Mindsnake — Themes and Context

Hale looked at his wife. "Lora doesn't like Wagner any more."

"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.

"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."

"But it shows weakness."

Hammen's face heated. "I never show weakness."

"Not _your_ weakness, my dear, dear boy," Gordus said in exaggeration. "The weakness of the Witch-Familiar relationship, the weakness of Witches as Companions at all. Don't take it personally."

Hammen leaped to his feet. Lad's muzzle gleamed white.

"Not take it personally?" Hammen cried. "How else can I take it? You are questioning the worthiness of my profession, of my way of life. You question the honor of many of my friends--my associates. Witchery is an ancient profession. My grandmother and uncle were Witches before me. Witches have an unparalleled record of service to Transmatters and to the human race. How dare you, sir!"

Gordus waved a fat hand in front of him, laughing up and down the scale. "No, no, no. Peace, please. You have no need to plead so strongly for the cause of Witches. _You_ don't have to be a Witch, you know, Hammen. You're good enough to be a regular, full-fledged Companion. The reason you get so many of your cargo through is that you in the most literal sense Companion them all. It would be possible for you to use a fellow Companion on your jumps instead of a Familiar."

Hammen sat down, no longer angry, or energetic. "No. No, it wouldn't be possible for me to do that. I can take people on an occasional jump, for high pay. But I couldn't stand the same kind of contact, day in, day out, with another human being. Pay doesn't come that high."

Gordus gave another laugh, and killed it sharply. "And there you were a few moments ago bragging about all the service Witches had been to the human race, and when we get down to it, it turns out you hate the human race."

Hammen tasted the inside of his dry mouth and longed for a way out. "I don't _hate_ it; I just can't stand it. There's a difference."

"If you say so. But tell me, do you like your fellow Companions, or even your fellow Witches, any better than you do your cargo?"