“What are you staring at?” someone asked, and Larry started, looking up, seeing a boy a little younger than himself standing before him. “Where did you come from, Tallo?”
Not till the final word did Larry realize that the stranger had spoken to him in the Darkovan language, now so familiar through tapes. Then I can understand it! Tallo—that was the word for copper; he supposed it meant redhead. The strange boy was red-headed too, flaming hair cut square around a thin, handsome, dark-skinned face. He was not quite as tall as Larry. He wore a rust-colored shirt and laced-up leather jerkin, and high leather boots knee-length over close-fitting trousers. But Larry was surprised more by the fact that, at the boy’s waist, in a battered leather sheath, there hung a short steel dagger.
Larry said at last, hesitantly in Darkovan, “Are you speaking to me?”
“Who else?” The strange boy’s hands, encased in thick dark gloves strayed to the handle of his knife, as if absentmindedly. “What are you staring at?”
“I was just looking at the spaceport.”
“And where did you get those ridiculous clothes?”
“Now look here,” Larry said, taken aback at the rude tone in which the boy spoke, “why are you asking me all these questions? I’m wearing the clothes I have—and for that matter, I don’t think much of yours,” he added belligerently. “What is it to you, anyhow?”
The strange boy looked startled. He blinked. “But have I made a mistake? I never saw—who are you?”
“My name is Larry Montray.”
The boy with the knife frowned. “I can’t take it in. Do you—forgive me but by some chance do you belong to the spaceport? No offense is intended, but—”
“I just came in on the ship Pantomime,” Larry said.
The stranger frowned. He said, slowly, “That explains it, I suppose. But you speak the language so well, and you look like—you must excuse my mistake, it was natural.” He stood staring at Larry for another minute. Then, suddenly, as if breaking the dam: “I’ve never spoken before to an offworlder! What is it like to travel in space? Is it true that there are many suns like this one? What are the other worlds like?”
But before Larry could answer, he heard his father’s voice, raised sharply. “Larry! Where have you gotten to?”
“I’m here,” he called turning around, realizing that where he stood, he was hidden in the shadow of the archway. “Just a minute—” he turned back to the strange boy, but to his surprise and exasperation the Darkovan boy had turned his back and was walking rapidly away. He disappeared into the dark mouth of a narrow street across the square. Larry stood frowning, looking after him.
His father came quickly toward him.
“What were you doing? Just watching the square? I suppose there’s no harm, but—” He sounded agitated. “Who were you talking to? One of the natives?”
“Just a kid about my age,” Larry said. “Dad, he thought—”
“Never mind now.” His father cut him off, rather sharply. “We have to find our quarters and get settled. You’ll learn soon enough. Come along.”
Larry followed, puzzled and exasperated at his father’s curtness. This wasn’t like Dad. But his first disappointment at the ordinariness of Darkover had suddenly disappeared.
That kid thought I was Darkovan. Even with the clothes I was wearing. From hearing me speak the language, he couldn’t tell the difference.
He looked back, almost wistfully, at the vanishing panorama of Darkover beyond the forbidden gateway. They were passing now into a street of houses and buildings that were just like Earth ones, and Larry’s father sighed—with relief?
“Just like home. At least you won’t be too homesick here,” he said, checked the numbers on a card he held, and pushed open a door. “Our rooms are in this building.”
Inside, the lights had been set so that the light was that of Earth at noon, and the apartment—five rooms on the fourth floor—might have been the one they had left on Earth. All the while they were unpacking, dialing food from the dispensers, exploring the rooms, Larry’s thoughts ran a new and strange pattern.
What was the point of living on a strange world if you did your best to make your house the furniture, the very light, look exactly like the old one? Why not stay on Earth if you felt like that?