Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers by Pam Uphoff

tanned skin. Both good looking. Large, well fed, healthy. Clean. Not like a lot of natives.
    "Hello, welcome. Come in." Nelson gestured an invitation. "Put the guns down, they are trying to look friendly."
    Javier muttered something behind him, about how he thought the blond had been female. "Damn homos."
    "Now, don't jump to conclusions or make value judgments." Nelson said, and sent a frown at the scouts, as they finally lowered their weapons, and holstered them with every sign of reluctance. "We'll just sit down and have dinner with them."
    The natives had been listening intently, and swapped shrugs. The dark haired one rattled off something.
    Nelson shook his head, "Sorry, but we don't speak your language. Come. Sit." Damn, what was he supposed to do with natives?
    Dark Hair walked in and swept his glance around, stopping on Nelson. He tapped his chest. "Dud It." Gestured at Blonde and Tan, "Lev Tee."
    Nelson smiled. That was simple enough. He tapped his own chest. Keep it simple. "Nel Son. Roxy. Ben. Hav I Air."
    Nelson looked at Roxy. "Get my case. I have a vid camm, we need to get all of this."
    The two men waited and watched while he set up the camm and started both recording and sending. Oh Hell! What were their names? He gulped. "This is a record of the first meeting. We have exchanged names."
    He turned back to the natives. "Dud?"
    "Dudit. Levty." He repeated obligingly. "Nel Son. Rocks Ee. Ben. Havi Air."
    Well, oral traditions and so forth. A good aural memory was no doubt trained into them.
    "Please, sit." Nelson gestured as he sat awkwardly on the ground.
    "Tanoo fer t'huspitly." Dark Hair—Dudit folded up easily to sit cross legged.
    "Crap. Did you hear what he said?" Ben was frowning at the natives. "He said 'Thank you for the hospitality.' He speaks some variety of old English."
    "Oh, I didn't catch that, makes this a very recent split, doesn't it?" Nelson perked up. Less paperwork, labor more profitable . "Well, we might as well feed them."
    The scouts started stirring about to get dinner ready, just hot packs of course, and the natives conferred and the blond, Levty, got up and walked to the edge of the camp's lights to pick up two sacks and return. Nelson braced himself. Apparently the sharing of food ritual was going to go both ways. Some sort of pancake-like primitive yeast bread, and meat. It didn't smell off. In fact it smelled wonderful and smoky. They all sat around in a circle and sampled each others food, and told each other what the names of the foods were and included a lot of words Nelson thought he ought to understand. The natives were picking up their language a lot faster than the reverse. As the food disappeared, Dudit produced what looked exactly like a wine bottle and looked thoughtfully at them. "Glassos?"
    "Glasses. Certainly."
    Javier fetched glasses, ordinary drinking ones, but what did it matter. This stuff they'd slung around in their backpack, made with primitive methods, was probably going to be awful, but he'd take a token drink . . .
    "Holy Mother!" Roxy exclaimed. "This is good stuff."
    It certainly had a good nose. He sipped. "Merlow, I think. Very nice." He sipped again. "I'd like to taste this when it hasn't been shaken up in a backpack."
    Dudit nodded. "Goodur. Ulder s'better."
    "Yes. A good year. And I suspect older would be better." God! A few hours and they were damn near speaking Merican. If Dallas could get a license to import labor from here, they'd have half the budget for education most of the labor companies had. And if they opened mines here, the overseers wouldn't have too many problems either. It was all a matter of finding something worth mining.
    When the wine was gone, Dudit and Levty stood up. "Good noche. Via Marnan." They scooped up their empty bags and walked out.
    Ben frowned, "Should we keep them here?"
    "No," Nelson yawned. "They'll be back." He got up and shut off the camm and turned on the radio. "Did you get that, Lon?"
    "Oh yes, I've half the staff