Free Howling Stones by Alan Dean Foster

it’s a start. One of the few I’ve been able to make.”
    “So that’s how you get your fruits and juices. Exotic tastes are always a good way to ingratiate oneself with natives, provided body chemistries are compatible, of course.”
    “It isn’t the taste. The drink is carbonated, and the bubbles tickle their sensitive palates. They like the sensation.” Leaning forward, she resumed manual control andturned the skimmer toward shore. “There’s something really important to be discovered here, Pulickel. Something that extends beyond treaties and trade agreements and adding to the general bulk of xenological knowledge. I’m just not sure what it is yet.”
    “Pretty hard to verify something in the laboratory when you don’t even know what it is you’re looking for,” he commented.
    “Maybe you’ll have better luck.” She shook her head, chasing blond strands from her face. “A new approach, intuition—you obviously have a lot of experience.”
    “It would help if I knew what you were looking for.”
    “I agree. All I can say is that it’s all tied up with what makes Parramat society so different from that of any of the other island groups and the Parramati different from the rest of the seni. They’re not evasive so much as they are obtuse.”
    “Is obtuseness a component of kusum, too?” Pulickel braced himself as the skimmer slowed, approaching the shoreline.
    “I don’t think so.” She eased the craft up on a narrow beach shaded by tall thin trees clad in striated blue bark and huge oval leaves that grew directly upon the trunk. Their coloring blended perfectly into the sky, an adaptive quality whose purpose he would have to discover at a later date. Near the crown of one bole small chittering things with eight legs hung upside down and gawked at him out of eyes like Persian turquoise. Each eye appeared to have three pupils.
    “We have to stop here and walk.” She climbed out of the open cab. “It’s not far, but there’s a bit of a climb.”
    He followed her over the side and studied the sloping terrain inland. “The skimmer should be able to negotiate this hill.”
    “Probably, but some of the older Parramati don’t liketo be around it when it’s running.” She smiled knowingly. “Because it sucks in air and kicks it back out they’re afraid it might steal their breath.”
    “And besides,” he grumbled as he studied the narrow trail that wound like a corkscrew through the dense vegetation, “no doubt it’s against kusum.”
    “You got it. So I park it here.” Reaching into the stern of the skimmer, she removed a couple of small backpacks and handed one to him. Slipping the other over her shoulders, she started up the trail. “As you’ve probably figured by now, the Parramati consider everything in the light of kusum.”
    “Who makes the interpretations? The local chief?”
    “I told you,” she reminded him, looking back over her shoulder, “the Parramati have no chiefs.”
    “Somebody has to make decisions.”
    “They all do. It’s something like an Athenian-style democracy, only with internal gradations I’m still trying to sort out. There are big persons, and middle persons, and small persons, and the big persons have a greater say than the small persons, but if enough small persons get together they can override the opinion of the big persons.”
    “So the voting is weighted?” He’d always had plenty of stamina and the climb wasn’t tiring him.
    “It’s not that straightforward. You’ll see.”
    The trail was well maintained. He glanced back the way they’d come. “They won’t bother the skimmer?”
    “They’ll look at it and peek inside, but they won’t touch anything. They’ve seen what it can do, and no one wants to take the risk of it running off with them. I set the alarm anyway, just in case somebody’s curiosity overcomes their adherence to kusum.” She held up her right arm, showing him the communicator band encircling her wrist. “I can