Remnant Population

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After days of scant contact with the other humans — polite but distant greetings that made it clear they didn’t have time to waste with an ignorant old woman — Ofelia noticed that she had become real to them again. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She suspected it meant that they were finishing up their contact work, as they called it, and getting ready to “make a final determination” (the team leader’s phrase) about her, and the colony, and the creatures.

The change began with slightly warmer greetings when they saw her, politely asking how she was, how her garden prospered. The tall woman commented on a necklace Ofelia had made. The stocky man told her he had discovered that Bluecloak was a minstrel or entertainer, a singer. The younger woman began hanging around Ofelia without saying much, just like a pesky child. Ofelia noticed that she had pilfered a necklace to wear, and that she left too many of her shirt buttons undone. After a few days of hovering that nearly drove Ofelia to rudeness, she actually began a conversation. She asked how Ofelia had taught the creatures to speak.

Ofelia explained, as well as she could. She had tried to teach them as she had taught babies — human babies, she repeated, though Bilong didn’t know about the others.

“That’s not how you teach a language,” the woman said. “I know you probably thought you taught your children to talk, but human children don’t have to be taught — they just learn.” Bilong was trying to be polite. Ofelia could tell that, just as she could tell that the woman was treating her with exaggerated patience, as if she were a naughty child. She herself tried not to resent the rudeness which was not intended.

“Some do,” Ofelia conceded. Most, probably. But had any mother ever been able to resist teaching? “All of them,” Bilong said, emphasizing it, “—all human children learn to talk on their own, because they’re designed to speak human language.”

Ofelia wished she could remember how to do what she had done for so many years, remove herself from the talk and let it pass by, but it was impossible to put that chicken back in the egg. “Sara’s child,” she heard herself saying, even as the old, cautious voice implored her to keep quiet. “It couldn’t talk, no matter what.”

“I meant normal children,” the woman said, less patiently “But these are aliens, Ofelia — I can call you Ofelia, can’t I?”

A girl from this neighborhood has no business getting a swelled head, her father had said. Pride goes before damnation, someone had said. The tall stalk asks for the knife. You are nothing. “Sera Ofelia,” she said, with the least emphasis.

“Oh — Sarah? I’m sorry; I thought you were called Ofelia.” The woman seemed confused, but willing. Her accent, Ofelia realized, meant that she could not hear the difference between the name Sara and the title Sera. Nor had she paid attention when the stocky man addressed her correctly as Sera Falfurrias. Ofelia did not enlighten her. She waited, hoping her face would remember the bland expressions that had kept her out of trouble before.

“Sarah,” the linguist said. “Let me explain about alien languages.” Ofelia waited in silence, but her mind crackled with comments. “They aren’t like human languages,” the linguist went on. Oh really? Did she think Ofelia hadn’t noticed? “Since their biological nature is different, the very structure of their brains — if we can call them brains, which is doubtful — determines a different structure of language.” Ofelia repressed a snort with difficulty: Whatever the brain had to do with language, some of the messages would have to be the same. I’m hungry, feed me. I’m hurt, comfort me. Come here. Go away. OUCH. Do it again. What is that and how does it work?

“They may not intend any of the same meanings,” the linguist said, completing the picture of an idiot. Prudence lost out; she had been too long free to speak her mind, if only to herself. “They have to say some of the same things,” she said. “If they’re hungry. If they hurt.”

The younger woman’s eyebrows went up. “Well… there are a few nearly universal messages. But those are least interesting; even a non-language species may have vocalizations associated with hunger or pain. Besides, in the languages we know, these aren’t expressed the same way. The goetiae, for instance, actually say ‘my sap dries’ when they mean I’m hungry,’ and in one dialect of your language—” The linguist said “your language” as if it were particularly silly. “—the South Naryan, I think it is, no one ever says ‘I hurt’ — they always use the form ‘it pains me.’”

Ofelia rubbed her foot a little backwards and forwards on the ground, reminding herself of that reality. She had never heard of the goetiae — were they aliens? — but she had had an aunt who was South Naryan, and she knew perfectly well that her aunt said “I hurt myself’ when she fell over something. Did this linguist say “I hurt” when she had a backache? Or did she say, more sensibly, “My back hurts”? She thought of a question she could ask.

