by Lyn Gala
No wonder the Imshee feared giving the Rownt technology. A pre-industrial society had taken the blueprints for a spaceship and improved it. That was more than impressive. “What do the Grandmothers of the Calti think of humans now holding one of the Cy ships?” Liam asked. He assumed that was the true center of their conversation. Grandmothers never took a step without seeing three sources of profit in it.
The Grandmother watched the temple with the younger Grandmothers clustered about, some more obvious than others as they listened. “If humans do not imitate Cy, I have no opinion on their technology. If humans do, we will teach them the same lesson.”
That was a rather unambiguous threat. “I'm sure humans understand that,” Liam said.
She did not look at him. “Most do. I hope these humans on the Cy ship do. Perhaps someone will explain the color and shape of reality to them.” She struggled to her feet, her massive frame almost too much for her knees. But once she got upright, she headed toward the stairs.
Liam needed to talk to Ondry. They should make time in the schedule for a little extra information trading. Some days Liam missed the old house on Prarownt and the slower lifestyle, but as long as they were tuk-ranked traders on the Calti, he and Ondry had a responsibility to make sure the Grandmother’s trades were carried out. And this was one mission Liam wanted to take because he never wanted to see Rownt and humans fighting, and that meant they had to understand one another well enough to see the mutually assured destruction that would result.
Liam wondered if these humans who had claimed this abandoned Cy ship understood the mess they’d fallen into.
A Guilt of Orphans Part One
“This is the Earth ship Violet requesting assistance. Rownt ship, please respond.” Nasila coughed hard enough to send blood splatters across the screen. “Please,” she whispered without triggering the transmit button. She knew Rownt lacked any sort of altruism, but she had one last card to play. “Rownt ship, we had a radiation leak, and we have children on board. We need assistance.”
Nasila waited. The radio remained silent. Seeing another ship on her sensors was a torture almost greater than the radiation poisoning. The door opened behind her, but she didn’t turn. She prayed he would go back to the nursery once he’d seen she was still alive. She hoped in vain.
“Anything?” Chad asked as he sat in the secondary communication seat.
“Nothing,” she said. A wave of dizziness slammed into her and she grabbed the edge of the control panel. Chad was there at her side, his hand under her elbow to keep her from falling over. “Don’t,” she snapped. Her body was radioactive, and Chad was too young to survive much exposure. As it was, he shouldn’t have been out of the most heavily shielded area.
“I won’t let you fall over.”
“Sooner or later you’ll have to.” Nasila blinked away tears. Her vision was always blurry now. “If I get too sick, keep hailing them, once every hour. Add new information each time—the number of children, the number of dead on the ship, the rad levels on the engine breach—anything. Just keep them interested.”
“If they won’t save us, why bother?” Chad asked. “We’re going to die anyway.”
“You tell them that,” Nasila said. “You tell them that the children here will die.” She coughed. She couldn’t stop the spasms this time, and she turned to the side before dull blobs of blood came up.
“Nasila!” Chad tried to reach her, but she held out a trembling arm. The closer he got, the more radiation he was absorbing. He was only twelve. To kill him it would take a fraction of the radiation as it would an adult. He was probably already doomed to die of cancer, even if the Rownt did take him off this flying coffin.
Chad went around to the other side, and Nasila turned the back of her chair toward him to keep him from trying to offer her some pointless comfort. Then she heard him.
“If you’re not monsters, you have to come save Nasila. She’s the only one left. I don’t know how to help her. You have to come!” He started crying. Nasila didn’t even know if he’d managed to trigger the communication switch, but she hoped so. The manual said the Rownt protected children, and if so, she hoped they suffered guilt for the rest of their long lives for leaving these children to die. Nasila knew she would. She wouldn’t live long with that regret, but she still felt the pain of it.
A computer-generated voice came over the radio. “Young one. Are no other adults present?”
“Just Nasila,” Chad said. “All the other survivors are younger. You have to come save Nasila. She’s coughing up blood, just like the others did before they died. You have to save her. You have to.”
The manual also said Rownt respected logic, and that was the least logical argument Nasila had ever heard, but she didn’t have the breath to tell him that. Her vision grayed as she struggled to get air through the blood in her lungs . It was surreal, hearing the death rattle in her own chest. In the last week, she had lived with the sound, woken to the sound, fallen asleep to it. It had grown fainter as her crewmates had died one by one, but now the rattle filled her ears. She could tell Chad was still talking to the other ship, but the words were lost as she lost her grip on consciousness.
Maybe it was the pointless hope of a dying woman, but she imagined relief in Chad’s voice. She pretended that meant the Rownt would come for the children. She pretended that she had saved the children in the end. It was a last, ridiculous hope she indulged in as she closed her eyes for the last time.
A Guilt of Orphans Part Two
A younger Grandmother appeared at the top of the stair. “Have the Calti grandmothers sent the information on human children yet?”
