Since Albert had made a point of it, I took a careful look at the Voodoo Pig carvings. I didn’t see what had interested him. The carvings weren’t anything new. The museums all had them. I’d even once held one in my hand-gingerly, because the smell of the sty had survived even boiling and polishing. They were just carved bits of woody plant matter, or of tooth or bone. They ran about ten or twelve centimeters long, and when they were carved out of teeth, the teeth were not the Voodoo Pigs’ own. The pigs didn’t have any teeth. All they had were abrasive and very hard rasping surfaces at the skinny ends of their noses—or trunks, or mouths, depending on how you chose to describe them. The teeth came from their food animals, several dozen of which had been imported along with the pigs when the colony was established. The fact that they used the teeth of other animals for their carvings didn’t prove any delicate sensibilities on the part of the pigs, though, because when they used bones, the bone was as likely as not to have come from their deceased nearest and dearest, once they had passed on and been eaten. “Carvings” isn’t exactly the right word, either. The pigs nibbled the pieces into shape, because they didn’t have tools to carve anything with. They didn’t have any language, either.
In fact, take them all in all, they had about the IQ of a gopher—Only they created, and obsessively went on creating, these works of art.
“Art,” too, may be too strong a word, because they had only one subject. The carvings were like dolls. They resembled, as close as I can describe it, a six-limbed creature with the body of a lion and the head and torso of a gorilla, and there was nothing remotely resembling it anywhere on the planet they came from.
“So what’s special about them?” I asked Albert.
He countered, “Why do you think the pigs carve them?”
The rest of the party got into the guessing game. “Religious objects,” said Cassata.
“Dolls,” said Alicia Lo. “They need something to cuddle.”
And, “Visitors,” said my dear Portable-Essie.
And Albert beamed at her approvingly.
As is so often the case between Albert and me, I had no idea what was on his mind. It would have been interesting to follow that up just then, but Cassata jerked upright. “Message,” he said. “Excuse me,” and vanished.
He didn’t exactly come back. What happened was that we lost the sight and sound of the little nook he had created for us. We just heard a voice. Not his, at first. At first we got what I recognized as a pickup from the Sluggards’ translator:
Huge they were and harmfully hot
And the people lashed each other in fear.
And then Cassata’s voice, full of excitement:
“Come on! You can come into the staff meeting!” And then Cassata himself appeared, glowing with the happiness of a soldier who sees a chance to do some fighting. “They’ve done it, folks!” he cried. “They’ve tracked down the source of the message to the Assassins. They’re shutting that whole sector down, and we’ll be moving in!”
13
KIDS IN CAPTIVITY
The school’s principal was not only human, she was good at dealing with children. She had four degrees and nineteen years of experience. In that time she had encountered nearly every problem kids could provide, which was roughly one problem per child per semester for all the thousands of children she had supervised over the years.
None of that helped now. She was out of her depth.
When she arrived in the waiting room of the counseling section she was breathless and unbelieving. “But that is fantastic, my dear,” she told the sobbing Oniko. “How could they possibly—To be able to read your diary—But why in the world—” She flung herself into a chair, scowling at the incredibility of it all.
“Ma’am?” said Sneezy, and when he got a glance from the principal went on, “It’s not just Oniko. I kept a diary, too, and that’s part of the transmission.”
The principal shook her head helplessly. She waved at the wall screen, which promptly displayed the school’s private beach; work-things were tending barbecue fires, and students were beginning to assemble. She looked from the children to the screen and back again. “I should be there,” she said fretfully. “It’s luau night tonight, you know.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sneezy, and Harold nodded vigorously beside him.
“Roast pig,” said Harold. “Dancing!”
The principal looked glum. She thought for a moment, then made her decision. “You’ll have to tell the whole thing to the counselors,” she said. “All three of you.”
“I didn’t keep any diary!” Harold wailed.
“But, you see, we can’t be sure of that. No,” the principal said firmly, “that’s the way it will have to be. You’ll all have to tell your stories. The machines will have questions, I’m sure. Just tell the truth, don’t leave anything out-I’m afraid you’ll miss the luau, but I’ll instruct the cook-things to save you something.” And she rose, waved the door open, and was gone.
Harold gazed stonily at his friends. “You two!” he snarled in condemnation.
“I’m sorry,” Sneezy said politely.
“Sorry! Making me miss the luau! Listen,” said Harold, thinking fast, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll go first. Then maybe I can get through and down to the beach before the dancing starts, anyway. I mean, that’s the least you two can do, isn’t it, after all this trouble?”
Of course, at this point none of the kids knew just how much trouble all this trouble was. They were kids. They were not used to being at the center of events that shook the entire universe.
There was, Sneezy supposed, a certain amount of justice in what Harold said, though there was a second level of unfairness that was not dealt with at all. Neither he nor Oniko had done anything! No one had told them they shouldn’t spend their time investigating Earth conditions in every way possible. No one had even hinted that there was anything wrong with synopsizing and organizing the data in their diaries-which, to be sure, were not really “diaries” at all, in the sense of little gilt-edged books that you wrote your latest crushes and enmities in. They had simply played all the information they could gather into their pods, as any right-thinking Heechee (or Heechee-influenced human) would have done.
They had done nothing at all that was in any way reprehensible-but, oh, how terrifying it was that their innocent activities had somehow been converted into that most forbidden of all possible actions, a transmission to the Foe! It was too scary a thought for Sneezy to deal with.
Oniko was nearer. Her fears were easier to handle. He said, “There’s another booth, Oniko. Would you like to go in now?”
She shook her head. Her dark eyes were darker still with recent tears, but she had stopped sobbing. “You go, Sternutator.”
He hesitated, then said, “All right, but I’ll wait until you’re through. We can go down to the beach together.”
“No, please, Sternutator. You go ahead when you’re done. I’m not hungry, anyway.”
Sneezy hissed in thought. He did not like the idea of Oniko missing the beach party, and liked even less the thought of her trying to hobble her way, walker and all, down the sands by herself. It was difficult enough for Oniko to get around on a level surface, with her muscles still unhardened to the full crush of Earth.
Then it occurred to him that he need promise nothing; he could wait for her whether she asked him to or not. “Very well, Oniko,” he started to say.
And then the whole question became moot.
The lights went out.
The lounge was in twilight, the only illumination coming from the picture window that looked out on the mountain; but the mountain was already hiding the setting sun.