Larreka remembered the words in the English which had been used. Fascinated by humans since their first arrival, he had seen as much of them as he could manage and learned everything about them and from them that he was able. This was rather more than he let on to his followers or his brother officers; it wouldn’t have fitted his character as a rough, tough old mudfoot. Language had been no problem to a fellow who’d knocked around half the globe and always quickly found how to ask local people for directions, help, food, beer, housing, sex, whatever he wanted. Besides, English was very narrow in range and choice of sounds. Humans could never match the voice or hearing of even a male Ishtarian. He admired them for plowing their way through Sehalan anyhow.
When they were so pitifully short-lived, too. A single sixty-four or less, and they needed special medicines to keep their strength. Before the end of the second sixty-four, that was no help either… Larreka unconsciously quickened his pace a bit. He wanted to enjoy his friends while he had them.
More urgent was his errand among them. He carried evil news.
Primavera was houses and other buildings along asphalt streets shaded by the red and yellow foliage of big old native trees which had been left in place when the area was originally cleared, their soil tended to keep them alive amidst alien growth. It rose in gentle slopes from a landing on the Jayin where boats docked and vessels of Ishtarian river traffic paid calls; the inhabitants manufactured a few articles like rot-proof fabrics to trade for many of their needs. They built largely in native materials, wood, stone, brick—though the glass they made was superior to anything of Beronnen—and added light bright paint. A road ran east, vanishing over a ridge, eventually to reach the spacefield, A kilometer outside of town it passed by the airport, where flyers were kept for long-range transportation. Around home people used groundcars, cycles and feet.
Ishtarians were too common in Primavera to draw special attention unless they were individually well-known. Larreka only was to long-term residents. And not many persons were outdoors at this hour, when adults were at work and children in school. He had reached Stubbs Park, was about to short-cut through it and grab a drink of water at the fountain in the middle, before he was hailed.
First, he heard the purr of a large flywheeler at high speed, followed by a squeal of braking. To drive like that in town would have been unforgivably reckless in most, but not quite all. He wasn’t surprised to recognize Jill Conway’s throaty shout.
“Larreka! Old Sugar Uncle himself! Hi there!” She unsnapped her safety harness, sprang from the saddle and out between the roll bars, left the vehicle balanced while she hurled herself into his arms.
At length, “M-m-m,” she murmured, stood back, cocked her head, and surveyed him centimeter by centimeter. “You’re looking good. Worked some fat off, have you? But why the deuce didn’t you let me know you were coming? I’d’ve baked a cake.”
“Maybe that was why,” he teased in her English.
“Aw, switch it off, will you? The trouble with a lifespan like yours is you develop no sense of time. My culinary disasters didn’t happen yesterday, they were twenty years ago. I’m a grown lady now, people keep wistfully telling me, and you’ll be surprised how well I cook. I must admit, you never did anything more heroic than eat those things a little girl made for her Sugar Uncle.”
They smiled at each other, a gesture common to both species though human lips curved rather than quirked upward. Larreka returned her searching gaze. They’d swapped radiograms and sometimes talked directly by phone, but hadn’t met in the flesh for seven years, since the Zera Victrix went to Valennen. He’d been kept busy by worsening natural conditions and the rise of banditry to take leave, while she’d first been studying hard, then embarking on her own career. When little was yet known about the ecology of Beronnen and the Iren Archipelago to the south, he couldn’t blame her for choosing to do research in their congenial environments. In fact, he would have been distressed had she decided to investigate the greater mysteries of Valennen. That continent wasn’t safe any longer, and Jill was among his loves.
She’d changed. In a hundred years of close acquaintance with humans, close friendships with several, Larreka had learned to tell them apart as well as they could themselves, person by person or year by year. He had left her a lanky, late-maturing adolescent who had scarcely outgrown a tomboyishness which, no doubt, he had helped foster. Today she was indeed adult.
Clad in the usual blouse and slacks of townsfolk, she stood tall, long-legged, barely on the feminine side of leanness. Her head was long too, the face rather narrow though bearing a wide full mouth, nose classically straight, eyes cobalt blue and heavy-lashed under level brows. Sunlight had browned and slightly freckled a fair skin. Dark-blond and straight, her hair fell to her shoulders, controlled by a silver-and-leather filigree band he had given her. She had stuck a bronzy saru feather in the back of it.
“You’re ready to be bred, all right,” Larreka agreed. “When and who to?”
He hadn’t expected she would flush and mumble, “Not yet,” then immediately ask: “How’s the family? Did Meroa come along?”
“Yes. I left her at the ranch.”
“Shucks, why?” she challenged. “You’ve got a far nicer wife than you deserve, for your information.”
“Don’t tell her.” His pleasure faded. “This is no furlough for me. I’m bound on to Sehala for an assembly, afterward back to Valennen as soon as may be; and Meroa will stay behind.”
Jill stood quite still for a space before she responded low: “Are things getting that bad there?”
“Worse.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“The trouble blew up damn near overnight. I wasn’t sure at first. We could just have been having a run of foul luck. When I knew better, I called to demand an assembly, then took ship.”
“Why didn’t you call us for air transport?”
“What use? You can’t bring in everybody. Even if you had enough aircraft, which I doubt, a lot of speakers wouldn’t ride in them. So we couldn’t get a quorum together sooner than I could arrive by sea and land.” Larreka gusted a sigh. “Meroa and I needed a vacation anyway—it’s been spiky, this past year—and the trip gave us that.”
Jill nodded. He had no cause to explain the reasons for his route to her. Under better conditions, the fastest way would have been entirely waterborne, from Port Rua in the South of Valennen to Liwas at the mouth of the Jayin and upriver to Sehala. But at present there were too many equinoctial gales, swelled by the red sun. Besides risk of shipwreck, sailors faced the likelihood of a voyage that contrary storms lengthened by weeks. Safest was to island-hop through the Fiery Sea, make harbor on the North Beronnen coast, then hike across the Dalag, the Badlands, the Red Hills, the Middle Forest, and the Thunderhead Range to the Jayin Valley: mostly wilderness and a lot of it pretty barren, but nothing that an old campaigner couldn’t get through at a goodly clip.
“Well, I’ve been out in the field awhile,” she said. “Fossilling around in the Stony Mountains till day before yesterday. Probably I’ve not gotten what news God or Ian Sparling now have.” Her reference wasn’t theological; Goddard Hanshaw was the mayor.
“They don’t, aside from doubtless having heard the speakers will assemble soon. How could I’ve called them on the march? That’s why I’ve stopped off here, to see your leaders and try for a word from them that I can bring along to Sehala.”
Again Jill nodded. “I forgot. Silly of me. I’m too used to instant communications, simply add hot air and stir.”
She was in a different boat from him, Larreka reflected indulgently. A standard-size portable transceiver would reach to one of the relays the humans had planted throughout the southern half of this continent, and it would buck the voice on. But greater distances required a big transmitter and those relays the newcomers had put on the moons. Thus far they hadn’t built more than four such stations—being, after all, at the end of a mighty long and thin supply line from Earth—Primavera, in Sehala, in Light Place on the Haelen coast, and, barely ten years ago, in Port Rua. It was ironic that, posted away off to Darkness-and-gone in the northern hemisphere, he’d been able to talk from end to end of the Gathering, a meridian arc ten thousand kilometers in length; and then, as he approached the center of civilization, his walkie-talkie had gone deaf and dumb.