, or at a bookstore near you.Chapter 2
"I have never seen one close up before.”
“How ever do they breathe through those long, pointed snouts?”“Munshi says this one is quite friendly, though painfully shy. It hardly said more than a few dozen words on the way back from the riot. But it seems intelligent—and look at the way it moves around the room, examining everything in sight. It is curious as a schripan’t.”
“Is it male or female?”
“Short hair—and Munshi says it has a deep voice. I think, perhaps, it is a male.”
“Maybe Zatar will not feel so out of place, now.”
“You know, he really need not be so lonely—not if we send Gh’sienna to tell him we have a guest.”
“Be not crude, Doshanda. Besides, ’Sienna hardly went into heat on purpose.”
“I will go.”
“No, I will go; you flirt so shamefully, we shall never get you out of his room if you go. And you have been eating so much you are likely to go into heat yourself.”
* * *
Zatar of Ibleiman was a handsome man, tall and powerfully built, with firm, angular cheekbones and a well-rounded chin. Even approaching middle age, his skin retained the whiteness of youth, for the yellowing of age came slowly to his proud and distinguished family. As befitted a scion of the House of Ibleiman, he was not easily given to wearing his thoughts on his countenance, but his eyes had almost lost their color and a look of bewilderment had seized his brow. He was, in a word, incredulous.
“Are you sure?” he asked again, as if repeating the question would alter the facts. His aide stamped her foot in annoyance. He knew that dwelling on the obvious was foolish, but the cold, dry planet sometimes affected his hearing and he wanted to be certain he heard things correctly.
“I saw the Terran with my own eyes, Ambassador,” she replied tartly. Men were impossible, she thought; you could repeat things a dozen times and they would still ask if you were sure. Even so, she could not stay angry with Zatar for long. It was the one benefit she could see in working for a man, and mischief soon darted across her cheek muscles.
“They say it is a male. Imagine that—but then, I suppose even Terran males are not without their charms.”
Irritation clouded Zatar’s face. Even after so many years of service together, his aides still delighted in showing themselves unawed by his credentials or accomplishments. As a senior procurator for the High Council of the Grand Alliance, Zatar had been places and seen things that few Veshnan men dreamed existed and fewer aspired to share. With each passing year, his reputation and influence grew in the corridors of power on Balarium, the tranquil, lovely planet that was the administrative center for the Alliance. He had even begun to dream of having at least one aide with a more enlightened perspective, but after all this time he was so used to each of them that such a radical change would be unsettling. He knew enough not to take offense, though now was hardly the time for teasing. Zatar cleared his throat haughtily.
Chastised, she continued.
“He saved G’ela’s life, and Maguna’s, and Munshi’s, and— ”
“But how...?”
“They all went to visit a Terran social club and some of the guests became unruly. Like wemblies guarding their brood, I suppose. So the Terran led them through an emergency exit—sent them ‘back to the wind before they could warm themselves,’ as it happened, but it was not really his fault. In fact, it was quite prudent, as I understand it. Now, Munshi is shaking from the cold and no other but you understands Terran talk. Our guest is wandering downstairs without a host, and we must not appear to be rude.”
Zatar bowed and dismissed her from the room. Immediately, he began searching his wardrobe for something suitable. Red perhaps, since they would be celebrating, even if the feast would be merely for Avoidance of Bother. He could deal with Munshi later. Why she would be so foolish as to venture outside by herself, much less contrive to avoid the Terran militiamen assigned as their escorts, was unexplainable. Simply unexplainable. But then, even though he was the official head of the delegation, it seemed that nobody in this House ever listened to anything he said.
As he changed from his housecoat to more formal attire, uncertainty creased his face. This would be the first time he had met a Terran without an interpreter. It would also be the first time any of them had met a Terran in a social setting, away from the formal trappings of diplomacy. His thirty-day language-immersion course may have taught him the rote responses needed for the stilted greetings of diplomats, but was hardly adequate to the more rigorous demands of small talk. Besides, some people had language talent and others did not. And while he could understand most Crutchtan dialects quite well, the Terran language was utter chaos to him. Terran vocal chords might be remarkably similar to his own, and each day found Zatar recognizing and pronouncing more Terran words than before. But he found himself intimidated by the syntactical bogs and conjugational swamps that were the hallmarks of their strange, guttural tongue. Munshi said the language was really quite simple, and that the staccato barks and growls that Terrans used to communicate were no different than any other language after mastering the inverted grammar and alien idioms. But Munshi was quite gifted.
His dressing completed, he looked in the mirror to see the embodiment of Veshnan manhood—tall and proud, like his forefathers before him, brightly arrayed in festive attire. He adjusted his robes to their best advantage and breathed heavily, forcing himself to relax, knowing that descending the stairs would be the most difficult part of the entire evening.
Of course, meeting the Terran would be easy. Exhilarating, actually, thought Zatar. What would be difficult would be trying to ignore Gh’sienna’s mating scent on the way to meet his guest. Veshnan women always found excuses for not taking men seriously, but they hardly helped matters by finding male preoccupations so amusing, especially since they were the biggest distraction themselves.
© 2009 by Jeffrey Caminsky
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