Temporary Duty (34 page)

* * *

«This is truly remarkable. You people look just like our old stories.» The speaker shook his head. He also grinned, but he couldn’t help that. The species-name of the inhabitants of Keelisika was
enkheil
, with the last
e
pronounced more like long
a
, and their name for their planet sounded more like Kheeyithikha to Peters than what he’d heard from the Grallt.

Khrog Dhakgo and his mate Ghnal Dhango had large, deep-sunk eyes, pug noses with the nostrils facing almost directly forward, and long canines that slipped past one another to allow upper and lower teeth to meet. Neither of them shared the spectacular monochrome coloring of the ship pilots. Khrog Dhakgo’s hands and facial skin were a bit darker than Peters’s, and his all-over fur, or hair, was black, with reddish-brown overtones where the light struck it; his mate’s facial skin was darker, and her fur was the rich coppery red associated with freckles in humans. Their eyes had round pupils and irises shading from reddish brown around the pupil to electric green at the edges. They spoke Grallt fairly well, though with gargling accents; their native language ran heavily to things in the back of the throat. Peters’s name was impossible, so they called him John.

Ghnal Dhango laughed, high-pitched notes on an ascending scale like a showoff riff on a marimba. «Yes, the resemblance is notable,» she agreed.

«I hope the stories give us a good reputation,» Peters remarked, and both enkheil laughed again. «No?»

«Yes and no, both,» Khrog Dhakgo said.

«It’s different according to culture,» Ghnal explained. «Where I come from, the Mud People live in grass huts on distant islands. If you are shipwrecked there they’ll repair your ship better than it was before, but they won’t teach you to sail it the new way. You have to find that out for yourself.»

«In my home culture we have almost the same story,» Khrog Dhakgo put in. «Except that the houses are made of mud and straw, and you find them in the middle of the desert, and it’s wagons they’ll fix. The part about making you figure out for yourself how to operate the new machine is the same, though.» He grinned, or at least Peters assumed it was a smile, a matter of stretching his lips to show his gums. «Do you have any stories about us?»

«I can’t be sure,» Peters said with a smile of his own. «The ones with white wings look very much like our concept of
angels
, the assistants to God.»

«God? This is a name?» Khrog Drakgo asked.

Peters shook his head. «It’s our name for the first one, the one who created everything.»

«Oh, how nice!» Ghnal Dhango exclaimed. «Why, they even have the name approximately correct!» She frowned. «Khrog, we have to do something. It isn’t, oh, symmetrical that they should have such a nice story about us, and our stories about them should be so cruel.»

«Don’t worry,» Peters assured. «They’re only stories.» He grinned. «Building machines and not explaining how to work them properly does happen sometimes with us. Much more often than it should.»

«Perhaps so, but stories can affect your reputation,» Khrog Dhakgo said. He paused, nodded, and went on, «It is good, though, to hear from someone who makes sense about things. These Grallt and their friends would have us believe our long-ago parents crawled out of mud, can you believe it?» The two enkheil waited expectantly, but Peters forebore to reply, and after a moment Khrog Dhakgo laughed. «Ghnal, here we have a wise person. John, now that that’s out of the way, do you have any opinion on politics?» It took a moment for that to get through, but when it did, Peters laughed as heartily as the aliens.

Mealtime was winding down, Grallt, humans, and a sprinkling of enkheil wandering out in ones and twos and small groups, some stopping to chat with others who hadn’t finished. «We should go,» Peters suggested. «Operations will begin soon.»

Khrog Dhakgo shrugged, generating a pop of wing membrane. «Yes, I suppose so,» he said. «Preparations always take longer than they should.» He stood, looked around to check for clearance, and did a quick stretch, flourishing his wings. «On the way, would you mind giving me a closer look at your ship? The dancers have already had a full tour, but I wasn’t able to get close enough.»

«Certainly,» said Peters as he stood. The male kheil was a good six inches taller than his own six feet, but still stood a full head shorter than the ship crews. Neither of the enkheil wore much clothing; snug but not tight briefs covered their genital areas, and both had arrangements of straps running from neck to hipline. It was hard to see how they might be able to wear more, because their wing membranes joined their torsos from armpit to hipbone.

«Excellent. Ghnal, will you come with us?»

