“Let us make our own plan,” said the ponderous one. “For the moment we must conceal our knowing of what the Orskimi intend. We must seem to be proceeding as they expect us to do. Let our warriors upon Moss fall upon the outpost and inflict damage. Then let one of us—it will, I fear, have to be one of us, not a simple warrior—be captured by the Earthers or perhaps the Tharst. When we are captured, we will confess that the Orskimi paid us to do this thing because the Orskimi want to take over all the Earthers’ planets…”
“Why only the Earthers?” asked another. “A small raid upon a Quondan planet, with another such confession. Another here, another there, and we could have half the races in the IC united against Orskim interests.”
“I fear, as their putative instrument, we would be considered as culpable as they,” said the ponderous one. “A small incursion, against an unarmed Planetary Protection team, that is not a big matter, particularly if we do not kill many of the important ones. An attack on a populated world would be of greater consequence, and would require the sacrifice of many Derac warriors at a time when all are needed to attack Orskimi. An attack is necessary, and while we are proceeding as planned on Moss, we can be deciding where and how it should take place.”
“What is left to be done on Moss?” asked the ancient.
“A few more of our warriors are to arrive with the heavy armament needed to knock out the shields at the ESC post. We have built our strength slowly, over time, not to alarm them, and we won’t destroy the ESC post, just scare the softskins half to death so they’ll get the message out.”
“How many of them are you going to kill?” asked the ancient one, running his old tongue reminiscently along his teeth.
“A few,” said Gahcha. “We’ll kill quite a few ordinary men. There are no young ones, but there are a few females we can kill. Killing females and young upsets the softskins greatly, but they forget as quickly. Kill their important men, they remember it forever, so we don’t want to do that.”
A long silence followed, at the end of which Gahcha slapped his tail twice upon the drum section of the cot, and announced, with great satisfaction, “Done.”
THE ARRIVAL OF GAINOR BRANDT
Early in the morning, I told the trainers what Paul had done, urging them and the dogs to keep their eyes and noses alert for any conc-looking thing that might be wandering about. On my way to the commissary for breakfast, I saw the odor sensors being set up on the meadow by a noncon-suited ESC team, Sybil among them. She waved to me, coming over to say that Gainor Brandt would arrive mid to late afternoon, and he wanted to have a conference in the ESC bubble ASAP thereafter.
I had a quick breakfast, then went through the specimen boxes and bags I’d brought back from the plateau area, feeding and watering live critters before taking a maintenance floater full of them over to Sybil.
“Can you take these over to the island with you? They’re specimens from the plateau area, many of them alive, and there may be some new things among them.” She gave me a doubtful look, so I added, “Collecting them can’t have been intrusive because most of them are exogenous to begin with.”
She peered more closely, with evident interest, and agreed to take them to the isolation lock where all ESC specimens were stored. When I looked out half an hour later, the ESC people were gone except for one man testing the sensors, and another crouched over a multisense recorder, making tiny, repetitive adjustments.
The ship arrived as specified, midafternoon, setting down on the usual landing spot above the meadow. I was waiting for it, along with Ornel Lethe, Duras Drom, and Paul, who had at the last minute decided he needed to present a good front to keep people from talking behind his back. I knew he intended to tell General Manager Brandt what he had discovered, and he had no plan to mention me as having had any part in the process. His intention was immediately frustrated by Brandt’s opening statement:
“Mr. Delis, I need to talk with you, but I’m going over to the island at once. I need Jewel to come along, as I have some information for her from the sanctuary on Earth. I’ll speak to you when I return.”
Paul fumed while we departed, for Gainor took Duras Drom as well. Later I learned that he stalked angrily up and down the meadow for a time, then announced his intention of concentrating on how verbs might develop in an odor language, particularly inasmuch as that was one thing “other people” had no idea about. He was also heard to mutter that his sister had no right making off with Gainor Brandt that way. Gainor Brandt was his contact, not hers.
