The Venom Trees of Sunga

II – The Michisko Bush

In the ruddy light of rising Epsilon Eridani, outside Levontin's Paradise Palace stood another wagon. Two purple-brown kyuumeis drew it, with a Kook on the driver's seat in front. Standing before the zuta watchers, Tchitchagov counted and said:

"Only nineteen? Where are the others?"

"Mrs. Ramos was tired," volunteered a member.

"Mr. Antonelli said he had seen all the makutos he wanted on the mainland," said Kirk Salazar.

"Mr. Mpanza isn't feeling well," said another.

"Miss Bedford wanted to shop in Sungecho," added still another.

"If she can find anything worth buying," said Tchitchagov, "I should like to know about it. At least I shall not have to find another wagon." He added in an undertone to Salazar: "Unless the Reverend demands to come along. He would fill two places."

Salazar said: "Igor, how did you make out with the chief?"

"I won a delay," replied the tour director, turning. "Hello, Mr. Cantemir."

Cantemir strolled up, accompanied by two armed Kooks. "Got room for me, Igor?"

"I fear there is not," said Tchitchagov. "All seats are occupied."

"He iss not velcome, anyway," said Herr Willebrandt. "We know about his plans to—how would you say?—Mount Sungara to scalp."

"Just one of those ruthless exploiters," added Mrs. Long. "The kind that has made our Terra into a big, overcrowded, overregulated jailhouse. You have to get official permission to keep a pet parakeet lest it upset the balance between food production and consumption."

Cantemir grinned through his golden beard. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, is that any way to convert anybody to your point of view? You'd get further with flattery and soft soap. Igor, I can sit on the tailboard." To his two Kooks he added in Sungao: "Fare ye well, lads. Do naught that I would not do." The Kooks walked off. "Ready?"

"Not quite," said Tchitchagov. "Chief Yaamo is sending one of his people as a guide. Here it comes, now."

Salazar thought the Kook approaching was probably as much a policeman to keep a wary eye on the aliens from outer space as a guide. The newcomer's hide bore a painted pattern of green and brown symbols, and a rifle was slung across its back. From its lack of the small, spiny crest that distinguished male Kooks, Salazar inferred that the newcomer was a female. Perhaps she was an onnifa, a barren female filling normally male roles such as soldier or mariner.

Approaching Tchitchagov, the guide spoke in Sungao: "Are you Chief Tchitchagov? I have been assigned to you as guide. I hight Fetutsi, forest warden third class."

"We are glad to have you," replied Tchitchagov in the same tongue. "This is an English-speaking group. Speak you that language?"

"A ritter," said Fetutsi. "Not very wey."

Conversing with Fetutsi was like talking with an intelligent parrot because of the differences between human and Kukulcanian vocal organs. Salazar knew that Kooks felt the same way about Terrans' efforts to imitate their rasping, cawing speech. Terrans trying to learn a native language complained that the sounds meant by letters used to transliterate Kukulcanian words bore only a faint resemblance to the Terran sounds those letters usually denoted.

"Where sit?" asked Fetutsi.

"On the tailboard," said Tchitchagov, pointing. The Kook nodded and heaved herself up, sitting with her back against the aftermost bench and with her feet dangling. Cantemir hoisted himself up beside her, while Tchitchagov climbed up to the little bench in front and sat beside the Kook driver.

"All ready?" he said, peering around. Then to the driver: "Katai!"

The driver released his brake and flicked the two kyuumeis with his whip. The massive animals ambled off; after them the wagon groaned and creaked. The wheels rattled on the cobblestones, shaking the passengers like one of those vibrating machines used to thin down overweight Terrans. As Salazar had noted before boarding, springing was of the simplest. Soon the paving ceased, and the wheels squelched through the mud of the latest rain. The vehicle lurched more but vibrated less.

The slatternly port drifted past, the houses becoming smaller and more widely spaced with each block. Along the street Terrans halted to stare, while the occasional Kukulcanians went about their business with typical indifference to anything but the task at hand.

