"Motta, having only a third of the people, could not vanquish the rest. So, when the fighters had quit for lack of breath, he agreed to leave the island with his faction if given his share of supplies: boats, tools, medicine, and such. Vaud was in accord, as he could retain many indivisible things like the houses and the tractor. Thus we parted peacefully.
"The Passivists paddled over to the mainland and set up a new village. My faith, but we have worked for a while! We hardly had the village built and the fields disposed when we learned some things we ought to have thought of sooner."
"For example?"
"For one thing, there are no large beasts on Nouvelle Arcadie. Therefore guns aren't needed, and Vaud hadn't brought any. He thought if there were guns and quarrels raised themselves, somebody might shoot. But here we have these big maladroit lizards —"
"So I see," said I, pointing. The trail had dipped and become soft and mucky. In the muck was a footprint like that of an elephant with big claws.
"Ah, an oecusaurus," said Adrienne.
"Are they dangerous?" I asked, my voice getting squeaky.
"Not especially, unless they step on you by accident. But some of the smaller, carnivorous species are formidable. We lost a man and a little girl before we finished the outer palisade. And then came the Cimbrians."
"What about those?" I asked.
"You have heard Motta. There's some species of camp of Cimbrians beyond this range. They lead a wild life of the chase, shooting native reptiles with flint guns and riding terran horses down here to raid us."
"What?" said I. She repeated.
I said: "It doesn't make sense. Cimbrians could make modern arms if they wished, but they're the most peaceful and orderly civilized species known. I can't imagine Cimbrians riding horses and shooting muskets. Could they be another similar species mistaken for Cimbrians?"
"No. Motta knew some Cimbrians on Earth and assures us that these are authentic."
"Are they the remains of a lost colony or the like?"
She shrugged. "I know not, nor do I know how they have acquired earthly horses."
I shook my head. "It's as if we found earthmen on Cimbria or Riphaea, riding Turanian lizards and hunting heads. Maybe if you could capture one you could find out."
"Perhaps, but we're impotent before their guns, and we cannot run after their horses."
The trail had steepened, so for a time I had no breath to talk. When I saw a convenient tree trunk I said:
"D'you mind if we stop to rest? I'm out of practice at imitating the goat of the mountains."
"A few years here would render you hard. It's —"
"Yeowp!" I yelled, leaping up. As I sat down, something stung me on the bare behind. It was a fearsome sting, too, like a red-hot needle.
"Poor man!" said Adrienne. "You sat on a vespoid. See?"
I looked. The insect I had crushed, now giving its last kicks, did look like a large Terran wasp. Adrienne said:
"There were lots of these here when we built the village, and they pricked us cruelly until we burned their nests."
"I see disadvantages to this Adam-and-Eve performance," t said, rubbing the afflicted spot.
"I'll put some mud on it the first swamp we see. It's too bad you killed it."
"Why? That's a form of wildlife for which I have little sympathy."
"Because otherwise it would have flown in a straight line for its nest, and we could have found the nest and destroyed it. Old Maximilian Wyss, our chief scientist, says these nests are just like those of the paper wasps on Earth. Convergent evolution, he calls it."
I sat down again, looking carefully this time and sitting a little sideways. "Have you tried to make your own weapons against the Cimbrians?"
"Motta won't permit that He puts his faith in interplanetary committees. In confidence, some young men have experimented with bows, but — holy God! — archery is more complicated than it seems. None has yet got anything one can hit an oecusaurus with. So ..." She shrugged and spread her hands.
I got up and said: "All right, let's be going."
I could have sat much longer admiring Adrienne. But if we didn't start, she might have reason to suspect me of not having my mind on the history of Nouvelle-Arcadie.
"How far to the top?" I asked.
"Half a kilometer, I think."
I said: "You don't seem completely entrapped by Louis Motta's regime."
"I'm not, but what can I do? I have come with the Passivists for a reason other than doctrinaire arguments."
"What was that?"
"Under the new rules of Vaud, my parents tried to make me marry André Morax. Now André is not a wicked man, but he is the biggest bore in Nouvelle-Arcadie. Anyway I don't love him, so I have come away."
"Good for you!"
She smiled at me, which made me flush and stumble over my own big feet.
"Oh, Motta talks about the sacred rights of individualism," she said, "but he is at bottom as much a dictator as Vaud, and his followers are as sheep-like. Me, I am a true individualist. I believe in none of their fine talk but make up my own mind."
"Live the individualism!"
"How do they arrange marriages on Earth nowadays?"
I shrugged. "Oh, about the same as when your colony left. Most of the world follows the American system, where each boy invites a series of girls out to the cinema and other entertainment — 'dates,' they call them — until a couple decides to make it permanent. Some countries still have chaperons, or the parents make the arrangements."
"Are you married, monsieur?"
"No."
"Why not? You're old enough, aren't you?"
These people were charmingly friendly but they came right to the point. My skin began to burn.
"I'm old enough," I gruffed. "About half again as old as you."
"Then why?"
"Oh, no woman would ever look at a big ugly hulk like me."
"I see nothing wrong with you," she said, running her eyes up and down me as if I were a prize hog. "A little thick in the middle, perhaps, but some hard work would repair that. Did you go on these 'dates'?"
"W-well, a few."
My tongue was tied in knots, my feet seemed to have been put on backwards, and I could feel myself blushing all over. I don't know why I went ahead and opened up to Adrienne, except there's something about that nature-boy atmosphere that makes one drop all pretence.
"To t-t-tell the truth, mademoiselle, I'm such a shy timid fellow that the mere thought of a girl's rebuffing me fills me with horror."
"Oh, you big nicodemus! If you asked me on a 'date' I'd say, to a sure blow! when do we commence? That is, to say, if I didn't suspect you of immoral intentions. Our chiefs say that all earthmen are lascivious degenerates where the sexes are concerned. Are you a lascivious degenerate?"
"Well — uh — I — uh —" What could I say? "I d-don't think that would be a fair description. I —"
"Hush!"
"What is it?"
"Something on the trail," she said. "Into the bushes!"
She found us a place whence we could still see through the greenery to the trail. I heard something big moving, its feet thudding and the branches brushing its sides. There was movement among the leaves, and an oecusaurus appeared.
I couldn't see all of it at once because of the leaves, but it was no less impressive for that. The name means it's a lizard as big as a house. It was as tall as an elephant and half again as long, with four legs like tree-trunks, a thick neck long enough to reach the ground, a big squarish head ending in a parrot-beak, a thick reptilian tail that swung from side to side as it walked, and a warty skin with knobs and spines, especially on its back and head.
When the oecusaurus had gone and the rustling of its passage had died away, we crept back to the trail. Adrienne said: