Beast Master's Quest

by Andre Norton

  Logan shook his head. “Even if they did it wouldn’t work, would it? I was tested by the rangers a couple of years ago. Since you have the gift, they thought I might, or I might have potential which could be developed. I don’t have it. Surely providing me with an aikiza wouldn’t produce anything which wasn’t there to start with, would it?”

  Storm was watching Laris and Prauo as they communicated with the two before them. All four had dropped to sit comfortably on the turf and Laris was using her hands to emphasize something. The remaining two pairs had moved back to stand right at the forest edge. “I don’t know. What’s not potential to terran science could still be brought out in other ways if there was something there.” Storm commented.

  He looked at his wife. “Keep Mandy and the coyotes away from these people. If they find them unnatural it’s possible they could harm them.”

  “I will, but do you really think so?”

  “Do you want to take any chances?” She shook her head so hard her braids flapped. “No, I don’t either. So until we know more about the subject we keep the animals away from them. I suspect the humanoids may be diurnal; they’re only out and about in the day and their eyes look more like ours. Our teams won’t find it hard to stay in during the day and go out only after dusk. They can still have freedom, just not when these people are around.”

  The captain spoke quietly then. “If we know when they’re around.”

  Storm jerked around to face him, looking startled. “Yes, that’s a good point. Now they know we’re on this world and where we’re located, they may be spying on us. Damn! All right, so we let the beasts out briefly only twice a day at dawn and dusk, and only in sets. The meerkats, then the coyotes, then Mandy. Any sign of the aikizai or the liomsa and they’re called back in. We work the same way. Only one of us outside at a time, stunner-armed and alert. That’s apart from Laris and Prauo when they’re talking to the natives.”

  “Do you think they could attack us?” Logan sounded worried.

  “I don’t know. It may depend on how well Laris and Prauo make friends, but remember something, my younger brother. Any people may have prejudices. These liomsa find our bond with beasts unnatural. They wouldn’t be the first civilization to try to wipe out something they regard as abhorrent, not by any means. They might even see it as a way of permanently reclaiming Laris and Prauo.”

  Logan looked suddenly horrified. “But, they couldn’t! You said it wasn’t safe for humans to live here. If anything happened to us, she’d die here after a year or two.”

  “I know that; we all know that here. But do they?”

  Captain D’Argeis nodded. “They may think that if Prauo is her aikiza she’d be safe. It depends on how much science and medicine they know. Just in case, I think it would be a good idea if I updated the Patrol cruiser on all this, including possible local attitudes and beliefs.” He waited for Storm and the others’ emphatic nods and left.

  Logan studied the tableau outside. “I’m not sure I appreciate the way those other two pairs retreated. They’re still standing there and watching but they’re right at the forest edge. Half a second and they could duck from sight.”

  “I know. It could be that they’re only being sensible. They don’t know all our intentions any more than we know theirs. Hang on a moment.”

  By the cairn, Laris had risen, bowed respectfully to the natives, and was returning to the ship with Prauo at her side. She paced up the steps and shut the door as soon as her aikiza had also entered, then she sank into the nearest seat with a gasp of relief.

  “Wow, that was exhausting!”

  “Why, what did you find out?”

  “Well, for one thing, the humanoids aren’t empathic with me, only through Prauo or their own aikizai. It’s like a relay, or maybe a comcaller. They transmit through their aikizai only. I can receive from either and can send to either. They’re quite excited that I don’t share their limitation and can send to them directly to some extent.”

  “Uh-huh,” Storm said thoughtfully. “Versha tested you and either you were born with the beast-master capabities or your prolonged contact with Prauo aroused and strengthened minor latent gifts.”

  “But if that second possibility was so, then wouldn’t the liomsa be able to transmit, too?”

  “They’re aliens, the same rules don’t apply. What else were you talking about?”

  Laris grinned. “Basically I was telling them the story of how I found Prauo, and how we think he’d come to be abandoned.” Storm frowned. “Was that wrong?”

