The robot said passionlessly, "It is impossible to insult a creature constructed of metal by describing him as such, but we deduce that this was your intention, and the intended insult is registered and acknowledged as such."
The Mekhar scowled and said, "You mean if I insult you, your masters the Hunters will regard it as an insult to them?"
"Oh, no." The robot's inflection did not change. "However, we have been informed that it is frustrating for a sapient being to insult another creature if the one insulted is not aware of the intended insult. We wish deeply to avoid giving cause for frustration to any of the Sacred Prey, so we were only reassuring you that we are aware of the intention to insult. Pray do not be frustrated."
Dane burst into a gurgle of laughter. He couldn't help it. The robot glided toward him and inquired anxiously, "Are you in distress?"
Dane, managing to get his face and voice straight, reassured the featureless robot that he was quite all right. The robot returned to the Mekhar who turned his back and the robot calmly glided around to face him again. The Mekhar, with a long sigh, remained still; and as if he had never been interrupted the robot continued. "As for your unwillingness to assume the garments of the Sacred Prey, it is customary that they shall be worn. Clad in the color assigned to the Sacred Prey, you will be admitted to any portion of the Hunting Preserves, and you will not be killed by accident or for any disciplinary action."
"You can't win, old fellow," said Dane to the Mekhar, trying hard to control his laughter. "Customs of the country, and all that. Here, you—" He turned to the robot, and the inexpressive voice said, "You may address me as Server."
"Give me your customary garments, or whatever; I'll wear them."
Aratak said in an undertone to Dane, "If I am going to be hunted, I want to be in decent condition. Let's see if this—Ahem! I have a problem. Server—" he said hesitantly.
The robot who called himself Server wheeled noiselessly toward him. "We are here to serve you."
"Server, your presence proposes a problem to me," Aratak said. "Are you a sapient being?"
Server was motionless before the huge lizard-man. "The question neither interests us nor makes sense to us," he said
Aratak said, "Then let me rephrase your question. Do you partake of Universal Sapience? Shall I regard you as an independently intelligent being? It is obvious that your answers are responsive to unforeseen and unprogrammed happenings. Therefore, how shall I regard you?"
"It is not necessary to regard us as anything in particular," said Server. "You are Sacred Prey, therefore transient, and we represent a permanence. But if you will forgive a suggestion, Honored Prey, we would prefer to delay any possible discussions or disputations or philosophical questions as to the nature of our being until your material wants have been met. Have you a material request which we may honor, or have we leave to wait upon your companions?"
"I have a material request," Aratak said "You spoke of bathing. In traveling one bathes as one can or must, in whatever way will serve the needs of sanitation, but can you provide me, for the repair of my integuments, with a bath of warm mud?"
Server's answer was instantaneous. "If you will proceed through that door beside the archway and travel along the path in the direction of the shadows, you will find a pool of mud for bathing. If the temperature proves unsuited to your integuments, report this to us tonight and we will duplicate whatever conditions are most suitable to you." He wheeled to the others and said, "There are water baths both hot and cold, ice baths, steam baths, and dry sand baths, as you prefer; make yourselves free of them. Now, if you would state your food requirements—"
He happened to be standing beside Rianna at that moment, and after a moment of thought she said, "I require a diet suitable for proto-simians, and am accustomed to a mixture comprising roughly a third of protein, a half of mixed carbohydrate and vegetable bulk, and the remainder of fat. My preferred flavors are either sweet or salty, with no objection to mild sournesses; I dislike great sourness or bitterness. Is this stated adequately?"
"We applaud your explicitness," said Server, "and will do our best to comply. Will this combination adequately nourish your other proto-simian companions?"
Dane said, "That's fine by me." After Rianna's scientific analysis of the human diet he'd have felt foolish asking for a steak dinner, although he did wonder how Server would have reacted to such a request.
Dallith said, "It is suitable for me also, with the reservation that I dislike salty flavors, but have no objection to mildly bitter ones. Also, it isn't customary for my race to feed on animal flesh."
