The narrow street widened and came out into a much larger open space, filled with the low reed stalls canvas tents with many-colored awnings, or small stone kiosks. It was dimly lighted with the flaring enclosed lights. Around the perimeter of the market, horses and carts were tied, and Larry looked at them curiously.
“Horses?”
Montray nodded. “They don’t manufacture any surface transport of any sort. We’ve tried to get them interested in a market for autocars or helicopters, but they say they don’t like building roads and nobody is in a hurry anyway. It’s a barbarian world, Larry. I told you that. Between ourselves,” he lowered his voice, “I think many of the Darkovan people would like some of our kind of machinery and manufacturing. But the people who run things want to keep their world just the way it is. They like it better this way.”
Larry was looking around in fascination. He said, “I’d hate to see this market turned into a big mechanized shopping center, though. The ones on Earth are ugly.”
His father smiled. “You wouldn’t like it if you had to live with it,” he said. “You’re like all youngsters, you romanticize old-fashioned things. Believe me, the Darkovan authorities aren’t romantic. It’s just easier for them to go on running things their own way, if they keep the people doing things the way they always have. But it won’t last long.” He sounded quietly certain. “Once the Terran Empire comes in to show people what a star-travel civilization can be like, people will want progress.”
A tall, hard-faced man in a long, wrapped cloak gave them a sharp, angry glance from harsh blue eyes, then lowered thick eyelashes and walked past them. Larry looked up at his father.
“Dad, that man heard what you said, and he didn’t like it!”
“Nonsense,” his father said. “I wasn’t speaking that loud, and very few of them can speak Terran languages. It’s all part of the same thing. They trade with us, yet they want nothing to do with our culture.” He stopped beside a row of stalls. “Can you see anything you’d like here?”
There was a row of blue-and-white glazed bowls in small and larger sizes, a similar row of green-and-brown ones. At the next stall there were knives and daggers of various sorts, and Larry found himself thinking of the Darkovan boy who had worn a knife in his belt. He picked up one and fingered it idly; at his father’s frown, he laughed a little and put it back. What would he do with it? Earthmen didn’t wear swords!
An old woman behind a low counter was bending over a huge pottery bowl of steaming, bubbling fat, twisting strips of dough and dropping them into the oil. Below the bowl, the charcoal fire glowed like the red sun, throwing out a welcome heat to where the boy stood. The strips of dough twisted like small goldfish as they turned crisp and brown; as she fished them out, Larry felt suddenly hungry. He had not spoken Darkovan since that first day, but as he opened his mouth, he found that the learning-tapes had done their work well, for he knew just what he wanted to say, and how.
“What is the price of your cakes, please?”
“Two sekals for each, young sir,” she said, and Larry, fishing in his pocket for his spending money, asked for half a dozen. His father put down a scroll at the next stall, and came toward him.
“Those are very good,” he said, “I’ve tasted them. Something like doughnuts.”
The old woman was laying out the cakes on a clean coarse cloth, letting the sweet-smelling oil drain from them, dusting them with some pale stuff. She wrapped them in a sheet of brownish fiber and handed the package to Larry.
“Your accent is strange, young sir. Are you from the Cahuenga ranges?” As she raised her lined old face, Larry saw with a shock that the woman’s eyes were whitish and unfocused; she was blind. But she had thought his speech genuinely Darkovan! He made a noncommittal reply, paying her for the cakes and biting hungrily into one. They were hot, sweet and crisp, powdered lightly with what tasted like crushed rock candy.