Her caress had been an irrevocable farewell, I was so sure of this that it held me paralyzed, stunned, unable to follow or question. What had she decided in that moment? What had moved her? What had Phaina said, or perhaps promised…I wasn’t given time to consider it for in very little time, Walky returned and settled beside me. “The Phaina found a good door not far away, and they have gone,” it said.
“I know.” I said. I had not felt this grief since Matty died. I turned away so that Walky would not see my face.
“It is best,” it persisted. “You must not be sad that they have gone. If they did not go, all might become a disaster. There are so few of them, only six grown-ups and the children. One blow from the Simusi might end them all. Their race will be safer this way. You know.”
Safety. Of course. No matter how she felt about me, Scramble would think of her children first. Realizing that fact did nothing to relieve the pain I was feeling. Since I couldn’t stop the tears, I put my head on my knees and let them flow. Walky hummed something very like a dirge, and that somehow seemed funny, which was perhaps its intention. When I looked up, my eyes reasonably dry, it suggested I go tell Gainor what had happened.
“Is he out of the meeting?”
“Gainor Brandt says the whole meeting is out. Every person is out, being very irritated and rude. No minds are meeting at all. I rejoice I was not there when it all came apart. Willogs cannot be blamed!”
“Where was Gainor?”
“He was walking to his office place looking angry, bothered, upset, exasperated, irritated…”
“All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll go tell him.”
Which I did.
“All of the dogs are gone?” said Gainor, astonished.
“All,” I said, “and the trainers, too.” Gone away from humans, I thought. Gone where they and their children could be safe.
“How long?” he asked.
Should I tell him they were gone forever? I couldn’t say that yet, not even to myself. Thinking it made me weepy again, and I fought tears by changing the subject. “I understand the meeting didn’t go well.”
“The meeting did not go at all. After we broke up, the Tharstian told me both the Derac and the Orskimi are behaving in strange ways. The Tharstians have never known the Orskimi to be as distraught or panicky as they seem to be at the moment. Some great plan laid by their ancestors has not fulfilled itself, evidently an apocalyptic event, and ships loaded with Orskim warriors are spreading in all directions into the galaxy. Meantime, Derac ships loaded with females are exploding in all directions away from their retirement planets. My friend thinks a war is about to start.”
I stared out the window, I didn’t care about the Derac or the Orskimi. I didn’t care if they went to war. The concern in Gainor’s voice barely got through to me, and I had to make myself focus. There were several thousand Derac not far away. They’d arrived in warships. Unfortunately, as targets went, we were as accessible where we were as we were where we’d been.
“Are any Orskimi headed here?” I asked.
“They could be,” said Gainor. “Some of them are moving in this general direction.”
“So we now have to worry about the Derac, the Zhaar…”
“The alleged Zhaar,” he interrupted.
“The real Zhaar,” I said. “The Phaina verified it. As I was saying, the Derac, the Zhaar, and the Orskimi.”
Gainor snorted. “Plus the Houses of Hessing and Hargess, who are deploying their mercenary fleet. We should worry also about the willogs, the warriors of Day and Night Mountains, and Dame Cecelia Hessing.”
“Gainor! Why?”
“Because there was no agreement at the meeting. The warriors of the two Mountains, backed by the mercenary fleet of the Hessing-Hargess empire, are blustering threats against the IC, whose Marshal has ruled that Moss may not be settled by outlanders unless formally invited to do so by the planet itself. This threat, when communicated to the plenipotentiary, was answered by the World, saying that it would invite people to stay when it had given the matter sufficient consideration, say a few hundred years. And before walking out, Walky indicated the willogs would be enforcing whatever the World wanted enforced.”
I hated to ask. “And Dame Cecelia?”
“Demands to see you so you may be restored to your proper place beside her son. She is most upset that your liaison was not renewed…”
“Hell, Gainor. He was gone, and she was doing her utmost to get rid of me!”
“That’s in the past. She wants to pay you a great deal of money to liaise with her son and have a grandchild or two for her. After which, you may do what you like.”
“Why me!” I snarled, wondering if Witt had told her he had been “fixed.”
“Seemingly Witt is unable even to consider liaising with anyone else.”
I started to rave, when a thought hit me. I took a deep breath and considered it for a moment, then gave Gainor a dewy-eyed look I had never used in living memory, and said, “Tell her I will consider it, Gainor.” After a moment, I said, “You forgot to include one of our perpetual worries on the list. What about the concs?”
“They’ve shown up on several colony planets for the first time. Now that we know for sure the Zhaar are still around, we can blame them for that.”
I shook my head. “The Phaina thinks not, Gainor. She says it’s far too subtle for the Zhaar.”
Gavi used her ESC pass and spent every available hour working on the odor organ. When she came back from the first day, she wore the expression of someone who has just had an epiphany. “Wonderful,” she murmured to me. “It is being wonderful. So many things I am saying all at once. But, I am needing Walking Sunshine. The saying is all very good, but what about the smelling? Is it working properly?”
