Queen of Springtime by Robert Silverberg Read Free Book Online Page A

“Queen—love.”
    He lifted his clenched fists, as if straining to find other words of People-speech long lost in the deeper reaches of his mind. There was anguish on his narrow face.
    At length he brought out another hjjk word, which Nialli Apuilana recognized as the one that could be translated as “flesh-folk.” It was the term the hjjks used for the People.
    “What are you two saying?” Husathirn Mueri asked.
    “Nothing very significant. Just making preliminary contact.”
    “Has he told you his name yet?”
    Nialli Apuilana gave Husathirn Mueri a scornful look. “The hjjk language doesn’t have a word for name. They don’t have names themselves.”
    “Can you ask him why he’s here, then?”
    “I’m trying,” she said. “Can’t you see that?”
    But it was hopeless. For ten minutes she worked in a steady dogged way at breaking through, without getting anywhere.
    She had expected so much of this meeting. She was desperately eager to relive with this stranger her time in the Nest. To speak with him of Queen-love and Egg-plan and Nest-strength and all those other things that she had barely had a chance to experience during her too-brief captivity: things which had shaped her soul as surely as the austere food of the hjjks had shaped this stranger’s lean body. But the barriers between them were a maddening obstacle.
    There seemed no way to breach them. All they could do was stammer random words at each other, and fragments of ideas. Sometimes they seemed close to a meeting of minds, and the stranger’s eyes would grow bright and the ghost of a smile, even, appeared on his face; but then they reached the limits of their understanding, and the walls descended between them once again.
    “Are you getting anywhere?” Husathirn Mueri asked, after a while.
    “Nowhere. Nowhere at all.”
    “You can’t even guess at what he’s saying? Or why he’s here?”
    “He’s here as some sort of ambassador. That much seems certain.”
    “Do you have anything to go by, or are you just guessing?”
    “You see those pieces of hjjk shell he’s wearing? They’re tokens of high authority,” she said. “The thing on his chest is called a Nest-guardian, and it’s made out of the shell of a dead hjjk warrior. They wouldn’t have let him take it out of the Nest except as a sign that he’s on a special mission. It’s something like a chieftain’s mask would be among us. The other one, the bracelet, was probably a gift from his Nest-thinker, to help him focus his thoughts. Poor lost soul, it hasn’t done him much good, has it?”
    “Nest-thinker?”
    “His mentor. His teacher. Don’t ask me to explain it all now. They’re only bug-folk to you, anyway.”
    “I told you that I regretted—”
    “Yes,” Nialli Apuilana said. “You told me that you regretted. Anyway, he’s surely here with some special message, not just the usual hazy stuff that returnees tell us, if they say anything at all. But he can’t speak. He must have lived in the Nest since he was three or four years old, and he can barely remember a word of our language.”
    Husathirn Mueri moodily stroked his cheek-fur.
    “Can you suggest anything?” he asked, after a time.
    “Only the obvious. Send for my father.”
    “Ah,” Husathirn Mueri said. “Of course!”
    “Does the chronicler speak hjjk?” Curabayn Bangkea asked.
    “The chronicler has the Wonderstone, idiot,” said Husathirn Mueri. “The Barak Dayir, the Barak Dayir! Of course! One touch of it and all mysteries are solved!”
    He clapped his hands. The fat bailiff appeared. “Find Hresh. Summon him here.” He looked around. “Adjourned until Hresh comes.”
    The chronicler just then was in his garden of natural history, in the western quadrant of the city, supervising the arrival of his caviandis.
    Many years earlier, Hresh in a vision of the Vengiboneeza of Great World times had entered a place called the Tree of Life. Here the sapphire-eyes folk had gathered all sorts of