Howling Stones (11 page)

“You did pretty good for a first encounter.” She stepped over a hollow that had filled with rainwater. “Just the right mix of conviction and understanding. I was afraid the stiffness and formality of your character would carry over into your fieldwork.”

“But it didn’t,” he responded, “which means I’m just stiff and formal the rest of the time, right?”

“Not exactly,” she demurred, trying to backtrack.

“It’s all right. I know that I’m something of a cold fish. Like I said before, I relate much better to aliens. There are no preconceptions on either side.”

She changed the subject. “I know it’s premature, but do you have an opinion of the situation so far?”

He shrugged. “If this Jorana is a typical big person, then I don’t foresee any further extensive delays. They’re stubborn, but they seem to enjoy debate. Any creature that will talk with me is one I can eventually persuade to see reason. I sense exploitable openings already. Conclusion? It will take more time than I’d hoped but less than I’d feared.”

She shoved a branch out of her way. It promptly exuded a cloud of perfumed dust. Since she walked right through it, Pulickel saw no harm in doing likewise. For a
delightful moment, the world smelled of sandalwood and myrrh.

“Jorana’s right, of course. If the Parramati give their consent to a full treaty, much of their traditional kusum will eventually be overwhelmed.”

“I know that.” He stumbled awkwardly down a slight slope. “But the alternative is for them to fall under the influence of the AAnn. Better the Commonwealth than the Empire.”

“Certainly. Unless they choose the third option and elect to remain unallied with either side.”

He moved up alongside her and gazed flatly into her face. “There is no third option, Fawn. Not for primitive aliens. I’m not sure there ever was.”

“Why do I have the feeling?” he asked as they prepared to reboard the skimmer, “that there’s a lot more to the Parramati and their kusum than you’re telling me? You keep insisting that they’re different. Of course they’re different; they’re aboriginal aliens.”

Both hands on the ladder built into the vehicle’s flank, she paused. “I’ve told you, Pulickel. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Sure their society is unique among organized seni groups, but it’s more than that. There’s an assurance, a contentment that you can’t find among the Eoluro or the Semisant, or even the Ophhlians. It’s easy to see but hard to quantify.” Effortlessly, she boarded the skimmer.

He followed and settled himself into the passenger seat. “I think you may be making too much of them, Fawn. The Parramati may be different from other social groupings on Senisran, but they don’t strike me as particularly unique. Reactionary, yes, but not unique.”

“I expect you’re right.” She powered up the skimmer’s engine. In response to the rising whine, something with a tail three times the length of its body went screeching off through the trees. With wings that were feathered in front and membranous in the rear, it had the appearance of a marvelous kite whose string was being given random jerks and pulls by a mischievous child.

The skimmer rose and pivoted to face the water. Fawn
spoke without looking up from the console. “One thing I am sure of: we’re never going to convince the Parramati to sign a treaty with us as opposed to the AAnn unless we can find a way to convince them that our road is the better one.”

He blinked at her. “Our ‘road’?”

The skimmer slid out over the calm water of the inlet. Small silver-sided cephalopods leaped into the air ahead of them, strips of mirror flashing in the sun.

“According to the Parramati belief system, everything in the universe—every person, every place, every dust mote—is connected by roads. These roads are fixed and immutable. Many are irrelevant to the scheme of things, but many others link places of importance and power. The location of these important roads are marked by special stones.”

He turned thoughtful. “And each stone possesses certain qualities, powers, or mystic ascriptions?” She nodded. “A fairly basic and straightforward mythology, not especially remarkable. I could list a dozen analogies off the top of my head, others after doing a little research. Cultural specifics of primitive sentients often overlap, regardless of species.”

They were out over the main lagoon now, accelerating as Fawn turned southward. “From my conversations with the Parramati, I’ve been able to make a short list of these stones. There are stones for healing, stones for fertility, for warding off disease or confounding enemies, and for forecasting the weather. There are stones that help in the steering of outriggers and stones for communicating with the spirits of dead ancestors.

