The Companions (55 page)

“I saw the fight, and I saw it die, Sannasees. It did not seem well practiced at battle. Perhaps the so-called Simusi have not really had to fight for a long, long time.”

“Indeed, the Simusi have not fought. They have lived
among us for ages, just as they are. Even if they are of some other shape, however, one may not merely assume, as you have done, that they are therefore Zhaar. One must find the answers to many questions. Did the Simusi race come into being only when the Zhaar departed, or did they exist before? And if so, do any of them still live elsewhere? And if real Simusi live, do they all make this change at death? If not, is it possible that some, many, or a few Zhaar inhabit Simusi shapes?”

“Or are Simusi a pretense, another Zhaar game?” I said.

“It is true the Zhaar played such games,” she acknowledged.

We were silent a moment. I asked “Why dog shape, Sannasees? That's what I can't figure out. It seems a bad choice to have no appendages for manipulation, no capability of oral language…”

Her voice was musing. “I have learned that in the long ago time of Earth, some of your subsets purposefully crippled themselves to show their power and wealth in having others serve them.”

“In China,” I said, having read of it. “Noblemen grew their fingernails so long that their hands were useless. Other people fed them, washed them, clothed them. The female nobility were crippled as children so they had to be carried everywhere they went.”

“So. If a race were very…proud, it might choose to have slaves with hands, slaves with voices. If a race were very proud, perhaps it would take a form that requires having others provide these functions. However, there is a better reason, perhaps. If a race were very frightened, it might choose to take an unlikely shape
because
it was an unlikely one. The Zhaar were under sentence of death. They had been told to leave the galaxy, to go beyond the rim or to stay and face us all.”

“All, Sannasee?”

“The elder races, who had had enough of them and their games. Then, too,” she mused, “dogs are…can be very beautiful, and they are packish by nature, which would ac
cord with what we know of Zhaar temperament. If we were only sure…”

The 'pute had translated the iron in her voice as well as the words. I murmured, “Well, if the Simusi are the Zhaar, they chose neither to go nor to die, obviously. Now that we know who they are…”

“May know,” corrected the Sannasee.

“May know,” I agreed. “But they don't know that we know. Not if your P'narg were successful in getting to the body first, which I presume you sent them to do. That body should be enough proof for anyone, shouldn't it?”

She stood very tall, placing her manipulators together and nodding in a slow, ritualistic way. “One body does not tell us that all Simusi are Zhaar. However, to protect you, both our peoples must act with the presumption they are Zhaar. Zhaar have ever been vengeful, and they will not forgive being bilked by humans of their prey and of their slaves and perhaps even of the Simusi masks behind which they have hidden.”

I said, “But if they don't know we have seen through their masks, then we have some time to make our plans. Our race, yours, this planet of Moss, your home worlds are all at risk. If you could return to the plateau with us, your counsel would benefit us greatly.”

She seemed lost in thought, her eye circle fluttering, the apertures on her neck quivering. The P'narg stood attentively around her, like a bodyguard.

“Jewel, what is it your people, not your race but your kind of people, those who believe as you believe, what is it they want most?”

I wanted to laugh and cry, both at once. “A return to Eden, Sannasee. A return to a world like Tsaliphor. A kinship with all of life. A place that welcomes all kinds of life among people who do not proliferate themselves at life's expense.”

She nodded, slowly, three times. I had seen that same measured nod among the Phain who walked the streets of Tsaliphor, like a punctuation mark, ending one prayer, beginning another.

Eventually she said, “I will not stay just now, no. In matters of this kind, we are required to be sure, and it will not take long to be sure. Once we are sure, then I will return, not only for you, or us, or this place, but for all those who passed sentence long ago…” She sighed. The 'pute did not attempt to translate the sigh. “We, the Phain and our ancient allies, will confront this great threat. We must prevent greater damage than the Zhaar have already done to your race. We must not be unjust again…”

“What have the Zhaar done to our race?” I asked.

