“My name is Roscoe Cook,” said the commander. He returned the Veshnan’s bow as they ran, nearly tripping over some cracked pavement in the process.
“Welcome to Ishtar.”
Chapter 2
“I HAVE NEVER SEEN one close up before.”
“How ever do they breathe through those long, pointed snouts?”
“Munshi says this one is quite friendly, though painfully shy. It hardly said more than a few dozen words on the way back from the riot. But it seems intelligent—and look at the way it moves around the room, examining everything in sight. It is curious as a schripan’t.”
“Is it male or female?”
“Who can tell?”
“Short hair—and Munshi says it has a deep voice. I think, perhaps, it is a male.”
“Maybe Zatar will not feel so out of place, now.”
“You know, he really need not be so lonely—not if we send Gh’sienna to tell him we have a guest.”
“Be not crude, Doshanda. Besides, ’Sienna hardly went into heat on purpose.”
“I will go.”
“No, I will go; you flirt so shamefully, we shall never get you out of his room if you go. And you have been eating so much you are likely to go into heat yourself.”
Zatar of Ibleiman was a handsome man, tall and powerfully built, with firm, angular cheekbones and a well-rounded chin. Even approaching middle age, his skin retained the whiteness of youth, for the yellowing of age came slowly to his proud and distinguished family. As befitted a scion of the House of Ibleiman, he was not easily given to wearing his thoughts on his countenance, but his eyes had almost lost their color and a look of bewilderment had seized his brow. He was, in a word, incredulous.
“Are you sure?” he asked again, as if repeating the question would alter the facts. His aide stamped her foot in annoyance. He knew that dwelling on the obvious was foolish, but the cold, dry planet sometimes affected his hearing and he wanted to be certain he heard things correctly.
“I saw the Terran with my own eyes, Ambassador,” she replied tartly. Men were impossible, she thought; you could repeat things a dozen times and they would still ask if you were sure. Even so, she could not stay angry with Zatar for long. It was the one benefit she could see in working for a man, and mischief soon darted across her cheek muscles.
“They say it is a male. Imagine that—but then, I suppose even Terran males are not without their charms.”
Irritation clouded Zatar’s face. Even after so many years of service together, his aides still delighted in showing themselves unawed by his credentials or accomplishments. As a senior procurator for the High Council of the Grand Alliance, Zatar had been places and seen things that few Veshnan men dreamed existed and fewer aspired to share. With each passing year, his reputation and influence grew in the corridors of power on Balarium, the tranquil, lovely planet that was the administrative center for the Alliance. He had even begun to dream of having at least one aide with a more enlightened perspective, but after all this time he was so used to each of them that such a radical change would be unsettling. He knew enough not to take offense, though now was hardly the time for teasing. Zatar cleared his throat haughtily.
Chastised, she continued.
“He saved G’ela’s life, and Maguna’s, and Munshi’s, and— ”
“But how...?”
“They all went to visit a Terran social club and some of the guests became unruly. Like wemblies guarding their brood, I suppose. So the Terran led them through an emergency exit—sent them ‘back to the wind before they could warm themselves,’ as it happened, but it was not really his fault. In fact, it was quite prudent, as I understand it. Now, Munshi is shaking from the cold and no other but you understands Terran talk. Our guest is wandering downstairs without a host, and we must not appear to be rude.”
Zatar bowed and dismissed her from the room. Immediately, he began searching his wardrobe for something suitable. Red perhaps, since they would be celebrating, even if the feast would be merely for Avoidance of Bother. He could deal with Munshi later. Why she would be so foolish as to venture outside by herself, much less contrive to avoid the Terran militiamen assigned as their escorts, was unexplainable. Simply unexplainable. But then, even though he was the official head of the delegation, it seemed that nobody in this House ever listened to anything he said.