Server acknowledged this with a little blink of lights, and turned to the Mekhar, who said harshly, "I'm a meat-eater."
"You prefer to consume a diet almost exclusively of animal protein or analogues thereof?" Server said. "It shall be provided for you. As for you, Honored Philosopher—"
Aratak's gill-ruffs glowed faintly blue as he bowed to the metal creature. He said politely, "The philosophical man consumes what nature sends his way. Fortunately our metabolism has adapted to the point where I can digest nearly anything, provided there is enough of it. An advantage to a harsh world where survival depends upon flexibility."
"We will attempt to please not only your digestion but your palate," Server said, and rolled away, while Dane stood marveling at a metal robot which could—almost—match Aratak in courteous philosophizing!
Aratak was evidently troubled. "I must speculate upon the place in Universal Sapience occupied by intelligent beings who are nevertheless constructed, rather than evolved by the grace of the Divine Egg. If you will forgive me, I will assume the customary garments and go to repair my integument in a pool of hot mud."
He stumped away toward the door which Server had indicated.
Rianna said to Dallith, "A hot bath sounds marvelous. Shall we go and look for one?"
Dallith turned to Dane, hesitantly. "Shouldn't we stay together?"
"I guess we're pretty safe here. Go and get your bath before supper." He didn't know if mixed bathing was customary in either of the women's worlds, but it wasn't anything he cared to bring up just now. Left alone with the Mekhar, he asked, "What sort of bath do you generally use? You—I can't just keep calling you 'you'; what is your name?"
The Mekhar growled, "I am known as Cliff-Climber; you may call me Cliff for the sake of brevity. And I prefer a bath of cool water, preferably in a stationary pool where swimming is possible."
Well, Dane thought, there's that one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. I never imagined I'd find anything in common with a giant sapient cat. He said aloud, "I could do with a swim myself. Let's go look for one out there."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Outdoors, the Hunter's World was cold; the great red moon, obscuring much of the sky, cast down a fiery light which seemed to suggest warmth, but Dane was glad of the woolly-textured tunic, and Cliff-Climber was shivering before they had gone a hundred yards from the building. Cats liked heat, Dane thought; they were all jungle creatures originally. The Mekhar ship had been steamy hot.
The path led away between green lawns and gardens; it was apparently a vast park, garden, or forest preserve. Before they had gone very far they passed a vast pool which looked like yellow mud and smelled to high heaven of sulfur; little plops and gurgles all over its surface proclaimed volcanic action beneath, and small wisps of odoriferous steam escaped in gusts from them. A long, reptilian snout emerged from the mud, surmounted by two oddly familiar eyes, then the creature heaved itself up, and Dane recognized Aratak.
"Most comfortable," he rumbled, "Will you join me?"
Dane pantomimed clothespin-on-nose. "If that's your idea of a comfortable bath, old fellow, I wish you joy of it, but I'm going to find something that smells a little better!"
"Suit your own tastes, of course," Aratak said, settling himself comfortably back in the stinking yellow mud, neck-deep. "But I cannot imagine how this delightful fragrance can displease you. Well, I r
ejoice with you in the infinite diversity of Creation."
Dane looked at Cliff-Climber. "Feel free to join him, if you'd rather!"
The Mekhar grimaced expressive disgust, and they moved on. They passed a bubbling spring whose waters were so icy that Dane shuddered when he stuck a careful toe into them, moved on to an area where a natural hot spring had been diverted so that the water flowed into a large bathing pool surrounded by a variety of small stone-circled round pools or tubs. In one of these Rianna lay at length, naked, her red hair curling with the steam and surrounding her body with floating rings. She lifted a hand in greeting to Dane, quite unabashed.
Why, she's beautiful. I didn't realize it; I've never thought of it. But she's a beautiful woman.
In the central hot pool, a variety of men and women were bathing or swimming; seven or eight who seemed as human as himself, with five or six others of varying alien species. Dane had grown used to this on the Mekhar slave ship, and no longer stared with goggle-eyed wonder at their strangeness.
