That meant two hours of backbreaking work, heaping chopped foliage over the small ship to camouflage it. Toshio wasn't sure even that would do any good if the Galactics finished their battle and turned their full attention to the planet's surface.
Metz and Dart were supposed to help him. Toshio had set them to work cutting brush, but found that he had to tell them to do each and every thing. Dart was sullen and angry at being commanded by a middie he had ordered around only days before. He obviously wanted to get to the supplies he had excitedly dropped by the drill-tree pool before being drafted into the work crew. Metz had been willing enough, but was so anxious to be off talking to Dennie that he was distracted and worse than useless.
Toshio finally sent them both away and finished the job by himself.
At last the boat was covered. He slumped to the ground and rested against the bole of an oli-nut tree.
Damn Takkata-Jim! Toshio and Dennie were supposed to see the encampment secure, report their findings on the Kiqui to Metz, and then climb on their sleds and get out of here! Gillian expected them to set out in a few hours, and yet almost nothing was accomplished!
To top it all off, Streaker had only warned him an hour or so in advance that he could probably expect a stowaway. Gillian decided not to have Charlie arrested for violation of orders, even though it appeared he had stolen equipment from at least a dozen labs aboard the ship. Toshio was glad to be spared the added chore. There wasn't much of anything hereabouts to use as a jail, anyway.
Foliage rustled to Toshio's left. A series of mechanical whirrings accompanied the sound of crushing vegetation. Then four 'spiders' pushed through the brush to enter his tiny clearing. A Stenos dolphin lay on the flotation pad of each armored mechanical, controlling the four high-jointed legs with neural-link commands. Toshio stood up as they approached.
Takkata-Jim passed by, eyeing him coolly, silently. The other three spiders followed him across the clearing and back into the forest. The Stenos piped to each other in gutter-Trinary.
Toshio stared after them. He discovered that he had been holding his breath.
'I don't know about Takkata-Jim, but those fen with him are crazier than Atlast pier-nesters,' he said to himself, shaking his head. He had met few so-called Stenos on Calafia. Some had displayed quirks, positive and negative, like Sah'ot. But none had ever had the look that the former vice-captain's followers had in their eyes.
The sound of the procession faded away. Toshio got up to his feet.
He wondered why Gillian had let Takkata-Jim go at all. Why not just throw him and his cohorts in the brig and have done with it?
Granted, it was a good idea to leave a party with the longboat, to try to sneak back to Earth if Streaker was lost trying to escape. Gillian probably couldn't spare any of the reliable members of the crew. But…
He turned toward the village of the Kiqui, thinking as he walked.
Of course, the longboat was stopped. Theoretically, Takkata-Jim couldn't contact the Galactics even if he wanted to. And Toshio couldn't imagine a reason he'd want to.
But what if he had a reason? And what if he found a way?
Toshio almost bumped into a tree in his worried concentration. He looked up and corrected his path.
I'll just have to make sure, he decided. Tonight I'll have to find out if he can cause trouble.
Tonight.
The tribe's adults squatted around a circle in a clearing in the center of the village. Ignacio Metz and Dennie Sudman sat to one side. The Nest-Mother squatted across from them, her bright green-and-red-striped puffer sacks fully inflated. The elders on either side of her billowed and chuffed like a chain of gaily painted balloons in the forest-filtered sunshine.
Toshio stopped at the edge of the village clearing. The sunshine filtered through the trees, revealing a conclave of races.
The Kiqui Nest-Mother chattered, waving her paws in a queer up-and-down pattern that Dennie had said connoted happy emphasis. If the oldest female had been angry, her gestures would have been crosswise. It was a blissfully simple expression pattern. The rest of the tribe repeated her sounds, sometimes anticipating her in a rising and falling chant of consensus.
Ignacio Metz nodded excitedly, cupping one hand over an earphone as he listened to the translation computer. When the chant died down he spoke a few words into a microphone. A long series of high-pitched repetitive squeaks came out of the machine's speaker.
Dennie's expression was one of relief. She had dreaded the uplift specialist's first meeting with the Kiqui. But Metz had not, apparently, muffed her long and careful negotiations with the pre-sentients. The meeting seemed to be coming to a satisfactory conclusion.
Dennie caught sight of Toshio, and smiled brilliantly. Without ceremony she stood up and left the circle. She hurried over to where he waited at the edge of the village clearing.
'How's it going?' he asked.
'Wonderfully! It turns out he's read every word I sent back! He understands their pack protocol, their physical manifestations of sex and age, and he thought my behavioral analysis was 'exemplary'! Exemplary!'