«Well, of course,» she said indignantly. «I’ll probably know more about what I’m seeing than you do.»

«The really terrible thing is that she is probably right,» Khrog Dhakgo told Peters with an air of confidentiality.

«Well of course I’m right,» said Ghnal with a sniff. «Males!» She stood in turn, doing the same scan for clearance and wing-flourish her mate had. Standing, she was about Peters’s height. «Ah, that feels better,» she said. «We don’t use chairs with backs. They’re confining.»

«I can understand that, I think,» Peters said. «If you are accustomed to flying, it must be hard to be forced into a small area.»

Both enkheil laughed at that. «We can’t fly,» Khrog said. «No enkheil can fly, except in zero gravity, or nearly zero. Our wings aren’t big enough to support us.»

«The best we can do is extend our jumps,» Ghnal added. «And if we fall from a height, we usually aren’t injured if we have time to spread our wings. But we have always dreamed about flying. It’s one of the reasons we adopted the zifthkakik so completely, and have so many space facilities. It’s very satisfying to live and work in a place where we really can fly.»

«And don’t try to tell me your people don’t feel very much the same,» Khrog chided. «That ship, the T’hongcat–»

«Tomcat,» Peters corrected.

«You know I can’t say that, any more than you can pronounce Ghnal’s name without hurting your throat.» Khrog grinned again. «The Tommcat,» giving himself the lie by carefully stretching his lips to make the sound, «was built by somebody who wanted very badly to fly, and spent a lot of effort achieving that.»

As the elevator clanked and banged its way to ops level Khrog Dhakgo remarked, «When I first came aboard, I thought perhaps the Traders had changed their ways. I have dealt with them before, and I have never seen their ship look so neat and clean.» He looked around. «But I see the change is superficial, if it exists.»

«Do you mean the cleanliness of the ship bay, and the fresh paint?» Peters asked. When Khrog Dhakgo nodded and looked at him he went on, «That is our work. We use large waterships, and have learned that they don’t continue to work well if they aren’t maintained properly. We convinced the Grallt to let us continue our habits.»

«I see.» Khrog regarded Peters steadily.

Ghnal produced another musical chuckle. «Oh, how wonderful! But you haven’t been aboard this ship very long, I see,» she said as they emerged in the ops bay. «The paint isn’t finished.»

«No, it isn’t,» Peters agreed with a nod. «And we still have a lot of other work to do. The aft door is working fairly well, but we haven’t had a chance to look at the forward one.» He smiled in retrospect. «And there are the elevators, of course.»

«Of course,» Ghnal said, projecting irony. She looked around. «Perhaps I’ll have a chance to see it after you finish. I would very much like that.»

«And I’d like very much to examine that portable weapon,» Khrog said as they approached the Tomcat. «Slug-thrower, isn’t it?» He gestured at the sailor standing guard.

«Yes, with chemical power,» Peters told him. Ridley, in dress blues with white helmet and Sam Browne belt, gave them a brief suspicious glance and returned to parade rest, M22 grounded. «I don’t think it would be a good idea to ask to look at it at the moment,» Peters continued.

«You’re probably right,» Ghnal said cheerfully. She looked the airplane over. «This is adapted from a chemical-drive atmosphere flyer, is it not? It’s pretty.»

Khrog Dhakgo snorted impressively. «Hah! Pretty, she says.» He glanced at Peters. «For myself, I think it looks fast, and powerful, and mean as a gveil in mating season.»

«Yes, all of that too,» Ghnal agreed cheerfully. «Khrog, could we do something like this?»

«I suppose so,» he replied, somewhat dubiously. He glanced at Peters. «It would be easier if the enhunan would sell us a few. Possible?»

«I don’t know,» Peters admitted. «Yes, it was once driven by chemicals. These housings–» he reached up to touch an intake cowling «–once held engines that took air through here, combined it with fuel, and ejected it from the back. The reaction propelled the
plane
–» both enkheil looked up at the English word, and Peters corrected, «–propelled the ship forward.»

«Yes, one of our thinkers proposed something similar, I believe,» Ghnal told him. «Before we met the Grallt, that is. Now of course we use zifthkakik.»

