The Companions

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “I do not understand.”

  “We are accustomed to conversations that are proximate in time. I say to you, you respond to me. Our World responds, but not for years or even centuries. When it does respond, we do not realize it is replying to something our grandfathers did; we do not recognize that it is speaking! On Moss, though the feedback is slow compared to any language we’re familiar with, it’s a lot quicker than we’ve ever known to occur at a planetary level, quick enough to tell us the Moss mind is obviously conscious. It feels what happens. It directs response. It actually speaks.”

  “I must go there,” she said, making the high, tinkling sound once more. “I must go there soon. Will you go with me?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I would do anything to help you, Sannasee. You know that.”

  She regarded me again with that ring of eyes, fluttering open and closed, as though some looked at my skin and others at my heart. “Will you do it without telling anyone?”

  Again, I heard the emotion in her voice before the machine translated it. It was a combination of eagerness and fear. As though she had been invited to meet God, personally, and was uncertain where she stood.

  I said very softly, “Someone would not want you to go?”

  Her great, oval head nodded, a very human-looking nod, and the eyes around her brow fluttered at me sequentially, like fingers waving hello or good-bye. “Our people are very conservative. They would not forbid, but they would…look askance. You will say of this…”

  “I will say of this nothing,” I told her. “What is there to say?”

  We sat there a time longer. I asked about Splendor, and she told me a little of its discovery, of the determination of the elder races to keep it unspoiled, to keep the riffraff out of it. She said almost nothing about the place, or places, the people or peoples who lived there, if, indeed, anyone did. It could have been a marvelous vacancy for all the description she permitted herself, though she did speak of all living creatures doing well in Splendor.

  When she finally departed, I went on with the garden. Gradually, as the day wore away, I grew a little achy, more than a little tired, but also relaxed and tranquil. My wanders on Moss had not been strenuous. This was the first real exercise I’d had in a very long time, and it was therapeutic.

  When the light dimmed around me, I cleaned and put away my tools before returning to quarters. Witt was there. He came to sit beside me at the table and tell me he wanted to come sleep with me that night. I felt only a mild revulsion. I remarked that I had been doing hard, physical labor all day, which had made me too tired to want company.

  His face wrinkled like a child who’s been slapped. “But I only have tonight. My master only let me come for two days. I told him we were liaised…”

  I gritted my teeth, reaching for the right tone. “It was very kind of your master to let you come, Witt. Be sure to tell him how grateful we are for his kindness, but our liaison expired more than seven years ago. We aren’t liaised anymore, and I prefer to keep to Earth law, as I’m accustomed to that.”

  Besides, thought I, he may have been fixed, but I didn’t know that for sure, and I did know I hadn’t been. I did not want to make that mistake again.

  He didn’t argue, just dropped his head and looked pathetic. I wanted to say, “Now you need a good night’s rest so you can be a good doggy tomorrow,” but I took his hand instead, pressed it with a sad little smile that was intended to look regretful, and left him sitting there. I don’t know where he went. Off, somewhere. All that charm, the poise, the knowledgeability that had made him seem so wonderful to me at eighteen had been only a well-practiced social facade. If I had not been so young, if I had had more experience of people, perhaps I would not have been so impressed by the veneer. Facing hardship, without the pedestal of money and family, he was lost.

  Which did not mean I was not partly responsible. If I had not been so quick to liaise with him, his mother would not have sent him away. If she had not sent him away, he could be living still on his pleasant pedestal in an environment he had been reared to inhabit. The Phaina had said she would go to Moss and take me with her. Perhaps it would be possible for Witt to go as well. If I could restore him to his niche, somehow, my personal responsibility toward him would be met.

  Only a thought. An attractive thought, nonetheless, one that remained with me.

  ESCAPE

  Deep in the night I wakened, thinking I’d heard something. I lay there, only half-alert, waiting for whatever it was to happen again. Around me the roomful of sleepers went on sleeping as the sound came again, a sharp rrr-aroo! And again. Rrr-aroo! Scramble’s voice, my signal, perhaps a warning, definitely a summons.

