The Man Who Counts nvr-1 Read online

  “Plain to see, we have found a navy ship,” grunted Van Rijn. “Not so good, that. With a trader, I can talk. With some pest-and-pox officer with gold braids on his brain, him I can only shout.” He raised small, close-set gray eyes to a night heaven where lightning ramped. “I am a poor old sinner,” he shouted, “but this I have not deserved! Do you hear me?”

  After a while the humans were prodded between lithe devil-bodies, toward the cabin. The dugout had begun to run before the gale, on two reef points and a jib. The roll and pitch, clamor of waves and wind and thunder, had receded into the back of Wace’s consciousness. He wanted only to find some place that was dry, take off his clothes and crawl into bed and sleep for a hundred years.

  The cabin was small. Three humans and two Diomedeans left barely room to sit down. But it was warm, and a stone lamp hung from the ceiling threw a dim light full of grotesquely moving shadows.

  The native who had first met them was present. His volcanic-glass dagger lay unsheathed in one hand, and he held a wary lion-crouch; but half his attention seemed aimed at the other one, who was leaner and older, with flecks of gray in the fur, and who was tied to a corner post by a rawhide leash.

  Sandra’s eyes narrowed. The blaster which Van Rijn had lent her slid quietly to her lap as she sat down. The Diomedean with the knife flicked his gaze across it, and Van Rijn swore. “You little all-thumbs brain, do you let him see what is a weapon?”

  The first autochthone said something to the leashed one. The latter made a reply with a growl in it; then turned to the humans. When he spoke, it did not sound like the same language.

  “So! An interpreter!” said Van Rijn. “You speakee Angly, ha? Haw, haw, haw!” He slapped his thigh.

  “No, wait. It’s worth trying.” Wace dropped into Tyrlanian: “Do you understand me? This is the only speech we could possibly have in common.”

  The captive raised his head-crest and sat up on hands and haunches. What he answered was almost familiar. “Speak slowly, if you will,” said Wace, and felt sleepiness drain out of him.

  Meaning came through, thickly: “You do not use a version (?) of the Carnoi that I have heard before.”

  “Carnoi—” Wait, yes, one of the Tyrlanians had mentioned a confederation of tribes far to the south, bearing some such name. “I am using the tongue of the folk of Tyrlan.”

  “I know not that race (?). They do not winter in our grounds. Nor do any Carnoi as a regular (?) thing, but now and then when all are in the tropics (?) one of them happens by, so—” It faded into unintelligibility.

  The Diomedean with the knife said something, impatiently, and got a curt answer. The interpreter said to Wace:

  “I am Tolk, a mochra of the Lannachska—”

  “A what of the what?” said Wace.

  It is not easy even for two humans to converse, when it must be in different patois of a language foreign to both. The dense accents imposed by human vocal cords and Diomedean ears — they heard farther into the subsonic, but did not go quite so high in pitch, and the curve of maximum response was different — made it a slow and painful process indeed. Wace took an hour to get a few sentences’ worth of information.

  Tolk was a linguistic specialist of the Great Flock of Lannach; it was his function to learn every language that came to his tribe’s attention, which were many. His title might, perhaps, be rendered Herald, for his duties included a good deal of ceremonial announcements and he presided over a corps of messengers. The Flock was at war with the Drak’honai, and Tolk had been captured in a recent skirmish. The other Diomedean present was named Delp, and was a high-ranking officer of the Drak’honai.

  Wace postponed saying much about himself, less from a wish to be secretive than from a realization of how appalling a task it would be. He did ask Tolk to warn Delp that the food from the cruiser, while essential to Earthlings, would kill a Diomedean.

  “And why should I tell him that?” asked Tolk, with a grin that was quite humanly unpleasant.

  “If you don’t, said Wace, “it may go hard with you when he learns that you did not.”

  “True.” Tolk spoke to Delp. The officer made a quick response.

  “He says you will not be harmed unless you yourselves make it necessary,” explained Tolk. “He says you are to learn his language so he can talk with you himself.”

  “What was it now?” interrupted Van Rijn.

