Crisis On Doona

by Anne McCaffrey

  Mrrva left him alone in the garden with his thoughts. It was so quiet that the tiny breeze brought distant voices and the faint clatter of hooves and machinery from the property beside theirs. Turning over his mother’s suggestion in his mind, Hrriss began to examine the possibilities of the females he knew. And came right up against a very important consideration: would she understand his friendship with the Hayuman? Would she like Zodd? More important, would Zodd like her?

  “I suppose I shall have to trust to my own judgment alone for this,” Hrriss said out loud, and laughed.

  Many of the females in this and other villages had sought him as their lifemate, and tempted him to commit while in their estrous cycles. There was never anything as crass as a demand for long-term relations, only a sighing and sensuous persuasion. While the attractions were obvious, Hrriss felt there needed to be more to the perfect image than a sexual being. He wanted a woman who thought, and created, and laughed. The image which kept coming back to his mind was the lithe, cinnamon-furred snake dancer at the feast. Her delicately graceful movements repeated in his memory again and again. He remembered her name was Nrrna, a soft and pliant sound. She worked with Mrrva in the Health Center. He wondered if she was willing. The last time she had gone through her fertile cycle, she had let him know that she would welcome him, but he had had to go off-planet then. When he returned, she had said nothing to him about what had gone on in his absence.

  There was also Mrratah, a weaver whose textiles were wearable art. Last year, after Snake Hunt, they had spent a wild night together. The heavy musk in the air and the excitement of the chase had stirred him. She had been out on Hunt, too, and was as aroused as he by primal bloodlust, the beat of the dance band’s drums, and the scent in the air.

  Hrriss’s eyelids lowered as he remembered that night, let his body sway with the rhythm in his memory. There was a high-pitched snarl that was so like the voice of Mrratah in excitation that he opened his eyes. His female ocelot, Mehh, loped out of the house past him, with the male, Prem, in determined pursuit. Mehh was young, no more than two Doonan years old. She was coming into full heat for the first time. Her attitude toward Prem was playful but firm. She intended the order of things to proceed as she pleased, not the way the male chose. That was right, according to the Hrruban way of life.

  The spotted cats dodged back and forth through the bushes Mrrva had planted around the green for privacy. They were not concerned with hiding what they were doing. Simple urges moved them. Sometimes Hrriss wished that he was not a thinking being. These creatures were acting out his unspoken dream.

  Mehh skidded and rolled to a halt in the grass before him. Prem followed, and tried to mount her before she was upright again. A quick blow across the nose from a paw full of razor-sharp talons let him know that Mehh was not ready yet. Prem withdrew a few paces and waited, making a soft, urgent rumbling sound low in his throat. Mehh flipped onto her belly and crept insouciantly, provocatively, into the mating position with her tail high and to the side, presenting her nether quarters to the male. She was blatant about what she wanted, and her urgent throaty growls made it certain that she wanted it now. Without hesitation, Prem was on her back, teeth gripping the female’s scruff as he mounted her.

  With an odd sense of detachment, Hrriss watched them. The female snarled and rolled over, driving Prem a paw’s length away, and just as swiftly invited him back again with raised tail. Prem crooned, a mild sound when compared with the green fire in his eyes. Hrriss, shaking his head to break the fascination, felt a creature sympathy for Prem. Right now a relationship, wild and abandoned and fun, would take his mind off the ache in his heart and the anger in his mind. Both Nrrna and Mrratah could be extremely exciting in estrus, but they were good companions away from the mating dance as well.

  His mother had made a valid point. It was more than time to seek a lifemate. While he was in this enforced separation from Todd, it might ease his loneliness to choose a mate. He would not be abandoning other aspects of his life, but filling in the parts that had too long remained empty.

  Through the house, he heard a knock at the front door. Hrriss started to get up, but he heard his mother’s soft footfalls emerge from the other wing and go toward the door. A short time passed, and she came out to him.

  “Hrriss, I will be going out later. Pat Rrev has said that she wants the four of us, Hrrestan and me, and Pat and Rrev, to speak together this evening. She is as convinced of your innocence as your father and I.”

