The Venom Trees of Sunga

VIII – The Prophet Khushvant Sen

Despite his drowsiness, fear that Yaamo's police would appear to clamp scaly hands upon him kept Salazar alert. After a time, sounds implied that two more Terrans had entered the car. Salazar opened his eyes to slits to see two ordinary-looking Terrans take seats. One flipped a hand toward Salazar, saying:

"Idhe!"

The other replied: "Einai Anatolikos. "

Salazar thought the language was Greek, of which he did not know enough to speak it. In any case, nothing about these men suggested that their doings concerned him.

At last the Unriu Express stirred to life with a clank of couplings and a rattle of chains. Salazar thought he had dozed for a few minutes, but the jerk of the train awoke him from a frightful dream. Cantemir and Mahasingh had tied him to the tracks and were standing over him, laughing, as the train bore down upon him. Just as the engine reached him, he awoke.

Making sure that the Greek speakers were far enough not to overhear, he began softly dictating into his recorder the sermon he planned to give on Mount Sungara. He worked at this task for hours, now and then erasing a paragraph to reword it. When his eyelids drooped, he dozed, awoke, and worked some more on the sermon. He would have written it out in pencil, but the lurching of the train would have made any handwriting illegible even to the writer.

At Torimas, the Greek speakers got off. Salazar was leaning out to buy another bladder of bumbleberry when he saw another Terran climb aboard. This was the towering, long-bearded Mahasingh, still with a lavender scarf wound around his head. Now Salazar would learn just how effective was his disguise. He sat up, holding his bladder of wine and giving Mahasingh a casual glance.

Making eye contact, Mahasingh halted. He placed his palms together with the fingers pointing up in a prayerful attitude. He nodded over his hands, saying:

"Namasté!"

"Good day, sir," said Salazar in an absentminded way.

Mahasingh's white teeth flashed through the mattress of beard. "Thank you, sir, and a good day to you. If I may take the liberty, I am Dhan Gopal Mahasingh."

"I'm Khushvant Sen," said Salazar. "I have heard of you. What brings you down here from Amoen?"

"I have been ordering supplies for the lumber camp I supervise, since the original supervisor met with an accident. The purchases are piled on the goods van in front."

Salazar said: "Sit down, pray. Who runs the camp in your absence?"

"My second, Hafiz Abdallah. I hope he conducts his office with efficiency and justice."

"Would you like a drop of this wine?"

"Thank you, sir, but I seek merit by abstaining. Now I must devote extra effort to my search to atone for the unfortunate accident of a few days past."

"Yes? Tell me," said Salazar.

"A mob of fanatics, inspired by their priestess, attacked my lumbering crew. To drive them off, I was compelled to shoot an attacker." He sighed gustily. "The path of virtue is hard. Would you believe it, my pursuit of merit drove my wife to leave me despite the fact that our union, celebrated with orthodox Shaivite rites, was supposed to be indissoluble?"

"Too much holiness?"

"Having given up intoxicants, the next logical step was to relinquish the fleshly pleasures of sex. After a few months of this she presented an ultimatum. All my arguments, such as the prospect of promotion in our next incarnations, did no good, and away she went. I hear she has found another husband, which is not difficult on this world with its surplus of men. I only hope that my grievous loss will be made up in my next life."

"You have my sympathy," said Salazar.

"And which facet of the jewel of divine truth do you seek to polish, sir?"

Salazar had been bracing himself for such a question. "I have evolved my own doctrine, to which I have not yet given a name. I have been influenced by Akbar's Din llahi.

Mahasingh frowned. "These eclectic cults never amount to much. I do not believe Emperor Akbar's syncresis outlasted its promulgator."

"Ah!" said Salazar. "Akbar launched it on Terra, where it had to compete with a host of firmly established ancient traditions. We are on Kukulcan, where a new approach is needed. Whether Trimurti of Allah or Guan Yin concern themselves with events on this world is beyond our limited mortal power to ascertain. In any case, I'm sure Metasu would not tolerate interference—"

"You are sure who would not tolerate?"

"Metasu, the planetary spirit, or what the Reverend Dumfries would call the local Demiurge. Neither she nor the local spirit of the island of Sunga, Shiiko, would stand for meddling by spirits from other worlds light-years away."

