“If Leelson Famber or his son came here, it was recently. He wouldn’t be weeded out! If he’s here, these people would know where!”
“Right. So we pick one at random and ask him? Without being discovered? Without any suspicion attaching to us? And with one carefully guarded port the only way off Dinadh?”
“Not a good idea,” admitted Chur Durwen.
“Not unless we want our exit slammed in our face. No, if we want to ask a rememberer, we’ll have to go to their central place, their capital or holy city, where their so-called index men dwell. Of course, we have no idea where that is. Assuming we can find out, assuming we can get there, then we’ll need to abduct one of the index men, hoping he’s the right one, one who can lead us to the rememberer we need. He might only lead us to a local subindexer. It might take as many as four or five steps to get us where we want to be.”
Chur Durwen grimaced.
The other said, “I think it’s simpler just to do as we planned. Go where they send us, keep our ears and eyes alert, ask questions. When we’ve got a clue, we’ll leave. These canyons will be easy to get lost in. We know how to live off the country. Nobody’s going to find us unless we want them to. Eventually, we’ll find who we’re after. King Lostre set no time limit. We’re being paid for our time as well as for the job, so we’re in no hurry. It’s always safest to take one’s own sweet time.”
Their guide went stumping off toward the hostel, shouting something unintelligible.
“As the zossit flies, we’d have arrived two days ago,” muttered Chur Durwen.
“As the zossit flies on this planet, we wouldn’t. It has no zossits. It has no large flying creatures at all, only tiny ones.” Mitigan picked up his pack and settled it on one shoulder.
From inside the hostelry came the clangor of a gong, a disruptive sound, quickly smothered, like a cough at a concert.
“Food,” Mitigan said, turning toward the gray building.
From the forest behind them came a voice, an interrogative note, a questing, almost human cry.
Their driver appeared beside the door.
“Come in,” he called. “Now.”
“Such a hurry,” Chur Durwen muttered to himself. “The usual nonsense. Hurry up and wait.”
Mitigan had not moved. He stood staring into the trees. “I heard something … wings. Didn’t I just say there were no large birds?”
“Now!” insisted the guide peremptorily.
The man from Asenagi turned and trudged after his colleague, hearing behind him the flutter of wings coming purposefully through the trees.
Perdur Alas was a celestial anomaly, a planet on which life had stuck at the level of fish, bird, and shrub without any obvious cause for the lack of further diversification. Currently the planet held a limited variety of sea and land plants, enormous schools of a few varieties of fish, and sizable flocks of even fewer scaled bird forms that seemed to have evolved directly from air-breathing flying fish without intermediate land-dwelling stages. Biologically speaking, Perdur Alas was extremely simple. So far as homo-norming went, simplicity made the job easier, which explained the small size of the preliminary team recently evacuated from the planet.
When the pseudo-team of ex-shadows arrived, they were set down beside a new encampment, raw as a wound, just beginning to scab over with ferny and brushy growths. A thousand or so paces to the west a pallid sea swooshed gently onto a rocky shelf at the base of the cliffs. A little north of west the cliffs sagged onto a scanty crescent of graveled beach, the only beach a day’s journey in either direction. Farther north, ranks of east-west ridges cut the sky, the nearest jagged, the more distant sparsely freckled with prototrees. Brackenlike and furzelike growths covered everything not covered by blue or purple mosses, making a moorland that stretched unbroken to the eastern and southern horizons.
When the preliminary work was done, the birds and plants would be gone. The planet would have trees suitable for lumber and grasses suitable for pasture. It would have grains, edible root, leaf, and fruit crops, plus at least one draft and one dairy animal and perhaps—if the colonists were not Firsters—one or two animals from the category “small-furry-dociles” or pets. There was no need for insects or birds in Class-C homo-norm. All plants were designed to be wind-pollinated, and Perdur Alas was windy enough.
The arriving team knew this without needing to consider the implications, though bio-assay tech Snark surprised herself shortly after landing by thinking that a million things could be added to Perdur Alas before it had the same complexity as most untouched Class-A planets. Her next thought was one of recognition. This planet, in all its simplicity, was entirely familiar to her.
“Quarters this way,” announced team leader Kane, hoisting an equipment case onto his shoulder and stumping off toward the team housing at one side of the encampment.
The pseudo-team, though differing from the original team in physical appearance, was identical as to numbers, sex, and functions. Now most of them straggled after Kane without comment. Each of them had a role to play. Kane’s was to keep everyone else working. Snark’s was to compare current organisms with those included in Class-C category, using an automatic inventory device, to determine which species should be adapted or eliminated and what others should be introduced to make the world suitable for man. A few members of the team had been conditioned as tank-farm workers, assigned to grow and process food. Others were assigned as housekeeping staff, while others yet would provide maintenance duties and staff communications.
Each of them would occupy the same work space and sleep space as his or her counterpart on the former team. Each of them knew the routine for each day’s labors. They knew what the departed team had known about the work already done. In addition, they