Yeah, quite the blasé sophisticated Galactic traveler... he told himself sourly. Just another spider-man, another proto-canine or proto-feline species—
Wonder what the hell the Hunters are like!
At the far end of the pool he spotted, close together, two beings who closely resembled the Mekhar at his side. Cliff-Climber saw them at almost the same instant, and his claws contracted and relaxed.
"I must go and see if they are people of my own world," he said, and moved away, circling the pool with his quick, bounding run.
Dane was not sorry to see him go. The close proximity of the Mekhar—word or no word—had been disconcerting. The hot water looked good, and it was too cold for a swim, so he decided to enter the pool himself.
He hesitated a moment before dropping his garment, but evidently there were no modesty taboos here. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, he told himself, stripping off the warm tunic and dropping it on the stone rim. He stuck in one foot, found that the water was as pleasantly warm as a heated swimming pool at home, and deepened toward the center for swimming, although at the edges it was no more than ankle-deep. He struck out toward the center and swam around for a few moments, enjoying the warmth after the chilly air.
The warm water seemed to ease the kinks from his muscles, aching and sore from the long confinement. I'm out of condition, he thought. I hope I get a chance to limber up before the Hunt!
He turned on his back to float, and someone beside him spoke his name.
"Dane?"
He turned to see Dallith floating beside him.
"I thought you were probably soaking in a hot tub like Rianna."
"I was, for a time," she said. "The water in the smaller pools is much hotter than this, and very"—she sought for a word—"very comforting. Then I felt you coming and swam out to speak to you."
They floated side by side for a moment, Dane looking up at the enormous red moon in the sky.
"Calling it a moon is really not quite right," Dallith said. "It must be another planet, and almost the twin of this one."
"It looks larger than this planet's sun," Dane agreed. The sun was an undistinguished yellow-orange ball, the apparent size of a dinner plate; the moon covered almost a sixth of the visible sky. "The man in the moon is a giant here," he said humorously, looking at the strange markings on the full red face.
Dallith said soberly, "We will soon be the men in the moon."
"What do you mean, Dallith?"
"There are two men here from a world in the Unity," she said. "They know my world and know of my people, although they have never been there. They were, of course, surprised to see one of my race away from our home world—when we must travel we do so in groups, for we cannot be alone, as you know—and they asked me many questions, and in return they told me what they knew of the Hunt." She gestured with one hand at the great red disk above. "The Hunt takes place on the moon."
She explained. The planet of the Hunters and the Red Moon revolved around one another in a stable path, so that eclipses of the sun were frequent on the Hunters' World, and eclipses of the moon almost as common. During the next eclipse of the sun—as seen from the moon—the Prey would be taken to the moon, and there, as the light returned, would be hunted. The Prey's only task was to survive until the darkness of the next eclipse—at which time the Hunt would end. The Hunters who had been victorious, and successfully killed their Prey, would bring the bodies back to the Hunters' World for ceremonial feasting, and great ceremony; the Prey who had managed to survive would be honored, rewarded, and given safe passage back to wherever they wished to go.
Dane asked, "Do they know what the Hunters are like?"
Dallith said, "No. I'm told no one knows that. They quoted the same thing Cliff-Climber said: The Hunter is seen only by the Prey he kills."
"That's ridiculous," Dane said. "Some people must have fought a Hunter and lived to tell about it."
"Maybe they're unkillable," suggested Dallith, in all seriousness. "Some races are said to be. When wounded, they simply regenerate their own parts."
"I don't think so," Dane said slowly. "If the Hunt is virtually a religious ritual for these people, Hunters, it must be associated with some genuine danger and risk for them. Most religions emphasize, one way or another, a conquest over death. A people who made a religion out of hunting, and went to such lengths to secure really dangerous prey, must be vulnerable. If they just wanted the fun of killing things, they could pick and choose among all the slave races, but they pay enormous sums and go to enormous amounts of trouble to get brave and desperate people for their Prey. So it hardly stands to reason that they'd make it a massacre. We must have some chance—maybe not a good chance, but a chance of some sort—at killing them right back."
