"You mean that tribal law has decreed that?" "Precisely. They breed fast and eat voraciously. You can't have agriculture and the storage of fruits and grains--any kind of stable handicraft culture even--with vicious tyrants like that on every patch of cultivated land. By rough estimate those beasts consume millions of tons of food a year. Even the small animal life is vanishing." "And they don't dare kill one," Kallatah said. "It sounds insane." "All primitive fear taboos are insane," I told her. "They're symptoms of the stark lunacy which possesses the human mind before it gets hold of the tools it needs to grasp the real nature of the physical world. Even when it gets such tools," I qualified, "a society can be psychotic in a more complex way. All societies are probably psychotic in one way or the other, but that's another story entirely." "But the adult males seem well fed," Kallatah said, her eyes on the trail ahead. "How could starved children grow up into such robust-looking adults?" "Deprivation has left its marks," I told her. "You've got to remember that only the strongest survive where the infant mortality skyrockets the way it does here. And those that do reach manhood have bad teeth, poor digestion--all kinds of psychosomatic ills. What you are seeing here is the warrior caste strutting its might. A warrior caste will _always_ find a way to eat." She didn't speak again until we were at the base of the mountain, and the village was coming swiftly toward us through the haze. "You still haven't told me how you managed to turn aside their wrath," she complained. "Just what did you say to them? Why are they bringing us here? Did you expect me to understand the gibberish you used?" Dared I be completely honest? I decided it would be tempting fate to tell her exactly what I had said to Geipgos. She'd find out soon enough. Meanwhile, I needed time to plan my strategy and come up with something workable that wouldn't make her hate me too much. The sudden appearance of the children saved the moment for me, sparing me the necessity of further evasion. They were playing on the plain directly in front of the village, racing to and fro with the eager abandonment of all children everywhere. They used their five arms to good advantage, tossing mud cakes at one another, blinking and grimacing with a demoniac expressiveness, pretending to be dead from famine one instant, and then, in the twinkling of an eye, coming exuberantly to life again. For an instant Kallatah's face radiated only maternal solicitude, a gentle sweetness untouched by rancor. Then, all at once, she seemed to realize how emaciated they were, how completely different from ordinary children. Her head came up, and her eyes blazed with indignation.