“Good morning, sir,” she said.
“Yoshi, how long have we been working together?”
“Four years, three-and-one-half months,” she said as if she’d been calculating that very thing the moment he’d asked.
“And during those four years, three-and-one-half months, how many times do you suppose you’ve agreed to stop calling me “sir?”
She gave him a sheepish look from beneath the black silk that fell across her forehead. “Oops. Sorry, Rhys. Sometimes it just slips out. Blame it on my family—small town, Shinto-Buddhist-Baha’i values. Every time I forget to use a term of respect for an elder or a teacher, I see my aunt Mineko shaking her finger at me and saying, ‘Yoshiko, honor those to whom honor is due.’ ”
“Godwin’s an elder; you never call him ‘sir.’ ”
She glanced at him out of the corner of eyes that somehow blended contrition and impishness. “Your point being?”
“My point being that after four years—”
“And three-and-one-half months,” she added, and smiled. “I’m trying, but old habits die hard, and sometimes you’re such a curmudgeon—”
Rhys snorted. “Curmudgeon, your Aunt Mineko!” They’d come to the mess tent and he’d pulled back the waterproof cowling over the door when he heard someone shouting for him. He turned. Rick Halfax was hurrying toward them from the direction they’d just come, waving his arms.
“You aren’t going to believe this!” he panted when he reached them. “Something… I mean someone left us a pile of goodies during the night.”
It was indeed a “pile of goodies.” The jumble of rocks, flowers and conifer seed-cones had been left between a pair of tarp-covered pallets at the eastern fringe of their supply yard. The rocks formed the bottom-most layer; the Bogish “pine cones” tumbled atop those; the flowers were sprinkled over all like brown sugar on oatmeal. Some of the Tanaka site crew were standing nearby looking on with mild interest. A young woman pointed at the heap of stuff and said, “This is just the way we found it, Professor. We haven’t touched a thing.”
Rhys knelt by the knee-high mound and picked up one of the large, purplish blossoms. “Interesting,” he murmured. “All of the same variety.”
“The botany team was really interested in those,” the young woman told him and smiled. “I think the fragrance was a hit.”
Rhys nodded. “There’s a lot of money in perfume on just about any world. ”
“Mimicry?” The one word question came from Rick, who was sampling one of the rocks with a field scanner. “They’ve seen us pile stuff up like this. Maybe they’re just aping us.”
Rhys shook his head. “Possibly, but the young lady is right—these flowers are ones the botany team was particularly interested in.” He sniffed at the bloom. “Tantalizing. They collected scores of them.”
“And you think one of the native species noticed that?”
In answer, Rhys nodded at the rock in Rick’s hand. “What’ve you got there?”
“Ore-bearing. Barium…” He gestured at another, lighter-colored specimen on the ground at his feet. “Gold. Also heavily sampled by the advance team.”
Yoshi nudged a seed-cone with her toe. “Dr. Gallioni says these are a storehouse of natural antibiotics… I guess we’ve been noticed.”
“Hmmm.” Rhys was examining the spongy ground around the cache, looking for tracks. “But by whom?”
“Oh, dear God, it’s true.” Raymond Godwin stood at the corner of the nearest pallet, looking aghast at the collection of native wares. “Someone or something has actually made an overture. And I thought this was going to be a simple matter of a corporate claim. Well, which one of our lovely natives left this little offering?”
Rhys turned one of the native plants in his hands, feeling a heady wash of exhilaration. “I don’t know. Mr. Godwin, but I intend to find out.”
“I take it this means our move is canceled.”
Rhys nodded absently, already pondering his next step.
It was easy enough to talk about finding the would-be traders, harder to do. After a long night of sleepless reflection, Rhys still hadn’t decided where to begin or what he could do that he hadn’t already done to flush Bog’s sentients out of the swamp. He reviewed behaviors—leaf sipping, rock carrying, tree-house building… icon making? Any and all could be significant.
He rose the next morning, showered, dressed and literally flipped a coin. The ancient British ha’penny came up “heads,” and Rhys took his crew off to the reptile village. Three days later, he was ready to give up. Aside from building houses that possibly paid tribute to the bogdillo, the reptiles showed no sign of abstract thought.
“Perhaps,” Yoshi said the morning they moved their remote camp to the arboreal village, “we’re not going about this the right way.”
Rick Halfax snorted. “Obviously not.”
Yoshi ignored him. “I mean, maybe there’s some sort of protocol we’re missing.”
Rhys raised his tired eyes to her face. “I’m all ears.”
“Well, they brought their goods to our camp and left them where we’d be sure to find them.”
“Which is precisely what we’ve been doing. For all we know this could just be a case of mimicry.”
“Or,” Yoshi continued, “it could be a step in some sort of trading ritual. Like the Pa-Kai dances or the Garulin processionals.”
She had his attention now and he waved her on.
“We left our goods at their doors—”
“Whose doors?” Rick asked. “We left our goods at several doors.”
Yoshi nudged him aside with a preemptory flick of her fingers. “I don’t know yet, but what if they took that as the first step in the protocol? A bid to establish the trading ground, let’s say. To them, what we’re saying is, ‘We elect your village to be the trading ground.’ So they take the next step; they elect our ‘village.’ Now we’ve put the ball back in their bailiwick. But maybe that’s not the polite thing to do, maybe we’re supposed to accept their offer to let us host the trading.”
“So you’re suggesting we lay our goods out where we picked theirs up—in the middle of the supply dump?”
Yoshi nodded. “We make a gesture of accepting the goods they brought and place our own on the exact spot where they were delivered.”
Rhys glanced at Rick, whose nose was buried in his coffee mug. “What do you think, Roddy?”
The other man shrugged. “I say anything’s worth a try. If we can’t prove any of the Bogies are sentient, this planet is going to become a big, soupy rock quarry.” He leaned closer to Rhys across the table and lowered his voice. “I’ve seen the geological reports Godwin’s been salivating over. There are so many rare-elsewhere minerals in the so-called ‘crust’ of this mudball that there’s virtually no place you can dig that you won’t unearth something marketable. And if you don’t think Godwin would cheerfully tear up every tree, siphon off every drop of standing water and dispossess every native lifeform to get it—”
“Danetta would never allow that,” Rhys protested. “And she’s in the driver’s seat at Tanaka.”
Rick gave him a wry glance. “Come on, professor. You know big business better than that. Even Danetta Price has to listen to the board of directors. And the board of directors listens to the shareholders and a lot of shareholders listen to the siren song of the almighty credit.”
“You’re right,” Rhys admitted, guiltily recalling that they, too, worked for Tanaka. “And Godwin’s been singing that song since we met him. He has a vested interest in our failure because our success would mean a substantial investment of time. And Tanaka Corp has traditionally favored investing financial resources over investing time. Whatever we determine about the lifeforms on Bog, we’ve got to be damn certain.”