“Why do they call them hunting boats?” Talitha asked.
“Come and see what they catch, and you’ll understand.”
He took her hand, and they ran along the beach with the children trailing after them. When they reached the village, the crew already had dragged the boat ashore. Hort led her over to it.
She looked once, briefly, and felt a wave of revulsion and horror such as she never before had experienced. She reeled backward with averted face, not believing, not wanting to remember, trying not to be sick.
The koluf was an enormous creature that completely filled the boat. It had a double row of clawing legs and a hideous, mottled, threshing, multitudinously jointed body that swiveled obnoxiously and formed strangely contorted curves. The vast head was slashed from front to rear by a gaping mouth with huge, protruding, curved teeth that snapped viciously. It was held in place in the narrow boat by poles and lashings.
Talitha turned and looked out to sea, where the colorful sails were just visible on the horizon. “Did they come all that distance with that in the boat?”
“It makes for a lively ride,” Hort said with a smile, “but it’s the only way it can be done. If they tried to tow it in, either it would haul them out to sea, or its friends and relatives would tear it to pieces. They have to get it into the boat as quickly as possible.”
“What do the women do?” she asked.
“The same thing the men do. They hunt koluf.”
The natives were hauling the koluf from the boat. They dragged it far up onto the beach, pulling it by its long, stringy, lashing fins and deftly avoiding the slashing teeth, clawing legs, and threshing, knifelike tail. By the time the hunters had finished, men and women of the village were gathered about them. The hunters turned at once, launched their boat, reefed in the sail, and paddled away.
The koluf continued to twist and thresh violently, and the villagers began to push sand over it with long-handled scrapers. As they worked, they shouted a rhythmic song in the native language. The koluf’s violent movements increased and several times it broke free, but they continued to push the sand. Finally they built a mound from which it could not escape, though its struggle made the sand heave and jerk.
A few villagers remained, putting finishing touches on the mound and watching to make certain that the koluf did not break free. The others returned to the village.
Talitha said incredulously, “And Uncle says it’s the most delicious meat he’s ever eaten!”
“If there were pantheons of gods in the Langrian religion,” Hort said solemnly, “that creature would be their ambrosia. It’s delectable beyond mere human comprehension.”
“I wish I’d tasted it before I saw it,” Talitha said. She counted eight widely spaced mounds along the beach and shuddered.
They walked on, skirting the village but passing close to the outlying dwellings, and Talitha stopped to examine one of them. She ran a finger over the brilliant color design of the roof and then rapped on it. “What’s it made of?”
“It’s a segment of a gourd. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It is.” She rapped again. “A gourd? If this is only a segment, they must be huge.”
“Enormous,” Hort agreed. “And when the shell is soaked in sea water and dried it becomes as tough and durable as plastic. Did you notice the lovely symmetry these dwellings have? They’re a fitting ornament for a beautiful world, and they’re also the best sort of housing that could be devised for this climate. Look at the walls—they’re a fine mesh woven of fiber, and they not only keep out pests, but they also breathe. They’re incredibly durable. Interestingly enough, the fiber is made from threads extracted from gourd stems, and the natives also use it for a rope—”
Talitha had lost interest. She saw her uncle approaching the village, followed by his usual incongruous escort. One of his two secretaries, Sela Thillow, carried an electronic gadget for note taking. The other, Kaol Renold, seemed to be waiting to be told to do something. Hirus Ayns followed along at the rear, sharp-eyed as usual, saying little but missing nothing. What the natives were doing she couldn’t fathom at all.
“Here’s Uncle,” she said.
Hort turned off his lecture, and they went to meet him. As they approached, the grinning natives suddenly scattered in all directions, and Wembling shouted a final admonition after them. “Big logs, mind you!”
“What are you doing?” Talitha asked him.
“Trying to get the natives to build a raft,” he said.
“What do they need a raft for?” Hort demanded. Talitha turned and stared at him. Few men spoke to her uncle in that tone of voice.
Wembling seemed not to notice. “They need a raft to hunt with,” he said.
“They seem to be doing quite well without one,” Talitha observed.
Wembling shook his head. “Have you seen the way they hunt? Whenever they catch one of those monsters, a crew has to bring it all the way to shore. Every catch costs them up to an hour of prime hunting time. Look at that!” He was counting the mounds on the beach. “Six, seven, eight. That’s a good start on the day’s hunt, but it means the boats already have made eight round trips from the hunting grounds. That’s the loss of a boat and crew for eight hours of hunting, and while one boat is bringing a koluf to shore, the fleet is less efficient. It takes every crew available to haul one of those monsters out of the water. If they could anchor a big raft close to the hunting grounds they could transfer the koluf to the raft, and then in the evening they could tow in the day’s catch all at once. A village this size would save a couple of hundred man-hours of work a day and hunt much more efficiently. That would make it possible to catch more koluf and get off their subsistence diet. Got that, Sela?”
“Got it,” she said, fingers playing rapidly on the electronic keyboard.
“Did you say subsistence diet?” Talitha asked. “I’ve never seen a healthier-looking people.”
“They’re healthy enough now, but they have very little food reserve. Whenever the hunting falls off, they come close to starvation. It takes a lot of koluf to feed a world population, even when it’s a small population. I wanted to teach them some ways to preserve their surplus meat. Couldn’t get them to understand what I was talking about. Turned out the reason they couldn’t understand was because they have so little surplus. A raft would increase the daily catch and let them store an emergency reserve. Well, Hort?”
“I’ve told you what I think,” Hort said. “The natives lead a precarious existence in the ecology of a hostile environment. Any tampering at all might upset the balance and exterminate them.”
Wembling grinned at him and spoke in conversational tones. “Hort, you’re fired. You can’t see beyond your textbooks. Increased efficiency in hunting will put them on the safe side of that precarious balance.”
“Increased efficiency in hunting could change the koluf’s feeding habits or reduce the breeding stock. The result would be fewer koluf and starving natives.”
“Long before that happened, we’d think of something else. Here’s Fornri.”
A group of young natives approached them, and one, obviously their leader, strode up to Wembling and wasted no time in coming to the point. “Excellency, this raft. It could not be used.”
“Why not?” Wembling asked.
“The koluf must be buried in sand.”
Wembling turned questioningly to Hort. “Some religious quirk?”
“It’s probably vital,” Hort said. “Most things on this world are poisonous to humans. Burying the koluf in sand must do something to neutralize the poison.”