'Four four's are sixteen. Five four's are twenty. Six four's are twenty-four. Seven ...'
... too interested! And that was a silly thing to think, because how could she tell if they were interested? She couldn't even see their faces, because all the ones in front were bending backwards-upside-down, like the one she'd seen in the garden...
'... four's are twenty-eight. Eight four's are thirty-two. Nine four's are ...'
... just standing there, the whole row of them, with their back legs or arms or whatever-they-were sticking up in the air, and their heads dipped down in front so they could stare at her out of the big glittery eye in the middle of each black head. . .
'... thirty-six. Ten four's are forty. Eleven ...'
What did they want, anyhow? Why didn't they do something? '... four's are forty-four. Twelve four's ...'
The Space Girl oath was hard to remember if you were trying to think about other things at the same time; but Deborah knew the multiplication tables by heart, and she could keep talking while she was thinking.
Daydanda was fascinated. She had guessed at it, in her chamber the night before ... more than guessed, really. She would have been certain, if the notion were not so flatly impossible in terms of all knowledge and experience. It was precisely that conflict between perception and precedent that had determined her to make the trip out here.
And she was right! These two were neither Lady and consort, nor Mother and baby, but only two children: a half-grown daughter and a babe in arms. Two young wingless ones, alone, afraid, and ... Motherless?
Eagerly, Daydanda poured out her questionings:
Where did they come from?
What sort of beings were they?
Where was their Mother?
'Twelve four's are forty-eight. One five is five. Two five's are ten, Three ...'
The important thing was just to keep talking—Dee knew that from when she had so much trouble at the garden. As long as she was saying something, anything at all, she could keep the crazy stuff out of her head.
'... five's are fifteen. Four five's are twenty. Five five's ...'
It was harder this time, though. At the garden, with the drumbeat-heartbeat sound that felt like Mommy's voice, all she had to do was think words. But now, it was stuff like thinking Petey was saying things to her—or feeling like somebody else was asking her a lot of silly questions. And every time she stopped for breath at all, she'd start wanting to answer a lot of things inside her head that there wasn't even anybody around to have asked.
'... are twenty-five. Six five's are thirty.'
The aching soreness in her body from the jolting journey through the forest ... the instant's agony when the sunlight seared her eye ... the nagging worry over the disturbed Bigheads ... all these were forgotten, or submerged, as the Lady experienced for the first time in her life the frustration of her curiosity.
Every answer she could get from the Strange child came in opposites. Each question brought a pair of contradictory replies ... if it brought any reply at all. Half the time, at least, the Stranger was refusing reception entirely, and for some obscure reason, broadcasting great quantities of arithmetic—most of it quite accurate, but all of it irrelevant to the present situation.
Would they remain here? the Lady asked. Or would they return to their own House? Had they come to build a House here? Or was the Wing-like structure on the blackened ground truly a House instead?
The answers were many and also various.
They would not stay, the Stranger seemed to say, nor would they leave. The structure from which she had emerged was a House, but it was also Wings: Unfamiliar concept in a single symbol—Wings-House? Both!
Their Mother was nearby—inside—but—dead? No! Not dead!
How could the child possibly answer a sensible question sensibly if she started broadcasting sets of numbers every time anyone tried to communicate with her? Very rude, Daydanda thought, and very stupid. Kackot eagerly confirmed her opinion, and moved a step closer to the litter, as if preparing to commence the long march home.
The Lady had no time to reprimand him. At just that moment, the Strange child also broke into motion—perhaps also feeling that the interview was over,
'... Thirty. Seven five's are thirty-fi ...'
One of them moved!
Just a couple of steps, but Dee, panicked, forgot to keep talking and started a dash for the rocket; her head was full of questions again, and part of her mind was trying to answer them, without her wanting to at all, while another part decided not to go back inside, with a mixed-up kind of feeling, as if Petey didn't want her to.
And that was silly, because she could hear Petey crying now. He wanted her to come in, all right, or at least to come and get him. She couldn't tell for sure, the way he was yelling, whether he was scared and mad at being left alone—or just mad and wanting to get picked up. It sounded almost more like he thought he was being left out or something, and wanted to get in on the fun.
If he thinks this is fun...!
'We're lost, that's what we are,' she said out loud, as if she were answering real questions someone had asked, instead of crazy ones inside her own head. 'I don't know where we are. We came from Starhope. That's a different planet. A different world. I don't know where ... One five is five,' she remembered. 'Two sixes are seven. I mean two seven's are twenty-one ... I can't think anything right!'
It really didn't matter what she said; as long as she kept talking. If she answered the silly questions right out loud that was all right too, because they couldn't understand her anyhow. How would they know Earthish?
It was possible that the Stranger's sudden move to return to the Wings-House was simply a response to Kackot's gesture of readiness to depart. The Lady promised herself an opportunity to express her irritation with her consort—soon. For the moment, however, every bit of energy she could muster went into a pleacommand-call-invitation to the Strange child to remain outside the shelter and continue to communicate.
The Stranger hesitated, paused—but even before that, she had begun, perversely, now that no questions were being asked, to release a whole new flood of semi-information.
More contradictions, of course!
