"Absolutely not! The last I saw of him, he was headed down slope, scratched and battered but otherwise functional."
"You look a bit scratched and battered, too. But Shiiko shall have her due, never fear!"
Alexis drew her bowie knife and rushed upon Salazar, holding the weapon out in an upward-stabbing position. The action was so unexpected that Salazar was almost caught unaware and stabbed. At the last instant he threw his rock, but between his haste and his lack of skill the missile went wild.
When the relentless woman was almost upon him, he turned, ran three steps to the apex of the point, and leapt.
He came down on the solid ground of the opposite point. Alexis pulled up with a scream of rage.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Salazar shouted.
"Fulfilling my contract with Yaamo!" she shouted back; then in Sungao: "Hatsa! Hagii! Seize that man and throw him into the crater!"
As Salazar braced himself to flee, one of the bodyguards said: "We cannot, mistress."
"What mean you, you cannot? I command!"
"We dare not slay Mr. Salazar, because he is also Sri Khushvant Sen, the holy man, who has influence with the planetary spirit Metasu. Besides, it is illegal to attack Terrans save to prevent a crime. He threatens us not at the moment."
"So I was right about your being two-faced!" said Alexis. "It was you, then, who lured a score of my Kashanites away for your silly conservationist cult! Hatsa! Hagii! He is no holy man but a Terran scientist who donned that costume and manner to thwart the Adriana Company's program. He has also disrupted my community and if not stopped will destroy it. Then I shall not be able to continue you in my service. Would not depriving you of your livelihood be a crime which you are entitled to forestall?"
"Now that you put it that way, mistress ..." said Hagii, scratching his scaly skull.
"Then seize Salazar!"
Hatsa said: "Mistress, you have raised a deep moral problem for us. We must go a little away to reason it out before we can decide whether to obey you."
Both Kooks turned their backs and faded into the mist. Alexis screamed and stamped her foot.
Salazar had a flash of superstitious fancy. What if at that instant some genius loci caused the point of rock to collapse beneath Alexis, dropping her into the lava? There would be a brief flare as her clothing flamed and then, no more Alexis. It would make a fine, dramatic end to her career.
Nothing of the sort happened. Alexis looked around and called: "Hagii! Hatsa! Come back! You can hold him whilst I slay him!" She screamed the bodyguards' names again, without response.
"I'll get you yet!" she shouted at Salazar. She started to run around the embayment, holding her knife at the ready. Salazar ran along the circumference of Shikawa, keeping a comfortable lead on Alexis, who was too plump to be a good runner.
She tripped and fell so that the knife skittered over the rock. At her yell of pain and dismay, Salazar turned back. With three long bounds he reached the knife.
Alexis sat up, nursing a bleeding knee. Tears streamed down her soot-smeared face. "What are you going to do, Kirk? Kill me? Rape me?"
Salazar allowed himself a grin as he picked up the knife. "Neither, my dear. But I'll keep this; you're not to be trusted with weapons."
"Oh, fuck you!" she spat, climbing painfully to her feet. "I'll get even with you yet. Hey, here come my Kooks back." She dropped into Sungao. "What have you twain decided?"
"Mistress," said one, "Hagii and I have concluded that your arguments are sound enough to overbear those against them. So command us and we shall obey."
"Then grab that man!"
Salazar wondered for a flash if he could outrun the Kooks over the tumbled lava in the dark, trusting to their poor night vision to give them as many falls as he would probably incur. He was still limping from the bash he had given his knee.
But the two bodyguards were already upon him with clawed hands outspread. Salazar gripped Alexis's knife and aimed an underhand thrust at the nearer Kook, a long, upward-sweeping lunge that would have disemboweled a Terran opponent. But Kooks' reflexes were faster than men's. Before Salazar's thrust sank home, a scaly hand gripped his wrist and stopped his attack. The other Kook seized his other arm, while the first assailant twisted the knife out of Salazar's grip. The two then dragged him toward the edge of the crater. Alexis cried:
"Good-bye, Kirk! No hard feelings!"
Stupid, stupid, he thought, for not starting to run as soon as he had picked up the knife! He had had a perfectly good chance to escape and had muffed it. Why? Because of curiosity to see how the Kooks would decide, because of his intellectual's weakness for reasoning everything out instead of acting instantly by reflex, and because of masculine resentment at being chivied about the country. He hoped that death in the lava would be quick.
Two strides more brought Salazar and his captors to the rim. Instead of throwing him over the edge forthwith, the Kooks halted. One asked:
"Mistress, which is the correct way to perform this act? With the victim facing the crater or away from it?"
"It matters not," she said. "Go ahead, throw him!"
"Hold!" said another Kookish voice. "Put the honorable Sarasara back on his feet forthwith and release him or you will be shot!"
Choku was standing over the Kooks' two rifles, which they had laid down to seize Salazar. He cradled Salazar's rifle and aimed at Hagii and Hatsa, swinging his muzzle toward Alexis to include her in the threat. In his free hand he held a lantern.
"What's all this?" said a deep, powerful voice in English. "Whatever it is, stop it at once!"
The heads of Salazar, Alexis, and the three Kooks swung to peer into the firelit murk. Out of the mist came a litter made of lengths of bamboolike cane, like that wherein Alexis's Kooks had carried Salazar from Amoen to Kashania thirty-odd days before. Two Kooks bore this litter, one fore and one aft. They halted and put down the carrying chair. Out climbed die bloated body of the Reverend Valentine Dumfries, holding a lantern.
Choku spoke in Sungao: "Sir, this Terran woman and her helpers—"
Dumfries waved a hand. "I don't understand a word. Can you speak English or at least some Terran tongue?"
"A ritter," said Choku. "Zis woman and her Kooks were about to srow Sarasara in crater. He is my boss, so I muss protec' him."
"Is this true, Mr. Salazar?" said Dumfries. He rolled ponderously toward the other group, helping himself along with his crutch-headed walking stick.
"You bet it's true, Reverend." Walking toward Choku, Salazar picked up the two rifles laid down by Alexis's Kooks. He exchanged one with Choku for his own firearm, since each weapon had a stock adapted to its owner's species.
"What about this other?" asked Choku.
"Best gotten rid of," said Salazar. Staying well clear of Alexis and her Kooks, he walked back to the brink and tossed the extra rifle over the edge. There was a brief, sharp crackle as the cartridges in the magazine exploded.
"Ha!" cried one of Alexis's Kooks. "That was my gun! You must pay me for it!"
"So sue me!" said Salazar. "After you tried to give me a bath in lava, I do not think your magistrates will pay you much heed."
"But what on Earth," asked Dumfries, "or on Kukulcan, for that matter, possessed Miss Ritter to attempt so foul a deed?"
"Don't believe a word he says!" cried Alexis. "He was trying to push me into Shikawa, and my Kooks saved me."
"Well, Mr. Salazar?" asked Dumfries.
"She's got it backward, Reverend. She has a deal with Chief Yaamo to sacrifice one human being a year by tossing him into Shikawa to propitiate the volcano spirit. If you don't believe me, ask Choku here."