Xavier William Lennox shuffled down the narrow, twisting street, trying to mimic the awkward walk of the Fireflies. He breathed in the pungent odors of decaying food, felt a slight burning sensation in his nostrils, and tried to ignore it.
He checked the sky. The huge yellow sun wouldn't set for another two hours, even though a trio of moons were already dancing above the horizon. That meant he'd have to stay here for at least another hour before making his final approach to the pyramid.
He looked around. Three Fireflies were standing outside the triangular doorway of a mud building, lost in conversation. They were wrapped in colorful robes, totally oblivious to the heat that was sapping Lennox's strength by the minute. He tried to hear what they were saying, but he was too far away, and he didn't dare move any closer: the last thing he needed was for some overly-friendly Firefly to ask him to join them.
A Firefly infant, no more than two years old, toddled up to him, totally nude, his golden skin reflecting the sunlight, his tiny vestigial wings flapping furiously to no good purpose. Lennox looked away from the child, hoping that it would lose interest in him and wander off.
Suddenly it tugged at his robe.
"Bebu?" it asked. "Bebu?"
"I'm not your bebu," replied Lennox, grateful that a toddler wouldn't be able to spot his accent as the alien words rolled uncomfortably off his tongue. "Go home."
"Bebu?" repeated the infant.
Lennox looked around to make sure no one was watching him, then slowly lifted his arms and dropped them. It was a sign of aggression in the fierce, carnivorous avians, now almost extinct, that for eons had preyed upon the Fireflies. The infant instinctively recoiled at the gesture, then raced into an angular mud house. It would be, Lennox knew, a typical Firefly dwelling with no windows, crazy angles, and a high ceiling covered with their incomprehensible religious symbols.
A moment later the infant's mother stuck her head out of the doorway, looking at Lennox as the child pointed in his direction. After glaring at him for what she considered a sufficient length of time, she disappeared back inside the house, and Lennox released his grip on the pistol he had hidden beneath his flowing robes.
A bead of sweat trickled down his face, ran along his upper lip, and made its way into his mouth. Then another, and another, and suddenly he realized that he was thirsty. More than thirsty; he was in serious danger of dehydration. The thought infuriated him. He had spent so long training his body for this day that he felt betrayed by it. For reasons he could not comprehend, for all oxygen-breathers needed water and Medina was a sweltering hellhole, the Fireflies drank--sipped, really--only at sunrise and sunset. Now he would have to risk exposure by giving his body the water it craved while the sun was still high in the sky.
He slowly shuffled down the street, peering casually into the interior of each building he passed. Every one of them was occupied, and the thought of having to wait for water made him lust for it even more.
Finally he reached the end of the street and found himself confronted by five more crazily winding thoroughfares, all narrow, all crowded with angular buildings that made little or no sense. He bore to the right, not out of any belief that he was more likely to find an empty domicile there, but simply so he could find his way back, and again began inspecting each structure as he walked by. Fireflies of both sexes and all sizes stared out at him, neither speaking nor showing any interest.
Maybe it's even hot for them, he thought as he continued. About halfway down the street he came to a stable--the least likely place to put it, so of course that's where it was located--and stepped inside, grateful to be out of the sun despite the alien smells. There were ten stalls--seven on the left, three on the right, all irregularly-shaped--and he walked slowly down the aisle between them, half-expecting to be stopped with every step he took.
But nobody was there to stop him, and he found that two of the stalls were empty. Trying to ignore the soft bleats of the shaggy, incredibly ugly beasts of burden--"They make old Earth's wildebeest look like creatures of grace and beauty", Fallico had remarked during their first visit to Medina--he entered a stall, sat in a corner below eye level of anyone passing by, quickly removed his canteen, and greedily poured half of it down his throat before pausing for breath.
He sat still for a moment, reveling in the relief from sun and thirst, then drained the canteen and walked over to the stall's water trough to refill it. The trough was empty.
He walked cautiously into the aisle and inspected all the other troughs. Evidently the beasts kept to the same schedule as their masters; there wasn't a drop of water to be had.
Lennox returned to the empty stall, buried the canteen beneath the bedding, and walked back out the way he had come. As he was about the leave the stable, he saw a pair of Fireflies approaching him. His first inclination was to duck back inside, but he quickly decided that was more likely to draw attention than simply walking down the street, swathed in his robes, acting as if he belonged there. His mind made up, he began walking directly toward the Fireflies, staring at the ground, circling around them without missing a step. They passed by silently, without giving him a second glance.
