From a military point of view, that discovery was relieving. There would be nothing to fear from the north. The region was probably uninhabited. And not even humans could ascend the northern cliff, without specialized mountaineering equipment.
The danger lay south, and east. The eastern flank of the Chiton tapered down much more gently than did its western flank—like a flattened tail. True, the eastern slope contained the densest vegetation on the mountain—much of it a type of quasi-bramble which Julius suspected any gukuy would find well-nigh impenetrable. But there were still many open areas, providing relatively easy access to the entire plateau. When questioned by Indira, the gukuy confirmed that they themselves had reached the big valley through that route. (And still did. Over time, Indira realized that the gukuy in the valley maintained communication with their co-believers in the south.)
Joseph and his lieutenants, after discussing the question with Julius, decided to ignore the potential danger from the east, for the moment. The gukuy in the big valley would warn them of any invaders coming from that direction. It was decided that, after Indira established good enough communications with the gukuy, the colonists would request permission to station one of the platoons in the big valley. But until that time came, they would concentrate on the immediate problem. The southern slope, and its canyons.
There were six canyons along the southern flank of the mountain. Three of them veered off into cul-de-sacs, and could be safely ignored. But the other three led straight toward the summit—and one of them, the largest, reached almost to the crest.
Andrew MacPherson was assigned the task of planning fortifications. The task was daunting, given the small numbers of the colonists, but Joseph was determined to create a stone wall barring access through the canyon.
Andrew came to Julius for advice on how to design fortified walls. As he had years before with Hector, Julius steered him toward Indira. But Indira refused to discuss the matter. Later, she promised, when she was done with learning the gukuy language.
“Later” turned out to be much later. Indira had thought it would be easier to learn the gukuy language than it had been to learn owoc. True, she assumed the language would be more complex. But, on the positive side, she thought there would be two big advantages:
First, she suspected that the gukuy mentality was much closer to human than was the owoc. Second, the fact that both she and the gukuy could speak (at least to some extent) the hooting language of the owoc gave them a mutual verbal Rosetta stone.
Both of those assumptions turned out to be correct. But what she hadn’t counted on was two other factors. One: there was no such thing as a “gukuy language.” There were five languages represented among the gukuy pilgrims. Three of those languages obviously belonged to the same language group. They were among the languages spoken by the civilized societies which lived somewhere to the south. Two of them were quite closely related. (In her own mind, she thought of the relationship between the three languages as being similar to trying to learn French, Spanish and Russian at the same time.) Unfortunately, the dominant language of the three—and the language spoken by the majority of the pilgrims—was the “Russian” oddball. The language in question was called Anshaku, and she soon learned that it was the principal language of the largest and most powerful empire in that part of Ishtar known to the pilgrims.
The two other languages belonged to an entirely different language group—the language group spoken by most of the barbarian tribes which, she learned, inhabited the great plain south of the Chiton. One of the languages was Kiktu, the language of the largest and most powerful of those tribes. The other “language” was an argot, a Kiktu-based lingua franca which could apparently be understood by all of the barbarians.
After dithering a bit (as someone who was both adept at languages and enjoyed learning them), Indira decided that practical considerations required her to focus her efforts on Anshaku and Kiktu. All of the gukuy pilgrims from the south could speak Anshaku, at least to some extent. And while only two of the pilgrims who came from the barbarian tribes were Kiktu, the other barbarians could speak the language to some extent.