“Who held a banquet?”
“The Council. They held a banquet to honor me. And… uh…”
“They served froolap,” Stetson said.
“Do you want to hear this or don’t you?”
“Dear boy, I’m all ears.”
Orne glanced pointedly at Stetson’s ears, said: “I hadn’t noticed.” Then: “Well, the Council banquet featured a stew of porjo tails that…”
“Porjo?”
“It’s a native rodent. They consider it a delicacy, especially the tails. The Tritsahin castaways survived at first on porjo.”
“So they served it at this banquet.”
“Right. What they did was—well, the cook, just before bringing me my bowl of stew, tied a live porjo with some kind of cord that dissolved quickly in the hot liquid. This animal erupted out of the pot all over me.”
“So?”
“They laughed for five minutes. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Hamalites really laugh.”
“You mean they played a practical joke on you and you got mad, so mad you pushed the panic button? I thought you said these people have no sense of humor.”
“Look, wise guy! Have you ever stopped to think what kind of people it takes to put a live animal in boiling liquid just to play a joke?”
“A little heavy for humor,” Stetson agreed. “But playful all the same. And that’s why you called in the I-A?”
“That’s part of it!”
“And the rest?”
Orne described the incident of the pratfall into the pile of soft fruit.
“So they just stood there without laughing and this aroused your deepest suspicions,” Stetson said.
Orne’s face darkened with anger. “So I got mad at the porjo trick! Go ahead, make something of it! I’m still right about this place! Make something out of that, too!”
“I fully intend to,” Stetson said. He reached under the go-buggy’s instrument panel, pulled out a microphone, spoke into it: “This is Stetson.”
So I’ve really had it, Orne thought. His stomach felt empty and there was a sour taste at the back of his throat.
The humming sound of a space-punch transceiver came from beneath the instrument panel, followed by: “This is the ship. What’s doing?” The voice carried the echo flatness of scrambler transmission.
“We have a real baddy here, Hal,” Stetson said. “Put out a Priority One emergency call for an occupation force.”
Orne jerked upright, stared at the I-A operative.
The transceiver emitted a clanking sound, then: “How bad is it, Stet?”
“One of the worst I’ve ever seen. Put out a VRO on the First-Contact, some schlammler by the name of Bullone. Have him sacked. I don’t care if he’s Commissioner Bullone’s mother! It’d take a blind man, and a stupid one at that, to call Hamal peaceful!”
“Will you have any trouble getting back?” the voice from the speaker asked.
“I doubt it. The R&R operative has been pretty cagey and they probably don’t know yet that we’re on to them.”
“Give me your grid just in case.”
Stetson glanced at an indicator on his instrument panel. “A-Eight.”
“Gotcha.”
“Get that call out immediately, Hal,” Stetson said. “I want a full O-force in here by tomorrow!”
“Call’s already on its way.”
The humming of the space-punch transceiver fell off to silence. Stetson replaced the microphone, turned to Orne. “So you just followed a hunch?”
Orne shook his head. “I…”
“Look behind us,” Stetson said.
Orne turned, stared back the way they had come.
“See anything curious?” Stetson asked.
Orne fought down a sensation of giddiness, said: “I see a late-coming farmer and one hunter with apprentice moving up fast on the outside.”
“I mean the road,” Stetson said. “You may consider this a first lesson in I-A technique: a wide road that follows the ridges is a military road. Always. Farm roads are narrow and follow the water level routes. Military roads are wider, avoid swamps and cross rivers at right angles. This one fits all the way.”
“But…” Orne fell silent as the hunter came up to them, passed their vehicle with only a casual side-glance.
“What’s the leather case on his back?” Stetson asked.
“Spyglass.”
“Lesson number two,” Stetson said. “Telescopes originate as astronomical devices. Spyglasses are developed as an adjunct of a long-range weapon. I would guess those fowling pieces have an effective range of about one hundred meters. Ergo: you may take it as proved that they have artillery.”
Orne nodded. He still felt dazed with the rapidity of developments, unable as yet to accept complete sensations of relief.
“Now, let’s consider that village up ahead,” Stetson said. “Notice the flag. Almost inevitably flags originate as banners to follow into battle. Not always. However, you may take this as a good piece of circumstantial evidence in view of the other things.”
“I see.”
“There’s the docility of the civilian populace,” Stetson said. “It’s axiomatic that this goes hand in glove with a powerful military and/or religious aristocracy which suppresses technological change. Hamal’s Leader Council is nothing but an aristocracy, well versed in the use of religion as a tool of statecraft and in the use of spies, another inevitable development occurring with armies and warfare.”
“They’re aristocrats, all right,” Orne agreed.
“Rule one in our book,” Stetson said, “says that whenever you have a situation of haves and have-nots, then you have positions to be defended. That always means armies, whether you call them troops or police or guards. I’ll bet my bottom credit those gaming fields of the green and yellow balls are disguised drill grounds.”
Orne swallowed. “I should’ve thought of that.”
“You did,” Stetson said. “Unconsciously. You saw all of the wrongness here unconsciously. It bothered the hell out of you. That’s why you pushed the panic button.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Another lesson,” Stetson said. “The most important point on the aggression index: peaceful people, really peaceful types, don’t even discuss peace. They have developed a dynamic of nonviolence in which the ordinary concept of peace doesn’t even occur. They don’t even think about it. The only way you develop more than a casual interest in peace as we conceive of it is through the recurrent and violent contrast of war.”
“Of course.” Orne took a deep breath, stared at the village on the high ground ahead of them. “But what about the lack of forts? I mean, no cavalry animals and…”
“We can take it for granted that they have artillery,” Stetson said. “Hmmmmm.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s probably enough. We’ll undoubtedly discover a pattern here which rules mobile cavalry out of the equation prohibiting stone forts.”
“I guess so.”
“What happened here was something like this,” Stetson said. “First-Contact, that schlammler, may he rot in a military prison, jumped to a wrong conclusion about Hamal. He tipped our hand. The Hamalites got together, declared a truce, hid or disguised every sign of warfare they knew anything about, put out the word to the citizenry, then concentrated on milking us for everything they could get. Have they sent a deputation to Marak, yet?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have to pick them up, too.”
“It figures,” Orne said. He began to feel the full emotional cleansing of relief, but with odd overtones of disquiet trailing along behind. His own career was out of the soup, but he thought of the consequences for Hamal in what was about to happen. A full O-force! Military occupation did nasty things to the occupiers and the occupied.