These two, the Stranger children, were—something hard to comprehend—not-aware-of-where-they-were.
They were in need of help, but not helpless.
The elder of the two—the daughter who now stood wavering in her intentions, just beside the open barrier of the Wings-House —was obviously acting in the capacity of nurse. Yet her self-pattern of identity claimed reproductive status!
Certainly the girl's attitude towards her young sibling was an odd mixture of what one might expect to find in nurse or Mother. Possibly the relationship could be made clearer by contact with the babe himself. There was little enough in the way of general information to be expected from such a source, but here he might be helpful. Tentatively, with just a small part of her mind, Daydanda reached out to find the babe, still concentrating on her effort to keep the older one from departing ...
'Food ... mama ... suck ... oh, look!'
The Lady promptly turned her full attention to the babe.
After the obstructionist tactics, and confused content of the Strange girl's mind, the little one's response to a brushing con-tact was doubly startling. Now that she was fully receptive to them, thoughts came crowding into the Mother's mind, thoughts unformed and infantile, but buoyantly eager and hopeful.
'Love ... food ... good ... mama .. . suck ... see ... see ...'
'Three seven's are twenty one!' Dee remembered triumphantly, and began feeling a lot better. They were all standing still again, for one thing; and her head felt clearer, too.
She moved a cautious step backwards, watching them as she went, and not having any trouble now remembering her multiplication.
'Four seven's are twenty-eight ...'
Just a few more steps. If she could just get back inside, and get the door closed, she wouldn'
t open it again for anything. She'd stay right there with Petey till some people came..?
'... MAMA ... SUCK ... see ... see ... good ... love ...'
It might have been one of her own latest brood, so easy and familiar was the contact. Just about the same age-level and emotional development, too. Daydanda was suddenly imperatively anxious to see the babe directly, to hold it in her own arms, to feel what sort of strange shape and texture could accommodate such warmly customary longings and perceptions.
'The babe!' she commanded. 'I wish to have the babe brought to me!' But the nurse to whom she had addressed the order hung back miserably.
'The babe, I said!' The Lady released all her pent-up irritation at the Stranger child, in one peremptory blast of anger at her own daughter. `Now!'
'Lady, I cannot ... the light ... forgive me, my Lady ...'
With her own eye still burning in its socket, Daydanda hastily blessed the nursing daughter, and excused her. Even standing on the fringes of the bright-lit area must be frightening to the wingless ones. But whom else could she send? The fliers were unaccustomed to handling babes...
Kackot…
He was good with babes, really. She felt better about sending him than she would have had she trusted the handling of the Stranger to a nurse. Kackot himself felt otherwise; but at the moment, the Lady's recognition of his discomfiture was no deterrent to her purpose; she had not forgotten his ill-advised move a little earlier.
The consort could not directly disobey. He went forward, doubtfully enough, and stood at the open entranceway, peering in.
'Oh, look I ... love ... look!'
The babe's welcoming thoughts were unmistakable; Kackot must have felt them as Daydanda did. Stranger or no, the near presence of a friendly and protective entity made it beg to be picked up, petted, fondled, loved—and hopefully, though not, the Mother thought, truly hungrily—perhaps also to be fed.
Meantime, however, there was the older child to reckon with. The babe was eager to come; the girl, Daydanda sensed, was determined not to allow it. Once more, the Mother tried to reach the Strange daughter with empathy and affection and reassurrance. Once again, she met with only blankness and refusal. Then she sent a surge of loving invitation to the babe, and got back snuggling eagerness and warmth—and suddenly, from the elder one, a lessening of fear and anger.
Daydanda smiled inside herself; she thought she knew now how to penetrate the strange defences of the child.
XI
DEE STOOD STILL and watched it happen. She saw the nervous fussy-bug—the one that had scared her when he moved before—go right over to the rocket and look inside. He passed right by her, close enough to touch; she was going to do something about it, until Petey started talking again.
He said, `Baby come to mama.'
At least, she thought he said it. Then she almost thought she heard a Mother say, `It's all right; don't worry. Baby wants to come to mama.'
'Mother's dead!' Deborah screamed at them all, at Petey and the bugs, without ever even opening her mouth. 'Five seven's are thirty-five,' she said hurriedly. She'd been forgetting to keep talking, that's what the trouble was. 'Six seven's are forty-two. Seven..?
And still, she couldn't get the notion out of her head that it was her own mother's voice she'd heard. 'Seven seven's..? she said desperately, and couldn't keep from turning around to look at the part of the rocket where Mommy was—would be—had been when—
The smooth gleaming metal nose looked just the same as ever, now it was cool again. There was no way of knowing anything had ever happened in there. If anything had happened ...
Deborah stared and stared, as if looking long enough and hard enough would let her see right through the triple hull into the burned-out inside: the wrecked control room, and the two char-red bodies that had been Father and Mother.
'... seven seven's is forty—forty seven? ... eight ... ?'
She floundered, forgetting, she was too small, and she didn't know what to do about anything, and she wanted her mother.
`It's all right. Stand still. Don't worry. Baby wants to come to mama.'
