This was of the same species that attacked after touchdown—dakotaraptors, Rachel called them. With a high-pitched squeak, it lowered its head and butted Professor Temerin to the ground, ruffling its stub-wing arms. In a flash, Selva whipped out her laser pistol, capacitors charging with a hum.
“Wait! Don’t!” A woman, short and brown-skinned like Ralbor, rushed out and held up her arms. “He’s tame!”
“But—” Eric sputtered, “That’s a raptor! Er, swiftclaw.”
“I’ve raised him from chickhood.” The woman rubbed under the raptor’s mouth, it cooed in contentment. “He won’t bite.”
Cobb voiced the thought running through Eric’s mind: “What the fuck?”
“No beastspeakers on your world, lad?” Wotoc said.
“This is my daughter, Ezhiri,” Ralbor said. “And, of course, one of our dear companions.” He patted the raptor.
“How do you manage that?” Selva relaxed her pistol, but kept it unholstered.
“You are starmen, and yet you do not know?” Ezhiri asked.
Temerin said, “Contrary to popular belief, we don’t know everything.”
“I would guess biotechnology,” Selva continued, “but how could that be, when the rest of your civilization is so...underdeveloped?”
“The Keepers weren’t all bad. They shared some of their secrets.”
She led them inside, the raptor followed like an overeager puppy with far too many sharp parts.
“I wish it were not the war bringing you here, my lord,” Ralbor said, while Ezhiri let the raptor out by another door. Eric relaxed at last.
“As do I,” Lord Leon replied. “And I thank you for not switching over to Lord Granat when he offered more money for gryphon-raising.”
“It would debase our craft, stooping to accept bribery. We have four coteries of fighting-beasts and trainers assembled, two of swiftclaws, one of gryphons, and the last for Longtooth. The others are in the countryside; it will take some time to gather them.”
“See to it,” Leon said. “We do not have long. May we inspect your forces as they are?”
“Certainly. My dear, show the starmen around, since they asked.”
Ezhiri nodded. Professor Temerin and Cobb wound up going with Lord Leon and Sir Gerend, figuring they might have improvements to suggest, while Eric stayed with Ezhiri, Wotoc, and the others. He figured the man-of-honor did not want to spend any more time around Sir Gerend than was absolutely necessary.
“I cannot tell you the exquisite details,” Ezhiri said, as she led them along a corridor open to the courtyard on one side. “since many of the details are held secrets of our Society. But our companions—the animals—are brought up on the Nectar of Friendship.” She opened a door to an airy room, full of little pens and plant pots, tended by other beastspeakers wearing robes similar to hers, green with a blue sash. Eric guessed the ropes around their waists were used as rank markers. Before an open window sat pots of a vibrant flower, like iridescent rainbow lilies with plump bulbs at center. “Do not touch, the Nectar is poison to men. In my great-grandfather’s day, a child ate it and his mind never grew beyond that age.”
“It rewires brains, then?” Rachel asked.
“I know not your words, but it makes our companions friendly. Domesticated.”
“It’s certainly feasible,” Selva said. “Many domesticated behaviors in Terran animals are mediated by a handful of altered genes, the plants were likely engineered to produce gene-drives for cellular alteration. Probably takes a few generations to complete the process.”
“It can easily consume a lifetime, domesticating a new species.”
“And where does the ‘speaking’ part come in?”
Ezhiri took a small flute from her pouch and played a fluttering tune. Amid the pitter-patter of little feet, a good dozen blue-feathered compies scampered into the room and formed a line, chittering and bobbing their long-necked heads.
Eric’s skin crawled, he stomped his foot. “Sorry, I had a bad experience with those things earlier. Red ones, that is.”
“Red skitters? You’re lucky you lived, they kill men caught alone.” The blue compies seemed friendly enough, Ezhiri fed them from a sack of corn.
“Surely you can’t use the same Nectar on both mammals and dinosaurs,” Selva said, noting some of the pens contained squirrels, whose fur displayed similar color variations as found in cats and dogs. “The gene codings wouldn’t match.”
“Ah, that is one of our secrets,” replied Ezhiri. “Suffice it to say the Nectar can be cultivated to work on new companions.”
