The tourists laughed. So did Radnal. Making a joke in a language that wasn’t Evillia’s took some brains. Then why, Radnal wondered, did she act so empty-headed? But he shrugged; he’d seen a lot of people with brains do impressively stupid things.
“Why don’t the camels eat all the forage in Trench Park?” Benter vez Maprab asked. He sounded as if his concern was for the plants, not the humpless camels.
“When the herds get too large for the park’s resource, we cull them,” Radnal answered. “This ecosystem is fragile. If we let it get out of balance, it would be a long time repairing itself.”
“Are any herds of wild humpless camels left outside Trench Park, Radnal vez?” Toglo asked.
“A few small ones, in areas of the Bottomlands too barren for people,” the tour guide said. “Not many, though. We occasionally introduce new males into this herd to increase genetic diversity, but they come from zoological parks, not the wild.” The herd receded rapidly, shielded from clear view by the dust it kicked up. “I’m glad we had a chance to see them, if at a distance. That’s why the gods made long lenses for cameras. But now we should head back to the lodge.”
The return journey north struck Radnal as curiously unreal. Though Peggol vez Menk rode among the tourists, they seemed to be pretending as hard as they could that Dokhnor of Kellef had not died, that this was just an ordinary holiday. The alternative was always looking over a shoulder, remembering the person next to you might be a murderer.
The person next to someone was a murderer. Whoever it was, he seemed no different from anyone else. That worried Radnal more than anything.
It even tainted his pleasure from talking with Toglo zev Pamdal. He had trouble imagining her as a killer, but he had trouble imagining anyone in the tour group a killer-save Dokhnor of Kellef, who was dead, and the Martoisi, who might want to kill each other.
He got to the point where he could say “Toglo zev” without prefacing it with “uh.” He really wanted to ask her (but lacked the nerve) how she put up with him after watching him at play with the two Highhead girls. Tarteshans seldom thought well of those who made free with their bodies.
He also wondered what he’d do if Evillia and Lofosa came into his cubicle tonight. He’d throw them out, he decided. Edifying a tour group was one thing, edifying the Park Militia and the Eyes and Ears another. But what they did was so edifying… Maybe he wouldn’t throw them out. He banged a fist onto his knee, irritated at his own fleshly weakness.
The lodge was only a couple of thousand cubits away when his donkey snorted and stiffened its legs against the ground. “Earthquake!” The word went up in Tarteshan and other languages. Radnal felt the ground jerk beneath him. He watched, and marveled at, the Martoisi clinging to each other atop their mounts.
After what seemed a daytenth but had to be an interval measured in heartbeats, the shaking ceased. Just in time, too; Peggol vez Menk’s donkey, panicked by the tremor, was about to buck the Eye and Ear into a thornbush. Radnal caught the beast’s reins, calmed it.
“Thank you, freeman vez Krobir,” Peggol said. “That was bad.”
“You didn’t make it any better by letting go of the reins,” Radnal told him. “If you were in a motor, wouldn’t you hang on to the tiller?”
“I hope so,” Peggol said. “But if I were in a motor, it wouldn’t try to run away by itself.”
Moblay Sopsirk’s son looked west, toward the Barrier Mountains. “That was worse than the one yesterday. I feared I’d see the Western Ocean pouring in with a wave as high as the Lion God’s mane.”
“As I’ve said before, that’s not something you’re likely to have to worry about,” Radnal said. “A quake would have to be very strong and at exactly the wrong place to disturb the mountains.”
“So it would.” Moblay did not sound comforted.
Radnal dismissed his concern with the mild scorn you feel for someone who overreacts to a danger you’re used to. Over in the Double Continent, they had vast and deadly windstorms. Radnal was sure one of those would frighten him out of his wits. But the Stekians probably took them in stride, as he lost no sleep over earthquakes.
The sun sank toward the spikes of the Barrier Mountains. As if bloodied by their pricking, its rays grew redder as Bottomlands shadows lengthened. More red sparkled from the glass and metal and plastic of the helos between the lodge and the stables. Noticing them made Radnal return to the here-and-now. He wondered how the militiamen and Eyes and Ears had done in their search for clues.
They came out as the tour group approached. In their tan, speckled robes, the militiamen were almost invisible against the desert. The Eyes and Ears, with their white and gold and patent leather, might have been spotted from ten thousand cubits away, or from the mountains of the moon.
Liem vez Steries waved to Radnal. “Any luck? Do you have the killer tied up in pink string?”
“Do you see any pink string?” Radnal turned back to face the group, raised his voice: “Let’s get the donkeys settled. They can’t do it for themselves. When they’re fed and watered, we can worry about ourselves.” And about everything that’s been going on, he added to himself.
The tourists’ dismounting groans were quieter than they’d been the day before; they were growing hardened to riding. Poor Peggol vez Menk assumed a bowlegged gait most often seen in rickets victims. “I was thinking of taking yesterday off,” he said lugubriously. “I wish I had — someone else would have taken your call.”
“You might have drawn a worse assignment,” Radnal said, helping him unsaddle the donkey. The way Peggol rolled his eyes denied that was possible.
Fer vez Canthal and Zosel vez Glesir came over to help see to the tour group’s donkeys. Under the brims of their caps, their eyes sparked with excitement. “Well, Radnal vez, we have a good deal to tell you,” Fer began.
Peggol had a sore fundament, but his wits still worked. He made a sharp chopping gesture. “Freeman, save your news for a more private time.” A smoother motion, this time with upturned palm, pointed out the chattering crowd still inside the stables. “Someone may hear something he should not.”
Fer looked abashed. “Your pardon, freeman; no doubt you are right.”
“No doubt.” Peggol’s tone argued that he couldn’t be anything but. From under the shiny brim of his cap, his gaze flicked here and there, measuring everyone in turn with the calipers of his suspicion. It came to Radnal, and showed no softening. Resentment flared in the tour guide, then dimmed. He knew he hadn’t killed anyone, but the Eye and Ear didn’t.
“I’ll get the firepit started,” Fer said.
“Good idea,” Eltsac vez Martois said as he walked by. “I’m hungry enough to eat one of those humpless camels, raw and without salt.”
“We can do better than that,” Radnal said. He noted the I-told-you-so look Peggol sent Fer vez Canthaclass="underline" if a tourist could overhear one bit of casual conversation, why not another?
Liem vez Steries greeted Peggol with a formal military salute he didn’t use five times a year — his body went tetanus — rigid, while he brought his right hand up so the tip of his middle finger brushed the brim of his cap.
“Freeman, my compliments. We’ve all heard of the abilities of the Hereditary Tyrant’s Eyes and Ears, but until now I’ve never seen them in action. Your team is superb, and what they found-” Unlike Fer vez Canthal, Liem had enough sense to close his mouth right there.
Radnal felt like dragging him into the desert to pry loose what he knew. But years of slow research had left him a patient man. He ate supper, sang songs, chatted about the earthquake and what he’d seen on the journey to and from the Bitter Lake. One by one, the tourists sought their sleepsacks.