edge of her awareness, then it faded and she looked up into Bruce Peltzer's watchful eyes.
“Ill,” she said, not quite knowing where the word, or the conviction, came from, yet certain that it needed expression.
“Ill,” she repeated and moved her shoulders. “Needing more comfort than gives a norbear.”
The big man nodded, slowly.
“Well, he seems a likely yoster,” he said. “Couple things remain before I can accept him permanent. First being, does he take to me like he's apparently taken to Captain Smoke and yourself?”
He extended a large hand, palm up on the counter—and waited.
Hevelin stood very still, gripping Aelliana's finger. For a heartbeat, she thought he would dash away and scramble back into the safety of the carryall. She felt a thrill then, of what might have been determination, and her finger was released. Dropping to all fours, he bumbled across the counter with his usual cheerful insouciance and climbed into Bruce Peltzer's hand.
“Bold lad. Let's you and me get acquainted, eh? Maybe you can tell me a little more about your previous circumstances.” He looked at Daav.
“If you pilots would like to take an hour's tour of beautiful Staederport, or stop over at the Repair Pit for a bite to eat? I'll have something to say when you come back.”
Daav inclined his head. “Of course.”
He stepped away from the counter, leaving the bag where it was. Aelliana slid off of the stool, and hesitated, looking once more to Hevelin. He did, she allowed after a moment's study, seem to be engaged and not at all nervous. That was good.
She turned and followed Daav out into the warm drizzle. Behind them the door sealed with a loud snap.
Startled, she turned.
The autoscroll now read: Closed for lunch.
* * *
Daav scanned the street, finding no dangers more immediate than becoming waterlogged in the incessant drizzle, and glanced at his companion. She was, he thought, ridiculously appealing with her rain-flattened hair and drop-spattered face, despite which he sensed that she was about to tax him hard.
“You have a question, Pilot?” he murmured.
“In fact, three,” she answered, holding up her thumb. “What is 'bacon'?” Forefinger. “Why does he call you 'Smokey'?” Second finger—“Why should we be directed to a garage for lunch?”
Well, it was not an unreasonable list, he conceded.
“If it is all the same to you, I propose to address the last question first, as I am most wonderfully hungry.”
“So long as they are all answered, sir, and no stinting on the count!”
He grinned. “I will do my best to keep every card in play,” he promised, looking about them again. The very casualness of the suggestion argued that the Repair Pit stood close at hand; that it had been mentioned specifically, surely indicated that Bruce felt it to be a reasonably secure haven for two pilots new on-port, and who were also Liaden.
“Ah.” He'd spied the end of a scroll message in the gap between two shops. “Just a very short walk, and I believe we may satisfy our—or, at the least, my—craving for food.”
Aelliana fell in beside him without comment. She kept watch, too, also without comment, and he smiled again, with pride of her. At this rate of gain, she would be as port-wise as any courier might need to be inside of two relumma.
Not, he reminded himself, that they were to be traveling so long. They ought, indeed, to turn their wings toward Liad, as soon as Hevelin's affairs were settled.
“Daav?” Aelliana put her hand on his arm.
“Ah, your pardon! I was thinking how delightful it will be to again raise the homeworld.”
She snorted lightly, eloquent of disbelief, but all she said was, “Of course. Now. You were answering three questions, without stint, beginning with the third.”
“I don't know how it is that I keep forgetting that you are a teacher,” he murmured. “However, I will not be seen to step back from my word! The answer to the third question is that 'Repair Pit' is—a joke, Aelliana. A play on words.”
He might never be able to share her thoughts, but he could—and did—feel her thinking, sorting through her store of Terran words and meanings, fingering each as if it were a bright stone . . .
“So one repairs to the Repair Pit in order to repair the deficiencies of hunger and thirst,” she murmured, slowly. Then, more quickly, her voice bright with excitement: “It is another multiple meaning!” She tucked herself closer against him, her fingers tightening on his arm.
“At first, you know, I had thought Terran a flat language, with all of its information on the surface. It is . . . delightful to find that I have been wrong, though it is somewhat difficult to know how to fathom the depths.”
“That is precisely what makes learning a language so perilous,” Daav murmured. “For one must have the culture, in order to understand that there are depths. Often,” he added, looking down into her luminous face, “the depths are treacherous.”
“Certainly they must be! And the assumption that one has—or has not—understood the whole of the information being granted . . . ” She sighed. “It seems to me that the Scouts set themselves an impossible task, van'chela. How can you hope to fathom all?”
“No one ever fathoms all; even the most astute of native speakers sometimes err. It is . . . often . . . enough to
