Touchdown, Touchdown, Rah, Rah, Rah!

“You heard her,” the coach said. The players rolled Faber onto his belly and lifted him again. He hung between the two groups of players like a lumpy, uncouth bag. “Let s move it, people,” the coach called.

The team took off toward Vrekle. Ray and Elizabeth kept up alongside the group who carried Faber, who looked unconscious. “How bad is it?” Ray asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He could go into shock or have convulsions. I wish we had an emetic; emptying his stomach would probably help.”

“We could stick a fmger down his throat,” Ray suggested. “That would—”

“Aw, sneeze!” one of the kya toting Faber said.

“Did he throw up?” Ray asked.

“No, he went off at the other end.” The kya’s muzzle contorted in disgust.

“That’s a typical food allergy symptom,” Elizabeth said. “At least it’s getting the knotvine out of his system.”

“Oh.” The kya trotted on in stoic silence.

After a while the coach called for a change in the carriers. Seeing how the kya were suffering from the smell, Ray moved in and took hold of Faber’s belt, relieving one of the players of the unpleasant job. This will make Zelk happy, he thought as he jogged along. She had wanted him to make a public display of friendship with Faber. To judge by the way the kya looked at him as he helped carry Faber, they thought Ray was making the ultimate sacrifice for him.

* * *

“He’ll be all right,” Elizabeth told Ray that night, as they met outside the restaurant. “He started to dehydrate from the diarrhea, but the doctor pumped in the fluids and gave him epinephrine for the histamine reaction. He’ll be up and around in a few days.”

“Good,” Ray said. “I hope he’s going to be more careful. If Faber gets sick again and can’t play, we’re all in a lot of trouble.”

“It won’t happen again,” Elizabeth said. “That isn’t the sort of mistake you make twice.”

“I hope,” Ray said as they entered the restaurant. It was the same restaurant he and Elizabeth had visited before, and the buffet was well-stocked. Despite Faber’s misadventure Ray felt no qualms about dining; he realized he trusted the enzyme pills. They took their food and circulated among the other diners on the main floor. “Do the kya dance?” Ray asked, as the band struck up a new tune.

“No, they’re not built for it,” Elizabeth said.

“You are,” Ray said.

She looked wry. “ ‘Built’ is the last thing I’d call myself.”

“Oh?” He heard the self-deprecation in her tone. He didn’t care for that, especially not in someone he liked. “ ‘And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare, as any she belied with false compare.’ ”

“Huh?”

“That’s Shakespeare’s way of saying not to sell yourself short. I forget the rest of the sonnet,” he added.

“A sonnet?” She looked surprised, and pleased. “You were right. You do have some good moves.”

Ray was about to elaborate on that point when Ghorf found them. “There’s a problem,” the executive said. He took a fax paper from inside his cloak and handed it to Ray. “Calling on me today, your embassy delivered this. My sister reads some human, but she couldn’t brush the knots out of this fur—she says it doesn’t even look like human writing.”

“No, it is,” Ray said. English was the lingua franca of human visitors to Kya, and many kya had come to assume it was the only human language. “It’s Russian. That’s one of our languages.”

“You people have more than one language, too?” Ghorf asked. “Who’d have thought? Translating it, what does it say?”

“It’s from Moskva Mnogophermaya,” Ray said. “They’re an agricultural development company. They’re interested in doing business with you. They’re also interested in hiring some of your people on an experimental basis, to see if they can use your sense of smell in soil and plant analyses.”

That clearly pleased Ghorf. “It’s good to think we can teach your people something. Let’s keep downwind of one another on this.” Ghorf sauntered away, his muzzle twitching.

“It’s a good thing you speak Russian,” Elizabeth said.

Ray shrugged. “I speak seven languages. I told you I started out as a linguist. I still can’t get the hang of starting my Wideplain sentences with participle phrases, though. The kya must think I sound awful.”

“Having the same problem, I know how you feel,” Elizabeth said. They both laughed at that, and then Elizabeth spotted somebody across the dining floor. “Is that an old girlfriend?” she asked Ray.

Ray looked and spotted Delores, who had just passed through the door with two men. “Hardly. She works at the embassy, and she doesn’t like me.” She was glaring at Ray with the sort of expression generally displayed by betrayed lovers. “She looks madder than usual. I wonder what I did this time?”

The answer came a moment later, when Delores and her two companions, who were built to the same general specifications as Faber, approached Ray. “Can’t you take a hint, Bennett?” Delores said without preamble. Her escorts crossed their massive arms and loomed above Ray like an impending avalanche.

Ray hoped he didn’t look intimidated. “What hint?” he squeaked.