Well, that did it. They'd had it, as far as Hume was concerned. And the puzzle still stared him in the face—him, Rowley, the boy who was going to do great things, like with teleconscious apprehension, with psychometry, with....
Psi-sensitives were new in the Galactic Ethnological Survey Corps—Galethsurv in the cryptic, telegraphic coding of service vernacular. Spliid had not been sarcastic when he had called Rowley a "percie", the abbreviated, half-humorous, half-scornful, scuttle-butt designation for the percipients.
Percipiency was still too new in the ethnological service to evaluate. A percie had hunches and feelings he was supposed to follow. Sometimes, it seemed, a percipient vaulted completely over painful steps of reasoning and "cogged" a conclusion that was often correct. The ability could be valuable, if properly used. That's where Rowley's harness rubbed. His wasn't being used.
He knew something was wrong on Hume. But if Galethsurv wanted to overlook his recommendation for further study, it should be no concern of his.
But he couldn't run away from a problem that challenged him to solve it.
Long grass swished against his calves as he strolled thoughtfully down toward the village of thatched, stone houses, bathed in the pink glow of a setting sun. Blue smoke curled lazily over stone chimneys, and even from this distance, he could hear the sharp, shrill voices of children raised in play. He took in the scene with a single glance, the stream running beside the village, the small, brown figures darting about the grassy lanes.
The village was nestled in a hollow of the rolling land. Beyond it and stalking around it to enclose it in a clasp of balsam, lay the great pine forest of Hume. Not really pine, but an other-world equivalent of it, each tree spaced a precise, geometrical distance from its neighbor, towering toward flecks of burnt-orange and mauve-colored clouds in the aquamarine sky.
The forest of Hume was gigantic, mystifying. It challenged the mind. It covered the whole land surface of Hume with its geometrical spacing of trees. And the people who populated Hume called themselves Keepers of the Trees.
Rowley tried to grasp the fact that what he saw here was almost endlessly repeated over the broad face of Hume. Why did he think that the real culture of Hume was otherwise than what he saw? A thousand thousand villages, purpling in the swift-rushing sunset ... a myriad of slender semi-savages, who spent their lives tending the trees. If he, Rowley, could perceive more than other men, then what did he perceive here? He wished he knew.