Gainor was reluctant to let the willog into the ESC enclosure. “I’ve had experience with both honesty and duplicity from aliens. That walking dictionary could be a congenial copse or a vegetable villain. I have no way of knowing which.” Also, there was the matter of spores, and seeds, and messages that might be scattered into the enclosure to ripen later. We compromised. From the room where Gavi was working, Sybil created an emitter that led outside, where Walky was invited to situate itself. This, coupled with a voice link, allowed the odors to get outside, where Walky could interpret them without breaching security.
“Do you think you can use it to make peace between all these people?” I asked her.
“Not all at once,” she said. “No. Words are one thing, dear Jewel. They are being like currency, money, universal exchange, understood by all. This is what language is, also, meanings persons agree upon. But the odors that are moving a person may not have the status of a word. Most people are having particular scents that are meaning something to them while meaning little or nothing to others. One has to experiment to find these odors. If we make peace, it will have to be person by person, couple by couple, this tribe then that tribe, making it like a quilt, sewing them together.”
I heard this with regret, for I confess to having had this marvelous daydream about being very useful to the Phaina, so useful that she would let me stay with her near Splendor, or, better yet, let me go to Tsaliphor, where there was not only a sun but also several moons. I had thought that making peace among groups of intransigent individuals might impress her in a way that few other things would.
“In the meantime, Gavi,” I said, “can you do me a tremendous favor?”
When I told her what it was, she laughed, but she said she thought it was possible, she’d let me know the following morning.
The following day, at lunch, I asked Gainor to reach Dame Cecelia. “Give her this message,” I said, handing him a onetime burn-book. “Precisely as it is written there.”
He read it through curiously. “You’re not really intending to…”
“Gainor, my intentions are my own. Just read her that message. If she and Witt are willing to comply, have Witt down here this evening.”
r /> He read: “ Liaisons made or renewed on Moss should be done in accordance with Mossian custom and rite. Such a rite has been arranged for this evening, if Witt is interested.’”
“Exactly,” I said. “Have him here this evening.”
Evidently, either Witt or his mother or both were eager. They arrived at the installation about sundown. I was there to meet Witt, bathed, perfumed, and dressed as prettily as could be, considering the situation. Dame Cecelia had come to witness the event, so she said in an ingratiating tone so far from the manner I remembered that for a moment I thought she might be quite another person, a Zhaar, say, in the shape of a Hessing. Setting that thought aside as yet another example of my tendency toward overingenious extrapolation, I explained that no witnesses were allowed except those enacting the ritual, but newly joined couples were always available the following morning to receive gifts and congratulations. After some argument, she departed on Gainor’s arm, and I led Witt by the hand to the cave Gavi and I had found the previous evening, one with a good warmwall and bathing pool. Since this area of the plateau was unoccupied, there were a good many vacant but quite livable caverns, and I confess that this one had appealed to me, as it was set about with fragrant trees and a number of colorful flowers.
Gainor had obtained some of the necessary materials from ESC stores, and Gavi had made a quick trip to Loam to fetch the others. Her assistant had been working in the cavern since morning, hanging the curtains, tuning the harp, and creating several of the things Gavi called burn-boards. Since there had been no time for the couple to provide the usual essences, Gavi had had to make adjustments to the ritual, which weren’t complicated. She told Witt to go behind the curtains, disrobe, place his clothing outside, and get into the warm pool, submerging himself entirely. The descenting material, whatever it was (Gavi had refused to say), was already in the water.
When splashing noises were heard, I slipped over to the curtain and took his underwear. We had borrowed the new odor organ from ESC, and it took Gavi less than a minute to analyze the smell and reproduce it. Gavi introduced me to the other person involved, and that person went behind the curtain and the splashing noises resumed, at which point I took the odor organ back to ESC before they found out it was gone.
I returned to witness the rest of the rite. There was a good deal of harping, singing, and odor squirting, as well as outcries of ecstasy from behind the curtain. Witt had never yelled like that with me, and I found myself in a bit of a snit over it. Then with a flash of intuition, I realized that Witt had been imprinted on concs. Of course he had. I had been a novice, he had been imprinted on another life-form, and we hadn’t had Gavi to help. Finally, in the hour just before dawn, we packed up everything and departed, she and her assistant to the floater that was waiting to return her to Loam, I to my bed where I lay down and cried a few more tears, perhaps partly because I had long ago wanted someone to love and had thought Witt was that someone, but more likely because I was lonely and past the age where I could convince myself that just anyone would fill the void.
Came the morning, Witt and his bride were there to greet his mother and sister. The bride was veiled. Gainor told everyone that Mossian custom demanded a bride should be veiled the first few days of marriage. I was watching the whole thing from inside the nearest building. Though the bride was a good six inches shorter than I, Dame Cecelia didn’t notice the difference. I did note Myra looking around, here and there, as though searching for someone. As I had thought, however, Dame Cecelia had never actually looked at me, and she would not have recognized me if she had seen me on the street.
While the group was sharing toasts, Myra sneaked away and made a beeline for the building I was in. Gainor let her go. He had probably told her where I was.
