The Companions (4 page)

It wasn't long before the information network started to do stories on them. They were “companions,” or that's what the news stories said, even though everybody called them concs, for concubines. Only a few weeks later Paul came home from his school with a mop-headed, big-eyed, mostly naked, reddish-brown thing. I saw it by the door, smiling and murmuring to itself.

I half wanted to laugh and half wanted to get mad, and I said, “Paul, that's a conc!”

“I know,” he said in his way-up-there, superior voice. (Matty said Paul had acquired loftiness with his mother's milk, not that his mother ever nursed him.) “But it's only a little one, and it followed me home. It's name is Cinnamon, and I'm going to keep it.”

Taddeus was standing right behind me. He said, “You're not old enough. Jewel, he's only twelve, he's not old enough, is he?”

I saw the flicker in Paul's eyes, like a hot, barely controlled flame, and I thought of Paul being amused by a concubine as compared to Paul getting his amusement elsewhere, usually from bullying Tad or me, so I said, “If he wants it, and he promises to take care of it, I think he should keep it.”

When I told Luth about it, I could tell she was thinking the same things I had. It didn't take her long to say yes, let it stay.

When I was twelve, Jon Point introduced me to a boy named Witt Hessing. Witt was one of
The
Hessings, and he came to buy two shepherd pups, Quick and Busy. He needed to know how to care for them and train them, and by that time I was very good at both those things, so Jon registered a contract between Witt and me so I could get paid for helping him. The Hessing place was outside the urb, a hundred-acre exempt estate with grass and trees and gardens. For a while I went over there every day, and Witt and I got to be friends. When he paid me for helping him train the dogs, he kissed me, just on the cheek, and I was so flustered I missed my stop at home tower.

Nobody had kissed me since Matty died. There isn't supposed to be any kissing except between liaised people, people with a contract. You don't dare be involved with anyone without a contract that says who you are and what your intentions are and what the outcome is to be. That's why Jon recorded a liaison contract between Witt and me.

Anyhow, that was the only time. Witt and I stayed friends, and we spent time in each other's company. Once I was old enough that they couldn't stop me, I told Paul and Tad I was doing volunteer work at an animal shelter. Paul was his usual nasty self about it, but I did it anyway. I had a few friends at the Tower Educational Center, but I spent most of my time at Jon's and with people he knew. I learned a lot, and mostly, I was…contented, I guess, until Witt got to be twenty-two and I turned eighteen, and that's when everything started to veer off in strange directions.

Paul broke the news first thing in the morning before I was fully awake. Paul knew it would make me crazy, hearing about it, so he stared at me while he told me, ready to enjoy the show. Somehow, I managed to keep my voice calm and my eyes dry as I said, “When did you hear this, Paul?”

“It was on the info-net, this morning, early.” He posed, re
peating the item for effect: “Evolun Moore announced Worldkeeper's decision forbidding animals or birds in residential towers. They use up too much water, too much air.”

I swallowed. “What about exempt estates?”

He sniffed. “Oh, the rich can keep their useless luxuries, of course. But in thirty days, no more furry little rats in the lifts.” And he turned away, disappointed because I hadn't screamed or had a tantrum or simply broken down in tears. I did all that, though silently, after I was in my room with the door shut, getting ready to go to the kennel. I knew Jon Point very well: He was a man given to frequent despair and when he despaired, he acted foolishly. I had to get there as fast as possible.

By the time I got to Tower 91, my eyes were swollen half-shut, and I was standing so tight against the pod doors that I almost fell into the pod lobby when they opened. The tower doors were still crisscrossed with warning signs, but I'd long since broken the locks and memorized the trail. I could run the whole way without even noticing the surroundings.

Everyone knew that Moore, as head of IGI-HFO (which means “In God's Image—Humans First and Only”) had been stirring up the down-dwellers. He had founded the group as a religious order, preaching in pod lobbies that animals had no right to exist anywhere on Earth—or on any other human occupied planet—because all space, air, water was needed for the one creature made in God's image. Moore was handsome, he seemed to have lots of funding from somewhere, and he was a marvelous speaker. Even people who hated him as I did could get caught up in the rhythm and thunder of his speeches, so you can imagine how easily the down-dwellers were stirred into a frenzy. Down-dwellers were always dissatisfied with life, even without an agitator, so having their anger gravel shoved over the edge was guaranteed to start an avalanche.

