The Companions (45 page)

“Same old story,” I said. “Invent an old codger out in the moss who claims to be able to translate. Tell Paul what he said. I've got a word-for-word translation that Gavi dictated to me, plus a more idiomatic translation. Gavi says there are almost no Mossen words that cannot be conveyed by natural smells on this world except a few Derac, human, and machine smells they've borrowed from us recently.”

“Almost?”

“She said ‘almost,'” I affirmed. “She said there are a few language smells that she herself has never smelled, not from anything here on Moss. She says, however, that doesn't mean they're not a natural smell somewhere else.”

“Did you ask her which ones?”

“As a matter of fact, I did, Gainor. She found a few on the odor organ and noted them down for me. One is a kind of cinnamon–burned sugar smell. Another is a dark, sulfur rot smell. It's in my report.”

“Very well,” he said, patting my hand. “Tell your group to get packed, and I'll tell PPI they'll be lifted first, with their equipment. We'll do Paul and his equipment next and leave you and the dogs until last. That'll give you time to talk to them and work out a plan for moving them.”

I went to Paul's quarters first. He was deeply involved, with several machines running, and it took a few moments to get his attention. When I gave him the story, he took the papers I gave him with only a trace of his usual sneering reluctance. After looking at them for a few moments, however, he said, “Right, right. Of course. Yes, this is on the right track.” He stabbed at a word with a forefinger, shaking his head. “Not completely accurate here, I don't think, but the next bit is fine. Good. Good. Leave it with me.” And he turned back to his work.

“They want to move you, Paul.”

“Fine, fine. Whenever.”

He was accomplishing something, which meant he would be making no trouble for anyone for a time, at least. Since Gainor would already have communicated with the PPI in
stallation, I went to the trainers and dogs next. Adam had already told them what had happened; I had only to let them know what Gainor planned to do.

“He's leaving us for last,” I said.

“Wan see,” said Behemoth. “See war.”

I looked uncertainly at Adam, who flushed a little and said, “Behemoth wants to go to the place where the war is going to be fought. I mentioned the business about…you know, the dogs.”

It took me a moment to remember. Gavi had said the words wanted to know about the four-legged creatures going somewhere. “Why there?” I asked, stupidly, only to have Behemoth give me a look. It was his don't-be-stupid look that reminded me why there. That's where the door to Splendor was.

Adam said, “He wants them all to go, including the puppies.”

“That could be dangerous,” I said. “I don't know what weapons the Derac will use, but…”

“Na now,” said Scramble, sounding anxious. “Affer war.”

“When the fighting's over,” Adam offered.

Scramble was looking at me intently. I was reminded a little of the way Scarlet had looked at me, long ago, when I had saved her puppies from Jon Point. “You all want this?” I asked.

Low, rumbling growl from the three male dogs. The females did not signal anything. They just sat there, looking at me.

I thought about it. I was as curious about the place as anyone, perhaps more than most, considering its possible connection to Witt's disappearance, and it would be very easy to find. We could get there without any trouble, so long as we didn't get mixed up in the battle. And the Derac, so Gainor had said, would be coming down the east side of the lake, well away from where we'd be.

“We'll need a big floater,” I said. “We'll have to carry food for the dogs and ourselves, plus all the pups. We'll need
to scout the area before anything happens, so we're sure we're safe and secure when people start fighting. If Gainor will let us, I'm willing to try.”

Gainor proved to be out of touch, so I explained to Ornel Lethe what we wanted to do. He said he'd get the message to Gainor. Five minutes later, Sybil linked, asking if she could add herself to the party, and I said sure, I could use the help. Only after she'd gone did I remember that three pseudodogs would be along, something Sybil wasn't supposed to know about. Well, maybe it was time she did.

Almost immediately thereafter, an ESC ship arrived. Mechs poured out, and one set of them began taking the installation apart while another set packed up the contents of the buildings. There were eight buildings in the installation, and within an hour, four of them had been loaded on freight floaters and tugged away north by low-flying and virtually soundless mechs. In the midst of this, Gainor arrived to talk with me.

