Howling Stones (25 page)

A check of his person revealed that the stones he had taken were missing. No surprise there, she knew. Doubtless they had been returned to their appropriate resting places. When she had protested her ignorance of Pulickel’s intentions, several of the Vounea Parramati had eyed her suspiciously, but none challenged her openly. Ascela, Jorana, and the other Torrelauapans had vouched for her, bless them.

“It is not easy to find someone after they have used these stones,” Ascela was saying. “Particularly someone who has not been instructed in their use. The roads they open are difficult to travel.”

“It takes many, many generations to learn how to use the stones,” added one of the visiting Vouneans.

She desperately wanted to hear Pulickel’s side of the story, but he couldn’t even look in her direction, didn’t respond to her voice. He continued to breathe, slowly and evenly, his eyes staring off into the distance and blinking occasionally. He was present, and yet he was not. Something critical, something vital, was missing.

If he didn’t respond soon, she was going to have to hook him up to an IV and request medevac. She didn’t want to do that. For one thing, it would be an admission of failure. Nor did she want to deal with the questions that would inevitably accompany such a procedure. But if she was going to be able to avoid making the call, he had to react to her presence, had to show some progress.
She couldn’t let him lie there and starve to death. Dehydration would be the first problem, she knew.

She turned to Ascela. Of all the Torrelauapan big persons, she felt the strongest rapport with the senior female. “I still don’t understand. The Vouneans claim they found him just lying in the jungle like this?”

“Not just like this.” A Vounean big person of equal stature stepped forward. Ears thrust forward, he swapped a series of rapid finger movements with Ascela, too fast for Fawn to follow. “When the stone masters found him he was screaming and kicking. This was understandable, as he was in a bad place. A very bad place.”

“What kind of bad place?” The xenologist tried to remember the proper gestures. “Did he fall and hit his head?” But that didn’t make sense, she thought. If he’d tumbled into a ravine or something, they wouldn’t have found him kicking and screaming. Besides, except for a few minor cuts and scrapes, he appeared unharmed. There was no blood showing, and the station’s medical scanner had revealed no broken bones or torn ligaments. If he’d suffered some kind of concussion or contusion, it was too subtle for the scanner to detect.

“The worst place,” the Vounean explained without explaining anything. “Our stone masters had to use other stones to bring him back. I am not a master so I did not participate, but those who did tell that it was a near thing.”

“Well, there was certainly something bad about it.” Whether through means chemical or otherwise, her companion’s previously jet-black hair was now streaked with white. Nor was the change superficially cosmetic. Close inspection had revealed that the color change extended right down to the follicular roots. It didn’t wash out when she was cleaning him up, either.

That had been her first priority, and it had been a job.
The smells that clung to him didn’t want to wash off. No doubt he’d picked up several exotic odors while stumbling through the jungle in his attempt to avoid the Vouneans. With the aid of the Parramati, she’d managed to wrestle him into some clean clothes, and that had helped. But a faintly disquieting odor still hung about him, a miasma that wouldn’t go away. It seemed familiar but she couldn’t quite identify it. It made her skin crawl, and she had to work hard at ignoring it.

“We did what we could for him,” Jorana was saying.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Fawn responded. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done, for bringing him back and doing your best to help him. I’m just trying to understand what happened and to figure out what’s wrong with him.” She studied the prone form. Perhaps he’d been bitten and paralyzed by some unknown denizen of the forest. But there were no bite marks that she’d been able to discover, no swelling or redness that would indicate the site of a sting. What was responsible for his present condition? Again she confessed her bafflement to the watching Parramati.

Jorana, too, was searching for an explanation. “Sometimes one who tries to use the stones cannot stay on the proper road. Then the stones may choose the road instead of the user. There are many roads and not all of them are benign.”

“I could’ve guessed that much.” Fawn spoke more harshly than she intended. “What am I going to do with him? What
can
I do?” Her colleague lay as limp as one of the dozens of cephalopods the Parramati fished daily from the ocean. It was as if all the bones in his body had melted away.