“Too much to take time for now. We will talk of it when I come again.”

Suspicion reared its head. “Did they put concs on Earth?”

She gave me a long, long level look. “That is, perhaps, too subtle for the Zhaar to have done.”

She headed back toward the pillar with her bodyguard of P'narg, and I went up the slope to the ship, where Gainor was waiting for me.

When the G'tach G'gh'hagh of all the Derac received no word from the army that had been directed to attack the humans on Moss, a scout ship was dispatched to find out what had happened. It went, stayed a very short time, and returned to report.

“Ships there,” said the scout. “Crews mostly there. Warriors not there. Tracers in warrior armor not work except one bellyplate I find by chunk of rock in middle of bowl. I not mean eating bowl, but like that. With things growing in it.”

Successive questioning elicited, word by reluctant word, a slightly better description of the battleground at Moss.

“So our warriors and their armor are gone,” said the Deracan Admiral.

“All gone except one bellyplate.”

“But there's no blood or bones or scales lying around? Nothing like that?”

“No, no blood, no bones, lots of scales.”

“As though there had been a struggle?”

“Or they were dancing,” said the scout. “Sometimes when we dance on ship, many scales come loose.”

The admiral frowned. Young Derac did dance, though he could not remember why at this stage of his life. “Where are the humans?”

“I go looking, find them on top of flat Mountain. Is force
field place, like they have. Is spread-out place, like they have.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Not grabbich. Brach, maybe, five eights, six eights. Lots of strange animals, like vlabbish. Hard shell with legs both sides.”

“So basically, what you're saying is, a grabbich of our warriors have just vanished.”

“No sir. I not say vanished. What I say is I not find Derac except few in camp, few in ships. Derac I find say our warriors go attack humans by lake, but humans not there. And I not say vanish, because maybe Derac still there, on planet somewhere, but if tracers not work, I not find.”

The scout was waved away, to his pleasure. Scout ships were extremely small, cramped, and cold, and he desperately wanted a bloody, stinking meal and a long sprawl in a decently warmed sandbox.

“I do not believe,” said the admiral, “that fewer than a brach of humans killed and disposed of a grabbich of Deracan without leaving any trace. In fact, even if they'd left a trace, I wouldn't believe it.”

“Can we ask them?” suggested Gahcha, the representative from Gar G'tach.

“We can ask the IC, of course. It may take some time to receive an answer.”

“What are we going to do in the meantime?” asked Gahcha.

“We are going to send two grabbichek of warriors to the third planet of Garr-290 to look for the one grabbich that disappeared,” said the admiral. “And while we're at it, we're going to arm every ship that's available and send them to attack the Orskimi, wherever they're running to! We'll teach those twelve-legged bugs to fool with the Derac! Modify our females, they said. We'll modify them!”

 

On E'Sharmifant, ancestral home of the Orskimi, dawnlight disclosed the great mortuary temple empty except for a
handful of Highnesses: the High Priest, the High Ritual Surgeon, the High Fire Master, the High War Leader, and the High Council Leader. Outside the morning shrilling began, rising to its customary level and subsiding as it now did, into silence. There was no daytime sound of wings buzzing, feet scraping, voices murmuring, for the city was wrapped in profound gloom and uncertainty concerning its future. It was rumored among the common Orskim of the street that a plan laid by ancestors and burnished over a hundred generations had gone awry.

High above the gathered officials, on the dusty beam where it had rested for many seasons, the Tharstian observer recorded what was said, translating to itself.

The High Priest asked, “The immortals? Have they all been moved?”

The War Leader spoke. “They are on their way to the sanctuary world, Most High. The flight will be long, for it is far.”

The High Priest made a ritual gesture of thanks. “We thank E'ikimi, All Most Holy, that the memory of that world was with us still!”

The High Ritual Surgeon murmured, “For one hundred thousand years the sanctuary world has been remembered, Most High.”

