Part 5 (1/2)

Kankad introduced the rest of his people, and von Schlichten introduced the Terrans from the telecast-station. Then Kankad looked at the watch he was wearing on his lower left wrist.

”We will have plenty of time, before the s.h.i.+p comes, to show Paula the town,” he suggested. ”Von, you know better than I do what she would like to see.”

He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm. guns to a stone stairway.

Von Schlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of King Kankad's town were the only artillery above 75-mm. on Ullr in non-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier and strapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankad showed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, where young Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied from textbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankad showed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kragan river-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under the supervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife; the small-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles and pistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop; the physics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loading plant; the battery of 155-mm. Long Toms, built in Kankad's own shops, which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; the printing-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescope and an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-power plant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.

Half an hour before the s.h.i.+p from Konkrook was due, they had arrived at the airport, where a gang of Kragans were clearing a berth for the _Aldebaran_. From somewhere, Kankad produced two cold bottles of Cape Town beer for Paula and von Schlichten, and a bowl of some boiling-hot black liquid for himself. Von Schlichten and Paula lit cigarettes; between sips of his bubbling h.e.l.l brew, Kankad gnawed on the stalk of some swamp-plant. Paula seemed as much surprised at Kankad's disregard for the eating taboo as she had been at von Schlichten's open flouting of the convention of concealment when he had put in his geek-speaker.

”This is the only place on Ullr where this happens,” von Schlichten told her. ”Here, or in the field when Terran and Kragan soldiers are together. There aren't any taboos between us and the Kragans.”

”No,” Kankad said. ”We cannot eat each others' food, and because our bodies are different, we cannot be the fathers of each others' young.

But we have been battle-comrades, and work-sharers, and we have learned from each other, my people more from yours than yours from mine. Before you came, my people were like children, shooting arrows at little animals on the beach, and climbing among the rocks at dare-me-and-I-do, and playing war with toy weapons. But we are growing up, and it will not be long before we will stand beside you, as the grown son stands beside his parent, and when that day comes, you will not be ashamed of us.”

It was easy to forget that Kankad had four arms and a rubbery, quartz-speckled skin, and a face like a lizard's.

”I want Little Me, when he's old enough to travel, to visit your world,” Kankad said. ”And some of the other young ones. And when Little Me is old enough to take over the rule of our people, I would like to go to Terra, myself.”

”You're going,” von Schlichten a.s.sured him. ”Some day, when I return, I'll see that you make the trip with me.”

”Wonderful, Von!” Kankad was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, it was in Kragan, and quickly. ”If we live so long, old friend. There is trouble coming, though even my spies cannot find what that trouble is. And two days ago in Keegark, two of my people died trying to learn it. I ask you--be careful!”

Then he switched hastily back to the language Paula could understand, apologizing. It gave von Schlichten time to wipe the worry from his face before she turned back to him, though it was worse news than he had expected. If Kankad thought things were bad enough to add his own spies to those of the Company, things couldn't be much worse. In fact, anything that brought whatever it was out into the open would be better.

He was still fretting over it as they said their good-byes to Kankad and boarded the _Aldebaran_ for Skilk.

V

The last clatter of silverware and dishes ceased as the native servants finished clearing the table. There was a remaining clatter of cups and saucers; liqueur-gla.s.ses tinkled, and an occasional cigarette-lighter clicked. At the head table, the voices seemed louder.

”... don't like it a millisol's worth,” Brigadier-General Barney Mordkovitz, the Skilk military CO, was saying to the lady on his right. ”They're too confounded meek. Nowadays, n.o.body yells '_Znidd suddabit!_' at you. They just stand and look at you like a farmer looking at a turkey the week before Christmas, and that I don't like!”

”Oh, bos.h.!.+” Jules Keaveney, the Skilk Resident-Agent, at the head of the table, exclaimed. ”If they don't bow and sc.r.a.pe to you and get off the sidewalk to let you pa.s.s, you say they're insolent and need a lesson. If they do, you say they're plotting insurrection.”

”What I said,” Mordkovitz repeated, ”was that I expect a certain amount of disorder, and a certain minimum show of hostility toward us from some of these geeks, to conform to what I know to be our unpopularity with many of them. When I don't find it, I want to know why.”

”I'm inclined,” von Schlichten came to his subordinate's support, ”to agree. This sudden absence of overt hostility is disquieting. Colonel Cheng-Li,” he called on the local Intelligence officer and Constabulary chief. ”This fellow Rakkeed was here, about a month ago.

Was there any noticeable disorder at that time? Anti-Terran demonstrations, attacks on Company property or personnel, shooting at aircars, that sort of thing?”

”No more than usual, general. In fact, it was when Rakkeed came here that the condition General Mordkovitz was speaking of began to become conspicuous.”

Von Schlichten nodded. ”And I might say that Lieutenant-Governor Blount has reported from Keegark, where he is now, that the same unnatural absence of hostility exists there.”

”Well, of course, general,” Keaveney said patronizingly, ”King Orgzild has things under pretty tight control at Keegark. He'd not allow a few fanatics to do anything to prejudice these s.p.a.ceport negotiations.”

”I wonder if the idea back of that s.p.a.ceport proposition isn't to get us concentrated at Keegark, where Orgzild could wipe us all out in one surprise blow,” somebody down the table suggested, and others nodded.