For all his ringing proclamation, for all his departing from the Harold Meeker and flying up to the Vengeance, Solut Mek Kem did not commence battle at once. Jennifer took that for a hopeful sign—with how much justification, she did not know. Trying to provide more justification, for herself and everyone else, she called the Great One. There was, she knew, a real chance the Foitan would not deign to speak to her, she being, after all, a mere alien. In that case, though, she—and everyone else—would be no worse off than if she had not called.
As far as she could interpret Foitani expressions—which wasn't far—Solut Mek Kem was anything but delighted to get on the screen with her. But the Great One did not refuse. Again, she took that for a hopeful sign. "Thank you for being willing to listen to me," she said, wanting him to know she realized the concession was unusual.
"It is no inherent merit on your part, let me assure you." Like most Foitani, Solut Mek Kem did not waste politeness on beings outside his kin-group. "My willingness, as you call it, is purely pragmatic. I am forced to recognize that the situation in which I find myself is not that which I anticipated on returning to awareness. You are part of this new situation. I will learn what I can, then act."
From a Foitan, that was a miracle of moderation; had Jennifer had to devise a motto for the Foitani, she would have come up with something like, Shoot first, then question the corpse. She said, "I have two things I want to discuss with you. One, obviously, is the prospect of a second round of Suicide Wars."
"This, again obviously, has my interest, though many aboard Vengeance feel it would be worthwhile if it meant exterminating all vodranet."
"But isn't it as likely to result in getting rid of all you kwopillot, or maybe all of your species?"
"This prospect is all that has stayed our hands thus far."
"Wonderful." The Great Ones used little in the way of subterfuge. They'd had scant need of it; whatever they wanted, they'd simply taken. Jennifer could have done with more socially lubricating hypocrisy—facing up to such straightforward self-interest was daunting. She said, "The other matter has to do with the humans you hold in your data storage system."
"Here we may have room for discussion, assuming it can be completed before fighting commences. As I told you before, I am indifferent to their fate," Solut Mek Kem said. "I asked you once if you wanted live copies produced for you."
"I don't think of them as copies. I think of them as humans," Jennifer answered. "I don't like the idea of their being in your hands; they aren't experimental animals."
Bernard Greenberg came up beside her. "That's right. What would you do if some other race held Foitani just to find out how they worked?"
"Destroy that race," Solut Mek Kem answered at once, his own voice as flat as the Spanglish words that came from the translator. "It has happened before. With the contemptible popguns in your vessel, however, you do not enjoy that option. You exist here on sufferance, not through strength. Remember it."
"We're here because Foitani thought we could solve a problem that baffled them, and the Harold Meeker is only a trading vessel, not a warship. I suggest you remember that, if you ever go into human space. We're better able to protect ourselves now than when you kidnapped those primitive ancestors of ours," Greenberg said.
Jennifer clapped her hands. From all she'd seen, matching the Foitani arrogance for arrogance was the best way to make them act in a humanly reasonable fashion. They could be made to respect power. Weakness they simply trampled.
Solut Mek Kem said, "I repeat, this matter is subject to discussion."
"Then let us come up to Vengeance and discuss it," Greenberg said. "I might point out that if it hadn't been for us, your ship would still be a tower and you would still be sleeping and impotent inside it." And the war on Gilver would have only two sides, not a good potential for three, Jennifer thought.
"A race that relies on the gratitude of others to cause them to act on its behalf is well on the way to extinction," Solut Mek Kem observed. "Nevertheless, you may come—in your own ship, not one furnished by either race of vodranet with which we have had the misfortune to become acquainted. Make note that I do this from considerations of my own advantage, not out of sentimentality." The screen blanked.
Greenberg called the research base. "I presume you were monitoring our call to the Great Ones' ship. They've given us permission. If you start shooting at us, it might annoy them. You don't want that, do you?" To Jennifer, he muttered under his breath, "I know damn well I don't."
The Foitani needed a couple of minutes to reply. Finally, a translated voice came back to the Harold Meeker. "You have our consent to undertake this mission, but you shall not under any circumstances enter into agreements binding up Odern in any way."
"We won't, Thegun Thegun Nug," Greenberg promised.
Another pause. "One day I must learn how I am so readily identifiable."
"It's your charming personality, Thegun Thegun Nug," Greenberg said. "What else could it possibly be?"
"Undoubtedly you are correct," Thegun Thegun Nug said. "Out." Jennifer and Greenberg tried to hold it in, but they both started laughing at the same time.
Greenberg began talking with the Harold Meeker's computer, making sure the ship was ready for space. Jennifer waited for a furious call from Voskop W Wurd. The Rof Golani knew how to delegate authority, however, for the furious call that came was from his aide Yulvot L Real, accusing her and Greenberg of selling out to the perfidious kwopillot and threatening to shoot them down if they took off.
"If you do that, you risk starting the war with the Great Ones again," Jennifer pointed out. "Not only that, you might antagonize the Foitani from Odern. Besides, we're just humans, remember? Do you expect any self-respecting Foitani to take seriously anything we say?"
"Probably not," Yulvot L Reat admitted, "nor do you deserve serious regard."
"Thank you so much, Yulvot L Reat," Jennifer said. "Out."
"You're getting to be able to handle them pretty well," Greenberg said.
"Bernard, I don't think that's necessarily a compliment. I just want to get into space again."
"Me, too. Stuck on the surface of Gilver like this, I've felt like a bug with a shoe poised over it. Once I'm flying on my own power, at least I'll have the illusion of being a free agent again, even if I'll still be under the guns of Vengeance."
The Harold Meeker lifted off a few minutes later. Jennifer watched the Foitani research base fall away. The screen's view expanded to pick up the Great Unknown. The precinct looked strange and incomplete without the central tower, as if all roads led, not to Rome, but to nowhere.
The sky quickly darkened toward black. Stars came out. Jennifer looked at the radar pickup. On the way in to Gilver, it had shown a hideously jumbled swarm of ships and missiles, their tracks and signals jammed to provide them the greatest possible protection. Now only one artificial object swung in space near Gilver: the Vengeance. On radar, it was only the palest of flickering ghosts.
"I'm just glad to see it at all," Greenberg said when Jennifer remarked on that. "If we couldn't pick it up, that would be bad news for human space."
A Great One sent a peremptory signal. "Approach slowly and directly, or you will be destroyed without further warning."
Jennifer acknowledged, then shut down the communicator and sighed. "They're such a charming race. I don't know what those CroMagnon people will do once we get them back, but we have to do it. The more I think, the more it looks like I couldn't live with myself if I just left them there in that Foitani database."
"I know what you mean," Greenberg answered. "At first, I didn't worry too much about it—they were in storage and weren't aware of anything that happened around them. But if the Foitani can call them up again and again, do what they want with them every time—test them to destruction if they've a mind to, which they probably do—I think we have to get a live copy back, and get the Great Ones to wipe the files so they can't make any more."
