Peter Dickinson - Earth and Air

Skunk was also a hermaphrodite and legless, but otherwise nothing like a Whizzer—slow, sightless, a nude blob, corrugated with scent glands. He could synthesize and aim a jet of any odour he wished. He could stun even Hippo with a stink, provided her nostril was unsealed. On the anniversary of David’s first joining the crew Skunk had presented him with a smell which was all the pleasures of his life, remembered and forgotten, linked into ten minutes of ecstasy. Skunk knew what odours to produce because he was a telepath, not in the style of the Bandicoots, but able to sense the minutest variations of emotion: thus he could attract or repel, numb or excite, at will. David had seen him organize the slaves of a fully functioning mine in Altair to load the ship with jade while their trance-held guards watched impotent. That had been a rich trip, if risky. Pity they’d had to trade the loot for fuel at a way station . . . Skunk had almost total power except over creatures such as Cats, which had no sense of smell. He could be any colour he chose. He could feel danger long before David could analyse it. Surface-scouting on a new planet was always done by a team of two Whizzers, one Bandicoot, and Skunk.

“The Bandicoot said we were to return,” hissed one of the Whizzers. “What new providence has the Lord effected?”

“I don’t know,” said David. “I think that the Bandicoots just wanted to get together.”

“Listen to them,” said Mole.

“Disgusting,” said the Whizzers.

“A very untidy relationship,” said Bird, smugly.

“Dear little things,” said Hippo.

“Hippo, get away from that strut,” said David.

“Sorry,” said Hippo. “You know, I really am pregnant.”

“You and who else?” said Bird. “You aren’t the only female in these parts, remember. There’s me, too, and several halves and quarters.”

“But it’s important,” said Hippo.

“It’s hysterical,” snapped Bird. “Get Doc to check. He’ll tell you.”

“Doc’s drunk,” said David. “He’s found some substance in Cat’s body . . . But if Hippo does give birth it means she’ll produce a cloud of seeds which float about until they stick to a living body—then they burrow in and eat it out from the inside.”

“Charming,” said Bird. “What happens if they land on another Hippo?”

“Why do you think they’ve evolved that hide, and the ability to seal off?” said David.

“Well, we’ll just have to copy her,” said Bird. “Get inside the ship, seal off, and wait till the happy event is over.”

“But you can’t do that,” said Hippo. “What about my babies? What will they eat?”

“Oh, they’ll find something,” said Bird.

“But was it not revealed to Brother/Sister Skunk that the Lord has not yet seen fit to bring forth warm-blooded creatures upon this planet?” said one Whizzer.

“Infinite is His mercy. Strange are His ways,” said the other.

David started trying to work out whether Hippo could bust her way into the ship. His analysis wouldn’t cohere. He didn’t know how much extra strength to allow for the desperation of maternal feelings, and all the other constants seemed to be slithering around. Then, in the middle of this mess, a wholly irrelevant point struck him. He ought to have seen it before.

“That means one of us killed Cat,” he said.

There was a sudden silence, apart from the climax of shrilling beyond the ship. Strange are His ways, thought David.

“Yes. Man,” said Skunk in his laboriously produced groan. “Something. Odd . . . Cat. Dead . . . Must. Know. How . . . Why?”

“Sorry, I can’t help,” said David. “I don’t know.”

“Come off it,” snapped Bird. “You’ve got to know. That’s what you’re there for, to classify and analyse information. That’s why we bother to cart you around with us—it’s your function.”

“I’m afraid I’m not functioning very well today,” said David.

“Feeling all right?” hooted Doc. “Like me to have a squint inside you?”

“Not on your life,” said David. “I’m fine. Only . . .”

“Only you’re not kissing well going to bother,” said Bird.

“Sister Bird,” hissed the Whizzers. “You must modify your language or we desert.”

There was a moment of shock. Nobody ever deserted. Nobody ever joked about it. By the same token Bird always remembered not to swear in front of the Whizzers.

“Yet the Lord has revealed to Brother/Sister Skunk that the duty has fallen on us to discover how and why Brother Cat was called to his Maker,” said one Whizzer.

“Blessed is His name,” said the other.

“ All right,” said Mole, “let’s go along with that. We can all analyse a bit, I suppose. We don’t have Men around at home, do we? Doc, sober up and pay attention. Bird, go and see if the Bandies have finished whatever it is they do . . .”

David withdrew into himself. He was not Man, he was David. He felt enormous reluctance to take part in analytic processes. It didn’t matter who had killed Cat, or why, and the others were only discussing it because Skunk said it was important—they were accepting Skunk’s dictum out of habit, because they were used to the idea of Skunk being right about that sort of thing, just as they were used to the idea of Bird being right about the threat of a particle-storm. Those were part of their functions but it didn’t mean that Skunk was in command—no one was, or they all were. They collected information through their nine senses, relayed it if necessary through the Bandicoots, and David collated it with what he knew and interpreted the resulting probabilities. Then, always till now, it had become clear what they should do next, and there had been no point on taking a vote, or even discussing the issue. They were a crew, a unit like a beehive or a termite nest. They had lost their previous Hippo because they’d landed on a quaking planet and the only way to take off from its jellylike surface was for that Hippo (a young one, male, mauve) to hold the ship upright from the outside while they blasted clear. At the time it had seemed sad, but not strange, to leave poor Hippo roasted there, and Hippo seemed to think so too. The Whizzers had sung a hymn as they’d blasted off, he remembered. But now . . .

Now he sat in the ring of creatures round the campfire and felt no oneness with them. They were aliens. They squeaked and boomed and lowed and rasped in words he could scarcely understand, though they were all speaking standard English. The fire reflected itself from the facets of Bird’s eyes: her mandibles clashed like punctuation marks in the flapping talk from her wing-cases. Doc had withdrawn his pseudopod from Cat’s drained body and the surface of his water was frothy with the by-products of his feast. The Bandicoots had joined the circle and were engrossed in the talk, all four heads perking this way and that as if joined by a crank-rod. The Whizzers lay half folded together, like a pair of clasped hands. Mole had absentmindedly dug himself down and was listening with his elbows at ground level and his snout resting on his little pink palms with their iron-coloured claws Skunk, too, had forgotten himself enough to be producing vague whiffs and stinks, as if trying to supplement the difficult business of speech with the communication system he used among his own kind.

I belong on Earth, thought David. What am I doing here? Being part of a crew, that’s what. But what is the crew doing here? Prospecting, with a bit of piracy when the chance offers, that’s what. But why? Why any longer? He was rich—they all were, enormously rich in the currency of their home planets. Or were they? All those claims. Were they valid? Had anyone exploited them? That jade, hijacked in Altair—a share of that would have been enough to buy David twenty wives and islands for all of them, but without argument they had traded it for less than a thousandth of its value in fuel—to what end? More exploration, more claims . . .