Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 80 страниц)

Meoraq forced himself to look down, to study the limp things the human males had and ponder the breeding of humans. He had no experience with the husbandry of animals; if there was a way to look at these creatures and know how quickly it made young or how many it could drop in a litter, Meoraq did not know what it was. He thought he’d ought to know too, because whether or not they were breeding at the moment, if they had opposing gender, there would be offspring eventually. If the swollen teats of their women were anything to measure by, those offspring might already have been recently birthed, but they were not in evidence now, which could mean the females would soon be ready to conceive again.

He had to think of Amber then, much as he had been fighting it. Amber and her silly spear. Amber, who spent so much time sitting at his fire and taking the little bites he fed her (right from his hand) and trying with such spectacular unsuccess to mouth his words. And yes, Amber, who was female, not that this mattered, and who might be breeding (he caught at his snout to stop the hiss that shot insensibly out of him) as she damned well should be (Meoraq swung himself down and out of the tree’s fork, moving fast from branch to branch until he dropped with a curse to the ground) instead of running over the wildlands with pointed sticks!

“Although You have made no law against this,” Meoraq acknowledged, glancing heavenward as he aimed himself for the humans and their camp. “And I admit I like better to see her at her foolish hunt than to see her N’ki doing nothing but waiting to be fed in proper female fashion.”

Nicci did everything in proper female fashion, come to think of it. She sat quietly, kept herself largely invisible and showed obedience to male command, since now he knew Scott to be male. Amber did none of these things, really. She talked almost constantly when she was with him, even reaching out to touch him if she did not think she had enough of his attention, and she let her frustrations show plainly on her ugly face. She kept apart from the rest of her kind, but was quick enough to argue with them if she thought they gave her cause. As for obedience, ha! He tried to imagine Amber as a proper female, to picture her in her father’s House (it greatly resembled his own in Xeqor) kneeling meekly, her neck bent and hands turned to heaven…

He couldn’t do it. Perhaps she had been feminine once, but no longer.

He liked her better like this anyway.

There had to be something wrong with him.

It was not far into the evening, and yet the humans were bedding themselves down in broad rings around the fires when he returned. Amber was still sitting up, wrapped in the shiny skin of her blanket, watching the other humans gnaw on saoq bones and talk at each other while she sat alone. She did not look at him until he had been standing over her for quite some time and she did not smile when she finally did.

She. So he had been thinking of her all this time, but he wanted to be sure. He needed to be sure. Just why he needed to be sure this instant, he didn’t know and did not explore. He simply hunkered down and started drawing in the dirt.

She watched listlessly until he had made two images, featureless blobs with arms and legs and hairy heads. She knew they were human and said so, tapping at them without enthusiasm even as her attention wandered back to the fire.

He caught her chin and made her look at the drawings as he, not without an internal wince, carefully added twin curves to one image and a short line to the other.

She studied the pictures in silence, her mouthparts slowly turning up at the corners. “Yeh. I ges we ki’indaskipt tht’biht. Man,” she said, pointing at the male figure. And at the female: “Woman.” And then she patted herself on the chest, right above the swellings of her—yes, her—teats. “Woman.”

‘If they are people, it is not a sin,’ he thought vaguely, and his belly warmed at once. ‘If they are people, she is a woman in your camp, under your protection, and she owes you every obedience.’

Even so, it would still be one of the unforgiveable sins and he knew it. The Word forbade all men, even Sheulek, to lie with a girl not yet in her woman’s years, or with any woman in her sickbed, or with a milking mother, unless she was his wife. Amber may indeed be female, but the proof of it was as good as a warning.

He made himself the master of his clay and put aside sexual thoughts—mostly—to add a third drawing to the first two. He wasn’t happy with it. He’d made it very small, armless and legless, as if wrapped in a blanket, but the effect was disturbingly grub-like instead. He scowled, started to rub it out and try again, then just looked at her and gestured around the camp. “Where are your children?” he asked boldly.

She tapped the grub. “Ba’bee. Orkid I ges. Ch’iild. You no litelpursen.”

“Where are they?” he asked again, determined to keep her focused. “Where is your child?”

She actually seemed to understand some of that, enough to draw back and crease up her brows at him. “Mine? Dijju’just say werz my ba’bee?”

He started to point at her teats, then changed his mind and pointed at those of the dirt-woman instead.

