The Man Who Counts nvr-1

by Poul Anderson

  “Hm-m-m… yes.” She nodded, stiffly. “You mean that we have nothing to offer the Drak’honai, except trade and treaty later on, if they get us home.”

  “Just so. And what hurry is there for them to meet the League? They are natural wary of unknowns like us from Earth. They like better to consolidate themselves in their new conquest before taking on powerful strangers, nie? I hear the scuttled butt, I tell you; I know the trend of thought about us. Maybe T’heonax lets us starve, or cuts our throats. Maybe he throws our stuff overboard and says later he never heard of us. Or maybe, when a League boat finds him at last, he says ja, we pulled some humans from the sea, and we was good to them, but we could not get them home in time.”

  “But could they — actually? I mean, Freeman van Rijn, how would you get us home, with any kind of Diomedean help?”

  “Bah! Details! I am not an engineer. Engineers I hire. My job is not to do what is impossible, it is to make others do it for me. Only how can I organize things when I am only a more-than-half prisoner of a king who is not interested in meeting my peoples? Hah?”

  “Whereas the Lannach tribe is hard pressed and will let you, what they say, write your own ticket. Yes.” Sandra laughed, with a touch of genuine humor. “Very good, my friend! Only one question now, how do we get to the Lannachs?”

  She waved a hand at their surroundings. It was not an encouraging view.

  The Gerunis was a typical raft: a big structure, of light tough balsalike logs lashed together with enough open space and flexibility to yield before the sea. A wall of uprights, pegged to the transverse logs, defined a capacious hold and supported a main deck of painfully trimmed planks. Poop and forecastle rose at either end, their flat roofs bearing artillery and, in the former case, the outsize tiller. Between them were seaweed-thatched cabins for storage, workshops, and living quarters. The overall dimensions were about sixty meters by fifteen, tapering toward a false bow which provided a catapult platform and some streamlining. A foremast and mainmast each carried three big square sails, a lateen-rigged mizzen stood just forward of the poop. Given a favoring wind — remembering the force of most winds on this planet — the seemingly awkward craft could make several knots, and even in a dead calm it could be rowed.

  It held about a hundred Diomedeans plus wives and children. Of those, ten couples were aristocrats, with private apartments in the poop; twenty were ranking sailors, with special skills, entitled to one room per family in the main-deck cabins; the rest were common deckhands, barracked into the forecastle.

  Not far away floated the rest of this squadron. There were rafts of various types, some primarily dwelling units like the Gerunis, some triple-decked for cargo, some bearing the long sheds in which fish and seaweed were processed. Often several at a time were linked together, to form a little temporary island. Moored to them, or patrolling between, were the outrigger canoes. Wings beat in the sky, where aerial detachments kept watch for an enemy: full-time professional warriors, the core of Drak’ho’s military strength.

  Beyond this outlying squadron, the other divisions of the Fleet darkened the water as far as a man’s eyes would reach. Most of them were fishing. It was brutally hard work, where long nets were trolled by muscle power. Nearly all a Drak’ho’s life seemed to go to back-bending labor. But out of these fluid fields they were dragging a harvest which leaped and flashed.

  “Like fiends they must drive themselves,” observed Van Rijn. He slapped the stout rail. “This is tough wood, even when green, and they chew it smooth with stone and glass tools! Some of these fellows I would like to hire, if the union busybodies can be kept away from them.”

  Sandra stamped her foot. She had not complained at danger of death, cold and discomfort and the drudgery of Tolk’s language lessons filtered through Wace. But there are limits. “Either you talk sense, Freeman, or I go somewhere else! I asked you how we get away from here.”

  “We get rescued by the Lannachska, of course,” said Van Rijn. “Or, rather, they come steal us. Yes, so-fashion will be better. Then, if they fail, friend Delp cannot say it is our fault we are so desired by all parties.”

  Her tall form grew rigid. “What do you mean? How are they to know we are even here?”

  “Maybe Tolk will tell them.”

  “But Tolk is even more a prisoner than we, not?”

  “So. However—” Van Rijn rubbed his hands. “We have a little plan made. He is a good head, him. Almost as good as me.”

