"Don't be ridiculous! I'll give seventy-five ..."
An hour later, the price was set at a hundred and thirty.
Wearing new Krishnan garments, the two set out on the five-day journey to Jeshang. The early part of the ride passed uneventfully save for a rainstorm. They rode through the gently-rolling farmlands of southern Mikardand, along the fine road maintained by the Knights. Traffic was heavy. At the first inn, Marot asked:
"What lies before us?"
"In three days we should cross into Chilihagh, ruled by a dasht, Kharob bad-Kavir. He's quasi-independent both of Mikardand and of Balhib, and he keeps this independence by playing each off against the other. Each has some vague claim to sovranty over the dashtate. But Mikardand had been too preoccupied by internal struggles to press its claim, while King Kir of Balhib thinks he's a flowerpot; so nobody takes him seriously."
At the border, the Chilihagho soldiers, in chain-mail vests over blue tunics, snapped to attention. One looked over the travelers' papers and said: "I understand this not."
"It might help if you held it right side up," said Reith.
The soldier glowered: "Wait here." He disappeared into a hut and emerged with an officer sporting a silvered cuirass. The two conversed earnestly, in a dialect that Reith had trouble following. The officer studied the Terrans and said:
"Aye, these must be the twain whereof we were warned. Seize them!"
Before either Reith or Marot could act, soldiers grabbed their arms and relieved them of their weapons.
Reith raised his voice: "What is this? We are harmless travelers. ..."
"A brace of Balhibo spies, more like," growled the officer. "Ye think to befool us by having your smelling-antennae amputated and your hides and hair dyed to look like Terrans? How simple ye must deem us!"
"We are as Terran as you are Krishnan!" said Reith. "We have no scars from that amputation. We are well-known at Novorecife. We speak Terran tongues—Portugese, French ..."
"All that can be faked," said the officer. "We have a short way with spies, sent by the mad King Kir to subvert our holy land. Which prefer ye, hanging or beheading?"
"What—what—" stammered Marot. "Are they indeed about to kill us?"
"Shut up!" snapped Reith. "I'm thinking. What external difference between men and Krishnans can't be faked?"
Marot frowned. "Since they are oviparous, like the other Tetrapoda, they have no navels."
"Good! Captain, if you will enter the hut with us, we can demonstrate our Earthly nature to your satisfaction."
"Think not to cozen me with sweet talk! But come on; the regulations give you the right."
In the hut, Reith and Marot bared their bellies. "Behold!" said Reith. "Here's proof of being born alive from Terran females."
The captain peered. "Those little hollows could be made by surgery. Now, would ye liefer be hanged—"
"Curse it, listen!" shouted Reith. "You know, the sexual organs of male Terrans differ from those of males of your kind. Drop your pants, Aristide!"
The captain peered again. "Ugh! what great, repulsive. ... But meseems ye speak sooth. Resume your garments, Ertsuma. Now get ye hence, and the quicker the better!"
They rode off, leaving the captain fuming as if he wished he could find some other charge against them. Marot said:
"We have worried because we lost the means of disguising ourselves as Krishnans; and here we are suspected of being Krishnans disguised as Terrans! I wonder who warned that officer to watch for us? Could it be my esteemed colleague Warren Foltz?"
"Hmm—maybe you've got something. Perhaps Foltz put in a bad word for us with Baron Kharob's flunkeys. No, hold on! If he's ahead of us, how could he know we're following him? He'd left Novo before you arrived and hired me as guide."
"I made a reservation on the Amazonas well in advance, before Foltz left Terra. He could have learned that I should arrive soon after him. From what he knows of my work, he could have guessed that I would seek the fossil beds of Chilihagh."
"Well, you'd better sharpen that sword of yours. This guy seems to be playing for keeps."
"I do not doubt that he hoped to have us killed at the border," said Marot. "Foltz is a man with a cause, one of those who consider all rules suspended when they act on behalf of their cause."
As they wended southward, the travelers saw the everyday costume for both men and women become a simple wraparound kilt, of thin material since this was summer. The upper body was covered, if at all, by a simple oblong of cloth, casually pinned over one shoulder.
Kharob bad-Kavir, Dasht of Chilihagh, proved a cadaverous Krishnan, clad in rusty black. When Reith explained their mission and requested a digging permit, a worried-looking Kharob said:
"Alas, good my sirs, you come too late. Your predecessor, Master Foltus—Follets—the other Terran hath obtained from me, a ten-night past, exclusive permission to excavate what he calls the Zorian beds of this realm. He gave solemn assurance that nought he should uncover would in any wise cast doubt upon the truth of our reformed religion."
"Deign to tell us about this religion, Your Altitude," said Reith. "Word of it has not yet reached Novorecife."
"It hath been the True Faith here for a score of years. 'Tis the worship of Balch, whom we know to be the only God, as proclaimed by the Book of Bákh, given by an angel in person to our High Priestess."
"Where does that leave the other Varasto deities, my lord?"
"There is a debate in the temple whether they be angels, or demons, or even mere figments. Some maintain that they be the creations of crafty priests to cozen the simple, or magnified memories of heroes of yore. Balch hath promised our High Priestess further revelations—so she saith—to clarify these details. To receive this authentic doctrine, she hath gone to her summer retreat in the hills.
"I strive to serve justice and to remain friends with Novorecife. So it grieves me to reject your petition. But I have given my word and seal."
"How could Foltz's work affect your religion, my lord?"
The Dasht explained: "Our High Priestess, the holy Lazdai, would fain have straitly examined Master Foltus to make sure that nought he found could cast doubt upon the manner of Bákh's creation of the world, but that she was away when he passed through here. Ere I extended permission to go digging, she would likewise examine you, were she in residence.
"Be not downcast, good my sirs. Jeshang, albeit smaller than Mishé, hath its share of sights and entertainment. Tarry a few days, I pray, ere returning northward. But promulgate no heretical opinions! Her Holiness hath been energetic in the extirpation of heresy."
"For all Kharob's boosterism," growled Reith, "this looks like the dullest little jerkwater town on Krishna. What now?"
"I am thinking, my friend," said Marot. "Did he not say he had given Foltz exclusive permission to dig in the Zorian beds?"
"He sure did. Please explain what the Zorian beds are."
"Do you know the work of the geologist Yamanuchi?"
"I've heard of him, but that was long before I came to Krishna—at least half a century ago."
"The lapse of time is inevitable, because of the years it took him to come here, to do his work, to return to Terra, and to publish his reports. Alors, Yamanuchi made a preliminary survey of the geological formations of the area west of the Sadabao Sea. He blocked out a rough chronology of these beds and named a series of periods after the places in which he found them exposed. One period he called the Zorian, after a ranch in the watershed of the upper Zora River, which joins the Zigros here at Jeshang."
Reith asked: "Did Yamanuchi collect any fossils?"