Chapter Four
“I’m excited we’re going to see this settlement,” Shona said. “It’s probably the most important one in the galaxy. I remember when it was founded, do you? It must have been almost fifteen years ago because I was still in secondary school. It’s been held up as proof that humans can coexist peacefully with another intelligent species.”
“But of course,” Chirwl said, diving in and out of the knee-high wiry grass. “Are we not proof an example our two selves? I will be curious to hear how good neighbors they are being.”
“Oh, very so,” Wla said. “Shnomri was ever visiting there, as were many others. Friends they we make good.”
The ottles’ path through the dense thicket was easily wide enough for human feet to pass. Wla dashed energetically a few meters ahead at a time, pausing every now and then for them to catch up. Shona, being small of stature, had less trouble following her than the men did. The low overhang of the trees suggested that humans seldom used the path; all of the men had to walk crouched over. Shona reached up to push the branches back, and came away with dozens of tiny thorns in her hands. No wonder no one had tried to clear the path. It would take a blowtorch.
To Ivo’s audible relief, the ceiling opened up within a hundred yards. A gap in the forest canopy informed them that at some time in the past one of the ancient trees had fallen, leaving a broad, rolling glen open to the sun. Wla ran along a straight track through low, lush, fragrant plant life, then made a ninety degree turn at its end. She whisked up to a meter-high gap in a dense wall of green, then tittered self-consciously.
“Here is where we go, but you are too tall!”
“Where do we get in?” Shona asked, threshing up and back along the natural barrier, looking for an entrance. The bushes had dense, sturdy branches, and lobed, ovate leaves the size of her head, making them impossible to see through. There seemed to be no break in the hedge. She captured Alex’s hand just in time before he grabbed a cluster of four-inch thorns. On the other side of the barrier she could hear voices and the hum of a generator. Gershom and the others spread out, looking for a way in.
“Not without a machete,” Kai decided, planting his fists on his hips.
“Over here!” a voice called. Shona turned to see a tall man waving his arm above his head. “We thought we heard someone wandering around behind the garden. This way!”
“Garden?” Shona looked down, and, with a laugh, identified the spiky plants around her feet. “Artichokes!” Carefully, she picked her way out of the patch with her hand out. The man who’d hailed them beamed at her and clasped her fingers in a huge, flipper-like hand.
“Shona Taylor,” she said, smiling up at him. “That’s my husband, Gershom, captain of the Sibyl, and our son, Alex.” Kai and Ivo stumped back between the cultivated rows, and introduced themselves. “We radioed you on the way in. I’m sorry about your crops.”
“DeWitt Horne,” said the man bowing over Shona’s hand. His hair grew in a salt-and-pepper fringe around the bald crown of his head, and his beaky, high-bridged nose supported blue-green tinted sunshades. He grinned, showing white but irregular teeth. “Governor of this blessed plot, artichokes and all. No problem. I’m pleased to meet you, Doctor. Captain, men, a pleasure.” He patted Alex on the shoulder, then shook hands with Gershom and the others. “Well, we don’t get a lot of human company. Nice to have you here.” He glanced down at the ottles, smiled at Wla, and raised his eyebrows at Chirwl. “I don’t know this fellow. You must be the returnee. How do you do, friend?”
“I do delightfully, thank you, DeWitt Horne,” Chirwl said, glancing around at the clearing. “How this open place has expanded since I was departed from here.”
Thumbs stuck in his belt, Horne rocked back on his heels and surveyed the open field with satisfaction. Six or seven now-distinct crops were flourishing in the acreage left open to the sky by the missing trees. All of them were healthy and bright green. He nodded several times.
“Yes, we’re doing all right. All the clearing has been done with the permission of the ottle heart-trees. No one in my demesne trims a bush without asking. ’A course, we don’t have anyone living here who isn’t willing to coexist peacefully. Come and have a look around. You’re welcome!”