“Oh.” She chuffed and looked down at her chest anyway. “Yeh. Theh’alwez luklyk’thss. D’ssnt alwez meen therza ba’bee. We don’t hev enee ba’bees heer’rytnow.”

It took some time to break that apart and bring it together in a way that made sense and once he had, he did not quite trust the meaning he took away. Hesitantly, he tapped the dirt-woman directly on one of the teats, then tapped the dirt-child.

“Nope,” said Amber, a clear and definitive negation. “Jsst big’buubs.”

He leaned back, trying very hard not to stare at them. It was grotesque to think her teats were always swollen, but if there was no suckling, then there was no sin in mating with her.

And that was where his mind went, yet again. Right there. Like a lodestone clamping on to steel. There was something really wrong with him.

As he grappled with this, one of the figures at the fire rose and came back to join them. Amber’s friend, Nicci. She sat—he knew it was a she by the teats—and gave Meoraq a wary nod.

“Wutz he duun’eer?” Nicci asked, eyeing the pictures in the dirt as if she thought they might be poisonous.

“Nuthnn,” said Amber, showing her teeth in a smile. “Litel’lengwij lessn thatzal. Sex’ehd lzzrdstyl.”

Nicci frowned, slowly drawing up her knees and hugging them to put the barrier of her skinny arms and legs between them. This act pulled the fabric of her breeches very tight across her loins, forming folds that made it appear as if she had a slit. Meoraq looked at the sky.

“Itz nuthnn,” Amber said again, no longer smiling. “Luk itwuz bountoo cummup.”

“Why? Wutz he wantwthuz?” Nicci whispered, her eyes still fixed on Meoraq.

“Nothing! Fr’Cryzzakes, eeza lzzrd! Eez jst nevrseen buubz b’for!”

“Thn wutabout tht?”

Silence. Meoraq risked a glance to see why and found the two of them studying the diminutive dirt-penis on his dirt-man.

“Peepel tokabout yutu,” said Nicci.

“O fuktht!” Amber spat with startling venom. “Thziz my j’b Nicci! You wanna givmeeshit about’ow I doit, doit yorgod dam slf!”

She threw off her shiny blanket, punched it down into her pack, and stomped away.

Meoraq watched her go, frowning. He’d embarrassed her—and he could hardly claim innocence after drawing a penis and showing it to her—but he himself felt no shame. In truth, he felt nothing as she fled him except a simmer of resentment at this Nicci, who had turned an awkward but promising conversation into a big puddle of piss.

They sat there, and after a time, he went ahead and looked at her.

She flinched and ducked her head, so exactly like a dumaq woman that he expected her to mewl at him. Gann’s unreasoning lust both leapt and curdled to nauseating effect. He got up at once and stalked away to his tent.

Safely shut away from human eyes, he tore off his tunic and boots, threw himself on his mat and gave the loin-plate girding him a vicious slap. It stung his palm a little. It hurt his stubbornly extruding cock a lot, but he doubted that would teach it any lasting lessons. Even now, in this storm of furious reproach, he knew that if it had been Amber who bent her neck to him, he would be on her, in her, right this instant.

Six breaths, Uyane. A slow-count of six. One for the Prophet, two for his brunt, and onward, as many times as it takes to remember that you are the master of your clay.

Six breaths. Six more. Six again.

Of course, Amber never would bend her neck.

Six breaths. Lashraq. His brunt. Uyane, father of his own line. Mykrm. Oyan. Thaliszr. And back to the Prophet.

Unless she were looking at her boots. Then she might, but then she wouldn’t care what he thought about seeing the back of her neck. And she certainly would never make that sound. She didn’t know anything about how to be a real woman, and that more than anything bothered him, because what did it say about him that he still wanted to have sex with her?

This was part of the ordeal. It had to be. Sheul had made the humans to test his resolve, his patience and his resourcefulness, and He had made Amber specifically to test his self-control. He needed to stare that down, own it, conquer it, and get on with his damned life.

Six breaths, like rising stairs. Meoraq climbed them over and over, determined to find peace at the top. He had almost done so—almost—when out of the pure black nothing, he suddenly thought, ‘You don’t like her in spite of the way she acts, you know. You like her because of it.’

‘I don’t like her at all,’ he thought back defiantly. At once he felt the Sheulek in him judge that for the lie it was. He may hate the feelings he had—they felt dangerous and deviant, even when they were not wholly anchored to his loins—but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t have them.

And sometimes…he wasn’t even sure he hated them.

