A World of Difference by Harry Turtledove Page B

for asking about the obvious.
    “At the budding female I close look?”
    It took several tries, backed by a good deal of gesturing, before Reatur figured out what Sarah meant. The domain-master hesitated. He had cleared the chamber in the mates’ quarters by himself after Biyal died—he did not want other males to haveanything to do with
his
mates, or even to venture into that part of the castle. But he had not kept the humans out of the mates’ quarters. They were too odd to worry about their planting buds on his mates. And poor Biyal would never bud again, that was certain.
    “Look if you care to,” the domain-master said at last. “Yes,” he added a moment later. Humans needed things kept simple.
    He started back toward the castle. One of his eyes watched Sarah bend over Biyal’s corpse. That peculiarly human motion still struck him as grotesque. Humans could not widen, though. He was sure of that. They did the best they could with the weird bodies they had.
    As did everyone else, he thought. That reminded him of the watch he was still posting on Ervis Gorge. Nothing whatever had happened there since Fralk—on whose eyestalks the domain-master wished the purple rash—was urged to go back to his own side and stay there. Reatur wondered whether he was wasting his males’ time by keeping them at the gorge. He decided to leave them in place a while longer. Up against a rogue like Fralk, fewest chances were best.
    The male dropped the lamp at Fralk’s feet; in fact, he almost dropped it on one of Fralk’s feet. “What’s all this about, Mountenc?” Fralk asked. He was both surprised and a little angry. As eldest of eldest, he was not often exposed to such rude behavior.
    But Mountenc was angry, too. “This stinking thing didn’t even live as long as a mate, Fralk,” he snapped. “It doesn’t light up anymore, and I want my eighteen stone blades back for it.”
    “I never said how long it would last, Mountenc,” Fralk pointed out.
    “Four nights isn’t long enough,” the other male retorted. “I kept it on all through the dark so I could see to work, and now look.” He picked it up and used a fingerclaw to click the little switch that made the light come out. No light came. “It’s dead,” Mountenc said contemptuously, “and I want my blades back.”
    “First let me see if I can make it live again,” Fralk said. He did not have the blades anymore. He had traded them for something else. At the moment, he could not remember what, but he had turned a profit.
    From the way Mountenc was glaring at him with three eyes at once, he did not think the other male would care about that. “You’d better,” Mountenc said.
    “I will do what I can.” Fralk was pleased to notice that none of his concern showed in his voice. He was a good deal less pleased when he remembered how many little lamps he had sold. If they all started dying, he was liable to end up dead himself.
    By the time Fralk was done talking Mountenc around, though, the other male was halfway polite again. Of course, had someone given him the promises he had made Mountenc, he would have been happy, too. He wondered if he could make those promises good. Time to find out, he thought as he carried the defunct lamp over to the humans’ tent.
    Next to the tent stood the thing—Fralk thought of it as a land-boat—the humans used to travel about. It rolled on the round contraptions humans seemed to prefer to skids. Thinking about the flying boat that had almost fallen on him, Fralk reflected that humans not only seemed to like traveling, but also seemed very good at it.
    That only made him wonder again why nobody had ever seen any of them before. Maybe they really did come from the Twinstar.
    As the humans liked, he paused beside the tent and did not go straight in. “Hello!” he called, and then added the human word:
“Zdrast’ye!”
Nothing happened. He hailed again. Still nothing. He said something unhappy, not quite out loud. Sometimes