“I know. Begging’s not part of your makeup, Colette.”
A steward was gesturing from alongside the motion lounge her father was strapped into. A faint voice called her name. It came from the throat of a powerful human relic.
“Time to go. Good-bye Ethan. Remember me if you change your mind. Remember me if you don’t.”
She spared him the worry of whether or not to kiss her by turning and striding purposefully toward her father, toward the people and machines helping him stay alive. He watched as the motion lounge maneuvered itself up the rampway leading into the access tube of the shuttlecraft. Snow speckled the window he stared through.
Fifteen minutes died. Then the exchange of cartons and packagings was complete. A muted chemical bubbling sounded through the thick glassalloy window. Red-orange streaks, like spilled oil paint, emerged from the stern of the shuttle. It rose rapidly until it had shrunk to a size no bigger than any of ten thousand other bright ice flakes swirling through Tran-ky-ky’s cold, cold atmosphere.
He rubbed his right arm where she’d clasped him, and thought.
IV
SEPTEMBER LET HIM STAND like that for nearly an hour. Then he moved to join him.
“Not easy, feller-me-lad?”
“No, Skua. Not easy.”
“Better this way, though,” the giant said cheerily. “Money’s not everything. She would have gotten tougher before sweeter as the years roll down. There’s a universe full of fledglings waiting to try their wings who are a good deal softer.”
“Skua.”
“What is it, lad?”
“Shut up.” He walked away, moving rapidly down the port corridor, hands jammed deep into his pockets. After a shrug, September followed, keeping the distance between them constant. There was a dark muddy wall raised around the young salesman, and it could only be taken down from within.
Sir Hunnar and his two squires were waiting patiently for them outside the shuttleport building. September had tried to argue them into coming inside to watch the liftoff of the shuttle from closer range. But the Tran had elected to forgo that pleasure, since it meant enduring the unbearably high temperatures inside.
“We saw it rise from out here, Ethan,” the Tran knight said. “It was bigger than the skyboat you came to us in.” A note of childlike wonder crept into his voice. “Does it truly chivan to a ship bigger still?”
“Much bigger, Hunnar.” Ethan was reminded by the Tran’s curious, open stare of the reason for his remaining here. One of those reasons, anyhow. “Let’s find a place in town and have a tankard of reedle.” At least the super pseudomead would salve his throat, if not his confused conscience.
The tavern they located had been smuggled in among more respectable looking two- and three-story structures on a narrow lane. It did not serve reedle, but they found an ample supply of nontoxic intoxicants. Most were derived from varieties of the omnipresent pika-pina or pika-pedan, a few from other plant life. All filled Ethan with an equally warm glow.
“How are we to proceed to form this necessary confederation, friend Ethan?” Suaxus-dal-Jagger sounded thoroughly discouraged, and the expedition hadn’t begun. “We know nothing of this country. No one from Wannome or Sofold has ever been this far from home.”
“So many satch,” murmured his counterpart Budjir.
“That can be to our advantage.” September hunched over the table. “The other states we will visit will know nothing of Sofold, but it’s possible they will have heard of Arsudun, and consequently, of the humanx station here.
“We’ve already seen indications that there’re entirely too many local goods goin’ off-planet to have come from Arsudun alone. That means the Arsudunites are trading with the surrounding states. What better way for them to make themselves look big and important than to constantly claim extratrannish wizards—that’s us—for allies?
“So how are they likely to react, when we show up and tell them they’d better confederate for their own good?”
Ethan put down the tall goblet of liquor, used the oversized spoon at his wrist to dip up another helping of the heavily spiced soup in front of him. He sipped at it carefully, the end of the spoon being too wide for his small human mouth. Soup had never been a favorite of his. He preferred more solid food. But Tran-ky-ky’s climate could make anyone a lover of hot food in any form.
“I would rather,” Hunnar replied petulantly, after considering September’s logic, “begin in the neighborhood of Sofold.” He pushed back in his chair, balanced on the two hind legs. Ethan knew the knight wouldn’t fall. He’d never seen a people with such perfect, innate sense of balance.
“No. I think we’ll have the better chance, Hunnar, here where we’re all strangers to the folks we’ll be tryin’ to convert, and where humankind’s dubious reputation has maybe preceded us.”
“Ta-hoding should have voice in this too.” Budjir put in a word for the Slanderscree’s captain. “It will be he who will bear considerable responsibility for taking us safely across uncharted ice, and for maneuvering us to safety should trouble arise.”
“That’s incidental,” September countered vigorously. “I’ll grant old Ta-hoding his piece, but it’s more important that we—”
“I detect an odd smell in here, Baftem.” Conversation at the table ceased.
The speaker was a richly dressed Tran standing very close to their booth. His dan spines were lacquered silvery chrome and pink, and he was nearly smothered beneath the impossibly thick fur of some slick white-striped and black-spotted creature. Next to him stood one of the largest Tran Ethan had seen, well over one and two-thirds meters tall and broad in proportion to a normal Tran physique. The latter had one paw resting lightly on the butt of some weapon banded to his left leg. It was dull white and gray and looked like the femur of some walking animal, possibly that of another Tran. Intricate bas-relief covered the club. Its knobby bottom end had been shaped into points.
“An offensive odor—I smell it too,” said the giant, smiling unpleasantly. Ethan noted that conversation in the tavern had dropped to a steady, low susurration. Most eyes were on them.
The wealthy local performed an elaborate gesture through the air in front of his nose, accompanying it with much expressive grimacing. Continuing to shield his muzzle from some imaginary olfactory offense, he made a show of searching the area around the booth, peering beneath chairs, sniffing the table, checking the floor. On all fours he approached Hunnar’s seat, stopped sniffing, and stood. For effect, he sniffed once more, loudly enough for all the onlookers to hear.
“I believe I’ve found the source, Baftem,” he told his companion. “Someone has had the bad manners to bring a castrated bourf into the room.”
The quiet became total. When no one at the table reacted, the giant wrinkled his own muzzle distinctively, squinted at Hunnar and made a disgusted sound.
“You know how the enoglids drain once they’ve been neutered. Awful smell!” He looked around the table, exclaimed in mock surprise, “Yet the source seems to be more than one.”
“Gentle, Baftem. It behooves a citizen to be polite, even to a fixed bourf.” He bent over the table, leaning between Ethan and Hunnar. “Would you get out?”
Ethan admired Hunnar’s control as the knight looked over his right shoulder, shouted. “Innkeeper, whose tavern is this; yours or his?”
With admirable prescience the innkeeper had already retreated to the vicinity of the cookroom doorway. In response to Hunnar’s query he made some incomprehensible gabbling noises and ducked inside before further elucidation could be requested.