The wagon staggered past the remains of a defensive wall that had warded the port before Yaamo's clan had established hegemony over the isle of Sunga, and on out into the country. They plodded past stretches of farmland until the patches of dusky green woodland grew larger and denser. Gradually the countryside changed from farmland with woodlots to forest with occasional clearings.

Salazar sat beside the Ritters, whom he knew the best of anyone in the group. He inquired: "Where's your daughter?"

Hilbert Ritter replied: "Gone back to Mount Sungara."

Suzette added: "When she found we'd come to try to talk her out of this cult business, she got furious. We had a frightful row, and she walked out on us. This morning, I hear, she's collected her two Kook bodyguards and taken the Unriu Express to Amoen."

"Sounds like a difficult offspring," said Salazar.

"You don't know the half of it," said Ritter. "Are you a family man?"

"Nope. Not married or even engaged."

"Oh?" said Suzette. "We saw you kissing a little blonde good-bye before the ship left Oõi. We assumed—well—"

"Just a friend, come to see me off," said Salazar. "She and I have been, I guess you'd say, going together. She's Professor Fisker's daughter, Calpurnia."

"Any future plans?" asked Suzette.

"If you mean getting married or even taking on a live-in arrangement, no. At least not till I get my degree and something more than a beginning instructor's pay."

"A careful man like your father," said Ritter with a chuckle. "One can be too careful, like the man attacked by a fyunga who called for help to his Kook companion but took so long getting his grammar right that the fyunga ate him."

Salazar changed the subject. "Will this—ah—disagreement with your daughter change your plans?"

Ritter grunted. "Looks that way. We were going to skip the zuta-watching trips from Amoen and spend the time deprogramming the girl. But after last night I think we may go on those field trips, after all. She said she never wanted to see us again; serve her right if we took her up on it."

Suzette added: "I doubt if anything we said would make a difference. If she likes the power and pelf that comes from being a high priestess, why would she want to give it up?"

The conversation was broken by a cry in Sungao from behind the wagon: "Keëkai! Keëkai!" meaning "Move aside" or "Out of the way!" Two Kooks on jutens overtook the wagon, their animals at a full run. When the wagon driver paid no attention, the two riders pulled over to the grassy strip alongside the road and pounded past, missing the wagon by millimeters. A gob of mud thrown up by the jutens' feet struck Miss Shakeh Dikranian, the sultry-looking, black-haired, Oriental-seeming beauty, on the left ear. She cursed in three languages and, with help from Mr. Antonelli, wiped off the mud with paper handkerchiefs.

"Juten racing," said Ritter, "is the nearest thing adult Kooks have to sport. Otherwise they say games are fine for children, but they think Terrans touched in the head to go on playing them when grown up."

Two hours later the wagon drew up on the rough, rutted dirt road that ran west from Sungecho. To the right rose the somber forest of the Michisko Bush. A substantial wire fence ran along the left side, where the forest had been cleared for farming half a kilometer back from the road. Beyond the fence, where the wagon halted, stretched a bare field, sparsely spotted with wild herbage and a few saplings. Salazar inferred that either the field was lying fallow or the owner had given up trying to raise a profitable crop there.

"We get down here," said Tchitchagov. "Follow Fetutsi. Do not get ahead of her and do not straggle. Do not approach any large wild animal closer than a hundred meters."

The driver spoke in Sungao: "Honorable Tchitchagov, I shall take my team an itikron down the road, where there is good grazing."

"Be back in two hours," said Tchitchagov; then to the Terrans: "Let us go!"

Fetutsi unslung her rifle and, holding it in one clawed hand, walked into the Michisko Bush. She turned her reptilian head to say: "You ay-yens, keep crose!" Her speech was even less intelligible than Chief Yaamo's. Tchitchagov brought up the tail of the column, herding stragglers along.

On either side rose huge trees, as thick as temple columns. Faint sylvan smells of rotting vegetation filled Salazar's nostrils. In this climax forest, little sunlight reached the ground, which was fairly free of underbrush. The gloom of the forest seemed to dampen the visitors' spirits, for there was none of the usual banter and chaff. When, however, a zuta with black and white striped wings flew over their heads, weaving among the tree trunks, some of the more dedicated zuta watchers whipped out binoculars and tally sheets.

