Beast Master's Quest

by Andre Norton

  Judging by the way he and his aikiza separated and left apart from the four watchers, she could have been right, Storm thought.

  Chapter Nine

  Inside the ship Storm was having difficulty suppressing a broad grin. He had to admit, if only to himself, that Laris spitting fire at the native had been very funny to see. It might not be so amusing if the natives broke off discussions as a result. However, he’d say nothing of that possibility unless or until it happened.

  He stood watching the viewscreen, which clearly showed the increasingly angry talk outside. He could not hear the words, nor would they have helped if he could, but the body language was fairly clear. In fact it looked as if a physical confrontation would break out very soon, if what was going on out there wasn’t calmed down.

  Captain D’Argeis joined him. “They don’t look like one big happy family out there, do they?”

  “No.” Storm considered. “Laris is sure that T’s’ai endangered Logan deliberately, but she also thinks T’s’ai’s aikiza tried twice to warn Logan and was silenced. If that’s so, then there is a chance the others who watched from a distance had no part in it either and aren’t pleased to have been excluded from a crucial decision.”

  The captain’s voice was urgent. “I think you’re right. Look!”

  Outside T’s’ai and his aikiza were being physically separated by the other two aikizai. The big felines had thrust themselves between the angry duo and their own people, gradually moved them further apart and kept them that way. Now the two liomsa were turning their backs with an attitude of deliberate rejection.

  T’s’ai and his aikiza were walking away into the forest, the rigidity of their backs seeming to express indignation and pride, while the other pairs remained—from their attitudes, if that could be correctly deduced regarding alien beings—very angry. Then they too left in the opposite direction.

  The captain smiled. “Dissension in the ranks?” he asked softly.

  “It looked like that, didn’t it? I guess we’ll find out in the morning. If they’re there to talk and T’s’ai isn’t, then we may tentatively guess that they didn’t approve of his behavior.”

  Yes, Storm wondered, but was that because they thought T’s’ai morally wrong to risk Logan’s life, a fool to show enmity openly, or for some other reason they might be totally alien?

  By turns that evening they let out the teams. Mandy flying briskly through the nearest portion of the forest to report that two aikizai watched the ship from within nearby patches of vines. Neither of the aliens seemed at all interested in her appearance.

  *I could go to speak to them,* Prauo offered.

  Laris bit back a pang of fear and anger. Did he want to spend time without her?

  “No, I don’t think so.” Storm shook his head. “Maybe another time if they’re there each night. But let things settle down a bit first.”

  The coyotes left to play on the turf by the ship. Tani went out to play with a ball with them for a while and Mandy promptly sent to Tani that the aikizai had sneaked closer to watch the game.

  “All right, when the coyotes come in I’ll let Ho and Hing out, but I’ve impressed on them they aren’t to approach the cairn and they must watch the sea. Any sign of movement at all and they’re to come back to the ship.” For clarity Storm was firm. “Logan, you stand guard with the rifle as well. Ho and Hing have good reflexes, but they can’t cover ground the way the coyotes can if they have to run.”

  Ho and Hing scavenged joyfully along the high-tide line, and they returned with minor treasures again. Storm went down to meet them, scooping up both to cuddle as he examined their findings.

  Tani came down to join him. “What did they find?”

  He laid an affectionate arm about her waist, displaying Hing’s treasure with his free hand. “Something interesting. That’s shell, but it’s been carved, possibly into a pendant. I noticed the aikizai all wore plaques like this on their harness.”

  He exhibited a slightly curved shell, about five by six inches with five small holes evenly spaced around its edges. On the converse side was carved a small scene of the native liomsa with their aikizai. What may have been a name was graven on the inner side. The edges of the shell were chipped; several of the holes were broken out, and one edge had been broken off completely and was missing.

  Tani eyed that. “I have a feeling this wasn’t just lost.”

