many, Shan and Bombi had decided, though Volsa still exhibited interest in what each day might disclose.
“Tomorrow will disclose another village or six,” Bombi told her in a bored voice, as he wiped dust from his eyes. The Baidee turbans had given way to caps; their white tunics had been replaced by rough coveralls of dark and heavy fabric. The High Baidee Damzels could have been anyone, anywhere, so long as the where was dusty and ancient and smelled of earth.
Bombi went on, “I cannot understand your enthusiasm, Volsa. We have seen almost four hundred villages by now, usually at the rate of two or three a day. Each has the ruins of little scoopy houses. Each has the ruins of several scoopy temples. The temples were built in series, we’ve established that. An old one fell to pieces before they built a new one, or concurrent with their building a new one. The villages all seem to have the same number of temples, as though every village decided to build at the same intervals. Six temples in every village. We don’t know why, of course, though the Archives suggest many historic parallels which would lend credence to a variety of contradictory hypotheses.”
He wiped his forehead and sighed dramatically, waiting for comment, which was not forthcoming. He sighed again, and went on. “All the house are alike. All the temples are more or less alike, except for the grillwork, which varies over time sufficiently that we might work up a dating scheme based on pattern, if there were any conceivable reason to do so. The very plain ones were first. Followed by leaves, followed by various inelegant conceits and useless frills.” He sighed once more, saying, “By the prophetess, but I’m thirsty.” The robot handi-serve beside him gurgled and offered a sip tube.
When he had drunk, he went on with his diatribe. “We have, however, made a noteworthy discovery. We know why the Old Ones died—of boredom. They had no talent for innovation. One might almost think they had pushed themselves too far in achieving this little and died of exhaustion.”
He intended to be brittle and sophisticated and amusing, and thereby succeeded in speaking the absolute truth, though neither he nor his indifferent listeners recognized that fact.
“How many villages do we have left to do?” asked Shan in a weary tone.
“If we do them personally, entirely too many. However, if we don’t find something a wee bit different soon, I’d suggest we have the rest of the survey done by machine. We could turn the whole job over to something along the lines of a Setter Model 15J environment sampler. We can feed in a planetary survey, and it will do very nice diagrams, and because it won’t get impatient, as I most certainly am becoming, it will maintain better sampling technique than I do!” Bombi laughed shortly and accepted a lengthy drink from the robot.
“We could always program it to call us if it found anything different from what we’ve already surveyed,” Volsa said doubtfully.
‘ Bombi agreed. “Which would give us time to get down to the settlements, which we haven’t even seen yet. I must say that my whole being longs for enormous quantities of hot water!” The flier they were using had a sonic cleanser, but the quality of the experience was in no sense comparable to the tumbling torrent Bombi envisioned.
Shan exploded, “Hot water! Bombi, this has been a very easy trip. You don’t know what a hard trip is. You …”
“Do not want to hear about the Porsa,” Bombi told his brother sternly. “Volsa and I have heard about the Porsa, and do not want to hear about them ever again.”
“I was just going to make the point that …”
“Don’t,” said Bombi. “What do you think, Volsa? Shan? I don’t want to shirk the job, but so far this has been a waste of man-days. We’ve done nothing a robot couldn’t have done as well. Our contract with Native Matters Advisory says we can use whatever method seems advisable.”
“Two days,” said Volsa at last, looking dreamily at the verdure around her. Green wasn’t the usual thing on Thyker. Or on Phansure. She found green rather intriguing. “Give it two more days. Then, if there’s nothing distinctive, give it to the robots.”
• • •
• Gotoit’s mama cat, Lucky, had five half-grown kittens hunting in the tall grass at the side of the easternmost grainfield. It was the job of all the settlement cats to minimize the ferf population along the edge of the fields. From the various animals man had used as workmates in pre-Dispersion times and taken with him from planet to planet in the long reach outward, cats had been chosen to accompany these settlers because they did not form destructive packs, did not require constant attention, and could be depended upon to keep the vermin population in check. Lucky and her kits were a demonstration in point. There were several dozen dead ferfs laid out in a row along the footpath, and the nightwatch was only half over.
None of the settlement cats ate ferfs. Something about them disagreed with cat stomachs, but this in no way lessened cat fondness for the chase. Only at dawn, when the count had been increased to over seventy, did the cat and kittens pause in their labors to engage in the lengthy face- and leg-washing all of them felt necessary. They had finished faces and front legs and were starting on the
