Remnant Population

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ofelia woke in a panic, sure she was suffocating. It was dark, too warm, too damp, and something stirred against her in the darkness. She gasped, found she could breathe, and even as that panic eased remembered that she had fallen asleep in a houseful of aliens. In the light. She forced herself to lie still. She could feel something along her back, something warmer than the air, something that felt… alive. She blinked, but saw only the wandering bright spots that haunted her eyes at night anyway. What had happened to the lights?

Thunder muttered in the distance, but the storm’s roar had died; she could hear the steady drip of rain off the roof. The main storm must be past. But where was she, and when? Her back and shoulder hurt; her bad hip stabbed her when she tried to move, and she bit back a gasp.

The creature beside her stirred; she was aware of its sudden alertness. It made a sound like water coming to a boil in a kettle, and she felt it move closer, She tensed… some part of it touched her lightly, felt along her body and paused on her chest where her racing heart felt as if it would burst free. Then the touch vanished. Ofelia blinked, surprised. What had it been feeling for?

As she lay there, she began to pick out vague shapes in the darkness. Light seeped through the shutters; it must be past dawn. Her stomach growled; she needed to use the toilet again. She would need the lights, or she’d step on some of the creatures, and she didn’t want to do that. She tried to stretch, and her hip stabbed her again. Stupid hip. She would need it to run with, if she got the chance. Slowly, she moved her leg back and forth until the pain eased.

When she turned on her side to push herself up, the creature beside her roused again. She could see the dim shape looming, taller even sitting than she was. But it didn’t touch her. Slowly, because that was what she could do in the morning after sleeping on the floor, she clambered to her feet. Now she could see the other shapes slumped in corners, huddled together… and she could walk between them. The one who had been at her side watched her, the great eyes gleaming in the dim light. She walked across to the bathroom, shut the door behind her, and used the toilet. The flush was loud, in the quiet aftermath of the storm. She heard startled noises from the other room; when she went back out, they were all awake, all looking at her.

She could not be as afraid now; her body was more interested in food. Her stomach growled; one of the creatures made a similar sound. Was it hungry? Or was it mocking her? She made her way across the room to the door, wondering if they would let her walk out, and she would go back to the center and bar them out of it. Then she could eat breakfast, and… Of course they would follow. She turned on the lights; as they all blinked, their pupils contracting, she unbarred the door and opened it. Soft warm rain fell steadily from high clouds. She could smell rotting vegetation, cow manure, even wet wool. She took a step outside. The rain was so’warm it felt more like a second coating of sweat than a cleansing bath. Ofelia looked back. Two of the creatures stood in the doorway, watching her.

“I’m going back,” she said. And walked away.

That raucous sound, from more than one of them. Ofelia looked over her shoulder. One of them moved out into the rain, shook itself, and kept walking after her. Not running, just walking, stepping high through the puddles. Ofelia walked on, ignoring it. She was hungry, she was tired, her hip ached, and she wanted to be back in her own space. Even if they were going to kill her.

At the center, she found water draining out the front door. Had she forgotten to close it when she came out to walk around? Or had the creatures found it and opened it? She walked into a mess. Wind had driven the rain all the way back down the central hallway; water had run into adjacent rooms and soaked the mattress she’d left on the floor in the sewing room. Apparently the interior doors had blown shut, though, and prevented worse damage.

She would have to sweep out the worst of the water before she could cook in the center. Perhaps her house was dryer. She went back out the door, nearly colliding with the creature who had followed her, and across the lane. Inside her house it was dry… until she and the wet creature following her came in and dripped on the floor. Ofelia toweled herself off and handed dry towels to the creature. It took the towel and held it aside, looking at her with those great eyes.

