They sailed for a full day and a night before Toroca caught sight of the first mast poking over the eastern horizon. It was difficult to make out the approaching ships against the rising sun, but Toroca had soon counted fourteen vessels spread out along the horizon, and he had every reason to think there were many more still behind them.
Would Jawn be aboard the lead ship, or another one? Was he even here at all? Jawn was the only one who spoke even some of the Quintaglio language; surely they would have brought him along.
Before departing Land, Toroca had painted Jawn’s name across the Stardeter’’s main sail; it was one of the very few words he knew how to make, having seen it over and over again on Jawn’s name-tag necklace. If the Others had far-seers, surely they’d be able to see the word ‘Jawn’ and understand that a meeting was being requested with him. That is, if they’d even noticed the tiny sailboat yet.
As their little craft moved closer to the armada, Toroca used his own far-seer to examine the big ships. Small colored flags were running up a guy from each ship’s bow to its foremast. Toroca at first thought that these identified individual vessels, but he soon counted three that were displaying the same sequence of flags. At one point, Toroca saw the old flags brought down and new ones hoisted. Apparently this was a signaling method used to communicate between the ships.
Wingfingers occasionally swooped down from the sky to look at the Stardeter. Many others were flitting above the Other ships, perhaps feeding on garbage thrown overboard.
And then, at last, one of the big ships changed course slightly, heading directly for the Stardeter. Toroca was deliberately not wearing his sash; instead he had on the same swimmer’s belt he’d worn that day he’d first arrived in the Other city. He suspected all Quintaglios looked alike to the Others, just as all of them looked pretty much the same to him, and he wanted to do everything possible to aid identification.
The big ship was approaching quickly. Toroca described its alien shape for Afsan, who seemed amazed by the differences from standard Quintaglio design. Toroca could see several Others on its deck. They were all standing in the shade of an overhanging tarpaulin; Toroca guessed they weren’t used to equatorial sun. Even in the far-seer, the faces were indistinct, but—
There.
Waving at him.
Jawn.
Toroca tied off the sail cord and, holding the mast for support with one hand, waved wildly in reply with the other. As the ships came closer together, Toroca could tell that not everyone on deck was pleased to see him. Two individuals were pointing metal tubes at him, and a large black cylinder, one of the much bigger weapons that had earlier taken shots at the Dasheter, had been swiveled in a wooden mount to face the Stardeter. Still, Jawn’s face was one of open delight at seeing his old friend. Two Others were putting a rope ladder over the ship’s side; weights on its ends kept it taut as it descended toward the waves.
“They’re letting down a ladder,” Toroca said to Afsan. “You’ll have to go up first; I’ll need to stay behind to tie off our boat.” Afsan nodded. Toroca shouted up at Jawn in the Other language, while pointing at Afsan: “No eyes! No eyes!”
Jawn looked perplexed for a moment, then seemed to get Toroca’s meaning. Shouting back at his own shipmates in the Other language, he said, “The big one is lees-tash“—presumably the word for ‘blind.’ ”
One of the Other sailors shouted out, “Then what is he doing here?” but Jawn ignored that and motioned for Toroca and Afsan to come aboard. Toroca helped Afsan get hold of the rope ladder. “It’s about thirty rungs to the top,” he said. “Remember, they can touch you without difficulty; let them help you get up on deck.”
Afsan grunted and began to climb. He had trouble with the first couple of rungs, but soon got the hang of it, and before long was up on the Other ship. Toroca tied his little sailing boat to the rope ladder in hopes that it wouldn’t bash against the big boat too much; the Other vessel could doubtless take the impacts, but the Stardeter had a fragile hull. He then made his own way up the ladder, banging his knuckles as it swung back against the ship when a big wave came by. Finally, he was on the deck, too. Toroca bowed deeply in Quintaglio greeting, then spoke the standard salutation used by the Others: “It is my good fortune to see you.” One of the Others made a derisive sound, but Toroca thought he was more likely mocking his halting command of their language than the actual sentiment.
Jawn repeated the greeting, then asked in his own language, “Who is this?”
“My… father,” said Toroca. “Afsan.”
Jawn bowed at Afsan, and, in heavily accented Quintaglio, said, “I cast a shadow in your presence.”
Afsan tilted his muzzle toward Jawn, impressed.
“Enough of this,” said the same one who had snorted earlier, speaking the Other tongue. “Ask him why they attacked us, Jawn.”
Toroca faced the fellow directly, and spoke in the same language. “That is what I have come to… to…”
“Gan-noth,” said Jawn. Explain.
“That is what I have come to explain,” said Toroca. “My people want no fight. We not good feel about what happened.”
The belligerent fellow let loose a vocal barrage containing many words that Toroca didn’t know, but he realized part of it was a body count of how many had been killed by the Quintaglios aboard the Dasheter.
“We are sorry for that,” said Toroca. “It is moving by the hand of God,” he said, an Other idiom meaning, we couldn’t help ourselves. “Your appearance causes a… a violent reaction within most of us.”
“Appearance,” said Jawn. “Then your father… he can be here because he is lees-tash, yes?”
“Yes.”
Jawn faced Afsan, and spoke in halting Quintaglio. “Toroca says he does not want to fight. Do you?”
“No,” said Afsan. And then repeating himself in the Other style of amplification, which Toroca had taught him during the voyage out: “No, no.”
“How,” said the belligerent one, who Toroca had come to suspect must be the captain, “is not fighting possible between our peoples?”
“We can have no direct contact,” said Toroca. “But my people are good at interacting without contact. We could trade, exchange documents, learn more about each other—”
“Enough!” The captain spit a string of words at Jawn so rapidly that Toroca could only pick out a few terms. Jawn looked upset.
“What did he say?” asked Toroca.
“He said you are—not the absence of good, but the opposite of it. You live out of the sight of God. We cannot trust you, he says.”
“Ah, but you can trust us, Jawn. You saw it yourself back in your city. I cannot lie without my muzzle turning blue; none of my people can. You know that.”
“Joth-shal,” said the captain.
“What?”
“A trick,” said Jawn. “He thinks you’ve tricked us into thinking that about yourselves.”
“Do you think it is a trick?” said Toroca.
Jawn looked thoughtful, then said slowly, “Among those who died trying to visit your ship was my sister.”
“We told you to stay away.”