Foreigner

by Robert J. Sawyer

“Well, I mean, Afsan and I are related. Since you help Afsan, I thought perhaps you might also be willing to help me.”

  Cadool’s tone was pleasant, but confused. “I don’t see what being related to Afsan has to do with anything.”

  “I don’t really know myself,” confessed Toroca. “But I need to ask a big favor of someone, and, well, I thought perhaps, because of your relationship with my father, that maybe…”

  Cadool held up a hand. “Toroca, if I were to do a favor for you it would be because of who you are, on your own terms. Why would you want it to be anything but thus?”

  Toroca nodded. “You’re right, of course. Forgive me.” A pause. “Afsan has told you what we are doing, I presume.”

  “Yes,” said Cadool. “I’m not enthusiastic about the idea—despite the efforts of that Mokleb person, Afsan is still blind. What you have proposed is very risky.”

  “That it is. But peace must be given a chance.”

  Cadool grunted noncommittally. “In any event,” he said, “what favor would you ask of me?”

  “I have in my custody a child,” said Toroca. “I need someone to look after him while I am gone.”

  “Surely room can be found for him in the creche?” said Cadool.

  “No, this child is, ah, not Quintaglio. He is an Other.”

  “An Other! Toroca, we are at war with the Others.”

  “The child is innocent. He was hatched aboard the Dasheter, just as I myself was. I need someone to care for him while I am gone.”

  “Surely you are not asking me to regurgitate meat,” said Cadool.

  “No. He’s big enough to swallow hunks whole now, although perhaps you could cut small pieces for him.”

  “Wait a beat—if he is an Other, won’t the sight of him drive me to dagamant?”

  “I honestly don’t know if children have the same effect, but, yes, you’ll have to take precautions. See him only in the dark, perhaps.”

  “But Emperor Dybo has given me my own assignment to take care of. I’m going to have to leave the Capital, too, in a couple of days.”

  “I should be on my way back by then. Taksan—that’s the child’s name—Taksan doesn’t require constant supervision, of course. He’s already used to being left alone. If you could simply check on him a couple of times before you go. He’s in my apartment.”

  “Well, if that is all, I suppose I can manage it.”

  “Ah, no, that isn’t quite all there is to it. Good Cadool, I find myself facing a problem no other Quintaglio has ever faced. I am responsible for another’s life. I am concerned about what will happen to Taksan if I don’t return from this peace mission. Cadool, I ask you to look after Taksan if I don’t come back.”

  “That is a lot to ask.”

  “I know it. But you were the only Quintaglio I could think of to approach. You look after my father; I thought perhaps you’d understand…”

  “I freely confess that I don’t understand,” said Cadool. “I will do this: I will make sure this, this Taksan, is fed and kept safe until I leave the Capital. Beyond that, I make no promises.”

  Toroca nodded slowly. It was all he could expect. “Thank you, Cadool.”

  Toroca and Afsan left Capital City early the next morning aboard a small sailboat, the Stardeter. The ship was only seven paces long, barely big enough to accommodate two people. Toroca was amidships, controlling the rigging for the two sails. Afsan sat in the stern, holding the tiller steady, and occasionally moving it in response to instructions from Toroca. They had to tack into the wind, and, despite the huge amounts of time he’d spent aboard the Dasheter, Toroca was by no means an expert sailor. Still, the boat handled well, and soon the cliffs along Land’s shore were receding over the horizon.

  They sailed for a full day and a night before Toroca caught sight of the first mast poking over the eastern horizon. It was difficult to make out the approaching ships against the rising sun, but Toroca had soon counted fourteen vessels spread out along the horizon, and he had every reason to think there were many more still behind them.

  Would Jawn be aboard the lead ship, or another one? Was he even here at all? Jawn was the only one who spoke even some of the Quintaglio language; surely they would have brought him along.

  Before departing Land, Toroca had painted Jawn’s name across the Stardeter’s main sail; it was one of the very few words he knew how to make, having seen it over and over again on Jawn’s name-tag necklace. If the Others had far-seers, surely they’d be able to see the word “Jawn” and understand that a meeting was being requested with him. That is, if they’d even noticed the tiny sailboat yet.

