The Companions

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Though it had seemed a short time to both of us, Matty had stayed down there long enough for cavern air to leak through a fault in her XT suit. It carried a virus with it, something unknown, something fatal. Later on it turned out that Matty hadn’t actually discovered the caverns, she’d just rediscovered them. When the experts magnified the wall scans they saw faint Zhaar seals on the wall, which meant the Zhaar had been there, long, long ago. Matty just laughed, and said it didn’t matter, discover or rediscover. Old things often became new things.

  She paid a researcher to do a search of Interstellar Confederation Archives for any records the Zhaar might have left concerning the cavern. The researcher found a pictorial record of the Martian carvings, done some fifty thousand years ago or so, along with a translation into Panqoin, written well before humans were painting horses on cave walls. The Panqoin had been allies of the Tsifis, a people who left our galaxy when we were in the middle Stone Age, and the archives had Panqoin-Tsifis transliterations. The Tsifis had in turn mentored the Gendeber, a race now extinct but contemporary with early Bronze Age man. In the Gendebers’ last years they had been visited by the Phain, and the Phain were still alive. So, the researcher translated the Panqoin to Tsifis, the Tisifis to Gendeber, and the Gendeber to Phainic, and from Phainic to Earthian common speech so Matty could get her translation and make songs out of it.

  Joram used to tease her: “It started out as roast beef, became hash, then stew, then soup, and God knows how the final broth resembles the original menu.”

  Matty just laughed at him. “I’m sure the translation is close enough, Joram. I recognize the music.”

  The song Matty sang when she was dying was the death song of a dying people, Joram said, though he didn’t say it in front of Matty. By the time she died, she had most of the visuals and all the music finished, and she left enough notes that Joram could complete the visuals for her. It’s known as Lipkin Symphony no. 7, the Cavern Symphony, in three movements based on the colors and glories of the great cavern; the wind voices accompanying that long, perilously dark passage; and finally, an ecstatic chorale-ballet that accompanies the final wall. It comes to life and dances its own farewell before remounting the cavern wall and changing back into carvings. At the premiere they called it the artistic event of the century. Matty would have loved that.

  She loved those caverns, too, even after she knew they had killed her. Until Matty died, I didn’t know that things you love can kill you.

  LIAISON

  On Earth, liaison contracts are required for every human interaction that involves rights, responsibilities, and money. Every item in a liaison is enforceable by law. If Jane Somebody conceives a child outside a liaison contract, she has two months to get an ex post facto coparent, or the child becomes the property of the state as soon as it’s born and is sold to some off-world settlement where young people are in demand. People can have whatever religious or cultural ceremonies or commitments they like, but only the civil contracts are enforceable.

  Our contract was simple. Our identichips knew almost everything about us, and our Worldkeeper files knew whatever the identichips didn’t. We were rated R, which meant “Authorized to reproduce.” Ours was the usual five-year cohabitation contract with a coparenting option. Once we were liaised, we could have a baby, or we could create embryos to be stored and born later. Many young people did this, because young ova and young sperm are healthier but mature people are better parents. Every liaison contract specifies who owns any resultant embryos or has custody of any resultant children. I guess in the past people got into real wrangles about who had the right to stored embryos.

  I took my belongings to the University Tower where Witt had already put both our names in the directory. Paul was off world on some kind of fellowship (thank heaven), but we invited Taddeus to our celebration at the new sanctuary, with Shiela Alred as hostess and a few of our friends as guests. Taddeus used a pocket album to record the festivities, then he gave it to us as a wedding gift. Registering a cohabitation liaison is called simply “recording a contract,” but if people are invited to celebrate the event, that celebration is still called a wedding.

  Our honeymoon consisted of splurging at ET restaurants and buying one another silly wedding presents in shops I’d never seen before, making up private jokes and experimenting with sex. Most young people experiment with concs, but I never had. They affected me deep down, like snakes affect some people who’ve never seen a snake before. I knew Witt had had concs, because he’d mentioned them, though we never discussed it. The sexual part of our relationship was agreeable though awkward, as though Witt kept having to remind himself I was there.

