America 2040 - Golden World Part 30

"You're sorry?" She laughed. "I'm sorry. But we have a lot of days ahead, don't we?"

"Yes. Who's on tap to relieve you?"

"Well, we're a bit strung out. I told Ito I'd stay until midnight."

"I think a new groom should have some consideration," Rodrick said. He walked over and picked up the communicator. Ito's voice answered, husky, full of sleep. "Ito, the brand-new groom needs a favor,"

Rodrick said. "I'd like to borrow my brand-new wife for a while."

Emi was with her husband when he came to the bridge, Emi all smiles, saying that she hadn't had a chance to kiss the groom, then remedying that omission as Ito shyly kissed Jackie on the cheek.

The house that had been built for the captain and his bride was on the south ridge, one entire side giving an un.o.bstructed view of the bay and the ocean beyond. Native stone had been worked in with the plastic building blocks, and Amando Kwait had, at Rodrick's request, filled a large atrium with some of the more attractive species of native flowers and plants. The entire house had a feeling of openness. Jackie dialed a soft, golden light from the walls after Duncan had carried her, laughing, over the threshold.

"Who's first for the shower?" Jackie asked, a little breathless after a very interesting kiss that had followed the act of threshold carrying.

"Who's captain of this ship?" Rodrick growled playfully. In the golden light she was more beautiful than he remembered. He felt almost shy, although he had known that tall, slim body, had loved every inch of it.

"We leave rank outside that door, Husband." Jackie grinned.

"Well said, Lieutenant." He reached for her, pulled her close. Perhaps he didn't love her, but she had always had the ability to heat his blood. It was more important than ever that he learn to love her now, because, when he'd learned of Rocky Miller's death, his first thought had been, "Now she's mine. Now it is possible." And the very fact that he had been pleased to hear of his first-officer's death had done more to put Mandy beyond his reach forever than anything that had gone before. Never would he sink so low as to betray the vow that he had made to this beautiful woman in his arms, looking up into his face with melting green eyes and inviting, moist lips.

"I have an idea," he said. "As a matter of fact, it did not just this minute occur to me. You yourself commented on the size of the shower I had installed."

"I said it was very big," she said, eyes widening. "Big enough for two?" he asked.

"I think so. Why don't we find out?"

It was big enough for two.

Max came back to the detention cell just after midnight with sandwiches and coffee and a couple of the big, southern fruit with a figlike texture. The stickman saw the fruit, pointed, and made a whistling, clicking sound. Grace handed him a fruit, and he ate hungrily.

"Grace, it's after midnight," Max complained.

"Max, listen to this," Grace said, turning a dial on the translation computer.

Max heard Grace's voice counting from one to ten, and then a series of clicks and whistles. Then Grace's voice said, "My name is Grace Monroe."

Max listened to the clicks and whistles into which Grace s words had been translated.

"Grace, that's very impressive. But it's after midnight on our wedding night."

"Yes, but listen," she insisted. The machine clicked and whistled and then counted to ten. And more clicks and whistles and a mechanical voice said, "I am called Chingclonk."

"I have real martinis in the fridge at our new home," Max teased.

Grace sighed and turned off the machine. It was, after all, going to take a long time to translate the whistling, clicking language of the stickman. She clung to Max's arm. "Okay, buddy," she said. "I'm with you now."

"I made the house totally robotproof," Max said. "There isn't a communicator in it, and I'm going to turn the alarms off."

"Good idea," Grace said.

They were just ready to step out the main hatch of the ship when Jacob West came running down the corridor behind them, yelling, "Hey, Max, Grace! Hold up!"

"I don't hear a d.a.m.ned thing," Max commented loudly. "I do not hear an eager voice yelling my name."

"I thought you two would like to have a look at this," Jacob said. He had a parchmentlike scroll in hand.

"Just take a minute."

