The Venom Trees of Sunga

VII – The Sungecho Library

Two days later Salazar was testing his whistles and taping the sounds and actions of the kusis. The animals now ignored him save occasionally to beg for mittas. He was working at the edge of the nanshin forest, dictating into his recorder, when a new sound brought him about. From around the curve of the mountain came the chug of a Kukulcanian steam engine. Salazar called:

"O Choku!"

"Aye, sir?"

"Will you please go see what is making that noise?" Salazar pointed.

"Aye, aye, sir!" Choku took off at a trot.

A half hour later Choku reported: "It is Mr. Cantemir's people, sir. They have widened the trail and brought up a big machine, preparing to cut the nanshins."

"Is Cantemir bossing them? I should expect him to be still laid up from the nanshin venom."

"I did not see Mr. Cantemir, sir. Mr. Mahasingh seems, to have taken command."

"I had better look into this. Choku, get the rifle— mine, not Cantemir's cannon."

They set out eastward. Less than a kilometer away, Salazar sighted a huge, smoke-belching tractor combine with a power saw mounted on a boom in front. A couple of the Adriana Company's lumberjacks ran the machine, while others, in long hooded slickers and goggles, prepared to haul away logs with the help of several kyuumeis.

The saw shrieked, and a nanshin crashed down. Lumberjacks with hoods fastened close waded into the brush and began to trim the limbs from the trunk with axes. Salazar thought that with Terran power saws and other tree-harvesting machinery he had read about, they could have done the whole job in a fraction of the time; but such devices were impractical on a technologically backward planet.

Salazar sighted a man who stood out from the rest, mounted on a juten. This man directed operations. He seemed very tall, not wearing a slicker, and had a lavender scarf wound around his head. As Salazar approached, he saw that the man was very dark of skin, with a curly black beard reaching halfway down his chest. Salazar tilted back his head to say:

"Mr. Mahasingh?"

"I am he," rumbled the man in a deep bass, looking down with large, liquid brown eyes. "And you, I think, are that Mr. Salazar, the young scientist who gave Mr. Cantemir grief."

"Served him right for trying to kill me. How is he?"

"He was recovering well from the nanshin stings under the care of his Kook helper and was expected to suffer nothing worse than pockmarks. But then something went wrong, and he sustained a most unfortunate injury."

"What happened? Break a leg?"

"Please, Mr. Salazar, the nature of the injury is one I should be embarrassed to discuss. In any case, I shall send him down the line to Doctor Deyssel."

"And you're going ahead with clear-cutting?"

"As you see."

Salazar thought that possibly this man might be more open to an appeal to principles than would a tough opportunist like Cantemir. "Are you aware of the damage your project will do to the whole environmental area, destroying the local biota?"

"I know what opponents of our project say. But the decision is for the directors of the Adriana Company, not for me."

"Doesn't your conscience bother you?"

"It might, save that when one works among Europeans—"

"Hold it!" Salazar broke in. "I'm no European. I was born on Kukulcan, as was my mother; my father was a native of the United States of America, on Terra."

Mahasingh waved the objection away with a smile. "With persons of my ethnic background, 'European' means anyone of the pale-skinned branch of the Cauca-soid race. I belong to the dark-skinned branch, as do Iranians and Arabs. To continue, when one works among Europeans, one must to some extent follow their ways.

"The question did bother me for a time. But I prayed to Shiv, and the god instructed me to take Arjuna's advice. Arjuna advised Krishna, when Krishna found himself playing the role of a warrior, to be the best warrior he could. Likewise, since the cosmic wheel has placed me in the role of lumber-camp foreman, I should try to be the best lumber-camp foreman I could. So I shall strive to obey that counsel." Mahasingh turned his head. "Ah, our talented neighbor, Miss Ritter, has come to investigate the noise. Good morning, Supreme Choraga!"

"Hello. Hello, Kirk," said Alexis Ritter. She wore rough work clothes, as she had in the climb to the crater. "I see what you're up to. Kirk, go away! I have something private to discuss with Dhan."

"Okay, your ineffable Highness," growled Salazar. He walked to where Choku stood waiting and whispered: "Lag behind and hear what you can." Then Salazar strolled away toward his own camp.

He had nearly reached the tent when Choku caught up with him. "Honorable boss! As you suspected, they talked freely within my hearing, as if I could not understand English. Miss Ritter asked whether Mr. Mahasingh would carry out Mr. Cantemir's offer to pay her money at the end of the operation if she kept her people from interfering. Mr. Mahasingh replied that he knew naught of any such agreement and would certainly not pay on. his own initiative out of company funds. If she had a complaint against the company, she should take it up with their higher officers.

