Complete short fiction, p.94
Complete Short Fiction, page 94
“Food can usually be sold,” the interpreter replied noncommittally. “Would you be willing to do your trading before you got any closer to the sea?”
“If necessary, as I said, though I don’t see why it should be necessary. Your flying machines could catch us before we got very far, if we tried to leave the coast before you wanted, couldn’t they?” Reejaaren might have been losing his suspicions up to this point, but the last question restored them in full force.
“Perhaps we could, but that is not for me to say. Marreni will decide, of course, but I suspect you might as well plan on lightening your ship here. There will be port fees, of course, in any case.”
“Port fees? This is no port, and I didn’t land here; I was washed up.”
“Nevertheless, foreign ships must pay port fees. I might point out that the amount is determined by the Officer of the Outer Ports, and he will get much of his impression of you through me. A little more courtesy might be in order.”
Barlennan restrained his temper with difficulty, but agreed aloud that the interpreter spoke the clearest truth. He said it at some length, and apparently mollified that individual to some extent. At any rate he departed without further threats, overt or implied. Barlennan expressed himself to his mate at length and with feeling as the interpreter climbed the hill once more and got into his glider.
Two of his fellows accompanied him; the other remained behind. Men from the other gliders hastily seized the two ropes attached to the collapsible framework and pulled. The cords stretched unbelievably, until their hooks were finally fastened to an attachment in the glider’s nose. The aircraft was then released and the ropes contracted to their original length, hurling the glider into the air. Barlennan instantly formed a heartfelt desire for some of that stretching rope. He said so, and Dondragmer sympathized. He had heard the entire conversation, and sympathized also with his captain’s feelings toward the linguist for the Officer of the Outer Ports.
“You know, Barl, I think we could put that lad in his place. Want to try it?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t think we can afford to let him get mad at us until we’re good and far away. I don’t want him and his friends dropping their spears on the Bree now or any other time.”
“I don’t mean to make him angry, but afraid of us. ‘Barbarians’—he’ll eat that word if I have to cook it personally for him. It all depends on certain things: do the Flyers know how these gliders work, and will they tell us?”
“They probably know, unless they’ve had better ones for so long they’ve forgotten—”
“So much the better, for what I have in mind.”
“. . . But I’m not sure whether they’ll tell. I think you know by now what I’m really hoping to get out of this trip; I want to learn everything I possibly can of the Flyers’ science. That’s why I want to get to that rocket of theirs near the Center; Charles himself said that it contained much of the most advanced scientific equipment they have. When we have that, there won’t be a pirate afloat or ashore who’ll be able to touch the Bree, and we’ll have paid our last port dues—we’ll be able to write our own menus from then on.”
“I guessed as much.”
“That’s why I wonder whether they’ll tell what you want; they may suspect what I’m after.”
“I think you’re too suspicious yourself. Have you ever asked for any of this scientific information you want to steal?”
“Yes; Charles always said it was too difficult to explain.”
“Maybe he was right; maybe he doesn’t know it himself. I want to ask one of his people about these gliders, anyway; I want to watch that Reejaaren grovel.”
“Just what is this idea of yours, anyway?”
Dondragmer told him, at length. The captain was dubious at first, but gradually grew more enthusiastic; and finally they went over to the radios together.
XIII.
Fortunately, Reejaaren did not return for a good many days. His people remained; four to six gliders were always drifting overhead, and several more squatted on the hilltops beside their catapults. The number of aircraft did not change noticeably, but the population of the hilltops increased day by day. Barlennan could not tell whether gliders were leaving and returning with more people, or whether some or all of the newcomers were arriving on foot. He did not particularly care, since he had matters of more immediate importance to settle. No further attempt was being made to free the ship, since that would obviously be an error in diplomacy; but the crew was busy just the same.
Barlennan and his mate were alternately at the radios and talking long and earnestly to the crew; the Earthmen above had entered into Dondragmer’s plan with enthusiasm and, Barlennan suspected, some little amusement. A few of the sailors were unable to pick up what was needed with sufficient speed, and had to be left out of the main plan in one sense; but even they understood the situation and would, Barlennan was sure, be able to contribute to the desired effect. In the meantime, he put them to work repairing the shattered masts, whose rigging had at least kept them with the ship.
