World without Stars (7 page)

Thus he was better able to explain himself at the following talk: “We fell from the sky, where our own Pack hunts. We cannot
return until we have fixed our boat. That will be the work of many years, and cannot be done without many hands. For this
we will pay in goods, blades such as we gave you, tools that will lighten your labor, perhaps also teaching of arts you do
not know yourselves.”

“But how shall the Pack be fed meanwhile?” ya-Kela asked.

“Given the use of certain weapons we own, fewer hunters can bring in ample game. Besides, they will soon drive off those enemies
who trouble you.”

Now this I may doubt
, ya-Kela thought.
You showed us your thunderous arms back at your camp. But are they really more potent than the downdevils’? I do not know.
Perhaps you do not either
.

He said merely, “That is good; yet such is not the ancient way. When you go, and leave a large number of our youngs who have
not had time to learn the skills we live by, what then?”

“
You’re one hell of a bright boy, you know?
” said ya-Valland in his own speech. He replied, “We must consider that also. If we plan well, there need be no hungry years;
for the tools and weapons you earn will keep you fed until the old ways are learned afresh. Or it is even possible—though
this I cannot promise—that my people will wish to come and trade with yours.”

He leaned forward, his eyes brilliant in the firelight, the musicmaker in his lap talking sweetly as God Himself. “We must
begin in a small way in any case, ya-Kela. Find me only a few clever young hes that are willing to come back with me and work
for knives like yours. Then, in the course of a year or so, we will find out if this is good for our two sides.”

“Gr-r-um.” Ya-Kela rubbed his muzzle thoughtfully. “You utter no ill word there. But let me think on the matter before I say
anything to the Pack at large.”

That period, shortly before sleep, ya-Valland spoke into a little box he carried. It answered him, as had often happened before.
But this time ya-Kela saw him grow tense, and his voice was chipped sharp and his smell became acrid.

“What is wrong?” asked the One, with hand on knife.

Ya-Valland bit his lip. “I may as well tell you,” he said. “I know you still keep watchers, who will send word here as soon
as they can reach the drums. Vessels have landed by the camp of my people, and some from the crews have entered the stockade
to talk.”

“The Herd does not use the laguage of the Pack,” ya-Kela said. Dampness sprang forth on his skin. “Some have learned it, true.
But none of your folk save you have mastered any but a few shards of Azkashi. How can there be talk?”

Ya-Valland was silent for a long while. The waning fire spat a few flames. That light picked out the shes and youngs, crouched
frightened in the inner cave.

“I do not know,” ya-Valland said. “But best I return at once. Will you give me a guide?”

Ya-Kela sprang to the cave mouth and bayed after help. “You lie!” he snarled. “I can tell that you hold something back. So
you shall not leave before we have the entire truth from your downdevil mouth.”

Ya-Valland could not have followed every word. But he rose himself, huge and strange, and clasped the weapon that hung at
his belt.

W
E ALWAYS
left one man on the guard tower while the rest were at the ship. What Valland had radioed—good thing our gear included some
portables!—suggested that attack by certain rivals of the Azkashi was not unthinkable. He hadn’t learned much about them yet,
except that they belonged to quite a different culture and must have sent those canoes we’d spied at sunset.

No doubt the Azkashi were prejudiced. They were … well, you couldn’t call them simple hunters and gatherers. A Pack was only
vaguely equivalent to a human-type tribe; Valland suspected that rather subtler concepts were involved. He was still unsure
about so elementary a matter as what “Azkashi” meant. It referred collectively to the different Packs, which shared out the
inland hunting grounds and lakeside fishing rights, spoke a common tongue and maintained a common way of life. But should
the name be translated “hill people” as he thought at first, or “free people,” or “people of the galaxy god,” or what? Maybe
it meant all those things, and more.

But at any rate, the Shkil, as ya-Kela called them, sometimes preyed on the Azkashi; and in the past, they had driven the
Packs out of lands on the far side of Lake Silence. This, and certain other details which Valland got during his struggle
for comprehension, suggested a more advanced society, agricultural, spreading at the expense of the savages. Which in turn
made me wonder if the Shkil might not be potentially more useful to us. On the other hand, they might be hostile,
for any of a multitude of reasons. We took no chances. A man in the tower, with gun and searchlights, could hold off an assault
and cover the landing of his friends.

