Suddenly the anger left him, and the fear. He was no longer a stranger
on a strange world. He was an archivist in an archive.
She took a better look at him and the local equivalent of a bright
smile shone on her face. "May I help you, til?" she asked in a softer,
sweeter voice.
"I am Balt, til," he said. "I am the new librarian."
She came out from behind the desk to offer the ceremonial toe touch.
"I'm Embelsira, the head librarian, and I am very glad to see you!" Her
tone was warm; she really seemed to mean it. "Everything's in such a
mess," she went on. "I've needed help so very badly, so very long." She
looked up at him, for she was a good deal shorter than he. "So glad,"
she murmured, "so very, very glad to see you, really."
"Well, now you have help," he said with quiet strength. "Where are the
files?"
They were written instead of punched, of alien design, in an alien
language, arranged according to alien patterns, but he understood them
at a glance. "These will need to be re-organized from top to bottom,"
he said.
"Yes, Til Balt," she said demurely. "Whatever you say."
* * * * *
Once every six months, Clarey went for a long weekend to visit
his "Aunt Askidush" in Barshwat. Barshwat was the largest city on
Damorlan; it was the capital of Vintnor--the greatest nation. Earthmen,
Clarey thought, as he traveled there in the comparative luxury of a
first-class compartment--as a rich nephew, he saw no real reason to
travel third-class--were disgustingly obvious.
That first time, he was five hours late, and Blynn was a nervous
wreck. "I was afraid you'd been killed or discovered or God knows," he
babbled, practically embracing Clarey in a fervency of relief. "I was
afraid--"
"Come, come, Colonel," Clarey interrupted, striding past him, "you know
how inefficient Damorlant transport is, and I had to make two chain
connections."
"Of course," the colonel said, wiping the perspiration off his
forehead. "Of course. And you must be dead tired. Sit down; let me take
your cloak--"
"How about the servants?" Clarey asked.
"This is their weekend off." Blynn pulled himself together. "Really, my
dear fellow, I've been in this business longer than you. I know what
precautions to take."
"Never can be too careful."
"I see you've got yourself another cloak," the colonel said as he hung
it in the guest snap. "Very handsome. I've never seen one like it."
"Yes. As a matter of fact, several people on the chains wanted to know
where I'd got it."
"Where _did_ you get it?" asked Blynn, feeling the material. "Might go
well as an export."
"Afraid it couldn't be exported. It's a custom job, you see.
Hand-woven, hand-decorated. It was a birthday present."
The colonel stared at him.
"Well," Clarey said, "if you didn't expect me to get birthday presents,
you shouldn't have put a birth date on my identity papers. My boss
baked me a melxhane--"
"Your boss!"
"The relationship between employer and employee is much different
from the way it is on Earth," Clarey explained. Reaching over, he
flipped the switch on the recorder and repeated the statement, adding,
"Embelsira is kind, considerate, helpful; she can't do enough for me."
He put his mouth close to the mechanism. "Be sure to tell MacFingal
that."
"Now, now," the colonel said, turning the switch off. He pushed a small
tea wagon over to Clarey. "You must be starving. Have some sandwiches
and coffee. I'm sure you'll be glad to taste good Earth food again."
"Yes, indeed," Clarey said, trying not to make a face. "Er--shouldn't
we start recording while everything's fresh in my mind?"
"Might as well," the colonel said, flipping the switch again. "Pity we
don't have a probe here. Would save so much time. But, of course, it's
an expensive installation. All right, Clarey, over to you."
* * * * *
Clarey choked on a mouthful of sandwich and hesitated. "Begin with your
very first impressions," the colonel urged.
"Well, the archives--the library--was in a real mess. Took me over two
weeks to get it in even roughly decent shape. Three different systems
of classification and, added to that--"
"Not so much the library, old chap. Leave the technical stuff for
later. What I meant was your first impressions of the natives....
Is something wrong with the coffee? And you've hardly touched your
sandwich. Maybe you'd like another kind. I have several varieties
here--ham and cheese and--"
"Oh, no," Clarey protested. "The one I have is fine. It's just that
I'm--well, to tell you the truth," he confessed, "I've grown accustomed
to Damorlant food."
"Don't see how you could," the colonel said. "Nauseating stuff--to my
way of thinking," he added politely. He opened a sandwich and inspected
the filling.
"You've only eaten at public places. Even the better restaurants don't
put themselves out for Earthmen, say they have no--palates, I guess the
word would be. But you ought to taste my landlady's cooking!"
"All this is being taped, you know. They'll have to listen to every
word on Earth."
"If only I could convey the true picture through words. Her ragouts
are rhapsodies, her soufflés symphonies--I'm using rough Terrestrial
equivalents, of course--"
"The cuisine comes later, please. Over-all impressions first."
"Well," Clarey began again, "at first I was a bit surprised that
you'd stuck me in a quarter-credit place like Katund. Naturally in a
village the people'd be more backward than in the cities, so you'd
have a poorer idea of how they were developing. Then I realized that
you couldn't help putting me there, that you probably couldn't write a
letter good enough to get me a job in any of the big centers. Embelsira
said she was surprised to find me so much more literate than she would
have expected from the letter."
The colonel sat erect huffily. "I've never pretended to be a
philologist. And, anyway, Damorlan isn't like Earth. Here the heartbeat
of the planet is in its villages."
"Earth hasn't any villages, so the comparison doesn't apply." Clarey
cleared his throat. "Don't you have anything to drink except coffee?"
"Tea?"