"As you know, sir, Miss Ritter is a Terran of what you aliens term a fiery temper. She eloquently cursed Mr. Mahasingh and might have physically assaulted him, despite his great size, had not Mr. Mahasingh been out of reach up on his juten. As it was, she threatened him with dire consequences ere walking off."

Salazar could not help a sly grin. "Lunchtime!"

In the afternoon the sky clouded over. The shriek of the saw from the Adriana Company's timber harvester seemed to disturb the kusis, for they all disappeared from Salazar's neighborhood. After watching for an hour in vain, Salazar gave up and decided to write up his notes.

He was sitting in his camp chair, swatting arthropods and working on a sheaf of papers, when sounds from the lumbering operation drew his attention. The shriek of the saw fell silent, and there were human mob sounds, with yells and curses.

"O Choku!" he called. "I must see this! Come on and fetch the rifle!"

He set out at a jog towards the sounds. Soon they came in sight of the timber harvester. A mob of men, naked but for sandals, and a few women similarly clad were attacking Mahasingh's lumberjacks with crude clubs and cudgels cut from saplings and branches. The lumberjacks fought back with axes and brush knives. One lumberjack lay on the ground, moving slightly, while a couple of wounded cultists hobbled away from the battlefield.

Each lumberjack was assailed by one or more naked cultists, threatening him with their clubs but not daring to get within reach of his steel. Although the cultists outnumbered the lumberjacks, the disparity in weapons resulted in a standoff, neither party yet doing much more than superficial harm to the other.

Then came Mahasingh's deep voice, bellowing orders. The foreman appeared on the trail from the lumber camp, mounted on his juten and waving a pistol. Behind him came the rest of the lumber crew, brandishing tools from axes and shovels down to wrenches.

The pistol banged twice, and a Kashanite screamed and fell. As the lumberjacks charged, the other Kashanites fled with howls of terror. They bolted into the nearest woods, crashing through the brush, and soon all had vanished save the one shot. Salazar heard a lumberjack say:

"He's dead, all right."

Mahasingh commanded: "Carry him back to the camp. I shall send a message to Miss Ritter asking if she wishes us to bury him or to send someone to take him back to their village."

"I think not that we should be welcome here," said Salazar. "Let us return to our own camp."

When Choku was rustling up dinner, the Kook asked: "What propose you to do now, sir?"

"I think I must go back to Sungecho. I want to try out an idea that Miss Dikranian suggested."

Choku's neck spines wriggled in a pleased way. "I shall be glad to see civilization—of a sort—again."

"I am sorry, but you cannot come. Someone must stay to guard the tent and my materials. You know what the kusis might do if given a chance."

Choku's bristles signaled a sigh. "Very well, sir. I believe the next express runs the day after tomorrow."

The rising sun was thrusting golden lances through the surrounding trees when Salazar, patting a yawn, walked along the platform of the Amoen station. Up ahead, the locomotive gave rhythmic sighs and the firekook shoveled. On the southbound trip of the Unriu Express, the soft-fare car, tolerable by Terrans, was directly behind the locomotive. The railroadkooks had reversed the locomotive on the Y track north of the station but saw no reason to reverse the entire train.

Salazar flashed his ticket at Conductor Zuiha and climbed into the car with the roof. He had just made himself comfortable when sounds of altercation led him to look out. On the platform stood two Kooks bearing a stretcher with folding legs. On the stretcher lay a bulky form.

Apart from this trio, the female Kook was arguing with Zuiha. Salazar could not make out the symbols painted on the female's scales with naked eyes, but his binoculars identified her as Cantemir's attendant, Fetutsi. He guessed that the swaddled figure on the stretcher was George Cantemir.

At last the conductor gave in and waved the group aboard. The two Kooks set down the stretcher in the aisle at the forward end of the car. Then they left the soft-fare car and climbed on the next flatcar, where other Kooks had gathered. Fetutsi said in Sungao:

"Good morning, Mr. Sarasara. May you enjoy robust health!"

"Hail, Fetutsi," said Salazar. "May you stay healthy also. I hear that your boss has had some sort of accident."

A growl from beneath the blankets answered: "You're goddamn right I came down with an accident! If Doc Deyssel can't fix it, I may have to go back to the mainland. They've got a couple of decent plastic surgeons in Harrison. You okay, Kirk?"

"I guess so. What happened to you, George?"

