Jef frowned, trying to understand, but finding that she made no sense at all.
"How could wisent ranchers crowd you out?" he said. "I mean, they're out in the open country and you eland ranchers are in the woods—even if the E. Corps would let them do anything, they just wouldn't in any case."
"E. Corps gave over direct control when we paid off Mortgage One," growled Jarji. "That's the rule. We didn't even have to take a Second Planetary Mortgage. We could have got on without people to teach us how to expand factories and plan highways and land spaceships—not saying anything against your brother; but we could've got on without a Second Mortgage and people like him. Other new worlds have done it."
"But the most practical thing—" began Jef, quoting almost word for word from one of the books he had studied, "is for a new world to take up the first three available mortgages offered under the Corps and Earth assistance plans. Every world needs the First Mortgage anyway, to pay for the original E. Corps survey, the seeding of needed variforms of Earth flora and fauna, and the direct E. Corps control personnel who have to be in charge until the First Mortgage is paid off and the new inhabitants have learned to handle their new world. But almost every world can benefit from a Second Mortgage too, which pays for teaching personnel and the professional help to expand the basic colony set up on the new world under the First Mortgage. What the First Mortgage sets up is primarily an agricultural-trading society; while the Second Mortgage helps this to expand into a semi-industrialized—"
The stick in Jarji's grip broke with a snap.
"What is this?" she snarled. "The sort of stuff they feed you back on Earth?"
Startled and somewhat embarrassed, Jef admitted it was.
"Well, forget it!" snapped Jarji. "That's all. Forget it. It doesn't go here in the wild. You understand me?"
"No," said Jef honestly.
"Well, you listen," said Jarji, dropping what was left of the stick and looking straight at him. "Every world's different, that's what. Every world's a brand new problem—to the E. Corps and to the colonists like us. That you were just quoting makes it sound like there's just one blueprint for all new worlds, like this, and things always go one-two-three. Well, they don't! Second Mortgage means not only E. Corps giving up direct control of a world—it means there's a lot of value that comes in, in the way of equipment and materials bought with Second Mortgage money to expand the colony. Means there's chances for some people to get rich. Means some people get the chance to be more important than others!"
The word "rich" rang oddly on Jef's ears. He remembered the elaborate home of Armage. "I still don't understand," said Jef.
"There's a law here on Everon—E. Corp's approved it," said Jarji. "If wisent don't do well on a certain range, then any wild rancher running eland in forest touching that area can go to court and sue for the right to plant the area to forest and increase his woods-range. Same way, if eland population drops in a forest area, any adjoining wisent rancher can sue to clear the area for wisent grazing."
She stared almost fiercely at Jef.
"Wisent ranchers been suing and winning the right to clear forest area ever since the E. Corps moved out of here," she went on. "You asked me why you probably wouldn't find Beau leCourboisier at Post Fifty, when you get there. I'm telling you why. His woods range got challenged for a wisent grazing area. It was condemned and cleared by a downcountry rancher a little over a year ago."
"But..." Jef puzzled over this information, "you said no one could take over forest unless the eland population was down. You mean Beau leCourboisier lost a lot of his eland—"
Jarji laughed shortly.
"Lost!" she echoed. "Lost, all right. You mean poisoned! Well, not all. Some drove off, some poisoned, some just plain disappeared—just as if five or six downcountry aircraft had come along, the night before the head count was made for the court—five or six cargo aircraft full of wisent ranchers armed with laser hand-weapons to kill and carry out every eland they spotted on their infrared scopes."
She laughed again, on a harsh note.
"It's because of things like that, that you radio ahead when you're coming through a person's woods nowadays."
"But," said Jef, "there's no aircraft allowed to fly this far up. The Planetary Constable told me so."
Jarji said nothing. She merely leaned deliberately and spat into the fire. Her spittle exploded with a sharp crack as it hit a red-hot ember.
"Then," said Jef after a few moments when it became clear that she was not going to say any more without prompting, "you say the wisent ranchers have been moving in on your forest territory under the excuse of some law. But I didn't know that; and even if it's true, there's nothing I could do about that You want to notify the E. Corps—"
"You really don't put two and two together too well, do you?" said Jarji. "Remember I was saying you might be looking in the wrong place for your brother? If he was a real good friend of Beau's, it could be the people who made your brother disappear were the same people who stood to gain by driving Beau out."
There was a long moment of silence. Then Jef heard his own voice speaking, as if it was somebody else's voice, some distance off.
"You don't mean that," he heard it saying. "What you're hinting at is the possibility of my brother being deliberately murdered. If that was the case, why would the E. Corps not tell us about it..."
"Not talking about any such thing!" said Jarji. "Just mentioning how things are here. You take it from there, if you want. Figure it out for yourself."
Far off in the night, a sound interrupted them. It was a low, moaning sound that rose gradually up the scale, and in volume, until it became a full-throated, if distant, roar. That roar rang about them for a full minute and then died away again slowly, as it had begun. Mikey shoved violently against Jef, almost crawling into his lap, shivering violently.
"Sure," said Jarji, looking at Mikey. "He knows."
