A World of Difference (23 page)

While Rustaveli was working through that chain of thought,
Bryusov asked what the Georgian should have. “How may we help you now, Sarah Davidovna?”

“You, Valery Aleksandrovich, can help best by staying out of the way and not risking any further harm to yourself,” she said firmly. “Shota Mikheilovich, if you would, you could help me swing
Damselfly
around so that it faces back toward Jötun Canyon once more. That will save me the trouble of flying around in a long, slow semicircle before I can head back to my own people.”

So much for the brotherhood of all men on Minerva, Rustaveli thought. Still, the request was entirely reasonable. “Show me what to do.”

He walked over to the ultra-ultralight with her. “Very simple,” she said. “You take one wingtip, I’ll take the other. Then we walk around till the plane points the way we want it to. Just be careful not to poke your fingers through the plastic skin.”

“
Da,
” he said absently. He was amazed at how easily the plane moved. “This, ah,
Damselfly
cannot weigh even as much as I do.”

“Not even close,” the American doctor agreed. The aircraft soon pointed east, but she still looked discontented. Rustaveli understood why when she said, as much to herself as to him, “Now how am I supposed to get into the blasted thing?”

He saw the problem at once. The canopy opened at the top, and there was no way to clamber up without tearing the plastic film of the fuselage to ribbons. He rubbed his chin; whiskers rasped under his gloves as he thought. Finally he snapped his fingers, or tried to—the gloves effectively muffled the noise. “Suppose I drive the rover alongside your plane here? You could climb on top of the roll cage, and I will help you down onto the seat inside the plane.”

After his try at feeling her up, he wondered if she would hesitate. She didn’t, not even for a second. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

The rover purred up to
Damselfly
. Rustaveli turned off the engine and set the brakes on all four wheels. Then he scrambled up onto the top of the machine. Sarah Levitt came swarming after him. “You do that very well,” he said.

“I haven’t been on a jungle gym since I was nine years old, but it’s not the sort of thing you forget.” Sarah undid the canopy and sat on the metal bars of the roll cage with her feet dangling down into—what would one call it? The pilot’s compartment?
The engine room? Wondering that, Rustaveli was almost caught by surprise when the American doctor said, “Lower me.”

Rustaveli hooked his feet at the corners of intersecting bars and took a firm grip on Sarah Levitt’s waist. He was glad she was a small woman; it made her weight easier to control as she slid into
Damselfly
. Although his arms traveled up her torso as she descended, he took no undue liberties.

“Thank you,” she said, in a way that thanked him for that as well as for his help.

He backed the rover out of the way and walked around to the other side of
Damselfly
so he could close the canopy. When it was latched, he asked, “Now what?”

“No need to shout,” she said. “The skin is too thin to cut down on sound.” She was already pedaling hard, though the propeller had not yet begun to spin. Her legs did not slow down as she went on, “Go to the end of one wing and run along with me, holding it level, when I start to taxi.”

He sprang to attention, and snapped off a salute sharper than any Tolmasov would ever wring from him. “I am yours to command.”

Under her white plastic helmet, the American doctor’s eyes twinkled. “You are a very silly man, Shota Mikheilovich. How did you manage to sneak past all the selection boards?”

He winked at her. “Simple. I did not tell them.” He was whistling as he walked out to the wingtip.

The big propeller, tall as he was, revolved slowly at first, then faster and faster. “Now!” Sarah Levitt shouted.
Damselfly
rolled forward, startlingly fast; Rustaveli was into a trot almost at once. Then he was running, and running for all he was worth. For a moment, it seemed to him that he was the one on the point of becoming airborne.

Then
Damselfly
’s wheels lifted clear of the ground. The plane was going faster than the Georgian could match. He pulled to a stop and stood panting, his breath a cloud of fog around his head. The American doctor briefly took one hand off the control stick to wave to him and Bryusov.

They both waved back. The linguist walked up to Rustaveli as
Damselfly
skimmed eastward, toward Jötun Canyon. “I’m sorry you will have to do all the driving as we return to our comrades,” Bryusov said.

