The Companions

  THE MESSAGE FROM THE WORLD

  Having observed a crouched and watchful crab, I knew the people of Loam had seen us on the height. It was likely Gavi would know we had been there. Adam and I made a fast trip to the falls while Clare and Frank stayed behind to look after the dogs and puppies. Gainor had wanted to come with me, but he had taken my word that Gavi had forbidden any contact except those of us who had first met her. We did little or no sight-seeing on the way, though we did stop to record the “birth” and the smells of a frond (sentence? phrase?) of words that happened to ripen as we were passing by. That night we stayed in the cavern Gavi had shown us on our first trip, which is where she found us the next morning. While Adam took a recorder and went in search of words being born, Gavi and I sat by her fire and talked.

  “My people were being annoyed at you,” she informed me. “You were pointing out our gardens so quickly, when they thought we were having them well hidden. So I was hearing in the halls of Loam.”

  “I knew we were spotted at least once,” I said.

  She nodded. “I was being in Loam to share a meal with Quynis and her brother Quillan of the Granite Tribe, along with Lailia of Loam.”

  “How many tribes are there, Gavi?”

  “On Night Mountain? Seven. Loam, Granite, Burrow, Cavern, Pillar, Falls. And, Lace Rock, though that’s being only a sort of tribe.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It’s artists and people having strange sex habits. They make clothing for us and glass, and paintings. They arrange spectacles and pageants. They don’t fight, not usually, anyhow.”

  She confided this to me as she might have done to a friend of long standing, though I realized she was doing so only because I had no standing whatsoever. She was desperate to talk with someone, and she could not safely share with anyone in Loam her thoughts, her motives, her hopes, or her methods. I had come all this way to talk of the Mossen dance, which she knew as well as I. If she wanted to talk about something else for a while, so be it. Her willing cooperation was too important to risk through impatience.

  “I interrupted you,” I said. “You were telling me about your dinner party.”

  “I was arranging it,” she said. “I was deciding Lailia should fall in love with Quillan now, before Lailia’s father is telling her she must be marrying Balnor of Burrow. No one was noticing that drink and cakes I am giving to Quillan and Lailia are being different from ones I am offering to Quynis or the ones I was eating myself. They are looking the same, certainly, but I am taking great care that only Quillan and Lailia are eating or drinking the special ones.”

  I nodded and tried to look interested.

  “When Lynbal was arriving, we are eating dinner, with wine I am bringing. Only having few sips of this and everyone is becoming warmer and more jovial. You say jovial?”

  “Sometimes,” I smiled. “A little drunk, you mean.”

  “Only a little. After supper, I am playing harp for them and using scent board. I have funny song about willogs and a moss-demon man whose wife was thinking herself well rid of him until he is coming back. While they are all laughing, the scent board is doing its work.”

  I rubbed the lines on my forehead a little fretfully. “Making Lailia fall in love with Quillan?”

  “Finishing of that, assuredly. When they are bidding good night to their hosts, I am following them home. Quillan was going into Lailia’s rooms and staying there until morning.” She smiled, a very satisfied smile. “Very early, Quillan was departing from her, eyes being all dreamy, so I am having only one task remaining. I am going into dining hall, just about time Chief Larign is thinking of ordering tea. I am saying I will get his tea along with mine, and I am bringing him very special tea indeed.

  “ Ah, Mistress,’ he is saying. ‘What brings you to my halls this morning? I hope we have no folk ill among us.’

  “I am telling him not at all, that I am having supper with his son and son’s wife, so comfortable the evening being, I did not go home afterward but am begging a bed at a Loam warmwall. He is drinking tea, making smiles on his face, and I am knowing the tea is pleasant for him. So, I am speaking of Quillan and of Lailia and of marriage between them and before many minutes, he is thinking this is his idea, to make alliance between Loam and Granite tight as a crab’s shell breastplate!”

  Now, I was interested. “How did you do that?” I demanded.

