Human to Human Read Online Free Page B

short, bowed legs working well on the plank-basket floor. The rooms flowed into each other, no set purpose to any other than the food room. When we got there, I saw that she’d gotten a table and chairs for us. Gwyngs just ate when they were hungry, from a vein or udder, in the field, from a bottle in the house, microwaved warm or not.
    I opened the chest coolers until I found the non­freezing one with some cheese and raw fruit in it. “Do you have baked yeasted wheat paste?” I asked, meaning bread. There was a Karst One term for bread, but for some reason the computers in Gwyng skulls conflated it with the concept for beer, the same “yeasted” root, I guess.
    She opened a cabinet and pulled down a warm loaf. I took it and it cut like fresh bread, squashed slightly by the knife. Black Amber oo’ed when I swallowed my saliva hard, her lips pursed as if to kiss. “Yes, new baked. I knew the bus schedule,” she said, “I leave you to your un-beer and seed pulp. Enjoy and come back to the first room.”
    After she’d left, I found a glass and poured Karl some milk, hoping it was Jersey, not mixed with marsupial. The cream line looked authentically Terran.
    Karl drank some and said, “At least, I can play with Rhyodolite.” I nodded, thinking that I could speak English to Molly if I wanted to. Was Sam’s ex-Berkeley wife still Rhyodolite’s lover, I wondered, or was he less erotic now that she could understand him better? I felt odd about feeling so hard toward Molly. Coming to Karst was Marianne’s idea; Molly and Sam struggled to make places for themselves as craft weaver and musician.
    I finished my cheese and bread quickly. This house of Amber’s gave me the creeps. Maybe she’d been very angry lately and smeared the juice from her thumb glands over the entrance way stones, warding off the other Gwyngs? Her last son wasn’t here—hers out of her own womb and pouch. Maybe she had been sick and was lying? Wy’um of the History Committee, her favorite mate, where was he?
    When Karl and I got back to the main room, Rhyodolite and Molly were huddled by Black Amber on one of the steel platforms. Funny, Molly took more space than they did, a social distance. And, as usual, I’d forgotten how small Rhyodolite was, not having seen him in several months. He was only about five feet tall on his true legs, a bit shorter than when I’d seen him first, disguised as a human with extended thigh bones.
    Karl ran up to him and embraced him sideways, rocking his body against the Gwyng. Rhyodolite could understand Karl, and Karl knew some hand signs
    “Red-Clay, help us defrost Black Amber,” he said.
    She’d been in a cool-down torpor then, a Gwyng social stress escape. “Should I heat some oil?”
    Molly said, in English, “Gwyng Home thought this house was pretentious for one who won’t outlive a certain bird.”
    I wondered how Black Amber paid for the house, but only said, “Oh.”
    Molly asked, in Karst One, “Is Marianne all right alone with them?”
    “They’re behind reinforced polycarbonate, and she’s got someone who speaks their language with her.”
    Rhyodolite looked at me and, in a slow ripple, squeezed one nostril shut, on the off-side from Black Amber.
    Black Amber said, “We will expand my social group soon.”
    Rhyodolite looked at her, his eyes rolling to white beneath the skull eyeshield. I noticed then that Black Amber looked age-wrinkled. The wrinkle folds under the fine velvet fur were thinner, not as plump and regular as Rhyodolite’s.
    She seemed annoyed by our silence and said, “We will (insistent/predictive) have more company.”
    Molly went “ Sheesh, ” and lay down on the cushions, shifting her legs to plant her feet on the floor. She put her forearm over her eyebrows. Black Amber got up and walked away. Rhyodolite said, “Yes, Sub-Rector Black Amber.”
    Molly asked, in English, “ Seen Yangchenla lately ?”
    “At a music club in the city just this week.” I said, also