Muttering, Ofelia took the towel back. Worse than a child. Surely it knew it was wet; surely it had seen her dry herself off. She reached out very slowly and ran the towel along one of its upper limbs. It shivered, but did not move. She tried to hand the towel back, but it didn’t take it. And it was still dripping on her floor. Stupid creature. How had they been smart enough to kill the other colonists? She touched its other upper limb with the towel, and when it didn’t resist dried its front and back, and finally its legs. Then she wrapped the damp towel around its feet, sopping up the puddle it had made. It grunted. What did that mean? It twitched its lower limbs and grunted again. Ofelia glared at it. Was it too stupid, or too lazy, to get its own feet out of the towel? “Take it off,” she said. It grunted again, and jerked its… she had to think of it as a leg. “Stupid baby,” Ofelia said, and bent down to take the towel away. “Stupid, lazy, inconsiderate…” Luckily it could not understand her speech. She was out of the habit of holding her tongue.

At least it was drier, and not dripping on her floor. She moved to the kitchen, turned on her stove, and pulled out her canisters. She needed bread, and meat, and vegetables. She would make flatbread first. She had a handful of flour when something hard touched her shoulder; she jumped, spilling the flour. “Idiot!” she said. The thing grunted; it let go. “I’m cooking,” she said, as if it could understand. “I’m hungry, and I’m cooking,” She got another handful of flour, the shortening, the salt, the water, and mixed them. The dough in her hands felt comforting, a familiar presence she understood better than most. Knead, knead, flatten, knead, knead, flatten. Pinch off bits, flatten them, roll them, lay them on the griddle. Already her mouth watered; the smell of the dough alone had done that. The creature, when she looked around, had retreated to the front door, its eyes fixed on the hot griddle where the flatbread steamed. Afraid of fire, was it? That might be useful, but not until she’d eaten. She opened the cooler door and took out a chunk of sausage. The first flatbread was done; she rolled it around nothing but her hunger, and ate it so hot it burned her tongue. On the second, she remembered to spread some jam she had made that spring. Better. The sausage sizzled now; she sliced potatoes to fry in its fat. She looked for the creature, and found it in the middle of the room, staring with apparent fascination at the cooler door. She opened it again, watching the creature; its eyes met hers and it grunted. “You can’t leave it open too long,” she said, and shut the door. She wondered if it was hungry too, and thought of offering it food, but when she turned around again, it had disappeared. Only the damp towel on the floor proved it had been there.

She had finished a meal, and gone back across to the center to sweep out the water when they came back. The rain was lighter, though still steady; she swept the water out into a lane streaming with it, the side ditches brimming. She didn’t see them until they stood in the doorway as she swept toward it, three or four of them at once. They didn’t move. Ofelia pushed the broom toward them. “Get back.”

They still did not move. Rude. She pushed the broom hard, and a cascade of dirty water rolled over their feet. One squawked, and backed away; the other two didn’t.

“I’ll do it again,” Ofelia said. When they stood there, stupid as cows, she thought, she pushed another slosh of water over their feet. Two more squawks, and they all backed up, glancing at each other. She went back down the hall. When she came to the door again, they were back, but this time they moved aside before she pushed the water out.

And this time they followed her inside. She ignored the wet smack of their feet on the floor; it didn’t matter, this floor was dirty and wet already. She wished they would dry themselves, rather than stand around in her way dripping, but she wasn’t about to stop and find towels for them. They moved out of her way as she came past with the broom, but otherwise simply stood watching her work. Lazy and spoiled, she decided. Rude, lazy, and spoiled. If they had mothers, their mothers had never taught them to help out around the house. If they had houses. She paused at that thought and looked at them. Surely they had houses. Intelligent animals built dwellings, it was one of the ways you knew if they were intelligent. Who wanted to be out in storms and blown about and rained on? Not these things; she had seen one injured by the storm. So they had to have houses, and if they had houses someone had to clean them. And they should know how.

On that, she went to the storage closet and pulled out a mop and a broom. If they were going to kill her, they might as well earn the privilege. She dragged the mop and brooms back up the hall; the creatures stood there, passive.

“Here,” she said, holding out the broom. One of them reached out and took it. She held out the mop to another, and it also took it, in the way of a child who is not sure what its for. She could teach them. She had taught her own children. And she was not about to become the unpaid housekeeper for a band of aliens.

