A World of Difference

by Harry Turtledove

  “Yes,” Yuri Voroshilov said; from the chemist, it almost counted as a major speech. Lopatin would have wondered had much more come from him. If anyone could have stayed sane alone through a nearly three-year Minerva mission, Lopatin would have bet on Voroshilov. Assuming, the KGB man thought, that he was sane now, on which Lopatin reserved judgment. That Yuri was competent counted for more.

  Beggars the Minervans were in the most literal sense of the word. They held out several arms apiece toward Tsiolkovsky. Lopatin clicked on the outside mike. He had not learned a lot of the local language, but he had heard that phrase too often to mistake it: “Give! Please give!”

  Lopatin had no use for beggars. Had it been up to him, he would have sent them packing, and in a hurry, too. But the orders from Moscow were clear: do nothing to antagonize the natives. Lopatin obeyed orders.

  All the same, he did not care for them. As he often did, he said, “Will you do the honors, Yuri Ivanovich?”

  “Yes,” Voroshilov said again. He got some trade goods out of a box by the inner airlock door, closed it after him, opened and closed the outer one, and started down the ladder. Lopatin trained a machine gun on the Minervans below. There had been no trouble with the locals, but he stayed ready for a first time.

  The Minervans recoiled when they first saw Voroshilov; these newcomers might have heard about humans, an amused Lopatin thought, but they had never set eyes on one before. One male let out a contralto shriek that would have made any movie heroine proud.

  “You want what?” the chemist asked when he was on the ground. The Minervans pulled back again at the sound of his deep voice.

  Then one of them, visibly gathering his courage, stepped toward Voroshilov again. He repeated the sad chant all three males had been making: “Give! Please give!”

  “Here.” Voroshilov pulled out a pocket knife and briefly took off one glove so he could use his thumbnail to pull out a blade and show the male what the artifact was. The Minervan shrieked again, this time, if Lopatin was any judge, in delight.

  Seeing their comrade rewarded, the other two males also came up to Voroshilov. He gave one of them another pocket knife, the other a chisel with a transparent gold plastic handle.

  “Hot, yellow ice!” the Minervan exclaimed as he held the chisel up to one eyestalk so he could peer through it.

  All three males made themselves short and fat to thank Voroshilov and were so happy they did not take fright when he bowed in return; Lopatin had seen other locals start running at what was to them a startling gesture.

  As he always did, Voroshilov asked, “What you do with tools I give you?” And Oleg Lopatin, not for the first time, thought the chemist was much more animated dealing with the Minervans than he ever had been with his fellow humans. Voroshilov’s pale, rather thin features lit up; real expression came into his voice.

  The answer he got was the one he and Lopatin heard most of the time: “Take them to Hogram’s town to get what we can for them.”

  “And after that?” Voroshilov persisted.

  Again the reply was familiar. “We hope we will have enough then to pay Hogram the back rent on our plots, so we will not have to give them up and come to the town for good to try to make a living there.”

  “Good luck to you,” Voroshilov said. Inside Tsiolkovsky, Lopatin sardonically echoed, “Good luck.” The Minervan peasants would not earn as much as they thought for the trinkets Voroshilov had given them. Too many such goods from Earth were available around Hogram’s castle; almost every day, the Russians there reported another drop in price.

  Well, the bumpkins would find that out soon enough. He watched them trudge off toward the town. Each of them kept a couple of eyes trained on Voroshilov as he climbed up into Tsiolkovsky. The locals would have a story for the rest of their lives, Lopatin thought.

  “What do you suppose they’ll end up doing a few weeks from now?” he asked when his companion was back inside.

  “Building boats,” Voroshilov said promptly.

  “I expect you’re right,” Lopatin agreed. “Building boats, earning whatever wages Fralk and Hogram choose to grant them, living wherever they can, with only their labor to sell.”

  “Proletarians,” Voroshilov said.

  “Exactly so. The revolution will come here one day, just as it has on Earth.”

  “Not now,” Voroshilov said with what sounded like alarm.

