"Sir? Oh, I see; you mean did she permit him sexual access? I cannot say that she did from direct knowledge, since you aliens have a cultural tabu on performing sexual congress in the presence of others. A professor in Machuro once explained to me that this tabu went back to you aliens' primitive times, because your practice of copulating lying down rendered you vulnerable to a spear thrust in the back.
"Miss Ritter, however, passed a night with Mr. Ratoo in her tent on the way from Amoen to the village of Kashania. I did not witness the actual intromission but, from what I know of Terran sexual customs, infer that it probably took place."
Salazar shivered, but not from the cold. "I think the sooner we move our tent and baggage away from the Kashanite community, the better for us."
"The logic of the situation compels me to agree, sir."
For a while Salazar walked in silence, making better time on the downward slopes than he had coming up. At last he said:
"I was sorry for Kashani when I heard he was pushed into Shikawa. But he only got what he asked for. And Chief Yaamo must have lied when he told me he knew naught of Latour's fate."
"If he lied, the movement of his cervical bristles would betray the fact, sir."
"But I wasn't looking at them, and I am not expert at interpreting those wiggles, anyway. Another thing, Choku. The Kashanites' indulgent attitude toward Adriana's lumbering puzzles me. I should expect Miss Ritter to oppose it, since it would cause her people much trouble. I can imagine what some of those roughnecks would do if they saw young women running around naked. What is behind it all?"
"Sir, I do not wish to accuse without due evidence.
But the chief human being of the community, Juugats, has passed on a rumor that Mr. Cantemir promised Miss Ritter a generous bribe to keep her followers from interfering."
Choku's neck bristles rippled in a way that betokened mirth. "You aliens are strange. You seem so clever, yet when you hire us human beings as servants, you forget that many comprehend some Terran tongues. You talk amongst yourselves about intimate matters, ignoring the fact that a human being overhears, as if we did not exist."
So much for the Kashanite quest for spiritual perfection, thought Salazar. "Well, let us display some of our vaunted Terran cleverness. First, I think our present location is unhealthy. We should move to another site on the edge of the nanshin belt and get on with our work."
"I think, sir, that you have made a wise decision," said Choku.
Ever since Alexis had proposed a picnic hike to Shikawa, a thought had buzzed at the back of Salazar's mind that there was something phony about that proposal. Why should she take the time and trouble to lead him to the crater when she was apparently not interested in his science and, as it proved, did not wish to fornicate again, at least not on the mountain?
With Choku's explanations, the parts of the puzzle fell into place. She would rely on her proven sexual appeal to lead him by the nose and push him into the lava, thus paying her rent for the year to Yaamo. She would also get rid of a former bedmate who, if he turned out a blabbermouth, might compromise her standing with the Kashanites.
If Salazar had been thinking with his brain instead of with his gonads, he would have caught on sooner. He thought: When Keats wrote "La Belle Dame sans Merci," he didn't know the half of it!
V – The Stump-Tailed Kusi
Salazar and Choku pitched their tent in a bay or recess on the outer or lower edge of the nanshin forest, a kilometer west of the Kashanite community. At mealtime Salazar invited Choku to eat with him. The Kook politely declined, saying that his rules of caste forbade that. He also preferred his native Kukulcanian porridge, which Terrans found as appetizing as library paste.
Salazar, now usually wearing his pistol, went about his scientific work in an orderly, systematic way, a contrast with the shyness and gaucherie that he often showed in his relations with people. First, he had to get the local kusis used to his presence. When he and Choku had arrived, the animals in the neighboring trees had scampered away with barks and whistles.
Salazar settled down and for a while ignored the local fauna, save for the constant battle against biting arthropods, analogues of Terran mosquitos and biting flies. He swatted and sprayed and coated his exposed skin with oily repellents.
Some species of Kukulcanian arthropods, hunting by smell, left Terrans alone; but many others, hunting by heat radiation, attacked them as energetically as did their Terran analogues. Salazar had learned from xenobiology that these small biters, after a meal, usually curled up and died of acute indigestion, since their systems were not adapted to Terran blood. But this was small comfort to the suffering Terran.
He assisted Choku with the chores, collected firewood, and read his books: O'Sullivan's The Trees of Sunga, Kaufmann's Fauna of the Eastern Littoral, and Yorimoto's The Pithecoidea of Kukulcan. All, he knew, were mere preliminary surveys. Enormous amounts of work had to be done before the cataloging of Kukulcanian species began to approach that prevailing on Terra. There, the known number of species ran to over two million, including tens of thousands driven to extinction by human expansion. In addition, Terran biologists estimated that there were perhaps another million not yet identified and classified.
For three days Salazar saw no sign of kusis. On the fourth, while he sat on his folding chair, his eye caught a flash of brown amid the green of the nanshins. He continued reading, pretending not to notice, but the kusi scout did not reappear.
The next day he sighted glimpses of brown among the branches. Still Salazar sat over his books as if unaware.
The day after that a couple of kusis came into plain sight in the nearest female nanshin. They moved about deliberately, plucking and eating the scarlet berries. The noisy creatures uttered barks, howls, grunts, growls, hoots, screams, and whistles.
From Terran analogies, Salazar suspected that the nanshin and the stump-tailed kusi were symbiotic. The trees furnished the kusis with food. The kusis cultivated the trees by eating the berries and defecating the undigested seeds far and wide so that the seedlings would not be overshadowed by the parent tree. Once a zuta fluttered close to the tree as if to snatch a berry; the two kusis leapt at it, barking, and it flew away.
Moving slowly, Salazar picked up his binoculars and focused. Gripping the glasses in one hand, he held his recorder close to his mouth in the other and spoke into it in a bated voice, telling the time and describing the kusis' movements.
The animals seemed monkeylike in a reptilian way. They had grasping feet on all four limbs, little round external ears, and, as the name implied, stumpy tails between one centimeter and two centimeters long. They used their handlike forefeet, each with three fingers and an opposable thumb, in quite a human way for plucking berries.
Salazar knew of other species of the Pithecoidea. Some had long tails, in some cases prehensile. Taxonomists were not yet agreed on dividing those species into families and genera. Progress was slow because Terran scientific resources on Kukulcan were minuscule compared to those back on Terra.
Then Salazar sat up and reached for his camera. A smaller kusi approached one of the two larger ones that he had been watching. Coming close, it extended a fore-limb and pulled it back in what looked like a beckoning gesture.
At first the adult ignored the gestures, but at last it took a berry, bit it in half, swallowed one half, and handed the other to the juvenile mendicant. With subdued but rising excitement, Salazar described the scene. He dropped the recorder on its lanyard and put the camera to his eye.