Cantemir peeled back the blanket from his face, which had lost its beard. His round, ruddy visage now bore a host of large red spots like carbuncles. "Goddamned if I'll tell you! Nothing personal, understand, but it's the kind of thing you don't care to talk about."

"Okay," said Salazar, pulling out a book.

No more Terrans appeared. Zuiha blew his whistle and beat his gong, and the engineer tooted. The locomotive sent up a cumulus of smoke and vapor, and the wheels began to turn. The Unriu Express clanked and rattled out of the station. On the first of the flatcars after the soft-fare car, the Kook passengers stood clutching the rail or sat on the bare planks. The remaining flatcar was piled with boxes and bundles beneath a tarpaulin.

Salazar found that the noise of the train made it hard to concentrate on the difference between Ulmoides syngata and Ulmoides styrax in O'Sullivan's Trees of Sunga. When the grade ascended, the roar of the nearby locomotive drowned out the other sounds. When it ran downhill, the conductor and his trainkooks wound the wheels controlling the hand brakes, with a rattle of chains and a screech of brake shoes. Now and then coal smoke billowed into the car, making Salazar cough and wipe his eyes. Up forward, Fetutsi tenderly succored Cantemir.

When a section of straight track with a slight downgrade allowed the noise to quiet, Salazar was surprised to hear a human sniffle. He glanced forward. Sure enough, tears were rolling down Cantemir's spotted face. Forgetting for a moment that Cantemir had tried to murder him, Salazar called:

"Are you all right, George?"

"Oh, sure," groaned Cantemir. "Kirk, tell me just one goddamn thing. How did you frog around in the nanshins without getting holes in you the way I did?"

Salazar grinned and moved to Cantemir's end of the car. He pulled his reed whistle out from beneath his shirt and blew a shrill blast.

"Huh?" said Cantemir. "What'd you do?"

"Didn't you hear?"

"Naw, not a goddamn thing."

"You see, this is a whistle with an extremely high pitch. I can barely hear it. You're older, and as a man gets older, he loses hearing in the highest registers."

Too late, Salazar realized that his knowledge of how to disarm the trees was a secret he should certainly not have shared with a man like Cantemir. To cover his blunder he asked:

"What did the venom do to you, George?"

"Not so much as it might have. I was wearing a good thick outfit, and the venom ate it full of holes like a sieve. Some got through to my skin and ate holes in it, too. Luckily, Tootsie got me back to the camp and dumped me in a tub of water with a whole boxful of baking soda. They tell me it'll leave a lot of pockmarks."

"Then what's the other injury?"

"Yeah. You got to understand that Tootsie has been awful good to me, better than any of my wives and girlfriends ever was. So when she got the last of the goo scrubbed off and I was feeling pretty good, she sat me down for a serious talk.

"She explained the customs as regard an onnifa and the master she's sworn allegiance to, kind of like some medieval knighthood thing. One requirement is that the master, whenever he isn't with his legal wife, is supposed to screw the onnifa instead. The Kook wives don't mind, since this is an ancient custom, and you know how set the Kooks are in their ways. So now she wanted to know when we were going to do our thing.

"Well, Tootsie may not be exactly the kind of gal you'd lay in Erika's place in Suvarov. She's not even human. I've heard of screwing sheep but never a lizard or a crocodile. On the other hand, I hadn't had any for a month, and my poor neglected whang was driving me crazy. And what real man would pass up a chance for a free fuck? So I thought, let's try it!

"What I didn't know was that she-Kooks have scales inside as well as out, and what happened to my poor joystick was what happens to a pencil in a pencil sharpener. Damn near skinned the poor thing."

"How is it now?"

"Hurts like hell every time the train jerks. If you had a shot of whiskey in your baggage ..."

"Okay," said Salazar, digging out his flask. Cantemir drank, coughed, and drank some more. When he handed back the flask, a shake told Salazar that the flask was empty. He had brought it to ameliorate boresome stretches of the trip, but he would have to find another anodyne.

The liquor abated Cantemir's reticence, and the lumberman began to blubber again. "My God, just think of it! Never to be able to fuck again!"

"Won't you?" asked Salazar.

"Dunno. Have to see if the docs back in Henderson can patch me up enough to function. But oh, just think of it!" The voice rose to a wail, and the tears came in a stream. "Never — to — fuck — again!"

"You'd be all through some day, anyway," said Salazar. "If you can still do it at a hundred and fifty, you're remarkable."

"But goddamn it, I'm not yet fifty!" screamed Cantemir. "It's not fair!"

"Who said life was fair? If it were, you'd have dissolved in nanshin juice for trying to kill me."

