Saying? Yes. Nortekku observed now that those grunts had a structured rhythm to them, the balance and even the audible punctuation of what must surely be a language. It was indeed trying to say something to him. But what?
“I can’t understand you,” Nortekku told the Sea-Lord futilely. “Let me go! Let go!” And, to the Hjjk: “What’s it saying, then?”
The Hjjk replied, evasively, in the clickings and chitterings of its own tongue, which Nortekku had never mastered. He glared at the insect-man’s great beaked face. “No,” he said. “Tell it so I can understand.”
“What it is is the usual thing,” said the Hjjk, after a moment. “It is asking for your help.”
“My—help?” Nortekku said, and a monstrous realization began to dawn in him. “What kind of help?”
The Sea-Lord was finished with its oration, now. It loosed its hold on Nortekku’s wrist and stepped back, watching him expectantly. Nortekku turned once more to the Hjjk.
“What kind of help?” he demanded again.
Once again the Hjjk answered him, maddeningly, in Hjjk.
Nortekku snatched up a driftwood log that was lying near his right foot and brandished it under the Hjjk’s jutting beak. “Tell it the right way, or by all the gods, I’ll pull you apart and feed your fragments to the fishes!”
The Hjjk showed no sign of alarm. Crossing its uppermost arms across its thorax in what might have been a gesture of self-protection, but which had more of an aura of unconcern, it said blandly, “It would like to end its life. It wishes that you would teach it how to die. This is the thing that they always are saying, you know.”
Yes. Yes, of course. Teach it how to die. Precisely what he had not wanted to hear, precisely what he would prefer not to face. Precisely what Thalarne had already guessed. It is the thing that they are always saying.
Thalarne did not seem surprised at all, when he told her of his encounter with the Sea-Lord. It was as if she had been expecting vindication of this kind to come at any moment.
“It had to be, Nortekku. I felt it from my first glimpse of them.” Wonderingly she said, “It wants us to teach it how to die! Which means they can’t achieve it on their own—they probably don’t even have the concept of suicide. So they’ve been asking and asking, ever since we got here. And of course those two have been suppressing it. The Sea-Lords are their big asset, their key to fame and fortune and scientific glory. They’d never permit anything to happen to them.”
“And you would?”
“No. You know I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It isn’t possible to take a responsibility like that into one’s own hands.”
He nodded. He wished he could hear more conviction in her voice.
She went on, “What I would do, what I will do—is file a report with the Institute about all this when I get back. And with the government of Yissou, and I suppose with the Presidium of Dawinno also. And let them decide what to do about the Sea-Lords.”
“You know that Kanibon Graysz and Siglondan will file a dissenting report.”
“Let them. The powers that be can hire their own Hjjk interpreters and send their own expedition out here and find out themselves what the Sea-Lords do or don’t want. The decision’s not up to us. But how good it is, Nortekku, that you discovered what you did. I was sure of it, but I had no proof. And now—”
“Proof? All you have, Thalarne, is the word of a Hjjk that that’s what the Sea-Lord was saying.”
“It’s a step toward understanding what’s happening here,” she said. “A very important one. And why would a Hjjk invent anything so fantastic? The Hjjks aren’t famous for their great imaginations. I don’t think they tell a lot of lies, either. Neither one of them would have volunteered a word about this on its own, but when you asked for a translation—”
“It gave me one. Yes. And an accurate one, I suppose. They’re too indifferent to want to tell lies, aren’t they?”
It wishes that you would teach it how to die.
No. No. No. No.
He and Thalarne agreed to say nothing more about any of this, neither to each other nor, certainly, to the Bornigrayans, until they had returned to their home continent. Siglondan had made it quite clear where she and her mate stood on the subject of Thalarne’s Sea-Lord theory. There was nothing to gain but trouble by debating it with them now.
Later in the week, as it became clear that the visit was winding down, Nortekku heard the sound of hammering coming from the ship as it sat at anchor off shore. The ship’s carpenters must be doing some remodeling on board. Then came Kanibond Graysz’s announcement that the ship would leave the next morning: the only thing that remained, he said, was to round up the Sea-Lord specimens that they were taking back, and put them on board the—
“What did you say?” Thalarne asked incredulously.
“To round up the Sea-Lord specimens,” the Bornigrayan said again. And then, in a droning, official tone: “Our charter empowers us to bring up to four Sea-Lords back with us to Bornigrayal, where they will be placed in a congenial environmental situation so that they can undergo careful study in the most sympathetic surroundings possible.”
“I don’t believe this,” Thalarne said. Her whole body had gone taut. “You’re going to take prisoners? Intelligent autonomous beings are going to be collected by you and brought home and turned into zoological exhibits?”
“That is in our charter. It was the understanding from the beginning. I can show you the authorization we have—the signatures of such important figures as Prince Samnibolon of Dawinno, and Prince Til-Menimat—”
“No,” Thalarne said. “This can’t be.”
“And of your own husband, lady, Prince Hamiruld of Yissou—”
“Hamiruld doesn’t have the rank of prince,” said Thalarne, absurdly, in the faintest of voices. She looked stunned. Turning from the Bornigrayan as if he had uttered some vile obscenity, she hurried off up the beach toward the tents. Nortekku went running after her. He caught up with her just outside the tent.
“Thalarne—”
Panting, wild-eyed, she whirled to face him. “Did you hear that? This is outrageous! We can’t let them do it, Nortekku!”
“We can’t?”
“We could make a case out for killing the Sea-Lords, if that’s what they genuinely want. But to put them on display in a zoo? Coddled, peered at, imprisoned? Their lives will be even more nightmarish than they already are.”
“I agree. This is very ugly.”
“Worse than ugly: criminal. We won’t allow it.”
“And just how will we stop it, then?”
“Why—why—” She paused only briefly. “We’ll explain to the captain and his men that what these two want to do is illegal, that he and his whole crew will be making themselves accessories to a crime—”
“They’ll laugh in our faces, Thalame. Their pay comes from Kanibond Graysz, not from us. The captain takes his orders from Kanibond Graysz.”
“Then we’ll prevent the ship from setting out if it has any Sea-Lords aboard.”
“How?” Nortekku asked again.
“We’ll figure something out. Damage the engine, or something. We can’t let this happen. We can’t.”
“If we make any sort of trouble,” Nortekku said quietly, “they’ll simply throw us overboard. Or at best put us in irons and keep us chained up until the ship has docked at Bornigrayal. Believe me, Thalame: there’s isn’t any way we can stop this. None. None. None.”