There was also the expectation that working in such teams would promote greater understanding of one another and so foster peace. None of the species loosely allied in this quadrant of space were technically at war—at this moment. Few, however, could claim closer association than limited trading agreements or the sharing of derogatory jokes aimed at the newcomer Humans. That might have remained the state of things, but for a mutual fascination concerning the vast civilization that had preceded them all, leaving puzzling ruins throughout their systems. The First formed almost unnoticed, an ongoing research collaboration conducted with deceptive informality by academics of all species, the name an acknowledgment of a level of cooperation that had never been managed before.
To date, the only concrete result of that cooperation was that no member of a Triad had actually killed another. Insulted, misunderstood, proposed inappropriate physical union, and found ways to brawl, yes. Still, Triads worked, and well. They were, after all, researchers with a purpose: to find out why the powerful Concentrix had failed, eons before those now studying them had done more than mark scent and howl.
Which was something the canid appeared to be doing now. Vasi sighed, grabbing the doorframe of the transport and heaving himself inside as the multispecies cursing renewed almost as loudly as those throbbing, mournful cries. Perhaps the animal was disturbed to have been shoved to the very back.
The instant his eyes met those brown ones, the howling stopped. Vasi felt an unwelcome flood of happiness. It wasn’t his. The canid was somehow programmed to respond this way to him, the bio’face freely passing its simple emotional reflexes into his mind. Too freely.
Damn dog, Vasi thought again, turning his back on his personal curse. The only empty seats were the last two, near the beast. Ignoring those, he walked up the side aisle to the frontmost seat behind the driver and stood waiting. The Tolian occupying the spot beside Ebbet dropped his crest and, with a sidelong look from his emerald eyes, rose and moved aside. Ebbet made an approving noise in his throat as Vasi joined him. They both obligingly slid closer to the sidewall so Medya, who’d followed Vasi, could squeeze in with them. Being a typical Brill, she didn’t so much share the seat as prop some of her ample haunch along its edge.
Being a typical Brill, she was laughing. “You didn’t tell us you’d taught it to sing, Sai Vasilo,” their Triad’s Recorder observed. “And so quickly, too.”
“I didn’t tell you it could pass noxious fumes out of two orifices at once, either,” Vasi replied, his voice even as always. A Tidik trait, the inability to inflect speech with emotion. The slender plates on either side of his neck vibrated with frustration.
Oblivious, Ebbet blinked all six eyes in what seemed random order and chuckled. “That much we all know. Especially after it eats raw omio roots. You didn’t mind my little addition to its supper, did you, Vasi? I thought you’d enjoy getting to know your new partner’s spectacular talent for yourself.”
Vasi didn’t bother to respond. Queeb humor was infamous; they had great difficulty comprehending why other species weren’t as amused by bodily functions or disparaging remarks about ancestry. They had even more difficulty with the concept of reverence for the dearly departed. Such interspecies insensitivity was one reason so many Queebs worked in waste management or became archaeologists. It also explained the common saying: Never tell a Queeb where your family was buried.
The transport lurched forward, obedient to a schedule that had little leeway for latecomers and a driver likely resentful of both muddy feet and alien beasts. She appeared to be taking out such resentment on her passengers. Vasi braced himself, noticing the others did as well. Still, there were sounds, several which could be of laughter; the four Triads presently on Aeande XII were comprised of nine different species, so it wasn’t always easy to tell. They shared a reason to be happy, if not common ways to express it. Vasi himself eagerly anticipated a night away from slogging up mountains and digging through mud barely thawed from winter. The gleeful bedlam in the transport grew louder as the vehicle swayed into the first switchback leading down to Crilliton.
Gleeful except for a sudden yip. Vasi winced as the bio’face transferred the flash of pain. Without intending to, he was on his feet immediately, pushing his way over Medya’s soft, leathery thighs, his extended nails digging into the nearest seatback for support. Standing and trying to move down the aisle was like trying to slope the mountainsides of home, only without the help of skis. The transport hit a pothole and abruptly lurched to one side. As Vasi hung on to avoid landing on Baoltor’s lap, the Dain scowling a warning, he smiled to himself. Perhaps more like sloping on the heels of true spring, when the hills sprouted rocks to threaten all four knee joints.
