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where they found a black gate set into the wall. Clearly they were both
expected and observed; the gate was already opening as they came within sight
of it. The bus turned in, and Joshua glanced back to see it close behind them.
The wall and the forest setting had somehow led Joshua's subconscious to
expect a relatively primitive, thatched-hut scene, and he was vaguely
disappointed as he left the bus to find the buildings, streets, and people as
modern as those they'd seen in Sollas. Three men waited off to the side, and
as the last of the Qasaman escorts left the bus they stepped forward. "Mayor
Ingliss," Moff nodded in greeting, "may I present to you the visitors from
Aventine: Cerenkov, Rynstadt, York, and Moreau."
Where Mayor Kimmeron of Sollas had been almost cheerful, Ingliss was gravely
polite. "I welcome you to Huriseem," he said with a nod. "I understand you
seek to learn about village life on
Qasama. To what end, may I inquire?"
So Qasaman suspicion isn't limited to the big cities. Somehow, Joshua found
that more of a disappointment than the lack of thatched huts.
Cerenkov went into his by-now familiar spiel about trade and cultural
exchange, and Joshua allowed his gaze to drift around the area. Huriseem
seemed to have none of the taller six-story-plus buildings of Sollas, and the
colorful abstract wall paintings were also absent, but otherwise the village
could have been a transplanted chunk of the larger city. Even the wall's
presence was not intrusive, and it took him a moment to realize the
structure's inside surface was painted with effectively camouflaging pictures
of buildings and forest scenes. So why is the outside painted black? he
wondered and with a flash of inspiration it hit him. Black the same color as
the tree trunks. A charging bololin must see the village as a giant tree and
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therefore goes around it. And that meant
Reaching to his neck, he covered the pendant's translator mike. "I've got it,"
he murmured. "The
Sollas street paintings make the place look sort of like a clump of
forest same colors and everything. Keeps the bololins from shying away."
There was a long enough pause that he began to wonder if no one on the Dewdrop
was monitoring the
" circuit. Then Nnamdi's voice came in over the earphone. "Interesting. Weird,
but entirely possible. Depends partly on how good the bololins' eyesight is, I
suppose. Governor Telek's still asleep, but I'll suggest this to her when she
wakes up, see if she got any data on that last night."
"Fine," Joshua said, "but in the meantime can you find any sociological
rationale for wanting those herds to come trampling through Sollas?"
"That does put into doubt Moff's assertion that they simply can't keep the
bololins out, doesn't it?" Nnamdi agreed thoughtfully. "I'll work on it, but
nothing comes immediately to mind. Wait a second face left a bit, will you?"
Joshua obediently turned his head a few degrees in the requested direction.
"What is it?"
"That red-bordered sign near the gate haven't seen anything like it anywhere
in Sollas. Let me get the visual translator going...."
Joshua held his head steady for a moment to give the tape a good image, then
turned back to face the others. "Okay," Nnamdi said after a moment. "It says,
'Krisjaw hunts this month: the 8th and 22nd at iO.' Today's the eighth, I
think, if the numbers we've
:" Seen elsewhere are accurate. Wonder why they bother
> to post a sign with the other comm lines they have."
;, "Maybe a village this small doesn't have the same wiring as Sollas does,"
Joshua suggested. It looked
?t like Cerenkov and the Qasamans had about finished
| the preliminaries; Mayor Ingliss was gesturing toward fe an open car of the
sort they'd used in Sollas all week.
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"I'll try to find out," he added and let his hand fall to his side.
Its mike open again, the translator came back online. " will be able to visit
the farming areas later," Ingliss was saying. "At the moment many of the
workers are out hunting, so there would be little to see." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]