The Companions

  The door swung inward. She stepped in. The P’narg came in behind her, filling the entire door and effectively preventing the Simusi from seeing inside.

  “Come,” said her lingui-pute. “We have only a few moments to get out of sight.” Then she stopped at the sight of Witt, Gavi, and old Oskar.

  I explained their presence in the fewest possible words.

  The Phaina gave me a look of frank skepticism from her multiple eyes. “I cannot in good conscience leave them here to be eaten. Come now.”

  The last P’narg was inside, the hut was filled with flesh, fur, and a musty odor. Outside, the Simusi were becoming louder and angrier. The Phaina crossed the hut to the back wall, laid her hands upon it, and said something which the lingui-pute did not translate. The wall shimmered, the P’narg lumbered through the shimmer, and we followed. I was the last one through except for the Phaina herself, who turned and gestured the shimmer to be gone.

  We stood in nowhere, looking into the room we had just left as though separated from it by a pane of dark, watery glass. The door burst open. Half a dozen Simusi leapt in, teeth bared, eyes blazing, only to halt, confused. Other heads and shoulders filled the door behind them. The Phaina’s lingui-pute began translating. “Where the stinkshit did they go?” “I had my teeth set for that human woman!” “My slave was with them! The one I was going to hunt tonight!” With an exclamation of disgust, the Phaina turned its volume down.

  They began sniffing the small room, digging into the hay, throwing it in all directions. One of them ran a large sliver of wood into his pads and yelped in pain. One group went out, another came in. Evidently, each separate Simusi wanted to see or smell for itself. Eventually, after a great deal of dispassionately translated invective, most of it directed at the Phaina, they gave up and went away. Still we stood there, waiting, more or less patiently, and I took the opportunity to whisper into the Phaina’s ’pute that a Simusi had been killed by the dogs.

  She shivered against me and whispered back, asking where the body was. I asked if she had ever seen a dead Simusi.

  “I have not. Their folk are secretive about their dying.”

  “The dead one looks nothing like the live ones,” I said, offering her the recording I had made.

  She looked at it, reset it in order to see it again, then spoke over her shoulder to the P’narg, in a voice totally unlike any voice I had heard her use. It was full of iron and anger, and the ’pute did not translate it. She handed the recorder back to me as she said the words that dissolved the glass.

  We were back in the hut again, shambling after the Phaina as she went out the door. Three of the P’narg turned to the right, to go back the way we had come, falling from their erect posture into a six-legged gallop. I assumed they were going after the dead body of the Simusi in order to…hide it, burn it, get rid of it. Or maybe not. Maybe the Phaina wanted to see it for herself.

  The rest of us followed the Phaina as she turned left and continued along the dike. An occasional howl drifted faintly from various directions. Even I could tell they were saying, “Not here. Nowhere here.”

  “We will take a side street,” said the Phaina, when we reached the end of the dike. “There is a door here.” She once again used words that were not translated, and we went through a shimmer into somewhere else. We were on a mountaintop looking down into an enormously wide, mountain-encircled valley. Rivers crossed it; forests dotted it; dust rose from it, and as my eyes followed the billows to their origin I saw a great herd of fine, phantasmic elephants, marvelous elephants, hundreds of them, ears waving, trunks lifted, feet pounding the valley floor in a distant thunder. Beyond them I saw giraffe, and beyond the giraffe, herds of other creatures I could not make out except for their pooled darkness, flowing across the grasses like a tide.

  We turned on the mountaintop and took one step out onto a spectacular desert decked with mind-boggling rock forms and ranges of huge dunes in various colors. On a far dune I caught the silhouetted shapes of camels. A small, long-legged rodent burst from a thornbush and fled across my feet in a series of enormous leaps. A tortoise chewed reflectively on an ash-gray leaf. We slogged through sand and around wind-sculpted stones until another shimmer led us into a garden full of ravishing colors and scents, and from that into a jungle, perhaps the jungle from which Witt had been taken, for he cried out, then another shimmer took us onto a meadow under a violet sky without a sun.