Mahasingh mused: "I have heard the Kooks speak of these spirits, but I have not concerned myself with the locals' barbarian theologies. On the mainland they have no real gods, merely ancestral spirits. Perhaps I ought to give the local beliefs some serious thought. I have always held that the divine truth encompasses all, even though a mortal individual can perceive but a fraction of it—a single facet of a many-faceted jewel. But the locals' facets may be quite as real as my own Shaivite creed."

Salazar unwrapped his sandwich. While he ate, Mahasingh sat with head bowed and eyes shut, apparently in deep thought. Then Mahasingh raised his head, opened large, brown eyes, and asked: "Mr. Sen, pray tell me, are you from Terra or were you, like me, born on Kukulcan?"

"The latter," mumbled Salazar past a mouthful of sandwich.

"A pity. I had hoped that you could give me a firsthand report on our mother planet."

"Oh?"

"Yes. All my life I have heard of the wonders of that world, its scientific and technological marvels, compared to which we Terrans here lead lives like those of centuries past. It were well worth seeing, although I know better than to take such gadgets and gimmicks very seriously."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Despite the Europeans' boasts of technological leadership, our ancestors in the land of Bharata mastered those material arts thousands of years ago—firearms, flying machines, atomic power, organ transplants, and so on. But they gave them all up in their quest for spiritual perfection."

"Indeed? I'm sure an ancient Hindu skimmer or zap-per would be well worth seeing. By the way, did the former supervisor survive his accident?"

"I don't know," said Mahasingh. "He left for Sungecho a few days ago and may have taken ship for the mainland. All I can say is that he brought it on himself by his flagrant scorn for the virtue of chastity." Mahasingh looked down his long, hooked nose at Salazar and spoke with the pride of a warrior who had routed an army single-handedly. "I have maintained my chastity since my wife left me. It was an arduous struggle, but I won!"

"The path of virtue is thorny," said Salazar, trying to match Mahasingh's sanctimony.

"It certainly is. Would you believe it, sir, that woman who rules the Kashanite sect, Alexis Ritter, came to me about some rash offer that Cantemir had made or that she said he made. It was a bribe to keep her cultists from interfering with our work. Naturally I refused, whereupon she offered to throw in my use of her body for carnal purposes! I refused that, too, albeit it was all I could do to keep my baser passions under control. My resistance to her charms so enraged her that she sent her cultists on an idiotic raid against the company's personnel and equipment."

"Very interesting," said Salazar. "Now I must beg you to excuse me; I have work to do."

Salazar was glad to get back to his sermon. On the one hand, he regretted not knowing enough history and other disciplines outside his chosen field to puncture some of Mahasingh's illusions. Life, even extended by modern medicine, was never long enough to learn everything one had to know to cope with conceivable contingencies.

On the other hand, perhaps it was just as well. Mahasingh was not one to be wantonly antagonized, and Salazar's father had lectured him on the common young man's folly of picking arguments for the sake of contention.

On time for once, the Unriu Express pulled into Amoen at dusk. Salazar hunted down Takao's juten stable and rented an animal. Behind the saddle he lashed his bundle of gear.

Salazar hiked up his robe, climbed into the saddle, and commanded, "Uai!" The animal lurched to its feet. When Salazar added "Tettai!" the juten obediently grasped its rider's ankles with its clawed forefeet as a substitute for Terran stirrups.

Holding the leading rope in one hand, Salazar guided the juten out of the yard by voice commands, along the main street, and up the trail to the top of Mount Sungara.

As the somber green of the forest closed over his head, Salazar speeded up the juten to a lively trot. He thought he was doing famously until the animal took a bend in the trail. A second too late, Salazar realized that the juten had let go of his ankles. Off he went into a bush, losing his turban and tearing his robe.

As if it had not noticed the loss of its rider, the juten trotted on up the trail until Salazar, scrambling out of the bush, yelled: "Tomai!"

The beast halted, and the command "Shtai!" persuaded it to squat. Battered, Salazar recovered his emerald turban, brushed twigs and leaves from his robe, limped to his beast, and mounted again.

They plodded on up the trail, though at a less ambitious pace. Salazar found that this juten, unless frequently reminded, now and then forgot to grip its rider's ankles, so that Salazar had to grab for the saddle.

"Who you?" said Choku in his rasping version of Terran speech. "Kto vi'?Ni shéi ma?" He stood before the tent with a lantern in one hand and Salazar's rifle in the other.