"It's the greater chocho!"

"No; it's the Saurophychus nesiotes. That's another genus."

"Catch one and I'll prove I'm right!"

"It's gone now, damn it. It's listed in Parker's book ..."

"Over there," said Tchitchagov, "you'll see the yellow-bellied gougebeak."

"Where?" asked Salazar, searching the forest in the direction indicated.

"On the left-hand side trunk of that V-shaped tree."

Salazar looked, but there seemed to be at least six V-shaped trees in that direction. "Which tree, please?"

"Too late; it has gone behind the trunk."

Fetutsi turned to say: "Prease keep move! And keep noise down. No roud noise, prease!"

The column got under way again. Salazar noted that George Cantemir walked a couple of paces ahead of him, beside Miss Axelson where the trail permitted. He was murmuring to the young woman, now and then bringing giggles to her fresh young face. Salazar thought, No doubt he is asking her for the same thing he tried to get from Alexis. Salazar also thought: Wish I had the guts to proposition every woman who came by—or even one of them once in a while.

An hour later the party entered an area of smaller timber and more undergrowth. A few charred, rotting trunks of larger size implied that this area had once, perhaps a century earlier, been swept by fire, and they were walking through second growth. Trees became sparser and more widely scattered, allowing longer views. More shrubs and saplings impeded their progress.

"Ouch!" said Mr. ben-Yahya. "That damn thing has thorns."

"Watch thorns, ay-yens," said Fetutsi belatedly. "You skin too soft." The Kook had brushed past the same thorny shrub without harm, her scales being proof against its spines.

A fallen trunk lay across the trail. Fetutsi put a clawed hand on the bark and, holding her rifle in her other hand, vaulted effortlessly over the obstacle. She said to the Terrans behind her:

"You ay-yens go round."

The Terrans straggled toward the butt end of the log, where a mass of roots stuck up to more than man height. Cantemir put both hands on the trunk and vaulted over, as Fetutsi had done. He came down with a loud grunt.

"What wrong?" said Fetutsi.

"Hurt yourself?" said Tchitchagov, hurrying forward.

"Just sprained my damned ankle," gritted Cantemir. "I'll cut a walking stick."

"Too bad Mr. Mpanza isn't with us," said Mrs. Nicollet. "You could borrow that blackthorn shillelagh he carries."

Cantemir limped off a few paces, chose a sapling, and pulled out a big sheath knife. In a few minutes he had cut a serviceable stick and was limping after the column.

Serves him right, thought Salazar, for showing off in front of the dame.

"You've put us behind schedule, George," grumped Tchitchagov.

"Sorry about that," growled Cantemir. "How much farther?"

"Maybe half a kilometer."

They plodded on. A wild tisai, looking like a slate-gray reptilian version of the Terran tapir, crashed away, followed by four spotted young.

At last Fetutsi held up a hand. "Ay-yens quiet. Makutos iss. Cameras ready."

Fetutsi advanced slowly, waving back the occasional wildlife enthusiast who tried to push past her. Salazar heard a subdued rustling and crashing ahead. A louder, prolonged crash, together with movement of the foliage, told of the overthrow of a smaller tree.

As the party neared the source of the sounds, huge dark bodies materialized through the trees. A herd of mouse-brown makutos was browsing in a comparatively clear area. Salazar heard gasps from some Patelians.

The makuto was a bipedal herbivore, larger than any he had ever seen. When they reared up, bracing themselves by their huge balancing tails, they towered as high as an eight- or nine-story building. Their hind legs were like the trunks of the larger trees, ending in huge splayed feet with massive toenails like small hooves. Their forelegs, though smaller, were still long enough to reach down branches with their clawed hands, like those of Fetutsi on a gargantuan scale. One of those hands, Salazar thought, could pick up a zuta watcher as easily as he, Kirk Salazar, could pick up a kitten. Their bellies rumbled like distant thunder, punctuated by explosions of vented gas like trumpet blasts.

