out our lunch.”
For a blink of time, while she dashed across the floor, he wished he could spend an hour being her human lover. To gaze into those curious half-white eyes, rub beak against beak and taste thick pink lips, send fingers down the long slim blue-veined throat, across the softnesses beneath to their sunrise-colored tips and on over a many- curved slope till they rested between her thighs… Did humans ever have such wonderings about Ishtarians? Unlikely; humans were too frail. His was the merest flicker of sadness that he could never be closer than now to her. Damn! When would she grab herself a mate and start whelping?
She cast herself onto her knees and into his arms. Her nails dug through the leaves of his mane.
Larreka bellowed for more cider. Jill liked it, too. “I brought you a kilo of tobacco,” she said.
“You brought more than that, I hear,” he answered. “Freeze-dried rations—You’re grand.”
She switched to English. He saw and felt the bleakness upon her. “You know about the ban on transport, don’t you? Instead of battering my skull against that wall, I kept quiet and… went around collecting firearms and ammunition. You’ve got mighty little in Valennen. I couldn’t be very bold, in case that Dejerine bastard got wind of it. But I bought, begged, borrowed, a couple of times I stole—about twenty rifles and pistols, plus a few thousand rounds for them.”
“Jill, you’re a laren!”
“The least I could do, Uncle. Let’s be practical, though. First, you’ll have to arrange for porters while you’re here, to help lug that stuff to the north coast.”
“Couldn’t you just flit it to Port Rua in a small vehicle?”
“Uh-uh. Too obvious. Dejerine could wonder why Miss Conway took a junket. He could check back and confiscate what he found. Whereas if I go off overland on a field trip, and the weapons aren’t really missed for weeks—You see?
“Another thing. Several thousand rounds aren’t that flinkin’ many. You know how ninety-nine percent are bound to miss in action, no matter how skilled the marksmen; and you have maybe ten skilled marksmen in Valennen, right? You’ll want an instructor who can spend a minimum of ammo on training more. And it’ll help if, come combat, that instructor is there in the line, firing shots that go where they’re supposed to.”
He understood before she had finished. “You don’t mean you aim to come along with me?” he exclaimed.
She nodded. She had drawn knees close to chin and folded arms around them; the ends of her wet hair stroked her breasts and left gleaming streaks. “I mean exactly that, Uncle.”
TWELVE
Dejerine had found it astonishingly hard to acquire a site for his ground installations. He wanted a place not too far from Primavera, and discovered an area two hundred kilometers eastward which his planetological team reported was suitable. It was otherwise useless land, stony, dusty when rain didn’t make it muddy, barren aside from scattered leathery shrubs, deserted by the natives. Repeated periastrons were doubtless responsible for that, droughts which killed off vegetation followed by cloudburst after cloudburst to wash away exposed topsoil. The planet had many such regions. Yet a substantial water table remained, the bedrock was solid, the surrounding hills could be quarried for building material.
He expected that the Tayessa family, to whose ranch this desert belonged, would be glad to sell it. No doubt they’d jack the price as high as they were able, but he had plenty of gold along, plus authority to draw pesos if Federation currency was demanded. He was dumfounded when, after conferring, the owners refused.
On the basis of what xenological knowledge he had, he replied to their representative: “I am aware that no individual owns the land, but rather the Tayessas do, and you must consider the rights of generations unborn.
However, surely titles change hands, for one reason or another. Have you the right to deny the unborn what my gold can buy?”
“What can it?” she answered through the interpreter Hanshaw had supplied. “The Red Sun is here. Who can eat gold, or shelter in it?”
“I can pay in money of my people.”
“How can we spend that, if no shipments are coming from Earth?”
In the end, he negotiated a contract which bound the Navy to send specified goods within a specified period. His superiors were going to give him hell for it; but no Ishtarians were likely to offer a better deal. The alternatives were either to set up in the antipodes, where only goblins lived, and thus complicate his job without end, or to seize and hold a spot by force. (Ah-ah-ah! Imperialism!) In writing his report, to go home by the next courier boat, he indicated tactfully but unmistakably that if the Navy did not honor the contract, he would resign his commission— and speculated how to let Jill Conway know he had done this.
Immediately upon taking possession, he brought down his men and established camp. Then he phoned to Primavera and requested a visit by Ian Sparling. The engineer should have a large amount of good advice in him, if he could be conciliated.
Sparling’s flyer landed the next day. Ever nearer to each other, both suns were aloft in a breathless sky. The cracked red clay wavered with heat; the hills around were gray and unreal. Prefab barracks clustered offside, ugly hemicylinders, while machinery cluttered the rest of fifty square kilometers, brawling like dinosaurs among sweating men. Dejerine, who had been making a general inspection, conducted him to an office small and bare but air- conditioned.
“Coffee or tea?” he asked as he settled down behind his desk. “And would you like a cigar?”
“Nothing, thanks.” Sparling’s voice might have blown off the south pole. He folded his lean length into a chair, took forth pipe and tobacco pouch, and got busy. “I don’t expect to be here long.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“Why should I?”
“I mentioned a consultant’s fee. And with your project suspended, you have nothing else to do, have you?” Dejerine considered the aquiline face. “I won’t make noises about patriotism. Let us be frank, you are hostile to my mission. But the sooner I complete it, the sooner I can release your resources back to you. Won’t you help to that end?” He paused. “Furthermore—please don’t misunderstand, this is neither a threat nor a bribe—I would like to see regular supplies coming to you from Earth again. My recommendations will carry more weight if I have done a good job fast.”
Sparling in turn studied him. “All right,” he said at length. “I think probably you are a decent sort. As we foulup humans go.”
Dejerine inhaled a cigar alight. However tiny, this thawing was an encouragement, especially since the engineer was a close friend of Jill. He should use the opportunity to learn a little more about these people, “Will you bear with a personal question?” he asked.
Sparling smiled sourly. “Go ahead. I may not answer.”
“Why do you long-term dwellers here have such an inferiority complex with respect to the Ishtarians?”
The other man was startled. “Huh? Who says we do?”
“Perhaps I phrased it badly,” Dejerine conceded. “But I have heard repeatedly how many superiorities to our species they have, both physical and mental. And yet… they fight wars too, don’t they?”
“Not every war is as senseless as yours,” Sparling snapped. He sat quiet for a few seconds. “No. Excuse me. I shouldn’t have made that remark, no matter how true it is. But as for, m-m, combative behavior, it can be a survival mechanism. To the best of my information and belief, no Ishtarians fight for anything but strictly practical reasons.” A new pause. “Not quite correct. Pride or revenge can be a motive, particularly in the young. However, always an individual motive. No Ishtarian ever tried to force a nationality or an ideology on someone else. Under all circumstances, killing is looked on as a regrettable last-ditch necessity.”
“Still, they do have ideologies, don’t they? Such as various religions.”
“Yeah. They aren’t fanatical about them.” Sparling seemed to grow more amicable as he talked. “I don’t believe any Ishtarian can become what we’d call ardently religious. Certainly this planet has never seen a proselytizing faith.”
“Not the—Triadic, do they call it?” Dejerine ventured a smile. “I have been reading, you see. How does that
