The Venom Trees of Sunga

IV – Mount Sungara

The Kooks who bore Salazar's litter, one before and one behind, trotted tirelessly along the trail. The litter bounced in time with their jog, one-two, one-two, until Salazar felt as if he were trapped in a chemical agitator. He would have preferred to walk; but although a good hiker, he knew he could never keep up with that distance-eating lope.

Alexis's litter bounced in front, flanked by her two reptilian bodyguards. Just behind Salazar came two others full of baggage. Choku's brought up the rear.

Kirk Salazar tried to watch the landscape as it jiggled past, to connect the fauna and flora he saw with what he had read. But his mind kept slipping back to his night with Alexis. Her lush curves blanked the occasional glimpses of animals, bipedal or quadrupedal but always semireptilian, watching the train from the edge of the timber or breaking into flight.

Mixed feelings troubled him. On one hand he felt older, stronger, and readier for contingencies than ever before. He had read about the ethology of the large Terran mammal called the elephant, now reduced to a few thousand in semidomestication. It was said that while elephants of both sexes and both species could be tamed and trained to do useful work, a male once allowed to breed was likely to become unmanageable, as if it told itself it was now a bull elephant whom nobody could order around. He thought he felt a little as a bred bull elephant must have felt.

It was time he put his mind upon his profession, but that proved hard. Damn it to hell! he thought. Can't I think of anything but sex? He had not come to Sunga for that. He did not even much like Alexis, whom he judged to be an aggressive, domineering egomaniac.

Nor did this intimacy with her leave him comfortable. While he was not restrained by religious tabus, his family's neo-Puritan background left him uneasy after violating them. Perhaps he should have saved it for Calpurnia Fisker, whom it seemed inevitable that he should marry, unless she got tired of merely dating and waiting and decided to cast her hook elsewhere. He and she had a tacit understanding that neither would screw around until they made their relationship formal.

Now he was angry at himself for not taking his courage in his hands and marrying the girl; if he had, he might have enjoyed this ecstasy for years. They suited each other very well, a fact he had not appreciated until becoming involved with a really difficult female. He had been too careful, like the man whom the fyunga ate while he was trying to remember the polite imperative in Feënzuo for "Help!"

Still the picture of Alexis, lush and pink in the yellow lamplight, kept crowding into his mind, and blood kept crowding into his loins. He thought: Ah, sweet mystery of lust! paraphrasing an old song from the Massacre Era.

Towards noon the procession halted. Salazar slid out of his litter, thankful for a chance to stretch his legs and relieve the tender backside that constant bounce was giving him. He found Alexis talking intensely with one of her Kook bodyguards. As he approached, the Kook departed, running up the trail.

"What's this?" asked Salazar.

Alexis said: "This trail passes close to Cantemir's lumber camp. I want to scout it before I try to run past. We'll eat while waiting for Hagii."

At her command, the other Kooks produced a pair of folding chairs and a folding table. They set out the luncheon in a formal, well-rehearsed way as if serving for royalty. Alexis poured two generous glasses of bumble-berry wine, first for herself and then for Salazar.

The biologist attacked his food. For a few minutes he was able to keep his mind off Alexis's maddening body. He said:

"Think George might try to ambush us again?"

"Can't tell. Whatever he does, I want to be ready. Where are your guns?"

"They're both in my baggage."

"Well, get one out, silly! What good would it do us buried in that duffel bag?"

Salazar strolled back to the litter containing his bag. When he opened the bag, he was startled by Alexis's voice close behind him. She had a way of silently stealing up on one.

"What's that funny smell, Kirk?"

"Oh, that. I bought a supply of mitta nuts to tempt the kusis."

"So they'll eat out of your hand?"

"Not quite, but close enough so I can watch and take pictures." He was fitting his rifle together.

"But if they become half-tame, they won't behave the same as they would in the wild alone."

Salazar shrugged. "That's the dilemma of the field biologist, observing without being observed by the observee. It's a chance I have to take, since I can't hover invisibly over them like one of the spirits these island Kooks believe in." He finished assembling the piece and rose.