  Wace told him. Van Rijn exploded. “What? What does he say? Stay here till — Death and wet liver! I tell that filthy toad—” He half rose to his feet. Delp’s wings rattled together. His teeth showed. The door was flung open and a pair of guards looked in. One of them carried a tomahawk, another had a wooden rake set with chips of flint.

  Van Rijn clapped a hand to his gun. Delp’s voice crackled out. Tolk translated: “He says to be calm.”

  After more parley, and with considerable effort and guesswork on Wace’s part: “He wishes you no harm, but he must think of his own people. You are something new. Perhaps you can help him, or perhaps you are so harmful that he dare not let you go. He must have time to find out. You will remove all your garments and implements, and leave them in his charge. You will be provided other clothing, since it appears you have no fur.”

  When Wace had interpreted for Van Rijn, the merchant said, surprisingly at ease: “I think we have no choice just now. We can burn down many of them, ja. Maybe we can take the whole boat. But we cannot sail it all the way home by ourselves. If nothing else, we would starve en route, nie? Were I younger, yes, by good St. George, I would fight on general principles. Single-handed I would take him apart and play a xylophone on his ribs, and try to bluster his whole nation into helping me. But now I am too old and fat and tired. It is hard to be old, my boy—”

  He wrinkled his sloping forehead and nodded in a wise fashion. “But, where there are enemies to bid against each other, that is where an honest trader has a chance to make a little bit profit!”

  V

  “First,” said Wace, “you must understand that the world is shaped like a ball.”

  “Our philosophers have known it for a long time,” said Delp complacently. “Even barbarians like the Lannach’honai have an idea of the truth. After all, they cover thousands of obdisai every year, migrating. We’re not so mobile, but we had to work out an astronomy before we could navigate very far.”

  Wace doubted that the Drak’honai could locate themselves with great precision. It was astonishing what their neolithic technology had achieved, not only in stone but in glass and ceramics; they even molded a few synthetic resins. They had telescopes, a sort of astrolabe, and navigational tables based on sun, stars, and the two small moons. However, compass and chronometer require iron, which simply did not exist in any noticeable quantity on Diomedes.

  Automatically, he noted a rich potential market. The primitive Tyrlanians were avid for simple tools and weapons of metal, paying exorbitantly in the furs, gems, and pharmaceutically useful juices which made this planet worth the attention of the Polesotechnic League. The Drak’honai could use more sophisticated amenities, from clocks and slide rules to Diesel engines — and were able to meet proportionately higher prices.

  He recollected where he was: the raft Gerunis, headquarters of the Chief Executive Officer of the Fleet; and that the amiable creature who sat on the upper deck and talked with him was actually his jailer.

  How long had it been since the crash — fifteen Diomedean days? That would be more than a week, Terrestrial reckoning. Several per cent of the Earthside food was already eaten.

  He had lashed himself into learning the Drak’ho tongue from his fellow-prisoner Tolk. It was fortunate that the League had, of necessity, long ago developed the principles by which instruction could be given in minimal time. When properly focused, a trained mind need only be told something once. Tolk himself used an almost identical system; he might never have seen metal, but the Herald was semantically sophisticated.

  “Well, then,” said Wace, still haltingl
y and with gaps in his vocabulary, but adequately for his purposes, “do you know that this world-ball goes around the sun?”

  “Quite a few of the philosophers believe that,” said Delp. “I’m a practical (?) one myself, and never cared much one way or another.”

  “The motion of your world is unusual. In fact, in many ways this is a freak place. Your sun is cooler and redder than ours, so your home is colder. This sun has a mass… what do you say?… oh, call it a weight not much less than that of our own; and it is about the same distance. Therefore Diomedes, as we call your world, has a year only somewhat longer than our Earth’s. Seven hundred eighty-two Diomedean days, isn’t it? Diomedes has more than twice the diameter of Earth, but lacks the heavy materials found in most worlds. Therefore its gravity — hell! — therefore I only weigh about one-tenth more here than I would at home.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Delp.

  “Oh, never mind,” said Wace gloomily.