"Just your honorable boss," grunted Salazar. "Shtai!" The juten squatted, and Salazar climbed painfully off.

"My honorable boss has no such bristles on his face," said Choku in Sungao. "How can you prove that you are he?"

"When I told you that I was going to Sungecho, you wanted to come along and were disappointed when I said you would have to remain here on guard. Then you said you would pack me for two overnight stops, including my pistol. Now, if you will help me to settle in and get this damned beard off, you will see plainly enough who I am."

When Choku saw Salazar's naked face, stained deep brown on the nose and forehead but pale where the beard had covered it, the ripple of his neck bristles betokened mirth. Salazar grumbled:

"The damned thing itches. Some day I shall grow a real one, like my old man's; it would be less trouble." He attacked the paint with a towel.

"Your robe has been torn, sir," said Choku, holding up the orange-yellow garment. "Let me mend the rip."

"Thank you, but I will do that myself," said Salazar. He had seen examples of Kookish attempts at needlework. Not wearing clothes, the Kooks were hardly out of the Stone Age regarding textiles. They had looms that turned out a coarse, heavy canvaslike fabric for tents, but such skills as sewing, knitting, and embroidery were beyond them. "What have the lumbermen been up to?"

"Yesterday Mr. Mahasingh left the camp and took the train."

"I know; he came back from Torimas with me."

"As soon as he was gone, the Supreme Choraga sent over a number of young females to make sexual advances to the lumberjacks. I have heard how, as a result of you Terrans' habit of covering yourselves with textiles, the sight of an uncovered female arouses the male to a frenzy of lust, like a male porondu in rut.

"The ensuing spectacle confirmed this rumor. The lumbering area was full of nude females, running, screaming, and laughing, pursued by lumberjacks shouting and fumbling with the fastenings of their nether garments. When a lumberjack caught a female, they copulated forthwith on the nearest patch of open ground. It made our yearly Intromission Day ceremonies seem a model of order." The cervical spines rippled mirthfully.

Salazar knew about Intromission Day. Young betrothed couples of Kooks assembled. At a signal the females fled; at another signal the males pursued them. Each female allowed her chosen male to catch her, whereupon they consummated their union on the spot. He asked:

"Did they get any lumbering done?"

"Nay, sir. After all the lumberjacks had taken their turns at the females, someone broke out the camp's supply of liquors, and the crew ended up dead drunk. Many copulated a second time, whilst others cheered them on, shouting and whooping.

"By midafternoon the lumberjacks were lying about in a drunken stupor, along with some of the females. Little by little the latter regained their senses and stole away toward the Kashanite village."

"Did not Mahasingh leave a deputy or substitute in command?"

"I believe he did, sir. I asked one of my fellow human beings, the cook's assistant, Hanatski, about it. He told me that a lumberjack named—ah—something like 'Bad-ara' had been appointed to that post. But Mr. Badara proved as drunken and lustful as the rest. You Terrans—"

Salazar interpreted "Badara" as Choku's attempt to say "Abdallah," whom Mahasingh had mentioned. He said:

"It takes a strong man to be a lumberjack, and these fellows had long been without the normal—ah—outlets."

"Hanatski told me that some such camps have one or more females whose task it is to provide these outlets, as in some nations the onnifas do amongst us. Mr. Cantemir proposed to do likewise, but Mr. Mahasingh vehemently objected on moral grounds."

Salazar yawned. "It will be interesting to see what Mahasingh does with his wild gang. He seems a man of strict moral standards. Now if you can whip me up something to eat, I must get to bed to recover from a taxing journey."

Next morning, Salazar stole up to where he could see the lumber camp from cover. Mahasingh would obviously not get much work from his crew that day. The few lumberjacks in sight sat around with their heads in their hands.

Salazar waited with the patience that wildlife watching had taught him. By midmorning, a few lumberjacks had begun to stir. At last Mahasingh himself appeared at the door of his personal cabin. There were words between him and the workers, not loud enough for Salazar to hear.

Then he heard a feminine cry of "Yoo hoo!" Along the trail from Kashania came a file of young women, nude but for footgear. The somnolent lumberjacks began to rouse themselves and to call back endearments. Salazar felt his own blood stir.

"Ho!" roared Mahasingh. "What are you doing here?"