In her dictatorial manner Alexis said: "Don't you dare make skeptical remarks about spirits around my followers! Shiiko is a Kukulcanian spirit, and our faith in her holds the community together."

"I'll try to be careful."

He slung the gun across his back. Then a need for privacy compelled him to walk off into the forest. His visions of the previous night's adventure crowded back into his mind, so that he nearly stepped on a boshiya, a venomous black-and-white wriggler sometimes called a snake-lizard by Terrans. He saw it in time and jumped back.

When he returned to the trail, Hagii had come back from his errand. The Kook was talking with Alexis, who turned, laughing.

"Kirk, you'll never guess! Hagii talked to the head Kook in the camp, an oldster named Juugats, without showing himself to the lumberjacks. They're on strike against Cantemir for exposing them to gunfire. They had two killed and several hurt, after they'd been promised there would be no danger. So before they do anything like that again, they want combat pay, at least twice what he's paying them now.

"So we can keep on up the trail. But now your litter shall go first, and you're to have your gun ready. Understand?"

"Okay," muttered Salazar.

He did not relish being point man; his newfound virility would have liked to find an excuse for contradicting her dogmata and defying her commands. But those orders had so far seemed reasonable, and he could not think of an excuse that would not make him sound craven. Alexis was an able if exacting boss.

The party passed the lumber camp closely enough for Salazar to smell the smoke of a cook fire and hear sounds of Terran talk and movement. The sounds faded away as the Kooks with the litters trotted along the trail, the slope of which became steep enough to slow even Kukulcanians' iron muscles and leathern lungs.

Hours later, at a word from Alexis, the cortege again halted. Salazar got out and watched as she walked briskly aft to fumble in her baggage. She pulled out a white, gauzy garment. Stripping off her dirty khakis, she flipped the white robe over her head, pulled it into place, and tightened its straps. She came forward, saying:

"Kirk, from here on I go first."

"You mean we're near your community?"

"Of course! When I come in, the Kashanites will make a big production of my return. Play along with them, understand?"

"I'll do my best," said Salazar. "What's expected of me?"

"Nothing much; just be polite and do as I ask."

A ray from the low sun caught Alexis slantwise, turning her coppery hair to a flaming halo. Half-seen through the gauze, Alexis was even more exciting than Alexis naked. But either the bull elephant had gone away or Salazar rationally thought Alexis too difficult and dangerous for a love object. He said:

"What—ah—arrangements will be made for tonight?"

"If you're thinking of a repeat," she snapped, "I'm now the Supreme Choraga, a pure and holy ascetic. Anyway, you've had it three times in twenty-four hours, which must set a record for a beginner. And by the way, if you tell anyone about our little—ah—exercises, I will kill you, and I don't mean that as a figure of speech."

"All I wanted," rasped Salazar, "was to know where I'm to sleep. I have my own tent, if someone will show me where to put it."

"You'll be shown, never fear. What's your plan for your professional work?"

"First I must hike around the neighborhood until I know it well enough not to get lost in the woods. Then I buckle down to serious study of the local biota, and the kusis in particular."

"Okay. Tomorrow I'll take you up the mountain. If we start early, we can make the crater Shikawa by midday."

A space around the community of Kashania was given to plowed fields and vegetable patches. Salazar saw no one at work in the fields, but the sun was setting and the workers must have gone back to the village. The Kooks trotted past the fields and halted at the edge of a village-sized clearing encircled by huts. Young trees, apparently planted by the designer of the settlement, stood between the cabins. Another circle of tables ran around inside the circle of the huts and concentric with them.

The space within the circle swarmed with Terrans of both sexes and all ages. All were naked but for sandals and but for the sweaters and shawls that a few had put over their upper bodies against the cool of evening. Some were building a fire in the center; others were setting tablewear on the circle of tables.

Salazar's litter approached the village behind that of Alexis. Her conveyance halted where the trail ran through a gap in the circle of huts. She slid out of her litter, her gauzy draperies floating, and motioned Salazar's litter forward to a position beside hers.

