Thank you.” The voice was a hoarse bass, somehow metallic, and strongly accented. “The Valtam of the Empire of Skontar sends greetings to the Premier of Sol by Skorrogan Valthak’s son, Duke of Kraakahaym.”
He stood out in the room, seeming to fill it with his strong, forbidding presence. In spite of coming from a world of higher gravity and lower temperature, the Skontarans were a huge race, over two meters tall and so broad that they seemed stocky. They could be classed as humanoid, in that they were bipedal mammals, but there was not much resemblance beyond that. Under a wide, low forehead and looming eyebrow ridges, the eyes of Skorrogan were fierce and golden, hawk’s eyes. His face was blunt-snouted, with a mouthful of fangs in the terrific jaws; his ears were blunt and set high on the massive skull. Short brown fur covered his muscular body to the end of the long restless tail, and a ruddy mane flared from his head and throat. In spite of the, to him, tropical temperature, he wore the furs and skins of state occasions at home, and the acrid reek of his sweat hung about him.
“You are late,” said one of the ministers with thin politeness. “I trust you were not detained by any difficulties.”
“No, I underestimated the time needed to get here,” answered Skorrogan. “Please to excuse me.” He did not sound at all sorry, but lowered his great bulk into the nearest chair and opened his portfolio. “We have business now, my sirs?”
“Well ... I suppose so.” Dalton sat down at the head of the long conference table. “Though we are not too concerned with facts and figures at this preliminary discussion. We want simply to agree on general aims, matters of basic policy.”
“Naturally, you will wish a full account of the available resources of Avaiki and Skang, as well as the Allanian colonies,” said Vahino in his soft voice. “The agriculture of Cundaloa, the mines of Skontar, will contribute much even at this early date, and, of course, in the end there must be economic self-sufficiency.” “It is a question of education, too,” said Dalton. “We will send many experts, technical advisers, teachers—”
“And, of course, some question of military resources will arise—” began the Chief of Staff.
“Skontar have own army,” snapped Skorrogan. “No need of talk there yet.”
“Perhaps not,” agreed the Minister of Finance mildly. He took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Please, sir!” For a moment Skorrogan’s voice rose to a bull roar. “No smoke. You know Skontarans allergic to tobacco—”
“Sorry!” The Minister of Finance stubbed out the cylinder. His hand shook a little and he glared at the envoy. There had been little need for concern, the air-conditioning system swept the smoke away at once. And in any case—you don’t shout at a cabinet minister. Especially when you come to ask him for help—
“There will be other systems involved,” said Dalton hastily, trying with a sudden feeling of desperation to smooth over the unease and tension. “Not only the colonies of Sol. I imagine your two races will be expanding beyond your own triple system, and the resources made available by such colonization—”
“We will have to,” said Skorrogan sourly. “After treaty rob us of all fourth planet— No matter. Please to excuse. Is bad enough to sit at same table with enemy without being reminded of how short time ago he was enemy.”
This time the silence lasted a long while. And Dalton realized, with a sudden feeling almost of physical illness, that Skorrogan had damaged his own position beyond repair. Even if he suddenly woke up to what he was doing and tried to make amends—and who ever heard of a Skontaran noble apologizing for anything —it was too late. Too many millions of people, watching their telescreens, had seen his unpardonable arrogance. Too many important men, the leaders of Sol, were sitting in the same room with him, looking into his contemptuous eyes and smelling the sharp stink of unhuman sweat.
There would be no aid to Skontar.
With sunset, clouds piled up behind the dark line of cliffs which lay to the east of Geyrhaym, and a thin, chill wind blew down over the valley with whispers of winter. The first few snowflakes were borne on it, whirling across the deepening purplish sky, tinted pink by the last bloody light. There would be a blizzard before midnight.
The spaceship came down out of darkness and settled into her cradle. Beyond the little spaceport, the old town of Geyrhaym lay wrapped in twilight, huddling together against the wind. Firelight glowed ruddily from the old peak-roofed houses, but the winding cobbled streets were like empty canyons, twisting up the hill on whose crest frowned the great castle of the old barons. The Valtam had taken it for his own use, and little Geyrhaym was now the capital of the Empire. For proud Skimor and stately Thruvang were radioactive pits, and wild beasts howled in the burned ruins of the old palace.
