Return to Eden

late afternoon before they returned to the rocky headland. Fafnepto was nowhere to be seen.
    "Is this the place where she landed?" Gunugul asked. Vaintè signed assuredness of location. "Then she is still hunting. We will all enjoy pleasure/satisfaction to have fresh meat. I will have bladders floated ashore so we may leave when she returns."
    Vaintè watched the crewmembers bring up the bladders and slide into the river with them. The water looked cool, the forested shore inviting. She had been in the smell-filled confines of the uruketo too long.
    A moment later she was slipping down from the uruketo's back and swimming strongly towards the beach.
    "Excitement of discovery," one of the crewmembers called out, pointing to the corpses of five large deer lying in the tall grass.
    Vaintè admired them, then looked up as Fafnepto herself appeared from under the trees. She signed urgency of speaking as Vaintè began to compliment her on her kill.
    "There is a thing I would have you see Vaintè. This way."
    "Has it to do with those we seek?"
    "No. But I think it is the ustuzou you told me of. They are beyond these trees."
    "They can be dangerous!"
    "Not now. All dead."
    The skin tent was on the far side of the small meadow near the stream. Two large ustuzou were crumpled on the ground before it, a third smaller one was lying nearby.
    "I killed them before they saw me," Fafnepto said. "You said they could be deadly."
    "You searched the structure?"
    "Yes. None there. Many hides—and a hèsotsan."
    One of the ustuzou lay face upwards. Vaintè turned the other one over with her foot claws, hopefully, but it was not Kerrick. "You were right to kill them," she said.
    "Is this the stone tooth of which you spoke?" Fafnepto asked, pointing to the spear in the dead hunter's hand.
    "It is one kind. Another is sent through the air, very much like the dart from a hèsotsan. Not poisonous but a great deal heavier. They are very dangerous beasts."
    "Then we can be sure that the uruketo you seek is not near here."
    "A wise observation. The search will continue."
    Vaintè walked back to the shore in enforced silence, her body rippling with the intensity of her thoughts.
    She knew that the search for the uruketo and the Daughters of Life, as well as the renegade scientist, would go on. She had told Saagakel that she would do this. And Fafnepto was here to aid her in that search. But it would not go on forever. Now that she thought about it she realized that she cared little if Enge and her accomplices lived or died. Not now, not after seeing the bodies in the clearing. The sight of those dead ustuzou drove the present search from her thoughts. It wasn't important. What was of primary importance, what she really needed to do, was to find Kerrick.
    Find him and kill him.
    "Message of urgency/import for the Eistaa," the fargi said, trembling with the effort to remember what she had been instructed to say, to be clear and comprehensible in her speaking.
    Lanefenuu leaned back on her board, her mouth working hard on a large portion of jellied meat. Her advisers sat in a circle about her, their attitudes appreciative of her wonderful appetite. She threw the bone aside and gestured a truncated continuance of talking to the fargi. The creature gaped in ignorance.
    Muruspe caught the fargi's attention. "You are ordered to speak. Finish telling what was told to be said."
    The fargi gasped with sudden comprehension when she understood the simplified commands, spoke quickly before she forgot everything.
    "Ukhereb reports discoveries of relevancy. Requests presence of Eistaa for revelation."
    Lanefenuu waved the fargi out of sight, heaved herself to her feet, signed for a water-fruit and used it to clean her hands. "A request for my presence signifies matters of importance," she said. "We go."
    As they left the ambesed two of her advisers hurried ahead to be sure her way was clear, the rest trailed behind. Muruspe, who was her efensele as well as first adviser, walked at her side.
    "Do you know what it can be, Muruspe?" Lanefenuu asked.
    "I know no more of it than you do, Eistaa. But my hope is that these Yilanè of science have uncovered some evidence of the ustuzou that kill."
    "My hope as well. A matter of lesser importance would have brought Ukhereb to the ambesed herself."
    Akotolp was waiting at the dilated opening in the wall to greet them, signing pleasure and joyful anticipation.
    "Apologies of request-for-presence from Ukhereb. That which we