"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try
to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked
like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its
appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held
it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what _kind_ of book? You have seen it. It
is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it
talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history?
Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a
subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how
they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must
kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
* * * * *
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot
behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than
you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will
kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand
and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,
brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not
twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far
away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just
disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer
toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items
around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand
against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed
through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for
a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle
softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but
his desire to hear the book was strong.
* * * * *
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the
syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been
a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,
Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in
sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers,
these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how
gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."