Small domiciles, prefabricated rectangles with sloped roofs, were set with their doorways opening out into the common area. Each of the houses had bird-feeders, hanging plants, handmade ornaments, and other decorations hanging from the eaves, brightening up what would have been a tediously monotonous neighborhood on other planets. Container gardens and kitchen gardens were everywhere. Shona guessed all one had to do was throw seeds at the ground and then stand back to produce a goodly crop in this climate.
“Have you had any medical problems living on Poxt?” Shona asked, falling into step with the big man as he led them past the hedge and down one side of the irregularly shaped common area.
“The usual: exhaustion, allergies, insect stings, tail bites …”
“What?”
Horne grinned. “You haven’t seen tails yet? They look like the south end of a northbound squirrel with no visible means of support. If you grab one by the plume, the animal, which is only about two, three centimeters long, detaches and runs for cover. If you catch it front-to-back, it can sink its choppers into you. They’re tiny, but they’re big-time sharp!” He showed Shona a small white scar on the pad of his forefinger. “I made that mistake myself. Our doctor inspected it, and put me under observation for infection. We’re close enough in biostructure to ottles that we can catch some of the same things they do. Fortunately, there’s nothing native here like rabies. No one will ever bring it here. I’ll do my best to see to that.”
Shona had no doubt he would. Though friendly and expansive, Horne’s upright, military carriage suggested a natural knack for command which probably didn’t brook defiance.
“How are you getting along with the ottles?” Gershom asked.
“Fabulously. There’s nothing like an ottle for a good, reasoned argument,” Horne said. “And they can be obtuse little buggers if they want to pretend they don’t understand Standard, but I like ’em. In the beginning we shipped out some folks who were disappointed. They figured that any other intelligent life in the universe ought to be bilaterally symmetrical humanoids like us, except for having funny ears. Me, I’m just plain fascinated by the differences. Trisexual aliens! There’s two kinds of bio-positors, you know: exterior plumbing, one donating sperm and one eggs, but you can’t tell ’em apart unless they tell you. One of my favorites hasn’t been coming around lately, a she-male called Shnomri.”
Wla chittered unhappily.
“Anyhow, come on around. People will be glad to meet you. If you have a chance, I’d like a chat about what it was like to introduce our alien friend here”—he waved a big hand toward Chirwl—“into human society.”
“I think I learned more from him than he did from us,” Shona said as they walked. “Because he asked, I had to examine why I said or did some things, and occasionally I couldn’t find a better answer than that’s the way I’d always done it. I suppose I never thought about the reasons.”
“Like?”
“Oh, why I wear socks,” Shona said, laughing as she ran her fingers along a makeshift fence of loosely woven branches. Alex had captured a leafy twig and was busily tearing the leaves apart. “Or for that matter, why I wear shoes. Since we tend to build artificial environments all around us, he wanted to know, why not make one that is safe for bare feet. And then he watched me drop a lab beaker on my toe, and dance around trying to find the brush and dustpan without collecting more shards in my soles than I could help.”
“Quod erat demonstrandum.” Grinning, Gershom spread his hands.
Horne was amused. “You had a microcosm of what we have here, Shona,” he said. “We’re always asking each other that kind of question. Ottles want to know everything. I think they’d make good researchers, if we could ever convince ’em that a human idea is worth investigating. The pressing need for practical exploration does not exist for them. Ottles have it relatively easy. They’ve licked their environment. Theoretical philosophy is about the only thing that keeps them falling back into non-sentient existence.”
“I beg to differ,” Chirwl interrupted, fixing the large human with a beady eye peeled for battle. “Would a species lapse into non-intelligence if well-fed and cared for? Then those humans who do not strive daily for their bread must also fall into non-mentality.”
Horne shook his head. “See what I mean?”
Privately, Shona agreed with Chirwl, but she smiled at her host. The common green was nearly empty. A man or woman occasionally trotted from one of the houses along a path toward the big building at the foot of the gentle slope. One woman, working alone at a laptop unit, sat under a tree, only glancing up with a distracted nod as they passed. Between two of the huts Shona spotted a cluster of children involved in a game of blindfold tag, shrieking as they backed away from It. In a fenced field well-removed from the main living area were several head of brown-and-white cattle huddled in a group in the sun. Their eyes were closed. A couple of calves browsed on something yellow and green in the corner of the pen.
