The Helping Hand

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 cau-ianriho, 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 Vabino 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 his 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