The Companions

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Lethe woke reluctantly and took some time to be convinced I needed to see him at once. When I arrived at the island, he had Durrow and Wyatt with him, and we walked to the laboratory in virtual silence.

  “Tell us,” Lethe said, when we were seated inside.

  I told them the current version, the old man and his warning, what we had seen on our return, what we had done.

  “I brought you a sample,” I said, laying the wrapper on the table. “I would suggest you treat it as hostile, certainly don’t touch it with bare skin. I think we got all of it out of Drom, but I’m not positive. It kept trying to crawl back onto him or onto me even after we’d thrown it some distance away. We’ve burned all the rest, and I’ve suggested the men stir the ashes into wet-set. However, Drom’s deputy, Lathey, mentioned fireproof spores, and if there were such things, they’ve been spread with the smoke. Please see if this stuff has spores. If it does, we need to know if they burn, and if they don’t, we need to get the hell off this world.”

  “It actually looked like Lukha?” asked Sybil.

  “It actually looked like Lukha, not just shape and size, but facial features and the way it moved. Do I know whether it actually looked like that or only made me feel I saw that? No, I don’t know. So far as I could see while we were ripping the stuff off him, there was no part of what we tore away that was as smooth as skin or in long filaments that resembled hair. The old man said they came at night, so the effect may depend upon a lack of light and the use of shadow or suggestion combined with some kind of chemical hypnotic released into the air. I don’t know. I know it’s called a moss-demon, I know we all saw it as Lukha, and I brought you a sample, and that’s the limit of my information.”

  “Gainor Brandt will be here tomorrow,” said Lethe. “He’s brought some new technical help.”

  He sounded resentful, but I wasn’t. “Ornel, be glad he’s bringing help. It’s no reflection on you, and at this juncture, we need all the help we can get. I have some other news for you. The language of the Mossen is not color. It’s odor. The Mossen that dance on the meadow are not separable things. They’re all one message. They are created at the same time, in a certain order; they keep that order, because that order is a message conveyed in smells.”

  They looked at me as though I had lost my mind.

  “Smells,” said Wyatt, skeptically. “And you know this because…”

  Since I could not tell him the truth about either Gavi or Behemoth, I had invented a story for this as well. “Because I saw a message being…born from its parent plant. They grow, as a group, all in a row. They’re botanical. They create some kind of gas inside themselves, hydrogen, I’d suppose. They have little tendrils at the bottom and the sides to hold themselves down and together; they come off the plant all in one string; and they sort of float-skip themselves away, still in the same order.”

  “Of course you recorded this?” asked Lethe, dubiously.

  “I did not,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I was walking around, just sight-seeing, and I’d left all the paraphernalia on the floater. Once I knew what I was looking at, I stayed right where I was, so I wouldn’t miss any of it. I’m sure we can find another one to record. I’ve seen the mother plant around here, I just didn’t know what it was at the time.”

  “Around here?” asked Durrow. “Really?”

  “A basal rosette, rather thick, with leaves as long as I am tall. No. That was in the mistlands. Things grow bigger there. Maybe not that large around here, Abe. Anyhow, out of the center of the rosettes come long, arching stems with the little bell shapes hung beneath them in a row. You may already have samples in your collection, but listen, this is important. We must not collect any more of them. The plants that grow the messages must not be bothered. We didn’t disturb the Mossen because we thought they might be people, might have language. They aren’t people, they don’t have language, but something upstream of them does. We have to shift our scruples to whatever creature or being is actually speaking. Once the message is…born or detached, we’d probably be safe in capturing the whole string if we had to.”

  “If we had to?”

  “I don’t think we have to. All we have to do is set up an apparatus that can analyze and reproduce the odors produced by the Mossen, one at a time, as they pass. If PPI doesn’t have any such paraphernalia, surely ESC does, or you could get it…”

  Wyatt said, “Of course we have scent analyzers. It’s part of regular survey gear, used in identifying botanicals, determining emissions, perfumes, if you will. We gather the same data on insects, birds, animals, as pheromones are often important for reproduction.”

  “But you’ve never used it here? Why not?”

  Lethe shot the words at me one at a time, like bullets. “Because, dear lady, we have not done a survey here. Not until we have the permission of the local population.”

  I was too tired to get involved in whys. “In this case we’ll have to do the survey to identify the local population. If you can get the equipment set up by the meadow where the dance goes on, we can analyze the smell of each one of the things as they pass. Does each smell produce some kind of symbol or chart that can be used for comparison?”

  “A profile, yes,” said Abe Durrow. “Made by its constituent molecules. Of course, they may be mixed with ambient odors from the local vegetation. They may be hard to isolate.”

  “They don’t mix,” I said. “I’ve noticed several times that odors on this planet are as limited in duration as tones played on a…a flute or a trumpet. You get a note, then the next one, and not a mixture of the two. So we get the charts or symbols or whatever, then we can give those charts to Paul.”

  “To Paul,” Lethe said coldly. “Why?”

  “Because he knows how to figure out languages,” I said. “And a word is a word is a word, no matter how it’s conveyed. Right?”