  As their little craft moved closer to the armada, Toroca used his own far-seer to examine the big ships. Small colored flags were running up a guy from each ship’s bow to its foremast. Toroca at first thought that these identified individual vessels, but he soon counted three that were displaying the same sequence of flags. At one point, Toroca saw the old flags brought down and new ones hoisted. Apparently this was a signaling method used to communicate between the ships.

  Wingfingers occasionally swooped down from the sky to look at the Stardeter. Many others were flitting above the Other ships, perhaps feeding on garbage thrown overboard.

  And then, at last, one of the big ships changed course slightly, heading directly for the Stardeter. Toroca was deliberately not wearing his sash; instead he had on the same swimmer’s belt he’d worn that day he’d first arrived in the Other city. He suspected all Quintaglios looked alike to the Others, just as all of them looked pretty much the same to him, and he wanted to do everything possible to aid identification.

  The big ship was approaching quickly. Toroca described its alien shape for Afsan, who seemed amazed by the differences from standard Quintaglio design. Toroca could see several Others on its deck. They were all standing in the shade of an overhanging tarpaulin; Toroca guessed they weren’t used to equatorial sun. Even in the far-seer, the faces were indistinct, but—

  There.

  Waving at him.

  Jawn.

  Toroca tied off the sail cord and, holding the mast for support with one hand, waved wildly in reply with the other. As the ships came closer together, Toroca could tell that not everyone on deck was pleased to see him. Two individuals were pointing metal tubes at him, and a large black cylinder, one of the much bigger weapons that had earlier taken shots at the Dasheter, had been swiveled in a wooden mount to face the Stardeter. Still, Jawn’s face was one of open delight at seeing his old friend. Two Others were putting a rope ladder over the ship’s side; weights on its ends kept it taut as it descended toward the waves.

  “They’re letting down a ladder,” Toroca said to Afsan. “You’ll have to go up first; I’ll need to stay behind to tie off our boat.”

  Afsan nodded. Toroca shouted up at Jawn in the Other language, while pointing at Afsan: “No eyes! No eyes!”

  Jawn looked perplexed for a moment, then seemed to get Toroca’s meaning. Shouting back at his own shipmates in the Other language, he said, “The big one is lees-tash”—presumably the word for “blind.”

  One of the Other sailors shouted out, “Then what is he doing here?” but Jawn ignored that and motioned for Toroca and Afsan to come aboard. Toroca helped Afsan get hold of the rope ladder. “It’s about thirty rungs to the top,” he said. “Remember, they can touch you without difficulty; let them help you get up on deck.”

  Afsan grunted and began to climb. He had trouble with the first couple of rungs, but soon got the hang of it, and before long was up on the Other ship. Toroca tied his little sailing boat to the rope ladder in hopes that it wouldn’t bash against the big boat too much; the Other vessel could doubtless take the impacts, but the Stardeter had a fragile hull. He then made his own way up the ladder, banging his knuckles as it swung back against the ship when a big wave came by. Finally, he was on the deck, too. Toroca bowed deeply in Quintaglio greeting, then spoke the standard salutation used by the Others: “It is my good fo
rtune to see you.” One of the Others made a derisive sound, but Toroca thought he was more likely mocking his halting command of their language than the actual sentiment.

  Jawn repeated the greeting, then asked in his own language, “Who is this?”

  “My…father,” said Toroca. “Afsan.”

  Jawn bowed at Afsan, and, in heavily accented Quintaglio, said, “I cast a shadow in your presence.”

  Afsan tilted his muzzle toward Jawn, impressed.

  “Enough of this,” said the same one who had snorted earlier, speaking the Other tongue. “Ask him why they attacked us, Jawn.”

  Toroca faced the fellow directly, and spoke in the same language. “That is what I have come to…to…”

  “Gan-noth,” said Jawn. Explain.

  “That is what I have come to explain,” said Toroca. “My people want no fight. We not good feel about what happened.”

