The Companions (37 page)

“We need a machine,” said I. “Something to measure the smells, analyze them, reproduce them, in order. If we had that, could you tell us what it means?”

She nodded. “If you could be doing it quietly, without telling bad people.”

Clare asked plaintively, “Where did you get the seeds and tools for your gardens?”

I looked up, confused. There Clare stood, fully clothed, having changed back into her own form and dressed herself without our noticing. Her face, however, was still changing. Gavi leapt to her feet, crying “Demons! Moss-demons!”

“No,” said I, catching hold of her. “No, no. They…they have two forms, that's all. One doglike form, one human form. Clare has changed back as we have been talking.”

“All of them?” Gavi shivered.

“No. Just three. Adam, Frank, and Clare. The others are true dogs, the puppies are true puppies. They are smarter than dogs used to be, and healthier, and they live longer, but otherwise they are dogs in every respect.”

“Why?” Gavi cried. “This is evil thing!”

“No,” said Clare. “This was to help dogs and learn about dogs, and we volunteered. I asked about the seeds.”

Gavi answered, mechanically. “We had supplies, seeds, farm tools, small farm animals. We were moving to Jardinconnu, for living on new world, necessary food growing, necessary flower planting. Our people said on way they would make detour, seeking Splendor, for Hessing headman had old map given him by Tharstian. It was joke! No one was really believing it. It was kind of playing they did, my ancestors. So, our people were misbehaving, making little side trip, getting caught in space hole, and then this place and no way back. Ships had what we needed for planting, growing. Later, when Day Mountain went away, we shared supplies with them.”

Clare nodded. “What animals do you have?”

“Chickens, for eggs. Goats, for milk and leather. Some goats got away, one time, and redmoss ate them quickly. Goat moss demons came home, crying for letting in. We burned them, crushed bones. Now we are very careful with livestock. When I learned moss language, words say to me no goats, goats eat talkers, eat other necessary things! We have also cats. No dogs.”

Clare said, “You could come with us on the floater, smell the message in the evening, stay with us, then we would return you.”

Gavi thought about it. “I am trusting you. I am not trusting others of you. Things happen. Maybe others would find me there and would not let me come back. No. I am telling you. You have things that make fires in sky? We had them, long ago.”

“Flares? Signals?”

“Signal flares, yes. I am explaining something: On Forêt we were not speaking common speech each day. Learning it in schools but not speaking it. So, when our people are coming here, so many words we do not use anymore. We read aloud to each other from old books for not forgetting, but we do forget. What is plumbing? What is computer? What is hot pan…griddle? Now I am speaking to you in Standard, but our talk being much changed. I am remembering book words, how they go together. Probably I sound strange…”

“Only a little,” said I. “You were asking about signal flares.”

“Yes. Red, I am thinking. From where I live, I can see your sky. Today, just past, is day one, day of our meeting. You are counting, I am counting. On day seven, I am watching your sky when dark is coming. If you want meeting me, make three red flares in early dark. Be doing this several times in evening, if I do not see first time, I will see later time. If you do not, count again, seven days. Each seven, I will be looking at sky. If I see flares, I will be coming down in next day or day after. If you are alone or with these people or dogs, I will find you. If you bring other people, you will not find me.”

“Dogs?”

She rose to her feet. “Protecting you, yes. Dogs are…fine. Now you come to bath place and warmwall!”

Gavi took me deeper into the cave, showing me the bathing place and the warmwall as she spread her own blankets against it. She pressed the album projector into my
hands before rolling herself against the wall, eyes shut, already seeming asleep. I returned to the outer chamber, where Adam had joined Clare in human shape. His muzzle was also very slightly extended. Changing the jaw and reshaping the tongue always took time; the calmer the situation, the more time it took. Being very frightened or completely enraged made the change happen so fast they didn't have time to undress first, as when Adam had changed on Earth that time, almost getting caught at it.

“What do you think?” I murmured.

“She smells perfectly honest,” said Clare. “Friendly. Not hiding anything or falsifying anything. Usually, we can smell that.”

“I was thinking more about what she had to say. Moss-demons. Willogs. Both might be dangerous to dogs. Moreover, she identified a plant as the message grower, and it looks exactly like one I saw on the moon, only larger. There was a smell there, Adam, remember? Just as we left, like an assault!”

