“ ‘That depends on what you want, and on what you have to give in exchange,’ I said, to match their curtness.

  “ ‘We have brought nothing with us, Bokzahan said, for we knew not if you would be willing to bargain.

  “Why should I not be?’ I answered. ‘That is what I came for. There is no strife between us.’ And I shot at him: ‘Is there?’

  “None of those ice-green eyes wavered. ‘No,’ Tulitur said, ‘there is not. Accordingly, we wish to buy guns.’

  “ ‘Such things we may not sell,’ I answered. Best not to add that policy allowed us to as soon as we felt reasonably sure no harm would result. ‘However, we have knives to exchange, as well as many useful tools.’

  “They sulked a bit, but didn’t argue. Instead, they went right to work, haggling over terms. They wanted as much of everything as we’d part with, and really didn’t try to bargain the price down far. Only they wanted the stuff on credit. They needed it now, they said, and it’d take time to gather the goods for payment.

  “That put me in an obvious pickle. On the one hand, the Yildivans had always acted honorably and, as far as I could check, always spoken truth. Nor did I want to antagonize them. On the other hand—but you can fill that in for yourself. I flatter myself I gave them a diplomatic answer. We did not for an instant doubt their good intentions, I said. We knew the Yildivans were fine chaps. But accidents could happen, and if so, we’d be out of pocket by a galactic sum.

  “Tulitur slapped the table and snorted, ‘Such fears might have been expected. Very well, we shall leave our Lugals here until payment is complete. Their value is great. But then you must carry the goods where we want them.’

  “I decided that on those terms they could have half the agreed amount right away.”

  Per fell silent and gnawed his lip. Harry leaned over to pat his hand. Van Rijn growled, “Ja, by damn, no one can foretell everything that goes wrong, only be sure that some bloody-be-plastered thing will. You did hokay, boy…Abdul, more drink, you suppose maybe this is Mars?”

  Per sighed. “We loaded the stuff on a gravsled,” he went on. “Manuel accompanied in an armed flitter, as a precaution. But nothing happened. Fifty kilometers or so from camp, the Yildivans told our men to land near a river. They had canoes drawn onto the bank there, with a few other Yildivans standing by. Clearly they intended to float the goods further by themselves, and Manuel called me to see if I had any objections. ‘No,’ I said. ‘What difference does it make? They must want to keep the destination secret. They don’t trust us any longer.’ Behind him, in the screen, I saw Bokzahan watching. Our communicators had fascinated visitors before now. But this time, was there some equivalent of a sneer on his face?

  “I was busy arranging quarters and rations for the Lugals, though. And a guard or two, nothing obtrusive. Not that I really expected trouble. I’d heard their masters say, ‘Remain here and do as the Erziran direct until we come for you.’ But nevertheless it felt queasy, having that pack of dog-beings in camp.

  “They settled down in their animal fashion. When the drums began again that night they got restless, shifted around in the pavilion we’d turned over to them and mewled in a language Brander hadn’t recorded. But they were quite meek next morning. One of them even asked if they couldn’t help in our work. I had to laugh at the thought of a Lugal behind the controls of a five hundred kilowatt trac, and told him no, thanks, they need only loaf and watch us. They were good at loafing.

  “A few times, in the next three days, I tried to get them into conversation. But nothing came of that. They’d answer me, not in the deferential style they used to a Yildivan but not insolently either. However, the answers were meaningless. ‘Where do you live?’ I would say. ‘In the forest yonder,’ the slave replied, staring at his toes. ‘What sort of tasks do you have to do at home?’ ‘That which my Yildivan sets for me.’ I gave up.

  “Yet they weren’t stupid. They had some sort of game they played, involving figures drawn in the dirt, that I never did unravel. Each sundown they formed ranks and crooned, an eerie minor-key chant, with improvisations that sometimes sent a chill along my nerves. Mostly they slept, or sat and stared at nothing, but once in a while several would squat in a circle, arms around their neighbors’ shoulders, and whisper together.

  “Well…I’m making the story too long. We were attacked shortly before dawn of the fourth day.

