“Yes?”
“Isn’t that funny?” said Afsan. “For the life of me, I can’t remember number eight.”
“Would you like a hint?”
“Um.”
“Its provincial color is light blue.”
Afsan shook his head. “Sorry. It’s right on the fork of my tongue, but—”
“Kev’toolar,” said Mokleb.
“Kev’toolar!” cried Afsan. “Of course. How could I forget that?”
“Now, quickly, Afsan, tell me the words that pop into your mind when you think of Kev’toolar.”
“Len-Lee. She’s the governor.”
“No, don’t explain unless I ask you to. Just say whatever words pop into your head.”
“Coastline.” A pause. “Kevpel.”
“Kevpel?”
“Yes, you know. The planet. Fourth planet from the sun.”
“Kev’toolar and Kevpeclass="underline" they both start the same way.”
“That’s right. It’s a coincidence, of course. The province is named after Kevo, one of the fifty original Packs. The ‘kev’ in the planet’s name is just an old word for ‘bright.’ ”
“And what does Kevpel make you think of?”
“Well, Novato, I guess. When we first met, she showed me her sketches of Kevpel. And phases, of course: you can see Kevpel’s phases clearly, even with a small far-seer. Oh, and rings: Kevpel has rings around it.”
“There’s another ringed planet, isn’t there?”
Afsan nodded. “Bripel. But it’s not as easy to see through a far-seer. And it’s farther away from the sun than we are, so it doesn’t go through phases.”
“Novato. Tell me about her.”
“Well, she’s head of the exodus project now.”
“But more than that, if I recall the stories I’ve heard correctly, she and you mated.”
“Yes.”
“Now phases. Tell me about phases.”
“Well, they’re cycles.”
“Cycles?”
“You know: periodic occurrences.”
“And rings. What things are ring-shaped?”
“A guvdoc stone.”
“Yes. Anything else?”
“Certain trading markers, no?”
“I suppose. Anything else?”
“No, well—eggs are laid in a circle with empty space at the center. A clutch of eggs looks like a ring.”
Mokleb nodded. “You couldn’t remember the province of Kev’toolar, because your mind was blocking out the similarly named planet Kevpel, and Kevpel makes you think of Novato, cycles, and rings.”
“Oh, be serious, Mokleb. Those are just random connections, surely.”
“Cycles and rings. Rings of eggs. And Novato, whom you once mated with. Let me ask you a question, Afsan. Tell me: is Novato about to be an integral number of years old? That is, is she about to cycle into her receptive phase, and take a mate?”
Afsan’s jaw dropped. “Mokleb—!”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong.”
“No, no, you’re absolutely right. She’ll be in heat anytime now.”
“And again forgive me, but have you perhaps been wondering if you and she will couple again? If the two of you will produce another clutch of eggs?”
Afsan’s claws slipped out for a moment, but then slid back into their sheaths. “Yes, Mokleb, as much as I have no right to wonder about such things, the questions you ask have indeed been disturbing me. I mean, normally I’d have a good chance at it, having been the first person she coupled with. But, ah, I’m blind and far away from her, and, well, there is the matter of Garios.”
“Garios?”
“Den-Garios. A fine fellow, really. Novato and I coupled prior to what would have been her normal first estrus; she mated with Garios about two kilodays later. So, yes, Mokleb, I have been wondering whether she and I will mate again. It’s not a proper thing to think about, I know, but…” He lifted his hands helplessly.
“As you can see,” said Mokleb, “the most insignificant-seeming slip can be of major importance. We’re beginning to gain access to your mind, Afsan; soon we’ll have our prey in sight.”
*9*
Toroca’s lessons in the Other language progressed rapidly. He soon had a vocabulary of perhaps two hundred words, mostly nouns. The pace had picked up once he realized that when Jawn pointed at an object with his palm open, the word he spoke was the general term (furniture, say), and when he pointed with his palm closed, the word was specific (table, for instance). Jawn was a good teacher, with inexhaustible patience; Toroca guessed that teaching the Other language to youngsters had once been his job. Nonetheless, Toroca found the language confusing. In the Quintaglio tongue, related nouns usually ended in the same suffix: -aja for kinds of wood, -staynt for types of buildings, and so on. But the Other language didn’t seem to have any such simplicity; a sailing ship was a ga-san whereas a rowboat was a sil-don-kes-la.
Eventually, some questions could be asked. There were six standard interrogatives in the Quintaglio language: who, what, how, why, where, and when. It became apparent, however, that there were eight in the Others’ speech, six corresponding to the Quintaglio ones, plus two more that Toroca gathered meant ‘with what degree of certainty?’ and ‘how righteous is this?’ He’d picked up the latter by Jawn repeatedly asking questions and pointing through the glass roof at the gibbous Face of God; the Other religion centered on the Face, just as the Quintaglios’ own discredited Larskian faith had.
The first question Jawn asked was the one Toroca had expected. Jawn leaned back on his tail—Toroca had decided to refer to Jawn as ‘he’; it was too difficult maintaining a mental image of a ‘she’ with a dewlap—and said in his own language, “Where you from, Toroca?”
Toroca had to answer with a question of his own. “Picture land,” he said, and made the beckoning hand sign that meant ‘give me.’
Jawn looked momentarily confused, then apparently realized that ‘picture land’ must refer to a ‘map,’ a word the Other equivalent of which Toroca didn’t know. Jawn spoke to Morb, the fellow with the black armbands, and a map was brought in. It was made of neither leather nor paper, but rather a pinkish material that had a waxy feel to it; perhaps a plant derivative. Once the map was unfurled, Toroca was surprised to see that although the page it was printed on was square, the image was perfectly circular. Rather than having the Others’ archipelago in the center, it was displaced toward the upper left. In the correct relative positions the northern and southern polar caps were indicated.
Suddenly it hit Toroca: the circular view showed all of the back side of their moon, everywhere from which the Face of God was visible. Had the Others never sailed farther than that? Perhaps with a religion built around the Face, they refused to sail beyond its purview. Indeed, the glass roofs of their buildings might be for more than simply letting in light; perhaps they ensured that the Others were never out of sight of their god.
Toroca used his hands to make the map bulge up from the tabletop into a dome, in hopes of indicating that it represented one hemisphere. Then, with an exaggerated gesture of his muzzle, he tried to show that he came from around past the borders of the map.
Jawn looked shocked. He glanced over at the guard, but Morb was paying little attention. Jawn said just two words, the two interrogatives unique to the Other language: With what degree of certainty? How righteous is this?
“Loud,” said Toroca in Jawn’s language, and then, realizing he was using the wrong word, “Much.”
Jawn shook his head. “How you here?”
Toroca hadn’t learned many verbs yet, but that sentence was easy enough to decipher even without them. “Ga-san,” he said. Sailing ship.