by IGMS
Doctor Venus nodded, firmly but not looking worried. "I can't rule out that there's a Bruma fetus in her head. But I think there's a good chance we're dealing with something else."
He turned to the young man. "Cai here was the first human host to a Bruma embryo. He has another explanation for what the tickling means. Cai?"
"It's not tickling," Cai replied in English with distinct Cantonese intonation. "It's the lingering effect of the Bruma. I don't feel them all the time, but they are there."
A lingering effect. At once Jake was flooded by fear for Malia, and fear of being locked away with her indefinitely again.
"What does that mean?" Jake said. "What lingers?"
"Nothing physical," Dr. Venus said. "I've seen Cai's scans, and there are no embryos anywhere in his body."
"Did I say I had Bruma in me?" Cai asked.
Jake felt Cai's glare as if the young man had to explain the most basic thing in the world.
"I have two sons," Cai continued. "One young and fast, always running in circles, always playing. One larger and calmer, contemplating life. He's a philosopher. I have contact with them both, but they don't live in me any longer. My first son shares his moods with me quite often. He is very, very far away, but the Bruma don't measure distances the same way we do. From what the Doctor tells me, Malia's first daughter is the same variety as my second son, so that one probably hasn't spoken to her yet. But her last four children will be playing by now, like my firstborn."
"Wait, your Bruma sons?" Andrea asked. "Who talk to you? What . . . they're telepaths? Did they leave something in your head? "
Cai threw up his hands. "I told you they wouldn't understand!" A litany of what Jake supposed was Mandarin curses followed.
"Cai is in contact with the Bruma he gave birth to," Doctor Venus said. "Malia is the mother of five Bruma babies. I think it's a fair assumption that Malia recently had her first telepathic contact with her children. The oldest hasn't matured enough for conversation yet, but the wee ones are probably communicating now. Their thoughts and feelings are likely what she describes as 'tickling.'"
Jake lowered his voice so Malia wouldn't hear him. "Likely? Probably? If there's still Bruma stuff left in her head, I want it out! We don't know what it'll do to her. What if she hemorrhages when we go downside? What if they take over her mind to control her?"
"They're her children," Cai said. "They won't do that."
Something in Jake wanted to grab Cai and scream She's my daughter. But Andrea spoke before he did.
"Is the Major keeping you on a short leash, Cai?" Her voice was full of kindness, and Jake knew that her empathy was helping them a hundred times more than his aggravation.
Cai's voice filled with hard emotions. "Men like him are always following me. Asking to do tests, offering to take samples, checking that I'm alright. They should just let it be, accept it. But they won't. They ask me about every thought my children share with me. Sometimes they put machines on my head and watch what is triggering in my brain. They don't care if I don't want to tell them. They just keep asking. And I'm not going downside, ever."
A chill went through Jake. Dictatorships on Earth had a way of monitoring people, but this was worse, an intrusion that neatly fit the label "Thought Police." He'd be damned if he'd let Major Blutnikov turn Malia into an object of study.
Doctor Venus said, "If the Major finds out that Malia has these abilities he'll never let her go."
"Men like the Major live for this kind of thing," Cai said. "Don't give in to their fears. Just accept that the Bruma are with Malia. They're a gift, not an illness."
A gift? That was pushing the crap cart too far.
But Andrea took his hand, and while they looked at each other, his thoughts tumbled into place.
Malia would always have the scars across her stomach. But if Cai was right, she would have something else as well. A link to another species. A connection that could stretch across the galaxy. A whole new kind of motherhood. He didn't need to ask Andrea to know she was thinking along the same lines.
"Why are you helping us?" Jake asked the Doctor.
"People in power have used diagnoses to have their way throughout history," he replied. "Illnesses like leprosy, HIV, and schizophrenia have caused people to be mistreated and isolated. Transsexuals and people with Down's Syndrome have been branded as sick deviants. I don't intend to spread those misconceptions to Blue Two."
Jake turned to Malia. "Is the tickling in your head disturbing you? Is it giving you a headache?"
She shook her head and smiled.
"No brain scan," Andrea said, echoing Jake's thoughts.
"There are no guarantees in life," Doctor Venus said. "But I think getting out of here as quickly as possible would be a very wise decision."
Cai nodded emphatically, and they said their goodbyes.
While the Durows waited for departure, Jake stood gazing one last time out the port window screen at the deepness of space outside. Empty still. But for the first time in ages he found himself staring at the stars that shone in the darkness, millions of stars offering what light they could.
It felt good to notice the light.
He turned to Andrea and saw the stars reflected in her eyes. He read anxiety as well, but the courage in her eyes clearly won out and settled over him.
"Let's go," he said. "It's time we moved on."
A Good Mother
by Andrea G. Stewart
Artwork by Andres Mossa
* * *
Pehlu was a sandpiper the first time I met him.