“How many alien languages do you know?”

The woman flushed. “Well… actually… not any. Not truly alien, that is. No ones ever found one. This will be the first.” As if Ofelia had said what she was thinking, the linguist hurried on. “Of course, we practiced with computer generated languages. The neural modelers created alien networks, and we practiced with the languages they generated.”

Ofelia kept her face blank. She understood what that meant: they had created machines that talked machine languages, and from this they thought they had learned how to understand alien languages. Stupid. Machines would not think like aliens, but like machines. The creatures were not machines — very far from it.

But the linguist was leaning closer, confiding now, as if Ofelia were a favorite aunt or grandmother. She did not want to be Bilong’s mother, or her grand-mother. She had done with these roles, with being a good child, a good wife, a good mother. She had put seventy-odd years into it; she had worked hard at it; now she wanted to be that Ofelia who painted and carved and sang in an old cracked voice with strange creatures and their stranger music. The role the creatures had given her was more than enough. “It’s all this tension,” the linguist was saying. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this—” Then don’t, Ofelia thought. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it. “—but you’re wise, even if you don’t have an education.” The arrogance in that almost yanked a reply from her, but she managed to squeeze it back. Wise even if she had no education? What did wisdom have to do with education? Besides, she had an education; she had spent hours studying, nights and early mornings studying, long before this child was born. This… this chit of a girl who hadn’t known how to repair the pumps, who had blithely walked between a cow and her calf.

“The thing is,” the girl went on, in happy unawareness of Ofelia’s thoughts, “they don’t like each other and never have. So they’re using me as an excuse. One says I’m flirting, and the other one says I’m not flirting, and—” “Are you flirting?” Ofelia asked. She thought so; why else wear that perfume? Why else swing her ripe young body back and forth like fruit on a vine, every motion declaring her readiness to be picked and eaten?

“Of course not.” A flounce, an outraged glance. Just like Linda, who had always denied with her mouth while proclaiming with her hips. But this was not Linda. “Well… maybe. But not seriously, you know. It’s not like your culture, you know.” Again that gentle condescension. “We don’t have the same rules—” As if human biology would shift aside for her convenience, as if men were not animals born to respond to smells and motions. “I do rather like one of them, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t know it. But that’s not really flirting.”

“Do you have sex with him?” Ofelia asked. The girl flushed and scowled,

“It’s none of your—” She stopped abruptly and her face changed, as if someone had wiped a thumb across clay. “Oh, in Kira. How’s the tech survey going?”

Ofelia looked up at the other woman. Older, warier, than the young one, but still young to Ofelia. She was angry about something; Ofelia suspected it was the girl’s antics.

“There’s a staff meeting in twenty minutes, Bilong, and you’re supposed to have the preliminary analysis

ready—”

“I can’t — it’s too soon — all I can do is discuss the raw data—”

“Then do that.” Kira stood there, as threatening as a sea-storm wall cloud until the younger woman got up and walked away, her shoulders stiff.

“You are angry?” Ofelia said. She leaned back against the sun-warmed wall and hoped she looked old and stupid.

“She is not supposed to waste her time talking to you,” Kira said. “She has work to do.” Ofelia waited. She had seen just this maneuver in older children who chased young ones away. What they really wanted was their own chance at the mother or grandmother.

Kira sighed, the kind of dramatic sigh that meant she too was going to confide. Ofelia let her eyelids sag almost shut. Maybe she would change her mind if Ofelia looked stupid enough. “You’re not a chatterbox,” Kira said. Mistake, This woman had wanted a safe confidant, and for that purpose stupid and quiet would do well enough. Ofelia opened her eyes but it was too late to pretend alert garrulity. Kira’s mouth quirked. “And I don’t think you’re half so dim as you pretend, either A stupid woman couldn’t have survived alone so long.” Good observation, if unflattering. Just once, Ofelia would have liked people to see her as she was, not as their ideas painted her. She looked at Kira, the short hair so carefully shaped that it must be a style of some sort, the smooth young-woman skin just showing the first lines of age. Who was this person, really? “I don’t think I’m stupid,” she said.

