Howling Stones

by Alan Dean Foster

  They were out over the main lagoon now, accelerating as Fawn turned southward. “From my conversations with the Parramati, I’ve been able to make a short list of these stones. There are stones for healing, stones for fertility, for warding off disease or confounding enemies, and for forecasting the weather. There are stones that help in the steering of outriggers and stones for communicating with the spirits of dead ancestors.

  “Control of the stones is strictly hierarchical. The patriarch of a family charged with the keeping of a planting stone wouldn’t try to swap rocks with the matriarch of a clan holding a fishing stone. Stone magic is handed down through family lines and helps to keep the peace among the Parramati. You can’t fight with your neighbors because you might want the assistance of their stones some day.”

  “Very convenient and ingenious, but I still see nothing that could be considered remarkable.” Pulickel shifted in his seat, watching the clear water race past several meters below them.

  As always, they found the station undisturbed. At their approach a gaggle of polutans—short, two-legged creatures with mournful dark eyes and incredibly ornate feathery crowns—went loping away from the trash pile like a flurry of midget extras from the last act of a Puccini opera.

  “Cute little suckers, aren’t they?”

  Pulickel eyed the dark patch of vegetation where the creatures had vanished. “Very pretty. What are they, some kind of flightless bird?” Tired, he forbore from pointing out that she had once again neglected to activate the station’s defensive perimeter prior to their departure.

  “I’m not sure. I let the computer handle most of the taxonomic classifying, but it can’t do anything unless I feed it information, and I’ve been pretty much preoccupied with the Parramati.”

  “I thought it was with improving your tan.”

  She gave him a sour look. “No, that’s only my third priority. So you do have a sense of humor.”

  “I’m told that it’s buried pretty deep, but occasionally it surfaces in spite of myself.”

  “Frankly, I’m surprised you’d noticed my tan. What’s your opinion?” Seated, she still managed to strike a pose.

  Thus invited, he allowed himself a long lingering look. “That you’ve been more successful with it than with the Parramati.”

  She snorted softly. “You’re telling me.” Using her feet, she drove the skimmer farther south.

  Later that night, long after the evening meal had been concluded, he noticed her outside, walking the station perimeter. At his touch of a switch, one of the wide window panels slid aside. Warm, humid air meshed confusingly with that of the air-conditioned station as the night sounds of Parramat entertained his hearing.

  “Lose something?” he called out and down to her.

  She looked back and up. “Just checking the alarm stanchions. I didn’t mean to distract you.”

  “You never distract me,” he lied. Staring down at her, he was rewarded with a sardonic pout. From the night-shrouded forest, something declared its alienness with a hair-raising howl. “I thought you didn’t worry about the local life-forms, even the dangerous ones.”

  “I don’t. It’s the AAnn who concern me. Them, and your desire to always have this damn thing turned on.” She knelt to run a handheld analyzer down the length of an activated stanchion.

  He leaned out the open window. “I suppose I can imagine them trying to engineer an ‘accident’ in the field, but surely they wouldn’t approach the station itself.”

  “Why not? Since neither side has any kind of formal agreement with the Parramati, they’re as free to move around Torrelau as we are. By the same token, I could go clomping around Mallatyah—if I didn’t mind being shot at.” Rising, she moved to another stanchion and began repeating the inspection procedure. “But we can legally keep them away from the station itself and from cutting our throats while we sleep.”

  He shifted his arms against the sill. “That wouldn’t look very good in light of the agreement on mutual cooperation for extraseni affairs that both the Commonwealth and Empire governments have signed.”

  “No, it wouldn’t, but we wouldn’t be around to chortle over the final resolution. I have no interest in becoming one of the triumphant deceased.” She touched the analyzer to the top of the stanchion. Both devices promptly responded with a satisfying green flash. “On the other hand, if we were to be massacred in our beds, dragged out of the station, hauled onto a skimmer, and dumped into the ocean, seagoing scavengers would quickly eliminate the evidence. That’s a chance I’d rather not take. In spite of what you think, I do occasionally leave the system running, especially at night.”

  Noting that she was more than half finished, he let his gaze roam skyward. Alien constellations teased his contemplation with suggestions of fantastical shapes that would have delighted the ancient Greeks.

  “Beautiful night. Too pretty for homicidal speculations.”

  “Not where the AAnn are concerned. Forgive me if I seem a little paranoid on the subject, Pulickel, but you have to remember that I’ve been here alone for quite a while. Is the defensive screen on, is the defensive screen off—you can go crazy trying to keep up with your fears. Of course, now that you’re here to protect me, I guess I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  “Mock if you will. But I’m actually reasonably handy with a gun. It’s a necessary component of the job.” He smiled down at her. “But I don’t shoot very well when I’m asleep.”

  “Precisely my point. We wouldn’t be the first field-workers to vanish with the AAnn offering protestations of innocence in response to follow-up inquiries. I’m not saying they’re responsible for what happened to the Murchinsons on Bandameva last year, but no one can prove that they weren’t, either. Me, I have no intention of disappearing without explanation, or even with one.

  “As for the station and you, they’re both technically my responsibility.”