  “The scent of the tea is…what would you say…hypnotic agent? What I am saying goes into his head, and he is believing idea is starting there. So, into my teacup, I am saying: ‘Then you make an ally of Belthos some other way, not? But only after everyone else is in alliance. That way, Belthos cannot bargain. Belthos has nothing to bargain with. If he had Lailia, he could threaten harm to her if you did not do as he wished.’

  “And the chieftain thinks this is his idea, also. Then are coming Quillan and Lailia, hand in hand, feelings all over their faces, and Chief Larign is taking the news with much good nature.

  “So, then into my cup I am murmuring, ‘Since you have no heir as yet, Quillan, you won’t be joining the battle for the key. Your father will no doubt want to leave you in charge of Granite tribal lands. Your marriage should occur at once, so Lailia may accompany you there…’

  “And then the chieftain is saying, ‘Better get you married off at once. Can’t have the lovelorn drifting about during the key-battle time, can we?’

  “The young couple are agreeing, not? ‘But, I must make a quick trip below,’ Quillan is saying. ‘To the gem deposits at the foot of the falls. I will not have Lailia wed without an appropriate bride gift.’

  “And I am saying, ‘May I accompany you, chief’s son? I am having urgent business of my own there, collecting healing herbs.’ As I was having, though it was really for meeting you I am coming. Quillan is finding gems very early and is climbing halfway up Night Mountain by now, very eager.”

  I said, “So they’ll be married.”

  “Yes,” said Gavi, with a smirk. “And, if I am Mistress of the First Slumber, I will guarantee they stay as fond as they are now.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I am telling you now of conversation I am overhearing between chieftain and his son…”

  She told me to my amazement, making me glad that I had not pushed the matter of the message. There was still time enough for that. “When are the men going?” I asked.

  “The chieftain says the army goes in a few days by the western route marked by the scouts, and he is not even knowing he tells me. I am intending to go after him. I will be seeing this door, this key, this battle. Besides, if there are being men wounded, they will be needing someone to heal them, or to let them go, painless.”

  “How long a journey is it?”

  “Later I am finding out, two days’ hard march, three if they go slower or have to go farther north to avoid the Tooth-ies. The scouts have come back, already, after marking southwestern trails to go and western ones to return. Our warriors want to reach the battleground when the moon is full, giving them more light to fight by. Day Mountain is coming for a long time already. It is a great distance for them…”

  I said, “Your people have seen us, up on the Mountain. They know we’ll be coming. With a meeting between us inevitable, will they still go off to war?”

  “After I am settling matter for Lailia and Quillan, I am asking about that. Chieftain says if you find us, you find us, with warriors or without warriors, no big difference, but if Night Mountain is not in time for battle, it is making great difference! If one side is not showing up, is forfeiting a turn. Besides, our watcher heard you strangers say the names Hessing and Hargess, and chief says you will do nothing evil to upset Hessings back on Earth, for only our being here gives Hessing-Hargess right to this world. Otherwise, this planet belongs to the toothy stenchfuls.”

  “True,” I said, with admiration. “I hadn’t thought that far.”

  Adam came through the woods at about that time, bringing the device he’d used to record several more
talker fronds, turned to me immediately, and asked if Gavi had received the message.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Adam,” I said, as he hurried to set up the scent organ and begin the sequence recorded on the meadow. Gavi sat silent, sniffing it all the way through, then twice again.

  After the third time, she said, “How wonderful the machine is being. Oh, if I am having one of these, what wonders I might be working in this world.”

  “It sounds to me as though you’ve already worked wonders,” I said. “You heal people…”

  “Oh, yes, if they are not being too seriously ill, but the method is being so cumbersome by comparison. Gums for burning, powders for burning or spraying, oils for heating, each one being gathered and prepared with great labor then stuffed into scent boards with even more labor and care. Here, is only the pressing of a button and the machine is making the word.”