Kira’s eyes widened, then narrowed

“No. I can see that. What I can’t see is why you chose to stay behind.”

“No,” Ofelia said, mimicking Kira’s intonation, “I can see you don’t. But you are too young.”

“You didn’t want to die aboard the ship, in suspension?”

Ofelia shrugged, annoyed. They always came back to death, these young ones; they were obsessed with it. She tried again to explain. “It was not about death. It was about life. If I stayed, I would be alone—” “But no one can survive isolation,” Kira said, interrupting Ofelia as she had done before, as they had all done. “You must have been terribly lonely. It’s lucky for you that the indigenes showed up when they did.”

It would do no good to argue that she had not been lonely. She had tried that, and they had looked at her with such pity, and such certainty.

“Perhaps I am crazy,” Ofelia said.

“Your psych profile didn’t show anything before,” Kira said. So they had snooped into her personnel file, something she had never done herself. Again the slow anger burned. What right had they? They were not her people: not family, not friends, not fellow colonists, not even someone she had gone to for help. “Its not… normal,” Kira said. “Wanting to be the only human on the whole world — that’s not normal.” “So I am not normal,” Ofelia said. Silence would not work with this one; she knew that already.

“But why?”

Ofelia shrugged. “You did not like my answers before; you told me I didn’t understand. Should I tell you the truth I know, or try to guess the untruth you want?”

Kira’s eyes widened. Surprise, the old lady has teeth. “You don’t have to be so — so vehement. I only wondered.” She sounded offended. Fine. Let her be offended. “I wanted to be alone. I had not been alone for years. It didn’t bother me to be alone as a child, and it didn’t bother me this time either.” Kira gave her perfect haircut a little shake, warding off that understanding. “Was it because your husband and children had died here? And you felt close to them?”

Ofelia sighed, and pushed herself away from the wall, standing slowly. These people felt almost as alien as the creatures, and they had less interest in understanding her. “If you don’t listen, you can’t hear,” she said, tugging her ear for emphasis. They would make up their own minds anyway, and nothing she said would change that.

She walked away, around the far end of her house, and out into the meadow. Kira followed her a few steps, bleating something incomprehensible. Then she fell behind. Ofelia did not turn to look, but she could feel Kira’s stare on her shoulderblades.

Out among the sheep, the blessedly silent sheep, who ignored her at this time of day, Ofelia hid in plain sight from the other humans. She used the basket she had brought to gather sheep droppings. She spread them along the outer margins of the meadow, supporting the terraforming grasses with their mix of bacteria and fungi, maintaining the meadows boundaries.

The newcomers hated the droppings, hated anything that smelled alive: “stank of organics,” is how they put it. They wanted nothing to do with her while she was doing work they considered dirty. After that first rapture over fresh tomatoes, they had recoiled from the discovery that she did not sterilize the sheep and cow manure, the kitchen garbage, that went into the compost trench and then into the soil. They accepted no more tomatoes, and refused the cooling fruit drink — although they would pick fruit themselves, and then scrub it in the kitchen sink in the center.

She was tired of the newcomers’ silliness about dirt, tired of their busyness, tired of the way they interrupted her without apology, talked as long as they wanted to, and then walked off, leaving her as casually as they would leave a building. She was behind in her garden work; she could not enjoy sewing or crocheting or making jewelry when at any moment someone might come interrupt her, with that expression which meant they thought she was especially silly to be making things now, when she would have to leave. They seemed to go out of their way to make her feel unimportant. The contrast between their behavior and that of the creatures could not be ignored. The old voice, smug in its certainty, told her that was to be expected. She could mean nothing to the humans; they knew how to rate humans, and she came at the bottom. The creatures could not know. They might like her because she had been their first human; they might value her for the novelty. Whatever the reason for their respect, they could not value her for anything important; they didn’t know what was important. In the sun’s heat, the droppings had dried quickly; Ofelia did not mind picking them up, although the stooping bothered her. Her head hurt now only when she bent over, as if all the blood rushed into that swollen knob and pulsed there. Maybe it did. The shirt she wore pulled across the shoulders. The old voice told her how old she was, how weak, how useless. The new voice said nothing, but lived like a cold knot in her heart. She tried to ignore the old voice, and kept on working. Maybe if she stayed away from the other humans, the new voice would speak to her again. She missed it. A shadow, a blur of motion; one of the creatures. She looked up, attempted the chest grunt of greeting, and got one in return. This creature wore one of her necklaces draped over its own accouterments. When it had her attention, it tapped the basket and gurgled its question. This one rarely attempted human speech. “Sheep droppings,” Ofelia said, as if the words had been clear. “For the grass. It feeds the grass.” The creature moved slowly to one of the sheep, which lifted its head to stare. Even more slowly, the creature leaned down, yanked loose a tuft of grass, and offered it to the sheep. The sheep accepted it docilely and its narrow jaw worked back and forth. The creature touched the sheep’s throat, then lightly ran its hand down the body to the rump. Ofelia could follow that: food goes in here, and goes through… When the creature tried to lift the sheep’s tail, the sheep yanked away and moved off briskly. The creature gaped its mouth at Ofelia — laughter? annoyance? — and then pointed at the sheep’s rump, then droppings on the ground.

