The Companions (56 page)

“Who occupied the buffer area?” demanded the Marshal.

“The Guardians, including but not limited to the Phain, and farther out, the race that hunted and ate people.”

There was another explosion of babble from Day and Night Mountains, and I said rather loudly that Gavi had been part of our group, that she had been caged to use as prey in
the hunt, and that when she recovered from her injuries, she could verify most of what I'd said.

That was enough from me. Gainor introduced Walking Sunshine, who welcomed us all to Moss on behalf of the planet itself and restated the World's preference that all humans stay on the plateaus until such time as they had defined their wants and worked out their proper function with the World itself. Even with all the adjectives he had assembled for this, it took him very little time to say, but it started an argument that threatened to go on all day. Everyone had his own definition of “proper function,” and everyone missed the point that it didn't matter how
they
defined it, the World would insist on its own definition. Quite frankly, I was surprised they could return to bickering over territory so quickly after learning what I'd told them. Perhaps they didn't take it seriously. Perhaps it hadn't sunk in!

Though I was interested in what would happen to Moss, I was not interested at all in the bickering, and since Gavi was resting in one of the nearby PPI housing units, I decided to go see how she was getting along. Aside from being tired, bruised, and hungry, she was in generally good spirits and curious about the meeting, so I brought her up-to-date. While we shared a pot of tea, I broached the subject I'd been cogitating over for some time.

“You do things with odors, Gavi. Not language things exactly.”

“Ah, well.” She waved it away.

I said firmly, “You changed my life by putting something in the bathwater, that time we first met. Don't deny it, because I know you did it.”

She looked at me out of the corners of her eyes, pretending innocence. I stared her down.

“You were stifled,” she finally said. “You were carrying around these mind-pictures made when you were first imprinted by those men…”

“Men!”

“Your brother and Witt. Many of us are having such im
printings. It is being necessary for many creatures. One is finding one's way in the pack or herd by knowing where one is ranking, who to be groveling to and who to be dominating. One is learning very young the smell or sound of the higher-up, the lower down. It is continuing for most or all of a life. Also, when we are mating, we are being imprinted, each by the other. No matter how unsuitable or disagreeable the mate is being, some people are staying imprinted all their lives.”

I'm sure I looked doubtful. “We're talking about human beings, here.”

“I am admitting humans are not being affected so much as animals not having language or not living so long. Our long lives are allowing much time for early imprinting to wear away. Also, we are not detecting the odors so much as animals are doing. But you…both brother and friend are imprinting on you when you are very young, and by time friend is imprinting, you are having very good sense of smell.”

“And you removed it!”

“Person-to-person imprinting, I can remove it, yes. It is not being so easy when the imprinting is done between different species.”

“But you can do it to anyone?” I persisted.

“Almost anyone. But what I do is not by chance, and imprinting is being the smaller part of it. Bigger part is convincing self to cast out much-used pathways that are no longer being useful. This increases possibility of making mesh! If you are being truly meshing with someone, if you are having similar opinions, same ways of dealing with difficulties…”

“I thought Witt and I did.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “An imprinted one is always thinking so, even when it is not being true. Proof of this is easy to see: If you are truly meshing, wiping out imprint is not changing your feelings. One little bath and Jewel's feeling toward brother and friend are changing, so? Then Jewel was not being suited to that brother, to that husband.”

I struggled for the best response to this, choosing between annoyance at her cavalier attitude and gratefulness for the
result. “I suppose I must thank you, Gavi. It was kind of you, and I appreciate it. I wasn't thinking of that particular talent of yours, however. I was thinking more of how you might go about making peace. You say imprinting is the lesser part, the greater part being removal of ideas that get in the way. Whenever people try to make peace, there are ideas that get in the way. Can you remove them? From nonhumans?”

“Why don't you be telling me why you are wishing to know,” she said.

I couldn't think of a reason not to, so I told her about the Derac and the Orskimi, and about the Phain and the putative Simusi. When I showed her the recording of the dead Simusi, she shuddered just as I had done on seeing the reality. It was an evil, horrible-looking thing.

I concluded, “We know that their dog form converses in smells…”

“Why are they being in dog form?” she queried.

“I'm not sure,” I confessed. “There are several versions. One they told the dogs is that the Simusi shape is holy, so the dogs were also holy for sharing the shape. The Phaina thinks they probably saw the dogs first and adopted their shape because a form without hands or language would be the last one to be suspected. Also, the Simusi might have seen that dogs already had slaves, us.”

“You are meaning other way around…”

“No. The dogs say they enslaved us, not the other way around. Who feeds whom? Who shelters whom? Which ones become veterinarians? Groomers? Anyhow, the Zhaar were also used to having slaves, so adopting dog shape would allow them to continue having slaves to serve them as manipulators and speakers and groomers and who knows what all.”

“What are you wanting me to do?”

“The Simusi have an odor language, not unlike the one here on Moss. Our dogs picked it up from them, very quickly. The dogs can't emit all the range of odors the Simusi can, but they can do it somewhat…”

“How are they doing it at all?” she asked. “Dogs are not doing this, making smells on purpose.”

The question stopped me. She was right, of course. Dogs couldn't make smells on purpose. Which meant the ability was part of their “special” breeding. Not an intentional part, just an unintended side effect of using Zhaarflesh in breeding them.

“Something that happened as a result of the breeding project,” I said. “I overheard…no, oversmelled an aroma conversation between Behemoth and Scramble. I detected odors during conversations between the Phaina and the Simusi. I'm assuming it's the same language as Moss's, and I'm hoping you're able to understand it. In order to speak it fluently, we'll need Paul's prototype odor organ, the one that ESC is building now. If it's any good, we can speak directly to them…”

“But, if it's Paul's device, he can do that.”

