No Terran analogy ever holds very true. Those arms terminated in four-digited hands whose nails resembled claws. The stance was akin to Merseian, forward-leaning, counterbalanced by the long strong tail. The legs were similarly long and muscular, their wide-webbed feet serving as fins for swimming, snowshoes for walking. Speech was melodious but nothing that a man could reproduce without a vocalizer.
And the consciousness behind those eyes—Flandry picked his response with care.
“I knew you would be angered at my invading your cache house,” he said. “I counted on your common sense to spare me when I made no resistance.” Well, I did have a blaster for backup. “And you have seen that I harmed or took nothing. On the contrary, I make you gifts.” Generously supplied by the airbus. “You understand I belong to a different race from the Merseians, even as you and the Domrath differ. Therefore, should I be bound by their word? No, let us instead seek a new word between Wirrda’s and mine.”
He pointed at the zenith. Rrinn’s gaze followed. Flandry wondered if he was giving himself false reassurance in believing he saw on the Ruad that awe which any thoughtful sophont feels who lets his soul fall upward among the stars. I’d better be right about him.
“You have not been told the full tale, you of Wirrda’s,” he said into the night and their watchfulness. “I bring you tidings of menace.”
Chapter XVII
It was glorious to have company and be moving again.
His time hidden had not been totally a vacuum for Flandry. True, when he unloaded the bus—before sending it off to crash at sea, lest his enemies get a clue to him—he hadn’t bothered with projection equipment, and therefore not with anything micro-recorded. Every erg in the accumulators must go to keeping him unfrozen. But there had been some full-size reading matter. Though the pilot’s manual, the Book of Virtues, and a couple of scientific journals palled with repetition, the Dayr Ynvory epic and, especially, the volume about Talwin and how to survive on it did not. Moreover, he had found writing materials and a genuine human-style deck of cards.
But he dared not go far from his shelter; storms were too frequent and rough. He’d already spent most of his resources of contemplation while wired to the bunk in Jake. Besides, he was by nature active and sociable, traits which youth augmented. Initially, whenever he decided that reading one more paragraph would make his vitreous humor bubble, he tried sketching; but he soon concluded that his gifts in that direction fell a little short of Michelangelo. A more durable pastime was the composition of scurrilous limericks about assorted Merseians and superior officers of his own. A few ought to become interstellar classics, he thought demurely—if he got free to pass them on—which meant that he had a positive duty to survive…And he invented elaborate new forms of solitaire, after which he devised ways to cheat at them.
The principal benefit of his exile was the chance to make plans. He developed them for every combination of contingencies that he could imagine. Yet he realized this must be kept within limits; unforeseen things were bound to pop up, and he couldn’t risk becoming mentally rigid.
“All that thinking did raise my hopes,” he told Rrinn.
“For us too?” the chief answered. He gave the man a contemplative look. “Skyswimmer, naught have we save your saying, that we should believe you intend our good.”
“My existence is proof that the Merseians have not apprised you of everything. They never mentioned races in contention with them—did they?”
“No. When Ydwyr and others declared the world goes around the sun and the stars are suns themselves with worlds aspin in the same wise…that took years to catch. I did ask once, were more folk than theirs upon those worlds, and he said Merseia was friend to many. Further has he not related.”
“Do you seize?” Flandry crowed. (He was getting the hang of Ruadrath idioms in Eriau. A man or Merseian would have phrased it, “Do you see?”)
“S-s-s-s…Gifts have they given us, and in fairness have they dealt.”
Why shouldn’t they? Flandry gibed. The scientists aren’t about to antagonize their objects of research, and the Navy has no cause to. The reasons for being a tad less than candid about the interstellar political brew are quite simple. Imprimis, as this chap here is wise enough to understand, radically new information has to be assimilated slowly; too much at once would only confuse. Secundus, by its effect on religion and so forth, it tends to upset the cultures that Ydwyr’s gang came to study.
The fact is, friend Rrinn, the Merseians like and rather admire your people. Far more than the Domrath, you resemble them—or us, in the days of our pioneering.
But you must not be allowed to continue believing that.
“Among their folk and mine is a practice of keeping meat animals behind walls,” he said. “Those beasts are treated well and fed richly…until time for slaughter.”
Rrinn arched his back. His tail stood straight. He bared teeth and clapped hand to knife.
He had been walking with Flandry ahead of the group. It consisted chiefly of young, aged, and females. The hunters were scattered in small parties, seeking game. Some would not rejoin their families for days. When Rrinn stopped stiffened, unease could be seen on all the sleek red-brown bodies behind. The leader evidently felt he shouldn’t let them come to a halt. He waved, a clawing gesture, and resumed his advance.
Flandry, who had modified a pair of Merseian snow-shoes for himself, kept pace. Against the fact that he wasn’t really built for this environment must be set his greater size. Furthermore, the going was currently easy.
Wirrda’s were bound across the tundra that had been jungle in summer. Most years they visited the Merseian base, which wasn’t far off their direct route, for sightseeing, talk, and a handout. However, the practice wasn’t invariable—it depended on factors like weather—and Flandry had made them sufficiently suspicious that on this occasion they jogged out of their way to avoid coming near the compound. Meanwhile he continued feeding their distrust.
The Hell-kettles would have been visible except for being wrapped in storm. That part of horizon and sky was cut off by a vast blue-black curtain. Not for weeks or months would the atmosphere settle down to the clear, even colder calm of full winter. But elsewhere the sky stood pale blue, with a few high cirrus clouds to catch sunlight.
This had dropped to considerably less than Terra gets. (In fact, the point of equal value had been passed in what meteorologically was early fall. Likewise, the lowest temperatures would come well after Talwin had gone through apastron, where insolation was about 0.45 Terran.) Flandry must nevertheless wear self-darkening goggles against its white refulgence; and, since he couldn’t look near the sun disc, its dwindling angular diameter did not impinge on his senses.
His surroundings did. He had experienced winters elsewhere, but none like this.
Even on planets akin to Terra, that period is not devoid of life. On Talwin, where it occupied most of the long year, a separate ecology had developed for it.
The divorce was not absolute. Seas were less affected than land, and many shore-based animals that ate marine species neither hibernated nor estivated. Seeds and other remnants of a season contributed to the diet of those which did. The Merseians had hardly begun to comprehend the web of interactions—structural, chemical, bacteriological, none knew what more—between hot-weather and cold-weather forms. As an elementary example: No equivalent of evergreens existed; summer’s wild growth would have strangled them; on the other hand, decaying in fall, it provided humus for winter vegetation.