“What’s so deadly about Langri?” she asked him.
“The world isn’t compatible with humans. The first colonists must have had a horrible struggle for survival, because there’s so little here that humans can eat. In compensation, there’s nothing here that wants to eat us, but there are a number of things that can cause unpleasant sickness or death.”
She reached out and plucked a flower and watched it turn brown. “Then the flowers are allergic to humans?”
“Some are. Some the natives can wear as ornaments. Some are poisonous to everything that comes near them. Better not touch anything at all without asking first.”
“What’s Uncle Harlow doing in a place like this?”
“Playing ambassador,” he answered indifferently.
“That doesn’t sound at all like him. He’s a dear, and he can move mountains, but usually he won’t stir a muscle until he counts the profit.”
“Being able to put the word ‘ambassador’ in front of one’s name is a kind of profit,” Hort said.
“I suppose, but it still doesn’t sound like Uncle Harlow.”
They were approaching the embassy buildings. Hort touched her arm and pointed, and she saw her uncle approaching from another direction. He seemed to be leading an army, but she quickly picked out familiar faces: Hirus Ayns, her uncle’s executive assistant, and two of her uncle’s secretaries. Ayns had noticed her. He spoke to Wembling, who turned. His mouth dropped open. Then he bellowed, “Talitha!”
She dashed into his arms. A moment of ponderous embrace, and then she backed off and looked at him. “Uncle Harlow!” she exclaimed. “You look wonderful! You’ve lost weight, and what a marvelous tan you have!”
“You’re looking pretty good yourself, Tal. But you’re supposed to be in medical school. Vacation time?”
She ignored the question. “I thought I’d find you lording it over a big embassy staff in some glamorous world capital. What are you doing here?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the natives, and then he drew her aside and spoke quietly. “Frankly, I’m working on the biggest deal of my life. I fell into this appointment, and if I use it properly—” He broke off. “Why aren’t you in medical school?” he asked sternly.
“Because I quit. I wanted to help suffering humanity. Know what they were making of me? A computer technician.”
“Medical computation is a damned good job,” he said. “Good pay, and you can always— Look here. Wemblings don’t quit. I’m sending you back on the next ship.”
He stomped away. The natives and his staff respectfully fell in behind him. No one looked back, but she shouted after him furiously, “You won’t have to! I’m leaving on the next ship!”
She glared at Aric Hort, who was looking on innocently. “I like that. The nerve!”
She flounced toward the nearest building, dropped a door open, entered, and dropped it closed again, leaving him staring blankly after her.
7
Her next impression of Langri was of the peering eyes of children. Whenever she left the embassy there were native children watching her. They stared at her from behind bushes, they trailed after her, they anticipated her movements and were there ahead of her wherever she went. The only sounds they uttered were suppressed giggles.
On the morning following her arrival she lay drowsily on the beach, acquiring a first installment of sun tan, and already she was so accustomed to children slyly circling around her that when Aric Hort approached she did not even open her eyes until he spoke.
He told her good morning, and she answered politely and closed her eyes again.
He sat down beside her. “Do you like Langri any better than you did yesterday?”
“Worlds usually don’t change much overnight,” she murmured.
She was silent for a time, and when she looked up at him she found him grinning at her. She said testily, “The ocean is the nicest blue-green I’ve ever seen, except for the sky, and the forest colors are magnificent, and the flowers are wonderfully fragrant and lovely until you pick them, and if you take away this world’s blatant prettiness what have you got?”
“At least you’re enjoying the beach,” Hort observed.
She picked up a handful of sand and flung it aside. “I tried to go swimming, but there are things out there I don’t care to share an ocean with.”
“They feel the same way about you. If you know how to swim, the ocean is the safest place on Langri.”
She pushed herself into a sitting position. “Tell me,” she said seriously. “Just what is Uncle doing here?”
“Yesterday he was laying out a drainage system for a native village. I don’t know what he’s doing today. Let’s find him and see.”
He helped her to her feet, and they walked off along the beach. She looked back once and saw a group of children scurrying to keep up with them.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Hort said. “Yesterday your uncle said you’d been in medical school.”
“I had one year of medical school, and it was ten per cent physiology and ninety per cent electronics, and I’d rather not think about it. You’ll have to take your aches somewhere else.”
He grinned at her. “No, no—I’m not after free medical advice. I’m worried about the natives. They’re a healthy people, which is fortunate—they have no medical science at all. When one of them is sick or injured, he’s in deep trouble.”
“If I tried to look after him, he’d be in worse trouble. Anyway, nursing a bunch of ignorant savages wouldn’t appeal to me.”
He said sharply, “Don’t call them ignorant! On this world they’re much more knowledgeable than you are.”
“Then they’re knowledgeable enough to nurse themselves.”
They walked on in silence.
The shore curved into an inlet, and a native village came into view, built on a gently sloping side of a hill above the sea. The dwellings stood in concentric circles, with a broad avenue pointing straight up the hill to bisect the village, and other avenues radiating out from the central oval. Children were playing along the beach, and older children were swimming and spearing sea creatures. The moment they saw Hort all of them headed for him at a rush, the younger children flocking along the beach and the older ones quickly swimming to shore and chasing after them. All of them shouted, “Airk! Airk!”
The younger children made faces at him, and the contorted expressions he produced in return convulsed them. The older children circled around him playing some kind of complicated hitting game that he invariably lost, and his expressions and gestures of feigned pain dissolved all of them in hilarity. Even the quivering gloom of his scowl set them squealing with merriment.
Plainly they loved this man, and his very presence was a delight to them. Talitha looked at Hort with interest for the first time and found that he had the kindest eyes she had ever seen, and that his face, behind its ridiculous facade of beard, radiated compassion and good humor.
She also thought that something was troubling him deeply.
Hort picked up one small girl and introduced her. “This is Dabbi. My prize student. Dabbi, this is Miss Warr.”
Dabbi smiled charmingly and spoke an unintelligible greeting.
Hort answered her unspoken question. “They’re bilingual. It’s a very strange situation. They have a language that I can’t make anything of, and then many of them are quite fluent in Galactic and almost all of them understand it—some of the young people even use fairly up-to-date slang expressions.”
He put Dabbi down and directed Talitha’s attention to the sea.
A hunting boat was rapidly approaching shore below the village. The crew, which consisted of both men and women, was standing poised on the edges of the boat. Hort waved, and all of them waved back.