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“Believe me, you do not want to know,” Karen told her. Trir plainly believed nothing of the sort. Karen sighed and went on, “It is nothing but a joke-and a foolish joke at that.” She sent Jonathan a severe look. He seemed notably deficient in anything resembling a sense of shame.
About forty-five minutes later, all the Americans rode with Trir toward the zisuili ranch. Kassquit came along, too. She hadn’t seen much more of Home than the Americans had, and she was bound to be at least as curious.
The bus had windows that were easy to see out of but hard to see into. That kept members of the Race from gawking, and possibly from causing accidents. The ride out to the ranch took a little more than an hour. The border between city and country was not abrupt. Buildings gradually got farther and father apart. The countryside looked not too different from the way it did in the rural areas outside of Los Angeles. It was scrubland and chaparral, with bushes giving way here and there to patches of what Home used for trees.
And then Karen almost fell off her seat. She pointed out the window. Sure as hell, there was a Lizard mounted on something that looked like a cross between a zebra and a duckbilled dinosaur. The creature was striped in a pattern of gold and dark brown that probably helped it fade into the background at any distance. To her vast relief, the Lizard on its back sported neither cowboy hat nor Colt revolver, nor even a wig. Even so, when she glanced over to Jonathan she saw him looking almost unbearably smug.
“What is the name of that riding beast?” she asked Trir. If she sounded slightly strangled, well, who could blame her?
“That is an eppori,” the guide answered. “Epporyu still have their uses, even after all these years of mechanical civilization. They require no fuel, and they can go places where wheeled vehicles would have difficulties. And some males and females enjoy riding them, though the attraction has always been beyond me.”
“We have animals like that back on Tosev 3,” Sam Yeager said. “When I was a hatchling, I lived on a farm. Back then, many more animals were in use than powered vehicles. I learned to ride-I had to.”
“Would you care to ride an eppori?” Trir asked.
“Maybe briefly,” he answered. “I was never one who enjoyed riding animals much. Vehicles are much more comfortable.”
“This is also my attitude,” Trir said. Her eye turrets swiveled over the other humans. “Perhaps some of your colleagues-or even you, Kassquit-would be interested in trying this.”
Kassquit promptly made the negative gesture. “I thank you, but no. I am happy enough with mechanical civilization. I do not have any of these atavistic impulses you mentioned.”
“I will try, unless my odor frightens the epporyu,” Tom de la Rosa said. “I have ridden back on Tosev 3, for most of the reasons you mentioned. Riding animals find their own fuel, and they can travel almost anywhere-certainly anywhere the larger animals from Home that I study are likely to go.”
One by one, the rest of the Americans agreed to make the effort. Karen was anything but enthusiastic. She hadn’t been on a horse for at least twenty years before going into cold sleep. Jonathan also looked dubious. The things we’ll do to keep from letting our friends down, Karen thought.
The zisuili were not a problem. They looked like ankylosaurs with turreted eyes. All the Americans had seen them in person before, and knew they paid no particular attention to people. What the epporyu would do when they met humans might be a different story. People weren’t just going to look at them. They were going to try to get on their backs-if the animals would put up with it.
Sam tried to be the first human on an eppori. Everybody had been willing to let him set foot on Home first. And everyone was just as unanimous in telling him he couldn’t ride first now. “You’re the one we can’t afford to lose,” Frank Coffey said in English, and added an emphatic cough. “Let ’em run away with one of us or trample him, but not you.” The other Americans nodded.
“I’m outvoted,” Karen’s father-in-law said.
“You bet you are, Dad,” Jonathan told him.
Tom de la Rosa tried to claim first ride by saying he was the best horseman among them. The others-including Linda-pointedly observed that being able to ride a horse might not have thing one to do with riding an eppori. They settled who would ride first by a method that fascinated Trir-stone, paper, scissors. And when Karen’s stone smashed Frank Coffey’s scissors, she won the prize.
