gratitude. Perhaps Keff was a mage, but from a distant part of the world.
They began to exchange the words for objects. Keff led Brannel to different parts of the holding, pointing and making his query. Brannel, becoming more interested by the minute, gave him the words and listened carefully to the stranger-words with which Keff identified the same things. Keff was freely offering Brannel a chance to exchange information, to know his words in trade for his own. Language was power, Brannel knew, and power held the key to self-determination.
Behind them, the villagers followed in a huddled group, never daring to come close, but unable to stay away as Brannel claimed the entire, and apparently friendly, attention of a mage. Fralim was muttering to himself. It might have meant trouble, since Fralim saw himself as the heir to village leadership after Alteis, but he was too much in awe of the seeming-mage and had already forgotten some of what had happened. If Brannel managed to distract him long enough afterward, Fralim would forget forever the details of his grudge. It would disappear into the grayness of memory that troubled nearly every server on Ozran. Brannel decided to take advantage of the situation, and named every single worker to the mage. Fralim whitened under his fur, but he smiled back, teeth gritted, when Keff repeated his name.
The stranger-mage asked about every type of root, every kind of flower and herb in the sheltered garden by the cavern mouth. Twice, he tried to enter the home-cavern, but stopped when he saw Brannel pause nervously on the threshold. The worker was more convinced than he was of anything else in his life that this mage was not as other mages: he didn't know entry to the home site between dawn and dusk was forbidden under pain of reprisal.
Toward evening, the prepared food for the villagers appeared in the stone square, as it did several times every day. Brannel would have to pretend to eat and just hope that he could control his rumbling guts until he had a chance to assuage his hunger from his secret cache. He'd worked a long, hard day before he'd had to stimulate his wits to meet the demands of this unexpected event.
Muttering began among the crowd at their heels. The children were hungry, too, and had neither the manners nor the wit to keep their voices down. Not wishing to incur the wrath of the visiting mage, Alteis and Mrana were discussing whether or not they dared offer such poor fare to the great one. Should they, or shouldn't they, interrupt the great ones visit at all by letting mere workers eat? What to do?
Brannel took care of the problem. Keeping a respectful distance, he led Keff to the stone square and picked up the lid of one of the huge covered dishes. With one hand, he made as if to eat from the steaming tureen of legume stew.
Keff's eyes widened in understanding and he smiled. Though he waved away offers of food, he encouraged the villagers with friendly gestures to come forward and eat. Knowing that Alteis was watching, Brannel was forced to join them. He consumed a few tiny mouthfuls as slowly as he dared.
Fortunately, he had plenty of interruptions which concealed his reluctance to eat. Keff questioned him on the names of the foodstuffs, and what each was made of, pointing to raw vegetables and making an interrogative noise.
«Stewed orange root,» Brannel said, pointing out the appropriate field to the mage. «Grain bread.» Some of the grain the plough animals ate served to demonstrate what kind. «Legume stew. Sliced tuber fried in bean oil.» Beans were unavailable, having been harvested and gathered in by the mages the month before, so he used small stones approximately the right size, and pretended to squeeze them. Keff understood. Brannel knew he did. He was as excited as the mage when the box began to make some of the right sounds, as if finding them on its tongue: frot, brot, brat, bret, bread.
«Bread! That's right,» Brannel said, enthusiastically, as Keff repeated what the box said. «That's right, Mage-lord: bread!»
Keff slapped Brannel hard on the back. The worker jumped and caught his breath, but it was a gesture of friendliness, not disapproval—as if Keff was just another worker, a neighbor . . . a—a friend. He tried to smile. The others fell to their knees and covered their heads with their arms, fearing the thunderbolt about to descend.
«Bread,» Keff repeated happily. «I think I've got it.»
«Do you?» Carialle asked in his ear. «And does the rain in Spain fall mainly in the plain?»
«Ozran, I think,» Keff said, subvocalizing as the villagers picked themselves off the ground and came around cautiously to inspect Brannel who was smiling. Keff himself was wild with glee, but restraining himself for fear of scaring the natives further. «I can hardly believe it. I'm making progress faster than I even dared to hope. There's some Ancient Terran forms in their speech, Carialle, embedded in the alien forms, of course. I believe the Ozran's had contact with humankind, maybe millenia ago, significant contact that altered or added to the functionalism of their language. Are there any records in the archives for first contact in this sector?»
«I'll put a trace through,» Carialle said, initiating the search sequence and letting it go through an automatic AI program. A couple of circuits «clicked,» and the library program began to hum quietly to itself.
By means of Keff's contact button, Carialle focused on the antics of the natives. A few of the females were picking up the spilled dishes with a cautious eye on Keff, never venturing too close to him. The large, black-furred male and the elderly salt-and-pepper male examined a protesting Brannel. The slender male tried without success to wave them off.
«What is wrong with these people?»
«Mm-mm? I don't know. They're looking Brannel over for damages or marks or something. What did they expect to happen when I patted him on the back?»
«I don't know. Bodily contact shouldn't be dangerous. I wish you could get close enough to them so I could read their vital signs and do a chemspec analysis of their skin.»
Keff stood at a distance from the villagers, nodding and smiling at any who would meet his eyes, but the moment he took a step toward one, that one moved a step back. «They won't let me, that's obvious. Why are most of them so downright scared of me, but not surprised to see me?»
«Maybe they have legends about deities that look like you,» Carialle said with wry humor. «You may be fulfilling some long-awaited prophecy. The bare-faced one will come out of the sky and set us free.»
«No,» Keff said, thoughtfully. «I think the reaction is more immediate, more present day. Whatever it is, they're most courteous and absolutely cooperative: an ethnologists dream. I'm making real progress in communications. I think I've found the 'to be' verb, but I'm not sure I'm parsing it correctly yet. Brannel keeps grinning at me when I ask what something 'is.'»
«Keep going,» Carialle said encouragingly. «Faint heart never won fair lady. You're all getting along so well there.»
With every evidence of annoyance, Brannel fought free of the hands of his comrades. He smoothed his ruffled fur and glared at the others, his aspect one of long suffering. He returned to Keff, his expression saying, «Let's resume the language lesson, and pay no more attention to those people.»
«I'd love to know what's going on,» Keff said out loud in Standard, with a polite smile, «but I'm going to have to learn a lot more before I can ask the right questions about your social situation here.»
One of the other Noble Primitives muttered under his breath. Brannel turned on him and hissed out a sharp phrase that needed no translation: even the sound of it was insulting. Keff moved between them to defuse a potential argument, and that made the other Primitive back off sharply. Keff got Brannel's attention and pointed to the raydome water carrier. Listening to prompts from the IT program through his implant, he attempted to put together a whole sentence of pidgin Ozran.
«What are that?» Keff asked. «Eh? Did I get that right?»
From Brannel's merry expression, he hadn't. He grinned, giving the local man his most winsome smile. «Well, teach me then, can you?»
Emboldened by Keff's friendly manner, the Noble Primitive laughed, a harsh sound; more of a cackle than a guffaw.
«So,» Keff asked, trying again in Ozran, «what are yes?» He whispered an aside to Carialle. «I don't know even how to ask 'what's right?' yet. I must sound like the most amazing idiot.»
«What is that. What are those,» Brannel said, with emphasis, picking up one stone in one hand, a handful of stones in the other, and displaying first one and then the other. He had correctly assumed Keff was trying to ask about singular and plural forms and had demonstrated the difference. The others were still staring dumbly, unable to understand what was going on. Keff was elated by his success.
«Incredible. You may have found the only intelligent man on the planet,» Carialle said, monitoring as the IT
