A World of Difference Read Free

not, he decided. Otherwise they would never have come up with Igor Lopatin.
    He grimaced. Had Katerina been as crabbed and dour as theengineer, life aboard
Tsiolkovsky
would have been a lot worse than complicated. It would have been intolerable, and maybe dangerous. He ran a grateful hand down the smooth skin of her back, glad she favored him at the moment.
    She stirred and detached herself from him. “Now,” she said, “back to work.” She retrieved her underpants and coverall from the little bag where she had stowed them. Tolmasov used a tissue to mop liquid out of the air. Katerina chuckled. “To the head first, then back to work,” she amended with a doctor’s practicality. As soon as she was dressed, she slipped out of the cubicle and away.
    Tolmasov put his clothes back on more slowly. It was not animal lassitude; he was too disciplined to let that affect him. Calculation played a much bigger part in it. Someone besides Oleg Lopatin, he was sure, had KGB connections. That was the way things were. Katerina made the most obvious choice: if anyone on the ship could find out everything that was going on, she was the one.
    Of course, the KGB did not have a reputation for being obvious. Tolmasov let out a snort of laughter. If Katerina was not what he suspected her to be, she doubtless had suspicions about him.
    A drop of water fell from the castle ceiling onto Reatur’s head. He extended an eyestalk and stared balefully upward at the ice. Was it starting to drip already? Plainly, it was. Summer was coming.
    Reatur was not happy about summer: It would be too hot; it always was. Most of the tools made of ice would melt; they always did. The domain-master would have to see to getting the stone tools out of storage, as he did toward the end of every spring.
    He did not like stone tools. They were hard to make and expensive to buy. His peasants did not like them, either. They were heavier than ice and tiring to use in the fields. He wished he lived in a land with a better climate, where ice stayed ice the year around.
    Even his castle’s thick walls would drip and trickle all summer long. He remembered the really scorching summer—how long ago was it? Seven years, that was it—when big chunks of the roof had melted and fallen in. Lucky his domain had been at peace then, and lucky the collapse had killed only mates.
    Reatur’s eldest son Ternat came into the great hall, breakinghis chain of thought. Ternat thickened his body so the top of his head was lower than the top of Reatur’s. “You are respectful,” the domain-master said, pleased, “but I know you are taller than I.”
    “Yes, clanfather.” Ternat resumed his natural height. “A male from the great clan of Skarmer waits outside. He would have speech with you.”
    “Would he?” Air hissed out through the breathing-pores under Reatur’s eyestalks. “I wonder what he wants.” Visits from the males who lived on the west side of the Ervis Gorge were never casual affairs; the gorge was too hard to cross for anything but serious business to be worthwhile. “Bring him in.”
    “Yes, clanfather.” Ternat hurried away. He was eldest, but he knew better than to do anything without his father’s leave. One day, if he outlived Reatur, he would be clanfather himself, and domain-master. Till then, he was as much in his father’s power as a just-budded mate.
    He led the Skarmer male up to the domain-master. The westerner politely widened himself before Reatur, though like most of his people he was already the shorter and rounder of the two. That peculiar combination of plump body and long eyestalks always made the males from west of the gorge look sneaky to Reatur.
    Still widened, the Skarmer male said in trade talk, “I bring my clanfather Hogram’s greetings to you, domain-master, and those of all the domains sprung from the Skarmer bud. I am named Fralk; I am eldest of eldest of Hogram.”
    Reatur felt like hissing again but refused to let this Fralk see