Jamie shook his head. "How about 'xenos are really weird'?"
"Well, that covers the facts, all right, but I was hoping for something with a bit more detail."
"Maybe we'll get that something soon," said Jamie, pointing toward a guard heading toward the entrance of their gondola. "It looks like they're coming for us."
Learned Searcher Taranarak of geneline Lucyrn allowed herself to be led to the center of the muddy, poorly maintained Order Patrol compound that had once been her sunward garden, moving carefully to stay on the paths, lifting the hem of her garment to avoid soiling it. At last her escort got her as far as the aircar landing pad. The lead guard stopped there, and only then seemed to notice an obvious fact. "The aircar has failed to arrive," he announced. He turned to the other guard, his subordinate. "Walk back out to the depot, advise them that no aircar has arrived, and have them send a replacement vehicle suitable for transporting one subject. And don't just pass the message. Stay there, and stay on them, until they confirm that an aircar has been dispatched."
"Wouldn't it be simpler to send the request by commlink signal?"
"Simpler, but less secure," the first guard growled. "This is to be a high-security event. Let's not start the evening by broadcasting our every move to the rebels. Now go."
"Yes, sir." The subordinate moved off toward the road, and the lead guard stayed where he was, very pointedly not looking toward Taranarak or acknowledging her in any way.
A moment or two later, the hatch on the human's mobile living quarters opened, and their guard led them down the ramp toward the aircar landing pad.
"Transport ops fouled up again," Taranarak's guard announced in a grimly cheerful voice. "No aircar for my charge. I just sent Zelphanot up the road to the depot to request a new one. It looks like no car for your friends, either."
"But sir, they're all to travel in one larger aircar tonight, and it isn't due for another twelve short-duration units. I was wondering why you sent me early to get these two."
"What? Something's off-center. No one can decide what to do or how to do it. They sent 'em off in two cars this morning, but it's all friends in one big car this evening? And I just sent Zelphanot legging off to the depot for a small car. Stars and blackness, you can bet whatever you like that they'll cancel the big car and just send the little one. We'd never fit 'em all in, and they'd get there late, and there'd be trouble enough for everybody. You'd better head off after Zelphanot and countermand, make sure they just send the big car as per schedule."
"But that'll leave you alone guarding all three of them."
"An old lady and two alien two-leggers dressed in their best. What are they going to do? Rush me, then run for the Elevator in their fancy-dinner clothes and hope they blend in with the crowd?"
"Well--I guess it will be all right."
"Get moving. If they get the aircar order wrong, and our friends here aren't there to look happy for the cameras, we won't be here at all in the morning. Go."
The newly arrived guard needed no more urging. He turned and headed off in the same direction Zelphanot had taken.
The lead guard watched him depart impassively, then turned very deliberately so that his back was to the three prisoners. "It is a very pleasant night," he announced to no one in particular, shifting from the local language to Lesser Trade Speech. "I will take a walk around the perimeter, so that I might enjoy the evening while patrolling for intruders. It will be a very brief walk." And with that he set off, still without looking at Taranarak or the humans.
Taranarak waited until he was fully out of earshot before she spoke. She did not dare look at the humans. They had already met her high expectations by not responding in any way. No shouts of surprise or nervous laughter. Perhaps these two were formed in the same mold as Trevor of geneline Wilcox. If so, it would be a great good fortune. "Do not look toward me. Do not gesture or show any particular reaction. We are a little bored, a little annoyed, and a little mystified as to what has happened to our transportation, and also annoyed at the ineptitude of our guards. That is all. Do you understand?"
"We do," said the senior of the two, the female, Wolfson. "Speak to us."
"I shall do so. It required a huge bribe to buy these few short-duration units out from under the watchers and the listeners. I will not waste them. Tigmin lied this morning. All of us there in the chamber knew what was in the message. It was, of course, the longlife treatment."
"But why entrust it to humans?" Mendez asked, his voice as casual as his words were urgent. "Why send the only copy of the information off-planet?"
"There is no time to explain all that now. Later, if we survive, you will know all. We must stick to essentials."
"Then before we go further, you must answer our essential questions," said Wolfson, making no effort to hide the steel in her voice. "What was the purpose of this morning's interview? Why were you there? Was it our trial? Yours? Why was the Xenoatric--the Unseen One--there? What made us criminals this morning but honored guests tonight?"
Taranarak cringed inwardly. There was so little time! But the humans might well need answers to those questions if they were to survive--and Taranarak would most definitely need them alive if her own plans were going to work. "The Three--Yalananav, Fallogon, and Tigmin--play intricate and deadly games together, each maneuvering for advantage, each seeking supremacy. I believe that the Unseen Being, Bulwark of Constancy, is, somehow, financing or otherwise backing Tigmin--or else is seeming to do so in an indirect move in support of Yalananav. I believe, but cannot know for sure, that I was there to witness that the Three had power over you. However, I have come to think that there is no one clear reason for any event that involves the Three. I think it is possible that I was also part of some complex maneuver of Fallogon's in opposition to the other two.
