The Companions

by Sheri S. Tepper

  In a later conversation I inquired about wild animals, learning there were none, and I remarked, without thinking, “We had many animals on Earth that were quite intelligent. It surprises me that yours are so…lacking in interest.”

  “Caaa,” breathed the Quondana. “There were indeed intelligent creatures, but being pious, we killed them all.”

  I breathed slowly, willing myself not to flush. Tad has always teased me about turning red when I am upset, and I did not want to give offense. “Indeed,” I replied, as casually as possible.

  “Caaa. Our scripture teaches that Great He/She Quondanapu made only Quondan pairs in His/Her image in all aspects, as is evident from the fact we bear His/Her name! Therefore, to have any creature except ourselves resembling the great Quondanapu in any aspect is an affront to the Holiness. Intelligence is an aspect of the great Quondanapu.”

  “I see,” I murmured, forcing myself to sit quietly.

  The Quondana continued, “Unfortunately, we were ignorant at that time of other deities. When we first encountered other intelligent races, we thought they were also an affront to the Holiness! We behaved piously and sought to kill them.”

  “Really?” I murmured. “Which ones?”

  “Oh, several. The Tharstians. The Orskimi. The Derac, who were—are—very strong, very ferocious. They like war very much, and they retaliated against us. Quondanga lost several worlds, many, many people.”

  “But you are at peace with them now?”

  “One cannot be at peace with quishimug, how you say? Those-not-like-oneself. But one can be amgrug, that is, not-at-war. We are amgrug with Earth or its people. We allow you fissimugra, tolerated-verminhood. This state of affairs is thanks to our great philosopher, Quandatis-bor-Bastree. It was Bastree who pointed out that other starfaring races had no doubt been created by other gods to resemble themselves. Thus they would be no affront to Quondanapu who, as scripture makes clear, limited His/Her creation to our home world, and all the people originating on that world. When away from our worlds, we are no doubt equal. When on our world, you are no doubt inferior, as our people are when upon yours, but verminhood is not your permanent state.”

  “I see,” I said again.

  “One will take you to observe the Perfection of Appearance. It is a worthy thing to do.”

  The following day, she did indeed escort me to a large building in the center of the nearest city. In a central room of that place, on a high throne, sat one of the Quondan, quite naked, showing that it had both male and female attributes.

  “Such are born from time to time,” said the Quondana. “One bearing all the attributes of Quondanapu. They grow up to sit in the heart of our cities, a symbol of our image in truth.”

  I heard a hissing behind me and turned to see a small crowd of Quondans pointing at me. The Quondana I was with spoke to them harshly, and they went away, not before I had heard the translated conversation.

  “Why is this vermin allowed in the holy precinct? Who is she who brings vermin here?”

  “This is a being from another planet, with another god, in whose image she is made. She is vermin, true, but she is acceptable vermin!”

  When we had gone outside, I asked, “Why am I acceptable vermin?”

  “Caaa. We have been gratified in meeting the Earthers, yes, for your own scripture and actions are in accord with ours. You also have a militancy upon your world that is vigilant in destroying other intelligences. A human person called Moore, who has named his militancy, In God’s Image…”

  “Iggy-huffo.” I said quietly, swallowing the bile that had risen in my throat.

  “Ah, you are familiar with it. Your people, also, are made in your deity’s image and you, also, are doing away with all lesser intelligences to preserve the purity of your worship.”

  “The one, back there, will it sit on that throne all its life?”

  “Yes. Which will not be long. Holy images do not eat or drink, of course. They do not excrete as we do. They merely show themselves until they have weakened too much, then they are placed in the sanctuary of likenesses. There they die. Would you like to see the sanctuary?”

  I managed to refuse the invitation in a deferential way. The Quondana went on to describe some of the worlds her people had encountered, those they found acceptable and those they did not. Discovery was one of the few topics considered appropriate for discussion during the rigidly ritualized observance of Anglazhee, during which many tiny plates of traditional snacks were served, along with tiny cups of differently named though uniformly unpleasant teas, both hot and cold.

  “…so we left the little planet to itself,” concluded the Quondana. “We will sell it, if we can.”

  “You chose not to colonize the little planet,” I asked, hoping for some clarification, for I had not followed her talk in my preoccupation with swallowing a particularly revolting fluid.

  “Indeed. It partook of both tomooze and flabbitz. Flabbitz we would eschew of our own accord, and tomooze our scripture bids us avoid in any place we settle.”

  I recognized the word flabbitz as one used each time the Quondana had said vermin. The other word, I did not recognize.

  “Paul,” I asked later in the day. “What is tomooze?”

  “Where did you hear that word?” he demanded. “I thought the females spoke Earthian to you. Improving their Earthian was why they asked for a couple.”

  “They do speak Earthian,” I said, surprised. “But they have some words that have no Earthian equivalent.”

  He frowned, annoyed, finally saying, “I suppose it hasn’t. Tomooze means something like ‘finally-unwelcoming,’ or ‘totally adversely affecting.’ If a group of Quondan go someplace, and one of them gets sick, the place is said to have tomooze. If they eat something that doesn’t agree, the food has tomooze. If they encounter one another and a quarrel breaks out, the people who quarreled are influenced by tomooze.”