  “I suppose,” said Lethe. “We’ll let Gainor decide.”

  “Let him decide,” I conceded. “But in the meantime, get that equipment over to the meadow so it will be ready when he gets here.”

  Paul was in his bed, as were three concs, sleeping in an untidy sprawl of appendages. I stood in the doorway, staring at the pile. Things weren’t going well on the language front, obviously. Now I had to get Paul thinking about a language of odors without telling him. Unless, perhaps, he should just be told. I couldn’t go on forever stroking his ego. Eventually he had to learn about cooperation. Or was that thought fatuous?

  I shut the door and left him as he was. The day had contained quite enough excitement. The next would no doubt offer its own challenges, and, one hoped, its own solutions. Halfway back to my own room, I hesitated. Three concs. I tried momentarily to convince myself that the other one, whichever one it was, was back in its case. Or under the bed. Or somewhere.

  Shaking my head, I retraced my steps, tiptoeing into his room and peering into the closet, under the bed, behind the table where he’d been working. No conc. I went into the conc dormitory, so-called, where the four cases sat on low stands. All of them empty. The food bin full of food but empty of conc.

  I searched the bathroom area, the living room, kitchen area, went through the door into the dog wing, woke the dogs and asked them to search.

  “Whigh?” asked Behemoth.

  “He wants to know which conc,” Adam translated from the door to his room, where he stood half-asleep.

  “Does it make a difference?”

  He merely looked at me. I flushed, went back the way I had come, into Paul’s bedroom once more. Of course the concs smelled different. The one on top with purple hair, that was Lavender. Beneath it was yellow hair, Marigold; and on the far side was Salvia, blue. The redhead, Poppy, was missing.

  I went back again to give Behemoth the information. He and the other dogs, except for Scramble, went through the bedrooms, through the closets, then out the door and over the fence. They were gone for some little time, returning in a group, Behemoth’s hair raised around his neck, h
is lips drawn back from his teeth.

  “Rrr-igh,” he yelped.

  “Poppy was in the redmoss?”

  “Ess. Wahs. ’awn.”

  “He means she’s gone,” said Adam. “He smelled her trail, into the redmoss, but now gone.”

  I went at once to the administration building, where the med tech and several of the staffers were still lingering while four men mixed wet-set into the ashes.

  Lathey was among them, and I drew him aside. “Did you see my brother or any of the concs outside today?”

  His lips thinned, he frowned.

  I said, “It’s all right. I know he does stupid things. Tell me.”

  “He brought them over to the commissary and got run off. The man in charge threatened to put him under restraints if he didn’t get the concs back where they belonged. Later we saw him outside, in the moss, chasing all four of them, laughing like a maniac. Drom said let it be until you got back, then he’d decide what to do.”

  “One of the concs evidently was…uh, eaten by the redmoss. It’s missing, and the dogs tracked it to the redmoss.”

  “Bones?”

  “Haven’t looked, but as I understand it, concs don’t really have bones. More like, cartilage. In which case…”

  His face hardened. “In which case we could have something looking like a cone come around real soon. And before that happens, I’m taking the concs that are left and putting them in stasis. Our damned linguist, pardon me, ma’am, I know he’s your brother, but he’ll just damned well have to do without them.”

  The concs could not be removed without waking Paul, who was not cooperative. I had foreseen as much. Paul was removed by Frank and Adam while the concs and their cases were taken from the building and put somewhere else; I didn’t ask where, and no one told me. I did ask the men to take the conc food, as well, and I reminded them the concs needed to eat every seven to ten days even when in stasis.

  “How dared they!” Paul shouted, when Frank and Adam went off on business of their own and Paul was allowed to return to his own rooms. “How dared they. Well, they can damned well solve their own linguistic problem. I’m sick of it. Sick of this place.”

  Thus far during his tantrum, I had followed my usual habit of patient soothing and sympathizing. The rage went on without tempering, however, and finally I reached the point I had always sedulously avoided: I became angrier than he was.

  “They’ll learn who they’re dealing with,” he shouted.

  “They already know,” I said, coldly. “And they’re sick of you. They don’t care if you leave. They wish you would, so they can get someone else who will solve the problem. The head of Earth Enterprises is due to arrive any day. They’re going to ask for your contract to be revoked so they can issue a new one.”

  It was the first time I had seen Paul speechless. He actually turned pale. “They’re what?”

  “I think you heard me, Paul. They have grounds. You disobeyed the regulations, and in doing so you’ve endangered every person on this base.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he sneered.

  I told him what I suspected as though it were proven fact. No point in temporizing! “You told Poppy to lie down on the redmoss.”

  He flushed. His mouth twisted.

  “You told it to. What was it, an experiment?”

  “…see what happened…” he mumbled. “…tired of it…”

  “Well, you saw what happened. No more Poppy. Now let me spell things out for you. It’s widely thought that the concs are created by Zhaar technology, that is, with the use of shape changer matrices. We also found out recently that when someone or something living is absorbed by the redmoss, the redmoss makes a simulacrum of that person, and it comes back looking for other people to eat. It happened here, tonight, in the headquarters building, while you slept through it. A simulacrum of Bar Lukha came back and tried to eat Drom! It was scary. At one point I had moss crawling after me trying to get onto my skin again.

