“Doesn’t seem to me it’s worth the effort,” Malesor said. “Our cars can get us where we’re going as fast as we need to go already, why bother?”
“Whatever an Earthman can do, we can do better! Soon Guhak will get his ground cars on the road. After that, it’ll only be a short step to cars that go in the sky. Then we’ll find out where the Earthmen come from and why they’re here. We’ll be as powerful as they are. We’ll get rid of them and their rotten music.”
The bar parlor was silent, except for the clink as Clarey put his mug on the table. If he held it an instant longer, he was afraid he would spill it. One or two of the men looked at him uneasily out of the corners of their eyes. Malesor spoke: “In the first place, you don’t know how powerful Earthmen are. In the second place, who wants to be powerful, anyway? The Earthmen haven’t done us any harm and they’re a good thing for the economy. My cousin in Zrig tells me one of ‘em come into his store a coupla months ago and bought out his whole stock, every bolt of cloth. Paid twice what it was worth, too. Live and let live, I say.”
The others murmured restlessly.
“If there are ways of doing things better,” Rini suggested, “why shouldn’t we have them, too?” His eyes darted quickly toward Clarey’s and then as quickly away.
Irik turned his head and looked directly at Clarey for the first time. “You’re silent, stranger. What do you think of the Earthmen?”
Clarey picked up his drink, finished the squfur and set the mug back down on the table. “I don’t know much about Earthmen. An ugly-looking lot, true, but there doesn’t seem to be any harm in them. Of course, living in Barshwat, you probably know a lot more about them than I do.”
“I doubt that,” Irik said. “You have an aunt in Barshwat.”
Clarey allowed himself to look surprised before he said courteously, “I’m glad you find me and my family so interesting. Yes, it so happens I do have an aunt there, but she’s rather advanced in years and doesn’t enjoy hanging around the starship field the way the children do.”
Irik’s face darkened. “What is your aunt’s name?”
This time everyone looked surprised. The question itself was not too out-of-the-way, but his tone decidedly was.
“She’s a great-grandmother,” Clarey said. “She would be too old for you. And I assure you it’s difficult to part her from her money. I’ve tried.”
Everybody laughed. Irik was furious. “I understand that your aunt lives very close to Earth Headquarters!”
Somebody must have followed him on one or more of his trips to Barshwat, Clarey realized. “If the Earthmen chose to establish themselves in the best residential section of Barshwat, then probably my aunt does live near them. She’s not the type to leave a comfortable dome simply because foreigners move into the neighborhood.”
“Perhaps she has more than neighborhood in common with Earthmen.”
The room was suddenly very quiet again.
“She does sometimes go to sleep at concerts,” Clarey conceded.
Irik opened his mouth. Malesor held up a hand. “Before you say anything more against the Earthmen, Irik,” he advised, “you oughta find out more about them. Their cars move faster and higher than ours. Maybe their catapults do, too.”
No one looked at Clarey. Malesor had averted a showdown, he knew, but this was the beginning of the end. And he had a suspicion who was responsible—innocently perhaps, perhaps not. Love does not always imply trust. And when he told Embelsira what had happened in the Furbush, she, too, couldn’t meet his eye. “That Irik,” she said, “I never liked him.”
“I wonder how he knows so much about me.”
“Rini writes him very often,” she babbled. “He must have told him you were responsible for the new music. That would make him hate you. Rini likes to irritate Irik, because he’s always been jealous of him. But the whole thing’s silly. How could you possibly make over the world’s music, even if you were—” Her voice ran down.
“An Earthman?” he finished coldly. “I suppose you went around telling everybody your suspicions, and Rini wrote that to Irik, too?”
“I didn’t tell anybody!” she protested indignantly. “Not a soul!” She met his eye. “Except Mother, of course.”
“Your mother! You might as well have published it in the District Bulletin!”
“You have no right to speak of Mother like that, even if it’s true!” Embelsira began to sob. “I had to tell her, Balt—she kept asking why there weren’t any young ones.”
“You could’ve told her to mind her own business!” he snapped, before he could catch himself. Five years, and he still made slips. It was her business. On Damorlan, it was a woman’s duty not only to have children but to see that her children had children and their children had children.
He made himself look grave and self-reproachful. “I have a confession to make, Belsir. I should have told you when I married you. I can’t have children.”
“I never heard of such a thing! Everybody has children—unless they’re not married, of course,” she added primly.
“It’s an affliction sent by the gods.”
“The gods would never do anything like that!” she declared confidently.
How primitive she is, he thought, and, then, angrily, how provincial I am! He had never stopped to think about it, but he knew of no married couple who had not at least one offspring; he and Embelsira were the only ones. It hadn’t occurred to the X-T specialists that a species whose biological assets were roughly the same might have different handicaps. Apparently there was no such thing as sterility on Damorlan.
“Are you really an Earthman, then, Balt?” she asked timidly.
She had spread the news around, ruined him, ruined the work Earth had been doing, perhaps ruined even more than that—and she hadn’t even been sure to begin with. But it was too late for recriminations. He had to salvage what little he could—time, maybe; that was all.
“Are you going to tell?” he asked.
She hesitated. “Do you swear you don’t mean my people any harm?”
“I swear,” he said.
“Then I swear not to tell,” she said.
He kissed her. After all, he thought, it isn’t a lie. I don’t mean her people any harm. Besides, sooner or later, her mother will get it out of her, so she won’t be keeping her part of the bargain.
The next time he went to Barshwat he knew he would be followed. He tried to shake the follower or followers off, but he couldn’t be sure he’d succeeded.
He found the colonel looking out of the window with an expression of quiet melancholy. If there had been any Earthwomen on Damorlan, Clarey would have thought he’d been crossed in love.
“Things are taking a bad turn, Clarey,” Blynn said. “There have been certain manifestations of hostility from the natives. Get any hint of it?”
“No,” Clarey said, taking his usual chair, “not a whisper.”
The colonel sat down heavily. “Katund’s too out of the way. We should’ve moved you to a city once you’d got the feel of things. But you do go to Zrig occasionally. Haven’t you heard anything there?”
“Only that an Earthman bought out a cloth merchant’s entire stock at one blow.”
Blynn grinned weakly.