"Yes," Kiv said absently.
"Their new teaching techniques enable us to learn faster and remember more. We can understand the Law and the Scriptures much better than any of our Ancestors did."
Kiv hardly heard her. He continued to stare at the larva tank. Then the meaning of her words reached him, and he saw that she was implying criticism of the Ancestors. And that, to Kiv's tradition-heavy mind, was not far from sacrilege.
"Narla!"
"I'm sorry,'' she said quickly. "I didn't mean to say anything disrespectful. I guess I'll never understand.'' And then he had to console her.
Before another day had passed, all the students of the Bel-rogas School had returned. The spacious green parks that surrounded the cluster of buildings were soon filled with young men and women, and the soft hum of their conversation carried through the air.
But their talk now vibrated with strange undertones. Several of them from the northern province of Sugon had not shown up at all. Rumor had it that they were fighting to save their parents' farms from the onslaught of the armies of hugl. And Kiv didn't like it.
"There should be something we can do about it,'' he exclaimed to Narla. "There must be some way of stopping them."
"Edris powder,'' Narla said. "Edris powder kills the hugl. Edris powder has always killed the hugl."
"But it's not killing them now," Kiv said savagely, and sank back into his gloom. The new semester was sliding by, and only one thing obsessed him: the failure of the Edris powder.
The Scripture prescribed Edris powder. Not in so many words, perhaps. But it did say, "Those ways are best which have been tried and pass the test.''
Edris powder had passed the test. As long as there had been hugl, the Edris powder had controlled them.
But now the powder was failing. Could the test be passed once and then failed, Kiv wondered?
And more important: could the Scripture be wrong?
The thought sickened him.
The first three days of the new semester made little impression on him. He studied, but only half-heartedly, and what he learned left him as soon as classes ended. On the fourth day, eight of the young men Kiv knew asked permission to leave. They had received word that they were needed at home.
Within a week, the hugl problem had grown from a nuisance to the status of a full-fledged menace.
"You're not studying," Narla said, as Kiv stared uneasily at the page of his textbook. "You 're looking, but you're not studying. What's the matter?"
"Nothing," he said, and tried to focus his attention. But he was unable to study. He rubbed the palm of his hand over the light golden hair that blurred the outlines of his face, and shifted worriedly in his seat. He felt nervous without quite knowing what he was nervous about. The destruction of acres of crops, and even the occasional reports of lives being lost, bothered him— but he knew it was something else, something deeper and subtler, that gnawed at the back of his mind.
I'll look at it as if I'm an Earthman, he told himself. The Scripture says, Rely on trusted things. The Scripture itself is a trusted thing. For thousands of years it has guided us safely. We are happy, contented with our world and its ways.
But what happens when the trusted guide no longer leads in the right direction? For a moment, Kiv pretended that he was Jones, and tried to look at the situation through the alien eyes of an Earthman.
When the trusted guide no longer leads, Jones might say—what?
Get a new guide?
He sat down to think it through—the whole thing, still using Jones' mind as a focus. And when he came up with what he thought was a conclusion, he went somewhat timidly to Jones.
He explained his thought.
"I don't quite see what you mean, Kiv," the Earthman said, his eyes inscrutable. He leaned back in the comfortable chair, facing Kiv in the tiny cubicle that was Jones' office.
"Well, look here: we know that Edris powder is a nerve poison, right?"
Jones nodded wordlessly.
"Well, then, why doesn't it kill this new kind of hugl? I thought about it a long time, and I finally came up with an answer—at least, I think it's an answer." Kiv looked at Jones for reassurance; the Earthman seemed somehow to smile with his eyes.
"Edris kills through the epidermis of the animal," Kiv went on. "It doesn't bother them if they eat it. Now: if a nerve poison doesn't work, it's because it's not getting to the nerves. I checked my theory by measuring the thickness of the chitin armor of these black hugl, and I came up with something odd: the armor is half again as thick and considerably denser than the armor of the normal animal. The Edris takes longer to penetrate, and it takes more of it. That's my guess. How does it sound to you?"
Jones rubbed his smooth fingers through his chin hair. "It sounds perfectly logical to me. What about it?"
"Well, then, if we kill them when they're still in the larval stage, they won't have the protection armor. Edris can be put in the lakes and ponds in quantities great enough to kill the larval hugl without endangering any other aquatic life."
"Perhaps," Jones said.
"I'm sure of it," returned Kiv, just a little surprised at his own new confidence. "I'd like to go down to Gelusar to see the Council of Elders. If they'll send the word out over the wires in time, we can stop the hugl onslaught before it gets any further and becomes really serious. If you would come with me to Gelusar, we could explain how this might work, and—"
He stopped. He could read the expression on the Earthman's face clearly, and he knew what it meant.
Jones confirmed it.
"I'm sorry, Kiv. We're here only to teach, not to interfere in government policies. If you want to go to the Council, you certainly have my permission to do so. In fact, you don't even need my permission." Jones smiled. "It is said in the Scripture: 'You shall govern yourselves according to the Law.' " He accented the yourselves.
Kiv considered that for a moment. "All right," he said. "You've got me there. But it's not fair."
"The Scripture is a potent arguing force, Kiv. Don't ever forget that." The Earthman's pale blue eyes looked steadily at him. "If you can understand and use the Scripture and the Law, you need fear nothing— neither here, nor in the sky."
"I—I see. Very well, Jones. If you think it's the right way, I'll go to the Council alone."
Kiv left the room without another word. His thoughts were confused, not angry. Somehow, the Earthmen always seemed to strike at the very root of a problem, no matter how complex.
And they could back up their solutions with unerring reference to the unanswerable Scripture.
Kiv turned his thoughts over in his mind as his deest trotted down the winding road to the Holy City.
Gelusar, located centrally on Nidor in the heart of the Province of Dimay, perched on the river Tammul and thus was both the religious and commercial center of the nation. In the heart of all loomed the Great Temple.
Kiv had brought his notebooks and his specimen drawings with him; they would constitute his argument in favor of the new plan. He would have to be absolutely sure of what he was saying before he would be able to convince the all-powerful Council of Elders.
He had plenty of time. Because of the press of the emergency, it took four days to gain an audience with the Elder of his Clan.
Kiv spent the four days wandering the city, trying not to worry. Narla came down from the School to join him on the second day, and they passed most of their time in the Great Temple, staring at the huge lens through which the Great Light was focused.