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Updated: June 30, 2025
The lighter your skin, the lower you were in the social scale. By that kind of selective breeding the present Khatkans are very dark indeed. "They reverted to the primitive for survival. Then, about two hundred years ago, long before the first Survey Scout discovered them, something happened.
They edged down into a small cut, floored with reeds and mud, where some of the moisture from the soggy land about them gathered into a half pool. Straight through this swale the Khatkans set course. The drum beat grew louder. Now there was a glow against the dark fire ahead? Dane squirmed forward and at last gained a vantage point from which to survey the poachers' camp.
Stand free, for the dark power follows him who misused it, and fear no longer eats from your basins, drinks from your cups, or lies beside you on the sleep mats." "Tau!" Jellico's shout reached them over the cries of the rousing Khatkans.
Dane retreated hurriedly. This was as bad as the battlefield of the rock apes. But the captain and the two Khatkans stood calmly assessing the slaughter left by the hide poachers. "Glam, graz, hoodra," Jellico commented. "Tusks and hides the full line of trade stuff." Asaki, his expression bleak, stepped back from the pit. "Day old calves, old ones, females all together.
He must have believed that we would not find out about the drugged water and so would be prepared for any fantasy he cared to produce. When they saw us coming out over the swamp they counted us easy takings. His practice had always been with Khatkans, and he judged us by their reactions to stimuli he knew well how to use. So he failed...." Asaki smiled.
"But they're Terran settlers, or at least from Terran stock, aren't they?" "Sure," Tau sipped his coffee slowly. "But there are settlers and settlers, son. And a lot depends upon when they left Terra and why, and who they were also what happened to them after they landed out here." "And Khatkans are really special?" "Well, they have an amazing history.
Wherever you have a rigidly controlled export you're going to have poachers and smugglers. But the Patrol doesn't go to Khatka. The natives handle their own criminals. Personally, I'd cheerfully take a ninety-nine-year sentence in the Lunar mines in place of what the Khatkans dish out to a poacher they net!" "So that rumor has spread satisfactorily!"
We are hounds who can run on a scent, and we are migrators who have better than a compass within our own bodies." "Now we take to climbing again?" Tau surveyed the way before them critically. "Not at this hour. That sun on the upward slopes can cook a man's skin were he to touch any rock. We wait...." Waiting for the Khatkans was a chance to sleep. They curled up on their light blankets.
Asaki's wide shoulders and upheld head showed for an instant against the light from the camp. "You want Lumbrilo," Tau replied. "Very well, sir, I believe I can give him to you, and in the doing discredit him with your Khatkans. But not with the off-worlders free to move." The program was not going to be easy, Dane decided.
Nymani's operations with burning splinters had been hard to take, but he had endured them without disgracing himself before the Khatkans, who appeared to regard such a mishap as just another travel incident.
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