Skorrogan Valthak’s son shivered as he came out of the airlock and down the gangway. Skontar was a cold planet. Even for its own people it was cold. He wrapped his heavy fur cloak more tightly about him.
They were waiting near the bottom of the gangway, the high chiefs of Skontar. Under an impassive exterior, Skorrogan’s belly muscles tightened. There might be death waiting m that silent, sullen group of men. Surely disgrace—and he couldn’t answer—
The Valtam himself stood there, his white mane blowing in the bitter wind. His golden eyes seemed luminous in the twilight, hard and fierce, a deep sullen hate smoldering behind them. His oldest son, the heir apparent, Thordin, stood beside him. The last sunlight gleamed crimson on the head of his spear; it seemed to drip blood against the sky. And there were the other mighty men of Skang, counts of the provinces on Skontar and the other planets, and they all stood waiting for him. Behind them was a line of imperial household guards, helmets and corselets shining in the dusk, faces in shadow, but hate and contempt like a living force radiating from them.
Skorrogan strode up to the Valtam, grounded his spear butt in salute, and inclined his head at just the proper degree. There was silence then, save for the whimpering wind. Drifting snow streamed across the field.
The Valtam spoke at last, without ceremonial greeting. It was like a deliberate slap in the face: “So you are back again.”
“Yes, sire.” Skorrogan tried to keep his voice stiff. It was difficult to do. He had no fear of death, but it was cruelly hard to bear this weight of failure. “As you know, I must regretfully report my mission unsuccessful.”
“Indeed. We receive telecasts here,” said the Valtam acidly.
“Sire, the Solarians are giving virtually unlimited aid to Cundaloa. But they refused any help at all to Skontar. No credits, no technical advisers-nothing. And we can expect little trade and almost no visitors "
“I know,” said Thordin. “And you were sent to get their help.”
“I tried, sire.” Skorrogan kept his voice expressionless. He had to say something—but be forever damned if I'll plead! “But the Solarians have an unreasonable prejudice against us, partly related to their wholly emotional bias toward Cundaloa and partly, I suppose, due to our being unlike them in so many ways.”
“So they do,” said the Valtam coldly. “But it was not great before. Surely the Mingonians, who are far less human than we, have received much good at Solarian hands. They got the same sort of help that Cundaloa will be getting and that we might have had.
“We desire nothing but good relations with the mightiest power in the Galaxy. We might have had more than that. I know, from first-hand reports, what the temper of the Commonwealth was. They were ready to help us, had we shown any cooperativeness at all. We could have rebuilt, and gone farther than that—” His voice trailed off into the keening wind.
After a moment he went on, and the fury that quivered in his voice was like a living force: “I sent you as my special delegate to get that generously offered help. You, whom I trusted, who I thought was aware of our cruel plight—Arrrgh!” He spat. “And you spent your whole time there being insulting, arrogant, boorish. You, on whom all the eyes of Sol were turned, made yourself the perfect embodiment of all the humans
think worst in us. No wonder our request was refused! You’re lucky Sol didn’t declare war!”
“It may not be too late,” said Thordin. “We could send another—”
“No.” The Valtam lifted his head with the inbred iron pride of his race, the haughtiness of a culture where for all history face had been more important than life. “Skorrogan went as our accredited representative. If we repudiated him, apologized for—not for any overt act but for bad manners!—if we crawled before the Galaxy—no! It isn’t worth that. We’ll just have to do without Sol.”
The snow was blowing thicker now, and the clouds were covering the sky. A few bright stars winked forth in the clear portions. But it was cold, cold.
