«Well—» Haraszthy rose to his sheer two meters and stretched till his joints cracked. He was burly to match that height, and his hook-nosed face carried the marks of old battles. Most Traders are tough, pragmatic extroverts; they have to be, just as Federal civils have to be the opposite. It makes for conflict, though. «Let’s hike.»
«Not so fast,» Vaughan said: a thin young man with an intense gaze. «That tribe has never seen or heard of our kind. If they noticed us land, they may be in a panic.»
«So we go jolly them out of it,» Haraszthy shrugged.
«Our whole party? Are you serious?» Commander Baldinger asked. He reflected a bit. «Yes, I suppose you are. But I’m responsible now. Lejeune and Cathcart, stand by here. We others will proceed to the village.»
«Just like that?» Vaughan protested.
«You know a better way?» Haraszthy answered.
«As a matter of fact—» But nobody listened. The government operates on some elaborate theories, and Vaughan was still too new in Survey to understand how often theory has to give way. We were impatient to go outside, and I regretted not being sent along to town. Of course, someone had to stay, ready to pull out our emissaries if serious trouble developed.
We emerged into long «grass» and a breeze that smelled of nothing so much as cinnamon. Trees rustled overhead against a deep blue sky; the reddish sunlight spilled across purple wild flowers and bronze-colored insectoid wings. I drew a savoring breath before going around with Lejeune to make sure our landing gear was properly set. We were all lightly clad; Baldinger carried a blast rifle and Haraszthy a radiocom big enough to contact Dannicar, but both seemed ludicrously inappropriate.
«I envy the Jorillians,» I remarked.
«In a way,» Lejeune said. «Though perhaps their environment is too good. What stimulus have they to advance further?»
«Why should they want to?»
«They don’t, consciously, my old. But every intelligent race is descended from animals that once had a hard struggle to survive, so hard they were forced to evolve brains. There is an instinct for adventure, even in the gentlest herbivorous beings, and sooner or later it must find expression—»
«Holy jumping Judas!»
Haraszthy’s yell brought Lejeune and me bounding back to that side of the ship. For a moment my reason wobbled. Then I decided the sight wasn’t really so strange… here.
A girl was emerging from the woods. She was about the equivalent of a Terrestrial five-year-old, I estimated. Less than a meter tall (the Jorillians average more short and slender than we), she had the big head of her species to make her look still more elfin. Long blondish hair, round ears, delicate features that were quite humanoid except for the high forehead and huge violet eyes added to the charm. Her brow-skinned body was clad only in a white loincloth. One four-fingered hand waved cheerily at us. The other carried a leash. And at the opposite end of that leash was a grasshopper the size of a hippopotamus.
No, not a grasshopper, I saw as she danced toward us. The head looked similar, but the four walking legs were short and stout, the several others mere boneless appendages. The gaudy hide was skin, not chitin. I saw that the creature breathed with lungs, too. Nonetheless it was a startling monster; and it drooled.
«Insular genus,» Vaughan said. «Undoubtedly harmless, or she wouldn’t—But a child, coming so casually—!»
Baldinger grinned and lowered his rifle. «What the hell,» he said, «to a kid everything’s equally wonderful. This is a break for our side. She’ll give us a good recommendation to her elders.»
The little girl (damn it, I will call her that) walked to within a meter of Haraszthy, turned those big eyes up and up till they met his piratical face, and trilled with an irresistible smile:
«Please, mister, could I have a cracker for my oontatherium?»
I don’t quite remember the next few minutes. They were confused. Eventually we found ourselves, the whole five, walking down a sun-speckled woodland path. The girl skipped beside us, chattering like a xylophone. The monster lumbered behind, chewing messily on what we had given it. When the light struck those compound eyes I thought of a jewel chest.
«My name is Mierna,» the girl said, «and my father makes things out of wood, I don’t know what that’s called in English, please tell me, oh, carpentry, thank you, you’re a nice man. My father thinks a lot. My mother makes songs. They are very pretty songs. She sent me out to get some sweet grass for a borning couch, because her assistant wife is going to born a baby soon, but when I saw you come down just the way Pengwil told, I knew I should say hello instead and take you to Taori. That’s our village. We have twenty-five houses. And sheds and a Thinking Hall that’s bigger than the one in Riru. Pengwil said crackers are awful tasty. Could I have one too?»
Haraszthy obliged in a numb fashion. Vaughan shook himself and fairly snapped, «How do you know our language?»
«Why, everybody does in Taori. Since Pengwil came and taught us. That was three days ago. We’ve been hoping and hoping you would come. They’ll be so jealous in Riru! But we’ll let them visit if they ask us nicely.»
«Pengwil… a Dannicarian name, all right,» Baldinger muttered. «But they never heard of this island till I showed them our map. And they couldn’t cross the ocean in those dugouts of theirs! It’s against the prevailing winds, and square sails—»
«Oh, Pengwil’s boat can sail right into the wind,» Mierna laughed. «I saw him myself, he took everybody for rides, and now my father’s making a boat like that too, only better.»
«Why did Pengwil come here?» Vaughan asked.
«To see what there was. He’s from a place called Folat. They have such funny names in Dannicar, and they dress funny too, don’t they, mister?»
«Folat… yes, I remember, a community a ways north of our camp,» Baldinger said.
«But savages don’t strike off into an unknown ocean for, for curiosity,» I stammered.
«These do,» Haraszthy grunted. I could almost see the relays clicking in his blocky head. There were tremendous commercial possibilities here, foods and textiles and especially the dazzling artwork. In exchange—
«No!» Vaughan exclaimed. «I know what you’re thinking, Trader Haraszthy, and you are not going to bring machines here.»
The big man bridled. «Says who?»
«Says me, by virtue of the authority vested in me. And I’m sure the Council will confirm my decision.» In that soft air Vaughan was sweating. «We don’t dare!»
«What’s a Council?» Mierna asked. A shade of trouble crossed her face. She edged close to the bulk of her animal.
In spite of everything, I had to pat her head and murmur, «Nothing you need worry about, sweetheart.» To get her mind, and my own, off vague fears: «Why do you call this fellow an oontatherium? That can’t be his real name.»
«Oh, no.» She forgot her worries at once. «He’s a yao and his real name is, well, it means Big-Feet-Buggy-Eyes-Top-Man-Underneath-And-Over. That’s what I named him. He’s mine and he’s lovely.» She tugged at an antenna. The monster actually purred. «But Pengwil told us about something called an oont you have at your home, that’s hairy and scary and carries things and drools like a yao, so I thought that would be a nice English name. Isn’t it?»
«Very,» I said weakly.
«What is this oont business?» Vaughan demanded.
Haraszthy ran a hand through his hair. «Well,» he said, «you know I like Kipling, and I read some of his poems to some natives one night at a party. The one about the oont, the camel, yeah, I guess that must have been among ’em. They sure enjoyed Kipling.»