  “Afterward I learned that something like a hundred male Yildivans were in that party, and heaven knows how many Lugals. They’d rendezvoused from everywhere in that tremendous territory called Ulash, called by the drums and, probably, by messengers who’d run day and night through the woods. Our pickets were known to their scouts, and they laid a hurricane of arrows over those spots, while the bulk of them rushed in between. Otherwise I can’t tell you much. I was a casualty.” Per grimaced. “What a damn fool thing to happen. On my first command!”

  “Go on,” Harry urged. “You haven’t told me any details.”

  “There aren’t many,” Per shrugged. “The first screams and roars slammed me awake. I threw on a jacket and stuffed feet into boots while my free hand buckled on a gun belt. By then the sirens were in full cry. Even so, I heard a blaster beam sizzle past my tent.

  “I stumbled out into the compound. Everything was one black, boiling hell-kettle. Blasters flashed and flashed, sirens howled and voices cried battle. The cold stabbed at me. Starlight sheened on snowbanks and hoarfrost over the hills. I had an instant to think how bright and many the stars were, out there and not giving a curse.

  “Then Yuschenkoff switched on the floodlamps in the Miriam’s turret. Suddenly an artificial sun stood overhead, too bright for us to look at. What must it have been to the Cainites? Blue-white incandescence, I suppose. They swarmed among our tents and machines, tall leopard-furred hunters, squat brown gnomes, axes, clubs, spears, bows, slings, our own daggers in their hands. I saw only one man—sprawled on the earth, gun still between his fingers, head a broken horror.

  “I put the command mike to my mouth—always wore it on my wrist as per doctrine—and bawled out orders as I pelted toward the ship. We had the atom itself to fight for us, but we were twenty, no, nineteen or less, against Ulash.

  “Now our dispositions were planned for defense. Two men slept in the ship, the others in sealtents ringed around her. The half dozen on guard duty had been cut off, but the rest had the ship for an impregnable retreat. What we must do, though, was rally to the rescue of those guards, and quick. If it wasn’t too late.

  “I saw the boys emerge from their strong point under the landing jacks. Even now I remember how Zerkowsky hadn’t fastened his parka, and what a low-comedy way it flapped around his bottom. He didn’t use pajamas. You notice the damnedest small things at such times, don’t you? The Cainites had begun to mill about, dazzled by the light. They hadn’t expected that, or the siren, which is a terrifying thing to hear at close range. Quite a few of them were already strewn dead or dying.

  “Then—but all I knew personally was a tide that bellowed and yelped and clawed. It rolled over me from behind. I went down under their legs. They pounded across me and left me in the grip of a Lugal. He lay on my chest and went for my throat with teeth and hands. Judas, but that creature was strong! Centimeter by centimeter he closed in against my pushing and gouging. Suddenly another one got into the act. Must have snatched a club from some fallen Cainite and attacked whatever part of me was handiest, which happened to be my left shin. It’s nothing but pain and rage after that, till the blessed darkness came.

  “The fact was, of course, that our Lugal hostages had overrun their guards and broken free. I might have expected as much. Even without specific orders, they wouldn’t have stood idle while their masters fought. But doubtless they’d been given advance commands. Tulitur and Bokzahan diddled us very nicely. First they got a big consignment of our trade goods, free, and then they planted reinforcements for themselves right in our compound.

  “Even so, the scheme didn’t work. The Yildivans hadn’t really comprehended our power. How could they have? Manuel himself dropped the two Lugals who were killing me. He needed exactly two shots for that. Our boys swept a ring of fire, and the enemy melted away.

  “But they’d hurt us badly. When I came to, I was in the Miriam’s sick bay. Manuel hovered over me like an anxious raven. ‘How’d we do?’ I think I said.

  “ ‘You should rest, señor,’ he said, ‘and God forgive me that I made the doctor rouse you with drugs. But we must have your decision quickly. Several men are wounded. Two are dead. Three are missing. The enemy is back in the wilderness, I believe with prisoners.’

  “He lifted me into a carrier and took me outside. I felt no physical pain, but was lightheaded and half crazy. You know how it is when you’re filled to the cap with stimulol. Manuel told me straight out that my legbone was pretty well pulverized, but that didn’t seem to matter at the time…What do I mean, seem? Of course it didn’t! Gower and Muramoto were dead. Bullis, Cheng, and Zerkowsky were gone.