"Sounds good to me," Jennifer agreed. She didn't know what sort of deal they would have to make with the Great Ones to accomplish that. Whatever it was, that price needed paying. Sometimes profit didn't count for everything.
The Vengeance might have been more or less invisible to radar, but before long it showed up visually in the Harold Meeker's forward screen. It looked even bigger alone in space than attached to a planet . . . and no wonder. It wasn't the size of a spacecraft. It was the size of a baby asteroid—maybe even a toddler asteroid. It also bristled with weapons emplacements that hadn't been visible while it slept away the centuries on Gilver.
What worried Jennifer most was that the Vengeance was an artifact from the side that had lost the Suicide Wars. What sort of craft had the winners used? Whatever the answer, those ships were gone now, either destroyed in the war or turned on one another afterward. The Vengeance remained, huge and deadly and all alone, as if a last Tyrannosaurus rex had somehow been raised from the grave and turned loose in the jungle parks of modern Earth.
The abrupt voice came out of the speaker again. "Berth your vessel at the lock with the flashing amber light, non-Foitani."
Jennifer looked in the screen. The flashing amber light seemed bright enough to be visible down on Gilver, let alone from just a couple of kilometers away. She said, "They aren't crediting us with a whole lot of brains."
"We aren't Foitani. How could we have brains?" Greenberg answered. "They're giving us more credit than they think we deserve just by talking with us. For that matter, how smart are we? Here we are, going to dicker for specimens from our own race and for a way to keep the Suicide Wars from starting over, and what can we offer? What do we have that the Great Ones might want?"
It was a good question. As with a good many others lately, Jennifer would have admired it more had she had a good answer for it. She rocked back and forth in her seat, not so much concentrating as trying to relax and let her subconscious come up with one. In SF novels, inspiration was usually enough to let the hero make the story come out right.
Inspiration did not come. In any case, inspiration looked puny when set in the balance against the kilometers of deadliness of the Vengeance. A mammal in the jungle park might be more inspired than any Tyrannosaurus rex ever hatched, but that wouldn't keep it from getting eaten if the dinosaur decided to open his mouth and gulp.
A human in the jungle park, of course, would think about a weapon to use against a monster dinosaur. Put a character from a Don A. Stuart novel in that park and he would think of a weapon one day, build it the next, and eat Tyrannosaurus steak the day after that. The spacegoing Tyrannosaurus engulfing the Harold Meeker, unfortunately, had already thought of more weapons than any Don A. Stuart character ever born. The Foitani, whether ancient or modern, put a lot of effort into destructive capacity. If only they'd expended even a little more on learning how to get along with one another, they would have been much nicer people . . . and Jennifer wouldn't be coming aboard a spacecraft called Vengeance.
"If only . . ." Jennifer sighed. That was one of the ways old-time SF writers had gone about building a story. She wished it had more bearing in the real world.
The communicator spoke. "You may now exit your ship. You will find atmospheric pressure and temperature maintained at a level suitable for your species; at least, the specimens of your kind in our data store take no harm of it."
Jennifer's hands curled into fists. Those poor cave people were getting the guinea-pig treatment again, and then being—what? Killed? Just erased? She thought of the explorer in Rogue Moon, who died again and again as he worked his way through the alien artifact on the moon. She wondered if, like him, the CroMagnons in the Foitani data banks remembered each brief incarnation, each death. She hoped not.
"Atmospheric analysis," Greenberg told the Harold Meeker's computer. It, too, reported that the air was good. Greenberg said, "I don't trust the Foitani any further than I have to." He cocked a wry eyebrow. "If they do want to kill us, I guess they could manage it a lot more directly than lying about the air outside."
"I don't blame you for not trusting them," Jennifer said. "I don't, either. And they have something we want, too. I only wish we had something they needed."
"A way for them to live in peace no matter whom they go to bed with would be nice. You don't happen to have one anywhere concealed about your person, do you?"
"Let me look." Jennifer checked a pocket in her coveralls, then mournfully shook her head. Greenberg snorted. Jennifer said, "Shall we go see if we can get our own remote ancestors out of their clutches—and maybe even ourselves, too?"
"That would be nice," Greenberg said. He and Jennifer went through the air lock one after the other. They peered around. The Vengeance was so big that Jennifer didn't feel as if she were on a spacecraft; it was more as if the Harold Meeker had inadvertently landed in the middle of a good-sized town.
A green-blue Foitan with a hand weapon stood waiting for them. Jennifer was tired of aliens ordering her around with jerks of a gun barrel. It didn't stop happening just because she was tired of it. The Great One led her and Greenberg to a blank metal wall. He rapped on it. A door into a small chamber opened. He chivvied the two humans inside, then rapped on the wall again. The door disappeared, in the way Foitani doors had a habit of doing.
The guard spoke to the air. "The offices of Solut Mek Kem," the translator said. Jennifer felt no motion, but when the Foitan opened the doorway again, the small chamber was not where it had been.
Solut Mek Kem stood waiting. "Well, creatures, shall we get to the dickering?" he said. "What can you offer that might persuade us to give you copies of these other creatures of your kind, now maintained in our data store?"
"That's not all we want," Jennifer said. "Once we have these—copies—we also want you to erase the archetypes of the humans you have in your data bank, as long as you can do that without causing them any pain. Can you do that?"
"Yes, we can, but why should we?" Solut Mek Kem said. "I repeat, what will you give in exchange for this service? Be quick. I am not in the habit of bargaining with creatures. Were it not for the service you rendered in slowing the outbreak of a combat whose result is uncertain, I would not waste my time here, I assure you."
"Oh, I believe it," Jennifer said. "Your whole species is like that. If only you were a little bit more easygoing—"
"What exactly do you want from us?" Greenberg demanded. "I can provide trade goods from Odern, and others of human manufacture. I can also give you information about what this part of the galaxy is like these days. Just how much, of course, is what makes a dicker."
"These things may perhaps buy you copies of your fellow creatures," Solut Mek Kem said. "They will in no way persuade me to clear our patterns in the matrices. Your kind, evidently, is a part of the galaxy about which we shall require a good deal of information. If you expect us to forgo it, you will have to do better."
"I've told you what we have," Greenberg said slowly.
Jennifer felt her face twist into a scowl. She didn't want to leave any vestiges of the CroMagnons in Foitani hands. "What would it take?" she said. "Do you want us to tell you how to live in peace with all the modern Foitani, who'd like nothing more than seeing every last one of you dead?"
"If you can tell us how to live in peace with vodranet, creature, you will have earned what you seek."