Uphill, there was a flurry of activity. An ancient man doddered out of a hut, heading toward the green. Behind him a couple of men in lab coats rushed out, retrieved him, and gently turned him back again. A dark-haired woman appeared at the door, and with an attitude of concern evident even at a distance, watched as the ancient hobbled back inside. Every house had a wealth of flowers and vines growing on or around it.
“This is a lovely place to have a home,” Shona said to Horne. “You chose a nice site—or did the ottles suggest this place?”
“Well, kind of a meeting of minds. When we first came here, we were farther inland, along a tributary of the big river—turned out to be smack in the middle of one of their villages. Took us a while to figure out they were sentient—what the heck, I think the xenos were looking for television antennas and pressed concrete. The ottles had been watching us, waiting for signs of intelligence, maybe. To them, we never assembled for a village conference or wrote philosophical treatises. You must know what it’s like founding a colony: everybody do their job, keep your jawing to a minimum. Not an ottle way at all.
“Well, after we figured each other out, we wanted a place that wasn’t in the middle of their dwelling spaces and didn’t have any historical significance to them. Out of the eight or so places they suggested, the biologists figured we’d do the least damage and could spread out the most here. It’s also the closest of the eight to an existing ottle center-place, so go figure. I think it was a penetrating insight on their part; we’ve trained a lot of xeno exploration terms here since then.”
“How do students react?” Kai asked.
“Thrilled!” Horne said, then qualified his exuberance. “Most of them, anyway. Some of the xenos have been openly disappointed, because I think they believed the tri-dee movies that say all sentient alien life is going to be bilaterally symmetrical humanoids with lobsters on their foreheads. It takes all kinds. Here’s my house.”
Horne’s prefabricated hut looked like all the others, except for a flag with the symbol of the Galactic Government fluttering on a three-meter staff stuck in a bed of moss-covered pebbles.
“From here you can see everyone’s front door. That’s the only hard requirement I made when we laid out the settlement. I want everyone in line of sight until we’re so big we’ve got to split in two like an amoeba. Otherwise, you can arrange your place anyway you like. We’ve got eighty people, adults and children, living in the main settlement right now, and twenty-two more in the annex.” He pointed up a rising path toward a cluster of eight or nine huts arranged in an arc. “They’re a bunch of researchers from LabCor. I don’t know what they’re doing, and so long as they don’t pollute that site or this planet, I don’t give a hoot. They don’t mix with us peasants a lot.” Horne lifted the corner of his lip in a sneer. Shona guessed that the LabCor workers had snubbed Horne’s attempts to make them part of the big, happy family.
“Is the GG supporting you now?” Gershom asked.
“Oh, we get stipends,” Horne said, with an expression that was a cross between a grin and a grimace, “but they expect us to get along on our own, pretty much. We might be their fair-haired baby right now, but they’re looking forward to the day when having non-Terrans as your next-door neighbors is ordinary, so they want us to function like an ordinary colony. They’d love to turn off the subsidies, but I’ll scream bloody blue murder to the media, and they know that.”
“What do you do here?”
Horne let his big chest puff up with pride. “We’re generalists. We’re investigating the native chemical compounds and jungle foods, specializing in sustainable natural supply. Most of our colony’s income comes from cataloguing the natural medicines that exist right here. We’re moving slowly and carefully, not exploiting any source to destruction. We don’t want what happened to Old Earth’s Amazonian rain forests to happen here. Our researchers go mad with joy every time they make a new foray into the jungles. The ottles are happy to act as friendly native guides. They ask nothing better than to have people appreciate the wealth of natural treasures here on Poxt. They want us to see everything, and they’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about a plant. You know, ottles talk a mile a minute.”
“I know,” Shona said, reaching a hand down to ruffle her friend’s ears. “Chirwl lived with me for several years. Now that he’s come home, I don’t know how I’m going to stand all the quiet.”
“I have been quiet, too, between saying,” Chirwl said reproachfully. “But how can one communicate verbally if one does not speak?”