Salazar got his first good look at the Kashanites. He had once seen a flier promoting a naturist colony. In its photographs of jolly naked crowds playing vigorous outdoor games, all the men had flat, hard-looking bellies and the women firm, outstanding breasts. That could not be said of most of the Kashanites.

As Alexis advanced, the Kashanites began pointing and jabbering. When she raised a hand, they cried in unison:

"Hail, Supreme Choraga! Hail, mouthpiece of the great spirit Shiiko!"

All but the youngest children dropped to their knees and bent to touch their foreheads to the ground. Alexis raised her arms, lifting her gauzes with an effect like spreading wings. In a strong, penetrating voice she called:

"Arise, ye faithful!"

As the Kashanites rose, she waved her arms and led the crowd in a song in a language that Salazar did not know. It seemed to have a wailing, Oriental-sounding tune, but most of the singers were so far off key that the melody would have been hard for a musician to recognize.

The song was mercifully short. At its close, Alexis beckoned Salazar. As he climbed from his litter, she cried:

"My faithful ones, I present Doctor Salazar, who comes among us as a visitor, studying our mountain with the methods of Terran science. While here, he shall be treated with kindness and hospitality, thus illuminating the path to virtue and salvation before him, that he may be persuaded to tread it in his turn."

Salazar suppressed an urge to blurt out: "Hey, but I'm not a doctor yet!" Common sense asserted itself, and he merely bowed to the throng. One of Alexis's bodyguards touched his arm, saying in Sungao:

"Pray step hither, sir, and I will show you where to put up your tent."

As he followed the Kook, with the laden Choku trailing, Salazar saw Alexis march with regal dignity through the parting mass of Kashanites to the largest cabin, on the farther side of the circle.

Salazar dined at one of the tables in the circle with a squad of Kashanites. He wryly noted that the sight of a lot of naked women all at once ceased to stimulate him sexually after the first quarter hour. Alexis, he thought, was on the right track in blaming the Judeo-Christian nudity tabu for the sexual excitability of males of those persuasions at a glimpse of those parts of the female body normally kept covered.

He uneasily observed that whereas the diners at the other tables chattered and gossiped, those at his were relatively quiet, as if his presence inhibited them. One was a small boy, who said loudly to a fat woman beside him:

"Mama, who is the man with those funny clothes on?"

"Shh, Nelson! He is our distinguished visitor."

"Well, I don't like our stinkish visitor. Why does he wear those funny things all over?"

Salazar was not long on repartee, but embarrassment forced it upon him. He spoke emphatically: "To give little boys like you something to talk about!"

The boy subsided for a minute but then asked his mother in a stage whisper: "Is he Shiiko's next husband?"

"Shh! We don't talk about things like that in front of strangers."

Salazar quickly finished and excused himself. Back at his tent he found Choku arranging his belongings inside. Kooks were neat to a degree that drove some of the more disorderly Terrans crazy.

"Honorable Sarasara," said Choku, "I have a message from the Supreme Choraga. If you will be at the door of her temple—"

"What temple?"

"The big house where she lives; that is what her servants call it. If you will be there at six o'clock by your Terran system, she will escort you up the mountain."

The news gave Salazar a moment of puzzlement; such an expedition would take a good part of a day, and why should she, unasked, offer to spend it thus with him? Perhaps she wanted more sex and figured that she could get it unbeknown to her followers up on the mountain.

"Fine," he said. "Please see that I am up in time."

"I will rouse you in ample time, honorable boss."

Salazar's mind, which he had kept off topic A for a whole hour, rushed back to the contemplation of Alexis's curves. Although he told himself that he should not be foolish, that such fancies were but tickets to trouble, he still did not sleep well.

At a quarter to six Salazar marched up to the front door of Alexis's house, a canvas pack on his back. He munched a snack from his emergency food supplies.

Choku had stepped out to boil water for acha. Salazar thought that Choku meant to accompany the safari to the crater. But if a chance for lovemaking arose along the way, Salazar did not wish his assistant present. Without awaiting his acha, he slipped out and strode briskly towards the circle of cabins.

