The Companions

by Sheri S. Tepper

  When I came out into the hallway, I saw one of the older guards, a man I’d known for years.

  “Jewel. Did you know Adam got picked up last night by that plipping Species Control? We just got him back.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He had a seizure or something. They took him to the medical center. One of our tame doctors checked him out and got him home.”

  I went past the labs and took the moving walkway to the staff apartments that had been built around an atrium cut through both the park floor above and the roof above that, and I found Adam lying on a chaise in the sunlight, the part of his face not hidden behind his beard looking quite gray.

  “Whoever designed those pills ought to have to take one every month for the rest of his life,” he grated at me, husky-voiced and obviously in pain.

  “They have to simulate a real emergency, Adam. Otherwise, you might get Worldkeeper doctors looking at the wrong parts of you…”

  “All very nice in theory,” he snarled. “I’m sure I’ll be fine as soon as my ears stop ringing and I can focus my eyes.”

  I sat down beside him, troubled both by his appearance and his obvious annoyance.

  He said angrily, “Jarl Alred needs his head examined. Either that or he needs to stop dosing. He got me into that mess last night…”

  If he needed to tell me, then I needed to listen. I sat back, made myself relax, and was careful to make my question as casual as possible. “Shiela’s son? What did he do?”

  “He buzzed me after midnight, told me he was down at this surface club, one of those clubs, and he needed a ride because flit taxies refuse to go down there, and who can blame them? So, since I’m blessed with terminal stupidity, I took a two-seater flit from the sanctuary garage and went to the address he gave me, which he hadn’t mentioned was level minus three.”

  “No flit entry,” I said. It sounded like Jarl Alred.

  “Of course not. And he wasn’t waiting for me at level. At which point I should have returned to quarters and sent an armed party after him, five or six mech-guards at least. Being, as I said, lethally incompetent, however, I parked the flit and went down after him. When I brought him up, a bunch of down-dweller users and half a dozen ruined concs had turned the flit over and were climbing the walls looking for something new to play with.

  “Alred had the staggers. I propped him inside the door, slipped into the alley, came around the back, and broke up the party. While the running and screaming went on, I went back the way I’d come to pick up Alred, which took a little time, and by the time I got out the door, somebody in the group had called Species Control. They decided to take me in for questioning, because I was there, and because I wasn’t Alred, who was dropping his mother’s name like concs drop giggles.”

  “So you bit the pill.”

  “So I bit. Yeah. Told them I was subject to seizures, just before I shook out. Also told them I saw something funny leaving the alley. Alred backed up the seizure bit, as much as he could, dosed as he was. He’s not a strong shoulder, Jewel. I wouldn’t want to have to lean on him.”

  “Gainor and I have had worries about that,” I confessed. We had more than that, if truth be told. “Shiela is solid as a rock and she claims her son is supportive, but he’s just…feeble. With this new edict, he probably won’t be involved much longer.”

  “What new edict?”

  He hadn’t heard. I told him.

  “And now what?” he breathed, his face turning even grayer.

  “We have a little time. There are some arks that are mostly ready. Gainor’s getting a delay on enforcement. Don’t panic yet.”

  I left him with that, good advice, though I had trouble following it myself. The panic was there, barely held at bay, ready to take over the moment I let my guard down. In the meantime, a specific something had to be done. Shiela wouldn’t think of it. Adam obviously hadn’t known about it. The dogs had to be told.

  I changed direction, taking a branch hallway toward the gated lift that opened upon forest. Trees, of course, real ones, brought back as seeds or saplings from planets where their species had been planted generations ago, stimulated into rapid growth by current technology. Oak. Ash. Beech. Pine. Smaller growths beneath and around: grasses, forbs, ferns. Rock outcroppings with hollows that could be used for dens. The trickle of water. The smell of moist earth.

