The Mount

by Carol Emshwiller

  But what if I ask this runner about my mother? What if he knows where I could find out something about her? If he has paper, I could write her a note. The Hoots never let us do that, they thought it would be bad for us, but nobody would stop me now.

  The Tennessee stands up and looks all around. He sees my drying dry cakes and looks all around again. Then he takes a big, blowy breath. He’s going to run again, but it’s easy to see he doesn’t want to.

  If I’m going to ask him anything, I’d better do it now.

  I sneak out from behind the broken bits of Hoot house as quietly as I can. But he’s not a Hoot, I don’t have to be that careful. And any Hoot would have smelled me and heard me a long time ago.

  I suppose I should have stepped out right away, made a noise, not come at him from behind, but I don’t know much about us Sams and Sues. I’ve only known a few really well. I was always in a stall with only one other person. And I worried what that Tennessee might think when he sees my scars. (It’s been months and they still hurt.) Only really bad Sams get scars all up and down themselves like mine. (And only really, really bad Sams are scarred up like my father.)

  The Tennessee startles and turns and jumps at me—he seems as fast as a Hoot. He has a long knife. I almost get another scar.

  You can tell he knows what he’s doing . . . I mean, how to fight, which I don’t. He holds the knife low and upside-down. I want to learn that. I’ll bet my father knows. I wonder why he didn’t show me?

  Being a Seattle, even though I’m only eleven, I’m taller than he is, but I think he sees I’m a young one and holds back just in time.

  “Sorry. Maybe sorry.” He looks at me, my scars and how I’m all wet. “Which side are you on?” He’s staring at me almost as hard as my father does. “You for refrigerators and nice warm stalls, or what? There’s lots of Sams haven’t decided where the strawberry ice cream comes from.”

  I can’t answer. I don’t know which side I’m on. All I know is: Not my father’s. Used to be I knew I was on my Little Master’s—that was my one and only side, but now I’m not so sure.

  “At least no surcingle. At least a nice long scar.” (And he can’t even see hardly half of it.) “Misbehave, did you?”

  I don’t dare say I got it saving a baby Hoot. I change the subject. I tell him I’m looking for my mother.

  “Who hasn’t lost a mother?” He puts his knife in its scabbard and sits down on the edge of the pool, still blowing every now and then—as if it’ll take a while for him to get his breathing back to normal. I sit, too, but not too close.

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Of course.”

  “Some don’t.”

  “She’s on my registration.”

  “Some never had any registration and some lost theirs, and some had theirs forged to something better.” He looks me up and down then, taking in my conformation. Nods a half-dozen times. “Pure Seattle,” he says. Then, “Well, you can’t help it.”

  That’s the first time I’ve heard anything like that, as if I’m not the best there is.

  I want to say, “And you can’t help it you’re just a Tennessee,” but I don’t. I say, “I’m out of Merry Mary. My grand-Sue on my father-side was Tutu. You must have heard of her. She was a champion . . . the champion, one hundred thirty-two, year of Hoots.”

  The more I talk about who I am, the more I hate my father. How are we going to have shows and races with everything smashed and Hoots all dead? I was going to live up to my granddam’s reputation. All the Hoots said I should, and that I had the conformation to do it, too. I might even be better. Now my father’s made it so I’ll probably never be able to do what I was born for. Little Master and I, all grownup and “go, go, going,” my nose fixed nice and straight and Little Master in his shiniest whites . . . his gold flags. . . . My father was born for it, too, and he didn’t even care. If he got to be one of those in that spiky tack, it was his own fault. I know it was. I’ll bet he had that crazy look of his even before they did all that to him. I don’t see why that Tennessee Sue likes him. Far as I’m concerned, he’s of even less worth than she is.

  “I’ve seen pictures of Tutu. I can see her in you. And Beauty! Was he your father? I saw him race once! The best!” Then he looks me up and down, my scars, and says exactly what I’m thinking. “You’ll not get a chance to be an endurance racer now, for lots of reasons, but some day you could run for us runners. You can carry lots more than I can.”