The door of the larger cabin swung open; there stood Alexis in a gauzy gown like that of the night before.

"On time, I see," she said. "Good! This way, Kirk!"

She led him down the hall. As she went, she picked up a little bundle with a strap to retain it. Out the back door, she set a brisk pace along the trail leading up the long slope from Kashania.

"I can carry that bundle as well as my pack," said Salazar.

"Nonsense! I'm strong, too, never fear!"

"You—certainly—are," said Salazar, beginning to pant a little. He wondered that one so efficient and matter-of-fact as Alexis should set out in a costume so ludicrously unsuited to mountaineering.

The community fell away behind them, shrinking as they climbed until the intervening trees obscured it. When the trail leveled off for a stretch, so that Salazar had breath left for speech, he said:

"What was that song you led the congregation in last night? I know several Terran languages, but I couldn't get a word."

She snickered. "That was the 'Faerda be-Shiko khahim raeft.' The language is Farsi."

"The language is what?"

"Farsi; Persian to you. The title means 'We go to Shiiko tomorrow'."

"Does your community speak Farsi? Those I heard all used English, except for a couple who spoke Russian."

"Not at all; they just learn the sounds by rote. I know a little but don't really speak it. You see, Rostam Kashani was an Iranian. He composed the song as the official hymn of the movement, and I haven't dared to try to change it—yet."

"What happened to him?"

"He named me his successor and a little later decided to 'go to Shiiko'—in other words, to dive into the crater. I begged him not to, but he was determined. So I've struggled along with my position as best I could."

"Do you, a Terran, really believe Shiiko is the volcano spirit, to be propitiated?"

She smiled grimly, and her reply showed a flash of steel. "If I didn't, do you think I'd be fool enough to admit it? If some scoffer made a scornful remark in the community, I'd need only to give my zealots a sign, and they would tear the unbeliever to pieces, never fear."

"I'd better keep my mouth shut around there," said Salazar.

The trail became steep again, so for a while they hiked in silence. When it leveled off, Salazar said:

"My maps show the zone of nanshin trees solidly encircling the mountain between certain altitudes. How can we get through without being stung?"

"The growth is not so solid as that. The trees grow in clumps, or forests I guess you'd call them. We're going through one of the gaps. There are some nanshins now." She pointed.

Salazar looked. The nearest nanshins looked somewhat like Terran longleaf pines. He knew the nearest tree for a female from its crimson berries. The fruits and berries that Kukulcanian plants had evolved as a way of spreading their seeds around widely provided a striking example of evolution parallel to that on Terra.

"I saw a few in the woods lower down," said Salazar, "but I wasn't sure of the species." He glanced at Alexis, who had opened her bundle and was taking out a work shirt and trousers. She shed the gauzy gown with Kashanite indifference to nudity.

"The trail gets rougher," she said, carefully folding the sacerdotal garment. She glanced at Salazar, whose vision was fixed upon her. "From the gleam in your eye, I think you're hoping for a quick one, right here. Forget it, boy! I know better than to fish off the company pier."

At the word "boy," the bull elephant gave an unexpected trumpet. "Damn it, Alexis!" roared Salazar. "If you don't want to be screwed, don't waggle your pretty personal parts at me!"

"You're just a damned Judeo-Christian mundane with those barbarian tabus, so you get horny at a glimpse of a tit—"

"Just a normal male. You make it hard for me to stand up with my pants on." Salazar's hormones raged like a forest fire. His blood pounded, his breath came short, and there was a haze before his eyes. His tongue clung to his palate.

"You idiots," she said, "think the sight of a woman without clothes is an automatic invitation to a free fuck. I've told you what's what, and if you're too dumb to get the message ..." She fumbled in her bundle and brought out a huge knife with a thirty-centimeter blade of the sort once popularized by the adventurer and slave smuggler Colonel James Bowie. "One step towards me ..."

"Honorable sir!" said Choku's voice in Sungao. "Wherefore did you go off without me?" The knife disappeared as the Kook came forward. "Pardon me, Madam Supreme Choraga! I promised to help and protect Mr. Salazar, as by carrying the pack he bears."

