VIII

Juchi the Shaman, who bound together all these fiefs, spoke in a whisper that pierced: "Let us have silence. We must weigh how this may be alone."

Flandry waited till the men had seated themselves. Then he gave them a rueful smile. "That's a good question," he said. "Next question, please."

"The Betelgeuseans-" rumbled Toghrul.

"I doubt that," said another gur-khan. "If I were Meg the Damned, I would put a guard around every individual Betelgeusean, as well as every spaceship, until all danger has passed. I would suspect every trade article, every fur or hide or gem, before it was loaded."

"Or send to Merseia at once," shivered someone else.

"No," said Flandry. "Not that. We can be sure Merseia is not going to take such hazardous action without being fairly sure that Terra has heard of their project. They have too many commitments elsewhere."

"Besides," said Juchi, "Oleg Yesukai will not make himself a laughing stock before the screaming for help because one fugitive is loose in the Khrebet."

"Anyhow," put in Toghrul, "he knows how impossible it is to smuggle such an appeal out!

Those tribes not of the Shamanate may dislike Yesukai tyranny, but they are still more suspicious of us, who traffic with the Ice Dwellers and scoff at that stupid Prophet. Even supposing one of them would agree to brand a hide for us, or slip a letter into a bale of pelts, and even supposing that did get past Oleg's inspectors, the cargo might wait months to be loaded, months more in some Betelgeusean warehouse."

"And we don't have so many months, I suppose, before Oleg overruns you and the Merseians arrive as planned," finished Flandry.

He sat for a while listening to their desperate chewing of impractical schemes. It was hot and stuffy in here, All at once he could take no mow He rose. "I need fresh air, and a chance to think, he said. Juchi nodded grave dismissal. Arghun jumped up again. "I come too," he said.

"If the Terran desires your company," said Toghrul.

"Indeed, indeed." Flandry's agreement was absent-minded.

He went out the door and down a short ladder. The kibitka where the chiefs met was a large, covered truck, its box fitted out as austere living quarters. On top of it, as on all the bigger, slower vehicles, the flat black plates of a solar-energy collector were tilted to face Krasna and charge an accumulator bank. Such roofs made this wandering town, dispersed across the hills, seem like a flock of futuristic turtles.

The Khrebet was not a high range. Gullied slopes ran up, gray-green with thornbush and yellow with sere grass, to a glacial cap in the north. Downward swept a cold wind, whining about Flandry; he shivered and drew the coat, hastily sewn to his measure, tighter about him. The sky was pale today, the rings low and wan in the south, where the hills emptied into steppe.

As far as Flandry could see, the herds of the Mangu Tuman spread out under care of varyak-mounted boys. They were not cattle. Terra's higher mammals were hard to raise on other planets; rodents are tougher and more adaptable. The first colonists had brought rabbits along, which they mutated and cross-bred systematically. That ancestor could hardly be recognized in the cow-sized grazing beasts of today, more like giant dun guinea pigs than anything else. There were also separate flocks of bio-engineered ostriches.

Arghun gestured with pride.

"Yonder is the library," he said, "and those children seated nearby are being instructed."

Flandry looked at that kibitka. Of course, given microprint, you could carry thousands of volumes along on your travels; illiterates could never have operated these ground vehicles or the nega-grav aircraft watchful overhead. Certain other trucks-including some trains of them-must house arsenals, sickbay, machine tools, small factories for textiles and ceramics. Poorer families might live crowded in a single yurt, a round felt tent on a motor cart; but no one looked hungry or ragged. And it was not an impoverished nation which carried such gleaming missiles on flatbed cars, or operated such a flock of light tanks, or armed every adult. Considering Bourtai, Flandry decided that the entire tribe, male and female, must be a military as well as a social and economic unit. Everybody worked, and everybody fought, and in their system the proceeds were more evenly shared than on Terra.

"Where does your metal come from?" he inquired.

"The grazing lands of every tribe include some mines," said Arghun. "We plan our yearly round so as to spend time there, digging and smelting-just as elsewhere we reap grain planted on the last visit, or tap crude oil from our wells and refine it. What we cannot produce ourselves, we trade with others to get."

"It sounds like a virtuous life," said Flandry.

His slight shudder did not escape Arghun, who hastened to say: "Oh, we have our pleasures, too, feasts, games and sports, the arts, the great fair at Kievka Hill each third year-" He broke off.

Bourtai came walking past a campfire. Flandry could sense her loneliness. Women in this culture were not much inferior to men; she was free to go where she would, and was a heroine for having brought the Terran here. But her family were slain and she was not even given work to do.

She saw the men and ran toward them. "Oh ... what has been decided?"

"Nothing yet." Flandry caught her hands. By all hot stars, she was a good-looking wench!

His face crinkled its best smile. "I couldn't see going in circles with a lot of men, hairy however well-intentioned, when I might be going in circles with you. So I came out here. And my hopes were granted."

A flush crept up her high flat cheeks. She wasn't used to glibness. Her gaze fluttered downward. "I do not know what to say," she whispered.

"You need say nothing. Only be," he leered.

"No-I am no one. The daughter of a dead man ... my dowry long ago plundered ... And you are a Terran! It is not right!"

"Do you think your dowry matters?" said Arghun. His voice cracked.

Flandry threw him a surprised glance. At once the warrior's mask was restored. But for an instant, Flandry had seen why Arghun Tiliksky didn't like him.

He sighed. "Come, we had better return to the kurultai," he said.

He didn't release Bourtai, but tucked her arm under his. She followed mutely along. He could feel her tremble a little, through the heavy garments. The wind off the glacier ruffled a stray lock of dark hair.

As they neared the kibitka of the council, its door opened. Juchi Ilyak stood there, bent beneath his years. The wizened lips opened, and somehow the breath carried across meters of blustering air: "Terran, perhaps there is a way for us. Dare you come with me to the Ice Folk?"