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pickings up north and come down here? It certainly must be something they do
at broader intervals; it wouldn t make any sense to do this except once in a
great while, maybe as a ritual, maybe as simply a gathering of a clan that s
otherwise spread out.
Well, you re the anthropologist, Nagel said. Me, I have a hard time
spelling it. But if that s the old preacher s ship, and it s sure looking big
enough to be a whole damned cathedral, then maybe it s Christmas or
something.
Well, maybe they can tell , An Li commented. We re in heavy air and going
in close. Cap, can you turn the us live shot on from the probe?
A few more seconds, the captain responded. Nothing to see yet. Ah!
There!
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Well, at least they re human and they re not quite
Adam and Eve.
Sure they are, Queson breathed. Just after the Fall.
It was quite an assembly of bodies they saw, all weathered and darkened by
exposure. There seemed to be a mixture of philosophies on how to deal with the
primitive conditions as well; men and women either tended to have very long
hair, the men beards as well, or they shaved their heads. There didn t seem to
be anybody obvious with a middle-ground point of view.
None of them, save the youngest children, were naked, although the women
tended to be bare-breasted, with a few exceptions for some sort of halter top,
and just about all had their private parts concealed at least in a basic
fashion, primarily by vines worn tightly at the hips with some kind of leaves
or short woven grasses draped over the front and sometimes back and held there
in some way. All were barefoot.
They were roughly equally divided by sex, although there might have been a few
more women than men per plot of ground, and they seemed to represent all ages.
None appeared particularly chubby, but likewise none looked to be starving,
either. The thin ones were naturally thin, the more full-figured types seemed
to be, well, filled out a bit more, that was all.
But they did have possessions. Clearly somebody had figured out how to make
cloth by hand out of a cottonlike plant, and others had found dyes, for there
were blankets, even homemade tent shelters made with the blankets and gathered
and trimmed sticks so the little ones, and anybody else who felt he or she
needed some shelter, could get it.
There were also gourds that clearly carried water or other drinks.
I doubt if they go back long enough to have evolved to this social and
technological level, Randi commented.
From what I can see, these are people who are forced to primitivism and know
it, not people who are necessarily primitives.
Could be, An Li agreed. Catch the Elders there.
What she referred to were a number of men, perhaps a few dozen within the
range of the camera, who seemed markedly different from the others. They had
manes of gray or even snow-white hair, flowing beards, and carried long
walking sticks, possibly staves of office. They were also the only ones who
wore full-body clothing, a robe made of what seemed a lighter-grade cloth than
the blanket material that hung on their bodies, with a hole cut in the center
for the head and two other holes for the arms. They were all dyed a kind of
pink-orange color, which made them very easy to spot in the mobs.
Buddhist monks who fell off the wagon? Sark asked cynically.
The Kingdom of Prester John, Randi Queson said, ignoring the snide jokes.
An ancient legend of a European-
style kingdom far off in the Himalayan Mountains, the source of Buddhism, but
yet Christians. It s just what I d expect a Karl Woodward to come up with.
We ll take your word for it, Lucky Cross responded dryly. In point of fact,
Queson was probably the only one there who knew what the term European
meant, let alone the details and legends, but she was right about one thing.
Karl Woodward would have known, and it was very much the sort of thing he
might come up with.
We ve been noticed, the captain pointed out.
The probe wasn t very large, designed more for carrying information and
perhaps a soil sample than anything else, but it was certainly larger than
anything native to Balshazzar, and very, very odd looking.
The kids had seen it first, then started shouting and pointing at it, and this
caused the adults and ultimately the pink-robed elders to pay attention as
well.
It s showtime, An Li said. Enable probe speaker mode.
Enabled, the captain reported.
An Li took a deep breath, then said, in a calm, measured tone, Hello, people
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of Balshazzar. We are the exploration ship
Stanley in orbit around your world. If you still have any functioning
communications devices on your ship, please have someone who knows how to use
them do so. We will wait. If you do not, please indicate this when I say the
word over and we will drop one to you.
Over!
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