Without sign of embarrassment, Alexis donned her shirt and pants and belted on the sheath knife. She said to Choku: "I was merely changing from my sacred garment."

"I understand, madam."

Salazar, waiting for Alexis to finish her preparations, caught a flash of brown in the nanshins, which whisked out of sight. My first stump-tailed kusi! he thought. Alexis's body vanished from his mind. Examining the contents of his pack, he suddenly cursed his own stupidity, saying: "Choku, I seem to have forgotten a camera. Will you please run back to our tent and get me one? The smaller Hayashi will do, with extra film." Serves you right, he added to himself, for letting this hypocritical floozy come between you and your scientific task.

"As you say, honorable boss." Choku trotted back down the trail.

She was on her feet with her bundle slung over her shoulder. "Come along! We can't spend the morning fooling around or we'll never get to the crater for lunch."

She set off with a resolute stride, as if daring Salazar to follow. He felt a twinge of resentment at having his abortive suggestion of lovemaking scorned as "fooling around," but that was Alexis. He deserved it, for he was like a moth circling too close to a flame.

They hiked between somber, looming groves of nanshin trees to the right and left, interspersed with thickets of jade-green, canelike plants reminding Salazar of the smaller kinds of Terran bamboos. Now and then he saw kusis, but they scampered away with piercing whistles before he had more than a glimpse. Occasional zutas flitted on rainbow wings, like bizarre combinations of butterfly, lizard, and bat.

Larger beasts were few compared to the fauna below the nanshin belt. Once they met a wild kudzai, an old tusker somewhat like a reptilian wild boar. While Salazar unslung his pack and got out his smaller gun, a pistol with a detachable stock, kudzai and Terrans eyed one another. Before Salazar got his weapon assembled and aimed, the kudzai snorted, trotted back up the trail, and vanished into a gap among the nanshins.

When the trail was comparatively easy, Salazar asked: "Alexis, what's the attitude of the community toward the Adriana lumbering project? Really, it's the Reverend Dumfries's enterprise."

With audible irritation, she snapped, "We went all over that in Sungecho. We'll just take things as they come. If Shiiko takes a dim view of Adriana's plans, she'll take care of them, never fear!"

"How would a spirit do that? Haunt the lumber camp?"

She smiled grimly. "Shiiko lords it over storms, eruptions, lightning, and earthquakes."

"Would you pray to her for those things?"

"No; we merely call her attention to Adriana's intentions. The rest is up to her."

"Seems to me you take a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards an ecological disaster."

She halted and faced him with an expression that showed her hair-trigger temper unleashed. "Oh, shut up, Kirk! I've run Kashania well so far, and I won't let any skinny little rabbit-faced priss dictate to me!"

"I merely pointed out—"

"Shut up!" she screamed. Then in a normal tone: "Come on! If we're to make the crater, we've got to move."

For an hour they tramped in silence. The footpath carried them up the slope to the upper edge of the nanshin belt. Above that zone, the air was cooler and the plant life sparser: stunted shrubs, discouraged-looking patches of gray-green grassoid, and the corpse of an occasional young nanshin that had given up the attempt to sprout and grow above the climatic zone to which evolution had adapted it. Ahead rose the final cone of Sungara's summit with its plume of vapor.

As they climbed, Salazar noted increasing signs of former lava flows. They clambered over ridges of glassy black lava rock, snaking down the mountainside like the roots of a giant tree. When they reached the final slope, the vegetation almost ceased, and they walked on the tormented surface of solidified lava.

Salazar was glad of his heavy, thick-soled boots; the lava's glassy fractures, where its millions of gas bubbles intersected its surface, would soon cut common shoes to pieces. They scrambled over irregularities. Alexis bounded ahead, leaping pits and trenches with a recklessness that frightened Salazar. If she fell and injured herself, he wondered how he could get her back to the community. He was no weakling; but she was a big girl, probably weighing more than he.

The terrain leveled off as they neared the crater. To right and left, little plumes of vapor rose from holes and chinks in the rock, merging into an all-pervading, heaven-veiling mist. A breeze whistled about the hikers' heads.