“We're not letting the Derac see us leaving,” he said with a wolfish grin. “Nor see where we're going. The mechs will take the floaters to the plateau and go up via a deep canyon that's shielded by rock from any detectors. They'll go to the spot your friend picked out and set up everything just the way it was here. Now, what's this about the dogs wanting to see the battle?”

“Not the battle, Gainor. Splendor. They want to see the door to Splendor.”

“Why?” he asked, amazed.

“I don't know,” I confessed. “But Gavi did say something about words inviting four-legged ones to go through. I didn't tell Adam not to mention it, and even if I had, he might have done it anyhow. Behemoth is alpha dog, and that means he rules Adam, too.”

Gainor's eyebrows went up. “That's interesting,” he said, whistling soundlessly through his teeth. “How long has that been going on?”

“For some time, I gather. However, I understand their cu
riosity. They want to see, and so do I. We shouldn't miss the chance.”

“Tell them I've said no, not just yet, because of the Derac. After this whole Derac nonsense is over, you can all go there, if you like, and take Ornel, Abe, and Sybil with you. She says you've already agreed she can go along.”

I nodded, swallowing my misgivings.

“All right. Then you get your materials packed. We'll go ahead and move you, like everyone else, but when the battle is over, we'll let you have a floater to come back and see the battlefield.”

I carried this word back to our quarters, emphasizing, as Gainor had not, the Derac heavy armaments that could make the whole area unsafe for anyone near it. Behemoth wandered off for a while. When he returned, he had evidently decided the plan was agreeable to him, for he sniffed my hand in passing. He usually made this gesture only when parting company.

By that evening, the rest of the installation had been moved. The following morning, our building went after the others. By noon, Paul and I were at home once more, though in a completely different location. By that evening, the ESC fortification had been reassembled not far away, though it was separated from us by deep chasms in the rock through which steams rose like tribes of troubled ghosts, almost hiding the force fields behind them.

“Are you sure the Derac don't know we're gone?” I asked Gainor, whom I encountered wandering around the installation, examining the weird jar trees and the immense liverworts.

“We're receiving from the fish around their base,” he said in an uninterested voice. “They're going right ahead, preparing for battle. If they knew we were gone, surely they'd be doing something else.”

I remembered what Paul had told me about the Derac and thought it entirely possible that Derac warriors would continue doing whatever they were doing until someone told
them to stop, regardless of what might have changed in the meantime.

“The Night Mountain warriors have reached the bottom of the plateau and are on their way to the battle,” Gainor said as he fingered a thick, juicy-looking leaf that smelled strongly of mint. “It occurred to me you might want to offer Gavi Norchis an opportunity to see what goes on there. You're both welcome to watch the monitors in ESC.”

“I'd make the offer if I could,” I agreed. “If I knew where to find her. She said something about following the Night Mountain warriors, and that's likely where she is. By the way, when do the dogs and trainers get up here?”

He turned to face me with his mouth open. “What do you mean? They came this afternoon!”

“No,” I said. “They didn't. Adam said they were coming in the last shift.”

“And someone told me they were already here,” he snarled. “What's going on?”

He headed toward the ESC installation, and I went to the house, where I found Clare stretched out on her bed. When I came in, she sat up, saying, “They're gone.”

“Where did they go?”

“Behemoth wanted to see the battleground. Adam borrowed a floater. He and Frank and all the dogs have gone.”

“And you're just telling me about it now?”

“I didn't know until a few moments ago when I came in here and found Adam's note.” She offered it to me, and I read it, cursing silently. I should have paid more attention when Adam had told me Behemoth was the alpha dog!

“Adam says they're going south around the bottom of the lake and then up the west side,” I said. “I imagine we can find them.”

“If you think that's wise,” she said.