The eldest Grandmother did not bother turning her old bones to face the new arrival. “Yes, they have. A Grandmother is searching for information on the transferring of custody to new guardians.” She was tempted to comment on the unhealthy pallor of their newest Grandmother, but these children would test the constitution of the eldest Grandmother who had ever lived. The adults had tried to repair their damaged engine and shielding in a failed attempt to save the children. The last adult had died calling for help, and she bad been little more than a child herself. The eldest Grandmother now wished she would have acted more quickly, but she had not understood the situation.
“This shall require visiting Earth space. Do the Grandmothers of the Calti have any advice for doing so?”
For a Grandmother of no more than six hundred years, she was quick to voice her beliefs. Perhaps they had encouraged her too much when she had been tuk-ranked. She had grown used to being one of the senior voices in that rank. “They advise only that human leadership is greatly divided and that any travels should take into account the fact that the Grandmothers and Grandfathers of that world do not have the full trust of the people. Beyond that, we must wait until all the Grandmothers and all those ranked tuk and ka can discuss this.”
She lumbered closer, moving much slower now than she had a month ago when she had been tuk-ranked. Acting older did not endow her with any additional common sense. It was as if she had gone back to a ka-ranked youngling who still cared how others perceived her. “How can Grandmothers not have the trust of the people?” she asked. “Would not the people simply move to a place where they would be under the leadership of wiser Grandmothers?”
“Do not expect human behavior to match Rownt.”
The young Grandmother displayed a stubborn set to her mouth. “Humans possess palteia, do they not?”
The eldest Grandmother resisted the urge to tighten her nostrils. Because Grandmothers had to live together, such insults were not easily forgotten. “They do. Kawt possess loyalty to their cubs.”
The younger Grandmother paled. She should. To assume one point of similarity implied any general rule was the height of illogic. Such an unsubstantiated belief should not be possessed by one who hoped to lead. And while some of her foolishness could be due to the stress of having so many children in pain on the ship, age should temper strong emotions.
After a pause long enough to ensure the young Grandmother had learned to listen before offering unconsidered opinions, the elder said, “Humans know the love of children so even if they are discomforted by our presence in their space, we must attempt to return the children to their people. However, do not assume their people will conform to our expectations. The Calti is full of Rownt who like the Imshee,” she said, not hiding the derision in her voice. Those Grandmothers should spend more time on Prarownt and less time talking to aliens. “Their ability to trade with humans does not prove humans sentient and does not imply we will be equally successful in speaking to such a young and rash race.”
The younger Grandmother was still pale with distress, but she took several minutes to gather herself before speaking. “Many have pointed out that the Calti have two human palteia who live on their ship. They suggest that it might be possible for the children to remain with us.”
The eldest Grandmother whistled at the thought. The children had recoiled in fear from the sight of the smallest Rownt. They’d huddled together like prey. The eldest spoke slowly. “That is not possible.” She would cut off her own tail before distressing those children more.
“The Calti have palteia. Humans can live happily within Rownt societies.”
“Palteia are adults, and in human culture, adulthood has a status not allowed children. Human authorities will want the children returned.”
“Human conflict does not scare us.”
The use of “us” was concerning. A Grandmother, even an elder one, would never go behind the backs of the others to speak to the lower ranks. However, apparently this one had lost at least a century of wisdom in the last ten hours. “The children are frightened by our appearance.” That should not have needed to be said, not when all the Grandmothers had seen the young ones in their distress. “Would you ignore their fear?”
Her nose snapped closed. “You know I would not.”
The eldest Grandmother wondered if she would have to name this one dalit because no Grandmother would ever put her own distress over that of children. And since this conversation had no possible resolution, she chose to walk away before the other female could say something that could not be forgotten. Their ship was too small and it had suffered too many losses in the near past. None of them were emotionally prepared to endure the pain of seeing children suffer, but they were the adults and it fell to them to endure. In silence. Without adding more stress.
So, as much as her eggless nest inspired an urge to claim a child and tuck her under an arm, she would do what was best for the children. She would return them to their home planet. And then perhaps it was time for them to return to Prarownt. It was possible the ship would not take off again, at least not with any of the current Rownt onboard. Some losses were too great for a community, and the bonds that held Rownt together provided more pain than protection.
When she reached the upper level of the temple, she let the silence settle into her bones. It was disquieting—a silent temple. It was as if the heart of their great ship was slowing, weighed down by their griefs the way an elderly Rownt was crushed by her own bones.
She hoped most of the Grandmothers were out providing a calming influence for the younger members of the crew, but she headed for the private command room accessible to Grandmothers. She had expected to find a half dozen of the more technically minded Grandmothers at the computers. Instead, one was working.