“And no one knows of that world except those who are moving our immortals?” asked the High Priest over his shoulder as he moved down into the temple proper to collect holy relics from the walls.

Arms full of memorabilia, the High War Leader said, “No other race has set foot upon that world for half a million years, and of our people, only the immortal who remembered it will tell the captain of the ship, Most High. Owki are meeting that ship at a secret rendezvous, known only to the captains of the other two ships, the one carrying the breeding Orskim, and the ship that waits for our sacred objects and ourselves.”

The High Council Leader spoke for the first time. “The city mourns. What will our people be told?”

The High Priest replied, “When owki leave, people will be told owki go on pilgrimage to E'Sharmirf, a holy place of owki's ancestors, and in time owki will return. That is not misleading, since it is possible owki may return, though unlikely.” He walked back to the altar with the salvaged materials, feet clicking in triple time: whikalap-whikalap.

“All owki's worlds are to be told this,” choked the High Council Leader. “Owki do this on all Orski worlds?”

“All are at risk,” the High War Chief intoned. “Skitimor gerfmi. Sharmpifeskit kansa!”

From above, the observer recorded this as: “The long-laid plan is broken, i.e., not happening. The ancestral plan has failed.”

The High Priest went on, “Owki do not despair. With racial memory safe from retaliation, with breeding stock safe, with owki-selves safe to lead the rebuilding of Orskim people, even if all these worlds are lost, owki's destiny continues. Now the warships may depart.”

“Where do they go?” asked the High Fire Master, opening one of the packing cases that stood ready.

The High War Chief responded. “The first ships are going to the place where the Derac broke their oath to attack the humans!”

“How is it known the oath was broken?” asked the High Council Leader.

The High War Chief replied, “There is no war between Derac and Earthers. That is how it is known. So, the first ships go to the third planet of Garr'ugh 290. There they will attack the humans, making it appear the Derac did it, while other Orski ships go in all directions, to other Derac planets, which we will take for Orskimi.

“Is this necessary?” asked the High Council Leader. “Owki know the Derac will counterattack. Can owki not merely remain peacefully on all Orski worlds and here on E'Sharmifant? Must Orskimi retaliate against the Derac? Must there be war with the Earthers and Derac?”

The High Priest turned blazing eyes upon the leader. “High
Council Leader, owki will pretend owki did not hear iki ask that question. Owki said Skitimor gerfmi! Owki said Sharmpifeskit kansa! An ancestral plan over one thousand ecres in the making has failed, has not come to fruition!
This does not happen unless owki have been betrayed or the E'Ilimi are punishing owki for laxity in owki's observances.
Both laxity and betrayal are mended by sacrifice! Having sent seed, memory, and rulers into safety, now warriors go to make that sacrifice while Orskim await sacrificial martyrdom.”

“Of course,” murmured the High Council Leader. “This one understands.”

“It is well iki understands,” said the High Priest. “Since there will be no council in the refuge for many years, while the population grows, it will be unnecessary for iki to go with the rest of us.”

“But, Most High! All this one's family are already gone. One had expected to go…”

“Expectation is not always reality,” said the High Priest, as he turned to take up the last of the ritual paraphernalia that had been set ready on the high altar. The scalpel. The retractor. The censer. From its post high above, the observer noted that the ritual censer was put into its carrying case without being inspected. It was as the observer had anticipated. While Orski high-ups had been collecting other items, the observer had placed a beacon in the censer. The Tharstians would be able to follow it with no difficulty at all, all the way to the secret planet of refuge.

Even when I stood close in front of him, Gainor kept looking over my shoulder at the pillar in the center of the battleground, then reabsorbing its shimmering door. When the door had quite gone, he shook himself, turned his eyes on me, and said, “I see you found Witt.”

“I think the best thing to do would be to send him back to his mother, Gainor.”

“Your liaison…?”