10

And that was how the time passed for Amber. Days that had seemed hellishly interminable when there was nothing to fill them but wind and rain, hunger and cold, now flew by. Even when Meoraq wasn’t there to give her his blank, silent stares as she pleaded with him to say her name, say hello, say fuck off, say anything, the time slipped away from her. If it wasn’t for Scott’s regular reminders that she’d wasted six days trying to teach a lizard how to talk…ten days…twelve…she would have lost track of them completely.

Which wasn’t to say that they hadn’t made any progress. Meoraq still had not said one word of English, but he responded to it. Of course, his responses were all in lizardish, which stubbornly resisted all of Amber’s attempts to decipher. Oh, she thought she was picking some up. She thought that every day until she actually tried to talk and inevitably insulted him. She didn’t even know how half the time. She’d just be there, clumsily coughing up lizard-words, and suddenly he’d stiffen and glare at her. If he felt like giving her another chance at that point, he might correct her (invariably with the same exact word she’d just said). More often, he just told her to be quiet and went on with what he was saying. Sometimes, he got up and left, muttering to himself and to his god on high, which was an open invitation for Scott to come over and illustrate all the ways in which she was a failure.

She tried not to let it worry her. Whether or not Meoraq ever learned to talk, Amber didn’t really think Scott would throw him out (and only partly because she didn’t think he could). She hadn’t seen a ration bar since Meoraq had started feeding them; she thought the last of them had probably been eaten in a celebratory binge during an extra-long, extra-quiet debriefing several days ago. Scott may not like the lizard, but he had no trouble recognizing the benefits of having him around.

He was off hunting at the moment, Meoraq. She’d heard him leave a little before dawn and even though the sun was now well up over the horizon, he might be gone for hours yet. Regular meals had done wonders for the morale here at camp, but steady predation had definitely made the saoqs skittish. They were nowhere to be seen anymore, not even from the top of the ridge. Meoraq never came back without one, but whatever secret tracking technique he used to find them, he kept it to himself.

And that bothered her. A lot. Amber knew her first hunt hadn’t exactly been the sort of thing to inspire confidence, but she sure wasn’t going to get any better at it without practice. She couldn’t understand how everyone could just sit around, day after day, waiting for Meoraq to come back and feed them, and sometimes even bitching to each other about how much time he took to do it, like he was a waiter slow-poking himself out of a tip.

And Meoraq, who should have been the first person to insist on some effort, was no help at all. The first time Amber had snatched up her spear and tried to go with him on his morning hunt, he’d actually laughed at her (she was pretty sure that gargling hiss was a laugh). Now he just said no, or occasionally, “No, damn it! Sit down!”

She refused to quit trying to go with him, though. Which was probably why he snuck out today before dawn. Big scaly jerk.

“How are those English lessons coming, Miss Bierce?” Scott called as Amber and Nicci came back from the bushes to join the others.

“Fine,” she said curtly and sat down. She didn’t want to sit down. She didn’t want anything to do with these people, but the alternative was just to sit by herself wrapped up in her blanket and wait for Meoraq alone. She still might do that, but Nicci wanted to be with people, so she sat.

“That’s good. When do you think you could arrange a formal debriefing?”

“It could take a while. I don’t think he has a tux,” said Amber, which was about as witty as she got first thing in the morning.

A few people laughed. Scott wasn’t one of them.

“Is that your way of saying a debriefing would be…premature?”

“Look, I’m working on it, okay?”

“No,” said Scott. “No, it’s not okay. Do you realize it’s been two weeks already? Two weeks. Now I think that I’ve been very patient with you, Miss Bierce, but it’s obvious that there’s a problem on someone’s end. Is it with him or with you?”

“Maybe it’s with the person who thinks two weeks is enough time to learn a new language.”

“I wasn’t expecting him to be fluent. A simple yes or no would be enough to answer most of my questions. Do you think he can manage that?”

Amber went back to rubbing her face.

Scott nodded as if that were the answer he’d expected. “I can’t help but think that any cognizant being would have managed some kind of communication by now.”

“We communicate.”

“You mean it grunts and hisses and you imagine you hear words.”

“I dare you to say that to his face. I fucking dare you.”

“Be cool,” Eric said.

“I don’t need to hear the profanity,” Scott agreed, smiling. “And you don’t need to be so sensitive. I admit that the idea had some merit, but communication is never going to be possible without a certain level of intelligence.” He paused, then added, “I mean the lizard’s intelligence, of course.”