Jennifer looked down at her shoes. If only she were a Middle English SF hero, the answer to that question would have been on the tip of her tongue. Would Miles Vorkosigan or Dominic Flandry just have stood there with nothing to say? "If only . . ." she said softly, and then, a moment later, more than a little surprised, "Well, maybe I can."
"Go ahead, then, creature," Solut Mek Kem said. "Tell me how I shall live in peace with beings for whom I have an instinctive antipathy. Instruct me. I shall be fascinated to imbibe of your wisdom." The kwopil used irony like a bludgeon.
"Actually, I can't specifically tell you how," Jennifer said. "But maybe, just maybe, I can tell you a way to go about finding the answer for yourselves, if you really want to." That was the rub, and she knew it. If kwopillot and vodranet wanted to fight, they would, and good intentions would only get in the way.
"Say on," Solut Mek Kem said, not revealing his thoughts.
"All right. You know by now that the Foitani from Odern brought humans—my people—to Odern because by themselves they couldn't safely enter what they called the Great Unknown—the area around your ship."
"We made sure prying vodranet would not be able to disturb us, yes."
"Fine," Jennifer said. "The reason the Foitani from Odern got me in particular is that I'm an expert in an old form of literature among my people, a form called science fiction. This was a literature that, in its purest form, extrapolated either from possible events deliberately taken to extremes or from premises known to be impossible, and speculated on what might happen if those impossible premises were in fact true."
Solut Mek Kem's ears twitched. "Why should I care if creatures choose to spend their lives deliberately speculating on the impossible? It strikes me as a waste of time, but with sub-Foitani creatures, the waste is minimal."
"It's not the way you're making it sound," Jennifer said. "Look—you know about military contingency plans, don't you?"
"Certainly," Solut Mek Kem said.
"I thought you would. If you're like humans at all, you make those plans even for cases you don't expect to happen. Sometimes you can learn things from those improbable plans, too, even if you don't directly use them. Am I right or wrong?"
"You are correct. How could you not be, in this instance? Of course data may be relevant in configurations other than the ones in which they are first envisioned. Any race with the minimal intelligence necessary to devise data base software learns the truth of this."
"Whatever you say, Solut Mek Kem. Do me one more favor, if you would: give me the connotations of the word this translator program uses to translate the term fiction."
The Great One paused before answering, "It means something like, tales for nestlings' ears. Another synonym might be, nonsense stories."
Jennifer nodded. A lot of races thought that way. With some, the only translation for fiction was lying. She said, "We use fiction for more things than the Foitani do, Solut Mek Kem. We use tales that we know to be false to entertain, yes, but also to cast light on true aspects of our characters and to help us gain insight into ourselves."
"And so?" Solut Mek Kem said. "What possible relevance does a creature's insight into itself have to the truly serious issue of vodranet?"
"Bear with me," Jennifer said. "More than a thousand years ago, back when humans were just starting to develop a technological society, they also developed the subform of fiction called science fiction."
"This strikes me as a contradiction in terms," Solut Mek Kem observed. "How can one have a nonsense story based on science?"
"Science fiction doesn't produce nonsense stories," Jennifer said, reflecting that Solut Mek Kem sounded like some of the contemporary critics of the genre. "It's sort of a fictional analogue of what you do when you develop a contingency plan. Conceive of it as a method for making thought experiments and projections when you don't have hard data, but need to substitute imagination instead. You kwopillot don't have hard data about living with vodranet, for instance; all you know is how to go about killing each other. You need all the imagination you can find, and you need a way to focus it. If imagination is light, think of the techniques of science fiction as a lens."
"I think of this entire line of talk as a waste of time," Solut Mek Kem said.
"Let me tell you this, then," Jennifer said quickly, before he could irrevocably reject her: "The Foitani from Odern sought me out and brought me here specifically because I'm an expert in this kind of fiction."
"The foibles of vodranet are not a recommendation," Solut Mek Kem said, and she was sure she had lost.
But Bernard Greenberg said, "Consider results, Solut Mek Kem. Before Jennifer got here, you had been dormant for twenty-eight thousand years. The Foitani from Odern weren't close to getting into the Great Unknown, let alone into the Vengeance by themselves. Look at all that's happened since Jennifer came to Gilver."
Jennifer put her hand on Greenberg's arm. It was completely in character for him to minimize his own role in everything that had happened so the deal could go forward.
Solut Mek Kem opened his mouth, then closed it again. Greenberg had managed to make him thoughtful, at any rate. At last the Great One said, "An argument from results is always the most difficult to confute. Very well; let me examine some samples of this alleged science fiction. If I think expertise in it might prove of some value to the present situation, I shall meet the terms you have set: copies of the creatures of your kind in our data stores, with the originals to be deleted."
Jennifer clenched her teeth. Put up or shut up, she thought. While she tried to decide which stories Solut Mek Kem ought to judge, she said, "May I please call Aissur Aissur Rus at the research base of the Foitani from Odern? He has a program that translates between your language and the one in which the stories were composed, one which we humans no longer speak."
"First scientific nonsense or nonsense science, I know not which. Now you haul in the vodranet," Solut Mek Kem grumbled. "Do what you think necessary, creature. Having stooped so low as to negotiate with sub-Foitani, how could vodranet befoul me further? Speak—your words are being transmitted as you require."
"Aissur Aissur Rus?" Jennifer said. "Are you there?"
The reply came from nowhere. "That is a translator's voice, so you must be a human. Which are you, and what do you need?"
"I'm Jennifer," Jennifer said. "Can you transmit to the Vengeance the program you used back on Saugus to read Middle English science fiction? You thought someone who knew it might be able to give you insights on the Great Unknown. Now the Great Ones hope its techniques may help them figure out how not to fight the next round of the Suicide Wars." She knew she was exaggerating the Great Ones' expectations, but no more than she would have in arranging a deal of much smaller magnitude.
"I will send the program," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "I would be intrigued to learn the Great Ones' opinion of this curious human discipline."
"You aren't the only one," Jennifer said.
Solut Mek Kem turned to glance at something—evidently a telltale, for after a moment he said, "Very well. We have received this program. On what material shall we make use of it?"
"I've been thinking about that," Jennifer said. "I'm going to give you three pieces. You know or can learn that humans are of two sexes, which we keep throughout life, just as you do. The Left Hand of Darkness speculates on the consequences of discovering a world of humans genetically engineered to be hermaphrodites."
"That is not precisely similar to our case, but I can see how it might be relevant," Solut Mek Kem said. "It is not the sort of topic about which we would produce fiction."
"Species differ," Jennifer said. Mentally, she added, You might know more about that if you hadn't gone around slaughtering all the aliens you came across.
"You spoke of three works," Solut Mek Kem said. "What are the other two?"
"One is 'The Marching Morons,' which looks at the possible genetic consequences of some of the social policies in vogue in the author's day. The events it describes did not happen. Kornbluth—the author—didn't expect them to, I'm certain. He was using them to comment on his own society's customs, which is something science fiction did very effectively."
