“Then why don’t we report that, Skua?”
“Feller-me-lad,” September said gently, “don’t be naive. What does it matter if a few humans are killed in a local brawl? Oh sure, you and I know it was no accidental encounter, but how do we prove that to a thranx judge?” He shook his head. “Not much we can do except be glad they weren’t better swordsmen and step up our preparations for getting under way.”
“It was a fight to speak well of.” Hunnar’s eyes gleamed. “Five against twenty-five.”
Ethan looked with distaste at the blood-stained sword on his own suit belt. He’d tried wiping it clean in the snow, but the frozen red crystals adhered accusingly to the blade.
“You’re too proud of killing, Hunnar.”
The Tran knight cocked his head to one side, looking for all the world like an inquisitive tabby. “That be true, Ethan. I come not from your advanced civilization, though. You must find it in your heart to be patient with us.” Wind rose and moaned around them as he gestured back down the strait leading out toward the ocean.
“My world is perhaps not so conducive to gentleness and understanding as is yours. Here we fight best with our hands and not our mouths.”
“I didn’t mean to be insulting,” Ethan replied testily.
“That’s enough.” September looked disgustedly from human to Tran. “We’re supposed to be forging a great alliance on this world, not testing the puny one we already have.” He jerked a thumb at the harbor. Smoke rose from a thousand chimneys. “The sooner we leave here, the less we’ll be disturbed, I hope.” He eyed Hunnar.
“Where do we start?”
Hunnar grumbled a reply. “As it is so many satch back to Sofold, and since you are so set on beginning this great undertaking here, and since it is not my idea but yours, but most especially since I am certain we will have no better luck here than near home, I suppose we may as well look for our first allies in this part of the world.
“Besides, were we to return home with this bizarre conception, we would have difficulty keeping our crew. Men will not remain loyal when given a choice between reaching for a glorious madness or retaining their simple homes.” He spun angrily and chivaned away.
“You shouldn’t have made him mad, lad,” September chided his friend.
“I know. I’m just not used to sticking things in people, and have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who does.” He smiled crookedly. Odd, how the unexpected shoved its way into one’s thoughts at the most unlikely moments. “Colette would be better at it than I am.”
“If you feel so strongly about it, feller-me-lad, why are you staying here to help with this when you could be on your way to more civilized climes, where people only stick one another, as Hunnar said, with sharp words?”
Ethan thought just a moment. “So that some day Hunnar’s grandchildren won’t feel the need to pick up a knife to settle an argument.” Behind and above them on the helm-deck, Ta-hoding was conversing with several mates. “Let’s go arrange a course. We’re going to bring maturity and knowledge to this world if it kills us.”
“Which it very well is likely to, lad.” They started aft. “Hunnar’s probably right about the trouble we’ll have tryin’ to sell this confederation to the inhabitants of outlying city-states.”
Ethan walked faster, more assuredly. “That’s my business…”
Jobius Trell opened his mouth slightly inside the survival suit, listened to the candy laugh and smiled as he sucked. At the moment the flavor was persimmon, the laugh invitingly female.
The slim, mature Tran standing on the hillside next to him gave him a questioning look, puzzled by the obviously masculine human’s ability to produce such a lilting chuckle.
Pausing in his study of the work going on in the little vale below them, Trell flipped back the face mask of his suit and turned his face from the stinging breeze. Using his gloved hand he picked the remainder of the candy from his mouth and showed it to his curious alien companion.
“Giggle drop. Sweet food,” he explained.
“Igg-el drup.” The Tran stumbled over the unfamiliar phonetics as the Resident Commissioner popped it back into his mouth and resumed sucking. “But the sound I heard, friend Trell?”
“Candy’s formed in layers,” Trell told him with a sigh. It was so boring, having to constantly explain the most common features of Commonwealth civilization to these barbarians, even one as curious and quick to learn as his companion of today. His attention wandered back to the work going on below.
The earthquake generated by the explosion of the great volcano known as The-Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns had caused some damage, mostly to the native town but also a little in Brass Monkey. As Commissioner, it was his duty to supervise personally the necessary reconstruction work. Doing so also made him look good in the eyes of the locals.
That the collapsed native food storage house in the depression below constituted the only serious damage was a tribute to native engineering skills. But then, he reflected that even within Arsudun’s comparatively sheltered harbor, a normal Tran structure had to be built well to stand up against the daily weather.
“How can food talk?”
“What? Oh. As each layer of the hard candy-stuff dissolves in your mouth, it releases a different flavor and a different laugh.” He turned to, face the Tran standing next to him.
He was slimmer than most of his brethren. In places—long streaky patches and spots—his steel-gray fur turned to coal-black. Other dark smudges colored his left ear, muzzle, and left cheek, running like a splotch of soft tar down his side to disappear beneath his brightly dyed blue cape and vest. His comparatively slender build was very similar to the Commissioner’s.
These two had more in common than external construction, however.
Trell finished his explanation. “The laughs are recorded from real people—you’ve seen our recording devices throughout the port?” The Tran made a gesture of acknowledgment. “A computerized—a thought-smart machine—then sonically embeds the sounds in tiny bubbles of air which are not quite just air bubbles, as the candy food is being solidified. As each layer of encoded laugh bubbles is exposed to the air in your mouth, the sound is released.” He grinned behind his mask at the obvious discomfort this explanation produced.
“Tell me, why shouldn’t food sound as good as it tastes?”
“I do not know,” the Tran responded gruffly, “but it is a strange thought to me, and not altogether agreeable.”
“Perhaps, but we’ve brought many strange things to you and even the strangest have proven themselves profitable. We have an archaic expression—like my candy-food, money also talks.”
The Tran brightened. “Something both our peoples agree upon, friend Trell. ‘Money talking’—good, but I still think I like my own food to lie decently quiet.”
Any onlooker could have told from the Tran’s lavish attire—richly inlaid with valuable metal thread and thin, foil ornamentation in the vests, metal strips set in his dan that flashed when he raised an arm—that he was exceptionally well off even by Arsudun’s standards. What they might not have recognized as important was the band of metal encircling his neck.
From time to time a human aiding the locals below in the rebuilding of the storehouse would climb the slight slope in search of Trell’s instructions or advice. Occasionally the questioner would be a Tran. And the inquiries were not racially exclusive. Sometimes a human would ask the Tran for advice, while a native would address the Commissioner.
The storehouse had been constructed partway down the strait and close to the ice’s edge, where it had received more of the shock than comparable structures in the town. Several other buildings close by had been knocked slightly askew or had had windows cracked out. Only the storehouse had suffered complete destruction.