Departures

“Not to do so would be unjust to the one who made it possible,” Nadab said. He looked from Carver to the Enrico Dandolo a few hundred meters away. “And, of course, would be inappropriate, as your people have posed the problem now facing me on behalf of mine.”

The trader grew alert. Now we come down to it, he thought. He said, “We have never intended anything but good for greenskins, Nadab. We want to end your oppression, if we can.”

“That is why, then, you offered Baasa the volumes you did?”

“Certainly. Why else?”

“Who could say, judging beings so strange?” A nice way to remind me, Carver thought, that I’m as alien to Nadab as he is to me, and a point worth getting across. Nadab went on, “I thought perhaps your purpose was to destroy my entire people.”

Carver stared. There are times when, no matter how well one speaks a language not his own, he will hear something, understand it perfectly, and still doubt his ears. This was one of those times. The trader spread his hands in a gesture of confusion. “We wish your folk nothing but good, Nadab. We think it wrong for you to be forced into separation on account of the color of your skin. My own race”-he touched the dark brown skin of his arm- “has too much of that in its own past. Save for your being green and Baasa blue, we know your kind and his are no different.”

It was Nadab’s turn to look sharply at the human. “You know that, do you?” He astonished Carver by throwing back his head and letting out the strangled snorts that served the locals for laughter.

“What’s fu

“Only that I came close to confusing skill with wisdom, a mistake I thought myself too wise for.” The oblique reply did little to soothe Carver’s temper. Nadab said, “Never mind. I see you bear me and mine no malice. Ignorance we shall cope with: we have before, often enough.”

The calm confidence with which the greenskin spoke only nettled Carver further. Somehow Nadab had put the shoe on the other foot, and the trader did not care for it. He was unused to being forced into the role of ignorant outsider, with the local as sophisticate.

“I think we can return now,” Nadab said. He still sounded,

Carver thought, quite full of his own importance. And then, as he turned, that note vanished from his voice. “Or perhaps not.”

Carver looked back toward the greenskin village. The blue guards had spread into a line between him, Nadab, and the buildings. “What are they doing?” the trader asked. But even as he spoke, he knew. His glance went to the sun. Not much daylight was left.

Nadab’s head swung in the same direction, then back to Carver. “Yes, outlander, it is exactly what you think. If I am not on the other side of the boundary stone by sunset-”

“But that’s murder!” Carver burst out. Immediately afterwards, he felt like a fool. Hunting down any greenskin outside his village when the sun went down was murder. He had seen that in gruesome telephoto from the safety of the Enrico Dandolo. Somehow, though, it had not occurred to him that even that violence might be perverted further by deliberately keeping a greenskin from reaching sanctuary.

Nadab, with three thousand years of tradition to guide him, had no such naivet?. He said, “It happens. From time to time, it happens. Now all that remains to be seen is whether they are out for their own amusement, or have something more in mind.”

He walked slowly toward the blue guards. They held their line, positioning themselves so he had no chance of breaking past them back into the village. Carver stood where he was, feeling extraordinarily helpless. He wished he were carrying a Kalashnikov to mow down the blues, who were waving clubs and spears and yelling threats at Nadab.

The greenskin said loudly, “Let me by. Baasa will not be pleased to learn I have come to harm at your hands.”

Strangled snorts came from the blues.”We’ll take our chances on that!” one shouted. “That’s what you think,” said another.

Carver saw Nadab’s shoulders sag. Such was what passed for a greenskin’s power in Shkenaz: if Nadab’s patron tired of him, he was as much at the mercy of the blues as was the lowliest greenskin tinsmith.

A small crowd of greenskins had gathered just on the safe side of the boundary stone. They watched and waited, making no move to help Nadab. Carver was sure they would not. The whole village stood hostage to the blues of Shkenaz. Everyone knew it, greenskins and blues alike. The ritual of death would be played out with no interference.

The lower edge of the local sun’s red, swollen disk touched the western horizon. The blues sidled forward. In a couple of minutes, Nadab was theirs in perfect legality. He drew back a few paces toward Carver, not that ru

Or would it? That retreat, that pathetic reflex of life trying to prolong itself even to no purpose, broke the trader’s horrified paralysis. “Nadab!” he shouted. The greenskin kept his eyes on the blues, but his ears twisted toward Carver. The trader yelled, “Run for our tradeship!”

Nadab stood motionless for another long moment. He had, Carver thought, been so sure of his imminent death that he needed time to realize he might live yet. Then he whirled and dashed toward the Enrico Dandolo. Carver, slower on two legs than the greenskin was on four but also closer to the ship, began to run, too.

The blues shouted in outrage. They were bound in the same web of custom as Nadab, though, and hesitated before giving chase: a sliver of sun still glowed above the horizon. Then it was gone, and they came pelting after Nadab and Carver. The trader heard their three-toed feet pounding behind him.

His chest felt on fire. He was not very young and not very light and not at all used to sprinting cross-country. He did not want to think about what would happen if he stepped in a hole or tripped over a bush. The blue guards might keep right on after Nadab. On the other hand, they might-or some of them might, which would be just as bad-decide to stop and kill him. He hoped that would stay just a thought experiment; he had no desire to test it empirically.

He also hoped people on the Enrico Dandolo were alert. The ground-level hatch was closed. If it didn’t open in the next few seconds-he was less than a hundred meters from the ship now, only a few meters behind Nadab and not nearly far enough ahead of his pursuers-things would get embarrassing. They’d get a great deal worse than that for the greenskin.

The hatch slid upward. Relief sobbed through Carver’s throat. “Go on!” he yelled or, rather croaked, to Nadab. The green-skin’s toes clicked on metal. A moment later, Carver’s boots clattered inside the cargo bay.

The hatch came down much faster than it had risen. None too soon-one of the blues was close enough to the Enrico Dandolo to hurl his bludgeon after Nadab. It belled off the descending door. Then the guards were pounding on the hatch with clubs and fists. The din was tremendous.

Carver stood with hands on knees, his head lowered, trying to catch his breath. Nadab was panting, too, but looked around the cargo bay with lively interest. The fluorescent strips in the ceiling proved particularly intriguing. “Not fire, yet they give light,” he said. “Have you, then, imprisoned glowfliers behind that glass? No, surely not,” he corrected himself: “too bright for that.”

“They work by the same power as our calculators,” Carver told him.

If the trader had expected a surprised outburst, he did not get one. “Ah. Interesting,” was all Nadab said. Carver had no chance to take things further. The i

Carver explained. The crewfolk shouted in anger. The way the empire treated greenskins was abominable enough without cheating them besides. Patrice Boileau burst out, “We should up ship now and have nothing more to do with these savages.”