Chapter 23

As it developed, Zo did wake Igwanda once in the night. The infrared showed only the same grouping of watchful natives as had assembled during the day plus assorted scurrying small creatures and the occasional avian; but the audio scan abruptly transmitted sounds of subsurface tunneling. Zo apologized, saying he felt it was some sort of wildlife activity; the sounds were too faint and too irregular to be reasonably ascribable to the Edenites. After a few moments the colonel agreed. He again asked the trooper if he needed relief, but Zo assured him that he was fully wakeful and Igwanda returned to his compartment.

Except for Zo, who retired soon after sunrise when Shaw relieved him, the entire crew was awake well before the appointed meeting. Meiersdottir, Lee, Igwanda and the three on-duty troopers all had substantial breakfasts, knowing that a long day awaited them without opportunity for refreshment; all also made precautionary visits to lavatory facilities.

This time, the natives began emerging from the overgrowth at the same moment that Igwanda and his troops descended the ramp. There was a moment of confusion among the Edenite contingent when only four soldiers appeared; then, without apparent discussion, one of the five natives who had originally started forward turned back, so that the numbers in the field were again equalized. Meiersdottir and Lee followed quickly, and two more natives promptly came into view; both pairs proceeded without hesitation to the same meeting ground they had occupied the day before. From his distance Igwanda couldn't discern whether these were the same individuals as yesterday, but the immediacy of the greeting when the groups met suggested that they were. All four soon took their anatomically diverse sitting postures; alert as always, Igwanda could still see no sign of trouble.

For nearly an hour they remained thus. Then he saw Meiersdottir arise together with her native companion. While the other two remained seated, Meiersdottir turned and began walking back toward the lander, and the alien likewise began moving away toward the group of four at the edge of the overgrowth.

Even as Meiersdottir came toward him her voice came through his communicator. "Carlos, I want to do this differently. I'm coming back for you, and I'll escort you back to the group with me. If you're already there we'll have your protection for when others come, and your troops can cover them as they cross the field. That way they'll have time to get used to you before anyone else joins us. All right?"

Igwanda was momentarily irritated that, for the second time in as many days, Meiersdottir was disregarding his orders without prior consultation. But it took him only an instant to realize that her plan was superior to his own; it would minimize the impact of his armed presence while compromising nothing in terms of safety. "Very well," he said as she reached his side. "I see no harm."

"Good," she said briskly. "Now, first, please make a show of shouldering your blaster so they can see." He did so. "All right," she continued, "let's go. But I want—"

"A moment," he interrupted. He turned to face his soldiers. "Van Damm, please take my position when I leave with Dr. Meiersdottir. Ahlia, Dzenda, reposition yourselves to maintain surveillance of a three-hundred-sixty-degree perimeter. No-one is to bring weapons to bear or discharge them without a direct order unless you perceive me and the civilians unmistakably under attack or some other patent assault is mounted. Clear?"

Three prompt "yes, sir" responses came, and Igwanda turned back to Meiersdottir. "We may go now. But you were saying?"

"Yes," she said. "Let's start moving, I don't want any delay." As they did, she picked up her thought. "Just follow my lead," she said. "Don't initiate anything, at least at first; get used to the group, and let them get used to you. I think you'll be pretty impressed with what you see."

Across the field two aliens were also advancing to the central meetingplace where Lee and the other remained huddled together. One was presumably Meiersdottir's Joe, he assumed, although he was unable to distinguish them. But he noted with interest that both were, so far as was visible, carrying nothing resembling a weapon. The first breach of parity, he thought.

The questions were still in his mind as the new arrivals finished closing the gap and came face to face. By this time Lee and the alien with whom she'd been in apparent conference had risen from their seated positions, so that all six were on their feet. Meiersdottir, still apparently acting as ... hostess? ... presiding officer? ... began introductions. She pointed first to the arriving alien who had gravitated roughly to her side. "Joe," she said. Then she pointed to Igwanda and said his name.

"Eeghanka," the native said. It extended its upper limbs and in the same moment repeated its original cry of the day before: "Ooeeongeengkheekh." Although now it was slightly permutated; however the language exchange had gone, enunciation lessons had clearly made progress: "Uee khong ing heekh," with appropriate pauses between each syllable.

"Joe," the colonel replied, extending his own hands to touch the native's. Then he had a further thought; if Amanda can extemporize, perhaps I may as well. "We come in peace," he added, with a small but discernible emphasis on the first word.