Adam said slowly, “Moon, planet, both from same source…”

I nodded. “During formation, meteoritic ejecta went from Moss to moon, from Jungle to moon, and vice versa. Possibly it still happens, now and then. Will we find willogs all three places? Moss-demons in all three places? Is that what happened to Witt? Is there redmoss on Jungle? And how did my little album get here? He had it in his hand when he left…”

“Space anomaly,” said Clare. “We knew there was one. The Derac fell into it.”

I stared at the device in my hands. “Keep in mind what she said about harvesters. ‘They come in much light.' We saw a flash on the moon. The people on Jungle saw a flash when Witt and the others disappeared…So much information! How do I pass it on without mentioning her?”

Adam yawned, moving his shortened jaw from side to
side to settle it into place. “You can tell Gainor. He'll keep his counsel, and he'll know what to do, won't he?”

I nodded. Gainor had been at this longer than I had. Perhaps he would. “If you don't mind, I'm going to use that nice hot-spring place to take a bath.”

Adam waved me off. “We'll come make up our beds shortly.”

Gavi was kneeling beside the stone trough, her hand in the water, when I approached.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I was going to bathe in it. I thought you were asleep.”

“Oh, yes, you must bathe.” Gavi smiled. “I was falling in sleep, then I thought of putting some scent in it for you. Nice, not? Is excellent for relaxing.”

“That's very kind.”

It was relaxing. The scent, whatever it was, for I could barely detect it, seemed to penetrate to my very bones. I did something I had not done in a while: took Matty's album, the Seventh Symphony, from my pack and let it play softly as I soaked. I opened my eyes to see Gavi leaning against the wall, listening. I smiled, letting her know it was all right to share it with me as my very bones softened, and my thoughts softened, flowing together. I found myself following odd chains of associations that had no meaning for me. No matter. I felt wonderfully clean and totally limp. I dried myself with my shirt and put on a clean one before leaving the hot-spring area to lie down.

As I was doing so, Gavi approached. “The words they sang, to that music. The words about being forsaken, will you tell them to me again?”

I said yes, I'd tell them to her, and she went away. I slept soundly and long, only to come straight up off the blanket to the sound of a strangled howl. One of the lanterns was alight, on dim, and I saw Gavi rising and starting for the cave entrance. I leapt up and followed, hearing that strange, strangled howl, now accompanied by a wild outcry from the dogs.

As I went through the outermost cavern, I picked up a lantern and turned it high, pushing past the hanging blanket into the barely lighted world beyond. I saw the struggle immediately, Behemoth, caught in something that was strangling him, the other dogs attacking the something, without success. I saw Behemoth's legs leave the ground, he was hanging by his throat in a sort of thicket…

And then Gavi went past me with the water jar from the cavern and flung the contents over the strange growth that was killing my lovely dog, and it shuddered all over and went limp. Behemoth fell in a heap, I yelled for Clare and Frank, both of them came running and we struggled to get Behemoth breathing again. At some point, I heard the thicket growl and shake itself, and when I finally looked up, it was gone.

“What?” I demanded of Gavi.

“Moss-demon,” she said. “Mostly made from willog! This is why we are sleeping inside! This is why we are not going sticking noses in things outside at night!”

“What did you throw on it?”

“Stuff to make it tangle itself, forget what it was doing,” she said, her manner indicating it would not do any good for me to ask for details.

Behemoth's neck was scratched, but he was otherwise unhurt. Scramble was licking his muzzle and whining softly to him. I contented myself with saying, “Gavi saved your life, Behemoth. Maybe someday we can return the favor.”

He gave me a look that said, “I am aware of my obligations.” We all went back to bed. Gavi Norchis woke me early to tell me where I could see the most spectacular falls and the most interesting growths.

“When we come here,” I said, “We have to spend at least one night sleeping out. How do we protect ourselves…?”

She handed me a tiny pottery bottle, stopped with a cork. “This I am making for you this morning. Rub on before sleeping. Is taking only tiny bit. Moss-demons are not liking
it, and enough is here for several trips. Now, please be telling me the words in the music you were playing.”

She had certainly earned that and a good deal more. She had a quick memory. I needed to repeat it only twice.

