Claimings Tails and Other Alien Artifacts Read online

  The Rownt gave a small and incomplete bow. “I am Ye-Ondry of the line of Chal, graduate of the Brarownt Academy and holder of a certificate of excellence from a Grandmother,” he introduced himself. Then he stared at Liam. The wind rustled through the trees, and the silence dragged on. This would be easier if Ye-Ondry would take the lead in conversation, especially since Liam rarely spoke other than simple greetings as he walked to and from the plaza. Sometimes he had to provide directions to the human base. Telling someone to walk two miles toward the peak of the distant mountain and then turn right on the path and crest a hill required less effort than small talk.

  “I hope next time to force you into a trade that leaves you with no meal to eat,” Liam said. The phrase was straight out of one of the Rownt stories Craig had won in trade a few years ago. He still bragged about that trade, and Lieutenant Spooner spent most of his time analyzing the texts.

  “I suspect I have already stolen your meat,” Ondry said. Liam was almost sure that was an insult aimed at the fact that Liam could have made a better deal. Liam grinned, careful to keep his teeth covered by his lips. He didn’t want Ye-Ondry to think he would snarl, not after the trader had been kind enough to verbally insult him. Rownt insulted people to show respect for them.

  “I failed to trade that copper for twelve days now. I am not the one who lacks meat,” Liam said proudly. If Ye-Ondry would insult him, maybe Ondry would trade more ore.

  Ye-Ondry’s expression shifted. His eyes narrowed and angled up a little, and the skin over his cheeks tightened. “Perhaps you do not know where to sell your goods. You stand in the rain and offer people water.”

  Liam laughed. He knew it was culturally inappropriate, but relief and joy allowed the sound to slip out before he could stop it. Ondry respected him enough to pull out the big insults and trust Liam to have enough self-confidence to survive them. For so many years, people looked at Liam like he was a broken toy. And damn it, Liam deserved respect. He hadn’t expected an alien to offer that support though.

  On the other hand, Liam honestly didn’t know if he’d made a bad trade. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. His agreement and self-insult clearly startled Ondry whose eyes grew large. “But tomorrow I will be trading root vegetables, and I won’t be sitting with copper I can’t sell,” Liam added.

  Another silence descended on them, and they studied each other. Liam wasn’t sure where to take the conversation, and he was straining the limits of his Rownt vocabulary and syntax. After several minutes, Ondry looked over Liam’s shoulder toward the trading table. “Go get your containers, young one. Help me carry these to the warehouse.”

  Liam grinned so widely he almost showed his teeth. To cover his lack of Rownt manners, Liam bowed deeply and hurried back inside to pack the copper Ondry had bought. He divided the goods into two boxes. Liam made sure one was light enough so he could carry it without struggling too much. The daily walk to and from the base had helped his legs acclimate to the heavier gravity, so hopefully he wouldn’t embarrass himself.

  When Liam pushed the heavier box to the edge of the trading plaza, Ondry and the potter were speaking. Both fell silent and watched while Liam went back to get the smaller box. Liam wondered what they were saying to each other. For such large creatures, they could be very soft-spoken, so he couldn’t catch any of their conversation.

  “Come,” Ondry said as he picked up the large box. “Elder,” he offered the potter, nodding at him before turning and heading into the center of town. Liam hurried after him. Technically Liam wasn’t supposed to stray outside the path that led from the base to the trading plaza, but Liam hoped any authorities they might meet would excuse him because he had an invitation.

  They walked straight toward the temple, the center of the Rownt town. The tall tower rose several stories into the air, although it was hard to judge how many levels were inside. Rownt buildings tended to be very tall to accommodate the largest adults. Craig said he thought the females were larger than the males because all the truly enormous Rownt he’d seen were females. The first floor of the temple was open. Liam knew that from briefings. Formal meetings, including high-level negotiations between the officers and the Rownt ruling council, took place in the open air under the temple.