“Now, there’s an ottle for you,” Horne said with a laugh. “So we identify botanical samples and make analyses of their contents—natural stuff has trace elements that sometimes help the efficacy of a drug, and sometimes make a witches’ brew of the whole thing. It helps that ottle biology is a lot like ours. They point out a plant that they use for a certain ailment, and if it’s a problem we share, we research their folk cure, see if it’s an improvement on ours. There’s the same number of old wives’ tales, too, though. I’m always hoping the oil for rheumatism that the ancients talk about turns up one day. We’ve had about three dozen near misses on that mix, but we don’t know what went wrong. The ottles are always arguing we didn’t boil it right, or we should have taken the root with the vine, or we shouldn’t have.”
“Are you in any discomfort?” Shona asked. “I can treat you if you want. The serum of the carti—”
Horne waved away her concern. “I’ve just got a few achy bones. Put it down to old age. In the beginning, there was too much to do to get the colony started. We wasted a ton of time arguing for continued funding, foisting off newshounds who wanted this whole thing to be a media extravaganza instead of an anthropological experiment, and just plain surviving from day to day. Now we’re established, I guess I have time to sit back and enjoy my arthritis.”
“But a calcite-dissolver for the residue …”
“Let be,” Horne said, with finality. “I’m fifty-five. My dad made it to eighty-nine, and he was in the space service.” Shona privately thought he looked much older. His forehead was deeply lined, and wrinkles rimmed his thin-lipped mouth. Hard work and responsibility had anticipated the calendar by some ten years or more. “Well, how about a tour? I can show you the test kitchens. You won’t believe the terrific fruits and nuts abounding on this planet. Why, within an acre I can show you sixty species of luscious edibles that would make you swear off anything else you’ve ever eaten.”
“Cha-ching,” Gershom whispered to Shona as Horne stumbled downhill toward a corrugated-wall warehouse. “Governor,” he said aloud, “I suppose you have a regular transport line shipping supplies of your produce off-planet.”
“And you’d be right to so suppose,” Horne said over his shoulder. “We use InterStar. Nice folks, supply all the main systems on their routes. Why—? Oh, that’s right,” he noted shrewdly, “you’re a trader, too. Well, I always feel there’s enough room in this galaxy for everybody, Gerald …”
“Gershom,” Gershom corrected him.
“… so maybe we can work something out. Say,” Horne said, stopping in mid-path before a residential hut, “we’re going to a working warehouse. Not too interesting, or too safe for the little one. Would you like to leave him with a minder for a minute? A nice, older couple. Mr. and Dr. Oktari. He’s a nutritionist, a good one. She’s a par-foo-mee-yer, and she’s done us proud. Folks,” he said, when a dark-skinned man and woman answered his knock, “this is Dr. Shona Taylor and her husband, Captain Gershom Taylor. I’m giving her a little tour of the place. Can you spare a few minutes to look after this young man—What’s your name, son?”
“Ahesssh,” the baby muttered into Shona’s tunic front, suddenly shy.
“Alex,” his mother corrected, over his head. “He’s two years old.”
“Well, he’s a sweet thing,” the woman said, holding out her arms for him. The baby looked up at her, eyes wide. Shona could tell at once he liked her kind face. Without any fuss, he put his arms around her neck and tilted his weight off Shona’s hip. Hastily, the other woman gathered him up. “My, what a big boy you are.” The woman glanced up at the man, and they shared a sweet, poignant look. Perhaps remembering their own first child, probably all grown up by now, Shona thought, noticing the copious scattering of white in the woman’s dark cloud of hair and the man’s bald pate.
“He’ll be fine with us,” Mr. Oktari said, patting his wife’s shoulder. “You enjoy your tour. I have some toys to play with, Alex. Would you like to see them?”
“Yah.” The boy, eyes shining, had already forgotten the existence of his parents. Grinning, Shona turned and followed Horne away from the hut.
“That’s your mommy?” the man asked.
“Ya,” Alex said, nodding. “Mommy.”
“And you have a daddy, too?”