“Yes,” said Ofelia, nodding vigorously.

The creature turned to her, presenting its own rump, and lifted the decorative kilt to point to an unmistakable orifice. Ofelia looked away. She didn’t really want to see what a creature hole looked like, but she had already registered that it had the predictable puckered appearance. “Yes,” she said. “It comes out a hole in the back.” They must know that, from their observations of her; she suspected them of watching at times when she had been unaware of it. She hoped they could get off this topic quickly, but the creatures had a way of sticking to something as long as it interested them. They should know this already; it had been impossible, in the early days, to keep them from knowing what happened when she used the toilet. This one had come with Bluecloak, so perhaps it had never seen… but it should have known, from talking to the others. She knew they discussed her. “Utter uhoo,” the creature said. Other you meant the other humans; none of the creatures would attempt the word human. “What about the others?” Ofelia asked. She had become used to the creatures understanding more of her speech than she did of theirs.

It pointed to its mouth, then her mouth… its rump and then the sheep droppings.

“Oh — you mean you wonder if the other humans do this too?” What a silly question. Of course they did.

She nodded vigorously. “Yes. They do.”

“Nott ksee,” the creature said. Ofelia thought about it. The other humans still lived in the shelters they’d set up down at the shuttle field; they had moved out of the shuttle itself only in the past few days. So perhaps the creatures had never seen them eat or excrete.

Now the creature tapped its nose, and sniffed elaborately. “Nnnott sssane.” Ofelia understood that as “smells crazy,” which made no sense in terms of what they had been talking about. The creature tried again. “Utter uhoo—” then a big sniff, “—nnot saamp.” Sane… saamp… same. Other yous smell not same? Yes, that could be it.

Ofelia gestured to reinforce her own words. “You think the other humans smell… not like me? Not the same?”

“Eeeyess.” It touched her shirt, then its own kilt and belts. “Nnnott saamp klote-ss.” True enough, the others didn’t wear the same clothes; they wore long-sleeved billowy shirts and long pants, shoes, all in muted colors.

“Saamp utter uhoose purrrt nessstt passs.” The same as other yous — other humans who purrrt — burnt? — nest-something. Burrrt sounded close to hurt. Ofelia set the basket down to have the use of both hands. Had those luckless colonists hurt the creatures’ nests? Was that why they’d been attacked? “Burrrt?” She mimed pounding, kicking.

The creature looked around, as if confused. Then it said “Hah-ahttt. Purrrt aaakss hah-ahtt.” Hot. Purrrt makes hot.

“Burn!” Astonishment and horror both hit at once. Where had it learned the word “burn”? Had she used it, in warning of the hot stoves? She couldn’t remember. And the other humans had burned the nests? Burned the babies?