He smelled the odors of alien cooking. Good. The Fireflies were preparing for the evening meal. That meant the sun had to set pretty soon. The temperature would drop forty degrees or more in the next hour, and he could finally stop worrying about passing out from heat stroke.
Suddenly he became aware of a damp feeling in his armpits. Damn! Despite all his precautions, his salt pills, his adrenaline injections, the oxygenation of his blood, his anti-perspirants, his loosely-fitting robes, he had begun sweating in earnest. Perspiration was pouring off his body. How much longer before the stains were visible? More to the point, did Fireflies ever sweat? There was so much he didn't know about them; who would ever have thought that he might get tripped up by something so trivial as perspiration?
He stepped into a recessed doorway while he considered his options, and finally concluded that he didn't really have any. He hadn't come this far to quit, and he had no way of masking any stains if they should come through, so he might as well not worry about them. If he held his body awkwardly, if he looked like he was trying to hide something, he'd draw more attention than if he simply walked boldly and confidently among the Fireflies. Possibly, if no one was observing him, he could cover his robes with a layer of dust, as if he had just come out of the desert, but the desert was red and the dust of the city streets was brown; it might call even more attention to himself.
The best alternative was to return to the stable and wait there until the sun set the rest of the way. He was just about to do so when a caravan of Fireflies and their beasts of burden passed by, laden with exotic goods. There was a chance that there was another stable further up the road, that their animals would be quartered there, but it wasn't worth the risk of exposure if he guessed wrong.
A small insect landed on his cheek, and he instinctively slapped at it. One of the Fireflies, sitting atop its ugly mount, turned to stare at him.
What now?, thought Lennox. Didn't any of you ever take a swipe at an insect before? And then he tried to remember: had he ever seen a Firefly react to an insect? He couldn't recall a single instance.
The Firefly was still staring at him, and he felt the need to do something, anything, to assuage what he was sure were its suspicions. He considered everything from faking a fit to eating the insect, and settled, uncomfortably, for meticulously readjusting the thick hood of his robe. He dared a quick look in the direction of the Firefly; evidently it had lost interest in him, and was once again staring dully at the street.
Still, just to be on the safe side, he began walking again, turning into the first side street he came to. It seemed to be a row of hovels housing weavers. There were great vats of dye, and large hanks of colorful yarn hanging out to dry. Here were the reds and oranges of the desert tribes, the muted browns and greens of the city dwellers, even the whites of the warrior caste and the golds of the priests. Firefly females sat at their looms, their fingers moving swiftly and surely, creating subtle patterns, while dozens of children played in the street. A small, feline creature emerged from a house and began walking across the street. One of the children threw a rock at it; it snarled and raced back inside.
As Lennox walked down the street, ignoring the children and ignored in turn by them, he saw an occasional water gourd hanging near a loom, and tried not to think about it. There was no way he could steal one without being noticed, not in an area as crowded as this. This led him to wonder if he was still sweating, then to lick his upper lip to find out. It was moist and salty. Were any sweat stains visible? He didn't know, and had no way to check on them, but the children continued to pay him no attention, so he assumed his outer robes were still dry.
He looked at a pair of male children chasing each other up the street. How the hell did they do it? Their metabolism couldn't be that different, not living as they did on an oxygen world that was capable of supporting human life. But they didn't sweat, they didn't drool, they didn't pant, they didn't give any indication that the heat affected them at all. Evolution and adaptation, he told himself, evolution and adaptation. But that didn't explain the wings. They couldn't fly--given their structures, they had never flown--so what were the wings for? And their fingers--why were they so long? How did useless wings and four-jointed fingers qualify as survival traits?
I should have done more homework.
But of course, that was precisely what he was doing now. The Fireflies had no use for Men. They refused to trade with them. They refused to exchange ambassadors. They refused to have anything to do with Man's sprawling Republic. They allowed Men one small outpost, right in the middle of that sun-baked southern desert known as Hell's Oven, but no Man was allowed access to their cities. Indeed, it was a minor miracle that Lennox had managed to learn their language, since there were no radio or video signals to study and analyze; he had accomplished it by being incarcerated with a Firefly who had killed four Men, and he had to fight for his life perhaps fifty times before the Firefly was willing to declare a truce and begin trying to converse with him. Even now, as he tried to pass for a Firefly and make his way to the pyramid, he was totally ignorant of the meaning behind the crude squiggles that passed for the Fireflies' written language.
