But she could never even have got through the narrow double-arch entrance to the ship. The ship ... that too, then, was a machine! It was a structure; a builded thing; not-alive; yet it could fly...
These two Strangers were very different creatures from a very different race; she began to understand that now. The striking similarities were purely superficial. The differences...
The thought of the babe tugged at her mind, asking warmth, asking food, and she could not think of him as Strange at all. There were differences; there were samenesses. No need now to make a counting of how many of which kind. Only to learn as much as could be learned, while she determined whether it was possible or desirable to keep the two Strange ones within the Household.
Very well then: these machines are not alive ... not all the time. They live only when the Strange daughter permits it, in most cases by moving a small organ projecting from the outside. Not so different, if you stopped to think of it, from the Bigheads, who might be counted not-alive most of the time. It was hard to adjust to the notion of working members of a Household existing on that low level, but ... these were Strangers.
And still the child maintained the machines were not alive at all, not members of her Household, merely structures, animated by...
By what? The things absorbed energy from somewhere. Through the little pipes ... apparently almost pure energy, the stuff the child called electric. What was the source of the electric?
The Strange daughter had a symbol and not-clear picture in her mind: a thing with rotating brushes, and a hard core of some kind. A thing kept under a round shelter, made of the same fabric as the ship ... metal. From under this metal housing came wires through which electric flowed to the machines ... much as cement flowed from the snout of a mason, or honey from the orifice of a nurse.
Into this machine, food was ... no, the child's symbol was a different one, though the content of the symbol was the same; food designed for a machine was fuel. Very well: fuel was fed only to the ... the Mother-machine!
Now the whole thing was beginning to make sense. The machines were comparable—in relationship to the Stranger's Household—to the winged or crawling creatures that sometimes co-existed with the Household of Daydanda's own people, sharing a House in symbiotic economy, but having, of course, a distinct biology and therefore, a separate Mother and separate reproductive system.
The generator, said the child, supplied warmth and nourishment and vital power to the other machines; the generator was fed by the humans (the child's symbol for her own people); the machines worked for the humans.
'Is the generator of machines alive?' the Lady asked.
'No. I told you before..?
'Am I alive?'
`Yes. Of course.'
The wonder was not that the Strange daughter failed to include the symbiotes in her semantic concept of 'life', but rather that she did include Daydanda, and Daydanda's Household. The Lady abandoned the effort to communicate such an abstraction, and ask if she might be shown the Mother-machine.
Wavering impression of willingness, but ...
The thing was on the other side of a door. The daughter went through one doorway into the room she had first entered, approached the far wall, and turned sideways, to demonstrate in great detail a mechanism of some sort (not one of the machines; no wires connected it to the Mother-machine) whose function apparently was educational. It created visual, auditory, and olfactory hallucinations, utilizing information previously registered on strips of somehow-sensitized fabric inside it ... roughly analagous to the work of a teaching-nurse, who could register and retain for instructive purposes information supplied by the Mother, and never fully available to the nurse in her own functioning, nor in any way necessary for her to 'know'. Thus an unwinged nurse could give instruction in the art of flying, and the biology of reproduction. But, once again, the Stranger's mechanism was—or so the child said—simply an artifact, a made thing, without life of its own, and this time it was even more puzzling than before, because the object in question was self-contained—had its own internal source of electric, and needed no connecting wires with the Mother-machine.
Mother-machine ... Mother!
Daydanda reacted so sharply to the sudden connection of data that Kackot, asleep in the next chamber, woke and came rushing to her side. Smiling, she shared her thoughts with him. Machine-Mother and Stranger-Mother both ... behind a door!
The same door?
'The source of electric is behind the other door?' The Mother-bug's question formed clearly in her mind this time. Dee looked up from the T-Z. There wasn't any other door. She looked all around but she couldn't see one. There was just the airlock, and the door to the workroom and kitchen in the back, but the Mother didn't mean either of those.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said, and went back to get the clothes out of the soil-remover, and thawed out a piece of cake from the freeze.
Daydanda looked at one and the same time through the eyes of her son in the Strange ship, and through those of the Stranger. Both focused on the same part of the same wall. Through the son's eyes, the Lady saw a rectangular outline in the surface of the wall, and a closure device set in one side. Through the child's eyes, she could see only a smooth unbroken stretch of wall.
'There is no door,' the child informed her clearly ... then turned around and left the room, once more broadcasting meaningless symbols, and accurate, but inappropriate, arithmetic.
Dee made sure she had enough clothes for a while. She didn't want to come back here right away. Maybe later on. She'd have to come back later on, of course. She couldn't really stay with the bugs. But...
She took a long strip off the roll of bottles, and a lot of milk, and all the powdered stuff she could find that looked any good. They probably had water there, anyhow. Things out of the freeze would spoil if she took them, so she left them for later, when she came back to the rocket.