I sat down. “Clare, the Derac have heavy armament, and they'll use it at the least provocation. If the dogs are in the way, they can all be killed, and if so, that's it for the dog project. Years of work for nothing. All that work stocking the
moon, for nothing. If they keep the puppies safe, but the adult dogs are killed along with Frank and Adam, that's still it. The puppies aren't weaned. Even if we raised them, they wouldn't be able to hunt without learning it from someone, just as the big dogs learned it from you three, two of whom would be dead.”

“I wasn't very good at it, either,” said Clare. “All I had to do was chase along to illustrate pack behavior. Adam and Frank make much better dogs than I do.”

“I'm going to link Gainor,” I told her. “Wait here. Don't, for heaven's sake decide to go off on your own. I think Gainor is going to want to go with us.”

I had some difficulty explaining to Gainor why Adam and Frank had behaved as they did.

“When they're in dog shape, they're dogs,” I shouted, finally, after trying several times without shouting. “They think like dogs. They believe they are dogs, which is why the trainers were modified in the first place. We believed we needed a role model for the puppies! Adam and Frank taught Behemoth and the rest of the pack how to hunt! You can't expect Adam and Frank not to act like properly subordinate dogs when they are dogs. Subordinate dogs follow the leader, and Behemoth is the leader.”

He cursed under his breath, calling upon several Tharstian gods. “You'll have to go after them without me, because I have to stay here to oversee contact between our people and the current residents. I'll send Ornel and Abe and Sybil…”

“Not in noncon suits, Gainor. We don't have time to fiddle with stuff.” Eating and excreting were equally difficult in noncon suits, not to speak of the limited time they gave people before the suit had to be flushed and resupplied. Gainor mumbled for a while before deciding I was right, and less than half an hour later the three ESC people were on a floater outside my door, where Clare and I joined them. During all this, I don't think Paul was aware of anything except what he was doing. I had heard recurrent gleeful shouts from his quarters, his usual habit when something he tried came
out right, so I presumed he was making good progress on the language.

The floater we had was a giant step up from the little one we'd used previously. It had both high-speed and high-altitude capability, which enabled us to fly low over the plateau, angle downward through the canyon, and then speed at low level toward the former PPI site, arriving there in only an hour or so. By that time, it was getting dark, so we descended into the forest and used our landing lights to pick up the trail of the other floater. It didn't take us long to find rumpled mosses and broken twigs leading more or less southwest, around the edge of the lake and far enough from it that no one would have observed them from the shore.

Ornel and Abe took the first watch; Clare, Sybil, and I curled up on the cushioned floor and tried to sleep. There among the trees, our speed couldn't be any greater than those we were following. Every grove and tree meant a detour, and the trail itself wasn't straight but wandering, as though the dogs had gone first, sniffing out things that interested them, while the floater followed, bearing puppies and occasional nursing mothers.

Every time I thought of the puppies and the Derac anywhere in proximity, I got a sick lump in my throat. We had all worked so hard to give this race of animals a place of its own, and now that work was threatened in a way I had never foreseen. Behemoth and the other dogs were no doubt intelligent, we could all testify to that, but they were uninterested in or impatient with things like politics and human conflicts. They simply didn't recognize that dogs were at the mercy of human problems.

At about the middle of the night, Abe woke me and Clare, and we took over for him and Ornel. “We're headed up the long northwest shore of the lake,” he said. “But it's still a wandering trail. I spoke to Ornel about just striking a line directly to the place they're headed for, but he thought it was better to follow them, in case something happened to them en route.”

I agreed with Ornel, so I drove while Clare used the night-vision screen to find the trail. We came to a stretch of un-forested country, all low mosses, and made good time crossing it, only to be slowed down again when we entered the forest on the far side. It was getting light when I stopped the floater so I could go off into the shrubbery for a few moments. When I returned, Abe and Sybil had broken out the rations and made coffee in the food service unit built into the floater.