The spoken language wasn't much better. Simplistic and crude, and grating to the ear--but there was a certain poetry to it when translated back into Terran. The Fireflies' name for Medina was Grotamana, which meant "Touched by God", while the city in which he found himself, Brakannan, was, literally, "Gold at Day's End". There were some fifty-odd dialects just in this hemisphere, but fortunately the language he had learned from his cellmate was a bastard tongue that had become the lingua franca for thousands of miles in every direction.
A trio of flying insects began buzzing around his face. He tried to ignore them, and they were joined by half a dozen more.
It must be the salt, he decided. Now that he was prepared, he could control his reactions--but none of the Fireflies were being bothered by insects, and if he drew enough of them, someone would start wondering why.
He continued walking until he was well past the children, then turned a corner, surreptitiously ran his hand over the front of a filthy building, and covered his face with dirt and grime, hoping that it would mask the odor of his perspiration from the insects. He gave no thought to how it would affect his appearance; if any Firefly actually saw his face, clean or dirty, he was a dead man anyway.
The shadows began lengthening as the sun plummeted down behind the distant hills, and Lennox began to think he actually had a chance of accomplishing his goal. The temperature began dropping precipitously. It was still hot, and it would remain hot, but he no longer felt like he was in danger of melting. He hadn't lost his craving for water, but somehow, with the coming of the darkness, he was able to control it.
He considered approaching the pyramid. The streets were emptying, and he would have a clear path, unhindered by any Fireflies. But the very act of walking there alone would call too much attention to himself, and he had no idea what was expected of him once he arrived, so he kept to the shadows, hoping to remain unseen, and planning to fall in behind the first group of Fireflies who emerged from their dwellings to begin the mile-long trek.
He would have liked to have simply squatted down, his back propped against a wall, and feigned sleep for the next hour, but he had no idea if Fireflies slept in such positions--the Firefly he had been incarcerated with hadn't seemed to sleep at all--and he decided not to risk it. But the sudden silence and lack of movement convinced him that they also didn't walk around after dark, at least not until they went to the pyramid, so he simply stood in the shadows, motionless, and hoped that no one would see him.
Five minutes passed, then ten more--and then a lone Firefly came walking down the narrow street. Lennox stood still, trying to hide the tension in his body, and hoping to strike an attitude that implied that of course this was where he belonged.
The Firefly stopped when he was about ten feet away and stared intently at Lennox. Lennox looked at the ground, seemingly oblivious to him.
Finally the Firefly began walking again, and just as Lennox began to relax, he turned back and said something in a dialect that Lennox had never heard before.
Lennox continued staring at the ground and made no response. The Firefly walked back to him and repeated the phrase.
"I do not understand you," muttered Lennox in the one language he had mastered.
"You are not of the Realm or the Legion," said the Firefly, switching to the lingua franca.
"No, I am not," replied Lennox, wondering what he was talking about.
"Nor are you of the Seven."
"That is true," said Lennox.
"There is something different about you," said the Firefly. "You mangle the language and you do not meet my gaze."
"I was born unable to speak clearly," answered Lennox, "and I do not meet your gaze because I am ashamed of my shortcoming."
It seemed like a reasonable answer, but something about it was terribly wrong, because without another word the Firefly launched himself at Lennox, his hands reaching out to clutch at the human's throat.
Lennox was caught completely off-guard by the suddenness of the attack, and an instant later was struggling for his life as the Firefly's hands tightened around his neck. He delivered a swift knee to the groin, which would have disabled any human opponent, but had no effect whatsoever on the Firefly. A thumb to the armpit elicited a groan, but did not make the Firefly relinquish his hold. Lennox felt himself becoming dizzy as he gasped futilely for air. Spots began appearing before his eyes, and finally he decided the only chance he had of surviving was to match surprise with surprise. He swiftly moved a hand to his face and pulled at the scarf that covered it until it was fully exposed.
The Firefly's eyes widened. "You are a Man!"
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