The Companions (33 page)

“Behemoth and Titan and Wolf have been in charge of their own lives since they were about…two years old. We don't give them orders because they won't follow orders. We ask them if they will comply with suggestions, and we tell them the reasons.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, will they pretend to obey orders to impress some visiting arkist who's likely to be a big donor? Will they be friendly with Shiela, whom they dislike, because she can turn us out on the street if she wants to? Will they please be nice to Gainor Brandt, pretty much for the same reason?”

“They dislike Shiela?”

“They say she smells of too many layers.”

“Are they being nice to me because maybe I can help them?” I asked, my throat dry.

He shook his head. “No. They've never even questioned anything about you. They never questioned anything about Jon Point, either, while he was alive. If they help you or obey you, it's because they see you as a pack somebody. Not the alpha dog, Behemoth's definitely that, but a somebody, nonetheless.”

I felt the fume building up and fought it down. This was no time to get stirred up. “Can they count, Adam?”

“So far as I can tell, they're discalculic, almost completely. They can distinguish between one and several, few and many, however. The pack has a certain weight or aura or completeness, and they expect that attribute to be there when the pack hunts. When something upsets the aura, they howl,
sometimes for a long time. Frank and Clare and I are sort of pack adjuncts, so we're part of the whatever, but we are definitely on the bottom rung. Not that they abuse us. They don't need to because they know we're no competition.”

With an effort, I pulled myself back to the original topic. “Remember the fix you got in the night you went to pick up Jarl Alred? There was a hostile crowd, you got all fired up, and you shifted to dog shape in order to break up the crowd. You were seen. The species police were all over the place and all over me. You were too far away today to be recognized as individuals, but you weren't so far away that someone couldn't count from one to eight! Six big dogs is all there are right now. Once Scramble's puppies are grown, it'll be harder to determine how many in a group. And once Veegee's and Dapple's puppies are born and grown, there'll be even less likelihood. Until then, you must not let more than six animals be seen at one time, less however many are back at the house with puppies!”

He flushed. “And how do I explain that to Behemoth?”

“You don't,” I replied. “I think I can explain it to Scramble. I'm not angry about your shifting, but I am angry about your letting yourself be seen. Your shifting could be very helpful. I'd like you to smell the redmoss and the area around the meadow, but you mustn't be seen doing it, not even at a distance.”

“Well, I did smell the redmoss.” He lifted one nostril. “The smell is distinctive, very attractive, but I don't think anyone with less than dognose would realize what it identifies.”

“You mean, people might smell it, but not know it?”

“Yes. Humans react to things they smell all the time, even when they don't know what they're smelling, or even
that
they're smelling. They do weird things and don't know why.”

I thought for a moment. “Is it an attractant to the dogs?”

“No, and for us when we're in dog shape, hardly at all.” He flushed. “We'll be good, Jewel. If Behemoth insists again, I'll refer him to you. Now, when is Gainor Brandt getting here?”

“Ten to fifteen days. Our trip out took about twenty-five
days, of which we experienced less than three. Gainor has access to faster transport. It won't be long.”

“The dogs think, that is, we were all thinking, talking…It would be interesting to go east of here, to the foot of that plateau. The guy in the PPI garage says if it's related to the project, we can take one of the floaters. You could use that, the rest of us can run…”

“How do I relate it to the project, Adam?”

“Our project? Or Paul's?”

“Paul's project is the one PPI knows about.”

“Maybe the Mossen dance other places. Maybe they make other noises other places.”

“The noises don't seem to be related to the message. It might be color…”

“Well, maybe they have different colors elsewhere.”

“Ah,” I said. “Where would we have heard that?”

“One of the guys who goes into the moss a lot. One who isn't here right now.” He was inventing, but since I needed only an excuse, it didn't matter.

“And what is
our
project, Adam?”

“The dogs have never had time or space to do long-distance runs. Both they and we need to know how good they are at cross-country. Just a test, Jewel.”