  Sandra glared. “And will you deign to tell me how you plotted with Tolk, under enemy surveillance, when you cannot even speak Drak’ho?”

  “Oh, I speak Drak’ho pretty good,” said Van Rijn blandly. “Did you not just hear me admit how I eavesdrop on all the palaver aboard? You think just because I make so much trouble, and still sit hours every day taking special instruction from Tolk, it is because I am a dumb old bell who cannot learn so easy? Horse maneuvers! Half the time we mumble together, he is teaching me his own Lannach lingo. Nobody on this raft knows it, so when they hear us say funny noises they think maybe Tolk tries words of Earth language out, ha? They think he despairs of teaching me through Wace and tries himself to pound some Drak’ho in me. Ho, ho, they are bamboozles, by damn! Why, yesterday I told Tolk a dirty joke in Lannachamael. He looked very disgusted. There is proof that poor old Van Rijn is not fat between the ears. We say nothing of the rest of his anatomy.”

  Sandra stood quiet for a bit, trying to understand what it meant to learn two nonhuman languages simultaneously, one of them forbidden.

  “I do not see why Tolk looks disgusted,” mused Van Rijn. “It was a good joke. Listen: there was a salesman who traveled on one of the colonial planets, and—”

  “I can guess why,” interrupted Sandra hastily. “I mean… why Tolk did not think it was a funny tale. Er… Freeman Wace was explaining it to me the other day. Here on Diomedes they have not the trait of, um, constant sexuality. They breed once each year only, in the tropics. No families in our sense. They would not think our” — she blushed — “our all-year-around interest in these questions was very normal or very polite.”

  Van Rijn nodded. “All this I know. But Tolk has seen somewhat of the Fleet, and in the Fleet they do have marriage, and get born at any time of year, just like humans.”

  “I got that impression,” she answered slowly, “and it puzzles me. Freeman Wace said the breeding cycle was in their, their heredity. Instinct, or glands, or what it now is called. How could the Fleet live differently from what their glands dictate?”

  “Well, they do.” Van Rijn shrugged massive shoulders. “Maybe we let some scientist worry about it for a thesis later on, hah?”

  Suddenly she gripped his arm so he winced. Her eyes were a green blaze. “But you have not said… what is to happen? How is Tolk to get word about us to Lannach? What do we do?”

  “I have no idea,” he told her cheerily. “I play with the ear.”

  He cocked a beady eye at the pale reddish overcast. Several kilometers away, enormously timbered, bearing what was almost a wooden castle, floated the flagship of all Drak’ho. A swirl of bat wings was lifting from it and streaming toward the Gerunis. Faintly down the sky was borne the screech of a blown sea shell.

  “But I think maybe we find out quick,” finished Van Rijn, “because his rheumatic majesty comes here now to decide about us.”

  VII

  The admiral’s household troops, a hundred full-time warriors, landed with beautiful exactness and snapped their weapons to position. Polished stone and oiled leather caught the dull light like sea-blink; the wind of their wings roared across the deck. A purple banner trimmed with scarlet shook loose, and the Gerunis crew, respectfully crowded into the rigging and on the forecastle roof, let out a hoarse ritual cheer.

  Delp hyr Orikan advanced from the poop and crouched before his lord. His wife, the beautiful Rodonis sa Axollon, and his two young children came behind him, bellies to the deck and wings over eyes. All wore the scarlet sashes and jeweled arm
bands which were formal dress.

  The three humans stood beside Delp. Van Rijn had vetoed any suggestion that they crouch, too. “It is not right for a member of the Polesotechnic League, he should get down on knees and elbows. Anyway I am not built for it.”

  Tolk of Lannach sat haughty next to Van Rijn. His wings were tucked into a net and the leash on his neck was held by a husky sailor. His eyes were as bleak and steady on the admiral as a snake’s.

  And the armed young males who formed a rough honor guard for Delp their captain had something of the same chill in their manner — not toward Syranax, but toward his son, the heir apparent on whom the admiral leaned. Their spears, rakes, tomahawks, and wood-bayoneted blowguns were held in a gesture of total respect: nevertheless, the weapons were held.