  I knew that the dogs would have heard the lift arrive. I sat down on a stump—imported, along with the trees—and waited, sensing the subtle tang in the air that denoted the approach of a furred thing, an other creature, a nearing manifested also in the momentary hush among the tiny creatures that kept this mini forest alive with chirpings and chewings. A larger thing was coming, a magisterial presence. It moved on tough-padded feet, its tongue lolled, a flow of saliva coursed its edge to spatter on soil; the deep velvet of coat stroked grasses and twigs soundlessly aside, the plumed tail streamed like a banner, air entered lungs like bellows, eyes rested on me.

  “Scramble,” I said, not daring to look up.

  A murmured growl. An acknowledgment, not a challenge. When I looked up, she was sitting behind a screen of willow, next to a watering pool. After a moment, she got up and came over to thrust her muzzle into my neck, below my ear, moving it down my body and across my back as she took an inventory of where I’d been lately and whom I’d been with. Scramble was Scarlet’s granddaughter, eight years old, twice the size of her mother, four times the size of her grandmother, twice as fast, more than twice as smart. If Scarlet had sometimes thought of me as family, Scramble thought of me as a puppy. Her puppy. I adored her. She was a manifestation of every dog I’d ever loved, starting with my stuffed plush puppy on Mars.

  Vigilant stepped out of shadow, Dapple behind her. Scramble returned to them and they sat, tails wrapped around their legs, utterly silent, watching me with opaque golden eyes.

  “Dapple, Veegee. You’re going to hear talk,” I said conversationally. “People are going to be jittery. We may be taking you off world soon.”

  A mutter from the underbrush. I had already sensed them. Behemoth, with Titan and Wolf behind him. These were the six “big dogs,” the culmination of the sanctuary’s efforts to create the consummate paradigm, the essential, perfected dog, bigger, healthier, smarter…no, I couldn’t say smarter when I didn’t know how smart they’d been before people had fooled with them. Maybe not smarter, but far better able to communicate.

  With all six of them there, staring at me, it was hard to speak. Sometimes…even though I had held these dogs as puppies, helped feed and bathe them, taught them behaviors, even though they were as close to family as any living things, sometimes they frightened me. I always told myself it wasn’t fright. Nonetheless, they stunned me; they were awe-ful.

  “I don’t know where you’ll end up, yet,” I said, keeping my voice level with an effort. “Not exactly, but it’s bound to be an ark planet.”

  Nothing. No movement. No eye blinked, no ear twitched, tails didn’t move. I sat beneath that timeless regard, waiting, wondering. I could not think as they thought. I could not see as they saw, nor sense as they sensed. I could only wait, hoping they would…agree? Concur? What?

  When I had given up hope, Behemoth growled, “Awl?”

  “All?” I whispered. “Yes. That’s all. For now.”

  Silently, they disappeared, except for Scramble, who put her nose to my cheek and tongued me along the jaw. Affection? Admonition? I didn’t know which, if either, but it was one more bit of evidence that Scramble thought of me as her pup.

  “Yu sai wen is ’ime,” she said, or asked.

  “I’ll tell you at once,” I agreed. “It will be a good place.” I prayed I was right, that it would be a good place.

  “Ai no. Yu aways magh ghu ha’van.”

  Alas, I only wished always to make good happen. Sometimes I could not make anything happen at all. I hugged Scramble once more and she sat beside me, leaning against me, sharing warmth. Scramble was the oldest of
the big dogs. I had known her longer than any of the others, and I would willingly have sat beside her all day, but there was work to do now that I had told the dogs what I had to tell. They were the only ones who needed to know.

  MISSION TO MOSS

  I had twelve hours much-needed sleep at the sanctuary, followed by a lavish and delicious breakfast with Shiela, during which Paul linked me and asked me to come home. He sounded shaky but sober and, oddly, he was without any of his usual postspasm resentment.

  “Are you going back so soon?” asked Shiela, with raised eyebrows.

  I temporized. “Not if there’s something you need me for here.”

  “My dear, this isn’t a matter of my needs, you know that.”