Some other physical work was also done during this time; such goods as Barlennan cared to trade from the material he had acquired crossing the isthmus were unloaded and displayed on shore. As he had said, they amounted to little, principally supplies of the “fir cones” and materials acquired from the rock-rollers. The captain did not care too much whether these were greatly desired by his present customers or not, provided he could unload enough to purchase some of the stretching rope and a supply of the fabric used in covering the wings on the gliders. The latter was a new desire, picked up as a result of his conversations with the Earthmen about the operation of the flying machines.
He realized perfectly well that neither item might be for sale, but he intended to try, anyway. He saw uses for both of them.
The plan was matured and well rehearsed long before the interpreter’s return, and the officers found themselves impatient to try it out though Dondragmer had been spending time at the radio meanwhile on yet another project. In fact, after controlling themselves for a few days, the captain and mate strolled one morning up the hill toward the parked gliders with a full determination to make a test of the idea, though neither had said a word to the other about his intention. The weather had completely cleared long since, and there was only the perpetual wind of Mesklin’s seas to help or hinder flying. Apparently it wanted to help; the gliders were tugging at their tie-down cables like living creatures, and crewmen were standing by the wings with a secure grip on the surrounding bushes, evidently ready to add their strength if necessary to that of the restraining lines.
Barlennan and Dondragmer approached the machines until they were ordered sharply to halt. They had no idea of the rank or authority of the individual giving the order, since he wore no insignia; but it was not part of their plan to argue such matters. They halted, and looked over the machines casually from a distance of thirty or forty yards, while the crewmen looked back rather belligerently. Apparently Reejaaren’s superciliousness was not a rare trait with his nation.
“You look astonished, Barbarians,” one of them remarked after a brief silence. “If I thought you could learn anything by looking at our machines, I would have to force you to stop. As it is, I can only assure you that you look rather childish.” He spoke Barlennan’s tongue with an accent not much worse than that of the chief linguist. Dondragmer found time to wonder how his own language came to be known even this well in a country which had managed to keep its very existence secret from his people. Barlennan did not wonder; he seized the opportunity.
“There seems little to learn from your machines. You could save much trouble with the wind in your present situation by warping the front of your wings down; why do you keep so many people busy instead?” He used the English word for “wings,” not having one in his own language. The other requested an explanation; receiving it, he was startled out of his superiority for a moment.
“You have seen gliders before? Where?”
“I have never seen your type of flying machine in my life,” Barlennan answered. His words were truthful, though their emphasis was decidedly misleading. “I have not been this close to the Rim before, and I should imagine that these flimsy structures would collapse from their added weight if you flew them much farther south.”
“How—?” the guard stopped, realizing that his attitude was not that of a civilized being toward a barbarian. He was silent for a moment, trying to decide just what his attitude should be in this case; then he decided to pass the problem higher in the chain of command. “When Reejaaren returns, he will no doubt be interested in any minor improvements you may be able to suggest. He might even reduce your port fee, if he deems them of sufficient value. Until then, I think you had better stay entirely away from our gliders; you might notice some of their more valuable features, and then we would regretfully have to consider you a spy.”
Barlennan and his mate retired to the Bree without argument, highly satisfied with the effect they had produced, and reported the conversation in its entirety to the Earthmen.
“You say that more than one of them speaks your language, and yet none of your people have ever heard of this country?” asked Lackland when the captain had finished. “They seem to have explorers of their own, then, and ships as well. Their reasons for keeping their own country unknown might be very interesting to your government.”
“I can believe that,” replied Barlennan, to whom Dondragmer had already communicated his thoughts on this subject. “They wouldn’t need ships, though; perhaps they fly to the continent at this or lower latitudes, and then travel overland to better known parts of the world. Many of our trading caravans have penetrated to the eastern shore of the continent, though of course far south of here.”
“That may be true. If so, you’ll have to hope that the explorers from these islands did not learn too much about your country along with the language.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” put in Dondragmer. “They’ll probably assume that we kept our knowledge secret just as they have theirs.”
“How do you think he reacted to the implication that you had gliders capable of flying up in the two-hundred-gravity latitudes?” asked Lackland. “Do you think he believed you?”
“I couldn’t say; he decided about then either that he was saying too much or hearing too much, and put us in storage until his chief returns. I think we started the right attitude developing, though.”
