We emerged now into another large hall, but this one seemed oval and had what appeared to be a long table and chairs of odd designs in it, with many Nomes going back and forth. The others formed into an honor guard as we approached. The High Spirit seated himself in the center of one long side of the table, and indicated we were to sit directly opposite him on the other side. The table was about five feet wide, allowing for plenty of room. The chairs were a bit short for us-not unexpected-but after a few minutes of sitting in them seemed surprisingly comfortable, though my legs did feel that they had very little clearance below the top of the table.
"I"ve been thinking about what you just brought up, Rokhaset," Jodi said finally. "The problem is that there"s no way you could have talked with us before. It wasn"t until the past, oh, fifty years or so that we could"ve built gadgets that would let us hear you, and you hear us."
" "Gadgets"?" Rokhaset repeated, puzzled. "Gadgets . . . Do you mean these "machines" like the ones you carry that make your voices sound like ours?"
"Yes."
"Ah. Well, in those days, there was no need of such things. As our legends and histories relate it, we were a much closer people in the ancient time; that is, you and I would have seemed less alien to one another, and we would have had ways of speaking together that would be considerably more simple. But then came the Makurada Demagon . . . the, hmm, what would make sense in your language . . . the "Senseless Shattering"? Ah, no . . . Darkness? Hmmm . . . Perhaps the best expression would be something like "Plague of Blindness." But that implies a disease, which this was not; it was a disaster which struck the whole world and affected it in different ways for each of the peoples who then inhabited it. The Nowethada lost contact with Nowe, who was sore injured by the Makurada, and with your people, and while apart, we changed."
"Who is Nowe?"
"You would call Nowe our patron deity, G.o.d or G.o.ddess of the Earth. That is what Nowethada means, the People of Nowe. It is at Nowe"s will that we exist. We are the servants of the Earth, made to oversee the interaction of the living rock with those other things that live upon it." He sat up a bit straighter. "Ah, tell me how this seems to you."
Light began to fill the room, shining out from several stafflike objects being carried into the room by other Nomes. It was light of a brilliant blue-white color, not exactly what I"d have chosen for lighting; but it saved on batteries and our host had apparently had this whipped together just for us. "That"s just great, Rokhaset!"
"You had your people do that up now?" Jodi asked. "Well, I"m impressed. Can I take a look?"
"By all means, Jodi." It was still pretty strange to hear such courteous and very well-spoken English coming out of that unmoving mouth. The only oddity to the sound was a slight hollow resonance, but in this cavern setting it was hardly noticeable.
Jodi studied the twisted stony shaft, which ended in a crystal that produced the light. "How do you turn it on and off?"
"I suppose I could instruct it to turn off, but do you not still require the light?"
"Oh, sure, sure. What do you mean, instruct it? Is this gadget voice-activated?"
Rokhaset tilted his head a few times. "There you are, using these words oddly. Tell me, would you call our pets gadgets?"
"You mean those things we call rockworms? No, they"re creatures."
"Then what you hold there is not a gadget either, if I understand you correctly."
Jodi nearly dropped the rod. "Are you saying that this thing is alive?"
"As alive as I am," the High Spirit agreed. "Not, I confess, nearly as capable of other activities as I. We grew that very quickly for one purpose only, to make that crystal hevrat in the same gos as your "lights" . . . how would that be in your language . . . hmm . . . Yes, we made it to glow in the same way as your lights do. It provides little for us to sense, but for you it appears to suffice quite well."
I shifted uncomfortably, then glanced down at the chair. "And what about . . ."
I almost got the impression of a broad smile. "Ah, you have noticed that they grow, have you? Yes, certainly! How else could we have chairs that all would be comfortable in, for my people vary in size as do yours?"
Jodi and I exchanged glances. I could see her mind following the same path. We kept getting deceived by the Nome"s human-sounding voice and his-or, to be more accurate, the makatdireskovi"s-grasp of our language, derived from the past forty years of broadcasts. Clearly we had much in common with the Nomes, and there was no reason we couldn"t be friends. But, just as clearly, there were some very, very alien aspects to their civilization. The thought that even the furniture I was sitting on, the lights I was seeing . . . "Is everything here alive?"
Surprisingly, that made Rokhaset pause; almost I could see him frowning in thought. "In a sense, yes . . . but not in the same sense as these things, no. The Earth itself is alive in its own way, but certainly there is a difference between the ordinary stone about us and ourselves, or these chairs or your new lights."
Servant Nomes moved to the High Spirit, and other Nomes came in and seated themselves-leaving a respectful, and possibly fearful, distance between us and their leader. The servants placed several stony bowls, plates, and platters on the table. There was a quick discussion with some glancing at us, which Rokhaset resolved with a gesture. "I presume you have brought at least some of your own food, Mr. Slade, Ms. Goldman? For it is time for me to eat, but I suspect our food is not to your taste."
