"Very well," Tall Eyebrow said, turning back to Keff. "We wait."
"Thank you," Keff said formally, with a low bow. He strode into the airlock, and heard the door slide shut and felt the slight drag on his shoulders as Carialle pressurized the cabin around him. His suit inflated slightly around his knees, crotch, elbows, and chest. He braced himself, legs well apart.
"Now, how's that go?" he said out loud. "Hello. Please take me to your leader. 'Freihur, co nafri da an colaro, yaro.'"
"Relax, you've done it a dozen times," Carialle reassured him. "Hold on, they're scanning me." Keff frowned up at the ceiling.
"They are? I didn't think they had anything as sophisticated as scanners."
"I didn't say they were sophisticated scanners. It feels like elephants are walking on my hull," Carialle grumbled. She paused, and Keff heard a low hiss beyond the airlock hatch. "Just a moment—if the race we're about to face is hostile, why are they pumping a 90/10 nitrox mix into the airlock?"
"They're what?" Keff demanded.
"I swear it by my sainted motherboard," Carialle said. "Look for yourself." The monitor beside him lit up with a specroanalysis of comparative atmospheres. "You'll find the air fragrant, too. Plenty of plant esters."
"Perfume?" Keff felt his jaw drop, and yanked it closed again. "I have to speak to them. Open up." He hurried forward, helmet almost bumping the inner hatch. The door slid partway open, then halted.
Carialle's usually crisp voice was almost tentative. "Be careful, Sir Knight. I'd always rather you return with your shield, than on it."
"So would I, Lady Fair," he said, cheerfully, his voice echoing in his helmet. "But in this case I've got better armor than any dragon. Alert the Cridi to rev up their Core power, and let me go."
The airlock slid open onto a wide flexible tube filled with griffins as far as Keff could see. With one hand flat over his pounding heart, he bowed deeply to them. Two of the great beasts bustled forward, stopping about four paces away, and sat down on their haunches. The narrow clawed hands met under their squared chins in the same gesture of respect he'd seen in a thousand beamed conversations, then the great wings spread as far as they could in the confined space. Then, they waited.
Keff stepped forward, and copied their moves as nearly as he could. "'Freihur, co nafri da an colaro, yaro,'" he said.
"In good time, in good time," the lead griffin said, its upper lip splitting to show the gleaming white fangs beneath. "You are most welcome. Are you in need of refueling? Supplies?"
"Uh . . . no," Keff said, gawking at the being. "Welcome?" His hands were seized and shaken by all the griffins who could reach him. Wings, claws, and faces flashed by him in a blur. "Carialle, did they . . . did they . . . ?"
" . . . speak Standard?" Carialle finished his question. "They sure did. With a respectable accent, too. How in the black hole did they learn it? When? Who from?"
"I don't know! How . . . ?"
"We are so glad to see you, great human," the second griffin said, offering another namaste. "This is a great honor. Never before has one of yours landed in our place."
"Where do they usually land?" Keff asked automatically, struggling to make sense of the situation. "Humans! You know other humans! How? Why—when?" His mental drives were overloaded with the new influx of knowledge. "I never saw any communications with humans in your transmissions." But his greeters did not have a chance to answer. A host of smaller griffins pushed past or sailed over the full-sized beasts, and clustered around him.
"Greetings!" they said, in flutelike voices. "Where do you come from?" "What is this for?"
"This doesn't sound like all the humans they've encountered were captives," Carialle said, pitching her voice low to be heard. "It sounds perhaps as if they were . . . collaborators?"
"Don't jump to any conclusions, Cari."
"I won't, but it sounds pretty suspicious to me," she said.
Keff spoke over the head of the youngsters surrounding him to the adults beyond. "You know humans?"
The leader's lip split again. The expression was clearly the griffin version of a smile.
"Of course, sacred one. You are but testing me. I know of the Melange."
"Sacred ones?" Keff asked.
"The Melange?" Carialle asked, in Keff's ear. He waved a hand in front of the camera eye for silence so he could concentrate on what the lead griffin was saying. "Who? I have no entry for any such name in my database."
"What is Melange?" Keff asked. The leader gave him a puzzled glance that narrowed the center stripe in his large eyes.
