Inner Child started in fright and the Fudir said, “Dint mean no fence. Whassa moose?” He knew of two kinds of animals that were called by that name. One was a sort of giant elk on Bracka; another was a variety of rodent that had spread across several worlds in the Jen-jen Cluster.
“A Terry,” said the jawharry, and this time the spitting was not mimed.
“Is there something wrong with…,” the Fudir began, but Donovan seized control. “Hey, no fence,” he said, reasserting the Valencian accent.
“But ya used a coupla words I heard from Terrans. Die Bold Terrans call their leader ‘Fendy.’ On Jehovah, dey call a shop a dukan; and you call yours a dook.”
The ‘harry touched his breast, lips, and forehead, and then each shoulder. “Shoran, they steal everything, even our tongues. They are worse than movers, seventy times seven. The Terries abandoned us after we had risked everything for them.”
The man’s voice has risen as he spoke and now took on a pitch close to cracking. But he suddenly stopped and visibly subsided into a dull rage. “I think you had better leave. You never call a’ Loon a moose. Shoran, that’s a deadly insult. Darkness falls on Algebra Street, and I cannot answer for your safety once the light is fled. Go and, indila, you find your way whole to your Phundaugh.”
The second piece of luck befell Méarana a little later that same day at Jawharry Chinwemma. Since this stood at Côndefer Park on the prairie east of Preeshdad, she took the air bus from Shdad-Center. The tourista rush was over, but a family of movers from Gladiola was aboard and their children shrieked most admirably when the bus left the launch rail and hit free fall. A trio of’ Loons twisted their faces at this, but aside from a muttered comment about coffers and spawning, they said nothing. The two young men wore their caephyas at a rakish angle and sported goatees. Their companion wore a gauze mask across her nose and mouth and her hair was caught up in a tammershanner. It was the garb of the “Young’ Loons,” a youth movement gaining in popularity.
Below, the grasslands rolled sere and uninterrupted to the horizon. Just as the bus lost its ballistic lift, the rotors kicked in and they settled into powered flight. The children flocked to the windows and pointed and chattered as the cluster of steep hills came into view. Méarana had one quick glimpse before the bus descended toward the receiving platform, where it hooked onto the brake-rail with a minimum of jostling and squealing.
Jawharry Chinwemma proved to be a gift shop attached to the park. The harper saw immediately that it was a jawharry in name only. True, it sold jewelry, mostly of an inexpensive sort designed to advertise Côndefer Park, but that it might harbor a genuine jeweler seemed beyond chance. The sign above the entrance announced the establishment’s name and asserted, curiously, that “God owns everything beautiful.” Like most other signs on Harpaloon, it bore a row of decorative squiggles underneath.
Behind the counter a pale, flat-nosed woman smiled at the late afternoon traffic. She was thin and of middling height, a few metric years older than Méarana herself.
“Excuse me,” Méarana said. “Are you Chinwemma? The jeweler… I mean, jawharry?”
The young woman’s eyes sparkled. “You’re from the Old Planets, aren’t you? I could tell by your accent. Your Gaelactic doesn’t have the lilt of High Tara, and you are much too direct.”
“Um… I’m from Dangchao Waypoint.”
“I would have guessed Die Bold. My, you are a long way from home.” Her eyes dropped to Méarana’s fingers, noted the nails. “And are ye after leaving yer harp behind ye?”
This last line was delivered with such a pitch-perfect impression of High Taran Gaelactic that Méarana laughed. “I’m afraid so. Is there a song out there on the plains?”
A half-smile. “There may be, but you’d best not sing it. Not until you’ve put parsex between yourself and Algebra Street.”
“Umm, parsex?”
“A local term meaning ‘a long distance.’ This is sacred ground to the’ Loons. The spot where their ancestors touched down. They claim the ‘Iron Cones’ are the landers they came down in. And they do look like landers of a sort, though precious large ones if they are. They’d be the only boats from Diaspora Days to have lasted. Historians have always been twitchy to study them, but the’ Loons will not allow it. They’d not like you mocking them, either. No, my name’s Enwelumokwu Tottenheim. Call me Enwii.”
Méarana was grateful for the contraction as well as for the pause. “I’d not mock a sacred spot. Do you expect Chinwemma back today?”
“Oh, no, no, no, Chinwemma is the name of the shop. It was my mother’s name. She told me it means ‘God owns all things beautiful’ in some ancient language. And I thought it would make a marvelous name for a jewelry shop.”
Méarana heard nothing from her earwig and was forced to agree. There were languages so long forgotten that the translators knew not even their names. Scraps of family traditions were all that remained—personal names, place names, a few phrases embedded in the tongues of others. “And what of Enwel… Enwela… Your name. Does it mean something, too?”
“I have something to say.”
Méarana waited, and then she realized that Enwii had answered her question, and she laughed again. “Don’t we all. Now if we could only get someone to listen…”
“Mehwíí. Is there something… Excuse me. Thank you, sir. That will be five punts, four dinners… Gladiola Bills? Of course, we take them.” Enwii checked the rate of exchange and made change for the man. She ran the little statuette through the packager, and handed it back to him. “Come again some day.”
When he was gone, Enwii laughed. “A set of three featureless steel cones. But it’s a replica of the Famous Iron Cones of Harpaloon. It says so on the base. The Cone of Momad, the Cone of Fìnmakuhl, and the Cone of Homer ben. Sells for just under five-and-a-half punts. I’ll leave you to guess how much it costs Wimbley and Chatterji to make them.”
“You’re not trying very hard to sell me anything.”
“Well, you didn’t come here to buy anything, now did you?”
Méarana pulled the medallion from under her blouse. “Do ye recognize this? I mean the sort of work, not this particular piece.”
Enwii took it and put it under the magnifying light. “Hmm. No, I can’t say I do… Of course, I’m not a real jawharry; but I suppose you know that by now. Sadd!” She called to a young man standing by. “The sun is coming through the windows. Be a good boy and turn the shades?” As the lad shuffled off, Enwii whispered, “His father’s a small-time’ harry in the Algebra Street Kasper. He prenticed him out here to give him a taste of the business—and maybe to keep an eye on the holy ground. I’ve lived on Harpaloon most my life, but to him I’m just a mover. My mother was Jugurthan and my father was a’ Cocker—if you can imagine so unlikely a couple!—so what does that make me? Sadd’s a conscientious lad, but he’s a’ Loon and you have to keep on him all the time or he’ll… Oho! What’s this! There’s writing on the back side. Micro-relief Sadd! Wait a minute before you roll down the shades. The light catches it… See here, ah…” Enwii straightened and blinked. “What is your name?”
“Lucy. Lucy Thompson.”
“Funny name. No offense. Die Bold, right. What do they say there? ‘Die Bold, Live Bolder!’ There, do you see the lettering? Let me put it on the screen. The light has to catch it at just the right angle. There.”