  “Each of those shimmers…that would be seen by others as a flash of light, right?” I asked the Phaina.

  The Phaina gave me an admonitory look and continued toward a stone cylinder standing in the meadow, slotted in the same way as the key pillar on the battleground of Moss. Again making the high, keening sound, the Phaina strolled around the cylinder several times before settling upon a particular place to thrust her hand. A door emerged, another shimmer yet, and when we stepped through that, we were back on Moss in the saucer of blue fire, the place from which we had been taken.

  As the Phaina closed the door behind us I glanced at the sky. It was just before dawn, with sufficient light to silhouette the trees around the eastern rim, turning them into a pattern of black lace against the sky. At one place, the pattern was irregular. Telling the others I’d be back, I trotted tiredly off in that direction to determine if the irregularity was perhaps a familiar willog, Walky itself.

  As it was. It greeted me as I neared. “Oh, and you have escaped from the creatures! I have been waiting these many days, sorrowing perhaps that you would not come. Is this not remarkable! What is that tall one with you? Who are those male persons?”

  “Come on, Walky,” I said. “I want you to meet the tall one, the Phaina. You will address her as Sannasees. You will be polite, won’t you?”

  “I will, oh yes, what great honor to meet a new peoples. Who are the hu-men?”

  “Humans,” I corrected.

  “But plural of man is men,” Walky said, sounding outraged.

  I said, “It’s not logical, but it’s still humans. One of the men is someone I met on the other side, and I’ve known the other one for a long time.”

  Accompanied by a great flurry of strolling foliage, I returned to my companions, where I introduced Walky to the Sannasees, to Oskar, and to Witt. Witt seemed more horrified than pleased, but the Phaina conversed with Walky at some length while all six of the dogs sat patiently by. I thought they were being patient, at the time, though they probably were suffering from the same overload of anxiety that I was. I very much wanted to sit down next to them, doing and thinking nothing, but my flesh crawled at the proximity of that gate. The Phaina had opened it this time, but it had been opened by Simusi before, and they could probably open it again if they got onto our trail.

  I walked out onto the mosses and tried my link. It hadn’t worked in Splendor, but it worked here. I reached Gainor, who was so busy asking questions and being glad I had returned that it took some doing to convince him we needed picking up, soonest.

  “Not floaters if you’ve got something faster, Gainor!”

  He got hold of someone else, and by the time the sun was chinning itself over the tops of the trees, shuttles were setting down at the edge of the battleground. The first person off was Gainor himself, though it took a while to recognize him. His hair was down around his neck and he had a beard. He was holding a young dog. Scramble and I met him halfway up the slope, as the others straggled toward the ship.

  “What’s happened to your head?” I cried. “And where did you get that pup?”

  He just stood there looking at me. Finally, he asked, “How long have you been gone, Jewel?”

  “Four or five days,” I said.

  “Try sixty or seventy,” he replied. “This is one of Scramble’s pups.”

  Scramble made a sound, half a whine, half a human cry of confusion and pain. She turned toward me, ears laid back, and I saw she was stuggling to comprehend. Trembling, she turned back toward the puppy, smelling it all over. The Phaina came up beside me
, speaking in that lovely, liquid language of hers. “I should have warned you all. In Splendor time can be either faster or slower, depending on where you are.”

  Scramble whirled, uttered, a shout more than a bark: “Mine?” she demanded, “My ile?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “It’s your child. All the puppies are well and healthy, I’m sure…”

  “They are,” interrupted Gainor.

  “…it’s just that more days have happened, and…”

  “Ess,” her growl interrupted me. “Ai no…”

  She knew? Well then, she knew more than I did. I watched helplessly as she turned with the big puppy at her heels and went down toward the other dogs, who were standing indecisively some distance away. I watched as the ritual of smelling and learning went on again. Veegee howled. Dapple answered. Behemoth growled. The Phaina went down toward them, and I heard her voice. I had not known her translator could create the smell language of the dogs, but evidently it could. The conversation went on for some time.

