Legend told that the Ghouls heard any word spoken of them, unless—some said—during broad daylight. The Ghouls might be all about them even now.
Kay asked, “Would your queen’s man truly rish with his traveling companions?”
The four Gleaners tittered. Beedj and Moonwa boomed their laughter. A little woman—Perilack—said to Kay, “If the Grass Giant women would notice. Size matters. But you, you and we might make something happen.”
Perilack and Kaywerbrimmis looked at each other as if both taken by the same notion. The little woman took Kay’s elbow; Kay’s arm brushed the Gleaner’s feathers. He suggested, “I expect you accumulate these faster than you can use them?”
She said, “No, the skins spoil quickly. We can trade a few, not many.”
“What if we could find a way to delay the spoilage?”
From time to time Valavirgillin would catch a foul whiff of battlefield stench and snort it out. But the smells weren’t reaching Kaywerbrimmis. Not him! Kay was into trader mode. His mind was in a place where win and lose were a matter of numbers, where discomfort was an embarrassment one could not afford, where an empire survived because one hominid’s trash was another’s ore bed.
Full night had fallen. But by the faint flash of an arc of daylit Arch, she saw Beedj’s broad grin. She asked the Grass Giant, “Have you watched bargaining sessions?”
“Some. Louis Wu came when I was a child, but agreements were all between him and the old Thurl. The Reds made peace with us thirty falans ago; we parceled up habitats. Twenty-four falans ago we gathered with the Reds and Sea People, shared maps. All peoples have learned things about the new territory. But all find Grass Giants awkwardly large.”
A polite disclaimer would not be believed. Vala reached up to grasp elbows with the Grass Giant. She’d been listening for Ghouls in the night, but the only sound was the rain.
The clouds had closed. It had become full dark.
One of the Gleaner men asked, “Should we only wait? Would they find that more polite?”
Manack, wasn’t it? Hair thicker around the throat, as if he were an alpha male and Silack a beta. In a good many hominid species, one male got most of the action; but Vala didn’t know that about Gleaners.
Vala said, “Manack, we’re here. In their habitat. You may even consider that we’ve come to entertain the lords of the night. Will you share rishathra?” To Beedj she quickly added, “Beedj, this is for size, to leave me larger. I expect Whand will go with Moonwa first …” Though Kay and Perilack, she noticed, were no longer talking business. Philosophies differ.
To rish with a Gleaner male was no more than foreplay.
Rishathra with the Thurl’s heir was something else again. It had its pleasures. He was big. He was very eager. He was very proud of his self-restraint, though it was right at the edge of his control. He was very big.
Kaywerbrimmis was having a wonderful night, or seemed to be. He was sharing some joke or secret with Moonwa now. Good trader, that one; a generally good man. Vala kept looking in his direction.
They’d mated. Vala couldn’t get her mind out of that mode … shouldn’t try, really. It was a good mind-set for a rishathra party. Still.
Mating is a matter of order. Eons of evolution have shaped many hominid’s mating responses: approach, scents, postures and positions, visual and tactile cues. Culture shapes more: dances, cliques, styles, permitted words and phrases.
But evolution never touches sex outside one’s species, and rishathra is always an art form. Where shapes don’t fit, other shapes might be found. Those who cannot participate can watch, can give ribald advice …
Can stand guard, for that matter, when a trader’s body or mind needs a rest.
The night was almost silent, but not every whisper was wind. Ghouls should be out there. It was their duty. But if for any reason word hadn’t reached them of a corpse-strewn battlefield, then those sounds might be vampires.
Vala perched on a stool three paces high and sturdy enough for a Grass Giant. The night was warm enough for nakedness, or she was, but loaded guns were on her back. Before her was blowing rain and little else to see. At her back any excitement had died for the moment.
“We and the Grass Giants, we love each other, but we’re not mere parasites,” one of the Gleaners was saying. “Wherever there once were mirror-flower forests, there are plant eaters now, prey that can feed us. We forage ahead of the Thurl’s people. We probe, we guide, we make their maps.”
Manack, that was. He was a bit small to accommodate even a Machine People woman, and inexperienced; but he could learn. The proper attitude was easy for some. Others never learned it.
Mating has consequences. A hominid’s response to mating is not of the mind. Rishathra has no consequences, and the mind may remain in command. Embarrassment is inappropriate. Laughter is always to be shared. Rishathra is entertainment and diplomacy and friendship, and knowing that you can reach your weapons in the dark.
“We hope to make our fortunes,” Kay was saying. “Those who extend the Empire are well-treated. The Empire grows with our fuel supply. If we can persuade a community to make fuel and sell it to the Empire, the bonus would let each of us raise a family.”
Moonwa said, “Those rewards are yours. Your client tribes face something else. Loss of ambition, loss of friends and mates, delusion and early death for any who learn to drink your fuel.”
“Some are too weak to say, ‘Enough.’ Moonwa, you must be stronger than that.”
“Of course. I can do that tonight, now. Enough, Kaywerbrimmis!”
Vala turned to see white grins large and small. Beedj said, “I wore one of your fuel wetted towels last night. It made me dizzy. It threw my aim off.”
Kay gracefully changed the subject. “Valavirgillin, will you return to Center City, mate and raise a family?”
“I mated,” she said.
Kay suddenly had nothing to say.
He didn’t know!
What had he been thinking? That he and she would be, come formal mates? Valavirgillin said, “I made myself rich with a gift from Louis Wu of the Ball People.” How she had done that was nobody’s business, and illegal. “I mated then. Tarb’s parents were friends of my family, as is usual with us, Moonwa. He had little money, but he’s a good father, he freed me to engage in business dealings.
“I grew restive. I remembered that Louis Wu suggested … no. Asked if my people make tools from the sludge that remains after we distill alcohol. Plastic, he said. His talking thing would not translate, but I learned his word. He said it means shapeless. Plastic can take any shape the maker likes. That sludge is useless, nasty stuff. Clients might be grateful if we had a reason to haul it away for them.
“So I funded a chemical laboratory.” She shrugged in the dark. “Always it cost more than anyone expected, but we got answers. There are secrets in that goo.
“One day most of my money was gone. Tarablilliast and the children are with my sire-family, and I am here, until I can feed them again. Coriack, are you ready to take guard?”
“Of course. Hold the thought, Whandernothtee. Vala, what’s out there?”
“Rain. I glimpse something black and shiny, sometimes, and I hear tittering. No smell of vampires.”
“Good.”
Moonwa had lapsed into Grass Giant language and was making jokes that set Beedj roaring. In the gray light of morning the Gleaners spoke together, waved at the brightening land, then more or less fell over in a pile.
“Do you think they came?” Spash asked nobody in particular, and he stepped out of the tent.
Whand said, “I don’t care. Let’s sleep.”
“They came,” Spash said.
Vala stepped out.