  “I will be a racer. I’ll find a way.”

  Now he really does look suspicious. “Maybe.”

  Some place there has to be Hoots living as they used to, in freedom and elegance and hard work and not wasting time. (Like I’m doing right now.) My kind couldn’t have ruined all their towns.

  “Well. . . .” He stretches and breathes another big breath. “I’ll keep an eye out for your mom. Where do you live?”

  I just stand there. I’m thinking how I wonder where I live, myself. Not any place.

  He gives another of those big, sloppy breaths. “I have to go, but I run this route every week, and I always drink right here.” He looks at the sun. “About this time, too. You could write me something. Leave it under a rock. Under there, where your dry cakes are. My name is Brandy. What’s yours?”

  I still can’t say anything. Besides, am I Smiley or Charley? Smiley’s on my registration.

  “So . . . well . . . good luck. I hope your cookies dry.”

  He starts off at a nice, easy, long-distance, Seattle kind of pace. Halfway down the avenue (it still looks like an avenue, though full of debris), he turns and waves, calls back, “Merry Mary. I’ll keep asking.”

  I wave hard—with both hands. I’m trying to make up for not saying good-bye.

  I take another drink and then sit where the runner sat and eat one of the soggy cakes. I’m so hungry I don’t care how gummy it is. (These days I’m always hungry. Before, with the Hoots, they made sure I had plenty of everything that would keep me growing, so I’d be the size I’m supposed to be. After a workout, I’d guzzle down a whole quart of milk or juice at one time. Sunrise always looked as if she couldn’t believe I could do that.)

  Then I think I’ll go see how Little Master is getting along without me. I actually miss him. Well, I always did, every time we weren’t together. And I start to worry that he might be in trouble. If any Sams or Sues see him, he’s done for. Unless they’re done for.

  I go back carefully. I’ve heard tales of how Hoots can leap down on you and make you their host for life in a half a minute. They did that all the time when they first came. They’re good at climbing because of their hands. Funny though, their houses are always half-underground (the tops of them look like igloos, except they go on and on, one room after another after another), but Hoots like to be up high when they’re outside and not riding somebody.

  When I get close to where I left him, I start being even more careful. I don’t want him dropping down on me from any of the Hoot light poles.

  I find him on the stall roof, lying flat as he can. (Hard to make that big head look flat, but easy to flatten that body.) There isn’t anything to hang on to, and he’s grabbing at a tiny metal edge of the ridge pole. Trembling. Scared. And talk about droopy! When he sees me, he perks up a bit, I see it in his ears, but he just stays there.

  “Let go,” I say. “Slide down. I’ll catch you.”

  But he can’t let go. I’ve heard of that happening, especially with young ones, but I never saw it before. I’ll have to go up and pry him loose. Maybe I won’t be able to. I’ll have to make him feel less scared when what I really want to do is scold him. I want to say, “You almost gave me the ‘leap-and-choke.’ I saw you. I’m the one who’s scared.” But instead I say—nice and calmly, “Everything’s all right now that I’m here. Look how wet I am. I can take you where there’s water. Just let go.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Think how you’ll ride me. Think how I’ll keep you safe.”
r />   “I want a mother. I can’t let go without one of my mothers.”

  “I don’t know where any mothers are. You have to let go. There’s no other way.”

  But he hangs on.

  “Remember how I saved you? Look. Look at my scars.” I pull up my tunic and vest, all the way to my shoulders, and then I lift my worst leg towards him, the one with the long scar slanting all the way down. I pull my leggings aside. “Look. What I did for you. I didn’t birth you, but I gave you your life back. I’m like a mother.”

  That doesn’t work either. I’m going to have to climb up and try to pry him off.

  “Put your head down on your hands. Relax all over. You’re safe now. I’m coming up.”

  I’m worrying so much about him, I forget to worry about how he could kill me with these exact same hands, grab me and not be able to let go. He’s held me too tight before. That’s one of the things our trainer had to keep yelling at him not to do.

