H.M. Hoover - Lost Star (3 page)

She was dreaming of her grandmother's house on Earth; she could smell the grass and hear someone walking in the garden. Footsteps crunching on gravel, a gardener working. There was something special about today, she remembered, some glad reason to get up. She opened her eyes, saw the round room, and remembered. The dream slipped away—far back into the past. But part of the gladness stayed.

During the night someone had covered her with a green plaid blanket It smelled faintly of sunshine and perfume, and she decided her benefactor was Dr. Scott. They are really very nice, she thought, to be so gracious to a total stranger. Her parents, faced with the same situation, would page someone like Max and give him responsibility for the guest. There would be no question of spending time so unproductively as to think of blankets. She checked her watch. They would be going to bed now at the observatory, or sitting in the dining room discussing the night's viewing, engrossed in radiant energy emitted from the exploded star ... she was missing it all. . . . She got up and went in to shower and put on clean clothes. Half an hour later she walked out into the morning.

The trees around the camp dew-glistened in the sun-
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light. The river winked at the bottom of the bluff. What she called birds, for lack of knowing their proper names, perched upon the fronds, their morning songs mingled with the throbs of amphibians from the marsh somewhere below. Off in the distance other creatures could be heard. Lian had no idea what they were.

A few igloos down the street, Dr. Scott was mowing the long grass around a flowering shrub, manicuring raw nature into a lawn for her home. Lian watched for a moment and then began to laugh. Insects flew, hopped, or walked out of the path of the cutter bar. Large frog-mouthed birds, like unkempt bags of blue feathers, marched about, scooping up the insects. Each time the birds swallowed, they paused in their walk; a look of almost insane gratification crossed their owlish faces; their amber eyes closed, and they gave a chesty cry of "Wortle!" Then, with a quick ruffle, they recovered their dignity and marched on.

Impulsively Lian knelt and picked up one of the birds; it was surprisingly heavy. Its feet went on walking on air as she held it. It regarded her with a direct stare, then quite audibly burped. She quickly set it down. It continued its walk as if nothing had happened.

"What are they?" she called to Dr. Scott.

"Wortles," came the answer. "They act like toy birds. Watch them-—after a time you start looking for the key in their backs." Her next words were drowned out by three wortles at once. Lian started off down the path to join her.

A black beetle half the size of her hand darted out from beneath a clump of leaves, paused, then raced the other way and dodged into the tall grass. It was no sooner gone than a fuzzy orange millipede some two feet long and six inches in diameter flowed across the path. Feathery brown antennae quivered as it followed the route of the beetle. It all happened so quickly Lian didn't even have time to be upset.

As if this creature's appearance gave evidence of her ability to flush out game, two wortles came flopping over and landed on the path beside her. She stopped.

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"You go ahead," she invited them. They ignored her and to her delight marched sideways like demented sentries until she turned and proceeded. Then she saw that each visible staff member had its complement of wortles.

"I never knew there was so much wildlife down here," she said as the woman turned off the mower to talk. "I nearly got knocked down by a worm."

"Big orange one?" said Dr. Scott, and when Lian nodded, "That's Buford. He's the camp pet. He controls our black beetle population. He's tame but you must be careful when you pet him. He has an acid tongue."

"I'll—uh—watch out for it," said Lian. Having no intention of petting a worm, but not wanting to offend local tastes, she added, "He is . . . lovely. And very quick, too."

Dr. Scott laughed, delighted by Lian's attempt to be tactful. "You don't like him, do you? There's no accounting for tastes. How do you feel about lumpies?"

"I've never seen one. The cargo men at Limai call each other lumpies as if it were an insult. Are they animals?"

"The cargo men are, yes. I'm not sure about the lumpies." She paused. "Dr. Farr and the others say so. . . ."

"Are there lumpies around here?"

"Some. They live in the hills of the old city. One comes up here every morning to feed Buford."

Lian frowned. "The worm is their pet, too?"

"Maybe . . ." Dr. Scott obviously had never thought of that. "Maybe that's why Buford's been tame since the beginning . . . there he is."

Lian turned cautiously, expecting to see Buford. She saw instead a large gray creature walking on four legs. "What an odd-looking . . ." she started to say and then stopped, for the lumpie had paused in midstep at the sight of her. It stood erect, and they were at eye level.

The lumpie was not a beautiful animal. It was squat
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and heavy, with smooth pearl-gray skin. Unlike the other animals she had seen here, this one was a hexa-pod. Its mid and rear legs were short and stocky, and it could walk on four legs or stand erect on the wide-spaced rear feet with mid legs folded against its belly. Its "arms" were oddly jointed, and its hands many-fingered like a gray sea anemone. It was short-necked, its high-set ears petal-shaped. The roundness of its head made the wide mouth form a clownlike smile beneath a short seal muzzle.

For what seemed like minutes to Lian, they stared at each other in the shock of some sort of recognition. Now she was aware only of its eyes, blue with rims and striations of dark blue, eyes large enough to belong to a nocturnal creature, eyes that peered into her mind like some alien camera and let her see into a soul where such quiet joy danced that she smiled.

It seemed to Lian as she stared that it knew—knew her being here was no accident but a thing predestined, knew what she had been and was and would be—and approved.

"lian?" Dr. Scott touched her arm. "Lian? Look at me!" A certain urgency in the voice made Lian obey, but regretfully. "They can almost hypnotize you. Please don't look or stare at them too long."

"What are they?" Lian was almost whispering. She saw Dr. Scott start to say something, then change her mind.

"Don't give them human feelings," she said. "They aren't . . . human. Possibly not even very intelligent, But gentle."

"Do they talk?"

"I've never heard one make any noise."

"Are they telepaths?"

"Do you think they are?"