As he changed from his housecoat to more formal attire, uncertainty creased his face. This would be the first time he had met a Terran without an interpreter. It would also be the first time any of them had met a Terran in a social setting, away from the formal trappings of diplomacy. His thirty-day language-immersion course may have taught him the rote responses needed for the stilted greetings of diplomats, but was hardly adequate to the more rigorous demands of small talk. Besides, some people had language talent and others did not. And while he could understand most Crutchtan dialects quite well, the Terran language was utter chaos to him. Terran vocal chords might be remarkably similar to his own, and each day found Zatar recognizing and pronouncing more Terran words than before. But he found himself intimidated by the syntactical bogs and conjugational swamps that were the hallmarks of their strange, guttural tongue. Munshi said the language was really quite simple, and that the staccato barks and growls that Terrans used to communicate were no different than any other language after mastering the inverted grammar and alien idioms. But Munshi was quite gifted.
His dressing completed, he looked in the mirror to see the embodiment of Veshnan manhood—tall and proud, like his forefathers before him, brightly arrayed in festive attire. He adjusted his robes to their best advantage and breathed heavily, forcing himself to relax, knowing that descending the stairs would be the most difficult part of the entire evening.
Of course, meeting the Terran would be easy. Exhilarating, actually, thought Zatar. What would be difficult would be trying to ignore Gh’sienna’s mating scent on the way to meet his guest. Veshnan women always found excuses for not taking men seriously, but they hardly helped matters by finding male preoccupations so amusing, especially since they were the biggest distraction themselves.
Roscoe Cook wandered aimlessly around the makeshift embassy, peering at the curiosities scattered about the living room. Brightly colored tapestries covered the dull walls, depicting scenes of Veshnan life in abstractions that the commander found unintelligible. Strange aromas filled his senses, beckoning his imagination on journeys reaching past the untamed wilderness of outer Terra. Even his boyhood awe at the heroic explorers who first breached the confines of Old Earth and headed off into the cosmos was lost in the wonder he felt touching the artifacts of an alien civilization. Unlike those who left the tantalizing ruins that dotted the forests of Isis, the Veshnans were a living culture. It made the dead relics of his home planet seem as cold and barren as the sands of Ishtar.
In the corner, an open cabinet stretched to the ceiling. Made from an unknown substance that was cool to the touch, it left a salty-tasting residue on the officer’s fingers. Its shelves were filled with strangely colored plants, which quivered and hummed as he approached. Beneath his feet was a plush, velvety carpet of deep maroon, which almost swallowed his boots as he wandered around the room. Bending to brush the material with his fingers, he found the carpet soft and supple as the winter fur of a Babylonian schrault. A large, transparent urn sat in front of the window, with multicolored fish squiggling in the water. What appeared to be stringed musical instruments hung from the wall on the room’s north side.
Cook walked to the north wall and ran his finger over the strings of a Veshnan lute, producing a wavering, metallic sound like the tremulous whine of a subspace engine in a vat of water. The sound was eerie and unsettling, reminding him of the mood music that accompanied the vid-screen monsters he loved to watch as a child. It stopped as soon as he removed his hand. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, he turned to see a red-robed Veshnan standing at the entrance to the living room. It had the same pale translucence, the sa
me four-fingered hands, the same calm serenity about its bearing, as those he had met in the pub. But this alien was large—almost a foot taller than the others—and its face was more angular, its features more pronounced.
This was, the commander guessed, a Veshnan male.
At the cosmic pace of distant stars passing in the blackness, the two males waited in silence for the other to speak. After the first tentative bows and smiles, Zatar began to feel quite foolish and the ensuing silence just compounded the problem. The artifacts and scents of home that filled the senses in the gathering room, so carefully designed to remind all of them of the worlds they left behind, merely added to his sense of disarray.
Curiously, while finding another species in such a place disturbed his sense of balance, the alien visitor was hardly the cause of the ambassador’s concern. Slowly, he realized that his shyness arose largely from his reluctance to make a fool of himself by butchering the Terran’s mother tongue. This was the way of cowards, he reflected, but found that he could not help himself. The mind that could charm the High Council and send those on the other side of any issue careening into outrage and despair balked at the prospect of floundering in a sea of alien phraseology. He was dismayed, as well, to learn that the well-endowed ego of a High Official of the Grand Alliance did not take kindly to the thought of communicating by grunts and sign language.
