"I don’t know anything about that. I remind you, I’ve only just arrived and real negotiations haven’t started. What they’ve asked for, though, is a treaty guaranteeing them that we will refrain forever from any sort of interference in their lives. There’s a chance I can at least get back the bones you’ve already dug up, but I’m not sure that they’re going to be willing to allow any additional excavations in the vicinity of their territory."

There was a chorus of immediate objections to that.

"Hold on!" Harpirias said, raising his hands for silence. "Listen to me. I’ll do what I can for you. But my main purpose here is simply to get you out of this place, and even that isn’t going to be easy. Anything else I happen to achieve in the way of safeguarding past or future scientific research will be strictly a bonus." He glared at them. "Is that understood?"

No one answered.

He chose to take their silence for acquiescence. "Good. Good. Now: aside from the confiscation of the fossils, have you been mistreated in any way that I should be told about?"

"Well," said one of the paleontologists hesitantly, "there’s the matter of the women."

Harpirias heard some shushing noises. He saw them exchanging uncomfortable glances.

"The women?" he asked, looking around in bafflement. "What women?"

"This is very embarrassing," Salvinor Hesz said.

"I need to know. What’s this about women?"

"They bring us their women," one of the other paleontologists said in the faintest of voices, after a pause that threatened never to end.

"To be fertilized," said another.

"It’s the worst part of the whole thing," offered a third. "The absolute worst."

"Shameful."

"Disgraceful."

"Revolting."

Now that they had broken through their reserve, they all wanted to talk at once. Harpirias faced a confusing babbling clamor of statements, out of which, gradually, he pieced together the story.

Savages though the Othinor might be, apparently they did have some understanding of genetics. They were worried about the negative consequences of tribal inbreeding. As a small group of closely related individuals living as they did in the centuries-long seclusion of their all-but-inaccessible mountain home, they were probably already experiencing plenty of congenital defects. And so they had chosen to regard the arrival of the nine paleontologists as a happy gift of new genetic material. Over the months of the scientists’ captivity the Othinor had systematically been sending women into the cave for impregnation. Already, so the paleontologists believed, several halfbreed children had been born, and others were well along the way.

Harpirias’s mind swam with outrage and alarm. It began to be clear to him now why a daughter of King Toikella had been waiting for him in his room after the royal banquet.

"This has been going on since the beginning?"

"Since the beginning, yes," Salvinor Hesz said. "Every few days a couple of women are brought here with the regular food delivery and are left here overnight. We’re very obviously expected to service them."

"And have you seen their women?" demanded Vinin Salal. "Have you smelled them? This isn’t just moral and physical abuse. It’s an esthetic crime!" He trembled with barely contained anger.

Harpirias heard Korinaam snickering. He threw the Shapeshifter a wrathful glance.

Yet it was hard to keep from feeling a certain amusement. In the normal course of things, probably, very few of these dedicated, sober-sided, scholarly men had any more interest in matters of the flesh than he did in digging up fossil bones. For them to be forced to serve as stud males for Othinor women seemed vaguely comic. As for the esthetic issue, well, most of the scientists looked something short of beautiful themselves; nor was their odor, after all these months of captivity, anything of which to boast.

No matter, Harpirias thought. This was no way to treat prisoners. He understood their indignation. He looked at them with deepest sympathy.

"What they have made you do is disgusting," he muttered. "Totally vile."

Vinin Salal said, "The first night, of course, we stayed far away from them. It would never have occurred to us to lay a finger on them. But the next morning they reported what had happened — or rather, hadn’t happened — to the guards, and our food that day was withheld. The following morning they came with the food sacks as usual, and there were two new women also. There was a little pantomime. Food: women. Women: food. We figured out very quickly what we were supposed to do."

"We drew lots," came a voice from the far corner. "The two who got the short straws were elected. And so it has gone ever since."

"But why do you think this is a breeding program?" Harpirias asked. "Maybe the Othinor are just trying to make your imprisonment a little more comfortable for you."

Salvinor Hesz smiled somberly. "Would that that were so. But we know otherwise now. We’ve learned a smattering of their language, you know, in all this time. The new women coming up tell us about the pregnancies. ‘Give me a baby too,’ they say. ‘Don’t send me away empty. The king will be angry with me if I don’t conceive.’ There’s no doubt about it. They sound almost desperate."

"You’ll see soon enough," said Vinin Salal. "He’ll want you to contribute to their gene pool too. You in particular, with your aristocratic blood. Mark my words, prince. The king will try to make your stay here more — ah — comfortable — just as he has done for us. And then what will you do?"

Harpirias smiled. "I’m not the king’s prisoner. And soon you won’t be either."

That evening, not long after Harpirias had completed his descent from the canyon rim, a second mutilated hajbarak was dumped down into the Othinor village. The circumstances were much the same as before. At dusk a bonfire flared suddenly atop the mountain wall — a different sector of it this time — and diminutive figures could be seen outlined against the gathering darkness of the sky, dancing wildly about. Then another big half-butchered beast came tumbling down the mountainside, bouncing heavily and ricocheting from the rocks as it dropped. It landed near the place where the other one had fallen.

The disturbance outside brought Harpirias from his room. He saw the king in a state of high ire, shaking his fist at the mountaintop and roaring streams of angry commands at his warriors. Once again the great animal was dragged out of sight; once again, the plaza was ritually purged of bloodstains. Harpirias heard discordant chanting far into the night.

The negotiating session the next morning did not go well.

Korinaam was ill at ease even before it began. "Have a little forbearance today," the Shapeshifter warned Harpirias as they entered the royal chamber. "He’ll be in a foul mood. Don’t provoke him in any way. I suggest that you simply express your regrets over this latest shocking death of a sacred hajbarak and request an immediate adjournment of the session."

"Time’s wasting, Korinaam. I need to ask him about this monstrous business of forcing the prisoners to sleep with women of the tribe."

"Ask him another day, prince. Please. Please."

"I’ll be the judge of that," Harpirias said.

But there was little opportunity for him to define the agenda of the day’s talks. The king seemed deeply shaken. Brooding, remote, edgy, he greeted them with little more than a surly growl and a perfunctory wave of his left hand.

Harpirias told the Shapeshifter to open by saying that the ambassador wished to take up certain matters concerning the welfare of the hostages. A calculated risk, Harpirias thought. Korinaam was plainly reluctant, but so far as Harpirias was able to judge, he did as he was told.