  Plenty of people had speculated about what the Rownt might be hiding in the upper levels, but Liam wasn’t fool enough to ask. He was not the sort of idiot to kill the golden goose, and right now Ondry looked rather gooselike. So few of the Rownt were willing to engage in conversation that most of Command’s language files were incomplete. The first explorers to reach the planet had been given a simple primer on basic vocabulary and syntax, and after that the Rownt had appeared largely uninterested in improving communication.

  Liam and Ye-Ondry were near the center of the town when Liam saw a huge building, far too large for a Rownt house. The building was made of stone, a rarity in the middle of the wooden houses. The roof appeared to be some sort of metal, and solar panels ran all along one side of the ridged peak.

  Ondry went straight to the arched entry and headed into the shadowed interior. Feeling a little apprehensive, Liam followed. The second he crossed into the building, he could tell it was a warehouse. However, the goods were not organized using any logic he could recognize. There were clear piles, but each pile appeared to be a strange mishmash of unrelated goods.

  Ondry moved down one of the isles to the left and placed his box next to several bags of nuts, an assortment of food goods, and the largest pile of pure ore that Liam had seen since arriving on the planet.

  Liam was tempted to take out his computer and photograph the stockpile, but he didn’t know if that would be seen as particularly rude.

  “You have good trading goods,” Liam said

  Ondry looked at him with wide eyes but didn’t respond. Too late Liam realized that by complementing the Ondry, he had actually implied that the trader needed some sort of reassurance because he wasn’t strong enough to stand on his own. That was a rookie’s mistake. If Liam wanted to fix this, he needed to find an insult and he needed one quickly. The problem was he really couldn’t figure out what to insult.

  “I hope to trade with you until you have nothing left to trade but dust,” Liam said, the words tumbling out in a nervous rush.

  Ondry’s expression relaxed, and his face darkened. “It is more likely that you will add to my wealth.” He took the box from Liam and placed it on top of the one he had just put down. “Your people trade in vegetables,” he said.

  Liam had no idea what that was supposed to mean, especially since Ondry had traded vegetables and nuts as part of their deal. Since he didn’t know what to say, Liam remained silent.

  “Come.” Ondry walked back toward the exit, and Liam followed. However, Ondry didn’t head for the trading plaza the way Liam expected. Instead he moved south into an area of town that Liam didn’t know it all. Huge trees stood between the simple houses. Tall bushes and vines grew everywhere so that the walls were nearly invisible under the greenery, and the buildings stood farther apart. Apparently the Rownt had social ranks because this was definitely a nicer neighborhood. Liam reached into his messenger bag and triggered the recording on his computer. Hopefully he could get some good samples of Rownt conversation to make up for the fact that he was skirting the edges of regulation with this trip to an older, higher status part of town.

  A few very small Rownt stopped and stared, and it took Liam a second to realize that these four and five-feet-tall aliens were children. They seemed to have some sort of mathematical game going with a grid traced in the dirt and colored rocks set on various intersections. Curiosity whispered for Liam to investigate, but if there was one truism in the world it was that you didn’t get near someone else’s kids. Ever. So Liam kept his gaze on Ye-Ondry.

  He led them to a communal space. At first Liam thought that individuals might be barbequing in the Rownt equivalent of a park. Then Ondry led them to a table that sat beside a low divider that marked a cooking area. The woman in the cooking area was probably as young as Ondry. She had smooth skin where older Rownt tended to develop spots, and she couldn’t be more than six feet tall. Liam was taller than her. She looked at Ondry for a long time before he reached into his trading pouch and removed a token. He put it down, and she took it before Liam could see what Ondry had offered her.

  That was when Liam realized Ondry had purchased lunch. This outdoor space was the Rownt equivalent of a restaurant. Liam waved an insect away as he wondered what Craig would think of this invitation. Craig had more experience and was the senior trader for the base, but he made no secret of the fact that he intensely disliked the Rownt. He carefully avoided the word hate, but words like terrifying, freakish, and ugly came out of his mouth on a regular basis.

