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an expert in animal behaviorism, but I don't think the attraction is unusual.
Incautious, to the point of self-destructive, perhaps. Either of our psi-users
up there could wipe them out with less power than it would take to hold up
those chairs."
The two mages, sailing past, parrying one another's magic bolts and making
their own thrusts, ignored the cluster which trailed them around the field. At
last the lit-
tle creatures gave up their hopeless pursuit, and rolled in a group toward
Keff and Carialle.
'Tour animal magnetism operating again," Carialle noted. The globe-frogs,
paddling hard on the inner wall of their spherelike conveyances with their
oversize paws, steered over the rocky ground and up the ramp, making for the
inside of the ship. "Ooops, wait a minute! You can't come in here. Out!" she
said, in full voice on her hatchway speakers. "Scat!"
The frogs ignored her. She tracked them with her inter-
nal cameras and directed her servos into the airlock to herd them out the door
again. The frogs made a few deter-
mined tries to get past the low-built robots. Thwarted, they reversed position
inside their globes and paddled the other
way.
"Pests," Carialle said. "Is everyone on this planet intent on a free tour of
my interior?"
The globe-frogs rolled noisily down the ramp and off the rise toward the
underbrush at the opposite end of the clearing. Keff watched them disappear.
"I wonder if they're just attracted to any vibrations or emissions," he said.
"Could be- Heads up!" Carialle trumpeted suddenly
She put her servos into full reverse to get them out of
Keffs way Without waiting to ask why or what, Keff dove sideways into
Carialle's hatch and hit the floor. A split second later, he felt a
flamethrowerlike blast of heat almost singe his cheek. If he'd remained
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standing where he was, he'd have gotten a faceful of fire.
'They're out of control! Get in here!" Carialle cried.
Keff complied. The battle had become more serious, and the magic-users had
given up caring where their bolts hit. Another spell flared out of the tips of
the woman's fin-
gers at the male, only a dozen meters from Keff.
The brawn tucked and rolled through the inner door.
Carialle slid the airlock door shut almost on his heels. Keff heard a whine of
stressed metal as something else hit the side of the ship.
"Yow!" Carialle protested. That blast was cold! How are they doing that?"
Keff ran to the central cabin viewscreens and dropped into his crash seat.
"Full view, please, Cari!"
The brain obliged, filling the three surrounding walls with a 270# panorama.
Keff spun his pilots couch to follow the green contrail across the sky, as the
male magician retreated to the far end of the combat zone. He looked
frustrated. The last, unsuccessful blast that hit Carialles flank must have
been his. The female, beautiful, powerful, sitting up high in her chair,
prepared another attack with busy hands. Her green eyes were dulling, as if
she didn't care where her strike might land. The five magimen on the sidelines
looked bored and angry, just barely restraining themselves from interfering.
The battle would end soon, one way or another.
Even inside the ship, Keff felt the sudden change in the atmosphere. His hair,
including his eyebrows and eye-
lashes and the hair on his arms, crackled with static.
Something momentous was imminent. He leaned in toward the central screen.
Out of nothingness, three new arrivals in hover-chairs blinked into the heart
of the battle zone. Inadvertentiy
Keff recoiled against the back of his chair.
Tow! They mean business," Carialle said. "No hundred meters of clearance
space. Just smack, right into the mid-
dle."
The spells the combatants were building dissipated like colored smoke on the
wind. Carialle's gauges showed a distinct drop in the electromagnetic fields.
The mage and magess dropped their hands stiffly onto their chair arms and
glared at the obstacles now hovering between them. If looks could have ignited
rocket fuel, the thwarted combatants would have set Carialles tanks ablaze.
Whatever was powering them had been cut off by the three in the center.
"Uh-oh. The Big Mountain Men are here," Keff said, flippantly, his face
guarded.
The newcomers' chairs were bigger and gaudier than any Keff and Carialle had
yet seen. A host of smaller seats, containing lesser magicians, popped in to
hover at a respectful distance outside the circle. Their presence was ignored
by the three males who were obviously about to discipline the combatants.
"Introductions," Keff said, monitoring IT. "High and mighty. The lad in the
gold is Nokias, the one in black is
Femgal, and the silver one in the middle who looks so nervous is Chaumel. He's
a diplomat."
Carialle observed the placatory gestures of the mage in the silver chair. T
don't think that Femgal and Nokias like each other much."
But Chaumel, nodding and smiling, floated suavely back and forth between the
gold and black in his silver chair and managed to persuade them to nod at one
another with civility if not friendliness. The lesser magicians promptly
polarized into two groups, reflecting their loyalties.
"Compliments to the Big Mountain Men from my pretty lady and her friend," Keff
continued. "She's Potria, and he's Asedow. One of the sideliners says they
were something-bold? cocky?-to come here. Aha, that's what that word Brannel
used meant: forbidden! That gives me some roots for some of the other things
they're saying. I'll have to backtrack the datahedrons-I think a territorial
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dispute is going on."
Nokias and Femgal each spoke at some length. Keff was able to translate a few
of the compliments the magi-
men paid to each other.
"Something about high mountains," he said, running IT
over contextual data. "Yes, I think that repeated word must be 'power,' so
Femgal is referring to Nokias as having power as high, I mean, strong as the
high mountains and deep as its roots." He laughed. "It's the same pun we have
in Standard, Cari. He used the same word Brannel used for the food 'roots.'
The farmers and the magicians do use two different dialects, but they're
related. It's the cognitive differences I find fascinating. Completely alien
to any lan-
guage in my databanks."
"All this intellectual analysis is very amusing," Carialle said, "but what are
they saying? And more to the point, how does it affect us?'
She shifted cameras to pick up Potria and Asedow on separate screens. After
the speeches by me two principals, the original combatants were allowed their
say, which they had with many interruptions from the other and much pointing
towards Carialle.
'Those are definitively possessive gestures," Keff said uneasily.
"No one puts a claim on my ship," Carialle said firmly.
"Which one of them has a tractor beam on me? I want it off."
Keff listened to the translator and shook his head. "Nei-
ther one did it, I think. It may be a natural phenomenon."
'Then why isn't it grounding any of those chairs?"
"Cari, we don't know that's what is happening."
"I have a pretty well-developed sense of survival, and that's exactly what its
telling me."
"Well, then, we'll tell them you own your ship, and they can't have it," Keff
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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