…no one here, the stone said eventually. For a long time…
It wasn’t that it actually spoke; that took a different kind of life. But the impression was plain. “Did anyone ever live here?” Kit said.
Never. It would have been nice, the boulder said. There was an atmosphere. And water. But nothing ever got started.
“I’m sorry,” Kit said.
We can’t all have what we want, I suppose, the boulder said, and fell silent.
Slowly Kit got up and dusted off his hands as Ponch came running along from behind a nearby outcropping of gray stone.
There’s nothing here, Ponch said. Come on, let’s play!
“I wouldn’t say nothing,” Kit said, glancing down at the boulder. “No people, maybe.” He walked off to have a look around the outcropping, and Ponch trotted along beside him.
Then it’s nowhere important.
“I guess it’s easy to think that,” Kit said. “There’s so much life around, we start taking it for granted that any planet’ll get some in time.” He shook his head. “Trouble is, once life does show up, before you know it, the Lone One’s turned up, too, and it’s running around messing up the Choices of every species It finds.”
It didn’t mess up ours, Ponch said.
Kit raised his eyebrows. “I keep meaning to get the details on that,” he said, as they walked around the outcropping together. “Though it must have gone the usual way, since there’s no Choice without wizards, and there are dog wizards, Rhiow tells me…”
Ponch’s expression was eloquent of skepticism. Oh, well, if you’re going to believe things cats say about dogs…
Kit got a sense that he was poised above a dangerous abyss. “Uh,” he said, “okay, maybe I should ask someone who knows about it firsthand.”
Ponch woofed; it was a dog laugh, of sorts. He picked up a rock in his mouth, shook it from side to side as if to make sure it was dead, and came bouncing over to Kit to put it in his hand. We have wizards, yeah. But as for the Choice, I just know what everybody’s mom tells them when they’re still drinking milk.
Kit took the rock and spent a while trying to get the dog slobber off it. “So educate me,” he said.
Oh, it’s the usual thing, Ponch said. There was us, and the Ones, and we ruled the world. And then the Bad Thing came and said, I can make it better for you. But we said, How? We have the Ones. We live with them, and hunt with them, and run around with them, and they give us whatever we need, and everything’s fine. So the Bad Thing went away. The End. …So come on and throw the rock!
Kit blinked, and threw the rock well away from the outcropping, across the bare gritty plain. Ponch tore off across the planet’s surface after it, leaving little scoots of gravel hanging up in the vacuum in a trail behind him. If that’s his idea of “the usual thing,” Kit thought, then all the Choices I’ve run into now have been real unusual. In fact, Ponch’s version of his species’ Choice didn’t sound much like a choice at all. And he didn’t sound very interested in talking about it.
He watched Ponch pounce on the rock, pick it up, shake it around, and lose it because of shaking it too hard; he went bounding across the surface again to get it back. Then again, Kit thought, there are some species that’re in really close relationships with each other, and their Choices are interrelated. Why shouldn’t the dogs’ Choice be involved with the human one? It makes a kind of sense.
Ponch skidded to a stop in front of Kit, dropping the rock in front of him. Again!
“Yeah, sure,” Kit said. He picked up the rock and threw it. Ponch went bouncing off after it. Boy, he’s really into it this morning. Needs to dump some stress, I guess.
Kit had to grin at himself then. Oh, great. Now you’re doing psychoanalysis on your dog.
But still… There’d been an overly casual quality to the way Ponch had been talking about the canine Choice. As if there was something about it he didn’t want to be thinking about. Almost as if he was trying to distract himself.
Ponch came bounding and plunging back with his rock, and dropped it in front of Kit once more. Again!
“Uh, no, I think we’ve done enough of that.”
Why? Is it time for something? Ponch looked a little crestfallen.
“Probably,” Kit said, fervently hoping that this was true. But he had to smile; Ponch’s sense of time was weak, except when mealtimes were concerned. “Let’s have a look here.” He got out his manual and flipped its cover open to show the front page, which he’d set to show him the date and time. “See, it says here—”
Then his jaw dropped.
314.3? How did that happen? Crap!!
Kit slapped the manual shut, turned around, and started back toward the pup-tent accesses. “Come on,” he said, “we’re running really late! We have to get Neets up.”
Ponch began to jump up and down with excitement as they went; in the low gravity, he was able to jump up to a height where his head was level with Kit’s. How come?
“Because it’s a lot later than it should be!” Kit started doing the astronaut-bounce that was the only way to hurry in this kind of gravity without falling on your face. “And I don’t know how it got that way. Come on!”
***
Nita stood in front of the mirror over the chest of drawers in her bedroom, staring anxiously at her face. I was right, she thought, utterly exasperated, as she pushed her bangs aside to get a closer look. It is a zit.
She let out a breath, then. Trouble is, this isn’t real. I’m asleep. And what am I wasting my time dreaming about? Zits! Nita shook her head. I can’t believe that the other day I actually thought this was a big deal.
Nonetheless, the place where the pimple was coming up still stung. Nita found herself torn between the eternal choices: squeeze it, which always grossed her out and sometimes left a mark? Or do a wizardry on it? Or just let it be, and go through the next couple of days feeling like a leper?
She shrugged. It’s a dream. There may not be a pimple at all. Just leave it alone. We’ve got more important things to think about.
Nita turned away from the mirror and found herself not in her bedroom at all, but out on the surface of Metemne. This sort of abrupt transition was normal for lucid dreaming, and Nita had learned over time to let these experiences take her where they wanted to.
Reluctantly, she looked up into the sky, knowing what she was about to see, and instead saw … nothing. There was no sign of the Pullulus, but neither was there any sign of the stars, or interstellar space, or even the little planet’s sun. The effect was like being in a closed, windowless room with the lights off. Nita didn’t much care for it … for inside the “room” with her she could hear slow, steady breathing.
She held very still, trying not to panic. The breathing stayed steady and slow; it was as if something slept nearby, something very big. She became concerned that she might wake it up. Then it occurred to her that this was the problem. Whatever was asleep, it needed to wake up.
“Hello?” she said, and her voice sounded as if she actually was inside a small room, like her bedroom with the door shut—but a bare unfurnished bedroom, an empty place in which her voice echoed. “Hey! Can you hear me? Wake up!”