"And if it was, I wouldn't have missed the one good shot I had. Serve you right for interfering with a man's legitimate living, all for the sake of some seven-legged bug or slimy reptile that shouldn't have been let live in the first place!"

"All you businessmen think of is a quick profit and getting out. You'd turn the whole planet into a lifeless desert if you thought there was frick to be made."

"Oh, go stick your head in a bucket of water and forget to take it out!"

Fetutsi intervened in Sungao: "Mr. Sarasara, you must not disturb my patient!"

"I shall be glad not to," said Salazar stiffly, returning to his seat and O'Sullivan's book.

Although the trip downward was faster than the ascent from Sungecho, Salazar found time heavy on his hands. It occurred to him that if Cantemir ordered Fetutsi to do him violence, as by throwing him off the train or tearing him limb from limb, she just might obey despite any Kook regulations. He wished he had the faithful Choku along, but he could not have done that and also secured his camp.

In Choku's absence, Salazar got the pistol out of his baggage and clipped the holster to his belt. Watching from his stretcher, Cantemir called:

"Hey, Kirk! Was you thinking of bumping me off? I warn you: If you get me, Tootsie'll get you!"

"Relax, George," said Salazar. "It was along here that you set up an ambush. Just dumb luck your lumberjacks didn't kill half the zuta watchers."

"Wrong, as usual! In the first place, nobody was supposed to kill nobody, just take prisoners. In the second, it wasn't my doing, but a cockamamy idea by Mahasingh. I raised hell with him when I found out. So you don't need the gun now."

"Says you! I'll keep it handy, thanks."

"If the stupid mounted gang on jutens hadn't gotten lost and arrived late, they'd have scooped up the lot of you before you could organize resistance."

Salazar wondered which one, Cantemir or Mahasingh, had truly ordered the ambush, but that was probably another insoluble mystery with which he would have to live.

The locomotive whistled; brakes squealed. Conductor Zuiha put his head in the door to announce: "Station Torimas!"

The train pulled up alongside another, a way freight waiting on a siding. A vendor walked along the platform, crying:

"Moriin! Moriin!"

Salazar leaned out and bought a bladder of bumble-berry wine. It proved neither very good nor very bad. Cantemir called:

"Hey, Kirk! Let's not stay mad at each other all the time just because we don't agree on everything. I admit I shot at you, but it wasn't anything personal."

Salazar grinned. "Seems to me that shooting a man is about as personal as you can get. What you're hinting at, with all the subtlety of a charging tseturen, is that you'd like a drink of this, wouldn't you?"

"Well—ah—now that you mention it, that would be nice."

"Okay." Salazar dug a pair of cups out of his bag. "You are without doubt the crassest son of a bitch I've ever met."

"Huh? What's that mean?"

"Nothing personal." Salazar poured. "And this isn't exactly what Omar had in mind when he wondered what the vintners bought one-half so precious as the stuff they sold. But here you are."

"Who's Omar?"

"Never mind. Drink up!"

As Salazar munched his luncheon sandwich, Cantemir continued: "That guy who sold us the moriin wine reminds me I once had a girlfriend named Maureen, between my third and fourth wives. Her face was nothing much, but she had the prettiest tits."

Between the bites that Fetutsi fed him, Cantemir rambled on about the women with whom he had been intimate. The supply seemed endless. While Salazar had a normal, healthy young man's interest in such matters, he found that even sex could become a bore. Under the endless concatenation of copulations, he found his eyelids growing heavy.

"Excuse me, George," he said. "I'm taking a nap." While he worked his bag into position as a pillow, Cantemir droned on. The last Salazar heard before dropping off was:

"... and then there was Yasmini, who had the longest orgasms I ever knew ..."

The train pulled into Sungecho at sunset, only an hour late. Fetutsi rounded up her Kook stretcher bearers to carry Cantemir off to Doctor Deyssel. Watching the procession march away, Salazar remembered Seisen's comment on the incorrigible Terran talent for "copulating up" their enterprises. He took a room at Levontin's Paradise Palace.

The next morning Salazar was waiting at the door of the library when it opened at ten hours by Terran clocks. The librarian said:

"Good morning. Aren't you Kirk Salazar, Professor Salazar's son?"

"Why, yes. How did you know?"

"I heard you had come to Sunga and was watching for you. Your father's a big name around here since his work on Fort Yayoi."

Salazar asked for tapes of religious and occult movements and cults. She handed him a stack, and he said: "Thanks. Now, where's your viewing room?"