"What is it?" demanded Jef, his own voice a little shaky. "Was that-"
"What else? A male maolot, full-grown one. Mine, maybe."
"Yours?"
"Mine," said Jarji. "Oh, not like your pet there. I mean the full-grown male whose hunting territory overlaps my eland range. Up here in the woods we aren't like the wisent ranchers. We don't go out deliberately to hunt down the maolots. But that maolot old man out there keeps other male maolots away. He takes the eland he needs to eat and I don't complain. He and I got a truce on. He goes his way and I go mine—and we both kind of see to it the ways don't cross. He'll measure near two meters high at the shoulder as he stands on four legs. You'll see that for yourself if you ever come face to face with him."
Jef shivered in spite of himself.
"Will he..." Jef hesitated. "Will a full-grown male like that stay out of any human's way?"
"Unless there's a reason—probably." Jarji looked over the now-low flames of the fire at him, thoughtfully. "Nothing bothers anything here, without a reason. You're going to have to learn that, if you figure to stick around."
"I know," said Jef.
She looked at him with surprise, and some approval—for the first time.
"You might manage to get by, after all," she said, "if you don't get killed before you learn your way around. If you don't know something, don't guess at it. Ask somebody, if there's somebody around to ask, or stay clear until you do know."
Jef nodded. The puzzling behavior of Mikey when they had encountered the galushas came back to nag at him.
"I ran into something odd earlier today," he said slowly.
"Oh? What was that?"
He told her. When he had finished describing what had happened, she nodded.
"That was their mating dance," she said. "Now that's just what I was telling you."
"Mating dance—you mean the galushas?"
"That's right. They'll start playing like that—a dozen or more of them at once, and break up into smaller groups, and then, one by one, an extra male, or an extra female'll drop out. It's a way
they have of choosing."
"But why did Mikey act the way he did?"
"I said!" She came down on the second word with emphasis. "Here on Everon nothing interferes with anything else without a reason. Any species that's mating, they're safe from the predators that'd ordinarily take them. Individuals from two species that'd ordinarily fight on sight, don't fight. Maolots are territorial, but at mating time they cross territory lines and there's never any argument."
"Is there any connection between that and the way this male maolot of yours has a truce with you?" She shook her head.
"That's something different. You'll have to live here a few years to understand that. That truce's just between him and me."
"Then, if I run into him—"
"No telling, like I said." Jarji frowned at the fire. "Probably he'll leave you alone, because there's no reason to do otherwise. No, wait. Come to think of it though, he won't bother you as long as you have that one there with you."
"Mikey?" Jef looked down and put an arm about the still-shivering body that huddled close to him.
"Sure. A full-grown male won't hurt any female or cub, or even a young male with his eyes still closed, like yours, there," Hillegas said. "Come to think of it, yours ought to know a full-grown one wouldn't touch him. Now, if he was another full male, it might be different. Any two males'll fight, whenever they meet, for territory. But your maolot ought to know no adult would hurt him."
"He's grown up on Earth, the last eight years," said Jef out of a dry throat. "Maybe he's forgotten, or never learned. My brother found him when he was only a few days old, beside his dead mother."
"Could be he doesn't, then," she said thoughtfully. Jef's eyes went to the crossbow at her feet. "I—-don't suppose," Jef said, "you could lend me that, or one like it?" Jarji shook her head.
"These are handmade," she said. "This is the only one I've got. Stay by the fire tonight; and travel in the day. You ought to be safe enough, once any male sees you've got that young one with you."
She got abruptly to her feet, picking up the crossbow as she did so.
"You'll make Post Fifty by noon tomorrow," she said. "My territory doesn't run that way more than another five kilometers, but I'll radio ahead for you and you won't be stopped by any other uplanders. Night!"
As unexpectedly as she had arrived, she was gone into the darkness beyond the now-feeble firelight. Jef listened; but there was no sound from the woods to signal the direction in which she had left. Hastily, he built up the fire.
The flames licked high again. Once more, from farther off, came the long, droning roar of a huge, adult male maolot. Mikey nuzzled Jef and curled up once more against his legs. Jef petted him absently.
Chapter Seven
jef woke at dawn, to find the fire out and Mikey still pressed against him.
He got stiffly to his feet, made up the fire and cooked breakfast for them both. With the new heat of the fire and his own reawakening, he began to feel more alive. A by-product of the alive feeling, however, was becoming aware of a rawness to his neck, face and the back of his hands. He had had a good tan on Earth, but apparently the golden sun of Everon was something special. He had become sunburned on the exposed parts of his skin during his hike yesterday. He looked through the small first-aid kit that was part of his pack supplies; but found nothing in there for sunburn. A little sheepishly, he ended up going back to the cooking supplies. He had some butter there in a vacuum pressure can; and he coated his areas of sunburn with that. Mikey tried to lick the butter off his hands.
As soon as possible he put out his fire and got moving. He had slept badly, waking from time to time under the sleepy impression that he had heard the roar of the adult maolot close at hand, then dropping back into sleep to dream that the great Everon predator was standing over him. But with breakfast in him, and the warmth that exercise brought to his sleep-chilled and stiffened body, the dreams of the night before began to fade.