Some of the Manifestors laughed.

“What exactly are you saying?” Amber asked. “That he’s not smart enough to talk? He talks all the time!”

“It vocalizes,” Scott agreed. “But an animal vocalizing is not the same as a person talking. I’m beginning to wonder if you know the difference.”

“Yeah? I’m beginning to wonder how Meoraq’s going to feel about bringing you food every goddamn day if he hears you saying he’s not a fucking person.”

Scott quit smiling. “I’m not going to tell you again about the profanity.”

“Oh what now? You going to wash my mouth out with soap?”

“Be cool, Bierce,” Eric said again. “We’re just trying to figure things out.”

“It is amazing to me,” Scott added, “that you are the only one who seems to think that you don’t need to make any effort to get along with the rest of us.”

“Just you, Scott. Just you.”

In the crowd, Dag leaned over and whispered something in Eric’s ear. Eric nodded and ran a hand through his hair. “Take a walk, Bierce. Cool off.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

He raised his head to look at her. His gaze was steady. “I said, take a walk.”

She stared at him and then at Maria, sitting next to him, and at Dag and Nicci and all of them, but the only one who would look back at her was Scott.

“Fine.” She shoved herself up, went to where her duffel bag was parked and grabbed her spear up from beside it.

“Amber, wait!” Nicci called, but she didn’t get up, just hugged herself and looked unhappy. It was Crandall who came after her, content to jog behind her and call her name two or three times before he finally caught her sleeve. When she shook him off, he gave her a slap to the ass which made her briefly see red, but only briefly. It wasn’t him she was mad at.

“Let me ask you something,” she said, just said.

Crandall shrugged and fell into easy step beside her. “Shoot.”

“Is he going to be content with humiliating me or should I be afraid for my life?”

God, she was proud of how calm she sounded. Pissed, but calm.

“I don’t know,” Crandall said.

“Would you tell me if you did?”

“Yeah, probably.” He glanced over his shoulder at the now-distant camp and caught at her sleeve again, this time pulling her to a stop. “Look, you want some free advice? Take a dive.”

“What?”

“You and Scott have been throwing punches from Day One. Time to hit the mat, little girl. Let the man win.”

“Is this a sports metaphor?” she asked, baffled. “Do I look like I know the first fucking thing about sports?”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, whatever. When you go out there today, don’t do anything stupid. Stay where you can see the smoke from our fire, give it five or ten minutes, and then come back and apolo—”

“The hell I will!”

“Oh come on, Bierce,” he said, actually rolling his eyes, actually laughing a little. “My feet are getting wet. Unbunch your panties and be a good girl for one day. I promise, it won’t kill you.”

Amber started walking again. This time, when he caught at her arm, she shook him off. “You’re still not getting that blowjob out of me,” she spat. “But you seem to prefer kissing Scott’s ass anyway.”

He quit laughing. When his smile came back, it was thin and hard and ugly. “Have fun getting killed out there, bitch,” he said and went back to camp without her.

* * *

The problem was, Amber had always been too practical. And looking at it from a practical point of view, Amber knew that she couldn’t stay mad all day. It was exhausting and it upset her stomach, but more to the point, it didn’t accomplish anything. Scott was an idiot, but just saying so wasn’t changing anyone’s high opinion of him. The way she saw it, she had only two choices: Unbunch her panties and let Scott be in charge, or find some way to convince people that the armed alien lizard in their midst was a better candidate for the job. It was obvious to her (although she didn’t know how happy Meoraq would be when he found out he’d been nominated); she just had to figure out how to prove it.

The answer, she was certain, was food. Scott had successfully taken command with nothing but a duffel bag filled with Fleet-issue rations. Meoraq hadn’t been able to shake anyone’s confidence yet, even with a freshly-delivered dead animal every morning, but he had the significant handicap of being an alien, and the only one of them with weapons, which he did not share and which he did frequently point at people if they got too close. What Amber needed to make them understand was that in addition to taking care of them, he could also teach them to take care of themselves.

She’d already stormed out of camp in a huff, pretty much exactly the way that Scott had wanted her to do, and she couldn’t help that now, but maybe she could salvage something if she came home with her own dead deer. She had her spear and enough regular meals to make her feel more confident about running down the next saoq that put her in that position. She’d go hunting. She’d catch something. And she’d show everyone what Scott and his everything-will-be-all-right bullshit was really worth. For that matter, she’d show Meoraq that they weren’t all just a bunch of starving alley cats waiting for someone else’s handouts. And maybe the next time she picked up this spear and walked out of Scott’s camp, she wouldn’t go alone.

