The Companions (30 page)

“Nobody warned me, Adam. I touched the stuff. It works on contact, and it wipes you completely off the charts for however long it takes to wear off. The immediate inclination is to do it again.”

“Which you…”

“Which I didn't do, thanks mostly to Scramble. Look around us. There's supposed to be a large contingent here. Where are they? I see people who look half-dead, and I find finger bones in the redmoss.” I drew a deep breath, “And I saw two people who had just died on it.”

They let me tell it, not interrupting. “Their clothing's lying out there in a pile with the ID tags on top. Bar Lukha was one of them, a woman named Surri Ponak was the other. They hadn't been dead long when I first saw them, and I watched the red stuff crawl out from under them and crawl back to swallow them.”

“How far out was it?” asked Clare.

“I was maybe half a mile or so into the bush, the forest, the whatever. Behemoth had stayed with the pups while Scramble had a break.”

“Anything besides the redmoss and the bone?”

“Just…beauty, and eeriness, and a lot of stuff that's fabulous, chimerical, bizarre…Pick any adjective, you'll find something it fits. If you go out, wear cover, no breves. If you're going to be touching stuff, wear gloves. Try not to let your skin touch anything until we find out about it.”

“Could the euphoric effect be a defense mechanism?” asked Adam.

“It would certainly be a good one, defense or offense,” I agreed. “Start to pick the stuff, or eat it, get it on your skin, then just stand there forever while it eats you. Anyhow, until we find something out about it, best keep hands off.”

“How do we find out anything about it?” asked Clare.

“I have an appointment to meet with an ESC man out on the island. He has access to all the data ESC has collected.”

“Nothing subjective, then,” remarked Adam. “No impressions.”

“Impressions!” I laughed. “I've got a few thousand, but none of them strike me as helpful. There's a peculiar smell out there that I catch every now and then when the wind shifts from the north. It makes me nervous; I don't know why. Some of the PPI people, Drom included, look underfed, with black circles around the eyes…”

“As though vampires had been at them,” said Clare.

“A few days in the redmoss might do that to you. Bleed away your strength…”

“Saprophytic,” murmured Adam. “Evolved to paralyze the prey and drink its vitality.”

“Ah,” I murmured. “I'll warn Paul about that.” Just in case, though it was very unlikely he'd go wandering off by himself.

Paul didn't join us for breakfast. He was deep into the ma
terials received the previous day when I knocked on his door, and he barely looked up when I warned him about the redmoss. The concs were still in their cases, and aside from making sure he had heard my warning, I was happy to leave well enough alone.

Along the sides of the little boat, water rippled clear as air; small almost transparent creatures swam beneath it, some scurried over the shallow bottom on walking fins. “Do you fish these waters?” I asked the PPI boatman, who had arrived at our quarters within moments of my return from breakfast.

“No sport and no food,” he said. “They don't fight a line, and nothing that lives in the waters here tastes good.”

“What about things that grow in the forest?”

“The blue drops are sweet, like fruit, and there are some things like mushrooms.”

He wasn't a talker by any means, though his face did not show the starved look I had seen on Lukha. “So what grows here eats you instead,” said I, deciding to risk it and see what response I got.

He turned toward me, surprised. “What?”

“The redmoss. It's eating people. Lukha. Maywool. Lackayst. Some of the others, no doubt. What do your medical people say?”

He looked away from me. I could see his hands shaking on the tiller of the little boat. “Pier up ahead,” he said, keeping his face resolutely forward. “When I take you back today, I'll leave this little floater with you, so you can get back and forth on your own…”

So he would talk only about the boat. “Is it easy to drive?”

“Same controls as a flit, ma'am.”

“Only there's no up and down.”

“No ma'am. If you go up and down with this, you can pretty well figure you're in trouble. I'll set you down at the end of the pier, and I'll be waiting when you're ready to go back.”

He bumped the floater into the pier, which automatically clamped the vessel to itself, allowing me to step up from the solidly anchored surface. The crewman busied himself, face still turned away, preventing eye contact.

I had been given a code for the call station nearest the lock. I used it; the lock clicked open; I covered my face with a mask, felt the air being pumped out, the sterilant beams encase my body, the new air pumped in. The lock door opened into a shabby lobby inhabited only by a dour, bony person who really did look like a priest of some particularly austere religion. Pole-thin, brooding-dark, heavy-boned, narrow-lipped, his coffin-shaped face ended in a forbidding jut of jaw.

“You're Delis?” he asked. “I'm Lethe. Follow me. Wyatt and Durrow are waiting in my lab.”

We went quickly, I trotting to keep up with Lethe's much longer legs. The ESC ship sat at the center of the island with a dozen small enclosures around it, the separate work areas connected by lanes of resilient matting and heavy conduits carrying air and power. I saw no one except a few uniformed figures passing at a distance. The door to the lab enclosure opened at Ornel's voice, let us through, then closed behind us with the crunch of a lock mechanism driving home.