  We had ten days of cohabitation, and for that little time I was really quite happy, and everything seemed open and new, as though all our dreams could come true. When reality returned, it came like a monster from under the bed! That’s how it felt, even though it was only a summons from Witt’s mother. He answered the link, said yes, no, right away, got dressed and went. I stayed home and fixed breakfast. Time went by, almost noon, and he came home looking as though he’d been beaten. His face was blotchy and strained, totally unlike himself, and his voice shook.

  “Mother the Dame found out we’re liaised.”

  “Hadn’t you told her?” I was surprised, a little stunned.

  “She went on and on about your being nobody, even after I told her who you were, who your parents were, that Shiela Alred thinks the world of you!”

  “Sit down, Witt. Take a deep breath…”

  “I can’t! So then the Dame demanded to know if you were pregnant, and I told her you weren’t. She said that meant there’d be no barrier to my going on this expedition.”

  “Expedition?” I cried, not believing any of this. “What expedition?”

  “Just listen. Her cousin is with Planetary Protection Institute, and PPI is certifying a newly discovered planetary system, and the contract provides profit sharing to the members of the certification team…”

  “You don’t know anything about planet certification!”

  “That’s what I told her, that I knew nothing about it, that I wanted to stay and finish school. And Mother said I would need something to live on, which this expedition would pay me. I said I had enough income, and she dropped the sky on me.”

  “Oh, Witt. Don’t tell me…”

  “Oh, yes. She told me I had an income, but the trust is in her keeping, and because I entered into a cohabitation liaison without her permission, I don’t get the income anymore, or the principal until I’m thirty.”

  “Is that legal?”

  He almost screamed. “Of course it’s not legal! I’m of age. I could prove she has no right if I had ten years’ time and a million Earth-creds to spend in court!” Witt’s head dropped into his hands, and he ran his pale, tapered fingers through his dark mane of hair, over and over. “Which she pointed out at some length, just in case I’d thought of trying it! As of this morning, we have no income. We can’t even break the liaison contract for five years, so she really can starve us if she likes.”

  Can’t break the contract! I’d been getting angrier by the moment, mostly at his mother, but at the way he was acting, too. I tried to keep that under control, as I said, “Witt, we’re well enough educated to hold jobs.” We were. Either of us was quite capable of holding down any number of boring but paying jobs. I knew, because I’d been checking what jobs were available just in case the sanctuary thing didn’t work out.

  “This isn’t the twenty-second century, Jewel. People can’t take a false name and pretend to be someone else. Identichips make that sort of thing impossible. And there’s not a job anywhere on Earth she can’t prevent our getting or get us fired from if she finds out about it, and she will. I hoped…I hoped she’d let me be! She won’t. If we don’t split up, she’ll see that we end up down-dwellers, with minimum I-chip credit, living in a sublevel hole.”

  “I don’t believe that, but if it’s true, we’ll sign up f
or a colony and go off world!”

  “You think she couldn’t stop us? You think she couldn’t block emigration permits?”

  I was talking to a crazy stranger, someone I didn’t even recognize. I knew we could get off planet without an emigration permit! Whenever Joram came home to visit, he told us stories about his travels, including all the tricks he used to get from this impossible place to that impossible place!

  I said, very calmly, “Just because she’s punishing you, you don’t have to go along with it, Witt. As you said, you’re of age. There are other ways…”

  He shook his head at me, raising his hands as though to fend me off. “If we’re going to live, I’ll have to go. She’ll make an allowance for you to live on while I’m gone, I got her to promise that much…”

  “While you’re gone? When?”

  “Tomorrow. Oh, God, don’t look at me like that, Jewel. It’s only three years. We’ll…we’ll have plenty of time when it’s over…” He said this last as though he’d been told it, not as though he’d thought it out, his mother’s words coming from his mouth.