Their snouts were prolonged into meter-long proboscises, like dwarfish elephants' trunks. They pulled down branches to within reach of those prehensile organs and stuffed the greenery into vast pink maws.

"Pictures now," said Fetutsi in a low voice.

Cameras buzzed and clicked. Cantemir muttered: "Boy, if I had my fourteen-millimeter, I'd show 'em!"

"What would you want to shoot one for?" asked Salazar. "You couldn't eat it."

"What real man could see a good shot like that and not want a crack at it? Anyway, there are plenty more on the mainland."

"This is a subspecies, distinct from those on the mainland."

"Huh! They don't look different to me."

"Too roud noise!" hissed Fetutsi, flicking her forked tongue.

Salazar forbore to argue further, although as a biologist he took a poor view of sport hunting. For the next quarter hour the watchers quietly watched and photographed. Now and then one would whisper:

"I say, look at that one!"

"There's a couple of young, playing like puppies!"

"If one played with you, it would squash you like a bug."

"Don't they do anything but eat all day long?"

"I suppose they must copulate, though how they manage with those great tails I can't imagine."

"Standing face to face, maybe?"

"They must eat hundreds of kilos of green stuff daily."

"It takes a lot of fuel to power an engine that big."

"It would get pretty dull, just watching them just eat, eat, eat."

"You just bother one and it wouldn't be dull at all."

Fidgeting restlessly, Cantemir muttered: "Damn! Can't see right with all these trees in the way."

"Can't be helped," said Ritter. "They are—"

"I'm going up where I can get a whole one in my field." Cantemir set out, helping his injured limb along with his stick.

"Hey!" said Tchitchagov. "I told you—"

"What do?" said Fetutsi sharply. "Back, ay-yen! You come back!"

Cantemir ignored the command. He advanced to fifteen or twenty meters in front of the others, then knelt and aimed his little camera.

"Back!" said Fetutsi more loudly. "Animars angry!"

In fact, Salazar noticed, the nearest makuto had turned toward the Patelians. Its round ears, like those of an oversized mouse, swiveled toward the watchers, and its trunk was raised to horizontal, swinging right and left. It sniffed with a sound like a starting steam locomotive.

"Time to go!" called Tchitchagov. "Get back, George, before you get us stepped on!"

"Come back, George!" added Salazar. "Want us killed?"

More makutos turned toward the Terrans, bringing their bodies down to horizontal, balanced by their enormous tails. They moved agitatedly about.

"Oh, all right!" said Cantemir, rising and limping back to where the rest of the party was lined up.

"Let's go!" said Tchitchagov. "You lead, Fetutsi!"

"Damn!" said Cantemir. "Dropped my lens cap. Be right back." In Sungao he added to Fetutsi: "Cover me!"

He limped back to where he had knelt. After looking about for several seconds, he snatched up the lens cap and turned back toward the party, which was already hastening back along the trail.

The nearest makuto gave a thunderous snort, like the blast of a celestial trumpet, and started for the Terrans. After it came the rest of the herd, their footfalls shaking the forest floor.

"Tchyort!" yelled Tchitchagov. "I warned you! Grab his other arm, Kirk, and help me hurry him up."

With Tchitchagov on one side and Salazar on the other, they boosted Cantemir along. The lumberman made fair time by bringing his stick down beside his injured foot with each stride and putting most of his weight on the stick.

Behind them, the crashing of the makutos and the rumble of their footfalls told them that the herd was getting closer. Cantemir speeded up even more, uttering little grunts every time he put his weight on his injured ankle. Ahead the Patelians, strung out, ran after Fetutsi. Now and then one tripped and sprawled, but the crashing and thunder behind had them instantly up and running again.

They ran and ran until one Terran after another had to stop for breath. Then the approach of the herd sent them running once more. Tchitchagov and Salazar hauled Cantemir along at a slower pace but one that did not force them to stop.

At length they burst out on the road at the spot where they had left the wagon. The vehicle had not yet returned, since they had been gone for less than the two hours planned.

The crashing in the forest became louder. Tchitchagov said: "Across the field!"