The canid seemed equally experienced at bracing itself. It had backed against the last, still vacant seat, the front pair of its four legs splayed out to provide the most stable possible platform. The setting sun peered through the clouds and into the mud-streaked windows, beams darting here and there as the transport leaned from side to side. The light revealed the long, pink tongue hanging from the creature’s gaping mouth. A streak of bright red lay amid the foam along one edge.
The wounded tongue seemed of no concern. More accurately, the pain of having bitten itself was smothered under waves of joy through the bio’face as the beast noticed Vasi’s approach. It lost all sense, crouching to sway its thin body in an uncontrolled spasm of greeting, its tail banging against the seat. Having thus lost any stability, the next turn of the transport to follow the hairpin of the road sent the beast flying down the aisle.
Vasi grunted as the creature slammed into his lower abdomen, suddenly compressing a few body parts not meant to be so abused. As he gasped and licked tears from his lips, the beast leaped up again, apparently viewing this contact as welcome.
The creature was more practiced at the bio’face than Vasi, but he’d learned enough to force disapproval from his mind into its, particularly when he felt this motivated. The happy squirming slowed and stopped, the beast dropping to the floor and doing its utmost to lie on its back submissively, even as the transport swerved madly around the next bend. Vasi had to reach down and grab it so it didn’t roll back into the seat support and harm itself. He might be a member of a First Triad—but this beast was more important than he was. Everyone, starting with Professor Emeritus Y Ebbet, of the 114th Siring by Raken, had left that in no doubt whatsoever.
The handling wasn’t affectionate, but the creature responded as though he’d caressed it, ropelike tail banging against his boots. Vasi did his utmost to ignore the emotions rippling across the bio’face.
He turned and, grabbing seats for purchase, began pulling himself forward again, only to halt in dismay as Ebbet’s face appeared over Medya’s lap. The Queeb’s voice was unfortunately loud: “Finder Durgin held it on her lap, during rides like this. Protected it from the bumps. Shouldn’t you, Sai Vasilo?”
Vasi froze in dismay. The beast was dripping with mud and smelled worse than usual. He was wearing the only fine clothes he’d brought to Aeande XII, in hopes of finding some attractive being interested in mutual stimulation at the bar—or at least a dance or two.
Judging by the laughter in the transport, those were hopes he should abandon now.
Damn dog.
“I concur with Finder Vasilo. We should go here today.” Medya’s ivory-tipped finger dimpled the surface of the image displayed on the map table. “Our records of the uppermost area are incomplete.”
Ebbet considered this thoughtfully, tilting his head as though the angle made some additional information available only to a Queeb’s multiple eyes. Vasi would have taken it for affectation in anyone else, but he had nothing but respect for the scholar, Queeb or not. Well, respect and an ongoing sense of humiliation. How could he possibly contribute to this fine Triad, except as the keeper of that beast?
He might be smarting over last night, which had been every bit as demeaning an experience as he’d feared— including a regrett
able incident involving a bodily function—but Vasi couldn’t help but be excited by the red-stained area under Medya’s fingertip. It was high-risk. The slope indicated challenged any he’d seen on his home world, but the potential . . . he leaned closer, sure he wasn’t imagining a curved outline, a suggestion of something buried, possibly a structure more elaborate and intact than any found thus far. Looking for such clues was his job, as was getting them there safely. Vasi found it hard to keep the flaps under his chin still. “The forecasters are calling for gusty winds out of the north-east, Professor,” he made himself say. “Clouds are already forming on the peaks. I’d be remiss not to warn of the potential for a sudden snowfall.”
“There’s always potential,” Medya growled. “It’s spring, for Grasis’ sake. One minute we’re huddling around heaters, the next there’s mold growing over my butt.”
