THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

shaman. from a long line of shamans."

"Doe's he have a name?" Jack said.

"It's a word that means, uh, one who puts a system together, uh, one who also gets a system working and keeps it working."

"You mean a builder?"

"No."

"An operator?"

"No, it's more like a . .

Poor Tappy! Her formal education had been very neglected.

She smiled and said, "An integrator!"

He told himself not to be so hasty in the future in judging her knowledge.

"Good' Let's call him the Integrator. I wonder what he integrates?"

The honkers appeared to be Stone Age preliterates. But that must be because they wanted the Gaol to believe that. As evidenced by the Integrator, they were more advanced in biological science than the peoples of Earth. What else were they concealing?

The Integrator halted, and he sca

He said, "Wino's delight! Muscatel, three dollars a gallon!"

The shaman walked into the semidarkness of the center of the grove. Jack, following him, was startled when he saw the bark of the central tree open. It swung out to display a hollow in the tree.

A honker stood within it. He bowed once to the shaman and three times to Tappy. Then he turned and went down a steep flight of steps. The shaman leading, all followed him.

But Tappy stopped and said, "What about Garths He can't get' down the steps, too. It's too narrow. And these wooden steps wouldn't bear his weight."

"Oh, man, I forgot about him," Jack said.

He, Tappy, and Candy went back up the steps, forcing the honkers behind them to get out of the tree. Jack was startled when he stepped out into the half-light. Garth was gone. A score of honkers was busily erasing the tracks of the Gaol's wheels.

"Ask them where Garth is," Jack said to Tappy.

Tappy honked at the nearest female. Then she said, "They've hidden him in a big hole in another tree. It's covered up with a fake section of bark."

"For God's sake!" Jack said. "Why didn't they tell us? And how did they get Garth to cooperate?"

She honked again, listened, and then said, "Some of the honkers speak the Gaol language. They can't whistle, but their honks can be the equivalent of the whistles that make up words. They just have to be the same lengths of the whistles and have the same timing between groups of whistles. He understands them when they do that, but he doesn't know honker speech.

"The Integrator didn't tell us that Garth would be hidden.

Apparently, he took it for granted that we'd know that Garth had to be concealed up here. That's the way of the honkers.

They assume a certain amount of intelligence in others. We'd better get used to their way of doing things, Jack."

They went down the steps again and passed through several tu

A twenty-foot-wide stream of water coursed from a hole in one wall to a hole at the far end of the cavern. A bridge formed of material ' like spiderweb silk, its cables attached to the cavern ' ing, cell crossed the stream. The mouth-watering odor of meat cooked in stone braziers filled the cavern. The smoke drifted slowly along and was sucked up by a large hole in the ceiling.

About thirty honkers, adults and a few children, were here. The youngsters were like children on Earth or elsewhere, playing, making a lot of noise, ru

Jack expected to be a

Then he caught sight of a table near the wall and forgot about the infants. He walked to it and bent down to look intently at the objects on its top. They were three concentric circles made of some brown fibrous cardboard and, in the center, a tiny rose-red stone. Bending over to get closer to the stone, he saw that one side of it had been carved to make a sort of throne.

The i

A series of loud blasts from the Integrator interrupted her. She said, "He wants to talk to us. Now."

The Integrator sat on a high-backed and intricately carved chair by a table. He was feeding his body-beasts with meat and vegetables. Another honker was doling out live insects to the mossy oysterlike thing covering the shaman's genitals. Somewhere 'n the mass beneath its thick greenish hair covering was a mouth.

At a gesture from the Integrator, Jack and Tappy sat down. Bu+, the shaman indicated that he had meant for Tappy only to take a chair.

She said, "Sorry, Jack. He says this is going to be a long talk, more like a lecture, actually. He doesn't want to be interrupted by my translating what he says. You wander around, do whatever you want to do while he talks. Later, I'll report what he's told me."

"Don't forget to ask him about the model of the crater rings," Jack said. "I want to know everything he knows."

"Ru

You can go wherever you wish, but he'll see you don't go into dangerous areas."

Jack bent over and kissed her forehead. "See you." But he did not leave at once. He stayed to watch the Imaget snatch a tiny piece of meat from a dish near the edge of the table. It had to move fast to escape the lunge of the snake thing. Jack paled. It would be a terrible loss if the Imaget were killed.

However, the hatchling was the fastest creature he had ever seen. Its jump was a blur like a hummingbird's wings in flight.

In fact, it looked as if it had zipped from this continuum into another and then immediately reappeared in this world. That was a fanciful analogy, which, however, might be true.

An estimated hour later, he returned from his tour. Though he could not understand his guide's language, he had comprehended from the gestures that the many caves he had seen were a very small part of the complex. Part of it was a natural cavern network. Another part had been dug by others than honkers, if he interpreted Ru