The Terrans ran across the road and started to climb through the fence. Some became enmeshed in the wires until the others freed them. Among the last to reach the fence was Cantemir, who threw his stick beyond the fence and pushed through a gap in the wires. But the wires caught on projections of his gear, so that his struggles seemed only to entangle him further.

Tchitchagov had already cleared the fence and was running across the dusty field in pursuit of the other Terrans. Salazar said: "Hold still, damn it, George!" as he bent to untangle the wires. As he pulled the last one away from Cantemir's body, the lumberman crawled through, picked up his stick, and rose. Just then the first makuto loomed up between the trees across the road.

Being slim, Salazar quickly wormed his way through the wire. He caught up with the hobbling Cantemir, who paused to look back. Three makutos had come out of the forest and stood blinking in the sunshine, raising their trunks and loudly sniffing to locate their annoyers.

"Hell, that fence won't stop 'em," said Cantemir in a despairing voice, "unless it's electrified. And if it was, we'd know it."

"Keep moving, idiot!" said Salazar.

"Hey, look! There comes Chief Yaamo's automobile!" cried Cantemir, pointing. "He's got the only steam car on the island."

The vehicle resembled a small flatbed truck with a tall, slender stack rising from the steam boiler in front. There were no seats, merely a rail running around the rectangular deck. On the deck, holding the rail in front, stood the driver and Chief Yaamo. Two bodyguards with rifles held the side rails. Kooks were indifferent to what Terrans considered necessary comfort.

The vehicle was passing in front of the makutos before any of those aboard it noticed. Then a guard pointed and cawed. The car speeded up, flashed past the makutos, and continued on toward Sungecho, leaving a plume of gray and white smoke from its stack and a cloud of yellow dust from its wheels.

The three makutos lumbered out of the forest and set off in pursuit. Seven others—two adults and five young of various sizes—erupted from the woods and joined the chase. Steam car and makutos vanished around a bend in the road.

The Patelians stood on the field or sat in the dirt, breathing heavily. Tchitchagov, who had lost his hat in the flight, shaded his eyes against the sun and peered along the road to the west.

"Here comes our wagon," he said, glancing at his poignet. "Right on time. Damn it, George, if you did not have that hurt ankle, I would leave you to walk back to Sungecho."

"Then my ankle's a blessing in disguise," said Cantemir with a naughty-boy grin.

"You may find it funny, almost getting us killed," said Tchitchagov. "Next time ..." He waved to the wagon driver and shouted: "Zaiye! Koko!"

As the watchers straggled back to the road, the driver asked in Sungao: "What do you out in yon field?"

Tchitchagov told briefly of their adventure. Zaiye said: "I always knew that Terrans were crazy. I saw his Highness go past. But I am not fain to proceed toward Sungecho, honorable Tchitchagov. We might meet those monsters coming back."

"We cannot remain here," said the director. "I do not think they will long stay out in the midday sun. So go ahead; I will scout at bends in the road so that we shall not encounter makutos unawares."

"And if we do encounter them, what then?"

"Then we shall turn the wagon around and speed away."

"I hope the road prove wide enough," said the driver. Nevertheless, he flicked his animals, which set off pulling the now-laden wagon.

On the tailboard, Cantemir craned his neck to speak to Salazar: "Now, Kirk, maybe you'll understand why we've got to get rid of those things to develop the area for human settlement. They're not only a danger to any people who come near them; they're migratory. They need a huge area to roam over."

"I know," said Salazar. "We were lucky to catch that herd where it could easily be reached from Sungecho."

"Ah, but that herd will clean out everything green in that territory, then move on to another and eat it bare while the first area recovers. So you can't preserve them in a small park or refuge, because they'd soon eat it barren. So there's nothing to do but kill them. There won't be room on Sunga for us and them both. If we're going to kill them anyway, why not get some fun and profit out of it?"

"Your idea is to make Sunga into just one more Terran suburb."

Cantemir grinned. "Sure; why not? It's at least as natural a process as the makutos' migrations. At least I know what species I belong to." He turned away and engaged Fetutsi, beside him, in low-voiced conversation in Sungao.

