“Then our course is clear, Zanural.” De-me-Halmur leaned forward the better to emphasize his words and gestures. “We must do our utmost to ensure that these visitors make use of our good intentions and accept the aid that the people of Po Rabi will freely extend to them.”
“Assuming they accept,” said another member. “What if they do not travel to the region of our hopes? What if they reach Kekkalong and decide they have journeyed far enough?”
“Then perhaps,” Changrit murmured quietly, “they might at that time be persuaded to loan us the use of their wondrous craft. I’m certain that the loquacious Ror de-Kelwhoang will employ all his admirable verbal talents to ensure that the immediate requirements of the Zanur are met.”
“I shall do my best, of course.” The ambassador performed an elaborate gesture designed to invoke the spirits of all the great diplomats of the past. He glanced sideways at the huge, gleaming mass of solid sunit.
“However, if I am to do my best, honored ones, it would help if you could explain to me the reasons behind my mission. Would I be remiss in assuming it has something to do with the astonishing wealth that lies next to a dead Mai in the center of this chamber?”
“You would not,” de-me-Halmur said. “Seat yourself.”
Gesturing his thanks at the honor, de-Kelwhoang joined the table as Changrit related the events of the morning.
The subsequent discussion and laying out of plans lasted well into the evening. The heat of day was followed by the heat of night and still the Zanur sat in extended session. Bureaucrats and guards gossiped and wondered, but still the rulers of Po Rabi remained sequestered in their chamber.
It was only when they finally adjourned in the early hours of the morning that someone thoughtfully directed attendants to remove the stiffened corpse of that soon to be memorialized merchant-explorer Bril de-Panltatol. Great care had already been taken to ensure that a proper share of his legacy was safely transported to the city treasury.
Greater care and craft might make possible the seemingly impossible task of securing for the Zanur of Po Rabi the rest of his legacy.
II 
Etienne Redowl was sick of measuring current flow. He was sick of taking samples from the river bottom. Recording the ebb and flow of sandbars and, mudbanks no longer interested him, nor did watching the analyzer spit out graphs listing gravel composition mineral by mineral.
But there was nothing else for him to do at Steamer Station.
It seemed as if they’d been waiting for permission from the native authorities to begin their Upriver expedition since the beginning of time. Anyone who thought the bureaucracy of Commonwealth Science and Exploration difficult to penetrate should have to cope once in his life with the byzantine machinations of the Mai of Tslamaina. The station’s location between the rival city-states of Po Rabi and Losithi only made it tougher to obtain the necessary clearances.
There was no pushing the matter, however. Where a Class Four-B world was involved, Commonwealth policy was strict. Porlezmozmith, the officer in charge of Steamer Station, was sympathetic to the Redowls’ plight, but not to the point of challenging regulations. So the husband-wife team sat and sweated and waited.
Etienne paused on the ladder long enough to adjust the thermo-sense on his fishnet shirt and shorts. Minuscule cooling units woven into the material struggled to cool his skin. He checked his wrist telltale. A fairly mild afternoon, with the temperatures hovering around a hundred and twenty degrees and the humidity a mere ninety percent. He longed for the coolness of their quarters on the station platform above.
The thranx found the temperature a mite hot, but the humidity suited them just fine. That was why they’d been chosen to staff the only Commonwealth outpost. For them it was almost like home. For humans it was pure misery.
Survey should have named it misery, Etienne thought. Instead it had been named for its geology. That geology and the unique civilization it had produced were the reasons why Etienne and his wife Lyra had braved endless application forms and sweltering weather in order to be the first humanx scientists allowed to work beyond the boundaries of the outpost. Or such would be the case if the native authorities ever gave them the okay to travel Upriver. Until that happened they were stuck at the station. Months of waiting for permission to arrive, endless days spent battling the terrible heat and humidity had sapped his initial enthusiasm. Lyra was bearing up better beneath the day-to-day disappointment, but even she was starting to wilt.
He forced himself to see Tslamaina as it looked from high orbit. The refreshing, cooler image reminded him again why they’d come to the world its discoverers had named Horseye. Lyra had no room for flippancy in science and preferred Tslamaina, the native name, but the image certainly fitted.
Eons ago the planet had collided with a meteor of truly impressive dimensions. In addition to creating the vast circular basin that was now filled by the Groalamasan Ocean, the concussion had badly cracked the planet’s surface. That surface, high above the single world-ocean, comprised the Guntali Plateau.
Water running off the Guntali for hundreds of millions of years patiently enlarged those surface cracks, eventually resulting in the most spectacular river canyons ever encountered. The combination of geological and climatological factors necessary to produce such awesome scenery had not been duplicated on any other of the explored worlds.
Of all the river canyons by far the greatest was the Barshajagad, which in the Mai language meant “Tongue-of-the-World.” More than two thousand kilometers wide at the point where it finally emptied into the ocean, it reached northward from its delta some thirteen thousand kilometers to vanish in the cloud-shrouded north polar wastes. From the edge of the Guntali, a few hundred kilometers Upriver, to the surface of the slowly moving river Skar, the Barshajagad dropped approximately eight thousand meters in elevation. Where mountains rose from the plateau, the disparity was even greater.