She waited for Solut Mek Kem to say something, but he just looked at her with those dark blue-green eyes. She went on, "The third story is called 'Hawk Among the Sparrows.' It warns of the problems someone used to a high technology may encounter in a place where that technology cannot be reproduced."
"Yes, that is relevant to us," Solut Mek Kem said. "Again, it is not a topic we would choose for fiction. I will consider these works. I will consider also the mind-set which informs them, which I gather to be the essence of what you seek to offer me."
"Exactly," Jennifer said, more than a little relieved the Great One understood what she was selling.
"Enough, then. You are dismissed. I shall communicate with you again when I have weighed these documents. You would be well advised to remain in your ship until that time, lest you be destroyed by one of my fellows who has less patience with vermin than I do. The guard here will escort you."
Jennifer fumed all the way back to the Harold Meeker. The worst of it was that she knew Solut Mek Kem had been trying to help. The Great Ones simply had no idea how to deal with any beings unlike themselves. No wonder they had started fighting when the split between kwopillot and vodranet developed among them, and no wonder they kept fighting until they could fight no more.
The only glimpses she got of Vengeance were of the open area around the Harold Meeker, which she'd already seen. Just a couple of Foitani beside her guard saw her, which she soon decided was just as well. By the way they automatically took a couple of steps toward her, she was sure they would have attacked if the guard had not been with her. They probably assumed she and Greenberg were prisoners. By the way the guard acted, that was what he thought. She didn't care to find out what would happen if she tried going in the wrong direction.
The quiet hiss of the air-lock gaskets sealing made her sag with relief. Logically, it shouldn't have mattered. She was just as much in the power of the Great Ones inside the Harold Meeker as she had been outside. But logic had little to do with it. The barrier looked and felt strong, no matter how flimsy it was in fact.
"I have a question for you," Greenberg said. "Suppose you do manage to convince the old-time Foitani you've given them a way to work out how to exist alongside their modern cousins? The modern Foitani don't have that way. You need two sides to have peace, but one is plenty to start a war."
"You're right." She paced back and forth, as best she could in the cramped crew compartment. "I'll call Aissur Aissur Rus. He's had some actual experience working with the concepts I'm selling. If anyone can interest the others in them, he's the one."
"Not Voskop W Wurd?" Greenberg asked slyly.
She rolled her eyes. "No, thanks."
As it happened, Aissur Aissur Rus called her first. She explained to him the deal she had put to the Great Ones, knowing all the while that Solut Mek Kem or one of his aides was surely listening in. She finished, "You were the one among your people who thought someone used to the ideas of science fiction would be able to help you on Gilver, and you turned out to be right. Do you think that you modern Foitani can apply this same sort of creative extrapolation to the problem of living with kwopillot?"
"That is—an intriguing question," Aissur Aissur Rus said slowly. "If the answer proves to be affirmative, its originator would surely derive much credit therefrom." You would derive that credit, you mean, Jennifer thought. Aissur Aissur Rus continued, "If on the other hand the answer is in the negative, the Suicide Wars begin again shortly afterward, at which point no blame is likely to accrue, for who would survive to lay blame?"
"Then shall I send you the same materials I gave to Solut Mek Kem?" Jennifer asked. "Maybe you can use them, if not to change Pawasar Pawasar Ras's mind, then at least to open it a little bit."
"What materials did you furnish to the Great One?" Aissur Aissur Ras asked. Jennifer told him. He said, "I presently have all of those, I believe, save 'Hawk Among the Sparrows.' We kidnapped you before you gained the opportunity to discuss the literary pitfalls of overreliance upon advanced technology. Though alien, I find them most intriguing documents. 'The Marching Morons' presents a quite Foitani-like view of what constitutes proper behavior under difficult circumstances—not that we would ever have permitted culls to breed as they did to establish that story's background."
"Aissur Aissur Rus, I'm convinced you would have gotten an A in my course," Jennifer said.
"So you have said, human Jennifer. I shall take this for a compliment. My people have said repeatedly, in talks you have heard and in many more conversations where you were not present, that they could not imagine how they were to live with kwopillot. I still cannot imagine how we are to accomplish this. Nevertheless, perhaps you have furnished us a tool wherewith to focus our imagination more sharply on the problem. If this be so, all Foitani will be in your debt."
"That's not something you ought to tell a trader, you know," Jennifer said.
"Possibly not. Nevertheless, you are at present in no position to exploit my words. Will you send 'Hawk Among the Sparrows' to me now?"
Jennifer fed the piece into the computer for transmission to Gilver. She remarked, "You know, Aissur Aissur Rus, you may end up as Odern's ambassador to the Great Ones if you do manage not to fight. You're better with strange peoples than any other Foitan I've met. Thegun Thegun Nug, for instance, would have ordered me to send him that story just now, instead of asking for it."
"He is an able male," Aissur Aissur Rus said stoutly.
"Have it your way," Jennifer said. "Out." She turned to Greenberg. "Now we wait to see what the Great Ones have to say."
"I hope we don't wait too long," he answered. "I'd be willing to bet Odern's fleet is already heading this way, and I have no idea how for from Gilver Rof Golan is. For once, I wouldn't mind if the communicator interrupted us."
"Is that a hint?"
"You know a better way to pass the time?" Greenberg asked.
"Now that you mention it, no," Jennifer said.
The communicator did not interrupt them. Like Greenberg, Jennifer almost wished it would have.
"You will report to me at once," Solut Mek Kem said, as abrupt as if he'd been Thegun Thegun Nug. Jennifer and Greenberg traded worried glances as they hurried out through the air lock. The communicator had been silent for thirty-six hours before that sharp order. Solut Mek Kem knew what he thought of the works Jennifer had given him. Whatever it was, he wasn't letting on.
A Foitani guard waited outside the Harold Meeker. Jennifer could not tell if it was the same one who had escorted her to Solut Mek Kem before. The guard said nothing and gave no clues, merely gesturing come along with his hand weapon. One of the nice things about human worlds, she thought, was that sometimes whole weeks went by without anyone pointing a gun at you.
She also could not tell if she and Greenberg went by way of the same moving chamber as they had the last time; one blank room looked much like another. Solut Mek Kem was definitely in the same office he had occupied before. The company he kept there, however, was a good deal different.
Some sort of invisible screen—possibly material, possibly not—kept the CroMagnon man and woman from either running away or attacking the Foitan. The two human specimens turned fierce, frightened faces on Jennifer and Greenberg as the guard led them into the chamber. They shouted something in a tongue as dead as the woolly mammoth.
"You have won your wager," Solut Mek Kem said. "The concept of extrapolation mixed with entertainment is not one we developed for ourselves, yet its uses quickly become obvious as we grow acquainted with it. I wonder how many other interesting concepts we have exterminated along with the races that created them." Jennifer had not imagined a Foitan could feel guilt. A moment later, Solut Mek Kem disabused her of her anthropocentrism, for he said, "Well, no matter. They are gone, and I shall not worry about them. The masters of these creatures—" He stuck out his tongue at the CroMagnon couple, "—are also now gone from our data store; I keep my bargains. The copies are yours to do with as you will."
Jennifer started to ask if there was any way for her to check that, then held her tongue. If the Great Ones wanted to cheat, they could; how was she supposed to thread her way through their data storage system? Besides, questioning Solut Mek Kem was liable to make him angry, and at the moment he was about as well disposed as a Foitan could be toward members of another species.
Instead of complaining to him, she turned to Greenberg. "I suppose the kindest thing we can do for these poor people is stun them and put them out of their sensory overload before they scare themselves to death." She wasn't sure she was exaggerating; half-remembered tales of primitive humans said they might do just that.
The translator carried her words to Solut Mek Kem. "I will take care of it for you," the Great One said. He rapped on the wall behind him to expose a cavity. From it he took a weapon smaller than the one the Foitani guard carried. He started to point it at the two reconstituted humans.
"Wait," Jennifer said quickly. She didn't know whether the Great Ones used the same stun beam as modern Foitani, but if they did, the CroMagnons wouldn't like waking up from it. She drew her own stunner from a coverall pocket, turned it on the man and woman from out of time. They slumped bonelessly to the floor.
"Let's take them back to the ship and get them into cold sleep," Greenberg said. "I don't want them awake in there and bouncing off the walls."
"Sounds good to me," Jennifer said. She spoke for the first time to the guard. "Honored Great One, could you please carry these humans to our ship? With your great size and strength, you can easily take them both at once."
Flattery got her nowhere. The guard said one word: "No."
She appealed to Solut Mek Kem. She got four words from him: "No. Carry your own."
She and Greenberg went over to the CroMagnon couple. Whatever had kept them in their corner of the room didn't keep the traders out. Greenberg grabbed the unconscious man by his shoulders. Jennifer took hold of his ankles. He was hairy, scarred, flea-bitten, and smelly. He seemed to weigh a ton, and Jennifer was sure he would only get heavier as she toted him.
"Let's go," Greenberg grunted. Neither of them had much practice at hauling what was in essence deadweight. Having the Foitani guard alongside watching did nothing to make matters easier. Getting the limp CroMagnon into and through the cramped air lock of the Harold Meeker was a separate wrestling match in itself. Breathing hard, Greenberg said, "Give him another dose, Jennifer. We want to make sure he's out until we can bring his mate back."
"Right," Jennifer said. Thinking of all the trouble a primitive who woke up too soon could get into on a starship was enough to make her blood run cold and then some.
After the man was sent into deeper unconsciousness, she and Greenberg went back for the woman. She was just as dirty and smelly and flea-bitten as her companion, but, fortunately, a good deal lighter. Greenberg once again handled the head end. "You know," he said, looking down at his burden, "clean her up a little—well, a lot—and she might be pretty."
"Maybe," Jennifer said. "So what?"
"It makes life easier." After a few steps, Greenberg noticed Jennifer hadn't answered. "Doesn't it?" he asked.
"A lot of the time, all it does is make things more complicated," she said. She thought about it for a few more steps, then added, "This one, though, will need all the help she can get. For her, I suppose, being pretty really is going to be an asset instead of a nuisance."
The woman was starting to wiggle and moan by the time they got to the Harold Meeker. Greenberg stunned her again before he and Jennifer hauled her through the air lock. He said, "Let's put them into cold sleep as fast as we can, before they start getting frisky again."
The cold-sleep process was designed to go fast, so it could be activated in case of sudden emergency aboard ship. As Jennifer hooked the male of the pair up to the system, she said, "What are they going to do when we get them back to human space? Nobody's had to deal with human primitives for hundreds of years; it must be a lost art."
"I haven't the slightest idea what they'll do," Greenberg answered. "I'm not going to worry about it, either. Whatever it is, it has to be better than life as experimental animals for the Foitani."
"You're right about that," Jennifer said. Just as she was connecting the nerve-retarder net, the communicator buzzed. "No, damn it, not now," she shouted at it. "We're not even screwing!"
The communicator ignored her. The words that came from it were more like snarls than speech. The translator turned them into flat Spanglish. "Answer me, you pestilential sub-Foitani creatures. When Voskop W Wurd deigns to speak with you, you are to take it as a privilege."
"Oh, shut up for a minute," Jennifer said, enjoying the license given her by a good many thousand kilometers of empty space between herself and the Rof Golani warleader. When the CroMagnons' pod retreated into its storage bay, she decided to notice the communicator again. "Now, what is it you want, Voskop W Wurd?"
"Whatever documents you have passed on to the Oderna and the kwopillot," Voskop W Wurd answered.
"Oh," Jennifer said. "Yes, I can do that. I would have done it sooner, but it never occurred to me that you might want them, Voskop W Wurd. You hadn't shown much use for humans, you know." You haven't shown much use for anything, you know, she added mentally.
The warleader said, "If my potential allies and my enemies have these data, I should be privy to them as well. Explain to me why the Oderna and kwopillot are interested in these long effusions by sub-Foitani."
"I love you, too, Voskop W Wurd," Jennifer said sweetly. But the more minds trying to find avoid a new round of Suicide Wars, the better, so she did explain to the warleader the concept of science fiction and its potential application here. Voskop W Wurd was vicious, but not stupid. Jennifer finished, "The books and stories are examples intended to turn your thinking in the appropriate direction."
Voskop W Wurd remained silent for some time after she was through. At last, he said, "This new concept will have to be analyzed. We on Rof Golan write and declaim sagas of great warriors of the past, but have nothing to do with the set of organized lies you term fiction, still less with using it as if it were fact."
"Let me know what you think when you've looked at the documents," Jennifer said. "You might also want to talk to Aissur Aissur Rus. He comes fairly close to being able to grasp another race's point of view."
Voskop W Wurd switched off without replying—typical Foitani manners, Jennifer thought. But she remained more cheerful than otherwise. The Rof Golani hadn't dismissed the concept of trying SF techniques to extrapolate ways in which kwopillot and vodranet could live together in the same galaxy. From him, that was an excellent sign.
Greenberg said, "The primitives are down and freezing. Assuming we ever get to leave—and assuming we don't run into any more leftover weapons from the Suicide Wars—we shouldn't have any trouble getting them back to Saugus."
"Saugus? Why Saugus?" Jennifer said.