“Like this,” she said, demonstrating the push of the broom. The one holding the broom looked and looked, with those wide eyes, and then looked at its companions and grunted, a series of little grunts ending in a high squawk. They squawked back. Ofelia made assumptions. “Yes, I do expect you to use it,” she said severely. “The floor is wet. You are bigger than I am, and stronger. Push the broom.” The creature holding the broom made a tentative pass at the floor, waggling the broom exactly like a child. “Harder,” said Ofelia. “Push it harder on the floor.” She demonstrated again. The creature pushed a little harder, not hard enough but a start. “Go ahead,” Ofelia said, waving her arm at a puddle where the floor was uneven. It glanced at her, at its companions, and pushed the broom through the puddle, not very effectively.

“And you,” Ofelia said to the mop holder. “Like this.” Since she had no mop, she put her hands over its grip on the mop and forcibly moved it into the right position. “The mop sops up the water,” she said. Even if it couldn’t understand, she felt better explaining aloud. When there were people there, you talked to them. Under her hands, its hands felt big and bony, harder than human hands and oddly constructed. “When its full of water, you wring it out,” she said. It stiffened when she tried to raise the mop to wringing height, resisting her direction. It churred, and the other two grunted in reply. Ofelia looked at its face, and saw that its eyelids were almost closed. Something was wrong. She let go of its hands on the mop handle, and its lids raised. It grunted. Well. Perhaps she could find another broom. She handed her broom to the third creature and pointed to the puddle its companion was more stirring than sweeping. Then she went back to the closet for another broom.

With gestures and nudges, she had them pushing water more or less toward the door, while she herself mopped. She didn’t like mopping, but she also didn’t like wet floors. Outside, the post-storm rain continued steadily.

She was hungry again when the rest of the creatures showed up, and noisily interfered with what “her” creatures were doing. That was what it seemed like, anyway. The newcomers grunted, squawked, and gabbled; the ones holding the brooms dropped them. They all stared at her, and again she felt the pressure of all their attention. She did not like it. She wished they would all kill her, or go away, anything but bother her by looking at her like that.

The floor was merely damp now; she didn’t really need the help. “Go on,” she said, sweeping at them with her arm. “Let me alone, then.” Instead of that, the newcomers came all the way in and dripped; new puddles formed under them. “Idiots!” Ofelia said. “Babies!” She picked up the mop again and pushed it at their feet. Behind her, the ones who had been sweeping gabbled at the newcomers, who gabbled back. The newcomers stood their ground; she had to flop the mophead against their long dark toes with the thick black nails, and push past them to wring it out into the lane. They made no move to help her, or to get out of her way.

Just like them. They would. The complete meaning of that pronoun — the source of her experience — she did not bother to consider When she had mopped the new puddles, she wrung out the mop a last time and propped it by the door. They were discussing something — possibly how she would taste, she thought — and ignoring her. She was still hungry. Down the central hall, past the rooms for machines, was the center kitchen and its pantries. She gave them a last disgusted look and walked away. Behind her, she heard startled noises, and the click of toenails on the hard floor. It took her a moment to think why she hadn’t noticed it before — it had been too noisy during the storm, and she’d been talking to them here.The center pantries held staples: flour, sugar, salt, dried yeast, baking powder and baking soda, dried beans and peas, and freezers less full than they had been of meats and other perishables. Ofelia had turned on the kitchen lights when she came in; now she turned on lights in the lefthand pantry. She was too hungry to wait for dried beans to cook. She looked in the freezer. Every household had contributed some finished dishes, for emergencies: casseroles and stews and soups. She had eaten little of that in these years, because she liked her own cooking. Now she took out a packet Ariane had contributed; it had her name and family name on it, and the contents: lamb stew. Ofelia put the packet in the kitchen’s quick-thaw machine, and rummaged for a saucepan to cook it in. By the time she found the pan, the packet was soft. She opened it and put the lumpy cold contents into the saucepan.