“Four.” Alex helpfully displayed four fingers.
“You’re not four years old,” Dr. Oktari teased. “Your mommy said you’re only two.”
“Four. Four daddies.”
When Shona returned from her tour of the inspection and refrigeration facility, the Oktaris eyed her with new respect.
“Has he been a handful?” she asked, retrieving the toddler, who was reaching for a length of corkscrewed plastic tubing that dangled from a hook in the ceiling.
The man hesitated. “Nothing I’m sure you couldn’t manage,” he finally said, exchanging an enigmatic look with his wife.
Horne led the way up the path. “What do you think of our wonderworks factory?” he asked.
“Very impressive,” Shona said. “I liked the variety of storage facilities you have behind the test kitchens: ambient temperature, refrigerated, and frozen. Such a sophisticated setup.”
“The flash freezer was an expensive investment, but it’s paying off. We lose lots fewer marginal-life products when we can hand them off to the shipper in cold packs.”
Gershom and the others were nodding knowingly. “It’ll be a pleasure to do business with you, sir,” Kai said.
“I’ll see what I’ve got, seeing as how you’re right here, right now. How long are you planning to stay?”
“No more than a few days,” Shona said, with open regret. “Time enough to meet people, take my dog and cat for a good walk, and say goodbye to Chirwl.”
“Is it true what they said in that video: you’re in environmental medicine?” Shona nodded. “Then you should drop in on Dr. Volk and tour her facilities. She might spare a fellow scientist more than just the time of day, which is all she gives me. I’ll give her a call, if you want.”
“What project are they working on?” Shona asked, remembering the old man and his keepers.
“I don’t exactly know. My guess is that she and her people are working on a treatment for senile dementia. They’ve got a couple of sorry specimens living over there. I feel bad every time I see ’em, and hope what’s wrong with them doesn’t happen to me when I get old. I have to tell you; we don’t mix much. Volk and her people aren’t exactly unfriendly, more like standoffish.”
“More your subject than mine,” Gershom said, lifting his eyebrows toward his wife. “Mr. Horne, what about if you and I have a little chat about your export situation?”
“Fine, fine!” Horne said genially. “How’d you like to try some of our local brew? Non-export, strictly for internal use, if you’ll pardon the bad joke. Come on, gentlemen. Just up there, Shona. I’ll call and tell her you’re coming.”
* * *
Dr. Volk turned out to be the dark-haired woman Shona had seen from the governor’s doorstep. She glanced at Shona and the ottles as they edged into the crowded hut at the top of the row.
“Yes?” She didn’t stop to shake hands or make eye contact with them, but carried on hurrying around the lab unit, picking up one vial, then another, scrutinizing the labels, then discarding each with a discontented expression. Shona thought she didn’t know exactly what she was looking for.
“Dr. Volk, my name is Shona Taylor. I’m a doctor, specializing in biomedical research in environmental illness. Governor Horne thought you might be willing to give me a short tour of your research facilities.”
“No tours,” Volk said tightly, scattering disks with a distracted hand. “This isn’t a tourist attraction. Our research is confidential. I’m very busy, Dr. Taylor. If you don’t mind? I’ve got an emergency to deal with.” She looked distractedly through another rack, then pushed it away, all the time looking up toward one wall of the hut as if she could see through it.
“Can I help?” Shona asked, immediately concerned. “Perhaps another pair of hands …?”
“Environmental?” Volk appeared to be hearing Shona’s words at last. She looked up, green eyes flashing. “We have a woman who is in deep anaphylactic shock. Do you know how to treat that?”
“I can. It depends on what caused it,” Shona said. Without waiting, Volk scooped up an armful of vials and trotted toward the door. Shooting an apologetic glance at the ottles, Shona followed.
They passed the open doors of the other huts. Inside the first few Shona glimpsed personal possessions and furniture. The next ones contained lab equipment and numerous small computers, their drives chuckling away to themselves. She tried to guess what the subject of their research was, but couldn’t. One lab setup looked much like another, from galaxy’s start to galaxy’s end. Volk shouldered past the two tall men in lab coats who were guarding the door of the last hut. With an apologetic glance, Shona squeezed in behind her.
