"I was only kidding. Something tells me we'll be better off in the lower city during our stay in Mishé. Khabur's only a so-so fencer, but he's strong as a shaihan."
Reith led Marot to the Treasury Building, where presently they were ushered into the office of the Treasurer of the Order of Qarar. Sir Kubanan proved a rarity, a fat Krishnan, who looked a little like a beardless Santa Claus. A large, golden, dragonlike emblem on the front of his crimson coat identified his lofty rank.
"Ah, Master Reit'!" said Kubanan in Mikardandou, waving his pungent cigar. "We have awaited your arrival with a score of Terran travelers, come hither to see our sights and buy our goods. Instead you appear with but one. Or are the others elsewhere at the moment?"
"No, good my lord," said Reith. "For now, I am guide to the learned Doctor Marot alone."
Kubanan puffed. "And what, may I ask, is the learned doctor a learned doctor of?"
"He studies forms of life that once roamed your world but no longer exist."
Kubanan's olfactory antennae drew together. "If they no longer exist, how then can he study them?"
Reith cleared his throat. "Doctor Marot digs up the bones of these long-vanished beasts."
"Interesting, albeit it strikes me not as a profitable business. We have some such bones in our little museum, if our visitor care to scrutinize them."
Reith translated for Marot. "A museum?" said Marot, becoming animated. "Mais, c'est la civilisation, donc! Pray tell Sir Kubanan that I shall be delighted."
Reith did, adding: "Tell me, did another Terran pass through Mishé a few days ago, bound for Chilihagh?"
"Methinks there was a report of such an one, buying supplies. Since he seemed harmless, we hindered him not. What canst tell me of this wight?"
"He is a scientist of the same kind as Doctor Marot. Had he others with him?"
"I wot not. Wherefore your interest in this—was his name Fost?"
"Foltz, my lord. My client and Foltz are colleagues and, in a sense, rivals."
"Well, I trust you to see that any conflict betwixt them shall be carried on beyond the bourne of the Republic."
"Sir," said Reith, "any combat between Foltz and Marot would be fought, not with swords or crossbows, but with the publication of learned essays, wherein each would accuse the other of inaccuracy and misuse of evidence."
"A tedious sort of combat," mused Kubanan. "One could hardly charge admission to witness it. Now that I bethink me, I recall another fact anent Master Feist. He came disguised as a human being, with dyed hair, false antennae, and in civilized raiment, as did all you Ertsuma until a few years ago. This seemed prudent, since Chilihagh is a wildish place, unused to Terrans. Would you, too, adopt this masquerade?"
"We meant to," said Reith, "but lost half our baggage to the Koloftuma. Does anyone here sell such cosmetics?"
"Nay, unless you could send to Majbur."
"Then we must trust our bare Terran faces. By the way, do you know anything about another Ertsu, Esteban Surkov, who also was bound for Chilihagh and has not been heard from?"
"Nought beyond the fact that he passed through Mishé some moons past. Your Comandante hath written the Grand Master to inquire, but we could add nought to what I have told you. And now, good my sirs ..."
"Let us see this museum before returning to our inn," said Marot.
"We'd better get the hell out of the Citadel. We don't want to run into Khabur," replied Reith.
"Oh, Fergus, I beg you! This to me is important."
Reith gave his companion a hard look. "Will you back me up with your sword?"
Marot hesitated. "Yes, even that. I know the elementary movements."
The museum occupied another boxlike building. Reith cast a nervous glance around to assure himself that no jealous Knight of Qarar lurked nearby.
Inside, they found a collection of curios: the helmet of some long-fallen king; a model of a Majburo war galley; a badly-stuffed pudamef from the boreal regions. This predator, like its tropical cousin the shan, resembled a ten-meter, six-legged, long-necked lizard, with a fanged crocodilian head. Unlike the shan, the pudamef was covered with thick white fur. Marot said:
"Were I stranded here, I should apply for the post of curator in this museum. Nothing is in logical order, and the labels are mostly missing or illegible."
At last they found the fossil to which Kubanan had alluded. It consisted of several limb bones and a meter-long, chocolate-brown skull. Marot crooned with delight as he examined it with a pocket magnifying glass.
"I think this is one of the Ocnotheridae," he said, "but a new genus. It is a plant-eating hexapod from a recent horizon. I wonder if the Order of Qarar would sell this fossil, to take back to Novorecife?"
"They're terrible people to do business with," said Reith. "Under their communistic setup, you have to work through endless interlocking committees to get a decision."
"How old is this system here?"
"I'm not sure, but at least several centuries."
"They appear to make it work not badly."
"Sure, because they ride on the backs of the commoners, who do all the real work. The knights just supervise and skim off the profits. The pretext is that the knights shouldn't stoop to vulgar toil, because they stand ready to fight for the Republic."
"It sounds like the ancien régime in my country."
"Aristide, suppose you could buy these fossils, how would you get them back to Terra? The freight charges would be astronomical, in the figurative as well as the literal sense."
"Oh, I would not attempt to ship the whole thing. Back in Novo, I have a lovely little computer. This makes a record of each piece of fossil so accurately that, when I return to Earth, the computer can reproduce the fossil in a synthetic material to an accuracy of ten microns."
"But suppose we find a half-ton fossil of some monster in Chilihagh? How would you get that back to Novo?"
"If it is too heavy for the local wagons, we get a carpenter to build us a sled and have it hauled by those—what do you call those things like six-legged buffaloes?"
"Shaihans."
"But truly, we are unlikely to encounter such a problem. The organisms I seek are near the point of division between major groups. Such creatures are usually small, like mice and lizards."
"How do you ever find the fossil of such a little critter?"
"Practice, my friend. With experience, the searching eye seizes upon a fossil fragment no larger than the joint of your finger."
Marot made a fist and aimed the large ring on his middle finger at the fossil, slowly moving his hand. Reith knew that the gem on the ring was actually the lens of a Hayashi ring camera, and that Marot was running off a strip of miniaturized film.
"You disappoint me," said Reith. "I thought we'd find a skeleton the size of a Terran dinosaur and have to move ten tons of petrified bone."
"Ah, no! Such discoveries are rare. Besides, a complete skeleton is something one can expect only a few times in one's life. Now, what things must we buy in the city?"
"Mainly a tent and a set of cooking utensils. I also want one of those lighters, like Gashigi's. There's the answer to Strachan. The technological blockade will in time become obsolete, because the Krishnans are just as inventive as we are. Now that they've heard of the wonders of Terran technology, they won't rest until they've made most of the same discoveries independently.
"We'll also buy Krishnan clothes to make us less conspicuous. Let's not push our luck; let's get away right now!"
Neither the cooking utensils, which they bought ready-made, nor the tent, which they ordered from a tentmaker who promised it in three days, presented difficulties. At a clothier's, Marot grumbled as he held up one of the large triangles of heavy cloth, which formed the common male nether garment of the region. "I am no longer an infant, in need of a diaper. My natural functions are under excellent control. Is there no alternative?"