“Sybil Wyatt, Abe Durrow,” said Lethe. “Jewel Delis.”

“We received word you wanted to see us,” said Durrow. “What about?”

His tone was both challenging and annoyed. I said, “Before we say anything more, will you please check your console for a message from Gainor Brandt. Code RY679ZZ.”

The three exchanged glances.

“Please,” I repeated. “He directed me to ask you to do that, first thing, before we had any opportunity to arrive at a misunderstanding, an impasse, or a mutual dislike.”

Durrow turned red; Wyatt grinned. Expressionless, Lethe
went to a communication bank on the far side of the room. While he was engaged with it, I examined the other two as they were examining me. Sybil Wyatt was a leggy brunette, her hair drawn back severely, no color in her face but the dark brows and suspicious gray eyes, dressed in blue overalls covered by a long white coat. Abe Durrow was short, stocky, and ruddy-cheeked though graying, with a cherub's sensual mouth and discontented expression. He was watching me the way the dogs watched their food dishes. Territorial. Who did they suspect me of being? What did they suspect me of wanting?

Ornel Lethe returned. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what was turned loose upon Treasure.”

“Rabbits,” I replied. “And hares, and burrowing rodents, deer, mice, and quail. Earlier drops have been made of larger prey animals, including some large swamp-living rodents for certain areas.”

“It seems she really is from Brandt,” he said to his friends. “Not someone sent to dig us out and burn us for supper.”

“Who burns whom for supper?” I asked, amazed.

“The Derac,” murmured Wyatt, pursing her lips. “But only the fur-bearing parts of us.”

My eyebrows went up. “You're not really afraid of the Derac?”

Lethe pointed to a group of chairs around a table, and three of them sat down while Durrow fetched coffee. “Yes, I am afraid of the Derac. I am afraid of even one Derac, if it's where I can't see it and don't know what it's doing. I have seen places where Derac have recently been, and you would not want that to happen to any feeling creature. When we came there were half a dozen Derac stationed here. They had a small ship, little more than a shuttle, at the north end of this lake. Not long after we got here, new ones started arriving. They've got a dozen ships down there by now, and may have as many as a thousand crocs. We're badly outnumbered, so yes, I'm afraid of them.”

Abe Durrow said, “At first, two of them dropped in every now and then to see what progress we were making. They behaved as Derac always behave, with an assurance totally unmodified by thought. Derac do what Derac do, they don't question it, and they don't worry about it. They asked questions, we answered, and they made reports to their G'tach in very simply coded Deracan, which we always intercepted and translated. Among other things, the Derac here are very vocal about their desire to capture and eat some of us, just to see what we taste like. In response to that wish, the G'tach orders them not to do so
at this time
as there will be plenty of opportunity later.”

I felt a prickling along my arms. When I looked down, I saw gooseflesh. Ornel's words had been completely flat and unemotional, but they conveyed threat quite well. “Do they smell?” I asked.

“The Derac? Why do you ask?”

“When the wind shifted from the north, I kept getting this smell. It made me think of snakes.”

“They smell, yes. I don't know how you could pick it up at this distance, though.”

I didn't tell him how. I just shrugged, as Abe Durrow returned to the subject at hand. “We have considered that this expressed desire to eat us may really be an attempt to find out whether we're reading their messages. If we get irate, or fearful, they'll know we are.”

“Could it be a joke?” I offered, from a dry mouth.

“Derac don't joke,” said Lethe. “They have no motive to attack us that we know of, except for hunger, of course, but attacks usually follow Derac buildups like this.”

“And you suspected me of being their agent? Do I look like a Derac?”

“No. We thought you might be somebody reporting to PPI,” said Durrow. “We have certain administrative difficulties with PPI.”

I shook my head, amused by this. “I have no reason to
love PPI, believe me. We're only housed with them because the linguistic work my brother is doing can't be done from inside a force field. I'm sure you know all this.”

“What we hear and what we know are often different things,” said Lethe. “What is it we can do for you?”

“Several things, actually, some to our mutual interest, some personal. I hope you have information on the differences between Moss flora and Treasure flora, and fauna—if any. The animals we've been dropping off on Treasure will reach a sustainable population level very soon. If there are mosses there like certain ones here, it may put the dogs at risk.”

The three stared at me, watchfully.

“Why do you say that?” asked Lethe.

I was caught by surprise. I'd been certain they already knew about it. Temporizing, I asked: “How big is the staff at the PPI compound?”

Wyatt strummed her fingers on the arm of her chair, “Fifty-two in the first group, and seventy-five arrivals since.”

“How many are here now?”

“No one's gone…”

“Have you checked how many are here now?”

“No reason to,” said Durrow, with a sneer. “They're PPI.”

“Do you have any
way
to check how many there are now?” I persisted, frowning.