  Stubbornly, I went on trying to discuss alternatives. Every possibility I raised, he said it was impossible, and he got more and more frantic and hysterical the harder I tried. He couldn’t even hear me. I knew I could convince him if only I had a little time, but he had no time to consider anything except his own confusion, and my attempts to change his mind were only making it worse.

  I stopped arguing. He made a frantic attempt at lovemaking that wasn’t about love at all; we had an hour getting things together and a flit ride together to the shuttleport. On the way, Witt used his link to drain his credit account, paying the rent a year in advance and giving me what little was left. I put the wedding photo album that Tad had given us into his pocket as a keepsake and kissed him good-bye, like kissing clammy stone. Total time of our cohabitation liaison: eleven days.

  By noon I was sitting in the windowless three-hundred-square-foot cell the university allotted to couples. The bedroom was three paces each way when the bed was pushed into the wall under the closet. The living room was three paces by four. The kitchen extended the living room by another pace and a half, the bathroom was just big enough for the fixtures in it. The storage closet, half as large as the bedroom, was packed with Witt’s belongings. He had taken almost nothing with him.

  I forced myself to make tea and sit down to drink it slowly while thinking my way through my immediate future. I had a place to sleep; the University Tower was number 27, two down and four over from the new sanctuary in Tower 69, an easy commute. I had the job at the sanctuary, which would pay me enough to live on so long as I didn’t have to pay rent. Paul and Taddeus’s place had already been reconfigured so I couldn’t rejoin them unless contiguous space opened up again, which it might never do. I was still entitled to eat with them, however, so I wouldn’t go hungry. So long as I slept in this apartment at least half time to maintain my tenancy, I could spend a lot of time at the sanctuary. Moving around might help me keep the walls from closing in. I already felt smothered, but I could do it. By the time the rent on Witt’s place ran out, the sanctuary might be settled enough that I could have a room there as Jon did. Then…

  I jumped to my feet, my hands over my ears to shut out a deafening shriek, and another, another! In the interval between shrieks, I figured out what it was. The door alarm. No one ever triggers a door alarm. No one ever visits an apartment without linking first, to be sure someone is there, or to get a route clearance! Nobody came unannounced except tower management! Was Witt mistaken about having paid in advance?

  I gritted my teeth, smoothed my trousers over my hips, ran my fingers through my hair, tangled, as usual, and went to the door, where I was confronted by an imposing woman made taller by six-inch soles on her boots and a hairdo that went up another foot or two. She was accompanied by a faceless servant, a Quondan. Oh, they have faces, but you can’t see them.

  “Jewel Delis,” the woman said, sneering the name. “I am Dame Cecelia Hessing. I’ve come to give you the charity my son begged me to provide you during his absence.”

  My mind was absolutely blank, vacant. All that was in my head were echoes. This was…this was Witt’s mother, the Dame.

  She pushed into the tiny room, leaving the door open as she dipped into her pockets, coming out with handfuls of the little podfare coins that people carry to buy a pod lobby snack or throw to a transit musician, a spill of silver, gold, and blue discs spinning away into corners: twentieths and tenths and quarters of credits, bright constellations in the shadows.

  She yelled at me. “You know you are ruining my son’s life!” She grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me. “You liaised with him for his money, I know that. Pretended to be pregnant, so you could get him for his money. Well, he’s out away from your lies now. He’ll be gone for three years. And by the time he gets back, we will have reached an understanding, you and I.”

  “I don’t need charity,” I gasped, totally astonished, still unable to admit to myself what was going on. “I don’t want it.”

  “Oh, people like you always want it! And I shall leave you to scramble for it, like the beggar you are. I’ll be back, every few days, so get used to getting down on your knees. Looking around here, you’re probably already used to it, living like this…”

  “This is Witt’s apartment,” I cried, furious. “He took it so he could get away from you!”

  “…and you’d better be here to get your handout, for I won’t make it up if you aren’t!”