I waved this off. “Paul can't. He's great at languages, but he's rotten at communication.”

“How would I learn to use the organ?”

“I get Gainor to give you a pass into the ESC enclosure.”

She thought about it for some time. “I am always wondering the reason,” she mused.

“What reason?”

“The reason I am being born as me. Why I am doing what I am doing. I am always wondering the reason for this. When I am growing up, I am thinking it is just so I am getting even with Belthos. Later I am thinking, well, I am making peace on Night Mountain. Making peace on Moss, among peoples, that is sounding even more important, very worthy.”

“Making peace is extremely worthy!” I assured her before I went off to get a pass for her from Gainor.

Then I went to talk to the dogs. Halfway there, I met Walky, who said it had left the meeting because people were saying the same thing over and over. I asked Walky to come with me and translate the dogs' language.

The willog planted himself just outside the open door of
the new doghouse. Adam and Frank were there. They'd been in human shape when I'd seen them on my way into Splendor, but they were in dog shape now. Clare had remained human. We all sat down together, even the puppies, though they were mainly interested in sprawling over their recumbent mothers and chasing one another. Twenty-eight dogs made a sizable sprawl.

With Walky translating their responses, I told them who the Zhaar had been, why they had been anathema to other races, and that the Phaina and I believed the Simusi might actually be what was left of the Zhaar. I picked up enough of the talk floating from dog to dog to believe the Zhaar had become anathema to Behemoth's pack as well. They really didn't like the fact that they'd been lied to.

Behemoth said something long and involved. Walky said something else, then I was out of the link among the overlapping waves of odor. When a lot of creatures talked at once, the no-smell borders between words tended to get lost in the confusion. I stepped away until the air cleared, and Walky beckoned to me.

“These Simusi. They spend evening times around the fire telling their histories, some in howling, some in odors. The dogs heard and smelled these histories, and they want you to know what they said.”

Wonderful. “Tell away, Walky. I'd love to hear it.”

“The Simusi say they came to your world, Earth, long ago. They found a young race of creatures who some of the time walked on two legs, an agile race with nimble hands, without much speech, but with intelligence enough to be useful without threatening the Simusi…”

Where had I heard that before!

“They say this Earthian race had already been enslaved by a race of quadrupeds with good noses, a fast, clever race that had adopted the not-so-clever biped race in order to have help in the hunt, caves to live in, and fires to sleep by.”

“So that is the way the Zhaar tell it,” I said.

“Biped creatures were not yet man. They had only a little
speech,” said Walky. “The other creatures were not quite dogs, but according to the story, the Simusi saw the shape of the dog, and behold, it was the shape of the Simusi themselves! They accepted this as a sign.”

“None of us believe that,” I said. “It wasn't their shape until they made it their shape.”

Walky rustled at me in irritation at being interrupted. “I am only repeating how the Simusi tell the story. The Simusi did not wish to stay on Earth, for Earth was included on many star-maps of inferior races, and the Simusi did not wish to associated with inferior races…”

“That's not true, either.”

“Nonetheless, it is their story,” said Walky, much offended. “So, the Simusi went to the nearest other world, an old world, where one small sea still was, where air and water still lingered in many deep caverns and abysses, taking with them the bipeds and the ones in the shape of the Simusi themselves. Also they took small prey animals who could live in these deep caverns.”

“That world was Mars,” I said.

Walky nodded. “Mars. Yes. And there, they say, they taught both creatures to be good slaves of the Simusi, but the Earthers did not do well on Mars. Earthian creatures did not reproduce well; they did not live long. They were susceptible to a disease that the Simusi carried, one that caused the Earth creatures dreadful pain, then weakened them so they could not move…”

I exclaimed in pain. Matty had died of a disease like that!

Walky patted me on the shoulder with a leafy twig. “Time after time, the Simusi returned to Earth to pick up more of both races, working on them to make them more…durable?”

“Enduring,” I offered. “Or tough, or hardy.”

“Hardy, yes. Millennia went by. The last little sea on Mars dried away to dust, and suddenly, several ships of the elder races landed on that world! The Simusi had their own ships deeply buried in the caverns, but they heard the ships of the
elder races when they approached, and they spied upon the elder races while they were there. Then, when the elder races went away, they left a beacon, and the Simusi knew that meant they would return.

“Since that world was dying anyway, they decided to leave it and go to a place they knew of long, long before, a place as remote as Mars itself, one very hard to find and to get into. On the way there, they returned most of their slaves to Earth, where they could breed well, for the Simusi planned to harvest them again, later on.”

“But they left some behind on Mars, didn't they?” I cried, my throat thick with anger. “They went off seeking Splendor, but they left the old ones behind. And those old ones went down into a deep, deep cavern they'd shared with their dogs, and they painted and carved their sorrow at being abandoned…”

“Was it a poem?” Walky interrupted. “Oh, tell it to me.”

I cleared my throat and quoted Matty's translation of the first words on the cavern wall.

“Oh, poor things,” cried Walky. “Were there shore birds on that planet then? Was it the humans who wrote that? Who were they speaking of?”

“They were speaking of themselves and of their friends, the old dogs who had been left behind, of their children, the strong young humans and dogs that had gone away. They painted and carved pictures of themselves and the dogs. I
think probably the Simusi told them the young ones chose to go. That's the kind of thing a Zhaar would do, and they were Zhaar, all along. I don't think the Zhaar ever saw that cavern. If they had, they'd have destroyed it. I think the old humans put Zhaar seals on the wall as a kind of invocation, praying the Zhaar would return with their children.”