  Adam shifted from foot to foot, impatiently. “The important thing is, what’s the message? What have they been saying to us!”

  Gavi nodded, “Ah. Well. The World is asking that you be speaking to it. The World is asking that you be speaking to it before you are doing anything more to the plants and the creatures, for you are not fitting this world at all. This world is having no place for you on these mossy lands. If you are wanting World to be making a place for you, you must be speaking to the World, describing selves, no…not selves, describing wantings of selves. World is saying now, today, you people must be going up to the heights where are more like you and where no destroying happens. When others come, other kinds, they must stay on heights, also. Heights are…not…speakable with. Is that word?”

  Adam and I shared a glance before I said, “You might say, ‘conversable.’ Is that all of it?”

  She shook her head, looking slightly confused.

  “World says ‘We wonder about four-legged kind. Are they wanting going now or waiting until later?’”

  “Going where?”

  “I am faulty in understanding. These are new words. The word for go, I understand. Dog smell, receding, receding, something shutting it off, that is smell of going, and the odor of bruised moss as things go through it. I am not being certain what this means.”

  “We might be able to figure it out if we knew who is speaking,” I said.

  “World is speaking.” Her gesture was wide, including all the growths around us, the sky, the stone ramparts looming above. “World is speaking.”

  “From…where?” Adam asked. “Where is the brain, the thinking part?”

  “All is thinking part,” she said. “No. All is part of thinking part.” She looked puzzled. “Now, that is strangeness. Message says, ‘We.’ Smelling of mosslands, smelling of something not quite mosslands and smaller, smelling of something stronger, bigger. Message says, ‘We wonder.’”

  “How the hell do you get wonder out of a smell?” demanded Adam.

  She pondered this. “Wonder is like question smell. Question smell is complex but familiar smell with part missing or strange new part included. Your mind asks, ‘What is missing?’ or, ‘What is that doing there?’ That is wondering.”

  I blinked. When had I encountered that before? Of course. Each time a mother dog nosed her puppies, to see if anything in that complex smell was missing, she was wondering…

  Gavi stared at the sky, obviously puzzled. “I have not been smelling message to outsiders before. World was never thinking I was outsider. I have been smelling only little messages, from part to part. Like…like your eye telling your hand to reach out, catch something. Like your skin telling your finger to scratch an itch.”

  “But slower,” said Adam.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Ten or twenty days from sprout to finished words, another ten or twenty before ripe words do last dance. But then, we have short lives so move fast. World lives almost forever, so is moving slower.”

  “How do we speak to the World?” I asked. “How do we learn the language?”

  “You are teaching me how this machine is working, and I am making message for you. You have something more for me to sniff?”

  We said yes, and put in the message we had seen being born on the way to her as well as the ones that Adam had collected that morning. I was watching her face, and it went ashen.

  “What?” I cried. “What is it?”

  “World will not wait any longer,” she gulped. “World says, badness, badness, you will go or you will be driven out. Now, World says. No more patience.”

  I might have scoffed at this except for the look on her face. She was terrified, not for herself, but for us. Adam and I shared a long, troubled look, and my mind clicked into panic mode. “A message, Gavi. Make us a message. Right now. Here’s the machine, here are all the logs…”

  “Too long, it will take too long…”

  “No. It won’t take too long. The message should be simple. ‘We hear…that is, we smell you. We will obey you at once.’” It wouldn’t be at once, of course, but it was obvious that whatever was speaking to us had an extremely flexible notion of what constituted promptness. “Here’s the index. All the smells. With names. You hit the number of the smell you want on this keyboard, and it will emit. If that’s the right one, enter it over here, on this other keyboard. I’ll help you.”

  We worked until noon. The sun was directly overhead when we had the message ready. ‘Humans understand you. Humans will obey at once.’ She had done it a dozen times over, refining it each time.

  “Let the machine send this smell over and over,” she said. “Tomorrow, when you start back, keep sending it. When you get there, keep on with it.”