He spent the day running tapes of noted Terran religious and occult leaders. He was particularly struck by the histrionics of the Reverend Alma Schindler Ferguson, who for a quarter century had moved multitudes of fanatical followers in North America. Her downfall had begun when she was caught in a love nest on Sea Island, Georgia, by the wife of her love of the moment, a media liaison officer for her Church of the Holy Pentagram.

The tape showed her standing on a plinth upon a stage. Black velvet covered all, while a spotlight picked out the priestess, in a white, gauzy, glittery gown like that worn by Alexis Ritter for her rituals. When Mrs. Ferguson raised her arms, the gown spread like the wings of a zuta. The costume, the voice, and the mannerisms were so much like those of Alexis that Salazar had an uneasy feeling that Alexis was a second coming of Mrs. Ferguson, dead for a century. More likely, he decided, Alexis had studied this same tape.

By the end of Mrs. Ferguson's sermon, in spite of himself , Salazar had the feeling of being revealed the inmost secrets of the cosmos, although he could not recall anything definite that she had said. It was all gauzy figures of speech interlarded with snatches of pseudoscience and commonplace truisms such as "Is it not true, my children, that people whom you like are likely to like you in return?" But she spoke with such verve and conviction as to give the impression that nobody had ever thought that thought before.

Perhaps, Salazar thought, Yaamo had by now heard that he, Salazar, was opposing the Adriana Company's project, even if not very effectively so far. Since the plan promised Yaamo revenue for developing the island, he would want to get Salazar out of the way. Possibilities ran from murder to a modest bribe. He wondered how big a bribe it would take to subvert his own rectitude. More likely he ought to worry about being arrested, tried, and sentenced to a flogging that, while merely painful to a Kook, was fatal to a Terran.

Salazar, however, had all his father's stubbornness in carrying through, despite hell or high water, a task he had started. Since Yaamo's police might be looking for him, they would probably try the railroad. When they learned that he had come down on the express the day before, they would next go to Levontin's to see if he had taken quarters there. Before he left the library, Salazar asked:

"Have you any books on the religions and philosophies of India?"

"You mean full-sized printed books, not cards or reels?"

"Yes."

The librarian consulted her file and came up with Panikkar's Creeds and Cults of the S.A.F. The initials stood for "South Asian Federation."

"May I borrow it?" he asked. "Have you a card?"

"No. I haven't been here long enough to get one."

The librarian produced a form, which Salazar filled out. As she handed over the book, she said:

"I wouldn't let anyone else have one of our real books if he didn't have a local address. We don't have many, and they're hard to get from Henderson. But since you're a Salazar, I can make an exception."

Salazar thanked her and walked out with the book. In his rectilinear mind he would never have thought of using family connections to bend the rules, which made him angry when someone else did it. But, he supposed, as the human species was addicted to the practice, he might as well take advantage of it. A microfiche card would have been more convenient than this half-kilo tome, but he had no viewer on Mount Sungara to read it by.

Salazar walked past Mao Dai's retsuraan to Levontin's, swiveling his eyes for signs of being followed. On the waterfront street he passed Terrans and an occasional Kook. One of the latter was a policeman with rifle and painted-on badges. Salazar said: "Wangabon!" meaning "Good afternoon."

"Wangabon!" the Kook replied with a nod, while his neck bristles rippled in a pleased way. Doubtless, thought Salazar, he was pleased at being treated with ordinary courtesy by an alien. The cop otherwise showed no interest in stopping or questioning Salazar, who inferred that no order had yet gone out to watch or detain him.

When Salazar entered Levontin's, he found the lobby full of tourists, Suvarovians from the rumble of Russian consonants. Levontin came up saying:

"Mr. Salazar! I did not expect you or I would have saved you a room."

"Mean you're full?"

"Ah, yes! Today the Ijumo dumped all these Russkies on me, twice as many as I was prepared for! So Olga and I sleep on pads in my office, having given up our own room."

"Has anyone been asking after me?"

"No, sir, no one."

"Well, can you find another pallet for me? I can sleep on the lobby floor if I must."

"I don't think ..."

"What's this?" said Hilbert Ritter, who had materialized out of the crowd with Suzette on his arm. "Hello, Kirk; what are you doing here?"

"Library research. What are you doing here? I thought you'd gone back to Oõi with the other Patelians."

Ritter replied, "We thought we'd make one more try at talking sense into Alexis. So we turned the Patelians over to Igor, who was out of the clinic with his arm in a sling, and saw them off. We figured we'd make a quick trip to Amoen and get back in time for the Ijumo's next sailing.

