XI.

THE MEETINGS BECAME more than a ritual. Time reduced them to the ordinary. Until the year Runs-red-Talking appeared clad in a type of bodysuit Chad had never seen before. Instead of the familiar dull operator’s brown and yellow, the Quozl blazed brightly in garb of emerald green sewn with patches of black and pink. Scarves and earrings matched perfectly, as they always did. As camouflage it was an utter failure, but as an alien fashion statement it was dazzling.

Nor were the only changes in his attire. New whorls and lines had been shaved into his face and upper arms. An entirely different pattern had been scalloped from his thighs. Even the knuckles of his toes had been carefully worked over by an artist’s razors.

“Got a hot date?” Chad inquired the first time he set eyes on the new Runs. “You look impressive.”

Runs extended his right hand to conclude the by-now-familiar human gesture as he greeted his old friend. Then Chad relaxed as the Quozl extended all seven fingers and placed his palm directly over the human’s face, gripping lightly for a moment with the fingertips.

They ambled over to the campsite where Chad’s tent offered protection from sun and rain.

“What have you brought for me to learn this time?” As usual, Runs could hardly contain his excitement at these first meetings of each new summer. To Chad he displayed nothing in the way of emotion.

“Have a look around. See what you can find.” He didn’t smile. While his Quozl friend understood the human smile, the toothy displays still made him uncomfortable. So Chad did his best to dampen his instinctive reactions.

Runs found the plastic bags, used his long fingers to swiftly unseal them. Small brown objects tumbled from the first into his waiting palm.

“What are these?” He lifted the handful to his face. “They smell strongly of other woods.”

“Mixed nuts. None of them grow around here. You’ve had the peanuts before but the rest will be new to you.”

The Quozl examined each nut in detail before popping it into his mouth and chewing experimentally. “They’re all delicious,” he said when he’d consumed the entire packet. “But then; everything you have brought me has been delicious. We had hoped to find edible foods on Shiraz. We did not expect to find cuisine.” He expelled air in the form of a high-pitched whistle, which Chad had come to know as a sigh.

“It’s hard for me to enjoy these delights knowing I can share none of them with my friends.”

“Hey, you’re not alone. I’ve enjoyed everything you brought for me from the Burrow gardens, but I can’t go spreading the stuff around either. It’s a damn shame. We could do a lot for each other’s agriculture. Not to mention what you guys could do for tree farming. I’ve seen you around trees. It’s weird.”

“The Quozl have always had a deep spiritual relationship with trees. It was gratifying to learn that those which grow here are no different in that respect from those of home.” He held up a large curved nut. “What did you call this one?”

“A Brazil nut.”

He placed it in his mouth and chewed blissfully. “Wondrous.” As he swallowed he tried to peer into the depths of the tent. “Did you bring any more tuna fish this time?”

“Some.”

“A few of the engineers have discussed the possibility of constructing a subterranean accessway from Burrow Seven to the river that flows above the colony. If the problems could be solved it would allow us to engage in a limited amount of aquaculture. Expeditions have tested the local fish and found the flesh nutritious and tasteful, as is everything else on this world, though we are not so fond of the flesh of the larger animals. I have tried more than anyone else, thanks to you, and I find this holds true. I do not know why it should be so. But all the fish is excellent, whether saltwater or fresh. It would add great variety to the Burrow diet.

“We still prefer our plants. I think we are further removed from wholly carnivorous ancestors than are you.”

“I remember us discussing that before.” Chad opened another bag of food for his friend to sample. “You’ve completely lost any canine teeth, for example.”

Runs was staring eagerly at the new bag, which was larger than its predecessor. “What have you there?”

“We call ’em snack foods. You’ve had some before. Potato chips, crackers, pretzels, hapi mix, a nice assortment. My mother got kind of upset with me for opening a whole slew of bags and taking a little of each. She tolerates me, though. Everybody thinks I’m turning into a real eccentric because I’m always going off by myself so much.”

“Very interesting. I am credited with great spirituality since I spend more time in meditation than anyone except senior philosophers.” Had he adopted the gesture he might have grinned. Instead his ears twitched rapidly in the movement Chad knew to translate as amusement.

“My companions marvel at how I manage to stay in such excellent physical condition when I spend so much of my time immersed in deep contemplation. They cannot know that my body is being exercised as thoroughly as my mind. Here, I have something to show you. I thought to make it a present.” He swung his own shoulder pack around and placed it on the ground. “I am not sure it is a good thing to do. We can discuss the ramifications.”

Chad watched and waited while his friend unpacked. Runs-red-Talking was big on ramifications.