Dallith did not reply. She struck out for the shore; Dane followed her. Near the edge of the pool he overtook her. She was standing knee-deep in the water, and for the first time he saw her wholly naked, without the all-enveloping loose white robe of her home planet.
She is beautiful too, he thought. When I first saw her she seemed all beauty to me, incomparable. Yet he did not react to her nakedness with the immediate sensual response as he had felt for Rianna. Is it only the habit of protecting her, caring for her, sparing her all trouble and fear? He quickly stifled the automatic response, knowing she would—with that eerie empathic sensitivity—pick it up from his mind and emotions.
I love her. And yet she doesn't appeal to me—sexually —half as much as Rianna. I look at Rianna lying naked in her bath, and I revert to the barbarian—I could jump on her right there, the way all proto-simians are supposed to do. And I don't even particularly like her!
The air struck icy and chill after the hot water, and Dane made haste to get into his warm tunic, belting it around him. He looked down at his bare legs and thought, It's funny how much we depend for our self-image on our clothes. If you'd asked me, say a year ago, I'd have said I didn't give a hang about clothes, they were just something to keep off the cold, and keep the cops from running me in for indecent exposure. But being without pants does funny things to Western man. We even define our masculinity that way—we talk about a man wearing the pants in his family.
He joined Dallith at the edge of the pool. The light was dimming, and the other swimmers were leaving the baths. In the long, loose terra-cotta tunic, her light straight hair falling like a curtain over her shoulders and nearly to her waist, Dallith looked shy and lovely.
"It is strange—to feel that people are looking at me."
"Me too," Dane said. "Nude bathing isn't done in the part of the world I come from, though of course I've traveled where it is customary and it doesn't bother me. We have a proverb, though, 'When in Rome'—Rome is a city on my world, a big one—'do as the Romans do.'"
Dallith smiled. "We have a similar saying. 'When traveling on Lughar, eat fish.' "
"Probably Aratak could find a proverb from the Wisdom of the Divine Egg to match it," Dane said wryly. "
Human nature seems to run in the same channels.... Human nature?"
"Universal Sapience," Dallith corrected him gently. "But you're right; most sapient beings do discover the same truths and put them down in their proverbs...."
Dane's mouth twisted. "Where do the Mekhars fit into that?" he asked.
Dallith said slowly, "They are surely sapient beings. They seem to have their own strict codes of ethics. But they have not yet accepted the Unity...."
Her words fell, as if of their own weight, and trailed into silence. Then she said, "Before we began talking of proverbs and sapience—I was saying, it feels strange to think people are looking at me."
"Nude bathing is not customary for you, then?"
"Oh, no. It is customary—in fact, we seldom wear clothes at all on our own world, unless it is snowing, or we have to travel in very wet and thorny woods—but we seldom look at one another. It's easier to react to other people of my own kind by the way they feel to our minds. It was so strange to feel people thinking about my body, my outside image, rather than what I was like inside—am I very ugly, Dane?"
It sounded rather pathetic, and Dane, taken aback, said simply, "No. No. To me you seem beautiful."
"And do—do men of your world judge women by their beauty?"
"I'm afraid so. Sometimes. The more sensible ones, of course, try to judge women by their other qualities—their intelligence, their good manners, kindness, gentleness, good nature—but I'm afraid too many men do judge women by whether or not they're good-looking."
"And women judge men that way too?" Suddenly Dallith blushed, turning away, but Dane could see that she was almost as red as her tunic. She said, still not looking at him, "Let's go and find Rianna. See, the others are all coming out of the water."
Dane went with her, feeling oddly confused, wondering how much of his own indecision and sexual awareness she had picked up. Rianna joined them in a minute or two, her hair drying in a frizzy copper-colored cloud around her head, her tunic tucked up to her knees. She said, "Aratak has gone to wash off that damnable yellow slime; I gather he considers it a precious perfume and meant to wear it to supper, but I managed to convince him that probably none of the rest of us could manage to eat much unless he got rid of the sulfur stink. Where's the Mekhar?"
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