  “No, it may be that these people come regularly to the coast to pick up the driftwood and shells to use in their jewelry. They might also be valuable trade items and worth the loss of a duo every now and again. If there’s a solid population of those sea-beasts, then I’m sure that at least occasionally the natives lose members. I suspect the inhabitants of our cairn just outside were two of the unlucky ones who met a sea-beast and were unprepared for it.”

  “And this plaque,” Tani said, completing the thought, “may have come from an aikiza whose body was never found.”

  “Or whose body was found a long way down the coast and buried there,” Storm added. “Get the scans we made of this coast as we landed. Let’s see if we can identify more cairns. If there’s a number of them, that may give us some idea of how numerous the sea-beasts are.”

  “It’ll take time.”

  “We could do it on the computer,” Storm suggested.

  Tani shook her head. “We could, but it’ll be more fun for everyone to do it by hand. It gives us something to do while we wait.” The idea spread, and in an hour they all had copies of the landing pictures laid out on every flat surface in the mess.

  “I suggest we lay these out in order,” said Captain D’Argeis. “That way we can each take a section of the coast and work up and down from where we are now.” Storm agreed and the blown-up pictures were laid out for study.

  Soon there were cries of recognition. One by one they marked scans and added the information into the main computer on the bridge. After three hours they were done, and they sat back to count cairn numbers and make guesses.

  Captain D’Argeis was busy with the transmitter, sending an updated report to the Patrol cruiser, including copies that showed the landing scans and more close-ups of the cairn, and some of their assumptions about them.

  He had tentatively tagged the natives with the names of “aikizai” and “liomsa,” as those within the Lady were calling them. When he was finished he closed down the transmitter and turned to the waiting group, signaling his half brother to begin discussion. Logan started with a precis of the scan results.

  “We’ve found over fifty cairns in this immediate section of coastline. That’s approximately one cairn every two miles. What we need to know now is the approximate ages of the cairns. If they’re all under, say, twenty years old, then it indicates that the sea beasts are extremely dangerous, or that they’re numerous, or that they live predominantly in this area of the coast themselves.” He paused to let everyone consider that before continuing.

  “If the cairns are spread out over several hundred years, then either the sea-beasts don’t catch that many people, don’t live around the coast that much, or aren’t numerous.” He looked at his half-brother. “Is that about right?”

  “It’s a start,” Storm said diplomatically. There was a whole list of other possibilities—but some of them they couldn’t check right now, and others Logan would think of himself soon enough. “What do you suggest we do to verify some of this?”

  Logan grinned. “Get out the crawler and check cairns.”

  Tani protested. “Logan, that isn’t a good idea. Cairn stones won’t show how long they’ve been in a cairn, and if we start dismantling cairns to test the contents, we might turn all the natives against us. How would you feel if aliens dug into your graves and did odd things to the skeletons inside?”

  Logan nodded ruefully. “Come to think of it, they actually did, didn’t they? And we didn’t like it. I remember Brad telling me about archaeologists on Terra in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds who happily dug up Indian
graves without worrying about how we felt over the desecration, and they ignored any protests we made. Okay, so we can’t do that. What can we do?”

  “Ask the natives,” Storm said briefly. He considered that before adding, “But we may be able to make some initial assumptions.”

  “T’s’ai seemed quite sure Logan was in danger,” Tani pointed out.

  “His aikiza wanted to warn Logan,” Laris chimed in. “If the sea-beasts are rare or hardly ever on this coast, I don’t think he’d have tried twice. It might not even have occurred to him to give a warning. That he tried hard says to me that either the sea-beasts are often around or there’s a lot of them at this time of the year. Maybe it’s their breeding season?”

  There was a general mutter of agreement to that. Storm rose and stretched. “We’ve gone as far as we can go with very little data as yet. Let’s sleep on it and see if the natives are waiting outside again in the morning, okay?”

  The night was peaceful; in the morning the viewscreens showed that the aikizai and their liomsa had returned. T’s’ai and his aikiza weren’t there, but the other two pairs were, sitting patiently by the cairn.