  “It may not have improved their opinion of humans, that’s all. First one steals an aikiza, and they could have assumed it was as an aikiza, then because the aikiza tries to bond as he’s supposed to do, he’s abandoned to die. Look at it from their point of view.”

  Laris winced. “I see. But Prauo is with me now, and they like me. Anyhow the ones we were speaking to like us—I think.”

  “Which may not prevent anyone who doesn’t like you from doing whatever they feel they must. But we’ll see how things work out. Did you get any sense of their preferred time of being outside?”

  “They warned me about being out at night. They seem to think the night is very dangerous.”

  “So it’s possible they hole up during the dark, don’t come out at all?”

  “That was the sense of what I received.”

  *I received more, however,* Prauo sent to them all. Everyone’s attention focused on the big feline, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  *We would be wise to be wary. The aikiza sent to me alone that I was not to fear. They would watch over me always.*

  “So some of the aikizai may well be outside in the dark, watching the ship?”

  *So I think,* Prauo agreed.

  “You could probably understand them better than Laris. What did you think? Did you get anything more than she’s told us?”

  *Somewhat. Firstly you and Tani were right to leave us. They are horrified that you bond with animals.* His mind-voice was amused. *I chose not to tell them that I too can communicate with your beasts, who are my friends. They think you are perverted, that having the ability to bond with an aikiza, you have deliberately chosen animals instead. Although there was communication between the one with whom we spoke and the others nearby, it was suggested that perhaps you had no choice, not having aikizai of your own.*

  Storm nodded. “Basically it’s like a civilized man who drinks fine wines accepting that another man who has never been able to make those might drink raw fever brandy in lieu of anything else.” He looked at Prauo. “I’m not sure I like the most logical path from that. Such a man would assume that if the other man were introduced to fine wines, he would automatically switch—and possibly pour all his brandy down the sink.”

  Tani made a small protesting sound. “You think they’d demand we discard our teams if we could have aikizai?” Minou and Ferrare were thrusting their heads against her, sensing her sudden anger and distress. Mandy had hopped back to Tani’s shoulder and was comfortingly preening the girl’s hair. “No offense, Prauo. But I wouldn’t dump my team for fifty aikizai.”

  *Nor would I expect it. But as Storm says, it is possible my kin would believe it an option. Let us wait until we have spoken more, learned to understand each other better. It may be they would not ask such a thing of you. If they do, perhaps I could make it clear this would be wrong in your eyes.*

  “Perhaps.” Storm’s voice was grim. “We’ll wait and see.” He could have said more but chose to remain silent. He could be wrong—but five thousand years was a long time. If the pattern of aikizai had remained frozen most of those years, then the people outside might be unable to conceive of any other pattern. They might attempt to force their visitors to conform, to stay on this world, to discard their beasts and take aikizai instead.

  Prauo, Storm believed, would not force a bond. But that didn’t mean others of his kind would feel the same way. Prauo had grown up learning the way humans thought—and ho
w badly they could react to force or intimidation. Those outside had not. He’d make no assumptions and he’d remain wary.

  The more so as the ship’s scanners had registered a number of bursts of some sort of activity in the electromagnetic spectrum while Laris and Prauo were with the natives. These people could have radios of some sort, and if so it was likely the two pairs that had hung back had been reporting on the events transpiring before them.

  Within the ship the night was quiet, but morning showed the first native duo already waiting by the cairn. This time Logan went out with Laris and her aikiza. He walked two paces behind them as Storm had suggested.

  “If they think those without aikizai are less, it’s better they see you behaving that way. It may also allow you to approach any of their own kind who haven’t paired.”

  Logan had agreed, and now he strolled along behind Laris and Prauo, eyes alert for anything which might appear. As his friends sat again by the cairn to talk, while Logan drifted off a little way along the beach. The humanoid turned to look at him but said nothing. The feline appeared as if he would mindspeak with Laris or Prauo, but his liomsa laid a hand on the furred shoulder and the big beast was silent.

