Free A World of Difference by Harry Turtledove Page B

bloodshed. History books—maybe history books on two worlds, he thought, blinking—would not bear his name as a curse.
    No one with a lot of arms would try to ram a spear through his brisket, either, which also counted. He stood up, stepped out from behind
Tsiolkovsky
’s immense tires, and let the Minervans see him. He left his rifle at his side but did not put it down. Not yet.
    “For me?” Hogram tested the knife blade with a fingerclaw and, like Fralk before him, was amazed at its keenness. “A most generous gift, eldest of eldest.”
    “Gift?” Fralk held his eyestalks very still, the picture of innocence. “How can such a thing be a gift, when all the clan possesses is in the clanfather’s keeping?”
    Hogram turned a second eye on the young male, who wondered if he had laid the flattery on too thick. Maybe he had. “There is a difference, you know,” Hogram said, “between being in my keeping and being in my hand.” But the domain-master’s eyestalks twitched; he was more amused than anything else.
    Fralk did not take another chance. He changed the subject, at least to some degree, saying, “These—strangers—may be valuable to us, clanfather.” “Strangers” seemed a better word than “monsters,” especially as he was trying to speak well of them.
    “If they have more knives such as this, certainly,” Hogram said. “Or, better yet, if they can make them with longer blades. Those would help us when we cross the Great Gorge. I would pay well for them.”
    “Of course, clanfather,” Fralk agreed. “The trouble is finding what the strange males want. They are so—different—from us that much of what we find valuable may be of no interest to them.”
    Hogram’s eyestalks were more than twitching now; they were wiggling with mirth. “That is the trouble with any trade, eldest of eldest, finding out what the other male wants and what it’s worth to him.” The clanfather’s faded, sagging skin and the continual wheezing of his breathing-pores showed that he would never be young again, but with his years had come shrewdness. Clan Hogram prospered, even among the Skarmer clans, where a trading blunder could put a clan up to its eyestalks in trouble.
    Fralk had learned a great deal, just watching and listening to his grandfather. Now to apply some of that learning, if he could … “Clanfather, have you chosen a male yet to work with the strangers, learn their peculiar words, and teach them ours?”
    “Why, no.” Hogram sounded a bit taken aback.
    Good, Fralk thought. The domain-master had not had a chance to work through all the implications of the strangers’ arrival, while he himself had thought about little else since the sky-box—(no, the
sky-boat
, he amended, consciously using the Lanuam word the Skarmers had borrowed)—almost fell on top of him.
    “Surely it would be better to have a single male handle such matters than to scatter them piecemeal among several,” he said.
    “So it would, so it would.” Hogram’s fingers twiddled as he thought. “You see to it, if you care to, Fralk. You’ve been dealing with the creatures since they came here, so you know more about them than anyone else.” The domain-master paused. “I’ve given you two hard tasks together now, first dealing with the Omalo domain-master and now with these strangers. You are still a young male. If you decline here, I will not think less of you.”
    “I will try, clanfather.” Fralk did his best to put a doubtful tremor in his voice, but had all he could do to keep from dancingwith glee. If he was the channel through which the strangers dealt with clan Hogram, some of what went by would stick to him, just as debris littered the sides and bottom of Ervis Gorge after the summer floods passed. He suspected the strangers had things much more interesting than the little knife. No trader with even the tiniest sense gave away his best stock as an opening present.
    And Hogram, the young male vowed to himself,