  “Now, can you imagine a simulacrum of Poppy with a shape changer matrix in it coming back for you? Or wandering around out there building an army of Poppys? Can you imagine how your career is going to go down the tubes when this little escapade of yours is known throughout ESC and PPI and every commercial agency they’ve ever worked with?”

  He sat down, abruptly.

  “You have one chance to save your reputation. I found something out on this trip. I found out that each Mossen is a separate word in a message, with a particular place in a word order, and each word is conveyed by odor. ESC has equipment to detect the odors and analyze them. They’re going to do it tomorrow night when the Mossen dance. Then they’ll give the information to you. I may even have a clue as to the system. Just like spoken language, it may have evolved as mimicry. The word for death smells like something dead. The word for rain smells like rain. What they do for verbs, I haven’t a notion, but presumably you’re bright enough to figure it out.”

  “How…how did you find that out?” he said, his face very red, rage simmering just under the surface.

  I told him the story I’d told everyone else, concluding, “They opened up one at a time, starting with the one farthest out, and as each one opened, there was a separate, distinct odor…”

  “Before, you said it was color, patterns…”

  “I didn’t say it was color or pattern, I said the colors and patterns were unique and interesting. They also happen to be associated with particular odors. Pink ones do seem to smell alike, so do blue ones, and so on.”

  “Why odor, why not color?”

  “Because until humans got here, this world was blind and deaf,” I shouted, angry, mostly at myself for not having realized this immediately. “It couldn’t have had language dependent upon seeing or hearing, because nothing native to this planet has eyes or ears!”

  “You’re saying they had noses?” he screamed.

  “Chemical receptors, which is the next best thing. Most plants do.”

  “Go away,” he said, petulantly. “Just go away.”

  “Fine. Take the chance or don’t take it. By tomorrow night, it’ll be too late to change your mind.”

  I left him. I also locked the door on my side of the living room as well as the outside doors, telling the dogs to wake me if they needed to go out. Since Gavi Norchis had described willogs, since I myself had seen a moss-demon, the planet Moss seemed much less friendly than before.

  Certainly I was less friendly than before! I had never talked to Paul like that, never threatened him, never indicated that I thought him less than brilliant. Siblings were supposed to feel rivalry, which I had carefully avoided by giving him nothing to rival. I had always been compliant, indulgent, obliging. What on earth had happened to me?

  A DECISION IN CHAGGA

  Life Captain Gacha was a member not only of the Gar G’tach but also of the G’tach G’gh’hagh, the supreme council of the Derac people. Not all tribal life captains were members of this group, which selected only Derac who were of abstemious habits and able to keep their jaws locked, thus minimizing the betrayal of secrets when one was far gone with what the humans called “moodsprays,” a product of Earth Industries much in favor with certain aged Derac who had received little or no mental benefit from the late life change.

  The meetings of the G’gh’hagh were rotated among the seventeen planets or systems used by Derac tribes as breeding and retirement sites. They were held at specified, infrequent intervals, though special meetings could be called if necessary. At Gahcha’s summons, and as soon as was possible following the disposal of Tachstucha, this grand council met in the old wardroom of the retired ship named Chagga, or “Slammer.” There Gahcha repeated what he had been told by Tachstucha concerning the Derac females. When he had concluded, he lay back on his warmed cot and waited for reaction, which was not slow in coming.

  “Your son. He’ll tell everyone,” said one member.

  “My son will tell no one,” said Gahcha in a soft but very meaningful
voice.

  Silence fell over the group. There was some shifting about, some muttering. Finally, one member growled, “Someone had better take care of that breeding facility worker. He’ll get spray crazy some night and spill it all.”

  “Already done,” said Gahcha, who had made an unscheduled inspection of the breeding facility the morning following Tachstucha’s disclosure. The worker hadn’t even fought back, had, in fact, seemed almost grateful that his terror was soon to be over.

  “This means we don’t need human women,” said the largest among them, a ponderous oldster with a low, growling voice. “Also, it means the Orskimi knew we didn’t need human women.”

  “You’re sure?” asked another, pale chartreuse with age. “About the Orskimi?”

  “This is the kind of thing the Orskimi are sure to know in great detail,” growled the large one. “Was not R’ragh the Reformer educated by the Orskimi? Did not our idea of H’hachap come from R’ragh? All along, have we not felt little Orskim pincers at the edges of events, nipping here, pinching there?”

  “They have a plan,” said a third member. “They always have a plan.”

  “Can we determine their plan?” asked Gahcha. “They have suggested, and we have agreed, to attack the human installation upon Moss. Then…of course, we will be at war with the humans…”

  “And while we are at war with the humans,” said the ponderous one, “the Orskimi will no doubt slip into all seventeen retirement systems and wipe out every one of our breeding centers because we have foolishly allowed our females to be concentrated in a few locations, where they may all be easily killed.”

  “All!” Gahcha was outraged. He had not thought of this, but it was certainly likely. What a blow! With all females gone…Great God Ghassifec forfend! “It would be the end of our race.”