So wide was the Barshajagad at its mouth, however, that a traveler on the surface of the river could not see where the gradually ascending slopes finally reached the plateau to east and west.
The result was an astonishing variety of life forms organized into ecological regions not by latitude but by elevation, as nature made use of the different temperature and moisture zones that climbed the canyon walls.
Three different intelligent mammalian races had appeared on Tslamaina, each confined to its own portion of the river canyons. The intensively competitive and primitively capitalistic Mai ruled the ocean and the river valleys. Above them in the more temperate zone between three thousand and fifty-five hundred meters were the Tsla. Clinging to the frozen rims of the canyons and freely roaming the Guntali were the carnivorous Na. Or so the locals claimed. None of them had ever seen a Na, and since Mai society was infused with a healthy respect for and belief in thousands of spirits, demons, and ghosts, Lyra Redowl, circumspect xenologist that she was, was reluctant to give instant recognition to the existence of this legendary third intelligent race.
Temperature and pressure and not national or tribal boundaries kept the races of Tslamaina separated. That made for a sociocultural situation every bit as unique as the local geology, as Lyra Was fond of pointing out to her husband.
Their hope, the dream that had brought them across many light-years, was to take a hydrofoil all the way up the Skar to its source, making a thorough study of the geology and the people of the planet as they advanced. But Tslamaina was a Class Four-B world. That meant they could only proceed with the natives’ permission, and that permission still was not forthcoming, despite repeated anxious requests.
So Etienne had been confined to examination of the delta soils and the geology around the station which was, in a word, flat. Lyra was better off, able to visit with those fisherfolk who sometimes stopped at the station to chat and to attempt to steal anything not bolted down. Station personnel never ventured reprisals for the attempts. For one thing the attempts were always unsuccessful. For another, it was part of the local culture.
Six months had passed since the shuttle had deposited the Redowls at Steamer Station and Etienne was close to calling off the expedition. Only the knowledge that they would be the first to make an Upriver journey kept him from booking passage out on the next supply run.
It would help if Lyra would learn to keep her frustration to herself, but no, not her. She’d declaim long and loud to anyone within earshot. The thranx were too polite to tell her to shut up, and Etienne had tried many times and failed. After the first month he simply gave up and tuned her out. It wasn’t hard. He had been doing it for twenty years. Eight or nine years ago the conflict might have ended in divorce, but now they had too much invested in each other. Convenience and familiarity balanced out a lot of bickering, though sometimes he wondered.
Something was itching sharply on the back of his neck. Holding onto the ladder with his right hand he reached up and back with his left, coming away with something soft and flexible. He eyed it with intense distaste.
It was as long as his hand and thick as his thumb, completely transparent except for the dark maroon color spreading slowly backward from the head. As he held it firmly it wiggled and twisted in search of the blood so recently discovered and quickly vanished.
The dangui was an elegant local bloodsucker related to the annelid worms but possessed of a cartilaginous backbone which when flexed allowed it to jump at its intended host. It turned red as it filled up with blood. It looked like a glass leech and seemed to find human plasma perfectly palatable, much to Etienne’s enduring disgust.
Forcing down the gorge rising in his throat he flung it as far away as he could, heard the faint plop when it hit the murky green water. He felt the back of his neck and his hand came away bloody. First stop inside the station would be for antibiotic spray.
The metal stilts on which Steamer Station rested carried a mild electric charge to discourage infestation by such local pests though they rarely troubled the thranx because of their tough exoskeletons. Etienne dealt in smooth, hard surfaces and clean stone and didn’t care much for biology, particularly when it chose to get personal.
High thin clouds blocked out some of the ultraviolet, but Etienne was still grateful for his naturally dark coloring, a legacy of ancient Amerindians. A lighter-skinned human would quickly fry under Tslamaina’s relentless sun. Though he’d been outside less than ten minutes, the sweat was pouring off him. The cooling meshwork shirt and shorts were all that kept him halfway comfortable.
Even the climate might be bearable if only they’d receive permission from the native authorities. The frustration of waiting was worse than any heat, he mused as he made his careful way up the ladder.
Behind him tall fat pseudopalms thrust enormous green fronds over the lazy water. Table tree roots exploded sideways from their trunks before dipping down into the mud. Nappers, tiny crustaceans with multihued shells, filled the air with their doglike barking.
Little relief beyond the shade it offered was available inside the station since the internal temperature was set to accommodate thranx and not humans. A hundred was certainly cooler than one-twenty, but the humidity was unchanged. Only when he entered the rooms reserved for less tolerant visitors did the humidity begin to drop. By the time he reached their quarters, station machinery had lowered the temperature forty-five degrees and sucked out more than half the humidity.
Lyra Redowl barely glanced up at him. She sprawled in a chair studying her clipboard viewer.