  He explained grudgingly, as though it were none of my business. “Or, the place had it. Or the weather had it that day. Or anything else they can think of.”

  “And flabbitz?” I pursued.

  “Flabbitz is an intrinsic quality of outrageousness, atrociousness, or strangeness. As a category, the word includes everything the Quondan don’t think, eat, wear, or do habitually. It can be associated with tomooze. Anything that has flabbitz is sure to cause tomooze, though not all tomooze arises from flabbitz.”

  Which was why the Quondanga had objected to my being in their temple. No doubt vermin had flabbitz.

  I didn’t pursue the matter, but during the balance of our tour of duty, I made copious notes concerning places, people, and things that had tomooze and how the impression of tomooze might be given in places it did not actually exist.

  HOW I BECAME A SPY

  When our tour on Quondangala was over, Paul invited me to move back into the apartment in NW Urb 15. Adjacent space had become available, the space allotment for two people was much more comfortable than for one alone and the move, so he said, would let me return to my “hobby” at the sanctuary.

  I deferred the decision until I’d had a chance to talk with Gainor Brandt. I went to his office, and after I’d complimented him on his changed appearance (he had a new transgenic scalp, rampageous with hair), I explained my problem.

  “Aunt Hatty wants to leave Earth to live with her two sisters on Faroff, Gainor, but she says she’ll stay to keep me company if I don’t want to live with Paul. If I live with her, it means staying in Baja. I’d rather come back to the sanctuary to work, but that means either a minimum space allotment somewhere or back with Paul. He wasn’t this bad while he was still in school, but now it’s like living on the edge of a volcano.” We still had volcanos, of course. Several urbs had been wiped out by eruptions, and nothing mankind could come up with had stopped that natural force, not even tapping earthcore for energy.

  Gainor ran his hands through his newly luxuriant hair and nodded slowly. “I know it’s difficult, Jewel, but if you
can tolerate living with him, I wish you would.”

  He saw how astonished I was at that.

  He said, “Remember the journal you turned over to Shiela when you got back from Quondangala?”

  “Of course. Before I left, she told me to keep my mouth shut, to pretend no more than a polite interest in anything that went on, to learn as much of the language as I could and make notes of any discovered worlds that weren’t being colonized. I just followed orders.”

  “I have experienced agents who could not have done as well.”

  “You mean the information was useful?”

  “Using your information, we managed to pick up at auction three planets supposedly cursed with tomooze, and therefore ‘worthless.’ We’d never have known about them if not for you. We also relied upon your information concerning flabbitz as a precursor of tomooze, which proved helpful in the purchase of still other planets. It takes only a few allegations of ineradicable flabbitz to make places unattractive to the Quondanga.”

  “Tomooze and flabbitz are useful? I had no idea.” I was weirdly gratified and annoyed, both at once. Glad to have helped, miffed that they hadn’t told me sooner. “I wish someone had told me.”

  “I was going to. When the time was right, which seems to be this evening. If you can bear it, stay with him, Jewel. He’s in demand. He travels a lot, often into places accessible only to specialists. Anytime you can use him to go anywhere, let us know. Meantime, if he gets into one of his difficult stages, stay at the sanctuary. Consider the sanctuary your refuge; consider the dogs your avocation; and consider traveling with Paul your real profession. Since he gives you little or nothing, for your trouble, we’ll see that you’re well paid for it.”

  “Some money would be very welcome,” I admitted. At that point, I was still several years from getting the trust funds left by my father. I had some of Matty’s original documents, including the unedited recording of her first exploration and a first edition of Lipkin’s Seventh, which could always be sold if need be, but I wouldn’t do that unless disaster struck. “The worst part is his escapades with those damned concs. They…they offend me.”

  Gainor grimaced, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands across his expansive belly. “His have no doubt adapted to his own preferences, but in the main, concs seem to have been designed to be inoffensive. They’re quite modest. The organs which were obviously designed with humans of either sex in mind only evert or invert during sensual play and only to the extent required. Otherwise, they’re as sexless as dolls. They don’t show temper or frustration or grief, they express no feelings except for childlike gaiety, curiosity, and a consistent sensuality.”

  “They can feel pain,” I objected, knowing so from firsthand experience. “They’ll cry like children—or puppies—when they’re hurt…or killed.” They could be killed. I knew that.

  “Oh, of course,” agreed Gainor, lifting one nostril in disgust. “And ruined ones are occasionally violent, as they’ve been conditioned to be. Their creators no doubt considered such conditioning necessary if they were to be sexually attractive to all users.”

  I said angrily, “How would another race know that?”

  “Anyone who knows anything about terran animals knows that, Jewel. Competition is evolution’s engine. Aggression is a way of competing, sexual aggression increases hormones, increased hormones increase aggression, which is a broadband drive. It is generally directed toward competitors, but it can slop over onto the target or even onto innocent bystanders. An unwilling female can turn aggression into pure violence. Even willing females can become unwilling out of pain or fear or both, at which point the mating ritual can turn into rape, assault, even murder. Stallions sometimes killed mares. Bulls sometimes killed cows. Male primates sometimes killed female primates. So also, alligators, bears, the larger variety of chimpanzees. Work your way through the animal alphabet.”

