Page 60 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Serving the Chocolate Eclipse

Evidently the Mulorgs coveted the priests’ scientific knowledge as
well as their spiritual authority. Kaga wondered how Sazish and his
cohorts managed to keep the ruling clan from usurping their powers;
it was not uncommon in the Known Universe for secular and
religious leadership to reside in the same individual or group in a
culture of the Mulos’ level.
But Kaga did not spend much time on this question; he assumed a
balance of power had been struck between the Mulorg and the priests
long ago, and that it would continue indefinitely. Instead he went
back to examining the astronomical issue. How much could the
Mulos know about the motions of their solar system, given their lack
of telescopes and higher mathematics?
He concluded that the priests probably had a rudimentary
understanding of lunar phases and the seasons, but not much more.
For his own amusement he programmed ephemerides for Somogo
on his desktop computer, and projected animated graphics of
geocentric solar and lunar cycles in fast motion through time. He
noted that solar eclipses were rather rare phenomena, occurring at
intervals of approximately one hundred and sixty-three sidereal years.
Certainly, Kaga had said to himself, the priests have no means of
tracking eclipses; they don’t even have a written language. He saw
that the next solar eclipse was due in less than a week, and he was
determined to be outside the base when it happened in order to
observe the Mulos’ reactions.
On that day he had driven the PKU staff car up close to the walls
of Joktu; it was not a market day, and the gates were closed.
Nonetheless, Kaga found a spot where the bricks had cracked and a
view could be had of the central square. Perhaps a macropod had
stumbled against the wall on the inside; the Mulos’ giant beasts of
burden were clumsy when overladen.
The PKU estimated an adult macropod, from the bottom of its
bony tetrahedral feet to the top of its tiny-brained head, weighed
about three metric tons and stood more than six meters tall. The
animals had but two lower limbs and six upper, so Kaga supposed
they did not deserve much respect from the Mulos; even so, a
macropod displayed fierce loyalty to its ten-limbed master, and PKU
representatives were warned to keep their distance.

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