“Why, what are you doing?” she asked.
He glanced up. “I have an idea,” he said almost eagerly. “It isn’t clear to me yet, but sketching helps me think.”
She went around behind him and leaned over to see. His drawings were always delicate, a contrast to much of his work in stone or wood. This showed a man in traditional peasant garb, holding a spade. On a large rock beside him jiquatted a-monkey, while a tiger stood below. Through the foreground flowed a stream wherein swam a carp.
“So you are finally going to try pictures?” she guessed.
He shook his head. “No, no. You are far better at them than I will ever be. These are just thoughts about figures I mean to sculpture.” He gazed up at her. “I think pictures may not help us much when we get to Tritos. Even on Earth, in old days, you remember how differently people in different times and countries would draw the same things. To the Alloi, any style of line, shade, color we might use may not make sense. Photographs may not. But a three-dimensional shape—no ghost in a computer; a solid thing they can handle—that should speak to them.”
Tritos, Alloi, he pronounced the names awkwardly; but one needed better words than “Star Three” and “Others,” and when Patulcius suggested these, the crew soon went along. Greek still bore its aura of science, learning, civilization. To three of those in the ship, it had been common speech for centuries. “Metroaster” for “Mother Star” had, though, been voted down, and “Pegasi” was back in use. After all, nobody could say whether the Alloi at Tritos had come from there, or even whether it was sun to a sentient race.
Hanno sat mute through the discussion and merely nodded his acceptance. He spoke little these days, and others no more to him than was necessary.
“Yes, an excellent thought,” Yukiko said. “What do you mean to show?”
“I am groping my way toward that,” Tu Shan replied. “Your ideas will be welcome. Here, I think, might be a group—more creatures than these—arranged according to our degrees of kinship with the animals. That may lead the Alloi to show us something about their evolution, which ought to tell us things about them.”
“Excellent.” Yukiko trilled laughter. “But how can you, now, keep up your pretense of being a simple-minded fanner and blacksmith?” She bent low, hugged him, laid her cheek on his. “This makes me so happy. You were sullen and silent and, and I truly feared you were going back to that miserable, beastly way of living I found you in—how long ago!”
He stiffened. Harshness came into his voice. “Why not? What else had our dear captain left us, before this came to me out of the dark? It will help fill a little of the emptiness ahead.”
She let go and slipped about to sit down on the bed in front of him. “I wish you could be less bitter toward “Hanno,” she said, troubled. “You and the rest of them.”
“Have we no reason to?”
“Oh, he was high-handed, true. But has he not been punished enough for that? How dare we take for granted that what he’s done is not for the best? It may prove to be what saves us.”
“Easy for you. You want to seek the Alloi.”
“But I don’t want this hateful division between us. I dare BOt give him a friendly word myself, I’m afraid of making matters worse. It makes me wish we’d never received the message. Can’t you see, dear, he is—like a righteous emperor of ancient times—taking on himself the heavy burden Of leadership?”
Again Tu Shan shook his head, but violently. “Nonsense. You are drawn to him—don’t deny—“ , Her tone went calm. “To his spirit, yes. It isn’t tike mine, but it also seeks. And to his person, no doubt, but I’ve honestly not dwelt on that in my mind.” She closed hands upon his knee. “You are the one I am with.”
It mildened him to a degree. Sternness remained. “Well, stop imagining he’s some kind of saint or sage. He’s a scheming, knavish old sailor, who naturally wants to sail. This is his selfishness. He happens to have the power to force it on us.” He slapped the screen down onto the blanket, as if striking with a weapon. “I am only trying to help us outlive the evil.”