She thought of the mechbots dropping out of the sky to scrape away whatever grew, to make the flat landing place for shuttles… if that had been nests, if it had caught fire from the mechbot exhausts, or perhaps they even fired the heaps of grass and roots… and nestlings. She knew her face must be a mask of horror, and the creature stared at her, recognizing her shock. “Utter uhoo,” it said again, this time with a decisive jerk of the head. “Nnnott saamp. Nnnott… “ and it rattled off a quick sequence of its own language, in which Ofelia thought she heard click-kaw-keerrr. However bad they were, these humans had not destroyed the creatures’ nests and children. She had to defend them. But she couldn’t figure out how to unmake that confusion — not confusion, she realized now, but settled antagonism. And why hadn’t Bluecloak told her, when it was teaching her, learning from her, when she had played it the tapes of the other colony’s death?

Had it been a wish to spare her pain, or a deeper mistrust?

“Click-kaw-keerrr,” she said, that being the word which usually settled them. “Gurgle-click-cough?”

The creature touched her head, delicately. “Uhoo kud click-kaw-keerrr.” She might be a good click-kaw-keerrr, but she still didn’t know all her responsibilities… responsibilities to both people, she thought suddenly. She didn’t want this — they weren’t going to listen to her — but she could not leave the humans ignorant of what she’d learned. She needed to find out more first, though, and that meant finding the best source.

“Bluecloak?” she asked the creature. “Where is Bluecloak?”

It tipped its head toward the forest — the forest? What was Bluecloak doing in the forest? The most likely thing was hunting, and although Ofelia no longer feared the long knives for herself, she didn’t really want to see Bluecloak butchering treeclimbers. But the creature with her had started walking that way, and Ofelia followed. She dumped her basket of sheep droppings at the edge of the meadow, and stepped carefully through the taller weeds and scrubby growth in the intermediate ground. She had intended to visit the forest more when she lived alone, but she had always been too busy in the village. After seeing the hunt, that time, she had not wanted to go in among the tall trees with the creatures. Now, it felt no different from following the creature anywhere. Cooler, perhaps. She watched the creature move, its high-stepping gait constrained in the forest by the coils of roots and vines. It led her a way she had no reason to know, but when they came to the place where she had sheltered, she recognized it as if she had left it only the day before. There was the fallen log, there the curve of root where she had put her sack of food.

And there were the creatures she knew, nearly all of them. Bluecloak, formally cloaked. Gurgle-clickcough. Her three babies, hedged about with the bodies of four creatures, who had stretched out to form a living playpen within which the babies tumbled and sprawled. They squeaked when they saw Ofelia, and staggered over to someone’s legs, where they bounced up and down on feet that seemed bigger every day. As Bluecloak greeted Ofelia, she saw two of the creatures slip away, back toward the village. Long knives gleamed in their hands. Had they planned a massacre — ? She would have gone, but Bluecloak had her hands, “Nnnott killll,” it said, as if it had read her thoughts. Her expression, most likely; human faces were so mobile, so flexible, “Nnot killll utter uhoo. Yahtch.” Not kill, but watch. Keep them away from this meeting, which the creatures had carefully held far from the scanners and recorders that had been planted all over the village by the industrious Bilong.

Ofelia realized that the one who had talked to her in the sheep meadow must have been waiting for that chance. She wanted to know how long — surely they had been in the village the day before — but that was not the most important question.

Bluecloak’s throat-sac swelled abruptly, and it began thrumming. Soon they all were, fingers and toes and bodies, in a complex of rhythms that had the babies lurching from one side of their enclosure to another, their little feet twitching first in one rhythm then another. Finally it all steadied; Ofelia could feel it all through her body, could feel her own toes tapping, her own heart slowing to match the left-hand drumming that meant concord.

Then silence, abrupt, into which the babies’ squeaks sounded loud. Ofelia put out her hand to them, and they ran to her, licking her wrist, grabbing with their little fingers, so much weaker still than their toes, though apt for manipulating everything they got hold of. The talons felt like tiny pins. When Bluecloak spoke, Ofelia could hardly believe it. He sounded exactly like Vasil Likisi, down to the accent and the pomposity. “I have been empowered by the government…” He stopped, and rattled off a long string in his own language. Ofelia stared.

“But you—”

Now in the voice she knew, the one which changed some sounds of human tongue, “It izh kud cahpih?” Better than a good copy; better than some recordings Ofelia had heard. “You can… can you do that all the time?”

