[Jan Darzek 03] - This Darkening Universe

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  The unending mass of traders that thronged the aisles seemed to be oozing in all directions, in defiance either of scientific principles or the dynamics of jammed public places, and every individual struggling in that mass looked as though it had escaped from one of the fair's sideshows.

  Miss Schlupe pushed her way into an aisle and began her own oozing as quickly as the uncertain and contradictory crowd movements permitted, pausing when she could not move at all to study the wild tableaux of unlikely goods and even less likely traders. She was enjoying herself immensely. Strange creatures conducted unintelligible arguments, underscoring their points with dramatic outpourings of sound, movement, odors - occasionally even colors. The goods that were the subjects of these exchanges sometimes looked exquisite and priceless and at other times, in other locations, looked like garbage. The aisles were wide, but displays of merchandise overflowed into them: containers, cartons, bundles, bales, jugs, crocks, kegs, and boxes were stacked about the booths and shelves and display tables, sometimes constricting the aisles almost to the point of impassability, but no one seemed to mind. Miss Schlupe escaped into a side aisle, a mere crack between displays, and slowly made her way forward to another main aisle that proved to be more crowded than the one she had abandoned.

  She began to speculate as to what the things on display were used for. These enormous, hideously veined, fetid-smelling leaves; they couldn't possibly have an ornamental value, but neither could she imagine anyone eating them. At one booth a slobbering tentacle placed a sample in her hand: a small green stone with a colorful pattern of red and white spots. She thanked the giver with as much sincerity as she could manage in a conversation with a being that had no visible head. Then she noticed that others who received this bounty were munching on it with evident pleasure. She slipped away as quickly as the crowd permitted. She didn't want to be guilty of a breach of ethics or perhaps even a legal transgression, but her resolution of the day was not to eat rocks. The only teeth she possessed were her own, and the nearest competent source for human bridgework was a galaxy away.

  There were live animals on display, some of them cunning furry or feathery creatures that looked as though they would make wonderfully cuddly pets. Miss Schlupe would have been hesitant to inquire about them even if she'd known the language. She feared that they were going to be eaten.

  There were acres of grains, of every conceivable size and shape and color, exhibited in pots, urns, crocks, bins, barrels, and chests, or heaped haphazardly on trays. There were variously sized and shaped vials of liquids, of a dazzling variety of colors and viscosities, and the traders gathered around these containers in deeply religious attitudes to taste a specimen, or sniff it, or inhale it, or meditatively rub it between appendages, or pour it in a congealed, slowly puddling glob from one container to another.

  There were strangely shaped ingots of unlikely metals, some feather light, some so heavy that Miss Schlupe, attempting to pick up a small display cube, at first thought it fastened down. There were metals as hard as diamonds, and metals so soft that the sample was squeezed out of shape by anyone examining it. She saw what looked like precious gems worth fortunes on Earth casually displayed in quantities comparable to bushels or barrels; and she saw something resembling a rusty tin can reposing on velvety cloth in a display case - so precious an object that prospective customers could not be permitted to touch or even breathe on it.

  The people - she could think of no other collective noun for intelligent beings - the people were far stranger than the merchandise, and she became increasingly apprehensive as she considered the likelihood that the natives of Montura might be one of the more repulsive types. Could she develop an attitude of friendship in beings whose very appearance made her want to vomit?

  In all of her experience with the nonhumans of her own galaxy, she had never before encountered them in such variety or such overpowering numbers. They overloaded and overwhelmed her senses, sight, hearing, and smell. There was no escape. The mass oozing toward the exits moved as slowly as the mass oozing toward the central column. Suddenly she felt exhausted, and she gravely feared she was going to be sick. She looked about for a place to sit down, but there was none. She was forced to stagger along with the crowd until she could walk no further, and then she settled herself onto a conveniently placed bale that stood in a crevice between two booths. She buried her face in her hands, which enabled her to conceal the fact that she was holding her nose.

  Immediately she felt better. She remained seated, resting her aching feet and marveling at the strange shapes of feet and/or footwear that moved past her. When her dizziness finally passed, she raised her eyes to the translucent dome and studied the peculiar patterns formed by the non-symmetrical spidery framework woven through it.

  Now she was close enough to the center of the arena to see that the enormous central column had a spiraling row of oval windows, and at the top, where it widened into the mushroom, a double row of windows completely surrounded it. She wondered whether the mart's customers ascended to the top to enjoy a spectacular bird's-eye view of the arena.

  She was diverted by someone pawing at her arm. A tall, gaunt, segmented individual, with a dozen stick legs that converged in a basketball-shaped body, stood over her and unleashed a violent, head-spinning onslaught of unintelligible speech.

  Miss Schlupe responded politely in English, "Did someone step on your - if you'll excuse the expression - feet?"

  The apparition articulated further, with increasing loudness, until Miss Schlupe began to wonder if she were being held accountable for her ancestry. She answered in both small - and large-talk, the two forms of common speech of her own galaxy, and got no response except another unintelligible outpouring.