She left me, saying, “I am telling you, do not bother talkers! Moss is not liking people bothering talkers.”

I took the words seriously enough that I searched out a talker, one with slightly unripe Mossen on it, and showed it to the dogs and trainers so they could sniff it from the end of one long stalk to the other.

“The smells are already there, a little,” said Adam. “Like fruit not ripe, it hints what it's going to be. Why didn't we figure this out before?”

I said, bowing toward Behemoth, “Behemoth did. He tried to tell me. I even smelled the succession of odors myself, when they were dancing, but I thought the smells came from the forest.”

Behemoth's nostrils quivered, but he took no other notice. We spent the rest of the day sight-seeing. I found what I was almost certain were gems in the dry gravel bed beneath a sometime fall, not clear stones, of course, only large pebbles with the dull matte surface created by centuries of tumbling in gravel. I spent a pleasant morning, overturning rocks and looking at those beneath, pocketing a selection of the largest gems in green, blue, and red. Emerald, sapphire, and ruby were chemically allied, differing only in their trace elements, and I had no doubt that's what these stones were. The plateau was of the same source as Planet Stone, after all, which was full of huge, pure gems, so the discovery didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was how different the plants were, here where the mists fell. They were huge in comparison to their counterparts in the drier lands, and they were alive with small animals, crabs, mice, other rodenty-looking things, birds of at least ten different kinds. I asked the dogs to collect samples—gently, please, without biting them in half—and even though I'd brought the sample boxes
along mostly for show, by evening we'd filled them all and were putting the overflow specimens into the collection bags I'd carried in my pockets.

We saw no dancing Mossen, though we did record some remarkably musical bell sounds that went on for some time during the dusk.

“Willogs,” I murmured to myself, totally convinced that Night Mountain had not chased the willogs as far south as they had assumed. The sounds weren't near enough to worry about. We slept warm in the cavern for the second night and left Gavi a note of thanks before departing the next morning. That night, halfway back to the base, we were considerably less casual about sleeping in the open than we had been on the way out. Two of us stood guard, turn and turn about.

Once Walking Sunshine had ears, it knew it needed a voice, but need makes no pattern, as the World said. Only trial and error does that! It was difficult. The eyes and the ears had been only receptors of a kind. The World was familiar with receptors, and so were willogs. Easy things. A bit different, but not difficult. But a voice that would do bells and singing and declaiming and so many other things. It took forever!

The only easy parts were the air puffers. Every word had lots of air puffers to emit the smells, and anything a word could do, a willog could do. Voice boxes were very much harder. There had never been a pattern for voice boxes. There was no pattern for tongue! For lips! How did one make them to move quickly, flexibly, to curl and shape and lift, both sides, front and back! Walking Sunshine had grown a tongue fifteen times! And the lips, even more. Walky had done them over and over and was still not satisfied. The result was getting close. Close enough to summon many friendly willogs and share spores with them to show them how it was done. Now the pattern was there, all the spores had that pattern. The new sprouts were few, still, but they would be many soon. Soon, many willogs would be sprouted with eyes to see, ears to hear sounds, and voices to make
sounding words. Much nicer to have the equipment in place rather than having to grow it all, bit by bit.

In recent days moss messages had come and gone, flowing from north to south. Humans, only a few, from Tall Rock were moving toward the wonder place, chopping signs on trees, piling stones to make markers. Walky had seen this happen several times before. The few humans would go to the wonder place and then back to Tall Rock. Then, more humans would follow the trail to the wonder place. Perhaps this would be a good time to introduce oneself and all the other speaking willogs. As was widely known, Tall Rock had one human who could hear World talk. Surely that human would walk with the others, and if Walking Sunshine were there, too, things could be explained! Not only Walky-self but the other speakers.

Walky lifted its talker branches experimentally. The latest crop of messages, concerning the advisability of having voices, was almost ripe. In fact, one branch was ripe! Walky shook it a little, loosening the first word, which, attached as it was by its tendrils, pulled the second one loose, then all the others in sequence. By the time the first message had danced off, several others were swelling into ripeness. Walking Sunshine shook its branches, loosening them all. When the last one had disappeared into the forest, it stepped out of its talker leaves and strode northward on nimble roots, toward the wonder place.