“Nnno. Cahpih foyss, eehess, hut he ssay. Ssay die thoughtss, aaakss utter ssondss.” Ofelia did not understand. If he could copy Likisi’s voice so exactly, even to the accent and tone, why couldn’t he say the words right when he said his own thoughts? For the first time, she had something to ask Bilong — assuming Bilong would listen, and then understand the question — but she didn’t have Bilong handy.

Bluecloak didn’t wait for her to understand. It went on, now uttering a phrase in Kira Stavi’s voice, and another in the flat monotone the military advisors murmured into their suit mics. Finally it repeated the song Ofelia had sung to the babies, in a voice she realized must be hers, though it sounded breathier, more like an old woman’s voice than she heard it inside. She had never heard her voice recorded. Maybe she did sound like that, and Bluecloak had been accurate with the others.

“Do you understand all that?” Ofelia asked. “Or just -

“Eehess,” Bluecloak said. “Know peeninks.” The meanings, he meant, but how? How could he understand so much, when she had learned so little of their language? She had known they were smart, but this — Bilong had made such a fuss about how hard it was to learn other languages, even human language families.

“All of you?” Ofelia asked.

“Alll know. Nnnott all tsay.”

If they understood it all — they couldn’t really, but if they did, if they thought they did — then what they had heard, in these last decems, must have given them a very… strange… idea of humans. Ofelia sat on the pillow one of them produced from behind the log. Her mind ran from one corner of her brain to another like the babies now playing chase in their playpen. How long had they understood? How much? And why this meeting now? What were they planning? What would they expect her to do? One of the babies squeaked, trying to climb adult legs to get to her. Gurgle-click-cough picked it up, licked its neck, and handed it to Ofelia. She cradled it, letting it lick the insides of both wrists, and then curl into a ball on her lap.

“Ahee,” said Bluecloak, pointing to itself. “Thry aaakss clearrr tub uhoo hut he hoo-ahnt.” Ofelia found she understood this much easily; she was reshaping the words almost without thought to the sounds she knew. They wanted to make clear to her what they wanted? That was what she most wanted to know, right now… and then she could find out more.

Only occasionally in the next few hours, did she have to ask Bluecloak to repeat or clarify what it said; the combination of near-human language and gestures conveyed more complicated meanings than she had thought possible. Much as she disliked the team members, she kept thinking that they should be here instead of her — or with her. They had the education, the training, to understand what she struggled to grasp. She was being given the knowledge they had come so far to obtain, knowledge the creatures still withheld (they made that clear) from the team.

“You should tell them,” she argued, early in the session. “They’re… official.” How could she explain official? How could she explain that no one would listen to her, that she was nothing in that social order? But Bluecloak interrupted firmly. They would tell her, and she must pay attention, She could do nothing else, Ori would be intrigued by the creatures’ social structure, she thought, the combination of nomadic hunting and herding for most adults with permanent, safe child-rearing locations in which the young, protected from predators and the rigors of migration, could be tutored as well as protected by the wisest of the adults. The special positions within the troops: singer-to-strangers, war leader, wayfinder, and click-kawkeerrr. Then the loose confederacy of most troops, the constant testing of opinion with right and left-hand drumming. They had no concept of disobedience; dissent could always leave, with any who drummed the same rhythm, and the world itself defined error and right.

Now Bluecloak explained more about her special position and his. Click-kaw-keerrr: more than aunt, a combination midwife, infant nurse, preschool and elementary teacher… and protector. Singer-tostrangers: those who made contact with other troops, and negotiated the sharing of lands and duties, bringing the drumming into the left hand if possible.

Kira and Ori both would have wanted to hear about the creatures’ understanding of their world’s living beings… how they classified the plants and animals, how they had learned to use them, how they bred their grass-eating herd animals, how they replanted the ruined nestmass. Ofelia realized that she was dividing what Bluecloak said into what this one and that would like to know — but Bluecloak wasn’t thinking that way. To Bluecloak, all “mind-hunting” was the same, each scent-trail leading to a different prey, but all the same in the joy of the hunt. She remembered how even the first of them had seemed so eager to learn, like young children before they are taught that most curiosity is idle, useless.

