Chapter Seven
“And Jamir is strong enough to kill a whole deer by himself,” Alex said, through a mouthful of chicken and dumplings. Alex had forgiven her instantly for disbelieving him, not just because she’d been too stupid and adult to believe him though he loved her anyway, but because it gave him a fresh audience for all the things he’d been thinking for weeks about animals. “You’re lucky. Tumi won’t let me see Lady Elaine. He says his mother gets too mad if he bothers her. She hides in the trees when we’re out there. But I like Three-eet, he whistles when you give him fish. I keep asking if I can swim with him, too, but Dougie says it’s a family thing. Sometimes Dwan says I’m getting to be just like one of the family, but she always says no about Three-eet. When are we going to get a dolphin?”
“We’re not, honey,” Shona said, cutting up a dumpling with her spoon for Jill. “We’re only on this planet for another few months. Dolphins need plenty of clean seawater. We have no room for a proper-sized lake on board the Sibyl.”
“We could use one of the cargo pods,” Alex suggested, with a winning smile. “We don’t need all three of them. Oh, wait. Your lab goes in one,” he said accusingly. Shona laughed. “Besides, Three-eet lives in a pool, not a lake. He wouldn’t need much room. You could put him in my cabin, and I can sleep in a bunk with Eblich. He’s small, too.”
“No, darling.”
“How about a monkey? I’m sure Papa will say yes.”
“I have enthusiasm for Three-eet,” Chirwl said. “My theory is such an animal has language discernible by study. I wish to learn how he communicates with other intelligent. I believe I can learning dolphin the same way ottles learned human. If Dwan let me.”
“She could hardly say no, under the circumstances,” Shona said, “but I think she’s as curious as the rest of us. If you succeed you’ll be spitting in the face of generations of scientists before you who’ve tried to figure out what they’re saying.”
“Would not spitting be rude?”
“No, it’s a way scientists communicate,” Shona said. “Go for it! You can take the cart whenever you want, but bring Saffie with you.”
Lani smiled but kept her eyes on her plate.
“Did you know about all these animals?” Shona asked her. “Did Zolly show you her family’s menagerie?”
Lani shook her head. “No. I think only the children speak among themselves.”
“Too young to understand discretion,” Shona said, nodding. “The teenagers know how to keep secrets. Well, it’s understandable that they’d be reluctant to tell us, since we’re transients. The population here is too small to defend such treasures. What they do have on their side is distance. Jardindor is simply too far off the spaceways for anyone to drop in on the chance that a rumor of fabulous beasts worth a thousand kings’ ransom is true.”
“I am close enough,” Lani said shyly.
“Would you like to see them?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I’ll ask Finoa when it’s convenient for you to stop by.” Shona grinned. “She couldn’t expect me to keep the secret from you, since the little ones have known all along. It’s exciting. I feel just like Alex. I can’t stop thinking about them. Wait until I tell Gershom.”
“I already did!” Alex protested.
Shona reached across the vast table to pat his hand. “You’re right, darling, you did. But I’ll tell him I saw them, too. It was a huge surprise. Dwan was so apologetic when she admitted she had been hiding Three-eet from me.”
“Introductions would be awkward,” Chirwl admitted. “The functions suggested by Finoa and Robret does not come to mind on animal charge viewing. With machines for every other, why there are not more for those?”
Shona grew grave. “I agree with you. The Jardindorians are mistaken if they honestly believe that animals are a remedy for ailments, whether real or imagined. Tigers can’t make you stronger. Elephants can’t improve your memory. Lizards can’t … cure your acne, or whatever it is they are claiming. They’re just indulging themselves. I’ve got a bone to pick with Dr. Setve.”
“Are you sure it is he who has trembling ethics?” Chirwl asked.
“You mean shaky ethics. I believe so. He’s in charge of their medical care. He must condone it. I intend to stay long enough to talk to him in person about this fraud he is perpetrating. None of these people are sick.”
“What about the man who was angry?” Chirwl asked.
Lani looked a question. Shona nodded acknowledgment. “Laren Carmody came to see me. In fact, I believe that his problem is caused by interaction with his … totem creature. I think I may hear from him before very long.” She sighed. “I just keep thinking about that tiger. I don’t know much about the big cats, but if Harry was pacing and glaring like that I would know he was unhappy.”