By chance, I was the sentry when the Shkil arrived. The galaxy was hidden in a slow, hot rain; my optical equipment could
show me nothing beyond the vapors that steamed under our walls. So I had to huddle cursing beneath an inadequate roof while
they maddened me with snatches of radioed information from the spaceship. Finally, though, the data were clear. A large band
of autochthones had appeared in several outsize canoes and a double-hulled galley. They wanted to confer. And … at least one
of them spoke the Yonderfolk language!

I dared not let myself believe that the Yonderfolk still maintained an outpost on this planet, so useless and lethal to them.
But I felt almost dizzy as I agreed that two or three of the newcomers might enter our compound along with the returning work
party. And when they came, destruction take thoughts of treachery, we left no one on the tower. We settled for barring the
gate before we led our guests into the hut.

Then I stood, soaked, hearing the rain rumble on our roof, crowded with my men between these narrow walls, and looked upon
wonder.

Our visitors were three. One resembled the Azkashi we had already met, though he wore a white robe of vegetable fiber and
a tall white hat, carried a crookheaded staff like some ancient bishop, and need but breathe a syllable for the others to
jump at his command. One was a giant, a good 240 centimeters in height. His legs and arms were disproportionately long and
powerful, his head small. He wore a corselet of scaly leather and carried a rawhide shield; but at our insistence he had left
his weapons behind. The third, by way of contrast, was a dwarf, also robed, but in gray. He kept his eyes shut and I took
a while to realize that he was blind.

The one with the staff waved his free hand around quite coolly, as if extraplanetary maroons were an everyday affair. “
Niao
” he said. I gathered this was his people’s name for themselves. He pointed to his own breast. “Gianyi.”

“Felip Argens,” I said, not to be outdone. I introduced my comrades and summed them up: “Men.”

“We’ve told him that much,” Urduga murmured in my ear. “He stood in the prow of that galley and talked for—you know how long.
But you’re better at the Yonder lingo than any of us, captain.”

I ought to be. I’d studied, as well as electro-crammed, what little had been learned on Zara. Not that we could be sure the
language was what the Yonderfolk used among themselves. It might well be an artificial code, like many others I had met, designed
for establishing quick communication with anyone whose mind wasn’t hopelessly alien. No matter. Gianyi of the Niao had also
mastered it.

“Sit down, everybody,” I babbled. “What can we offer them? Better not anything to eat or drink. Presents. Find some good presents,
somebody. And for mercy’s sake, whisky!”

We had a little guzzling alcohol left. It steadied me. I forgot the rain and the heat and the darkness outside, bending myself
to talk with Gianyi.

That wasn’t any light job. Neither of us had a large vocabulary in that language of gestures as well as sounds. What we had
in common was still less. Furthermore, his people’s acquaintance with it antedated mine by many generations, and had not been
reinforced by subsequent contact. You might say he had another dialect. Finally, a language originated by beings unlike his
race or mine was now filtered through two different body types and cultural patterns—indeed, through different instincts;
I had yet to discover how very different.

So I can no more set down coherent discourse for Gianyi
and me than I could for ya-Kela and Valland. I can merely pretend:

“We came from the sky,” I said. “We are friendly, but we have been wrecked and need help before we can leave. You have met
others, not akin to us but also from the sky, not so?”

“They tell me such beings came,” Gianyi said. “It was before my time, and far away.”

That made sense. In an early stage of space travel, the Yonderfolk would have visited their neighbor planets. Finding intelligent
life here, they would have instituted a base from which to conduct scientific studies—before they discovered the space jump
and abandoned this world for ones more interesting and hospitable to them. And it would have been an unlikely coincidence
if that base happened to have been anywhere near here.