"We"ve brought some stuff, yeah."
Five huge covered platters were carried to the table, heavy enough to require two Nomes each, and placed carefully in front of the diners. The one in front of the High Spirit unfolded its top like a flower at his touch.
In the brilliant blue-white glow, the dishes within shimmered with the colors of the rainbow. There were slices of some rich brown and yellow rippled stuff that looked almost like a chocolate and yellow swirled cake, some brilliantly red fruitlike things, some really peculiar transparent sticks, and other things like noodles, puddings, and crumbled croutons.
"Are those . . . rocks?" Jodi asked tentatively.
The High Spirit gave us a deliberate nod. "Properly prepared by the finest chefs, of course."
"How do you cook a rock?"
"Not using the trivial methods shown in your media, if I understand them correctly. Your people lost, in some ways, far more than we in the Makurada Demagon."
"So," I said, studying his plate, "What are those? The reds . . . garnets, maybe. The stuff that looked like cake slices at first must be layered limestone-the main rock around here."
"You have an excellent eye for one of your people," Rokhaset said. "Though I am not sure of your first identification, your second is quite correct."
Suddenly Jodi began laughing almost hysterically.
"What"s so durn funny?"
She finally got a grip on herself. "You . . . you Slades! And the Nomes! All this time, you big, strong frontiersmen have been sneaking in and robbing the Nomes" pantries! You"re nothing but overgrown mice with iron bars!" She went off into another fit of laughter.
I blinked. Now there was a completely humiliating thought. "Is she right, sir? Have we been stealing your caviar-special food or something?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes. I admit to having a fondness for H"adamant when I can afford to have some prepared. But I would hardly have sent out a legion of warriors to Tennatu just for my stomach!"
"So why did you send your warriors after the diamonds?"
"Not diamonds-H"adamant."
"Same thing."
He shook his head, emphasizing his disagreement by using our own gesture. "Ridiculous. I have seen these "diamonds" in your television advertis.e.m.e.nts. They are nothing like H"adamant."
"We weren"t anything like what y"all got out of those broadcasts either," I pointed out. "There, Jodi"s got herself a big diamond on her hand, you tell me that ain"t the same thing."
Jodi held out her engagement ring. Rokhaset studied it for a few minutes, then slowly raised his head and gazed at us with those weird crystal eyes for a long time in silence. Finally he reached out and placed one of the stones we"d returned to the Nomes on the table between us. "I return your question, Clinton Slade. You tell me that these two things are the same."
"Shoot, I know they are. I"ve studied geology for years, and h.e.l.l, it ain"t hard to tell a diamond. Jodi"s ring was cut from one of the ones we got down here."
He stood bolt upright and shrieked out something that I couldn"t make out because the transducer"s volume cutoff killed it. Jodi and I jumped back, fumbling for the iron bars, sure that we were about to get mobbed.
But no one else moved in a way that seemed hostile. If anything, they huddled together a bit more. Finally Rokhaset got himself under control. He sat down slowly and selected another morsel off the plate. I could see now that the mouth was located under the sound-tube he used for speaking-sort of where the chin-neck juncture would be in a human. He didn"t seem to eat this with enthusiasm, but more like a man doing something while thinking.
Finally he looked back at us. "I must beg your pardon. It is hard for someone such as myself to suddenly realize how alien your people are. I had foolishly permitted myself to think that because your words are translated to ones I understand by the makatdireskovi that we are really essentially the same, aside from a few minor differences." I got the impression of a long, shaky breath being drawn, though all I could see was a faint movement of the stony skin on the rounded torso. "To give you something you might understand, telling me that the . . . stone in the ring that Ms. Goldman is wearing is the same as this H"adamant would be the same as my holding out one of your skeletons and telling you, in all seriousness, that I could not tell the difference between the skeleton and the living, breathing Tennathada before me."
He shuddered, a movement rather similar to our own. "Your people have lost more than I had ever imagined. This"-he indicated the natural diamond-"is a living stone, Clinton Slade, Jodi Goldman. The H"adamant is precious because of that living essence within it. Now that I know your people cannot see the difference, and that you call both by the name "diamond" . . ." He shook his head again. "What a terrible waste. You cannot even see what it is that you destroy by cutting the stone in the way you do. We had foolishly thought that you needed the . . . diamonds for the same reasons we did, for their special properties."
"Well, since we"re on the subject," I said, after a moment"s pause, "we"d like to come to a more peaceable arrangement. Maybe a trade, something you"d like for stuff we"d like. Maybe we can bring you stones like aren"t around here?"
Rokhaset nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, there are ossibilities-many crystals and minerals that we know of, yet cannot find here. But we would have to give you some way of making sure you brought us live stones, not ones whose essence had been damaged or destroyed. However, there are more pressing matters. You returned these few stones as a gesture of your goodwill, and so I have accepted it. But it is essential that you return the ones you took recently."