by M J Engh
“I'm as willing to deal as anybody they'll find,” the Captain said now. “But not while they treat me like some sort of animal. Not,” she added, “that they know how to treat animals.” She had already remarked that she gave the crows (not to mention Broz) more respect than these people gave her.
“It's no worse than what the Quicksilvers did to them,” Lethgro said mildly. And the Captain snorted.
They were penned like animals indeed in the open ground before the snow caves—held not by any visible fence but by a line they did not dare to cross, while the creatures of the strangers prowled unceasingly around them. The torches lay tumbled and half buried in the snow, their flames all extinguished, but the prisoners were brightly lit, for one of the golden lights shone upon them from the top of a pole set just outside their circle. In its hot brilliance the snow was melting, so that they stood or sat or crouched miserably in deep slush, watching their dead turn sodden.
There were not many dead, considering the number of wounded. What had cut them down, Lethgro and Repnomar believed now, had been no ordinary weapon but a flat blast of wind, narrow as a swordblade, swung like a scythe indeed by those unholy reapers. It stunned, it bruised, it snapped bones, and sometimes it did worse. The humans were only battered and sore; but Quicksilvers, it seemed, were frailer. Besides their broken bones, which were many, they had taken hurts inside, and most of the dead and the worst wounded had blood at mouth or nose or ears. There were some newly dead, for the prisoners had learned by cruel experience the boundaries of their prison.
There were only three of the creatures, but they were enough. They moved relentlessly around and around the circle, insectlike with their many little legs and their blank, unchanging eyes; ever busy and yet seeming (for all their eyes) somehow blind. But they missed nothing, for every Quicksilver who crossed the unmarked boundary line was felled by one stroke of an unseen blade.
Those in the snow caves (for some of the Quicksilvers had managed to take refuge there from the first attack, and most of the sailors had never bothered to come out for the Quicksilver Council) were not pursued; but when any showed themselves at a cave mouth, they too were cut down, in a great swirl of blown snow. This had happened often at first, so that now most of the cave mouths were sealed with fallen snow, with here and there the gray limbs of a Quicksilver showing at an odd angle through it, lifeless and unwholesome. Round and round the creatures trundled, armless, headless, their eyes (or what might be eyes) set in a circle around their top edge, their stout dark-gleaming forms spotted with knobs and slots.
“And our whole crew buried in there,” the Captain said bitterly, with a jerk of her head toward the caves. “And Brask.” She laughed without mirth. “It's a safe bet that's not the way she expected to die.”
“They may be alive,” Lethgro said, “and better off than we are. Those caves are deep, and we don't know how far back they've collapsed.”
“No, we don't know,” the Captain repeated. Her mouth was grim. She had come near to sending a crow (for the crows, who had flown upward when the attack came, were unhurt) with a message for the Mouse; but she had decided against it, since, as she rhetorically asked, “What can I tell them, except that we're in trouble and they should stay away?” For she would not call the rest of her crew into the reach of these murderers. Several times she had stood up, on the verge of yelling out a challenge or a demand to the strangers who must be lurking somewhere in the darkness behind their creatures, but prudence and Lethgro's hand had held her back. Those invisible blades could kill very swiftly. Lethgro, who had been giving the matter some thought, believed that in the first attack the creatures had not meant to kill at all, only to strike down, whereas now they were ready to give more deadly thrusts.
He also believed, sadly, that it had been a grave mistake ever to entertain kindly feelings toward the Exile. It was dear now that for all the little man's professions of friendship, he had abandoned them as soon as he was able to rejoin his own folk—abandoned them like beasts penned for the slaughter. It was true, of course, that Lethgro had threatened the Exile with death not long before, but that had been under extreme provocation; and, Lethgro told himself, in the unlikely event that he had been forced to make good his threat, he would at least have done it with dignity and humanity. He would not have condemned the Exile to this misery in the snow.
Whistle, who had survived the attack with no worse damage (or at least none visible) than a broken forearm, showed ever more clearly as a person of importance among the Quicksilvers, restraining those who wanted to run for it and arranging some care and comfort for the wounded. Lethgro and Repnomar had tried to help, but there was little they could do. The Quicksilvers were very wretched, crowding as far from the hot light as they could safely get, shaking their wet paws and covering their eyes (for strangely enough it seemed that they too could see this light) and grooming slush out of their fur.
“But they haven't killed us all outright,” the Captain said. “They must see some use for us.”
“And that may not be good,” Lethgro answered.
They had come to this dreary point in their talking and, having no more to say, looked away from each other, when suddenly they both stiffened. Lethgro stood up, saying grimly, “Here he comes,” as the Exile advanced into the light; while at the same moment Repnomar, facing the other way, saw a net flying through the air toward one of the creatures. She cut off her whistle of surprise in mid-breath; but the creature took no notice, and the net settled over it.
For a moment it trundled forward as if nothing had happened, till the meshes began to hamper its movement. Now Repnomar could make out dim forms on the ill-lit hillside beyond, Quicksilvers and humans together hauling on the ropes of the net. The creature pressed doggedly forward against the pull, its little legs tangling in the meshes, till it was tilted at a steep angle. Its legs churned. Snow burst from the ground in one spot after another between the thing and where Repnomar stood among the other captives—the invisible sword striking wildly and askew.