Alexis said: "Here we are!"

At the rim of the crater, Salazar moved cautiously forward, testing every step. The level surface of the summit fell away abruptly into a circular pit almost a kilometer across, with vertical walls descending over fifty meters to the lake of lava. On most of the lake, the lava had cooled to a scum of silver-gray rock traversed by zigzag fissures. Through these cracks, the liquid lava below the surface shone red even in the misty sunlight. Here and there across the surface rose fountains of bright red liquid lava, rising and falling in short, thick columns. From the crater came a continuous swish-swish, swish-swish like the sound of a surf.

As Salazar watched, some fountains died down while others broke through the crust and spouted in their turn, throwing up dark fragments of scum with the molten lava. Alexis said:

"There's your crater, Kirk. The Kooks call it 'Shikawa,' from the volcano spirit Shiiko. Let's walk along the rim." She started off to their left.

Salazar followed cautiously over the twisted surface. Presently they reached a place where the rim bent sharply to the left and back again, forming an embayment enclosed by a nearly circular wall about four meters across, with a point on either side. She said:

"You get a fine view out there on the point, if you're not afraid."

"Me, afraid?" With a snort, he stepped out on the tapering point, saying: "Looks like the old Christian picture of hell, doesn't it? Those fountains could be sinners tossing their arms in the flames."

He moved still further out on the point. He suffered a mild acrophobia, so that looking down almost vertically into the lava made his testicles crawl. You damned fool, he berated himself, letting this masterful bitch taunt you into risking your life to show you're not afraid!

A shout in Sungao made him start. Choku called: "Mr. Sarasara! Honorable boss, I have your camera."

Salazar stepped abruptly back to the base of the point, colliding with Alexis close behind him. With a yelp of dismay, she fell back and ended sitting on a bulbous mass of lava rock, crying:

"Ouch! That hurt, you clumsy bastard!"

"I—I'm sorry!" said a flustered Salazar. "I didn't know you were so close."

"Oh, shut up! I'll have a sore rump for a week, with a bruise the size of a saucer. Now where in hell's lunch?"

She rummaged in her bag while Salazar did the same in his. Choku asked:

"Is all well with you, sir?"

"All is well. And with you likewise?"

"Likewise. I had a certain worry about you, but I see that I arrived in time."

"Good of you," grunted Salazar, munching a sandwich. He pulled out a bottle of bumbleberry, filled a paper cup, and handed it to Alexis, who muttered an ungracious thanks. He poured his own in silence. He sneezed; he had worked up a sweat during the climb, and now the cool wind made him shiver.

His lunch consumed, Salazar took his camera from Choku, rose, and scouted around the crater, shooting. He said: "Alexis, will you stand up so I can get a shot at you?"

"No, I won't!" she snapped.

He thought: Jeepers, what a termagant! And to think I once found her attractive—even irresistible! Then she said:

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded, Kirk. It's just that I don't like pictures of me floating around where my enemies, like the Reverend Dumfries, might get hold of them and use them against me."

He took more pictures, wondering to what extent these enemies were real and to what extent paranoid delusions. At last he said:

"Alexis, you called Dumfries an enemy. But I thought you had reached a modus vivendi with the Adriana people."

"I have, but they'll double-cross me the minute they think it's to their advantage. Dumfries has gotten so filthy rich from his church that most big shots, Terran or Kook, sit up and beg or roll over when he tells them to."

"Doesn't say much for the integrity of either species," mused Salazar. "I wouldn't sit up and beg, or roll over either."

"Maybe not, but you're an unworldly scientist. In the struggle for power you don't count. Actually, I think Kooks have more of what you call 'integrity' than we do. People like Dumfries call it 'blind obstinacy' when they resist Terrans' attempts to diddle them out of their ancestral lands. In this regard, Yaamo is more like a Terran than most of his—what do you call somebody of the same species?"

"A conspecific."

"Than most of his conspecifics."

He asked: "How has Dumfries worked up such a huge, fanatical following on Terra in a few years? He's not much to look at."