As she heated the stew, the creatures came into the kitchen. They were like children, prying into everything. They tried the water controls of the sinks — so they had remembered what she taught them in the house. They opened cabinets, picked up and put down everything they could move, and even turned on the light in the other pantry. One of them came to her side, and very slowly touched her hand on the stirring spoon. It grunted softly.

As long as they weren’t actually killing her, she might as well be polite. “I’m cooking stew,” she said.

“That’s a spoon, this is a pot, this is a stove.” As she spoke, she pointed. Did they understand pointing? The creature dipped its head low over the pan, then jerked back as the stew bubbled. “Hot,” Ofelia said, as she would have to a toddler. “Be careful, its hot.”

A crash behind her made her jump, and she whirled around. One of the creatures had tried to take plates out of a cabinet, and had dropped several. Now it stood stiffly, arms away from its sides, while two others advanced on it slowly. Ofelia giggled before she could stop herself. It was so much like a child who’d had an accident, being scolded by siblings. She didn’t really mind about those plates; they were dull beige with a brown stripe, a preprogrammed design in the fabricator, and she had never liked them. She turned back to the stew, which was hot enough now, and turned the stove down. She would need a bowl. If she remembered right, the small bowls were at this end of the china cabinets. She opened one, and found serving bowls; in the next were the small bowls. The creatures watched as she took out a bowl, and then a spoon from the drawer underneath. She poured her stew — Ariane’s stew, actually — into the bowl.

She tasted it. Ariane was a good cook, but she had been more conservative with this dish, meant for the community as a whole, than at home. Ofelia would have added more marjoram and more pepper. Still, it was good enough, and she was hungry. She looked at the creatures, who were now exploring again, all ignoring her except for the nearest, and decided to eat where she was, standing up. She finished that bowl of stew, and then another, and put the remainder into the cooler, in the cooking pot she’d used. Then she started for the sink with her dirty bowl and spoon.

They still hadn’t cleaned up the broken bits of plate. Ofelia looked at them, and sighed. One of them looked back, and churred. “Its your mess,” Ofelia said, without much hope that this would make any difference. It grunted. “Not my mess,” Ofelia went on. She didn’t want to stoop down and pick up those pieces; she was already tired and sore. She walked on past and turned on the water in the sink. One of the creatures came close and peered at her while she washed the bowl. Didn’t they wash their dishes? Or didn’t they have dishes? Ofelia put the bowl upside down to drain. When she turned around, one of them was trying to pick up the pieces of plate in one hand, and hold them in the other. Perhaps they didn’t have trash collectors. Ofelia opened the cabinet under the sink, and got out the trash collector. She took it over to the creature and mimed putting the broken pieces in. It stared at her a moment, then dropped them in. Ofelia smiled, and it stepped back, its pupils dilating. Was it scared? Ofelia looked away, and found the others watching. Was it embarrassed? She couldn’t tell. And she wanted to go home and take a nap, before she tackled the rest of the cleaning. Although she really should get that soggy mattress up off the floor. Her joints ached at the thought of heaving it up. She started back down the passage, and heard behind her the clicking of many toenails. Drat. She couldn’t leave them here alone in the center. What if they got into the control rooms and started pushing buttons? What if they broke the machines she depended on? She turned around, and there they were, close behind her, bright-eyed and bouncy.

Go away, she wanted to say. Go away and let me sleep and maybe later I can think how to deal with you. Go away and leave everything as it is, don’t touch anything… It wouldn’t work. It didn’t work with toddlers, who never cared how sleepy you were, or how much you needed to get done, or how dangerous the machine was they were determined to explore. These creatures were not toddlers to themselves, but they were as dangerous, even if they didn’t mean to kill her.

She would have to stay awake. She wondered if she could make locks for the doors she didn’t want them to open. Their hands were not as dexterous as hers; they had fumbled at first with the water faucets. She suspected that they would interfere if they saw her blocking their way. Even as she thought that, one of them opened the door to the control room and squawked loudly.