From the interior the Quozl withdrew a handful of interlocked rings. They were fashioned of wood, each a different color and grain, and had been polished until they gleamed like brass. One was umber, another dark brown, a third light brown shot through with golden splinters, while a fourth was a startlingly bright blue. The fifth was black with white spots, the sixth a silvery gray, and the seventh and last an absurd translucent pink.

Placing the rings between them he proceeded to demonstrate how you could create different sculptural shapes by twisting and locking the rings into position. Or they could be worn as jewelry. At a gesture, Chad picked them up.

“Are these as expensive as they are pretty? Hey!”

He nearly dropped the ring set as the black loop began to quiver slightly in his hand. None of the others vibrated but each exhibited a distinctive tactile quality. Runs tried to explain as he named each of the rings in turn.

They had been brought all the way through underspace from distant Quozlene.

“I’d like you to have it.”

Chad was overcome. “I couldn’t possibly.” The look and feel of the alien wood held most of his attention. It was difficult to turn them, to feel them slip through his fingers, and concentrate on what his friend was saying.

“The problem I have is that someone else might see them. Your parents, or your sister, or your friends.”

“None of them are botanists. They’d think it was just an interesting puzzle I’d picked up in a store somewhere. Unless I let them spend time with something like this.” He caressed the black ring, feeling it jump slightly under his fingertip.

“Can you guarantee that will not happen?”

Chad slumped slightly. “No, of course not.” He extended his arm. “Here. You’d better take ’em back. They’re beautiful and I’d love to have them and I appreciate the thought, but it’s an unnecessary risk.”

“I thought you might say that.” Runs turned the taking back into a ritual that lasted several minutes. Then he indulged himself in the snack foods Chad had brought for him to try.

Not all were appealing. While the term “snack” seemed appropriate, in several instances the word “food” did not apply at all. He much preferred the mixed nuts.

“Tell me about the fancy suit. Is it some special occasion? Talk about risks: if anyone was looking in your direction they’d be able to spot that getup halfway across a valley.”

Runs looked down at himself. “I thought it safe enough to emerge without changing. The weather is cloudy and there have been no recent atmospheric overflights. I did not believe there would be anyone about to see me.”

“I was thinking about your own people, the expeditions you’re always sending out. You’re right about the woods, though. They seem empty.” He pointed to the black circles and cutouts. “What about the patches? I haven’t seen any of them before. Are they significant of something?”

“Indeed. I have sired.”

“Sired? You mean you had a kid? You?”

“With an old friend and mate. We were finally given permission to conceive. You know how carefully we limit our population.”

“Yeah, I remember you talking about that. A kid’s a real privilege. You must be pretty proud.”

“I am. You should see him, nesting in his mother’s pouch, hardly bigger than your thumb. He will grow rapidly, much more rapidly than a human child which is of course born in a more advanced state of maturity.” He blinked. “You have not yet sired?”

Chad raised both hands. “I’m not even going steady right now.”

“Well, then, how is your coupling frequency?”

Chad looked away. “You’ve got to understand about that. We just don’t do it as often as Quozl. We’re not designed for it. We don’t talk about it as freely, either.”

“I did not mean to offend.”

“You didn’t offend.” Runs’s habit of apologizing for everything was difficult to get used to, Chad reflected. “You are not responsible for your biology, I’m not responsible for mine.”

“I know, but it still seems rather a shame.”

“You think it’s a shame!”

While they argued Mindy crouched in the bushes opposite the tent, hardly daring to breathe. She’d lost her brother’s trail once but had managed to find him again by hurrying to higher ground. He hadn’t traveled half as far as she’d expected.

Two days he’d spent camped by the shore of the river, sitting near his tent and peering up the canyon without straying. That behavior was strange enough, but she hadn’t begun to observe strangeness. That arrived in the leaping shape of something short, gray-white, and furry, a big-footed whisk brush clad in opium green. Trailing brightly hued scarves and tinkling earrings it shook hands with her ingenuous brother, whereupon he began feeding it nuts and pretzels as the two of them sat down to immerse themselves in nonstop conversation.

Now that was strange.

Her powers of identification might have failed but there was nothing wrong with her imagination. It didn’t resemble anything she knew and it moved much too naturally to be someone in a suit, acting out a role. Half an hour’s close scrutiny was sufficient to convince her that her brother’s companion wasn’t from around there, and she didn’t mean Idaho. It looked exactly like something from another world, though rather more cuddly than she would have designed it. The fact that it spoke excellent English and dressed like a refugee from a Carnaby Street fashion closeout only added intrigue.