It wasn't obvious, but Igwanda thought he saw the native's large eyes dilate slightly. Not exactly "dilate," since the eyes, he noticed, had no visible pupils; but there was a slight widening of their orbs. Igwanda and the native touched briefly, dropped their arms and performed the ritual bows that Meiersdottir had introduced the day before. Then Igwanda was presented to "Gus" in the same fashion, but this time the native imitated Igwanda's inflection in his call for peace and the colonel reciprocated.

Now it was Joe's turn. It pointed first to the native who had accompanied it back from the group on the fringes: "Akakha," it said. Then, eyes still on its comrade, it pointed to Igwanda. "Eeghanka." The two repeated each other's names and touched hands as before, but this time there were no proclamations of peace; instead the native's eyes seemed to focus—pointedly, the colonel thought—on first his helmet, then the holster encasing his sidearm, and finally the shouldered blaster. You don't like the weapons, Igwanda thought. Very well; you remember so much, remember this? He turned his head momentarily back to the lander occupying the same position as had the Argo's, then refocused his attention on Akakha and completed the bow.

here was no way he could be sure his point had been taken, especially since making it had required him to momentarily avert his attention, but Igwanda thought he saw just a hint of the same dilation of eyes he'd noted in Joe when he altered the emphasis in the peace message. A flaw in your poker faces? he wondered privately. Carefully keeping his own expression neutral—the colonel was an excellent poker player—he joined the others as they took sitting posi­tions.

The scientists' backpacks contained only the miniaturized power equipment to electrify their clothing and operate their communicators, but Igwanda's and his troops' had additional utilities. One was a metal detector linked to his helmet, which he immediately activated by a timed eyeblink and focused on each native in turn. There was no feedback; either all three were really unarmed or the natives had not yet applied their new iron technology to weaponry. Since the latter seemed improbable—iron holds an edge vastly better than any kind of unprocessed stone—he tentatively concluded that in this group, at least, there was no immediate threat.

With that concern abated for the moment, Igwanda focused his attention on the gathering before him. Each group of three sat together facing the other, leaving, he noticed, each with a clear line of retreat to their fellows. All appeared to be sitting in comfortable and evidently relaxed positions, although Igwanda noted that the aliens could afford this militarily much better than the humans; they could arise almost instantly by merely flexing their hindquarters, whereas the humans would have to first gather their legs beneath them.

Schooling himself to disregard the gross physical differences that on Earth were often a major barrier to interspecies, sometimes even interracial, individual recognition, Igwanda could soon make out clear distinctions in the aliens' appearances. All three had the oversize, slightly iridescent but pupil-less eyes of their species, but they were of somewhat different hues—Joe's beige with pink overtones, Gus' a pale chartreuse, Akakha's a slightly deeper tan. There were slight differences in physiognomy, with Gus' face longer than Joe's and Akakha's noticeably squarer. Joe and Gus were fairly slender in build, with Joe being slightly the taller, while Akakha was more heavily set with what appeared to be musculature. Idly Igwanda wondered if Akakha had been selected for its physical prowess to match the armed human.

In manner, too, there were differences. Joe sat calmly, patiently opposite Meiersdottir but let its attention be drawn to whoever was speaking. Gus seemed more animated opposite Lee, not infrequently using its upper limbs to gesticulate. Akakha, by contrast, sat unmoving with its attention solely on Igwanda. On alert, the colonel mused. Ready to react if I make any suspicious moves.

To test the hypothesis he reached slowly around behind himself to scratch a nonexistent itch on his lower back. The effect was to move his hand in the general direction of his weapon holster, though he was careful to keep well clear of the laser itself. Once again he saw the same eye response in Akakha, even a little stronger; definitely an involuntary sign of heightened attention, he thought. There was, however, no indication of increased bodily tension in any of the natives. They may look relaxed, continued his thought, but they are ready for instant motion, no need to gear up. It was that way with the Argo, too; except for the shift in center of gravity, they struck instantly.

But there still seemed no immediate danger, and he turned his focus to the language lessons in which Lee and Gus were apparently wholly engaged, with occasional interjections from both Meiersdottir and Joe. It was quickly apparent that Lee's assessment of the aliens' learning curve had not been exaggerated. On board the Gardener during the doldrums of their warp transition, Lee had spent most of one crew meeting explaining the difficulties of exchanging lang­uage with no common referents.