«And these structures are wings,» said Khrog, reaching to touch a leading edge. He could just reach it. «A very sensible arrangement, actually. Much more reasonable than things that fly around with nothing visible to hold them up.» He snapped his own wings out for emphasis, and Ghnal laughed.

«Yes, I feel much the same way,» said Peters with a chuckle. «We
humans
have only recently made contact with the Traders. The zifthkakik are still strange to us.»

The three moved around the aircraft, the two enkheil touching and remarking on things, Peters making explanations when necessary. They were interested in structure and manufacturing techniques, and thought the cockpits entirely too restricted; radio antennas and radar emitters elicited blank looks, at least partly because Peters didn’t have any words in Grallt to describe them. Once Khrog Dhakgo made a comment in his own staccato language, and Ghnal Dhango chided him. «Speak Trade, Khrog, you’re in public.»

«I said,» Khrog pronouced in an aggrieved tone, «that it is extremely well made. And it is, don’t you think? Look at the way the rivets are almost even with the surface. I don’t know anyone who uses that technique.»

«I agree completely,» Ghnal told him. «It’s as least as good as any of our work, and in many ways better. But John doesn’t speak our language, and you should be polite.»

«You are correct, of course.» Khrog produced a somehow wry version of the alarming expression that Peters had decided was a smile. «You haven’t shown us the weapons,» the kheil said. «They will be shooting at us, and we are interested.»

What little Peters knew about it suggested that the weapons suite had probably been more of a problem than the engine change. «This ship was designed to carry, ah–» he had no word for "missile", so he used English, with an explanation: «–
Missiles
, small independent ships that drive themselves toward the target. That wasn’t practical in this case, so instead it has these.» The wing hardpoints were empty, as were the aft missile racks; the forward missile racks were occupied. «We call this a
hell pod
, from the initial letters of its description.»

Ghnal ran her fingers over, but not touching, the lens at the business end. «I hear something in your voice that tells me that is at least partly a joke,» she noted. «What is a
hel
?»

«I should have expected you to spot it,» Peters said. «The name comes from our phrase
high energy laser
, which means ‘high energy’ and a special type of light emitter. But in our mythology,
Hell
is a place where bad people suffer after their lifetimes in extreme heat.»

Ghnal clapped her hands together. «Khah! How appropriate. May we look inside the housing?»

Peters shifted to English: "Hey, Ridley, any problem if I open up a HEL pod and show these folks what’s gonna be shootin’ at them?"

Ridley turned and shrugged. "They told me to keep people away unless they had an escort. I guess you qualify," he said sourly. He and Peters were not friends. "But if the fruitbats break anything, it’s gonna be your ass, not mine."

"Yeah, right." He turned and changed languages again: «It opens like this. Please support the end, I would prefer not to damage the paint.» Khrog Dhakgo obligingly supported the forward end of the panel while Peters produced his pocket tool and popped the fasteners.

«Oh, the interior mechanism isn’t enclosed,» said Ghnal when the panel swung down.

«No.» What was that all about?

«How does it work?» Khrog wanted to know.

«The basic technology is called
laser
. It produces an extremely intense light, which is powerful enough to damage the opposing ship. I’m not fully knowledgeable about the details.» Peters shrugged. «The weapon’s intensity can be adjusted, and has been reduced so that it will make a noise, and perhaps a small scar, without any real damage. The other ship-type has the same system. That one originally used
missiles
, and also had a slug thrower like a larger version of the one my associate has.»

Ghnal Dhango nodded. «Yes, it would be difficult to adjust the force of a slug thrower, wouldn’t it? And of course a slug thrower wouldn’t be much use against a ship driven by zifthkakik. Our ships have similar weapons, and have been adjusted the same way.» She reached inside the pod, coming close to the mechanism without touching it. «But ours come from the Makers, like the zifthkakik, and are enclosed so that the principle of operation is hidden. This is remarkable, Khrog. The enhunan–
humans
, that is not so hard to say. The
humans
have a higher technology than we did before the Traders came.»

Khrog Dhakgo nodded. «Yes, that was clear from the beginning.» He looked sharply at Peters. «Your people designed and built this, and know all the principles involved?»

Peters mused briefly on Japanese components, Mexican assembly plants, and the phrase "your people" as applied from a distance of umpteen jillion miles. «Yes to both questions,» he said without emphasis.