Gradually I grow aware of a presence in the room, more than one presence—something hot, a disturbance in the air. I open my eyes, but see nothing.
“Who’s there?” I ask.
“You know who we are.”
The words are like a blow. My head snaps back, as if hit by a large, open hand. The room is empty.
No, not empty. Floating an arm’s length in front of me are three faintly shimmering, insubstantial bands of light. They stretch almost floor to ceiling in a room twice my height. The vaporous bands, no thinker than my wrist, curve and twist as though blown by a soft breeze. The air in the room is still.
“We have a great interest in you, Khe.”
The words come more gently now, like a sister’s stroke on my neck. I hear them not with my ear holes but in my mind. Only one of the vaporous beings seems to communicate. The others hang back. I don’t see emotion colors from any of them.
I know what they are. “Why are the Powers interested in me?”
The three streaks quiver, undulating like ropes flicked by a skilled hand.
“We forget that is what you call us. We call ourselves lumani.”
My neck lights with the muddy gray of fear.
Bracing my arms, I sit up and make my voice sound as calm as possible. “Why are the lumani interested in me?”
“I, in particular, am called Weast,” the one speaking says.
Is it ignoring my question or did I interrupt the introduction and it continued on anyway? The other two lumani shimmer, and then contract into small, hazy balls of almost light. The balls sink down slowly and spread out until the entire floor glitters with tiny sparks. Weast remains shaped like a vaporous band.
My spots glow with fear colors. My voice sounds calmer than I feel. “Am I of interest to the lumani, or to Weast?”
A sound like the rumble of distant thunder vibrates through me. Laughter. The lumani thinks I’ve said something funny.
When the thunder dies away, Weast says, “To all, which includes, to a greater degree, I.”
“Why you more than the others?”
The band vibrates. “We have decided that I am to be your donor.”
Every muscle in my body tenses. My emotion spots flair blue-red with anxiety.
“Are you fatigued?” Weast asks. “You should be well rested first, to make a good decision.”
A thousand years the lumani have been watching us, and they can’t tell anxiety from exhaustion. They can’t read the colors of our spots. The realization is comforting. What they don’t know can maybe be used against them.
“I am well-rested,” I say and don’t flinch at the lie. My spots light, but it doesn’t matter if I lie or tell the truth to these beings—they can’t tell the difference.
The glittering band that is Weast expands to twice the width it was. “Good. We will talk now. Do you have more questions?”
I nod, and wonder how that gesture looks to the lumani, what it indicates to them if anything. I wonder why the other two have spread out over the floor while Weast has not, and why Weast has suddenly doubled in size. Are these lumani gestures, filled with significance I can’t read?
“What do you mean by being my donor?” I ask.
Weast undulates, the sides of its form swelling and shrinking in waves from top to bottom. I try to open my awareness to Weast and the others and grasp their emotions. All I feel is curiosity. But no, there is something else coming from them—desperation.
“There is an essence,” Weast says, “a bit of chemicals in every fiber of your being that makes each doumana who she is, distinct from any others. All living things are what they are because of this essence, which they received from their progenitors. We, too have this substance. Ours is different from yours, but not so different as you might think when looking at the ways we are made.
The vaporous band undulates faster. Is it excited?
“We will adjust your chemical and electrical levels,” Weast continues. “In this way, we believe you will become enough like us to provide offspring. When you are more lumani, I will donate some of my essence to yours. My essence will find a place there and grow. Our species will continue.”
My mouth drops open but I can’t speak. My emotion spots riot: gray-green of disgust, muddy-gray of fear, pale-blue of despair.
“Why?” I manage to say.
Weast’s form stops moving. Its outsides harden like a shell, so that thousands of tiny lights seem to be blinking inside a glass box.
“When we came to this world, we discovered that we aged more slowly. Perhaps something happened while we were not conscious during our traveling here. Perhaps it is something in the air, soil, or magnetic force of the planet. We have tried to discover the reason, but failed.”
My mind spins. These, then, are the same lumani who came originally to our world longer ago than I can imagine. Azlii was right when she said the Powers didn’t seem to die.
“We have discovered, too, that on this world we cannot breed,” Weast continues. “Unlike your race, we are complete in ourselves, being both what you call female and male. We do not mate within ourselves, however; we join with others for that. But here, when we join, our union bears no fruit.”
I stare at the form that is Weast. I understand the lumani’s longing, but don’t grieve for their failures. I have no pity for those who’ve brought my world anguish.
The hard shell around Weast dissolves. The again-fluid band thins to a line no thicker than my finger.
“We are like your orindles,” Weast says, its tone turning factual. “We find answers to questions. The answer to the question of when our lives will run out is very soon. The twenty-seven lumani here have perhaps another one hundred of your years left. Our thesstrin is destroyed. We cannot go back. Before our energies extinguish, we must pass our essence to a new generation who will call this world theirs. You will make that possible.”
I don’t know what a thesstrin is, but guess it must be what they used to come to our world. I do know that the lumani have no understanding of us, thinking that I would help make another generation of Powers…lumani.
