Doomstar

'You were different then. Shall I rumple your hair and hold you on my knee, and feed you exotic sweets from other stars until you get the bellyache and your mother hates me?'

'I thought you were a god then.' She had an exquisite smile.

'And what do you think now?'

'You're too big, your hands are coarse and your chin is bristly. You are most certainly not a god. But it's all right, Johnny. I still love you.' She laughed and poured him more wine.

Much later, Kettrick asked if Seri had had a woman with him, and Nillaine said no.

They feasted in the Tall House until long after the storm was gone. Kettrick got pretty drunk on wine and the happy feeling of being there, and the drunker he got the more a peculiar clarity affected his vision, so that he saw in the laughing faces of the beautiful little people who danced and sang and ate and drank with him a salting of new malice, a new excitement burning just beyond his sight, gleaming in the quick sidelong glances and secret smiles. Sometimes when the young men danced they made gestures like warriors, stamping their feet and tossing up their heads, and then the girls would run in and stop them and they would all laugh together and turn to some other dance, a little too ostentatiously. They reminded Kettrick of children who knew a big secret. They were keeping it from the adults…himself, Boker, Hurth, and Glevan.

He wondered why.

When it was quite late and he was quite drunk, and Whellan was drunker, Whellan leaned over and looked at him with deep affection and whispered, 'Johnny, you stay here with us. Eh? Just a little while. After that, the I– C…'

Nillaine interrupted. Whellan never finished what he was about to say. And Kettrick wondered.

After that, the I–C what?

9

Next morning, Kettrick thought that perhaps he had heen imagining things. In the soft warm sunlight the village seemed as peaceful as it ever had. The child-sized houses steamed as last night's rain dried out of them. Children as tiny as dolls ran about the green, their little voices piping, sweetly shrill. The grownups woke late after the feast and began without haste to make ready for the trading. It would go on for several days, until all the people from the outlying villages had had time to come in. There was no hurry. There was never any hurry here.

The peoples on the other side of Gurra were of different stocks, physically larger and temperamentally more aggressive. They were developing a more complex and technologically advanced society, readily assimilating ideas brought in by the traders and adapting them to their own uses. Quite a few of them had begun to migrate, anxious to see what wonders lay beyond their own sky.

Whellan's people, on the other hand, were indolent, incurious, completely self-satisfied. They already had the best of everything and they were happy with it. Mountains and jungle protected them. They had no enemies. The soil, with a minimum of labor, provided them with ample food, clothing, and building materials. Comfort came to them naturally in the gentle air.

Some articles, such as synthetic fabrics in brilliant colors, jewelry, cosmetics, metal knives and pots, and simple medicines, they were glad to get from the traders. Other things like electric generators and farm machinery they looked at with amused disinterest and total incomprehension, so that basically their culture had not been altered by the establishment of interstellar trade.

Whether it ever would be depended entirely on them. The League of Cluster Worlds forbade missions of any sort to sell people on anything, and the I–C enforced the ban. The appurtenances of many cultures were displayed for all to see. If people wanted them and were willing to work for them, they were welcome to have them. If they did not, the things were useless to them anyway. All over the Cluster could be seen the rusting remains of water works, power stations, and what have you designed to improve the lot of local populations who could not possibly have cared less and who never bothered with the contraptions, Since those early days, technological advances had been put on a strictly do-it-yourself basis.

Whellan's people had chosen not to do it. Some day, Kettrick supposed, their more energetic neighbors would swamp them under. But that was their lookout, and in the meantime they were blithe as babies playing in the sun.

He decided that what he had thought he had seen last night at the feast was only a sort of fever dream brought on by excitement and too much wine in that hot and busy room.

Then Chai, who had slept beside him on the floor and who had come with him now to stand outside the door of the Tall House, blew a long breath out through her nose and said, 'Not like this place, John-nee.'

Surprised, he asked her why.

She shook her head, peering slit-eyed at the sunny green. 'Smell wrong,' she said, and grunted, indicating that it was not possible to explain to a human why she felt that way.

Then Kettrick remembered again the sly glances and the hushed triumphant laughter, and he remembered Whellan saying, 'Stay here with us, a little while…'

He went back inside and shook Glevan and the two Hlakrans awake.

After that for four days they were busy. Kettrick took care of the trading. The others took care of Grellah, getting her ready for the next jump. All that time a singular nervousness stayed with Kettrick. Until she was ready for space, the planet-bound ship was a trap.

He did not know why he felt this way. Everything went smoothly. The trading was good. The people were as friendly as ever, and Nillaine hung at his elbow like a cheerful sprite, just as she had used to. Whellan entertained them all royally each night. But he did not repeat to Kettrick his invitation to stay a while. And Kettrick did not refer to it.

One thing became increasingly clear. Seri had not traded with the people. They came out to Grellah with their little carts and baskets stacked high with goods; fine-woven native cloth, carved things of rare wood and great delicacy, the much-prized purple-bronze skins of the big river snakes. They were rich.

Boker said shrewdly, 'Maybe he didn't take his pay in goods.'

'Drugs?' said Kettrick. He knew the little people still made and used their particular narcotic, in some religious rites. They were permitted to, as long as they didn't sell it. 'I wouldn't put it past him. The stuff would be worth a lot now, being so scarce. Only they certainly wouldn't have given it to him for nothing, and there isn't a sign of anything new in the village. You can tell that anyhow by the way they're trading.'

Boker shrugged. 'Whellan did say Seri's prices were too high. Maybe he did just have his trip for nothing.' He scratched his silver mane with a grease-blackened hand and added, 'But I'm damned if I see why he bothered to come at all. Seri, I mean, himself, in person. Not once, but several times. The market's hardly worth it.'

That was on the morning of the fourth day. At noon Boker came to tell him that the refitting job was done.

'Take over the trading,' Kettrick said.

'Where are you going?'

'To ask a couple of questions.' He frowned, feeling a little foolish as he went on. 'I want you to stick close, all of you. We might just want to take off in a hurry.'

'Huh,' said Boker. 'You get it too, eh?'

'Get what?'

'I don't know,' said Boker, 'and that's a fact. But don't trust your little friends too far, Johnny. They've got some kind of a bee in their bonnets.' He leaned closer. 'Glevan says it's a sign.' He grinned, but his eyes were serious. 'You watch, huh?'

'I'll watch.' Kettrick walked away through the fair-ground cluster of carts and little matting shelters and holiday people under Grellah's rusty bulk. Her cargo hatch was open, the lift mechanism clanking and groaning as loads went in and out. It was such a normal, peaceful scene, and the idea of being afraid of these people was so ridiculous, that he almost laughed.

'Ask a couple of questions, that's all,' he thought. 'And then we'll go.'