The thought he had had before occurred to him again. “How are you going to learn the native words for ‘front’ and ‘back,’ Valery Aleksandrovich? This Fralk doesn’t have either one.”
For a moment, Bryusov looked scornful, as he did whenever anyone presumed to comment about his specialty. Then he must have realized he had no impressively crushing rejoinder handy. He tugged at his mustache. “A very good question, Sergei Konstantinovich,” he admitted.
The alarm rang in the headsets of the crewfolk on the ground. Oleg Lopatin’s voice followed it. “A large party of Minervans heading this way out of the northeast. They appear to be armed.”
“Then we should have the one here on good terms with us, to speak well of us to its companions,” Rustaveli said. He reached into a jacket pocket. The motion made Fralk turn an eye from Bryusov to him. The biologist pulled out a pocket knife and opened its blade. Fralk hefted the rocks it was holding.
“You are not endearing yourself to the native, Shota,” Katerina remarked.
That had comebacks obvious even to Tolmasov, but Rustaveli was, for once, pure business. “Hush,” was all he said. He bent, set the knife on the ground, and stepped back from it. Then he pointed to it and to Fralk and waved an invitation to the Minervan. “Go ahead; it’s yours,” he said, though Fralk could not hope to understand his words.
The gestures got through, though. Fralk moved toward the knife, hesitantly at first but then with more confidence as Rustaveli and Bryusov backed farther away to show that it was all right. The Minervan grew short and wide and picked up the knife-by the handle, Tolmasov saw, which meant it knew what a knife was. Well, Lopatin had as much as said that.
Yes, Fralk knew what a knife was, It held the blade in one hand and tested it with the fingers of another. It must have approved of what it found. It pointed to the knife, then to itself, and made a noise that Tolmasov mentally translated as, “For me.’?”
Rustaveli must have read it the same way. “Da, da,” he said. When he did not try to take away the pocket knife, Fralk must have gotten the idea.
Tolmasov heard faint contralto cries in the distance. The Minervans sounded angry. His face quirked into a smile, almost against his will. Angry Minervans sounded like angry sexy women-an unexpected perk of the job. The American slang threatened to make his smile wider. He forced himself to seriousness.
Katerina also heard the locals approaching. She took cover behind one of Tsiolkovsky’s huge tires. That made such good sense that Tolmasov crouched behind another one.
He watched the Minervans approach. They were within a couple of hundred meters now, carrying spears and stones and other things less easy to identify. The Kalashnikovs could make bloody hash of them-and of the Soviet mission. If the Americans made peaceful contact while he got into a firefight…, he shuddered. He would not end up a Hero of the Soviet Union when he got home. He would end up begging for a bullet, more likely.
Bryusov did not seem to have noticed the-army? gang? posse? He gestured vehemently, like a man in the grip of an overpowering itch. Maybe he was getting through to Fralk, though; the native had three eyes on him, for whatever that was worth.
“I suggest you come to the point, Valery.” Shota Rustaveli was on his belly on the cold ground, behind a stone that would give him some cover. He knew the Minervans were coming. So did Fralk, who kept an eye on them.
Evidently Bryusov did come to the point. Fralk hurried out toward its-countrymen? Probably, Tolmasov thought. If they were enemies, it would have run the other way.
Fralk shouted something. The onrushing Minervans came to a ragged halt. A couple of natives emerged from the crowd and hurried up to Fralk. They made themselves short and wide, then resumed their usual shape. If Bryusov had gone through contortions before, they were not a patch on the ones Fralk put on now. Of course, having six arms and eyestalks gave it an unfair advantage there.
One of the natives who had approached Fralk said something. Fralk broke in loudly. The other native went short and wide again. “That must be a token of submission, like a salute or a bow,” Bryusov called.
Fralk shouted to the whole group of Minervans. They set their weapons on the ground. “Valery!” Fralk called in that thrilling voice.
The linguist had put down his rifle when he started trying to communicate with Fralk. “Cover me,” he called to his companions, and walked, empty-handed, toward the Minervans. Fralk widened himself as the human came up. In delighted reply, Bryusov bowed from the waist.
That set the Minervans off again. “They’re not used to anything that can bend that way,” Katerina guessed.
“No,” Tolmasov agreed. He knew he sounded absentminded, and he did not care. The relief washing through him was too great for that. First contact was made, and made without bloodshed. History books-maybe history books on two worlds, he thought, blinking-would not bear his name as a curse.
No one with a lot of arms would try to ram a spear through his brisket, either, which also counted. He stood up, stepped out from behind Tsiolkovsky’s immense tires, and let the Minervans see him. He left his rifle at his side but did not put it down. Not yet.
“For me?” Hogram tested the knife blade with a fingerclaw and, like Fralk before him, was amazed at its keenness. “A most generous gift, eldest of eldest.”
“Gift?” Fralk held his eyestalks very still, the picture of innocence. “How can such a thing be a gift, when all the clan possesses is in the clanfather’s keeping?”
Hogram turned a second eye on the young male, who wondered if he had laid the flattery on too thick. Maybe he had. “There is a difference, you know,” Hogram said, “between being in my keeping and being in my hand.” But the domain master’s eyestalks twitched; he was more mused than anything else.
Fralk did not take another chance. He changed the subject, at least to some degree, saying, “These-strangers-may be valuable to us, clanfather.” “Strangers” seemed a better word than “monsters,” especially as he was trying to speak well of them.
“If they have more knives such as this, certainly,” Hogram said. “Or, better yet, if they can make them with longer blades. Those would help us when we cross the Great Gorge. I would pay well for them.”
“Of course, clanfather,” Fralk agreed. “The trouble is finding what the strange males want. They are so-different-from us that much of what we find valuable may be of no interest to them.”
Hogram’s eyestalks were more than twitching now; they were wiggling with mirth. “That is the trouble with any trade, eldest of eldest, finding out what the other male wants and what it’s worth to him.” The clanfather’s faded, sagging skin and the continual wheezing of his breathing pores showed that he would never be young again, but with his years had come shrewdness. Clan Hogram prospered, even among the Skarmer clans, where a trading blunder could put a clan up to its eyestalks in trouble.
Fralk had learned a great deal, just watching and listening to his grandfather. Now to apply some of that learning, if he could… “Clanfather, have you chosen a male yet to work with the strangers, learn their peculiar words, and teach them ours?”
“Why, no.” Hogram sounded a bit taken aback.
Good, Fralk thought. The domain master had not had a chance to work through all the implications of the strangers’ arrival, while he himself had thought about little else since the skybox(no, the skyboat,. he amended, consciously using the Lanuam word the Skarmers had borrowed, almost fell on top of him.
“Surely it would be better to have a single male handle such matters than to scatter them piecemeal among several,” he said.
“So it would, so it would.” Hogram’s fingers twiddled as he thought. “You see to it, if you care to, Fralk. You’ve been dealing with the creatures since they came here, so you know more about them than anyone else.” The domain master paused. “I’ve given you two hard tasks together now, first dealing with the Omalo domain master and now with these strangers. You are still a young male. If you decline here, I will not think less of you.”