The Exile, on the other side of the circle, shouted out something in a voice of anguish and ran forward at his clumsy gait. Lethgro saw that he carried something in his hands. Meanwhile, the other two creatures continued their mindless rounds, and one of them was now approaching its snared fellow. On the shadowy hillside there was movement, and Repnomar had no doubt that another net was being readied for its prey. A whining sound rose from the netted thing, and it began to tilt back toward an even keel. The bursts of flying snow that marked its swordstrokes leaped closer. The meshes were tearing.
29
Conferences in the Snow
They had, the Captain saw, only a few moments before the creature would be free enough of its net to turn its killing blast on her and the other prisoners. There was no shelter; but there was a gap of sorts in the circle of their unwalled prison, since two of the creatures were now close together on one side. She stooped to pull at Whistle's good arm, pointing and gesturing with her other hand, and shouting at Lethgro and Broz all the while.
But the Exile was shouting too, one word that cut through the Captain's cries and the whistling of the Quicksilvers: “Wait!” At the same moment all three creatures stopped dead, the pull of the netted one ceasing so abruptly that it was yanked bodily toward the hill and lay motionless, tumbled on its side. A confused cheer went up from the hillside, and a second net descended on the second creature, which made no move and let itself be overturned like its fellow.
Now the Exile had arrived panting within the circle, and began to plead for calm. He carried a small device in his hands, which, he said, gave him power over the creatures (though he asserted they were not creatures, but themselves devices, no more alive than his flying pods). It was urgent now, he said, to call off whoever was on the hillside, so that negotiations could begin in earnest and in peace.
The Captain cupped her hands around her mouth and hallooed in that direction, calling out that any sailor under her command, and an
yone else of good sense, would be well advised to stop all hostilities immediately and wait for orders.
The Exile had been staring about him at the carnage of the Quicksilvers’ camp, the wounded and the dead, the wrecked caves and the blue eyes glazed with misery, and he began to speak in a broken voice, saying that he was sorry for the damage, which might have been avoided with more patience. But the Captain interrupted him. “If you mean to do the Quicksilvers any good,” she said, “you'll let them get out of this muck and this heat. Is that boundary safe to cross?”
The Exile swore that it was, so long as he held the control device, and explained this as best he could to Whistle; and in a very few minutes the living Quicksilvers had disappeared into the darkness, the ablest carrying the worst hurt on their shoulders. Only Whistle perched within sight, above the sealed mouth of a snow cave.
Meanwhile one of Repnomar's sailors—Anscrop, as they saw when he reached the light—had come down the hill, reporting that (with all due respect to the Captain's orders) there was something that needed doing at once, for there were still people trapped in those collapsed caves, Captain Brask among them.
“What are you waiting for, then?” Repnomar snapped. “Get to it!” And Anscrop, pausing only to say that they were hard at it already, turned and scrambled back up the snowy slope. “So they dug their way out,” the Captain observed with satisfaction.
Lethgro and the Exile were gazing at each other with looks of grim appraisal. It was Lethgro who spoke: “Well, friend, am I your prisoner, or are you mine?”
The Exile answered mildly that he hoped there was no need for either to hold the other prisoner, especially if they were friends indeed, as he trusted they were. But he did not fail to point out that he and his people had powers that could destroy everything within sight in a moment, though they did not like to use them for such purposes. Here Lethgro cast a look of much eloquence at the ugliness around them, the clean snow changed to dirty swill, and the bodies of Quicksilvers, no longer silver and no longer quick, soaking in the slop. And the Exile added, still more mildly, that unless some agreement could be reached, his people would have no choice but to destroy all who had witnessed this affair.
This seemed excessive to both Lethgro and the Captain, and they said so with vigor. “But never mind that now,” the Captain finished, with a stroke of her hand through the air as if to wipe it all away. “For there's nothing we want more than an agreement. Let's put away the weapons and talk.”
The Exile agreed heartily with this, and would have led them back to his people's ship at once; but Repnomar wanted first to see to the welfare of her crew (not to mention Brask) and Lethgro insisted that the meeting must be on neutral ground and that the Quicksilvers must be in it, so that with one thing and another it was some little while before they were settled at last on a nearby hilltop. By general consent, all sides had taken time to eat and refresh themselves and lay their plans before they came to conference.
Captain Repnomar was in high good humor, for none of the sailors had been killed, or even much hurt, in the collapsing of the snow caves, nor any of the Quicksilvers except those who had been cut down at the entrances. The sailors who had been trapped inside, while their comrades had been attacking the creatures with nets, had much to say about this uncivil neglect; and Brask, snorting like a walrus and beating snow from her clothes with both hands, assured anyone within earshot that she could have handled the whole affair better.