"For one thing, it's the planet you live on these days. For another, I assume the university where you're teaching is a good one." He waited for her to nod, then went on, "It ought to have some good anthropologists, then. I can't think of any people better suited to helping show our unwilling passengers how the world has changed since they were last around to look at it."
"Makes sense," Jennifer said.
"Saugus also ought to have a merchants' guild hall." Again, Greenberg waited for a nod before continuing. "In that case, I can do a couple of things. First, I can recommend you for master status." He held up a hand to forestall whatever she might say. "You've earned it, you ought to have it, and you're going to get it. If we do manage to get out of this mess, it'll be thanks to your expertise. And we'll show a profit, and a good-sized one. You qualify."
"All right." The only thing Jennifer really wanted was to get back to teaching and research, but she'd learned that having something else to fell back on could come in handy. She said, "That's one thing. What turns it into a couple?"
Greenberg hesitated before he answered. "The other thing I was thinking of was transferring my base of operations to Saugus. That is, if you want to turn us into a couple once we're back."
"Oh." She felt her face twist into a new expression as the implications of that sank in. The expression was an enormous grin. "Sure!" She hugged him.
"I don't want you to leap into this, you know," he said seriously. "I'm not going to stop trading, which means we may be apart big stretches of time. And I know you'd sooner stay at the university."
She shrugged. "We'll do the best we can for as long as we can. That's all we can do—that's all anyone can do. Right now, I don't want to worry about complications, except the ones that are keeping us stuck in Foitani space."
"Sounds sensible to me," he said. "People who borrow trouble usually end up repaying it at high interest." He yawned. "I wouldn't mind going into cold sleep myself. I'm far enough behind on the regular sort that I guess that's the only way I'm likely to catch up. Shall we try to gain on what we can?"
"When going to sleep sounds like a better idea than going to bed, does that mean the romance is starting to fade?" Jennifer asked. Greenberg had just pulled his shirt off over his head. He bunched it up and threw it at her. She tossed it aside, undressed, and settled down on her foam pad. She didn't care about romance right this second, only about how tired she was. Greenberg told the computer to turn down the lights. Sleep hit her like a club.
The communicator hauled Jennifer and Greenberg back to life after about five hours of sleep—just enough to leave them both painfully aware they needed more. A Foitani voice roared from the speaker. "Answer, humans," the translator supplied.
"What is it now, Voskop W Wurd?" Jennifer asked, rubbing her eyes and thinking wistfully of coffee.
"This is not Voskop W Wurd. This is Yulvot L Reat. The warleader ordered me to evaluate your concept of scientific lying."
Jennifer wondered whether the translator was hiccuping or whether Voskop W Wurd had given that name to the Middle English literature as he assigned it to his subordinate. That didn't really matter. "What do you think of it, Yulvot W Reat?"
"To my surprise, I find myself quite impressed," the Rof Golani Foitan answered. "It serves to make extrapolation palatable, and by extension even speculates logically about the consequences of propositions known to be false, something I had not imagined possible."
""Then you think it might let you find a way to live with the kwopillot aboard the Vengeance?" Jennifer asked hopefully.
"It might let us look for a way," Yulvot L Reat said. "I take that for progress. So will the warleader Voskop W Wurd, since we never imagined—"
Yulvot L Reat's voice vanished from the speaker. A moment later, that of a different Foitan replaced it. "Humans, this is Solut Mek Kem. We have detected ships emerging from hyperdrive in this system. Your presence compromises Vengeance's defenses, to say nothing of the fact that your drive energies could be used as a suicide weapon against us. You will leave immediately."
"Of course, Solut Mek Kem," Greenberg said. "I'll order the computer to—"
"Look in the viewscreen," Jennifer said. Greenberg did. His eyes got wide. There was the Vengeance, some kilometers away and visibly shrinking. When Solut Mek Kem said immediately, he didn't fool around.
"One of these days, I'll see if our instruments picked up any clue of how they just did that," Greenberg said. "Right now, though, I think the smartest thing to do is put as much distance between us and the Vengeance as we can."
Jennifer did not argue with him. The Vengeance, at the moment, was the biggest target in the Gilver system. No, the second biggest—Gilver itself was still down there. "Can we monitor traffic between the ship and the ground?" she asked.
"Good idea," Greenberg said.
The first signal the Harold Meeker picked up was almost strong enough to overload its receiver. "Solut Mek Kem aboard Vengeance, calling the base on Gilver. We will act for our own defense only for a period of two rotations of Gilver, in which time you are to persuade your newly arrived ships to break off combat so that we and your leaders may extrapolate ways in which we need not destroy each other. If they continue to attack thereafter, we shall fight as we see fit. Be informed and be warned."
"We did it!" Jennifer exclaimed.
"We may have done it," Greenberg said, less optimistically. "Let's see what Pawasar Pawasar Ras thinks of the offer."
The answer was not long in coming. "Incoming Foitani fleet, hold your fire," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "This is Pawasar Pawasar Ras on Gilver. I speak without coercion of any sort. Know that the Suicide Wars arose out of conflict between our sort of Foitani and kwopillot. Know also that if we and they fail to come to terms now, the Suicide Wars will return; earthgrip will hold sway over us all, and it shall be as if our race had never existed. Let us talk and explore other ways before we fight."
A louder, shriller voice followed that of Pawasar Pawasar Ras. "I, Voskop W Wurd, Warleader of Rof Golan, declare the time for fighting is not yet—and who would dare coerce a warleader? Hear me and obey, my brethren of Rof Golan!"
"Do you think they'll listen?" Jennifer asked.
"I don't know." Greenberg glanced toward the radar. So did Jennifer. The screen was full of ships. All of them were headed straight toward Gilver, or rather toward the Vengeance, which hung above the planet in a synchronous orbit that held it right above the precinct of the Great Unknown—and the Foitani research station. He looked at the radar plot again and shook his head. "I don't intend to wait around and find out, either. Computer, initiate hyperdrive acceleration sequence, vector exactly opposite that of those approaching ships."
"Initiating," the computer said.
If Greenberg had hoped to sneak out of the brewing fight while no one was paying attention to the Harold Meeker, that hope lasted less than a minute. A Foitani voice came from the communicator. "Human ship, this is Solut Mek Kem. Why are you abandoning this solar system? Answer immediately or face the consequences."
When a Foitan said face the consequences, he meant dig your grave and jump in. Greenberg said, "When you pushed us away from your ship, Solut Mek Kem, you left us sitting right next door to you as the modern Foitani head in on an attack run. We can't defend ourselves; this is a trader, not a warship. This isn't our war, anyhow. If you were in our position, what would you do?"
"Extrapolate, please," Jennifer added, knowing the only way Foitani usually put on other people's shoes was after those other people had no further use for them.
No answer came from Solut Mek Kem. Jennifer found she was grinding her teeth, made herself stop, then found she was grinding them again. Vengeance could swat the Harold Meeker out of the sky like a man swatting a gnat.