  But . . . well, do I want my Little Master or not? What would I do down here all by myself? Sleeping without his leg around me and his warm baby breath on my cheek?

  I climb on up.

  I don’t try to pry him off. I lie down beside him and stroke him. I even do a little of their kind of nibbling. I talk mother-talk. I remind him about the doll of me he wants and how, as soon as we get down, we’ll go get that. Except we’ll go have a drink first and eat a soggy dry cake. I try to make him laugh about our cakes. I tell him how it’ll taste so bad he’ll say, yuasch, yuasch. His ears go up a little bit. Then I tell him how he’ll ride on me and the Smiley doll will ride on him. “Won’t that look funny, one of me riding you? And off we’ll go, go, go.”

  That’s what finally does it. His ears begin to wiggle-giggle.

  He wants to help me dig into his house, but he gets in the way. I put him on a nice smooth piece of unbroken wall to watch me work. He droops, but he perks up when I tell him, “Your job is to listen and smell and look all around in case of danger. That’s always a big help.” I spread out our half-dry dry cakes again. I say, “Don’t let any mama ducks get them.”

  Breaking the stucco off his house is easy, but I have to find a joint in the mesh to pry it aside, which means I have to pull a lot of stucco off. Even when I find a joint, it’s not easy to pry it apart. My father could do that, no trouble at all.

  When I finally make a hole big enough to crawl through, I go up beside Little Master and lie back to rest. We each eat half a dry cake. But it looks like he sneaked a couple while I was working. I should have warned him we’re going to run out pretty soon. I ought to talk to him about a lot of things.

  “This is serious. I have to talk to you. You got scared without me, but I got scared, too. You could kill me by mistake even, not even trying. That wouldn’t do you much good. Remember our trainer telling you, ‘Loose, firm hands? Loose elbows?’ If you want to ride me, you have to promise a lot of things. You have to remember, if I’m not safe, you’re not either. If I’m not safe, you’re as good as dead.”

  “And you have to remember I’m His Excellent Excellency, About-To-Be-The-Ruler-Of-Us-All.”

  “More likely I am. Look at who my father is.”

  “There never was a Sam who could get to be ruler. And, anyway, I’m trained for it.”

  “You’re just a baby and you know it. You need me a lot more than I need you.”

  “Do not.”

  “I don’t need you at all.” I get up and start walking away. “And I don’t need your dumb doll.”

  I see him scrabbling up the broken roof of his house, trying to get high again, ears drooping.

  “I do. I do. I need you. I know I do.”

  “So you’ve finally got that through your stupid Sammish head?” But that’s their kind of talk. I change it. “Stupid Hoot head.”

  “All us Hoots are smarter than any of you. They said you Sams and Sues would eat our brains if you had the chance so you could get as smart as us.”

  “Smart! Is it so smart for you to threaten your one-and-only mount? Maybe one-and-only forever. Where will you get another?”

  In the sun, when the light is just right, those great big eyes of theirs look so transparent. You’d think you could see right into their brains and see their thoughts swirling around. And they’re such a pale, pale blue. . . .

  I wait and let him think. Then I hear his ears flap, giggling again. “I’ll ride my Smiley doll,” he says.

  “Just remember a thing or two.”

  “Peace and kindness is a Hoot’s way.”

  “Promise? Cross your heart?”

  “Promise, but not hope to die.”

  That’ll have to do for now. Besides, I’m anxious to go in.

  “Come on. You crawl in first. I’ll be right behind. But you think about what I told you.”

  Inside it’s not as squashed as it looked from the outside, though I have to lean over even more than when I was here rescuing Little Master. And there’s light. They have these glowing strips that turn on by themselves if it’s dark, and some are still working.

  I forgot how grand it is—grand, even all broken. We . . . my own kind, destroyed all this elegance: Plaster underfoot along the halls, pictures on the floor, broken mirrors (they have a lot of mirrors), dead flowers in smashed vases, plant stands tipped over, plants dead . . . but they have a lot of phony flowers, too, bigger and better than any real ones I ever saw. (Maybe they’re copies of ones from their planet. They always say, except for us, things were better where they come from.) There’s lots of twisted frames, gold and silver, broken but still glittery. That’s what you notice most: The shine of everything.