Barlennan may have been right, but the interpreter gave no particular evidence of it when he returned. There was some delay between his actual landing and his descent of the hill to the Bree, and it seemed likely that the guard had reported the conversation; but he made no reference to it at first. He was accompanied by quite a large party this time, and many more people who must have come by some mode of ground travel began to gather on the hills looking down on the imprisoned vessel. Reejaaren’s attitude was still one of superiority.
“The Officer of the Outer Ports has decided to assume for the moment that your intentions are harmless,” he began. “You have, of course, violated our rules in coming ashore without permission; but he recognized that you were in difficulties at the time, and is inclined to be lenient. He authorizes me to inspect your cargo and evaluate the amount of the necessary port fee and fine.”
“The officer would not care to see our cargo for himself and perhaps accept some token of our gratitude for his kindness?” Barlennan managed to keep sarcasm out of his voice. Reejaaren gave the equivalent of a smile.
“Your attitude is commendable, and I am sure we will get along very well with each other. Unfortunately, he is occupied on one of the other islands, and will be for many days to come. Should you still be here at the end of that time, I am sure he will be delighted to take advantage of your offer. In the meantime we might proceed to business.”
Reejaaren lost little if any of his superiority during his examination of the Bree’s cargo, but he managed to give Barlennan some information during the process which he would probably have died rather than give consciously. His words, of course, tended to belittle the value of everything he saw; he harped endlessly on the “mercy” of his so-far-unseen chief, Marreni. However, he appropriated as fine a respectable number of the “fircones” that had been acquired during the journey across the isthmus.
Now, these should have been fairly easy to obtain here, since the distance could not be too great for the gliders—in fact, the interpreter had made remarks indicating acquaintance with the natives of those regions. If, then, Reejaaren held the fruit as being of value, it meant that the “barbarians” of the isthmus were a little too much for the interpreter’s highly cultured people, and the latter were not so close to being the lords of creation as they wanted people to think.
Barlennan remembered in this connection that when Marreni’s assistant first heard about the fruit he had hastily credited the captain with diplomacy rather than military prowess. Reejaaren would probably not want to admit even to himself that anyone surpassed his people in the latter quality. He was, in short, conscious of weakness; Barlennan’s excellent knowledge of practical psychology let him picture the situation with some accuracy, though he had no term in his language equivalent to “inferiority complex.” That suggested that the mate’s plan had a very good chance of success, since the interpreter would probably do almost anything rather than appear inferior to the “barbarian” crew of the Bree.
Barlennan, reflecting on this, felt his morale rise like the Earthmen’s rocket; he was going to be able to lead this Reejaaren around like a pet ternee. He bent all his considerable skill to the task, and the crew seconded nobly.
Once the fine was paid, the spectators on the hills descended in swarms; and the conclusion about the value of the firconelike fruit was amply confirmed. Barlennan at first had a slight reluctance to sell all of it, since he had hoped to get really high prices at home; but then he reflected that he would have to go back through the source of supply before reaching his home in any case.
Many of the buyers were evidently professional merchants themselves, and had plentiful supplies of trade goods with them. Some of these were also edibles, but on their captain’s orders the crew paid these little attention. This was accepted as natural enough by the merchants; after all, such goods would be of little value to an overseas trader, who could supply his own food from the ocean but could hardly expect to preserve most types of comestibles for a long enough time to sell at home. The “spices” which kept more or less permanently were the principal exception to this rule, and none of these were offered by the local tradesmen.
Some of the merchants, however, did have interesting materials. Both the cord and the fabric in which Barlennan had been interested were offered, rather to his surprise. He personally dealt with one of the salesmen who had a supply of the latter. The captain felt its unbelievably sheer and even more incredibly tough texture for a long time before satisfying himself that it was really the same material as that used in the glider wings. Reejaaren was close beside him, which made a little care necessary.
He learned from the merchant that it was a woven fabric in spite of appearances, the fiber being of vegetable origin—the canny salesman refused to be more specific—the cloth being treated after weaving with a liquid which partly dissolved the threads and filled the holes with the material thus obtained.
“Then the cloth is windproof? I think I could sell this easily at home. It is hardly strong enough for practical uses like roofing, but it is certainly ornamental, particularly the colored versions. I will admit, though it is hardly good buying procedure, that this is the most salable material I have yet seen on this island.”
