"Well we can launch it but we need to be certain that it falls correctly." The chieftain, smug since he managed to demonstrate to Oleg his understanding of ballistics, reclined in his throne. The feathers adorning his head quivered majestically.
"Wait, wait," Oleg made a cautionary gesture with his hand. "I don't understand. What are you planning to launch and what for?"
Since the Academy of Sciences got permission to assist peoples at the stages of development marked red and orange, it often faced a dilemma of who should be chosen to be endowed with the light of knowledge. After all, such planets were often characterized by ethnic conflicts sometimes simultaneously involving a multitude of tribes. An envoy had to make such decisions on the spot trusting his own judgment. And Oleg gave his preference to those parading in purple and white feathers since their industriousness appealed to him.
"A pod of poisonous peas," the tribal chief explained irritability, exasperated by Oleg's slowness. "We load a pod of ijbo plant into a sling and, whew, all the yellow feathers are gone"
He handed a piece of bark with a blueprint of the sling scratched on it.
"Isn't it brilliant?"
"Well," Oleg examined the drawing skeptically, though admitting that this variation of a scaled-up crossbow might work after all.
"When did you manage to do all that? A month ago there wasn't an inkling..."
The chieftain puffed his cheeks proudly.
"Oh heavenly curator, it's just a tiny sample of what we can do. You'll see when you come back after a month. "
"Well, it will be reckless to leave you unattended for a month," Oleg mused
The heavenly curator moniker stuck to him immediately after he arrived, and he wasn't able to convince locals that he was anything but. He suggested calling him simply "curator" but the locals became so infatuated with the word curator that they expanded it into "heavenly curator." Oleg, after spending the first month orbiting the planet immersed in the work on his Ph.D., had to admit that he somewhat lost control of the situation.
"This kind of device will have to be made of some sturdy materials," Oleg reasoned with the chieftain, "if it's to handle this kind of pressure. Besides, what if you don't manage to eliminate all the yellow feathers? They'll come for you with sharp sticks. There will be war."
"Right," the leader of purple and white feathers extricated a sheaf of tree bark tied with a liana from under his throne. "Here, we made a detailed plan."
"What plan?" Oleg sighed resignedly. He had no intention to decipher those doodles so he just waited for the chieftain to explain it to him.
"How many chunks of ironwood we'll have to expropriate from the masons. How many pieces of rope we'll have to take from fishermen. If they show defiance we'll assemble a gang of riffraff, give them some food and let them clobber the disaffected. If there's warfare, each family has to provide a lad, giving him a supply of food and a sharpened stick. So, yes, we thought of everything. The only thing left is to compute the trajectory of a falling pod."
The chieftain expected the "heavenly curator" to assist him in that. Not for nothing the shrewd overlord occupied the wicker throne for so long. Oleg stood up and stretched, a hulking two meters tall figure, the top of his head near missing the ceiling.
"Ahem, here I think we should consider our cooperation terminated."
Then he turned around and sauntered toward the exit.
"What a waste of time," he grumbled under his breath, "why didn't I pick the yellows? Now we would explore ways to boost the efficiency of agriculture."
"Wait," the chieftain exclaimed after him, "heavenly curator, what about the falling trajectory?"
Oleg strolled back scanning the space around the throne with his eyes then extracted the bundle of tree bark tied with liana from a jumble of colorful beads.
"This is the trajectory of your fall," he nodded, tossing the bundle on the ground near the chieftain's feet.
