The young man and Alexis threw themselves into a passionate clinch. When they untangled, Alexis said: "Kirk, this is my friend Matthew Peters. Kirk Salazar, the up-and-coming scientist."
Peters put out a hand the size of a gorilla's. Salazar, by applying pressure first, got his hand back intact. Peters took Alexis's traveling case, and the two walked off arm in arm. The young man was the one she had been with in Levontin's breakfast room on Salazar's first morning in Sungecho.
Salazar wondered what would have happened if he had taken Alexis up on her latest advance. Would she have had Peters lying in wait, to pounce just as Salazar prepared to dip his wick? Or had she planned a mini-orgy, with Peters and Salazar mounting seriatim? It would be interesting to attend an orgy once in his life; but on the whole, this was a mystery of the sort he was willing to leave unsolved.
On the way to Levontin's, Salazar and Choku encountered Hilbert and Suzette Ritter. After greetings, Salazar said:
"Alexis came down on the train with me, but she went off with Peters."
Suzette sighed. "Not surprising. She avoids us, saying she can't bear to be preached at. Peters is her local fancy man, whom she comes down more or less monthly to quote see unquote. Oyodo says he's got his cranky engine fixed and, Metasu willing, the Ijumo will sail tomorrow night.
"Meanwhile I've been studying the phonetics of Sungao. Some call it a dialect of Feënzuo, while others consider it a separate language."
"I know these endless arguments," said Salazar, "which boil down to questions of definition. In my field it's about questions like: Does the extant hurato belong to the same species as the fossil hurato one of my colleagues dug up last year? The only way to settle it would be to put a male of one kind in a cage with a female of the other and wait to see if they were interfertile. But there's no way you can cross-breed a fossil with a living animal, or anything else, for that matter. Has Levontin an empty room?"
"I'm sure he has. He says rumors of disturbances on Mount Sungara have damaged his tourist trade ever since that boatload of Suvarovians was here."
Choku helped Salazar settle in his room at Levontin's Paradise Palace. As usual, Choku declined Salazar's offer to share the room, saying that his kind did not feel comfortable in alien dwellings, wherefore he would sleep against the outside wall as usual. Then a loud knock was followed by a demand in Sungao:
"Open in the name of High Chief Yaamo!"
The speaker proved a Kook with the painted insignia of Yaamo's constabulary. "Both of you!" he said. "You are commanded by the High Chief to appear in the conference room forthwith!"
"What now?" muttered Salazar. Soon he found himself back in the converted game room, as at the end of the trip to the Michisko Bush. He sat facing Chief Yaamo, with a translator and a squad of subordinates.
Those summoned, besides Salazar and Choku, were the elder Ritters, Alexis Ritter, and her friend Matthew Peters. The last two had evidently been snatched from bed at an inopportune moment. Peters had a sheet wrapped around his otherwise unclad torso, while Alexis was nude but for slippers. Her defiant glare said that nobody had better comment on those facts if he knew what was good for him.
"May aw your heth be good," said Yaamo slowly and with effort. "We wi' do wizzout ze perim— preriminaries."
He turned to his interpreter and spoke rapidly in Sungao. The interpreter translated:
"The High Chief has received reports of violence on Mount Sungara among Miss Ritter's followers and the employees of the Adriana Company. This has shut down the lumbering. Most of the lumbermen have departed, leaving too few to carry on.
"In addition, there is a tale of a Terran, a holy prophet, who stirred up this trouble. His name is reported as Sen. After arousing many to form a group to oppose the lumbering, he vanished, leaving the former subforeman in command. We have been unable to find him despite close watch on transportation facilities.
"A local Terran, who lives by selling other Terrans-predictions of their futures, told us that some Terran holy men have the power of making themselves invisible. We.
shall doubt this until we see a convincing demonstration. Can any of you Terrans vanish whilst we watch? Nay? We thought not.
"Furthermore, we have a complaint from one Takao, owner of the juten stable in Amoen, of the disappearance of a juten rented by this alien Sen without payment for the animal. The remains of a carcass, mostly devoured by wild animals, were found on the edge of the nanshin forest, and it is suspected that this is the beast in question." The interpreter looked at Salazar. "You are Mr. Salazar, are you not?"
"I am."
"What have you to say about these matters?"
"The Reverend Khushvant Sen came by my camp on the juten in question. Later he returned afoot, saying that Mr. Mahasingh, enraged by his teachings, had pursued him and shot his animal dead. Sen escaped by hiding in the nanshins, where the spirit of Metasu protected him from the venom. So if anyone owes Takao for the animal, it is Mahasingh."
"Where is Mahasingh now?"
"This morning he meant to take the train to Sungecho with me. But questions about the missing juten detained him in Amoen until after train time."
Yaamo muttered to one of his subordinates; Salazar caught the word 'Maasinga'. The Kook hurried out, doubtless to alert the police to watch for Mahasingh.
So began an hour of questioning and tale telling. Salazar's heart was in his mouth lest Alexis blurt out that he was also Khushvant Sen. But she held her fire, probably, he thought, because of his counterthreat to expose her murder of Dumfries, whose name did not come up. Salazar wondered what she would do if it did. Yaamo would think nothing of the fact that she had sacrificed Dumfries to Shiiko to pay the rent on her lease; but if she confessed to this in open court, she would arouse fierce hostility among other Terrans.
She said that she had seen Salazar; in fact, they had climbed Sungara to the crater together for a picnic. Afterward, all she saw of him was glimpses as he went about his research. She attended Sen's meeting but had no idea whence he came or whither he went. When she finished, Salazar drew a breath of relief.
Even riskier was the chief's questioning of Choku, since every Kook had a built-in lie detector. When his turn came, Choku merely said that he had brought Sen down from the crater and had seen him as far as Amoen. If the high chief had asked about the true identities of Sen and Salazar, the fat would have been in the fire, but that question seemed not to have occurred to the inquisitors.
At last Yaamo said through his interpreter: "The more we look into this affair, the more tangled it becomes. Trust Terrans to complicate matters beyond human understanding! When we locate Mahasingh and Sen, questioning may make some sense of the story. Meanwhile the Terrans Salazar and the young female Ritter shall remain in Sungecho until these matters be clarified.
"Like a sensible person, we avoid interference in disputes amongst aliens. Know, however, that all this business of strange Terran cults, crimes, conflicts, and riots is intolerable to us human beings. The next such outbreak, we shall order all aliens off Sunga, even if it means that we shall have to send real human beings to Shikawa to keep Shiiko well disposed. We are sure that as a result of the bad example set by you Terrans, we shall have enough human criminals to satisfy the volcano spirit.
"While the aliens' presence brings us some small advantages in manufactures and trade goods, they are not worth these disturbances and interruptions of the island's orderly activities. Your crimes against one another we do not deem our proper business, but lately there have even been Terran offenses against human beings. We will not put up with that!