  Lopatin made a mental note of that tone, but only a small one, because Voroshilov was right. The Minervans here were just entering a capitalist economy, not coming to its conclusion. And from what Lopatin had gathered from the Americans’ reports, the natives on the far side of Jotun Canyon were still frankly feudal.

  Barring the genius of a Lenin, then, the time for the revolt of the proletariat was still far away. Lopatin had a very good opinion of himself, but he knew he was no Lenin.

  “Back to work,” Voroshilov said, and headed off for his lab. A strange one, Lopatin thought as the chemist walked down the passageway. He had had the thought many times and still did not care for it. He wanted-he needed people to be orderly and predictable. Anything he did not understand, he mistrusted.

  Voroshilov, for instance, had gone far longer than any of the other men on Tsiolkovsky before even trying to approach Katerina. He had gone so long, in fact, that Lopatin began to wonder if he was a homosexual who had somehow escaped all the screening for that kind of criminal behavior. Lopatin would not have much minded if he was; it would have given him a hold on the quiet chemist. But it was not so. As far as the KGB man could tell, Voroshilov was just painfully shy.

  He waited until clanks and clatters told him that Voroshilov was busy again, then called up a computer index to which no one else on Tsiolkovsky had access. In it were his files on the other five crewfolk. He recalled Voroshilov’s. One of the documents was called “Poetry”-it was a transcription of the set of jottings Lopatin had found on one of his periodic searches through the ship. The scribbles themselves were back in their hiding place.

  “Love songs,” the KGB man muttered under his breath as he read them again. They were amazingly good, amazingly sensuous, and every one had Katerina’s name in it. Just glancing at them made Lopatin wish she were there. She had not warmed much in his embrace during the brief time she let him share her cubicle, but he still savored the relief her body had brought.

  Men were not like women, he thought thankfully, remembering the old joke about the fellow who came into a tavern complaining that the lovemaking he had just had was the worst he had ever known. When the man behind the bar asked him how he would describe it, he grinned and said, “Magnificent!”

  Regretfully, Lopatin sent the poems back into the computer’s memory. He also sent a sharp glance back toward where Voroshilov was still working. Nobody with that unprepossessing an exterior had any business having all those fine words running around loose in his head. Lopatin doubted everyone on principle but felt real suspicion of anyone who concealed himself the way the chemist did.

  Tried to conceal himself, the KGB man amended. If he ever needed one, he had a handle on Voroshilov, all right. He smiled. Katerina was a very nicely shaped handle, now that he thought of it.

  The ball, a hide cover over soft teagfiber, flew past Lamra. She let out a frustrated squawk as she went after it. She had thought she had an arm in the right place to catch it, but somehow it got by her. It usually did.

  She widened herself so she could pick up the ball. “Reatur always catches it,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

  “Throw it back to me,” Peri said. When Lamra did not throw it back right away, the other mate’s voice got louder. “Throw it back to me! Throw it back to me!” Lamra still did not throw it. Peri came over and took it away from her. “Mine!”

  Lamra snatched it back. She used a couple of free hands to hit Peri. She was older and bigger than the other mate, but that did not stop Peri from hitting her, too, and poking her with a fingerclaw. She yelled and threw the ball at Peri as
hard as she could. She missed. The ball bounced away.

  Neither mate cared about it anymore anyhow. They were too busy fighting with each other. Other mates came running to watch and to add their shouts to Lamra’s and Peri’s.

  Lamra had taken control of the fight and was just about to tie three of Peri’s arms into a knot when the door to the outside world came open and Reatur walked in.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked. “What’s this racket all about?”

  “She took my ball away,” Peri said, squirming away from Lamra and pointing at her with the arms that-too bad! she hadn’t got to knot up after all.

  “Not your ball,” Lamra said. She gathered herself to grab Peri again and really give her what for. Reatur turned an extra eyestalk her way and pointed at her with an arm that did not seem to have anything better to do. Regretfully, she subsided. She might have known he would notice.