They went over to a worktable, and Jacob spread the scroll. "We found it in the downed airship," he explained. "It was in a box that looked as if it was filled just with arrows. On the bottom. No one noticed it until just a while ago, and since the captain is already at home in bed I had to show it to someone."

"If I don't say that I am eternally grateful, forgive me," Max said pleasantly. Jacob grinned at Grace. "You're already being a good influence on this old bear," he said. "He's mellowing."

Grace bent over the table. The parchment was a very good map of the globe of the planet they called Omega.

"There's no writing," Jacob said. "Just as there was none at Stoner's Valley, but look at the pictures.

Here's Eden."

The contours of the Eden peninsula were quite accurate, and at several spots there was a neat little drawing of a miner with his head and neck extending from a burrow.

"The jungle," Jacob said, pointing to a little drawing of a fierce beast in a vast area of green. "But here's what I wanted to show you." He pointed to the largest western continent, which looked somewhat like a diving duck. "Here, along the coast."

"Definitely a river," Max said.

"A river valley with buildings?" Grace asked, for the light was not all that good and the drawings along the river were tiny.

"There's a pyramid," Jacob said. "And there are other buildings here and there. You can see them pretty well with a magnifying gla.s.s. But look at this." He pointed. A slightly larger drawing showed a group of five figures, all sticklike except the one in the center.

"There's a difference in body shape," Jacob said. "Stickpeople, but different. Females, maybe. But look at that one in the middle."

Grace looked and saw a creditable drawing of a woman, nude, tall and slim, big breasted.

"Is there any way one of them could have added that picture today after seeing human beings for the first time?" Grace asked.

"I doubt it," Jacob answered. "Besides, it doesn't look like new work. See? The wrinkles in the sheet run through it just like the others, the stickpeople."

"I think we should wake the captain," Grace said.

"d.a.m.n it, he is not asleep, " Max growled.

"Max, that's definitely a drawing of a human woman," Grace said. "Think what that means."

"Grace, we are going,now , to our new home, where I am going to turn off all alarms-"

"Oh, Max," she said.

Max bent and put his arms around her thighs, just above the knees. He lifted her as she squealed and hefted her onto his shoulder.

"Mr. West," Max said formally, "at this time I am leaving the ship to take my wife to our new home. My wife will not be available to anyone until well after sunup tomorrow. Nor will I. You may pa.s.s the wordthat if anyone knocks on my door, he or she will be shot with a stun gun. We will be unreachable by communicator, and we will not hear any alarm that is sounded."

"You may put me down now, Max," Grace said calmly as he stalked out the hatch.

"I'll walk now, Max," she said, after a few paces.

"Oh, well," she said, after a few more paces. "I am rather tired. If you want to carry me-"

Mandy Miller awoke screaming. One of her nurses put a hand on her shoulder and eased her back.

"Would you like another sedative, Dr. Miller?"

"Yes, please," she said shakily, for she kept seeing the spear running all the way from the back of Rocky's neck to his crotch, saw the woman being axed down, smelled the blood, and mixed in with that horror was a sadness that was as damaging as the horror.

She looked at the clock. It was after midnight, Omega time. She had not come out of sleep screaming because of Rocky, or the axed woman, or the blood. She had been dreaming that it was she who was now in that s.p.a.cious, open house on the south ridge with Duncan Rodrick, and her unconscious mind had fed into her dreams the gladness that Rocky was dead, the happiness that at last she was free to love Duncan. And to know that even in her unconscious she could harbor such thoughts had jerked her up out of sleep screaming.

Grace Monroe drew a model of Omega's solar system on the board. Chingclonk, the Whorsk, stood beside her, sipping water. He had refused to take coffee, tea, or anything containing alcohol. He'd spent more time with Grace than her new husband had, much to Max's chagrin.

"We are here," Grace said, and the translating machine whistled and clicked, and Chingclonk nodded his head sharply backward. "This is the star we call 61 Cygni B," Grace said.

"The sun," Chingclonk said, through the translator.