"Just come to give your boys some fun," said the woman in the lead. "Poor things haven't had any in sixtnights."

"Yeah!" chorused the lumberjacks. "It's about time."

"Abdallah!" yelled Mahasingh. "Where in Nâraka are you?" A squat, black-bearded man with a wrestler's build detached himself from the crowd and answered. The two talked back and forth, but Salazar could not make out the words.

The discussion became heated. At length Abdallah swung a massive fist. Before it landed, Mahasingh shot out ferocious straight punches, one, two, three, to Abdallah's face and body. Abdallah fell backward, rolled over, and slowly climbed to his feet.

"Does anyone else dispute my orders?" roared Mahasingh. "Shapir! You're my subforeman in place of this scum." He indicated Abdallah. "Now back to work, all of you!"

His words were not heeded as the women moved among the lumberjacks, exchanging endearments and suggestive gestures. Some lumberjacks began to unbuckle and unzip.

"Get out, you women!" bellowed Mahasingh. When none heeded his roars, he dashed to a nanshin trunk whence the branches had been trimmed. He picked up a branch by the thick end, where there were no needles. Then he rushed at the visiting women, waving it.

"This will burn holes in your pretty hides!" he shouted.

Shrieking, the women ran away at last, disappearing down the trail. Some lumberjacks looked resentful at having their fun cut short, while others found the sight a cause for laughter.

"Now," said Mahasingh, "get to work!"

The lumberjacks obeyed in a listless, lethargic way. Not much lumbering would be done that day. Salazar backed out of his blind and plodded back to his own camp.

"Choku," said Salazar, "is there a print shop in Amoen?"

"I believe there is, sir. There is a little newspaper published once a sixtnight, printed in Sungao with summaries in English, Russian, and Chinese. So there must be a press to print it. You Terrans always think yourselves so far ahead of us human beings, but we invented printing long before your Mr. Caxton or Mr. Gutembru. Why, sir?"

Salazar handed Choku a sheet of paper. "If you set out now to run to Amoen, when, think you, could you be back?"

"Depending on how long the printing takes, perhaps by tomorrow night."

Choku departed at his tireless trot. Left alone, Salazar fed and exercised his juten. He spent the rest of his time watching kusis and making notes. He was nearing the point where the quirks of kusi behavior proved new to him only at longer and longer intervals. He was nearing the end of his study and would soon have to prepare to return to the mainland.

Still, he was committed to derailing the Adriana Company's project to destroy the nanshin forest. Alexis Ritter had tried to stop it, first by sending a platoon of club-armed naturists to attack the lumberjacks, next by sending some of the shapelier young women to seduce them. Her efforts so far had succeeded only in delaying the Adriana Company's schedule by two days. So Salazar would have to see what he could do. He would begin by choosing a site for manifesting himself as Khushvant Sen.

"Here you are, sir," said Choku, looming out of the darkness. He handed Salazar a stack of sheets of paper. Salazar held one up to the light of the camp fire and read:

SAVE OUR WORLD! HEAR THE PROPHET OF THE

GREAT METASU! LEARN THE WISHES OF THE

PLANETARY SPIRIT TOWARD US MORTALS!

The Reverend Sri Khushvant Sen will lecture on the evening of the thirteenth at the meeting place half a kilometer west of the Adriana Company's lumber camp and below the border of the nonvenomous vegetation. He will discourse on the disaster threatening our planet and the measures that must be taken to avert this catastrophe. Time, 2000 Terran standard. Come all! No charge!

"Now," said Salazar, "please tack these fliers up on trees around the lumber camp and the Kashanite village without letting yourself be seen. You will find a box of tacks in my tool chest."

"Aye, aye, sir," said Choku.

The next two days Salazar and Choku spent preparing their meeting place in the lower forest, felling a few small trees and clearing a space near a large fallen tree trunk. By the evening of the thirteenth day they had it ready.

People began straggling in before the appointed hour. There were lumberjacks from the Adriana camp and Kashanites from Alexis's village, the latter now more conventionally clad. Some of the audience stood in the rear, while others sat on the ground or on tree trunks.

When the space was full, Salazar, in his Khushvant Sen makeup, mounted the big tree trunk and called out in the deep, oratorical voice he had used in his swami act on the Ijumo:

"Peace to all sentient beings! Peace! Peace! Peace!

