The slatternly port drifted past, the houses becoming smaller and more widely spaced with each block. Along the street Terrans halted to stare, while the occasional Kukulcanians went about their business with typical indifference to anything but the task at hand.
The wagon staggered past the remains of a defensive wall that had warded the port before Yaamo's clan had established hegemony over the isle of Sunga, and on out into the country. They plodded past stretches of farmland until the patches of dusky green woodland grew larger and denser. Gradually the countryside changed from farmland with woodlots to forest with occasional clearings.
Salazar sat beside the Ritters, whom he knew the best of anyone in the group. He inquired: "Where's your daughter?"
Hilbert Ritter replied: "Gone back to Mount Sungara."
Suzette added: "When she found we'd come to try to talk her out of this cult business, she got furious. We had a frightful row, and she walked out on us. This morning, I hear, she's collected her two Kook bodyguards and taken the Unriu Express to Amoen."
"Sounds like a difficult offspring," said Salazar.
"You don't know the half of it," said Ritter. "Are you a family man?"
"Nope. Not married or even engaged."
"Oh?" said Suzette. "We saw you kissing a little blonde good-bye before the ship left Oõi. We assumed—well—"
"Just a friend, come to see me off," said Salazar. "She and I have been, I guess you'd say, going together. She's Professor Fisker's daughter, Calpurnia."
"Any future plans?" asked Suzette.
"If you mean getting married or even taking on a live-in arrangement, no. At least not till I get my degree and something more than a beginning instructor's pay."
"A careful man like your father," said Ritter with a chuckle. "One can be too careful, like the man attacked by a fyunga who called for help to his Kook companion but took so long getting his grammar right that the fyunga ate him."
Salazar changed the subject. "Will this—ah—disagreement with your daughter change your plans?"
Ritter grunted. "Looks that way. We were going to skip the zuta-watching trips from Amoen and spend the time deprogramming the girl. But after last night I think we may go on those field trips, after all. She said she never wanted to see us again; serve her right if we took her up on it."
Suzette added: "I doubt if anything we said would make a difference. If she likes the power and pelf that comes from being a high priestess, why would she want to give it up?"
The conversation was broken by a cry in Sungao from behind the wagon: "Keëkai! Keëkai!" meaning "Move aside" or "Out of the way!" Two Kooks on jutens overtook the wagon, their animals at a full run. When the wagon driver paid no attention, the two riders pulled over to the grassy strip alongside the road and pounded past, missing the wagon by millimeters. A gob of mud thrown up by the jutens' feet struck Miss Shakeh Dikranian, the sultry-looking, black-haired, Oriental-seeming beauty, on the left ear. She cursed in three languages and, with help from Mr. Antonelli, wiped off the mud with paper handkerchiefs.
"Juten racing," said Ritter, "is the nearest thing adult Kooks have to sport. Otherwise they say games are fine for children, but they think Terrans touched in the head to go on playing them when grown up."
Two hours later the wagon drew up on the rough, rutted dirt road that ran west from Sungecho. To the right rose the somber forest of the Michisko Bush. A substantial wire fence ran along the left side, where the forest had been cleared for farming half a kilometer back from the road. Beyond the fence, where the wagon halted, stretched a bare field, sparsely spotted with wild herbage and a few saplings. Salazar inferred that either the field was lying fallow or the owner had given up trying to raise a profitable crop there.
"We get down here," said Tchitchagov. "Follow Fetutsi. Do not get ahead of her and do not straggle. Do not approach any large wild animal closer than a hundred meters."
The driver spoke in Sungao: "Honorable Tchitchagov, I shall take my team an itikron down the road, where there is good grazing."
"Be back in two hours," said Tchitchagov; then to the Terrans: "Let us go!"
Fetutsi unslung her rifle and, holding it in one clawed hand, walked into the Michisko Bush. She turned her reptilian head to say: "You ay-yens, keep crose!" Her speech was even less intelligible than Chief Yaamo's. Tchitchagov brought up the tail of the column, herding stragglers along.
On either side rose huge trees, as thick as temple columns. Faint sylvan smells of rotting vegetation filled Salazar's nostrils. In this climax forest, little sunlight reached the ground, which was fairly free of underbrush. The gloom of the forest seemed to dampen the visitors' spirits, for there was none of the usual banter and chaff. When, however, a zuta with black and white striped wings flew over their heads, weaving among the tree trunks, some of the more dedicated zuta watchers whipped out binoculars and tally sheets.
"It's the greater chocho!"
"No; it's the Saurophychus nesiotes. That's another genus."
"Catch one and I'll prove I'm right!"
"It's gone now, damn it. It's listed in Parker's book ..."
"Over there," said Tchitchagov, "you'll see the yellow-bellied gougebeak."
"Where?" asked Salazar, searching the forest in the direction indicated.
"On the left-hand side trunk of that V-shaped tree."
Salazar looked, but there seemed to be at least six V-shaped trees in that direction. "Which tree, please?"
"Too late; it has gone behind the trunk."
Fetutsi turned to say: "Prease keep move! And keep noise down. No roud noise, prease!"
The column got under way again. Salazar noted that George Cantemir walked a couple of paces ahead of him, beside Miss Axelson where the trail permitted. He was murmuring to the young woman, now and then bringing giggles to her fresh young face. Salazar thought, No doubt he is asking her for the same thing he tried to get from Alexis. Salazar also thought: Wish I had the guts to proposition every woman who came by—or even one of them once in a while.
An hour later the party entered an area of smaller timber and more undergrowth. A few charred, rotting trunks of larger size implied that this area had once, perhaps a century earlier, been swept by fire, and they were walking through second growth. Trees became sparser and more widely scattered, allowing longer views. More shrubs and saplings impeded their progress.
"Ouch!" said Mr. ben-Yahya. "That damn thing has thorns."
"Watch thorns, ay-yens," said Fetutsi belatedly. "You skin too soft." The Kook had brushed past the same thorny shrub without harm, her scales being proof against its spines.
A fallen trunk lay across the trail. Fetutsi put a clawed hand on the bark and, holding her rifle in her other hand, vaulted effortlessly over the obstacle. She said to the Terrans behind her:
"You ay-yens go round."
The Terrans straggled toward the butt end of the log, where a mass of roots stuck up to more than man height. Cantemir put both hands on the trunk and vaulted over, as Fetutsi had done. He came down with a loud grunt.
"What wrong?" said Fetutsi.
"Hurt yourself?" said Tchitchagov, hurrying forward.
"Just sprained my damned ankle," gritted Cantemir. "I'll cut a walking stick."
"Too bad Mr. Mpanza isn't with us," said Mrs. Nicollet. "You could borrow that blackthorn shillelagh he carries."
Cantemir limped off a few paces, chose a sapling, and pulled out a big sheath knife. In a few minutes he had cut a serviceable stick and was limping after the column.
Serves him right, thought Salazar, for showing off in front of the dame.
"You've put us behind schedule, George," grumped Tchitchagov.