"Oh, no; they screw the year round, like Terrans. Don't you as a journalist know about these matters?"
"Only a little. The Times has a man for native relations, Phil Reiner. All my work has been with human beings. Hey, Keith, look!"
Salazar turned. A being had appeared on the far side of the field: a Kook mounted on a juten, a creature that resembled something between a small bipedal dinosaur and a featherless ostrich. Its coppery scales reflected the sun; its large head, on a thick neck, ended in a huge hooked beak. The Kook bore a slender lance, while the holster of a bulky pistol hung from his saddle.
Salazar took out his pistol and checked the magazine, muttering: "Damn, I should have kept those three I hired for the Henderson trip! That's a Chosha, a nomad, and we need more fire power ..."
As he spoke, the newcomer wheeled his mount and leisurely jounced away to the dusty-green forest. Salazar growled: "I'm stupid. I should have brought my rifle."
"Wouldn't your pistol outrange those flintlock things?"
"Yep; but their big bullets can still kill at a hundred meters."
"If we had a zapper, we could mow them down."
"Sure, but the army won't let ray weapons out of its armories. This may foreshadow something serious; rumors are afloat that the nomads are preparing an attack on the Shongosi Chieftainship, which includes our site."
"What would happen?"
Salazar shrugged. "Couldn't predict. If the Choshas overran Shongosi, they'd be up against the Empire of Feënzun, and I don't think Empress Gariko would tolerate that. So we'd better move along, if we don't want to get caught in a Kookish war." Salazar paused. "Since there's no help for it, we shall have to open the first test pit ourselves. Will you lend a hand?"
"Sure," said Kara. "But why can't Kono and Uwangi man the shovels?"
"They were hired as camp workers, and it would be easier to pick up Mount Nezumi than to get a Kook to do a job he's not contracted for."
"Okay, then; but I want to see this Intromission Day ceremony."
"You won't get an erotic lack out of it, unless you're like a man I knew who got horny from watching an amoeba divide itself under the microscope."
"You're evil-minded, Keith! It's my job as a writer."
"Not evil, but not an amoeba, either. Besides, I've got to make the most of every minute on the dig, before the money runs out or the Choshas invade."
"Now look here, Keith! If I put in two days' work on your dig—you know I'm no weakling—that would make up the time you'd lose by taking one day off. If you won't—well, I'll go alone."
"You can't do that! You don't speak Shongo, and all sorts of things could happen."
Eyes alight with animation, Marcel Frappot spoke up: "Keith, why do you not take her? We will start your test pits and set up the screens. We know how to sort and bag the finds."
"Go ahead!" echoed Galina Bartch.
"I shall keep meticulous records," added Ito Kurita primly.
"If we strike a significant feature," said Frappot, "we shall leave it untouched until you return."
Salazar thought glumly: Macel, the romantic, would like to engineer a reunion. Well, I suppose one day without me won't be fatal to the project.
"Okay," he said at last. "I'D let you kids run the dig, provided you don't go below ten centimeters on any new pits. Kara, please hold the tape. While the young people finish here, I'll mark out a few test pits."
II – THE FESTIVAL
Keith Salazar and Kara Sheffield walked back to one of the five-meter squares the assistants had staked out along the side of the site toward the camp. Salazar blew his whistle. Then he laid a compass on the ground and, with Kara's help, marked off a one-by-two-meter rectangle, with its long axis north and south, and demarcated the area by stakes and strings.
By the time they had finished this task, Kono and Uwangi had answered the summons. Kono, his scales alight with a pattern of emerald crosses, shouldered an armload of timbers and a screen of coarse wire netting. Uwangi, gay in scarlet circles, carried shovels, buckets, and other implements. Either load could scarcely have been managed by a large, strong human being; but the Kooks bore them in their long, stringy arms without apparent effort.
Under Salazar's direction, Kono spread a tarpaulin beside the marked-off rectangle. Uwangi began assembling the timbers into a frame, which Salazar secured with nuts and bolts.
"It's one thing we can do better than the Kooks," Salazar remarked. "With only three fingers and a thumb, and claws instead of nails, they're not so handy with nuts and bolts."
When fully assembled, the framework supported the screen horizontally over the tarpaulin. The screen itself hung from four short chains hooked to eyebolts on the framework, so that it could be swung through an arc.
Salazar dismissed the Kooks and picked up an edger. He tested its semicircular blade with his thumb, then set the edge against the ground just inside the bordering strings. Planting his foot on the flange of the edger, he applied his weight and sliced into the olive-green turf. Then he moved the edger and repeated the action.
"Let me try that!" said Kara.
Salazar handed her the edger; but when she put her foot on it, she proved too light to drive it through the root-tangled turf. "At least," remarked Salazar dryly as he took back the tool, "you haven't put on weight."
"What did you think?" she retorted acidly. "That grieving over my single state, I'd gorge until I swelled like a balloon?"
"No, of course not—"
"After all, I might want to catch another husband some day."
"Well—all—of course, if ..."
"If I gained a kilo, all I'd have to do is to pedal out here to sweat it off."
With a grunt, Salazar dug in the edger. "Be glad to have you, any old time."
She smiled warily. "If by 'have' you mean you would put me up, I'll be glad to come whenever my job demands it."
"Now who's evil-minded?" said Salazar with a grin.
When the rectangle had been outlined by cuts, they spent the rest of the day grubbing up vegetation and piling it on the tarpaulin. The three assistants finished their survey and started to clear another test pit. At quitting time, Kara stretched and yawned.
"I'll have some mighty stiff muscles," she said, "But I won't have any problems sleeping tonight."
Kara and Salazar exchanged a pregnant glance. He said: "At least not if—" He bit off the half-formed double-entendre when he noticed three pairs of youthful eyeballs swiveling in his direction. The kids, he thought, are eaten with curiosity about our relationship. Let 'em guess! He resolved thenceforth to handle his guest with reticent courtesy, nothing more. That seemed to be her desire anyway.
The following day saw the clearing of more test pits. In the afternoon, Kara said: "Keith, couldn't you do a little actual digging, to help me with my article?"
"Guess so, if we don't go below the surface layer." Salazar raised his voice: "Hey, kids! Will you come here, please?" He turned back. "We divide the preliminary excavation into arbitrary ten-centimeter strata, called from the top down: Surface, A, B, C, and so on. Ito, Marcel, take shovels. Galina, show Miss Sheffield how to work the screen. I'll do the bagging."
Kurita and Frappot began to fill a bucket with freshly-dug earth, which Kurita dumped on the screen. Galina Bartch vigorously rocked the screen, so that brown soil cascaded through the meshes. Presently there were only stones, lumps, and clods spread out across the screen. Galina stirred these with her gloved hands, crushing the clods, until all that remained unsieved was a mass of pebbles and fragments.
"What did we get?" asked Salazar.
Galina held up a piece of rust-red brick. "Shongo work?"