"The Melange," the second one repeated, as if no explanation was really needed.
"But . . . ?"
"What are you called, human male-man?" one of the children demanded, tugging at his arm. When he looked down, it drew back, giggling at its own boldness.
"My name is Keff," he said, bending down to look into their faces. In spite of their size, and their weight, which must have been around fifty kilos each, they were like any children galaxy-wide: curious, friendly, bold and shy at the same time, and irresistibly cute. They romped around him on all fours.
"And what does 'Keff' describe?" asked another youngster, pushing in close. Its upper lip opened to show the nares, and it sniffed his hands and knees.
"Me," Keff said, tapping his chest. A couple of the children grabbed his hand with their wingclaws to examine his gauntlet. They exclaimed over the transparent material, running delicate talon-tips up and down his palm. "I, uh, Keff comes from Kefyn, an ancient name of my people."
"Poara, vno!" One of the youngsters had discovered the IT on Keff's chest, and pulled it down for a closer look.
"Uh, please don't touch that," Keff said, pulling his hands free and retaking prossession of IT from the enthusiastic fledglings.
"Vidoro, eha," another child said, and giggled, creeping around behind Keff to feel his clear plastic suit. Keff prided himself on his physical prowess, but these children were effortlessly stronger than he. They butted into his knees, patted his waist and chest. Their affectionate, curious touches had the power of a body blow.
"Kids, please, enough," he said, holding up his hands as he felt for a wall to brace himself against. The floor bobbed up and down under his feet, and he grabbed for the edge of the airlock. One of the children rose up on hind legs to get a good look at the tubes running from the back of his helmet into his suit, and Keff overbalanced completely. Flailing for a handhold, he toppled toward the adults. The first griffin grabbed his arms in both of its strong claw hands and set him upright.
"Forgive, sir-madam," the creature said. "My child is bad-mannered."
"It's sir," Keff said. "He—she?—didn't mean any harm."
"Are you all right?" Carialle's voice erupted in his ear. "Your heart is running the three-minute mile."
"I'm fine, Cari," Keff assured her in an undertone. The children, restrained from physical contact by their parents, were bombarding him with questions.
"Do you wish food, human sir? Good food, at the canteen. Human coo-orn, human broccocoli, human meeeat. All good!"
"Uh, maybe later," Keff said. "Tell me about these humans."
"But, sir, you are a human."
"They are rather charming," Carialle said, "and I don't want to like them. Not yet."
"I know what you mean," Keff said. "If they're involved in piracy, they must be the most cold-blooded . . ."
"What did you say?" One of the youngsters pricked up its fluffy ears. Keff cursed. These beings must have very sharp hearing. "Who are you talking to?"
"To my friend," Keff said, tapping the IT unit. At least they couldn't hear Carialle. "I am asking her questions."
"Who is your friend?" "Can we meet her?" "Your ship is so pretty. Can I go in?" "Ask us questions. We know answers!"
"Excuse me," Keff said, holding up a forefinger to stem the flood, and addressed himself to the first adult. "What is your name, please?"
"I am Cloudy. My friends here are Shower an
d Moment." The first Griffin indicated the two nearest him. Others began to call out their names, and Keff decided to count on IT remembering them all for him.
"What do you call this beautiful world, Cloudy?" he asked.
"This is Thelerie, at the Center of all things, but you must know that, human sir."
Keff made the namaste, and saw it repeated by every griffin.
"I must assure you I do not know all that. I am pleased to be here. Cloudy, I am here for a most important reason."
The wide smile flashed again. "Ah, so I know. What commodities do you bring to us?"
"Uh, no commodities. I'm just visiting."
Carialle's voice was a siren in his ear canal. "I knew it, piracy! They trade in contraband!"
"Hush, Carialle!" Keff schooled his expression and waited, smiling.
The griffins looked puzzled, and some of the ones further back exchanged glances. "You are not of the Melange?"
"No," Keff said, firmly. "Who are they?"
"You are teasing us," Shower said, shaking its great head.
"How do you know humans?" Keff said, pressing. "How do you all speak Standard so well?"
They looked knowingly at him.
