To his disappointment, the Lord seemed unmoved by this sacrilege. “ Rayois the top Canton car. It is very important that Rangua Canton wins the Tortuga Race — not merely for financial reasons. The Companies have been troublesome lately, and I want it to be seen that Canton cars are superior.»
The Companies were loose associations of True Humans who operated cars out of various coastal towns in competition with the official Canton cars.
«I have sent a reprimand to El Tigre,” continued the Lord, «recommending his daughter be sent away for a while. This will give matters a chance to calm down.»
«Lord Benefactor, the felinos aren’t fools. They will have guessed the capabilities of Rayo. There will be ugly scenes when we demonstrate these capabilities. The felinos will see Rayo as the first step towards their becoming redundant.»
«As indeed it is. But I anticipated this. Guards will be posted at the Stages. All that remains now is for you to prove yourself worthy of the trust I’ve placed in you. You will win that race, Tonio. You understand?»
«Yes, Lord Benefactor.»
The interview was at an end. He was still alive. His vicuna jacket was drenched in sweat. He rose, and left. His final impression was of the sheer size of the Lord, who rose on the other side of the screen like a thunderhead.
Karina in the tumpfields
The ride into the foothills seemed endless. The shrugleggers plodded slowly uphill, following the sail-way towards Rangua Town for a while, then joining an ancient trail which wound among the rolling downs. The short grass became streaked with a richer green — the sign that tumps had been here. The shrugleggers pulled on, dragging the crude meat‑carts with their squeaking bearings, heads twitching to the bites of countless insects.
Karina seethed. She was in disgrace and her punishment was, to her mind, unjustified.
From time to time the other felinos grinned in her direction as she rode, bolt upright, beside her father. She ignored them. She despised them — particularly that fat fool Dozo who had ruined El Tigre’s meeting, calling her testimony into doubt and holding her up to ridicule.
«So Karina says Rayo is faster than the wind.… Well, she must be more trustworthy than our previous informant, the anonymous crocodile. Or wasn’t it her grupo that Iolande caught stealing tumpmeat the other day? Dear me, I can’t quite remember.…»
The El Tigre grupo minus Karina, having been beaten by Iolande in battle, had been presented to the camp as the guilty ones. Might, in the felino culture, is always right.
By the time the meat train reached the tump station, Karina was at bursting point. She stood sulkily by as her father bargained with Haleka, the head tumpier, and she refused to speak to the young felinos.
Haleka was a frail figure beside El Tigre, but he carried himself with pride. He had never kowtowed to the felinos and he wasn’t going to start now, even though El Tigre himself had come. He bargained almost absently, while with razor-sharp shell he cut strips of meat from the tump.
Haleka prided herself on being the best butcher in Rangua. He cut strips a meter long and five centimeters deep, wedge-shaped so that the beast’s skin was marked by a single cut which healed within two days.
And the tump lay there, making no sound, feeling nothing.
Haleka wore a simple robe of guanaco hide. His face was long and pale despite a lifetime in the sun; his eyes pale also, and deep-set. When El Tigre finally arrived at an acceptable price, he merely nodded slightly, saying nothing. The felinos carried the strips to the cart. There were other felinos, other tumpiers; but the best tump was Haleka’s and the best meat went to the cart of El Tigre. The meat was ripe red and bleeding sweet blood.
Karina stood beside the tump. She touched one of the neat incisions. No blood flowed here, and only a faint indentation in the skin showed where the wedge of meat had been cut.
«And the girl will help you,” said El Tigre. «She is my daughter, so you will treat her with the respect she deserves.»
«I will certainly do that,” replied Haleka drily, «but not because she is your daughter, El Tigre. Here in the tumpfields, respect must be earned.»
«And each year there are less tumps. Perhaps there is something wrong with the tumpiers’ code.»
«When God wishes it, the tumps will breed. Maybe God wishes to cut down on the felino population.» He referred to the felinos’ dependence on tumpmeat.
«One day the felinos will hunt the jungle again,” snarled El Tigre, «But without tumps there will be no tumpiers.»
Haleka was preparing his next sally when his gaze fell upon Karina. She stood beside the tump, swallowing heavily. As he watched, she brushed a finger along the wound and raised it to her lips.
«Get your dirty hands off my tump!» Haleka shouted. He stepped forward and slashed at Karina with his tumpstick, then picked up a bundle of herbs and began to rub them gently along the length of the wound, chanting in a sing-song voice:
«Spirit of the herb make the tump live long.
Spirit of the herb make the muscle strong.
Spirit of the herb make the man belong,
All one with hills.»
And as he sang, he nicked his own forearm with the shell, and rubbed the herb into that wound, too.
«Damned fool,” said El Tigre.
Karina stood by, fingers hooked, restraining herself with difficulty. The tumpstick had missed her by several centimeters, but the indignity had struck home.
When the meat was all loaded the felinos returned to their carts. Seven tumps lay in a great circle, their keepers ministering to their wounds, their chanting borne up the foothills into the trees, where the monkeys heard it and yelled back with animal derision.
«Goodbye, father,” said Karina, feeling suddenly alone.
El Tigre looked at her for a moment, then turned away with a growl. The felinos shouted. The shrugleggers threw themselves against the harness. The carts squealed, and the long procession moved off downhill, El Tigre in the lead, hopeful vultures circling overhead, Rangua a clutter of little boxes under the noon sun.
Iolande rode in the last cart with her grupo trotting alongside. Karina’s final impression of the meat train was Iolande’s malicious grin.
«You will learn to respect the tump,” Haleka stated from his lofty perch. «You will always walk on the uphill side of him, because it is from the forest above that the danger comes, when the jaguars walk at night. You will match your pace to his, because he dislikes being hurried or held back. His very life depends on steady movement across the grass because he cannot move his head.»
Karina paced slowly along in the late afternoon sun. The other tumps had diverged on their separate paths, the tumpiers sitting on their backs, the apprentices walking alongside. The apprentices were the lowest of the low.
Karina, for the time being, was one of them.
«The sun and the grass are all the tump needs,” Haleka droned on. «When God created the tump, he created the perfect meat producer.»
«If the tump is so goddamned great, how come it’s got no goddamned legs?» Karina shouted in sudden temper.
«The tump has no need of legs, because it can move by flexing its ribs. There have been tumps on these hills for many thousands of years, and they’ll be here for thousands more.»
But even as he said this, a sadness took Haleka. The tump numbers had dwindled alarmingly in recent years. The trouble was, they didn’t breed. At one time this didn’t matter, because they didn’t die, either. But increasing felino demands on them had resulted in some overflensing, and recently there had been the occasional death through disease.