She pulled her mind back to what Bluecloak was saying. For a people like this, there could be no single government; nothing they did, in fact, resembled anything she knew about governments. Bluecloak sang for some large fraction of the People (she heard the capital of that now, and accepted it) who roamed the plains, but singing for them did not mean ruling them. And while Bluecloak had sung to (different from singing for) some of the People who lived on the stone coast, this did not mean that agreement had come. Ofelia had to hear more about the people on the stone coast; the humans, when asked, had cut her off. Bluecloak explained, and in the process Ofelia understood why the idea of water and electricity in pipes had come easily to them. Their People ran water, other liquids, and particulates like sand in pipes of wood and hollow reeds, and brewed things in gourds made of clay or burnt sand. They had no electricity — yet — and their water pumps ran on water or foot power… but the idea of pumped water was not strange to them, even to the nomads.

But the core of what Bluecloak wanted to say had to do with the colony that had destroyed their nestmass, and which they had killed in shocked revenge… and these new humans, who had come because of that, who now wanted to make their rules for the People, what they could learn and what they could not. Nestmass — which meant, Ofelia thought, the nestlings and nest-guards as well as the nests themselves — were untouchable in the People’s own culture.

Bluecloak understood — they all understood — that perhaps the strange monsters from the sky hadn’t known what they destroyed. But that was an excuse no click-kaw-keerrr would accept from a nestling. To see the end of a deed in its beginning was the prime virtue — to lay a trap where only prey, not allies, walked, was the first lesson of the stalker. In all the lessons of hunting that continued: go hungry rather than kill and eat the last mother of the prey. Go thirsty rather than take water of the those who will be eaten. Leave sweet fruits on the tree for the climbers you hunt.

Ofelia understood that, but not the lengths to which the People took it. She had no training in logic; she had been taught only enough math to use the necessary manuals and work the necessary machines. She remembered seeing Bluecloak hunched over the old math textbooks; now it held one out, pointing to a long proof. That, it explained to her, was easy; its People thought in longer and more winding trails than that.

“But you…” There was no way to say tactfully that for such smart people, they hadn’t got very far. No real cities — well, she hadn’t seen the ones of the stone coast yet. But no vehicles, no big machines — she remembered something from the doomed colony tape about a catapult that threw something explosive. No big metal machines, no mechbots. No computers.

“Papiess,” Bluecloak said. If she understood him, if he understood what had happened, they considered themselves a young People, almost babies. They had once been other, only ten or twenty generations back. With the math book, with stones laid out in rows, Bluecloak conveyed that their recent ancestors could think along only few-step chains, whereas they could think along many-step chains. Something had happened; they didn’t know what. Someday they would figure it out, but in the meantime, they had other things to deal with.

Such as intrusive humans who wanted to set limits to their learning. Which brought them back to nestguardians. The good nest-guardians, Bluecloak explained, wanted the nestlings to learn all they could about everything, to be ready for — eager for — new things. Bad nest-guardians wanted to make life easy on themselves by keeping the nestlings content with sameness. These humans, Bluecloak said slowly, watching Ofelia’s face. They destroyed nestmass. Now they want to keep us from learning new things. They are bad nest-guardians. Not like you. And they do not properly respect you. It sounded as if these were equally bad.

Ofelia thought of all the times she had resented the questions her children asked, the times she had resented the intrusive curiosity of the creatures. She had been snubbed that way herself; she had been kept from learning all she could. Once she had believed that necessary. You couldn’t let children waste their time that way; they would never learn discipline if they weren’t made to learn what they needed. In her memory she saw the bright faces, the sparkling eyes, heard the eager voices… and she remembered how they had changed, how she had changed, all that curiosity and eagerness settling into a mold of passive obedience, more or less sullen depending on how much the child had to abandon. “I was not a good nest-guardian for my children,” she said. The baby in her lap stirred, and grabbed her thumb with both its hands. She looked down, and stroked the line of knobs along its back. She was a good nest-guardian now, Bluecloak said. And mothers were not nest-guardians anyway. Only the old, those who were no longer nesting mothers, who understood things, were nest-guardians. Perhaps she had not had the right nest-guardians to help her.

“Not fathers?”