"We got to Amoen and Kashania all right, but as for Alexis, we might as well have argued with a tornado. Then the down train had a breakdown, so we missed the sailing. The Ijumo was supposed to go out again tomorrow, but Captain Oyodo says that's canceled. She'll be laid up a few days while he fixes some engine trouble. Anyway, you needn't sleep on the floor just anywhere. We have an inflatable mattress you can use in our room."

"Thanks; glad to," said Salazar.

"Had dinner yet?" asked Ritter. "No? We were setting out for Mao Dai's; figured we'd beat the crowd."

"Let me stow my gear and wash up," said Salazar, "and I shall be with you."

At Mao Dai's, the kyuumeis plodded in their eternal circle, giving the outer ring of the restaurant floor its slow, creaking rotation. Salazar turned in his holstered pistol at the check room in obedience to a sign in Reformed English:

PEITR3NZ WIL PLIIZ CEK WEP3NZ IN KLOUK RUUM

They crossed the inner, stationary ring of flooring to the outer, rotating ring as Mao ceremoniously ushered Salazar and the Ritters to a table for four on the rotating ring. Salazar looked around, memorizing the decor lest, if he had to visit the gents', he have trouble finding his place coming back because that place would have moved.

Things loosened up after two rounds of drinks. Hilbert Ritter talked of his research into the caste system of Sunga. Suzette talked of notes she was making for a book on the dialects of Feënzuo. Salazar told of the ethology of the stump-tailed kusis.

While they talked, the annular dining room filled with Slavic tourists. Then Mao Dai appeared with the vast, globular form of the Reverend Valentine Dumfries. Mao said:

"I hope you will not mind letting Mr. Dumfries have your vacant seat. All others are taken."

"No-o, of course not," said Hilbert Ritter. "Sit down, Reverend."

"Thank you," said Dumfries, carefully lowering his bulk. Salazar had visions of the chair's collapsing or of Dumfries's getting wedged between the chair arms and requiring carpentry to release him.

"Well, now," said Dumfries, "isn't it nice to be all together peacefully? Mr. Salazar, I understand you have just come down from Mount Sungara. What is going on there? I have just come from Doctor Deyssel's clinic, where I visited poor Cantemir. He tells an extraordinary story of which I cannot make sense."

"He ordered me off the mountain," said Salazar, "and when I refused to go, he tried to murder me."

"Oh, not really! I cannot believe that George—"

"If shooting at someone with a big-game rifle isn't attempted murder, I don't know what is."

"That's not what he says at all. Furthermore, he claims that you tied him up and mutilated his private parts in a most indecent manner."

"Not true," said Salazar. "He tried to scr—excuse me, to have carnal intercourse with his female Kook helper and got his membrum virile skinned."

"Incredible! I know that George is a bit wild at times, but I must use such instruments as the Demiurge puts into my hand. I fear things at the Adriana camp have gotten into a mess, and I shall have to go north to take personal command. As you see, I am hardly built for roughing it in the outback." He gave a little self-deprecating laugh.

"Still," continued Dumfries, "I cannot believe that George would so flagrantly violate the strictures of the Terran Bible. In eighteenth Leviticus congress with beasts is forbidden, and in twentieth death is prescribed for the offense."

"Didn't know you were a Judeo-Christian fundamentalist," said Salazar.

"I am not, young man! But we take the Bible as our point of departure, interpreting its messages in the light of modern knowledge, just as we do with the Holy Qur'an. The passages I cited were put there for sound, scientific, modern reasons."

"What's that?"

"Why, any sexual act in which there is no possibility of conception is a waste of precious seed. This applies equally to contraception, masturbation, sodomy, and bestiality. He who indulges in any of these fails in his duty to increase the tribe—nowadays, the whole human species—to enable it to rule the universe."

"Why should anyone want to rule the universe? My fellow primates have enough trouble ruling much smaller units, like a city or a nation."

"It is the destiny laid upon us by the Supreme God!" roared Dumfries, causing diners at other tables to look around. He glowered at Salazar from under his bushy brows. "Cantemir tells me that you and the other Patelians are environmentalist fanatics who want to preserve this planet just as it is, in the possession of a race of revolting reptiles. You—"

"Who's revolting?" Salazar interrupted. "The Kooks are sentient beings like us, and their moral standards are at least as high as ours. They have nothing like the local underworld for which Sungecho is notorious."

"A reptile is a reptile," boomed Dumfries, whose delivery had become that of an orator haranguing thousands. "In addition to siding with these soulless lower animals against your own kind, you pursue some ridiculous ideal of freezing everything to immobility, as in fairy tales. You would stop all change and progress so you can study and admire a static picture forever, like a habitat group in a museum. But life is full of inevitable ch— Oh, I am sorry!"