The small hut was divided by curtains into individual dormitories leading off a narrow corridor of waving cloth. Volk headed straight for the last room in line and swept the curtain aside, revealing an elderly woman writhing on a camp bed. Her skin was like wrinkled, yellowing tissue paper, and her teeth were gritted. The teeth themselves were in surprisingly good shape, but one was missing on the side, the gum puckering around it like an empty wrapper. She was pale, and Shona could see how shallowly she was breathing. Her lips puffed painfully in and out. Shona hurried to kneel by her side, and picked up one of the bony wrists.
The pulse beat weakly. Shona pried up an eyelid to look at the pupil. “She’s in shock. What bit her? How long ago did it happen?”
“About twenty minutes ago now,” said a man with brown hair. He tossed back his long forelock in a gesture that reminded Shona of Gershom. “We were out in the forest. I didn’t pay any special attention until Zeura collapsed; then I think I concentrated more on getting her back home. She’s not heavy, but she was dead limp. I don’t know what bug it was. Should I have chased it down instead?”
“No, you did the right thing,” Shona reassured him. “Have you given her a stimulant?”
“We’ve given her epinephrine,” said a small woman, whose short brown hair was mixed with gray strands.
“That usually does it in case of anaphylaxis, but you should have seen improvement already. Perhaps she’s allergic to it,” Shona said. “Can someone show me her records?”
“Records?” asked the small woman blankly.
“Yes! You know, you should have called for the nurses in the main complex. They’re used to treating bites from the indigenous arthropodia.” One of the men started to reply, then changed his mind. The woman on the bed groaned. Shona counted her pulse. It was thready. “Where are her records?”
Instead of dashing to the computer terminal attached to the wall, the scientists standing around behind her shifted uncomfortably and exchanged worried looks.
“I have to check it,” Shona insisted. “If I give her something else, and she’s allergic to that, it can kill her! Please! Time is limited.”
Almost reluctantly, one of the men stepped to the terminal and entered a few words. He inserted the receiving end of a clipboard into the light-transfer port, then brought the unit to Shona. She read the details under “Larch, Zeura,” and frowned. “This isn’t very complete.”
“It’s all we have,” said a dark man whose name tag said “Morganstern.”
“Well, look here, there aren’t any dates on it, let alone information on sensitivities or previous attacks. How old is she?” Shona shook the patient. “How old are you?” she shouted, trying to raise any kind of reaction.
The old woman focused wrinkle-ringed eyes on Shona, blank and glassy. Shona repeated her question, loudly and distinctly. Volk stepped up beside her. Larch’s expression changed from blank and glassy to alarmed. She tilted her head back to Shona.
“None o’ yer business how old I am.” Her lip puffed out over the gap where the tooth was missing. “Askin’ queschns like that!” Her eyes went blank again. Her pulse hadn’t improved, but there were small spots of red in her cheeks.
“Poor thing,” Volk said in a hoarse whisper. “It might be that at her age she can’t remember how old she is. She was keeping her records herself. I didn’t realize how spotty they were.”
Shona gave her a curious look, then turned back to her patient. Such neglect of personal documents wasn’t unheard of in the cases of elderly people, nor of members of a scientific colony, as witness her friends on Erebus, who had more important things to think about than noting down their last immunizations. She did think it was bad in a research project that subjects in the study were in charge of their own data, particularly in one that obviously studied the decline of the mental processes. It should have been the duty of one of the scientists to keep track. It was strange that the community didn’t have more complete records on their master file.
“Is there an IV kit?” Shona asked.
“Saline? Glucose?” The woman with brown hair rummaged in a cupboard.
“Glucose is better,” Shona said, uncoiling the tubing the woman handed her, and accepting a bottle. “I want to increase her blood volume. It should help.” She hooked the bottle onto a metal hanger, and set the valve to a rapid drip. The old woman stopped struggling and lay still when Shona held her hand to keep her from pulling the needle out. In a very short time her skin became moister, and her breathing relaxed. Soon, she fell asleep, her lips parted. Shona counted her respiration, and was pleased to note that it was normal. She stayed by her patient’s side until she was confident the woman was out of danger.