Salazar thought: That Lothario will try to make time with anything female, regardless of race, age, or even species. He whispered to the Ritters:

"What'll this do to the zuta watching?"

"Can't tell," murmured Hilbert Ritter. "Depends on whom Yaamo blames for his scare—assuming he made it back to Sungecho."

As in late afternoon the wagon rumbled into Sungecho, Fetutsi dropped off the tail. She said: "I go report. Good-bye, honoraber George."

Off she went at a run, with her rifle slung across her back. Cantemir squirmed around to say: "Hey, Igor!"

"Yes?"

"Why didn't anybody take a shot at the makutos when they started for us? Neither Miss Fetutsi nor the chief's guards fired a shot. What was it, buck fever?"

"Shooting them with rifles would merely annoy them," said Tchitchagov. "They're too big for anything but a real cannon. And how is it that Fetutsi said goodbye to you and ignored the rest of us?"

Cantemir grinned. "Guess I just can't help bein' nice to the ladies. I was explaining how our little mix-up occurred. "

The wagon creaked to a stop in front of Levontin's Paradise Palace. Guided by Tchitchagov, Cantemir limped away toward Doctor Deyssel's to have his ankle strapped, followed by a gaggle of Patelians who had sustained minor injuries in the flight or thought they should have their hearts medically checked after their extreme exertions. As the passengers dispersed, Salazar heard a mutter from the sultry-looking Miss Dikranian beside him. Glaring at Cantemir's receding back, she said:

"Somebody ought to shoot that man!"

"Somebody probably will, sooner or later," said Salazar.

"Wouldn't do any good," said Hilbert Ritter. "He has a foreman or second in command, Dhan Gopal Mahasingh, every bit as hard-nosed as he. The Adriana Company has lots of tentacles. Besides, if you said that where people could hear you and then George was found shot, whom do you think they'd suspect?"

Shakeh Dikranian gave a sound between a sniff and a snort. "You're one of those cold north European types, always calculating results a year in advance. Like a Kook!"

"Thanks for the compliment," said Ritter. "I try to use what brain I have."

As Salazar neared the entrance, a Kook stepped forward. "Prease, which of you is honoraber Sarasara?"

"I think you mean me," said Kirk Salazar in Sungao. "Are you that cousin of the student Hakka?"

"Aye. I am clept Choku. My cousin wrote me, telling me I could perhaps get a post as assistant to you. Spake he the truth?"

"Aye, if we can come to terms."

Half an hour later Salazar was in his room explaining to Choku the purpose of each piece of equipment in his duffel bag. He held up an empty plastic case with a closure having a combination-number lock.

"This will be used for keeping all records, notes, exposed film, and the like. When the job is finished, it will be our most important—"

A knock interrupted. When he opened the door, Ilya Levontin, the stout innkeeper, said: "Mr. Salazar! High Chief Yaamo is calling a conference with the leading Terrans of your group in half an hour. He commands you to attend."

"Huh? Where?"

"In the conference room—that room on the left at the end of the corridor."

"Why me? I'm not a leader of anything."

Levontin shrugged. "He has not told me. He also demands the presence of Mr. Cantemir, the Doctors Ritter, the Reverend Dumfries, and Mr. Tchitchagov."

"All right, I shall be down as soon as I have cleaned up." Knowing the Kooks' formality, Salazar thought it inexpedient to go directly to the conference in dirty khakis. To Choku he said: "I suspect that this has to do with our being chased by makutos today."

"Indeed, sir? Methinks that a tale well worth hearing."

"Tell you later," said Salazar, washing his face.

Leaving Choku, Salazar sought the conference room, which doubled as a game room. The card tables and roulette wheel had been put away, and six of Levontin's better-upholstered chairs were set in a row.

Tchitchagov and the Ritters were already seated; Dumfries and Cantemir came in after Salazar. Across the room, standing, were Chief Yaamo, one Terran, and four Kooks. Salazar recognized one Kook as their erstwhile guide, the female Fetutsi. Two of the others he assumed, from the rifles slung across their backs, to be the chief's bodyguards.