Perversely, she envied him that part of his condition. At least he looked at ease. His vital signs remained
strong. Nothing critical would relax, she hoped. Like his heart.

“There must be something we can do,” she insisted.

“Perhaps a healing stone …” Massapapu began.

Fawn looked over sharply. “No! No stones. Not until I’ve exhausted the medical program’s recommendations.”

Unmoved by the sharpness of her reaction, the Torrelauapan big person indicated understanding. Turning away from her, he proceeded to discuss the matter with his companions and the Vouneans. Fawn strained to overhear, without much success.

She’d pumped an assortment of stimulants into Pulickel, but without knowing the cause of his condition, the station’s pharmaceutical program could only prescribe the most general range of medication. She’d even chanced a dose of buffered adrenaline. It made him twitch briefly but did nothing to restore awareness. At least the occasional blink meant she didn’t have to drop-treat his eyes to keep them moist.

In addition to taking no nourishment, his body generated no wastes. It was as if his entire system beyond that necessary for the maintenance of life was locked in a kind of physiological as well as mental stasis. Nothing she had done showed any signs of bringing him out of it.

She became aware that the Parramati had concluded their discussion. They stood by patiently, waiting for her.

“I can give you an idea of what happened, F’an.” Jo-rana regarded her out of dark eyes. “Pu’il traveled down a road he shouldn’t have, to a place that should not be visited.”

“How did you—how did the stone masters find him if they didn’t know what road he’d taken?”

This time it was Ascela who responded. “One stone knows another, even as the stone masters seek to know them. Stone follows upon stone.”

“I see,” she muttered, not seeing at all. “So some Vounean stone master used another stone to track Pulickel down, and then you brought him back?” Did certain stones give off a resonance only the seni could detect? The idea seemed farfetched. The glassy material looked utterly inert. Almost as inert as Pulickel, who at the moment wasn’t resonating very much himself. Certainly the stones didn’t smell. So how had one stone master tracked down another stone?

Light, she thought, and wondered why the answer hadn’t occurred to her earlier. During the demonstration she’d been privy to, the growing stone and earth stone had conjoined to form a single mass that had given off an intense green luminescence that had spread throughout the newly planted field. Somehow, intentionally or otherwise, the pair of stones in Pulickel’s possession must have come together. In addition to his present condition, one of the by-products of that mingling had probably been light similar to that which she had witnessed. If bright enough, it would have generated a beacon easily followed even at midday.

“Not all of him.” Ascela nodded somberly at the motionless body on the couch. “A part of Pu’il has not yet returned. Now that we have most of him, the rest must be brought back.”

“Yeah, I can see that. But I’m not ready to try a healing master. Not yet.”

“Then we will leave you to your friend.” Jorana gestured at the Vouneans, who were still fascinated by their alien surroundings. “Our friends from the peninsula will stay with us tonight. We will go back to Torrelauapa but return tomorrow with proper help. If you wish it then, we will try to heal Pu’il.”

“If there’s been no change by tomorrow,” she replied listlessly, “I’ll need your help.”

She bade farewell to the concerned Parramati. Once they had departed and she had reestablished the defensive perimeter, she resumed her vigil over the diminutive xenologist.

As she watched and waited and hoped for the pharmaceuticals she’d pumped into him to take effect, she reviewed in her mind the confrontation and conversation with the Parramati. Though she felt sure that much that had been said bore importantly on Pulickel’s recovery, she was unable to penetrate the natives’ multiple layers of meaning.

Or else, she concluded tiredly, she simply did not possess the necessary cultural referents for understanding.

She stayed awake until her body demanded sleep, and then she gave it little enough of that, rising immediately after the sun to check on her patient. Pulickel lay as she’d left him, prone and motionless on the couch, blinking at the ceiling. According to the scanner, his vital signs were unchanged. Small comfort, she mused.

At her invitation, the Parramati who had been waiting patiently just beyond the defense perimeter filed somberly back into the station. Ascela performed a respectful introduction, following which the oldest seni Fawn had ever seen stepped forward.

