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Authors: Poul Anderson
Tags: Science-Fiction
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on this planet, so useless and lethal to them.
But I felt almost dizzy as I agreed that two or three of the newcomers might enter our compound along with the returning work
party. And when they came, destruction take thoughts of treachery, we left no one on the tower. We settled for barring the
gate before we led our guests into the hut.
Then I stood, soaked, hearing the rain rumble on our roof, crowded with my men between these narrow walls, and looked upon
wonder.
Our visitors were three. One resembled the Azkashi we had already met, though he wore a white robe of vegetable fiber and
a tall white hat, carried a crookheaded staff like some ancient bishop, and need but breathe a syllable for the others to
jump at his command. One was a giant, a good 240 centimeters in height. His legs and arms were disproportionately long and
powerful, his head small. He wore a corselet of scaly leather and carried a rawhide shield; but at our insistence he had left
his weapons behind. The third, by way of contrast, was a dwarf, also robed, but in gray. He kept his eyes shut and I took
a while to realize that he was blind.
The one with the staff waved his free hand around quite coolly, as if extraplanetary maroons were an everyday affair. “
Niao
” he said. I gathered this was his people’s name for themselves. He pointed to his own breast. “Gianyi.”
“Felip Argens,” I said, not to be outdone. I introduced my comrades and summed them up: “Men.”
“We’ve told him that much,” Urduga murmured in my ear. “He stood in the prow of that galley and talked for—you know how long.
But you’re better at the Yonder lingo than any of us, captain.”
I ought to be. I’d studied, as well as electro-crammed, what little had been learned on Zara. Not that we could be sure the
language was what the Yonderfolk used among themselves. It might well be an artificial code, like many others I had met, designed
for establishing quick communication with anyone whose mind wasn’t hopelessly alien. No matter. Gianyi of the Niao had also
mastered it.
“Sit down, everybody,” I babbled. “What can we offer them? Better not anything to eat or drink. Presents. Find some good presents,
somebody. And for mercy’s sake, whisky!”
We had a little guzzling alcohol left. It steadied me. I forgot the rain and the heat and the darkness outside, bending myself
to talk with Gianyi.
That wasn’t any light job. Neither of us had a large vocabulary in that language of gestures as well as sounds. What we had
in common was still less. Furthermore, his people’s acquaintance with it antedated mine by many generations, and had not been
reinforced by subsequent contact. You might say he had another dialect. Finally, a language originated by beings unlike his
race or mine was now filtered through two different body types and cultural patterns—indeed, through different instincts;
I had yet to discover how very different.
So I can no more set down coherent discourse for Gianyiand me than I could for ya-Kela and Valland. I can merely pretend:
“We came from the sky,” I said. “We are friendly, but we have been wrecked and need help before we can leave. You have met
others, not akin to us but also from the sky, not so?”
“They tell me such beings came,” Gianyi said. “It was before my time, and far away.”
That made sense. In an early stage of space travel, the Yonderfolk would have visited their neighbor planets. Finding intelligent
life here, they would have instituted a base from which to conduct scientific studies—before they discovered the space jump
and abandoned this world for ones more interesting and hospitable to them. And it would have been an unlikely coincidence
if that base happened to have been anywhere near here.
How, though, had the mutual language been preserved through Earth centuries after they left? And how had it traveled across
hundreds or thousands of kilometers to
But I felt almost dizzy as I agreed that two or three of the newcomers might enter our compound along with the returning work
party. And when they came, destruction take thoughts of treachery, we left no one on the tower. We settled for barring the
gate before we led our guests into the hut.
Then I stood, soaked, hearing the rain rumble on our roof, crowded with my men between these narrow walls, and looked upon
wonder.
Our visitors were three. One resembled the Azkashi we had already met, though he wore a white robe of vegetable fiber and
a tall white hat, carried a crookheaded staff like some ancient bishop, and need but breathe a syllable for the others to
jump at his command. One was a giant, a good 240 centimeters in height. His legs and arms were disproportionately long and
powerful, his head small. He wore a corselet of scaly leather and carried a rawhide shield; but at our insistence he had left
his weapons behind. The third, by way of contrast, was a dwarf, also robed, but in gray. He kept his eyes shut and I took
a while to realize that he was blind.
The one with the staff waved his free hand around quite coolly, as if extraplanetary maroons were an everyday affair. “
Niao
” he said. I gathered this was his people’s name for themselves. He pointed to his own breast. “Gianyi.”
“Felip Argens,” I said, not to be outdone. I introduced my comrades and summed them up: “Men.”
“We’ve told him that much,” Urduga murmured in my ear. “He stood in the prow of that galley and talked for—you know how long.
But you’re better at the Yonder lingo than any of us, captain.”
I ought to be. I’d studied, as well as electro-crammed, what little had been learned on Zara. Not that we could be sure the
language was what the Yonderfolk used among themselves. It might well be an artificial code, like many others I had met, designed
for establishing quick communication with anyone whose mind wasn’t hopelessly alien. No matter. Gianyi of the Niao had also
mastered it.
“Sit down, everybody,” I babbled. “What can we offer them? Better not anything to eat or drink. Presents. Find some good presents,
somebody. And for mercy’s sake, whisky!”
We had a little guzzling alcohol left. It steadied me. I forgot the rain and the heat and the darkness outside, bending myself
to talk with Gianyi.
That wasn’t any light job. Neither of us had a large vocabulary in that language of gestures as well as sounds. What we had
in common was still less. Furthermore, his people’s acquaintance with it antedated mine by many generations, and had not been
reinforced by subsequent contact. You might say he had another dialect. Finally, a language originated by beings unlike his
race or mine was now filtered through two different body types and cultural patterns—indeed, through different instincts;
I had yet to discover how very different.
So I can no more set down coherent discourse for Gianyiand me than I could for ya-Kela and Valland. I can merely pretend:
“We came from the sky,” I said. “We are friendly, but we have been wrecked and need help before we can leave. You have met
others, not akin to us but also from the sky, not so?”
“They tell me such beings came,” Gianyi said. “It was before my time, and far away.”
That made sense. In an early stage of space travel, the Yonderfolk would have visited their neighbor planets. Finding intelligent
life here, they would have instituted a base from which to conduct scientific studies—before they discovered the space jump
and abandoned this world for ones more interesting and hospitable to them. And it would have been an unlikely coincidence
if that base happened to have been anywhere near here.
How, though, had the mutual language been preserved through Earth centuries after they left? And how had it traveled across
hundreds or thousands of kilometers to
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