3 x T

That piece was excellent, but it paled beside the other. "This," Gazar had said, swelling up with self-importance, "is a veritable omphoth, carved from its own ivory to show later generations the sort of monsters we had to battle in those ancient days."

To a tree-dweller, Je

Imagining a full-sized one, Je

"Thus was the first of the monsters slain," Gazar had declaimed, "giving proof?could be done again." Je

Now, though, she was more interested in the statuette than in the poetry its model had inspired. No matter how many treelords ransacked their collections for Celia Rodriguez, she did not think the master merchant would come up with a finer piece.

How much would the omphoth be worth? Enough to set up an endowed chair of Middle English literature? Je

She sighed, rewrapped the figurines, and put them in her strongbox. One of these days, she told herself?most likely, just about the time when she would start forgetting her Middle English.

No, that was unfair. She loved the old language?although perhaps it wasn't older, she thought, surprised, than Gazar's hunting epic?and kept fresh her command of it. Fiche and a reader even a journeyman could easily afford.

She settled in with her scientific detective. This tale, part of what was called his memoirs, had to do with horse racing. Je

"'Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?'

" 'To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.'

" 'The dog did nothing in the nighttime.'

" 'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes."

She finished "The Silver Blaze," loaded the fiche Oxford English Dictionary into the reader so she could look up a few words that had completely baffled her. But her mind kept going back to the dog that had not done anything. She frowned, trying to figure out why.

Then her eyes got wide. She reached under the bunk for her strongbox. She got out the two figurines she had just bought from Gazar. She looked from one of them to the other, then slowly nodded. This had to be how Holmes felt when all the pieces fell together. She quoted him again. "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Excuse me, Master Merchant." Je

Finally Rodriguez looked up from her computer screen. "You want something, Je

"Yes, I think so, Master Merchant. That is, I think I may know why this forest is shrinking."

Rodriguez slammed a meaty hand down on the panel in front of her. "Well, if you do, that's more than anyone else does. And I haven't seen you doing anything in the way of trying to find out, either. So how do you know? Divine inspiration?"

"No. I?I?" Je

The master merchant groaned. "Je

"It's?a way of thinking. But never mind that now. You're right, Master Merchant, I haven't done much work on the problem till now. I'm sorry. But can you tell me if you have maps that show the boundaries of the forest from a long time ago? Long before we first landed here, I mean: back when the Atheters were first settling this territory."

"I think so, yes." Rodriguez fiddled with the computer. A map appeared on the screen, replacing the chart she had been studying. "As best we can tell now, this is the size of the forest about fifteen hundred local years ago. It started declining then, slowly at first, but more and more rapidly in the past mille

The master merchant checked herself, glanced sourly at Je

Je

"I think it was?" She spoke so softly that Rodriguez had to lean forward to hear what she was saying. She involuntarily yelped, "?the omphoth."

"The omphoth?" The master merchant looked disgusted. "You come in here, waste my time with this foolishness when I have serious work to do? The omphoth," she said, as if to an idiot child, "have been extinct for a thousand years. You were the one who found that out. How can something that isn't here any more have anything to do with conditions now?"

"By not being here," Je

"Coincidence," Rodriguez snorted. But she did look at Je

"Yes, they ate the trees," Je

"They sprout, of course."

"Yes." Je