Despite all that, I hadn't believed anyone could want to kill pets. Now I had to believe it, and all I could think about was getting to the kennel before Jon got there and did something irreparable.

Adults aren't supposed to run. Running isn't acceptable. People can be injured by runners. Never mind all that; I ran anyway, conscious of being dangerously out of control. I felt as though I were falling forward onto air, as if my feet couldn't keep up with the rest of me. I'd always had dreams like that, running like crazy with nothing under my feet while I tried to escape the awful unseen behind me. In each dream, I knew flying was the only way to escape, but I also knew if I flew, I'd fall. The thing behind me got closer, pushing me higher and higher, to a height where the fall would be more certainly fatal, and finally I did fall, then woke, heart pounding and throat closed, so terrified I could hardly breathe.

That's the feeling I had as I ran toward the kennel, that I wasn't going to escape what I was trying to prevent. Jon Point was already there because the lights were on. Whenever he left, he disconnected and hid his pirated lines to save them from tower-strippers.

I heard the howls long before I lurched into the doorless corridor and raced toward the pens. Scarlet was howling, my favorite dog, the one I'd met originally. I saw Jon's brows in the dim cone of light, his cheekbone, nose, his white beard above shadowed eyes, pits of darkness peering down at the glittering knife in his hands. The howls and the shrieking rake of hard claws yammered from behind the closed door of the feed room. Scarlet was slamming against the unyielding surface with her full weight, over and over.

Without losing a stride, I jumped the side of the pen and threw myself over the puppies. What drama! God, yes! Not that I'd been thinking so at the time, but there I was, flattened over those little dogs like a screaming pancake: “No, Jon!”

Jon's face was as tear-stained as mine. He stepped away from me, half hiding the knife behind his back. “Jewel, sweetheart, oh, girl, girl, where did you come from? I don't want to, but they passed the law…”

“We have two weeks!” I gargled at him, scarcely able to speak. “They said two weeks!”

He wiped at his rough cheeks with a grimy sleeve. “Why make it harder? In two weeks, their eyes will be open, they'll be moving around. Now…they won't even know.”

“I'll know,” I yelled at him, gathering the five furry lumps into my arms. One of them yawned, pink tongue curling like a leaf in the toothless, milky mouth. “Scarlet knows, even though you have her shut up in there. I want two weeks, Jon. You owe me two weeks.”

He turned away from my accusations, running his hands through his white mane, clearing his throat with some effort as he stared through the kennel door at the darkness outside. He wiped his eyes again and struggled with trembling hands to fold the knife, dropping it twice before he managed it.

He sounded so mournful when he said, “If I'd known this was going to happen, I wouldn't have bred the bitches. The pups don't have a chance. Neither do the older dogs!”

“I'm going to talk to Witt Hessing,” I said. I was quite firm, quite confident. Oh, yes, I knew Witt would fix things. Witt was my knight-errant, my hero. “Witt will help me figure something out.”

Jon drew a deep breath at the mention of the Hessing name, as though I'd said a magic word. Jon knew what I knew, that if anyone had the power to change things, it would be a Hessing or a Hargess.

He said, “Jewel, I'll let it go for the two weeks. I'll even help you, if I can, but there's no way we can find enough exempt estate homes even for dogs old enough to leave their mothers…”

He was so willing to concede defeat! It made me angry. I said, “Let Scarlet out, Jon. She's going crazy in there.”

Jon unlatched the door. It hit him in the chest with Scarlet's full weight behind it, and he went down. She came across the side of the pen in a scrabbling rush, lips drawn back, fangs glittering, knocking me aside as she thrust her nose among the pups, sniffing to learn whether they were all there, all unhurt before turning her head to regard me with eyes as opaque as metal. Her teeth were still bared, her throat rumbled with a
growl that told me to keep back when I put out a tentative hand. Her yellow eyes said, “I know what he was going to do.”

