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"So what do the omphoth have to do with any of that? If they eat those fruits, they digest them, don't they? That gets rid of them a lot more thoroughly than trying to grow in the shade."

"They digest the fruit, yes, but what about the seeds inside?" Je

"Do they? Did you?" Now, at last, Celia Rodriguez began to seem interested.

"Yes. It makes sense here, too, in ecological terms. It really does, Master Rodriguez. The omphoth ate fruit nothing else here likes at all. Doesn't that probably mean they and the trees evolved together? The trees provided them a special food and in return they disseminated the seeds inside. And so when they disappeared, the seeds didn't get disseminated any more, and that's what I think has made this tract of forest get smaller."

"Hmm." The master merchant pulled out her lower lip, then let it snap back with a soft plop. "You've done your homework on this, haven't you?"

"Of course I have, Master Rodriguez." Je

"Hmm," Celia Rodriguez said again. "Well, what do we do even if you're right? The omphoth are extinct. We don't have a time machine to bring them back."

"Ooh." It was like a blow in the belly?Je

But once the master merchant had an idea, she was not one to let go of it. She said, as much to herself as to Je

"It shouldn't be hard to find out," Je

Celia Rodriguez barked a couple of syllables' worth of laughter. "No, not hardly," she agreed. "Even with our translators barely working, the way they act when they're still picking up new languages, the locals won't be in much doubt about whether they have omphoth around."

Je

"First things first." The master merchant laughed again. "Hope the stu

Something went crashing through the undergrowth far below the branch on which Gazar's establishment was perched. Then the something?Je

Gazar made a ghastly face. "Now I know why our heroic ancestors slew all the ancient omphoth?in the hope of getting a good night's sleep. The cursed beasts are never quiet, are they?"

"They don't seem to be," Je

Out along the branch, Atheters shouted and screeched. Je

"Why should I want to see the creature that torments my rest?" Gazar grumbled, but he went. Je

Young Atheters squealed and clung to their mothers' fur as the omphoth lumbered by underneath. It took no notice of the excited locals in the tree; its attention was centered solely on food. It pulled up a bush, spat it out?it was still learning what was good in this new forest and what was not.

"It doesn't look the way an omphoth is supposed to," Gazar complained; having found that figurine for Je

He had a point, she supposed. The new beasts were not identical to their exterminated cousins. Not only were they tuskless, but their lower-lip trunks were bifurcated for the last meter or so of their length. They hardly had any tails, either, and their claws were smaller than those of the omphoth this forest had once known.

But in the one essential way, they were like the omphoth of old: they were ravenously fond of the big, knobby fruits the various trees here produced. The omphoth under Gazar's tree bent its head down so its forked trunk could grab fruit that had fallen to the ground. Wet chewing noises followed.

Then the omphoth reached up almost as high as the branch on which Je

It was not interested in snacking off the locals, though. All it wanted to do was pluck more fruit from any branch it could reach. Finally it stripped those branches bare and stamped away to look for more fodder.

Gazar turned around to display his hindquarters at it, a gesture of contempt he had never been rude enough to use on a human. He caught Je

"Why would they do that?" Je

"Saving the whole, aye, but damaging the parts. We have laws against building on branches lower than a certain height." Gazar blinked. "I suppose one reason we have those laws is the omphoth of long ago. I never thought about it till now. But not every treelord enforces those laws?without omphoth, they matter little. Now there are omphoth again, and they've already wrecked some houses that were low enough for them to reach."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that," Je

"The treelords know that," Gazar said, still sounding a long way from happy at the prospect. "Armed males travel through the trees to guard the beasts from harm."

"I should hope so," Je

She took her leave from Gazar and climbed down the chain ladder to the ground. The omphoth was nowhere to be seen, although she could still hear it somewhere off deeper in the forest. She was glad it was not between her and Pacific Overtures.

Immense footprints and crushed bushes showed the beast's path. So did a huge pile of steaming, stinking, green dung. In the dung Je

She smiled. These particular seeds got no great advantage from their trip through the omphoth's gut. But omphoth also wandered out to the edges of the sava

Her smile grew broader. All too often preindustrial races wanted nothing more from traders than help in war against their neighbors. This time, though, the crew of Pacific Overtures had really accomplished something worth doing. They'd turned a profit on the deal, too. Je