"My children, the ruling spirit of the planet Kukulcan, Metasu, has sent me amongst you with the most important message that you shall ever receive. Hear and be warned!

"For many years Metasu has observed the deeds of the beings that inhabit her surface. With interest she has seen one species of her planet develop intelligence and go on to acquire speech and writing and to learn to manipulate the material world for its own benefit—in other words, to attain civilization. More recently she has witnessed the coming of another sapient species across the vast, nighted gulfs of interstellar space from a distant world."

He went on and on, mixing history, philosophy, and sheer gibberish: "And now, my dear children, we must resume the triad in unity. We must rectify the noncohesion. We must activate the benisons of our world."

He was careful not to put in too many hard facts, since in studying the art of swaying a Terran assembly he had learned that too much fact killed the audience's emotional reaction. The listeners would become bored and withdraw their attention.

"This means that we must bring the exploitation of the natural world under spiritual control. Some forms of exploitation Metasu views with approval, some with indifference, and some with alarm, such as the project to destroy the nanshin forest. She is horrified by the aliens' plan to rape Mount Sungara of its protective forest cover, warning of irreversible damage to the environment if this continues. If all else fails, she will if need be blow up Mount Sungara, destroying all life on Sunga.

"She has given me a dire warning to pass on. To her we are as insectoids are to us, and she can stamp us out as easily as we can creeping things. Have you ever watched as a weathered log is placed in a roaring fire and the insectoids scramble out of their burrow in the wood, seeking in vain to escape? And watched them writhe and kick as they died? Such is our situation."

Groans arose from the audience.

"And so I, unworthy as I am, come amongst you. To carry the word of Metasu's will, I shall require followers. Among these I shall designate those who can most effectively spread Metasu's word."

Salazar finally ran out of his mixture of conservation-ism and rhetorical flapdoodle. He ended with "Peace! Peace! Peace!" as he slowly lowered his outstretched arms.

Applause spattered. The burly Hafiz Abdallah approached, saying: "Sri Sen, don't you need someone to collect for you?"

"True, my child. For myself, I can live on wild fruits and drink the dew; but for an organization, more material means are needed. Will you kindly hold this bag open?"

The audience crowded around Abdallah, dropping into the bag United Settlements paper money and polygonal Kukulcanian coins. They called up to Salazar:

"What can we do? What do you want us to do, sir?"

Although he had aimed for this result, Salazar was amazed to find that a carefully rehearsed theatrical performance, delivered in a certain tone of voice with certain gestures, had so devastating an effect on his fellow Terrans. He had slipped in a strong message for saving the nanshins; but even if his speech had consisted entirely of orotund balderdash, it would have had an equal effect and been just as effective in collecting money. In the firelight he caught the sparkle of tears on some of the cheeks of the audience; even the tough-looking Abdallah shed a tear or two.

No wonder, he thought, that throughout human history people had been so easily seduced by grandiloquent rodomontade to follow one pied piper after another, often to their destruction! People whose private personalities were as unlikable as Alexis Ritter's had swayed multitudes, whipping their emotions to a frenzy and sending them off to conquer the world, or save the souls of the heathen, or exterminate some sect, tribe, or other group whom the leader considered evil.

Salazar was appalled to realize that he, too, had this power over his conspecifics. It was an insidious, treacherous, irrational power. He belonged to a species with a built-in and often fatal weakness, to believe anything said to it in a certain emphatic way, in a certain voice, and pushing certain emotional buttons. It worked as surely and as arbitrarily as the magical spells of children's fairy tales.

If he wished, Salazar could drop science, start a cult, make a million, and become a mover and shaker of Kukulcanian civilization, at least of the Terran part of it. He doubted that Kooks, with their robotic, coldly logical minds, would be so easily taken in. But he felt no temptation to follow such a course. Not only did he despise those who took advantage of this human weakness, but the kinds of activities it would entail—endless speeches, committee meetings, and secret intrigues—bored the spots off him.

"Mr. Abdallah!" he said. "Will you kindly take charge of this money? Metasu tells me to appoint you leader of her first group of Terran devotees. Gather them around you and set up an elementary organization, with officers and committees.

"Now I must withdraw to replenish my spiritual forces and to seek guidance from great Metasu for my next step. Good night, all!"

He hopped down from his log and walked to where his juten squatted munching leaves. Hiking up his robe, he commanded the animal to rise and then to head for his camp.

