Earth and Air Read online

  “How kind of you to ask,” said Hippo, incapable of irony. “Yes, I’m afraid I may have been a wee bit careless and let myself get . . .

  you know what. I think I’ll probably pop later tonight, but if you all get aboard and close the ports and I go downwind you’ll be quite safe. My poor darlings will just have to take their chance.”

  “Remember what she was saying twenty minutes ago?” said David.

  “The Lord has changed her heart,” said a Whizzer.

  “Infinite is His mercy,” said the other one.

  “Do you still want to go home, Bird?” said David.

  “Come off it. I notice you don’t ask old Mole. Just because I’m female you pick on me for a moment of nostalgia, as if I was a brainless ninny all the time.”

  “But you’re back to normal now? You too, Mole? And the Bandies? And me. But it isn’t normal. We’re all behaving in ways which are unnatural for our species. We’re suppressing some parts of our behaviour and exaggerating other parts. It isn’t normal for me to act like a fault-free computer. My brain has computer like abilities, but in order to function as a crew member I’ve had to adapt them. It isn’t normal for Bandies not to mate whenever four of them meet, but they’ve suppressed that side of their behaviour. It’s the same with all of us. Now think of the order of events: Cat dies; we stop being a crew and become individuals; a new Cat turns up and we start being something like a crew again; only this new Cat is badly wounded and not paying proper attention, which is why we have still got a little time left.”

  David glanced towards the bucket. The water level, which had at first perceptibly sunk was steady now. As soon as it started to rise it would mean that Doc was beginning to withdraw his substance from the Cat’s body.

  “Listen,” he said. “Do you remember that load of jade we hijacked round Altair? We could all have retired on that, but we didn’t. Instead we got rid of it at the first opportunity, for a ludicrous price. Why? Because it would have broken us up as a crew, and we’ve got to stay as a crew, not for our own sake but for Cat’s. The Cat is a parasitic species. I don’t know anything about natural Cat behaviour, which is interesting, considering that I’ve got all your details stored away, but my bet is that on their own planet Cats are parasitic on lower animals. When the first explorers reached their planet they simply adapted them into the system, and now the function of a space crew is to provide a safe environment for a Cat.”

  “It wasn’t safe for our Cat,” said Mole.

  “It was almost safe. Between us we could control any normal dangers, except one. You missed a point in your analysis, you know. Doc said that if you’re going to kill a Cat you have to know exactly where to hit. The only crew members who might have known were Doc and myself. Doc couldn’t have got to the rocks, and I’ve already told you I don’t know much about Cats, because our Cat never allowed me to. But there’s one other creature who would have known, one creature whom neither Skunk nor the Bandies would have detected when they were feeling for traces of higher life on this planet. That’s another Cat which survived the space wreck. A Cat large enough to ambush and kill our Cat despite a broken leg. Our Cat must have fought and wounded it, in the shoulder: our Cat must also somehow have mentally sent for me as the fight began, which was why I went out to the rocks, but I was too late.”

  David glanced at the bucket again. The water level had risen halfway to its normal level and the strange Cat was stirring.

  “We’ve got to be quick,” he said. “There’s no time left. In a moment this new Cat will take us over. But we don’t have to give in. Cats don’t have total control. This one had to hang around and wait for the Bandies to finish their mating pattern, because that was an urge too powerful to be interrupted once it had begun. I don’t think Cats are very intelligent—they don’t have to be, because we do their thinking for them. But now we are aware what they do to us, I believe that we’ve got the will power and intelligence to resist the control, long enough to get clear. We can go home, find out if any of our claims are valid, and if they are we can retire. Surely we can cooperate that long, without being forced to by a Cat? You’ve got to make up your minds. Now, at once. That is part of the analysis. What’s your verdict?”

  The new Cat quivered, shook itself, and stood up by the bucket. Fresh scar tissue showed on its shoulder—so Doc had done a rushed job. The Cat took a pace towards the fire. If only it had a sense of smell, Skunk could have controlled it, But it hadn’t. That too was part of the analysis.

  “Quick. What’s your verdict?” hissed David.

  He felt the pressure of their attentions focused on him.

  “Guilty,” groaned Skunk. “Man. Guilty. Of. Mutiny.”

  David was only for an instant conscious of the blast of odour that laid him out.

  He woke some time after midnight. The embers were dim, but gave just enough light for him to see that the ship’s port was closed. Hippo was crashing around in the remains of the ruined grove. David rose, intending to go and say good-bye, but his legs walked him away from her—just as, a few hours back, they had walked him for no good reason towards the rocks. He was ceasing to function, but his normal intelligence was sound enough to tell him that he could never rejoin the crew, any crew, because his knowledge of the behaviour of Cats would henceforth be part of his memory and thus part of his function. He would not be able to perform his tasks without being aware of why he was doing so.

  As the harsh clarity of thought faded into softer textures, full of vaguenesses and shadows, David became conscious of the planet around him, of the sweetness of its air, of the rustle of primitive leathery leaves, of the ticking insect life that might one day evolve towards a creature like Bird. He had known all these things, of course, soon after the ship had landed, but known them merely as facts—the chemical composition of the air, the level of evolution of plant and insect—and not as sensations, accepted and relished through channels other than those of the intellect.

  Behind him the sound of splintering timber ceased. From vast lungs came a strange whinnying noise, dying into a long sigh. David realized he had been walking downwind from Hippo. His legs continued to do so. Breeze at, say, six kph—at any rate a little faster than he had been walking. He had about a kilometer start, so the seed cloud should reach him in . . . His mind refused to tackle even that simple sum, because it kept slithering off into irrelevancies, such as the sudden thought that Cats had five senses after all; and that they were more intelligent that he had guessed; and, to judge by their revenges, more catlike.

  About the Author

  Peter Dickinson OBE is the author of more than fifty books, including many books for children and young adults such as Emma Tupper’s Diary, Kin, Eva, The Dancing Bear, and The Seventh Raven. He is a two-time winner of both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award and winner of the Guardian Award. He spent seventeen years working at the magazine Punch. He lives in England and is married to the novelist Robin McKinley. Find out more at peterdickinson.com.

  Big Mouth House

  Joan Aiken, The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories

  A Junior Library Guild Pick | Smithsonian Magazine Notable Book

  “The Armitage’s world grows richer as it is extended. This is a collection of stories which allow—in fact demand—the reader joins in with their own imagination and remakes the story inside their own head.”—January Magazine

  Holly Black, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

  A Junior Library Guild Pick | Audiobook Available From Brilliance

  “Sly humor, vivid characters, each word perfectly chosen:

  These stories deserve reading again and again.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  Lydia Millet, The Fires Beneath the Sea: a novel

  A Junior Library Guild Pick | Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011

  Abc Best Books For Children

  “An intriguing mix of everyday activities and the otherworldly, The Fires Beneath the Sea pu
lls readers in. . . . A well-done beginning, with some riveting moments and frightening escapes, to what should prove to be a popular series.”

  —School Library Journal

  Lydia Millet, The Shimmers in the Night: a novel

  A Junior Library Guild Pick

  The world is becoming very strange for thirteen-year-old Cara who discovers that

  some wonderful creatures don’t only exist in dreams.

  Delia Sherman, The Freedom Maze: a novel

  Norton, Mythopoeic, and Prometheus Award Winner

  Kirkus Reviews Best of the Year · Audiobook From Listening Library

  “Adroit, sympathetic, both clever and smart.”

  —Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

  Find out more at bigmouthhouse.net

  and weightlessbooks.net