“Send each one a message,” jeered Durrow. “Something requiring an answer.”

“Ask to speak to all of them at a meeting,” suggested Wyatt, grinning.

I grimaced and stood up, at which point Lethe waved me down, saying, “Everyone over there is supposed to be wearing a link. If necessary, we could run a check of active links.”

“Can you do that
now
?” I insisted, not sitting down.

My suggestion bought me a skeptical look, but Durrow and Lethe rose reluctantly and crossed the room to the con
sole, conferring under their breaths. The screens before them flickered. Durrow exclaimed abruptly.

Wyatt said, “You think they're going to find something, don't you?”

“I know they're going to find some of the PPI personnel are missing.”

“None of them have gone on a ship…”

“I know.”

Lethe returned to us, white-faced. “How did you know?”

“The first three people I met here looked like something was eating them alive. Our group ate at the commissary last night and again this morning among a mere handful of PPI agents and staffers. I walked around the compound and saw very few others. The man who brought me over to the island looked okay, but he won't talk about what's eating his colleagues. How many active links did you find?”

“Forty-seven.”

“Out of a hundred twenty-seven,” murmured Wyatt.

I nodded, rummaging among the contents of the deep pocket of my jacket. “There's a kind of redmoss out there. I've brought you a sample. I believe it's lethal, not all at once, but gradually. It's also a euphoric. I touched it by accident, and it was very difficult to keep myself from doing it again. That single exposure was enough to give me a craving for it. I don't want to do anything about the craving, which is still going on, because it'll be useful to find out how long it takes to dissipate, if it dissipates. I believe every time a person uses it, a little of the person gets killed off, until there's not enough left to go on living. The effect must be cumulative over time. I should imagine the stuff would kill a rabbit or a small deer almost at once, assuming it does to other creatures what it does to humans. That's why I said the prey animals may not be able to survive on this world.”

“Where are the missing people?” Wyatt asked the air.

“Possibly lying on a bank of the redmoss, or in it, maybe nothing left but bones and a pile of clothing,” I offered,
dumping the pack rat contents of my pocket on the table. Pocket recorder. Matty's recording and her last work. Comb. Nail kit. Vial of STOP. Odds and ends, including the envelope I was looking for. I handed it to Wyatt. “There's a human finger bone. You can test it along with the moss sample, run it against personnel genetic records, find out who it belonged to. And that's just one growth. What about all the rest? That's what we need to know for the animals on Treasure, and for me, personally, I'd like any information you have on this world.”

Durrow peered at the sample of redmoss before replying, with a glance at Lethe as though asking permission. “PPI has sampled the area around the installation extensively, and they've sent all the samples to us. We have complete genomes for most of the stuff that grows around here, but I don't recognize this redmoss at all. Sybil has traced the family…wouldn't be family tree, would it? The family moss: what's related to what and how long ago. There are several separate genetic lines. Nothing we've tested is harmful, we've handled it all.

“The trees are not related to the mosses. We hypothesize that the trees were at one time the majority species, and the mosses took over later. Needless to say, PPI never sent us a sample of this red stuff…”

“Which could mean it was there and they just missed sampling it,” said I, holding up a finger. “Or it wasn't there until recently.” Another finger. “Or, it was there all along, but they didn't want you to know! At least three possibilities.”

Durrow nodded. “My guess would be that last one.”

Sybil said, “To add to the list of what we have so far: We have a census of the fauna, not much of it, frankly, and there's a question whether any land animals originated here. We thought so at first, since Moss wasn't known to have been visited by anyone but the Derac before we got here, but that was before those Hessing ships turned up on the plateau. They were merchant ships, not explorers, which means they weren't X-teed to get rid of any organisms. Most merchant
ships are contaminated with critters, depending on where they've landed recently or what they're carrying in the holds. There are no land fauna here that couldn't have come from those ships if we accept very rapid evolution. Little crabs that got packed in with seaweeds are now bigger crabs. Little mice became several things like bigger mice, and differently shaped mice, and aquatic mice. A few tiny lizards gave us some small and large scaly tree climbers. A few pet birds, or wild birds being carried as cargo, gave us half a dozen types of avians, most of them brightly colored. We have dew-eaters, moss-creepers, leaf-suckers. Except for the crabs that still need to spawn in water, all the other water animals are truly Mossian, native to the planet.”

I was amazed. “All this in a few hundred years?”

Sybil said, “We don't know the mechanism. Something here promotes mutation, we have no idea what.”

I considered this. “But you're trying to find out.”

“Of course. We began by looking at the environment, including air, water, food, a combination of all those, plus perhaps radiation of some kind. Vacuum-driven evolution is known to be quick, to be sure, and these creatures definitely entered a fauna vacuum—no land animal competition at all. Still, we usually talk in terms of a few thousand years to get speciation like this. Two hundred years is ridiculous. We're still looking for a reason. We haven't given up.”