How, though, had the mutual language been preserved through Earth centuries after they left? And how had it traveled across
hundreds or thousands of kilometers to us? I asked Gianyi and got no good answer through the linguistic haze. The Ai Chun
could do such things, he tried to explain. The Ai Chun had sent his party to us, making him the commander since he was among
those Niao who were traditionally instructed in sky-talk. He bowed his head whenever he spoke that name. So did the blind
dwarf. The giant remained motionless, poised; only his eyes never rested.

“A ruling class,” Bren suggested to me. “Theocrats?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I have an impression they’re something more, though.” To Gianyi: “We will be glad to meet the Ai Chun and
make gifts to them as well as to the rest of your people.”

He got unreasonably excited. I must not lump Niao and Ai Chun together. That was wrong. That was bad medicine. I apologized
for my ignorance.

Gianyi calmed down. “You will meet the Ai Chun,” he said. “You will come with us to them.”

“Well, one or two of us will,” I agreed. We had to take some risks.

“No, no. Every one of you. They have so ordered.”

Not being sure whether that last term indicated a fiat or simply a request, I tried to explain that we could not abandon our
camp. Gianyi barked at the giant, who growled and took a stiff-legged step forward. I heard guns leave their holsters at my
back.

“Easy! Easy!” I sprang to my feet. “You want to start a war?” Gianyi rose also and waved his bully boy back. We faced each
other, he and I, while the rain came down louder. The dwarf had never stirred.

I cleared my throat. “You must know that those from the sky have great powers,” I said. “Or if you do not, the Ai Chun should.
We have no wish to fight. We will, however, if you insist we do what is impossible. Have all the Niao come here? Certainly
not. Likewise, all of us cannot go away with you. But we will be glad to send one or two, in friendship.”

When I had made this clear, which took time, Gianyi turned to the dwarf and spoke a while in his own high-pitched language.
Something like pain went across the blind countenance. The answer was almost too low to hear. Gianyi folded his hands and
bent nearly to the floor before he straightened and addressed me again.

“So be it,” he told me. “We will take a pair of you. We will leave two canoes here to keep watch. The crews can catch fish
to live. You are not to molest them.”

“What the bloody blazes is going on?” Urduga whispered behind me.

I looked at the dwarf, who was now shivering, and made no replay. That poor little thing couldn’t be the real chief of the
party. Well, I’ve met different kinds of telepathic sensitives
among the million known civilizations; none like him, but—

“Think it’s a good idea to go, captain?” Galmer asked.

“I don’t think we have much choice,” I told him, trying hard to keep my voice steady. Inside, I was afraid. “We’ll be here
a long time. We’ve got to know what we’re up against.”

“They may mean well in spite of their manners,” Bren said.

“Sure,” I said. “They may.” The rain gurgled as it fell onto soaked earth.

While Gianyi and his escort waited impassively, we discussed procedure. Our representatives were to be taken to the opposite
shore, where the Niao had a frontier settlement. From Valland’s questioning of ya-Kela, we knew the lake was broad, an inland
sea. Still, we should get across in a couple of standard days, given those swift-looking boats. We might or might not be able
to maintain radio contact. Valland could, but he hadn’t traveled so far. Under the tenuous ionosphere of this planet, we needed
a hypersensitive receiver to read him.

I must go, having the best command of Yonder. An extra man was desirable, both as a backup for me—the situation looked trickier
than Valland’s—and as evidence of good faith on our part. Everyone volunteered (who could do otherwise, with the rest of us
watching him?) and I picked Yo Rorn. He wasn’t my ideal of a traveling companion, but his special skills could be duplicated
by Valland and Bren working in concert, whereas nobody but Urduga could fix a drive unit and Galmer was alone in knowing the
ins and outs of a control system.

We started to pack our gear, more or less what Valland himself had taken along. Bedrolls; plastic tent; cooking and distilling
utensils; lyophilized food from stores; medical kit; torchguns and charges; radio, extra capacitors, hand-cranked
minigenerator for reviving them; flashes, goggles, photoplates, space garments— The receiver buzzed. I thrust across the crowded
hut and sat down. “Hello?” I shouted.

“Me here,” Valland’s voice said, tiny out of the speaker. “Just reportin’. Things look pretty hopeful at this end. How’s with
you?”