Another reason for Repnomar's cheerfulness was that (though she agreed with Lethgro that it would be foolish, as things stood, to trust themselves on board the alien ship or even too close to it) she hoped sooner or later to have a view of that ship and all the wonders it must contain. Indeed the Exile had hinted that he might be able to arrange such a tour if and once an agreement were reached. It tickled her fancy mightily to be conferring with gods, and she meant to strike a good bargain with them. All her bitterness of a little while ago was, though not forgotten, at least set aside for present purposes.
Whistle and a number of other Quicksilvers were there, and all but one (so the Exile claimed) of the strangers, that one being left with the ship. On the human side, Repnomar and Lethgro took the lead, supported by Brask and Broz, while the sailors crowded behind them for a view of the strangers.
These, indeed, were not much to see, except for their outlandish clothing, for they all looked a good deal like the Exile. But they conducted themselves with some dignity. In deference to the Quicksilvers, they had not set up one of their fiery lights, but a much cooler one. First the Exile's captain (whose name was as unmanageable as his own) made a short speech, which the Exile, with apologies to the humans, translated first into Quicksilver chirps; for, as he said, it was addressed mostly to them. The Quicksilvers listened gravely, sometimes interrupting him with a few sharp whistles. Then they conferred among themselves while the Exile repeated the speech more briefly to the humans. The gist of it was that the strangers, having been attacked and imprisoned without provocation, had very naturally called their devices (by means of smaller devices which they prudently carried) to rescue them and defend them; but that in spite of this inhospitable reception, they meant no harm to any of the peoples of this world. They were prepared to make restitution in the form of medical care for the wounded. And the Exile added that this offer was not only for Quicksilvers, and that he had good hope that even Broz's eye and the Warden's arm might be healed.
Now Whistle (with occasional additions from other Quicksilvers) delivered a spirited reply, to the effect (as the Exile eventually explained it) that they would allow the strangers to try their healing on a few of the wounded who were thought to be past help, so long as it was done in the open away from the ship. And on this, two of the strangers withdrew to fetch their medicines and gear, with a Quicksilver to guide them to the patients.
And the conference proceeded—slowly, since everything must be translated twice, and the Exile was sometimes at a loss for proper words in one language or another. They were all seated, the strangers on their sheets, the humans (except for some of the sailors, who were still craning to see) on their blankets and packs, the Quicksilvers very comfortably on their haunches in the snow. But in the midst of one of the Exile's translations Lethgro stood up, rising to his full dignity, and the Exile fell silent.
“We've heard enough lies,” Lethgro said, and his voice boomed across the snowy hillside, “and enough smooth speeches. Let's have straight talk. Why are you here?”
The Exile cast a glance at his captain, but to Lethgro's surprise he did not at once translate those words. Instead, he answered softly, “I'll tell you.” And he began to tell.
“You know there are many worlds,” he said. “I've told you so. Most have no peoples, no beasts, only rocks and clouds. In some worlds, the people are trees or grass.” (Brask, who was still not accustomed to the Exile's strange statements, gave a great guffaw of laughter at this, but he went on.) “My own people were born in a world very far from here—‘Earth', we call it—but we have been coming nearer for a long time, visiting many worlds, settling in some; meeting other peoples, which is good for us, and sometimes good for them. Now, there are agreements among the peoples of these different worlds—not all of them, but the ones who know how to sail from world to world. There is a league, like the league between the Councils of Beng and Rotl. The league of worlds is a good thing, because it makes for peace between worlds. But there are other agreements, more important.”
Here the Exile, though he had been speaking with unaccustomed fluency, seemed hard put to find the next words; and his captain took advantage of this faltering to speak sharply to him. The Exile answered; and after a short exchange he turned back to Lethgro, saying mildly, “If I've made trouble for you, I've made trouble for myself, too.”
“What other agreements?” Repnomar demanded.
Now the Exile answered that in many worlds there were folk whose pleasure and business was always to learn new things; and from
this came not only their own livelihood and satisfaction, but all those powers and devices that had so amazed and troubled other worlds. “And we have a league of our own,” the Exile said. (From which they took it that he and his comrades were among these curious folk.) “And there is a league of traders, too. And these leagues are more powerful than the league of—of councils.”
“And what does your league want with this world?” Lethgro asked, for at last he began to see a kind of sense in all this.
But the Exile thought best to refer this to his captain, who made another speech. It was not clear, however, if the Exile translated it or not; for what he said was, “I was sent here—I and my friend who is dead and eaten—to set up devices for reporting the weather, as I told you. If there was anything I did not tell you, it was only that there are many such missions, each to a different world. We take the reports of all these devices and put them together to learn as much as we can about the making of weathers, why one world is different from another, how peoples can use their weathers—all this and much more. But one other thing we have learned —” (here the Exile's face squeezed up ruefully into an expression of pain) “one thing we've learned is that it's dangerous to touch a world. It's not like a little rock you drop into the Soll; it's like a knife you stick into a sail, and when the wind blows, the cut tears wider and wider. Everything changes, before we can find out what it is. Everything changes, and we've set somebody else's ship adrift. Now we try not to touch a world too hard. We send two alone with the devices, to set them up secretly. (Also,” he added, “this way is cheaper.) But now—” He gestured helplessly. “I had to tell my captain that the Quicksilvers killed my friend.”