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 skybox(no, the skyboat,. 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 dancing with 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, would not see everything the strangers had to offer. Some Fralk would keep or dispose of for himself. Though clanfathers’ rights were as strong in theory among the Skarmer clans as with the Omalo across the gorge, in practice a male still under his clanfather’s power could also accumulate a limited amount of wealth for himself. Or even, Fralk thought, not such a limited amount, so long as he was careful.

His musing made him miss something Hogram had said. “Your pardon, clanfather,” he said, widening himself contritely.

“I wonder where these strangers-creatures-whatever they are-come from,” Hogram repeated. “We’ve not seen nor heard of nor smelled their like.” His arms waved in agitation. “Imagine not having eyestalks, being blind to half the world all the time. Imagine having only two legs, and two hands. Imagine wanting to stay so hot-”

“That is unnerving,” Fralk agreed. The strangers had a device with fire somehow trapped inside it and had used it on the journey to the castle when night came. They huddled around it, though the evening was mild. The heat had been so savage that no one wanted to go near them, not even Fralk, who was curious about the fire. He knew of few things that burned readily; a new one would find a ready market among icesmiths and also could be useful in war. When he got more words, he would ask about that.

“They follow strange gods, too, if what you and the others have told me of them is true,” Hogram went on. “I’ve never heard of anyone worshiping the Twinstar.”

“They do, clanfather,” Fralk insisted. “They roused a little before dawn this morning, as did we, and through clouds low in the east they spied the Twinstar, the bright blue one and its little faint companion. As we watched them, they pointed to it, to themselves, and to it again. I cannot think of any reason for such a rite as that but worship.”

“For all we know of them, they may have been trying to tell us they’re. from the Twinstar,” Hogram said. “They’re weird enough.”

Fralk’s eyestalks started to twitch. Then he noticed that Hogram was not laughing. He thought about it. It made as much sense as anything else, he supposed. He said so. He was still thoughtful when he left the domain master’s presence a little while later. He was reminded he would have to be even more cautious in his dealings with the strangers than he had thought. Taking Hogram for a fool would never do.

“I hope they don’t mind us watching as their young get born,” Pat Marquard said as she walked along behind Reatur.

“So do I,” Irv said. “From the way they keep their females so restricted, I’m afraid they might. But I hope Reatur will see we’re so different from his kind that we don’t count.”

Though he had gloves on, he kept his hands in his pockets. He noticed himself doing that whenever he was inside Reatur’s castle. Just the idea of being in a building made largely of ice gave him goose bumps. He glanced over at his wife. She was doing the same thing.

“Do you think it’s being so restricted that makes the females here nothing like the males?” Sarah asked him.

“More likely just a universal constant,” he said, which earned him a glare from his wife, a snort from Pat, and, at the noise, the brief honor of a second eyeball on him from Reatur. If it was an honor, he thought, and not simply a reflex.

He wasn’t really sure about that. After two and a half weeks on Minerva, he wasn’t really sure about much. Back on Earth, the people to whom Athena’s crew relayed data all sounded certain they knew what was going on. Irv would have had more confidence in them if the advice they sent agreed with itself more than two times in five. As it was, he was looking forward to the day when the Earth slipped behind the sun. Being out of radio contact for a while was beginning to seem a delightful prospect.

Reatur brought him back to the here-and-now by opening the door to the females’ part of the castle. As always, the din that came from the other side of the door when the females saw him was impressive. “Reserved” was not in the Minervan female vocabulary.

The din redoubled when the females spotted the three humans behind the-baron? chief? Irv still had no sure feel for the best rendering of Reatur’s title. One of the few things Minervan he did have a feel for was what the local females thought about humans.

They thought humans were hilarious.

They came crowding around, staring, falling over one another, prodding, poking, pulling their arms back in amazement every time they directly touched warm human flesh, then reaching out to do it again. “They’re like a bunch of berserk puppies,” Pat said as the wave washed over her. She was smiling; it was hard not to smile around Minervan females.

Irv jerked his head back, just in time to keep a female’s fingerclaw from poking him in the eye. The female reached up and ran the finger under the top of his cap instead, then let out an almost supersonic squeal.

“Reminds me even more of my two-year-old niece,” Irv said. The thought saddened him; Beth was three now, not two, and would be five when Irv got back to Earth. She probably would not remember Sarah or him.

“They are like toddlers, aren’t they?” Sarah said slowly.

“Not the one named Biyal,” Pat said. Sarah and Irv both had to nod. No toddler on Earth could have been so dramatically gravid as Biyal. The bulges above her legs made her instantly recognizable to the humans, where even with Reatur they had to pause and consider before they were sure who he was. Those bulges also made her move very slowly, so she was the last female to come out and see the humans. “Hello, Biyal,” Irv said, waving.

“Hello, Irv,” she answered, and waved back with three arms at once. Except for that, both words and gesture were eerily accurate echoes of what the anthropologist had said and done. Such a gift for mimicry was something young children often displayed; Irv thought his wife might have put a finger on an important truth.

Biyal was still wading through the crowd of females toward the humans when she suddenly stopped. “Reatur!” she called, and followed the chieftain’s name with a stream of what was still gibberish despite nearly sleepless efforts on the part of everyone from Athena.