"This is of much difficulty to be explaining," he said, tapping his headband.
"Oh. Is it an auction?"
"Auction." He brought his hands up to reposition the headband. "Auction. No. It is in the nature of being a protest."
"Protest? What are they protesting?"
"Again, this is of much difficulty."
"Right."
Language barriers are one thing, cultural and conceptual ones quite another.
We entered another commercial area. The merchants here seemed of a distinct ethnic group, wearing their cornsilk hair in braids tied off with bright ribbons and floral bows. Their costumes were much more molest. Susan stopped to look at some pottery. Some items were quite attractive, though hard to identify.
Ragna was chuckling. "It is being centuries since these people are living in anything but faln, yet they construct their traditional objects and sell them quite speedily. Making much money into the bargain, too."
"Indians selling beads and blankets," I said.
"You will be pardoning me?"
"Well, it's difficult to explain."
Susan managed to blow fifteen minutes deciding what she wasn't going to buy.
"Susan."'
"Sorry, right. Let's go."
Next up was a sunken arena where a sporting event was being held. The game looked like a cross between rugby and motorcycle racing. If that sounds confusing… well, you'd have to see it. We stopped briefly to watch, but I didn't bother to ask Ragna to supply play-by-play commentary.
We went on. After taking a path through a small forested area, we came out into another marketplace, this one bigger and offering all sorts of products―furniture, vehicles, foodstuffs, clothing, you name it. It took about ten minutes for Tivi to find the stall of a merchant who could possibly fit Susan. It was an alien, a slender little yellow-furred biped who looked somewhat feline.
After conferring with the merchant, Tivi told us, "Yes, it has seen your species before. It can be accommodating your physique in the style of your choosing. But it says its merchandise is of so poor a quality that you would hardly be wanting to waste your money or your time."
I said, "Ask it… er, him or whatever―ask where he saw creatures like us."
She did. "It says it has traveled to many planets and has seen many creatures-your kind to be sure, but it is fearing that your ire will be aroused when it is telling you that the exact location of this sighting is not being remembered."
"Was it recently?"
The alien made apologetic gestures.
"It is saying also that this memory is not fixed with respect to a time element. It craves a thousand forgivenesses and begs that you not kill it."
"Well, tell him he's safe for now. He was probably fibbing about seeing humans. Just wanted our business."
Tivi went on as the alien continued mewling: "It still is insisting that you could not possibly be interested in the worthless articles of apparel that it is dealing in. In matter of fact, it is willing to be paying person or persons to take the junk off his hands."
"Tell him he doesn't have to go through Nogon dickering rituals with us," I said.
"As long as I am interpreting for you," Tivi answered, "it will be afraid not to be doing this dickering and ritualizing."
"What's his name?" Susan asked.
"It protests that an obviously high-born female such as yourself, one who no doubt is in possession of uncountable husbands and slaves, would not be interested in inquiring as to the name of so low-born and abject a creature as we see before us." As an aside, Tivi added, "I am thinking it is also a female―and also that this is being part of her own type of dickering and ritualizing."
"Tell her that I'd be interested in buying everything she has, and would be willing to pay her handsomely for the privilege," Susan instructed.
"Again she is protesting that such a wondrously beautiful creature such as yourself would be ill-served by―"
This went on at some length, and I got bored. To kill some time, Ragna took me on a little tour of the area. We watched what he told me was an actual auction, but strangely enough, it looked more like a protest meeting. After that we browsed through a fast-food section. Some of the stuff looked edible, even good, but I knew that, while I wouldn't be poisoned, I'd get sick as a pup if I had any. We had found that we couldn't eat Nogon food, even though its peptide configurations weren't too far divergent from Terran ones.
By the time we got back, Susan was out of the fitting booth.
"My survival suit'll be ready in an hour or two," Susan said. "I even got to design it myself. Custom tailored-how about that!"
"Good. Now let's―"
"Oh, look over here," Susan said, walking off.
We followed her over to a stall offering a wide variety of weaponry.
"Guns." Susan curled her lip in distaste. "I'm going to buy one."
"Whatever for?" I asked.
"Everybody else is armed to the teeth. Even John's carrying a gun now. Hell, with all the trouble we've been running into, I'd be foolish not to be packing some kind of shooting iron."
"I think we have enough to go around, Suzie."
"No, I want something that doesn't kill."
"Oh."
"Something that'll stop an enemy but not hurt him. I don't believe in killing."
"That might be a tall order, but let's see."
The merchant was a Nogon, and we found that the extent to which the alien had engaged in ritualizing and dickering had been a mere nod to local custom. Done properly, complete with nuances and byplay, the real thing could take hours. By being brusque almost to the point of insult, Tivi cut it down to twenty minutes. Meantime, Ragna went off to buy Susan a torch and some other camping gear. By the time he returned, the merchant had sold Susan a box containing three components which supposedly fit together. The sale of completely functional weapons inside the faln was illegal.
"They are scanning all the time for operative armaments," Ragna told me.
The sale complete, our merchant growled something and stepped behind a curtain. He didn't come out again.
"What was that all about?" I asked Tivi.
"He is saying that such a show of crass materialism and greed has been making him sick, at which point he will be expelling the contents of his gastric sac."
"Oh." I turned and yelled, "Sorry!"
"I wonder if this thing works," Susan said, examining the contents of the box.
"I wonder what it does," I said. "Wouldn't look like a gun, no matter how you'd put the parts together. What did the salesman say?"
"Who knows. Tivi?"
"He was saying that this particular weapon would not be killing one's opponent. However, he was not saying in exactitude what in matter of fact it would be doing."
"That's what came out of all that conversation?" I wanted to know.
"Much was being spoken," Tivi said, "but little was being said."
"Is it that these articles are to your satisfaction?" Ragna asked, displaying the various oddments he had bought for Susan―torch, mess kit, toilet articles, some sort of bedroll, other stuff, all of which were Nogon-made but eminently adaptable to human use.
"Oh, they're fine. Thank you so much, Ragna. Here, let me pay you."
"We may be settling monetary business dealings later, you are welcome."
I said, "We can't thank you enough for exchanging our gold for currency."
Hokar had let slip that gold prices had taken a dive recently. Apparently, the economy of the Nogon maze was booming.