  And with that she was out the door and off down the corridor, heavy shoes clomping like hammers, the servant two steps behind. I shut the door and leaned against it. Dame Cecelia. Bizarre! Insane! Even Paul never acted like that! No one acted like that! No wonder Witt hadn’t wanted to introduce her. And that ridiculous strewing of podfare coins, the only money that existed outside the identichip system, so I’d have to stoop to pick them up. Her way of punishing the beggar girl who had inveigled the young lord into a liaison? The woman was living in a fairy tale!

  I wasn’t weeping or grieving, I was just furiously, ragingly angry. Well, I would not be around for a repeat visit. Since the woman could get into the residential floors of the university without a pass, I would become a moving target, just as I had when I was a child, evading Paul’s attentions. I’d ride the podways and be constantly elsewhere!

  I ate something. Five minutes later I couldn’t remember what, not that it mattered. I went to work. Shiela Alred wasn’t there, but she had left me a list of things that had to be done. Jon was there, supervising the planning of apartments for trainers, runs for dogs. Shiela had said there was to be a laboratory, a veterinary hospital. When Jon was free, I told him about Dame Cecelia’s visit, between laughter and furious tears.

  Jon asked, “Whyn’t you just let the old bitch come drop money on you?”

  “Don’t use that word for her, Jon! It insults the dogs! I won’t do it because that would convince her she’s right! I didn’t liaise with Witt because he’s wealthy. He’s the one who asked me, not me him. I never even thought of it until he asked me.” The thought of my recent humiliation bent me double with fury. My head pounded so that I had to sit down for a moment. As a child, whenever I’d been this angry, Matty had washed my face, washed the anger away, along with the sorrows. I got to my feet and into the washroom, where I made firm resolutions behind a steaming towel. It would keep me busy just being evasive.

  Six slippery weeks went by after that. I disabled the door alarm, using a method Joram had described. I pod-hopped my way to and from. I went to work. I came home late. She caught me twice, once going in, once out, and both times I just stood there, enduring the shower of coins and the repetitive rage. During the third visit, Dame Cecelia noticed the coins were still on the floor, and that seemed to push her fury up a notch.

  Then, suddenly, the visits stopped. I held my breath for several days, gradually relaxing though I wasn’t certain enough to
let the floorbot suck up the coins.

  “She finally got tired of it,” I told Shiela Alred, who had had to be told about it, just in case I didn’t show up for work on time. Or at all.

  “Cecelia Hessing? I’d be surprised if that were true.” Shiela furrowed her forehead, looking worried. “I’ve known Cecelia for years, and she has jaws like one of those ancient turtles. The kind that didn’t let go until sundown.”

  “Well, if she has stopped…” I said, “…if she has, even with Witt gone, I think I can make it. I’ll just have to make plans for when he comes back, and since I’ll be living in the University Tower for the better part of a year, it’s time I took some courses, some that would be of more value to our effort here. Would you suggest what that might be? I’m reasonably intelligent and did quite well at school so long as I stayed away from higher mathematics.”

  “I’ll ask around, my dear, and I do hope you’re right about Cecelia Hessing. When did you see her last?”

  “Friday a week ago.”

  Shiela’s face was still troubled. “I don’t like the feel of any of this. Perhaps only because I’m not going to be here for a while, and you may need me. I’ve made plans to visit some old friends in Mid-Europe North, but I’ll give you the link where I’ll be. Promise to let me know if there’s a problem.”

  Privately, I thought there’d be no more problems. Even Dame Cecelia had to realize eventually how ridiculous her behavior was. So I assured myself.

  I was returning to the apartment a few days later, concentrating on some minor problem at the sanctuary, not noticing the two men outside my door until I was almost on top of them. They saw me coming, stepped back and held out their right hands in a motion so choreographed it almost made me laugh. The next movement should have been a dance step, but the only thing visible was the holographic splendor on their outstretched palms, marching letters that spelled out: INTELLIGENCE DIVISION.