When he could discern the terrain between the forest and the tent, he saw no sign of his visitors. Choku had resumed his preparation of dinner as if nothing had happened. At the edge of the wood Salazar called: "O Choku!"
The Kook looked up. "Yea, honorable boss?"
"Have they gone?"
"Aye, sir. When Mr. Cantemir called for help, Fetutsi let go of me and ran to the woods. As soon as she released me, I got your rifle from the tent. Then she came out of the woods leading Mr. Cantemir. His clothes were spotted with drops of venom, and he was shouting in pain."
"Were there any more words between you and them?"
"The onnifa asked if I had any baking soda. I told her no, I did not. She knew from the movement of my spines that I lied to her, but I had the gun and they did not. Mr. Cantemir had lost his, which I see you have recovered.
"Meseemed we should reserve our baking soda for ourselves. She appealed to me as a fellow human being, so at last I gave her a worn-out towel to wipe the venom from her scales. It was beginning to pain her, even though we human beings have tougher hides than you fragile aliens.
"All the time Mr. Cantemir kept shouting for her to get him back to the lumber camp. The last I saw, she was trotting back towards the Amoen trail with Mr. Cantemir bouncing on her shoulder and screaming curses."
"You didn't think to shoot them?"
Choku's spines registered amazement. "Nay indeed, sir. Why, that would have been illegal!"
"You mean it is legal for Cantemir to shoot me but not for you to shoot him?"
"You are entirely correct, sir. The Chiefly Council enacts the laws that govern the actions of us human beings toward one another. High Chief Yaamo's covenants with you aliens have the force of law. These laws forbid us to slay an alien save to prevent a crime against oneself or another human being. It dictates not the acts of Terrans with one another, any more than your Terran laws, upon your native planet, regulate the number of kills that one of your beasts of prey may take in a given time.
"That is doubtless why Fetutsi was given the task of preventing me from interfering while Mr. Cantemir undertook to shoot you. He could not hand her the gun and command her to slay you while he essayed to stop me from interfering. She would have refused to perform an illegal act, since you were not threatening her with any crime. On the other hand, it would have been lawful for me to slay him to stop his destroying my source of income—namely you, sir. Of course, I could bring a charge of assault against Fetutsi, albeit I doubt that such litigation were worthwhile."
Salazar grumbled. "You Kukulcanians are all born lawyers. How about dinner?"
VII – The Sungecho Library
Two days later Salazar was testing his whistles and taping the sounds and actions of the kusis. The animals now ignored him save occasionally to beg for mittas. He was working at the edge of the nanshin forest, dictating into his recorder, when a new sound brought him about. From around the curve of the mountain came the chug of a Kukulcanian steam engine. Salazar called:
"O Choku!"
"Aye, sir?"
"Will you please go see what is making that noise?" Salazar pointed.
"Aye, aye, sir!" Choku took off at a trot.
A half hour later Choku reported: "It is Mr. Cantemir's people, sir. They have widened the trail and brought up a big machine, preparing to cut the nanshins."
"Is Cantemir bossing them? I should expect him to be still laid up from the nanshin venom."
"I did not see Mr. Cantemir, sir. Mr. Mahasingh seems, to have taken command."
"I had better look into this. Choku, get the rifle— mine, not Cantemir's cannon."
They set out eastward. Less than a kilometer away, Salazar sighted a huge, smoke-belching tractor combine with a power saw mounted on a boom in front. A couple of the Adriana Company's lumberjacks ran the machine, while others, in long hooded slickers and goggles, prepared to haul away logs with the help of several kyuumeis.
The saw shrieked, and a nanshin crashed down. Lumberjacks with hoods fastened close waded into the brush and began to trim the limbs from the trunk with axes. Salazar thought that with Terran power saws and other tree-harvesting machinery he had read about, they could have done the whole job in a fraction of the time; but such devices were impractical on a technologically backward planet.
Salazar sighted a man who stood out from the rest, mounted on a juten. This man directed operations. He seemed very tall, not wearing a slicker, and had a lavender scarf wound around his head. As Salazar approached, he saw that the man was very dark of skin, with a curly black beard reaching halfway down his chest. Salazar tilted back his head to say:
"Mr. Mahasingh?"
"I am he," rumbled the man in a deep bass, looking down with large, liquid brown eyes. "And you, I think, are that Mr. Salazar, the young scientist who gave Mr. Cantemir grief."
"Served him right for trying to kill me. How is he?"
"He was recovering well from the nanshin stings under the care of his Kook helper and was expected to suffer nothing worse than pockmarks. But then something went wrong, and he sustained a most unfortunate injury."
"What happened? Break a leg?"
"Please, Mr. Salazar, the nature of the injury is one I should be embarrassed to discuss. In any case, I shall send him down the line to Doctor Deyssel."
"And you're going ahead with clear-cutting?"
"As you see."
Salazar thought that possibly this man might be more open to an appeal to principles than would a tough opportunist like Cantemir. "Are you aware of the damage your project will do to the whole environmental area, destroying the local biota?"
"I know what opponents of our project say. But the decision is for the directors of the Adriana Company, not for me."
"Doesn't your conscience bother you?"
"It might, save that when one works among Europeans—"
"Hold it!" Salazar broke in. "I'm no European. I was born on Kukulcan, as was my mother; my father was a native of the United States of America, on Terra."
Mahasingh waved the objection away with a smile. "With persons of my ethnic background, 'European' means anyone of the pale-skinned branch of the Cauca-soid race. I belong to the dark-skinned branch, as do Iranians and Arabs. To continue, when one works among Europeans, one must to some extent follow their ways.
"The question did bother me for a time. But I prayed to Shiv, and the god instructed me to take Arjuna's advice. Arjuna advised Krishna, when Krishna found himself playing the role of a warrior, to be the best warrior he could. Likewise, since the cosmic wheel has placed me in the role of lumber-camp foreman, I should try to be the best lumber-camp foreman I could. So I shall strive to obey that counsel." Mahasingh turned his head. "Ah, our talented neighbor, Miss Ritter, has come to investigate the noise. Good morning, Supreme Choraga!"
"Hello. Hello, Kirk," said Alexis Ritter. She wore rough work clothes, as she had in the climb to the crater. "I see what you're up to. Kirk, go away! I have something private to discuss with Dhan."
"Okay, your ineffable Highness," growled Salazar. He walked to where Choku stood waiting and whispered: "Lag behind and hear what you can." Then Salazar strolled away toward his own camp.
He had nearly reached the tent when Choku caught up with him. "Honorable boss! As you suspected, they talked freely within my hearing, as if I could not understand English. Miss Ritter asked whether Mr. Mahasingh would carry out Mr. Cantemir's offer to pay her money at the end of the operation if she kept her people from interfering. Mr. Mahasingh replied that he knew naught of any such agreement and would certainly not pay on. his own initiative out of company funds. If she had a complaint against the company, she should take it up with their higher officers.