“Expired long ago. Expired before it expired, I suppose. There's nothing left there, we've both become other people. Besides, he'll be fully occupied being groomed to run the Hessing empire.”

“He'll have to stop whining first,” said Gainor. “He sounds like a two-year-old. What did they do to him over there?”

“He was a servant of the Simusi. They prefer lackeys, the more obsequious the better, and Witt had already been rather well schooled in groveling.”

He gave me one of his “now, now” looks, and it made me angry.

“What the hell would you call it, Gainor? He was her possession. He made one attempt to do something on his own, and when she challenged him, he did as he was told. It was years ago, and I'm not involved anymore. Send him back. It would be politically inexpedient to do anything else.”

He flushed and changed the subject. “Where did you pick up the Phaina?”

“From a place that seems to be upon the fringes of Splendor.” I caught his raised eyebrow and reaffirmed what I'd said. “Splendor, Gainor. Truly. The Phaina may be the same one I knew on Tsaliphor, and she is deeply involved in our immediate crisis.”

“Crisis?” He looked startled.

“It's possible something very nasty is going to pour out of that door to Splendor, and I'd be more comfortable if we put a little distance between ourselves and it!”

He took my word for it, and the shuttle flew us directly to our new location on Night Mountain. We were met by a few of the PPI staffers, including Duras Drom, who looked a lot better than when I had seen him last. He was a handsome man when his eyes weren't blurry and his cheeks sunken. I postponed his invitation to have coffee until after I'd reunited all the dogs, male and female, with their huge children, now housed in a recently built annex full of dog beds, puppy toys, and food bowls. Our older quarters wouldn't have held half this puppy pack, lolloping all over one another, making clumsy attacks and retreats, eager to be licked and welcomed by their sires and dams but no longer clamoring for their mother's milk.

“Tell me again how long we've been gone?” I asked Sybil.

“Sixty-four days,” said Sybil. “Did it seem like more, or less?”

There had been days and nights where we had been, but no sun, no moon. I had thought we'd been gone only four or five days, if that. While Sybil measured out a diet supplement to make up for the hungry days the dogs had spent in Splendor, eating scraps left to them by the Simusi, the three male dogs continued a conversation they'd been having about the true shape of the Simusi. At least, so Scramble told me. There were a great many stinks involved, and Simusi envy, if it had ever existed, seemed to have waned, as had Behemoth's antagonism toward me in particular or humans in general.

I had coffee with Drom, rejoicing at the taste. No matter how good the Phaina's food had been, there'd been nothing like coffee.

“You're looking a lot better,” I commented, realizing the remark might not be a tactful one.

He said, matter-of-factly, “There's no temptation on the plateau, Jewel. It feels more humanish up here, not as warm, not as welcoming, but much more healthful.”

After leaving Drom, I went to see Paul, who seemed surprised to learn I had been away.

He was, he crowed, making enormous strides with the odor language of Moss. Two prototype translation devices had already been tested and refined, the third version was being put together by the ESC technicians as we spoke. He looked excited and boyish, the way he does sometimes when he is almost likable. He actually gave me a copy of his extensive lexicon, so I could admire it, which I did, fulsomely—he was incapable of detecting irony if it was clad in acclamation. His lexicon was from human to code and from code to human, designed to be used with a translation device. It wasn't a system that would encourage intuitive leaps as to meanings, and I made a mental note to have Gavi spend some time with the ESC people. She could do things with odors that Paul hadn't even conceived of, she understood the associations and correlations of this world, and I had a hunch we were going to need all her capabilities.

Then I collapsed in my own bedroom in our quarters and actually napped until Gainor wakened me to say that Dame Cecelia and Witt's sister, Myra, were on the Hessing ship in orbit around Moss. They had arrived—in defiance of Gainor's orders—while I had been away.

“The Hessing-Hargess empire owns a mercenary star-fleet,” he remarked. “I haven't the authority to stop their going wherever they like in space, though I can keep them off this planet for the time being. Anyhow, Mama and Sister are up there, in case you care.”