A sweeping gesture by Dumfries had knocked over his glass of unfermented bumbleberry juice. While Mao Dai's well-drilled waiters mopped up the spillage and changed the tablecloth, Salazar used the interval to marshal his thoughts. At last he said:

"I'm afraid my motives are not quite so purely unselfish. I make my living studying the biota and reporting on it for my doctorate. If your gang ruins it, my work will go for nothing."

"Have you no loyalty to your own species, man? To any normal human being, a reptile is loathsome, to be slain forthwith. And that includes Kooks!"

"Mere herpetophobia," said Salazar, "which parents implant in their children. Probably goes back to hunting-gathering days, when our naked ancestors couldn't tell a venomous snake from a harmless one."

"If," retorted Dumfries, "the mere sight of these reptiles does not fill you with horror and revulsion, as it does normal human beings, then you are the victim of some congenital abnormality."

"You're the one with the irrational phobia, not me," began Salazar, but Ritter broke in:

"Let's not argue who has the most neuroses. A shrink could doubtless find a few loose screws in each. But Reverend Dumfries, what's your ultimate objective? If your people took over Kukulcan, under your natalist doctrine they would soon fill the planet until it was as crowded and superregulated as poor old Terra. No wild country; every square meter devoted to raising food; every action regulated by a vast bureaucracy to make production and consumption match; births controlled by the Genetics Board."

"To get away from that condition is the whole idea," said Dumfries, "by furnishing an escape valve to relieve population pressure! As fast as one alien world becomes crowded, mankind should go on to open up another. In so vast a galaxy there's no danger of running out of habitable worlds in the foreseeable future."

"But your alien worlds," said Salazar, "will then become overcrowded and overregulated in their turn. From all I hear of life on Terra, it's like living in a neat, clean, humane jail, and who wants to spend his life in even the nicest jail? You're trying to turn the whole galaxy into such a jail."

"Besides," added Ritter, "your scheme will not really relieve population pressure, for logistical reasons. The most people you could move to other planets would be thousands per year, but the natural rate of increase on Terra, before the World Federation clamped down on it, was tens of millions a year. So you could never catch up."

"The Supreme God will show us a way," said Dumfries. "He will instruct his Demiurges, who will pass the solution on to us." He wiped his mouth on a napkin and rose. The chair, held to his vast bulk by the encircling arms, rose with him, but he quickly pushed himself free. He said:

"I apologize, but I find that the prospect of eating with a table full of reptile lovers has quite destroyed my appetite. Good night, and may the Demiurge—not this feeble spook Metasu but our own Terran Yahveh or Allah-grant you wisdom!"

The stout preacher marched out, leaving an embarrassed silence. Dinner arrived.

They were lingering over Mao Dai's desserts and acha when four rough-looking Terrans appeared on the narrow stationary ring of flooring inside the revolving floor. They brandished pistols, saying:

"Stand up everybody, and you won't get hurt!"

"Bozhe moi!" shouted a nearby diner. Cries of alarm and outrage came from the other tables.

"This ain't a robbery," said the first speaker. "Which of you is Kirk Salazar?"

Nobody answered. One of the quartet stepped out and came back dragging Mao Dai's smallest and youngest waiter. The leader pressed his muzzle against the little Gueiliner's head. "Now point out Salazar if you don't want your brains spattered all over the pretty decorations!"

The waiter pointed a trembling finger at Salazar.

"Okay, grab him," said the leader. Two of the quartet holstered pistols and started for Salazar, who picked up a chair. The leader fired a warning shot, bang! over Salazar's head.

Salazar swung the light chair as if he were going to hit the nearest gangster over the head, then reversed and jabbed the man in the belly with the leg. The man doubled up with a grunt, but then the other was upon Salazar. This man, who proved immensely strong, wrenched away the chair and threw it across the room, where it smashed into a table setting with a crash of glass and flatware.

The man got a grip on one of Salazar's arms and twisted. Salazar kicked, aiming for the crotch, but missed.

The man released Salazar's arm with one beefy hand to grab for support because the floor on which they were struggling seemed to have acquired a sudden slant. The whir and creak of the floor-rotating machinery rose in pitch; mingled with it came the rhythmic crack of whips applied with furious intensity.

Salazar guessed what had happened. Mao or his crew must have hitched up the two spare kyuumeis and speeded up the rotation of the ring-shaped floor bearing the tables. Diners, gangsters, tables, chairs, and everything else slid clattering, crashing, and screaming down the centrifugal slope to the outer wall.

