A Grand Tour

one. She didn't approve, but it wasn't her place to object; anyway, that would be a waste of breath.

'I've arranged to borrow an air car for you and the master tomorrow,' Beresford said. 'A farmer named Holdt's staying in town and lent it. I was coming to tell him that, but I wonder if you'd… ?'

'Yes, all right,' Mincio said. There was no telling when Beresford would get back to the Singh compound, and there was no need for him and his presumed whores to come any closer to the party in his master's honor.

'Thank you, Ms. Mincio,' Beresford said, tipping his hat and returning to his companions. 'We'll be off, then.'

Beresford seemed to like Mincio well enough, and he never failed to treat her as the gentlewoman she was by birth. There was always an undercurrent of amused contempt when he spoke to her, though. Beresford knew his status; Mincio was neither fish nor fowl. As she'd said to Lalita, poverty was as surely a trap as any backward planet could be.

'We should get back anyway,' Mincio said. 'Though I don't know that I'm going to be ready for anything faster than a saraband.'

They turned together, putting the breeze behind them. It felt cool now. Snatches of Beresford's song reached them; Mincio hoped that the girl couldn't understand the words, though she didn't suppose anyone on Hope could be described as 'delicately brought up.'

Two figures came up the alley just ahead of them. A man and a boy, Mincio first thought; then realized she'd been wrong in both identifications. The first growler she'd seen on Hope was following an old woman who wore a cloak and floppy hat as she plodded steadily toward the dance.

'Oh, it's Ms. deKyper,' Lalita said, her lips close to Mincio's ear so as not to be overheard. The old woman was only a few steps ahead. 'She's from Haven. She's been here oh! so many years, studying the Alphanes like you. She used to be rich, but something happened back home and now she just scrapes by.'

'I'd like to meet her,' Mincio said. 'If she's as expert as you say, she'd be a perfect guide for the time we're on Hope.'

'Ms. deKyper?' Lalita called. 'May I introduce our guest, Ms. Mincio of Manticore?'

'Oh my goodness!' deKyper said. She swept her hat off as she turned; a thin, tired woman, showing her advanced age despite prolong, whose eyes nonetheless sparkled in the area light flooding from the compound across the street. 'I'm honored I'm sure. I came as soon as I heard that scholars touring the Alphane worlds had arrived.'

Her face hardened in wooden disapproval. 'You're not, I trust,' she said, 'associated with Lord Orloff and his fellow savages?'

'We are not,' Mincio said, her tone an echo of the older woman's. They touched fingertips. 'While my friend and pupil Sir Hakon Nessler may gather a small souvenir here or there, for the most part we view and record artifacts with the intention of recreating some of them on his estate.'

The growler stuck out a tongue almost twenty centimeters long and licked Mincio's hand. The contact was rough but not unpleasant, something like the touch of a dry washcloth. It was completely unexpected, though, and Mincio jerked back as if from a hot burner.

'Oh, I'm very sorry!' deKyper said. 'She's quite harmless, believe me.'

'I didn't know what it was,' Mincio said in embarrassment. 'I was just startled.'

The growler's broad forehead tapered abruptly to the nose and jaws from which the tongue had snaked. Its skin was covered with fine scales; they showed a sheen but no particular color under the present dim light. According to images and travelers' descriptions, growlers were generally gray or green.

Mincio reached tentatively to stroke the beast's head; it began to purr with the deep buzzsaw note that had gotten the creatures their common name. The sound was a shock to hear even though she knew it was friendly, not a threatening growl.

'Does he have a name?' Mincio asked. The growler licked her wrist as she petted it. The tongue was remarkable, virtually a third hand in addition to the four-fingered appendages on the ends of the arms.

'She, I believe,' deKyper said, 'but I don't know her name.'

She straightened and added with the emphasis of someone who knows she's making an insupportable statement, 'There's no doubt that growlers are the real Alphanes. I can tell by the way she attends when I play Alphane books.'

'Can you read Alphane crystals, Ms. deKyper?' Lalita said. 'Oh, that's wonderful! I didn't know that.'

'Well…' the old woman temporized. 'I've discovered the frequency at which the crystal books are intended to be played, but I haven't deciphered the symbology as yet. I'm sure that will come in time.'

And so will Christ and His angels, Mincio thought. Another enthusiast who's discovered the key to the universe by studying the site of the Great Sphinx of Giza; or here, its Alphane equivalent.

Aloud she said, 'Would you care to meet my companion, Sir Hakon Nessler? We like to have a guide knowledgeable about local sites when we visit a planet. Of course there'd be a special honorarium for a scholar like you, if you wouldn't be embarrassed.'

The growler stopped licking Mincio and shuffled close to deKyper again. Though its hind legs were short, the beast was fully bipedal. It leaned its head against deKyper's chest and resumed its thunderous purr.

'I long ago stopped being embarrassed at honest ways to receive money,' deKyper said with a wan smile. 'And it doesn't happen so frequently that I'm apt to get bored with the experience, either. In any case, I'd be proud to accompany real scholars.'

Her resemblance to her pet went beyond a degree of physical similarity that itself was surprising in members of such different species. They both shared a dreamy harmlessness, and neither really belonged — here or perhaps anywhere. Mincio could empathize with the lack of belonging, but she herself was unlikely ever to be mistaken for a dreamer.

Perhaps deKyper understood Mincio's guardedly neutral expression; wistful the old woman might be, but she certainly wasn't stupid. 'It's of particular importance that we translate Alphane books,' she said. 'The knowledge and the public excitement that will generate in the developed regions will bring tourists to the Alphane worlds in large numbers.'

'You want mass tourism?' Mincio said. 'I would have thought…'

'Ms. Mincio,' deKyper said, 'if only scholars like you and your companion toured the Alphane worlds, I would be delighted. But for every pair like yourselves there's a party which knocks chunks off the pylons with a hammer — and now we have the unspeakable barbarians from Melungeon who plan to spirit a pylon clean away! Only large-scale interest among civilized peoples will permit arrangements that will save the remaining artifacts for future generations.'

'I see,' Mincio said. She fully empathized with the old woman's hopes, but wishful thinking about the translation of Alphane books wouldn't bring those hopes to fruition. 'Let's go see Nessler, Ms. deKyper. And perhaps tomorrow while the three of us visit the Six Pylons, our technician Rovald can stay behind to take a look at the crystals in your collection. She has an absolute genius at anything to do with electronics.'

The three women walked toward the music and the fan of light spilling through the warehouse doorway. The growler followed with a rumble of soft contentment.

* * *

Nessler dropped the air car skillfully downwind of the long tent with its sides rolled up. The dozen people sitting at cards in its shade turned to watch the vehicle land. A few of them got up.

Hundreds of workers with hand tools continued to toil. Some dug away the ground at the base of the tallest pylon while others carried loosened earth from the pit in baskets to pour in a heap a hundred meters away. The men wore shorts; the women sometimes as little. Mincio frowned at thought of what the sun and gritty wind must be doing to their skin. The burrows in the gully wall east of the site must be housing for the laborers.

'Oh, the barbarians,' deKyper whimpered from the back seat. The pylon was the easternmost of the line of six. Almost the entire length of the shaft was covered by countergrav rings like those used for moving heavy gear aboard a warship. Several of the rings were dark, obviously dead, while others shimmered nervously with a surface discharge that implied incipient failure.

The party — the officers under the tent at least — had arrived on an ornate air car big enough to carry all of them together. A cutter had landed nearby in the recent past. Despite the skirling wind, the scars from its lift jets remained as pits in the soil.