  “I’ll make a quick visit after work, to see if things are back to normal or not.”

  My plan didn’t satisfy Shiela, but Paul’s abrupt break with pattern had me interested. When I let myself into the apartment late in the afternoon it was obvious that tower housekeeping had made an emergency visit. The postorgy mess had been cleaned up and the broken furniture replaced, though usually I was the one who took care of such matters. The only reason I could imagine for this transformation, and for his almost apologetic link call, was that Paul had received an assignment so important that he had pulled himself out of his mania overnight. He hadn’t taken the two or three days necessary to sleep it off, so he must have used moodspray antidote, despite its nauseating side effects.

  Evidently he had had time to get over the discomfort, for he greeted me cheerfully in a warm, almost brotherly voice.

  “Oh, there you are, Jewel. So glad you’re back. I’ve just made coffee…”

  Aha! He was using his charming and reasonable “managing Jewel” voice. Brother dear wanted something, and he was well into his connivance script. The freshly made coffee, the platter of tiny and very expensive cakes from an import shop on Floor 191, the cleanup of the apartment, all intended to distract, to put me off guard.

  “How was the sanctuary?” he asked. “Everything going well?”

  Anyone who didn’t know him as well as I would have thought he was interested. “It’s in an uproar, as one might imagine, Paul. The new law will affect us adversely, of course.”

  “A pity you’re going to be deprived of your work there. Well, I’m glad to have something to tell you that may help make up for the loss! A real challenge, Jewel!”

  He poured the coffee. He offered the plate of cakes. I took several. They were only innocent bystanders, no reason not to enjoy them.

  “I’ve been chosen as consultant for a compliance contract! It’s for an Earth-like planet, with one large moon in Garr’ugh 290 system…What?”

  “Sorry,” I murmured, pouring sloshed coffee back into the cup from my saucer. The system name had surprised me. “My hand slipped.”

  He frowned. “As I was saying, it’s a…marvelous place.” He tasted a bit of imported pastry while noting how this was being received. I didn’t look at him as I concentrated on the flavor and texture of the first cake. Delicious. Quite marvelous. Unearthly, one might say. When eventually I turned widely innocent eyes his way, he went on. “You’ll love it, Jewel. It’s felicitous in climate, lovely in aspect. Both PPI and ESC are on planet, so we’ll be quite safe. It’s a primitive world, of course, but the seas are shallow and clear, the housing is luxurious by Earth standards, there are great trees to sit under and mossy lawns to walk on.” He smiled at me, enjoying the sound of his own voice. “It’s a maximum three-year contract, and only a fool would turn down a chance like this…”

  I chewed slowly, and swallowed slowly. This was quintessential Paul. He had reached the end of step one, at which point I was either to agree or disagree. I had already agreed, of course. A split second after I heard the name Garr’ugh 290, I had decided to go with him for very good reasons of my own, but I kept that intention to myself while taking another slow sip of coffee-14 (which was no improvement over coffee-13 or indeed, if one thought back a decade, coffee-9 or-10), frustrating his strategy by saying nothing while I stared out the nearest window with a totally blank face.

  Paul’s usual ready cannonade of counterarguments was spiked by my silence. He followed the direction of my eyes. The only view through that window was of the housing tower opposite, an uninteresting grid of windows, some of them framing potted plants. Aside from the tenants and any wandering microorganisms that made it through the decon locks, potted plants were now the only living things in housing towers. On the several occasions when Paul had bought such expensive greenery, however, I had always managed to kill it. Potted plants were not, in my mind, any kind of substitute for warm friends that welcomed one home with soft fur and eager noses.

  He shifted slightly, fidgeting.