His name was Ijaju. His back was bent and sharply curved forward, his tail broken so many times it no longer was held out stiffly but hung down, limp and flexible, behind him. Incapable of hopping, he could advance only by shuffling, sliding forward one huge foot at a time. Instead of being held erect and alert, his ears lay flat on the top of his head. When he spoke, the double eyelids opened no more than a crack. It gave him the appearance of being perpetually asleep. The long snout was shrunken and wrinkled, the lips cracked and blackened, and most of his teeth were missing. Those that remained in the aged jaws looked none too healthy.

But the delicate three-fingered hands did not shake as they traced the length of Pulickel’s comatose form. Fawn
kept silent for as long as she could stand it before finally stammering, “Can you help him?”

Ancient eyes turned to meet her own. The healer’s voice was a lacework of whispers, and she had to strain to make out the words. “I do not know. One who has taken to such roads in ignorance may be doomed to wander them forever.”

“Wander—but he’s
here
,” she protested.

The elder didn’t argue with her. “I will try. But not here. To heal, two stones are necessary. Two stones and two masters.”

That much made sense. Based on what she now knew, no stone functioned on its own. At least two were required and for all she knew, sometimes more.

“Where, then?”

“Torrelauapa.” As he said this, several of the assembled big persons indicated solemn assent, executing in unison the gestures she had come to recognize as the Parramati equivalent of a nod.

Insisting that the patient be stretchered so that Ijaju could watch over him, and leery as always of the skimmer, the Torrelauapans carried Pulickel over the mountain trail back to their village. Lesser males and females looked on in silence as the line of big persons conveyed the body to the longhouse of Solinna. Though subordinate in age and status to the visiting Ijaju, her healing skills were respected throughout the region.

No feasting, no celebration preceded the treatment. The villagers went about their daily tasks as if nothing out of the ordinary was going to take place. This was very different from the ceremony of the blessing of the planting that Fawn had witnessed. Those youngsters whose innate high spirits could not be restrained were gently guided away from the healer’s longhouse. Several elders whom Fawn had come to know well came up to
her to offer condolences. Their concern made her feel ashamed. None of this would have happened if they’d simply left the stones alone.

Which they couldn’t do, she knew with equal certainty. Not after the planting ceremony, and especially not now. Pulickel would agree with her absolutely—once he was able to agree to anything again.

She refused to countenance the possibility of that never happening.

Pulickel was placed on one of the most finely woven Parramati mats Fawn had ever seen. Incense pots were placed at the four corners of the mat and lit. Aromatic smoke filled the room, drifting out through a hole in the sharply raked ceiling.

With two young villagers supporting him under either arm, Ijaju settled into a resting squat close by the motionless xenologist’s head. Solinna assumed the lesser position, at the human’s feet. Chanting and waving pucici fronds, they set their respective healing stones down in front of them. These were typically unimpressive lumps of the same glassy green material Fawn had seen before.

The chanting continued without a break, monotonous and uninspiring. Waving at the smoke, she frequently stepped outside for some fresh air and sunshine. No one could give her an idea of how long the ceremony might last. She knew that by nightfall her companion’s body would be demanding fluids even if he couldn’t come right out and ask for them. That would mean a return trip to the station for the necessary equipment. Whether it interfered with the healing ceremony or not, she had to at least get some sustaining glucose solution into him.

She intercepted Ascela as the big person was bounding past. “I can’t see that anything is happening or that this is doing Pu’il any good. When does the healing start?”

The weather stone master eyed her sympathetically. At
least, Fawn thought it was sympathetically. Her knowledge of Parramati expressions was less than perfect.

“The healing has already begun, F’an.” She took one of Fawn’s hands in hers, the long fingers wrapping completely around the smaller human hand, the middle one twice. That gesture, at least, needed no interpreting. “They are seeking the right road. Challenging or otherwise interrupting them may divert them from their course and make the healing more difficult.”