  While the dogs talked, everyone else assembled at the ships, including Walky. The dogs came last, and as they went aboard, I went down the slope to the Phaina, so I could speak to her privately.

  “Sannasees,” I said. “All our peoples have heard of the Zhaar, the shape shifters, the bane of the galaxy. You believed they were gone. It seems likely they were never gone, that they took this new shape and lived in it.”

  She asked, “The thing you showed me, is it really true the three dogs killed it, unaided?”

  “I saw the fight, and I saw it die, Sannasees. It did not seem well practiced at battle. Perhaps the so-called Simusi have not really had to fight for a long, long time.”

  “Indeed, the Simusi have not fought. They have lived among us for ages, just as they are. Even if they are of some other shape, however, one may not merely assume, as you have done, that they are therefore Zhaar. One must find the answers to many questions. Did the Simusi race come into being only when the Zhaar departed, or did they exist before? And if so, do any of them still live elsewhere? And if real Simusi live, do they all make this change at death? If not, is it possible that some, many, or a few Zhaar inhabit Simusi shapes?”

  “Or are Simusi a pretense, another Zhaar game?” I said.

  “It is true the Zhaar played such games,” she acknowledged.

  We were silent a moment. I asked “Why dog shape, Sannasees? That’s what I can’t figure out. It seems a bad choice to have no appendages for manipulation, no capability of oral language…”

  Her voice was musing. “I have learned that in the long ago time of Earth, some of your subsets purposefully crippled themselves to show their power and wealth in having others serve them.”

  “In China,” I said, having read of it. “Noblemen grew their fingernails so long that their hands were useless. Other people fed them, washed them, clothed them. The female nobility were crippled as children so they had to be carried everywhere they went.”

  “So. If a race were very…proud, it might choose to have slaves with hands, slaves with voices. If a race were very proud, perhaps it would take a form that requires having others provide these functions. However, there is a better reason, perhaps. If a race were very frightened, it might choose to take an unlikely shape because it was an unlikely one. The Zhaar were under sentence of death. They had been told to leave the galaxy, to go beyond the rim or to stay and face us all.”

  “All, Sannasee?”

  “The elder races, who had had enough of them and their games. Then, too,” she mused, “dogs are…can be very beautiful, and they are packish by nature, which would accord with what we know of Zhaar temperament. If we were only sure…”

  The ’pute had translated the iron in her voice as well as the words. I murmured, “Well, if the Simusi are the Zhaar, they chose neither to go nor to die, obviously. Now that we know who they are…”

  “May know,” corrected the Sannasee.

  “May know,” I agreed. “But they don’t know that we know. Not if your P’narg were successful in getting to the body first, which I presume you sent them to do. That body should be enough proof for anyone, shouldn’t it?”

  She stood very tall, placing her manipulators together and nodding in a slow, ritualistic way. “One body does not tell us that all Simusi are Zhaar. However, to protect you, both our peoples must act with the presumption they are Zhaar. Zhaar have ever been vengeful, and they will not forgive being bilked by humans of their prey and of their slaves and perhaps even of the Simusi masks behind which they have hidden.”

  I said, “But if they don’t know we have seen through their masks, then we have some time to make our plans. Our race, yours, this planet of Moss, your home worlds are all at risk. If you could return to the plateau with us, your counsel would benefit us greatly.”

  She seemed lost in thought, her eye circle fluttering, the apertures on her neck quivering. The P’narg stood attentively around her, like a bodyguard.

  “Jewel, what is it your people, not your race but your kind of people, those who believe as you believe, what is it they want most?”

  I wanted to laugh and cry, both at once. “A return to Eden, Sannasee. A return to a world like Tsaliphor. A kinship with all of life. A place that welcomes all kinds of life among people who do not proliferate themselves at life’s expense.”

  She nodded, slowly, three times. I had seen that same measured nod among the Phain who walked the streets of Tsaliphor, like a punctuation mark, ending one prayer, beginning another.

