Keeping a hand near his pistol, Salazar shrugged. "Don't see how I could interfere with anybody out here in the boonies with nobody but Choku yonder."
"Well, I'm not underestimating you. You're too damned smart under that wimpy manner. So I'm giving you an order."
"Who the hell are you to order me—"
"Shut up! I'm talking. You're to fold up your tent and get the fuck out of here inside of twenty-four hours or face the consequences. Understand?"
Choku quietly emerged from the tent, carrying Salazar's rifle. The Kook did not raise the gun, and Cantemir ignored him.
"I hear you," said Salazar. "I shall have to think about it. I need at least a few days to finish my work here."
"I said twenty-four hours, and that's what I mean. Consider yourself lucky I don't order you out right this minute. I'm doing you a favor by giving you a day's notice, because you helped me through that fence when the makutos chased us. But after that you're on your own. You dreamers think you've got a right to step in and ruin a man's lawful, legitimate business just because it don't fit some woolly-minded theory, like you was a bunch of those spirits the Kooks here believe in." He paused for breath. "Okay, then, you'll be out of here and off the goddamn mountain tomorrow, or else. That's what I came to say, and I've said it. Winnow me?"
"I understand," said Salazar. "Is there anything else?"
"Hell, no." Cantemir looked around. "Haven't you killed anything yet?"
"I'm not here to hunt but to solve a scientific problem."
Cantemir snorted. "A real man would rather hunt any day. You ought to see the heads of game on the walls of my house. Don't forget, now!"
Cantemir turned and walked back down the trail. The Kook Fetutsi followed him out of sight.
Salazar gazed after the departing lumberman. "Choku, what would you do in my situation?"
"Sir, I could never be in your situation. Our institutions, at least in the civilized human nations, have arrangements for resolving such conflicts before they threaten the peace."
"I know, I know. Your governments are all bureaucratic dictatorships, under an overgrown civil service promoted by competitive examination. We tried that on Terra several times, but the system always broke down."
"Perhaps, sir, human beings are more inherently suited to our forms of government than you aliens."
"Maybe so." After a silence Salazar said: "I certainly am not fain to let that bravo chase me out with my work half-done. I suppose a 'real man,' as he is always saying, would have shot him in the back as he turned away to go down the trail, buried the body, and said nothing about the visit. I fear I am not up to that sort of—well, there is an English word, 'swashbuckling,' that fits.
"I must remember to wear this pistol; I keep forgetting. I have heard of a retired Kukulcanian philosopher who lives up on the mountain. Maybe he could make useful suggestions. He was called—damn, the name slips my mind."
"Doctor Seisen, sir?"
"That is it. Know you where on the mountain he is? Sungara is virtually a range in itself."
"Nay, sir. But if you will wait a few hours, methinks I can learn from some of Miss Ritters human attendants."
After dark, Choku returned with a crude map. "Luckily I found Juugats, who keeps up with every tiling. You see, sir, if we go west another itikron and a half, we shall come upon another passage through the nanshins. Then, if we go up slope for another half itikron, Doctor Seisen's abode should be in sight."
"Fine! I shall set out the first thing tomorrow morning. That will still give us time to pack up if we decide to cut and run. Please pack supplies for a one-day, one-man hike, with enough to eat for lunch, and supper, too, in case I am delayed in returning."
"But sir! Surely you do not wish to go to this philosopher alone! I should be with you."
"No, I shall go alone. Someone must guard the camp; if we left it vacant, the kusis would rip it to shreds and the insectoids would clean up anything left."
Choku's neck spines rippled in the equivalent of a sigh.
"If you are determined, sir. If you carry the rifle, pray leave the pistol with me."
"I will make do with the pistol."
Remembering that Seisen demanded a book as a consultation fee, Salazar looked over his library. He chose O'Sullivan's The Trees of Sunga as the volume he would miss least and sat up rereading it to get the most he could from it before giving it up.
VI – The Hermit Seisen
Beneath a brilliant morning sun, the retired philosopher's hut of fieldstone and bamboolike canes stood on the barren slope above the nanshin belt. Adjacent rose another building, from the look of which Salazar took to be a barn. Around the buildings grew a scanty cover of herbs, patches of grassoid, and a few stunted trees. The mountain breeze whistled; Kirk Salazar pulled his bush jacket out of his pack.
One of the big, predatory zutas of the heights, two meters in wingspan, swooped over the hut, veered away, and flapped off around the curve of the mountain. Noting the pattern of black spots on the pale yellow wings, Salazar automatically thought: Nycteraetus romeroi.
To one side of the hut a pair of neat, precise rectangles of cultivated ground stood out from the waste. One showed bare, turned earth; the other bore a crop of some edible Kukulcanian vegetable.
Salazar saw no signs of life outside the hut. He warily circled the structure with a hand on his pistol. He felt a little foolish, as if he were acting the part of a hero in a Terran entertainment strip dealing with one of Terra's wilder historical periods, such as the western United States in the nineteenth century. But, he told himself, he would feel even sillier if he walked into an ambush unaware.
Still finding no sign of life, Salazar stopped before the door, a rough but solid piece of homemade carpentry. When he pushed, the door creaked open. Within, a voice spoke in Feënzuo:
"Do you aliens invade each other's houses uninvited?"
"I b-beg your pardon," said Salazar, mortified and flustered.
"I am not a judge about to sentence you for an offense and so have no authority to pardon you," said the voice. "If you wish to enter, simply say so."
"May I please come in?"
"You may."
Entering, Salazar took in the scanty furnishings. The walls were lined with sagging shelves on which stood rows and rows of books. One wall bore books of the Terran codex type. On the other stood rows of Kukulcanian books: boxed, glass-fronted scrolls on a pair of spindles, with little cranks for reeling the scroll past the window. The Terran book of the codex type had only begun to be accepted by the Kooks.
More books rose in piles like stalagmites from the floor. On the far side stood an aged male Kook holding a book in his claws so that the daylight through the window illuminated it.
This Kook differed from most in that he wore eyeglasses strapped over his reptilian, turtle-beaked muzzle. Kukulcanians did not suffer the progressive presbyopia that afflicted middle-aged and elderly Terrans, but extreme age nevertheless reduced their visual acuity. Kooks were wearing spectacles when Terrans first landed on the planet, but only a handful out of a thousand used them. Salazar said: