"Bravo, TE," Carialle whispered over the mastoid implant to Keff.
Big Eyes was obviously impressed, by the way she gazed at Tall Eyebrow- and other Cridi were listening. Clearly they were nodding wisely to one another, they found encouragement in the Ozranian leader's words.
"I hope you teach me more than that," the female said at last, with a coy look up under her eyelids. Tall Eyebrow looked pleased and a little flustered.
"They don't need us at all," Keff murmured.
In spite of the discomfort of diminished privacy, Keff found the enforced closeness provided him with wonderful opportunities to observe unique sociological interaction. Once the Cridi began to relax, they reverted to their normal personalities.
Tall Eyebrow and the other two Ozranians were also affected by the lack of privacy. TE seemed torn between his desire to spend every waking moment with Big Eyes, and his need to get away by himself for a while.
"It is too crowded," he had said wistfully to Keff in an unguarded moment. Keff sympathized.
Wisely, the young female perceived that not everyone had grown up in a household crowded with dozens of children and other relatives, and left TE several times a day to do other things. She made friends with Long Hand, too. From the occasional eavesdrop, Keff discovered that Big Eyes was asking about life on Ozran. The facts were hard for someone brought up amid plenty and water, but to her credit, the Cridi councillor didn't blanch. She and the elder female also had numerous close conversations in the corner of the large cabin, glancing at the screens showing the Cridi in the other ship and giggling behind their palms. Big Eyes seemed to enjoy Long Hand's sardonic sense of humor.
Some funny moments were universally shared. Big Voice had appointed himself Communications Officer. He solicited messages every day from both ships, and spent about an hour broadcasting back towards Cridi. The transmissions were more amusing than useful. Carialle brought in the frequency so she and Keff could enjoy the pompous administrator practicing self-aggrandizement before the video pickup. Tall Eyebrow and the others watched with interest the first two days. Thereafter they turned off the sound and made rude signs among themselves. Big Voice's tenth transmission made especially good comedy.
"Further advancement has been made. I have observed constellations as mapped by our ancestors in their star charts. I am pleased to let the Council and the constituency of Cridi know that those charts are accurate!"
"Oh, no!" Big Eyes signed merrily, waving her hands at the 3-D image. "Get away."
"I am pleased that he has allowed the poor navigators to trust those maps that have been in place for a thousand years," Long Hand gestured, with a sly look in her eyes.
"Important message from our ship commander, Narrow Leg," Big Voice continued, picking up a minute square of white. "We have approached and passed halfway point of journey, and expect to arrive at our destination soon. This is confirmed by our human companions, Keff and Carialle"-he made the sign of the 'Watcher Within the Walls'-"We are grateful for their input, since they confirm what it is that we learn."
"That's not exactly what you said," Keff said to Carialle. "You told Narrow Leg where we are, and he checked it." Her frog image on the wall made much the same throwing-away gesture that Big Eyes had.
"Let him tell their press whatever he wants," she said. "If it will help public relations, I don't care what he says. Do you think any of them kept listening past the first five minutes?"
"I doubt it," Keff said, sitting down with a thump on the bench of his Rotoflex exercise machine at a good remove from Big Voice's screen. "I don't know why Narrow Leg lets him blather on like that."
The commander, whose face was visible on the screen nearest Keff's bench, must have heard his last remark.
"It serves to unite," the old one said, his wrinkled, pistachio-colored face creasing in a friendly grimace. "It does him no harm, because others have too much tact to tell him he is silly."
"Aren't you afraid all that nonsense will begin to pall? You don't want the folks back home to lose interest in what you're doing because he"-Keff tilted his head toward the main screen-"bores them to death."
Narrow Leg shook his head. "He is too shrewd to allow himself to be boring. And he is not. Every day he finds a new way to make himself ridiculous. It does not matter what the media say, so long as they say something with one's name in it. That is what Big Voice thinks. Most importantly, it keeps our minds off what we are doing. If allowed to brood, I think my folk would go mad. That is why I like your games and puzzles and lessons."
"Thank you," Carialle said. "I wish you'd say that to our administration. They think we are already mad for playing games on long flights."
"I shall," the old one said, with a courtly nod, "at the first available opportunity. How is our progress?"
"Very good," Carialle said. "I was right that the gravity well between the twin systems would destroy the ion trail where it passed closest, but now that we're past it, I'm seeing plenty. I'm also getting traces of low-power radio transmissions from the twin system."
The old one cocked his head to one side and looked pleased. "The fourth planet, yes?"
"Yes. With your people's extensive history of space travel I'm surprised you never explored in the system closest to your own, in spite of the gravity well."
"We did," Narrow Leg said, the pixels in his image updating in waves as he swiveled toward his own computer. "We knew of civilization. Our explorers had images of artifacts, buildings-perhaps houses. Large. See here, now." He waved a hand, and the image that was in front of him superimposed itself on the communication screen between him and Keff. In the Cridi format the view was hard to make out, but on the sides of a rocky, steep gorge, the brawn could make out structures that were clearly artificial.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said, his eyebrows creeping upward into his hairline. "Then why didn't your people ever land there?"
"Already inhabited," the Cridi captain said simply, returning to the screen. "We wished planets for colonization, so we did not pay attention to ones with intelligent life. It was remiss of us," he added grimly. "We should have."
Carialle's frog image looked thoughtful. "Why didn't you make contact with them? They're your nearest neighbors."
Narrow Leg shook his head. "Crude. Too primitive. We knew they were too far behind us to share civilization. Someday, we thought."
Keff snorted. "Well, it looks like they evolved in a hurry."
"If they're our pirates," Carialle said, warningly. "We might just be following the gang from base to base. Narrow Leg, I'd like to copy your data and send it with ours to the CenCom when we transmit next."
"My honor," the captain said, bowing.
"Just a moment!" Big Voice came up behind the commander. While the three of them had been chatting, the councillor had finished his daily tirade. Clearly he had overheard or overseen the last exchange. "I wish to send such a message to your Central Committee. Today!"
"You can't," Keff said, quickly. He glanced at Carialle's frog image, which spread its big mouth in dismay. He knew they shared the same thought. They didn't want to alert the CenCom just yet that they were flying a joint mission with the Cridi. They had already disobeyed a direct order to return. The next time they made contact with CW there'd be a hue and cry out after them, so they'd better have the proof they needed in hand.
Big Voice looked upset. "Why not? You have communication frequencies as we do."
Carialle's frog image suddenly filled the screens. "Honored councillor," she said, waiting while the IT program filtered her Standard speech into Cridi voice-language, "it would confuse matters for our diplomats. Keff and I are the only members of the Central Worlds with a working knowledge of your language. There is no translator in the CenCom who would be able to appreciate your most important words."