“It is not for your clothes you should be cautious, Dennis,” Chester said, “but rather for yourself.”
“Oh, I’ll heal too,” the youth remarked gaily. It felt good to be out of—out of sight of, even—the brown pile of Rakastava.
Dennis began to whistle a tune; the tune the tavern girl had been singing when he passed on the way to get the Founder’s Sword.
The pasture, a broad stretch of sunlit grassland, was as obvious as the path leading to it.
Dennis had never seen anything like it. There were grassed plots in Emath Village, jealously guarded by their owners—and generally of approximately the same dimensions as a doorway. Beyond those small holdings, greenery meant the jungle rather than grass.
Here was grass on the scale of the jungle: a strip a quarter-mile wide that undulated on out of sight between walls of trees and clogging brambles. The cows had already cropped away a broad swath close to the trail from Rakastava, but the portion a few hundred yards beyond was knee-high and a lush green that looked delicious even to Dennis.
Scattering now, the herd ambled to its food—each cow choosing the tuft that its great brown eyes thought most tasty. They let Dennis and Chester come within a few feet of them—if the companions walked slowly. A closer approach sent the cows bolting some yards further, to stare back doubtfully at the unfamiliar figures.
Dennis paused, breathing fresh air and feeling the direct sun. It was going to be scorching here at midday, when the dew burned off and the light plunged straight down with no shadows.
He frowned at the black and white backs straggling away from him and each other.
“Chester?” he asked. “How are we going to get them back to the stables in the evening? They won’t let us get close to them.”
“They will return of themselves, Dennis,” the robot said quietly, “to be milked by the machines of Rakastava so that the weight of their udders will not pain them.”
Dennis looked at his companion in puzzlement. “But they didn’t need me to drive them here, either,” he said. “They knew the way…”
He shrugged. “Well, maybe they just wanted somebody here to guard the cows. They’re afraid of the jungle, after all.”
“They are afraid of many things, Dennis,” Chester said. “And who is it to say they are wrong?”
“Let’s go get ourselves some breakfast,” the youth said. He sauntered on a slanting course toward the jungle—rather than try to follow the forebodings that Chester seemed determined to rouse.
“Crocodiles eat their portion of the fools who roam, Dennis,” the robot said.
“What’s a crocodile, Chester?” Dennis asked with a little more interest than he had intended to display.
“There are no crocodiles on this Earth, Dennis,” Chester replied.
The youth grimaced.
He wondered idly how the pasture was kept in grass. Grass survived hard use better than broader-leafed greenery, so heavy cropping by animals would keep the jungle from reclaiming the open area… but a few score cows weren’t by themselves enough to achieve that here. Perhaps the folk of Rakastava mowed it occasionally.
Perhaps Rakastava itself extended a brown, slick-textured pseudopod that sheared away the vegetation.
“Fah!” Dennis said loudly. “I’m away from the place for now.”
As he got nearer, he saw that the jungle was making small inroads already. Plants with coarse, colorful leaves spiked up several yards into the grass—springing from deep-buried roots. Vines trailed surreptitiously across the pasture edge, ready to snag Dennis’ foot if he placed it carelessly.
There was a boulder, gray and as big as a house, lying not far ahead at the jungle margin. The grass in front of it had been trampled down.
Dennis glanced over his shoulder. None of the cows had wandered in this direction. The boulder didn’t seem to be a salt lick or—
He was walking forward and his head was moving, turning toward the boulder, but the boulder moved also. Half of its front—it was bigger than he’d thought—slid aside in a rippling motion.
It was a hut of lichen-gray leaves woven onto a wicker framework. Something shifted across the opening from within.
This has to be a boulder, humped and gray and rolling out through the doorway toward me…