  “The camp was unnaturally quiet under the orange sun. My men had policed the grounds while I was unconscious. Enemy corpses were laid out in a row. Twenty-three Yildivans—that number’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life—and I’m not sure how many Lugals, a hundred perhaps. I had Manuel push me along while I peered into face after still, bloody face. But I didn’t recognize any.

  “Our own prisoners were packed together in our main basement excavation. A couple of hundred Lugals, but only two wounded Yildivans. The rest who were hurt had been carried off by their friends. With so much construction and big machines standing around for cover, that hadn’t been too hard to do. Manuel explained that he’d stopped the attack of the hostages with stunbeams. Much the best weapon. You can’t prevent a Lugal fighting for his master with a mere threat to kill him.

  “In a corner of the pit, glaring up at the armed men above, were the Yildivans. One I didn’t know. He had a nasty blaster burn, and our medics had give him sedation after patching it, so he was pretty much out of the picture anyway. But I recognized the other, who was intact. A stunbeam had taken him. It was Kochihir, an adult son of Shivaru, who’d visited us like his father a time or two.

  “We stared at each other for a space, he and I. Finally, I asked him. ‘Why have you done this?’ Each word puffed white out of my mouth and the wind shredded it.

  “ ‘Because they are traitors, murderers, and thieves by nature, that’s why,’ Yuschenkoff said, also in Ulash. Brander’s team had naturally been careful to find out whether there were words corresponding to concepts of honor and the reverse. I don’t imagine the League will ever forget the Darborian Semantics!

  “Yuschenkoff spat at Kochihir. ‘Now we shall hunt down your breed like the animals they are,’ he said. Gower had been his brother-in-law.

  “ ‘No,’ I said at once, in Ulash, because such a growl had risen from the Lugals that any insane thing might have happened next. ‘Speak thus no more.’ Yuschenkoff shut his mouth, and a kind of ripple went among those packed, hairy bodies, like wind dying out on ocean. ‘But Kochihir,’ I said, ‘your father was my good friend. Or so I believed. In what wise have we offended him and his people?’

  “He raised his ruff, the tail lashed his ankles, and he snarled, ‘You must go and never come back. Else we shall harry you in the forests, roll the hillsides down on you, stampede horned beasts through your camps, poison the wells, and burn the grass about your feet. Go, and do not dare return!’

  “My own temper flared—which made my head spin and throb, as if with fever—and I said, ‘We shall certainly not go unless our captive friends are returned to us. There are drums in camp that your father gave me before he betrayed us. Call your folk on those, Kochihir, and tell them to bring back our folk. After that, perhaps we can talk. Never before.’

  “He fleered at me without replying.

  “I beckoned to Manuel. ‘No sense in stalling unnecessarily,’ I said. ‘We’ll organize a tight defense here. Won’t get taken by surprise twice. But we’ve got to rescue those men. Send flitters aloft to search for them. The war party can’t have gone far.’

  “You can best tell how you argued with me, Manuel. You said an airflit was an utter waste of energy which was badly needed elsewhere. Didn’t you?”

  The Nuevo Méxican looked embarrassed. “I did not wish to contradict my captain,” he said. His oddly delicate fingers twisted together in his lap as he stared out into the night that had fallen. “But, indeed, I thought that aerial scouts would never find anyone in so many, many hectares of hill and ravine, water and woods. They could have dispersed, those devils. Surely, even if they traveled away in company, they would not be in such a clump that infrared detectors could see them through the forest roof. Yet I did not like to contradict my captain.”

  “Oh, you did, you,” Per said. A corner of his mouth bent upward. “I was quite daft by then. Shouted and stormed at you, eh? Told you to jolly well obey orders and get those flitters in motion. You saluted and started off, and I called you back. You mustn’t go in person. Too damned valuable here. Yes, that meant I was keeping back the one man with enough wilderness experience that he might have stood a chance of identifying spoor, even from above. But my brain was spinning down and down the sides of a maelstrom. ‘See what you can do to make this furry bastard cooperate,’ I said.”

  “It pained me a little that my captain should appoint me his torturer,” Manuel confessed mildly. “Although from time to time, on various planets, when there was great need—No matter.”

