"No, sir."
"You did, however, set fires?"
"I did, sir. I was trying to smoke out the creechies that killed my men."
"Very well. Mr. Lepennon?"
The tall Hainishman cleared his throat. "Captain Davidson," he said, "do you think that the people under your command at Smith Camp were mostly content?"
"Yes, I do."
Davidson's manner was firm and forthright; he seemed indifferent to the fact that he was in trouble. Of course these Navy officers and foreigners had no authority, over him; it was to his own Colonel that he must answer for losing two hundred men and making unauthorized reprisals. But his Colonel was right there, listening.
"They were well fed, well housed, not overworked, then, as well as can be managed in a frontier camp?"
"Yes."
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"Was the discipline maintained very harsh?"
"No, it was not.**
"What, then, do you think motivated the revolt?"
"I don't understand."
"If none of them were discontented, why did some of mem massacre the rest and destroy the camp?" There was a worried silence.
"May I put in a word," Lyubov said. "It was the native hilfs, the Amsheans employed in the camp, who joined with an attack by the forest people against the Terran humans. In his report Captain Davidson referred to the Athsheans as "creechies.* "
Lepennon looked embarrassed and anxious.
"Thank you, Dr. Lyubov. I misunderstood entirely. Actually I took the word 'creechie* to stand for a Terran caste that did rather menial work in the logging camps. Believing, as we all did, mat the Amsheans were intraspecies non-aggressive, I never thought they might be the group meant. In fact I didn't realize that they cooperated with you in your camps.—However, I am more at a loss than ever to understand'what provoked the attack and mutiny."
"I don't know, sir."
"When he said the people under his command were content, did the Captain include native people?** said the Cetian, Or, in a dry mumble. The Hainishman picked it up at once, and asked Davidson, in his concerned, courteous voice.
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"Were the Athsheans living at the camp content, do you think?"
"So far as I know."
"There was nothing unusual in their position there, or the work they had to do?"
Lyubov felt the heightening of tension, one turn of the screw, in Colonel Dongh and his staff, and also in the starship commander. Davidson remained calm and easy. "Nothing unusual."
Lyubov knew now that only his scientific studies had been sent up to the Shackleton; his protests, even his annual assessments of 'Native Adjustment to Colonial Presence* required by the Administration, had been kept in some desk drawer deep in HQ. These two N.-T.H.'s knew nothing about the exploitation of the Athsheans. Commander Yung did, of course; he had been down before today and had probably seen the creechie-pens. In any case a Navy commander on Colony runs wouldn't have much to learn about Terran-hilf relations. Whether or not he approved of how the Colonial Administration ran its business, not much would come as a shock to him. But a Cetian and a Hainishman, how much would they know about Terran colonies, unless chance brought them to one on the way to somewhere else? Lepennon and Or had not intended to come on-planet here at all. Or
possibly they had not been intended to come on-planet, but, hearing of trouble, had insisted. Why had the commander brought them down: his will, or theirs? Whoever they were they had about them a hint of authority,
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a whiff of the dry, intoxicating odor of power. Lyubov's headache had gone, he felt alert and excited, his face was rather hot.' "Captain David-son," he said, "I have a couple of questions, concerning your confrontation with the four natives, day before yesterday. You* re certain that one of them was San, or Selver Thele?"
"I believe so."
"You're aware that he has a personal grudge against you."
"I don't know."
"You don't? Since his wife died in your quarters immediately subsequent to sexual intercourse with you, he holds you responsible for her death; you didn't know that? He attacked you once before, here in Centralville; you had forgotten that? Well, the point is, mat Selver's personal hatred for Captain Davidson may serve as a partial explanation or motivation for mis unprecedented assault. The Athsheans aren't incapable of personal violence, that's never been asserted in any of my studies of them. Adolescents who haven't mastered controlled dreaming or competitive singing do a lot of wrestling and fist-fighting, not all of it good-tempered. But Selver is an adult and an adept; and his first, personal attack on Captain Davidson, which I happened to witness pan of, was pretty certainly an attempt to kill. As was the Captain's retaliation, incidentally. At the time,
I thought that attack an isolated psychotic incident, resulting from grief and stress, not likely to be repeated. I was wrong.—Captain, when the four
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Athsheans jumped you from ambush, as you describe in your report, did you end up prone on the ground?"
"Yes."
"In what position?"
Davidson's calm face tensed and stiffened, and Lyubov felt a pang of compunction. He wanted to corner Davidson in his lies, to force him into speaking truth once, but not to humiliate him before others. Accusations of rape and murder supported Davidson's image of himself as the totally virile man, but now that image was endangered: Lyubov had called up a picture of him, the soldier, the fighter, the cool tough man, being knocked down by enemies the size of six-year-olds. . . . What did it cost Davidson, then, to recall that moment when he had lain looking up at the little green men, for once, not down at them?
"I was on my back."
"Was your head thrown back, or turned aside?"
"I don't know."
"I'm trying to establish a fact here, Captain, one that might help explain why Selver didn't kill you, although he had a grudge against you and had helped kill two hundred men a few hours earlier. I wondered if you might by chance have been in one of the positions which, when assumed by an Athshean, prevent his opponent from further physical aggression,"
"I don't know."
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Lyubov glanced round the conference table; all the faces showed curiosity and some tension. 1 'These aggression-halting gestures and positions may have some innate basis, may rise from a surviving trigger-response, but they are socially developed and expanded, and of course learned. The strongest and completes! of them is a prone position, on the back, eyes shut, head turned1 so the throat is fully exposed. I think an Athshean of the local cultures might find it impossible to hurt an enemy who took that position. He would have to do something else to release his anger or aggressive drive. When they had all got you down, Captain, did Selver by any chance sing?''
"Did he what?"
"Sing."
"I don't know."
Block. No go. Lyubov was about to shrug and give it up when the Cetian said, "Why, Mr. Lyubov?'' The most winning characteristic of the rather harsh Cetian temperament was curiosity, inopportune and inexhausitible curiosity; Cetians died eagerly, curious as to what came next.
"You see," Lyubov said, "the Athsheans use a kind of ritualised singing to replace physical combat. Again it's a universal social phenomenon that might have a physiological foundation, though it's very hard to establish anything as 'innate* in human beings. However the higher primates here all go in for vocal competing between two males, a lot of howling and whistling; the dominant male may finally give the other a
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cuff, but usually they just spend an hour or so trying to outbellow each other. The Athsheans themselves see the similarity to their singing-matches, which are also only between males; but as they observe, theirs are not only aggression-releases, but an art-form. The better artist wins. I wondered if Selver sang over Captain Davidson, and if so, whether he did because he could not kill, or because he preferred the bloodless victory. These questions have suddenly become rather urgent."