“Not strong enough?” It was Reejaaren rather than the merchant who expressed indignation. “This material is made nowhere else, and is the only substance at once strong and light enough to form the wings of our gliders. If you buy it, we will have to give it to you in bolts too small for such a purpose—no one but a fool, of course, would trust a sewn seam in a wing.”
“Of course,” Barlennan agreed easily. “I suppose such stuff could be used in wings here, where the weight is so small. I assure you that it would be quite useless for the purpose in high latitudes; a wing large enough to lift anyone would tear to pieces at once in any wind strong enough to furnish the lift.”
This was almost a direct quote from one of his human friends, who had been suggesting why the gliders had never been seen in countries farther south. He was quite sure he would not actually have to tell any lies; it would be more than surprising if Reejaaren were to ask him any questions about how gliders were built in the high latitudes. The official would undoubtedly try to pump him as subtly as possible on the subject; but admit that his own people did not have such machines? Never! His words confirmed this belief.
“Of course, there is very little load on a glider in these latitudes,” he agreed. “Naturally, there is no point in building them stronger than necessary here; it adds to the weight.” Barlennan decided that his tactical adversary was not too bright.
“Naturally,” he agreed. “I suppose with the storms you have here your surface ships must be stronger. Do they ever get flung inland the way mine was? I never saw the sea rise in that fashion before.”
“We naturally take precautions when a storm is coming. The rising of the sea occurs only in these latitudes of little weight, as far as I have been able to observe. Actually, our ships are very much like yours, though we have different armament, I notice. Yours is unfamiliar to me—doubtless our philosophers of war found it inadequate for the storms of these latitudes. Did it suffer seriously in the hurricane that brought you here?”
“Rather badly,” Barlennan lied. “How are your own ships armed?”
He did not for a second expect the interpreter to answer the question in any way, except perhaps a resumption of his former haughtiness, but Reejaaren for once was both affable and co-operative. (He can afford to be, Barlennan thought, after what he’s taken off us.) He hooted a signal up the hill to some of his party who had remained above, and one of these obediently came down to the scene of bargaining with a peculiar object in his pincers.
“If necessary, as I said, though I don’t see why it should be necessary. Your flying machines could catch us before we got very far, if we tried to leave the coast before you wanted, couldn’t they?” Reejaaren might have been losing his suspicions up to this point, but the last question restored them in full force.
“Perhaps we could, but that is not for me to say. Marreni will decide, of course, but I suspect you might as well plan on lightening your ship here. There will be port fees, of course, in any case.”
“Port fees? This is no port, and I didn’t land here; I was washed up.”
“Nevertheless, foreign ships must pay port fees. I might point out that the amount is determined by the Officer of the Outer Ports, and he will get much of his impression of you through me. A little more courtesy might be in order.”
Barlennan restrained his temper with difficulty, but agreed aloud that the interpreter spoke the clearest truth. He said it at some length, and apparently mollified that individual to some extent. At any rate he departed without further threats, overt or implied. Barlennan expressed himself to his mate at length and with feeling as the interpreter climbed the hill once more and got into his glider.
Two of his fellows accompanied him; the other remained behind. Men from the other gliders hastily seized the two ropes attached to the collapsible framework and pulled. The cords stretched unbelievably, until their hooks were finally fastened to an attachment in the glider’s nose. The aircraft was then released and the ropes contracted to their original length, hurling the glider into the air. Barlennan instantly formed a heartfelt desire for some of that stretching rope. He said so, and Dondragmer sympathized. He had heard the entire conversation, and sympathized also with his captain’s feelings toward the linguist for the Officer of the Outer Ports.
“You know, Barl, I think we could put that lad in his place. Want to try it?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t think we can afford to let him get mad at us until we’re good and far away. I don’t want him and his friends dropping their spears on the Bree now or any other time.”
“I don’t mean to make him angry, but afraid of us. ‘Barbarians’—he’ll eat that word if I have to cook it personally for him. It all depends on certain things: do the Flyers know how these gliders work, and will they tell us?”
“They probably know, unless they’ve had better ones for so long they’ve forgotten—”
“So much the better, for what I have in mind.”
