Mati felt frustrated, but knew it was a small fraction of what Malika-Terno was feeling. Something was wrong, very wrong, but the huge horse would not yet talk about it. Mati got the impression that he hoped their next stop would have a different result.
The problem was, he had been hoping that for the last seven or eight stops.
They were at the fourth location on the third continent, keeping the Manessa Kwi busy any time it wasn’t transporting another contact specialist. Three times Ashley had been about to harvest some strange fruit on their uninhabited tropical island, when Ilika had called her back to the ship to pick up Malika-Terno and Mati, and take them to yet another grassland, woodland, or high-desert prairie.
All Malika-Terno would say was that the continents had been sliced up into thousands of little pieces with equine-proof fences. The native horses, both wild and captive, could still communicate across vast distances by relaying messages, but that took time. It would work for whatever Malika-Terno wanted to tell them, but not for getting their answers within the timeframe of the mission.
So he kept asking the Manessa Kwi to move them a thousand or so kilometers, or across a body of water that horses, on their own, could not cross, and he grew more and more frustrated.
Night was falling as they huddled in a ditch not far from a road with
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roaring, smoking machines going in both directions. Mati worked her way to the bottom of a food packet she had grabbed on their last flight, and Malika-Terno chewed on the grasses around them.
“If you’re not going to let me help you, then why are you dragging me along?” Mati finally asked in the darkness after finishing her dinner.
Malika-Terno didn’t say anything, but his labored breathing told Mati he was still stewing.
“I need an answer,” she pressed.
He snorted, then hung his head in the darkness. “It’s because . . . I’m embarrassed.”
“Why,
Malika-Terno?
You are not responsible, in any way, for the equines of Ko-tera Three! You’re a Nebador citizen, more highly-trained and experienced than I will ever be. You can’t blame yourself if they’re stuck in some rut, and too stupid to get out, even when their planet is in danger!”
Mati figured she had said enough, so she fell silent and just stroked the big horse’s mane.
After a few minutes, he made a sound deep in his throat that could only be some kind of laughter.
“What?” she asked softly.
“It’s . . . a little different than that. I am embarrassed because . . . I am ashamed. The equines of Ko-tera Three — every one of them, as far as I can tell — are proving to be far nobler than I. They are choosing to stay with the dominant monkey mammals, even if those same monkey mammals are destroying the planet . . . or at least . . . all sapient life on it . . .”
After Malika-Terno poured out his shame and frustration to Mati, they finally got some sleep. When morning light crept into the sky, they made their way out of the ditch, dealt with a couple of low fences, and put some distance between themselves and the noisy road. After finding a secluded field, he grazed while she picked apples from an abandoned orchard. As the sun climbed above the trees and began to warm them, they settled down in the grass to eat fruit together.
“Last night,” Mati began, “you said the local equines were being noble.
Okay, that’s one way of looking at it. Another is that they’re not as sapient as
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you think. There comes a time to let go of anything, seems to me. I had to let go of my home planet to get my knee fixed and become a pilot and engineer. I could have held onto it and been a . . . goatherd’s wife. If those equines can’t let go of something that’s dying . . . a planet . . . a relationship . . . maybe they aren’t smart enough to be worth saving. I don’t really know, and I don’t have the wisdom — or the right — to judge. It’s just a thought.”
Malika-Terno was silent, except for the crunching of the apple in his mouth. Eventually he swallowed it. “They think . . . and I agree . . . that the monkey mammals of Ko-tera Three will need them before . . . the end.”
“You mean, want to use and abuse them because they won’t be able to keep their machines running after the climate gets weird?”
The horse curled his lips. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Really, really poor excuse for staying in slavery when they have a way out.”
Malika-Terno hung his head. “I know.”
The contact specialist and his monkey-mammal assistant put many kilometers behind them that day, spoke to native equines in five captive situations, and came upon one pair of wild horses, quietly living in an undeveloped area between two small cities.
They all told Malika-Terno the same story. They would stay, and live or die with their planet.
Mati tried yelling at them once, and the horse beside her translated. She couldn’t tell if the three horses on the other side of the fence were angry, or were laughing their heads off at her. Malika-Terno later told her it was a bit of both.
As evening approached, Mati stated the obvious. “You have received many opinions on the question of evacuation, Malika-Terno, in about twenty places on three continents, and they’ve all been the same. Do you have any hope that gathering a few more opinions will change anything?”
He stood silently, scanning the horizon that included a tangled interchange of roads and fences with roaring cars and trucks going every which way. To continue their journey, without another transfer by ship,
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they’d have to somehow get through that mess.
“Now I think I see why — at least in my case — I was assigned a helper.
Because the equines of this planet are my species, I’m too close to them to think clearly all the time. Thank you, wise monkey mammal.”
“You’re welcome, wise equine.”
“The answer to your question is no. Let’s rejoin our friends on the ship.”
“Agreed.”
The horse lifted his left front leg and touched the wide mission bracelet with his muzzle. “Manessa Kwi, we are ready for pick-up.”