“Now there’s human behavior,” said Rick.
“That too.” Yoshi pointed to where a clutch of immature reptiles were attempting to feed one of the bogdillos a large, decimated leaf. The animal seemed completely uninterested which, in turn, caused the “children” to lose interest in it. They next offered their wizened frond to a flock of avians with more success.
Godwin, checking the soles of his boots for unmentionables, said, “Well, doctor. I’ll bet you’re just in seventh heaven. There’s more humanoid behavior going on out there than I’ve seen in most spaceport cantinas. Shall we make an appearance and ask to be taken to their leader?”
“Perhaps,” Rhys told him, “if we can determine who that leader is.”
They watched the reptiles for three days without making a single move. In that time, they collected a plethora of data on community life and interaction, noted the hierarchy among the “lizards,” and chased away nosy arthropods and avians. On day three, Godwin, whose patience was apparently not a virtue that got much exercise, returned to the base camp complaining of sand fleas and insomnia. The sands around their mobile cabin made a peculiar sucking noise at night which Godwin found unbearable. Rhys silently (and guiltily) thanked the sands.
Their observations did indeed yield the identification of a dominant member of the reptile community. It was a female, judging from physiological and behavioral cues, who ruled the reptile roost. It was to this noble creature that Rhys at last decided to make himself known.
At first he merely let them see him at the edge of the village laying out his “merchandise” and making observations to his notepad. After a while he moved in closer. The reptiles watched him with their golden, saucer-round eyes, occasionally opening and closing their wide mouths; Rhys expected to hear the clack of castanets. The elder female watched him most carefully as she went about her business, which consisted largely of scolding the younger members of her group who brought her food and occasionally rocks for her mound.
By the time he was face to face with the matriarch, she accepted him without tremor or outrage, merely observing his every move through her extraordinary eyes. He proffered her a piece of glazed azure tile. She looked at it, reached out a scaly digit and touched it, then scratched her neck. He rose and pressed the tile into the earthen wall of the mound she basked beside; she watched him with vague interest. Carefully, he took a rock from the pile her young cohorts had brought her and placed it among his wares; she blinked and scratched her neck again.
He repeated the exercise a few more times, drawing a small crowd of the reptilian Bogies. Finally, one of the creatures came forward and gingerly poked at another piece of tile. Rhys held his breath, affording a quick glance over his shoulder to where Yoshi and Rick observed and recorded the goings-on. The reptile handled the tile, turning it this way and that so the bright, glazed surface caught the sun, then he picked it up in one long-fingered hand and scuttled away with it to place it in his own pile of building materials some yards away. He did not return with an offering.
Rhys let out a long breath and tried not to let his hope go with it. But twenty or so pilfered tiles later, he admitted momentary defeat and retired to the camp.
“It seems,” he sighed some days later with no further progress to show, “that all we’ve accomplished is to leave our reptilian friends with gaudier houses.”
“Houses they may not even live in that much longer,” Yoshi added. “I explored the other side of that little knoll.” She indicated a nearby hillock covered with sand and some wispy bushes. “It seems that what these fellows do is build up their little mud igloos until the inner passages are all clogged with rocks and bits of wood, or the roofs cave in. From what I can tell, they just abandon the villages little by little and start new mounds right next door.”
Rhys nodded. “Which explains the trail of mud huts we followed to get here.”
“Professor…” Rick was watching a playback of Rhys’s interaction with the reptiles. “This is probably irrelevant, but does it seem to anyone else that those mud huts bear a more than passing resemblance to Yoshi’s bogdillos?”
Both Yoshi and Rhys brought their attention to the video. “Roddy’s right,” Rhys murmured thoughtfully. “Although that could just as easily be by accident as by design.”
Rick selected another time index, presenting them with a view of their encounter with the lake dwellers. It escaped no one that the water-bound lodges of the amphibians, with their anarchic polka-dots of bright stuff looked much like submerged bogdillos.
Rhys exhaled explosively. “Worship? Art? Coincidence?”
“Do we stick around or move on?” Rick asked.
“I guess we’d best move on,” Rhys decided. “But we’ll be back. Maybe I just need some fresh ideas.”
Raymond Godwin greeted their return to base camp with ill-concealed relief. “No luck, eh? Will you be giving up then?”
“Yes,” Rhys said mildly, “we re going to move the base camp to the next location.”
Godwin grimaced. “And may I ask how many ‘locations’ there are?”
“About a dozen, all told. The habitable zone on Bog is rather small, after all.”
“A dozen.” Godwin glanced from Rhys to his two assistants. “And I suppose you’re going to check out every one of them, aren’t you?”
Rhys smiled. “Until we find sentience or determine it’s not to be found. That’s our job this time out.”
“Professor Llewellyn, you obviously have very little business acumen. I don’t know how you managed to impress Ms. Price as a negotiator.” God win turned on his heel, narrowly avoiding doing the splits on the ever-soggy turf, and made a most dignified exit.
Putting Godwin’s ill-temper out of his mind, Rhys visited the logistics chief next to arrange for the camp move. Unlike Raymond Godwin, Chief Pinski was thrilled with the prospect of some action. “My people have been going stir crazy,” he told Rhys. “While you folks’re out doing the jungle, all they’ve got to do is read and play VR games. You want to see how bored people can get?” He beckoned Rhys to the door of his portable office and nodded toward the cargo area where a quartet of bright blue, tarp-covered pallets stood awaiting dispersal. At the edge of the area, a handful of men and women in varicolored coveralls lobbed the local version of pine cones into the forest.
“What are they aiming at?” Rhys asked.
“Oh, anything and everything. Leaves, seed cones on stumps, the blossoms on those big, droopy trees, the critters that skulk around the edge of camp.”
Rhys smiled wanly. “I see. Well, do you think you could ask them not to target anything that moves? I’d hate to annoy the neighbors.”
Pinski chuckled. “I see your point. Sure, Doc. Now, when would you like to bug out?”
“Tomorrow morning will do fine. I’ll have the coordinates for you by supper time.”
Leaving Pinski’s office he heard a rousing cheer go up along the edge of the cargo dump. He sighed, praying the site crew hadn’t hit anyone who would hold a grudge.
They were up by Bog’s green early light. Forest denizens strove to outdo each other in song, and a legitimately cool breeze rustled the rampant foliage. Rhys took his morning shower-essential to starting a day on Bog—and realized he couldn’t face putting on his kilt. The humid atmosphere made the wool itch and cling, and he was damn tired of smelling like a wet sheep. Nattily attired in a jumpsuit of jungle green, he was walking cross-camp when Yoshi fell into step with him.