I had forewarned the trainers to be on the lookout for what Paul was likely to do if frustrated. Whenever people seemed to know things Paul did not know, he did his best to find them out so he could “manage” them. When we were much younger, he went through my belongings regularly in order to know all my secrets and keep me in my place. He was never in the least remorseful about doing it. He was convinced it was his right as the smarter, more able person to control others who were less intelligent and less able. I remember once Luth asked him why he did this.
“Father meant for me to take care of her.”
“Your father? You were only three when he died, Paul.”
“He still meant me to. He had her for me, so I’d have someone who would be smart enough to help me but not smart enough to do anything very important on her own.”
“I thought he and Matty had Jewel because they wanted a child?”
Paul had snorted, “Oh, Matty wasn’t important. My mother was important, but Matty was just someone to look after me. Like Bonner is.”
Some years later, Luth had repeated this conversation to me. “I thought you needed to know.”
I had replied. “That’s another one of Paul’s ‘memories’ that simply isn’t true. Paul builds his dream castles in an interesting way. It starts with his wanting the castle. He knows such a castle can’t exist without a foundation, so instead of admitting there is no foundation, he goes searching through memories and conversations for words or phrases that might be twisted or interpreted as a reference to his castle. When he finds them, he ‘remembers’ the foundation, and his castle is suddenly real.”
“He really believes it?” asked Luth. “Believes his father said that?”
“Of course he believes it,” I replied. “After a while, he believes anything he has said is true, simply because the words came out of his mouth. If you accuse him of lying, he’s outraged.”
Paul believed it no less on Moss than he had when we were children. In order to find out what I was keeping from him, he tried the adjoining door in the house (Adam heard him), only to find it locked. He went outside and found the east-facing door locked as well, and the south one, inside the dog pen, though Adam opened that one, when Paul rattled it.
“Something I can do for you, Paul?”
“Why is everything locked up?”
“I thought Jewel told you. We no longer leave anything unlocked. Moss-demons are not something to be taken lightly. Anything else?”
Paul said no, nothing else, and walked away, looking slightly angry and slightly fearful. Adam told me later that he thought Paul had actually forgotten about moss-demons until that moment. However, as he walked away, it probably occurred to him that if a moss-demon like Poppy did come back, it would come looking for him. Concs habituated to the person who fed them, and Paul had had Poppy for several years.
Adam watched him standing outside his own door, which he had left open, shifting from one foot to the other. After dithering for some time, he came back to ask Adam to look around in his quarters, which Adam did with the utmost gravity. Adam felt about concs very much as I did, though his dislike was based on the way they smelled, which made him no less offended at Paul’s having put Poppy into the redmoss. “A little panic, perhaps a good dose of terror might serve the bastard right,” he told me when I returned.
On the island, meantime, Gainor had called his meeting in Lethe’s lab, the first order of business being what Drom and I had to say concerni
ng the previous night’s incident. Since Drom and some unfamiliar ESC people were present, I stuck to the story I had told previously, and when the likelihood of an odor language came up, I once again said that I had seen it myself.
Gainor Brandt fixed Duras Drom with a pointed forefinger and said, “I think it’s time we see this message the PPI force is supposed to have received.”
Drom nodded. “It’s been in the commissary.”
“The commissary?” blurted Lethe. “Why?”
“It was written on bark in some kind of fruit sap. We put it under refrigeration to preserve it, but I brought it this morning. I knew you’d want to see it.”
The rest of us waited while he went out to get it, then gathered around the table when he placed his burden on it and began to unwrap it. A chunk of bark, about two feet square, with one smooth side where it had been peeled away from a tree, and on the smooth side, the words, “Thankful, thankful, peoples here wanting know many more peoples.” The letters were a little ragged, but quite clear.
We stared for an extremely long time. Something jostled in my head, and I asked, “Have these words been in evidence at PPI? In written form? Not in files or on forms, but on something obvious?”
