PASTORAL AFFAIR
By CHARLES A. STEARNS
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionFebruary 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The seaplane cast its silhouette from aloft upon the blue Arabian Sea,left its white wake across the shallows, and taxied alongside theancient stone jetty, clawing into the sandy bottom with its small foreand after anchors.
Colonel Glinka stepped out upon the wing, carefully measured thedistance to the jetty, and sprang for it, wetting himself up to the seatof his voluminous khaki shorts.
This lonely sandspit, these barren slopes and frowning, ocher cliffs,the oceanic silence around him, broken by the plaintive cries ofwheeling Caspian terns that were badly in need of laundering, were not,he thought as he clambered ashore, exactly as one pictures a tropicalparadise.
And it helped the desolation of his mood not at all that upon these samearid ridges scores of silent, burnoosed figures watched him as he stoodthere, allowing the water to drain from his perforated white oxfords andall unaware that his vast pith helmet, curiously heavy malacca cane andformidable fundament cast a centaur's shadow upon the rocks in the laterafternoon sun.
Colonel Glinka took a pair of green sun goggles from his pocket and putthem on, resolutely hitched up his shorts, assumed the stern yetconciliatory expression of a hedgehog in mating season, and set off upthe rocky path.
Ahead of him, the burnoosed ones scrambled nimbly up the slope, lookingover their shoulders, intent upon not missing a thing, yet endeavoringto keep their distance. But two there had been who either had not seenhim arrive, or did not give a damn, for they suddenly appeared upon therise before him, racing down toward the sea with very little regard forlife or limb.
In the lead, a brown young man in flying green turban and white ducktrousers appeared to be losing steadily to his pursuer, who, thoughswathed from head to food in that featureless native garb of the others,might yet be identified by subtle conformations as a female.
Both of them stopped at once upon sighting Colonel Glinka in thepathway, the female hurriedly retreating to what might be deemed a saferdistance, the young man standing as if petrified, with one foot upraisedand a sun-snarl upon his mottled face, quivering at point.
"Oh, Effendi," he cried at last, "if you are looking for Aden, then youare lost, for Aden is five hundred miles that way. And if you arelooking for Cairo—"
"I am hardly ever lost," Colonel Glinka said, and, eying the youngfemale, added, "Tell me, what is the name of that rather tasteless gamethat you are playing?"
"No game, Effendi," the brown young man said. "That one chases me everytime I go outside. They are worse than Tuaregs, these people."
"Are you not a native, then?"
"I?" The young man placed a hand of scorn upon his breast. "Hadji AbdulHakkim ben Salazar? I am Saudi, and a Hadj besides. Say, Joe, have yougot an American cigarette?"
"A great deal better than that," Colonel Glinka said, proffering anornate golden cigarette case. "Try one of these, my boy."
Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar took two, sniffing them suspiciously. "They arevery brown," he said.
Less critically, Colonel Glinka lighted one for himself. "You know," he