Rustaveli was still watching the ultra-ultralight diminish in the distance. “
Nichevo
,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. At least I won’t have to pedal home.”

“There!” Louise Bragg shouted. She slapped Irv on the back.

He staggered, straightened and followed her pointing finger with his eyes. At first he could make out nothing through the mist, but then he, too, spied the moving speck. He held the radio to his mouth. “Honey—uh,
Damselfly—
we have you visually.”

“Good. I don’t see you yet. Now shut up and let me work.” Sarah’s voice came in panting gasps.

Irv picked up the video camera and kicked in the zoom lens.
Damselfly
seemed to leap toward him, though it was still well out over Jötun Canyon. No gusts, not now, he thought—as close to a prayer as a secular man would let himself come.

Beside him, he heard Pat saying, “Come on, dammit, come on,” over and over to herself. He nodded, which made the image he was taping jump. Somehow, the way Pat was pulling for Sarah made him easier about what had happened—and what had almost happened—the night before.

Then he could hear the prop’s whoosh and the rattle of the bicycle chain that fed the power of Sarah’s legs to the ultra-ultralight. She was above level ground now, on this side of the canyon. Irv switched off the camcorder and set it down so he could jump and yell.

“
Damselfly
has landed,” Sarah said, touching down only a few feet from where she had taken off. Her ribs were heaving with exhaustion; she sat slumped over the control stick.

She managed a tired wave for Irv as he set the wide stepladder beside
Damselfly
. He undid the latches to the canopy, flung it open, and leaned over to help her climb out.

“Thanks,” she said when she stood beside him. “All I can say is, the next time the Russians want my services, they can jolly well come see me.”

He sadly shook his head. “I knew it had to happen—all that exercise has made your brain atrophy.”

“Not to the point where I can’t feel cold.” She poked him in the ribs with an elbow. “Help me into my gear, will you?”

He did, saying, “I’m glad you’re back.”

“You and me both,” she agreed feelingly. “There were a few seconds on the way over when I doubted—but let’s not talk about that. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Neither do I. Why don’t you just relax and let Louise and me knock down
Damselfly
so we can take it back to
Athena?
”

“If I sit still too soon, I’ll stiffen up.” Sarah walked around
while Irv and Louise attacked the ultra-ultralight with wrenches. Pat fell into step beside her. Irv felt a nervous twinge whenever they happened to look his way. Stupid, he told himself—nothing happened.

The only time Sarah said anything even remotely sexual on the way back, though, was just after she emerged from behind a boulder where she had gone to answer a call of nature. “I
have
stiffened up,” she grumbled, then she grinned wryly at Irv. “Better not ask me to get on top anytime in the next few days.”

“Damn, just when I was hoping to break out the trampoline,” he said, so innocently that she almost forgot to glare.

They got back to
Athena
a little before sunset. Emmett Bragg took the 8-mm cassette from the video camera as if it were worth its weight in diamonds and handed it to his wife. “We transmit this first thing tomorrow,” he told her.

“Why?” she demanded. “It’ll tie up the link. Wouldn’t you rather send data than pretty pictures?”

“Most of the time, sure. With this, I’d sooner be on the network news. And we will, too—tape of the American doctor flying back after saving the Russians’ bacon? They’ll show that all over the world. When you think about what it’ll do for our program, the data can wait.”

They all looked at each other. No one argued with him.

Reatur had grown used to having humans around. He did not realize it—he would have indignantly denied it—until four of the six strange creatures went away on their traveling contraptions and the other two stayed close by the building that had fallen from the sky. Without their poking their stalkless eyes into every corner of his domain and throwing questions at him like snowballs, he found himself bored.

Now they were back, and Sarah, just as though he—
she
, curse it—had never been away, was pestering him about Lamra. He did not want to think about Lamra right now. To keep from having to do so, he changed the subject. “Why did the four of you leave so suddenly the other day?”

“To help a hurt human.”

“Ah,” Reatur said. Then he brought himself up short. “Wait. Four of you went away. None of you was hurt, am I right?” At Sarah’s head-wag, he went on, “The two who stayed were not hurt, either, true?” Again the human wagged her head. “That accounts for all the humans there are, doesn’t it?” he asked. “So where did the hurt one come from?”