  Logan wandered casually down the sands. Attractive shells littered the beach, along with some short lengths of the dense, richly opaline-colored wood, the same kind of wood from which the knife case they’d found had been made. He collected several of the better lengths and a number of the attractive shells, bringing them back to pile near Laris. She turned to smile affectionately at him.

  “Those are beautiful, Logan. We can take them to the ship once we’re done here.” She returned to the conversation. It was becoming interesting. She was not communicating in language as much as a medley of single words, pictures, emotions, and blocks of feelings of query, emphasis, and other stresses over her information or questions.

  *Forgive me if I ask questions about matters which are sacred or improper. But I am a stranger; if I do not ask, how shall I learn?*

  The humanoid gave what looked to be a rather grudging nod.

  *Then I would ask your names. You do not offer them to me: is it improper to ask?*

  The creature’s primary emotion received by Laris was a sort of embarrassment as it answered. *Name*—a feeling of personality that might be translated as “I am,” then a long compound string of syllables which carried emotions underlining each sound. Laris blinked. That would not be easy to speak.

  *Have you a short name, something a friend might use?*

  *T’s’ai.*

  She repeated that, striving for the double click in the middle while he patiently corrected her. Somewhere in the flavor of the name, she noted, had also been the information of maleness. His aikiza, too, was male, she believed.

  *Are there many of your people?*

  *Many, but not nearby. We rarely come close to each other.* With that came a feeling of discomfort.

  *So you can’t gather together in too-large groups. Why not?*

  *Emotions of annoyance, disturbance, unwillingness to discuss the question.* It was the aikiza who replied more clearly then.

  *Too many together, hurts head, brings sickness.* His gaze moved to where Logan gathered other interesting flotsam from the high-tide mark. Again it was as if he would have spoken further, but his liomsa touched him and Laris felt a faint flicker of warning and perhaps disapproval pass between them.

  *Is there something you would ask me about Logan?*

  *He has no aikiza. Is he like the others, speaking to animals?*

  *No, he has no aikiza, but he isn’t able to speak to animals, either. He doesn’t have the gift.*

  *Gift?* The accompanying stab of disgust had clearly come from T’s’ai. *Sickness!*

  *Speaking to animals is wrong?*

  *Speaking to aikizai, right. To animals, not-right.*

  That was a clear enough indication of their beliefs, Laris felt. She couldn’t agree with those beliefs, not at all, but it was a definite piece of information she could take to her friends once this conversation was finished. She hesitated, then replied as moderately as possible, *It is not so where we live.*

  *You live in a wrong place, then,* came the answer as she could understand the blocks of emotions and word-combinations.

  She waited as she put her own language blocks into order and sent carefully. *Different people, different customs. But we need not be alike to be friends.*

  She felt a surge of strong quick sending then, not aimed in her direction, something being passed on by T’s’ai’s aikiza to the two pairs who remained again as they had the previous day, just at the forest fringe. As if drawn by that sending, which might well concern Laris, their own heads turned to stare at her and Prauo. There was something forbidding in their looks.

  Logan had gone some distance down the beach and was slowly making his way towards her again, his hands filled with treasures gifted by the waves. One of the items was a long straight branch of the dense, opaline wood. The narrower end had splintered into a point while the other end was more bulbous.

  Looking at it, Laris wondered if it didn’t come from a tree like the Arzoran castree—a species akin in type to Earth mangroves—which cast seeds like darts to stick into the mud and begin to grow. The castree did that during the Big Wet, Arzor’s monsoon season, when many inches of rain might fall in one day.

  However, the castree’s branches were often slender and built to break where they met the main trunk. In the powerful winds of the Big Dry, they could be carried and flung into the earth long distances from the parent tree and, like cuttings, could also take root. The branch Logan bore looked very much like a castree branch.