“You will be the first of a new race,” Weast says. “No longer a simple doumana, groveling in the dirt for food to sustain you. Already you are superior to any other of your kind that we have found. We have probed your memory and know you are a Talent, but you did not go insane. You have eaten aruna and it increased your natural empathic abilities, again without making you insane or killing you. Your body and mind have unusual strengths. No other has as good a chance of surviving the uniting and providing us offspring.”
Sweat prickles my skin. My neck burns. I say nothing.
Weast straightens, the thin line growing tall, touching the ceiling.
“You too, are aging,” Weast says, “your natural span leaking away too quickly. We can give you what you want. We can give you back your life.”
Chapter Twenty
My heart cries out in longing.
--The Expectation of Returning
Weast and its companions have gone, leaving me alone in the room. But not before Weast advised me to come to peace with the idea of the procedure and said that someone would come to prepare me. I wait in the darkness.
The door whooshes open. Dim lights glow in the hall. A yellow-clad helphand pushes a waist-high rolling cot into the room.
The helphand sidles around from behind the cot, moving toward me in that efficient, almost silent way that helphands do. Her face shows her focus; she’s thinking about what needs to be done, not what her patient might be planning. She leans over me.
I kick her belly, knocking her backwards. She falls against the rolling cot with a thud. The cot rolls away and she falls to the floor. I leap on her, biting and clawing at her arms, face, neck, whatever I can reach. Her hands come up, defending herself. She rakes her nails across my face. I hardly notice. I press my shoulder into her belly and push up, trying to lever her onto the cot. Her hands flail, reaching for the instrument tray. I grab for he
r arms but she’s faster. An icy needle pricks my neck.
Against my will, my muscles begin to relax. My legs feel boneless and the floor rushes up. My arms won’t move to break the fall. I hear a crash as I crumple onto the tiles. I feel nothing, though my mind whirls.
And feel nothing as the helphand grabs me, the muscles in her arms and shoulders tensed and bunched under her skin. Lifting me onto the cot, she grunts. There's no need for restraints, but she locks them around my wrists and ankles, and fastens thick straps across my chest and upper arms, hips, and knees.
The lights are too bright. They pierce my eyes as I’m wheeled down one hallway and then another. The helphand walks with fast steps, and then breaks into a trot, as though wanting to be rid of me as quickly as possible. Is the medication short acting? She takes a fast corner and my head lolls helplessly from side to side. I try to call out, but can’t.
A door opens with a hiss and I am pushed into a new room. The helphand glares down at me and pinches my cheek between her thumb and first finger. Her teeth grit with the strain of how hard she’s squeezing. It’s horrifying to see, hear, smell, and know everything when my mind can only watch and record and my body can do nothing. Anger burns in me like a sun. The helphand pinches me again.
This room is well lit, the walls painted blue-gray, the color of acceptance. A bank of machinery stands in the middle of the room—dark orbs on long, spindly silver legs. Red, white, and yellow lights blink across their black faces. The helphand pushes the rolling cot to the machines and busies herself hooking me to them with wires and tubes. She focuses light beams from other machines on precise areas of my body—one on a spot in the middle of my forehead, one on my belly—on the place where, beneath the skin, the egg quickens during Resonance. She steps back to judge her work, then comes forward and makes adjustments until she’s satisfied.
The helphand leans across me and twists a dial. A machine hums with a low-pitched sound. Greenish black liquid seeps down a tube into my arm. My mouth tastes of brackish water. My muscles jump and begin to tingle.
She starts a second machine. Almost immediately I begin to feel drowsy and fight against it. The helphand flips another dial that starts a slow drip of red liquid leaking into me.
Another yellow-clad doumana slips into the room, all efficiency and bustle, a textbox clutched to her chest. She hands the box to the helphand, whose lips draw into a tight line as she reads. Contempt, but also fear, fills her eyes.
“Our orders are to leave you,” the helphand says. “Someone will come.”
I’m no longer drowsy and have gained back some command over my muscles. I turn my head to watch the doumanas leave. As soon as the door squeezes shut behind them, I try the restraints at my wrists and ankles, but it’s no use. I’m too weak and they are too securely fastened.
I slump back on the cot. Greenish black liquid trickles down the tube into my blood.
Chapter Twenty-One
We hear the wind blowing,
Generation to generation,
Carrying the seed.
--The Song of Growing
The air in the room grows warm. A vaporous form takes shape between the rolling cot I’m strapped to and the closed round door. The thin, hazy band twists slowly in the still air.
“Some time will pass before you are prepared properly by the machines to accept my essence,” Weast says. “You will find your natural electrical energy magnified; your chemistry changed. Then we will bond.”
Nausea makes my stomach heave—drugs or disgust? I clamp my jaws shut.
The whirring sound of one of the machines suddenly speeds up, its pitch rising.
A tremendous mental strength rushes through me. From the drugs. I am … keenly aware. I realize that there are six separate chemicals mixed with the oxygen in the room. I don’t know their names, but can tell each from the other by the subtle differences in their odors. I see suddenly how the haze of Weast is made of millions of tiny sparks, that each spark is made of three different elements, how two of the parts circle in a specific order around a central core. It seems natural that I should know these things, as though I have lived my life muffled in blankets, and now they have been lifted away.