She had to make a couple of trips to get everything out to the litter: the clothes and food and the T-Z and Petey and some toys for Petey; and the Mother-bug or the son-bug, one of them, kept trying to say things at her, but she wouldn't listen. She just started saying the Space Girl oath again; and when she couldn't remember it, even some of the silly multiplication, because she didn't feel like talking right now.
XX
DAYDANDA WAS SHORT of time, and entirely out of patience. The Strange child's antics had gone from the puzzling to the incomprehensible, and the Lady of the House had other concerns ... many of them now aggravated by inattention over the preceding days. She simply could not continue to devote nearly all her thought, nor nearly so much of her time, to any one matter.
The children had brought back with them provisions sufficient for a few days at least, and the Mother was satisfied that their presence in the Household for that period represented no menace to the members of her own Families.
There was no purpose to thinking about their continued stay until the Encyclopaedic Seat completed a biological analysis. Nor could she determine how much responsibility she was willing to take for possible damage to the Wings-House in further exploration and examination, until she knew for certain that she could offer the Strange children a permanent home in her own Household.
The flying son who had accompanied the two of them on their trip to the rocket, had informed her that the barrier on which the daughter's fear seemed centred was, like the rest of the Strange structure, composed of metal, and that this metal was the hardest wood he had ever seen. It could be cut through, he thought, but not without damage to the fabric that might not be repairable. As for discovering the secret of the mechanism that was designed to hold the door closed or allow it to open, he was pessimistic.
There was nothing to do, then, but put the matter from her mind until she had more information.
Accordingly, the Mother gave instructions—when all her children were in communion, after the evening Homecalling—that every member of the Household was to treat the
Strange guests with kindliness and respect; to guard them from dangers they might fail to recognize; to co-operate with their needs or wishes, insofar as they could express them; and to offer just such friendship—no more and no less—as the young Strangers themselves seemed to desire. She then assigned a well-trained elder daughter (a nurse might have done better in some ways, but she wanted a written record of any information acquired, and that meant it had to be a winged one) to maintain full-time contact with the Strange daughter, so as to answer the visitors' questions and to keep the Household informed of their activities.
With that, she turned her mind to more familiar problems of her Household.
Dee was glad she'd decided to come back. Of course, they couldn't really stay here, but just for a little while, it was interesting.
The bugs were really pretty nice people she thought, and giggled at the silly way that sounded ... calling bugs people. But it was hard not to, because they thought about themselves that way, and acted that way: and once you got used to how they looked, (And how they looked at you, too: it still felt funny having them turn their backs to you when you talked to them, so they could see you) it was just natural to think of them that way.
Anyhow, they were all nice to her, and especially nice to Petey. She could 'talk' to them pretty easily now, too; but she had an idea she wasn't really doing it herself. There was a ... big-sister? ... bug who was sort of keeping an eye on her, she thought. Not a real eye, of course; she giggled again. Just the kind of an eye that could see pictures in somebody else's head. But any time she wanted to know something, such as whether it was all right to go out, and where could she find some water to mix the food with, and—as now—how to get to one of those gardens—the big sister-bug would start telling her almost before she asked.
And Dee thought that probably most of the other bugs she talked to were at least partway using the big-sister's mind—the way the Mother-bug had helped her 'hear' what Petey 'said'—because now they all seemed to have pretty much the same kind of 'voice'. But it was different from the Mother's, or from the one who went to the rocket with her.
That gave her a strange feeling sometimes ... thinking that maybe the big-sister one was listening in on her all the time, but at least it wasn't like with the Mother-bug, who'd make that prickly hurting if you thought something she didn't like. The big-sister-bug didn't try to tell her what to do or what not to do, or put ideas in her head, or anything like that. So if she wanted to just listen all the time, Deborah supposed it didn't matter much. And it certainly was useful.
Petey was stuck in the mud again; Dee helped him get loose. She couldn't carry him around all the time, so she'd finally settled for not putting any clothes on him except a diaper, and just letting him go as gucky as he wanted to. He'd learned to crawl pretty well on the soft surface; it was just once in a while that he'd put an arm in too deep, or something like that. But he didn't mind, so she didn't either.
She still couldn't see any garden; just the trees and the mud. 'How far is it?' she asked or wondered.
'Not much more,' Big-sister told her. 'Walk around the next tree, and go to ... to your right.'
Just a little farther on, after she turned, Dee saw the sudden splurge of colour. It was a different garden from the one she'd seen the first time; at least the big-sister-bug said it was. The other one was for the tiny babies—the ones who were really about the same age as Petey, but about half his size. This one was for the next oldest hunch, but they were all just about Petey's size, so maybe he could play with them.
It looked just the same, though; the same kind of crazy combinations of colours and shapes. Everything was just as she re-membered, except for not being scared now; and when she got right up to it, she saw these bugs weren't nursing on the plants the way the others had been doing. Once in a while, one of there would stop and suck a little while on a tendril; mostly, though they were chasing each other around, and kind of playing games—just like kindergarten kids any place.