When Salazar sat down beside Hilbert Ritter, the latter leaned over and whispered: "Yaamo's in a bad mood. That's why he brought interpreters instead of struggling with English."

Chief Yaamo spoke to his human interpreter. Although Salazar was fairly familiar with Sungao, a dialect of Feënzuo, the chief spoke so fast and with such a pronounced local accent that Salazar caught only an occasional word. Then the interpreter said:

"His Highness commands that this meeting come to order."

The six Terrans sat in silence. Yaamo spoke some more, in bursts of a sentence or two each, to give the interpreter time to translate. The interpreter said:

"This morning, his Highness was chased for three or four itikron by a herd of makutos ... Thanks to his ancestral spirits, his car stood the test, and the makutos at last gave up the pursuit ...

"His Highness has ordered investigation of this untoward event ... His faithful retainer, the onnifa Fetutsi, informed him that the zuta watchers became unruly at the sight of makutos ... Several, against orders, insisted on going closer than the permitted distance, thus arousing the creatures' hostility ...

"His Highness says this is an example of the erratic, irresponsible conduct that, he believes, characterizes Terrans. Their mere presence on Sunga poses a threat to public order ... Since his Highness is not a physician skilled in treating the human brain, he is inclined to solve the problem by removing the cause, namely, the members of the Patel Society, who from Fetutsi's account appear the most irresponsible of your lawless species."

"His Highness is misinformed," said Tchitchagov. "I do not know what Fetutsi has told you, but our difficulties were caused by one Terran only, who is not a society member. I mean Mr. George Cantemir. You may ask the Doctors Ritter or Mr. Salazar, who saw the whole thing."

Tchitchagov plunged into an account of the arousal of the makutos, pausing for Yaamo's Sungarin interpreter to render his speech into Sungao. When he had finished, there was fast, low-voiced talk between the chief and the onnifa. Then Yaamo, fingering his disk of office, spoke through the interpreter again:

"Then let the Doctors Ritter and Mr. Salazar give their stories."

The Ritters told their tale, and Salazar told his, essentially the same as Tchitchagov's. Yaamo's human interpreter announced:

"His Highness says that unlike you aliens, real human beings lack your ability to utter lies with straight faces. He suspects that you four Terrans got together before this meeting and cooked this story up."

"Let him ask other Terrans who were there," said Salazar.

Yaamo spoke to his Terran interpreter, who went out and soon returned with six zuta watchers whom he had rounded up. In turn, they told their stories, differing only in trivial details from Tchitchagov's. When all tales had been told, the interpreter said:

"His Highness says he has heard that Terrans can transfer thoughts from brain to brain by mental power alone. I think he means what is called telepathy. If you had it, he says, your leader, Mr. Tchitchagov, could easily give you all the stories to tell."

Tchitchagov replied: "Terrans have speculated for centuries about telepathy but have not found conclusive evidence that it exists."

"His Highness says, ah, but that is just what you would claim, is it not? He knows you have those devices for communicating by electricity, which most human authorities forbid as dangerous to their ancestral spirits. It seems plain to his Highness either that you are carrying electrical devices concealed or that you do in fact have the rumored telepathic powers."

Tchitchagov said: "Mr. Cantemir has said nothing yet. If I may question him, perhaps we can clear up this matter."

Receiving permission, Tchitchagov asked for Cantemir's version of the event. It proved the same as Fetutsi's, fleshed out with more colorful details: "... and every time I got ready to shoot with my little old camera, one of the others would crowd up in front of me, gettin' in the field of my picture. Well, I didn't come out for shots of the backs of these other folks' heads. So at last I stepped a couple of paces out in front of the rest, took my shot, and came right back."

Attempts by Tchitchagov to cross-question Cantemir failed to dent his story. "Kroklyatiye!" exclaimed Tchitchagov. "How can one prove that he is not telepathic?"

"What about crocodiles?" asked the interpreter.

"Nothing; just a Russian swear word."

"His Highness," said the interpreter, "says that is your problem, not his ... The mere possibility of such powers is enough reason to take the action he deems important to safeguard his people. In this case, that means the removal of the disorderly aliens."