“Well, I care enough to be pleased that Witt is already in the bosom of his family,” I said.

“He is, yes. The shuttle took him up to the Hessing ship before I knew he had family aboard. However, there seems to be a problem. A few moments ago, Dame Cecelia linked me wanting to come down to the surface to talk to her ‘dear son's dear wife.' I took the liberty of telling her you were no longer his wife.”

“Thank you, Gainor. I'm glad you have such a good grasp of the situation.”

“She wants to meet with you, beg you to come back to him.”

“Tell her…my affections are now directed elsewhere. I have learned I am oriented toward female lovers. Or nonhumans. Or I've taken a vow of eternal chastity or turned into a moss-demon.”

“I'll think of something.”

I yawned, struggled to my feet, and went to make coffee. “What's happened with the Orskim scheme using the Derac to start a war?”

He sat down, frowning. “A war hasn't started. Yet. Within a day or two after you got dragged away, we picked up some stiff little messages from the Derac base, wondering where their people were. Not long thereafter, a scout ship arrived to inspect the base and look for the missing warriors. They found a skeleton staff at the base, of course, and nothing else. Their high command, whatever it's called…”

“It's called the G'tach G'gh'hagh,” I said. “According to Paul.”

“Whatever. The G'whatsit asked the IC to find out where their warriors had gone. We told IC we didn't know where they were, which was true enough, since no one knew what was on the other side of that door. We tried to open it, by the way, and it wouldn't. All we could tell the Derac was that our people were mostly accounted for, and we weren't keeping track of theirs.”

“That should have upset them.”

“It did. Not long after, ships holding a couple of thousand Derac warriors came down on the previous site. They've had armed parties scouring the woods down there for days. We've not reacted at all except to increase security and put heavy weapons here and there on the plateau. Within the last couple of days almost all the Derac search parties have regrouped at the landing site. We've intercepted messages to their G'tach saying they found nothing, no body parts, nothing…”

“Gainor, when Scramble dragged me through the gate, I saw armed ships above us and the Derac were lying around the edge of the saucer. How in the devil did they get through the gate?”

“The ship was our shuttle, arriving a trifle late to pick you up. As for the Derac, the Day and Night warriors lugged them down, four men to a Derac, and pitched them through the gate. An hour later, when I asked them who told them to do that, they couldn't remember.”

“So what are two thousand Derac doing now?”

“Settled down on the same place the others were, staying in camp. Listening devices tell us they're preoccupied by a new war they're waging against the Orskimi. It wouldn't surprise me if we were on the receiving end as well, at some point. They've got some new idea they need to change their breeding habits and occupy a lot of livable planets, which makes me very nervous. By the way, what did happen to the Derac that got hauled into Splendor?”

“The ones that weren't dead are being used as prey animals in there. And the Orskimi?”

“A couple of days ago the Orskimi advised the IC that several of their colonies have been wiped out.”

I snarled, “I suppose everyone has been told the Zhaar did it?”

“Naturally. Isn't that usual?”

“Don't believe it, Gainor. The Zhaar didn't do it. There are no more Zhaar moving around out here. All the Zhaar are on the other side of that door, living on the fringes of
Splendor, in the shape of big, big dogs calling themselves Simusi.”

“You're joking.” He stared at me as though I'd lost my mind.

“They've been living in there for a few tens of thousands of years, shaped like dogs. They haven't shifted shape at all. No one knew they were Zhaar. All the races that met them thought the Simusi were a previously unknown race.”

“Why would the Zhaar have done that?”

“According to the Phaina, about a million years ago, the elder races put the Zhaar under sentence of death. They were told to get out of the galaxy or die. Everyone supposed they had left the galaxy; the last anyone had seen of them, they were headed for the edge. They didn't leave. They hid out, possibly on Mars, and decided to stay hidden until all the races that threatened them had died off.”