  Wace thought that Van Rijn’s outsize nose must have an abnormal keenness for discord. Only now did he himself sense the tension on which his boss had obviously been counting.

  Syranax cleared his throat, blinked, and pointed his muzzle at the humans. “Which one of you is captain?” he asked. It was still a deep voice, but it no longer came from the bottom of the lungs, and there was a mucous rattle in it.

  Wace stepped forward. His answer was the one Van Rijn had, hastily and without bothering to explain, commanded that he give: “The other male is our leader, sir. But he does not speak your language very well as yet. I myself still have trouble with it, so we” must use this Lannach’ho prisoner to interpret.”

  T’heonax scrowled. “How should he know what you want to say to us?”

  “He has been teaching us your language,” said Wace. “As you know, sir, foreign tongues are his main task in life. Because of this natural ability, as well as his special experience with us, he will often be able to guess what we may be trying to say when we search for a word.”

  “That sounds reasonable.” Syranax’s gray head wove about. “Yes.”

  “I wonder!” T’heonax gave Delp an ugly look. It was returned in spades.

  “So! By damn, now I talk.” Van Rijn rolled forward. “My good friend… um… er… pokker, what is the word? — my admiral, we, ahem, we talk-um like good brothers — good brothers, is that how I say-um, Tolk?—”

  Wace winced. Despite what Sandra had whispered to him, as they were being hustled here to receive the visitors, he found it hard to believe that so ludicrous an accent and grammar were faked.

  And why?

  Syranax stirred impatiently. “It may be best if we talked through your companion,” he suggested.

  “Bilge and barnacles!” shouted Van Rijn. “Him? No, no, me talkum talky-talk self. Straight, like, um, er, what-is-your-title. We talk-um like brothers, ha?”

  Syranax sighed. But it did not occur to him to overrule the human. An alien aristocrat was still an aristocrat, in the eyes of this caste-ridden society, and as such might surely claim the right to speak for himself.

  “I would have visited you before,” said the admiral, “but you could not have conversed with me, and there was so much else to do. As they grow more desperate, the Lannach’honai become more dangerous in their raids and ambushes. Not a day goes by that we do not have at least a minor battle.”

  “Hm-m-m?” Van Rijn counted off the declension-comparison on his fingers. “Xammagapai… let me see, xammagan, xammagai… oh, yes. A small fight! I make-um see no fights, old admiral — I mean, honored admiral.”

  T’heonax bristled. “Watch your tongue, Eart’ho!” he clipped. He had been over frequently to stare at the prisoners, and their sequestered possessions were in his keeping. Little awe remained — but then, Wace decided, T’heonax was not capable of admitting that a being could possibly exist in any way superior to T’heonax.

  “And yours, son,” murmured Syranax. To Van Rijn: “Oh, they would scarcely venture this far out. I mean our positions on the mainland are constantly harassed.”

  “Yes,” nodded the Terrestrial, rather blankly.

  Syranax lay down on the deck in an easy lion-pose. T’heonax remained standing, taut in Delp’s presence. “I have, of course, been getting reports about you,” went on the admiral. “They are, ah, remarkable. Yes, remarkable. It’s alleged you came from the stars.”

  “Stars, yes!” Van Rijn’s head bobbed with imbecilic eagerness. “We from stars. Far far away.”

  “Is it true also that your people have established an outpost on the other shore of The Ocean?”

  Van Rijn went into a huddle with Tolk. The Lannacha put the question into childish words. After several explanations, Van Rijn beamed. “Yes, yes, we from across Ocean. Far far away.”

  “Will your friends not come in search of you?”

  “They look-um, yes, they look-um plenty hard. By Joe! Look-um all over. You treat-um us good or our friends find out and—” Van Rijn broke off, looking dismayed, and conferred again with Tolk.

  “I believe the Eart’ho wishes to apologize for tactlessness,” explained the Herald dryly.

  “It may be a truthful kind of tactlessness,” observed Syranax. “If his friends can, indeed, locate him while he is still alive, much will depend on what kind of treatment he received from us. Eh? The problem is, can they find him that soon? What say, Eart’ho?” He pushed the last question out like a spear.