“All right, Jewel,” she said, with some annoyance. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Gemma,” I said. “Call her Jewel, she won’t care. She is Witt’s true love, and you may believe me when I say he will never love anyone else.”
“Who is she!” demanded Myra again.
“A lovely young woman of Loam, one of the provinces here on Moss. Her people were originally from Forêt. She was a virgin at her marriage to Witt. She has a good reputation. She is a skilled tapestry designer. She is physically healthy and quite capable of producing several grandchildren for your mother if Witt is capable, which he may or may not be.”
She waved my explanation aside. “And Witt loves her?”
“He does,” I said firmly. “He will continue to do so even after they fix her face, back on Earth.”
“Aha! So she’s ugly?”
“She is quite plain, yes. Here on Moss, they were unable to do anything about that, but I’m sure any beauty surgeon on Earth will be delighted to help a Hessing.”
“How will she put up with Witt?”
I sighed. “You don’t understand, Myra. Witt was habituated to concs. That habituation has been erased and forgotten. They are both completely, absolutely in love with one another. Neither he nor she will ever love anyone else.”
“Good Lord. That’s possible? You arranged this?”
I said, “Yes. I ‘arranged’ it. Such things are often ‘arranged’ here on Moss.”
“Mother will scream the ship down!”
“Let her scream. It won’t affect Witt. Not after last night. He’s been deprogrammed and reprogrammed.” I had only my own example to make me sure it would work, but Gavi had told me she had never failed before and had no reason to think she would fail with Witt and Gemma.
Later that day, several Hessing ships left orbit for return to Earth, including the one Witt was on. I amused myself imagining various scenarios of what had taken place. The simplest was that Witt, thoroughly in love with his wife, had responded immediately to her request (which Gavi had schooled her to make at least twice during every waking hour) that she be taken to Earth where her appearance could be modified, making her more acceptable in her new position in life.
The whole business amused both Gainor and me greatly. We laughed about it. It was rather nice, in a way, to have such a humorous memory, since what was coming had nothing amusing about it.
The following day the Tharstian Marshal from IC recessed the meeting indefinitely and then he (she, it, or them) spoke privately with Gainor. Derac and Orskim peoples were at war, he said. Since there were several thousand Derac on Moss, we could probably expect an invasion of Orskimi, or at least a hit-and-run raid. He suggested very strongly that the Earthers, together with all their force fields, shields, buildings, and weapons be moved into the nearest convenient cavern, inasmuch as there were no ships available to evacuate all of us.
I said, “What about the Hessing fleet?”
Gainor snorted. “They’re not in a mood to be helpful, Jewel.”
Moving the compound wasn’t something that could be done in a few hours, but the ESC staff, together with crews and mechs from both the shuttles and the two small ESC ships in system, made a valiant effort. Luckily, there was a very large cavern nearby, into which mech crews could move the disassembled ESC installation while other crews took apart the PPI structures and moved them as well. None of the shifting about could be done, of course, without the Derac delegation seeing what was going on, and Gainor had to explain that we had “an intimation” we might be attacked and by whom.
That was enough to make the Derac delegation depart at once, in their own shuttle, and in an amazingly short time thereafter, their flotilla of warships soared up from the Derac camp below. As Gainor reminded me, ships don’t fight well from the ground. The warriors and chiefs from Day Mountain spent the day finding their own cover and making it look as natural as possible. After several hundred years of practice, they were really very good at it. Walky observed everything that was going on, from start to finish, remarking from time to time that if he could just borrow a floater and bring up a few hundred willogs, the camouflage could be vastly improved. I think I was the only one listening to him, and it occurr
ed to me that while he was right, it would be more useful to make false installations below, where they had been, rather than hide the ones we were moving. I talked to him about doing so, and he grew quite enthusiastic. When evening came, and everyone was too tired to be attentive, Sybil and I took a floater to transport Walky down to the site of our former encampment.
“Do we go back right now, or do we stay and see what Walky does?” Sybil asked me. “Is the attack theoretical or imminent?”
We decided to split the difference and stay for a while. There would be moonlight later on, and we would be able to see well enough to get the floater back to the cavern. Walky wasted no time. He had not been gone an hour before we began to see a ghost installation rising up where the real one had been. The headquarters building, constructed entirely from moss. The building we had occupied, the refectory, the workrooms and habitations, all rising up complete with windows and doors, even the ornamental mosses set as they had been when I first saw the place. Moss-demons, I thought, had no lock on similitude.
Walky came out to ask how we liked it, and we told him we liked it a great deal, but to remember that if an attack came, these structures might be set afire, or blown up.
“Oh, gracious, yes, Walky is not unintelligent! My, yes, it would not do to put delicate, rare things in the way of such a danger. These are ordinary mosses, easily regrown, and once the guides have put them in place, the guides themselves will go back into the forest. All that will be left will be the mosses, with no voice, no mind. Do not worry, Jewel. I would not commit an ethical misstep. No. Not for all the world!”