“I wonder how that works… A reaction to genetic material from the new species, yes, done by the plants since you don’t have resequencers, but how would you get it to them? Grow the plants over a carcass? That’s it, isn’t it; I could see your reaction!”
Ezhiri said nothing.
“So the Keepers gave them that as biotech?” Eric asked.
“Indeed. It’s all stuff we routinely do with modern hardware, but getting it into a package usable at their tech-level is still impressive.” Selva turned back to Ezhiri. “Beastspeaker as a profession dates back to Keeper times?”
“They instituted it, in fact,” Ezhiri replied. “Our Temple’s founders came over with the rest of the Druza settlers.”
“Any idea why? From what we’ve heard, the Keepers seemed reluctant to share their secrets—airships, light-casters, and whatnot.”
“The tapestries are not secret. Come, I will show you.”
The room across the courtyard which they entered appeared to be one of the most important spaces in the entire Temple; Eric could tell by the feel alone. The floor was fine wood, perfectly smooth, with concentric circles of steps descending down to a flat bottom. This appeared to be where the Beastspeakers held meetings and prayers; the steps sported padded cushions. At the top level, around the walls, were exquisite tapestries. As they drew closer, Eric saw the fabric was slicked with some sort of oil. Ezhiri spotted him checking the light’s reflection off it, and said:
“The Oil of Preservation, for fire-proofing. Another thing the Keepers gave us.” She walked over to what must be the start, which depicted a group of people motioning down at a circle which depicted Meridian, Eric recognized the inland sea which the Druza Freeholds of Far Shore, Dulane’s Panarchy of Arztillan, and dwindling number of other nations surrounded. “Unlike many of the lords and common folk, we had little problem believing the starmen when they first came. The Keepers were starmen themselves, from a place doomed to die of its own folly. They carried themselves away through a hole in the sky, to find this world waiting fallow.”
Some of the Keeper-figures were pointing up towards a second, hollow disk above Meridian. Representing a wormhole, Eric guessed, collapsed or destroyed before the Interstellar Dark Ages’ outbreak.
Ezhiri moved down the tapestry, from left to right. “They breathed life into the land and, from the clay of the Origin Mountains, molded new men to rise above the failures of old, cultivate a world which would remain lush until the sun itself burns out.”
“Radical ecologists, then,” Selva said to the other expedition members in Americ. “Who likely believed high-tech civilization is doomed to collapse.”
The next scene showed a town, unwalled, with dinosaurs grazing outside. Above it floated an airship—not a vacuum or gas-bag airship, with a large lifting envelope, but a sleek design more like an ocean-going vessel given sails along its sides. Ezhiri continued:
“In the First Years, they taught us the arts of farming, building, beastspeaking, all we needed to live.”
“But not war?” Selva asked.
Ezhiri nodded. “The Keepers forbade violence—even the sons of Arztillus, who overthrew them, still have some longing for those times.”
“I’ve heard that name before, some great historical figure?”
The next tapestry started across a doorway. Its centerpiece was a man being acclaimed by others, while behind him a mountain range burned. “Piercing the veil of the Keepers’ secrets, he stirred up revolt and became a legend without peer. For better or worse, there is now nothing over us besides the spirits of the world themselves.”
“And Dulane, if he gets his way.”
The remaining tapestries detailed the Temple’s history, referencing various internecine feuds which had swept the Freeholds while Meridian remained isolated as the interstellar civilization its founders rejected went through wars, dark ages, and resurgence. None of that was as interesting to Eric as the Keeper lore, similar sad stories could be found in any book of primitive history. They ended up on a balcony overlooking the forest and fields nestled inside it, along with a dirt stripe he realized was a runway for gryphons.
“What does it take to ride one of those?” Eric asked, as a great golden-brown gryphon swept down to a landing, rider atop its back.
“Less than you might think, gryphons are smart creatures,” replied Ezhiri.
“They must eat a lot,” Rachel said.
“Many pounds of high-quality meat.” Ezhiri nodded. “It is a great expense; even rich lords rarely keep more than a few.” She gazed out across the forest; off in the distance one could see the terraced city of Highwater Mountain among the northern peaks. “I wish it would not happen in my time. That Dulane would pass us by, and we could live in peace as our grandfathers did.”
“It’s not our choice, the times in which we live,” Selva said. Instead, our choice is whether to make a better time.”