“Thank you,” Volk said, letting out a long exhalation. “Sorry I was so snappish.” The others murmured quiet thanks.
“I understand how emergencies affect people,” Shona said kindly. Everyone seemed grateful for her forgiveness. “How long have you been here on Poxt?” she asked, just to pass the time while taking her patient’s pulse again.
“Two years, seven months,” Volk said, evidently deciding some facts about their study weren’t classified.
“This is quite an installation. Yours must be an important project. Where are you getting funding?” Shona asked, with the air of someone who’s shared the burden of applying for grants. Instead of being forthcoming in the way of one scientist to another, Volk stiffened.
“We’re engaged in some work for an underwriting entity,” she said obliquely. “I told you, our research is confidential. I’m sorry.”
“I apologize,” Shona said at once, rising to her feet. “I shouldn’t be pressing you. I’ve done work under classified conditions. It’s a strain, I know.”
Volk unbent just a trifle. “I appreciate that. Come along. I can at least show you the facilities on your way out.”
The array of equipment the LabCor team had at their disposal was impressive. Shona stopped for a moment to stare at the spectrographic computer, which was eight years newer and several grades of quality above the one she had in her own small lab. She made a mental note to price one when things started to pick up again. All the other appointments were similarly new and expensive. Volk was polite in letting her examine the workrooms, but Shona could tell she was impatient to have the unwelcome visitor on her way.
“Very nice,” she said. “I’m envious. Well, thank you for showing me around.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Volk said, sounding human for the first time. “Are you on Poxt for a while?”
“No, I wish we could stay. This is a wonderful place, isn’t it? We’re here to drop off the ottle I’ve been hosting for seven years. Chirwl is the larger of the two waiting in your office. I hope we’ll be able to come back some day when we have more time to look around.”
Volk nodded. “We’ve been so busy, I sometimes forget what the outside world looks like, and what manners used to be. Sorry about the bitchiness.”
“I understand,” Shona said. “I’m glad I could be of help.”
“Another time, perhaps, I can be more obliging.”
As they neared Volk’s office, an old, old man staggered out of the jungle and bleated incoherently at Volk. His slack jaws were streaked with saliva, and his gummy eyes focused imperfectly on Shona. She felt a surge of pity, thinking he must be another one of the subjects, suffering from an advanced kind of senile dementia. He veered away from Volk, and babbled in a high-pitched voice at Shona.
“I’m Dennison,” he said, urgently. “Get help, please!”
Volk shouldered him away, and grabbed Shona by the arm to hurry her off. The man shouted after them.
“Poor creature,” Shona said.
“He’s old,” Volk said briefly. She showed no sympathy, so evident earlier with the old woman, but instead evinced a fierce satisfaction. Curious, but not atypical of the scientific mind that occasionally forgot it was dealing with human beings. Perhaps this man was the perfect specimen for their studies, and Volk took pride in finding a textbook example. Shona respected the mind’s ability to focus, but shivered at the cold-bloodedness such concentration required. Or perhaps the old man had offended Volk in some way. The satisfaction seemed personal. Shona opened her mouth to ask, then closed it. Volk didn’t strike her as the type to share confidences. Or maybe, Shona thought ruefully as she walked down the hill, Volk had seen Susan’s video about their adventures, and wondered if she’d been having a cozy chat with a mass-murderer.
* * *
“Sure, we saw the show,” Governor Horne said when Shona asked him about it. “Told you. A good yarn, but you can’t tell a thing from those videos, they fictionalize so much. Whole thing could’ve been made up except for the names.”
“Well, let me assure you we were the injured parties in that case,” Gershom said. “Shona had nothing to do with those people dying.”
“Sounded like the opposite to me,” Horne said, waving away Gershom’s concerns. “But don’t ask me; could have been a good script. Still, I’m always inclined to think the best of people. You’d tell me if it was important. Well, if you folks aren’t busy at suppertime, come on back. There’s always room at the community table. We can talk about specifics of our deal then.”