Toshio smiled, sharing her pleasure.
'He's talking about getting me an appointment as a fellow at the Uplift Center! Can you imagine that?' Dennie couldn't help bouncing up and down excitedly.
'What about the treaty?'
'Oh they're ready any time. If Hikahi makes it here in the skiff we'll take a dozen Kiqui back to Streaker with us. Otherwise a few will go back to Earth with Metz in the longboat. It's all settled.'
Toshio looked back at the happy villagers and tried not to show his misgivings.
Of course, it was for the good of the Kiqui as a species. They would fare far better under the patronage of Mankind than under almost any other starfaring race. And Earth geneticists had to have living beings to examine before any sort of adoption claim could be made.
Every attempt would be made to keep the first group of aboriginals healthy. Half of Dennie's job had been to analyze their bodily requirements, including needed trace elements. But it was still unlikely any of the first group would survive. Even if they did, Toshio doubted the Kiqui had a notion of the strangeness they were about to embark upon.
They're not sentients yet, he reminded himself. By Galactic law they're still animals. And, unlike anyone else in the Five Galaxies, we'll at least try to explain to their limited understanding, and ask permission.
But he remembered a stormy night, with driving rain and flashing lightning, when the little amphibians had huddled around him and an injured dolphin who was his friend, keeping them warm and warding off despair with their company.
He turned away from the sun-washed clearing.
'Then there's nothing keeping you here any longer?' He asked Dennie.
She shook her head. 'I'd rather stay a while longer, of course. Now that I'm finished with the Kiqui I can really work on the problem of the metal-mound. That's why I was so grouchy a couple of days ago. Besides being so tired trying to do two major jobs, I was also frustrated. But now we're a step closer to solving that problem. And did you know the core of the metal-mound is still alive? It's…'
Toshio had to interrupt to stop the flow of words. 'Dennie! Stop it for a minute, please. Answer my question. Are you ready to leave now?'
Dennie blinked. She changed tracks, frowning. 'Is it Streaker? Has something gone wrong?'
'They began the move a few hours ago. I want you to gather all of your notes and samples and secure them to your sled. You and Sah'ot are leaving in the morning.'
She looked at him, his words slowly sinking in. 'You mean you, me, and Sah'ot, don't you?'
'No. I'm staying for another day. I have to.'
'But why?'
'Look, Dennie, I can't talk about it now. Just do as I ask, please.'
As he turned to walk back toward the drill-tree pool she grabbed his arm. Holding on, she was forced to follow.
'But we were going to go together! If you have things to do here, I'll wait for you!'
He walked along without answering. He couldn't think of anything to say. It was bitter to win her respect and affection at last, only to lose her within hours.
If this is what being grown up means, they can have it, he thought. It sucks.
As they approached the pool, sounds of loud argument came from that direction. Toshio hurried. Dennie trotted alongside until they burst into the clearing.
Charles Dart screamed and clutched at a slender cylinder that was gripped at the other end by the manipulator arm of Takkata-Jim's spider. Charlie strained against the pull of the waldo-machine. Takkata-Jim grinned open-mouthed.
The tug of war lasted for a few seconds as the neochimp's powerful muscles strained, then the cylinder popped out of his hands. He fell back to the dust and barely stopped before rolling into the pool. He hopped up and shrieked his anger.
Toshio saw three other Stenos-controlled spiders trooping off toward the longboat. Each carried another of the thin cylinders. Toshio stopped in his tracks when he got a good look at the one Takkata-Jim had taken. His eyes went wide.
'There is no longer any danger,' Takkata-Jim told him. His voice carried insouciance. 'I have conflssscated these. They'll be kept safe aboard my boat, and there will be no harm.'
'They're mine, you thief!' Charles Dart hopped angrily, and his hands fluttered. 'You criminal!' he growled. 'You think I don't know you tried to m-murder Creideiki? We all know you did! You wrecked the buoys to destroy the evidence! And n-now you steal the tools of m-my trade!'
'Which you stole from Streakers armory, no doubt. Or do you wish to call Dr. Baskin for confirmation that they truly are yoursss?'
Dart growled and showed an impressive display of teeth. He whirled away from the neo-dolphin and sat down in the dust in front of a complex diving robot, freshly unpacked on the verge of the pool.
Takkata-Jim's spider started to turn, but the fin noticed Toshio looking at him. For just a moment, Takkata-Jim's cool reserve broke under the youth's fierce gaze. He looked away, and then back at Toshio.
