(Amid a ripple of knowing amusement Skilluck fumed, “It doesn’t surprise me! After the flattery, the put-down!”)
Burney quieted the crowd. “Perhaps that remark was unworthy,” he resumed. “At all events, we know these are an adventurous people, who take the utmost care to ensure that when they set out on no matter how risky a voyage they can find their way home by one means or another. Suppose, as I was about to say, they carried not only telescopes useful for sighting a promising landfall, but better ones suitable for studying the sky, and the means to prove to anyone they contacted how right Jing was in what he wrote!”
(Applause … but Wellearn had to cede a point to Skilluck when he mused, “So they want to overload our briqs with chaplains worse than Blestar?”)
“We therefore offer an exchange!” Burney roared. “I hope Captain Skilluck will accept it! We will share with his folk everything we know— yes, everything!—if the Wego will put their fleet at our disposal every summer for a score of years, to return laden with southern foods and southern seeds and southern tools, after carrying our message to lands as yet unknown! Now this is a grand scheme”—his voice dropped—”and there are countless details to thrash out. But we must first know whether the principle is acceptable.”
(Skilluck looked worried. Wellearn whispered, “They do things differently here!”)
(“That’s obvious! He never tried to preside at a captains’ meeting!”)
“I see there are doubts,” Burney said after a pause. “Let me add one thing, therefore. Assuming they accept our offer, then—if the winters at Ushere do become intolerable, as we may apparently fear according to what Chard has said—their people can remove hither and settle around the bay where their briq first made landfall. We would welcome them. Are we agreed?”
A roar of enthusiasm went up, and among those who shouted loudest Wellearn was proud to notice Embery. But Skilluck gave a brusque order.
“Tell him we need time to discuss this idea. Say we will be ready no sooner than tomorrow night!”
Perforce, Wellearn translated, and the assembly dispersed with many sighs.
“It’s a trap,” said Strongrip for the latest of a score of times. “There must be some snag in it we don’t see!”
“I’ve been everywhere in the city and met many of the most prominent of these people!” Wellearn declared. “They take Jing’s teaching seriously—they really do want to spread his knowledge around the globe!”
“That’s what frightens me most,” grunted Skilluck. “Blestar was bad enough; embriqing with a stranger who has absolute rule over what course I choose is out of the question!”
“That isn’t what they have in mind!” Wellearn argued. “These people never travel the oceans—they want to hook on to someone who does, and that could be us!”
“Budlings!” Strongrip said, and turned away in disgust.
That was too much for Wellearn. Rising to his maximum height— which, since arriving here, imbibing vast quantities of creshban, and eating the best diet he had ever enjoyed, had noticeably increased—he blasted, “I invoke the judgment of my ancestors in the stars!”
And bared his mandibles, which normally he kept shrouded out of ordinary politeness.
Skilluck said hastily, “Now just a moment, boy—”
“Boy?” Wellearn cut in. “Boy? I haven’t forgotten my oath of fealty to my captain, but if you can’t recognize a man who’s just become a man I’ll consider it void!”
Following which he opened his claws to full extent, and waited, recklessly exuding combat-stink.
At long last Skilluck said heavily, “It was time, I guess. You’re not a young’un anymore. But do you still want to challenge Strongrip?”
“I’d rather we were comrades. But I must. Unless he accepts me for what I am, with all my power of judgment. I did,” Wellearn added, “invoke the honor of my ancestors.”
There were still creshmarks on Strongrip’s mantle, but Wellearn’s was clear. Skilluck studied each of them in turn and said finally, “I forbid the challenge. Your ancestors, young man, are honored sufficiently by your willingness to utter it. Strongrip, deny what you last said.”
He clenched his body into battle posture, mandibles exposed, and concluded, “Or it must be me, not Wellearn, you take on!”