  The Phaina’s doors had no locks, just like the ones on Tsaliphor. The door swung quietly closed as I slipped out beneath the pallid, shadowless sheen of an unlit sky, a gloaming with the glisten of polished steel. Halfway across the meadow that Oskar and I had crossed on arrival, I risked a reply, trying to make a convincingly doglike yelp. She came like the wind, a great gust of her, sound and scent and presence, thrusting her muzzle into my neck, breathing me in.

  I threw my arms around her as she sat beside me, whispering to her, babbling at her. “Oh, Scramble, Scramble…Why doesn’t Behemoth want me to get the puppies?”

  She stood back, staring at me warily. “Ow u eer?” she asked.

  “I didn’t hear it. I smelled it. When you and Behemoth were outside that other place, that…kennel. Behemoth threatened to kill me? Or kill somebody else?”

  She persisted. “Ow yu nnoh owr wrns?”

  “I know your words because Gavi Norchis taught me to smell words, a little. Did you learn the language after you came to Moss?”

  “Ess. On Moss. We lerhn we Simusi.”

  “You learned on Moss you were Simusi? Who told you that?”

  “In nigh, woice sais, yu Simusi.”

  “A voice told you in the night?” That confused me for a moment. “Did that same voice tell you to come to the gate? Is that why you took the puppies and headed to the battlefield?”

  “Es.” She stared at me, her head cocked, waiting for me to go on guessing. Our conversations were sometimes easier if I guessed and let her say yes or no.

  “But you didn’t believe the voice?”

  “Ehemosh, es. He wery mush. Me, nuh noh. Nuh suhr.”

  She had not been sure, but Behemoth had believed very much, of course. Would his great pride have allowed him not to believe? If an angel stepped from heaven and told me I was kin to angels, would I doubt it? Well, yes, but then, I had a long history of doubting. Even Scramble had not been sure. “Do you believe the puppies are Simusi?”

  “No,” she said, half a growl. “No. Uhs nuh e’en Simusi, nuh mush. We nah ghoo Simusi. No ghan. Rr ghuh oghs.”

  She knew they weren’t much Simusi, not good ones, couldn’t be, and she was angry about it. Angry at not being? Or angry at being told a lie? She gathered herself, as for some great effort. “Ghewll, my ren, I shingh mohr ghuh we gho whar we uhs.” She looked away from me, her ears drooping, tail tight around her feet.

  “Jewel, my friend, I think more good we go where we us.” She must have worked out that combination well in advance. The dogs couldn’t pronounce B, D, F, hard G, J, K, P, T, Th, V, or Z. They used a throaty GH gargle for G J K sounds. Despite that constraint, she had made her wishes clearly known. Knowing what she said, she had called me friend.

  I pulled her back into my arms, crouching beside her. “I think every creature is happiest where it can be itself. Do you want to go to Treasure as we planned? Where you can be just you, whatever you are?”

  Tired of words, she breathed at me, a flowing line of scent notes, woods and mosses, forest and trees, water flowing, the attractive aroma of prey. Though they couldn’t be Simusi, they had certainly picked up some of the scent language. Perhaps only enough to frustrate them as spoken language often did us. “Uhs ghuh oghs,” she repeated softly, to herself.

  They
were good dogs, indeed. “And Behemoth?”

  “Ehemosh hurs.”

  “He hurts?”

  “Es.”

  I should have realized that. Alpha dog, suddenly demoted to half-breed status, to nothingness, his puppies gone, his mate arguing with him, all in pursuit of a phantom glory. Hating me, hating everyone, probably, because the glory wasn’t real. I leaned against her and she against me in mutual confusion and misery. Any urge to sleep had fled, and my mind was busy with possibilities.

  “If I find a way to get out of here, do you want to come with me?”

  She nodded, stopped, put her head down for a moment, then said, “Awl woman oghs.”

  All the woman dogs. That was new. “Veegee and Dapple?”