Salazar found his arm free and scrambled up the slope before it became too steep to negotiate. A gangster groped for his ankle, but he kicked free and gained the stationary inner ring.

On the fixed flooring Salazar leapt up, pushed past a gaggle of waiters, dashed to the cloakroom, and snatched his pistol from its hook. He returned to the stationary ring, shouting back at the restaurant personnel:

"Tell them to slow the spin!"

On the stationary ring he watched for his party and the gangsters to come past. As rotation slowed, they appeared. Salazar aimed, saying:

"Hands up, you four!"

"As soon as I—can—stand up," grunted one. As rotation diminished further, another bent and fumbled for his gun amid the wreckage along the outer wall.

Salazar sighted carefully and fired; the man collapsed amid the rubble. Mao Dai said:

"Mr. Salazar, I think you can give these people to us, including the dead one. We will see to it that they disappear without a trace."

"Okay," said Salazar. The Gueiliners seized the three surviving gangsters, twisted their arms, and tied their wrists behind them.

"What you gonna do to us?" said one of the trio, his voice rising in pitch. "We ain't hurt nobody!"

"You'll see," said Salazar.

"You gotta let me get my lawyer!" cried another. "The Settlements Constitution says I got civil rights."

"This isn't the Settlements," said Salazar. "Mr. Mao!"

"Yes, Mr. Salazar?"

"I'm pretty sure these people were hired by the Reverend Dumfries. If you could—ah—persuade them to sign confessions to that effect, the documents might be valuable back in Henderson. Be sure to question them separately so they don't have a chance to cook up a story among them."

Mao smiled. "I think we can obtain satisfactory results, sir."

Back at the inn, as Salazar and the Ritters entered, Ilya Levontin bustled up. "Oh, Mr. Salazar!"

"Yes?"

The innkeeper lowered his voice. "A Kook cop came in while you were at dinner, asking for you. Since you were not yet officially registered, I told him no, nyet, bù shì, and he went away."

"What did he want of me?"

"Just to answer some questions, he said. Are you in trouble?"

"Not yet, but maybe soon. Are there any such people around here now?"

"None that I know of, unless one of the Kook kitchen help is in Yaamo's pay."

"Then let me settle my bill now, and don't be surprised if I pull out at an odd hour or looking a bit different from the way I do now. Could the cook make me a sandwich?"

An hour later Salazar had recovered the rest of his baggage from storage and hauled it up to his room. After dinner he went to sleep until awakened by his poignet at midnight.

He got out the costume he had worn for passengers' night on the Ijumo. This consisted of an emerald-green turban, an ankle-length pumpkin-yellow robe, and a long false beard. He rubbed a brown grease pencil on his face and hands until he looked like a native of the Terran tropics, then tied on the beard and the turban. The latter was of a prewound kind with stitching to hold it together. A real turban wearer would scorn it, but Salazar had never mastered the trick of winding a turban so that it would stay wound and not fall apart when the wearer moved.

With his duffel bag on his shoulder, Salazar went quietly down to Levontin's lobby. In this otherwise deserted area, Levontin was talking with a Kook whose authoritative bearing would have identified him as a peace officer even without the symbols painted on his torso. Levontin was saying:

"No, Officer. He came here this afternoon, but he checked out earlier and left. I don't know where he is."

Salazar walked past the pair and out. As he passed, the policeman turned a searching gaze upon him, then looked back to the innkeeper, saying:

"He would not rook rike zat, would he? I have not seen him."

"No, sir, nothing like that. For one thing, he is cleanshaven save for a small mustache."

Salazar headed for the station. He passed another Kook cop outside the inn, but this one hardly looked at him. He walked briskly, fighting down the urge to break into a run. Opposite Mao Dai's revolving restaurant he passed two more Kook policemen on night patrol. He was glad that he had not yielded to the temptation to run.

When at dawn Conductor Zuiha opened the door at the end of the soft-fare car of the Unriu Express, he stared at a bearded, turbaned, long-robed, brown-skinned Terran climbing aboard. The Terran passed over a ticket to Amoen without a word. Zuiha said:

"Never seen Terran in such croze. Where come from?"

"From the spirit plane," said a deep, resonant voice, "to bring enlightenment to my fellow Terrans." The man yawned and rubbed his eyes. Salazar had been trying to sleep on a station bench.

"Could enrighten me, sir?"

"Perchance, after I have dealt with the ignorance of those of my own kind. Forgive me."

The robed one entered the car, sat down, arranged his bag as a pillow, and prepared to sleep.