  Her verbal assailant finally stalked away - stalk being a strikingly apt figure of speech, she thought. Her feet continued to ache. She relaxed again and turned her attention to the dome and the intriguing column. Abruptly her assailant towered over her again. This time he brought reinforcements in the form of an individual the size and general shape of a grocery cart minus its wheels. The new entrant sputtered a different flavor of unintelligibility, and it dawned on Miss Schlupe that the previous onslaught was being interpreted for her. She patiently listened to a variety of intonations, delivered in rapid succession. During each pause she said politely, in English, "Boo! You can't scare me."

  The interpreter left and returned with another, a banana-shaped body on skids with a prune for a head, who subjected her to another series of unintelligible intonations. Then the second interpreter; fetched a third, who on the fourth try managed to ask, "Is this your language?" It spoke large-talk, the most complicated Galactic Prime dialect, in a stilted but highly precise accent.

  Miss Schlupe fervently claimed the language as her own.

  The third interpreter, who was as massive as a two-legged elephant, made a movement that could have been either a graceful bow or an attempt to assuage an awkwardly placed itch. "This," the interpreter said, indicating the segmented character who had started the altercation, "this says you are sitting on his quaq-sister."

  Miss Schlupe leaped to her feet and backed away in horror. The bale she had been sitting on put out a few tentative, telescoping legs, humped itself once or twice, and scurried away beside her segmented brother. Or perhaps he was a quaq-brother. Miss Schlupe's profuse apologies, in every language her acute embarrassment could inspire, went ignored.

  The interpreter, apparently satisfied with this successful resolution of a delicate problem, bowed, or responded again to the same itch, and started away. Miss Schlupe leaped after him.

  "Just a moment," she called in large-talk. "I want to hire you. Obviously my need for an interpreter is more desperate than I realized."

  An expression of perplexity suffused the mammoth face. The interpreter said, "You want to hire - but it could not be done! I am a djard!"

  As they drifted with the crowd, Miss Schlupe attempted to unravel the meaning of
djard and finally made it out as something between an apprentice or trainee and an indentured servant. Obviously the thing could not be done. A gesard, or gurgesard, or even a kaskird, would not go to all the trouble and expense of finding a djard with linguistic capabilities, or training one, and bringing him to Montura Mart, only to have him hire himself out to someone else. His boss probably brought him there because he needed his own interpreter.

  "Do you know of any interpreter I could hire?" she asked. "I would pay well."

  "But why not bring a djard of your own here to interpret for you?" mini-elephant asked perplexedly.

  "None of my kind has been here before," Miss Schlupe explained.

  "None of us knows the languages spoken here. I'd like to learn them, but I have no one to teach me."

  He halted and faced her, meditating her problem with engaging concern. "Perhaps the kloa would be willing to help you."

  "Is that another kind of djard?"

  "The kloa have no djardz. Or perhaps they do, but they are very numerous, and they are always willing to be helpful. I'll take you to them”.

  He led her into a narrow side aisle. Miss Schlupe kept closely on his oversized heels, attempting at the same time to express her gratitude and negotiate a path through the overflow of merchandise and avoid entanglements with surrealistic zoological specimens that barred her path or were attempting to pass in the opposite direction.

  They reached a main aisle and turned toward one of the posh gesard headquarters that faced onto the arena. The djard led her inside. At the front of the enormous common room was a lavish display of products. Beyond it were double rows of cubicles in the manner of her own common except that these cubicles were large, well-furnished offices. At most of the desks, perched on tall stools, were thick-bodied creatures a meter or so tall that made Miss Schlupe think of large insects with football heads. Their fellows were scurrying about in all directions: multi-legged, multi-armed little monsters with taut, hairless, scaly skin showing wherever their plasticlike clothing did not cover.

  The djard intercepted one of them for a brief conversation. Then he motioned to Miss Schlupe and moved on, and they passed through the common with her following on his heels. Suddenly he turned aside, and with his massive form out of the way she was able to see for the first time what loomed ahead of her. She came to a rigid halt, staring.

  It was a mountain: a massive piece of rock, milky white with rainbow threads, like uniquely colored white quartz. The shape was oddly irregular, with ripples, bulges, and hollows, and as she dazedly began to stumble toward it she became aware that it neither rested on the floor nor stopped at the high ceiling. It stood in a deep pit, and the upper stories had been cut away to make room for it, or framed around it, so that this immense chunk of rock extended from its subterranean base to the top of the building. Each of the floors of this multistoried kloa headquarters had a balustrated opening around the rock.

  But it was neither the unexpectedness of encountering a stone mountain in the center of a building nor its lovely color that halted her and drew her hypnotically forward. It was the lights.

  The thing was lighted from within. Lights winked on here and there, briefly or steadily illuminating a minute portion of its surface. Sometimes these pinpoints enlarged and intensified until the brightness seemed blinding. More often they merely winked and faded. Occasionally several lights merged and a large area suddenly became illuminated with a dazzling flash. Sometimes ripples of light moved rapidly across the surface. Twice some interior eruption of light set the entire looming mountain ablaze. At other times the whole surface lapsed into darkness. Then the tiny flashes, the ripples of illumination, the flaring and the fading, began again.

