"Just a minute, Peter," she said as he turned to go, pushing the growing bitterness determinedly from her mind. After all, she was only forty-five—far too young to become a cynic. "I seem to recall you were interested earlier in a tour of the Skyport topdeck. That still true?"
"Uh, yes," he said, an uncertain smile playing around his lips. "If it's not too much trouble."
"No trouble at all." And besides, reacting with cynicism would just be giving Rayburn one final victory over her. "Come on, we'll start with the crew lounge. Drinks are on the house—and I understand the fruit juice is excellent today."
Houseguest
The fuzzy red ball that was Drym's sun hung low in the sky, and already the temperature had started its nightly descent. Measuring the angle between sun and mountains, Wynne Kendal estimated he had a good fifteen minutes to get home before sunset brought on the dangerous, highly energetic "musth" part of the tricorn activity cycle. He was all right though; across the shallow stream just ahead was the ruin of his original prefab home, and it was only a ten-minute walk from there to the House.
As always, he glanced at the ruin as he passed. Little had changed in the past eight months; the tricorns had pretty thoroughly trampled the plastic and metal structure the first week after he abandoned it and now, having driven him away, generally ignored it.
"Bastards," he muttered, the oath expanding to include both the tricorns and the Company exploration group who had given Drym a fast once-over and blithely declared it safe. Perhaps if they'd hung around long enough, the tricorns would have turned on them instead of waiting until the mining group was settled and out of communication to turn from docile to nasty. Clearly, though, the survey had been a mere formality; with rich concentrations of precious scandium-bearing ores lying barely beneath the planetary surface, the Company would have sent miners in even if Drym had been covered with Bellatrix sparkbrats.
Ahead of Kendal loomed a line of granite hills, and he could now make out the five-meter-high rocky dome and gaping circular entrance of his House. His heartbeat never failed to pick up slightly at this point; there was no way of telling from here which of its moods the other would be in, and some of them could be dangerous. Not that it made any real difference, of course. Staying outside alone all night would be even worse.
The sun was just grazing the mountain tops as he reached the House. A few meters to one side of the dome was a hill with one flat face. A large stone rested against it, and Kendal manhandled it aside to expose the tiny cave he used for storage. He withdrew his night-pack, rations, and stove, brushing off with quick motions a few bloodworms who were clinging to the bundles. The mining team had briefly entertained the idea of living in caves after realizing their prefabs had no chance against the tricorns, but the bloodworms had ended that hope. Human tissue was supposed to be completely non-nourishing to Drym fauna, something the planet's flying insects seemed to sense from a distance. The cave-dwelling bloodworms, unfortunately, each needed a few bites to catch on.
The last item Kendal withdrew from the cave was a telescoping duryai alloy pole, originally a part of the miners' shoring equipment. He extended it to the two-meter length required and gave it a quick visual check before stuffing his mining gear into the cave and resealing it. Picking up his packs, he lugged them to the House's entrance, setting them down outside. Taking a deep breath, he held the pole out in front of him like a spear and, ducking slightly, entered the House.
It was not quite pitch-dark inside, but the light from the setting sun showed only that Kendal was in a dome-shaped space two meters high in the middle and perhaps four across at the ground. A strange, almost musky odor filled the air; strong, but not overpowering. Watching the walls warily, Kendal walked toward the center. "Hello, House," he called tentatively.
The answer came promptly and in a tone so low Kendal could feel it as much as he could hear it: "Greetings, master."
Kendal breathed a little easier. The House was only sarcastic when it was in a relatively good mood. It had probably fed today, he decided, setting one end of his pole into a notch dug in the hard clay of the floor and carefully wedging the other end against the ceiling. Only when that was done did he finally relax. Wasting no time, he retrieved his packs and brought them into the House. Flicking on a lantern, he nodded, "Okay, you can close up now," he said, sitting down cross-legged near the pole.
"Very well, master," the House rumbled, and the circular orifice squeezed shut in a way that always reminded Kendal of someone pursing his lips.
"Thank you," he said as he started to set up his stove. "How was your day?"
"How should it have been?" the House responded. "I spoke for a time with the Others, and I waited. There is little else I can do."
"You did eat, though," Kendal commented. He'd spotted a small rocky bulge high up on the wall that hadn't been there when he's left. "A white-wing, wasn't it?"
"Yes. It was small, but will have to serve. You Men have seen to that."
Kendal winced. In their self-defense killing of tricorns, the miners were apparently causing a serious threat to the Houses' main food supply. Along with the humiliation of having been turned into living bedrooms, this was just one more cause for resentment. And if they got mad enough... Kendal shuddered at the memory of the crushed bodies of the first handful of miners to innocently venture into the Houses. They had never known what hit them. If the exploration team had goofed on their analysis of the tricorns, they had missed the Houses completely, and it had cost seven lives before anyone figured out what was happening. Another four men were lost before the shoring pole technique was perfected. Like other creatures throughout history, the Houses had proved at least marginally tamable, and were taught by short laser bursts to open and close their "mouths" in response to slaps or light kicks. No one had been prepared, though, when the Houses started talking to them.
Kendal's communicator buzzed. "Kendal; yeah?"
"Tan here. You locked up for the night?"
"Sure am." Cardman Tan had been the Number Three man of the mining team before the tricorns and Houses had taken their massive toll; now, he was Number One. "Any particular reason why you're doing a bedcheck tonight?"
"I saw what looked like a new bevy of tricorns coming over the hills in your area a few minutes ago," Tan explained. "I wanted to make sure nobody was wandering around outside."
More tricorns in the area. Damn. "Thanks for the warning. I'll be careful."
"See you tomorrow." The communicator clicked off.
The House was silent as Kendal turned back and finished his dinner preparations. It had listened to the conversation, of course, and certainly understood the implications. Theoretically, more tricorns meant more food for all the Houses scattered among the hills—but only if the bull-sized beasts came within sniffing range of the odor lures the Houses used. If the tricorns chose instead to hound the men at the mine two kilometers away, there wasn't a solitary thing the Houses could do about it. Their "roots"—Kendal's House's own word—went deep into the ground, drawing out water and dissolved rock for their organo-mineral metabolisms. And while no one knew how deep the roots went, it was for sure that the Houses weren't going out hunting.
"I wonder how many tricorns are in this new bevy, Kendal remarked as he ate, just to break the silence.
"Forty-seven," the House said promptly.
Kendal looked up in surprise. "You've seen them?"
"They passed near one of the Others a short time ago. He counted them."
"I see." Kendal hadn't realized he'd been that preoccupied; usually he could feel the underground vibrations the Houses used to talk with each other. "Well, hopefully this group will stay close to the hills, where you can have a shot at them."