“. . . But I’m not sure whether they’ll tell. I think you know by now what I’m really hoping to get out of this trip; I want to learn everything I possibly can of the Flyers’ science. That’s why I want to get to that rocket of theirs near the Center; Charles himself said that it contained much of the most advanced scientific equipment they have. When we have that, there won’t be a pirate afloat or ashore who’ll be able to touch the Bree, and we’ll have paid our last port dues—we’ll be able to write our own menus from then on.”
“I guessed as much.”
“That’s why I wonder whether they’ll tell what you want; they may suspect what I’m after.”
“I think you’re too suspicious yourself. Have you ever asked for any of this scientific information you want to steal?”
“Yes; Charles always said it was too difficult to explain.”
“Maybe he was right; maybe he doesn’t know it himself. I want to ask one of his people about these gliders, anyway; I want to watch that Reejaaren grovel.”
“Just what is this idea of yours, anyway?”
Dondragmer told him, at length. The captain was dubious at first, but gradually grew more enthusiastic; and finally they went over to the radios together.
XIII.
Fortunately, Reejaaren did not return for a good many days. His people remained; four to six gliders were always drifting overhead, and several more squatted on the hilltops beside their catapults. The number of aircraft did not change noticeably, but the population of the hilltops increased day by day. Barlennan could not tell whether gliders were leaving and returning with more people, or whether some or all of the newcomers were arriving on foot. He did not particularly care, since he had matters of more immediate importance to settle. No further attempt was being made to free the ship, since that would obviously be an error in diplomacy; but the crew was busy just the same.
Barlennan and his mate were alternately at the radios and talking long and earnestly to the crew; the Earthmen above had entered into Dondragmer’s plan with enthusiasm and, Barlennan suspected, some little amusement. A few of the sailors were unable to pick up what was needed with sufficient speed, and had to be left out of the main plan in one sense; but even they understood the situation and would, Barlennan was sure, be able to contribute to the desired effect. In the meantime, he put them to work repairing the shattered masts, whose rigging had at least kept them with the ship.
Some other physical work was also done during this time; such goods as Barlennan cared to trade from the material he had acquired crossing the isthmus were unloaded and displayed on shore. As he had said, they amounted to little, principally supplies of the “fir cones” and materials acquired from the rock-rollers. The captain did not care too much whether these were greatly desired by his present customers or not, provided he could unload enough to purchase some of the stretching rope and a supply of the fabric used in covering the wings on the gliders. The latter was a new desire, picked up as a result of his conversations with the Earthmen about the operation of the flying machines.
He realized perfectly well that neither item might be for sale, but he intended to try, anyway. He saw uses for both of them.
The plan was matured and well rehearsed long before the interpreter’s return, and the officers found themselves impatient to try it out though Dondragmer had been spending time at the radio meanwhile on yet another project. In fact, after controlling themselves for a few days, the captain and mate strolled one morning up the hill toward the parked gliders with a full determination to make a test of the idea, though neither had said a word to the other about his intention. The weather had completely cleared long since, and there was only the perpetual wind of Mesklin’s seas to help or hinder flying. Apparently it wanted to help; the gliders were tugging at their tie-down cables like living creatures, and crewmen were standing by the wings with a secure grip on the surrounding bushes, evidently ready to add their strength if necessary to that of the restraining lines.
Barlennan and Dondragmer approached the machines until they were ordered sharply to halt. They had no idea of the rank or authority of the individual giving the order, since he wore no insignia; but it was not part of their plan to argue such matters. They halted, and looked over the machines casually from a distance of thirty or forty yards, while the crewmen looked back rather belligerently. Apparently Reejaaren’s superciliousness was not a rare trait with his nation.
“You look astonished, Barbarians,” one of them remarked after a brief silence. “If I thought you could learn anything by looking at our machines, I would have to force you to stop. As it is, I can only assure you that you look rather childish.” He spoke Barlennan’s tongue with an accent not much worse than that of the chief linguist. Dondragmer found time to wonder how his own language came to be known even this well in a country which had managed to keep its very existence secret from his people. Barlennan did not wonder; he seized the opportunity.
“There seems little to learn from your machines. You could save much trouble with the wind in your present situation by warping the front of your wings down; why do you keep so many people busy instead?” He used the English word for “wings,” not having one in his own language. The other requested an explanation; receiving it, he was startled out of his superiority for a moment.
