The Companions (57 page)

“The Zhaar were supposed to be shape shifters,” said Clare.

“Of course they were. And I don't believe for a minute their real shape was dog shape either, not until they saw real dogs on Earth and decided to take that shape and hide out with protohumans and real dogs on a dying planet.”

Walky said, “According to your dogs, the Simusi said they gave many gifts to your ancestors, and your ancestors took those gifts back to Earth with them. They gave the gifts of language, and walking upright, and there were other gifts as well!”

“What other gifts?”

“I don't know,” Walky said. “The Simusi did not include that in the story, or if they did, your dogs did not understand it.”

“And that's the end of it?” I asked.

“Not quite. The Simusi (I will use that name for it is the name the story uses) decided to settle in that place, through the gate…”

“They decided that before they left Mars,” I said. “Or the old humans wouldn't have known to put it on the wall. So much time had gone by since anyone had seen a Zhaar that no one was looking for Zhaar anymore. The Zhaar thought their disguise made them safe.”

“Perhaps. The story does not say. The story does say that after many ages, the Simusi opened gates into other places, which they used now and then to harvest new slaves from among humans, which they had a right to do since they had invented humans in the first place.”

“Invented?” I snarled.

“So the story says. Recently they opened gates onto Jun
gle and took slaves from there, and when you came to Moss, bringing dogs, they remembered the good slaves dogs had been in their old stories, and they determined to take dogs as slaves again.”

I turned to the dogs. “You all heard this in Splendor, from the…Simusi?”

Scramble said “Ess.” The others nodded, growled, or breathed assent.

Walky whispered to me, “When the Simusi called to the dogs, in the wind, Behemoth did not understand what a slave was. He thought it meant if the dogs went into Splendor, they would be like the Simusi. When he realized the truth, he felt angry and ashamed. He has told me when time comes for him to die, he will let me study him, his nose, his eyes, his type of body. He is most generous, Behemoth, as humans are.”

I was trying to think of an appropriate reply, when we were all startled by a flash of light from outside. Walky shivered all over with a rattling of leaves. My first reaction was terror at the possibility the Zhaar had opened a door and come through to get us all, but no such thing happened. Instead, we heard the liquid burbling of Phain speech, and Walky's more exuberant reply as he moved aside to let the Phaina stoop through the door.

She spoke first to Walky, at length, then to the dogs before she turned to me to murmur through her 'pute, “It is true, Jewel. The Simusi are indeed Zhaar. There is no record of the Simusi until the time they came to our vicinity, fifty millennia ago, and the body is unmistakable. So, we shall do as we discussed, if the dogs are agreeable?”

“I haven't even had time to ask them, Sannasee. They have been telling me the history of the Simusi…”

“The story of the Simusi on the planet you call Mars?” she asked. “I have now heard that story. A small part of it is true.”

She turned to the dogs and began talking, odors flowing from the lingui-pute. Behemoth growled softly, Scramble turned toward me longingly. I'd seen that expression some
times at night when she leapt onto my bed, wanting a comforting arm, a few murmured words. She stood abruptly and came to me, thrusting her nose into my neck, touching me with one swift lap of her tongue, and then, too suddenly for me to react, she led them all out the door, Behemoth and Titan dragging Frank and Adam along, the puppies in a long, waggling line, while Clare ran behind yelling, “What's going on, where are you going?” with Walky close behind her.

Her caress had been an irrevocable farewell, I was so sure of this that it held me paralyzed, stunned, unable to follow or question. What had she decided in that moment? What had moved her? What had Phaina said, or perhaps promised…I wasn't given time to consider it for in very little time, Walky returned and settled beside me. “The Phaina found a good door not far away, and they have gone,” it said.

“I know.” I said. I had not felt this grief since Matty died. I turned away so that Walky would not see my face.

“It is best,” it persisted. “You must not be sad that they have gone. If they did not go, all might become a disaster. There are so few of them, only six grown-ups and the children. One blow from the Simusi might end them all. Their race will be safer this way. You know.”

