good and moldy. Then—”
“Neelot?” interrupted McCoy.
‘They’re those big, hairless, lizard-like animals you saw pulling carts. They remind me of a skinned manx cat. The hillmen use them for food, leather, and as draft animals. There’s also a special breed for riding.”
“They sound like the old Mongol hordes of Earth and their horses,” Kirk said.
“Never saw a horse—or a cat—with a head like an alligator,” McCoy murmured.
Sara continued to speak to Kirk. “The hill culture is similar: nomadic people, sparse grazing lands, and a horse-like animal.”
She advanced into the dimly lit interior of Vembe’s eating house and approached a gnarled little man squatting in front of a fire pit. His leather mask was black, but with orange stripes under the eye slits. Several hillmen glanced at the three, then turned back to their bowls of vris and jugs of wine.
“Vembe,” Sara said and made an odd little bow of greeting.
The Kyrosian hunched his shoulders in acknowledgment of her salute and, picking up a small pitcher, dribbled a slimy-looking sauce over the chunks of greenish-yellow meat that were slowly turning on a spit. As drops of sauce dripped onto the hot coals, little puffs of oily smoke arose, and the stench intensified. Vembe leaned forward, took a long sniff, nodded, and said something to Sara.
“The vris is ready,” she translated. “He says he would be honored if you’d have some.”
Kirk’s gorge heaved at the thought.
“You can tell him… tell him we appreciate the offer but we both had a very large breakfast before leaving our ship…” Kirk paused, and glanced at McCoy. “Though perhaps I shouldn’t speak for the doctor. He was just telling us how hungry he was.”
McCoy rolled his eyes and said hastily, “I’ve a better idea. Tell him our religion won’t let us eat meat on whatever day this is.”
Sara spoke rapidly to the little man in guttural Kyrosian. Then, gesturing toward her companions, she made what was obviously an introduction. Vembe rose, touched a finger to the middle of his forehead, and bowed. Kirk and McCoy responded with like movements.
“Ask him if he can tell us where to find Chag Gara,” Kirk said.
There was a rapid exchange.
“He wants to know what you want with that zreel. That’s a local insect, a blood-sucker similar to the terrestrial louse,” Sara said.
The little man added something in a hostile voice and spat into the fire pit.
“He says that Chag Gara used to be just crazy, but that all of a sudden he’s become dangerous. Now, people listen to his ravings and become converted. And that’s bad for business,” Sara translated.
“Ask him why.”
Vembe responded at length, pointing indignantly to the turning joints of neelot.
“He says that if the Messiah goes marching off on a holy war, most of his customers will go along. And that would mean that the best vris house in Andros would have to close its doors.”
“A gastronomic catastrophe,” McCoy muttered, wrinkling his nose.
“De gustibus no disputandem,” Kirk said with a grin.
“What does that mean?” Sara asked.
“‘Of taste there is no disputing.’ It’s an old language, Latin. But let’s get back to the business at hand. Vembe is obviously no friend of Gara’s. Tell him that Chag committed a horrible crime in our home country and is under sentence of death by torture. Tell him we’ve journeyed many months over the seas to carry out the sentence, but we can’t until we find him.”
The woman made a quick translation. When she finished, the old hillman gave a grunt of satisfaction, started to speak, then halted. He stared down into the fire pit for a moment and then cocked his head, muttering something.
“What’s he saying?” Kirk demanded impatiently.
“I think he’s putting the bite on us. He says he’s getting old and his memory isn’t what it used to be.”
Kirk took the pouch of Kyrosian coins from his belt and handed it to the woman.
“Pay him what’s necessary. We’ll wait outside.”
Ducking their heads, and hurrying to be out of the stench, the two exited through the small door. Moving away from the odor that seemed to follow them like a rolling fog bank, they both took deep, appreciative lung-fulls of fresh air. A moment later Sara joined them. She handed Kirk a much-depleted purse, and shouldered a neelot- skin bag.
“This way,” she said, and started diagonally across the market square.
“I hope that’s not what I think it is,” McCoy said, prodding the bag she carried as they wove their way through the crowd.
“Prime vris,” Sara said as she turned her nose away from the bag. “Old Vembe’s hill code wouldn’t let him take a bribe. But he found nothing in it against selling me ten kilos at three times the going rate. At least now, though, we know where Chag Gara lives. It’s not too far from here.”
She stepped through the narrow spaces between the closely grouped buildings heading back in the direction they had come.
“Anybody in the mood for vris?”
Kirk and McCoy stared at her and shook their heads in a vigorous negative.
“Somehow, I thought that’s what you gentlemen would say,” she grimaced and heaved the bag onto a pile of trash.
Twenty minutes later, after walking down the slope leading to the western sea’s bay, they paused near the edge of a marsh. The salty tang in the air from the wind-borne sea spray tingled their nostrils. They breathed it in deeply, flushing out the last remnants of the stench of the vris. The bay and the sea were visible beyond the marsh, tinged a deep blue, almost violet, by the rays of Kyr.
Only one kind of vegetation seemed to be growing in the marsh. Barrel-shaped plants with five or six slender, spiky leaves jutting from their tops and jiggling in a gentle land breeze, made a mat that glowed golden-yellow in the sun’s rays. Among the plants moved harvesters, who tore off the leaves and piled them on sledges they dragged through the mud behind them.
“Jakim,” George explained. “Lumber is scarce in Andros, and once those leaves are processed, they can be woven into mats that are almost as strong as steel.”
She looked around as if searching for a landmark and then, nodding with satisfaction, stepped off to the right. A few minutes later, she led the way into a narrow, winding street. Soon the smell of vris was in the air again. Sara explained that they were in the section of the city inhabited almost solely by exiled hillmen. The street wasn’t paved, and an evil-smelling sewer meandered down its center. Sara in the lead, they picked their way down a walkway made of jakim mats, stepping over piles of trash and broken crockery. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of angry, drunken voices and a woman’s scream.
Only half of the mud-walled, dome-shaped, single dwellings seemed to be inhabited. The sky could be seen through barred windows in some of the homes where the roofs had fallen in. Ragged, emaciated children played on weed-covered plots among the rubble of collapsed walls.
“Poor devils,” McCoy muttered softly. “Any system that forces people to live like this should be changed.”
“You’re right, Bones,” Kirk agreed, “but it isn’t our place to change it and Spock’s way would only make things worse. Planets like Kyros have to be allowed to find their own way in their own time. That’s why we have General Order One.”
Ensign George paused suddenly and pointed across the street.
“I think this is it,” she said. “Vembe told me it would be a small house on the left with a red and black door directly across from a wine shop. This is the wine shop…” she gestured to the building behind them. “… and that seems to be the only place which fits the description.” Turning to Kirk, the ensign asked, “What now?”
Kirk peered at Chag Gara’s dwelling for a moment, then said, “From what we know of Gara’s proclivities, he’d be more likely to let a woman alone in, rather than one accompanied by a pair of men. If Dr. McCoy gives you the hypo, do you think you can handle Gara? We’ll be right outside in case of trouble.”
“Trust my dop,” Sara said, giving a confident nod. “She can handle any man.”