They were still chatting amiably but she was too far off to overhear the actual conversation. If the creature carried a weapon it was inconspicuous and her brother seemed completely relaxed. She felt safe in assuming it could not be too dangerous.

She had to get closer if she was going to hear anything.

“Make no mistake about it,” Runs-red-Talking was saying. “That’s why the Books are so important to us.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Hundreds. You could not begin to master them in several lifetimes. The best one can hope for is a respectable sampling. They cover every aspect of Quozl life and more are being added all the time. The Samizene is not static: it is an evolving organism imbued with self-regenerating immortality. You do not study it. It breathes into you through your mind, you inhale the spirit with your eyes.” He broke off abruptly, staring past his friend.

Chad turned, saw nothing, looked back. “Something on your mind? You see something?”

“No, Chad, I do not see anything. But I can hear something. It moves clumsily, and it exhales tension.”

Chad turned and concentrated. “I don’t hear a thing. But of course with those ears you can hear a lot better than I.”

“I can also see better and smell more intensely. These things I have learned over the years. Among the Quozl, the most sensitive human would be considered sensory-deprived.”

“Yeah, but you guys can’t swim worth a damn.” Frustrated, he climbed to his feet. “I swear I can’t see anything moving in there.”

“Some large animal: bigger than a squirrel, smaller than a deer.”

Suddenly color flashed between two bushes, enough for Chad to recognize. He cursed himself silently. “That’s no large animal. That’s my sister.” He took a step in her direction, hesitated. “You’d better hide in the tent.”

Runs’s ears bobbed negatively. “She has been here long enough to have noticed me, I fear. If she had not been watching there would be no reason for her to continue hiding. Yet if there is any chance …” He bounded into the depths of the tent.

Chad let the rain flap flop against the opening, walking toward the line of trees. “All right, Mindy, you can come out now.” When she made no move to emerge he added, “I saw you. You’ve got that stupid green shirt on, the one with the red stripes. At least if you’re going to try and hide in the woods you should pick something without bright red stripes.”

There was a long pause, then she rose from behind another bush, slightly to the right of the place he’d guessed. “I wasn’t hiding.” She was smiling at him, unable to eliminate the slightly superior tone she always used when they talked. As she advanced toward him he saw that her attention was focused on the tent. His heart sank. Runs-red-talking was right.

“What is it, little brother?”

“What’s what?” He spoke irritably. “And don’t call me that.”

Ignoring his request she nodded at the tent. “Your friend with the big feet and the oversized ears.”

“Why’d you follow me?” he asked her, attempting to postpone the inevitable.

“I got curious. You know me and my curiosity. You kept talking about all the exploring you were doing, all the wonderful new places you were visiting, but every time you left the cabin you went off in the same direction. Every summer.

“For a while I thought you had a secret camp where you’d found some gold. As you got older I found myself wondering if you’d run into some pretty backpacker like yourself and the two of you were making a regular yearly rendezvous you wanted to keep secret from Mom and Dad.” She indicated the tent. “Is it a girl?”

“No. Runs-red-Talking is a he, not an it.” He let out the heaviest sigh of his life. “Come on. I guess I might as well introduce you.”

He led her back to the tent, pulled the rain flap aside. “Might as well come on out, Runs. You were right. She saw us.” Something stirred inside the shelter. Mindy was bent over, trying to restrain herself.

“His name is Runs-red-Talking?”

“As near as he can approximate it in English. I can say it properly but my Quozl’s not too good. Too high-pitched and too soft for my palate. He says I just sound like I’m grunting, a lot of the time. But I’m getting better.”

“You can speak its—pardon me, his, language?”

“We’ve been friends for a long time.”

He heard his sister’s sharp intake of breath as Runs emerged from the tent and straightened. To Mindy, Runs would seem expressionless and solemn. She didn’t know how to interpret the subtle movements of hand and eye, ear and fur.

For his part Runs studied her with open interest. “You are the first female of your species I have encountered in person, so I suppose some good will come of this.”

“His English is as good as yours, Chad. How did you learn our language?”

The Quozl turned questioningly to his friend. “You might as well tell her what you feel she can handle,” Chad said tiredly. “She’ll badger me to death if you don’t tell her.”

“I will tell her, and freely, but,” Runs turned back to Mindy, “you must swear to tell no one else of this meeting or of my existence. Your brother has kept such a promise for many years. Can you do no less? If not, this encounter must end now and forever.”

“No, no,” Mindy assured him quickly, “I swear. I swear it. Why should I tell anyone? It’s a big secret, right? Our secret.” Her eyes swept over the Quozl. “I like your jewelry.”

