“Because you screwed up,” Obie chortled in English.
“Speak Hakh’hli and not Earth language!” Polly thundered. “Who knows what listening devices Earth creatures have? But Oberon is correct and not in error, Lysander-Wimp. You failed and did not succeed. Those Earth creatures penetrated your ruse at once. How could you have been so foolish and not at all wise, Lysander?”
And Tanya, hurriedly loading the food cart at the far end of the chamber, chimed in, “Your incompetence has endangered our entire plan, Lysander.”
And Helen added, “Major Seniors are displeased and not at all happy.”
And even Oberon opened his mouth for a denunciation of his own, and Sandy might have had a great deal more recrimination to endure, but Tanya was already pulling their midday meal out of the warmer. The Hakh’hli abandoned Sandy for more rewarding fare.
In the confined space of the lander there wasn’t room for all six of them to attack the food at once. As always, Sandy didn’t even try, but waited for the feeding frenzy to subside. Even Obie, the smallest, was pushed out of the way. He tried to squeeze past Polly, but ducked back as she reached to pinch him, bumping into Sandy.
He winced as Sandy glared at him. “I’m sorry about what I said,” he offered. “Only it’s all so very confusing here. They do stare at us so!”
Sandy snorted. “Now you know how I’ve been feeling for the last twenty years,” he said, pleased at the role reversal—mostly pleased, anyway, although it was not altogether pleasing to find that he was no longer the unique center of attention.
Polly, mouth full, turned to glare at them. “I told you to speak Hakh’hli and not Earth language!” she said thickly, chewing. “It is in any case natural that Earth creatures should stare. It is clear in Earth history that such things happen, when primitive savages are suddenly visited by their technological and intellectual superiors; no doubt they think we are ‘gods.’ ” And, godlike, she shoved Bottom out of the way for another go at the meal.
That made room for Obie to squeeze his way in, which he promptly did, leaving Sandy to wait outside the noisy, violent knot. Sandy didn’t mind waiting. Actually, he was mildly repelled by the sight of his Hakh’hli cohort at their food. In the kitchen of the human food-animal herders things had been quite different. No one had been chewing and tearing at the meal there. Why couldn’t the Hakh’hli be as—well—dignified about their eating?
There was another thought that was troubling him, and it was even more somber. How was it possible, he asked himself, that their elaborate first-contact plan had gone so wrong so rapidly? How had the Earth humans discovered the landing ship so fast?
After all, the whole plan had been devised by the Major Seniors themselves. It was their own decision that the landing ship should remain hidden while Lysander, as the human member of the party, reconnoitered with the human beings to make sure that everything was safe before the first Hakh’hli-human contact occurred. Certainly the Major Seniors couldn’t have made an unworkable plan—could they?
But the fact was that the plan had gone wrong from the very beginning; which meant that the Major Seniors had failed to take all the factors into account.
Which was impossible.
The Hakh’hli were beginning to go slack and empty-eyed. As one by one they staggered to their seats Sandy moved soberly to the food cart. He made a selection of what was left and descended the ladder to eat it in the glorious Earthly sunlight.
In just the few minutes he had been inside the lander a new and bigger helicopter had arrived. It was white and powerful-looking, and the side of it bore the cryptic legend InterSec. Its rotors were still turning as its door opened and half a dozen new human beings jumped out.
They approached Sandy as he climbed onto the sun-warmed flat rock to eat his midday meal. The people with the television cameras, and even the police officers who were still hanging around, watching everything, seemed to defer to them. “Hello, Mr. Washington,” one of them called. “I’m Hamilton Boyle.”
Sandy stood up, careful not to spill the tray with his meal. He extended his hand in the approved Earth fashion. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Boyle,” he said, in his well-rehearsed way.
“Glad to know you—” Boyle began, and then ended with a grunt of pain. He pulled his hand back, rubbing it. “You’ve got some grip,” he said, surprised.
“I’m sorry,” Sandy said at once, annoyed with himself. “I forgot how much stronger I am than you are. It’s because of the one point four gravity environment on the ship, you see. Would you—” He hesitated, trying to remember what was appropriate behavior; but surely offering food was a friendly gesture on Earth? “Would you like to try some of this?” He extended a handful of wafers.
Boyle took one and examined it carefully. “I think not, just now,” he said doubtfully. “What is it, exactly?”
One of the female human beings was wrinkling her nose. Sandy wondered what the matter was. “This meat,” he said, holding up the slab in his left hand, “is hoo’hik. That’s a kind of meat animal. The ground-up stuff in the wafer you have is tuber. The things in it are bits of a kind of animal that lives in water—I don’t know what you’d call it, but it’s almost solid meat, except for the shell—no bones, and the internal organs come right out—”
“Like a shrimp, you mean?” one of the humans hazarded.
“I don’t know what a ‘shrimp’ is,” Sandy apologized. “Anyway, that’s what the wafers usually are made of: dried ground tuber flour mixed with protein things. They’re very good, really. Are you sure you don’t want to try some?”
The human looked tempted and repelled at the same time. He sniffed the wafer carefully.
“I’d watch it if I were you,” a female human said.
“They do smell kind of fishy,” the man named Boyle agreed. “But you eat it, don’t you, Mr. Washington?”
“I’ve been eating these things all my life.”
The female human laughed. “Well, you look healthy enough,” she said, looking him over. “Not to say, well, scary.”
Sandy felt pleased. He was almost sure that was a compliment. It was quite clear that he was far stronger than any of the Earth humans—the other Earth humans, he corrected himself—and he was nearly certain that that was a selective breeding advantage in the eyes of human females. He wondered happily when he would have a chance to try it out. Not right now, of course. He knew well that humans did not do amphylaxis in public, as a general rule. But soon! “What?” he said, brought back from his tempting musings.
“I asked how you got your vitamins,” one of the females repeated.
“Vitamins?”
“Chemical substances that your body needs to function, and minerals, and so on.”
“Oh, I’m not your best witness on that,” Sandy apologized. “You’d have to ask Bottom. The food experts arrange all that. They know exactly what we need, and they control the content of the midday meal accordingly. It has everything anyone needs for a day’s nutrition. The cookies and milk don’t, though; they’re just a, what you would call, a ‘snack.’ “And then he had to explain “cookies and milk.” “We usually have them six times a day,” he said, “but here on Earth, with your longer day, probably we’ll have them more often. I don’t know what we’ll do about the midday meal; I don’t know if they’ll want to have stun time more than once . . .”
And then, of course, he had to explain “stun time” to them. The man named Boyle sighed. He took the wafer, which he had been holding all that time, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and stuffed it in a pocket of his suit.
“Is it all right if I keep this, Mr. Washington?” he asked. “I know our food chemists would love to study it—and maybe any leftovers from the rest of the meal?”