“Control of the stones is strictly hierarchical. The patriarch of a family charged with the keeping of a planting stone wouldn’t try to swap rocks with the matriarch of a clan holding a fishing stone. Stone magic is handed down
through family lines and helps to keep the peace among the Parramati. You can’t fight with your neighbors because you might want the assistance of their stones some day.”

“Very convenient and ingenious, but I still see nothing that could be considered remarkable.” Pulickel shifted in his seat, watching the clear water race past several meters below them.

As always, they found the station undisturbed. At their approach a gaggle of polutans—short, two-legged creatures with mournful dark eyes and incredibly ornate feathery crowns—went loping away from the trash pile like a flurry of midget extras from the last act of a Puccini opera.

“Cute little suckers, aren’t they?”

Pulickel eyed the dark patch of vegetation where the creatures had vanished. “Very pretty. What are they, some kind of flightless bird?” Tired, he forbore from pointing out that she had once again neglected to activate the station’s defensive perimeter prior to their departure.

“I’m not sure. I let the computer handle most of the taxonomic classifying, but it can’t do anything unless I feed it information, and I’ve been pretty much preoccupied with the Parramati.”

“I thought it was with improving your tan.”

She gave him a sour look. “No, that’s only my third priority. So you do have a sense of humor.”

“I’m told that it’s buried pretty deep, but occasionally it surfaces in spite of myself.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised you’d noticed my tan. What’s your opinion?” Seated, she still managed to strike a pose.

Thus invited, he allowed himself a long lingering look. “That you’ve been more successful with it than with the Parramati.”

She snorted softly. “You’re telling me.” Using her feet, she drove the skimmer farther south.

Later that night, long after the evening meal had been concluded, he noticed her outside, walking the station perimeter. At his touch of a switch, one of the wide window panels slid aside. Warm, humid air meshed confusingly with that of the air-conditioned station as the night sounds of Parramat entertained his hearing.

“Lose something?” he called out and down to her.

She looked back and up. “Just checking the alarm stanchions. I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“You never distract me,” he lied. Staring down at her, he was rewarded with a sardonic pout. From the night-shrouded forest, something declared its alienness with a hair-raising howl. “I thought you didn’t worry about the local life-forms, even the dangerous ones.”

“I don’t. It’s the AAnn who concern me. Them, and your desire to always have this damn thing turned on.” She knelt to run a handheld analyzer down the length of an activated stanchion.

He leaned out the open window. “I suppose I can imagine them trying to engineer an ‘accident’ in the field, but surely they wouldn’t approach the station itself.”

“Why not? Since neither side has any kind of formal agreement with the Parramati, they’re as free to move around Torrelau as we are. By the same token, I could go clomping around Mallatyah—if I didn’t mind being shot at.” Rising, she moved to another stanchion and began repeating the inspection procedure. “But we can legally keep them away from the station itself and from cutting our throats while we sleep.”

He shifted his arms against the sill. “That wouldn’t look very good in light of the agreement on mutual cooperation for extraseni affairs that both the Commonwealth and Empire governments have signed.”

“No, it wouldn’t, but we wouldn’t be around to chortle over the final resolution. I have no interest in becoming one of the triumphant deceased.” She touched the analyzer to the top of the stanchion. Both devices promptly responded with a satisfying green flash. “On the other hand, if we were to be massacred in our beds, dragged out of the station, hauled onto a skimmer, and dumped into the ocean, seagoing scavengers would quickly eliminate the evidence. That’s a chance I’d rather not take. In spite of what you think, I do occasionally leave the system running, especially at night.”

Noting that she was more than half finished, he let his gaze roam skyward. Alien constellations teased his contemplation with suggestions of fantastical shapes that would have delighted the ancient Greeks.

“Beautiful night. Too pretty for homicidal speculations.”

“Not where the AAnn are concerned. Forgive me if I seem a little paranoid on the subject, Pulickel, but you have to remember that I’ve been here alone for quite a while. Is the defensive screen on, is the defensive screen off—you can go crazy trying to keep up with your fears. Of course, now that you’re here to protect me, I guess I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“Mock if you will. But I’m actually reasonably handy with a gun. It’s a necessary component of the job.” He smiled down at her. “But I don’t shoot very well when I’m asleep.”

