Something prompted him to great caution. Lowering to minimum bearable height, he stole among shadows cast by bushes until he reached a rocky niche where he could look on unobserved. Fortunately the wind prevented anyone from scenting him … but the stink it bore to him from the crowd was enough to make him quail. It uttered a whole history of greed and jealousy, and the speaker at the middle of the group was fomenting it.
And the orator was—
Recognizing him, Tenthag was almost snatched by dreamness. It was Fifthorch.
Who was saying, “—so of course they want to keep the secret for themselves! It’s lucky for us that the People of the Sea aren’t under the pads of the Bowockers and their precious Order of the Jingfired! Jing was never real! Jing was a figment to keep young’uns quiet! Well, some of us grew out of childhood tales! I wish we all had! The fact that supposedly adult people right here on Neesos still claimed that the Jingtexts must be truth—until we drove them out as they deserved!—isn’t that enough to curdle your maw? It certainly did mine! Be thankful for the People of the Sea, who are coming to our rescue! I’m sure we’ve brought together enough goods to make them give us the secret of fertility! They care about the fact that we’ve been left without a single new bud since traitor Tenthag ran away! They aren’t cold and cynical and cruel like the Bowockers, who weren’t content to take our most valuable possessions from beneath the Bay of Prefs, but stole our youngest young’un as well! And what did they leave in exchange? Rubbish! Scraps and oddments any one of us could have got by making a voyage to the mainland! Things you trade for common seed or common glass! Not glass like ours, the finest on the planet! Did they offer musculators and nervograps? Did they give us anything useful? No, they robbed us of what we didn’t even realize we owned, and laughed when they went away! Taking our last new-budded youngling with them, what is worse!”
His memory echoing with Nemora’s comment about the archeologists who were far too mercenary for her liking, Tenthag found that more than he could endure. Rising to normal height, he padded forward, shouting, and all eyes turned on him with amazement … save for Fifthorch’s, which was full of hate.
“I never dreamed you’d miss me so much, Fifthorch!” he roared. “Did it not suit you to become the youngest when I left—not stolen, but of my own free will?”
His diet of yelg, in spite of his lonely and inactive life aboard a porp, kept him fit and well pressurized; he was able to overtop Fifthorch without effort. Taking station higher on the branchway, where he could continue to dominate the other, he filled his mantle with air for the loudest possible shout. These people looked as though they needed to be startled back to reality.
But a shrill voice took the pressure out of him with a single question.
“Are you one of the People of the Sea, who are going to show us how to breed again?”
He turned, seeking the source of the inquiry … and was instantly deflated.
“Ninthag!” he blurted, scarcely recognizing the old, bloated, half-blind shape that clung to a slanting bough befouled with tatters of wild orqid— colorful, but unfit for food. “Ninthag, don’t you know your own sole bud?”
“Are you pretending to be Tenthag?” the old man wheezed. “I’m not such a fool as to believe you! He went away, long, long ago, stolen by the Bowockers! I see him in visions now, and he’s laughing at us—laughing at the poor folk he left behind while he rejoices in the best the world can offer! We stay here, wondering when if ever another bud will come among us, and—Keep away from me!”
Tenthag was scrambling towards him, but on the instant half a score of others rose to block his way. Their exudates took on the taint of combat-stink.
Slowly Tenthag retreated, recognizing what he had encountered at Klong and sundry places since. These folk were starved into dreamness … of their own volition.