«Water break,» Keff observed, propping his chin on his palm. «Interesting bucket.»
«It looks more like a microwave raydome to me, Keff,» Carialle said. «Whaddayou know! They're using the remains of a piece of advanced technical equipment to haul water.»
«By Saint George and Saint Vidicon, you're right! It does look like a raydome. So the civilization's not evolving, but in the last stages of decline,» Keff said, thoughtfully, tapping his cheek with his fingertips. «I wonder if they had a war, eons ago, and the opposing forces blew themselves out of civilization. It's so horribly cold and dry here that we could very well be seeing the survivors of a comet strike.»
Carialle ran through her photo maps of the planet taken from space. «No ruins of cities above ground. No signatures of decaying radiation that I saw, except for those sourceless power surges—and by the way, I just felt another one. Could they be from the planet's magnetic disturbance? There are heavy electromagnetic bursts throughout the fabric of the planet, and they don't seem to be coming from anywhere. I suppose they could be natural but—it's certainly puzzling. Possibly there was a Pyrrhic victory and both sides declined past survival point so that they ended up back in the Stone Age. Dawn of Furry Mankind, second day.»
«Now that you've mention it, I do recognize some of the pieces they made their tools out of,» Keff said. He watched an adolescent female guiding two six-packs in a tandem yoke pulling a plow over part of the field that had been harvested. «Yours is probably the best explanation, unless they're a hard-line back-to-nature sect doing this on purpose, and I doubt that very much. But that plowshare looks more to me like part of a shuttlecraft fin. Especially if their bucket has a ninety-seven-point resemblance to a raydome. Sad. A viable culture reduced to noble primitives with only vestiges of their civilization.»
«That's what we'll call them, then,» Carialle said, promptly. «Noble Primitives.»
«Seconded. The motion is carried.»
Another young female and her docile six-pack dragged a full load of roots toward the stone square. Keff shifted to watch her.
«Hey, the last load of roots is gone! I didn't see anyone move it.»
«We weren't paying attention,» Carialle said. «The grounds uneven. There might be a root cellar near that square, with another crew of workers. If you walk over the ground nearby I could do a sounding and find it. If it's unheated that would explain why its not as easy to pick out as their living quarters.»
Keff heard a whirring noise behind him and shifted as silently as he could. «Am I well enough camouflaged?»
«Don't worry, Keff,» Carialle said in his ear. «It's just another globe-frog.»
«Damn. I hope they don't see me.»
Beside the six-packs, one of the few examples of animal life on RNJ were small green amphibioids that meandered over the rocky plains, probably from scarce water source to water source, in clear globular cases full of water. Outside their shells they'd be about a foot long, with delicate limbs and big, flat paws that drove the spheres across dry land. Keff had dubbed them «globe-frogs.» The leader was followed by two more. Globe-frogs were curious as cats, and all of them seemed fascinated by Keff.
«Poor things, like living tumbleweeds,» Carialle said, sympathetically.
«The intelligent life isn't much better off,» Keff said. «It's dry as dust around here.»
«Terrible when sentient beings are reduced to mere survival,» Carialle agreed.
«Oops,» Keff said, in resignation. «They see me. Here they come. Damn it, woman, stop laughing.»
«It's your animal magnetism,» Carialle said, amused.
The frogs rolled nearer, spreading out into a line; perhaps to get a look at all sides of him, or perhaps as a safety precaution. If he suddenly sprang and attacked, he could only get one. The rumble of their cases on the ground sounded like thunder to him.
«Shoo,» Keff said, trying to wave them off before the field workers came over to investigate. He glanced at the workers. Luckily, none were paying attention to the frogs. «Cari, where s the nearest water supply?»
«Back where the raydomeful came from. About two kilometers north northeast.»
«Go that way,» Keff said, pointing, with his hand bent up close to his body. «Water. You don't want me. Vamoose. Scram.» He flicked his fingers. «Go! Please.»
The frogs fixed him with their bulbous black eyes and halted their globes about a meter away from him. One of them opened its small mouth to reveal short, sharp teeth and a pale, blue-green tongue. With frantic gestures, Keff beseeched them to move off. The frogs exchanged glances and rolled away, amazingly in the direction he had indicated. A small child playing in a nearby shallow ditch shrieked with delight when it saw the frogs passing and ran after them. The frogs paddled faster, but the tot caught up, and fetched one of the globes a kick that propelled it over the crest of the hill. The others hastily followed, avoiding their gleeful pursuer. The light rumbling died away.
«Whew!» Keff said. «Those frogs nearly blew my cover. I'd better reveal myself now before someone discovers me by accident.»
«Not yet! We don't have enough data to prove the Noble Primitives are nonhostile.»
«That's a chance we always take, lady fair. Or why else are we here?»
«Look, we know the villagers we've observed do not leave their sites. I haven't been able to tell an inhabitant of one village from the inhabitant of any other. And you sure don't look like any Noble Primitive. I really don't like risking your being attacked. I'm four kilometers away from you so I can't pull your softshell behind out of trouble, you know. My servos would take hours to get to your position.»
Keff flexed his muscles and wished he could take a good stretch first. «If I approach them peacefully, they should at least give me a hearing.»
«And when you explain that you're from off-planet? Are they ready for an advanced civilization like ours?»
«They have a right to our advantages, to our help in getting themselves back on their feet. Look how wretchedly they live. Think of the raydome, and the other stuff we've seen. They once had a high-tech civilization. Central Worlds can help them. It's our duty to give them a chance to improve their miserable lot, bring them back to this century. They were once our equals. They deserve a chance to be so again, Carialle.»
«Thou hast a heart as well as a brain, sir knight. Okay.»
Before they had settled how to make the approach, shouting broke out on the work site. Keff glanced up. Two big males were standing nose to nose exchanging insults. One male whipped a knife made of a shard of blued metal out of his tool bag; another relic that had been worn to a mere streak from sharpening. The male he was facing retreated and picked up a digging tool with a ground-down end. Yelling, the knife-wielder lunged in at him, knife over his head. The children scattered in every direction, screaming. Before the pikeman could bring up his weapon, the first male had drawn blood. Two crew leaders rushed up to try to pull them apart. The wounded male, red blood turning dark brown as it mixed with the dust in his body-fur, snarled over the peacemaker's head at his foe. With a roar, he shook himself loose.
«I think you missed your chance for a peaceful approach, Keff.»
«Um,» Keff said. «He who spies and runs away lives to chat another day.»
While the combatants circled each other, ringed by a watching crowd, Keff backed away on his hands and knees through the bush. Cursing the pins and needles in his legs, Keff managed to get to his feet and started downhill toward the gully where Carialle was concealed.
Carialle launched gracefully out of the gully and turned into the face of planetary rotation toward another spot on the day-side which her monitors said showed signs of life.
«May as well ring the front doorbell this time,» Keff said. «No sense letting them get distracted over something else. If only I'd moved sooner!»
«No sense having a post mortem over it,» Carialle said firmly. «You can amaze these natives with how much you already know about them.»
Reversing to a tail-first position just at the top of atmosphere, Carialle lowered herself gently through the thin clouds and cleaved through a clear sly onto a rocky field in plain sight of the workers. Switching on all her exterior cameras, she laughed, and put the results on monitor for Keff.
«I could paint a gorgeous picture,» she said. «Portrait of blinding astonishment.»
«Another regional mutation,» Keff said, studying the screen. «They're still beautiful, still the same root stock,