  Liam had to admit that Rownt had a little ugly going on. Their faces were proportioned like a turtle’s with wide-spread eyes and a small chin. Thank God they had a nose, or they would cross over into truly freakish land. Despite the lack of human beauty, Liam liked to look at the Rownt. They were slow and calm. Better yet, they weren’t going to use their looks to try to lead Liam around by the cock. That was for damn sure. So their lack of beauty was a comfort. Ondry was particular interesting. His flushes were much more pronounced than other Rownt, and the fact that he wasn’t too much taller than Liam helped. Some of the traders were ten or eleven feet tall, and Liam started feeling like a bug when he talked to them too long.

  Despite his desperate attempts to think of some way to start a conversation, Liam could only sit in silence and stare at Ye-Ondry as the server prepared some sort of food. When the female finished, she put thick slices of meat and irregular loaves of flat bread with burnt edges on two plates. She added a relish of chopped vegetables, and presented the
food to Liam and Ondry. Ondry took it without hesitation and bit into a piece of meat.

  Liam looked at his plate helplessly. Rownt meat was safe for human consumption, but it was so tough he wouldn’t be able to chew it, and some of the plant life had alkaline or poisons that posed long-term health risks. True, most of it was safe, but when items were cooked all together, Liam didn’t know if all the ingredients were safe. He picked up the hard bread and ate a bit of the end that hadn’t gotten soaked in the juices from the stir-fry vegetable topping.

  Ondry used the bread as a scoop to capture a heaping bite of the vegetables. After a couple of bites, Ondry put his food down and studied Liam. Even the server came over, and from the way they both watched Liam, Liam guessed he was offending the server by avoiding most of her food.

  He tried to construct a factual sentence that put any blame on his own ignorance. “I don’t know this food is safe for humans who have more…” Liam stopped. He didn’t know how to say delicate or more easily damaged by certain chemicals. “Who have stomachs,” he finished, cringing at his poor construction.

  The server looked at Ondry.

  Ondry just stared at Liam. Maybe he didn’t know what to say in response to such blatant stupidity and inability to construct a logical thought. Either way, Liam was feeling more and more like he was in over his head. Finally the food server said something to Ondry so fast that Liam didn’t understand any of it.

  Ondry spoke more slowly, but Liam still missed words. “He fears the food is…for his body.” Liam wasn’t sure what the missing word was, but incompatible or fatal or dangerous would all fit in there quite nicely. At least Liam got the sense that Ondry was trying to explain the problem.

  The server blinked at Liam for several long minutes, and Liam tried hard to look inoffensive. He tried, but he had the feeling he already offended her by not eating her food. When she spoke, she spoke slowly and her accent was definitely different from Ondry’s.

  “Food is safe…biology…my reputation.”

  This time Liam was missing more words than he understood, but the server had managed to get her point across. So now Liam could trust her and believe her when she said the food was safe, or he could offend her horribly and get banned from the planet. Dying of alien food poisoning sounded more pleasant than going back to the front, so Liam used the bread to scoop up some of the stir-fry substance, imitating Ondry’s table manners.

  The moment he bit into it, he started to choke. The sourness of it made his mouth water in protest and his lips pucker. Liam grabbed for a mug of water to wash it down it quickly. Life on the front had taught him to eat and appreciate some truly noxious food, but he’d never tasted anything this horrible. If he couldn’t swallow soon, he would have to spit it out. Luckily the vegetables were fairly soft, and Liam got the majority of it down. Then he ripped off some bread to take the taste out of his mouth.

  When the tears cleared, he realized the server and Ye-Ondry both watched him with wide eyes.

  “That food is…” Liam had to resort to English. “Sour,” he finished.

  “Can you define that word?” Ondry asked. That was a very familiar phrase, one of those included in the first grammar primer the Rownt themselves had offered.

  Liam thought about their earlier trade. “It tastes like the berries you tried to trade and I refused,” he said.

  The server trilled, and Ondry lost a little of his dark color. Liam looked between them, alarmed that he might have offended someone.