"You are teasing us," Cloudy said, his upper lip spreading again. "We did not know of humans to be so merry."
"They are friendly?" asked Tall Eyebrow, rolling out of the open airlock around Keff's feet, with Small Spot and Big Eyes immediately behind. The griffins looked down at the small globes. Tall Eyebrow looked up at them, wearing his best human-type smile. The curious, striped eyes widened.
"Slllaaayiiim!" the aliens shrieked. The large ones grabbed the small ones, and they backpedaled hastily away in the billowing tube. In moments, the long corridor was empty, and bobbing softly. Keff, thrown off his feet by the jouncing, listened to the shrieks outside on the surface as he climbed up again, using the airlock for a handhold, but his gauntlets scrabbled on smooth enamel. As soon as the corridor had broken open to atmosphere, Carialle had slammed the airlock shut.
"Well, that hasn't changed," Carialle said, into the silence. "Your ancestors must have fought hard, TE."
"This isn't the way to start a detente," Keff said severely, looking down at the Ozranian. His back and elbows hurt where he'd slipped against the side of the ship. "I wish you'd waited inside as I asked you. Now they'll probably call out the militia."
"We will protect you," Big Eyes said firmly, showing her fingerstalls.
Keff swallowed his exasperation. "Please wait here. Please." He held up a hand to forbid any of the Cridi to follow him, and threshed clumsily down the tube toward daylight. Two of the globes levitated and started after him, but he held up a warning hand. The plastic balls subsided to the cloth floor. The Cridi inside them sat down crosslegged in the water at the bottom.
"We wait," Tall Eyebrow said, disappointedly.
Lying flat on his belly Keff poked his head out of the end of the corridor. The landing field was deserted. He squinted up into the bright sky, quickly enough to see hundreds of winged shadows fleeing off in all directions.
"Damn," he said.
"At least they aren't calling out the guards," Carialle said in his ear. "No transmissions from this site, and no warm bodies headed in your direction. My, that's a long way down."
Keff glanced at the ground below him. In their haste, the griffins had shoved the gurney away from the ship. The only way down to the pavement was a drop of almost ten meters.
"Do you want me to open my ramp?" Carialle asked.
"No." Keff pulled himself back into the tube and waded back toward the globe-frogs. "I guess you four win, after all. I need an elevator ride to the ground floor."
To his credit, Tall Eyebrow tried not to look triumphant.
"We come with you?"
"Yes, but under conditions," Keff said. "One, you do what I tell you. Two, you stay out of sight until I think it's all right. Three—well, I'll decide on three if I have to. Agreed?"
The Cridi all nodded vigorously.
"This visiting of a new world is fun," Big Eyes said, her dark eyes shining.
"It is," Keff agreed, as they floated out into the sunshine on a wave of Core power. "The worst thing is that we're not the first humans to land here, Cari. After all this, somebody else gets the credit."
"Cheer up, Sir Keff," Carialle said. "We're in this one for another purpose this time."
"I just wish all our witnesses hadn't run away," Keff said. He forced himself to stare straight ahead and not look down as the four Cridi carried him toward the mountain city where most of the natives had fled.
Chapter Fourteen
"Four heat traces inside that one," Carialle said, as Keff obligingly swept his sensors toward the nearest house on the edge of town.
The habitations of the griffins were a peculiar hodgepodge of modern and primitive architecture strewn throughout the ridges of the high mountain reaches. No one seemed to like to live in the valleys. All of the buildings were of stone; unsurprising in a landscape with few trees. Each house had been constructed with considerable physical labor, using handhewn blocks, and yet, on top of this building and the ones visible nearby were delicate metal antennae, the communications transmitters Carialle had detected from space. The houses were roofed and decorated with the local clay, colored blue and green with trace minerals Carialle identified as copper extractives.
"One thing you can say about them, they do landscape nicely," Carialle commented, focusing on various details in the large yard. "Although the preponderance of rock gardens would get old fairly quickly."
"Pee-yew!" Keff said, as the globe frogs floated him over a pit. It was carefully bermed to prevent its strong stench from wafting toward the small blue house, so the only place for the stink to go was straight up, toward him. He gestured with frantic hands.