  The belligerent fellow let loose a vocal barrage containing many words that Toroca didn’t know, but he realized part of it was a body count of how many had been killed by the Quintaglios aboard the Dasheter.

  “We are sorry for that,” said Toroca. “It is moving by the hand of God,” he said, an Other idiom meaning, we couldn’t help ourselves. “Your appearance causes a…a violent reaction within most of us.”

  “Appearance,” said Jawn. “Then your father…he can be here because he is lees-tash, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Jawn faced Afsan, and spoke in halting Quintaglio. “Toroca says he does not want to fight. Do you?”

  “No,” said Afsan. And then repeating himself in the Other style of amplification, which Toroca had taught him during the voyage out: “No, no.”

  “How,” said the belligerent one, who Toroca had come to suspect must be the captain, “is not fighting possible between our peoples?”

  “We can have no direct contact,” said Toroca. “But my people are good at interacting without contact. We could trade, exchange documents, learn more about each other—”

  “Enough!” The captain spit a string of words at Jawn so rapidly that Toroca could only pick out a few terms. Jawn looked upset.

  “What did he say?” asked Toroca.

  “He said you are—not the absence of good, but the opposite of it. You live out of the sight of God. We cannot trust you, he says.”

  “Ah, but you can trust us, Jawn. You saw it yourself back in your city. I cannot lie without my muzzle turning blue; none of my people can. You know that.”

  “Joth-shal,” said the captain.

  “What?”

  “A trick,” said Jawn. “He thinks you’ve tricked us into thinking that about yourselves.”

  “Do you think it is a trick?” said Toroca.

  Jawn looked thoughtful, then said slowly, “Among those who died trying to visit your ship was my sister.”

  “We told you to stay away.”

  “Yes, you did. You—”

  “How?” snapped the captain, his face suddenly suspicious. “How—” and then a string of words Toroca couldn’t follow.

  Jawn looked at Toroca. “My friend asks a good question,” he said. “How did you know what effect our appearance would have on you? How did you know enough to warn us not to visit your ship?”

  Toroca’s heart sank. Not knowing what to do, he turned to Afsan and quickly filled him in. Afsan shrugged.

  “Because,” said Toroca slowly, “that day I arrived in your city was not the first time Quintaglios had seen your peoples. We had landed on another one of your islands a few days before—”

  The captain spoke again and Toroca recognized the name of one of the islands.

  “Oh, God,” said Jawn. “You killed two people there, didn’t you? There was a massive search; one body was found, and another was never recovered.”

  “Now the test!” said the captain. “If you killed them, you must die for it. Prove you cannot lie, thash-rath. Tell us you killed them.”

  Toroca briefly explained to Afsan what was going on.

  “Not a great experiment,” observed Afsan. “You die either way.”

  “I did not kill them,” said Toroca in the Other language, “but, yes, ones of my kind did. We feel not good about it.” Toroca held up a hand, and was relieved to see his claws were still sheathed. “If you believe that we did kill them, you must also believe we are sorry. Sorry, sorry.”

  “If you knew the effect of our appearance, then why did you come back to our islands?” said Jawn. “Why did you risk killing more of us?”

  “That is why Afsan is here,” Toroca said. “He is one of our greatest thinkers, and is influential with our Emperor. He has something to”—he tried to recall the word he’d just learned—“explain to you about what will come for our world. Let him show you; I will translate what he says.”

  The captain’s tail swished. “You are dangerous. Your kind must be eliminated if my kind is to be safe.” He moved in closer. He was no bigger than Toroca; the young geologist could surely take him in single combat. But other sailors had weapon tubes trained on him. “We attack you tomorrow, thash-rath. Tell me where your weakest point is.”

  Toroca crossed his arms over his chest. “I do not wish for this conflict to go on,” he said, “but I will not…” His noble speech faltered as he realized he didn’t know the Other word for betray. “I will not not help my people.”

  The captain held out his right hand, motioning to one of the armed sailors to give him his tube. “Tell me, or I’ll shoot you,” he said.

  “No!” said Jawn. “Do not!”

  “I would rather die than not not help my people,” said Toroca.

