The Companions (44 page)

“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 evening 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 sec
ond one, so we will win, but people are still dying. Without blood, without dying, there is no battle.”

“It surprises me they keep it secret,” Adam said. “If it's such a big thing, one would expect it to be discussed, all the details recounted…”

“Oh, they are discussing,” said Gavi. “Over and over. This one was at the battle, he is saying this happened. Chief Such-such was almost dead, key was used, bright light came, chieftain was gone. That one was at the battle, he is saying ‘No bright light, nothing happened, except body was gone.' This one saw the door open, that one didn't. This one saw something inside Splendor, that one says there is no seeing inside Splendor. What is being true, what is being false? Who can tell?”

“Well, some few things are probably true,” I said. “There really is a key. It opens something. There is a where, there. Some people or bodies of people can go into that where. And there are beings or inhabitants in that place…”

“And the place isn't in normal space,” said Adam. “Obviously.”

Gavi looked thunderstruck. “If that is so, then I saw it! That was place I am seeing inside the rock. That place.”

“Yes,” I agreed with her. “It may have been.”

We took our leave of her and started back to the installation, emitting our message continuously as we went.

 

Where Walking Sunshine went, words came fragrant through the forest, scented sermons, odorous orations, redolent rodomontades, syllable on scented syllable proclaiming the beauty of the World. The morning message might call attention to the scented blooms on the zibber trees. The afternoon message might remind one of the moist smell of mosses beneath a fall. Lately, the words had grown annoyed, irritated. Sharp smells protested the unresponsive creatures, men! In the forest north of the lake, following the trail the humans had made toward the battle place, Walking Sunshine sniffed the words with some concern, worried over their
content, for (blasphemous as it would be to put it into smells) Walking Sunshine knew something the World did not.

Such a thing was unsmelled of! For any creature to presume it knew more than the World knew was heretical, disorderly, unwillogish, and being unwillogish took some doing, for willogs were a widely differentiated lot.

Nonetheless, Walky had come to the realization of a great oddity. Although humans could sense odors—badly, but they could do it—when words were sent to them, they did not smell the words. Conversely, though humans spoke words, the World neither heard nor heeded the words the humans spoke. Badly needed was a creature who could both talk and emit! An interspeaker! Though there might not be time for an interspeaker to do any good, for even then, new words came marching, not merely the constant trickle of them that was usual, but great chains of them, everywhere. Strong words emitting across mosses, reeking along ramparts, venting along valleys, stinking beside streams; they ripened, rose up, and exploded in showers of seeds from which new talkers sprang up in tens, dozens, and scores where only one had been before, all to grow the same messages that were jiggling here and bouncing there, multiplying as they went.

“Rottenness, rottenness to be rooted out, to be extirpated, removed from the circles of this world that the tranquillity, the long quietude of Moss be not disturbed.

“Is this not the footstool of heaven? Is this not the gateway to paradise? Is it fitting this monstrosity should continue, this moving creature that will not talk and will not listen, this thing called man? Is it fitting, this green toothy thing that burns the forests?”

Walky had never encountered a dilemma before. He had taken the word from men, who often argued about dilemmas, and the concept had been difficult for Walky to enfold. On the one hand, the World was the World. On the other hand, givers of such great gifts as eyes and ears should not be destroyed. Walky's willog soul denied this order of destruction. Its willog sap ran warmly at sensing these words.
What thanks would that be for the gift of color? For the sound of bells. For the miracle of singing! Walky had grown three voices in three separate registers in order to try it for itself! Walky sounded lovely, simply lovely!

Walking Sunshine knew what response it would receive if this argument were put into words. Willogs could use their own words, of course. When they wrote poetry, they used their own words, but one could never use words that contradicted the wisdom of the World. Walky had told all the creatures to grow ears! Had that contradicted messages already received? Walky shivered all over as it thought back over its history. Surely, surely it had learned something, sometime that would be of help in this terrible predicament.

Though, on further thought, perhaps his words were not a contradiction of the World's words. Not really. Ears did not contradict noses. Ears were simply facts. Things the World should know about. Eyes were facts. So were voices. Something had to be done to let the World know what was true and factual, but what could it be?

