But once the master merchant had an idea, she was not one to let go of it. She said, as much to herself as to Jennifer, "They're extinct here, anyhow. But this isn't the only tract of rain forest on Athet, not by a long shot. It's just the one offworlders do the most business with. Maybe others have relatives of the omphoth still running around loose."
"It shouldn't be hard to find out," Jennifer said.
Celia Rodriguez barked a couple of syllables' worth of laughter. "No, not hardly," she agreed. "Even with our translators barely working, the way they act when they're still picking up new languages, the locals won't be in much doubt about whether they have omphoth around."
Jennifer thought of something else. "I hope the main hold is big enough to carry one. More than one, I mean, if we intend to establish them here."
"First things first." The master merchant laughed again. "Hope the stunners are strong enough to put them under. Otherwise I suppose we'll have to herd them across the however many hundreds or thousands of kilometers it is from where they are to here. And for that?" Rodriguez's tone was still bantering, but Jennifer had no doubt she meant what she said "?for that, I would definitely charge extra."
Something went crashing through the undergrowth far below the branch on which Gazar's establishment was perched. Then the something?Jennifer and Gazar both knew what it was; nothing else made that much racket?let out a bellow that sounded like a cross between a kettledrum and a synthesizer with a bad short in its works.
Gazar made a ghastly face. "Now I know why our heroic ancestors slew all the ancient omphoth?in the hope of getting a good night's sleep. The cursed beasts are never quiet, are they?"
"They don't seem to be," Jennifer admitted. The cries of the newly released animals could be heard even inside Pacific Overtures.
Out along the branch, Atheters shouted and screeched. Jennifer's translator screeched, too, protesting the overload. It did manage to pick up one call. "Come on out, Gazar, and look at the omphoth! Here it comes!"
"Why should I want to see the creature that torments my rest?" Gazar grumbled, but he went. Jennifer followed more slowly, the hobnails in the bottom of her boots helping to give her purchase on the branch.
Young Atheters squealed and clung to their mothers' fur as the omphoth lumbered by underneath. It took no notice of the excited locals in the tree; its attention was centered solely on food. It pulled up a bush, spat it out?it was still learning what was good in this new forest and what was not.
"It doesn't look the way an omphoth is supposed to," Gazar complained; having found that figurine for Jennifer, he fancied himself an expert. "It doesn't even have tusks."
He had a point, she supposed. The new beasts were not identical to their exterminated cousins. Not only were they tuskless, but their lower-lip trunks were bifurcated for the last meter or so of their length. They hardly had any tails, either, and their claws were smaller than those of the omphoth this forest had once known.
But in the one essential way, they were like the omphoth of old: they were ravenously fond of the big, knobby fruits the various trees here produced. The omphoth under Gazar's tree bent its head down so its forked trunk could grab fruit that had fallen to the ground. Wet chewing noises followed.
Then the omphoth reached up almost as high as the branch on which Jennifer was perched. If the baby Atheters had squealed before, they shrieked now. Jennifer could not blame them. The sight of that open pink maw only a few meters away made her want to shriek, too. The omphoth had dreadful breath.
It was not interested in snacking off the locals, though. All it wanted to do was pluck more fruit from any branch it could reach. Finally it stripped those branches bare and stamped away to look for more fodder.
Gazar turned around to display his hindquarters at it, a gesture of contempt he had never been rude enough to use on a human. He caught Jennifer's eye. "Some treetowns are even less happy with these beasts than ours," he said. "I only hope they are not so shortsighted as to try to get rid of them."
"Why would they do that?" Jennifer exclaimed in horror. "The omphoth are saving the forest for you."
"Saving the whole, aye, but damaging the parts. We have laws against building on branches lower than a certain height." Gazar blinked. "I suppose one reason we have those laws is the omphoth of long ago. I never thought about it till now. But not every treelord enforces those laws?without omphoth, they matter little. Now there are omphoth again, and they've already wrecked some houses that were low enough for them to reach."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that," Jennifer said. "Your people had better know, though, that we won't be around to get more omphoth for them if they go and kill these. You need to build up the herd, not destroy it."
"The treelords know that," Gazar said, still sounding a long way from happy at the prospect. "Armed males travel through the trees to guard the beasts from harm."
"I should hope so," Jennifer said. After all the trouble the crew of Pacific Overtures had gone through in stunning and transporting the great beasts, the idea of having them hunted down was appalling.
She took her leave from Gazar and climbed down the chain ladder to the ground. The omphoth was nowhere to be seen, although she could still hear it somewhere off deeper in the forest. She was glad it was not between her and Pacific Overtures.
Immense footprints and crushed bushes showed the beast's path. So did a huge pile of steaming, stinking, green dung. In the dung Jennifer saw several teardrop-shaped seeds.
She smiled. These particular seeds got no great advantage from their trip through the omphoth's gut. But omphoth also wandered out to the edges of the savannah country surrounding the forest. Seeds deposited there would be more likely to thrive. With luck, the forest would grow again.
Her smile grew broader. All too often preindustrial races wanted nothing more from traders than help in war against their neighbors. This time, though, the crew of Pacific Overtures had really accomplished something worth doing. They'd turned a profit on the deal, too. Jennifer had learned to think well of the combination. She hurried toward the ship.
An omphoth came out of the forest. Sam Watson stepped up the gain on Pacific Overtures' viewscreen. He and Jennifer watched the beast's pupils shrink in the sudden bright sun. It didn't seem to like the feeling much. With a bellow, it drew back into the shelter of the trees.
Watson yawned and stretched. "I'll almost miss the big noisy things," he said.
"Yes, so will I, but not their racket," Jennifer said.
"No, not that. Maybe the next ship in can see if coffee does for Atheters what it does for us. I suspect a good many of them will need it, though they're not what you'd call a quiet race themselves."
"Hardly." Thinking of Gazar, Jennifer knew that was, if anything, an understatement. After a moment, she went on, "Maybe we should have done some tests with the coffee in the galley. If it worked, they'd have paid plenty for it."
"Too late to worry about it now, what with us upshipping tomorrow. I wonder how much the ivory will end up bringing. The way Master Rodriguez has things lined up, we may take a while selling everything, but we'll get a lot when we finally do. It's especially nice," Watson added, "that the new kind of omphoth we've introduced here doesn't have tusks; the Atheters won't have the incentive of hunting them to carve more trinkets for traders."