Vasi shuddered quietly. The Queeb roared with laughter, disturbing the canid’s sleep. Its brown eyes puzzled at the three of them, then closed again. The beast had better manners than some, Vasi admitted to himself. Despite his initial skepticism, it obeyed the signals he’d been told to use and would stay curled on the floor until required for its task. Curled on the floor as close to his boots as possible, but Vasi had learned nothing would discourage its desire for such proximity. If ordered to lie by the doorway, the creature would pretend to comply, then somehow be lying nearer each time he checked until almost underfoot. The creature only seemed content when in imminent danger of being stepped on—or, as now, when the Triad began to move. Vasi found himself fascinated by how the sound of Medya clearing off the map table was enough to bring the canid’s head and ears up to attention, its furred body tense with anticipation, eyes riveted on him.
That anticipation shivered through the bio’face— likely both ways. Vasi preferred to be outside and active himself and, though he had his reservations about the weather, he felt his own ears stiffen with excitement. The find they could make today? What questions might it answer about the Hoveny? How many more might it raise? He couldn’t wait to see.
Three hours later, Vasi settled his hip against one walking pole and stared, aghast, at what waited for them.
Fieldwork wasn’t tidy or without hazard—that’s what he liked about it—but the aircar hadn’t left them on a mountain slope. This was the icy tongue of a monster ready to lick them from the face of the planet. The spill of ice, wrinkled and split by black, water-slicked crevasses, groaned and snapped as it moved. Chunks larger than Medya rattled free from its face to join the jumble already damming a glacial lake.
Above? Vasi shrugged his loose hood to his shoulders and tilted his head back. The mountain’s peak leered down, baring cloud teeth that ripped through what blue sky remained. It might be calm here, but the wind at those upper elevations would strip flesh from bone.
“Ah, who has the lunch pack? Vasilo, do you recall where it’s packed?”
“Lunch?” The Tidik couldn’t believe his ears or eyes. He must be misreading the Queeb. No rational being could stare at this—this death incarnate—and ask about food. It must be a valiant effort to shore up their spirits, so close yet so far from possible treasure.
The canid didn’t need help with its spirits, busy prancing around their feet. It appeared to disregard anything higher than its eager nose, and began pushing that supposedly tender organ under a loose rock.
“I’ve got the lunch,” Medya said, shouldering the harness for the larger of the two grav sleds. Ebbet already had the smaller tethered to his back, secured by straps that took advantage of his naturally hunched shoulders.
“Then lead the way, Finder,” the Queeb ordered, pointing at the preoccupied canid. “We’ve no time to waste with the weather this unsettled. I won’t leave a promising site to be buried under the next avalanche without at least an autosampler in place. And our Triad’s marker.”
“Very well,” Vasi replied, abandoning hope that the Queeb was playing another trick on him. He summoned the beast with a tap of one hand against his leg, watching as it leaped forward with delight in every body part and surging through the bio’face. It sat before him, waiting for instructions.
Vasi hesitated before giving the “find” signal with both hand and thought, his uncertainty plain to read in the faint shuddering of his neck flaps, had any of his companions the perception to see it.
Strangely, the beast hesitated as well, its face lifted to one side as though it studied him, ears perked upward.
“Find,” Vasi said quietly, sure his voice could carry no emotion to confuse the animal.
The canid whirled on its haunches and headed for the glacier, looking back over its shoulder as if to be sure they followed. Vasi grabbed his poles and settled his pack, then started moving. The first part of their climb would be simple enough. As soon as winter had eased, Ebbet had hired a crew of laborers to blast a ramp up one side of the glacier’s face. Gravel and debris, melted clear this spring, formed a roadway from the valley floor to the top of the ice sheet. A good, steady slope. They were all fit and trained for this—the First expected their Triads to be able to cope with fieldwork. Vasi resolutely kept his eyes focused on the happily wagging tail ahead of him, between glances at the instrumentation festooning his left arm and wrist.
He’d grown up on mountainsides, and his every instinct told him this was the wrong time to be on this one. The sooner he and the beast found the suspected Hoveny site, Vasi reasoned coldly, the sooner they could start running for their lives.
