“Twenty-four of us humans,” Flandry counted. “And the sixteen we’re leaving behind, plus the good doctor, also have appetites. I don’t know if our rations will stretch.”
“We can supplement some with native food,” Kathryn reassured him. “There’re levo compounds in certain plants and animals, same as terrestroid biochemistries involve occasional dextros. I can show you and the boys what they look like.”
“Well, I suppose we may as well scratch around for them, since we’ll be oysting so much in camp.”
“Oystin’?”
“What oysters do. Mainly sit.” Flandry ruffled his mustache. “Damn, but this is turning into a loathsome fungus! The two items I did not think to rescue would have to be scissors and a mirror.”
Kathryn laughed. “Why didn’t you speak before? They have scissors here. Clumsy, none too sharp, but you can cut hair with them. Let me be your barber.”
Her hands across his head made him dizzy. He was glad that she let the men take care of themselves.
They were all quite under her spell. He didn’t think it was merely because she was the sole woman around. They vied to do her favors and show her courtesies. He wished they would stop, but couldn’t well order it. Relationships were strained already.
He was no longer the captain to them, but the commander: his brevet rank, as opposed to his lost status of shipmaster. They cooperated efficiently, but it was inevitable that discipline relaxed, even between enlisted men and other officers. He felt he must preserve its basic forms around himself. This led to a degree of — not hostility, but cool, correct aloofness as regarded him, in distinction to the camaraderie that developed among the rest.
One night, happening to wake without showing it, he overheard a muted conversation among several. Two were declaring their intention not just to accept internment, but to join McCormac’s side if its chances looked reasonable when they got to the base. They were trying to convince their friends to do likewise. The friends declined, for the time being at any rate, but good-naturedly. That was what disturbed Flandry: that no one else was disturbed. He began regular eavesdropping. He didn’t mean to report anyone, but he did want to know where every man stood. Not that he felt any great need for moralistic justification. The snooping was fun.
That started well after the party had left Thunderstone. The three Didonians were named by Kathryn as Cave Discoverer, Harvest Fetcher, and, to human amusement, Smith. It was more than dubious if the entities thought of themselves by name. The terms were convenient designations, based on personal qualities or events of past life. The unit animals had nothing but individual signals.
Often they swapped around, to form such combinations as Iron Miner, Guardian Of North Gate, or Lightning Struck The House. Kathryn explained that this was partly for a change, partly to keep fresh the habits and memories which constituted each entity, and partly a quasi-religious rite.
“Oneness is the ideal in this culture, I’m learnin’, as ’tis in a lot of others,” she told Flandry. “They consider the whole world to be potentially a single entity. By ceremonies, mystic contemplation, hallucinogenic foods, or whatever, they try to merge with it. An everyday method is to make frequent new interconnections. The matin’ season, ’round the autumnal equinox, is their high point of the year, mainly ’cause of the ecstatic, transcendental ’speriences that then become possible.”
“Yes, I imagine a race like this has some interesting sexual variations,” Flandry said. She flushed and looked away. He didn’t know why she should react so, who had observed life as a scientist. Associations with her captivity? He thought not. She was too vital to let that cripple her long; the scars would always remain, but by now she had her merriment back. Why, then, this shyness with him?
They were following a ridge. The country belonged to another communion which, being akin to Thunderstone, had freely allowed transit. Already they had climbed above the jungle zone. Here the air was tropical by Terran standards, but wonderfully less wet, with a breeze to lave the skin and caress the hair and carry scents not unlike ginger. The ground was decked with spongy brown carpet weed, iridescent blossoms, occasional stands of arrowbrush, grenade, and lantern tree. A mass of land coral rose to the left, its red and blue the more vivid against the sky’s eternal silver-gray.
None of the Didonians were complete. One maintained heesh’s noga-ruka linkage, the other two rukas were off gathering berries, the three krippos were aloft as scouts. Separated, the animals could carry out routine tasks and recognize a need for reunion when it arose.
Besides their own ruka-wielded equipment — including spears, bows, and battleaxes — the nogas easily carried the stuff from the spaceboat. Thus liberated, the men could outpace the ambling quadrupeds. With no danger and no way to get lost hereabouts, Flandry had told them to expedite matters by helping the rukas. They were scattered across the hill.
Leaving him alone with Kathryn. He was acutely conscious of her: curve of breast and hip beneath her coverall, free-swinging stride, locks blowing free and bright next to the sun-darkened skin, strong face, great green-gold eyes, scent of warm flesh … He changed the subject at once. “Isn’t the, well, pantheistic concept natural to Didonians?”
“No more than monotheism’s natural, inevitable, in man,” Kathryn said with equal haste. “It depends on culture. Some exalt the communion itself, as an entity distinct from the rest of the world, includin’ other communions. Their rites remind me of human mobs cheerin’ an almighty State and its director. They tend to be warlike and predatory.” She pointed ahead, where mountain peaks were vaguely visible. “I’m ’fraid we’ve got to get past a society of that kind. Tis one reason why they weren’t keen on this trip in Thunderstone. Word travels, whether or not entities do. I had to remind Many Thoughts ’bout our guns.”
“People who don’t fear death make wicked opponents,” Flandry said. “However, I wouldn’t suppose a Didonian exactly enjoys losing a unit; and heesh must have the usual desire to avoid pain.”
Kathryn smiled, at ease once more. “You learn fast. Ought to be a xenologist yourself.”
He shrugged. “My business has put me in contact with various breeds. I remain convinced we humans are the weirdest of the lot; but your Didonians come close. Have you any idea how they evolved?”
“Yes, some paleontology’s been done. Nowhere near enough. Why is it we can always find money for a war and’re always pinched for everything else? Does the first cause the second?”
“I doubt that. I think people naturally prefer war.”
“Someday they’ll learn.”
“You have insufficient faith in man’s magnificent ability to ignore what history keeps yelling at him,” Flandry said. Immediately, lest her thoughts turn to Hugh McCormac, who wanted to reform the Empire: “But fossils are a less depressing subject. What about evolution on Dido?”
“Well, near’s can be told, a prolonged hot spell occurred — like millions of years long. The ancestors of the nogas fed on soft plants which drought made scarce. Tis thought they took to hangin’ ’round what trees were left, to catch leaves that ancestral rukas tore loose in the course of gatherin’ fruit. Belike they had a tickbird relationship with the proto-krippos. But trees were dyin’ off too. The krippos could spy forage a far ways off and guide the nogas there. Taggin’ ’long, the rukas got protection to boot, and repaid by strippin’ the trees.