Awb’s mantle clenched around him. So were three of Axwep’s—and they were still in the city, one studying, two working on the secondary plants. The mayor didn’t object to their presence. But Phrallet could all too easily have seen her buds as potential rivals, and that would explain so much, so much!
Oh, if only he had been budded to somebody like Thilling! But the picturist must be sterile; she had no bud-scars at all.
A faint idea hovered at the edge of his awareness, in that dim zone where memory, imagination and reason blurred together. He was far too tired to pursue it, though, and turned his mind back to the discussion. Axwep was presiding over it now, directing its course like a commander of old at the bragmeets recounted in ancient legend.
She was saying: “So when you first came here, and heard about peculiar plants and deformed animals, you found no actual evidence, correct?”
“The nearest reports,” Byra confirmed, “were from several padlonglaqs away. The local vegetation displayed some unusual features, but that’s often the way with modified Gveestian secondaries, isn’t it?”
“What about the natives? I haven’t seen much of them, but they strike me as very peculiar indeed!”
Axwep’s thrust went home. Byra broke off in confusion. But Drotninch spoke up bluffly.
“It was regarded by the Council of the Jingfired as a great advantage that the folk hereabouts were unlikely to protest at our intrusion!”
There was a murmur of approval from the assembled scientists, growing restive at the mayor’s intervention.
“I thought so too,” Lesh said suddenly. “But now I don’t. Oh, it’s very well for you lot to argue in such terms, comfortable at home in Chisp! What do you think it’s been like for us, though, surrounded by people we can’t even talk to? It’s been preying on my pith, I tell you straight, and I don’t think I’m the only one.”
Seizing her chance, Axwep said, “Can you relate the loss of your luminants to any particular event? Or the failure of your nervograps? After all, when you first arrived everything seemed normal except for the people. What did you do that might have—oh, I don’t know!—imported a new infection from beyond the hills, say?”
There was a pause. Lesh said at last, with reluctance, “Well, I have wondered about…”
“Go on!”
“Well, we do require a lot of fresh water, you know, and we were running short the winter before last, because it freezes so hard around here, and one of our aerial surveys noted that a stream just the other side of the local watershed was still free of ice. So last spring we tapped it with some quick-growing cutinates, and by the end of the summer we had a good supply. It’s lasted through the winter exactly as we planned. But in any case, what could that have to do with the sudden blight we’ve suffered? We’re all trained personnel, and we have the most modern medical knowledge, and—”
“Nobody’s told me,” Axwep cut in, “but I’ll wager that the local folk have long been accustomed to collecting food from beyond the watershed. Correct?”
“Ah … Yes, I believe so.”
“Because the vegetation there is lusher, or better to eat, or superior in some other way? Or don’t you know?”
“I already told you: some of the Gveestian secondaries are unfamiliar, but we’re on the edge of a climatic boundary, so I suppose the cold—”
“It’s time to stop supposing and start thinking,” murmured a soft voice at Awb’s side, and Thilling settled close to him. “No need to explain what’s going on. I can guess, even though it’s taken me until now to get all my images developed. They practically tell the story by themselves … Say, wasn’t it Phrallet I sensed passing me on the way here? What’s with her? She was reeking!”
Awb summed up the reason, and Thilling clacked her mandibles in sympathy.
“It’s not going to be much fun for you on Voosla for the foreseeable future, is it?”
That was it. That was the hint he needed to complete the idea which had been so elusive before. Even though life at sea was preferable, life anywhere in company with so foul-tempered a budder…