“You have seen gliders before? Where?”
“I have never seen your type of flying machine in my life,” Barlennan answered. His words were truthful, though their emphasis was decidedly misleading. “I have not been this close to the Rim before, and I should imagine that these flimsy structures would collapse from their added weight if you flew them much farther south.”
“How—?” the guard stopped, realizing that his attitude was not that of a civilized being toward a barbarian. He was silent for a moment, trying to decide just what his attitude should be in this case; then he decided to pass the problem higher in the chain of command. “When Reejaaren returns, he will no doubt be interested in any minor improvements you may be able to suggest. He might even reduce your port fee, if he deems them of sufficient value. Until then, I think you had better stay entirely away from our gliders; you might notice some of their more valuable features, and then we would regretfully have to consider you a spy.”
Barlennan and his mate retired to the Bree without argument, highly satisfied with the effect they had produced, and reported the conversation in its entirety to the Earthmen.
“You say that more than one of them speaks your language, and yet none of your people have ever heard of this country?” asked Lackland when the captain had finished. “They seem to have explorers of their own, then, and ships as well. Their reasons for keeping their own country unknown might be very interesting to your government.”
“I can believe that,” replied Barlennan, to whom Dondragmer had already communicated his thoughts on this subject. “They wouldn’t need ships, though; perhaps they fly to the continent at this or lower latitudes, and then travel overland to better known parts of the world. Many of our trading caravans have penetrated to the eastern shore of the continent, though of course far south of here.”
“That may be true. If so, you’ll have to hope that the explorers from these islands did not learn too much about your country along with the language.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” put in Dondragmer. “They’ll probably assume that we kept our knowledge secret just as they have theirs.”
“How do you think he reacted to the implication that you had gliders capable of flying up in the two-hundred-gravity latitudes?” asked Lackland. “Do you think he believed you?”
“I couldn’t say; he decided about then either that he was saying too much or hearing too much, and put us in storage until his chief returns. I think we started the right attitude developing, though.”
Barlennan may have been right, but the interpreter gave no particular evidence of it when he returned. There was some delay between his actual landing and his descent of the hill to the Bree, and it seemed likely that the guard had reported the conversation; but he made no reference to it at first. He was accompanied by quite a large party this time, and many more people who must have come by some mode of ground travel began to gather on the hills looking down on the imprisoned vessel. Reejaaren’s attitude was still one of superiority.
“The Officer of the Outer Ports has decided to assume for the moment that your intentions are harmless,” he began. “You have, of course, violated our rules in coming ashore without permission; but he recognized that you were in difficulties at the time, and is inclined to be lenient. He authorizes me to inspect your cargo and evaluate the amount of the necessary port fee and fine.”
“The officer would not care to see our cargo for himself and perhaps accept some token of our gratitude for his kindness?” Barlennan managed to keep sarcasm out of his voice. Reejaaren gave the equivalent of a smile.
“Your attitude is commendable, and I am sure we will get along very well with each other. Unfortunately, he is occupied on one of the other islands, and will be for many days to come. Should you still be here at the end of that time, I am sure he will be delighted to take advantage of your offer. In the meantime we might proceed to business.”
Reejaaren lost little if any of his superiority during his examination of the Bree’s cargo, but he managed to give Barlennan some information during the process which he would probably have died rather than give consciously. His words, of course, tended to belittle the value of everything he saw; he harped endlessly on the “mercy” of his so-far-unseen chief, Marreni. However, he appropriated as fine a respectable number of the “fircones” that had been acquired during the journey across the isthmus.
Now, these should have been fairly easy to obtain here, since the distance could not be too great for the gliders—in fact, the interpreter had made remarks indicating acquaintance with the natives of those regions. If, then, Reejaaren held the fruit as being of value, it meant that the “barbarians” of the isthmus were a little too much for the interpreter’s highly cultured people, and the latter were not so close to being the lords of creation as they wanted people to think.