  Hrriss nodded eagerly. “Tell Zodd...” he began, and then swallowed the rest of his words, hanging his head and letting his hands fall limp to his sides. “I may give no message for him. It is a matter of honor.”

  “Poor Hrriss. He knows, my little one,” Mrrva said sympathetically. “He knows.”

  Hrriss cleared his throat tentatively. “Mother, you know Nrrna, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” the Hrruban woman said, clearly surprised. “She works at the Health Center in the laboratory where I conduct my research.”

  “Has she ever come to this house to join our evening meal?” Hrriss inquired.

  He thought the pupils in his mother’s eyes widened just slightly. “She has, from time to time. Her company is excellent. I shall inquire if she is free to join us.”

  Then she turned and left the garden in a rather abrupt fashion that made Hrriss wonder if she was displeased in any way with his suggestion.

  * * *

  The afternoon was fair, and the air had a fresh crispness that was far more relaxing to Todd’s jangled nerves than the tropical warmth of Treaty Island. He rode Gypsy down the narrow trail that circled around the fruit orchard at the edge of the Reeve Ranch. The fruit trees were fenced in for protection, though many a clever horse stretched his neck far enough to nip ripening apples off the nearer trees. Apart from the orchard, Lon Adjei, as manager of the ranch, gave the horse herds plenty of room to graze in, but the open land made it harder to find them.

  Todd was after a foursome of colts who had hightailed it this way, avoiding capture as if it was a new game invented for them to show off. He lost sight of them among the clumps of shrub and mature trees. He and Hrriss had always worked together on this sort of a detail: the Hrruban had keener eyesight and sense of smell. He could find yearlings no matter where they hid themselves.

  A scented breeze shifted, and blew directly into Todd’s hot face. Gratefully he took a deep breath and was nearly unseated as Gypsy slammed to a halt under him.

  “What’s the matter, boy?”

  The gelding propped his front legs, refusing to move forward. Gypsy was a sensible animal, so if he was scared to move, he had reason. Possibly there was a small ssorasos in the woods, which Gypsy had smelled when the wind changed. When surprised, the knee-high mammal attacked like a juggernaut. Todd dismounted and sidled cautiously a few feet up the path. In front of him was a clump of red-veined plants. Todd recognized them instantly. Ssersa. It was toxic enough to Humans, but absolute poison for horses. Gypsy had smelled the poisonous weed.

  “Smart horse!” Todd said over his shoulder to reassure the gelding. Ssersa was nearly as bad a contact-toxin as rroamal. Most animals were wary of it while it was unripe. When it matured and dried, it lost its bitter aroma and smelled sweet and appealing. It was death for livestock, especially those of Earth origin. Ranchers assiduously cleared it from their pastures or they lost stock. The trick was to get it before it dried and left its seeds for the unwary animal. Ben Adjei, Lon’s father, called ssersa “silent death.” Ranch hands automatically pulled it up wherever they saw it.

  The radio at his waist crackled. “Todd, where are you? I’ve lost sight of you and I’ve got two more for you to hold for their shots.”

  “I’m on the trail behind the apple orchard, Lon,” Todd replied into the radio. The horse snuffled his ear and he pushed him gently away. “I was chasing a pair of yearlings and Lady Megan’s twins. G
ypsy got wind of a patch of ssersa back here. I’m uprooting it and bringing it in.”

  “Ssersa!” Lon’s voice exclaimed. “Damn, I was sure I cleared the whole place of it. And before it could seed.”

  “Never mind. Probably some bird seeded it,” Todd said. “Be with you as soon as I pull it up and catch those yearlings.”

  Pulling on the hide gloves from his belt, he yanked the plant up and beat its roots on the ground to dislodge the dirt. Then he squashed it into a ball, which he shoved into his saddle bag. The stink of ssersa sap made Gypsy restless and quite willing to move away from it.