At the sound of his name the Abyssinian cat looked up from his bowl near the wall and came over in hope of a taste of chicken.
“Perhaps Jamir needs someone who can understand him, as Harry has our listen,” suggested Chirwl.
“That,” said Shona, picking a morsel of food out of her plate for the cat, “is not a bad notion.”
* * *
Chirwl could be right. These animals might need an advocate. The situation required more study. Tigers were virtually extinct. What if the choices for Jamir were either to live in a captive setting or to die when the next opportunist found him? What if the only answer for the survival of Lady Elaine’s offspring was not to let her tear up her environment but to keep her in a small area and provide fodder and constant medical supervision? She let Alex babble on during dinner, not really hearing him, but putting in all the right maternal noises when he stopped and looked at her. She was grateful to Lani, who asked Alex questions and smiled at his comments, giving Shona a chance to think.
When the meal was over Shona had no idea what she’d eaten. She sent the children up to play in one of the bedrooms.
“What about the dishes?” Alex asked, eyeing the table. It was his turn. Shona could tell he was hoping for a reprieve.
“Just this once,” Shona said, “we will let the service robots clear away the dishes. But just this once.”
“Super!” Alex crowed. He tagged Jill and ran out of the dining room. The toddler protested and scrambled away after her brother.
“Whew!” said Shona, watching them go. “Servers, clear and clean.” The robot hands swung down from the ceiling and began to convey the plates one at a time fire-brigade style toward the kitchen.
“Mama, may I borrow the cart?” Lani pleaded. “Zolly has asked the other girls over for tonight.”
Shona brightened. At least there was one positive facet of this posting: Lani had a peer group for the first time, and she was enjoying it. “Of course, darling. Are you all staying overnight?”
The girl looked hopeful. “May I?”
“Absolutely. If you enjoy it, you can host your own slumber party next.”
Lani’s dark eyes glowed. “I’ve never had a party.”
Shona felt a pang of conscience. She put her arms around the girl, now a few centimeters taller than she was. “Your father and I have kept you all to ourselves long enough, sweetheart. It’s time we learned to share you. When you come home tomorrow we’ll make some plans. We’ll do whatever you want.”
Knocked completely silent by the awe-inspiring notion of being a hostess, Lani ran to her room to pack a bag. Shona got on her communications console to check with Hanya. A party was indeed going on, the big woman assured Shona.
“I expect it will go on all night, of course,” Hanya said, with a grin. In the background, Shona heard the strains of the latest teen music playing. The other girls had already arrived.
“Is that Dr. Shona?” Zolly crowded in behind her mother. “Tell Lani to hurry over. The others are already here! What kind of pizza does she like?”
James was summoned from the outbuilding. Her face glowing, Lani climbed into the seat. Her spine bolt upright with excitement, she was whisked away, a princess going to the ball in her mouseless pumpkin carriage. Shona grinned as she walked out to sit in the garden.
Days were growing longer. The sun was still a good distance above the horizon. From the comfortable embrace of the sling lounger Shona watched pinkish clouds ambling slowly across the sky. What a fantastic sensation to realize that she might be the only person in the universe seeing that sight at that moment. Lani, on her way to her first real party, was too excited to be paying attention to anything, the other children were inside, and no one else on Jardindor seemed to take advantage of the fantastic gift they had outside their doors at any time of the day or night.
“They all ought to try living in space for a while,” Shona said aloud. “That’ll teach them to appreciate atmospheric phenomena when they see them.”
“I remark with happy upon their presence,” Chirwl’s voice said from almost underneath her elbow. Shona shot up out of the sling onto her feet.
“Blue Star, Chirwl, you startled me out of ten years’ growth!”
The ottle crawled up onto the frame of the chair and rested his front legs on the swaying glider seat. “How to detect and enumerate so clearly the age lost?” he asked.
“Oh, never mind, it’s just an expression,” Shona said, sitting down in the chair again. Her thoughts had been broken by the ottle’s unexpected appearance. She laughed.
“What for is the humor?” Chirwl asked.
