Vilcabamba by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2010-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Prilk and his guards waited impassively in the square. “Well, Moffatt, what is it going to be?”

“You can’t mine silver on our land,” Moffatt said. “You would ruin our whole country”—what’s left of our whole country—“if you did.”

“We are going to mine that silver,” the Krolpish envoy said, his voice flat and hard. “You cannot stop us from doing it. Because you cannot stop us, you cannot say in truth that the land is yours.”

“If your folk come onto our land without our leave, you will see what we can do,” Harris Moffatt III said. His son was already on his way back to the free USA from St. Louis. He hoped.

Prilk let out flatulent Krolpish laughter. “I foul myself in fear,” he said.

A sarcastic Krolp was the very last thing the President needed. “You will see,” he repeated. “Tell Governor Vrank the land is ours, the silver is ours, and he may not have it.”

Prilk leaned his torso forward, toward the President. As with humans, that meant earnestness among the Krolp. “Moffatt, you had better think again. You have no hope of winning.”

“We have no hope if you trash our country, either,” Moffatt said, which was nothing but the truth.

“But we would not interfere with you if you did not act like a fool,” Prilk said.

“If I did what you told me to do, you mean,” Moffatt replied. “And you would interfere with the United States. You would interfere badly. That interferes with me.”

“You will be sorry,” Prilk warned.

“I am already sorry. Everyone on Earth is sorry. We are sorry you ever found us,” the President said.

“Which has nothing to do with how many claws are on a franggel’s foot,” Prilk said.

Harris Moffatt III had never seen a franggel. Come to that, neither had Prilk. The Krolp had hunted them to extinction hundreds of years before. They lingered on in proverbs, though. The President had heard this one many times before. Nothing to do with the price of beer, an English-speaking human probably would have said. But he’d heard about a franggel’s foot even in English. Krolpish phrases, Krolpish ideas, gained. Human notions retreated. Pretty soon, they’d have nowhere to retreat to.

Vilcabamba.

The President hadn’t imagined he’d remember the name of the place, not while the Secretary of Alien Affairs was yakking about it. He also hadn’t imagined he would sympathize with the poor befuddled Inca holdouts who’d tried to hang on to their old way of life there. If the Krolp started strip-mining in Utah, the old American way of life, or what was left of it, was gone forever.

“Envoy Prilk, we will fight to stop you,” he repeated, his voice firmer than it had been a few minutes earlier.

“Moffatt, we will eat your brains, if you have any.” Prilk turned and walked away. His guards formed up around him. If the humans wanted to start fighting now, they were ready. Here, though, human and Krolpish customs coincided. The envoy was suffered to leave in peace. Trouble would start soon, but not yet.

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