  The captain grunted, a sound of grudging respect. “Finally a quality to admire in your kind,” he said. “No matter. Tell me where your people’s weakest point is, or I shall kill the large one.” He swung the mouth of his tube toward Afsan.

  “No!” said Toroca, first in Quintaglio, then in the Other tongue. “He is blind.”

  “So you say,” said the captain. “He is also much bigger than any of us, and that makes him dangerous. Now, tell me, where exactly should we attack? Where are you least fortified?”

  “I cannot reveal that,” said Toroca.

  The captain did something to the tube. It made a loud click.

  “Tell me, or I will kas-tak.” A word that presumably referred to operating the weapon.

  “Do not,” said Jawn again. “They came here in peace.”

  “There will be peace,” said the captain. “When they are all dead, and the jar-dik to our people is over, there will be peace.” He looked at Toroca again, his yellow eyes thin slits against his yellow face. “Tell me!”

  Toroca closed his eyes. “The docks.” The Quintaglio word exploded from him.

  The captain looked at Jawn, who provided the equivalent Other term.

  “The docks,” Toroca said again. “The harbor.”

  “Where?” snapped the captain. “Exactly where?”

  “Dead ahead, at the easternmost tip of our land,” said Toroca. “You cannot miss it. Our Capital City is built on cliffs overlooking those docks. They are unfortified and unguarded.”

  “Thank you,” said the captain. “Thank you very much.” And then he casually aimed the mouth of his tube at Afsan and moved his fingers. A flash of light leapt from the barrel’s mouth and wingfingers who were roosting on the ship’s rigging took to flight. Afsan fell backward against the raised wall around the edge of the ship, and collapsed to the wooden deck.

  “You said you wouldn’t shoot him!” shouted Toroca in Quintaglio.

  The Other captain must have been anticipating the question, because he answered it even though he couldn’t possibly have understood the words. “You may not be able to lie,” he said simply, “but I can.”

  Chapter 28

  Toroca ran over to the fallen Afsan. A neat round hole, with blackened edges, was visible on his upper-left chest. Blood was seeping from the wound. Toroca lifted Afsan’s sash from over his
shoulders, wadded it up, and pressed it against his chest, trying to stanch the flow. Afsan groaned.

  “Why?” Toroca said, but he realized that wasn’t the question he really wanted to ask. He fixed his gaze on the captain and spoke the eighth Other interrogative word: “Glees?” How righteous is this?

  Jawn, too, was looking at the captain in naked disgust. He turned to Toroca. “How is he?”

  “Bad,” said Toroca, his Other vocabulary lessons failing him. “Bad.”

  Afsan tried to lift his head. There was some blood in his mouth; the metal pellet had probably torn into his lung or windpipe. “I…” His voice was raw, pained. “I do not wish to die here.”

  “Nobody’s going to die,” said Toroca, glad for once that his father was blind and could not see his muzzle. He turned to Jawn. “I am not a healer,” he said. “I have to get him back to my people.”

  “No,” said the captain. He gestured at some of his sailors. “Take them below.”

  Jawn protested in language Toroca couldn’t follow, but soon weapon tubes were being waved at them. Toroca put an arm around his father and helped support his massive weight as they were taken down a ramp into the ship’s interior. Large skylights were inlaid into the ceiling; there were no signs of interior lamps.

  Afsan was groaning slightly with each step. While helping him walk, Toroca could no longer hold the leather sash against his father’s wound, but Afsan himself was doing it now. They soon found themselves at the doorway to a little room. Even aboard ship the Others favored any floor plan that wasn’t square; the room was five-sided. A circular skylight admitted late-afternoon sun.

  There were coarse sacks stacked in three of the five corners. Toroca helped Afsan lie on his side, leaning against one of the sacks. The door was closed, and Toroca heard the sound of metal hitting metal. He tried to open the door but found he couldn’t shift it.

  “Locked,” said Afsan faintly.

  “What does that mean?” said Toroca.

  “Secured…so it can’t be opened.”

  “Oh.” Toroca came back to where Afsan was lying. “How are you?”

  “Cold,” he said. “Cold. And thirsty.”