No. Ofelia pushed past them, using her elbows even as they squawked and grunted. Then she faced them, arms spread. “Get out of here,” she said. “No.” It was like talking to a new puppy, or someone else’s baby: they were staring past her at the colored lights, the gauges, the monitor screens flickering with status reports. They grunted at each other and pushed forward.

“NO!” Ofelia stamped her foot; they stopped as if she’d hit them with something heavy and stared at her.

“This is not for you/’ she said. “You’ll break it. You’ll ruin it.”

The one in front gave a long rolling churr and waved its forelimb at the room. Ofelia shook her head. “No. Not. For. You. Dangerous.” She wondered how to mime danger to them. Did they know about electricity? “Zzzzt!” she said, pretending to touch something and then jerking back, shaking her hand.

“Zzzzt…” It was the first sound of hers any of them had copied. What did zzzzt mean in their language? More importantly, would it stop them from poking around in here and destroying things? Ofelia tried to remember childhood lessons in electricity. Lightning was also electricity; they had to know about lightning. Could she get that across?

The one in front slowly extended its long dark nails toward one of the control boards. “Zzzzt…” it uttered, more softly than Ofelia had, and yanked its limb back as if stung. Ofelia nodded; at least they had that right.

“Yes — zzzzt. Hurts you. Big ouch.” She felt silly, talking to them as if they were babies just reaching for trouble, but it had worked.

The creature extended its limb to her, not quite touching. It tilted its head to one side, presenting her with more of one eye than the other. “Zzzzt…” it uttered again, and then touched her very gently on the chest. Ofelia frowned. It meant something, she was sure of it. It wanted to say something to her… but she could not think what that meant. She rehearsed it in her head. She had tried to convey that the things in here could hurt if you touched them — and the creature had copied her actions, which might mean it understood, although she had known plenty of children who couldn’t learn from a pretense like that, who had to be hurt themselves before they understood that fire would burn. Then it had uttered the sound, while almost touching her, and then had touched her.

Was it saying that she might hurt it, the same way as the machines? That she did hurt? But no — they had touched her already, and as near as she could tell, it hadn’t hurt them. They hadn’t jerked or jumped back or shown any other sign of pain. If they showed pain the way people did. “Zzzzt…” the creature uttered, repeating its earlier sequence. Then it seemed to point to the machines behind her, with an emphatic little stab on the end of the gesture. “Zzzzt.” Then it pointed at her again. Oh. Ofelia laughed aloud before she could stop herself. Of course. It wanted to know if the machines would zzzzt her. Or it wanted to see her get a zzzzt. Or something that connected her with the machines and the action she had claimed they had.

She held up one finger; the creatures stared at it. “The wrong place will go Zzzzt,” she said. She walked over to the outlet where the cables linked to the power system. “Here it will make anyone go Zzzzt.” Again she pretended to touch it, made the noise, and jerked back. “But here — IF you know what you’re doing, I can touch it.” As she spoke, she mimed: finger tapping head… knows… a careful approach, looking all over the control board before deciding which button to push… a careful touch with one finger on one button. No zzzzt. The lights blinked; she had enabled a warning circuit that put all the center lights on slow flash.

Squawks and grunts and gabbles, restless stirring in the hall behind the frontmost creatures. Ofelia prodded the button again and the lights returned to a steady glow. While she was there, she touched other controls, storing all monitor displays for later analysis, disabling all but the board she was using, choosing the most resistant of systems to run things. Just in case they got eager and tried to poke around, she could prevent much of the trouble they’d cause. They would be unlikely to hit the enabling sequences with random attempts to get something to happen. And she would disable this board when she was through. Let them have another scare first. “If you aren’t very careful,” she said. “If you just swipe at the controls, bad things will happen.” She laid her hand on the board, carefully across the emergency alert panel. Sirens wailed outside, higher and higher; bells rang in every room in the center; the lights changed to a different flash sequence, from normal to brighter and back. Ofelia turned it off, and locked the board down. “And that’s why you shouldn’t mess—” But they had. At least half of them had left stinking piles on the floor they had just cleaned. All of them stared at her. She didn’t have to know their language to know they were angry. Ofelia glared back. It wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t meant to scare them that much — only to convince them to leave the controls alone. And they’d dirtied the floor.

