Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds by Joe Haldeman Read Free Book Online Page A

III—its real name is !ka’al—rides a slow sweeping orbit around Morocho A, the brighter of the two suns that make up the Morocho system (Morocho A is a close double star itself, but its white dwarf companion hugs so close that it’s lost in the glare). At this time of day, Morocho B was visible low in the sky, a hard blue diamond too bright to stare at, and A was right overhead, a bloated golden ball. On the sandy beach below us the flyer cast two shadows, dark blue and faint yellow, which raced to come together as we landed.
    Pa’an!al is a fishing village thousands of years old, on a natural harbor formed where a broad jungle river flows into the sea. Here on the beach were only a few pole huts with thatched roofs, where the fishers who worked the surf and shallow pools lived. Pa’an!al proper was behind a high stone wall, which protected it on one side from the occasional hurricane and on the other from the interesting fauna of the jungle.
    I paid off my driver and told him to come back at second sundown. I took a deep breath and mounted the steps. There was an open-cage Otis elevator beside the stairs, but people didn’t use it, only fish.
    The !tang are compulsive about geometry. This wall was a precise 1:2 rectangle, and the stairs mounted from one corner to the opposite in a satisfyingly Euclidean 30 degrees. A guardrail would have spoiled the harmony. The stairs were just wide enough for two !tang to pass, and the rise of each step was a good half meter. By the time I got to the top I was both tired and slightly terrified.
    A spacefaring man shouldn’t be afraid of heights, and I’m not, so long as I’m in a vehicle. But when I attained the top of the wall and looked down the equally long and perilous flight of stairs to ground level, I almost swooned. Why couldn’t they simply have left a door in the wall?
    I sat there for a minute and looked down at the small city. The geometric regularity was pleasing. Each building was either a cube or a stack of cubes, and the rock from which the city was built had been carefully sorted, so that each building was a uniform shade. They went from white marble through sandy yellow and salmon to pearly gray and obsidian. The streets were a regular matrix of red brick. I walked down, hugging the wall.
    At the bottom of the steps a !tang sat on a low bench, watching the nonexistent traffic. —Greetings, I clicked and snorted at him. —It certainly is a pleasant day.
    â€”Not everywhere, he grunted and wheezed back. An unusually direct response.
    â€”Are you waiting for me?
    â€”Who can say? I am waiting. His trunk made a philosophical circle in the air. —If you had not come, who knows for what I would have been waiting?
    â€”Well, that’s true. He made a circle in the other direction, which I think meant What else? I stood there for a minute while he looked at me or the ground or the sky. You could never tell.
    â€”I hope this isn’t a rude question, he said. —Will you forgive me if this is a rude question?
    â€”I certainly will try.
    â€”Is your name !ica’o *va!o?
    That was admirably close. —It certainly is.
    â€”You could follow me. He got up. —Or enjoy the pleasant day.
    I followed him closely down the narrow street. If he got in a crowd I’d lose him for sure. I couldn’t tell an estrus-four female from a neuter, not having sonar (they tell each other apart by sensing body cavities, very romantic).
    We went through the center of town, where the well and the market square were. A few dozen !tang bargained over food, craft items, or abstractions. They were the most mercantile race on the planet, although they had sidestepped the idea of money in favor of labor equivalence: for those two ugly fish I will trade you an original sonnet about your daughter and three vile limericks for your next affinity-group meeting. Four limericks, tops.
    We went into a large white building that