“What did you think?” Shona asked, as they made their way back through the forest toward the ottle center-place.
“He’s liberal with his beer,” Gershom said with a wry grin. “And his promises.”
“It’s good beer, too,” Ivo said, patting his belly.
“I think we can do business. Horne’s no fool. He knows to the last iota how much they can expand here without hurting the natural character of the planet, and they’re at less than ten per cent capacity. He’s right, too, in saying there’s room for us.” Gershom had a bounce in his step Shona hadn’t seen since before the refit of the Sibyl began. “Every year they show a greater profit, get in a few more people. They’re expanding slowly.”
“What will we be carrying?”
“Perfumes, pharmaceuticals, raw materials for handcrafts, fish hides—the ottle bedpouches are made of cured fishskin—tea, fruit, fresh and dried, natural dyes, seeds, maybe a few minerals.” Kai ticked off the possibilities on his fingertips, his usual dourness gone. “Gershom gave him a diagram and particulars of the Sibyl’s holds, with special emphasis on climate control, and we all suggested we would be the best candidate for small, valuable cargoes. I think he was impressed.”
“InterStar can’t give them the kind of individual service we can,” Gershom finished smugly. Shona could see his mind was already full of plans. She squeezed his arm.
“I’m so happy,” she said.
“We can get back to normal pretty quickly, with a high-value customer like this,” Gershom pointed out. “And it means that we won’t lose touch with you, Chirwl.”
“That also makes me happy,” the ottle said, bounding forward swiftly to keep pace with the human’s long stride. “For I have gone to much care to build our friendship. I do not wish it to end.”
“Well, looks like it won’t,” Kai assured him. “You could see a lot of us every year.”
At that thought, Shona felt a bound of good spirits. She squeezed Alex, who emitted a fat, happy chuckle.
“You need a change and a nap, young man,” she told the toddler. “How is it you’re staying awake so well?”
“Too much stimulation. Heads down,” Gershom said, with resignation, as they approached the arcade of low-hanging trees. He stepped aside to let Shona and the ottles go first.
As they started down the trail, Chirwl and Wla suddenly bolted ahead of the group, disappearing under the overhang.
“What’s wrong?” Ivo asked.
“No idea,” Shona said.
Putting up a hand to shield Alex’s face from twigs, she ducked her head to run after the ottles. Up ahead she heard their voices, then the rattling voice of an elder ottle. Thio had been waiting for them.
“You are seeming concerned,” Chirwl said to hir, as Shona arrived.
“I have succeeded in making Shnomri emerge from the pouch,” Thio said. “Come at immediate.” The senior ottle turned in hir length and loped toward the end of the tunnel.
“What is the occurrence?” Chirwl asked, hurrying alongside. Shona trotted with them, leaving Gershom and the others behind.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Wla chittered in her own language at Thio, but the elder ottle paid no attention to questions.
“Most unprecedented,” was all Thio would say.
In the clearing, hundreds of ottles were gathered, all talking at the tops of their lungs. Squeaking, chittering, and babbling burst upon Shona’s ears like a peal of thunder. The milling crowd centered around the tree bole where Thio had been arguing. Lani stood with them, staring into their midst. When Chirwl appeared, the others made way for him, bounding up to continue their argument in the channeled bark of trees or under clumps of huge-leaf bushes.
The center of attention was an elderly ottle with a graying muzzle and gray streaks and patches throughout hir fur. As Chirwl caught sight of hir, he skidded to a halt and let out a shrill whistle. Shnomri met his gaze, then turned hir head away, trembling slightly with age. Wla hurried between Chirwl and Thio to nuzzle the newcomer frantically, Shona knelt down beside hir and smiled.
“How do you do? I’m Chirwl’s friend, Shona. You didn’t tell me Shnomri was so much older than you, Chirwl,” she said, turning to him. He stared unblinkingly at his co-mate.
“This one is not,” he said, in a shocked voice. “We are of the same birth year exactly!”