  Something fist-size and bright orange came whizzing out of the darkness to circle him twice before darting back into the night. Instinctively he swatted at it, but his slow-motion flailings didn’t come close to hitting the creature, whatever it was.

  “Why am I your responsibility?”

  “Because even though you rank me within the Department, I’m the one in charge of Parramat station.” Her tone was firm. “I’m the one who helped set it up, I’m the one who’s been here for months, and I’m the one charged with the care of all local Commonwealth facilities.”

  “Dear me,” he responded with mock uncertainty. “I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to as a facility before.”

  “Go ahead and laugh. The AAnn have made several visits to Torrelau. They’re concentrating on Mallatyah, of course, but they’re not neglecting the other inhabited islands. Have I mentioned that their base commander is a slimy sort? Essasu RRGVB. An irritable character, as if the average AAnn wasn’t testy enough.”

  “The AAnn aren’t slimy,” he reminded her.

  “I was referring to his personality, not his epidermis.”

  Pulickel pondered. “How are they doing lately?”

  “As near as I’ve been able to tell from talking with Jorana, Ascela, and other Torrelauans, no better than me. On the days and weeks when I feel that I haven’t made any progress, I comfort myself with that thought. They have a full contact unit on Mallatyah, whereas until now there’s just been me here on Torrelau.”

  “Well, now that there’s two of us,” he responded, “maybe we can double your progress.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She was nearly finished with her inspection. “You know, I don’t give a shit about the yttrium, and niobium, and all the other ‘iums’ that the Commonwealth wants to dig out of Parramat. It’s the Parramati themselves who fascinate me. That’s why I’ve stayed on here for so long instead of putting in for a transfer. These people are hinting around at something of major importance, and I’m not leaving here until I figure out what it is.

  “As for the AAnn and the danger they
present, that’s something I’ve learned to live with. One day I was out doing some collecting on the far side of the lagoon when the remote alarm I had connected to the skimmer went off. Let’s just say that if I hadn’t been alert and prepared, the skimmer might have ‘drifted’ off, leaving me stranded out too far to swim back against the prevailing currents. There have been other potential accidents that I’ve managed to avoid. Doesn’t do any good to yell or complain or say anything about it, of course. The AAnn are consummate deniers.

  “Alternatively, if they succeeded in doing away with us, they might choose to dispose of the evidence by consuming it.”

  He started. “I’ve never heard of the AAnn eating a human, or a thranx.”

  She grinned up at him, her face illuminated by the monitor lights that were an integral part of the armed stanchions. “They wouldn’t rush to publicize a taste like that, now would they? Personally, I don’t understand your reaction. Meat is meat. If I was hungry enough I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to eat an AAnn, provided it had been properly cooked.”

  She might look like a goddess, he mused, but there were aspects to her that were decidedly un-Olympian. For these he was grateful. They helped to keep his thoughts focused where they belonged.

  The inspection concluded, she started back toward the lift shaft. “The AAnn may not be having any better luck at persuading the Parramati to see things their way, but they’re certainly more active in their attempts to eliminate the competition.”

  He had to lean out and look down to follow her progress. “Surely they know there’d be an investigation.”

  She paused to look up at him. “Uh-huh. Which means they wouldn’t follow through on anything unless they were pretty confident of getting away with it. Which is why I check the equipment alarms and my weapons regularly.” She vanished beneath the building’s overhanging edge. A moment later he heard the muted whine of the lift as she started up.

  Raising his gaze, he stared out into the squeaking, squalling, chittering rain forest, with its multihued trees and tremulous undergrowth. Were there night-camouflaged AAnn slinking about out there even now, watching him as he relaxed there at the open window, training night sights on his forehead preparatory to blowing his brains out?

  He stepped back and closed the window. Not for the first time, Fawn Seaforth had given him something else to think about before retiring besides herself.

  As warm, languid days came and went, progress in persuading the Torrelauans to formalize relations with the Commonwealth advanced at the philosopher Russell’s two classic speeds: dead slow and slower than dead. Jorana, the other big persons Pulickel talked to, even those with the least status among the villagers: all were unvaryingly polite, cordial, and obstinate. They expressed respectful interest in all the benefits Pulickel and Fawn claimed a formal treaty would bring to the people of Parramat. They were willing to listen to comparisons of what both the Commonwealth and the Empire had to offer. And they absolutely, uncategorically, refused to agree to anything.

  It wasn’t long before Pulickel came to the conclusion that many, if not all, of the natives he had established a personal relationship with listened to him purely out of courtesy, and that they had no intention of giving serious consideration to the proposals he so carefully presented. Just as Fawn had warned him, they wanted nothing to do with the benefits being proffered either by the Commonwealth or the Empire.

  One morning he confessed as much as they walked the mountainside southwest of the village, continuing their study of the extraordinary gardens of Torrelauapa. Middle and small persons worked the terraces while youngsters, their antics patiently tolerated by the busy adults, bounded and chased one another through the lush growth and elaborate arbors. Damp earth squished beneath the xenologists’ field sandals and they had to duck repeatedly to avoid bumping into the intricate, decorative trelliswork.

