Like some Terran anthropoid apes, the kusis had evolved food-sharing behavior! Some xenanthropologists deemed this instinct a necessary precondition for the evolution of an intelligent, civilized species.
Just as Salazar was getting his long-distance lens adjusted, the kusis burst into barks. Instantly all three, with a chorus of hoots and whistles, leapt into other trees and disappeared.
Damn! thought Salazar. He knew that, to many Terran wild animals, a staring eye was viewed as a threat or a challenge. To such a beast, the lenses of cameras and other optical instruments presented an especially menacing threat. Salazar had hoped that he was far enough from the trees for the animals not to notice the camera, but their eyesight must have been keener than he thought.
It must have been pure luck that they had not noticed his binoculars aimed toward them; when he had dropped the glasses and picked up the camera, the motion had attracted their attention.
The next day there was no sign of kusis, but Salazar had other troubles to occupy him. He awoke to find the tent swarming with a Kukulcanian arthropod somewhat like a Terran cricket, but non-jumping. They were attacking the bag in which the food supply was tied up, purposefully gnawing at the rope securing it.
Salazar yelled for Choku, who had been standing watch outside. They hunted frantically through their baggage, swatting insectoids that crawled up their legs. Choku found the spray can. Salazar sprayed until the tent was littered with dead and dying arthropods, some feebly kicking on their backs.
"Did you pack not a broom with your supplies, honorable boss?" asked Choku.
"Nay; meseemed one would not be needed." Salazar squatted and began picking up insectoid corpses, which in death emitted a horrible smell. There were hundreds.
"Permit me to expedite matters, sir," said Choku. "Take your ease whilst I obtain the needed instrument."
The Kook left the tent and soon returned with a tree branch trimmed to a broomlike shape. He began sweeping corpses out. In a few minutes the tent was clear save for a few in odd corners. Salazar collected those by hand.
On the second day after the camera incident, Salazar caught sight of more kusis in the nanshin trees. Soon the animals became bolder, showing themselves openly and ignoring Salazar's camera and binoculars. Sometimes a couple of young would come down and chase each other round and round the grassoid between Salazar's camp and the nanshins.
Between swats at biting arthropods, Salazar continued dictating notes on the beasts' behavior. He observed the begging of the young and the pair-bonding of the older kusis. One day the nearest pair appeared with the female in heat, betokened by a conspicuous genital swelling. After the pair had for some time nuzzled each other and squeaked, the female climbed down to the ground and crouched with her rump raised.
The male of the pair, whom Salazar identified by a patch of darker scales on his neck, climbed down after her. So did three other males, who appeared out of nowhere. One moved towards the female, but the male— Salazar thought of him as her mate, though he knew that assessment was premature—bared his teeth and chattered at the interloper. The strange male retreated to a prudent distance. Another of the trio made a similar approach and was likewise driven back.
The "mate" then went up to the female from behind, grasped her hips, and mounted. After a dozen thrusts he gave a shriek and withdrew. The female remained in her crouch.
One of three other males approached not the female but the dominant male. The newcomer made the same begging gesture that Salazar had seen the young do for food. The mate gave a chirp, and the newcomer hopped over to the female and copulated as the mate had done.
Another of the trio then repeated the whole performance. But when the third, who up to then had not even approached the female, tried the same begging gesture, the mate barked and rushed at him with bared teeth. The lorn lover fled away into the trees.
Poor little bastard, thought Salazar. I know just how he feels, always odd man out with the other sex. When I get back to Henderson, I must make up my mind about Calpurnia. Maybe we should get engaged.
The kusis' pair-bonding, he thought, must have been less exclusive than that which he had read about among Terran gibbons, though developed beyond that of the Terran gorilla and chimpanzee. The relationship he had witnessed had parallels in some primitive Terran tribes—at least, it had before all the erstwhile primitives had donned pants and shirts and taken up computers and golf. With some, monogamy had been the rule, but a husband might grant a highly esteemed friend or kinsman the privilege of copulation with his wife. What the wives thought of it was not reported by any of the anthropologists whose works Salazar had read.
Salazar dug a mitta nut out of its bag. He laid the nut on the grassoid, halfway from his tent to the nearest nanshin trees, and waited.
An hour after Salazar had set out his bait, a young male kusi appeared at the base of the nearest nanshin. Attracted by the smell, it made little tentative rushes this way and that. Then it zeroed in on the nut. It hopped across the grassoid for several meters but halted short of its goal, looking warily at Salazar on his camp chair. Its courage failed, and it ran back to the tree and climbed out of sight.
Several more kusis made similar approaches during the day. Toward dusk, as Salazar was helping Choku prepare dinner and not watching the kusis, one bold fellow raced out, grabbed the nut, and ran back into the trees. Salazar looked around in time to see the animal disappear.
After two more days the kusis, drawn by the smell of mitta nuts, became tame enough for Salazar to walk within a couple of meters of them before they fled. Now he could attack the serious question: How did the kusis neutralize the poison of the venom trees? He had heard that the best antidote, if one got a drop on one's skin, was sodium acid carbonate, but the kusis certainly had no baking soda.
The animals' growing tolerance of Salazar allowed him to approach their trees within two or three meters to watch. When they moved about, barking, hooting, and whistling, the needles of the nanshins curled away from them. Salazar suspected that the whistling, one of the kusis' wide repertory of sounds, caused this reaction.
But the true explanation might still be a chemical one. To make sure of his doctorate, he ought to eliminate possibilities other than the correct one.
He did not take seriously Alexis's belief that the kusis were in telepathic communication with the trees. If all other explanations failed, he might have to investigate that one. It would be a daunting task.
Salazar's apparatus included a phonometer and an odorometer. The phonometer measured and recorded the pitch and intensity of sounds all the way from the subaudible frequencies used by elephants in communicating, to the ultrasound frequencies used in surgery and dentistry, and to even higher than the clicks and squeaks employed by bats for echolocation. Thus it recorded sounds both above and below the frequencies audible to the human ear. The odorometer analyzed the smellable compounds in the air and recorded them.
Salazar waited until nightfall, when the kusis huddled in clumps on branches and slept. Then he carried the phonometer to a nearby tree and set it down at the base. He likewise set the odorometer at the base of another. He had to crawl to reach the base without touching the venom-spraying needles. Remembering what he had read of the destructiveness of Terran monkeys, he laid a couple of dead branches over each instrument.
The next day, as the kusis began to move about, one uttered a shriek, staring down at the base of the tree where Salazar had laid the odorometer. In a flash, all the kusis in sight, a dozen or so, bounded away. No more appeared for the rest of the day or for two days following. Salazar knew that he had not sufficiently hidden the instrument.