Safety. Of course. No matter how she felt about me, Scramble would think of her children first. Realizing that fact did nothing to relieve the pain I was feeling. Since I couldn't stop the tears, I put my head on my knees and let them flow. Walky hummed something very like a dirge, and that somehow seemed funny, which was perhaps its intention. When I looked up, my eyes reasonably dry, it suggested I go tell Gainor what had happened.

“Is he out of the meeting?”

“Gainor Brandt says the whole meeting is out. Every person is out, being very irritated and rude. No minds are meeting at all. I rejoice I was not there when it all came apart. Willogs cannot be blamed!”

“Where was Gainor?”

“He was walking to his office place looking angry, bothered, upset, exasperated, irritated…”

“All right, all right,” I said. “I'll go tell him.”

Which I did.

“All of the dogs are gone?” said Gainor, astonished.

“All,” I said, “and the trainers, too.” Gone away from humans, I thought. Gone where they and their children could be safe.

“How long?” he asked.

Should I tell him they were gone forever? I couldn't say that yet, not even to myself. Thinking it made me weepy again, and I fought tears by changing the subject. “I understand the meeting didn't go well.”

“The meeting did not go at all. After we broke up, the Tharstian told me both the Derac and the Orskimi are behaving in strange ways. The Tharstians have never known the Orskimi to be as distraught or panicky as they seem to be at the moment. Some great plan laid by their ancestors has not fulfilled itself, evidently an apocalyptic event, and ships loaded with Orskim warriors are spreading in all directions into the galaxy. Meantime, Derac ships loaded with females are exploding in all directions away from their retirement planets. My friend thinks a war is about to start.”

I stared out the window, I didn't care about the Derac or the Orskimi. I didn't care if they went to war. The concern in Gainor's voice barely got through to me, and I had to make myself focus. There were several thousand Derac not far away. They'd arrived in warships. Unfortunately, as targets went, we were as accessible where we were as we were where we'd been.

“Are any Orskimi headed here?” I asked.

“They could be,” said Gainor. “Some of them are moving in this general direction.”

“So we now have to worry about the Derac, the Zhaar…”

“The alleged Zhaar,” he interrupted.

“The real Zhaar,” I said. “The Phaina verified it. As I was saying, the Derac, the Zhaar, and the Orskimi.”

Gainor snorted. “Plus the Houses of Hessing and Hargess, who are deploying their mercenary fleet. We should worry also about the willogs, the warriors of Day and Night Mountains, and Dame Cecelia Hessing.”

“Gainor! Why?”

“Because there was no agreement at the meeting. The warriors of the two Mountains, backed by the mercenary fleet of the Hessing-Hargess empire, are blustering threats against the IC, whose Marshal has ruled that Moss may not be settled by outlanders unless formally invited to do so by the planet itself. This threat, when communicated to the plenipotentiary, was answered by the World, saying that it would invite people to stay when it had given the matter sufficient consideration, say a few hundred years. And before walking out, Walky indicated the willogs would be enforcing whatever the World wanted enforced.”

I hated to ask. “And Dame Cecelia?”

“Demands to see you so you may be restored to your proper place beside her son. She is most upset that your liaison was not renewed…”

“Hell, Gainor. He was gone, and she was doing her utmost to get rid of me!”

“That's in the past. She wants to pay you a great deal of money to liaise with her son and have a grandchild or two for her. After which, you may do what you like.”

“Why me!” I snarled, wondering if Witt had told her he had been “fixed.”

“Seemingly Witt is unable even to consider liaising with anyone else.”

I started to rave, when a thought hit me. I took a deep breath and considered it for a moment, then gave Gainor a dewy-eyed look I had never used in living memory, and said, “Tell her I will consider it, Gainor.” After a moment, I said, “You forgot to include one of our perpetual worries on the list. What about the concs?”

“They've shown up on several colony planets for the first
time. Now that we know for sure the Zhaar are still around, we can blame them for that.”

I shook my head. “The Phaina thinks not, Gainor. She says it's far too subtle for the Zhaar.”