  “Now you know,” Fawn was telling him, “why from time to time I’ve been less than fanatical about my work here. If the Parramati ever agree to a formal treaty with the Commonwealth, it’s not going to happen in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. It’s going to be the result of a long, tedious grind.”

  Pulickel stepped carefully over something that looked like a meter-long yellow squash. “I’m sorry, Fawn, but I can’t accept that. I’m not the long, tedious grind kind of person.”

  “You don’t say.” She started up a line of stone steps. “I never would’ve guessed. Listen to me: like it or not, you’d better resign yourself to the idea. Impatience here will only result in greater and greater frustration. No matter how clever or persistent you are, you can’t rush the Parramati.”

  He followed her with his eyes. “The longest it’s ever taken me to resolve a xenological impasse was three months. It’s a record I’m quite proud of, and I do not intend on losing it here.”

  Idly waving at something small and fast that persisted in hovering in front of her face, she looked back over a shoulder at him. “I’d like to think you’re right. Unfortunately, experience tells me otherwise. And, there’s the big person I wanted you to meet.”

  Their climb had taken them to the topmost terraces and both of them were breathing a little harder in the thick, humid air. “What is she,” he asked as he caught sight of the alien in question and was able to sex it, “a hermit?”

  “No. Ascela and her relations just prefer to live up here. Think of it as a one-family suburb.”

  Approaching, Fawn lowered her head toward the earth. Several of the younger seni in the vicinity responded with neatly tucked forward flips. When Pulickel duplicated their efforts, as he was now known to do, their delight was joyous to behold. The senior Parramati the xenologists had come to meet yipped appreciatively.

  “I had heard that you could do the greeting, friend Pu’il.” Lips rippled eloquently.

  He studied the mature female. She appeared to be approaching late middle age, though it was hard to be sure. The species did not manifest many outward indications of advancing years until they were quite elderly, but he was gradually learning to recognize the subtle indicators. She was a little less erect, a shade less bouncy on her hind legs than most of her brethren.

  “It is pleasing to meet you.” He extended both hands palm upward. Three long, smooth fingers did their best to cover four of his own, ignoring the thumb. The seni found that extra afterthought of a digit quite amusing. Finger-out-of-place, they called it in their own language.

  Fawn was speaking. “I have brought my friend Pulickel to talk with you because he wishes to learn about roads and about stones.”

  “I am not surprised.” The senior Parramati withdrew her hands. “It is said that you have no stones of your own and must use other things instead.”

  “This is true.” In terranglo she told Pulickel, “I’ve tried to explain to these people what a computer is and what it does. It’s not a concept that translates well to a culture with low-end technology.”

  “How did you finally do it?”

  “Told them they were like flat stones that were connected by roads through the air. That’s pretty simplistic, but it’s a concept they can handle.”

  Ascela was picking some kind of oval-shaped blue berries with pink spots, her long middle finger snapping them off the vine and placing them in a basket she carried beneath one arm. “Did you come to me now because there is going to be a mastorm tonight?”

  Pulickel’s expression twisted slightly. “A mastorm? How does that differ from any other storm?”

  “In the same way,” Fawn explained, “that a big person differs from a small person, or a stone master from one who can only sift gravel.”

  “Then it’s just a bigger storm.”

  “Not hardly.” She walked alongside the busy elder, towering over her and the other Parramati. “It’s a unique local meteorological phenomenon, sort of a pocket hurricane. Too compact to be a typhoon, too extended to be a tornado. They form in the southwest at regular intervals and sweep over the archipelago. Riding one out
is quite an experience. They’re intense, and dangerous, but they’re over fairly quickly. I haven’t had time to analyze the mechanics very closely. When one sweeps in, I’m usually too busy seeing to the integrity of the station to spend time making observations.”

  He brooded on the consequences of this possible new disruption of his work. “But it’s just a storm.”

  She nodded. “Insofar as I’ve been able to determine. If you want a local take, ask Ascela.” He proceeded to do exactly that.

  “The mastorm is a break in the roads.” Three-fingered hands continued to pluck berries with the delicacy of a surgeon. “During such times, certain stones do not work properly and people must be careful.”

  “I can imagine,” he murmured. “There’s nothing worse than a defective stone.” Fawn frowned in his direction but, as usual, he ignored her.

  Ascela took him literally. “That is very true.” She raised her penetrating gaze to the southwest. “This one will be difficult.”

  He eyed her tolerantly. “Are you the local weather forecaster?”

  She turned bright seni eyes on him. “There has been a weather stone in my family for a hundred generations.”

  “There are two others on the island,” Fawn told him. “Each island has its own complement of weather stones, fishing stones, growing stones, and so on.”

  “I remember.” To the female big person he said, “I wouldn’t mind seeing your weather stone.”

  Fawn missed a step, but Ascela didn’t hesitate, gesturing elaborately with one delicate hand. “I would be pleased to show it to you, friend Pu’il. You must not touch it, of course, since you are not a stone master.”

  “I quite understand.” Bending, he removed a glittering piece of quartz from the narrow paved path along which they were walking. “I have my own stones.”

  “Come with me, then.”