“There’s a notice board outside the commissary.”
“Is it ever read aloud?”
“Occasionally, I suppose. ‘More people,’ appears every now and then, as in, ‘The cleanup crew needs more people for duty next shift.’ One man might read that off to another man.”
“Thankful?” asked Gainor.
“The circuit riders from the Ethics Commission come by every now and then. Sometimes they do rituals. You never know who it’s going to be, sometimes a Tharstian, sometimes a Fenbar or an Ocpurat. Human ones sometimes post a notice announcing a thanksgiving service.”
I gave Gainor a curious look. I’d never heard of the Ethics Commission. He caught my glance and shook his head slightly, meaning let it go for now. “So these words, all of them, could have appeared…”
“Look,” said Drom, “if you want me to be sure, I’ll look it up and see. We keep copies of everything.”
“Fine,” Gainor said. “You do that, bring me the copies, and meanwhile I’ll finish up my business with the people here.”
That got rid of the extraneous people. When I was alone with Brandt and the trio I was accustomed to meeting with, I said, “I have some sensitive information, for your ears only, Gainor, unless you choose otherwise.”
“I think we’re trustworthy,” said Lethe, in a dry voice.
“I think they are, too,” said Gainor. “What’s happened?”
“I haven’t been telling the entire truth,” I began, going on to supply the details about the journey from Forét, the spatial anomaly, the Night and Day Mountains, the tribal structure, the mysterious key, Gavi Norchis, the mention of Splendor, and the possibility that it was here, close, perhaps interpenetrating us as we spoke. Mouths opened as I told the story, and they remained open when I had finished. I felt laughter welling up and choked it back with an effort. It was a ridiculous tale. During the telling, I had been quite aware of how crazy it sounded. Nonetheless, the ESC people, who had been annoyingly smug during all our previous encounters, looked considerably shaken when I had finished.
“But you have no evidence of this,” said Lethe. “No physical evidence.
I fished the little photo album out of my pocket. “Gavi Norchis found this at the foot of the mesa not long ago, and that evening she saw and heard the people in the rock—don’t ask, I can’t clarify that for you. This thing, however, happens to be a photo album of my wedding celebration with Witt. He had it with him when he left for Jungle. Presumably, he had it with him on Jungle. How did it get here?”
“By the Muzzle of Great Mahalus,” murmured Brandt. “By the Twenty Toes of Tongal.”
Lethe turned a curious glance his way.
“Tharstian gods,” said I drily. “Gainor has taken to swearing by them recently, ever since a Tharstian High Priest told him Great Mahalus has no racial bias.”
“The Great Mahalus,” Gainor intoned, “is possibly the only supreme being in the universe who never created anything in its own image. Jewel, what have we got here?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of days,” said I. “If we prefer to disbelieve, we have to come up with a simple, nonmiraculous way this album got to Moss. The first possibility that crossed my mind was your ESC people; some of them have been both here and on Jungle. Did one of them, perhaps, pick this thing up after Witt disappeared then drop it on this planet?”
“We were never out of noncon suits on that planet,” said Lethe. “All the belongings of the men who disappeared were packed up and returned to Earth except for what they had on them when they vanished. On this planet, we’ve never left the compound to go any farther than the shore, as we did today.”
I nodded. I had thought as much. “If we rule out meteoritic ejecta, since the album shows no signs of burning up in atmosphere, then I’m left with the album’s being further evidence of the spatial anomaly the Derac ran into. Perhaps a branch of that anomaly connects the two planets and the moon.”
“Why the moon?” asked Gainor.
“Because Witt disappeared on Jungle, his keepsake was found on Moss; because Gavi Norchis spoke of ‘harvesters’ here on Moss who come in a flash of light in which people disappear. Adam and I saw such a flash of light as we were leaving Treasure, and there was said to have been a flash of light on Jungle when the eleven men disappeared.