“He from domain called
Russia,
” Sarah replied, which told Reatur nothing. “Not same domain as ours. He hurt on far side of Ervis Gorge.”

More humans? More
domains
of humans? The idea disconcerted Reatur as badly as it had Fralk. The domain-master started to ask about it, then stopped. Something else Sarah had said was of more immediate concern to him. “You went
across
Ervis Gorge?” he asked, hoping he had misunderstood. But Sarah was moving her head up and down once more. “How?” Reatur asked faintly.

“In small machine that goes through air.” Sarah spread her single pair of arms to mimic wings and moved her two legs as she did when she was inside the contraption.

Reatur felt brief relief, then had another unsettling thought. “These other humans from the other domain”—he did not try to pronounce it—“do they also have one of these machines for moving through the air?”

“No.” Sarah’s answer was quick and positive.

“Then they couldn’t give one to the Skarmer?” The idea of humans dropping out of the sky was quite bad enough. Thinking of armed westerners crossing Ervis Gorge through the air was simply horrifying.

But Sarah said “No” again. Reatur turned an eyestalk on himself. Good—he had not been alarmed enough to turn blue. Showing fear to any human would have been embarrassing; showing fear to a human mate did not bear thinking about. Mates had enough trouble in their poor short lives that they should never be burdened with a male’s concerns, as well. Intellectually, Reatur knew the three human mates were not like those of his kind. Emotionally, that still had not sunk in.

Sarah helped drive the point home, though. “About Lamra—” she resumed, more stubborn than any of Reatur’s males would have been when the domain-master was so plainly unwilling to discuss the matter.

“We will talk about Lamra another time, not now,” Reatur declared.

That should have settled the matter, but Sarah rudely refused to let it stay settled. “What you do now instead? What more important than Lamra? You not talk of Lamra, Lamra die. What more important than Lamra not dying?”

He had to think for a moment to come up with an answer, but at last he did. “I am going to check with the watchers I have placed at the edges of Ervis Gorge. If the Skarmer somehow
manage to root themselves on this side, Lamra will not be the only one who dies.” He started to leave.

“You run from me,” Sarah said. Reatur watched himself start to go yellow. That it was partly true only made him angrier. The human went on. “How Skarmer—how
anyone
—cross Ervis Gorge?”

“How should I know?” Reatur yelled, so loud that Sarah stepped back a pace and a male stuck an eyestalk around a corner to make sure everything was all right. The domain-master was a person who, if poked by one fingerclaw, hit back with three. He kept right on shouting. “Until you told me, Sarah, I didn’t think anyone could cross it through the air. For all I know, the sneaky westerners may come by way of water when the gorge fills up.” That was the most ridiculous thing he could think of, but he was cursed if he would admit it. “Since I don’t know
what
they’ll do, I have to point my eyestalks every which way at once, don’t I?”

“Yes,” the human mate conceded reluctantly. Reatur had not intimidated her, though, for she continued. “We talk of Lamra later, yes?”

“Later, yes. Not now.” This time, when the domain-master walked past Sarah, she let him go.

But her voice pursued him. “Maybe Skarmer does—
do—
use water. Humans go by water sometimes.”

Reatur kept walking. His color slowly faded. He decided he preferred being bored to being harassed. He had grown so used to being harassed by humans that it had taken some time without them to remind him how things had been not so very long ago.

A drop of water hit him in an eye as he walked out of his castle. Summer was close now; everything was starting to melt. Dealing with humans gave the domain-master the same feeling as that splash. They melted all his certainties just as the summer sun worked on his home.

The males working in the fields, he saw, were not working very hard. He started to shout at them, then decided he would be wasting his temper. Stone tools made everyone slow. At least the males were accomplishing more with those than they would have with ice, which grew more frangible day by day.

Some of the males were working in the very shadow of
Athena
, and not turning so much as a single eyestalk toward the huge, strange structure. They were used to humans, too. Reatur wondered if that was good or bad. Good, he supposed: nothing at all would have gotten done if everyone was still as bemused as
at first. But finding a human as normal as an eloc did not seem right, either.