"He was going to pull an alarm! I had to stop him, quick! Damn, I'm tired of your jawing, Miri. We're partners, right? I make some of the decisions, right?"
Mirina's brown-in-white eyes filled with water-tears-and she said huskily, "I had a partner once. He died. I don't want to hear about partners. We're co-leaders. They owe us the stuff, right?" she said, mocking him. "They owe us, but they don't owe us their lives."
What she said made sense to Sunset, but Bisman appeared ready to disagree with her. Humans' flat faces were full of emotion, easy to read. Bisman's cheeks turned red, and his eyes stood out. Sunset thought for a moment he would strike Mirina, but he clenched his hands and left the room. Mirina's round face was set. She stared after the male, then closed her eyes. Sunset could see a slight vibration shake her body.
"There's enough in this shipment, Miri," Zonzalo spoke up softly from his station. "We could settle down somewhere on our share. CW would never find us. How about the nice place we stopped before we were on Base Fifteen the last time? We're heading back that way. We could scope out a place, buy some land?"
"No," Mirina said, opening her eyes. "I can't settle. I hate being groundbound. I prefer to be out here, in the blackness, away from people."
Sunset spread the shoulder pinions of his wings in acknowledgement. He had caught her many times just staring out into the void, communing. Space spoke to her in a way he had always believed it did to the blessed ones. That was no doubt why she was so cross when he interrupted her. Zonzalo was easier to befriend. Mirina turned suddenly to him, and the young Thelerie jumped, wondering if she could read his thoughts.
"Which way's your world, Sunset?" she asked. Without hesitation, he pointed toward his Center, and she sighted along his wing-finger.
"We count on you, you know that," she said, wearily. Sunset nodded. "Good. Go take a rest."
"You should, too, ma- Mirina." Then he dropped on all fours and hurried out of the control room, surprised by his own boldness. The woman stared after him.
Zonzalo waved at his sister, and pointed at a light on his control board.
"Message coming in," he said. Mirina stood over his shoulder and watched the brief transmission.
"Route it to Bisman," she said at once. "He has to hear this."
The co-leader was in the control room almost at once.
"A ship penetrated the other P-sector system near Base Eight? We have to send word to have the others destroy it!"
"We can't," Mirina said. "It's landed on the second planet. It's protected. Listen to this all the way through." She signalled to Zonzalo to play it back again.
"The reptiles," Bisman said, exasperated. "The Slime. Damn it, I thought we had them bottled." He recorded a return message to their base. "Keep an eye out. If anything else happens, take appropriate action and notify us at once. Appropriate action," he repeated, with heavy emphasis, and one eye on Mirina. She glared at him, but held her tongue.
Chapter Four
For an interminable third day, Keff sat crosslegged on the floor of the Cridi assembly hall. He sat with his chin braced on one palm, elbow on knee, his wrist held to one side so Carialle could see everything that was going on from the miniaturized video pickup on his shirt front.
"Another day of flapping lips and hands in the Main Bog," Keff murmured behind his hand. "I feel like Gulliver in Lilliput."
The humidity was so uncomfortable that in direct countermand of orders from Central Worlds, Keff had stopped wearing uniforms. Instead, he was clad in his least disreputable exercise clothes, fabric made for sweating in. His hair had wound itself into curls, as it always did when it was damp, and he smelled musty. No one else seemed to notice the odor; perhaps his hosts simply couldn't distinguish it in the swamp miasma that hung over everything on this soggy world. Nor did the Cridi pay any attention to the drops running down his face. Like Tall Eyebrow and the others in the ship, some of them made a practice of wearing a film of water to keep their delicate skins from drying out. Others just counted on the ambient humidity, which, Keff thought, was more than sufficient.
The room's decor reflected the possibility of wet delegates. The ceiling rolled back as easily to allow a passing downpour into the chamber as the view of a sunset or a rainbow. Low, comfortable seats shaped for either sitting upright, crouching, or lounging had soft, water-repellent covers; bright white light came from thick, enclosed bubbles hanging overhead; wooden tables were sealed in plastic, or perhaps made of a naturally resinous wood-Keff hadn't had a chance yet to examine one closely. Every time he approached a sitting group, perforce on hands and knees in the low-ceilinged room, stone-faced security frogs came out of the woodwork and herded him back to his spot.
"At least they're allowing you to stay," Carialle said. "It's a foot in the door. You could be stuck out here with me, watching the swamp gurgle, and listening to the security guards babble formulae at each other."
"I'm getting no forrader in advancing the cause of the Central Worlds," Keff said, forlornly watching Tall Eyebrow and the others, separated among three huge groups of Cridi, answering questions. Long Hand was perched in one of the chairs, waving her hands to get the attention of a pair of natives who were squabbling in high-pitched voices. "All during that muddy tour yesterday and the day before, I kept trying to tell them about the Central Worlds, but Big Voice over there kept saying the conclave hadn't yet discussed whether to allow input from an outworlder that would result in any kind of social engineering, when they've never met an outworlder before. Once they've discussed the topic, we have to wait until they've had input from every other city on the planet before proceeding. The final decision rests with the Council of Eight. I'm not allowed to influence anyone, particularly not with the fact of my being an alien. It's a bureaucracy. Our mission, to encounter strange new holdups and fascinating new ways to tie red tape where no frog has gone before."
"Isn't anyone talking to you?"
"Oh, yes, on and off, but more out of curiosity than diplomatic interest. I think," Keff said, smiling and making a seated bow to a passing delegate, "I'm serving a function all the same. The Cridi are learning not to be afraid of us. That's good. If they see me as a clown, I just have to coddle my own ego. The problem is they treat me rather like a talking dog, a non-sentient that is a wonder because it can pronounce recognizable words. I would be most concerned that they wouldn't take the Central Worlds seriously enough. There's no future alliance possible without respect."
"Respect comes with knowledge. They are getting used to you. They've never seen anything like you-or me. As with humans, it sounds like they've run into very few, if any, sentient species beside their own. It would be like one of their dogs starting to talk, if they have dogs. So far I've only seen those blobbies and lizardings they keep for pets. In time, they'll get used to the idea that you do think for yourself. Be thankful that they don't think you're a monster. I was a little worried after that first group took off screaming. They could have burned out Frankenstein and his castle with Core power."
"So they could." Keff shifted uncomfortably, pulling the folds of his sweatshirt away from his back. "I'd just prefer to be in the midst of things instead of merely observing. It looks like Tall Eyebrow could use my help." He glanced over at the group surrounding the Ozranian Frog Prince.
"Tch, greedy. Look, they're friendly. You're getting an unprecedented privilege to have the first peep at an entirely new world, something anyone in Xeno would kill for."