a skeleton, and one almost had muscles. Four wore shapeless, almost colorless brown robes, a fifth wore a robe, of similar cut—cut from a similar blanket?—but in a faded pink pattern.
The one who spoke was the thinnest of them. A blue tattooed bird adorned the back of his hand.
Louis answered.
The tattooed one made a short speech. That was luck. The autopilot would need data before it could begin a translation.
Louis replied.
The tattooed man spoke again. His four companions maintained their dignified silence. So, incredibly, did their audience.
Presently the discs were filling in words and phrases…
He thought later that the silence should have tipped him off. It was their stance that fooled him. There was the wide ring of the crowd, and the four hairy men in robes, all standing in a row; and the man with the tattooed hand, talking.
“We call the mountain Fist-of-God.” He was pointing directly starboard. “Why? Why not, if it please you, engineer?” He must have meant the big mountain, the one they had left behind with the ship. By now it was entirely concealed by haze and distance.
Louis listened and learned. The autopilot made a dandy translator. Gradually a picture built up, a picture of a farming village living in the ruins of what had once been a mighty city…
“True, Zignamuclickclick is no longer as great as it once was. Yet our dwellings are far superior to what we could make for ourselves. Where a roof is open to the sky, still the lower floor will remain dry during a short rainstorm. The buildings of the city are easy to keep warm. In time of war, they are easily defended and difficult to burn down.
“So it is, engineer, that though we go in the morning to work our fields, at night we return to our dwellings along the edge of Zignamuclickclick. Why should we strain to make new homes when the old ones serve better?”
Two terrifying aliens and two almost-humans, unbearded and unnaturally tall; all four riding wingless metal birds, speaking gibberish from their mouths and sense from metal discs…small wonder if the natives had taken them for the Ringworld builders. Louis did nothing to correct the impression. An explanation of their origin would have taken days, and the team was here to learn, not to teach.
“This tower, engineer, is our seat of government. We rule more than a thousand people here. Could we raise a better palace than this tower? We have blocked off the upper stories so that the sections we use will retain heat. Once we defended the tower by dropping rubble from upper floors. I remember that our worst problem was the fear of high places…
“Yet we long for the return of the days of wonder, when our city held a thousand thousand people, and buildings floated in the air. We hope that you will choose to bring back those days. It is said that in the days of wonder, even this very world was bent to its present shape. Perhaps you will deign to say if it is true?”
“It’s true enough,” said Louis.
“And shall those days return?”
Louis made an answer he hoped was noncommittal. He sensed the other’s disappointment, or guessed it.
Reading the hairy man’s expression was not easy. Gestures are a kind of code; and the spokesman’s gestures were not those of any terrestrial culture. Tightly-curled platinum hair hid his entire face, except for the eyes, which were brown and soft. But eyes hold little expression, contrary to public opinion.
His voice was almost a chant, almost a recital of poetry. The autopilot was translating Louis’s words into a similar chant, though it spoke to Louis in a conversational tone. Louis could hear the other translator discs whistling softly in Puppeteer, snarling quietly in the Hero’s Tongue.
Louis put questions…
“No, engineer, we are not a bloodthirsty people. We make war rarely. The skulls? They lie underfoot wherever one walks in Zignamuclickclick. They have been there since the fall of the city, it is said. We use them for decoration and for their symbolic significance.” The spokesman solemnly raised his hand with its back to Louis, presenting the bird tattoo.
And everyone in sight shouted, “—!”
The word was not translated.
It was the first time anyone but the spokesman had said anything at all.
Louis had missed something, and he knew it. Unfortunately there wasn’t time to worry about it.
“Show us a wonder,” the spokesman was saying. “We doubt not your power. But you may not pass this way again. We would have a memory