  Storm stood over Laris and Prauo until they’d eaten, then he released them to join the waiting natives. Logan recorded the scene from the crew doorway as Laris slowly approached the four, deliberately and physically exaggerating both her reluctance to approach and her distrust of them.

  The two aikizai stood, walked partway toward them, and halted. Then slowly, making no quick movements, they crouched, dropping their heads flat to the ground, arching and exposing their upper neck areas.

  Within the ship, Storm stiffened. “That’s a submission posture. I think they’re trying to apologize.”

  Laris recognized it as well. When Prauo had been a baby and had done something he knew to be wrong, he would adopt the same posture—instinctively, it had seemed. Now she saw it done deliberately and was distressed for the aikizai. They might want to take Prauo away from her, they might entice him to abandon her, but she was unable to watch as they humbled their pride. Impulsively she dropped to the ground with them, stroking their heads and rubbing under their chins as she had done when Prauo was a baby to reassure him that he was forgiven. With a small hand under each head she lifted them to meet the gaze of four purple eyes.

  *Don’t!* she sent as slowly and clearly as she could. *It wasn’t your fault. It was T’s’ai. How could I blame you? And besides, his aikiza wanted to warn us. Please, don’t be unhappy.*

  From beside her Prauo whined softly, his emotions echoing hers. Understanding, forgiveness, and distaste that his kind should debase themselves for a fault not their own.

  The two aikizai rose and moved to lay their heads in apparent affection across Prauo’s shoulders. Then they came to look into Laris’ eyes. She smiled up at them. *You know, you’re beautiful. I always thought Prauo was, now I know there’s only one thing more beautiful than one of him, and that’s a bunch of you.*

  She allowed her emotions to flow outwards, letting them feel the mental truth behind probably unintelligible alien words. She received mind-tastes in turn: Thanks, pleasure, happiness at being forgiven, apology that the liomsa had been foolish and given no warning. A brief picture of many pairs of aikizai and their liomsa wandering the shoreline after a storm, gleaning what could be found. A strong suggestion of necessity that they do this. That last was overlaid with what Laris interpreted as indications of religious or cultural imperative.

  It was followed by pictures of sea-beasts erupting from the water to rend and destroy. Cairns raised to hold the bodies of those who died. Overlaying that last, a clear block of emotions Laris translated as meaning that the sea-beasts were the enemy of all liomsa and aikizai. That T’s’ai had done very wrong to offer any being at all to their jaws.

  Then a careful warning, and she understood it was strictly personal from the aikizai to her, as their own liomsa were excluded from the mind-sending. Some of their humanoid partners might feel as T’s’ai had. Let her beware of that. The aikizai only rejoiced that her aikiza had found his liomsa, that he was two in one and loved. For what else was life?

  Laris sat so long stroking them then that the humanoids rose to walk across to where the girl sat with the three aikizai. The liomsa sat across from her and they too managed, though not nearly so eloquently—nor so believably, Laris thought—to apologize for T’s’ai’s actions. Laris forgave them, but used it to press for clearer explanations both of events and of their lives here. After more than two hours her brain felt overworked and overstuffed, and she was weary.

  *I must return to the ship and my friends. Will you come back later today or return tomorrow?*

  That was easy. She received a neat quick set of pictures. Of the sun where it now stood. The four walking into the forest, the sun moving to low on the horizon and the four returning.

  *You’ll be back late this afternoon?*

  Assent.

  Laris stood. *I’ll be waiting then. Thank you.*

  With Prauo in attendance she circled towards the beach, selected a few more items from the tide’s bounty, and headed back to the ship, climbing the steps wearily. All she’d done was sit and talk and listen a while, but she felt terribly tired.

  She liked the aikizai but she was becoming more and more afraid that Prauo might want to leave to spend time alone with them. Again she thrust down her fears, concealing them from others and herself as best she could. Logan met her with a large plate of food, a glass filled with fruit juice, a quick kiss, and a broad, approving smile as she reentered the ship.