  She wrenched herself away and hurried after the djard. "What's that?" she exclaimed, clutching at him.

  "The kloatraz," he answered blandly.

  One of the strange, scurrying creatures was approaching them purposefully. The djard greeted it, they spoke a few words, and then the djard turned to Miss Schlupe.

  "This is Arluklo. He may be able to help you."

  Miss Schlupe studied the creature doubtfully. "He's a - a kloa?" "He is Arluklo. He is a klo. He is one of the kloa." The djard's oversized face was expressionless, but this did not lessen the scowl of disapproval in its voice.

  "I see. And does it speak my language?"

  The djard's patience was being taxed severely. "Why don't you ask it?" he demanded.

  Miss Schlupe turned to the squatting klo. When not in motion, its many legs sagged to a crouch and its head sank toward the floor. She began, "Do you speak - "

  Her eye caught an abrupt movement. The djard was hurrying away. Perhaps he resorted to flight to avoid her next stupid question. Her embarrassment was intensified by the fact that 1he had to hurl her thanks after him.

  She tried again. "Do you speak - do you understand my speech?" "Very well, yes." The creature had a thin, piping voice.

  "I would like to engage an interpreter who can assist my trading group when needed and who would be able to teach me one of the languages in common use here!"

  "That was my understanding." "Are you able to do it?"

  "I have permission," the klo piped noncommittally.

  Reflecting on her experience with the djard, Miss Schlupe thought an expression of gratitude might be in order. She said, "I would like to thank your employer personally for extending the permission."

  "I have informed it that you thank it personally," Arluklo said.

  She decided not to try to figure that out. Arluklo invited her to his own cubicle, and she followed meekly, and seated herself on a normal-sized hassock while the klo climbed, spider fashion, onto a stool that brought his head to the level of hers.

  His speech was flawless. He had mastered perfectly the full, richly complicated range of large-talk, in which Miss Schlupe, still rusty from want of practice, occasionally found herself floundering. After a brief discussion they made arrangements to meet daily, and then Miss Schlupe circled the arena until she found the kurog twanlaft, the twelfth segment. She returned to the Prime Common by way of two pairs of transmitters.

  The traders were still in conference, and the atmosphere was one of deepening gloom. Miss Schlupe entered the cubicle triumphantly, seated herself, and announced, "I've found an interpreter. He'll be available whenever we need him, and he's going to teach me one of the mart's languages."

  They turned on her in astonishment. "How did you manage it so quickly?" Gul Ceyh asked.

  "It was simple," Miss Schlupe said. "If you need an interpreter and language teacher, this is what you do: You go down to the arena and sit on someone's quaq-sister. Eventually a quaq-brother will show up 10 complain about this unnatural act, and when you don't understand him he'll bring one interpreter after another until he finds one who speaks your language and can ask you to kindly remove your person from the quaq-sister. You try to hire him, but he's in bondage as a djard, so he introduces you to one of the kloa, who will have a remarkable mastery of large-talk, and - "

  "One of the kloa!" Gul Ceyh exclaimed.

  "Right. Collectively, they are the kloa; individually they are each and every one of them a klo. If you confuse that point, it reflects unfavorably on your intelligence. My teacher is Arluklo, and his boss generously gave him permission - "

  She broke off. Gul Meszk, Gul Ceyh, and Gul Kahn were staring at her in mingled horror and consternation. "Now what's wrong?" Miss Schlupe demanded.

  "You couldn't!" Gul Ceyh exclaimed, disapproval dripping from each intonation. "Not with one of the kloa!"

  "I could," Miss Schlupe said firmly. "I did. I think he'll make an excellent teacher. Beggars can't be choosers, as we say on Earth. Any port in a storm, and not being able to communicate is a storm, believe me. Strike when the iron is hot. Don't look your gift horse in the mouth. What's wrong with the kloa?"

  "They're slaves!"

  "That may not do much for them socially, but
it doesn't mean they can't be good teachers. So what?"

  "No one has anything to do with them except in the way of business," Gul Meszk said.

  "Shame on no one. When I go to Arluklo's cubicle for a language lesson, who's to know we aren't transacting business? And what does it matter, anyway? I doubt that Arluklo is any more a slave than that djard who couldn't give me lessons because his boss wouldn't let him."

  "Did you see the kloatraz?" Gul Ceyh asked. "It's not easily overlooked. What is it?"

  "It's a computer," Gul Ceyh said. "It's a computer built on an entirely new and totally unknown - to us, anyway - principle."

  "It certainly looked new and totally unknown to me. What about it?"

  "Kloatraz," Gul Ceyh said. "That means 'kloa master.' That's what the kloa are slaves to. The computer owns them."

  "Both parties have my sympathy, but unless you have a list of socially approved language teachers, I'm going to continue my lessons." She changed the subject. "How's the planning coming?"