"That would be better. Do you know the Katundi have a special variety
of tea, or something very like it, which is--"
"Tell me what they think of Earthmen," the colonel interrupted
desperately.
"Not much. What I mean is, nobody in Katund's actually had any contact
with them, though they've heard of them, of course. Every now and then
there's a little article in the Dordonec Bulletin from their Barshwat
correspondent, and sometimes, if there isn't any real news, he gives a
couple of inches to the Earthmen."
"Exactly how do they regard us?" the colonel asked as he spooned tea
into the pot. "Demi-gods? Superior beings? Are they in great awe of us?"
"They regard us as visitors from another planet," Clarey said. "They
don't realize from quite how far away we hail, think it's only a matter
of a solar system or two, but they've got the general idea. Don't
forget, they may not be a mechanical people, but they do have some idea
of astronomy. They're not illiterate clods."
"What do they think of our spaceships? Great silver birds, something
like that?"
* * * * *
Sighing deeply, Clarey said, "They think our spaceships are cars that
fly through the sky without tracks. And they think it's silly, our
having machines to fly in the sky and none to go on the ground. There's
an old Dordonec proverb: 'One must run before one must fly.' Originally
applied to birds, but--"
"But what else do they think about us?"
Clarey was hurt. "That's what I was getting to, if you'll only give me
time. After all, I've been speaking Vangtort for six months and it's a
little hard to go back to Terran and organize my thoughts at the same
time."
"Terribly sorry," the colonel apologized, handing him a cup of tea.
"Carry on."
"Thank you. They say if you--if we--are so smart, why do we use hax or
the chains like anybody else? They think somebody else must have given
us the starships, or else we stole them. That's mostly Piq's idea; he's
the village lawyer and, of course, lawyers are apt to think in terms
like that."
"Um," the colonel said. "We didn't think it would be a good idea to
introduce ground cars. Upset their traffic and cause dissatisfied
yearnings."
"They're satisfied with their hax carts. They're not in any hurry to
get anywhere. But Katund's a village. Attitudes may be different in the
cities."
"You stick with your village, old chap. If you feel a wild urge for
city life, you can always take a weekend trip to Zrig. Stay at the Zrig
Grasht; it's the only decent inn. By the way, you spoke of a landlady.
Do you mean at the inn?"
No, Clarey told him, at first he had put up at the inn, but he found
the place noisy, the cooking poor, and the pallet covers dirty.
Besides, Hanxi had kept importuning him to go on visits to a nearby
township where he promised him a good time.
"I was wondering, though," Clarey finished, "if it would be possible
for an Earthman and a Damorlant to--er--have a good time together."
"Been wondering myself!" the colonel said eagerly. "I didn't dare ask
on my own behalf, but it's your job, isn't it? I'll check back with the
X-T boys on Earth. Go on with your story."
* * * * *
As a resident of the inn, Clarey told Colonel Blynn, he'd found that
he was expected to join the men in the bar parlor every evening, where
they'd drink and exchange appropriate stories. But he'd choked on the
squfur and was insufficiently familiar with the local mores to be able
to appreciate the stories, let alone tell any. He'd concentrated on
smiling and agreeing with whatever anybody said, with the result that
the others began to agree with Piq that he was a bit cracked. "They
were, for the most part, polite enough to me, but I could sense the
gulf. I was a stranger, a city man, and probably a bit of a lunatic."
A few of the younger ones hadn't even been polite. "They used to insult
me obliquely," Clarey went on, "and whisper things I only half-heard. I
pretended I didn't hear at all. I stood them drinks and told them what
a lovely place Katund was, so much cleaner and prettier and friendlier
than the city. That just seemed to confirm their impression that I was
an idiot."
He stopped, took a sip of tea, and continued, "The females were
friendly enough, though. Every time they came into the library they'd
always stop for a chat. And they were very hospitable--invited
me to outdoor luncheons, temple gatherings, things like that.
Embelsira--she's the chief librarian--got quite annoyed because she
said they made so much noise when they all gathered round my desk."
He paused and blushed. "I have an idea that--well, the ladies don't
find me unattractive. I mean they're not really ladies. That is,
they're perfect ladies; they're just not women."
"I'm not a bit surprised," the colonel nodded sagely. "Very well-set-up
young fellow for a native--only natural they should take a liking to
you. And only natural the men shouldn't."
Clarey gave an embarrassed grin. "One evening I was sitting in the
bar-parlor, talking to Kuqal and Gazmor, two of the older men. And then
Mundes came in; he's the town muscle boy. You know the type--one in
every tri-di series. He was rather unpleasant. I pretended to think he
was joking. I've learned to laugh like one of them. Listen." He gave a
creditable imitation of an agonized turshi.
* * * * *
The colonel shuddered. "I'm sure if anything would convince the chaps
back on Earth that the Damorlanti aren't human, that would do it. What
then?"
"Finally he made a remark impugning the virility of librarians that I
simply could not ignore, so I emptied my mug of squfur in his face."
"Stout fellow!"
"I knew he'd attack me and probably beat me up, but I thought that
perhaps if I put up a show of courage they'd respect me. There was
something like that in _Sentries of the Sky_ a year or so ago--but of
course you'd have missed that episode; you were up here. Anyhow, as I
expected, he hit me. And then I hit him...." He smiled reminiscently
into his cup of tea.
"And then?"
"I beat him," Clarey said simply. "I still can't figure out how I did
it. I think it must be because my muscles are heavier-gravity type." He
smiled again. "And I beat him good. He couldn't dance at the temple for
weeks."