Long silence.
“Well, where did they dance before we came?” asked Sybil. “We haven’t looked into their activities before we arrived, but there were survey fish on the planet for almost a year before we came, and we have those records.”
“It’s only a suggestion,” I offered. “If I suggest anything to Paul, he spends more time debating the proposition than he does working with it, so the best I can do with him is drop a hint he can later claim as his own idea.”
“Tell us something about the dogs,” said Lethe.
The answer to that question had been carefully composed, rehearsed, and was even largely true. “Geneticists selected for size, longevity, and strength. They’re better able to communicate and possibly more intelligent than natural dogs were. They were bred this way with the idea of giving them even more survival skills, for when we turn them loose.”
Sybil murmured, “You said ‘selected.’ Was that done with Zhaar technology?”
I responded stiffly. “Use of Zhaar technology is against IC law.”
“The Orskimi use it,” said Abe.
I said, “All I know is that Gainor mentions recurring top-level IC discussions about the technology and about other races using it. If the Orskimi have the stuff, it’s logical to assume others might get it, too. I can’t swear nobody on Earth has ever touched it any more than you can.”
“How about PPI?” Abe asked.
“I can’t swear to that, either. I can only swear that I have no personal knowledge of anyone using it.”
“Ah,” said Abe, sharing a glance with his colleagues.
I said, “Gainor has told me what’s said about the Zhaar, about their being shape changers, able to change themselves into anyone or anything they wanted to, able to infiltrate any group, mimic any person, any race. They’re rumored to have stolen secrets, killed for pleasure. They could have anything they wanted simply by becoming the owner of whatever it was, committing piracy by becoming the crew, committing genocide by becoming the settlers of a planet. But then, it was said to be the Zhaar who wiped out Holme’s World, so if anyone from that world is a Zhaar, it would be you, Sybil.”
“Fat chance,” she snarled. “If I could change my shape, I’d have done it long since.”
“The other thing that’s said about the Zhaar is that they’re dead and gone. Gainor says whoever or whatever made the final decision to commit genocide on the Zhaar, assuming that it actually happened, probably saved millions of lives.”
“And who’s alleged to have done it?” asked Sybil.
“Gainor says some of the elder races may have done it.”
“See, that’s what I can’t figure out,” Sybil complained. “The Zhaar are gone. But the rumor is the biotechnology still exists. How can they have the one without the other? I mean, the shape changer matrix was in the Zhaar bodies, not stored in a laboratory somewhere. Whoever has it, they had to have taken some of the people…alive. And if they reproduced by budding, as is said, if you’ve got one live one, you could soon have thousands.”
“I don’t know,” said I. “Maybe I don’t want to know because having Zhaar technology implies we might still have Zhaar as well.”
“So you’d be against using the technology?” asked Lethe.
“Philosophically, I’m against it,” I said. “But I’m told, the use of Zhaar net tissue would enable amputees to produce new limbs and people with broken spines to be healed and disfigured people to be pleasant-looking again without the long time lapse and repeated surgical interventions we used to do to get lesser results, and without cloning ourselves in order to harvest parts, with the attendant ethical complexities. So, practically, I might feel differently.”
“Ah,” Lethe said.
“But,” I said, “I try to keep in mind that though philosophical absolutes prevent practical solutions, practical solutions can involve insuperable ethical dilemmas. For some people.”
Sybil gave me a quizzical look. “In other words, you’re on the fence.”
I laughed, ruefully. “I’m the kind of person who opts for practical solutions in particular cases, then feels guilty about it later.”
Lethe said, “There was that attempt to give animal senses to people, back…oh, when, fifteen years or so.”
“I’m one of those they tried to plant dognose in,” I said quietly. “I volunteered for the experiment when I was sixteen. There was no danger involved; the cells would grow or they wouldn’t, but they weren’t invasive, and I have no idea whether any Zhaar technology was involved. The cells did grow, but not a lot. I have a hyperacute sense of smell, but it still isn’t anywhere near that of a dog, much less a dog like Behemoth or Scramble.”
“How acute is hyperacute?” asked Abe.
“Blindfolded, I could identify you three from across a room, and who’s been here recently. From fifty feet away, I can smell what kind of mood my brother’s in or smell something very strange and dreadful in the PPI staffers who are using the redmoss. What I can’t do, and the dogs can, is say whether you are afraid of me or not, whether you are a danger to me or not.”
“To their world, we’re deaf and dumb,” said Lethe.
“Just about, yes. The sense hasn’t been notably useful to me, not on Earth, at least.”
They promised to let me know as soon as they had an arrival time for Brandt. I got in my little boat, backed it up, and turned to go back to shore, seeing once again the spit of land where I had seen eight dogs.
“Damn,” I said, feelingly. “Damn, damn, damn.”
“I went out to ESC,” I said to Adam, later that afternoon. “On the way, I looked down the shoreline, and what did I see? Eight dogs, lapping water from the lake, like a pack of myth-wolves. It was I in the boat, counting dogs, but it could have been anyone, counting dogs.”
Adam flushed. “I knew you’d be angry, but he said they expected us to go along. I really couldn’t say no.”
“Say no to whom?” I demanded, outraged.
“Behemoth. Well, him and Titan both.”
As that penetrated, slowly, I felt my mouth hanging agape and snapped it shut. “I thought we were the ones who decided what was best, Adam. Are the dogs running things now?”
Instead of remorse, I saw amusement. “Of course they are! What makes you think they haven’t been running things for a long while?”
Now I really was stunned. “Explain,” I said, afraid I’d get started on a rant if I said anything more.
“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 co
nversation 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.
The Companions Page 29
