The Companions (26 page)

The last cages opened silently, the first allowing a flutter of bright wings to escape into the air. Some flyers, others ground walkers. Warblers and quail. Hungry birds that pulled down the first head of seed they came to and began swallowing the seeds. Though Moss had no plants with seeds, Jungle did, and Treasure had borrowed from both. The other cages were larger, tall enough to hold speckled deer. Three adult does with their young. Two full-grown bucks in individual cages. Other cages with young of both sexes. They stepped out watchfully, ears alert, eyes searching the surroundings.

In the ship as we moved away, I turned to face Adam.

“What was that?” I asked. “That smell, just before we left?”

“Two smells! Did Paul notice?”

“I don't think he caught it at all. I wonder how the first odor managed to dissipate so entirely before I smelled the second one. As though it had an edge to it.”

He put his hands on my shoulders, his nose twitching, his
face seeming elongated in his effort to smell what it had been. “My nose even in the daytime, as you should know very well, is damn near dog nose, and I smelled danger.”

“There are lots of stenches that aren't threatening, Adam.”

“It felt threatening. We may have put those poor little critters at risk!”

“They'll make it,” I said, striving for the calming voice I always used around the trainers and the dogs. Both sets reacted strongly and quickly to stimuli that I couldn't sense or couldn't interpret. High levels of threat and stress coupled to intelligences that fully apprehended danger meant they needed all the calm they could get. “If it was something big you smelled, remember that our prey animals have evolved to sneak around the borders of big stuff. Their ancestors outlived the dinosaurs, coexisted with cave bears, went right on breeding when coyotes and wolves and dogs were all over the place. We've made hundreds of drops on Treasure. All the prior ones have survived well. The deer are having twins and maturing fast. All of them have unlimited food and no predators yet…”

“That we know of,” he muttered.

I pretended not to have heard him. “The native plants plus the seeds we've left give them all the nourishment they need. The mineral blocks in the cages will keep them going until the plants grow. Six pregnant doe rabbits, average litter of six, ready to breed at three months. Two buck rabbits. The others similarly arrayed. From this drop alone, assuming little or no mortality, several thousand doe rabbits, more or less, in a year or so. That's Earth time, of course. The one thing we don't know is what the change in the seasons and length of days will do to them. The breeding stock came from a dozen different ark habitats. Gravity will be different for some. Because they're burrowers, living by smell in the dark a lot of the time, length of days shouldn't matter much. And they get Mosslight, at night.”

“How long before dogs can be introduced?”

“We're not certain. A dog Behemoth's size would eat sev
eral rabbits a day. A pregnant or nursing bitch would eat more. The prey population was dotted all over the moon, and it's already widespread. There are still more drops to be made, and we'll have to risk being seen in order to make a few big, big deliveries. Thus far we've managed not to be noticed. A casual sampling stop en route to or from Moss attracts no particular attention. Only Gainor Brandt and our associates know that Treasure is owned by the arkists, so don't mention it…”

“What's that?” Adam asked, staring out the port.

“Where?”

“Back on the moon, just there for a moment…A flash of light like a beacon. Did you see it?”

I peered at the receding globe, seeing nothing except itself, a green orb with pools of blue here and there, wisps of cloud overlaying all. “Probably light reflected off a rock face. There's a lot of rock under all that green, and sometimes a face splits off. If the slope is steep enough, it will slide down and leave a bare surface for a short time, smooth and slick, like a mirror.”

“You know all about the place?”

“I know everything ESC knows.”

“From General Brandt?”

“He's a good friend, Adam. To all of us.”

An ESC shuttle brought us to Moss. From above, as we descended, I admired the textures and colors of the surrounding forest. The randomly patterned surface gave a subtle impression of movement, as an ocean does. The only landmarks that stood out were the shielded island where ESC held sway, and a large, dark-colored blot to the west, a charred clearing littered with ugly ships. One of the crewmen, noticing my frown, said, “That's the Derac encampment.”