  The planetographers were still puzzling about Diomedes. It didn’t fall into either of the standard types, the small hard ball like Earth or Mars, or the gas giant with a collapsed core like Jupiter or 61 Cygni C. It was intermediate, with a mass of 4.75 Earths; but its overall density was only half as much. This was due to the nearly total absence of all elements beyond calcium.

  There was one sister freak, uninhabitable; the remaining planets were more or less normal giants, the sun a G8 dwarf not very different from other stars of that size and temperature. It was theorized that because of some improbable turbulence, or possibly an odd magnetic effect — a chance-created cosmic mass spectrograph — there had been no heavy elements in the local section of the primordial gas cloud… But why hadn’t there at least been a density-increasing molecular collapse at the center of Diomedes? Sheer mass-pressure ought to have produced degeneracy. The most plausible answer to that was, the minerals in the body of this world were not normal ones, being formed in the absence of such elements as chromium, manganese, iron, and nickel. Their crystal structure was apparently more stable than, say, olivine, the most important of the Earth materials condensed by pressure -

  The devil with it!

  “Never mind that weight stuff,” said Delp. “What’s so unusual about the motion of Ikt-hanis?” It was his name for this planet, and did not mean “earth” but — in a language where nouns were compared — could be translated “Oceanest,” and was feminine.

  Wace needed time to reply; the technicalities outran his vocabulary.

  It was merely that the axial tilt of Diomedes was almost ninety degrees, so that the poles were virtually in the ecliptic plane. But that fact, coupled with the cool ultra-violet-poor sun, had set the pattern of life.

  At either pole, nearly half the year was spent in total night. The endless daylight of the other half did not really compensate; there were polar species, but they were unimpressive hibernators. Even at forty-five degrees latitude, a fourth of the year was darkness, in a winter grimmer than Earth had ever seen. That was as far north or south as any intelligent Diomedeans could live; the annual migration used up too much of their time and energy, and they fell into a stagnant struggle for existence on the paleolithic level.

  Here, at thirty degrees north, the Absolute Winter lasted one-sixth of the year — a shade over two Terrestrial months — and it was only (!) a few weeks’ flight to the equatorial breeding grounds and back during that time. Therefore the Lannachska were a fairly cultivated people. The Drak’honai were originally from even farther south -

  But you could only do so much without metals. Of course, Diomedes had abundant magnesium, beryllium, and aluminum, but what use was that unless you first developed electrolytic technology, which required copper or silver?

  Delp cocked his head. “You mean it’s always equinox on your Eart’?”

  “Well, not quite. But by your standards, very nearly!”

  “So that’s why you haven’t got wings. The Lodestar didn’t give you any, because you don’t need them.”

  “Uh… perhaps. They’d have been no use to us, anyway. Earth’s air is too thin for a creature the size of you or me to fly under its own power.”

  “What do you mean, thin? Air is… is air.”

  “Oh, never mind. Take my word for it.”

  How did you explain gravitational potential to a nonhuman whose mathematics was about on Euclid’s level? You could say: “Look, if you go sixty-three hundred kilometers upward from the surface of Earth, the attraction has dropped off to one-fourth; but you must go thirteen thousand kilometers upward from Diomedes to diminish its pull on you correspondingly. Therefore Diomedes can hold a great deal more air. The weaker solar radiation helps, to be sure, especially the relatively less ultraviolet. But on the whole, gravitational potential is the secret.

  “In fact, so dense is this air that if it held proportionate amounts of oxygen, or even of nitrogen, it would poison me. Luckily, the Diomedean atmosphere is a full seventy-nine per cent neon. Oxygen and nitrogen are lesser constituents: their partial pressures do not amount to very much more than on Earth. Likewise carbon dioxide and water vapor.”

  But Wace said only: “Let’s talk about ourselves. Do you understand that the stars are other suns, like yours, but immensely farther away; and that Earth is a world of such a star?”

  “Yes. I’ve heard the philosophers wonder — I’ll believe you.”

  “Do you realize what our powers are, to cross the space between the stars? Do you know how we can reward you for your help in getting us home, and how our friends can punish you if you keep us here?”