  Todd lifted the gelding into a canter. The trail was wide here and the surface firm enough to safely maintain a stiff pace. The colts were well ahead of him but, as he recalled it, there was a grassy meadow up ahead that would certainly cause them to stop and graze.

  An eerie scream—like a horse in agony—made him dig his heels into Gypsy’s ribs and they galloped over the breast of the hill. Two of the colts were skittering around the pasture nervously. The third was standing over the fourth, which lay still in a patch of bracken. He whinnied shrilly.

  Todd brought Gypsy to a dirt-kicking halt and was out of the saddle at a run to the young horse on the ground. The remaining twin nudged its fallen brother with its nose, puzzled by its unresponsiveness.

  “No more games for this lad,” Todd said sadly.

  He still had his gloves on, so he turned back the upper lip to see the livid magenta of the membrane. “Poisoned. Damn it. There can’t be more ssersa.” Fearing for the other youngsters in this meadow, he looked all around him, and then at Gypsy, who was standing calmly. Turning back to the dead animal, he opened its lips again and saw what was stuck in the colt’s teeth—the twigs of dried ssersa. Sitting back on his heels, he radioed Lon.

  “More ssersa?” Lon demanded disbelievingly. “Where? I cleared that meadow. I know I did.” There was silence and a sigh from the speaker. “Leave it. I’ll get the flyer and bring the corpse in for burning. We can’t even use the hide. The toxins will poison whatever it touches. Todd, there was no mature ssersa in that field, I promise you!”

  “Then where did it come from?” Todd said, aggravated. Lon was a good farm manager. If he said he’d cleared ssersa weed, he had!

  He remounted Gypsy and rounded up the other two. He had to lasso the mourning colt to get him away from his dead twin but gave him a few feed pellets to make up for the insult. Whooshing the others in front of him, he kept his eyes peeled for any further sign of ssersa. It was an active seeder, like many Doonan plants: so where there was one, there’d be others.

  Then, just as he herded the colts over the lip of the ridge, he spotted a burned patch in the grass on the one level place on the entire field: a patch just about the size of a small transport shuttle.

  Todd got his charges back to the barn without further incident. Lon examined the three young animals and entered the control numbers in their freeze brands into a hand-held computer unit. Todd saw Robin and Inessa in the paddock, dragging one unwilling horse after another into the chute for inoculations.

  “That’s a hundred and forty-three,” Lon said, slapping the last one on the rump as he sent it running into the corral, “counting that poor poisoned colt. I think that’s all we’re going to find. We’ve combed the landscape.”

  “Shouldn’t there be more like a hundred sixty?” Todd asked.

  “Yeah, should be,” Lon said, scratching his ear with the edge of his comp. “I put in a call to Mike Solinari at the Veterinary Hospital, and the foreman on the Hu spread, just in case any of our animals have hopped the fence.”

  “Not bloody seventeen of ’em,” Todd replied grimly.

  “With that ssersa you found today, that might account for some, but we haven’t even found any bodies. Not even mda will touch a ssersa carcass.” Lon gave a disgusted snort. “My dad told me that if I can’t hand-pull fields, I deserve to have such losses but, honest, Todd ...”

  “Didn’t Hrriss and I spend”—Todd made himself continue despite the pang that the reminder of happier days gave him—“a whole week helping you? But I’ll tell you something else I found—a burn-off mark on that one level spot in the big meadow.”

  “A shuttle burn-off?” Lon’s tanned face paled. “There’s been no emergency landing in that section. D’you think ...” He stopped, not liking his own thoughts.

  “Rustling does present itself as an explanation,” Todd said, not wanting to believe it either, “especially if there’ve been no bodies found.”

  Since Doona’s wealth was its stock, not minerals or mining, rustling was the sovereign crime and punishable by immediate transport to the nearest penal colony. To keep track of all stock, each animal was branded with freeze-dry chemicals as soon after birth as possible: a painless process that left a permanent ID, naming its ranch of origin, breeding information, and control numbers. The brand was unalterable so that it was easy to keep a record of inoculations and vaccinations throughout an animal’s lifetime. It made illegitimate transfer of ownership impossible. It also made rustling—on Doona—an unprofitable occupation.