  Van Rijn retreated, lifting his hands as if to ward off a blow. “Help!” he whined. “You help-urn us, take us home, old admiral… honored admiral… we go home and pay-um many many fish.”

  T’heonax murmured in his father’s ear: “The truth comes out — not that I haven’t suspected as much already. His friends have no measurable chance of finding him before he starves. If they did, he wouldn’t be begging us for help. He’d be demanding whatever struck his fancy.”

  “I would have done that in all events,” said the admiral. “Our friend isn’t very experienced in these matters, eh? Well, it’s good to know how easily truth can be squeezed out of him.”

  “So,” said T’heonax contemptuously, not bothering to whisper, “the only problem is, to get some value out of the beasts before they die.”

  Sandra’s breath sucked sharply in. Wace grasped her arm, opened his mouth, and caught Van Rijn’s hurried Anglic murmur: “Shut up! Not a word, you bucket head!” Where upon the merchant resumed his timid smile and attitude of straining puzzlement.

  “It isn’t right!” exploded Delp. “By the Lodestar; sir, these are guests — not enemies — we can’t just use them!”

  “What else would you do?” shrugged T’heonax.

  His father blinked and mumbled, as if weighing the arguments for both sides. Something like a spark jumped between Delp and T’heonax. It ran along the ranked lines of Gerunis crew-folk and household troopers as an imperceptible tautening, the barest ripple of muscle and forward slant of weapons.

  Van Rijn seemed to get the drift all at once. He recoiled operatically, covered his eyes, then went to his knees before Delp. “No, no!” he screamed. “You take-um us home! You help-um us, we help-um you! You remember say how you help-um us if we help-um you!”

  “What’s this?”

  It was a wild-animal snarl from T’heonax. He surged forward. “You’ve been bargaining with them, have you?”

  “What do you mean?” The executive’s teeth clashed together, centimeters from T’heonax’s nose. His wing-spurs lifted like knives.

  “What sort of help were these creatures going to give you?”

  “What do you think?” Delp flung the gage into the winds, and crouched waiting.

  T’heonax did not quite pick it up. “Some might guess you had ideas of getting rid of certain rivals within the Fleet,” he purred.

  In the silence which fell across the raft, Wace could hear how the dragon shapes up in the rigging breathed more swiftly. He could hear the creak of timbers and cables, the slap of waves and the low damp mumble of wind. Almost, he heard obsidian daggers being loosened in their sheaths.

  If an unpopular prince finds an excuse to arrest a subordinate whom the commoner
s trust, there are likely going to be men who will fight. It was not otherwise here on Diomedes.

  Syranax broke the explosive quiet. “There’s some kind of misunderstanding,” he said loudly. “Nobody is going to charge anyone with anything on the basis of this wingless creature’s gabble. What’s the fuss about? What could he possibly do for any of us, anyway?”

  “That remains to be seen,” answered T’heonax. “But a race which can fly across The Ocean in less than an equinoctail day must know some handy arts.”

  He whirled on a quivering Van Rijn. With the relish of the inquisitor whose suspect has broken, he said curtly: “Maybe we can get you home somehow if you help us. We are not sure how to get you home. Maybe your stuff can help us get you home. You show us how to use your stuff.”

  “Oh, yes!” said Van Rijn. He clasped his hands and waggled his head. “Oh, yes, good sir, I do you want-um.”

  T’heonax clipped an order. A Drak’ho slithered across the deck with a large box. “I’ve been in charge of these things,” explained the heir. “Haven’t tried to fool with it, except for a few knives of that shimmery substance—” Momentarily, his eyes glowed with honest enthusiasm. “You’ve never seen such knives, father! They don’t hack or grind, they slice! They’ll carve seasoned wood!”

  He opened the box. The ranking officers forgot dignity and crowded around. T’heonax waved them back. “Give this blubberpot room to demonstrate,” he snapped. “Bowmen, blowgunners, cover him from all sides. Be ready to shoot if necessary.”

  Van Rijn took out a blaster.

  “You mean to fight your way clear?” hissed Wace. “You can’t!” He tried to step between Sandra and the menace of weapons which suddenly ringed them in. “They’ll fill us with arrows before—”