Part 9 (2/2)
”And what,” Chmeee asked, ”of these?” He showed polished black claws.
”Give me one tiny dagger against your eight. Or give me none, I will fight without.”
Louis was chortling. He used the intercom. ”Chmeee, haven't you ever seen a bullfight? And this one must be the Patriarch of the herd, the king giant!”
The giant asked, ”Who or what was that?”
”That was Louis.” Chmeee's voice dropped. ”There is danger for you. I urge you to be respectful. Louis is ... fearsome.”
Louis was a little startled. What was this? A reverse G.o.d Gambit, with the Voice of Louis Wu as guest star? It could work, if Chmeee the ferocious kzin was clearly afraid of an unseen voice ... Louis said, ”King of Plant Eaters, tell me why you attacked my wors.h.i.+ppers.”
”Their beasts ate our forage,” said the giant.
”Was there forage elsewhere, that you could avoid risking my anger?”
Among the males of a herd of cattle or buffalo, one either dominates or submits. There is no middle ground. The giant's eyes rolled, seeking escape, but there was none. If he couldn't dominate Chmeee, how could he cow an unseen voice?
”We had no choice,” he said. ”To spinward are the fire plants. To port are the Machine People. To starboard is a high ridge of exposed scrith. Nothing will grow on scrith, and it is too slippery to climb. To antispinward is gra.s.s, and nothing to stop us but small savages, until you came! What is your power, Louis? Are my men alive?”
”I let your men live. In”-fifty miles, running naked and hungry-”... in two days they will be with you. But I can kill you all with a motion of my finger.”
The giant's eyes searched the ceiling, pleading. ”If you can kill the fire plants, we will wors.h.i.+p you.”
Louis settled back to think. Suddenly it was no longer fun.
He heard the giant begging Chmeee for information on Louis; he heard Chmeee lying outrageously. They'd played such games before. The G.o.d Gambit had kept them alive during their long return to the Liar; Speaker-To-Animals's reputation as a war G.o.d, and the natives' offerings, had kept them from starvation. Louis hadn't realized that Speaker / Chmeee enjoyed it.
Sure, Chmeee was having fun. But the giant was pleading for help, and what could Louis do against sunflowers? Actually, it was hardly a problem. The giants had offended him, hadn't they? G.o.ds in general were not noted for forgiveness. So Louis opened his mouth, and closed it again, and thought some more, and said, ”For your life and the lives of your people, tell me the truth. Can you eat the fire plants if they do not burn you first?”
The giant answered eagerly. ”Yes, Louis. We forage along the border at night, when we grow hungry enough. But we must be far away by dawn! The plants can find us miles away, and they burn anything that moves! They all turn at once, they turn the glare of the sun on us, and we burn!”
”But you can eat them when the sun isn't s.h.i.+ning.”
”Yes.”
”How do the winds blow in this region?”
”Winds? ... In these parts they blow to spinward. For great distances around, they blow only into the realm of fire plants.”
”Because the plants heat the air?”
”Am I a G.o.d, to know that?”
After all, the sunflowers only got a certain amount of sunlight. The way they worked, they'd heat the air around and above them, but the sunlight would never pa.s.s the silver blossoms to reach the roots. Dew would condense on the cool soil. The plants would get their moisture that way. And rising hot air would bring a steady wind from the borders of the sunflower patch.
And the plants burned anything that moved, to turn plant-eating beasts and birds into fertilizer.
He could do it. He could.
”You will do most of the work yourself,” Louis said. ”The tribe is yours and you will save them. Afterward, you and they will turn toward the dying fire plants. Eat them, or plow them under and plant whatever you like to eat.” Louis grinned at Chmeee's bewilderment, and continued, ”You will never disturb my wors.h.i.+ppers, the red people.”
The armored giant was gloriously happy. ”All of this is most welcome news. Our wors.h.i.+p is yours. We must seal the covenant by rishathra.”
”You're kidding.”
”What? No, I spoke of this earlier, but Chmeee did not understand. Bargains must be sealed by rishathra, even between men and G.o.ds. Chmeee, this is no problem. You are even of proper size for my women.”
”I am stranger than you think,” Chmeee said.
From Louis's ceiling viewpoint it looked like Chmeee was exposing himself to the giant. Certainly something had caused the giant's startled expression. Louis couldn't have cared less. Tanj dammit! he thought. I actually thought of an answer! And now this. What do I have to do to- Yeah. ”I will make for you a servant,” Louis said. ”Because I am hurried, he will be dwarf, and mute in your language. Call him Wu. Chmeee, we must confer.”
Chapter 11 -.
The Gra.s.s Giants The lander touched down in a malevolent glare of white light. The glare from the longhouse persisted for a minute after the lander stopped moving, then died. Presently the ramp descended. The king giant, fully armored, let it carry him to the ground. He raised his head and bellowed. The sound must have carried for many miles.
Giants began jogging toward the lander.
Chmeee descended, then Wu. Wu was small, partly hairless, and harmless-looking. He smiled a lot; he looked about him with charming enthusiasm, as if seeing the world for the first time ...
The longhouse was a fair distance away. It was mud and gra.s.s, reinforced with vertical members. The row of sunflowers planted on the roof s.h.i.+fted restlessly, now turning their concave mirror faces and green photosynthetic nodes to the sun, now flas.h.i.+ng at the giants converging from all directions.
Chmeee was asking, ”What if an enemy attacked in the daytime? How can you reach the longhouse? Or do you store your weapons elsewhere?”
The giant considered before giving away secrets of defense. But Chmeee served Louis, and it was well not to offend him ... ”See you the pile of brush to antispinward of the longhouse? If danger threatens, a man must approach from behind that pile and wave a sheet. The sunflowers fire the damp wood. Under cover of smoke we may then enter and take weapons.” He glanced at the lander and added, ”An enemy fast enough to reach us before we can reach weapons is too strong for us anyway. Perhaps the sunflowers would surprise him.”
”May Wu choose his own mate?”
”Does he have that much volition? I had thought to lend him my wife Reeth, who has practiced Rishathra before. She is small, and the Machine People are not so different from Wu.”
”Acceptable,” Chmeee said without a glance at Wu.
A hundred of the giants surrounded them now. No more seemed to be coming. The kzin asked, ”Are these all?”
”These and my warriors are all of my tribe. There are twenty-six tribes on the veldt. We stay together when we can, but none speaks for all,” the king giant said.
Of the hundred or so, eight were males, and all of the eight were markedly scarred; three were actual cripples. None but the king giant showed the wrinkles and whitening hair of age.
The rest were females ... rather, they were women. They stood six and a half to seven feet tall, small next to their men: brown-skinned, dignified, naked. Their hair was golden and spilled in wealth down their backs; it was generally a ma.s.s of tangles. None bore any kind of decoration. Their legs were thick, their feet large and hard. A few of the women were white-haired. Their heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s gave a good indication of their relative ages. They examined their guests with pleasure and wonder while the armored giant told what he knew of them.
And Chmeee, with his translator off, spoke low. ”If you prefer one or another female, I must say so now.”
”No, they're all about equally ... attractive.”
”We can still end this situation. You must be mad to make such a promise!”
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