It wasn't her own mother's voice, though; that wasn't the way Mommy talked. If it was these bugs that were making her hear crazy things and putting silly questions in her head ... seven seven's ... seven seven's is ... just stand still ... don't worry ... everything will be all right ... seven seven's ... I don't know ... don't worry, all right, stand still, seven's is...
`Forty-nine!' she shrieked. The fussy-bug was all the way inside, and she'd been standing there like any dumb kid, hearing thoughts and voices that weren't real, and not knowing what to do.
`Forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two,' she shouted. She could have been just counting like that all along, instead of trying to remember something like seven times seven. Get out of there, you awful hairy horrible old thing! `Fifty-three, fifty-four. You leave my brother alone!'
The fussy-bug came crawling out of the airlock, with Petey —soft little pink-and-wet Petey—clutched in its sticky arms.
'Fifty-five,' she tried to shout, but it came out like a creak instead. You leave him alone! her whole body screamed; but her throat was too dry and felt as if somebody had glued it together, and she couldn't make any words come out at all. She started forward to grab the baby.
'Come to Mama,' Petey said. 'Nice Mama. Like. Good.'
She was looking right at him all the time, and she knew he wasn't really talking. Just drooling the way he always did, and making happy-baby gurgling noises. He certainly didn't act scared—he was cuddling up to the hairy-bug just as if it was a person.
'Come to Mama,' the baby crooned inside her head; she should have made a grab for him right then, but somehow she wasn't sure...
The fussy-bug walked straight across the Bearing to the tree where the big box was, and handed Petey inside.
'Oo-oo-ooh, Mama!' Petey cried out with delight.
'Mommy's dead!' Deborah heard herself shouting, so she knew her voice was working again. 'Dead, she's dead, can't you understand that? Any dope could understand that much. She's dead!'
Nobody paid any attention to her. Petey was laughing out loud; and the sound got mixed up with some other kind of laughter in her head that was hard to not-listen to, because it felt good.
XII
HOLDING THE BABE tenderly, Daydanda petted and patted and stroked it, and made pleased laughter from them both. Cautiously, she experimented with balancing the intensities of the two contacts, trying to gauge the older child's reactions to each variation. Reluctantly, as she observed the results, she came to the conclusion that the Strange daughter had indeed been consciously attempting to block communication.
It was unheard-of; therefore impossible—but impossibilities were commonplace today. The Mother's own presence at this scene was a flat violation of tradition and natural law.
Nevertheless:
The child had emerged from the Wings-House, in response to a Homecalling pattern.
Therefore, she was not an enemy.
Therefore she could not possibly feel either fear or hostility towards Daydanda's Household.
These things being true, what reason could she have for desiring to prevent communication?
Answer: Obviously, despite the logic of the foregoing, the Strange child was afraid.
Why? There was no danger to her in this contact.
'Stupid,' Kackot grumbled; 'just plain stupid. As much brains as a Bighead. Lady, it is getting late; we have a long journey home ...'
Daydanda let him rumble on. A child was likely to behave stupidly when frightened. She remembered, and sharply reminded her consort, of the time a young winged one of her own, a very bright boy normally—was it the fifth Family he was in? No, the sixth—had wandered into the Bigheads' corral, and been too petrified with fear to save himself, or even to call for help.
The boy had been afraid, she remembered now, that he would call the Bigheads' attention to himself, if he tried to communicate with
anyone, so he closed off against the world. Of course, he knew in advance that the Bigheads were dangerous. If the Stranger here had somehow decided to be fearful in advance, perhaps her effort to block contact was motivated the same way ...
'The Homecalling,' Kackot reminded her; 'she answered a Homecalling.'
'She is a Stranger,' Daydanda pointed out. 'Perhaps she responded to friendship without identifying it ... I don't know ...'
But she would find out. Once again she centred her attention on the babe, keeping only a loose contact with the older child.
Dee kept watching the box on the ground that had the big bug inside it. She couldn't see much of the bug, and she couldn't see Petey at all, after the other bug handed him in. But it wasn't just Petey she was watching for.
It was that big bug that was—talking to her. Well, anyhow, that was making it sound as if Petey talked to her and putting questions in her head and...
She didn't know how it did it, but she couldn't pretend any more that it wasn't really happening. Somebody was picking and poking at her inside her head, and she didn't know how they did it or why, or what to do about it. But she was sure by now that the big bug in the box was the one.
'Let's see now—seven seven's is forty-nine.' Just counting didn't seem to work so well. 'Seven eight's is ... I mean, eight seven's is ... I don't know I can't remember ... We came for Daddy and Mommy to make reports. That's what they always do. Daddy's a Survey Engineer and Mommy's a Geologist. They work for the Planetary Survey Commiss ... I mean they did ...'
It was none of their business. And they did know Earthish!
If they didn't, how could they talk to her?
'Seven seven's is forty-nine. Seven seven's is forty-nine. Seven seven's ...'
At the first exchange, the Lady had put it down to incompetence, but she could no longer entertain that excuse. The Strangers had no visible antennae, yet the ease of communication with the babe made it clear that they could receive as well as broadcast readily—if they wished.
Daughters of Earth and Other Stories Page 23