“And what a price to pay for honor!” said Thordin wearily. “Our folk are starving—food from Sol could keep them alive. They have only rags to wear—Sol would send clothes. Our factories are devastated, are obsolete, our young men grow up in ignorance of Galactic civilization and technology—Sol would send us machines and engineers, help us rebuild. Sol would send teachers, and we could become great— Well, too late, too late.” His eyes searched through the gloom, puzzled, hurt. Skorrogan had been his friend. “But why did you do it? Why did you do it?”
“I did my best,” said Skorrogan stiffly. “If I was not fitted for the task, you should not have sent me.”
“But you were,” said Valtam. “You were out best diplomat. Your wiliness, your understanding of extra-Skontaran psychology, your personality—all were invaluable to our foreign relations. And then, on this simple and most tremendous mission— No more!” His voice rose to a shout against the rising wind. “No more will I trust you. Skontar will know you failed.”
“Sire—” Skorrogan’s voice shook suddenly. “Sire, I have taken words from you which from anyone else would have meant a death duel. If you have more to say, say it. Otherwise let me go.”
“I cannot strip you of your hereditary titles and holdings,” said the Valtam. “But your position in the imperial government is ended, and you are no longer to come to court or to any official function. Nor do I think you will have many friends left.”
“Perhaps not,” said Skorrogan. “I did what I did, and even if I could explain further, I would not after these insults. But if you ask my advice for the future of Skontar—”
“I don’t,” said the Valtam. “You have done enough harm already.”
“... then consider three things.” Skorrogan lifted his spear and pointed toward the remote glittering stars. “First, those suns out there. Second, certain new scientific and technological developments here at home— such as Dyrin’s work on semantics. And last—look about you. Look at the houses your fathers built, look at the clothes you wear, listen, perhaps, to the language you speak. And then come back in fifty years or so and beg my pardon!”
He swirled his cloak about him, saluted the Valtam again, and went with long steps across the field and into the town. They looked after him with incomprehension and bitterness in their eyes.
There was hunger in the town. He could almost feel it behind the dark walls, the hunger of ragged and desperate folk crouched over their fires, and wondered whether they could survive the winter. Briefly he wondered how many would die—but he didn’t dare follow the thought out.
He heard someone singing and paused. A wandering bard, begging his way from town to town, came down the street, his tattered cloak blowing fantastically about him. He plucked his harp with thin fingers, and his voice rose in an old ballad that held all the harsh ringing music, the great iron clamor of the old tongue, the language of Naarhaym on Skontar. Mentally, for a moment of wry amusement, Skorrogan rendered a few lines into Terrestrial:
Wildly the winging
War birds, flying
wake the winter-dead
wish for the sea-road.
Sweetheart, they summon me,
singing of flowers
fair for the faring.
Farewell, I love you.
It didn’t work. It wasn’t only that the metallic rhythm and hard barking syllables were lost, the intricate rhyme and alliteration, though that was part of it —but it just didn’t make sense in Terrestrial. The concepts were lacking. How could you render, well, such a word as vorkansraavin as “faring” and hope to get more than a mutilated fragment of meaning? Psychologies were simply too different.
And there, perhaps, lay his answer to the high chiefs. But they wouldn’t know. They couldn’t. And he was alone, and winter was coming again.
Valka Vahino sat in his garden and let sunlight wash over his bare skin. It was not often, these days, that he got a chance to aliacaui— What was that old Terrestrial word? “Siesta”? But that was wrong. A resting Cundaloan didn’t sleep in the afternoon. He sat or lay outdoors, with the sun soaking into his bones or a warm rain like a benediction over him, and he let his thoughts run free. Solarians called that daydreaming, but it wasn’t, it was, well—they had no real word for it. Psychic recreation was a clumsy term, and the Solarians never understood.
Sometimes it seemed to Vahino that he had never rested, not in an eternity of years. The grinding urgencies of wartime duty, and then his hectic journeys to Sol—and since then, in the past three years, the Great House had appointed him official liaison man at the highest level, assuming that he understood the Solarians better than anyone else in the League.
Maybe he did. He’d spent a lot of time with them and liked them as a race and as individuals. But—by all the spirits, how they worked! How they drove themselves! As if demons were after them.