“The land looks cleared.”

“Right.”

“I didn't think IC members could do that, not until the planet is certified.”

“The Derac read the regs differently. If their ships burn a clearing, that's an accident, and it doesn't count. And if each time the ship sets down, it burns it a little bigger, that's still just an accident.”

“How many of them are on the planet?”

“Anywhere from half a dozen to what looks like several hundred, now. They've been building up, lately.”

After we landed, I stood in the lock, trying to verify the movement I thought I had seen. Though no wind was blowing, a branch moved fractionally toward the ship, bringing its drapery with it. A mossy mass turned from a green that was almost black to a more brilliant hue as fronds turned to face us. The straight line made by three globular growths be
came a triangle as the center one edged forward. It was as though the surroundings had heard the shriek of the descending ship and were now in the process of confronting it, us, as avidly as I confronted this new world. Foolishness, of course. Building drama on insufficient foundation. Gainor, who claimed to have found this tendency in many of my reports, had warned me against it.

“Lonely children learn to do it,” he had said with the tone of one who knew whereof he spoke. “They build enchanted worlds for themselves to replace unpleasant or impenetrable actuality. Unfortunately, living in fantasy doesn't equip them to deal with dangerous reality.”

“You sound like my aunt Hatty,” I had said, remembering that she had said something of the kind about not paying attention to the nudging of one's subconscious. Still, Gainor's warnings stayed with me as I went down the ramp, so focused on the forest that the appearance of the welcoming party struck me momentarily mute.

I hadn't seen them arrive, but there they were, doom written on their faces and phantom vultures nesting in their eyes. The foremost parted his lips and words breathed out like the whisper of a ghost.

“Bar Lukha. Lieutenant to the CEPO on this contract. At your service.”

His eyes were set so deeply in circles of darkened skin that it was like looking down chimneys to find the light in them, sullen embers ebbing into darkness, brightening briefly at each breath. His cheekbones jutted over blue-shaded hollows, and his neck tendons stood bare as cables, seeming almost separated from the flesh beneath. Behind him were two more cadavers, each as remote, each smiling as grotesquely: three nodding skulls making a mockery of welcome.

It took all my self-control to respond in a flat, ordinary voice. “Delighted to meet you, gentlemen.”

Lukha whispered again. “These are the people who will provide you with any assistance you need, Installation Manager Maywool, Commissary Manager Lackayst.”

As I turned toward them, they shuffled a handbreadth toward me, exhausting themselves in the effort. I greeted them with the same hollow heartiness, turning to include Lieutenant Lukha, only to see him shambling slowly toward the moss forest, evidently having completed his duty as he saw it.

The gray-haired man, Lackayst, waved a leaf-thin hand toward an untidy pile of panels and fittings that lay upon the meadow. “We should…ah…have those put together by evening. Maybe the ship could stay…ah…in case we don't…quite…”

His voice wheezed into silence as he ran out of energy and stood paralyzed, lips still curved, face calm, a horrid simulacrum of a living man.

I turned wordlessly and strode back up the ramp. My belly and thighs said run, but I held myself to a walk and managed a gentle push to close the lock behind me. The captain stood nearby, looking at me curiously.

“Something wrong?”

“Captain, is there an ESC ship in system? I mean, something larger than the courier we came in?”

“The
Dorian
is in system, yes. It has another load of supplies to deliver here before going on to Stone.”

“Can you put me in touch with it?”

He did so, and I spoke to the captain of that ship, who referred me to the construction chief.

“So what've they got done?” he demanded.

“Nothing. The panels are in piles. There's something very wrong down here. I need…mechs, I suppose, under the command of someone who can figure this out.”

Angry words came from the com. When they had run their course, I said, “Gainor Brandt told us ESC would do whatever was necessary to expedite our work. The ship we came on is a four-man courier, so you're the only ones in system I can ask. If you want to question Brandt's orders, you'll have to do it with him, so we'll go back up to our
transport and message Brandt that we're holding them in station while you sort it out.”