"As to why you were there--this morning was an audition, a clearance procedure, for tonight. The answers you gave were satisfactory and made it plain you were not a threat to the newly established Bureaucratic Order. Therefore, you can be presented tonight for propaganda purposes.
"You have propaganda value because the rumor had gotten about that a human being was somehow involved in the search for the lost longlife treatment and killed during the search. When you appear tonight, the mere sight of humans--especially humans who work for the same service as Trevor Wilcox--will suggest that the search goes on, that the authorities are in fact working to recover the lost formulae, and that the rebel claim that the treatment has been deliberately suppressed is a fiction. It will send the message that those who wish for the formulae to be recovered should support the Bureaucratic Order, and the work of the Three.
"I can expand on all these points later, but time is short! We have only a few moments before the aircar arrives, and all we say in the car, and for the rest of the evening, will be listened to, I can assure you."
"Very well," said Wolfson. "We will count ourselves satisfied--for the moment. Speak to the essentials you mentioned earlier."
Taranarak took a deep breath and spoke rapidly. "It was I who arranged for the emergency Metrannan-edible rations to be delivered to your ship. If, somehow, you are permitted to leave this madhouse planet--you must take me with you. If it can be done legally, normally, through proper channels, all the better. If I must be smuggled aboard somehow, then so be it. The rations are there to allow us that option. I do not request this favor of you--I demand it. And I do not demand it to save my own life--although it likely will. I demand it as the only means available to save my culture and my people."
The stunned silence from the humans would likely not have lasted long, even if their guard hadn't chosen that moment to reappear, and the aircar hadn't started its landing approach. But in a strange way, Taranarak was glad of the timing. She could think of many questions the humans would want to ask right away.
But none that she would not prefer to answer later.
Much, much later.
TWENTY-ONE
CHANGING FOR DINNE
R
The ride in the aircar provided a spectacular view of the city at sunset and flew them over parts of town they had not seen before. However, Jamie was far too distracted to take much of it in. The car they had flown in that morning had been converted to bench seating for the benefit of human visitors. Jamie had not really appreciated that detail until now. This vehicle had not been so modified and retained the hard, narrow saddles that the four-legged Metrannans preferred. They were excruciatingly uncomfortable for humans to sit on even in the straddle position, and of course that pose was utterly impossible for Hannah in an evening gown. They were both reduced to wedging themselves in sidesaddle, which was massively uncomfortable. Nor was the higher gravity much of a help.
Meanwhile, of course, Taranarak, possessed of both a body and a gown suited to the saddles, sat placidly and silently, watching their contortions and doing a far better job than the two humans of pretending that nothing at all had happened at the landing pad.
And as soon as the relaxing car ride was over, they would have to wade through the horrors of, not only a formal dinner, not only an Elder Race formal dinner, but a multispecies Elder Race formal dinner. Jamie remembered reading somewhere that a human logician had computed that, given the mutually exclusive mores and rules of etiquette of the various Elder Race species, and the physiological limitations of the human body, with anything over six species in attendance, it became something close to a mathematical impossibility to get through the evening without committing a perhaps literally fatal social error.
On the bright side, so far as Jamie was aware, there would only be three species present at the meal: human, Metrannan, and Xenoatric. On the downside, two of the species there were among the most dangerous of all known species when offended or annoyed: Metrannan and Xenoatric. Jamie glanced over at Hannah, wedged in between two saddles, the expression on her face a veritable catalog of discomfort and negative emotions, and decided it might just be that humans belonged on the second list as well.
They were coming for a landing. Jamie breathed a sigh of relief. The ride was about to come to an end. Unfortunately that meant the meal was about to begin.
Hannah bolted a smile onto her face as she pried herself out of the car. Jamie offered her his arm, and she made no pretense at all about the fact that she needed it to keep upright, just at first. She had nearly regained feeling in both legs by the time they were ushered inside.
The Xenoatrics seemed to have polished and burnished their metal carapaces, and they literally glittered in colors of gold and silver and hard-edged steel. But even they receded into the background compared to the Metrannans. Taranarak's iridescent gown turned out to be downright dowdy compared to most of the outfits. Bright colors, designs with complex geometric patterns and elaborate decoration, and madly complex headdresses were the order of the evening. Perhaps the overall effect was less jarring to the Metrannans' red-adapted optic nerves, but it came close to making Hannah's Earth-evolved eyes water.
Hannah almost felt embarrassed by the stark simplicity of her own gown and the comparative drabness of its color. But perhaps the understated style of her clothes and Jamie's was distinction enough. It was to her eye, at least. She thought Jamie looked very much the poised, cosmopolitan, elegant gentleman. The gaudy, overwrought clothes of the other guests merely served as a backdrop to Jamie's crisp, simple tuxedo. What he wore was a welcome spot of refined quiet in the midst of clamor. But then, she was biased.