Well, there was no other way to rebuild, to reform the old obsolete methods and grasp the dazzling new wealth which only lay waiting to be created. But right now it was wonderfully soothing to lie in his garden, with the great golden flowers nodding about him and filling the summer air with their drowsy scent, with a few honey insects buzzing past and a new poem growing in his head.
The Solarians seemed to have some difficulty in understanding a whole race of poets. When even the meanest and stupidest Cundaloan could stretch out in the sun and make lyrics—well, every race has its own peculiar talents. Who could equal the gadgeteering genius which the humans possessed?
The great soaring, singing lines thundered in his head. He turned them over, fashioning them, shaping every syllable, and fitting the pattern together with a dawning delight. This one would be—good! It would be remembered, it would be sung a century hence, and they wouldn’t forget Valka Vahino. He might even be remembered as a masterversemaker—Alia Amaui caurianriho, valana, valana, vro!
“Pardon, sir.” The flat metal voice shook in his brain, he felt the delicate fabric of the poem tear and go swirling off into darkness and forgetfulness. For a moment there was only the pang of his loss; he realized dully that the interruption had broken a sequence which he would never quite recapture.
“Pardon, sir, but Mr. Lombard wishes to see you.”
It was a sonic beam from the roboreceptionist which Lombard himself had given Vahino. The Cundaloan had felt the incongruity of installing its shining metal among the carved wood and old tapestries of his house, but he had not wanted to offend the donor—and the thing was useful.
Lombard, head of the Solarian reconstruction commission, the most important human in the Avaikian System. Just now Vahino appreciated the courtesy of the man’s coming to him rather than simply sending for him. Only—why did he have to come exactly at this moment?
“Tell Mr. Lombard I’ll be there in a minute.”
Vahino went in the back way and put on some clothes. Humans didn’t have the completely casual attitude toward nakedness of Cundaloa. Then he went into the forehall. He had installed some chairs there for the benefit of Earthlings, who didn’t like to squat on a woven mat—another incongruity. Lombard got up as Vahino entered.
The human was short and stocky, with a thick bush of gray hair above a seamed face. He had worked his way up from laborer through engineer to High Commissioner, and the marks of h
is struggle were still on him. He attacked work with what seemed almost a personal fury, and he could be harder than tool steel. But most of the time he was pleasant, he had an astonishing range of interests and knowledge, and, of course, he had done miracles for the Avaikian System.
“Peace on your house, brother,” said Vahino.
“How do you do,” clipped the Solarian. As his host began to signal for servants, he went on hastily: “Please, none of your ritual hospitality. I appreciate it, but there just isn’t time to sit and have a meal and talk cultural topics for three hours before getting down to business. I wish . . . well, you’re a native here and I’m not, so I wish you’d personally pass the word around— tactfully, of course—to discontinue this sort of thing.” “But... they are among our oldest customs—” “That’s just it! Old—backward—delaying progress. I don’t mean to be disparaging, Mr. Vahino. I wish we Solarians had some customs as charming as yours. But —not during working hours. Please.”
“Well... I dare say you’re right. It doesn’t fit into the pattern of a modern industrial civilization. And that is what we are trying to build, of course.” Vahino took a chair and offered his guest a cigarette. Smoking was one of Sol’s characteristic vices, perhaps the most easily transmitted and certainly the most easily defensible. Vahino lit up with the enjoyment of the neophyte.
“Quite. Exactly. And that is really what I came here about, Mr. Vahino. I have no specific complaints, but there has accumulated a whole host of minor difficulties which only you Cundaloans can handle for yourselves. We Solarians can’t and won’t meddle in your internal affairs. But you must change some things, or we won’t be able to help you at all.”
Vahino had a general idea of what was coming. He’d been expecting it for some time, he thought grayly, and there was really nothing to be done about it. But he took another puff of smoke, let it trickle slowly out, and raised his eyebrows in polite inquiry. Then he remembered that Solarians weren’t used to interpreting nuances of expression as part of a language, and said aloud, “Please say what you like. I realize no offense is meant, and none will be taken.”
Great Stories of Space Travel Page 21