  “I’d some notion of breaking down morale among our prisoners,” Per said. “In retrospect, I see that it wouldn’t have made any difference if they had cooperated, at least to the extent of drumming for us. The Cainites don’t have our kind of group solidarity. If Kochihir and his buddy came to grief at our hands, that was their hard luck. But Shivaru and some of the others had read our psychology shrewdly enough to know what a hold on us their three prisoners gave.

  “I looked down at Kochihir. His teeth gleamed back. He hadn’t missed a syllable or a gesture, and even if he didn’t know any Anglic, he must have understood almost exactly what was going on. By now I was slurring my words as if drunk. So, also like a drunk, I picked them with uncommon care. ‘Kochihir,’ I said, ‘I have commanded our fliers out to hunt down your people and fetch our own whom they have captured. Can a Yildivan outrun a flying machine? Can he fight when its guns flame at him from above? Can he hide from its eyes that see from end to end to horizon? Your kinfolk will dearly pay if they do not return our men of their own accord. Take the drums, Kochihir, and tell them so. If you do not, it will cost you dearly. I have commanded my man here to do whatever may be needful to break your will.’

  “Oh, that was a vicious speech. But Gower and Muramoto had been my friends. Bullis, Cheng, and Zerkowsky still were, if they lived. And I was on the point of passing out. I did, actually, on the way back to the ship. I heard Doc Leblanc mutter something about how could he be expected to treat a patient whose system was abused with enough drugs to bloat a camel, and then the words kind of trailed off in a long gibber that went on and on, rising and falling until I thought I’d been turned into an electron and was trapped in an oscilloscope…and the darkness turned green and…and they tell me I was unconscious for fifty hours.

  “From there on it’s Manuel’s story.”

  At this stage, Per was croaking. As he sank back in his lounger, I saw how white he had become. One hand picked at his blanket, and the vermouth slopped when he raised his glass. Harry watched him, with a helpless anger that smoldered at Van Rijn. The merchant said, “There, there, so soon after his operation and I make him lecture us, ha? But shortly comes dinner, no better medicine than a real rijstaffel, and so soon after that he can walk about, he comes to my place in Djakarta for a nice old-fashioned orgy.”

  “Oh, hellfire!” Per exploded in a whisper. “Why’re you trying to make me feel good? I ruined the whole show!”

  “Whoa, son,” I ventured to suggest. “You were in good spirits half an hour ago, and half an hour from now you’ll be the same. It’s only that reliving the bad moments is more punishment than Jehovah would inflict. I’ve been there too.” Blindly, the blue gaze sought mine. “Look, Per,” I said, “if Freeman Van Rijn thought you’d botched a mission through your own fault, you wouldn’t be lapping his booze tonight. You’d be selling meat to the cannibals.”

  A ghost of a grin rewarded me.

  “Well, Don Manuel,” Van Rijn said, “now we hear from you, nie?”

  “By your favor, señor, I am no Don,” the Nuevo Méxican said, courteously, academically, and not the least humbly. “My father was a huntsman in the Sierra de los Bosques Secos, and I traveled in space as a mercenary with Rogers’ Rovers, becoming sergeant before I left them for your service. No more.” He hesitated. “Nor is there much I can relate of the happenings on Cain.”

  “Don’t make foolishness,” Van Rijn said, finished his third or fourth liter of beer since I arrived, and signaled for more. My own glass had been kept filled too, so much so that the stars and the city lights had begun to dance in the dark outside. I stuffed my pipe to help me ease off. “I have read the official reports from your expeditioning,” Van Rijn continued. “They are scum-dreary. I need details—the little things nobody thinks to record, like Per has used up his lawrence in telling— I need to make a planet real for me before this cracked old pot of mine can maybe find a pattern. For it is my experience of many other planets, where I, even I, Nicholas van Rijn, got my nose rubbed in the dirt—which, ho, ho! takes a lot of dirt—it is on that I draw. Evolutions have parallels, but also skews, like somebody said tonight. Which lines is Cain’s evolution parallel to? Talk, Ensign Gómez y Palomares. Brag. Pop jokes, sing songs, balance a chair on your head if you want—but talk!”