  I caught the almost imperceptible movement and turned to look at him instead of the window. In Paul’s script of this encounter, the words “only a fool” had been purposefully used as words at which I might take umbrage. My doing so now would lead him into the usual “in the overall scheme of things, Paul’s jobs are more important than Jewel’s jobs” argument, with its infinite avenues of digression and ambush. Inevitably, he would needle me until I lost my temper. Then, as would have been his intention from the beginning, he would retreat into a dungeon of endlessly inventive sulks to lick the traumatic wounds inflicted by his nearest of kin. Being wounded was all the justification he needed for making my life intolerable.

  Then, after a lengthy episode of bleak unpleasantness, he would signal me that I might now raise him from the depths by apologizing abjectly and surrendering completely to whatever subordination he was proposing. On occasion I had done so, and in such cases, the clouds had cleared immediately. The moment I agreed, he would be sunny as a summer meadow in a Bonner I wall vista. This pattern had been more or less routine, but this time, and not without a pleasant thrill of malice, I refused the bait and skirted the trap.

  “What about my work at the sanctuary, Paul?”

  He gaped, thrown only momentarily off stride. “Why…I assume this new law will pretty well wipe out any need for sanctuaries, and if not, someone else in your ca-ninny group can substitute for whatever it is you do there. Dogs could always be left in stasis…”

  Ca-ninny. I ignored the prick of the dagger and stood up, saying, “What do you mean, stasis?”

  “We’ll only be gone three years, maximum.”

  “Ten percent brain loss per year…”

  “My ass, Jewel, they’re not Ph.D.’s. They’re dogs!”

  “You’ll be leaving the concs in stasis?” If housing permitted, he sometimes took them with him on these trips.

  He was genuinely startled. “Since it’s three years, I’m taking the concs. Besides, as you said, 10 percent mental loss…”

  “Ten percent of zero is zero. There’d be no noticeable difference in any of them except Poppy. Once in a great while, Poppy sounds almost sentient, unlike Marigold, Salvia, or Lavender. Particularly Lavender, who has the brain of a virus.”

  A curled lip showed I’d hit a nerve, a definite no-no with Paul. He brought out the big guns. “Oh, well, stay on Earth if you like, but you can’t go on living here. With your Aunt Hatty gone off world to her sisters, there’s no place waiting for you in Baja, and my priority housing rating goes with me, so this place will be sublet. I have no idea what you’d rate by yourself. Whatever it is, it won’t cover space for hobbies.”

  What did one politely call concubines if not a hobby! Or was there, indeed, anything one could politely call concubines? “The dogs aren’t a hobby, and I have a species preservation license.”

  He sneered. “The species in question won’t even exist a month from now.”

  Which was the absolute truth so far as Earth was concerned, and no less infuriating for that. In any case, it had nothing to do with the present conversation except peeving me enough to ready my sword and execute a graceful turn with my cape.

  “I would hate living as a down-dweller on the bo
ttom level of nowhere next to an algae conversion plant while you’re gone, Paul.” I paused to ripple the cape. “However, the same goes for residing on Garr’ugh 290 as your unpaid housekeeper as I have done from time to time elsewhere. We both know that the stakes on new planets are enormous; the budget for a compliance mission is huge. I want a fair share, which means a salary and permission to take some dogs and trainers for my own amusement, just as you’re taking the concs for yours. Either that, or I’ll stay here to accept a recent liaison proposal.”

  “Liaison proposal? You?”

  The sword had gone home, and he had been wounded. I saw his chagrin at this self-betrayal. “A liaison offer, yes. A fellow preservation enthusiast.”

  He was honestly surprised. “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone…”

  Trust Paul to think of sex first. “I’m speaking of Margaret Olcot. She and I have been friends for years, and she’s recently lost her longtime associate. She has an heir-hold on a protected site, over forty acres of trees, which is quite a temptation. She’s asked me to join her for the sake of companionship and affinity.”

  At this juncture, he could still decide to charge, snorting and bellowing. Better all around if we could skip another of his rages. I continued, “Quite frankly, I think the liaison might be a better move for me, but you know I enjoy travel, and I’m curious about Garr’ugh 290. When you’ve decided…”