  As he approached she admired the find. He paused to pick up another couple of the shells, turning his back to the sea as he straightened. Since Laris continued to gaze in his direction, she was the first to see what suddenly rose from the sea behind him.

  “Logan!” Her scream soared out so desperately that he spun to face whatever she saw. Even as Laris screamed she and Prauo were on their feet racing toward him. She scooped up her laid aside stunner and was thumbing it to full strength as she ran. Prauo bared fangs in a ferocious snarl. None of their display of weaponry bothered the predator that focused upon Logan.

  Within the ship’s doorway Storm and Tani moved as one. He’d had the pulse-rifle by his hand during conversation. Tani braced herself against the doorframe; Storm propped the rifle and the top of her shoulder and laid the weapon’s sights on the beast’s head.

  The sea-beast was a formidable vision as its powerful tail drove it up the beach. To human eyes the thing was a mixture of crocodile and shark and all predator, an amphibious eating machine that cared neither that what it targeted had ridden the star lanes to be here, nor that it would destroy an intelligent being. With no time to evade the creature’s charge in the soft sand, Logan stood his ground, dropped the bulbous end of the long branch into the sand and angled the sharp point towards the attacker.

  Laris and Prauo had split, and now Prauo leaped, landing astride the thick neck, his teeth slicing home even through the beast’s armor plating. Distracted, the sea-creature failed to observe Logan’s branch. It still moved forward and the branch’s point took it in the chest. Feeling the sharp pains in chest and neck it continued to thrust towards what was hurting it.

  As one leg lifted Laris darted forward, pressing the stunner to the thinner skin as she triggered the entire clip in one burst. The creature flung back its head, screaming agony and rage, and, fractions of a second later, with a clear shot at last, Storm fired. The long wedge-shaped head exploded, the beast’s dying convulsions flinging it up almost clear of the sand before it flopped back to lie shuddering in final nerve spasms.

  Logan, Laris, and Prauo gathered in a tiny, shaking group, well back from the dead body. Storm joined them, still bearing the pulse-rifle in his left hand.

  Logan padded forward to wrench loose his branch. “Which of us would have killed it if you
hadn’t fired, I wonder?” Beside him Laris was breathing hard, her fury breaking out suddenly as she turned and strode back to where the natives stood watching events. Her worries over Prauo’s possible wish to remain here and her fear for Logan combined to send her into an adrenaline-fueled rage. Glaring furiously on T’s’ai, she both spoke and mind-sent, hurling words, emotions, and accusation at him like a spear.

  *You knew that beast was there, that it would attack. You didn’t even bother to warn us—no.* She recalled how twice the aikiza seemed about to say something. *It was worse than that. Your aikiza would have warned us, but you prevented him from speaking.* T’s’ai took an angry step towards her and from behind Laris came Prauo’s low, shuddering growl of warning.

  She felt a surge of disbelief from T’s’ai, and again from the other humanoids who watched the scene. Underneath it came a flick of amusement from their aikizai.

  Her hands dropped to tangle in Prauo’s shoulder fur as her gaze met that of T’s’ai. *You find those who speak to animals perverted. You know what I find perverted? People who’d sit and watch an innocent visitor walk into danger and don’t just say nothing, you prevent anyone, even your own aikizai, from warning him as well.*

  Along with that confused speech she flung all her anger, her disgust, and her rejection of their ways into T’s’ai’s blankly alien stare. Then she turned on her heel and marched back to the ship. Logan, who’d collected his beach gleanings, fell in behind her while Storm, rifle at the ready, brought up the rear.

  Prauo remained briefly, matching purple stares with T’s’ai’s aikiza, then he too bounded for the ship, to rejoin Laris as she stormed up the ramp.

  On the short turf by the cairn, three humanoids with three aikizai appeared to be engaged in a heated discussion. Laris glanced back at them as she entered the ship and hoped aloud that T’s’ai was the subject and that he was getting his ears chewed off by the others.