“Nnott” No more explanation. Qfelia could see where mothers — grandmothers — if they were still physically strong and able, would know things about babies and children that the men she knew would not. But these were not human, and she could not assume that their fathers had limitations. If they even had fathers… Bluecloak had still not explained how they reproduced. They trusted Ofelia, Bluecloak went on. She was a nest-guardian; she had proved herself so with Gurgleclick-cough’s nesting; the nestlings accepted her. Bluecloak could sing for her, but only the nest-guardian could make the agreement when all the People could not drum together, because of distance. “Agreement?”

“Or not agreement” What followed took her breath away; she felt as if she’d been hit in the chest. She was their nest-guardian; the People would deal with other humans only through her. She must make the other humans understand this, now that she understood.

“But that won’t work. They won’t listen to me. Besides, they say I must leave,” Ofelia said. “They say they will take me when they go.”

“NO!” All of them, throat-sacs expanded. The baby in her lap came wide awake, wrapped legs and tail around her arm, and squeaked loudly. She soothed it automatically with her other hand. “I don’t want to go,” Ofelia said. “I want to stay. That’s why I stayed before, but—” But she was only one old woman, and they were four strong younger adults, and two military advisors, and the pilot — they could carry her off kicking and screaming, if it came to that. Or just give her a shot, put her to sleep, and she would wake up — if she did — somewhere else.

“Nnot go!” Bluecloak said loudly. “Ssstopp tim.”

Were they saying they would protect her? Looking at them, she did not doubt they would try. But had they believed anything she’d told them of the humans’ weapons? Bright as they were, they would have no chance against those chunky firearms the military advisors carried, the weaponry mounted on the shuttle itself, let alone what the ship aloft might have. She didn’t want them to die for her; she wasn’t worth it. She tried to say that, and Bluecloak hissed; so did all the babies, like a multiple leak in an air line, three slightly different notes.

She was worth it; she was their nest-guardian, and the nest-guardian was the most important position the People had. All the eyes, adult and baby, stared at her as the toes drummed agreement. She: nest-guardian. She: important. Tears burned her eyes; she had never felt such affirmation. The toes stilled, and Bluecloak went on, as if explaining one plus one to a small child. What she had to do was make those other humans understand. They must let the People learn; they must help the People learn; they must be respectful of Ofelia and all nest guardians, and all nestmass. And the People would deal only with Ofelia… if Ofelia were taken away, they would not deal at all. Demands Ofelia understood, though she was not used to them from this direction. The creatures — the People — had been so reasonable before, so childlike… she pushed that thought back. Children demanded; she had demanded, when she was a child. The part of her that stayed behind had not been the oldest part, but the child part, the part determined to get its own way, to grow its own way… or, as these People would say, hunt its own scent-trail.

She could imagine how the team members — especially pompous Likisi — would react to all this. They were supposed to listen to her, to the person they thought of as a nuisance, almost an embarrassment? Her old voice embroidered this design at length, as the People sat waiting for her response. She had no education; she had no profession; she had no powerful family She was bringing a message they would not want to hear; neither messenger nor message would please them, and she would be the one to take the brunt of their displeasure. They would laugh at her; they would be angry; they would ignore her. The baby in her lap sat up, and tapped its right foot. She glanced down, and it stared at her, still tapping the right foot. Disagreement. Dissent. What was it disagreeing with? The bright eyes stared into hers, unblinking. Ofelia sighed.

This time, with this child, she would do it right. This time she would give what she had never really wanted to withhold. “You,” she said to the baby, feeling a red smile relaxing her face. “You want me to do the impossible, don’t you?”

Now it blinked, once, and the left foot drummed. Impossible. Do it. It couldn’t possibly understand; it was only days old. But other humans thought she couldn’t possibly understand, because she was too old, too stupid. Maybe all the humans were wrong — she about this child, the others about her. But these are aliens, the old voice argued. No. These were people, people with babies and children and grandmothers who took care of the babies, and she could not refuse the eagerness in those bright eyes, the desire in those little taloned hands.

It was impossible, it was all impossible, and she might as well get on with it. Impossible things didn’t get done by sitting around in the shade playing with children.

Nonetheless, before she left, she played with all three of them, even bending down so they could explore her hair, which seemed to fascinate them most.