Gainor gulped. “How many of them are there?”

“I don't know. I have absolutely no idea. Talk to Oskar! Find out what he knows. He's spent twenty years captive there, working mostly for the so-called Simusi. He should know a good deal about them, where they are and how many of them.”

“And what do we do now?”

“I don't know what you'll choose to do, but I'm waiting until the Phaina satisfies herself that the Simusi are really Zhaar in dogs' clothing. Once she's sure of that, she might put together some help for us.”

“When you say help, what do you mean?”

“I had no time to ask her. I assume she could ask for assistance from some of the elder races who sentenced the Zhaar to die in the first place.”

“Some of which races may no longer exist.”

It wasn't a thought either of us had the energy to discuss or the time to pursue. While I had been away, the IC had sent a Tharstian Marshal, along with a flock of translators, to convene a meeting among the interested parties on Moss: the Derac, the PPI, ESC, Day Mountain, Night Moun
tain, and the Hessing-Hargess legal contingent (who had arrived in the Hessing ship). When Walking Sunshine arrived on the plateau, the willog was included as plenipotentiary to represent the planet itself. The Marshal asked Gainor to invite me to speak briefly about what I had seen in Splendor.

The meeting was supposed to start early but was delayed because the Derac claimed to believe that chairs, benches, or positions to the west of other positions had higher status than chairs placed in other relationships. (Later, Paul said, “I could have told them that!”) The Marshal finally had everyone stand, sit, recline or float in a circle, and after every speaker, everyone rotated clockwise one position. Since there were many speakers, the rotation kept everyone awake as well as balanced, status-wise.

I spoke briefly, in spurts, to allow time for translation, telling them what I'd seen, personally. For the benefit of the Day and Night people, I explained what actually happened to their dead and wounded. There was an immediate outcry from both Mountains, some claiming I was a liar, others cursing the people, whoever they might be, of Splendor. Gainor and I had discussed mentioning the Simusi by name, or describing them by shape, and had decided against doing either. Let people get used to the idea that the door didn't lead into paradise before telling them the nearest section of it was run by dogs.

When Gainor asked me to speak briefly, he hadn't considered the Derac's great interest in prey animals and eating dead things. They had many questions about rotting times and kill rates, which I declined to answer and moved on to what I had been told by the Phaina. I used her words to describe Splendor, saying it was coiled up inside our own galaxy, touching it at many points, traversable through “wrinkles” or “folds.” I said both the Derac and the ships from Forêt had accidentally flown through such wrinkles, as had ships of virtually every starfaring race many times before and since. Thousands of star systems had been discov
ered when ships went through wrinkles that skimmed the edges of Splendor.

According to the Phaina, energy constantly flowed back and forth between our galaxy and Splendor, pockets existed within both that had different time and space dimensions, the whole shebang constituting a self-regulating system that maintained this section of the universe, though occasionally all the matter in one area was drawn through to the other side and then exploded back in a big bang. It was, however, the Phaina had said, a system that could be upset if clever but not intelligent races started “flinging stars about.”

“Meaning what?” asked the bubble-carried Tharstian from IC. His 'pute made the question sound rather anxious.

“Evidently at the time Splendor was discovered, the elder races had weapons of enormous destructive power. If used in or near Splendor, they could upset the balance. So, the elder races put a cordon around Splendor to avoid—what would one say—blowing out the fuses? The connectors…? I don't know the right words, but the sense of it is that the balance between the two systems could possibly be destroyed, destroying the systems themselves.”

The Marshal persisted: “Was this place populated when the elder races discovered it, or did everyone now in it come from out here?”

It took me a moment to think about this. “We don't know that it was populated before. The only creatures that I saw in areas that I believe might be part of Splendor were former Earth animals. However, those areas might have been planets in our galaxy to which former Earth animals had been transported. All we saw for any length of time was the edge, a kind of…buffer area.”