The drill seemed to be that the guests were all held backstage by a gaggle of minders and sorted out into a precisely calculated pecking order, moving from least to most important. It did not escape Hannah's notice that Jamie and she were posted quite near the head of the line, or that Taranarak was positioned only a place or two behind them. What she found more amusing was that the minders flatly refused to let her go in on Jamie's arm. She was, after all, senior to him. Therefore, he had to go first, and alone. It didn't really matter, anyway, as they were to be seated at separate tables.
The five or so Xenoatrics were assembled at the most senior end of the line--with Bulwark of Constancy last of all. One other thing struck her: Constancy was motionless, aloof, inert, for long periods of time--but the other Xenoatrics were engaged in animated conversation, among themselves and with the senior Metrannans near them in the line.
Once the guests were in order, they were required to wait where they were, in the order they were in, for no clearly explained reason, until it was somehow determined it was time to begin the Procession of Entrance and the door to the dining room was opened.
Guards of the Order Patrol, resplendent in formal red uniforms with green-and-purple piping, came to stand beside each guest. Then, one by one, the guests were escorted to their starting positions around their initial feeding vats, while complex, atonal--and dreadfully unpleasant--music played. Somehow the whole process resembled a bizarre variation on musical chairs.
Hannah allowed herself to be led to her own table, and tried not to be alarmed by the dining saddle set behind her place. She was the first one to her table. She quickly saw why--the seating at each table was also in order of seniority, counterclockwise around the round table. She remained standing as each diner was escorted in, in part because everyone else did, and in part because between her gown and the saddle, she simply had no other options. She located Jamie going through the same ritual at the far side of the room.
At last the Order Guards ran out of Metrannans and started working through the Xenoatrics. One of them--thankfully, not Bulwark of Constancy--was led to Hannah's table and took the last open place, to Hannah's right.
Once the Xenoatrics, the Unseen Beings, were delivered to their places, it was time for the guests of honor--or, more accurately, the hosts of the event--to be brought out from some separate holding room. Yalananav, Fallogon, and Tigmin did not so much enter the room as appear in it, stepping abruptly, three abreast, from a shadowy corner into the bright dazzle of a sudden spotlight, as music that sounded even more like a cat fight blared out.
The Three stepped forward together, carefully avoiding any pose or positioning that might indicate anything other than exact and precise equality among the three of them. The Metrannans in the room thumped their forefeet on the floor and their closework hands on the tables. Even the Xenoatrics offered their version of applause--a sort of low-throated trilling that sounded like something halfway between a birdsong and a synthesounder.
Hannah had expected the Three to sit separate from the others at some sort of special table where they could remain a little bit apart, a little bit exalted, a little bit better than their followers--but apparently this particular New Order hadn't reached that stage yet.
Instead, the Three took their places at three different tables, each taking the seat for the most senior person, but otherwise without any particular special treatment. Once the Three were at their places, the Metrannans sat down, while the Xenoatrics contracted themselves somehow and refolded their carapaces a bit to bring them in closer to the tables.
Hannah was relieved to discover that her escort Guard had produced a more or less human-style chair from somewhere while she was distracted. He set it in position and whisked away the Metrannan saddle at her place. She could see Jamie getting the same treatment on the other side of the room.
The briefing materials Hannah and Jamie had read while inbound to Metran had covered the procedure and etiquette of a formal meal on Metran, but somehow the dry words of the report didn't quite convey the feel of the event itself. In a sense, it was the opposite of a human dinner party, where the diners remained in place and the food was brought to them. On Metran, it was the diners that did the moving around.
There were six formal dining saddles set around the edge of each table--if "table" was the right word. Probably "feeding vat" would be a more accurate description. Each vat contained a particular dish, and the diners would assemble at their assigned spot for each course, eat whatever particular item was on offer at that tab
le, converse with their neighbors, then, when a chime sounded, follow their escort to their next assigned seating at another table for the next course.
Perhaps by use of some hideously complex algorithm, the diners were in effect shuffled and redealt to a fresh grouping for each course, so that each diner encountered five new dinner partners with each change.
Hannah rather liked that feature of Metrannan dinner etiquette. She could almost imagine trying to introduce it at her next dinner party--or would have, if she ever gave dinner parties. But then she considered the difficulty of getting six or seven tables of six into her duty quarters, and the chaos that would ensue every time it was time to swap tables, and decided to drop the idea.
What she did not care for was the food itself or the way it was served. Things got off to a difficult start at her first table. Set into the center of the table was a large shallow metal container that resembled a wok or a frying pan. In the pan were small, eight-legged creatures scuttling around its interior. They more or less resembled a cross between a bald mouse and a crayfish. Their bodies were covered with a chitinous material, except for brownish-red strips of fur that ran along the topsides of their bodies.
The Metrannan diners would snatch one of the scuttlers out of the pan using their heavy-duty outside pair of hands, then use their smaller closework hands to take the little creature apart. They used the fur strips more or less as zippers, pulling back on them to peel the animals right out of their shells before popping them, still wriggling, into their mouths. The fur strip, it would appear, added a little roughage.
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