 

In the Derac camp, the warriors were preparing for an assault.

“Clean armor,” said one to another, who passed the word on, “Clean armor.” The throaty gasps ricocheted around the wide and blackened clearing as groups of warriors set themselves to the task. Clean armor would be followed by other readiness commands, the series of commands that was always uttered in the days before battle. The heavy armament was due to arrive that day, along with the last clan-ship of warriors. In two days, three at the latest, they would attack the humans by marching down the west side of the lake and around it to the south, to fall upon the encampment from the south. No one would expect it, not from that direction. No one would see them until they had their teeth in the throats of the humans. Battle day was a day all the Derac were looking forward to. There was no meat on this planet at all, and they were heartily sick of eating rations.

The commander of the last shipload of Derac to arrive
had said something about an aged one coming in the final ship. Usually aged ones did not leave their G'Tachs.

“Why is an aged one coming here?' asked one of the warriors, busy polishing his sword.

“To give us a talk,” said the nearest Derac. That particular group had arrived in the last ship, and they had picked an unburned spot at the edge of the forest to work, because it was shadier. “Sometimes they do that, give us a talk if there's something special they want us to do.”

“Like what?” asked the first, a somewhat younger warrior, with far less experience.

“Like if they want us to kill all the females first.”

“There aren't any human females here.”

“Oh, yes there are. They look like the males, that's all.”

“If they look alike, how do we know which ones to kill first?”

“Jabucha says we just kill them all very fast, that way we're sure to have done the females as quick as anything. Nobody can tell which were first and which were next.”

“Can we eat them? The females?”

“I suppose so. Nobody has said we can't.”

Behind the warriors, at the edge of the forest, a particular copse took note of what was being said. The copse was indignant. These toothy ones had contributed nothing! They had burned the forest and reburned it every time someone tried to get closer to learn about them. They slept in their ships, with the doors locked. They wouldn't share the pattern of their eyes or ears. It had been very difficult to learn their language because they did not help by writing things. They did not share anything! A fungus upon them, the copse thought to itself, emitting the spores that would guarantee an itchy mold on the newcomers to match the one suffered by those who had arrived earlier.

Humans should be warned about this battle, this attack. They should be told, loudly, firmly, in words! So thinking, the copse faded, sapling by sapling, back into the forest, creeping away unseen, until it was far enough that Walking
Sunshine could begin to roll, quickly, toward the battleground where it knew the humans would be. There, at the battleground, it would announce itself as interspeaker for the World.

 

We pushed the floater hard to get back to the PPI installation as soon as we could. We didn't make it by dark, so we rubbed Gavi's monster-off stuff on us, slept lightly, and rose very early to make the installation shortly after noon. I linked ESC and said I was on the way, please get yourselves together, and when my little boat arrived at the pier, Sybil was awaiting me inside the lock. We said very little on the way to the lab, where the others were gathered. The story didn't take long to tell.

“The World wants us to move,” Gainor repeated the gist of what I'd said. “It wants us to do that immediately, it has lost patience with us. And you've told it we would.”

“I've emitted Gavi's message all the way back here, and the scent organ is still poofing away on the meadow. We put it at the edge of the forest, hoping there are sniffers in there. I assume with only forty some odd PPI staffers left, moving won't take any great time.”

“We can make a start today,” he said. “Enough to indicate a good faith effort.” He grinned to himself. “And won't the Derac be surprised when they find we're gone.”

“You think they're planning to attack us?”

“Certain of it. Probably within the next few days. We've spotted their scouts at various places along the eastern edge of the lake, no doubt laying out the attack route. You think the World is planning to attack them?”

I shrugged. It was entirely possible. I couldn't imagine Moss would tolerate all that burn off and scarring, all that buildup of troops. I unrolled Gavi's map.

“Here's the place on the plateau Gavi picked for us to set down, destroying no gardens and infringing on no tribal lands. Naturally, we don't let on she gave it to us.”

Gainor walked me back to the pier. “What are you going to tell Paul?”