Runs-red-Talking tilted his head to one side, staring at her. “And I have observed in my studies which I can now confirm that despite the insignificance of your own organs of hearing, you decorate them as much as you are able, though among humans this civilized habit is largely confined to the females.”

“Maybe we can trade earrings. No, we can’t do that. It might risk your secret, right?”

Runs-red-Talking made no secret of his relief. “I am glad to see you may be counted upon to help preserve our privacy.”

“Why would I want to share you? This is too good.” She chose a place and sat down, crossing her legs and locking them together with her arms. “Now take your time and tell me all about yourself and the rest of the—what did you call them, brother?”

“Quozl. The Quozl.” He didn’t know whether to be furious with his sister for having followed him or relieved that she so readily accepted the need for continued secrecy.

“What do you want to know?” Runs asked her.

“Everything!” She smiled reassuringly at him.

“I do not have the time in this life to tell you everything, but I will endeavor to satisfy your immediate curiosity. We will begin with the business of smiling.” Chad hunted for the thermos of cold fruit juice while Runs lectured Mindy.

While he spoke, Runs-red-Talking was considering alternatives. Short of slaying the female there was little he could do. The inherent logic of it notwithstanding, he doubted his human friend would understand such a course of action. The next step involved killing them both. That held dangers of its own. Their parents would miss them and come searching, possibly along with others of their kind much better equipped for tracking. They might find more than evidence of assassination: they might begin to learn who was responsible. Under no circumstances could he expose the colony to such a danger.

It really mattered not because he didn’t want to kill Chad and he was morally and spiritually incapable of harming either of them. He could not even intrude on their Sama without first asking permission. He had no choice but to discard the thought, which he never broached to his human friend.

Chad had to admit that his sister handled the return home perfectly. She did nothing to suggest that anything out of the ordinary had transpired during her absence.

Their parents did express surprise when she told them that instead of spending her days writing on the porch or in her room she was henceforth going to accompany her brother on his week-long forest forays. At the same time they were delighted to see brother and sister, who had fought for so long, getting along so well. Mindy allowed as how she was learning things about the forest she’d never imagined while Chad reluctantly admitted it was good to have some company on his long trips.

Everything went smoothly from then on until the last week of the summer. Chad set up camp and waited with his sister by the side of the river, but when three days had gone by without Runs-red-Talking emerging from the woods he found himself growing uneasy.

He was splashing cold water on his face when Mindy came up next to him.

“Has he ever been this late before?”

“No.” Chad fumbled for the towel, wiped his eyes. “Never. Never more than a couple of days.”

“Maybe something happened to delay him longer.”

“Not by choice. One of the things the Quozl make a fetish of is punctuality. He told me that several times.”

“Okay, so he’s late. It’s too early to panic. He can’t exactly let us know what’s going on by letter. It’s probably something so ordinary it’s dumb, like locking himself in the bathroom. Or maybe he just got busy with something else important and forgot.”

“For a few hours, possibly. Not for three days. It’s not like him at all. You’re right, though, when you say something might have happened to him. Something involuntary. What if he ran into a cougar, or a sow bear with cubs? Both of us always worried about that.”

Mindy’s reaction showed she hadn’t considered those possibilities. “God, I hope not.”

Chad looked back at her in some surprise. “I didn’t think you cared about him, personally.”

“There you go again,” she said in exasperation, “putting words in my mouth, thinking for me. Did I ever say anything like that?”

“No. You just always struck me as a lot less interested in him than in the stories he told you.”

“You’re crazy. I like him as much as you do.”

Finding the discussion suddenly distasteful, Chad turned to stare upstream. “Something’s happened to him, I know it.”

“He could be sick. Quozl do get sick, don’t they?”

“I suppose. Funny, that’s something we never talked about.” He relaxed slightly. “Maybe that’s all it is. But this still isn’t like him.”

“Nobody plans on illness. He’s probably more worried than you are. He can’t have his doctor or whatever they use send us a telegram.” She settled a pan over the small propane stove. “Nothing we can do except wait and hope he shows up. If he doesn’t we’ll leave and come back in a week. That’s the pattern, isn’t it?”

Chad nodded. “That’s the way it’s been set up.”

Runs-red-Talking did not appear the following day, or the next, or the one after that when they were packing for the hike back to the lake. Chad tried not to worry too much. His friend’s absence might be due to something as ordinary as a sprained ankle. That would seriously incapacitate a Quozl. Or he might be having problems on the job, or with his family. They would find out in a week when they returned to the meeting site.

Not for an instant did he consider the possibility that he might never see Runs-red-Talking again. With a start he realized how fond he’d become of the long-eared alien. That wasn’t normal but, then, his sister had known that her brother was something other than normal for years.