 

Gavi used her ESC pass and spent every available hour working on the odor organ. When she came back from the first day, she wore the expression of someone who has just had an epiphany. “Wonderful,” she murmured to me. “It is being wonderful. So many things I am saying all at once. But, I am needing Walking Sunshine. The saying is all very good, but what about the smelling? Is it working properly?”

Gainor was reluctant to let the willog into the ESC enclosure. “I've had experience with both honesty and duplicity from aliens. That walking dictionary could be a congenial copse or a vegetable villain. I have no way of knowing which.” Also, there was the matter of spores, and seeds, and messages that might be scattered into the enclosure to ripen later. We compromised. From the room where Gavi was working, Sybil created an emitter that led outside, where Walky was invited to situate itself. This, coupled with a voice link, allowed the odors to get outside, where Walky could interpret them without breaching security.

“Do you think you can use it to make peace between all these people?” I asked her.

“Not all at once,” she said. “No. Words are one thing, dear Jewel. They are being like currency, money, universal exchange, understood by all. This is what language is, also, meanings persons agree upon. But the odors that are moving a person may not have the status of a word. Most people are having particular scents that are meaning something to them while meaning little or nothing to others. One has to experiment to find these odors. If we make peace, it will have to be person by person, couple by couple, this tribe then that tribe, making it like a quilt, sewing them together.”

I heard this with regret, for I confess to having had this
marvelous daydream about being very useful to the Phaina, so useful that she would let me stay with her near Splendor, or, better yet, let me go to Tsaliphor, where there was not only a sun but also several moons. I had thought that making peace among groups of intransigent individuals might impress her in a way that few other things would.

“In the meantime, Gavi,” I said, “can you do me a tremendous favor?”

When I told her what it was, she laughed, but she said she thought it was possible, she'd let me know the following morning.

The following day, at lunch, I asked Gainor to reach Dame Cecelia. “Give her this message,” I said, handing him a onetime burn-book. “Precisely as it is written there.”

He read it through curiously. “You're not really intending to…”

“Gainor, my intentions are my own. Just read her that message. If she and Witt are willing to comply, have Witt down here this evening.”

He read: “ Liaisons made or renewed on Moss should be done in accordance with Mossian custom and rite. Such a rite has been arranged for this evening, if Witt is interested.'”

“Exactly,” I said. “Have him here this evening.”

Evidently, either Witt or his mother or both were eager. They arrived at the installation about sundown. I was there to meet Witt, bathed, perfumed, and dressed as prettily as could be, considering the situation. Dame Cecelia had come to witness the event, so she said in an ingratiating tone so far from the manner I remembered that for a moment I thought she might be quite another person, a Zhaar, say, in the shape of a Hessing. Setting that thought aside as yet another example of my tendency toward overingenious extrapolation, I explained that no witnesses were allowed except those enacting the ritual, but newly joined couples were always available the following morning to receive gifts and congratulations. After some argument, she departed on Gainor's arm, and I led Witt by the hand to the cave Gavi and I had found the previous
evening, one with a good warmwall and bathing pool. Since this area of the plateau was unoccupied, there were a good many vacant but quite livable caverns, and I confess that this one had appealed to me, as it was set about with fragrant trees and a number of colorful flowers.

Gainor had obtained some of the necessary materials from ESC stores, and Gavi had made a quick trip to Loam to fetch the others. Her assistant had been working in the cavern since morning, hanging the curtains, tuning the harp, and creating several of the things Gavi called burn-boards. Since there had been no time for the couple to provide the usual essences, Gavi had had to make adjustments to the ritual, which weren't complicated. She told Witt to go behind the curtains, disrobe, place his clothing outside, and get into the warm pool, submerging himself entirely. The descenting material, whatever it was (Gavi had refused to say), was already in the water.

When splashing noises were heard, I slipped over to the curtain and took his underwear. We had borrowed the new odor organ from ESC, and it took Gavi less than a minute to analyze the smell and reproduce it. Gavi introduced me to the other person involved, and that person went behind the curtain and the splashing noises resumed, at which point I took the odor organ back to ESC before they found out it was gone.