"I tried to get word to you, Earl, but you didn't ring back, so I had to take a chance and come myself." He nodded at Zenya. "The girl took the message."
"What message?" She frowned. "A man rang a few times asking for you to call back. A news service, I understood. Naturally you wouldn't want to be bothered."
"You should have told me," said Dumarest mildly. The delay wasn't important. "Any luck?"
"Some, but you may not like it. The name didn't help, but names can be changed, and the man you're looking for is known here as Amil Kulov."
"You're sure?"
"There's no doubt about it, Earl. The Lammarre details match to the last decimal point. He had an infection shortly after landing and was treated in the city hospital. He also worked for a time in a chemical factory, doing spot checks on sprays and fungicides, and he's on record in their medical section. The thing is, he isn't in the city."
Dumarest frowned. "Where, then? At one of the villages?"
"Not even that. He's one of these crazy guys, you know, always trying to help those who don't really want him to interfere but are too polite to say so. The last known of him was that he was living in the hills among the Ayutha." Branchard poured himself some wine, emptied half the glass in a single swallow. "Nice stuff, Earl. They seem to be treating you well."
"Stick to the point, captain."
"That is it, Earl. You might as well forget the man. The odds are that he's dead by now. Everyone I spoke to reckons that all the social workers who interested themselves in the primitives got the chop when the trouble started. One thing is for sure-if you go looking for him, you'll head smack into trouble."
Nothing was simple. Dumarest said, "Thank you, captain. I'll send money to you at the field."
Chapter Ten
From the head of the column Ven Taykor said, "I've never been a gambling man, Earl, but if I were I'd take odds that none of us will get back alive." His voice was muffled, distorted by the diaphragm of his respirator. "If I were with the Ayutha, I could pick us off one by one and never need to show myself at all."
A gamble impossible to avoid. Pausing, Dumarest glanced back at the column of men. They had been marching since dawn from where the rafts had dropped them, following Taykor as he led them toward the hills. They were tired, hot, and irritable, and showed it. Hand-picked, but poorly trained; there had been no time for that.
He said, "You're a pessimist, Ven. All we want to do is to make contact."
"Let's hope that we don't do it the hard way." Taykor reached up to scratch his face, swore as his fingers met the mask. "Do we have to wear these damn things all the time?"
There was no wind; the leaves of the lofios all around were still, swollen pods taut beneath the sun. They had worn the respirators continuously, field training to get accustomed to the equipment, but the capacity of the tanks was limited.
"We'll take a break," decided Dumarest. "Captain Corm, set guards. Respirators to be worn, no firing on any account unless I order. Lieutenant Paran, report."
He listened as the other relayed details of the situation.
Rafts, heavily armed, riding high at the edge of the hills, men tense to shoot at anything that moved below. More rafts, deeper in, scanning with electronic sensors.
"A party has been spotted moving toward the west, sir. About thirty men, as far as can be determined." His voice hardened. "They could have been responsible for the recent attacks."
"Any other signs of movement?"
"No, sir. That party, sir, do you wish it destroyed?"
"No." Dumarest's voice was harsh. "My orders are plain-no firing for any reason unless I give the command. Any man disobeying will be shot. Our objective is to contact the Ayutha. If we start shooting, they will run."
Run and attack in turn, and the column he commanded was too vulnerable for his liking. As they settled, one of the men complained, "A hell of a thing. Why couldn't we have used rafts to drop us right in the hills? All this walking seems crazy to me."
His companion, more logical, said, "Use your head, man. Suppose you were one of the Ayutha. You could see a raft coming for miles, right? You'd see it land and armed men get out, and then what? I'll tell you, you'd run and get help and set up an ambush. The marshal knows what he's doing."
A blind confidence that Dumarest hoped would be justified. Squatting, crouched over a map, he studied the terrain. They were close to the foothills, where a shallow gully wound into the higher regions, heading, so Ven Taykor had said, to one of the Ayutha settlements. It would be deserted now; even primitives would not have remained massed together to offer an easy target, but equally so, they would have remained scattered in the vicinity. If he could reach the area without being attacked, if they were a little curious and held their fire, if the men behind him would control their nervous tension, it was possible that his mission could be a success.
He said, "Ven, come over here."
Taykor made no reply. Looking up, Dumarest saw him standing beside one of the lofios plants. He had dropped his respirator and was digging with his thumbnails into one of the blooms. He turned, grinning, oil gleaming on his thumbs.
"Here, Earl, come and smell what this is all about."
The scent was incredible. It rose from the oil, catching at the senses, filling the mind with sensations of warm suns and sultry days, of fields of flowers and silken skin. A gourmet would have found in it the succulence of favorite foods, a lover the impact of his woman's flesh. For a moment he stood, confused with a variety of impressions; then Ven Taykor dropped his hands, wiping them on his faded tunic.
"It gets you, doesn't it? I've known men to become so hooked on the stuff they spend their lives among the lofios just collecting, smelling, drifting into a private world all of their own. Not many, but it happens." He added grimly, "You find them sometimes. Mostly bones. With fruit all around, they sit and starve to death."
"A narcotic?"
"No. It isn't habit forming in the sense that it creates a dependency. It's just that a few men like it so much they haven't the will to leave it alone. Mostly you build a tolerance toward it. The marketed stuff, of course, is diluted and refined." Taykor reached up and jerked a fruit from its branch. "Try it, it's good."
The fruit was round, the size of a clenched hand, the rind easily peeled from the juicy pulp beneath. Dumarest lifted his mask and buried his teeth in the flesh. It held a cool, refreshing tang, tart and yet sweet, devoid of seeds.
He said, "How do the plants propagate?"
"By cuttings. They are all from one original hybrid. Even so, the blooms still need pollinating." Taykor lifted his hand and rested it on one of the swollen pods. "See?"
As he rapped it, the pod opened in a gush of golden grains, tiny motes rising, to drift high into the air, a smokelike cloud which hung over the guide as if a mist.
Dumarest snapped, "Be careful!"
"Why?" Taykor frowned. "They're harmless, Earl. The dust is only pollen. It might sting your eyes if you stood too close, and maybe make you sneeze, but that's all." He reached out to gather more fruit. "You'd better let the men eat while they have the chance. From now on the going gets rough."
Eat and recharge the air tanks and get ready for the next stage of the journey. Dumarest moved softly around the camp, watching the shadows beneath the plants to either side. He saw nothing, but that meant little. Their progress had been not as silent as he wished; a stray Ayutha could have spotted them, be even now keeping watch. But if so, there was nothing he could do.
Two hours later they saw the skull.
It was the fleshless head of some beast mounted on a short stick, facing them with fanged jaws. Ven Taykor looked at it, hand rising to his mask in conditioned reflex as he tried to scratch his jaw.
"Well, now," he said. "This is something new. I've never seen anything like it before."
Dumarest looked to either side. The lofios had given way to scrub, matted vegetation covering torn ground. A few of the plants stood in sheltered places, thin and with dulled leaves, ragged beneath the sun, their roots driving deep for the specialized minerals they required. Spined vines pressed against them, yellow flowers bright among the thorns,, red berries hanging in clusters beneath orange leaves.