  Later, after she’d eaten, drunk, and relaxed briefly, the questions began. Everyone was eager to hear what she had to say. For a girl who up until recently, had been a bond-servant and safer being neither seen nor heard, the experience of having friends hanging on her words was a heady one.

  “They apologized. The aikizai first, then the liomsa. It was strange,” she added reflectively. “The aikizai apologized as if it really was their fault and they were honestly very sorry about it. The liomsa acted as if the aikizai apology was the main one, theirs was just a formality; something they didn’t feel but did to be polite.”

  She turned to look at Storm. “You saw how the aikizai acted. As if they had to really grovel to make me understand it was all their fault. But it wasn’t. T’s’ai was the one who risked Logan’s life; his aikiza tried to prevent it. I didn’t like that. It wasn’t right that the aikizai should blame themselves that way or have to grovel to me.”

  Storm looked at Prauo. “Did you get anything more from that?”

  *A little. It was as if the aikizai had to apologize. I tasted a suggestion of compulsion in their minds. Not physical, but some sort of emotional or mental demand. My furless-sister is right: after my kin begged for our forgiveness, their partners seemed casual, uncaring beyond a necessary politeness. As if it was their aikizai’s apology that was the important one.*

  For a short time everyone present stared at each other, absorbing that and trying to understand.

  Tani spoke first. “Could it perhaps be that the aikizai act as proxies for their liomsa? Maybe they act out major emotions when the display is required? After that, their partners have only to echo the decision or whatever to show they’re in agreement. It could be a way of apologizing without having to lower themselves to apologize personally.”

  “It’s possible,” Storm said slowly, “but I don’t like Prauo’s suggestion of compulsion. I’ve been watching the recordings of Laris’s meetings, and I’m beginning to wonder if the aikizai aren’t second-class citizens out there.”

  He overrode the demands for an explanation. “I can’t give you one. I don’t really know myself what I think; it’s just a feeling. But look at what we’ve seen so far. T’s’ai was able to silence his aikiza twice, clearly against the aikiza’s desire to speak and warn us. When an apology is required, it’s the aikizai who make it to the point of physical groveling.

  “And now,
these two aikizai speak privately to Laris and Prauo—as if they don’t want their liomsa to know what’s being said. Could it be they’ve been told not to tell us anything apart from what the liomsa say? And if they’ve been ordered to make the apology, just where does that place them in terms of status?”

  Around the mess table there was a long, thoughtful silence before Laris spoke.

  “We can find out. Last night they left two aikizai to watch the ship. What if Prauo and I go out to meet them tonight after my second meeting with the humanoids? If Tani had Mandy check that none of their liomsa are about, Prauo and I could talk without being overheard. After all, the aikizai felt safe enough talking to us so that their partners didn’t hear when they were only two hundred yards away from us. They might feel even safer if their liomsa aren’t out in the forest at all after dark.”

  Storm nodded thoughtfully. “It sounds like a possible plan. Let’s wait and see what their liomsa say this afternoon. If they’re open to your questions, then we can put this idea on hold. If they stay uncommunicative on the things we need to know, you can meet the aikizai. But,” he cautioned, “you’ll do that close to the ship and with one of us on guard.”

  He wasn’t going to take chances. Storm reflected. The arrival of aliens on a planet had triggered civil war or revolution, before now. Sometimes, it had also resulted in the murder of the aliens. If some of the things he was wondering about were true, then all three possibilities could be applicable in one form or another.

  He went quietly to the bridge and flipped on the main transmitter. He’d discuss some of his speculations with the Patrol’s alien specialist privately and see what the woman thought about it all. Some time later he shut off the transmitter and left the room still considering what he’d heard.

  The humanoids and their aikizai wandered out of the forest early that evening. Laris returned to the ship quite quickly, leaving Prauo to sit with the two aikizai, their liomsa having drawn away together.