  “You don’t answer the message back to the message carrier?” Adam asked.

  She shook her head reprovingly. “Think! Ten, twenty days to make question. Then ten, twenty days to make answer. Words are gone by then. Sniffers are being everywhere in forest. Willogs sniff. Some mosses sniff. Some trees are good sniffers. Somewhere, here or on way, one will sniff the message…”

  “But who gets the message?” I demanded. “Willogs don’t run the world, do they?”

  Gavi gave me a hurt look. “I am saying many times, World sends message, World hears message. You are asking where is World’s nose? I am not knowing! Now is not time to be worrying about it. You have much work to do. Who is knowing what your wantings are? Every person is having different wantings. How am I saying your wantings? What are words for your wantings?”

  “We probably want Splendor, too,” grunted Adam. “We want heaven.”

  “Who has the key now?” I asked.

  “Key is at battleground, but Night Mountain is having…ownerness?”

  “Ownership.”

  “Yes. Soon the men will be marching away, going to fight for it.”

  “All the men?” asked Adam. “If so, that makes this a very good time for us to come to Night Mountain doesn’t it? Fewer people to worry about meeting?”

  Gavi wrinkled her nose. “It is not mattering, good time or bad time or impossible time. You must come, now, soon. Otherwise, it will be bad for you. I am wishing I could answer for you, talk to something for you. Why is the Mountain being not conversable, I am wondering.”

  “Rock,” I said. “The rest of the world is probably covered with a network of living material. It extends under the rivers and seas. Anyplace there’s a crack it can get through. But the rock that makes up the plateaus goes all the way through the world, and it’s solid basalt.”

  “So,” Gavi said, rather sadly. “This is why the World lets us be. Because we are out of way. I was thinking it was because we are living in respect of it.”

  Adam asked, “What’s the smell for go?”

  “I smell your smell receding, that means you go. I smell sharp, nasty smell, meaning ‘pay attention!’ added on, and whole smell means, you will go. That message you had me sniff, it says you will go to Mountain. Now.”

  “How do you smell now?” he persisted.

  “Evening smell, cut off. Little before even
ing smell, cut off, earlier time yet, cut off. Meaning, do not wait, not even a little. Do it now.”

  “And the word for the heights would be the smell of the heights,” said Adam.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “It is having a different smell from here, colder, with more leaves in it. And jar trees. Jar trees are very strange-smelling, smell is very…”

  “Pervasive?” I offered. “It spreads out?”

  “Oh, yes. Big jar tree is being dangerous. People are drinking sap, after time, they are becoming limp, senseless. After much time, they are dying. Small jar tree is being more useful.”

  “So, if a good many of the PPI people move up onto the plateau…”

  “Staying away from jar trees and gardens,” said Gavi, firmly.

  “…staying away from gardens,” I agreed.

  “I am drawing you map to make sure,” she said firmly, taking writing materials from the bag she carried and explaining as she drew: southernmost was tribe Loam, farther west was tribe Granite, farther east, tribe Burrow, others here, and here, there are gardens, and here, only here a good place for ships to set down on rock, disturbing nothing. The settlements took up only a small segment at the edge of the great plateau, though she mentioned that all the edge and part of the center had been explored by young men with nothing better to do.

  “Will your people welcome us?” I asked.

  “While most all the strutters gone, yes,” she said. “Then, when they are returning, we must be using your machine on them. Make them peaceable.”

  “You can do that?” I asked. “Really?” And if she could, I exulted, could I take the method back to Earth and use it on the iggy-huffos?

  “I can do it, if I am having help. If they will accept idea of sharing key.”

  “Will they win the battle?” Adam asked.

  “Oh, yes. It is our turn.”

  Adam regarded her quizzically. “You mean, the battle is more of a ritual than a reality.”

  She shook her head. “Is being very real, but ending is foreknown. Night Mountain is owed three wins, this is second one, so we will win, but people are still dying. Without blood, without dying, there is no battle.”