  “Not very romantic,” I remarked, making a face.

  “On a biological level, reproduction scorns romance. Only a civilized intelligence yokes sexuality to sentiment, a team that was never designed to pull together. Which is one reason concs are so successful.”

  They were that. They were ubiquitous in public, occasioning no more than a casual glance. And of course, no one knew how many were kept in private.

  “Why are they here?” I asked. “No one has ever told us why they’re here or where they came from.”

  Gainor shook his head at me. “Have you ever asked that question before, Jewel?”

  I said, in some surprise, “No. I don’t think I ever have.”

  “Doesn’t that frighten you?” He ran his hand uneasily across his mouth.

  I gaped at him.

  He said. “Doesn’t it frighten you that the question is infrequently asked? There are half a dozen answers, by the way, none of them guaranteed to be true. And almost no one really cares. Which frightens me, a lot.”

  That trip to Quondangala was girlhood’s swan song, the last time I was able to live on the surface of my world without knowing—or perhaps, while disregarding—all the potent currents and eddies that went on underneath. Like many Earthers, I’d bobbed along on a little raft of acceptable fiction, not in total safety but not in terror, either. After that conversation with Gainor, things changed. I didn’t panic. I didn’t start hiding under the bed, but the whole matter of why-the-concs nagged at me. I could figure out for myself why no one cared very much. As Gainor had said, they were inoffensive. They were quite attractive. There was nothing at all threatening about them. One thing I was sure of. Someone, somewhere was making a profit out of them. So far as anyone knew, concs were found only on Earth. I began thinking seriously of going off world permanently. Exploring that possibility became part of my motivation in accompanying Paul on his off-world assignments.

  Most of his off-planet trips were quite brief. Sometimes I went as half a “couple,” other times as an aide-de-camp, someone to take care of the dull details. Before each one, I spent time with the arkists, learning what they needed to know about my destination and who might have that information. During each journey, I kept quiet, listened with great concentration, and gave no indication of interest beyond the merely polite. The information I garnered went straight to Gainor Brandt, where it was used to spread our arkists onto several more “worthless” planets and moons that either were then or could soon be able to support terran fauna.

  The seventh trip after Quondangala was to a Phain settlement planet, Tsaliphor. The Phain are an elder race as measured both by the length of their recorded history and the number of worlds they occupy, worlds that are widely spread throughout our arm of the galaxy and even in, toward the center, where radiation is known to be hostile to many forms of life. Usually, the only non-Phain allowed to visit Phain worlds are the personnel working at the embassies, not that the Phain recognize them as embassies. They are “foreign presences” who are allowed to lease space on the planet for finite, and usually brief, periods of time. The Phain do not maintain embassies on other planets, either. They have an observer or two at IC meetings, but that’s the limit of their interest in the “younger” races, which includes just about everyone.

  “Foreign presences” was at least preferable to “acceptable vermin,” and linguists often go to places others do not. Their experience in those places may be quite restricted, however, as was ours on Tsaliphor. As soon as we arrived, the Earthian ambassador told us we were to live in the embassy and leave it only if invited to do so by one of the Phaina, that is, the female Phain. The males were interested in religion, art, and business, and did not socialize with aliens, but sometimes, rarely, the Phaina did.

  Paul had once again been summoned to work on legal syntax for IC Linguistics Board. The ambassador said the reason for my presence was Phainic curiosity. The embassy staff was entirely male, so the Phain had never seen an Earther female. I was, in other words, a zoo exhibit. I was prepared to be outraged about my status at the earliest opportunity, but n
othing outrageous happened. Days went by with me cooped up in the embassy without ever seeing a he-Phain or a she-Phain. I was assured, when I asked, that none of them had seen me, though I had gone so far as to envision eyes in my showerbath and over my bed that would allow the Phain to satisfy their curiosity. It seemed odd to have been asked to come to the planet so they could see a female, then have no one interested in looking.

  At night, when it turned cooler, I would sit in my window and look out across a scruffy spread of bare soil lying between the embassy and its high boundary wall, which ran along the edge of a road. A pair of tall metal gates, ornamentally contorted to represent growing trees and vines, allowed a blurred view of shapes moving on the road, presumably the Phain, though there was too much foliage in the way to distinguish them from any other, equally lumpy shadows. The embassy had been built in accordance with Earthian security regulations, which meant the only windows in the place were at the back, over this so-called garden, limiting our view of the world to whatever could be seen through the gates.

  If I wanted to see out, I needed to be near the gates, which could be achieved if I had something to do there. I therefore asked for and received permission to work in the garden, a move of pure desperation to prevent my being overcome by boredom. My only experience with matters botanical had been during my years with Jon Point. The outer edges of the derelict park floor had received enough light and rain to grow things, and I’d been attracted by the novelty of growing something, anything. As I recall, Jon had found some seeds for me in an import shop, pumpkins and squash and tomatoes. I hadn’t cared much for the pumpkins or the squash, but the tomatoes had been a revelation.