I have not howled since I was a puppy far younger than my she. Instead I kiss her cheek and let her soak my fur with her warm-snowmelt tears and my howl fills my belly. When she is gone, my litter-brother will be gone, too.
I dream of my brother. We are playing chase in the snow and it glitters like stardust from a thousand frozen galaxies as he catches me and we tumble over and over in the cold, dry whiteness. Then we are curled together in our sleeping place, warm, dreaming. That was a long, long time ago, before we learned to be servants, before we left to guard the Speaker pups. I will never forget the smell of him.
Once, in his mail, he sent me a map of the place where he is, a sweep of glittering stars with their silent planets. He had flagged the world he was on, a mote of darkness in that sea of light.
My she stirs and wakes and stares up into the darkness. My dream is gone, my litter-brother’s voice is gone, and even when she finally falls asleep again, it does not return.
She is quiet this morning. I take her to the dining room, her hand on my shoulder. She is not using my eyes, is looking inward, walking in darkness, trusting me to guide her feet. I bring her breakfast and take my own plate to squat along the wall with the others like me. Their ears flick and flatten as I pass and they smell sympathy for me. Ah, well, we know before anyone else, always. I have no appetite for my roll this morning but I eat it. I am a good servant.
Each litter of young Speakers sits at its own table, ten together, the oldest and tallest near the front, the young ones with their servants close in the rear, near the big doors. The room is light and warm. I have made many trips across it over the years, moving from door to the front of the room, then back to the door as my puppy assumes the Speaker’s gown and departs and I am assigned to a new puppy.
Now, my she sits at the front table with her litter, all identical, with the same, white-gold hair braided down their backs, the same white coveralls that mark them as Speakers-in-Training. The same faces and pale, lavender, unseeing eyes. Only the smell identifies them.
My she smells sad.
And this morning . . . afraid.
Perhaps, even among the Speakers, the news is spreading. Perhaps even they, with their nearly-dead noses, can smell failure.
The litters rise together at their tables, the youngest first, to return to their meditation where they can learn to Hear the words of God across the space between the stars. One after another, we rise as we smell our puppy and we follow. And it occurs to me as they pass—identical hair, identical pale, sightless eyes, identically curved spines and graceful fingers—that they are as created as we are.
That is a blasphemous thought because we are taught that citizens are not created. Servants are. I rise to join my she and I feel her arm brush against my shoulder. Secretly. I smell sympathy from the other servants, and think that she is like us.
I should not think it, but I do.
After breakfast we go to the room where she learns to Hear the God words. But when she gets there, an old one like she waits for her, wearing the full robe of a Speaker. Her servant flicks his ears at me then flattens them slightly and my own flatten in return. I want to squeeze against my she and comfort her. She lowers herself before the Speaker, like any pup. Respectfully. But her fear stings my nose and my ears flick back and forth.
“Your presence is requested at Council.” The Speaker offers a hand.
“The DNA analysis came back?” My she doesn’t move.
I take her hand, place it in the Speaker’s hand. It feels dead, heavy without life.
“Yes.” The Speaker closes her hand around my she’s and then releases it, walking away with her hand on her servant’s shoulder.
The Council room is white but the table and the chairs are brown, made of dead trees from the Home World. I was not born on the Home World, I know. That world is at the far end of the stars, too far to visit, farther even than my litter-brother. But the Speakers can Speak there. They can Hear a whisper on the far, far away world.
I am proud to be a servant to Speaker pups.
But the scent of the room keeps my ears flat and the others along the wall smell sympathy for me as we come in. Three Speakers wait at the table, their robes all around their feet, their faces creased and wrinkled like a pile of clothes that has been slept on. They smell very old. And of power.
The fur on my neck stirs and rises even though that is not permitted here. I flatten my ears but I cannot make my fur lie down. I sit along the wall with the others.
“The power to Speak is all,” they murmur, all together. “The power to Hear is all.” They bow their heads. Except my she. She has seated herself but her eyes are on the far wall.
“The Speaker is a pure being.” The Speaker who smells oldest, the one who made my fur stand up, speaks. “In a thousand years, the purity has been maintained. Only those of that purity can Speak between the worlds with the words of God. What is the holy trinity?”
She speaks command and my throat wants to answer her.
“A pure life, a pure mind, and a pure body.” My she’s voice is so soft even I can barely hear it.
“You have never compromised the purity of your life, nor of your mind.” The powerful Speaker whispers on. “But even in the sanctity of the convents, purity must be defended. Always.”
“How can I be impure?” My she rises, smelling of anger now. “I came into being here. I have nine siblings. They are pure. You cannot have found anything wrong.”
“It is a tiny mutation.” Another of the powerful old ones speaks. “A small thing. It occurred late in gestation, after our final test pre-decantation. We will expand our testing after this and we have alerted the other convents.”
“I can block out the other voices. I can concentrate on the one I’m supposed to Hear.”
“Communication is the neurosystem that holds our civilization together. Flesh and blood, impure as we are, we must emulate the purity of electronics. Interpretation, alteration, destroys purity.”
“But I don’t . . . ”
“The quantum effect is doubled by the mutation. That is why you Hear more than the voice you tune to.”
“But I can—”
“Communication must be pure, perfect.
Even her standing is a command. The others stand with her and their servants leap into position. My she does not react as I reach her side, refusing my sight, keeping her face turned to the wall as the others file out. The last one out the door, the one who came to summon her, smells sad. Only she.
We stand there for a long time after the others have left. My fur no longer stands up, but my ears are still flat to my head and the howl that has troubled me has returned to knot in my gut. Finally, she stirs and the room shimmers as she takes my sight. She strides out of the room and I have to almost trot to stay with her. It is dinner time and my stomach growls as we pass the corridor that leads to the dining room and the scent of fish stew wafts out. But my she marches on past servants like myself moving floaters piled with laundry or stacked with goods that came in as tithe from the citizen communities around the convent. We pass into the old hallways in the center of the convent, the ones that were built long ago, perhaps before my gene-line even existed, when my ancestors still ran on four feet and ate from the floor. I know where she is going. We come here, sometimes. And she always smells thoughtful. It is after these visits that she often wants me to creep onto the bed with her.
At last we reach it, the center of the old convent, the room with eight sides and the old, dark screens that once, my she told me, offered information the way a holographic window does now. And in the very center of that
