“Twaphu-anuph, you exceed your prerogatives, which do not include heaping personal abuse on a fellow acolyte of the Great Institutes. However, if you pass us through at once, I may refrain from lodging a formal protest.”
Perhaps it was fatigue from a long, successful mission that gave Harry’s voice a more confident tenor. To his surprise, the big hoon seemed unmotivated to continue his traditional derisive taunting. Twaphu-anuph held out a giant hand.
“Hr-rr-r. Show me the humans’ identification tags. Please.”
Harry shook his head.
“They are specimens claimed for observation by the Navigation Institute, entering Kazzkark under my own credentials. You may image both humans and do a bio scan before letting us through. That should take about thirty duras to accomplish. Regulations do not allow a longer delay. Or shall I complain to Wer’Q’quinn?”
Their eyes met. A low, rumbling sound fluttered from below Twaphu-anuph’s chin as the throat sac drummed. Harry knew he was being roundly cursed in a semiprivate racial dialect. Formal insult could not be taken, since no official Galactic language was involved, but several onlookers seemed to grasp the cutting remark, expressing agreement or amusement in their own ways. Ever since the debacle at the NuDawn Colony, centuries ago, malevolence from hoons had been a tedious fact of life to members of beleaguered Earthclan.
Dwer Koolhan abruptly burst out laughing, a sound that cut through Twaphu-anuph’s hostile umble, causing it to trip and founder. The hoon gave up a surprised stare as the young human responded in Anglic — also an unofficial tongue, but one that many sophonts understood these days.
“Ouch, what a good cut! Hold on there a dura, while I explain to this poor chimp what you just said about his body type, his ancestors, and all that!”
Leaning toward Harry, Dwer offered a quick wink and whispered.
“Smile and pretend you’re tellin’ me something to say back at the fool.”
Harry blinked.
“What do you think you’re trying to—”
Dwer stood up straight again, guffawing loudly and pointing at Harry. He made as if to say something to Twaphu-anuph, but was unable to get by gasps of laughter.
“He says … the chimp says …”
Rety wore a sour expression, rolling her eyes. But Harry could only stare in amazement as Dwer gathered a deep breath, looked straight at Twaphu-anuph … and began approximating a deep hoonish umble!
A kind of ferocity seemed to flash in Dwer’s eyes as he threw a belchlike groan at the officious inspector, whose throat flapped with astonishment and dismay.
Abrupt silence reigned when Dwer took a breath and switched to Anglic.
“There, wasn’t that clever? Where I come from, any chimp who said something like that would be called a real—”
Harry grabbed Dwer’s arm and squeezed. The young man was wiry for a human, but no match for chim strength. Obediently, Dwer cut off at once, smiling amiably at the crowd. None had ever heard an Earthling umble before. It sure was a first for Harry!
Then, as if for good measure, Rety’s little “husband” stuck his little urrish head out from her pouch, giving the tall hoon a hiss of raspberry scorn, prompting still more surprised shouts from the throng.
“Enough!” Twaphu-anuph cried, slamming his heavy fist on a switch, causing the portal to fly open. “Hoontalking humans? Earth-talking hoons? Has the whole cosmos gone crazy? Get out of here! Go!”
While the bureaucrat buried his massive head in his hands, Harry kept his grip on Dwer’s arm, pulling until all of them passed safely onto the covered avenues of Kazzkark, letting go only when the Ingress Atrium was far behind them.
Stepping back, he regarded the sooner boy, as if for the first time.
After a long pause, Harry grunted with a brief nod.
“I got just one question for you.”
“Yes?” Dwer replied.
“Can you teach me how to do what you did back there?”
There are ways of reporting an event that make it seem uneventful.
While waiting in Wer’Q’quinn’s lobby for his boss to see him, Harry quickly modified his written account of meeting Dwer and Rety in E Space, removing his surmise that they came from a sooner world. It wasn’t necessary to hide any actual facts. Who else but another Earthling would recognize Dwer’s handsewn buckskins and neolithic weaponry for what they were?
He could rationalize that he wasn’t really breaking his oath. Sort of.
“Your ship broke down and you lost all personal effects before the machine craft picked you up,” he coaxed the pair. “You also suffered brain damage, resulting in partial amnesia. That should qualify you for basic aid, under the Traveler’s Assistance Tradition. Maybe enough to pay for air, water, and protein till you find a way to earn your keep. Got that?”
While Dwer nodded soberly, Rety murmured to the little male urs.
“You hear that, yee? Brain damage? I bet Dwer can fake that real good.”
Her “husband” responded by aiming a swift nip at her left hand, which she yanked back just in time. All at once, Harry decided he liked the small creature.
“I know some people in Low Town,” he said. “Maybe they can find the two of you some jobs you’re suited for. Meanwhile, here’s a data chip with standard information about Kazzkark and the surrounding sector,” he continued, handing over a clear rod, which Rety slid into her prize possession — a rather beat-up-looking tutorial computer of Terran design. “Study hard while I’m inside. When I finish, I’ll take you someplace safe. But in return I’m gonna want your story — the whole story, you understand? About your home and everything.”
Both humans nodded, and Harry felt sure they meant it.
A musical chime seemed to fill the air — a unique rhythm and melody that Harry had been taught to recognize more surely than his own name.
A summons. Wer’Q’quinn’s staff must have finished going through his data, taken by instruments that had peered at the Real Cosmos from the outside.
At last, he thought, standing up. Already the two young humans were immersed in images from the teaching unit, so he left without a word. Hurrying toward his boss’s office, Harry felt growing excitement. With this recent success, he had earned some consideration from the Navigation Institute. Perhaps enough to be let in on the big secret.
Maybe now someone will tell me what in Ifni’s Probabilistic Purgatory is going on!
Several miduras passed before he emerged at last from Wer’Q’quinn’s sanctuary, feeling rather dazed.
He had hoped for an explanation.
Now Harry wondered if it was such a good idea, after all.
Ain’t it always like this? The gods warn us to be careful what we wish for. Sometimes it comes true.
• • •
There was good news, bad news … and tidings that were downright terrifying.
First came congratulations on surviving a hard voyage. The changed fur coloring — plus addition of a new body appendage — seemed relatively mild compared to the afflictions that some other observers came home with. He was given a generous personal compensation allowance, and the NavInst staff said nothing more about it.
As for the mission, Wer’Q’quinn could not be more pleased. Using the peculiar perspectives of E Space to gaze in at the sidereal universe, Harry’s cameras had measured a progressive stretching of the underlying subvacuum. A process that was rapidly nearing rupture. Thanks to his bold mission, Wer’Q’quinn’s local savants knew almost as much about this process as their august superiors, back at Quadrant HQ.
That was also the bad news.
Those superiors must have known for some time what was going on. Yet they had delayed declaring an emergency till the last moment. Even now they were downplaying public fears.
“Could it be a conspiracy?” Harry had asked Wer’Q’quinn, at one point.