More angry words, less emphatic, to which I replied in monosyllables. Finally, agreement.

“What?” asked Paul from behind me.

“A minor foul-up,” I said casually. “I'll take care of it, but you may as well relax until it's done. Our quarters in the PPI installation aren't quite ready at present.”

Paul turned an ugly red and began to steam. Before he could work himself into a lengthy tantrum, I went to tell Adam, Clare, and Frank to stay where they were. When I went back outside, Lackayst and Maywool were still where I had left them. My return jolted the former into speech.

“…as I was saying…I'm sure we'll get it…sorted out…”

“Don't bother.” I smiled brightly. “The supply ship is sending someone down to take care of it.”

The two stared at me without comprehension. It seemed to take forever for them to decipher where we were at the moment. Either it penetrated at last or they simply gave up, for they turned in a series of tiny, tottering steps and went off toward the installation, slow shuffle by slow shuffle, each movement the result of laborious maneuver. I could read the effort it took: “Now, move left foot forward. Put weight on left foot. Pull other foot up even with left foot, no, no, don't put it down, move it forward…” Their hands hung loose on their wrists, as though barely connected, each hand trembling, quivering, reaching out and grasping at nothing, then falling limp before beginning the same motions again.

What was going on? Where were the local PPI people? Over a hundred people worked here, but not one was to be seen, though I stayed where I was for some time, looking, sniffing, listening, sorting out the directions. The expanse of low-growth “meadow” lay around the ship on all sides and extended its rippled, watery patterns westward to the shore of the large lake, where it met the surface of the real water
without a visible seam. Water and meadow were twin surfaces, joined imperceptibly at their edges.

The farther shore was invisible, though I could follow the long curve of the nearer bank southward for some distance before it was hidden by mist. Straight out from shore, not far, the force fields doming the ESC island shimmered with light. The Derac were north of that, on the near side, hidden by the forest and by the curve of the lake. PPI's sober installation was strewn beneath the skirts of the forest to the south. All PPI installations I had seen had possessed walls or fences to mark their boundaries, but nothing separated these buildings from the growth around them. Above them masses of angular trees grasped at the sky, a gaunt scaffolding everywhere garlanded with moss, which also covered the buildings and the paths among them. Decorative clumps of the stuff had either been planted or had prettily positioned themselves here and there.

The smells were remarkable. The ship had crushed the foliage beneath us, and the area was redolent with an odor I could only describe as edgy or agitated, which contributed to the unsettled impression I was getting. On Earth, we arkists were used to vague menace and continual anxiety, but we knew our enemies and what they might do. This was different. This was an immediate, positive trepidation without discernible cause, an invisible someone shouting “boo!” Nothing looked threatening, that is if one ignored the vaguely monstrous shapes the shadowed mosses massed among the trees. No menacing sounds reached me, no monsters approached, my hair did not stand on end, but I was afraid in a way that seemed—ridiculously enough—entirely familiar.

I told myself in no uncertain words that I was dramatizing the situation, but the edginess continued. Finally, I shut my eyes and concentrated, trying to find the path through whatever emotional thicket I was caught in. Was it childhood fears? Monsters in the closet, under the bed? Abandonment horrors? Nothing resonated. Whatever it was, it had nothing
to do with my past. It was of itself, of this place, a sense…It came to me suddenly. What I felt was awareness, not mine, something else's. The smell was part of it. It, whatever it was, knew we were here. It knew we had just come. It was fiercely, remorselessly interested! I stood paralyzed, eyes still shut, asking myself why I was thinking “it” instead of “they.”

The scream of the
Dorian
's descending shuttle put an end to this divagation. I went back into the ship and didn't come out again until the shuttle had disgorged a party of mechs commanded by a striped-sleeved, noncontact-suited officer. ESC regs required noncon suits on any planet that wasn't certified, no matter that it made conversation difficult.

“You're the one who called?” demanded the sergeant in a too-loud, surly voice. “Good thing for you we had to shift cargo. Otherwise, we'd have brought the last load and been gone by now.”