“Also, I found many of the same plants growing on Treasure as are growing on Moss, and while spores might have traveled the distance, it’s a bit much to swallow. Since we already know as a fact that a spatial weirdness exists, the simplest hypothesis connects the three worlds by that means.”
“And where does Splendor fit?”
“Assuming it isn’t a purely religious or mythical place? If the tribes have gained access to this weirdness, it may be…what? Are there surfaces in an anomaly? Could it be dimensional or might it pull in a planetary surface as a nexus? Wormholes sometimes look quite splendid from inside. Might someone go through a door here, arrive on a surface called Splendor, then go from a door there to Jungle? Gavi spoke of a key. The two tribes or Mountains go to war over it every few decades, and they’re due to start another one momentarily. Doesn’t a key imply a door one can go through to somewhere?”
Gainor heaved a sigh. “As usual, Jewel, you’ve given me a good bit more to chew on than I…well, have appetite for! Assuming you’re right in the main, even if not in the details, one thing we do not want to happen is to have any kind of spatial link to fall into Derac or Orskim hands, since we have recently learned the Orskimi have been pushing the Derac to declare war with Earthers in order to take over the human planets.”
There were assorted expressions of outrage, surprise, and dismay, several of them from me.
“Derac don’t live on planets,” objected Abe, loudly.
Gainor said soothingly, “Except during retirement, quite true. The Orskimi, however, have also suggested Derac females should be hybridized with human women, to make them more intelligent, after which the Derac will live on planets.”
“You found that out because of what I told you!” I said.
“You were one of the more important informants, Jewel. You’re owed a vote of thanks.” Turning to the others, he explained, “We’ve been recording Derac speech for a very long time, but we made little progress on understanding it because we put our recording devices in their ships, and the shipclans use only a few hundred words, total. It’s like listening to the scatological cackling of carnivorous hens. They are not given to subtlety. Turns out, the best place to put our ears is on their retirement planets, as Jewel suggested.”
“The Tharstians did it for us?” I asked.
“When I approached the subject with my Tharstian colleague, invoking the Great Mahalus as my witness, he told me they’d been doin
g so for at least a generation, and they were gratified to learn we were finally catching on to what the Derac and Orskimi were up to. At that point my Tharstian friend paused significantly, looking expectant…”
“How does a Tharstian look expectant?” Sybil asked. “They float around in those glassy orbs all the time. You can’t even see them!”
“The orb is actually a biological membrane that closes around them to filter alien air. The orb is quite expressive. It flushes, turns pale, freezes when surprised, quivers when the occupant is interested in something. At any rate, when the Tharstian quivered, I put on my enigmatic face and nodded thoughtfully, as though I knew all about it. As a matter of ethics, Tharstians don’t tell other races things the other races don’t already know. They think of it as interfering. When it’s a matter of stopping an interstellar war before it starts, however, they let the policy stretch a little around the edges.
“To advance, as the Derac say, my Tharstian friend decided I knew enough about it that he could speak without sullying his sense of honor. The Derac are counting on the Orskimi for two things: to hybridize human and Derac females and to be their allies in taking over all human planets. The Orskimi are planning, however, that when the Derac-human war starts, they’ll move in and take over both territories. It’s something they’ve been planning for ages.”
“Who knows this besides you?” asked Lethe.
“The information has been sent to the chairman of the Racial Relations Board of Interstellar Confederation; I left copies to be sent to half a dozen other IC agencies if I don’t get a response. And, it went to the ET Committee of the Earthian Congress, as well as to Worldkeeper Defense Mobilization.”
“Admitting you sneak-eared the Derac?” asked I.
“Saying we’d been informed by a friendly power who shall remain nameless. Actually, the Tharstians gave me proof: a recording from a mortuary temple of the Orskim home planet. The Tharstians have informed us of Orski duplicity before. If anyone requires proof before acting, we can show it to them. I would, however, prefer your kind of story, Jewel, mostly true, with just enough fabrication to minimize damage.”