Barlennan remembered in this connection that when Marreni’s assistant first heard about the fruit he had hastily credited the captain with diplomacy rather than military prowess. Reejaaren would probably not want to admit even to himself that anyone surpassed his people in the latter quality. He was, in short, conscious of weakness; Barlennan’s excellent knowledge of practical psychology let him picture the situation with some accuracy, though he had no term in his language equivalent to “inferiority complex.” That suggested that the mate’s plan had a very good chance of success, since the interpreter would probably do almost anything rather than appear inferior to the “barbarian” crew of the Bree.
Barlennan, reflecting on this, felt his morale rise like the Earthmen’s rocket; he was going to be able to lead this Reejaaren around like a pet ternee. He bent all his considerable skill to the task, and the crew seconded nobly.
Once the fine was paid, the spectators on the hills descended in swarms; and the conclusion about the value of the firconelike fruit was amply confirmed. Barlennan at first had a slight reluctance to sell all of it, since he had hoped to get really high prices at home; but then he reflected that he would have to go back through the source of supply before reaching his home in any case.
Many of the buyers were evidently professional merchants themselves, and had plentiful supplies of trade goods with them. Some of these were also edibles, but on their captain’s orders the crew paid these little attention. This was accepted as natural enough by the merchants; after all, such goods would be of little value to an overseas trader, who could supply his own food from the ocean but could hardly expect to preserve most types of comestibles for a long enough time to sell at home. The “spices” which kept more or less permanently were the principal exception to this rule, and none of these were offered by the local tradesmen.
Some of the merchants, however, did have interesting materials. Both the cord and the fabric in which Barlennan had been interested were offered, rather to his surprise. He personally dealt with one of the salesmen who had a supply of the latter. The captain felt its unbelievably sheer and even more incredibly tough texture for a long time before satisfying himself that it was really the same material as that used in the glider wings. Reejaaren was close beside him, which made a little care necessary.
He learned from the merchant that it was a woven fabric in spite of appearances, the fiber being of vegetable origin—the canny salesman refused to be more specific—the cloth being treated after weaving with a liquid which partly dissolved the threads and filled the holes with the material thus obtained.
“Then the cloth is windproof? I think I could sell this easily at home. It is hardly strong enough for practical uses like roofing, but it is certainly ornamental, particularly the colored versions. I will admit, though it is hardly good buying procedure, that this is the most salable material I have yet seen on this island.”
“Not strong enough?” It was Reejaaren rather than the merchant who expressed indignation. “This material is made nowhere else, and is the only substance at once strong and light enough to form the wings of our gliders. If you buy it, we will have to give it to you in bolts too small for such a purpose—no one but a fool, of course, would trust a sewn seam in a wing.”
“Of course,” Barlennan agreed easily. “I suppose such stuff could be used in wings here, where the weight is so small. I assure you that it would be quite useless for the purpose in high latitudes; a wing large enough to lift anyone would tear to pieces at once in any wind strong enough to furnish the lift.”
This was almost a direct quote from one of his human friends, who had been suggesting why the gliders had never been seen in countries farther south. He was quite sure he would not actually have to tell any lies; it would be more than surprising if Reejaaren were to ask him any questions about how gliders were built in the high latitudes. The official would undoubtedly try to pump him as subtly as possible on the subject; but admit that his own people did not have such machines? Never! His words confirmed this belief.
“Of course, there is very little load on a glider in these latitudes,” he agreed. “Naturally, there is no point in building them stronger than necessary here; it adds to the weight.” Barlennan decided that his tactical adversary was not too bright.
“Naturally,” he agreed. “I suppose with the storms you have here your surface ships must be stronger. Do they ever get flung inland the way mine was? I never saw the sea rise in that fashion before.”
“We naturally take precautions when a storm is coming. The rising of the sea occurs only in these latitudes of little weight, as far as I have been able to observe. Actually, our ships are very much like yours, though we have different armament, I notice. Yours is unfamiliar to me—doubtless our philosophers of war found it inadequate for the storms of these latitudes. Did it suffer seriously in the hurricane that brought you here?”
“Rather badly,” Barlennan lied. “How are your own ships armed?”
He did not for a second expect the interpreter to answer the question in any way, except perhaps a resumption of his former haughtiness, but Reejaaren for once was both affable and co-operative. (He can afford to be, Barlennan thought, after what he’s taken off us.) He hooted a signal up the hill to some of his party who had remained above, and one of these obediently came down to the scene of bargaining with a peculiar object in his pincers.