“I, in particular, will monitor your progress,” Weast says. It glimmers, then bends over me.
“Much time has passed since I’ve been this near to a soumyo,” Weast says softly, as though speaking to itself. “To sense the slow rhythms of the electric fields, to study the hard container around the fields is a pleasure. But we must keep distance. To be among them invites familiarity. Familiarity invites dissent. Yes, we were right to stay away.”
The vaporous band straightens and drifts off a short distance. My mouth is dry. I never got the water I asked for when I could still speak. Does Weast know that I can no longer speak? Does it matter to the lumani?
Weast drifts back to the cot. “But we are not common, you and I” it says, plainly talking to me now, and just as plainly knowing that I heard what it said before. “We should be companionable.”
My mind is crowded with questions only a lumani can answer. I try to form words and speak, but no sound comes out. I’m tired of this one-way conversation. My teeth grind together in frustration. It sounds like a crash of boulders careening down a hillside. My heart thuds. What is happening to me?
I need to speak. I need my voice.
I think, maybe I can “talk” to Weast the way Azlii said sentients of differing species do. Like using a firestarter, Azlii said. Little different from asking the plants to grow. I form my question and concentrate on sending thought-energy to the lumani.
Weast has no reaction.
I concentrate harder and try again.
You can think-talk! Weast sends, its electrical bits whirling fast. Did I not say that you were superior within your species? No other soumyo has communicated this way.
I can’t speak in words, I send. My voice won’t work.
Because you would not come easily, you were given a relaxant, Weast replies. The speech areas return last.
Weast’s thoughts come to me clearly, but it’s different from when it spoke before. The lumani must have been sending all along, but now I hear its words not only in my mind, but also with my entire being. I catch emotions, too—Weast’s amazement and excitement. The emotions don’t come as colors or feelings. More like a knowing. I worry that I might send thoughts I’d rather keep to myself, though Weast doesn’t seem to know all that I’m thinking, only what I send.
I’m thirsty, I send. Can I have some water?
Weast doesn’t react. Maybe it doesn’t understand “thirst.” I try a different tact.
Weast, I send, what do you want to tell me?
So many things, it answers immediately. Everything.
Why?
The haze that is Weast shrinks to a line the width of my smallest finger. The line coils around itself, forming a spring-like shape. A moment passes, and then another.
There is a small chance, Weast sends, that sharing essence with you will disrupt my energies until I cease to exist.
If I could count on that, it almost would be worth going through the procedure.
Whether I disrupt or not, you will of course raise our offspring. This is our way. Lumani offspring stay with the “doumana” half of any pairing.
You said lumani don’t have doumana and male.
Indeed, we do not, Weast sends. Not as you understand them. We are both. We can be growing an offspring within our form at the same moment we are providing what you call “the male essence” to another. It is of course efficient.
Your offspring don’t grow in an egg?
The distant thunder of Weast’s laughter floats through the room. No. Nor do our young have an in-between stage like your hatchlings. Our offspring are smaller but exact versions of ourselves.
My shoulders shake and I feel cold. A dark pain starts behind my left temple.
On our world, Weast sends, Lumani pair-bonds are based on succe
ssful mating. If two lumani mate and no offspring results, the bond does not hold. Each looks for new mates. If the mating is successful, the two lumani set up a house-ring together. If the other is already in another pair-bond, the third lumani lives in the same ring. If the third is in a pair-bond, the fourth shares the same ring, and so on. The bond dissolves when the offspring are born. The “doumana” side then raises the offspring to maturity, in about twenty of your years.
My breath catches in my throat. If Weast expects that I will see the half-breed abomination through to maturity, it offers me at least that much more life time—twenty more of our years, nearly twice our normal span.
The machines thrum. The pain in my temple is gone. I feel my body changing inside, can hear the blood rushing, my electrical energy pulsing. I’m changing, but I’m not frightened. They must be feeding me a drug that makes me accept.
I will not accept this.
But . . . I am relaxed, happy almost. Twenty more years.
Weast glides around the rolling cot and shrinks its band. The row of four brighter glows that I think of as eyes are next to the machine. Its sparks flare, then drop back to what they were before.
There is no way of accurately predicting how quickly our offspring will mature, Weast sends. Your species matures in a wisp of lumani time. The combining might not succeed, though our calculations indicate it will.
But you might not survive. I need to keep my mind busy, focused. The relaxation drugs are stealing my resistance. If Weast Returns in the combining … What good is it to rid our world of only one?
Weast doesn’t answer. I know it heard me. I can see our thoughts traveling back and forth like grains of sand in neat lines, rising and falling on crests of invisible waves. The gentle movements fascinate me.
Yes, Weast sends at last. Which is why I must tell you everything that I want my lumanicate to know.
I might as well be a textbox. Weast wants to fill me with information.
Is lumanicate the lumani word for offspring? I send. Where are Azlii, Tanez, and Inra? If I can escape, how will I find them?
Yes, of course, but no, Weast answers. For us, the word lumanicate means not only the offspring of our bodies, but our hope for the future.
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