This was all true, and it would give us a chance to see more of Moss, so I went to inform Paul, finding him busily entering information into his lingui-putes. When I came in, he hastily covered what he was working on, something to do with Mossen belts. “Paul, would recordings of belt patterns and colors in other groups of Mossen be helpful to you? I mean, groups other than the ones that dance here?”

He glared at me, irritated at the interruption. “Are there other groups?”

“One of the PPI men says there are. East of here, toward the plateau. The trainers and I thought we'd make a little trek that way tomorrow, just to take a look at the cliffs and the falls. If it would be any help to you, I'd take a recorder along.”

He considered it, a tiny tic jumping at the side of one nostril. “Maybe I'll go with you.”

“Oh.” I didn't need to simulate surprise, though I did need to counterfeit pleasure at the prospect. “That'd be wonderful! We're taking a floater and sleeping on the ground. Bring your antibug stuff, some of the local ones bite, but there won't be many until we get into the real rain forest at the foot of the plateau. It rains a lot more over and near the plateau, so you'll need waterproof gear, too. I'm glad you'll join us. It'll be fun.”

He thought about it, the tiny tic leaping and leaping, the way it always did when he was planning to manage me. The twitching subsided. He had decided against it. He didn't need me for anything just then, and the trip would be uncomfortable. He didn't like being uncomfortable.

“No,” he said, finally. “No, I shouldn't interrupt what I'm doing. Yes, it would help if you record the colors and belt patterns elsewhere, to see if they vary from those here. If there's something interesting, I can make a trip there later with one of your fellows to guide me.”

“All right,” I murmured, trying to sound disappointed. “Whatever you like.”

Normally, when I accompanied Paul on his contract trips, I served as his hostess in entertaining the locals, his surrogate in being entertained by the locals, in either case keeping them off his back while also taking care of the details of daily life. Here, there was no entertaining. Here, the details of daily living were reduced to a minimum and provided by PPI.

I told Drom I was going to the plateau, asking his advice.

“Early on we made a few trips out that way, nothing too lengthy. The waterfalls are remarkable, well worth seeing. There are gemstones in the streams, near the falls, but be careful. Wear protective clothing. There could be some other redmoss kind of thing out there.”

I thanked him. On my link, Lethe said more or less the same thing, as well as insisting I take spare power cells for
everything. Adam and I got everything ready, so we could leave early the following morning.

In my room, that night, when everything was quiet, I talked to Scramble. I just talked. I told her about Adam getting into trouble back on Earth. I said, if anyone saw him or Frank or Clare when they were changed, it might cause a lot of trouble for them as well as for me. It might threaten her and the puppies, and the other dogs. I said humans were in the habit of counting things because we had good eyes but inferior noses. I asked if she could keep Behemoth and Titan from getting the trainers into trouble. She listened.

When I had finished and was about to turn out the light, she said, “Wy?”

“Why? Why would it cause trouble? Or why do Adam and Frank change into dogs?”

“Wy engh humahn?”

“Why do they change back? Into humans?”

She fixed me with her unblinking eyes, waiting.

“They change into dogs because Gainor got some stuff through the Tharstians in order to make dog surrogates, so when you were puppies, you could learn from example how to live as natural dogs do live, in packs, with leaders, by hunting. We had no wild dogs for you to learn from, and that was the best we could do. Also, we thought we could learn more about dogs from people who were being dogs.”

“No.”

“They're not dogs?”

“No.”

“I know, not real dogs, but they thought they might learn something more.”

She went on staring. I said, “You want to tell me something more, something you may not have words for? You want me to guess, so you can tell me when I'm right?” She stared, licked her jowls, went on staring. I sighed. “All right. You want to tell me…they haven't learned.”

“Es.”

“They haven't learned. Because…” Because why? “Because they can't forget they are human?”

“Es.”

“And they're not going to find anything out. It's just…”

“Pay.”

I thought about that one. “Play?”