"Put me down! Now!" He dipped dangerously towards the cesspit, and waved for attention. "No, not in here, over there." He rose through the air once more. Following his signals, the Cridi set him down in the long grass several meters away from the humped construction. Once on the ground, he could see that it was fitted with wide stone steps leading to the lip, and surrounded by handsome gardens that no doubt benefited from the natural fertilizer.
"I see you've found 'the necessary,'" Carialle commented drily.
"You can laugh," Keff said crossly, triggering the stud that controlled air recirculation. "You didn't smell it. It was so bad that it passed the filters in my suit." Grateful to be back on his own feet, he patted the nearest Cridi's globe. Small Spot glanced up at him with large, scared eyes.
"These beasts are not secretly making an attack?" he asked.
"I don't think so," Keff replied. "It does not appear as if we have much to fear from them. They're afraid of you."
"Us? They are so many, and we are so few, and yet they do not attack?"
"It would seem not," Keff said. He squeezed his eyes halfway closed to trigger magnification on the house. "Those wires are very new," Keff said. "The contacts have yet to oxidize in spite of the chlorinated atmosphere."
"I am finding it very difficult to believe they continue to live in a semi-primitive state like this after having developed space travel," Carialle said.
"Focused application of technology?" Keff wondered out loud. "Perhaps they have a cultural prohibition against wholesale changes in the environment."
"Yes, but Keff, even sustainable technology could take care of that midden heap in a more aesthetic and less odiferous fashion. Side by side with electric light and telecommunications is that complicated system of water-wheels for ventilation."
"Yes," Big Eyes said. "Why do they not use electricity to run water mills and to ventilate? Much more efficient."
"Tradition?" Keff asked, but he wasn't convinced either.
"It's as if all this doesn't belong, as if it has been imposed on the landscape," Carialle said. "Looking at it with an artist's eye, it doesn't make sense. Some scientific advances are used fo
r one purpose, but all other uses are ignored.
Big Eyes, accustomed to luxuries available at the flick of a finger, stared around her at the dry landscape with puzzled eyes. "So barren," she said. "Bleak, primitive."
Tall Eyebrow suddenly looked very sad. "Very much like home on Sky Clear," he gestured. Big Eyes caught the expression on his face, and attempted to apologize.
"It is only that I am not used to it," she said hastily, both in voice and sign. "I do not mean such things cannot be considered attractive."
"I'm going to go speak to the beings in the house," Keff signed, distracting them both from a potentially embarrassing exchange. "Stay close, but don't come out until I signal for you."
With the Cridi in their globes staying low in the tall, crisp grass, Keff circled out of the yard and made his way to the front. A wide but low door, elaborately molded bronze to match the shutters of the wide windows, lay in the exact center of the side of the house, facing a lane.
"Not much in the way of roadbuilders," Carialle said. "But would you be, if you could fly everywhere?"
"Not I," Keff said. He raised his hand to knock, then noticed a cluster of bells hanging just under the eaves. "That's right. They haven't much in the way of knuckles, have they?" He jangled the bells with his fingertips. In a few moments, the door swung wide. A noseless lion face appeared at his chest level.
"Freihur?" the griffin asked. Its strange eyes darkened as its visitor registered on its consciousness, and it sat back on its haunches. "Za, humancaldifaro!"
"Yes, I'm human. My name is Keff. How do you do? Do you speak Standard?" Keff asked, politely, airing the griffin language he'd elicited from Carialle's telephone tap.
"I . . . yes! Welcome," the griffin said in Standard, in seeming befuddlement. It passed wing-hands over its golden fur, grooming it back into place. "Enter, yaro."
Keff followed his host into the low house. The interior was arranged rather like a nest. All the furniture was made for sinking into or settling on. The big, fluffy pillows looked comfortable. The heavy gravity was wearing on his muscles in spite of the assistance of Core power. Keff would have enjoyed flopping down on the cushion with the silky covering that lay under a sunny window amid potted plants. The windows were unglazed, a blessing in the heat, but were all fitted with screens of a microfine weave to keep out the blowing dust.
The Ship Who Saved the Worlds Page 54