Once she had it, she wasn’t sure she wanted it. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk,” she said. But she walked toward the eppori that a zisuiliboy named Gatemp was holding for her.
When she started to go to the creature’s left side, Gatemp made the negative gesture. “We mount from the right,” he said.
“You would,” Karen muttered. The eppori swiveled an eye turret her way as she came up beside it. It made a snuffling noise that might have meant anything. She set a hand on its scaly hide. It felt like living, breathing crocodile leather. She asked Gatemp, “Is it all right to get up?”
“I think so,” he answered. “Why not find out?”
“Yes, why not?” Karen said grimly. She would have been awkward mounting from the left side. She was worse than awkward from the right. Gatemp’s mouth fell open in a laugh. She would have bet it would. A Lizard stirrup had only a bar on the bottom. Members of the Race could grip it with their toes. Karen couldn’t, but her foot did fit on it.
Fortunately, the eppori seemed good-natured. It snuffled again, but didn’t buck or jump or do anything else too very horrifying. It plodded forward for a couple of strides, then turned one eye turret back toward her as if asking, Well, what do you want me to do now?
The saddle was uncomfortable as could be. She ignored that; she wouldn’t be on long. “How do I control it?” she asked Gatemp.
“With the reins, and with your legs, and with your voice.” He might have been talking about a horse, sure enough. After he gave her the basic instructions, he said, “Now you try. Make the eppori walk and go to the left.”
“It shall be done,” she said, and hoped it would. She squeezed the scaly body with her knees and twitched the reins as he’d told her. The eppori walked. Karen felt like cheering. She tugged the reins to the left. The animal turned in that direction. She hadn’t come more than ten light-years to go riding, but by God she could!
On the bus on the way back to Sitneff, Jonathan Yeager turned to his wife and said, “You smell like an eppori.”
“So do you,” Karen answered. “We all do.”
“Well, no,” Jonathan said. “Tom smells more like zisuili. But then, he was the one who stepped in it.”
“You guys are never going to let me live that down, are you?” Tom de la Rosa’s voice rose in mock anger.
“You’ll be famous on four planets, once
the word gets around,” Jonathan’s father said. They’d been speaking English. He translated for Kassquit and Trir.
“Being around animals larger than I am makes me nervous,” Kassquit said. “Who knows what they will do next? They are animals, after all.” By the way she spoke, that should have been obvious to anybody.
Jonathan, who’d grown up in the city, had a certain amount of sympathy for her point of view. But Kassquit had never even seen an animal in person, not till she got to Home. No wonder she was hinky about them now. Jonathan didn’t say any of that, though. The less he said that involved agreeing with Kassquit, the less trouble he’d have with Karen.
Frank Coffey said, “Animals-most animals, I should say; I do not mean large carnivores or anything of the sort-are not so bad once you get to know them and to know what they are likely to do. Until that happens, though, it is only natural to be wary near them.”
“Truth,” Sam Yeager said. “As I told you, I grew up on a farm, so I ought to know. We had the meanest mule in the county. A mule is a work animal and can be a riding animal, and is often stubborn. I was very careful around him until I figured out what he would put up with and what made him angry. After that, we got along well enough.”
“I never heard that story before,” Jonathan said.
“No? Well, maybe it is because you are stubborn as a mule yourself, and would not listen even if I told it.”
Karen snickered. Jonathan gave her a dirty look, which only made her snicker again. But when he turned around and glanced at his father, Sam Yeager tipped him a wink. What was that supposed to mean? It wasn’t anything either Kassquit or Trir would notice. Was his old man making up the story about the mule so Kassquit would feel better? That would have been Jonathan’s guess, but he couldn’t prove it.
They came to the outskirts of Sitneff just in time for the evening rush hour. It was crowded on the highway, but things didn’t coagulate the way they did in Los Angeles. The roads were adequate for the number of cars that used them. Jonathan sighed. There were times when seeing how smoothly the Lizards managed things made him feel very much the barbarian.