  “Es.” She threw her head back, sniffing, then said suddenly, “Mus gho.” She turned and was gone, swiftly as she had come. Back, I supposed, to join her pack before she was missed. I walked slowly back across the meadow, not looking where I was going, almost running into a giant, furry wall of P’narg, who were busy browsing fruit from one of the Phaina’s trees. I stepped back, bowed, and excused myself as the P’narg rumbled at me. When I got to the house, I was met by the Phaina herself, a Phaina who seemed only amused.

  “Do you usually wander around at night, bumping into creatures?” her lingui-pute asked me.

  “No, ma’am, but tonight I was summoned. Scramble came to talk to me.”

  “Scramble being…a dog? And what does Scramble have to say?”

  “She says the female dogs don’t want to stay here. They say they can’t be real Simusi, and they want to go somewhere else, where they can be themselves.”

  “And the males?”

  I rubbed my forehead in frustration. “It’s as you suggested, Sannasee. They’re…not happy with what they are. From Scramble’s manner, I’d say she isn’t sure what Behemoth and the others will do, but my hunch is they would follow the females, now or later, if they were allowed to go.”

  She was silent for a long, brooding moment. “Would you like to help them now?”

  I spoke through gritted teeth, trying not to commit an un-Phainic impoliteness by yelling. “Helping them is what I’ve been trying to do for years, Sannasee. Of course I want to help them, but Scramble’s gone back wherever they are. I’d have to get word to her…”

  “Which we will try to do.” She tilted her head back and turned deliberately around, the upper arc of her eyelids viewing the entire hemisphere, the whole of the sky from horizon to horizon. I don’t know what she saw there. It was featureless, as far as I was concerned.

  When she spoke it was as to herself. “It is appropriate for me to do this. Dalongar is being diluted. The Simusi are overstepping themselves…”

  The lingui-pute whispered as she mused, half to herself, “When we were young races, the Zhaar made riot with shape and function, a vast usurpation of others’ individuality, caring nothing for other peoples and worlds. Planets were burned, ancient civilizations were destroyed. We could not convince the Zhaar to accept our policy of noninterference, for they gloried in their power over others. At last, we declared them anathema and told them to depart or be destroyed, as they did, no one knew where or how, nor cared. We breathed with relief for a time, then we forgot them, considering them well gone.

  “But it seems immutable law that there is always a pricking thorn on the flower, a bit of grit in the shellfish, a troublesome relative in the family. Some great time later, we met this new race, this Simusi. They told us they had adopted a simple primitivism as their way, the exaltation of austerity as their goal, but we soon realized their simplicity and austerity could be maintained only through the enslavement of a dozen other races.” She snorted, a sound that was the same from her as from the machine.

  “A simple, austere race would hunt or go hungry. The Simusi hunt and return expecting to find cooked food prepared for them. A primitive race would bathe or be dirty. The Simusi crawl through mire and return expecting others to bathe and groom them. A race of simplicity would mate for life, once only. The Simusi keep whole harems of various creatures, only to delight their senses. They are not simple. They have merely enslaved others to deal with their complexities!

  “The Simusi tell us their accumulation of ‘friends’ is proof of their dalongar, their respectful regard for others, though in fact it proves otherwise, for it denies respect and courtesy. Slavery is against our law.”

  She made a high, keening sound that the machine made no attempt to translate, and was then silent for some time. I did not dare to interrupt her. I had assumed the Phain did not feel pain, but I had been mistaken. She felt pain, from a cause I would not perceive.

  Finally, she said, “I will give you directions to the place the dogs are. Meantime, I will devise a path we may use without being prevented or followed, and you will bring them to meet me on the way…”

  She followed this with explicit directions concerning where I was to go, and she had me repeat the whole business three times before she left me to return to her house.

  I went into the dormitory, dressed myself more completely than I’d done to go night walking, packed all my belongings, went out the door and was halfway across the meadow on the first leg of the journey I’d been assigned before I was aware of being followed. I spun around and caught sight of him, ducking behind a bush.

  “Come out, Witt.”

  He did so, his drag-footed reluctance bringing my previous thoughts to mind. If I wanted to erase my obligation to him by getting him out of here, there could be no better chance than this. The Sannasee might not allow it, of course, but if she didn’t, he’d be no worse off than he was now.