Choku had again been left in camp and was now presumably standing guard. Salazar had not worn his pistol because it would have made his costume bulge betrayingly, and with it under the robe he could probably not have gotten it out fast enough for an emergency.

Beneath the stars and two of Kukulkan's miniature moons, Salazar rode along the nearly treeless strip between the nanshin forest of the upper slope and the lower forest of mixed timber. He had covered half the distance to his camp when the rapid thud-thud-thud of a running juten caused him to pull up. As the pursuer drew closer, Salazar saw that the rider wore a hooded topcoat with the hood thrown back. Then he recognized Mahasingh by his head scarf and patriarchal beard.

"Sen!" roared Mahasingh. "Stop! I must talk to you!"

"Well?"

"What in Nâraka are you doing to my work? Half my lumberjacks swear they will cut no more nanshins because they have joined some new conservationist cult!"

Salazar assumed his holy prophet voice. "I merely convey to my children the truths vouchsafed me by the planetary spirit, great Metasu."

"Believe what you like," growled Mahasingh, "but I cannot let you interfere with my duties. Will you go away for good and call off this nonsense?"

"I fear that Metasu, whose voice I am on this material plane, will not permit me to withdraw from my mission of enlightenment."

"Shiv curse you!" bellowed Mahasingh. With one hand he drew his machete or brush knife from its sheath; with the other he grabbed the end of Salazar's prophetic beard, yelling in a voice thick with passion: "We shall see how much message you can utter from a mouth without lungs attached!"

Salazar saw Mahasingh's long arm fly up, swinging the knife for a decapitating blow. By reflex, Salazar jerked violently away. The beard came off with a rending sound, leaving Salazar feeling as if his lower face had been skinned.

"Ow!" he cried, putting a hand to his face. The adhesive with which he had pasted on the beard had been entirely too effective.

Mahasingh sat in his saddle, looking bewilderedly at the beard in his hand and then at the erstwhile Sri Khushvant Sen.

"Salazar!" he gasped. "By Shiv, I'll kill you for this!"

He swung the machete again. But with a yell of "Katai! Yukki!" Salazar put his animal into a rapid run. The blade swished through empty air.

Mahasingh's mount pounded after Salazar. Light flashed, and Salazar heard the thunderous bang of Mahasingh's big pistol. Again and again the gun roared. Salazar thought he heard the whistle of a couple of near misses, but the dim light and the jouncing of the jutens made marksmanship impossible. At least, he thought, the shots after the first seemed to be coming from farther away, as if he were gaining on Mahasingh. He could understand this, because their jutens were of about the same size, but Mahasingh must have weighed over half again as much as he, Salazar, did.

The pistol banged once more. This time, through his saddle, Salazar felt the impact of the bullet on his juten. The animal gave a piteous squall and collapsed on the stony ground. Salazar was thrown over its head to land on all fours on the soil before it.

"Ha!" roared Mahasingh, pounding toward him. "Now we shall see!" He pointed the pistol, but it only clicked.

Scrambling up, Salazar glanced around. To his left the downward slope offered little cover for another fifty to a hundred meters, where the outskirts of the lower forest, black in the starlight, began. To his right loomed the dark mass of the nanshins.

Salazar pulled out his whistle. Blowing lustily, he ran into the venom trees. He pushed his way through, stumbling in the darkness, going to his knees, and scrambling up again, all the while blowing to burst his lungs. He heard the robe tear as it snagged. Then away went the turban.

Fainter and fainter came the yells of Mahasingh, vainly trying to get his juten into the nanshins. Smart animal, thought Salazar.

Then Mahasingh's bellows ceased, and Salazar heard the thrashing and crackle of a man forcing his way into the forest. Salazar plunged on, confident that the nanshins would treat Mahasingh as they had Cantemir.

The noise kept on and on, growing louder. Mahasingh, Salazar thought, was a stalwart man, but surely he did not have a hide proof against nanshin venom! There was nothing to do but struggle on.

Salazar soon emerged into starlight again. Ahead loomed the huge, squatty, conical mass of the volcano summit. Sounds of Mahasingh's approach came louder. Salazar had no weapon, and in any form of hand-to-hand combat the huge Shaivite would pulverize him. He could do nothing but plod on up the slope, hoping that he could wear Mahasingh down to the point of abandoning the chase.