  “Back to what you were doing, the rest of you,” Reatur told the crowd of mates around Peri and Lamra. They went, thoughalmost all of them kept an eyestalk on what was going on. Even so, Lamra wished they would do what she told them to like that.

  Maybe being big like Reatur helped.

  He had been talking to Peri. Filled with her own not quite happy thoughts, Lamra had paid no attention to whatever he was saying. She was a little surprised when Peri, after squeaking, “I will,” hurried away. Several of the other mates were playing a game of tag. Peri joined them. In a moment, her trouble with Lamra forgotten, she was frisking about.

  “Now you,” Reatur said to Lamra. He had not forgotten, even if silly Peri had.

  “It wasn’t her ball,” Lamra said.

  “I know that,” Reatur said. “You all play with everything here in the mates’ chambers, so how could any of it belong especially to any one of you? That’s not what I wanted to talk with you about, Lamra.”

  Then he did something Lamra had never seen him do with any other mate, though he had before with her, once or twice: he widened himself down very low, so that he was hardly taller than she. She still did not know what to make of that-she felt proud and nervous at the same time.

  “You ought to know better than to squabble that way with Peri,” he said.

  “It’s not fair,” Lamra said. “She squabbled with me, too.” She saw Reatur’s eyestalks start to wiggle, saw him make them stop. That was just one more thing she did not understand: Why would he want to make himself stop laughing? Laughing was fun.

  “So she was,” he said. “But she”-he lowered his voice a little, so the others could not hear-“is just an ordinary mate, and you, I think, are something more. So I expect more from you.”

  “Not fair,” Lamra said again.

  “Maybe not. Would you rather I expected less from you than you are able to give?”

  “Yes. No. Wait.” Lamra had to stop and work that one through. Reatur was talking to her as if she were another male. His words were as badly tangled as she had hoped to make Peri’s arms. “No,” she said at last.

  “Good,” Reatur said. “So you’ll behave yourself, then?”

  “Yes,” Lamra said. Then she wailed, “I don’t want to behave myself!” The world suddenly seemed a more complicated place than she wanted it to be.

  “I know you don’t,” Reatur said gently. “Doing it anyway is the hard part. It’s called being responsible.”

  “I don’t want to be whatever you said-responsible. It’s silly, like not laughing when you want to laugh.” Lamra turned an eyestalk away from Reatur to show she was not happy with him. “And like widening yourself so you’re so short and fat that you look like a toy nosver.”

  “Do I?” Reatur laughed then, so hard that Lamra doubted he could see straight. He also resumed his regular height. “Is this better?”

  “Yes,” Lamra said, though she could hear the doubt in her own voice.

  “All right.” Reatur hesitated. “How are the buds?”

  Lamra looked down at herself. She was beginning to have a swelling above each foot, but the buds did not inconvenience her yet, and so she did not think about them very much. “They’re just-there,” she said, which seemed to satisfy Reatur. “How are Biyal’s budlings?”

  She saw that she had startled Reatur; his eyestalks drew in, then slowly extended themselves again. “One mate has died,” he said. “The others seem to be holding their own. It won’t be long before we bring them back to live in here. The male is doing well.”

  “I miss Biyal. She was fun to play with-not like Peri, who squawks all the time,” Lamra added pointedly. She let air hiss out from her breathing pores in quite a good imitation of Reatur sighing. “I suppose the new ones will be even more foolish.”

  “I suppose they will.” Reatur turned an extra eye her way. “I’ve hardly ever heard a mate say she missed another one after that one-after that one budded,” he said slowly. “You remember more than most, don’t you?”

  “How can I tell that?” Lamra asked. There Reatur went, confusing her again. “I only know what I remember, not what anyone else remembers.”

  “That’s true.” Reatur was trying not to laugh again, she saw. He stopped for a while, then went on in a musing tone. “What would you be like if you could hope for my years, or even Ternat’s?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she told him. “Who ever heard of an old mate?”

  “Who indeed?” he said, and gave a sigh so much like hers that she could not help wiggling her eyestalks. He reached out and awkwardly patted her between her eyestalks and her arms. “All I can tell you, Lamra, is that I hope the male you bear takes after you. Having such wits around to grow would be precious.”

