The song was mercifully short. At its close, Alexis beckoned Salazar. As he climbed from his litter, she cried:
"My faithful ones, I present Doctor Salazar, who comes among us as a visitor, studying our mountain with the methods of Terran science. While here, he shall be treated with kindness and hospitality, thus illuminating the path to virtue and salvation before him, that he may be persuaded to tread it in his turn."
Salazar suppressed an urge to blurt out: "Hey, but I'm not a doctor yet!" Common sense asserted itself, and he merely bowed to the throng. One of Alexis's bodyguards touched his arm, saying in Sungao:
"Pray step hither, sir, and I will show you where to put up your tent."
As he followed the Kook, with the laden Choku trailing, Salazar saw Alexis march with regal dignity through the parting mass of Kashanites to the largest cabin, on the farther side of the circle.
Salazar dined at one of the tables in the circle with a squad of Kashanites. He wryly noted that the sight of a lot of naked women all at once ceased to stimulate him sexually after the first quarter hour. Alexis, he thought, was on the right track in blaming the Judeo-Christian nudity tabu for the sexual excitability of males of those persuasions at a glimpse of those parts of the female body normally kept covered.
He uneasily observed that whereas the diners at the other tables chattered and gossiped, those at his were relatively quiet, as if his presence inhibited them. One was a small boy, who said loudly to a fat woman beside him:
"Mama, who is the man with those funny clothes on?"
"Shh, Nelson! He is our distinguished visitor."
"Well, I don't like our stinkish visitor. Why does he wear those funny things all over?"
Salazar was not long on repartee, but embarrassment forced it upon him. He spoke emphatically: "To give little boys like you something to talk about!"
The boy subsided for a minute but then asked his mother in a stage whisper: "Is he Shiiko's next husband?"
"Shh! We don't talk about things like that in front of strangers."
Salazar quickly finished and excused himself. Back at his tent he found Choku arranging his belongings inside. Kooks were neat to a degree that drove some of the more disorderly Terrans crazy.
"Honorable Sarasara," said Choku, "I have a message from the Supreme Choraga. If you will be at the door of her temple—"
"What temple?"
"The big house where she lives; that is what her servants call it. If you will be there at six o'clock by your Terran system, she will escort you up the mountain."
The news gave Salazar a moment of puzzlement; such an expedition would take a good part of a day, and why should she, unasked, offer to spend it thus with him? Perhaps she wanted more sex and figured that she could get it unbeknown to her followers up on the mountain.
"Fine," he said. "Please see that I am up in time."
"I will rouse you in ample time, honorable boss."
Salazar's mind, which he had kept off topic A for a whole hour, rushed back to the contemplation of Alexis's curves. Although he told himself that he should not be foolish, that such fancies were but tickets to trouble, he still did not sleep well.
At a quarter to six Salazar marched up to the front door of Alexis's house, a canvas pack on his back. He munched a snack from his emergency food supplies.
Choku had stepped out to boil water for acha. Salazar thought that Choku meant to accompany the safari to the crater. But if a chance for lovemaking arose along the way, Salazar did not wish his assistant present. Without awaiting his acha, he slipped out and strode briskly towards the circle of cabins.
The door of the larger cabin swung open; there stood Alexis in a gauzy gown like that of the night before.
"On time, I see," she said. "Good! This way, Kirk!"
She led him down the hall. As she went, she picked up a little bundle with a strap to retain it. Out the back door, she set a brisk pace along the trail leading up the long slope from Kashania.
"I can carry that bundle as well as my pack," said Salazar.
"Nonsense! I'm strong, too, never fear!"
"You—certainly—are," said Salazar, beginning to pant a little. He wondered that one so efficient and matter-of-fact as Alexis should set out in a costume so ludicrously unsuited to mountaineering.
The community fell away behind them, shrinking as they climbed until the intervening trees obscured it. When the trail leveled off for a stretch, so that Salazar had breath left for speech, he said:
"What was that song you led the congregation in last night? I know several Terran languages, but I couldn't get a word."
She snickered. "That was the 'Faerda be-Shiko khahim raeft.' The language is Farsi."
"The language is what?"
"Farsi; Persian to you. The title means 'We go to Shiiko tomorrow'."
"Does your community speak Farsi? Those I heard all used English, except for a couple who spoke Russian."
"Not at all; they just learn the sounds by rote. I know a little but don't really speak it. You see, Rostam Kashani was an Iranian. He composed the song as the official hymn of the movement, and I haven't dared to try to change it—yet."
"What happened to him?"
"He named me his successor and a little later decided to 'go to Shiiko'—in other words, to dive into the crater. I begged him not to, but he was determined. So I've struggled along with my position as best I could."
"Do you, a Terran, really believe Shiiko is the volcano spirit, to be propitiated?"
She smiled grimly, and her reply showed a flash of steel. "If I didn't, do you think I'd be fool enough to admit it? If some scoffer made a scornful remark in the community, I'd need only to give my zealots a sign, and they would tear the unbeliever to pieces, never fear."
"I'd better keep my mouth shut around there," said Salazar.
The trail became steep again, so for a while they hiked in silence. When it leveled off, Salazar said:
"My maps show the zone of nanshin trees solidly encircling the mountain between certain altitudes. How can we get through without being stung?"
"The growth is not so solid as that. The trees grow in clumps, or forests I guess you'd call them. We're going through one of the gaps. There are some nanshins now." She pointed.
Salazar looked. The nearest nanshins looked somewhat like Terran longleaf pines. He knew the nearest tree for a female from its crimson berries. The fruits and berries that Kukulcanian plants had evolved as a way of spreading their seeds around widely provided a striking example of evolution parallel to that on Terra.
"I saw a few in the woods lower down," said Salazar, "but I wasn't sure of the species." He glanced at Alexis, who had opened her bundle and was taking out a work shirt and trousers. She shed the gauzy gown with Kashanite indifference to nudity.
"The trail gets rougher," she said, carefully folding the sacerdotal garment. She glanced at Salazar, whose vision was fixed upon her. "From the gleam in your eye, I think you're hoping for a quick one, right here. Forget it, boy! I know better than to fish off the company pier."
At the word "boy," the bull elephant gave an unexpected trumpet. "Damn it, Alexis!" roared Salazar. "If you don't want to be screwed, don't waggle your pretty personal parts at me!"
"You're just a damned Judeo-Christian mundane with those barbarian tabus, so you get horny at a glimpse of a tit—"
"Just a normal male. You make it hard for me to stand up with my pants on." Salazar's hormones raged like a forest fire. His blood pounded, his breath came short, and there was a haze before his eyes. His tongue clung to his palate.