“I’m not cleaning that up,” Ofelia said. “Get the brooms.” It would take mops. It would take… but it didn’t. One of them grunted something especially emphatic, and the guilty parties — as Ofelia saw it — bounced away at high speed, to return with scoops that she recognized too late as the big stirring paddles from the kitchens. Oh well. They could be sterilized. She didn’t care that the biochemistry wasn’t supposed to be compatible: she was not going to use stirring paddles that had picked up alien waste until they’d been properly disinfected.

The creatures picked up their messes and went down the hall in the direction of the outside door. Perhaps she should have told them about the toilets. She looked back at the ones still staring at her. Perhaps she should not upset them any more. A lifetime’s experience reminded her that upsetting those who outnumber you and have weapons is a bad idea. It was because they hadn’t hurt her yet… she had begun to think of them as harmless, or at least not immediately threatening. The cleanup crew returned; she noticed that the stirring paddles looked clean, as if they’d been scrubbed in the rainwater. Looks weren’t everything; she’d put them through a hot water cycle. With a little shudder, the others relaxed; their intent gaze left her, and Ofelia felt herself relaxing too. Perhaps they weren’t going to kill her. At least not now. At least not if she kept them pacified. If they had been children, she would have cooked something sweet, but they had not seemed attracted to the food in the kitchen.

She moved toward the door, and the creatures moved back. They followed her down the passage, and into the sewing room where her wet mattress lay under the long work table. She counted — all of them. No one was lurking in the control room, tinkering with the switches.

As in the kitchen, they moved around, looking at everything making soft noises that she could not help but assume were language of some sort. Ofelia squatted down with a grunt of her own and tried to drag the wet mattress out from under the table. It had absorbed enough water to add kilos to its weight, and it stuck to the damp floor beneath it. She yanked harder, wishing she had had the sense to prop it up on something in the first place. Of course, she hadn’t meant to have the door open and rain blowing in. She still couldn’t remember whether she herself had left it open when she went out to walk in the calm at the heart of the storm. Not that it mattered, really.

She tugged again and again, and the mattress resisted. Suddenly, four bony odd-shaped hands with long dark nails gripped it; it slid suddenly towards her and she fell backwards. The mattress landed on her feet. She looked over; two of the creatures, still holding the mattress, were watching her. “Thank you,” she said. It was important to thank children, if they were trying to help, even if they got it wrong. That way they would keep trying. She dragged her feet out from under the mattress, levered herself up to a squat again, and tugged. They tugged. With her guidance, they got the mattress out from under the table and up on end, propped sagging against a wall.

Ofelia put her hands to her back, and sighed. Tonight she would sleep in her own bed, if she was still alive, and rest. She looked around. One of the creatures was poking at the loose beads; another had picked up her beaded and fringed netted garment and was shaking it softly, listening to the sounds it made. Children! Always into things, always moving things, always making messes. “That’s mine,” she said. The heads turned, the eyes stared. It wasn’t quite as bad now; she knew they could stare very well without doing anything else. She took the garment from the one who held it — it released it to her without resistance — and then realized they could have no idea what it was for. “It’s a dress,” she said. She might as well show them; it wasn’t as if they were people, who might make comments about her handiwork.

She wriggled into the garment, enjoying as before the feel of it against her — she had finally gotten that set of beads in just the right place, and the itchy place just under her shoulderblade now had an automatic scratcher every time she moved. Her hands moved without her thought, touching the beads, the bits of bright color and softness and smoothness and texture.

“That’s better,” she said.

“Zzzzt…” said one of them, pointing its long hard fingernail at her.

“No. Not zzzzt. I made this.” Her hands spread, then she picked up a loose bead and threaded it onto one of her twisted-grass strings. “I like to make things.” She picked up another bead, a tiny spacer, then another larger one, and showed them. They all approached; she sensed real interest.