"They tell me he's a marvelous speaker, potbelly and all, practically hypnotic. And his Holy Gnostic Church is the first major religion to face up to the fact that there are other civilized planets."

"But the Neognostics were just a small sect."

"Were, but their growth has put them right up there with the biggies. The others—Christianity, Judaism, Islam—all assume Terra to be the center of the universe and the only inhabited world. Dumfries gets away from that with his multiple Demiurges, one for each planet."

"How about the Hindus and Buddhists?"

"The Neognostics haven't made much progress in countries like India and Sri Lanka, because they are not so firmly tied to Terra. Their mythology, like that of the Theosophists, is full of other worlds already."

Salazar sneezed again. "Shouldn't we start back now?"

"You go on; Choku can guide you. I'll follow later. I'm going to commune with Shiiko."

"Are you sure? I don't like to leave you alone."

"Of course I'm sure! Run along; I know the way as well as I know my own house."

"But—"

"Go!" she shouted, pointing.

"Very well, your Holiness," grated Salazar. "Don't blame me if you break a leg or meet a hungry porondu. Come, Choku."

Salazar turned away with a shrug. One so willful as Alexis could probably not be persuaded once she had made up her mind. Anyway, he wanted to question Choku out of her hearing.

Salazar and the Kook marched off. When they got beyond the mountaintop area of tumbled lava rock and did not have to watch their steps so vigilantly, Salazar asked:

"Choku, what did you save me from?"

"Honorable Sarasara," said the Kook, "I know that you Terrans have powers, from your science, beyond those of us human beings. But can you walk on molten lava?"

Salazar looked narrowly at his assistant. "I have never tried but am sure I cannot. Do you mean that she ..."

"Aye, sir; I mean that I arrived in time to save you from being pushed off the cliff. Miss Ritter was bracing herself to shove you into the crater when I called."

"Tell me more!" said Salazar.

"Sir, pray understand that this has been difficult. I worked for her after Mr. Kashani met his death, and a condition of my employment was that I must never tell what I saw her do or heard her say. We human beings take such promises more seriously than, I fear, do you aliens.

"I also promised you, as a condition of employment, to succor you and ward you from peril. Now, I foresaw that these promises would conflict. I could not adhere to one without violating the other."

Salazar had a flash of insight. "You mean you had seen her shove Kashani into the crater and thought she might try the same thing on me?"

"Precisely, sir. After long thought I concluded that whereas revealing her secrets would have only a suppositious effect on the Supreme Choraga, failure to warn you would likely give you a fatal bath in lava. So the latter promise, meseemed, took precedence over the former."

It was like a Kukulcanian, thought Salazar, to work such a dilemma out by laborious logicization and then to give a blow-by-blow account of the process. Still, Salazar realized that he owed his life to it.

"I most gratefully thank you," he said.

"And I thank my ancestral spirits that I was able to carry out my agreement with you, sir. I trust that I have done so to your satisfaction."

"Eminently so. Had you not, I should not be here to complain. But why in the name of Metasu should she want to kill me? I have not wronged her; in fact, she once seemed to like me well, at least in bed. I can understand her killing Kashani to seize his place as head of Kashania, but why me?"

"Are you familiar with the history of Sunga, sir?"

"In a general way. I understand the Sungarin used to practice the sacrifice of some of their own folk but gave that up on the urging of Terran missionaries."

"That is not quite my understanding, sir."

"What, then?"

"I believe that the Sungarin sacrificed to Shiiko chosen ones from their own number by casting them into Shikawa. They sought to choose the wickedest criminals for the purpose, thus, as you would put it, slaying two zutas with one projectile.

"But sir, crime amongst us human beings is but a tiny fraction of that which, I am told, obtains amongst you aliens. So when no egregiously wicked criminals could be found, the high chief had to devote to the spirit some person who had committed only a trivial offense. It was feared that soon some wholly innocent being, chosen by lot, must needs be sacrificed.

