“Maybe.”

“Did you plan this?”

“I don’t plan nearly as much as you think I do.”

“Huh.” I took my dishes to the recycling table, then went to the supply dome and got a notebook with a 256K memory.

I spent the morning in my room. First I wrote down the stories that I’d heard the night before: the People Whose Gift Is Folly.

After that I did an outline of my report.

I stopped at noon and went and got a sandwich. I was missing a gorgeous day. Huge clouds blew across the sky. The lake glittered. There were people on the dock, unloading more boxes. I took the sandwich back to my room and ate it as I wrote.

I noticed, finally, that my back hurt. No more sunlight came in my window, and the sky was more green than blue. A late afternoon color. I saved my work and shut off the notebook, then stood and stretched.

It was too early for dinner. In any case I wasn’t hungry. I decided to take a walk.

I went south along the lake. The beach was flat and comparatively wide. Easy to walk on. Here and there streams came down off the bluff. They were small and almost dry. I stepped over them.

The beach narrowed. Vegetation loomed on my right, and I could smell the damp, close aroma of a forest. I looked back. The camp was out of sight.

“Ha-runh,” said something.

I looked ahead. A creature had emerged from the vegetation. It stood on the beach, about ten meters away, regarding me with a tiny dark eye. It didn’t seem worried. Why should it be? It was as big as a rhinoceros.

I kept still, frightened but also interested.

It was a quadruped. Nothing like a bowhorn. Its skin was brown and hairless. Its legs were thick. It had a long tail, which it held in a graceful curve. The tip waved slowly back and forth. What did that mean? Was it a sign of good humor?

Odd flat horns stuck off the animal’s head. There were two pairs. They reminded me of the cantilevered roofs of certain modern buildings. Or of shelf fungus. They were covered with a fine short down or fur.

Brown velvet fungus. Brown velvet cantilevered roofs.

The animal watched me for another moment or two. Then it picked its way delicately to the lake, the huge feet making hardly any noise, and waded into the water. It had a flexible, almost-prehensile upper lip, which it lifted as it drank, exposing its teeth. They were long and flat and shovel-like.

A herbivore, almost certainly. I suspected it was a browser.

It lifted its head and looked at me again, then went back to drinking.

Time to leave. I backed down the beach. The animal kept on drinking, though its tail began to twitch. A rapid, nervous motion. My hunch was it indicated irritation.

I stopped moving.

The animal waded back to shore.

Where could I run to? Would I be safer in the water or the forest?

The animal paused a moment and stared at me, then turned and trotted south along the beach. I watched it go, the wide backside swaying, the tail moving to and fro. From this angle the animal looked silly. I did not think it would have looked silly if it had been coming toward me.

I walked back to camp, glancing over my shoulder from time to time to make sure nothing was coming up behind me. The beach remained empty.

Marina was in her dome, feeding leaves to a biped. “It doesn’t like anything I give it. I’m going to have to let it go. Unless I decide to dissect it.”

“I’ve got to tell you what I saw.”

She glanced at me. Today she wore golden contacts. They matched her earrings, which were intricate and dangly and chimed every time she moved. “Do I need a recorder?”

“Yes.”

She found one and turned it on. “Okay.”

I described the animal.

“That big?”

“I’m not especially good at judging sizes. But it had legs like an elephant. How big does that make it?”

“Not small. Could it have been a domestic animal?”

“I don’t know. But I haven’t seen anything like it in any village.”

“If it isn’t.” She tugged her lower lip. “More problems. More questions. I wish I knew which god to thank.” She turned off the recorder. “I’ll go down there tomorrow and look at the prints. If I’m lucky, I’ll find some droppings. That will tell us what the critter eats.”

“Nia might know what it is.”

Marina nodded. “I really ought to spend some time with her. How about tomorrow? You introduce us. She can come with me and look for piles of shit.”

“Sounds great.”

I left her there, still trying to feed the biped, which was a lovely specimen. The feathers on the back were pale soft gray. The belly was cream-white. The forearms ended in pink claws, and the clawed feet were the same delicate color. The animal moved restlessly back and forth in its cage. The clawed hands picked up Marina’s food, then dropped it. The clawed feet kicked the leaves away.

I went to the big dome. This time I followed a sign, which led me to the commons—a large room full of low tables and comfortable chairs. It was almost empty. I saw Brian, sitting with a pair of Chinese. He lifted a hand in greeting. I waved and went over to the bar.

The bartender was a stocky man with Mayan features. Most of the time his eyes were ordinary dark brown. Now and then, when the light hit them at just the right angle, the irises turned green—a shimmering metallic color, stunning and disturbing.

“Li Lixia.” He held out his hand. “Gustavo Isidis Planitia. I’m on the medical team.”

We shook. He asked me to name my toxin. I said chablis.

He filled a glass. “Are you still in quarantine?”

“What do you mean?”

“Eddie put out the word to leave you alone. We are supposed to give you plenty of time to recover from whatever.”

I tasted the wine. It was young and harsh. There had been no practical way to keep the winery going on the long trip out and no good reason to. The people were sleeping. The computers did not drink. All our wine had been made in the last year or so. It all tasted like this or worse.

“Eddie is probably right,” I said. “We are having some trouble readjusting.”

“I think it’s a plot,” Gustavo said. “We know Eddie’s position. I think he is trying to control information—from you to us and from us to you.”

I looked at him. His eyes were green at the moment, shining like the plumage of some kind of tropical bird.

“That sounds like paranoia,” I said.

“That’s a technical term, and it’s out of date. What you mean is—you think I’m harboring an unfounded suspicion. What you said is—you think I am crazy.”

“Okay. I withdraw paranoia. But I think you are wrong. Thank you for the wine.”

“My pleasure. And I’m glad to have met you.”

I sat down by myself. There was a bowl of bar mix on the table: nuts and dried fruit and other things I could not identify. Pretty tasty. I ate a handful and sipped at my wine.

It might be true. Eddie might be trying to isolate us. On the other hand I wasn’t in the mood for political game-playing. Maybe he knew that and was simply protecting me.

Brian stopped on the way out and introduced me to his companions. They were young and earnest-looking, from the planetology team. They bowed and shook hands and said it was a pleasure.

“We’re going to have to talk,” said Brian.

“Okay.”

“We look forward,” said one of the Chinese.

“Eagerly,” said the other.

They left. I drank more wine and looked at the window above me. It was hexagonal, set in the curving ceiling. Above it was a cloud, moving in the wind and darkening as the last sunlight faded off it.

“Can I join you?” asked Eddie.

I made the gesture of assent.

He lowered himself into a chair. “Derek has talked to Nia and the oracle. He is willing to go. She says she has to think.”

I made the gesture of acknowledgment.

He took a long swallow from the bottle he carried—it was mineral water—and set the bottle on the table, then took a big handful of the bar mix. He glanced at me. “Is there coconut in this?”