It wasn’t the noblest motive, but it was an invigorating one. With renewed purpose, Amber set off again. An exhausting march over the thorn-covered hills and marshy ravines didn’t bring her to any saoqs, but after God knew how many hours stubbornly struggling along, she found something. A whole herd of somethings, in fact.

Like the saoqs that she kept trying to see as deer, when Amber first realized she was looking at animals and not boulders, her brain tried to force them into a shape it already knew. So they were armadillos at first glance. Armadillos the same size and general shape as those bubble-top cars that Volkswagen tried to bring back for their centennial anniversary. Armadillos with massive cloven hooves and shovel-shaped tusks. Armadillos that periodically sidled up and bashed at one another with the huge, bone-studded clubs of their tails. Armadillos that did not appear to be terrifically light on their feet, but that surely wouldn’t hesitate to trample her fat ass to death if they could catch it. And they probably could.

Watching them, Amber slowly realized that no one knew where she was.

No one would be able to hear her when she screamed.

No one would ever find her body.

And while Amber huddled in the grass, trying to decide the best way to get the hell out of there without being seen, Meoraq’s scaly hand slipped over her mouth.

She screamed into his palm, even knowing it was him. He yanked her back against his chest long enough to hiss something in her ear—blah blah blah something about God blah blah you idiot—and then he was dragging her rapidly and none too gently backwards through the grass.

After he had put a little distance and the slope of a hill between them and the giant armadillos, Meoraq stopped. He stood her up, swung her around, and snapped back the hand that had been over her mouth for one mother of a roundhouse slap.

She flinched, but only because she was stupid that way. Standing here with her heart still pounding from the adrenaline of knowing she was about to be tail-whipped and trampled to death by a herd of for-God’s-sake armadillos, she knew she deserved a lot worse than a smack in the face. She kept her arms at her sides, her spear low in her hand. She didn’t try to defend herself, even with words. She just wished he’d get it over with.

His arm hovered. His fingers flexed and curled in the air. His chest heaved in silence. The black scales of his throat were striped with yellow as bright as a school bus. Then he just turned around and started walking, moving fast and with unnatural silence through the grass. She trudged after him, her spear trailing in the grass behind her, but not for long. He came back, seizing her by the front of her shirt like a man grabbing the collar of an errant dog, and pulled her along with him at his swift, angry stride.

In spite of that, it seemed like a long walk back, made even longer with nothing but the wind to listen to. Meoraq seethed beside her, his hand still knotted in her shirt. If she stumbled over a hidden stone, he kept going, dragging her until she found her feet. He didn’t need to stop and check his bearings, never lost his breath or caught his boots in the thorns, but still the morning was over and the afternoon getting long when they got back to camp.

“Welcome back, Miss Bierce,” Scott called when they finally arrived, making sure everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her. “We were all starting to get worried. What were you trying to prove, wandering off like that?”

Meoraq snarled something before Amber had a chance to reply, but she couldn’t make it out. He dragged her over to the fire, where the saoq he had brought back had already been eaten down to the bones. He made her sit down, smacked her in the back of the head when she tried to get up, then stalked off to his tent, muttering.

“You seem upset,” Scott remarked with a smile.

“Should I take another walk, asshole?”

His jaw tightened. “Watch the profanity, Miss Bierce, or you will.”

Meoraq swept out of his tent and stalked back to the fire. He crouched down at Amber’s side, took her wrist again and slapped a square of his jerky-stuff into her palm hard enough to sting.

“I don’t want it,” she said, pushing it back at him.

He looked up at the sky, rubbing the jerky between his fingers while the scales at his throat faded between yellow and black, yellow and black. He began to talk then, but not to her. He started out calmly enough, but in less than a minute, he was on his feet, his voice steadily rising as he paced back and forth, pointing at Amber and bellowing into the clouds.

Several people eased quietly away.

“What’s he saying?” Eric asked finally.

“He’s praying,” said Amber.

“That’s a prayer?”

Meoraq swung around and shouted directly at her for a while, then threw himself down very suddenly in his thinking position—crouched low and bent forward, one hand open on the ground and the other resting on one knee, head bent, eyes shut. He breathed, silent.

“Now what is he doing?” Eric asked.

“Praying harder.”