The Terran stared at him through circles of color in a sea of white. Terran eyes were paralyzing, thought Zatar, at once compelling and hypnotic. The effect was less pronounced at the negotiating table, where interpreters served as a buffer, but now Zatar felt a subliminal wariness. It was, he concluded, a singular advantage for a predator species, yet he recalled the Terran’s almost gleeful inquisitiveness as earlier he watched it dart across the room, moving with surprising agility for such a large creature. Unlike those with proper Veshnan manners, it was not at all self-conscious about its curiosity. And that was, thought Zatar, the mark of a civilized man no matter what the women thought. It was enough to make him wonder how his own species appeared, when seen through Terran eyes.
Silently, Zatar studied the costume of their long-nosed simian visitor. It was a type of uniform worn by other members of the Terran militia force. “Protectors of the Universe,” they called themselves—or khasg’a’rhd’h, in their own language. It seemed a heavier uniform than he had seen before, of coarser material and cluttered with pockets and flaps. The uniform was also the color of the sky, which meant that their guest was a military officer of some sort. Zatar could not guess its rank merely by looking, but the Terran’s face suggested that their guest was one of some importance. Except for females and children, most of the people he had seen on the planet—and many militiamen, as well—covered their faces with fur. Only those the Terran government had sent to negotiate with him kept their face fur so closely cropped as to be invisible.
And the difference was not congenital, he knew, for Zatar recalled seeing fur grow on many of the Terran negotiators during their long sessions in seclusion together. He supposed that the Terran government ordered its diplomats and senior militiamen to trim their faces, so as not to frighten the representatives of the Grand Alliance needlessly. After all, the first sightings of the long-haired simians had driven the Crutchtans to panic at the bloody First Encounter. The Terran policy of cropping their fur was an act of profound civility for which Zatar was grateful, even if his colleagues dismissed the gesture as the product of his own imagination.
Finally, the ambassador could stand the silence no longer. Resolved to muddle through as best he could, he swallowed his misgivings and began to speak, only to find the venture cut short: the Terran, apparently just as impatient at the long silence, blurted out the last sounds in the world that Zatar expected to hear. His guest spoke tentatively, unsurely, and indistinctly, but the message came through nonetheless.
“Friend,” it said; at least that was what it sounded like. Zatar could not be sure, given the thick accent and low-pitched growl of the Terran’s voice. Actually, it sounded more like “f’Rroinght,” but the context was right, and Zatar judged that it was as close as a Terran could come without choking. What astounded him was that the Terran knew any Veshnan words at all. Even Terra’s ambassadors seemed disinterested in learning to speak for themselves, and Zatar had all but concluded that Terrans had little interest in other languages. Choosing his words slowly and carefully, Zatar forged ahead with his effort at cross-cultural communication. But by now he was smiling so broadly that he could only guess what he sounded like to the Terran.
“Hearth our toward, is hospitality,” Zatar said in the Terran’s language, repeating by rote one of the many greetings he had learned from the language tapes. “Zatar of Ibleiman, the emissary am I.” He approached the Terran, prepared to clasp hands in the traditional Terran greeting. Zatar rather enjoyed the quaint custom, though he could not fathom its significance. He assumed it derived from the keen tactile sense noted in proto-simians throughout the galaxy and was meant to engender some sort of temporary bonding between the participants. To his surprise, his guest smiled and bowed in the finest Veshnan manner.
“Emissary sir,” the Terran replied in its own language. “Conferring is contentment.”
“Like health, conferring of mine is joyful,” Zatar responded, returning the bow. To his horror, he realized that his memory was failing him and he was running out of rote responses. Trying not to panic, he tried to clear his mind by listening to the sands whipping against the side of their dwelling. But the thought of the cold, pelting winds merely made him shudder and seemed to keep the words from rising in his brain. Finally, the distraction itself unclogged his mental faculties, and another Terran phrase popped into his head.