The Grandmother who had the most aptitude for alien language sat at a computer, reading with great intensity. The eldest Grandmother stood near, waiting for her to acknowledge her. Whatever documents the Calti had sent, they demanded the Grandmother’s attention. The eldest settled in for a long wait. An hour passed before the one with language skills turned away from the computer, all color gone from her face.
“Grandmother?” the eldest asked, alarmed at the expression. Unlike the young Grandmother earlier, this one had proven her wisdom and age through many difficulties. However, right now she was pale enough that one might expect she had seen a kawt.
“They have orphanages.”
The eldest Grandmother settled into a seat and attempted to understand the word. Every Rownt knew orphans, but the unfamiliar suffix had to be a human language structure. “Will you define that word?” She felt discomfort at the direct question. Another Grandmother would or would not provide her expertise. It was her choice. However, all of them were distressed and manners had been set aside.
The other Grandmother clenched her hands until the knuckles appeared white. “They have orphans who no adult will claim. Those orphans are left, many of them together in one place and under the care of a few adults who trade their time for money but who maintain little to no emotional connection with the younglings.”
The idea was so horrifying that the eldest could not even understand the words. It was as if she lost her ability to process her own language. However, the other was not finished.
“The Calti found statistics on how many of those children were grievously harmed versus which were mildly psychologically damaged. If we return those children, some will have genetic matches who will cherish them, but some will be left in places to suffer great harm.”
In nine hundred years, the eldest had only felt a true killing rage three times. The first had been when her child had died, the victim of carelessness on a ship too old for such mistakes. The second had been during their recent loss. And now she felt her fangs itch with homicidal rage. She would tear all humanity out of existence for allowing such horrors. She would destroy the Calti for not removing every child from an orphanage once they uncovered the truth.
“What will we do?” the other Grandmother asked. “They fear us, but we cannot turn children over for others to harm.” The Grandmother turned to the eldest as if she had some answer—as if she had, in her nine hundred years of life, come across a similar situation. However, she had no solution and she had no explanation for how some human adults would expose themselves to radiation in order to save children while others would leave them in orphanages. Orphanages. The word was an abomination.
“Let the Grandmothers speak together,” she said, because she had no other words. The Grandmothers would have to come up with some plan to present to the ka and ye-ranks. They suffered already and could not endure more uncertainty. However, that plan would have to protect the children or those same Rownt would not wait until the Grandmother landed the ship before leaving it. While rare, she had known of Rownt who walked into space rather than remain on a ship where the Grandmothers were disastrously wrong, and when the welfare of children were at stake, every Grandmother had best remember that.
A Guilt of Orphans Part Three
Liam blew out a breath. He had no idea what he was supposed to say to any of these Grandmothers, so he turned his back on thousands of years of experience and sat on the floor in front of a nine- or ten-year-old boy with blue eyes.
“Hi. I’m Liam.”
The boy nodded, but his gaze kept darting around the room. Liam imagined that all those huge Grandmothers must’ve seemed overwhelming for someone who had lost his whole ship—his whole family. For him, they must’ve resembled dinosaurs. Personally, Liam was noticing how much smaller these Grandmothers were—they resembled Tuk-status females more than millennia-old Grandmothers with the wisdom to rule a ship. Maybe that was why they had to ask the Calti for help.
“What’s your name?” Liam asked the little boy.
He focused on Liam. “Chad,” he said softly. “Is Nasila okay?”
The ship’s eldest Grandmother gazed at Liam without showing any emotion, and Ondry had paled. Liam closed his eyes and tried to find the words to explain death to a child who had already seen too much of it. Liam knew a lot of humans flew in old ships—the war had redirected too many resources to the fighting. But that had been a distant problem up until this moment.
Now a Rownt ship had a dozen orphans and no consensus about how to handle them. Maybe Ondry held Liam
up as some expert on humanity, but Liam didn’t have any answers.
“She’s not okay, is she?” Chad hiccupped in the middle.
“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “The Grandmothers didn’t reach her in time.” Even if they had boarded earlier, she had gone into the radiation zone too many times to survive. All the adults had. Until the end, they’d tried to fix their broken old ship to save the children. That had made an impact on the Grandmothers, no matter how much they put on stoic expressions. They probably didn’t want strangers from the Calti to see their distress.
“Why didn’t they come?” Chad looked around as if he was surrounded by monsters.
“Rownt see the world differently,” Liam said, and that was the worst explanation he had ever offered to anyone. He took a breath and tried again. “They move slowly, and they didn’t understand what had happened.”
“You mean they were afraid?” Chad wrinkled his nose.
“They didn’t want to make a mistake. They don’t understand people or why your ship was so damaged.”
“There was an explosion.” Chad’s eyes shone with tears, and in the background, Liam heard Ondry whispering. He was probably explaining human tears, but for once Liam didn’t have time to pay attention to what Ondry might be doing.
“How long ago?”