Shona threw out an arm to indicate the endless gardens. “I was just thinking. I came out here to be alone to think. You turned up just now, and I felt as though the garden had just become crowded. There are hundreds, no, thousands of empty acres out there, and I just pulled in my elbows because you’re here.”
“Is it proximity that makes the crowd?”
Shona shook her head. “It couldn’t be. On the ship we’re almost tripping over one another, and no one is worried about it. Even living on Mars I had very little private space. Here I could run naked for miles and not one other warm-blooded creature would see me. It’s a wonderful strangeness. It makes me feel as though I’m someone else.”
“Do you feel someone-elseness when you are another somewhere-else than this?”
“Yes,” Shona said, after a moment. “At first I experienced fear at sleeping in those big rooms by myself. I got so used to defining my personal space by a kind of echolocation, by my relationship to you and the children and the walls of the ship. When those had all been moved away I didn’t know where my own boundaries were. I am not sure I know all of them yet. I think it’s simply adaptation.”
“Self-normalcy is called for.”
“Don’t I know it,” Shona sighed. “At least we’re all sleeping in separate bedrooms again.”
The ottle wiggled his whiskers at her. “For why then the contemplation of emptiness?”
“You know the human tendency to fill up any available space?” Shona said, with a wry grin. “I just discovered I’d filled up this whole huge yard with me.”
“You must remember who you are when you are not here.”
“Now, that is very clear thinking,” Shona said, rising to her feet. Night had fallen. The greenery had turned into an irregular dark carpet at their feet. “I’d better see what kind of trouble the little ones have gotten into in all their space. Then I’m going to send to Gershom. I always feel better after I’ve talked to him. Do you have any message for him?”
“No, with thanks,” Chirwl said, huddling into a comfortable position on the seat of the cast-iron chair. “I already feel normalcy.”
* * *
When she touched the console icon for personal mail the first item that sprang up was a personal message from Bock.
“Please accept our apologies for walking out on you the other day,” the dark-skinned man said, with a rueful smile. “I would like to make amends for our abruptness. I’d promised you a walk on the mountains. How about Saturday?”
“Oh, yes!” Shona sent an enthusiastic thank-you, then checked for off-planet messages. She had plenty of mail from friends and relatives, issues of medical journals and correspondence from her peers in environmental medicine, and half a dozen messages from Susan. She scanned the list twice, feeling her heart sink: there was no word from Gershom. Though he sent every day it was likely that the path taken by the Sibyl to fulfill all the orders Governor Hethyr had given him might cause a delay of a day or two in between sendings. For a moment Shona felt bereft. No matter. She hit the keys for a new message and smiled at the video pickup.
“Hello, love,” she said. “Well, I’ve had quite a day. This won’t come as new news to you, since I know Alex has been telling you all about Jamir for weeks. I feel silly. He was telling the truth. Jamir isn’t a robot. He is a real animal.” Shona paused to grin, feeling the awe and delight well up inside her, and knew her husband would share them, however vicariously the sensation had to be at many light-years’ distance. “A tiger, Gershom. You can’t believe how beautiful he is. And almost more amazing, they have got an elephant. A live elephant! Finoa’s said I can come and observe them occasionally. It’ll be a treat. I plan to ask her if you can see them, too. But they’re not the only surprise: everyone seems to have an exotic or three in their backyards. Dwan’s got a dolphin and a monkey, and the governor herself has a wolf. You know how I love animals. This is heaven for me. But you will not believe why they’ve been imported here. Let me tell you …”
Shona related as much as she could of what Robret had told her about Animal Magnetism, and described meeting Kajiro, Three-eet, and Argent. “This may turn out to be the best posting we’ve ever had. All this, and they’re paying me, too!” She smiled. “I can picture you sitting and listening to me babble on about all this. You’re a darling. Oh! I have another big piece of news: Lani was invited to a sleepover. She was so excited. We are really going to have to insist she go to an academy next term. She needs more socialization than she gets living in a fishbowl with all of us. I’m downloading brochures, but if you come across any interesting schools while you’re visiting suppliers, please send me some data. I’d better go and make sure the kids are still in bed. I love you.” She touched her fingers to her lips and brought them to the video pickup in the center of the screen. “I miss you.” She felt the loneliness in her heart when she reached out to touch the Send button.