Camelot 30K by Robert L. Forward

Author:Robert L. Forward [Forward, Robert L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780312852153
Publisher: TOR
Published: 1993-11-15T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Tournament at the Oval

"IT BE fi'fitfthday soon," Merlene announced to the humans when they arrived back at her home, having spent the day watching a baker produce breads and berry pies using certain ground-up multiberry plant roots for flour. Some of the pies had looked delicious to Rob, just like ones his mother used to make, with thin strips of crust over bubbling berry fillings. It had been many years since he had tasted a real pie and now he wished his telebot had taste buds.

"Is there something special about every fifth Fifthday?" Rob asked. He had been practicing converting numbers from the kerack five-base number system to the human decimal system. Since the keracks had ten legs, one would have thought that they would have developed a decimal counting system too, but unfortunately, it hadn't happened that way.

"Betruth!" Merlene exclaimed. "The warriors be putting on a tournament. Jordat be now off taking part for the first time as apprentice to the great warrior Laslot."

"Sounds interesting," said Rob. Since the young male was not there, Rob hauled the heavy feastbasket up the stairs to the surface in his warclaw while Fasart managed the sharestand. Selke was up on the surface showing Solene how to skip rope. Solene was fascinated with the new game, and soon was outdoing the clumsy two-leg-pair-gaited human in speed skipping.

At the park, with Solene off showing the other children how to skip and Merlene and Fasart busy setting out the upper layer of the feastbasket contents on the sharestand, Rob and Selke wandered around, looking for something new to add to their sample collections. They had obtained samples of pretty much everything there was to offer in the way of food items, so they collected very little this Fifthday. The tenders of the many sharestands were very disappointed when the humans passed by without taking anything. Then Selke saw a male kerack setting out something different on his sharestand. She recognized him easily because his war-claw was missing.

"That is the painter Komart. I wonder what he is giving away this Fifthday?"

"Let's go get a couple," Rob said, clumsily taking a sample bag out of his carrying pouch and lurching toward Komart's sharestand in the awkward two-leg-pair by two-leg-pair gait of the telebots.

By the time the humans got to the sharestand, it was surrounded by young keracks eagerly removing the items from the sharestand as fast as Komart took them out of his carrying basket. When Komart saw the humans coming, he quickly dived back down into the basket and came up with two bowl-like objects. They were the size of the eyeglobe on a small kerack child.

"These be for you," he said with a hic of laughter, handing the bowls to the humans over the outstretched claws and protests of the eager children.

"They are paintings of us!" Selke said in surprise.

"They sure are!" Rob looked down at a painted version of himself on the shallow bowl he held in his claw. The bowl looked like it had been cast out of crystal-clear ice.

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