There was a long silence. “If your story is like ours,” Memeki said, “the good time ends.”
Yes and no, Ponch said. We always heard voices when the Light in the Sky was full, the thing the humans call the Moon. But there came a Moon when all the First Ones actually heard what the voices were saying. One sounded like the brightness of the Moon: cold, and small, sometimes louder and sometimes very faint and soft. It said, “The time comes for you to choose a new path, in which you may become more than you have been. Wisdom will come to you, and the power that will descend on you in that path is great. The One who made all hunters and all the hunted alike will dwell within you and among you, in your own image. But to enter on that path, you must depart from your old comfortable certainties and walk the new way alone.” And then the second voice spoke. It was more like the darkness of the Moon, which is always all around it, trying to drown the brightness out. That voice said, “Greatness, indeed, awaits you, but these naked apes, who in your folly you treat like your own kind, will either turn you into slaves or, after the manner of prey with their proper predators, will come to fear your greatness and kill you. If you do my bidding and kill them first, neither death nor pain will touch you, and this world will be yours forever.”
“So your story has the killing as well,” Memeki said.
Almost, Ponch said, sounding somber. The First Ones drew aside to consider. And when they’d sung the matter over together, to the Voices they said, “We’ve eaten the same meat as these creatures, and hunted in company with them. Though they’re shaped differently from us, we’re in-pack with them. We’ll do them no harm. Yet neither will we desert them, for without our companionship, they might die.” At this, the second Voice laughed, and said, “Fools and weaklings! In repayment of your kindness, the ones you’ve spared will make you their slaves. They’ll change your bodies and your nature at their whim, until you no longer know yourselves. And since you’ve chosen to stay in-pack with them, you’ll suffer the fate they suffer—death and pain until Time’s end.” And that Voice faded away into the darkness, where it remains in the dark beyond the Moon, always waiting Its time.
Yet when It was silent, then the first Voice spoke, still and small. It said, “You’ve put your proper Choice aside, but this you did in loyalty’s name, and so in Life’s. For Life’s sake, therefore, some of Its power will still descend to you. In every generation will be whelped among you some of those able to sing the Speech that every creature hears. But no power more will come to you, and no new life, until you once more see before you the path you refused, and set out to walk it alone.” Then that Voice was silent as well, and though we’ve sung to the silver of the Moon from then till now, we haven’t heard it again. We live and work and hunt with them as we did before, and we take care of them as we promised we would. They give us what we need, which was always their part of the bargain. So everything is fine.
Kit lay there, hardly breathing.
“But if everything is fine,” Memeki said, “then why do you still sing to the Light?”
There was a pause while Kit heard Ponch nosing one last time, regretfully, in the biscuit box. It was empty. I don’t know, he said. It’s a habit.
“It sounds as if there’s something you still need to do,” Memeki said.
A brief cardboard-scraping noise suggested that Ponch had gotten his nose stuck in the dog biscuit box and, as usual, was having trouble getting it out again. That sounds strange coming from you, he said. You don’t even know what you’re supposed to do next.
“But if I knew what this thing I needed to do was, I would be doing it. It’s far better than what awaits me if life goes on as it’s been going.” That shiver again—
Kit felt Ponch looking up at her. Are you all right?
“Not all right,” she said, “no. Tell me again what you told me when we met—what it’s like where you live. Tell me what you do.”
From the way the point of view changed, Kit could tell that Ponch had rolled over and was looking at Memeki upside down. I get up in the morning. I go out and harnf. Kit’s eyebrows went up at Ponch’s careful use of the politest Cyene word for dealing with bodily waste. Then Kit gets up and gives me food. Maybe we go walking before he goes off to school. Afterward I go out to my little house in the middle of my territory and have a nap. Then I get up and check my territory and make sure that everything’s all right. I have another nap. Then Kit comes home and we go for a walk, and I run, and he throws the ball for me, and maybe I see a squirrel and chase it. And then Kit gives me food. Ponch’s stomach growled; he rolled over again, looking longingly at the dog biscuit box. Then he does things he needs to do for school, and I lie and watch him while he does that. And then we go downstairs and he watches the pictures on the Noisy Flat Thing for a while, or he does wizardry, or uses the Quiet Box with the screen that sends him messages. And then we go to sleep, and I lie on his bed and make sure that he’s safe. Then we sleep—and in the morning, we get up and do it again.
Memeki was looking down at Ponch with what the dog could tell was the most profound kind of longing. “This is a life beyond lives that you’re living,” she said, wistful. “No carrying, no digging, no killing—”
I dig, Ponch said. I have to put my bones somewhere! Otherwise the dogs down the street might get them. And I carry things. Balls and sticks, mostly. But only when I want to. And as for the killing— He sounded a little wistful. It doesn’t happen that often, and only to the really stupid squirrels. I don’t usually get to catch the smart ones. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be, though. You have to send the stupid ones back so they can get it right the next time.
“But what a wonder to live in a world where there are next times,” Memeki said. “And to do what you want to do, not always what someone else says you must.”
You shouldn’t have to live a life like that, Ponch said. He was indignant. It’s terrible. Why don’t you come home with us! If you like caves, we have a cave under the house where you could stay.
Uh-oh! Kit thought, and his eyes opened wide in the dark as a series of truly terrible images started spreading themselves out in his mind. He could just imagine what his pop would think about Ponch bringing home a pet giant bug. He remembered his Popi’s reaction to all the neighbors’ dogs howling about nothing on the front lawn. Boy, once they got Memeki’s scent, would they have something to howl about then.