It was all very tragic and complicated, and I interested myself with it for all the miles we walked that afternoon, down the long canyon, out into the bare space where the five canyons meet, and across that rocky expanse to the place beside the water where we hid ourselves in a grove of trees and set up our camp.
I had no more idea how to set up the gaufer cage than they did. After a time we figured it out. The pen had the wain for one side, with a narrow panel fastened across the wheels to keep anything from coming under. Two oblong panels hooked onto the front and back of the wain, then onto other panels to make a six-sided enclosure. Then six triangular panels made the peaked roof, all joined together with paran-wood fasteners on the inside.
“Leather lacings would be easier,” said Trompe as he struggled with a panel that would not line up correctly.
“The Kachis can chew through leather,” I said quietly. “They cannot chew paran, which is sometimes called wood-adamant. It must be steamed a long time before it can be worked, and when it is dry, even metal tools have difficulty cutting it.”
“I can see why,” he muttered, continuing his struggle.
Eventually, he and Leelson figured it out. Only after they’d done it by trial and error did they find the faded marks on the edges of the panels to show which one went where. Meantime, the gaufers had been watered and allowed to graze in the woody glade. When the sun was almost gone, they surprised us by coming purposefully out of the woods and entering the enclosure by themselves. They milled about uncertainly until we shut them in, then they settled, each to a small pile of the edible growths we had gathered during the afternoon. We were shut in as well, with a tiny fire in the firebox to warm our food and make a pleasant smoke. The Kachis do not like smoke, though they are attracted to fire. Carrying a torch at night is a sure way to bring them by the dozens.
We heard the dusk song, echoes of it from far up the canyons. Only from the southern canyon came no sound, for it is too narrow for men to live in. The days are short inside it, and there are no hives there. Luckily, the canyon itself is not long. We could traverse it, I told Lutha, in a couple of days.
“Will we find enough fodder for the gaufers?” she asked.
“Lady, I do not know,” I told her. “I feel such a fool. I should know more about my own world.”
“Your world is sexually di-cultural,” she said seriously. “Men know one set of things, and women know another. And, I suppose the women are di-cultural as well. Those who are … veiled and those who are not.”
“No,” I said. “We who are veiled know everything the others do. And more, besides.”
She opened her mouth as though to ask a question, then caught herself and was still. Trompe and Leelson were murmuring together, but they, too, fell quiet in that instant and we all heard the questing cry from the southern canyon.
At that sound, the gaufers shivered and crowded together, away from the woven panels. They arranged themselves in a circle, holding the same order they had occupied during the day, the less opinionated one hissing and laying his ears back as he took a few moments to decide where he belonged. When they were settled, with their legs folded under them and their heads laid back upon their spines, eyes half-closed, jaws moving, no part of them was within reach of the panels. Whatever was out there could not get hold of them.
“So interesting,” said Lutha, looking at the beasts. “You know, gaufs are the first animals I’ve ever seen.”
“There are no animals on your world?” I asked, and she said no, no animals upon Alliance Central. No animals on any world that had been completely homo-normed. “They’re all in the files,” she said. “If there’s ever room for them again.”
I thought I would miss animals if there were none. I had a pet cornrat when I was a child. Many Dinadhi have pet gaufs. Weaving Woman is said to favor animals and there were many in Blessed Breadh, the world from which we came. On the other hand, the Firsters teach that the universe was made for man, made for man to use and use up, including all its creatures. We talked of this in desultory fashion while we listened for approaching wings.
Try though we would to keep our minds on something else, it did no good. First a little silence fell among us, then a longer one, then one longer yet. Finally, we withdrew into the wagon itself and pulled the door almost shut behind us. There we each sat in our own ten square feet of space and tried not to hear what was going on outside. They were teasing us. Kachis always do, tease us, try to frighten us. They do it, say the songfathers, to try our faith, to be sure we are strong and resolved. First they flutter. Then come the cries, like hungry children, enough to melt ones heart. They shake the panels, they thrust in their long, stick-thin arms. They gnaw at the panels with sharp, white teeth. They cannot chew paran wood. It is for this reason we call paran the Lord Protector of Trees and never cut a mature one without planting two in its