  Eventually she said, “I will not stay just now, no. In matters of this kind, we are required to be sure, and it will not take long to be sure. Once we are sure, then I will return, not only for you, or us, or this place, but for all those who passed sentence long ago…” She sighed. The ’pute did not attempt to translate the sigh. “We, the Phain and our ancient allies, will confront this great threat. We must prevent greater damage than the Zhaar have already done to your race. We must not be unjust again…”

  “What have the Zhaar done to our race?” I asked.

  “Too much to take time for now. We will talk of it when I come again.”

  Suspicion reared its head. “Did they put concs on Earth?”

  She gave me a long, long level look. “That is, perhaps, too subtle for the Zhaar to have done.”

  She headed back toward the pillar with her bodyguard of P’narg, and I went up the slope to the ship, where Gainor was waiting for me.

  A MATTER OF SCALE

  When the G’tach G’gh’hagh of all the Derac received no word from the army that had been directed to attack the humans on Moss, a scout ship was dispatched to find out what had happened. It went, stayed a very short time, and returned to report.

  “Ships there,” said the scout. “Crews mostly there. Warriors not there. Tracers in warrior armor not work except one bellyplate I find by chunk of rock in middle of bowl. I not mean eating bowl, but like that. With things growing in it.”

  Successive questioning elicited, word by reluctant word, a slightly better description of the battleground at Moss.

  “So our warriors and their armor are gone,” said the Deracan Admiral.

  “All gone except one bellyplate.”

  “But there’s no blood or bones or scales lying around? Nothing like that?”

  “No, no blood, no bones, lots of scales.”

  “As though there had been a struggle?”

  “Or they were dancing,” said the scout. “Sometimes when we dance on ship, many scales come loose.”

  The admiral frowned. Young Derac did dance, though he could not remember why at this stage of his life. “Where are the humans?”

  “I go looking, find them on top of flat Mountain. Is force field place, like they have. Is spread-out place, like they have.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “Not grabbich. Brach, maybe, five eights, six eights. Lots of strange animals, like vlabbish. Hard shell with legs both sides.”
r />   “So basically, what you’re saying is, a grabbich of our warriors have just vanished.”

  “No sir. I not say vanished. What I say is I not find Derac except few in camp, few in ships. Derac I find say our warriors go attack humans by lake, but humans not there. And I not say vanish, because maybe Derac still there, on planet somewhere, but if tracers not work, I not find.”

  The scout was waved away, to his pleasure. Scout ships were extremely small, cramped, and cold, and he desperately wanted a bloody, stinking meal and a long sprawl in a decently warmed sandbox.

  “I do not believe,” said the admiral, “that fewer than a brach of humans killed and disposed of a grabbich of Deracan without leaving any trace. In fact, even if they’d left a trace, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Can we ask them?” suggested Gahcha, the representative from Gar G’tach.

  “We can ask the IC, of course. It may take some time to receive an answer.”

  “What are we going to do in the meantime?” asked Gahcha.

  “We are going to send two grabbichek of warriors to the third planet of Garr-290 to look for the one grabbich that disappeared,” said the admiral. “And while we’re at it, we’re going to arm every ship that’s available and send them to attack the Orskimi, wherever they’re running to! We’ll teach those twelve-legged bugs to fool with the Derac! Modify our females, they said. We’ll modify them!”

  On E’Sharmifant, ancestral home of the Orskimi, dawnlight disclosed the great mortuary temple empty except for a handful of Highnesses: the High Priest, the High Ritual Surgeon, the High Fire Master, the High War Leader, and the High Council Leader. Outside the morning shrilling began, rising to its customary level and subsiding as it now did, into silence. There was no daytime sound of wings buzzing, feet scraping, voices murmuring, for the city was wrapped in profound gloom and uncertainty concerning its future. It was rumored among the common Orskim of the street that a plan laid by ancestors and burnished over a hundred generations had gone awry.