  Lamra thought about it. She was not used to taking such a long view; being as they were, mates did not have occasion to. Finally she said, “You know, that would be nice, but I’d rather it was me.”

  Reatur looked at her with all six eyes at once for a moment, something he had never done before. “So would I, little one. So would I.” Then he said something she did not understand at all. “I’m beginning to envy humans, curse me if I’m not.”

  He left the mates’ chambers very quickly after that.

  II

  Several Minervans kept an eye, or two, or three, on Frank Marquard as he got ready to descend. The lead male of the group was the one called Enoph. “Why are you going down?” he asked for the third time as Marquard checked and rechecked the lashing of his line around the big boulder that would secure it. “Tell me again, in words I can understand.”

  “I try,” the geologist said in halting Omalo. He knew he could not have explained even if he spoke the language fluently. The Minervans had not developed the concepts they needed to grasp what he was up to.

  “You know I walk on path down this far, more than halfway down J6tm” He caught himself; the human name for the canyon meant nothing to the locals. “Down Ervis Gorge.”

  “Not just on the path,” Enoph said with the sinuous wriggle of his arms that Marquard mentally translated as a shudder. “Away from it, too. How do you dare go where you might fall? Especially since you have only two arms and two legs to hold on with.”

  “How I go? Carefully.” Marquard sighed when Enoph only opened and closed a couple of his hands in agreement. So much for the old joke. But see how I go. When not on path, always have rope-how you say? tied to big rock. If fall, not fall far.”

  “Yes, I grasp that,” Enoph said-a natural image for a six-armed folk to use. “You humans are clever with ropes. I suppose you have to be. But why do you do what you do?”

  “To learn from rocks,” Marquard said. That was as close as he had come to rendering geology into Minervan.

  “A rock is a rock.” Enoph had said that before. Now, though, he paused to think it over. “Maybe not,” he amended. “Some rocks are harder than others, some better to chip at than others. Do you want to learn which ones are best for tools? I could show you that.”

  “No, not for tools. Want to see how rocks change in time.

>   New rocks near top of Ervis Gorge, rocks older down low.”

  Enoph wiggled his eyestalks, which meant he was laughing at Frank. I do better as a comedian when I’m not trying, Marquard thought. “All rocks are as old as the world. How could one be older than another?” Enoph asked.

  Marquard shook his head; like other Minervans who had spent a good deal of time with humans, Enoph understood the gesture. “Think of two fossils I find in rocks,” the geologist said.

  The key word was in English. Again, though, Enoph followed; the locals had not really started wondering about long ago life preserved in rocks, but Marquard had shown them the couple of specimens he had discovered and had found giving them a new word easier than the elaborate circumlocution he would have needed to say the same thing in Minervan.

  “I remember,” Enoph said. “One looked just like the foot of a nosver turned to stone. How can a nosver turn to stone?”

  That, Marquard thought, needed a longer and more complicated explanation than he could give. Fortunately, it also was not quite relevant. “Where that rock like nosver from?”

  “Not far from the top of the gorge, as I recall,” Enoph answered. “What of it?”

  “Now think on other fossil.”

  “That weird creature?” Enoph made the shuddery gesture again. “It looked like an eloc, or rather a piece of an eloc, but hardly bigger than a runnerpest. Even newbudded eloca are three times that size.”

  “No animal like that now, yes?” Marquard asked. Enoph repeated his hand closing gesture. The geologist went on. “Then that rock old, old, old, yes? No animal like that left now, yes? And that rock from where?”

  Enoph pointed an eyestalk at a spot halfway down the side of the canyon. He suddenly turned four of his other eyes toward Marquard. The geologist smiled; no Minervan had ever shown him that much respect before. He also realized Enoph was no fool-he had not had to point out all the implications to the male. With data presented the right way, Enoph was plenty smart enough to work out implications for himself.

  “You humans have the oddest notions,” he said. “I see this one is true, but who would have thought rocks could have ages? How does it help you to know this?”