It was a beautiful morning. The forest was open here, with tall variform western white pines shading out any undergrowth, and the yellow-brilliant shafts of sunlight came in at angles to brighten the green low carpet of the forest form of the moss-grass. It was almost like taking a stroll through a park back on Earth. The clock-birds chimed cheerfully all around them and occasionally some small scurrying native creature could be glimpsed— although not for long. They were all clearly wasting no time in getting out of the way of these two strangers. Jef wondered if it was he or Mikey—young as the maolot was—that was making them scurry for cover in such fashion.
But there was no way of answering that question. Jef consulted his mapcase from time to time; but the black line marking the route of his actual passage continued to run right beside the red line of his indicated route. Something about the area of the map displayed in the case bothered him, however; and it was not until the fourth or fifth time he consulted it that he put his finger on what was bothering him.
According to the map Post Fifty was deep in forest territory with no open country closer than twenty or twenty-five kilometers. But Jarji had said that Beau leCourboisier's game ranch, which had been close to Post Fifty, was now cleared for open range and wisent grazing. But if so, the map did not show the change.
It was hard to believe that up to twenty kilometers of what had been forest had been cleaned out completely and turned into pasture. Not that there was anything physically impossible about it, even with the sort of tools that were all a new world like Everon would have obtained with its First Mortgage. But it seemed inconceivable that woods territory would deliberately be destroyed on that scale by colonists on as young a world as this. Surely the E. Corps would get around to checking the world, sooner or later; and surely the Corps would never approve that kind of massive interference with the native ecological pattern?
The question hung in Jef's mind without an answer, nagging him until he forced himself not to think about it anymore. Happily, a glance at the mapcase told him he was now less than eight kilometers from Post Fifty. It was already mid-morning of the twenty-five-hour Everon day. He should reach the post as Jarji had said, by noon—or even before noon.
Jef gave up thinking and went back to enjoying his hike. Mikey paced beside him, apparently also relaxed and peaceful, only brushing the side of his head lightly against Jef's hip from time to time as if to reassure himself that Jef was still there.
About four kilometers from Post Fifty, something bluish-green flickered in the farther shadows under the trees ahead and Jef stopped suddenly, Mikey bumping into him. For a second Jef squinted in the direction in which the movement had been visible, without seeing any further sign of what might have caused it.
Then his vision adjusted; and he realized that he had been looking directly at what had moved without identifying it, because the colors of its sticklike body blended so well with the green of the trees and the moss-grass underfoot.
It was a so-called leaf-stalker, one of the native Everon life forms. The leaf-stalker, he remembered from his studies, was an entirely harmless, insectlike creature which lived on the tiny life infesting the moss-grass itself and the trunks of the trees. The only remarkable thing about it was its size. It stood about sixty centimeters high on its brilliantly blue-green, sticklike legs-larger than any insect on Earth. A pair of false wings half-lifted from its back, shimmering with a play of all colors of the spectrum. Now, as Jef watched, it moved both stiffly and daintily forward, probing the branches of a small bush with its dark-blue, rod-shaped head.
Ashamed of himself for his moment of alarm, Jef paused to admire the leaf-stalker. It was like some strange, impossible, but lovely creature out of a fantasy, with its soft coloring and odd movements. Then, as he watched, it suddenly stopped moving; and with the stopping almost disappeared once more into the colors of its background.
At the same time Mikey crowded suddenly out in front of him, so suddenly that Jef stumbled and almost went down. A second later the deep droning roar of a mature male maolot
broke the silence. Not from the far distance, this time, but from close at hand.
Catching his balance, Jef froze—as the leaf-stalker had frozen.
The roar broke out again. The sound of it mounted, rising until the whole woods seemed to vibrate to it. It came from ahead of them, from behind them—there was no telling from which direction it came, because it seemed to echo and re-echo from every quarter.
Then, slowly it died away. But, even after the woods had gone back to silence, Jef still stood motionless where he was, stunned by the memory of that sound still in his head. Gradually his head cleared; and he remembered that Post Fifty was now certainly no more than a few kilometers distant. Once in sight of the Post...
But, as he was about to start moving again, a thought stopped him. The roar he had just heard had come from only meters away from him; but in what direction? What if the full-grown male was directly between him and the Post; and by going forward he would walk right to it?
He stood, chilled, trying to remember where the roar had seemed to come when it had first begun. But memory was no help —and then he became aware that Mikey's head was turned, facing blindly in one direction; ahead, but a little to the left of their path toward the Post.
He looked the way Mikey's muzzle was pointing, to see a close patch of trees and a clump of darker shadow—and then, as he watched, the maolot adult male walked into full view, less than thirty meters away.
Jef stopped breathing. He had read about the adults; he had heard Jarji describe one last night; and he had lived with Mikey for four years; but the actual sight of one was something for which nothing could have prepared him.
As Jarji had said, the male now facing Jef and Mikey stood almost two meters tall at the shoulder. His head, lifted on a powerful neck, looked toward Jef and Mikey from more than two meters in the air. He was in fact no taller than a good-sized Earthly horse. But the comparison to a horse did not begin to do justice to the impression of enormous physical power and majesty that radiated from him.