She nosed the puppies and lay down, flat, the conversation over. I turned out the light, but it was some time before I went to sleep. The sense of it was, if they had learned anything about being dogs, they would not change back into humans. So long as they were willing to change back, it was only play, they hadn't really learned anything. I tried it in reverse. If I were a dog who could change into a human, but I preferred being a dog, would that mean I knew nothing about being human? Or, too damned much?

 

Shortly before leaving the next morning, I uncased the concs and fed them. They were as unhappy as concs could be, wanting to play, to go outside, to eat something different. I was firm with them, putting them back into their cases, though it galled me to do so. They were the way they were because that was how Paul wanted them, infantile and cute, and totally subordinate. It seemed unfair to lock them up because they were as Paul had made them. Of course, if he really struck a stopping point, he might uncase them for a while. Otherwise, they were likely to stay in those cases the entire time they were on planet, except when being fed every six to eight days.

All the dogs went along, the puppies in a covered basket on the floater, which was supplied with dog and human rations and a modest supply of water, easily renewable. Water ran everywhere on Moss, and it was everywhere potable, according to the ESC people.

The trainers and I rode in the floater until we were deeply into the forest, well out of sight of anyone from the compound. There the trainers stripped off their clothing and
walked beside the floater as they changed. Adrenaline could make the process happen quickly, rage or great excitement could make it happen in minutes, but when things were calm, jaws and tongues slowly lengthened, eyes shifted subtly to the sides, ears rose toward the top of the skull, forearms and shoulders shifted. Genetically they did not change. They became quite doglike, except for their high-domed heads, far too rounded for canines though not terribly unlike the old, large-headed dogs: St. Bernards, golden retrievers, mastiffs. At a distance, they would pass for dogs, particularly if they stayed in dog form long enough to lengthen their coats. At first their fur was merely an all-over fuzz. Adam was the same shining steel gray as his hair, with a darker gray stripe down the spine. Given long enough, he usually grew a mane. Clare was evenly brown with red glints in her fur, and she would acquire feathers on her legs and tail; Frank was a mottled gray and black, plain black at a distance, with a close, short-haired coat. Getting the coat to grow wasn't voluntary. It simply grew, like claws, like teeth, like tails. If they stayed dogs for several weeks—which was the longest it had ever been tested—they would have full coats, long tails, longer legs, fangs, and hard claws for digging. Whatever technology Gainor had obtained, it was limited to soft tissue and young bones. At some point, Adam, Clare, and Frank would be too old. Their bones wouldn't make the shift. I'd heard them discussing how careful they'd have to be later in life, to prevent their being dogs when that final moment came. Funny. The conclusion I drew now from that remembered conversation was quite different from the one I had drawn at the time.

It took several hours before they felt ready to run, but once they did, I lost all sight of them. The floater hummed beneath me, a vibration more felt than heard. The wind waved moss banners from every tree. I heard an occasional chirp or flutter but was otherwise alone: No other person was within sight or sound of my voice. I halted the floater and gloried in the quiet, focusing on the surroundings.

My world had always been narrowly circumscribed. On Mars, one saw caverns. On Earth, one saw the walls of the towers. In both cases, our perceptual world had finite boundaries. On Moss, I stood at the center of a transparent and expanding balloon that was itself unconfined. Each barrier my eyes touched became the threshold to something farther on, each perimeter pressing outward as the tenuous fabric of perception reached and then encompassed another layer of the endless series of mosses, trees, hills, and distances, ending eventually in the shifting mist at the limit of my sight, itself unconfined in any direction. I felt ridiculously, ecstatically happy.

The iggy-huffo people talked a lot about their religion of killing animals to manifest man's God-given dominion, but they'd never known what dominion was. They thought it meant shutting everything out but themselves. The glory of Moss meant letting everything in, all this space with the plants and animals interwoven into it, only myself fully aware of the fabric of it. No, no. Unthink that. I had no idea who or what else might be as aware as I or even more aware than I. In any case, I was willing to cede the primacy of knowing, if I could only keep the feeling of ecstatic freedom that had wrapped around me like protective wings. Never in my life until that moment had I felt both unobserved and totally encompassed.