  Little Master wobbles off on his skinny legs right away, but, just like that first time, I can’t do anything but stare. There’s so much I didn’t notice before: The handles along the walls and ceilings, black filigree and shaped as if a slot for each finger (that’s another thing, they love filigree), the glittery white rugs, here and there on the floor and here and there on the walls, too, and even on the ceiling. (We never had rugs. We had cement floors they had us hose down once a week.) There’s my picture and my father’s, slanting sideways now, and, further along, my mom’s. She’s so beautiful. Her shiny black hair is in a fancy complicated roll—sort of a filigree look to it, too. Her nose is perfect. I don’t know if it was ever fixed or not, but I don’t think it needed to be. Her legs are muscled. She’s wearing short shorts that show them off. She has a perfect conformation. My father didn’t love her, even so. Not even ever! He practically said so.

  I go look at myself in a big cracked mirror. I do look like my father. I pull my vest up to get a better look at my scars. All my life I tried to be a good Seattle, but now I really do look as if I misbehaved.

  Little Master comes rolling back on a baby stool just his size, with his doll of me, and with a pile of nice shiny whites folded into squares. “Look! I found my best whites! If you find silks, we’ll look good.”

  (He doesn’t like his scratchy sheep-colored handknit vest any more than I like mine, but we do like how they’re warm.)

  That doll is so worn-out I wonder how he can still want it. He’s hugging it and nibbling at it and licking it like he nibbles and licks me. It’s already been licked too much. Pretty soon it’ll be licked right through. There are shiny patches on its cheeks and nose. I can’t believe it, they made it with a nose just like mine. You’d think they’d have made it so it would look like me after I have my nose fixed.

  Of course, who cares what my nose looks like up there in the mountains? And I’ll bet my father likes his nose just the way it is, just like he likes everything handmade and hard to do—a handmade, hacked-out nose. Little Master will laugh when I tell him.

  “I’m ready. Can we bring my stool?”

  I turn away and unclip my mom’s picture from the wall. The picture hangs almost to the floor and it’s creased and scratched. That reminds me of her poling. I think how now I know how much that hurt and how she has to wear her misb
ehavior right out in front like I have to.

  I turned away from Little Master because I’m too tired to even think about bringing that metal stool. Of course Little Master doesn’t understand about carrying things. He never had to carry one single thing in his whole life—except this doll.

  Little Master and I have to talk about a lot more things. It feels safe in here. I’ll do it here. While I talk I’ll be able to look around. Maybe I should get myself a silver surcingle. Lots of Wild Sams and Sues have them. Except I heard my father say it’s like a dog showing off a jeweled leash. We have a dog up there. Hoots hate them. They got rid of most of them first thing. They can’t stand how they smell even for a minute. They’d rather smell something dead than a live dog.

  We always joke that the Hoots smell bad to the dogs, too, but Hoots say they don’t have a smell and how that makes them safe unless seen and heard. And that that makes them better than all the smelly creatures on this world. Anyway, they wouldn’t fit comfortably on dogs like they fit on us. Our shoulders are as if made for them. And dogs are too dumb. Hoots are used to smart hosts. Except they often say we’re not quite smart enough to know what’s in our best interests. I guess we aren’t. I guess all this dumb destroying my kind is doing proves it. I’m smart, though. I haven’t destroyed a single thing nor stolen until this picture of my mom.

  I pick Little Master up and take him to his crib. I carry him like the mothers do their infants, by the skin at the back of the neck. They do it so as not to get grabbed by the babies when they don’t want to be grabbed. I do it for the same reason, and as a kind of lesson about how I’m in charge now. That crib has glassy-like sides so you can look in at your baby. He can’t climb out by himself and I don’t have to ever take him out unless and until I want to.