So, a few days later, after thinking about dancing all that time, after Mama One promised to visit, and bring Benjamin and Tutsy, Ellin went to live at History House with Mama Two and to dream, at night, that she was walking along a high road with Mama One and Papa One and they came to a great cliff and Mama and Papa One told her to fly, and she did fly, but even while she was flying she felt … she felt as though they had thrown her out into the air with nothing there, all the way down.
7—The Questioner and the Trader
On a mud world named Swamp-Six, Questioner II sat in a reed hut near the shuttleport, so called though it was only a badly mown clearing amid endless stretches of deadly guillotine grass, its razor leaves snicking together with every breeze. The place was clamorous with frogbirds, soggy from the usual afternoon downpour—the livid skies still drooling, though the suns had gone down some time since—and totally lacking in amenities, a condition which Questioner refused to notice.
She could feel comfort, she could perceive beauty, she could appreciate music, she had pleasure receptors for tastes, smells, and touches, but when duty took her to worlds where comfort, beauty, and pleasure were absent, she turned her receptors off. Questioner’s review of Swamp-six had consisted of an instantaneous recognition of ugly realities requiring no prolonged verification.
She had come quite far, she had seen quite enough, but her ship was not scheduled to return for two days. She had been passing the time playing cards, a complicated kind of solitaire that took her mind off her recurrent feelings of amorphous and aimless sadness. Or maybe anger. Or maybe sheer peevishness. She had no explanation for these emotions, which seemed to rise like smoke whenever she was unoccupied, but she knew from long experience they would be less intrusive if she was distracted.
Additional distraction presented itself in the form of a small shuttle that plunged from the zenith and settled onto the mown area to emit a stooped and stuttering Flagian, a trader from his dress, who came tottering unerringly toward her. Questioner rose and awaited him, the cards scattered on the equipment box that served her as a table. He was an aged and floppy-fleshed fellow, one of those whose forefathers had survived the Flagian Miscalculation by virtue of being several systems removed at the time it occurred.
“Questioner?” he asked, with a certain diffidence, peering shortsightedly through the tinted glasses that protected his pink eyes. “I am Ybor Transit.”
“We have met before,” she said. “You sold me that information about the indigenous dancers on Newholme.”
“Aha,” he murmured. “You do remember. I have been searching for you because I have something else you may find interesting. Is it true you are a collector of information on non-mankind races?”
“More or less,” she said coolly.
“I have in my possession an actual sensory recording of a Quaggian event.” He paused, adding, in a hushed and mysterious voice, “A ritual event.”
“Wouldn’t it be unintelligible to me?” she asked in the uninterested tone she reserved for traders, politicians, and members of her politically appointed entourage. “The Quaggi do not talk with us at all.”
“May I sit down, Ma’am? Thank you kindly.” He lowered himself onto one of the smaller equipment cases. “The Quaggi do talk to traders, Ma’am. There are certain botanical substances which they require, and they are sufficiently interested in obtaining these to answer a few questions now and again. As a matter of fact, the BIT, that’s the Brotherhood of Interstellar Trade, Ma’am, has circulated a list of questions so that each trader calling upon the Quaggi can ask one or more of them. Thus we fill in our knowledge in an orderly fashion.”
“Remarkable,” said the Questioner, seating herself across from him. “I had no idea you were so well organized.”
“We aren’t, in many manners.” The old Flagian gave her a gap-toothed grin. He went on, “We are curious, however, and there’s no denying that the more one knows about a client, the better it is for trade.”
“Are the Quaggi bisexual, as we’ve been told?”