“Pray, your title what grows, plus?”
Zatar winced; he knew that he had said it wrong, but hoped he had come close enough for his guest to understand. Talking in this strange tongue was quite exhilarating, he realized, but it seemed that much of the excitement came from never being quite sure what he was saying. As far as he could tell, Terrans strung words together randomly, with no discernable pattern, and in the past he often created confusion whenever he tried to follow conventional rules of syntax. He sighed with relief upon hearing a familiar voice come to his rescue.
“His name is Khu’ukh of Waashkho.”
It was Munshi. She had changed into more formal attire—a dark blue tunic and long, flowing gown—and her skin no longer pulsed with the cold. The ambassador had rarely been gladder to see anyone in his life.
“But you are doing so well,” she said, obviously enjoying herself. “Please, do not stop on my account.”
Zatar was not amused.
“Khu’ukh,” mumbled the ambassador, struggling with the pronunciation and feeling quite ignored as Munshi and the Terran chatted unintelligibly.
“You know what it means, do you not?” asked Munshi. Her laughing eyes told Zatar that he could ignore the question without loss, but curiosity triumphed over his sense of dignity.
He exhaled loudly, frustrated that his reputation among the High Council offered no immunity from teasing by his own kind. As with most men, his curiosity never failed to provide amusement for the mischievous females around him, who seemed to delight in showing their casual irreverence toward any of his accomplishments.
“I hope the cold has not stripped your sense of irony,” she continued wryly. “For the word ‘khu’ukh’ denotes the Terran equivalent of an apprentice Crutchtan chef.”
Zatar laughed loudly, soon joined by Munshi. Neither noticed the look of concern that clouded the Terran’s face, for neither could tell that their good spirits sounded to him as if they were choking. But as the moments passed their visitor relaxed, sensing that his new friends were in no real danger. Soon his eyes resumed wandering impatiently around the room.
“A propitious omen for our Crutchtan friends,” Zatar said at last. “But I suppose if we tell them, they will celebrate their good fortune until
the stars grow horns.”
They both shared another long laugh, until they were interrupted by the Terran. Zatar tried to follow the conversation, but quickly lost its gist—something about returning to school when they were pensioners, he thought. It hardly surprised him when Munshi’s translation came out differently.
“Khu’ukh of Waashkho suggests proceeding to the library, where we can talk in more relaxed surroundings,” Munshi related. “He can stay only briefly today, but promises to return if we invite him. He thinks that quiet conversation may do more to further understanding than all manner of diplomatic yammering.”
“Your friend is very wise,” said Zatar, bowing solemnly to both in turn. “Tell the kitchen to prepare their finest refreshments. Our guest should feel welcome, and you may tell him that we wish him to stay as long as he wishes and look forward to his return with eager anticipation.”
As the three made their way toward the next room, Zatar noticed the rest of the staff peeking from behind every available wall, like children who have forgotten their manners. Women chuckled at the curiosity of their men, he thought, but they were every bit as bad. Still, he realized that he could not keep them from intruding, and hoped that the prying did not offend their guest.
Walking beside the Terran, he found his eyes drawn, as always, to the exquisitely pointed Terran snout. It was the most striking feature on the otherwise fathomless Terran face. Why any intelligent creature needed such extended nostrils baffled scientists in all corners of the Grand Alliance. Asking its function would be impolite, of course, but Zatar recalled reading that most biologists back home thought it showed a transitional phase in Terran evolution: when the early Terran ancestors first left the trees, they theorized, they needed long snouts to dig for roots and grubs. Their omnivore’s mouth supported this theory, but Zatar wondered why the earliest Terrans would use their nose instead of their hands. He agreed with the dissenters: obviously, it had something to do with mating.
The Sirens of Space Page 3