"Excuse me," said Salazar. "I think I know how to prove that Mr. Cantemir went closer to the makutos than he admits."

"His Highness would be glad to know."

"Mr. Cantemir took photographs. We know the approximate size of the largest makutos. If his Highness will take that camera into custody and have the film developed and printed, we can estimate how far away the makutos were from the size of their images."

"That don't prove a thing!" said Cantemir loudly. "With a zoom lens I can make the critters look as close or as far as I like."

"But you weren't using a camera with a zoom lens today. It's a pocket model, the Hayashi Z-706, which has a simple setting for three distances: face, group, and distant. I know because I owned one a few years ago."

"I'll fetch my camera and show you—" began Cantemir, rising.

"Stop him before he gets his hands on his cameras and switches things!" said Salazar.

When this had been translated, the interpreter said: "His Highness says come back and sit down! He will send someone else to fetch your camera."

Cantemir was already out the door, but one of the chief's bodyguards bounded after him and soon returned, gripping Cantemir's arm. Cantemir kept muttering in Sungao: "Take your hands off me!" But he came nevertheless.

"Is there a camera shop in Sungecho?" asked Salazar. The interpreter, walking towards the door, turned to say: "Yes, McGloin's. He sells knickknacks and also does photographic work." The interpreter closed the door behind him; Cantemir, fuming, resumed his seat.

Half an hour later the camera had been brought, examined, and found to be as Salazar had said. The chief ordered it taken to McGloin's shop for processing.

"Until that is done," said the interpreter, "His Highness will suspend judgment. Until this matter is settled, Mr. Cantemir must suspend his timber-cutting operation."

"Now wait just a minute!" rumbled Dumfries, who had not yet spoken. "The Adriana Company cannot afford to pay our lumberjacks to sit around waiting for His Highness to make up his mind."

"His Highness," replied the interpreter, "says that, as in the case of proving telepathy, that is your company's problem, not his. He asks: Were you on this animal-watching expedition?"

"No, I was not. My business is with human souls, not the lower beasts. If his Highness expects the usufruct of our operations—"

"Excuse me, expects the what?"

"The gain, the profit."

"His Highness says he will not be dictated to by an alien monster; so his order stands."

"But—"

"His Highness says the subject is closed."

Tchitchagov said: "Meanwhile, may the Patel Society proceed with our travel plans? We have a car reserved on the Unriu Express for the day after tomorrow, to Amoen."

Chief Yaamo took his time. At last the interpreter said: "His Highness does not see how you can do much harm up on the mountain ... He wishes you to understand that you do so at your own risk ... That is wild country. If you perish as a result of your foolishness or other forms of Terranism, that is no concern of his."

"We thank the honorable chief," said Tchitchagov.

Going back to the private rooms with the Ritters, Salazar said: "Sounds to me as if Dumfries and Cantemir want to flood the area with Terran settlers and kick out the Kooks, the way our ancestors did with the Native Americans."

"Sure," said Hilbert Ritter. "There's a party in the Settlements, small but growing, that wants to do that to the whole planet. But on Kukulcan, Terrans don't have the advantage that Europeans did in the Americas."

"What's that? Iron metallurgy?"

"That, too, but I had in mind that they brought in smallpox, measles, and other Old World diseases that the Native Americans had no resistance to; so they died off by millions. Nobody has yet found a disease that a Kook can catch from a Terran."

"Will this incident derail Dumfries's project? I could see from his neck spines that Dumfries and Cantemir made Yaamo pretty angry."

"For a while, maybe. But Dumfries makes huge amounts from his Holy Gnostic Church. He knows how to use it to dissolve away opposition, as acid eats metal. The worst is, he's probably sincere. Thinks he's doing the will of God—or those Demiurges he talks about. So we'd better make the most of our time."

"Wouldn't the IC step in? They talk a fine line against planetary imperialism."

"If the reverend can get enough of his people on Kukulcan—and I hear he hopes to bring in thousands—he can shrug off the Interplanetary Council on the ground that it's an internal planetary matter."