“It must be buried as soon as possible after it is caught,” Fornri said, “and it must be kept buried for a day and a night. Otherwise, the meat cannot be eaten.”
Wembling nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Couldn’t we load the raft with sand and bury the koluf there?”
“The sand must be dry. Would that be possible on a raft at sea? And burying the koluf is dangerous. Much room is needed for the burying.”
Wembling nodded again. He was bitterly disappointed and trying not to show it. “I’ll have to think about it. A dying koluf does thresh about a bit. As for keeping the sand dry—I’ll think about it.”
He turned and marched away, and his entourage formed up and followed him. Fornri and a young woman remained behind, and Hort performed introductions. “Fornri, this is Talitha Warr, sister-daughter of the ambassador.”
Fornri smiled and raised his arm in the native greeting. Talitha hesitated and then awkwardly tried to imitate him.
“And this is Dalla,” Hort said.
The native woman greeted her warmly.
Fornri said to Hort, “It is a very interesting suggestion. Is the ambassador angry?”
“Frustrated, perhaps. You might consider building a small raft just to show him that it wouldn’t work.”
“But then he would say the failure was because the raft was too small,” Fornri said with a polite smile. “And it would not work no matter how large the raft was. Every time a new koluf was taken onto this raft much water would go with it, and such a small amount of sand would quickly become wet even if it did not wash away. And the sand must be dry, or the koluf cannot be eaten. So I think we won’t build the raft.”
The two of them took their farewells with upraised arms and disappeared into the forest.
Hort said thoughtfully, “Among all the records of primitive peoples I can remember, it was the elders who ruled and made the decisions. Here it seems to be the young people who lead, but actually they’re doing what Fornri tells them to do. He reflects, he speaks, and that’s the law. If it’s really complicated he asks for time, and then he probably consults with others, but even so he carries an enormous responsibility for one so young.”
“They’re a handsome couple,” Talitha said. “Are they married?”
“That’s another mystery. They aren’t. Other youths Fornri’s age are married, and many of them have a child. I’d suspect that he’s a youthful high priest with a rule of celibacy if it weren’t for the fact that he and Dalla obviously are sweethearts. They behave like a betrothed couple.”
Wembling had been talking with a group of natives on the beach, and now he called to them, “We’re going back by boat. Want to come?”
Talitha turned questioningly to Hort.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I have a class of native children to teach.”
“Really? What are you teaching them?”
“Reading and writing.”
She stared for a moment and then burst into laughter. “What for? Once they’ve learned, what possible use could they have for it?”
“Who knows? They’re exceptionally bright children. Maybe someday Langri will create its own great literature. You go with your uncle. I’ll walk back after my class.”
She joined her uncle on the beach. He was finishing his conversation with the natives—something about drainage ditches—and while she waited she watched Aric Hort. The children were dashing to meet him, the girl called Dabbi in the lead. “Airk!” they shouted. “Airk!”
Hort knelt on a level stretch of packed sand near the village. “Proud,” he said. The children repeated the word. “Proud.”
He spelled it. “P-R-O-U-D. Proud.” They spelled it after him, and he wrote the word in the sand. Then he stalked about on his knees, nose in the air, acting out the word “proud.” The children, in convulsions of merriment, imitated him.
“Strong,” Hort said.
“Strong,” the children repeated.
Wembling patted Talitha on the arm. “Ready to go, Tal?”
He helped her into a boat, and the paddlers, young native boys, pushed off. Looking back, she saw Aric Hort, surrounded by his mob of children, acting out the word “strong.”
“What a dear man!” she exclaimed.
Wembling grunted skeptically. “I’d say he acts rather silly.”
She smiled. “Yes. He certainly does.”
8
She swam in the gentle surf, she lounged on the beach, and sometimes she flirted mischievously with an unlikely-looking animal that eyed her warily from the forest or, at dusk, scurried along the water’s edge on scavenger patrol. Dusk came too soon on this world of Langri, and no one lay abed mornings because the dawn touched the bulging clouds with a drama of color to set in motion a renewed procession of ever changing facets of beauty.
The beach sand was the finest she had ever seen. She poured it, powderlike, from one hand to another, and to her amazement she saw that it, too, was composed of myriad grains of color. The sun, warming but never burning, so relaxed her that she had to will herself not to sleep.
She rarely saw Aric Hort. His days were filled with teaching and learning, and on the infrequent occasions when they met she could not refrain from mocking his preoccupation with Langrian trivialities. The things that elated him—that an elderly native accidentally revealed a memory of a time when there were no metal spear points, or his new theory that the poor quality of clay was as much responsible for the absence of pottery on Langri as were the easily available multitudes of gourds, or the list of a hundred and seventeen words that proved some kind of interworld contacts for the natives no more than seventy years before—Talitha failed to see anything universe-shattering about such discoveries.
But as time passed, and Langri’s beauty became cloying, even a Langrian triviality eased her boredom somewhat, and she occasionally accepted Hort’s invitation to look at something or other that he found remarkable.
Returning from swimming one day, she stopped at the embassy’s office and found her uncle talking guardedly with Hirus Ayns. She would have withdrawn without disturbing them, but her uncle waved and invited her in.
“Well, Tal,” he said, “you seem to be keeping busy.”
“I’m keeping busy the way a tourist keeps busy,” she said bitterly. “The beach until it gets boring, and then sightseeing until I can’t stand that any longer. Tomorrow Aric is taking me to see some gourds that are supposed to be fascinating. Dangerous trip, that—into the forest. Tomorrow night we’re to be entertained and fed by the natives, songs and dances, gourmet dishes that will make me sick because I’ve seen what they’re made of, everything certified authentic and uncorrupted. It reminds me of that vacation I took on Mallorr. I didn’t like it there, either.”
“The natives’ food will make you forget what you saw, and their dancing and singing are lovely.” Wembling strode to the window and looked out absently. Obviously he had a few problems of his own to cope with, so she said nothing more to him. “The natives are a fine people,” he announced finally, “but I wish they weren’t so confounded stubborn. I think maybe I ought to fire Hort—really fire him. He encourages them.”
He served himself a smoke capsule, exhaled a cloud of lavender smoke, and started for the door. “I’ll see if Sela has those messages transcribed,” he said to Ayns.
Talitha looked after him affectionately. “Poor Uncle. The biggest deal of his life, and the stupid natives won’t cooperate. By the way, what is this big deal?”
Ayns eyed her calculatingly. When she was younger, that look had disturbed her; but now she knew that he eyed everyone calculatingly. “Ambassador to Binoris,” he said.
She straightened up in astonishment. “Wow! That’s quite a deal! How does an ambassador get promoted from a nothing world like this to the most important independent world in the galaxy?”