"Weapon homing!" the computer shrieked.
"It's not the Vengeance," Greenberg said after a quick look at the radar tank. "It's from one of the ships that just came into the system."
"Can we get into hyperdrive before it catches us?" Jennifer asked:
"No," he and the computer replied at the same time.
Jennifer went over to the radar tank and watched the missile close. Others trailed it, but they did not count; the Harold Meeker would hit hyperdrive kick-in velocity before they reached it. That first one, though . . . some Foitani pilot, not knowing what the fleeing ship was, had been fast on the trigger—too fast.
Then, without warning, the missile ceased to be. Greenberg shouted and pounded his fist against his thigh. "Human ship Harold Meeker to Vengeance," Jennifer said. "Thank you." Still no answer came. Less than half a minute later, the Harold Meeker flashed into hyperdrive.
Snow clung to the ground wherever there was shadow. The distant mountains were cloaked in white halfway down from their peaks; a glacier came forth from them onto the nearer plains like a frozen tongue sticking out. Musk oxen and the larger dots that were mammoths moved slowly across those plains.
Jennifer shivered. The synthetic furs and hides she was wearing were not as warm as the real things. Her arms were bare; gooseflesh prickled up on them as she watched. Her breath came smoky from her nostrils. "They'd better hurry up, before I freeze to death," she said, making a miniature fogbank around her head with the words.
"Maybe there's such a thing as too much realism," Greenberg agreed through chattering teeth.
On the ground a few paces away from them lay the two humans they had brought back from the Foitani sphere. The CroMagnons were just on the point of coming out of cold sleep. The anthropologists at Saugus Central University had gone to a good deal of effort to make them as homelike an environment as possible in which to awaken. Putting the temperature somewhere below freezing struck Jennifer as excessive. Still, in trying to bridge the gap between Pleistocene and starship, who could say what detail might prove crucial?
The woman stirred. A few seconds later, so did the man. "Here we go," one of the anthropologists radioed into the little ear speakers Jennifer and Greenberg were wearing. "Remember, you people are the link between this familiar—we hope—place and what they've gone through. When they see you here, they ought to get the idea that they aren't really home, or not exactly, anyway."
"We'll see soon," Jennifer answered. Getting through to the primitives was going to be as hard as any first contact with an alien race. They'd have to learn a new language from scratch; not even theoretically reconstructed Ur-Indo-European went back even as far as a quarter of the way to their time.
The man sat up first. His eyes, at first, were only on the woman. When she opened her eyes and also managed to sit, his face glowed with relief. Then he noticed Jennifer and Greenberg. He rattled off something in his extinct speech.
"Hello. We're peaceful. We hope you are, too," Greenberg said in Spanglish. He held his hands out before him, palms up, to show they were empty. That was about as old a pacific gesture as humanity knew. Nobody could be sure, though, whether it went back to the Paleolithic. Everything the CroMagnons did taught researchers something.
The man didn't return the gesture, but he seemed to understand what it meant. He stood up and took a couple of steps forward to put himself between the woman and Greenberg and Jennifer. Then he spoke again, this time in a questioning tone. Jennifer made what she thought was a pretty fair guess at what he was saying. You were there in that strange place with those monsters. Now you're here. What's going on?
"Time for that special effect we were talking about," she whispered, for the benefit of the anthropologists outside.
Without warning, a holovid projection of a Foitan sprang into being, a few meters away from the primitives. The woman let out a piercing shriek. The man shouted, too, fear and fury mingling in his voice. He looked around wildly for a stone to throw.
"You!" Greenberg said in a commanding tone, stabbing out his forefinger at the alarmingly perfect image. "Go away and never come back!" He struck a pose that proclaimed he had every right to order the big, blue alien around so.
The projection winked out as if it had never been. The man and woman shouted again, this time in amazement. Then they both hurried over to Greenberg, embraced him, and pounded him on the back. He staggered under the joyful blows. "They're stronger than they think," he wheezed, trying to stay upright.
"Congratulations," the anthropologist said into his and Jennifer's ears. "You are now a powerful wizard."
"Good." Greenberg turned his head. "Ah, I see the second part of the demonstration is on its way."
Four plates floated toward the humans. Each one carried a thick steak, a couple of apples, and some ripe strawberries. The primitives needed another few seconds to spot them. Then they started exclaiming all over again.
Jennifer intercepted two of the plates, Greenberg the other two. She passed one to each Cro-Magnon, then unhooked a couple of knives from her belt and handed them to the primitives, too. She drew one more for herself. Greenberg had his own. She cut a chunk from her steak, stabbed it, and lifted it to her mouth. Fancy manners could come later.
Neither of the humans just out of cold sleep had recognized the metal knife for what it was—they were used to tools of bone and stone. But they caught on quickly. The man grunted in wonder as the keen blade slid through the meat. He grunted again, this time happily, when the first bite went into his mouth. Jennifer knew just how he felt. After so long on Foitani kibbles, every meal of honest food was a special treat.
The primitives made the steaks vanish in short order. They inhaled the strawberries and ate the apples cores, stems and all. When they saw that Greenberg and Jennifer didn't want their cores, they made questioning noises and reached out for them. Getting no rebuff, they ate them, too.
"Hunter-gatherers can't afford to waste any amount of food, no matter how small," the anthropologist said.
The man kept trying the edge of the knife with his thumb. The woman said something to him, rather sharply. With obvious reluctance, he held out the knife to Jennifer. The woman held out hers.
Jennifer shook her head as she made pushing noises. "No, they're yours to keep," she said.
When the primitives realized what she meant, they whooped with glee and pummeled her as they had Greenberg. The man also reached under her synthetic fur and squeezed her left breast. She knocked his hand away. He didn't try twice. She gave him points for getting the idea in a hurry.
She pointed to herself. "Jennifer," she said.
"Bernard." Greenberg did the same thing.
The man's eyes lit up. He thumped his own chest. "Nangar," he declared.
He spoke to the woman. "Loto," she said, touching herself.
"I wonder if those are names or if they just mean 'man' and 'woman,'" an anthropologist radioed to Jennifer and Greenberg. "Well, we'll find out soon enough."
Language lessons went on from there, with parts of the body and the names of things close by. Nangar seemed to have an easier time picking up Spanglish words than Loto did.
"Maybe the tribe next door spoke a different language," the anthropologist suggested. "We think men traveled more widely through a tribal range than women, so he could be more used to using different words than she is."
After a while, Nangar pointed to the distant herds, which were actually holovid projections on a not-so-distant wall. With his own speech and many gestures, he got across the idea of hunting and then feasting. He gazed confidently at Greenberg all the while. Jennifer said, "After you got rid of that Foitan, Bernard, he figures you can do anything."