There were two big bugs—the kind that had dark-coloured skins, and had eyes, but didn't have any wings. These ones were nurses, Dee figured. There were others just like these, with different kinds of noses—and some with different kinds of hands—who did other things; but these ones had to be nurses, because they were watching the kids. They were sitting outside the gar-den, not doing anything, and Dee felt funny about going inside, partly because it was supposed to be for little kids, partly because she was afraid she'd step on one of the plants or something like that. So she let Petey crawl, and she sat down next to the nurses, and just watched.
It was warm in the forest. It was always warm there, but she was getting to like it. She wasn't wearing anything except shorts now, and the only thing she minded was always feeling a little bit damp, because the air was so wet. But altogether, she had to admit it was better at least than being in the rocket all by themselves; shut up in there as they had been, Petey was always cranky and fussing about something. Now he was having a good time, so he didn't keep bothering her. And she had the T-Z set back in their room, now, and you didn't even need a light on to work that. Of course, she didn't have very many film-strips for it; she'd have to go back to the rocket pretty soon and get some more.
They'd need some more food, too, and she'd have to get Petey's diapers dean again. She wished there was some way to take along frozen food; then she wouldn't have to fuss around with mixing things with water, and all that, but...
The big-sister-bug was asking her what she meant by 'frozen food', but she'd tried to explain that before.
Anyhow, she had to go back there pretty soon, if she and Petey decided to stay here for a while, because she had to leave a message, so that when somebody came to rescue them, they'd know where to look.
'You wish to visit the Wings-House now?' Big-sister asked.
'It's kind of late today,' Dee said; `tomorrow, I guess.' Sometimes she talked out loud like that, even though she knew it didn't make any difference. All she had to do was think what she meant, but sometimes she just talked out loud from habit.
'The litter goes swiftly,' said Big-sister. 'If you wish to make the visit now ...'
Tomorrow! This time she didn't say it ... just thought it extra hard. Big-sister stopped bothering her about it, and she sat still and watched Petey crawling around and grabbing at the pretty colours.
XXI
DAYDANDA RECEIVED THE report personally, and trusted not even her own memory to retain it all, but relayed to three elder daughters, so that whatever errors any one might make in transcription, the records of the others could correct. There was so much technical symbology throughout the message—even though the clerk at the Seat tried to keep it intelligible—that she could not try to comprehend it entirely as it came. She would have to study and examine the meaning of each datum, before she could fully determine what it meant in terms of the questions she had to answer for her Household and the Strangers.
If she had only had a pair of Scientists! Communicating with each other, they would have known the purpose of the analysis; communicating with her, Mother and sons, there would have been no problem of translation of symbols. But it was hardly possible to give full information to the Scientists at the Seat, when many of them were from neighbouring or nearby Households, whose best interests were by no means identical with her own. Of course, they vowed impartiality when they took up Encydopaedic work, but...
The next breeding, definitely ... ! (Rackot, daily more sensitive, came to the archway and peered in. He had taken to working and napping in the other room these few days. She sent a gentle negative.) The very next breeding would have to be limited to a pair of Scientists! Though now that she had put it off so long, and the youngest babes were already growing too big for fondling ...
Scientists it would be! The Household needed them. All very well to follow easily along the drive to procreate, but it was necessary, also, to safeguard those already born. And right now, the problem was not one of breeding, or breeding
inhibition, but of making enough sense out of the message so that she could come to some decision about the Strangers.
She had the three daughters bring her their copies, and lay for a long while on her couch, studying and comparing and making rapid notes. Finally, she called to Kackot, and thought as she did so that it would perhaps do something to soothe his wounded feelings, if he felt she was unable to make this decision without his help.
He listened, soberly, and did what she knew she could count on him to do: reformulated, repeated, and advised according to what she wished. Since the report clearly established that the Strangers represented no biologic danger to the Household—their exudations were entirely non-toxic, and some of the solid matter was even useable, containing large quantities of semi-digested cellulose—it was clearly her duty to keep them in the Household, and learn as much as possible from them. Since the report further indicated that normal food would be non-toxic to the Strangers (and Mother and consort both tended to avoid the question, unanswered in the report, of whether normal feeding would supply all the nourishment the two Strange children needed), it was possible to extend indefinite hospitality to them.
(After all, if there were elements of nourishment they required beyond what the fungus-foods and wood-honey offered, they could continue to make use of their own supplies ... which would last longer if supplemented by native food. So Daydanda eased her conscience.)
The question of how far to go in examining the rocket was more complicated. The ethic involved...
'There is no ethic,' Kackot reminded her stiffly, 'above the duty of a Mother to her Household. The obligations to a Stranger in the House are sacred, but ...' He dronned his formality. andended, smiling and once more at ease '... non-biologic!' So, again, Daydanda soothed her conscience.
Daughters of Earth and Other Stories Page 27