  For just a moment, Delp spread his wings, the fur bristled along his back and his eyes became flat yellow chips. He belonged to a proud folk.

  Then he slumped. Across all gulfs of race, the human could sense how troubled he was:

  “You told me yourself, Eart’ho, that you crossed The Ocean from the west, and in thousands of obdisai you didn’t see so much as an island. It bears our own explorings out. We couldn’t possibly fly that far, carrying you or just a message to your friends, without some place to stop and rest between times.”

  Wace nodded, slowly and carefully. “I see. And you couldn’t take us back in a fast canoe before our food runs out.”

  “I’m afraid not. Even with favoring winds all the way, a beat is so much slower than wings. It’d take us half a year or more to sail the distance you speak of.”

  “But there must be some way—”

  “Perhaps. But we’re fighting a hard war, remember. We can’t spare much effort or many workers for your sake.

  “I don’t think the Admiralty even intends to try.”

  VI

  To the south was Lannach, an island the size of Britain. From it Holmenach, an archipelago, curved northward for some hundreds of kilometers, into regions still wintry. Thus the islands acted as boundary and shield: defining the Sea of Achan, protecting it from the great cold currents of The Ocean.

  Here the Drak’honai lay.

  Nicholas van Rijn stood on the main deck of the Gerunis, glaring eastward to the Fleet’s main body. The roughly woven, roughly fitted coat and trousers which a Sailmaker had thrown together for him irritated a skin long used to more expensive fabrics. He was tired of sugar-cured ham and brandied peaches — though when such fare gave out, he would begin starving to death. The thought of being a captured chattel whose wishes nobody need consult was pure anguish. The reflection on how much money the company must be losing for lack of his personal supervision was almost as bad.

  “Bah!” he rumbled. “If they would make it a goal of their policy to get us home, it could be done.”

  Sandra gave him a weary look. “And what shall the Lannachs be doing while the Drak’honai bend all their efforts to return us?” she answered. “It is still a close thing, this war of theirs. Dra’ho could lose it yet.”

  “Satan’s hoof-and-mouth disease!” He waved a hairy fist in the air. “While they squabble about their stupid little territories, th
e Solar Spice Liquors is losing a million credits a day!”

  “The war happens to be a life-and-death matter for both sides,” she said.

  “Also for us. Nie?” He fumbled after a pipe, remembered that his meerschaums were on the sea bottom, and groaned. “When I find who it was stuck that bomb in my cruiser—” It did not occur to him to offer excuses for getting her into this. But then, perhaps it was she who had indirectly caused the trouble. “Well,” he finished on a calmer note, “it is true we must settle matters here, I think. End the war for them so they can do important business like getting me home.”

  Sandra frowned across the bright sun-blink of waters. “Do you mean help the Drak-honai? I do not care for that so much. They are the aggressors. But then, they saw the wives and little ones hungry—” She signed. “It is hard to unravel. Let such be so, then.”

  “Oh, no!” Van Rijn combed his goatee. “We help the other side. The Lannachska.”

  “What!” She stood back from the rail and dropped her jaw at him. “But… but—”

  “You see,” explained Van Rijn, “I know a little something about politics. It is needful for an honest businessman seeking to make him a little hard-earned profit, else some louse-bound politician comes and taxes it from him for some idiot school or old-age pension. The politics here is not so different from what we do out in the galaxy. It is a culture of powerful aristocrats, this Fleet, but the balance of power lies with the throne — the Admiralty. Now the admiral is old, and his son the crown prince has more to say than is rightful. I waggle my ears at gossip — they forget how much better we hear than they, in this pea-soup-with-sausages atmosphere. I know. He is a hard-cooked one, him that T’heonax.

  “So we help the Drak’honai win over the Flock. So what? They are already winning. The Flock is only making guerrilla now, in the wild parts of Lannach. They are still powerful, but the Fleet has the upper hand, and need only maintain status quo to win. Anyhow, what can we, who the good God did not offer wings, do at guerrillas? We show T’heonax how to use a blaster, well, how do we show him how to find somebodies to use it on?”