Every Hoveny find on Aeande XII had been made in these mountains, old upthrust seabeds now eroded to reveal their former life as city-lined coasts. Their low altitude was a gift. Even the canid panted comfortably, and Medya was able to make a running commentary of their trek into her recorder, much of it laden with cheery-sounding phrases in her own tongue, as though she too found Comspeak inadequate. Vasi thought he might ask her, when they were back in camp. If they got back to camp. The wind had tilted over the peak and was spinningcolumns of loose white snow, catching sparks from the sunshine. A warning.
They were now traveling on the ice sheet itself, lint on the mountain’s blue-white shoulder. There was a path, beaten into the snow and smoothed by the same crew who had provided the ramp. It saved the Triad’s strength for what mattered—if they found it. The orbital and aerial surveys only located possibilities. It was up to him, Vasi realized as he moved one foot carefully ahead of the other, never trusting a path he hadn’t made himself.
And the canid. The beast wore boots on its feet as well today, a necessity as the sun’s warmth softened the snow into a glue prone to stick and accumulate on any surface. It had only taken one such excursion without the boots to prove their value to both canid and Vasi, who’d had to use his bare hands to melt the hardened ice balls trapped between the beast’s sore and bleeding footpads. The bio’face had shared the discomfort—and the easing of it.
The discomfort hadn’t slowed the beast. When on the hunt, the canid was determined, Vasi had to admit. Its keen senses of smell and hearing were their guide, not as accurate or sensitive as instrumentation, but exquisitely more discerning. Humans had finally convinced the First that their beasts were able to distinguish true Hoveny ruins, with their characteristic construction materials, patterns of decay, and faint sounds of hibernating technology, from those of other civilizations.
He wasn’t convinced the damn dog could find anything but trouble.
Vasi flexed his six-fingered hands around the handles of his walking poles. He should be towing a sled himself, laden with sensors. He’d packed one this morning, but Ebbet had dismissed the need for such equipment, along with three years of Vasi’s training and skill, with one flick of a gloved tentacle. The scruffy beast, the Queeb asserted, was all they’d need. Since Professor Emeritis Y Ebbet of the 114th Siring by Raken was the being with a reputation to risk, Vasi could hardly protest.
Yet. The beast might work for food pellets and carry itself, Vasi thought bitterly, but if
it failed to locate anything worthwhile, he’d protest, in writing, with enough adjectives to make his feelings clear even in Comspeak.
They walked, single file, the canid leading and Vasi behind, for the better part of another hour. The Tidik divided his attention between the clouds skittering by overhead and the crosshairs on the locator strapped to his right wrist, which would let him know when they were standing on the suspected Hoveny site.
Suddenly, Vasi’s pole went deeper into the snow than he’d expected, and he pulled up short. The beast stopped as well, head cocked toward him. A hand signal and the canid eased down to its belly, chin on its paws. It seemed glad of the rest.
“Are we there?”
“Don’t move,” Vasi snapped, raising his arm to bar both his companions. He took a step back, then another, before probing the path ahead ever-so-gently with his extended pole.
Snow crumpled away, as if he’d touched some area of rot. The resulting hole was small, but intensely dark, promising depth. “Crevasse,” the Tidik said tersely. The path continued beyond, its surface unmarked and innocent.
There wasn’t talk of turning back. Instead, the Triad pulled out safety lines and tied themselves together at intervals long enough to prevent all three from dropping into the same hidden crack. Even the canid was leashed. When ready, Vasi signaled it to move forward and they continued, going around the crevasse, testing every foot-step. The Tidik and Queeb planted their walking poles deeply into the snow as emergency supports each time Medya, their heaviest and so most at-risk member, followed them across any chancy area.
Midday, but the air temperature was plummeting. Vasi didn’t need instruments to tell him so—he watched the frosty beard forming along the canid’s jaw and a single icicle grow from the dribbling of its moist nose. When he felt it shiver, he halted their procession to adjust the warming rings strapped around its middle and chest. Its natural covering was useless in this environment, little more than short wiry hair, white with random blotches of black too small to soak up appreciable radiation from the sun. The beast, for all its lack of brain matter, appeared to understand and stood patiently, tail swaying side to side.
A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition) Page 40