  When he came close, I said, “Follow me and keep quiet.”

  “But…” he began, in that whining tone that seemed to be the only one he had left.

  I stopped, fighting down my anger at him. “Witt, if you will not follow me quietly, then you must go back to the Phaina’s house. I will not risk my life for yours.”

  He looked shocked, but he followed me. At a trot, we traveled the path Oskar and I had used to get to the Guardian House. The Phaina had said to bring the dogs to the rendezvous by morning, so I concentrated on speed. The first landmark the Phaina had mentioned was the stone dike where the path ran through a narrow defile. I remembered the place from before and had no trouble finding it again. We didn’t enter the passageway through it, however, but turned to our right along the wall, into the woods. Witt was panting, lagging behind, trying repeatedly to start a conversation. Each time I told him to save his breath for running as quietly as possible or we might be heard, sought, killed. Each time he responded with: “But, Jewel…”

  Finally, I stopped in exasperation to whisper to him, “Tell you what, Witt. Since you’re determined to get caught, why don’t you concentrate on doing that by yourself. You can either sit out here and make noise, or you can find someplace to hide and just stay there until I return. Either way, you’ll only risk yourself.”

  “But, Jewel…”

  “The Phaina ordered this, Witt. Are you saying you won’t obey her?”

  Wringing his hands, he stood looking after me as I plunged on to the next landmark, a gravelly patch from which a half dozen rocky paths led in different directions. As I counted them off clockwise to choose the fourth one, I wondered what he would choose to do. He might sit tight, he might try to follow, or he might wander off and get himself lost, thereby losing any chance of returning home. I reproved myself for harshness but was able to care only slightly, one way or the other.

  The new path was narrow as a game trail. This was another Joram expression which he had had to explain, for Tad and I had found the word game an odd one to describe trailing and killing something. The way led upward for some distance, over a wooded ridge, then down through the woods on the far side to emerge onto short grasses above a long, narrow dale with a chatty stream gossiping its way down the middle. Across the water, a like stretch of grass sloped up to an eroded ba
nk dotted with dark tunnel openings. Dens, the Phaina had said, dug by the Simusi. After her description of the Simusi, however, I thought more likely they’d been dug by some burrowing creature adopted as a “friend,” to save the Simusi the trouble of being primitive on their own.

  I stepped well back into the shadow of the trees, turned to my left, downstream, and moved as quietly as possible parallel to the brook.

  According to the Phaina, this stream and its grassy valley would meet another at the bottom of the slope, and from there the conjoined streams would flow to the right, down a steep combe where the dogs were digging their dens. I kept moving, without much anxiety, until a full-voiced howl stopped me in my tracks. It came from the right, ahead of me, out in the vale. More howls joined the first. I stayed, frozen. The noise got louder, but came no closer. Moving stealthily, I found a vantage point near the forest edge. On a flat area across the stream, a large fire was being tended by a few collared humans and some of the four-armed lemurish things. Inside the ring of rosy light sat a number of Simusi, shadow black and fire red, eyes glinting, muzzles toward the sky.

  When the fire tenders threw more wood onto the fire, it leapt up, disclosing several cages near the stream. Firelight reflected from the stream onto the backs of the cages and onto a face pressed to the bars, eyes wide with frantic terror. Gavi.

  I crept back into the trees again and sat down, head on knees, trying desperately to think what I could do, how I could free her. Alone, I could do nothing. Nothing. But…but if I had Scramble’s help. And Veegee’s, and Dapple’s. If I had Behemoth’s help…

  Giving up caution, I ran, hoping the noise the Simusi were making would hide any I might make. Eventually, the dale widened and leveled in an almost flat delta, where it met the larger stream that ran from left to right before me. To follow the near bank of the conjoined stream, I had to cross both the talkative brook and the spread of grasses through which it ran. I told myself it was possible the Simusi had posted sentinels. I then tried to convince myself it was unlikely they had posted them so far from their gathering.