Lian didn't know her well enough to judge if the woman was mocking her—but instinctively she felt not "You
do
think they're telepaths!"

"But we're not, are we?" Dr. Scott said, and that seemed to sadden her. "Sometimes I wish „.

"What?"

"I wish they'd quit playing the fool!"

At the hint of anger in the woman's voice the lumpie dropped to four feet and approached, smiling its built-in smile. In one hand it carried a bulgy woven string bag. Dr. Scott looked at it, then shook her head in resignation and smiled at the creature. "Good morning, Billy," she said. The lumpie sat down on its haunches like an odd dog.

"You give them bags to collect things?" said Lian.

"No. They weave them from grass. They make hammocks for beds, too." She gave an unexpectedly piercing whistle, and almost immediately Buford appeared from the shrubbery and paused, looking to see if it was safe to come out into the clearing. The lumpie held out its bag and shook it vigorously. Lian saw the bag contained several large, very live, very leggy beetles. Buford saw them, too, or smelled them. He hurried over.

At that the lumpie paused and gave the bugs a look of great compassion, then reached deftly into the bag, selected a struggling insect, and held it a few inches from Buford's head. The worm's tongue flicked out and the bug went still. A second flick and the victim was lashed into an orange and toothless mouth. Lian considered throwing up, then remembered she hadn't had breakfast. The lumpie turned and regarded her intently, then gravely offered her a beetle.

After a conventional breakfast Dr. Farr and
Lian walked down to the dig together. Two lumpies ambled on ahead, their moon-round bottoms gleaming in the sunshine. Buford skulked in the underbrush. Twice the walkers had to step aside as a tolat drove past on digging equipment.

"The site is three miles long and not quite two miles wide," Dr. Farr told Lian. "The western end is almost completely buried. We've started digging where structures are closest to the surface. One of the more interesting aspects of the site." He pointed to where the road cut through a hillock. "This earthwork rims the entire eye. We found nothing buried in it, so its purpose probably was not ritual. We don't think it was built for defense; it's much too low. And there is Utile danger here. It may have been only decorative."

The dirt road made a right turn on the other side of the eye's rim and widened out. Lian noted the trees on the site were much smaller than those outside. Without heavy leaf canopy a profusion of flowering

shrubs grew here, and the air smelled of flowers and plowed ground. What she first thought were flakes of colored paper floating about became, on closer look, butterflylike insects.

The entire area bustled with activity. Tolats were removing the overburden; one machine rolled up sod as if it were strips of carpet; another forked the sod rolls off and deposited them in neat rows to one side of the clearing. Still another unit was shaving the bare ground, layer by layer, and dumping the soil into a carry-all loader for removal. A human stood with map in hand, guiding the operation. Two amalfi worked with power brooms, carefully vacuuming the surface of the now denuded mound.

With the powerful hum of the equipment, the ripping of roots in the soil, the conversations called back and forth in three different languages, half of which were repeated by belt-worn translating units at full volume, the site was almost unbearably noisy to Lian. She was acclimated to long hours alone in the observatory domes where the silence was broken only by the occasional whine of the roof or the telescope turning as a star was tracked.

"Farr? Farr?" The translator crackled as it converted the clicking amalfi tongue. "Lurch your body to my proximity for viewing." Lian looked in the direction of the voice and saw an amalfi gesturing as eagerly as it was possible for it to wave those limp arms.

"Klat appears to have found something," said Dr. Farr. "Let's go look."

They made their way up the slope on a well-defined path and descended into what they thought was once an ancient street. Off to one side, where Klat waited, three tolats were clearing the ground away from an oblong black platform.

"Well done!" said Dr. Farr. "It appears intact."

"What is it?" Lian asked.

"The roof of something, they think," he said. "They're going to dig it out."

"Why not open the roof and look in?"

"There's no seam. It's one piece." Klat and Dr. Farr began debating in esoteric terms whether to dig to the base of this structure first or clear more of the surrounding area to the same level to avoid creating too deep a pit. Everyone else was busy. Lian stood listening, feeling rather out of it. When there was a pause in the conversation, she said, "Would it be all right if I went exploring? Would it be safe?"

"Certainly," said Dr. Farr. "You can't get lost. If you think you are, just follow the sun to the rim of the eye and follow the rim back here."

She picked her way out of the excavation, careful not to step outside the staked walkway, dodging the workers and their equipment, and headed for a path she had seen the lumpies follow off into the woods. Within ten minutes she had left the noise of the excavation behind.

The path meandered along what had once been streets, or so she thought. But it was hard for her to Imagine that a city had once stood where she walked now. There was no real trace of it among the trees and bushes and creeping vines. She paused to study the footprints in a sandy spot where rain had washed down from the mounds and found only lumpie tracks and those of wild things. "Strange," she said aloud, thinking someone should have walked this way just out of curiosity.

At the edge of a clearing she paused; the path split, one branch going on through the trees, the other off to the edge of a grassy hill. Then, looking at the hill, she remembered the aerial view of the place and realized this must be the center of the eye.

The slope was deceptively steep. The ground was smooth and slick beneath creeper vine that caught around her ankles and threatened to trip her. By the time she reached the top, she was perspiring and out of breath. She took off her jacket and sat down to rest. The ground was very hard.

She could see the camp from here, and the river winding to the west, the scars of road and excavation

hidden by distance and trees. Whoever picked this place for a city chose one of the best places on this world. Mild climate, good scenery ... it would be nice lo build a house up here, she thought. It had been so long since she had even seen a real house. She folded her jacket into a pillow and stretched out on her side, head propped on hand to daydream a bit. Her house would have a beautiful view. Miles and miles of no people, just forest and mountains and the river. Of course, she would have to do something to keep out Buford, the beetles, and their ilk. And at night she could watch the stars.