She knew Jon had locked her up. She knew I hadn't been here. She had heard my voice arguing with him, and then Jon had let her go. She knew the puppies were all right, and her eyes swiveled across me, almost apologetically. We were friends. Scarlet had saved my life once. I would never have hurt her.

“It's all right, Scarlet,” I said, my tears welling up again. “They're all right, Scarlet. Honest. They're all there.”

Scarlet nosed the puppies once more. If even one of them had been injured or taken away, the odor picture of the litter would have changed. I didn't know whether the dogs were able to count, but I knew they could tell when something was missing. As Scarlet lay down and nosed the puppies against her belly, her growl faded to a low rumble, but she still glared past me to Jon, who refused to look at her. He wouldn't let himself hope. He was too busy convincing himself that disappointment and death were inevitable, despite anything I might do. I hated that, people giving up, not trying to fight. I just hated it.

I stayed where I was until Scarlet let me stroke the babies. Then I straightened my clothes, left the pen, and repeated my intentions, to be sure Jon understood. “I'm going home, Jon. You let the dogs alone. I'm going to talk to Witt.”

Which I did, though I sat by the phone for hours before he returned my link message.

“I know there's very little time…” I said.

He said, in his very topstory voice, “That's true, but there are possibilities. You know Shiela Alred?”

“I know who she is. Some kind of philanthropist.”

“I know her pretty well. She's quite friendly with Mama the Dame, and she has an exempt estate in Tower 69.”

“
In
Tower 69?”

“Her family owned the land the tower's on. It was sold with the proviso the family got the top three floors as an ex
empt estate into perpetuity, so yes, it's at the top of the tower, two residential floors and one park floor on the bay, two towers over from Government Center.” He fell silent for a moment. “Have you cleaned up, Jewel, since you left the kennel?”

I flushed. He knew I hadn't. Who could think of cleaning up with all this going on? “Of course,” I said.

“Then get yourself into something appropriate. Give me twenty minutes to link Shiela Alred, then I'll pick you up at the west flit lobby on 200.”

That was very much Witt. Thinking about introducing me to his friends, but making sure I'd be clean and properly dressed before he did it. I was very fond of Witt, but sometimes little things like that itched at me. Considering the situation, it shouldn't have mattered if I smelled like dog, which I did.

Nonetheless, I was neat and clean when Witt picked me up in his private flit. He cut among a clutter of other traffic and spurted up into the private lanes before cutting across toward Tower 69. From that height I could see the whole ten-by-ten grid of the hundred-towered urb, each mile-square roof black with solar collectors, the chasms between towers glittering with podways, the depths at their foundations invisible in the dark. Outside the city, the huge cables that brought power from earthcore-generators snaked away across the farmlands, on to another urb, tying everything together. Almost every tower had a huge poster of Evolun Moore grinning at us, his eyes following the flit: “Vote for Moore, for Humanity's sake!” He was running for the legislature or the Urban Council or something, whatever office was a step higher than the one he held.

Trees poked out of the top of Tower 69, and I realized I'd seen them before when I was pod-hopping, the only roof in the urb with trees poked through it. From the private flit lobby we were escorted into a sun-drenched parlor just inside, a room that looked all the way across the sluggishly
shifting surface of the bay to the line of scum harvesters squatted on the horizon. Shiela Alred came fluttering in—she was dressed in green that day—and Witt introduced us.

“Witt, my dear! So nice to see you. Sit down, take that chair, my dear, it's comfortable, and you look in need of comforting!” Shiela seated herself without pausing in her chatter. “I've been devising, my dears, since early this morning.” She cocked her head as she asked Witt, “Do you know Gainor Brandt? No? Well, he's an old friend of mine who happens to be second-in-command at Earth Enterprises, very much in line to take over in a few years when the current general manager retires.”

At the time, I didn't know what that was. I asked, hesitatingly, “Earth Enterprises…?”

“Earth Enterprises is the parent agency of Exploration and Survey Corps,” Witt said.