"We humans come from far away," Grace said. "From so far away that it would take a Whorsk airship thousands of years to travel that distance."

Chingclonk jerked his head back as if in total understanding. "You come from-" The translating machine was stumped, but the name had an alien sound on Chingclonk's lips.

"We come from Earth," she said, and the translating machine made the word in Whorsk for Earth.

"You lie," Chingclonk said. He was not noted for politeness... or was it just the blunt, simple nature of his language?

"Why do you say that?"

He took a marker and drew a dotted line far and away from Omega, indicating great distances by drawing several parallel lines in spots. "You come from-" Once again the machine could not find anEnglish equivalent. Rut it was obvious that Chingclonk had a conception of s.p.a.ce. He knew that the bright points of light in the night sky were other suns, like 61 Cygni B, or, as he called it, the sun.

And such revelations were keeping people in the colony awake nights.

The translation machine had severe limitations, and Grace spent long night hours, the admiral or Evangeline Burr at her side, trying to improve it. The physical nature of Chingclonk's sound-making organ was a challenge. So far, Grace had not been able to program the machine to imitate all of the sounds of the Whorsk language. The name she applied to Chingclonk's kind was itself a compromise, for the Whorsk sound was more a whistle than a combination of dipthong and consonant, but at least a simple, basic communication had been established.

Duncan Rodrick was able to ask, "Why did you attack us?"

"You steal."

"Steal what?" Grace asked. Chingclonk tapped the steel grid, the metal bulkhead.

"Steal metals?"

"Steal-" Chingclonk said. He seized the marker and drew a recognizable picture of a miner and a Whorsk facing each other, thrust his head violently backward, for yes. Then he drew a fuller, manlike figure with the miner, crossed it out, thrust his head forward, no.

Rodrick showed Chingclonk a map of Eden. He drew pictures of two airships. "Your fleet is camped here," he said. "You are chief?"

A violent yes nod.

"Will you tell your people that we desire peace?"

"We will not fight," Chingclonk said. "Otherwise, you will kill us."

"Good thinking," Rodrick said. "Peace?"

"No choice," Chingclonk answered.

"We will trade with you," Rodrick said.

"Yes. We will trade food, furs, and metals for things that make the killing sun."

"No lasers," Rodrick said.

"We will return to our home," Chingclonk said, making a quick, obviously obscene gesture with one three-fingered hand.

"I think he just said 'up yours,' " Rodrick noted.

"Yes, up yours," Chingclonk said in English.

The other captives had made themselves comfortable in their detention cells, whistled and clicked forfood and water, and ran their hands admiringly and greedily over all metal surfaces.

In one cell, where five of the Whorsk were being held, a fight broke out, and with swift and deadly malice four of the Whorsk killed the fifth. When the door was opened, they tossed the dead body out and turned away to whistle and click among themselves.

The incident shocked the scientists, who met for breakfast with Duncan Rodrick.

"From what we've been able to determine," the animal behaviorist, James Wilson, said, "they have no system of ethics as we know it. Death to them is no more than eating."

"I've been studying the one called Chingclonk, the chief," Dr. Allano, the psychiatrist, said. "He is chief because he can throw a spear with the greatest force, and he killed three rivals to earn his position. He shows absolutely no remorse for having ma.s.sacred over two hundred people, women and children among them. He looks upon us as invaders of an area that is his by custom and right. He can't understand why we won't move out of Eden so that he can make his trades with what we call miners. If he had the chance, he'd kill all of us as quickly and with as little regard as he killed the Miller group."

After breakfast, Grace continued her observations in the detention area. Rodrick joined her.

"Chief Chingclonk," she said, "you seem upset today. What is bothering you?"

"You," he said.

"Explain?"

Suddenly Chingclonk thrust out his lower abdomen and his long, pointed organ was glaringly evident.

"Must have female," he said. "When the two moons come full three or four times and we've had no female, we die."