"Mr. Kashani proposed to the Sungarin that in return for a lease on the land now occupied by the community, he should sacrifice one alien of his own species each year to Shiiko by the traditional method. The then high chief doubted whether Shiiko would accept the sacrifice of aliens, but he gave Mr. Kashani's scheme a trial. When, after the first such sacrifice, the land enjoyed beneficent weather and bountiful crops, this was taken to signify Shiiko's assent. You can perceive why mainlanders like me tend to look down upon the Sungarin as a backward, superstitious folk, only partly civilized."

"How does the leader of the community get his—or her—victims?" asked Salazar.

"This may be a visitor like yourself, or perhaps a Terran can be lured from Sungecho by curiosity or promises."

"It figures. At dinner last night a child asked if I was Shiiko's next husband; that must be what he meant. I was stupid not to catch on sooner. I guess it is premature to say that Homo sapiens has altogether given up the sacrifice of its conspecifics. Is that what happened to my old classmate Latour?"

"I believe so, sir, albeit I did not witness the actual immolation. This occurred last year, after Miss Ritter had devoted Mr. Kashani to the volcano spirit. I believe that she beguiled Mr. Ratoo to her village by a promise of sexual pleasure, and her followers did the rest."

"Know you if she upheld her end of the bargain?"

"Sir? Oh, I see; you mean did she permit him sexual access? I cannot say that she did from direct knowledge, since you aliens have a cultural tabu on performing sexual congress in the presence of others. A professor in Machuro once explained to me that this tabu went back to you aliens' primitive times, because your practice of copulating lying down rendered you vulnerable to a spear thrust in the back.

"Miss Ritter, however, passed a night with Mr. Ratoo in her tent on the way from Amoen to the village of Kashania. I did not witness the actual intromission but, from what I know of Terran sexual customs, infer that it probably took place."

Salazar shivered, but not from the cold. "I think the sooner we move our tent and baggage away from the Kashanite community, the better for us."

"The logic of the situation compels me to agree, sir."

For a while Salazar walked in silence, making better time on the downward slopes than he had coming up. At last he said:

"I was sorry for Kashani when I heard he was pushed into Shikawa. But he only got what he asked for. And Chief Yaamo must have lied when he told me he knew naught of Latour's fate."

"If he lied, the movement of his cervical bristles would betray the fact, sir."

"But I wasn't looking at them, and I am not expert at interpreting those wiggles, anyway. Another thing, Choku. The Kashanites' indulgent attitude toward Adriana's lumbering puzzles me. I should expect Miss Ritter to oppose it, since it would cause her people much trouble. I can imagine what some of those roughnecks would do if they saw young women running around naked. What is behind it all?"

"Sir, I do not wish to accuse without due evidence.

But the chief human being of the community, Juugats, has passed on a rumor that Mr. Cantemir promised Miss Ritter a generous bribe to keep her followers from interfering."

Choku's neck bristles rippled in a way that betokened mirth. "You aliens are strange. You seem so clever, yet when you hire us human beings as servants, you forget that many comprehend some Terran tongues. You talk amongst yourselves about intimate matters, ignoring the fact that a human being overhears, as if we did not exist."

So much for the Kashanite quest for spiritual perfection, thought Salazar. "Well, let us display some of our vaunted Terran cleverness. First, I think our present location is unhealthy. We should move to another site on the edge of the nanshin belt and get on with our work."

"I think, sir, that you have made a wise decision," said Choku.

Ever since Alexis had proposed a picnic hike to Shikawa, a thought had buzzed at the back of Salazar's mind that there was something phony about that proposal. Why should she take the time and trouble to lead him to the crater when she was apparently not interested in his science and, as it proved, did not wish to fornicate again, at least not on the mountain?

With Choku's explanations, the parts of the puzzle fell into place. She would rely on her proven sexual appeal to lead him by the nose and push him into the lava, thus paying her rent for the year to Yaamo. She would also get rid of a former bedmate who, if he turned out a blabbermouth, might compromise her standing with the Kashanites.

If Salazar had been thinking with his brain instead of with his gonads, he would have caught on sooner. He thought: When Keats wrote "La Belle Dame sans Merci," he didn't know the half of it!