“Precisely my point. We wouldn’t be the first field-workers to vanish with the AAnn offering protestations of innocence in response to follow-up inquiries. I’m not saying they’re responsible for what happened to the Murchinsons on Bandameva last year, but no one can prove that they weren’t, either. Me, I have no intention of disappearing without explanation, or even with one.

“As for the station and you, they’re both technically my responsibility.”

Something fist-size and bright orange came whizzing out of the darkness to circle him twice before darting back into the night. Instinctively he swatted at it, but his slow-motion flailings didn’t come close to hitting the creature, whatever it was.

“Why am I your responsibility?”

“Because even though you rank me within the Department, I’m the one in charge of Parramat station.” Her tone was firm. “I’m the one who helped set it up, I’m the one who’s been here for months, and I’m the one charged with the care of all local Commonwealth facilities.”

“Dear me,” he responded with mock uncertainty. “I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to as a facility before.”

“Go ahead and laugh. The AAnn have made several visits to Torrelau. They’re concentrating on Mallatyah, of course, but they’re not neglecting the other inhabited islands. Have I mentioned that their base commander is a slimy sort? Essasu RRGVB. An irritable character, as if the average AAnn wasn’t testy enough.”

“The AAnn aren’t slimy,” he reminded her.

“I was referring to his personality, not his epidermis.”

Pulickel pondered. “How are they doing lately?”

“As near as I’ve been able to tell from talking with Jorana, Ascela, and other Torrelauans, no better than me. On the days and weeks when I feel that I haven’t made any progress, I comfort myself with that thought. They have a full contact unit on Mallatyah, whereas until now there’s just been me here on Torrelau.”

“Well, now that there’s two of us,” he responded, “maybe we can double your progress.”

“Sounds good to me.” She was nearly finished with her inspection. “You know, I don’t give a shit about the yttrium, and niobium, and all the other ‘iums’ that the
Commonwealth wants to dig out of Parramat. It’s the Parramati themselves who fascinate me. That’s why I’ve stayed on here for so long instead of putting in for a transfer. These people are hinting around at something of major importance, and I’m not leaving here until I figure out what it is.

“As for the AAnn and the danger they present, that’s something I’ve learned to live with. One day I was out doing some collecting on the far side of the lagoon when the remote alarm I had connected to the skimmer went off. Let’s just say that if I hadn’t been alert and prepared, the skimmer might have ‘drifted’ off, leaving me stranded out too far to swim back against the prevailing currents. There have been other potential accidents that I’ve managed to avoid. Doesn’t do any good to yell or complain or say anything about it, of course. The AAnn are consummate deniers.

“Alternatively, if they succeeded in doing away with us, they might choose to dispose of the evidence by consuming it.”

He started. “I’ve never heard of the AAnn eating a human, or a thranx.”

She grinned up at him, her face illuminated by the monitor lights that were an integral part of the armed stanchions. “They wouldn’t rush to publicize a taste like that, now would they? Personally, I don’t understand your reaction. Meat is meat. If I was hungry enough I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to eat an AAnn, provided it had been properly cooked.”

She might look like a goddess, he mused, but there were aspects to her that were decidedly un-Olympian. For these he was grateful. They helped to keep his thoughts focused where they belonged.

The inspection concluded, she started back toward the lift shaft. “The AAnn may not be having any better luck
at persuading the Parramati to see things their way, but they’re certainly more active in their attempts to eliminate the competition.”

He had to lean out and look down to follow her progress. “Surely they know there’d be an investigation.”

She paused to look up at him. “Uh-huh. Which means they wouldn’t follow through on anything unless they were pretty confident of getting away with it. Which is why I check the equipment alarms and my weapons regularly.” She vanished beneath the building’s overhanging edge. A moment later he heard the muted whine of the lift as she started up.

Raising his gaze, he stared out into the squeaking, squalling, chittering rain forest, with its multihued trees and tremulous undergrowth. Were there night-camouflaged AAnn slinking about out there even now, watching him as he relaxed there at the open window, training night sights on his forehead preparatory to blowing his brains out?