Meoraq muttered under his breath, rubbed at his brow-ridges, inhaled, exhaled, and was still.

Everyone watched except Amber, who poked at the saoq bones in the fire and wished she had something to eat, and Scott, who was watching her.

“I would like to ask a question,” said Scott presently. “Could you, Miss Bierce, translate one so-called word of that prayer? Because I’m very curious about this lizard-god. What’s he called? O Great and Scaly One?”

Meoraq’s eyes opened.

“Do you know what I think?” Scott pressed, oblivious to the narrow, red stare now boring into him. “I think you’re making it up. I don’t think you have the first clue what that thing is saying. I think you’re just too stubborn to admit it’s not saying anything at all.”

“Dude,” murmured Dag, watching Meoraq’s head slowly tip to one side. “You might want to drop this.”

“No, I think it’s long past time we had this out.” Scott came briskly back to the fireside and stood over Meoraq with his arms folded in his most commanding posture. “Say something,” he ordered. “Say anything. Talk. Pray. Heck, sing some dirty limericks. Come on, Meoraq. Let’s hear it.”

Heads turned all around the camp as people waited for Meoraq to speak.

Meoraq kept his narrow stare on Scott and did not say one word.

People began to whisper.

Scott threw up both hands in a gesture that was at once victory and surrender. “Miss Bierce, you justified the tremendous danger of bringing that thing into my camp by insisting that it could act as our guide once we had achieved some form of communication. Now I think I’ve been more than patient with you—”

“Bullshit you have!” Amber sputtered.

“—but all I’ve gotten out of the endeavor so far is a lot of argument and profanity,” Scott concluded. He didn’t shout. It was actually worse that way. If he’d shouted, she could have jumped up and shouted back, but as it was, he just talked, sounding disappointed but so damned reasonable. “All you had to do was teach that thing enough English to tell us, oh, anything! What his people are called! What planet this is! Yes, no, anything!”

“I tried!”

“She tried!” Nicci came out of the crowd of Manifestors, past a suddenly-flustered Scott, to stand at Amber’s side. “She tried every single day. For hours. No one can make someone else speak English.”

“Yeah, come on.” And that was Maria, miraculously enough. Lawsuit Lady herself, ignoring Eric’s whispers to stand up and take a challenging step forward. “What was she supposed to do? Hold hot irons to his feet?”

Meoraq’s head tipped back. He looked at Amber.

“He can talk,” Maria declared. “Even I can understand him a little, and so could you if you weren’t too busy campaigning to listen.”

Scott gazed at her for a moment or two while Eric raked his hands through his hair. “And what was he saying, Miss Alverez?”

Maria hesitated, looking at Meoraq, who kept his eyes on Amber. “I couldn’t quite…He was talking pretty fast.”

“In other words, you don’t know.”

“I—”

“And yet you’re convinced it was a prayer. How do his prayers usually go?”

Maria sat down again and put her hand on Eric’s knee almost defensively. Eric wouldn’t look at her.

“So, in point of fact,” Scott continued, “you didn’t understand any of it.”

Maria opened her mouth. Eric murmured something. She glared at him, but pressed her lips together, silent.

“I can appreciate that you’re trying to help, Miss Alverez,” said Scott, dismissing her with a wave, “but Miss Bierce needs to answer for her own failures.”

“My failures?” Amber echoed. “It’s complicated, goddammit!”

“And if you have something to say, Miss Bierce, find a way to say it without turning it into a personal attack.”

Meoraq glanced at him and snorted. It was nice to know that someone else saw the irony in that, since it seemed that most of the people watching them did not.

“It’s complicated,” Amber said again, struggling to keep her voice down and sound as reasonable as he did. To her own ears, she sounded weak and sullen—a child making excuses for skipped homework. “Everything he says can change just by how he says it! Like…gann.”

“Guns?” All of a sudden, Scott was interested again. “Those things have guns?”

“If you’re going to interrupt, pay attention,” she snapped. “Gann. One sound, but I’ve heard him say it different ways to mean different things. Like, um, gann—”

Meoraq glanced over at her.

“Which I think is the name of this world. And gann,” Amber continued, dragging the word up into a higher pitch and watching his spines slowly flare forward. “Which could mean a person, or at least a person’s body. I’m not sure. Or gann. That’s just dirt. And then there’s gann, and I don’t know what that one means, except that it’s a swear of some sort. There’s others, and I can hear the differences when he says them, but I can’t…I can’t do it right.”