"Perdition!" said Hammen. "I _never_ liked Wagner. She's growing up."
Lora put a half-closed fist to her lips, and didn't look at either of
the men, or at the dog who stood with freshly pointed ears.
"No," she said softly. "I lost something on the last one. Gee, I wonder
if the Mindsnake likes Wagner now? Still, it's not as if I had stopped
liking music altogether, or books. Not this time."
Hale grabbed her arm roughly. "You're sure doing a great job of getting
Hammen ready for the jump."
Lora's eyes clouded. "I'm sorry, Ham." She looked up, smiled warmly,
kissed her fingertips and placed them on Hammen's lips. "Companion's
Code, huh?"
He took her hand and for the moment liked her. "Okay, honey. I guess
even a Witch squeezes in under the wire for that."
The young team was abruptly embarrassed. "Oh, well, Witch," Hale said
deprecatingly, "what does cargo know, anyway?"
Hammen laughed and scratched Lad's ears. "They know I'm a Witch. But
it has its advantages. I don't have to worry about Lad losing his taste
for Wagner. A dog does not have that much to lose. If it comes to that,
he's just gone."
Lora shuddered delicately, the way of a watered flower. "How could you
stand to lose a Companion with so little feeling?"
"I've lost three Companions, and got myself and my cargo into port.
They were only dogs."
Hale looked at him sharply. "But you were Companioning with them. It
must have been," he selected a word, "difficult for you."
"Don't absorb the cargo's superstitions about Witches and their
Familiars. They have fogged, even dirty, ideas. They were just dogs to
me. Like Lad."
* * * * *
"A dog, that's all he is," Gordus said in a manner designed to explain
the thing patiently to Hammen.
"Lad is a dog."
"Why do you emphasize the point now?" Hammen demanded.
The Companion sat on a seat formed from a single S-shaped plastic
surface. Hammen studied the bulk of Gordus, Coordinator of
Transmatters, who sat hulked in his utility chair in the bubble office
overhanging the City of the Sea, on the world of Lanole. Hammen
was comfortable, cooled, relaxed, amused by a light play of sensory
electron music, and aggressively unhappy.
Gordus sat in his great chair patting the hair on the back of his left
hand with his right palm, as if the fist were a sleeping kitten. At
Hammen's feet, Lad's neck muscles quivered uneasily.
"Your record, Hammen," Gordus said at last, "is a good one."
"How could it be better? I've never lost one member of a cargo."
"But you have lost three Companions."
"Familiars. Dogs."
"But it shows weakness."