“I lead a charmed life, remember?” he told her, actually smiling.
“Leelson! It’s dangerous!”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Drive on. I’ll catch up with you in a while.”
Trompe grunted in annoyance, but he drove on. We kept going for some little time, then, at Lutha’s insistence, we stopped. We waited, and waited, growing increasingly apprehensive. At the moment when both Trompe and Lutha had decided to turn about and go back, Leelson appeared at the turn in the canyon, sauntering toward us as though he had been out for a morning stroll around a hive!
“Do you know anything about what we saw back there, Saluez?”
I looked blankly at him. Of course I didn’t.
“Very strange,” he mused. “They’re unconscious. As in a trance.”
I said nothing. What could I say?
He shrugged, with an apologetic look at me. “I’m picking up all kind of avoidance signals here. This is evidently something Saluez doesn’t want us to discuss.”
“Saluez doesn’t want to talk about the Kachis,” said Lutha.
“Talk,” I said weakly, flapping my hands at them. “You talk. I won’t listen.”
Of course I did listen, even though they used many words I didn’t know then, words I only learned later.
Leelson said, “There are a few dead ones back in the canyon, like the ones we saw yesterday. But those gathered around the fountains don’t seem to be dead, even though they’re totally unresponsive to stimuli. I thumped a few of them. They’re rigid. But there’s no sign of decay or mummification, so I wondered what Saluez could tell us.”
Lutha looked at me from the corner of her eye. I avoided her look.
She said carefully, “I believe … at the ceremony of Tahs-uppi, some Kachis go into the omphalos—”
The Kachis, I corrected her mentally. All of them. Our beloved ghosts, going on to heaven.
“—and if this ceremony is dependent upon songfathers getting to the omphalos, perhaps it’s a state the Kachis go into at this time. Making the journey safer for people.”
“Interesting,” mused Leelson, climbing up to take the reins from Trompe.
Not interesting! Holy!
I was amazed to find my eyes wet, to feel that choking sensation that comes with tears. What was there to cry over?
In Simidi-ala, the rememberer returned to the outlanders, his brow broken by three deep horizontal wrinkles, his mouth twisted up as though he had drunk sour water, his hands flapping.
“Well?” demanded the Procurator.
“Gone!” said the rememberer. “Mitigan and Chur Durwen, they’re gone from the hive we sent them to. And there’s been a herdsman murdered, a gaufer taken!”
“Chowby excrement,” said the Procurator. “The piss of diseased farbles. The sexual relationships of brain-dead bi-Tharbians.”
“Now, now,” said Poracious Luv. “Cursing won’t help.”
The Procurator shuddered. “How long ago?” he demanded.
“Several days.” The rememberer fell into a chair limply. “There’s hardly a chance of their surviving.”
“Why?” asked the ex-king. “What dangers does your world afford?”
The rememberer flushed. “We enter upon a delicate area, sirs, madam.”
“I don’t care if we enter upon you and your wife in the act of holy procreation,” the Procurator snarled. “Damn it, we need to know!”
“We have certain sacred … creatures upon Dinadh. They are nocturnal. Anyone who is abroad upon the planet during the hours of darkness is almost certain to be … ah, damaged.”
“Mitigan came from Asenagi,” said the ex-king. “Though the Asenagi are Firsters, they are of a sect which does not believe in homo-norming. Have you heard of the viper bats of Asenagi? Or the great owl weasel? Both of them are nocturnal. Viper bats go in clouds of several thousand. Owl weasels are more solitary, but then, they’re as big as a man. Asenagi youth spend several years in the wilderness, living off the country, before they’re accepted into the clan of assassins. Do you think your nocturnal creatures, whatever they are, will bother Mitigan?”
“Or Chur Durwen,” Poracious Luv offered. “Collis, too, is a warlike world. Young men are expected to have slaughtered their first enemy by the time they are seven.”
Beads of sweat stood like pearls along the rememberer’s brow. “The songfather of T’loch-ala is questioning those who spoke with the two leaseholders. He will determine whether they gave any hint as to where they are going.”