  The server spoke slowly. “Ye-Ondry would trade to human what no human wants.” It was clear she was simplifying her syntax and vocabulary the way one might for a child, and while that should be offensive, Liam appreciated the gesture.

  “Ye-Ondry will make profits somewhere else,” Liam said, and then to make sure he wasn’t offending Ondry, he added, “but not from me.”

  Ondry snorted. “You traded away temple wealth in return for the…of a meal,” he said.

  Liam really wished he had a larger vocabulary because he suspected that had been a good insult. “I don’t trade food that makes my trading partner wish for hunger.”

  Again the server trilled. She turned and moved the two steps into her cooking area. She quickly fixed another plate, this time with nuts and cheese. She put that next to Liam’s first plate. Liam picked up the cheese with some trepidation. When he took a small bite, he found the texture was slightly unpleasant. It had a rubbery, stringy consistency that got between his teeth, but it actually tasted quite good. It was like a nutty mozzarella. “I really like this,” he said.

  That caused another flurry of too-fast-to-follow conversation between the food server and Ondry. Too late, Liam realized he had complimented another Rownt. At this rate they were going to kick him off the planet. Liam tried to find a way to make it clear that he had been making a statement of fact rather than complimenting her.

  “Much Rownt food is unpleasant,” he said.

  “Do all humans dislike gasha berries?” Ondry asked. Liam made a mental note of the Rownt name for the bitter berries. He was very glad he had thought to record this.

  “Yes,” Liam said firmly. He could go on in great detail about how much the soldiers at the base disliked them, but he didn’t have the Rownt vocabulary. And he definitely didn’t want to explain that the kitchen staff had threatened to eviscerate him if he brought any back.

  “Do humans like da nuts?” When Ondry asked that, the server leaned against the low wall that separated her cooking area from the single table where Liam and Ondry sat.

  Liam recognized when he was being pumped for information, but building a relationship with the trader was more important than keeping secrets about which food humans found particularly disgusting. He also appreciated that when the Rownt used him for information, they didn’t hide the fact they were using him. “Humans do not dislike da nuts,” Liam said. Ondry leaned forward and widened his eyes, and Liam was beginning to think that meant Ondry had not understood a word of what Liam was saying. Liam tried again without using a double negative. “Some humans like da nuts. Some humans only eat them when they’re hungry. Humans would have to be very, very, very hungry to eat gasha berries.”

  “I understand,” Ondry said.

  Good, because Liam was fairly sure he was butchering the Rownt language, but he needed to record Ondry talking, not spend all his precious time showing off his own lack of proper grammar.

  “Do Rownt like to eat gasha berries?” Liam asked, mimicking Ondry’s sentence from earlier.

  “Yes,” Ondry said. Getting him to describe something—anything—was like pulling teeth. For a time, they were silent, and Liam pulled off small pieces of the rubbery cheese. Between that and the tough bread, Rownt food was hard on the teeth.

  “I need food that is less liked,” Liam said. Again that caused a quick flurry of language between Ondry and the server. Liam could just imagine Lieutenant Spooner in spasms of linguistic joy over getting this much oral language recorded. Rownt were not talkative. The server turned back to her station and returned with a plate of something new. They were thin slices of some sort of fruit. The white flesh was still attached to a pink rind.

  “These are not popular with Rownt,” Ondry said.

  Liam picked one up and bit off a small piece. It still had that lemon flavor that seemed to permeate most Rownt fruit, but it was much sweeter, and it had the consistency of a slightly overripe apple. The graininess didn’t distract from it being just plain good. “I like this,” Liam said. He took a larger bite and then reached for more cheese. He’d had no idea that Rownt food could be actually good, but this was.

  “Do you trade here often?” Liam asked Ondry. That sounded like a strange pickup line, but Ondry was the best trading partner Liam had found so far, and he didn’t want to lose him.

  The server quickly turned away from the table, and Ondry pressed his lips together. While neither of those gestures was covered in the material Liam had studied, he had the feeling he had done something wrong.