Greenberg grinned wryly. "No matter how big a wizard I am, I don't think I can put much nourishment into a projection. Maybe it's time to distract him again." He spoke as much to the waiting anthropologists as to Jennifer.
A few seconds later, a couple of the scientists came out from behind a boulder. They wore modern cold-weather gear. Nangar and Loto drew back in alarm. "Friends," Jennifer said reassuringly. She went over and smiled at the newcomers, patting them on the back. So did Greenberg.
The primitives remained dubious until one of the anthropologists reached into her backpack and took out several pieces of roasted chicken. When she passed them to Loto and Nangar, she found that the way to their hearts lay through their stomachs. Although they'd eaten a good-sized meal not long before, they devoured the chicken and gnawed clean the bones the anthropologists discarded.
The woman who'd given them the treat looked faintly appalled. "The way they eat, it's a wonder they aren't two hundred kilos each."
"The fact that they aren't tells you how often—or rather, how seldom—they get the chance to eat like this," her male companion answered. She thought it over and nodded.
Seeing that friendly relations had been established between the primitives and the people whose job it would be to guide them into the modern worlds, Greenberg and Jennifer strolled casually toward the boulder from in back of which the anthropologists had emerged. Several more anthropologists waited in the doorway the boulder concealed. They greeted the two traders with almost as much enthusiasm as Nangar and Loto had shown. One of them—in the crowd, Jennifer couldn't tell which one—let his hands wander more than they might have. Whoever he was, he didn't have Nangar's excuse for bad manners—he was supposed to be civilized.
Jennifer changed back into proper clothes with more than a little relief. Greenberg was waiting in the hall outside her cubicle when she emerged. "Do you want to hang around for a while and watch them work with the CroMagnons?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Do you?"
"No, not really," he said. "They do want us to stay on call for a few days, though, in case they run into trouble and need our familiar faces."
"I suppose that's fair enough." Jennifer sighed. "Still, what I'd like most would be just to start picking up the threads of my normal life again."
"Normal life? What's that? I gave it up when I decided to become a trader. But I will say that the time I spent in the Foitani sphere turned out to be even farther from normal than I was quite braced for myself." Greenberg smiled and set his hand on her waist. "Not that all of it was bad, not by a long shot."
Her hand covered his. "No, not all of it was bad. We wouldn't have ended up together if they hadn't kidnapped me, and I'm glad we did. But I'm a whole lot gladder to be back on a human world again and to feel fairly sure no one's going to shoot at me or fire a missile at my ship in the next twenty minutes."
"Amen to that," he said. "All the same, I can't help wondering whether the kwopillot and the vodranet decided to talk things over or just slug it out."
"I wonder, too," Jennifer said. "Still, you did the right thing when you got us out of there. We never would have found a better chance. But I would like to know what the Foitani ended up doing. I wonder if we'll ever find out."
"Hello, dear," Ella Metchnikova said as her path crossed Jennifer's on the edge of the university campus. "You must come over to my place before long. I have a marvelous new—well, old, I should say—drink that everyone loves. It's called a Black Russian, and you simply would not believe what drinking two or three of them will do to you."
"Set you up for a liver transplant?" Jennifer asked, not altogether in jest—some of Ella's concoctions seemed to have been invented by ancient temperance workers intent on demonstrating the evils of ethanol poisoning by horrible example.
Ella laughed heartily. Despite mixological experiments too numerous to remember, her liver was still intact—unless, of course, this was her second or third by now. She said, "They're not as bad as all that. And bring your Bernard by. Perhaps he'd be interested in the recipe as something he could trade to, ah, aliens."
To unsuspecting aliens, Jennifer thought, inserting a likely word into Ella's hesitation. Her friend meant well, though, so she said, "Maybe he would be—you never can tell. Still, I can't bring him by for a while; he set out on a trading run last week and he won't be back for a few months."
"Really? What an—interesting—arrangement. Do you plan on, ah, consoling yourself with someone else while he's off being primitive?" Ella's eyes went big and round.
"No," Jennifer said shortly. Ella Metchnikova wanted everything to be melodramatic. Jennifer had been in the middle of enough melodrama to last her a lifetime. But however volatile Ella was, she came through in a pinch. Jennifer said, "Thanks again for putting my stuff into storage when I disappeared."
"It was only my duty, dear," Ella said grandly. "Unlike some I could name but won't—Ali Bakhtiar, for instance—I was always sure you would come back."
"There were a lot of times when I wasn't," Jennifer said. Her kidnapping and spectacular return with Nangar and Loto had given her brief media fame on Saugus; she wasn't the least bit sorry it had finally started to wear off. She and Greenberg hadn't given the snoops all the lurid details of their adventures; that would only have made getting back to the ordinary course of day to day life harder.
Ella looked down at her watch. "Oh, dear, I'm late; I must fly. Call me soon, Jennifer—promise you will."
"I promise," Jennifer said. She was late, too, not a good thing to be on the first day of a new semester. Ella went on her way. Jennifer hurried across the campus. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw people stop and look at her. That had happened before the Foitani kidnapped her, too, but now about as many were women as men—a legacy of having had her face in the holovid tank a lot. She hoped that sort of attention would die down soon. She wanted no part of it. Aside from Bernard, all she wanted was to get back to work.
Even that wouldn't be easy. Almost in a trot, she went past the building where she'd lectured before notoriety came her way. No hall in that building was big enough to hold a class the size of the one she'd be teaching today. The enrollment was three times as big as she'd ever had before, which angered her more than it pleased her. She wanted students who would be interested in the material she presented, not in her as a curiosity.
She checked the time and swore. Five minutes late—that was disgraceful. But there at last ahead of her lay the second biggest lecture hall Saugus Central University boasted. The rear double doors were closed, which meant all the students were already inside. She swore again. They had to be thinking unkind thoughts about her. She fairly ran toward the special faculty entrance, which let her in right behind the podium.
She dashed up the steps onto the lecturer's platform. "I'm sorry, class," she began as she got her first look at this year's crop of students. "I—"
She stopped dead. She knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help it. Better than three-quarters of the seats in the huge chamber were occupied by Foitani—blue Foitani from Odern, gray-blue Foitani from Rof Golan, green-blue Great Ones, purple and brown and gray and even pink Foitani from worlds she'd never heard of. Hundreds of pairs of round, attentive, deeply colored eyes bored into hers.
They didn't kill each other off, she thought. Good—I think. She took a deep breath and started her lecture. Translators droned to turn her words into ones Foitani could understand. Somehow she got through it. "I'm sorry; I can't take questions today," she said when she was through.
She hurried out of the lecture hall, found a public phone, fed her access card into it, and checked the listings. Then she made a call. A man's face appeared on the screen. "Universal Protective Services," he said. "We're the best on Saugus."
"You'd better be," she told him.