"As you know, sir, Miss Ritter is a Terran of what you aliens term a fiery temper. She eloquently cursed Mr. Mahasingh and might have physically assaulted him, despite his great size, had not Mr. Mahasingh been out of reach up on his juten. As it was, she threatened him with dire consequences ere walking off."
Salazar could not help a sly grin. "Lunchtime!"
In the afternoon the sky clouded over. The shriek of the saw from the Adriana Company's timber harvester seemed to disturb the kusis, for they all disappeared from Salazar's neighborhood. After watching for an hour in vain, Salazar gave up and decided to write up his notes.
He was sitting in his camp chair, swatting arthropods and working on a sheaf of papers, when sounds from the lumbering operation drew his attention. The shriek of the saw fell silent, and there were human mob sounds, with yells and curses.
"O Choku!" he called. "I must see this! Come on and fetch the rifle!"
He set out at a jog towards the sounds. Soon they came in sight of the timber harvester. A mob of men, naked but for sandals, and a few women similarly clad were attacking Mahasingh's lumberjacks with crude clubs and cudgels cut from saplings and branches. The lumberjacks fought back with axes and brush knives. One lumberjack lay on the ground, moving slightly, while a couple of wounded cultists hobbled away from the battlefield.
Each lumberjack was assailed by one or more naked cultists, threatening him with their clubs but not daring to get within reach of his steel. Although the cultists outnumbered the lumberjacks, the disparity in weapons resulted in a standoff, neither party yet doing much more than superficial harm to the other.
Then came Mahasingh's deep voice, bellowing orders. The foreman appeared on the trail from the lumber camp, mounted on his juten and waving a pistol. Behind him came the rest of the lumber crew, brandishing tools from axes and shovels down to wrenches.
The pistol banged twice, and a Kashanite screamed and fell. As the lumberjacks charged, the other Kashanites fled with howls of terror. They bolted into the nearest woods, crashing through the brush, and soon all had vanished save the one shot. Salazar heard a lumberjack say:
"He's dead, all right."
Mahasingh commanded: "Carry him back to the camp. I shall send a message to Miss Ritter asking if she wishes us to bury him or to send someone to take him back to their village."
"I think not that we should be welcome here," said Salazar. "Let us return to our own camp."
When Choku was rustling up dinner, the Kook asked: "What propose you to do now, sir?"
"I think I must go back to Sungecho. I want to try out an idea that Miss Dikranian suggested."
Choku's neck spines wriggled in a pleased way. "I shall be glad to see civilization—of a sort—again."
"I am sorry, but you cannot come. Someone must stay to guard the tent and my materials. You know what the kusis might do if given a chance."
Choku's bristles signaled a sigh. "Very well, sir. I believe the next express runs the day after tomorrow."
The rising sun was thrusting golden lances through the surrounding trees when Salazar, patting a yawn, walked along the platform of the Amoen station. Up ahead, the locomotive gave rhythmic sighs and the firekook shoveled. On the southbound trip of the Unriu Express, the soft-fare car, tolerable by Terrans, was directly behind the locomotive. The railroadkooks had reversed the locomotive on the Y track north of the station but saw no reason to reverse the entire train.
Salazar flashed his ticket at Conductor Zuiha and climbed into the car with the roof. He had just made himself comfortable when sounds of altercation led him to look out. On the platform stood two Kooks bearing a stretcher with folding legs. On the stretcher lay a bulky form.
Apart from this trio, the female Kook was arguing with Zuiha. Salazar could not make out the symbols painted on the female's scales with naked eyes, but his binoculars identified her as Cantemir's attendant, Fetutsi. He guessed that the swaddled figure on the stretcher was George Cantemir.
At last the conductor gave in and waved the group aboard. The two Kooks set down the stretcher in the aisle at the forward end of the car. Then they left the soft-fare car and climbed on the next flatcar, where other Kooks had gathered. Fetutsi said in Sungao:
"Good morning, Mr. Sarasara. May you enjoy robust health!"
"Hail, Fetutsi," said Salazar. "May you stay healthy also. I hear that your boss has had some sort of accident."
A growl from beneath the blankets answered: "You're goddamn right I came down with an accident! If Doc Deyssel can't fix it, I may have to go back to the mainland. They've got a couple of decent plastic surgeons in Harrison. You okay, Kirk?"
"I guess so. What happened to you, George?"
Cantemir peeled back the blanket from his face, which had lost its beard. His round, ruddy visage now bore a host of large red spots like carbuncles. "Goddamned if I'll tell you! Nothing personal, understand, but it's the kind of thing you don't care to talk about."
"Okay," said Salazar, pulling out a book.
No more Terrans appeared. Zuiha blew his whistle and beat his gong, and the engineer tooted. The locomotive sent up a cumulus of smoke and vapor, and the wheels began to turn. The Unriu Express clanked and rattled out of the station. On the first of the flatcars after the soft-fare car, the Kook passengers stood clutching the rail or sat on the bare planks. The remaining flatcar was piled with boxes and bundles beneath a tarpaulin.
Salazar found that the noise of the train made it hard to concentrate on the difference between Ulmoides syngata and Ulmoides styrax in O'Sullivan's Trees of Sunga. When the grade ascended, the roar of the nearby locomotive drowned out the other sounds. When it ran downhill, the conductor and his trainkooks wound the wheels controlling the hand brakes, with a rattle of chains and a screech of brake shoes. Now and then coal smoke billowed into the car, making Salazar cough and wipe his eyes. Up forward, Fetutsi tenderly succored Cantemir.
When a section of straight track with a slight downgrade allowed the noise to quiet, Salazar was surprised to hear a human sniffle. He glanced forward. Sure enough, tears were rolling down Cantemir's spotted face. Forgetting for a moment that Cantemir had tried to murder him, Salazar called:
"Are you all right, George?"
"Oh, sure," groaned Cantemir. "Kirk, tell me just one goddamn thing. How did you frog around in the nanshins without getting holes in you the way I did?"
Salazar grinned and moved to Cantemir's end of the car. He pulled his reed whistle out from beneath his shirt and blew a shrill blast.
"Huh?" said Cantemir. "What'd you do?"
"Didn't you hear?"
"Naw, not a goddamn thing."
"You see, this is a whistle with an extremely high pitch. I can barely hear it. You're older, and as a man gets older, he loses hearing in the highest registers."
Too late, Salazar realized that his knowledge of how to disarm the trees was a secret he should certainly not have shared with a man like Cantemir. To cover his blunder he asked:
"What did the venom do to you, George?"
"Not so much as it might have. I was wearing a good thick outfit, and the venom ate it full of holes like a sieve. Some got through to my skin and ate holes in it, too. Luckily, Tootsie got me back to the camp and dumped me in a tub of water with a whole boxful of baking soda. They tell me it'll leave a lot of pockmarks."
"Then what's the other injury?"
"Yeah. You got to understand that Tootsie has been awful good to me, better than any of my wives and girlfriends ever was. So when she got the last of the goo scrubbed off and I was feeling pretty good, she sat me down for a serious talk.