  Despite rigid psychological tests devised by Lee Lawrence, the colony sociologist, sometimes unsuitable personalities slipped through. People eager enough to get off Earth were known to equivocate about their open-mindedness as regards living with aliens, or their willingness to learn and speak an alien language. Their bigotry was generally discovered soon enough to do no lasting harm and they were sent off Doona, either to Earth or to see if they would fit into a totally Human colony.

  Other new settlers became overwhelmed by the responsibilities of caring for a whole, stocked ranch, let alone a house set in the midst of more uninterrupted land than anyone on Earth had ever seen. Some could not adapt to the lack of labor-saving devices which were felt to be superfluous or environmentally dangerous. Fossil fuels were avoided, and natural power, windmills, river barrages, or battery cells charged by solar panels supplied what power was required. Some settlers learned to cope, others requested transport back to familiar constrictions.

  Those unwilling, or unable, to take responsibility for themselves in a pioneer society posed the worst problem. Sometimes, folk who had been told all their lives what to do couldn’t adjust to making their own decisions. Or, once they realized that behavior monitors had been left behind on Earth, they began acting as if they could behave any way they wanted. And take anything they wanted. Rustlers generally emerged from that group.

  “We haven’t had any rustlers for years,” Lon said. “And how could there have been a shuttle landing when we’ve got satellite controllers?”

  “Have we got any newcomers from Earth who’ve gone possession crazy? You know that syndrome.”

  “How could I forget?” Lon asked grimly, spitting into the dust. “It was my father’s new mares that were stolen. A guy named Hammond did it. I’ve a hard place in my mind for anyone named Hammond. Since then I’ve learned to judge people. I’ve a good record at picking those who won’t make it through their first season.”

  “You helping Lee with his testing these days?”

  “He has only to ask. Now, let’s double-check the ones we do have so I can send in the brands of those we’re missing.”

  Together they checked the withers of each animal that came out of the chute, entering the brand and updating the inoculation record.

  “Yeah, we’re seventeen shy. I’ll just send the IDs on to Vet. They’ll forward the list to Poldep. Once the word’s out we’ve done that, we might just find those seventeen missing horses back in their home pastures.”

  Squinting at the sky, Todd shook his head. “They might not be on Doona anymore.”

  “Oh, come on, Todd. The security satellites would have reported any unauthorized transport in orbit,” Lon said, scornful of that suggestion. “No, we’ll find out where they got stashed on this planet
. Might take a while, but we’ll find ’em on Doona.”

  Todd did not argue the point now, but he was annoyed that seventeen animals were missing. Seventeen! At the current market price, that was almost half the value of a good farm. Doonan horses were a valuable commodity, not only as transportation and a constant source of fertilizer but for the end product of meat, hide, and bonemeal.

  “I’ll look into it, find out if the neighbors have any inexplicable losses, and I can make that report to Poldep.” Even as he spoke, Todd realized he was no longer the person to make reports to Poldep.

  “No, I’m farm manager. I’ll make the report,” Lon said, almost too quickly. “I need your help more out here in the pens,” he went on, stumbling to get the words out. “You’ve a longer attention span than those two flibbertigibbets,” he said, nodding toward Todd’s two siblings.

  It was obvious that the ranch foreman knew the details of Todd’s house arrest, even if he had the tact not to comment on it directly. Most of the neighbors had radios, so Todd could ask his questions without leaving the ranch. But he could see that keeping his word was going to complicate life considerably.

  “I’ll radio them, Lon,” he said quietly. “And thanks.”

  “The Reeves have been having a run of bad luck lately,” Lon said stoutly, turning his head to spit in the dust. “I figure you don’t deserve it. Count on me if you need help—off the ranch.”

  “Me, too!” said Robin. At eighteen Terran years of age, he was the youngest of the Reeves’ five children. He and Inessa climbed out of the corral as the last of the foals galloped free. “I don’t think I’m grounded. Am I?” He turned wide ingenuous eyes to his brother.