“We need housing,” I said, moving in close “Those seem to be the parts of it. I don't know what's there…”

“I do,” he grated impatiently, still almost shouting. “We brought it here. It's exactly as it was when we unloaded it three days ago. What the hell are they…?”

I stepped close enough to brush his suit-ear with my lips, lowering my voice. “Something wrong here, Sergeant. We need to find out what. Can't find out without someplace to sit down and study the situation. Can you put the thing together?”

He dropped his voice to match mine. “Putting the damned thing together is what we were supposed to do, and I told that fellow Lukha so, but he couldn't wait to be rid of us.” He turned on his heel, striding away while shouting instructions over his shoulder.

The procedure was new to me. I watched somewhat bemusedly as the heavy mechs paced off distances and angles with monumental exactitude before placing three service cores and assembling the floor panels around them. When the last panel clicked into place, the entire floor leveled itself
in a series of little rises and drops, bumpety bump, whompety, boom, done. Interior and exterior wall panels, some with windows and doors already hung, were slid into preset channels on this surface. Finally, the process was repeated with a shallowly arched roof, after which the entire structure shook itself like a dog, settling all the joints. I almost applauded. It had taken them far less than an hour to assemble a long, low building with three doors on its east-facing side and one door at the far, southern end. The mechs then opened the remaining flexi-crates of furnishings and carried the contents into the building.

As they were separating the empty crates into units for stowage, a man came out of the largest of the PPI buildings, stared in wonder at what was going on, then trudged up the slope toward me.

“What the hell?” he asked in a hoarse baritone.

“ESC has assembled our living quarters,” said I, crisply. “I'm Jewel Delis. My brother is the linguistics expert PPI asked for. And you are?”

“Drom,” he said. “Duras Drom. Chief Emergence Compliance Officer for this operation. Why in hell didn't they wake me?”

“You didn't expect us?”

“Not until…galactic date twenty-four thirteen, at the earliest. Was there no one here to meet you?”

“Someone named Lukha,” I said. “Your deputy? Someone named Lackayst, someone named Maywool. All of whom, if I may say so, Chief, looked decidedly unwell and incapable of function.”

Drom shifted from foot to foot, lips drawn back from his teeth, nose wrinkled, a futile snarl of exasperation? Guilt? Anger? I couldn't decode it.

“I've been working long hours,” he said at last. “I told Lukha to wake me.”

“You must have been exceptionally tired,” said I. “It was 24:13 yesterday.”

His eyes opened wide. “I slept through two days?”

“If you have the same disease as the ones I just met, I could understand that,” I replied, searching his face. “What's going on, Chief? And where is everybody?”

Drom cast a surprised glance at me, as though I had said something bizarre. “Sorry?”

“I don't see any activity. Where are your crew?”

“Ah.” He nodded, his eyes wandering evasively over the installation and the trees beyond. “Well, we spend a lot of time out in the moss. Taking samples. Identifying species. As for what's going on, well, ah…we have a project under way, trapping some small Big Crabs. I mean, that's what we call the type, the Big Crabs, but we want some small, ah, immature ones to analyze.”

“What are they? Really crabs? Like on old Earth?”

For the first time, he seemed truly responsive. “They look remarkably like extinct Earth shore creatures, as a matter of fact. Since we recently learned about the ships up on the escarpment, we've wondered if perhaps these down here aren't descendants of some that arrived in the cargo holds of those ships. If so, they've grown at an astonishing rate.”

“How large are they?” I asked.

“The biggest ones we've only seen in the mist lands. From what the fish—I mean the floating data-gatherers—show us, they're a couple of meters long. The legs are much stockier than an Earth crab's. I mean, proportionately, they'd have to be, to carry the additional weight, not that they're heavily built. The armor is chitin, fairly light, very strong, and there's not a lot of gut…” His attention veered to the construction party, now leaving the site. “I understand you've brought some animals?”