In the pre-dawn hours, I escaped the confines of my fourth-level bed and crept to the shore. Even the sharp eyes and ears of third-grandmother didn't catch me. I went to the beach to be alone; only the fishermen were out on the pier, casting their lines into the sea.
I caught Pehlu the sandpiper with a laugh in the back of my throat, my outstretched fingers a net. The ocean's breeze ruffled the feathers over my knuckles and his round eyes stared at me, bright as polished stones. He fit neatly in my thirteen-year-old hands, and his heartbeat thrummed against my palms.
When I brought the bird level with my eyes, he spoke.
"Ulaa."
I nearly dropped him. "How do you know my name?"
"Each time you come to the shore, you chase the birds and cry out, 'Ulaa comes for you!'"
A flush crept up my neck. "I do not."
"You do. I've seen it."
"There are many girls my age living on the island. It could have been someone who only looked like me."
The bird did not reply. His legs kicked the empty air beneath my hands.
"Well," I said, finally, "what is your name?"
"Peluvisinaka."
"I like Pehlu better."
"Very well. Can you please put me down?"
I could not think of how to deny so polite a request, so I placed him back on the sand.
He shook himself and began to preen.
"You're not a real sandpiper," I said. I crouched, and the salt-seaweed smell of the ocean washed over me. A tiny crab, disturbed by my presence, scuttled back into its hole.
"I am, for now."
"You're a kailun -- a spirit."
He snatched up a beetle and swallowed it. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"You talk. Sandpipers don't talk."
Pehlu looked up at me, his head tilted to the side. "Mother tells me I shouldn't."
A sudden rush of kinship filled my chest. "My mother tells me I shouldn't run off to the shore in the mornings. But my cousins above and below me snore, and it gets hot in the sleeper, and sometimes I feel that if I don't get away, my own skin will suffocate me."
The sandpiper nodded, wisely as any grandfather. "I feel that way too, before I grow."
I thought for a moment. "When you grow big enough, one of my people's grandparents will eat you. That's what happens to all the kailun."
"Maybe you can keep me safe."
I straightened, rocking my k
nees onto the cold sand. "We should be friends. I don't have any."
"Neither do I."
"Ulaa!" My mother's voice echoed down the beach. I glanced back and saw her striding toward me, her long brown hair whipping in the wind. The sun had crested the horizon, and others were making their way to the shore. By the time it was afternoon, a swell and press of bodies would move from the sleepers to the outdoors. The waves would be dotted with children, the sand covered with people plying their trades.
"I have to go," I whispered before rising to my feet and letting my mother overtake me.
I did not protest as she took my hand, as she scolded me, as she led me back through the city and into the hot, musty air of the sleeper. She told me to go back to bed, so I did -- climbing the ladder to my fourth-level cot. Around me, a hundred throats breathed in the darkness: mothers and fathers, children, third and fourth and tenth-grandparents. When the wind blew, the bamboo struts creaked and the lattice-walls swayed.
"Pehlu," I whispered as I lay there, listening. I hooked my thumbs around one another and fluttered my fingers like a bird.
Nineteenth-grandfather ate a kailun the very next day. All of his family gathered in the city square to watch the ritual. I couldn't count how many of us there were -- I stood near the front with my mother, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Around us, the buildings loomed like giant, crooked fingers. The mountains beyond the city were cut into farming terraces.
My mother leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Nineteenth-grandfather is my father's father," she said. "What will that make you, when your children have children?"
It took me a moment to puzzle out the words. "Twenty-second-grandmother."
She patted my shoulder in silent praise.
Beside me, my cousins poked and jostled one another. "Only a good mother gives her children a name," one boy said to the other. He squared his shoulders, imaginary bow held in his hands. I knew the words he spoke -- all children did. "What do I see before me but a herd of wild animals, all of them brought up by bad mothers?"
The other, younger boy pranced from side to side, imitating a kailun in the form of a deer. "Ooh, me, me! I have a name! I have a good mother!"
And the first boy nocked a pretend arrow before letting it fly.
The dramatic "death" of my youngest cousin was enough to throw off the balance of several people behind us. One of my uncles seized both boys by their ears. "That's enough. Quiet, both of you."
They settled down just as first-grandmother emerged from her house with a kailun flask. I only ever saw first-grandmother during the rituals. Though her hair was white, her face was unlined, her hands thin and smooth. She wore a long, blue robe that swept the ground behind her. No expression marred her face.
Through the gaps in her fingers, I could see the bright glow of the kailun. The light flickered as the spirit moved. She brought the flask to the chair where nineteenth-grandfather sat. He hunched in his seat, his gnarled fingers curling around the armrests like tree roots.
After she uncorked the flask and tipped it over his mouth, her hands came away. A tiny blue light, so bright it hurt to look at, pressed against the glass. Nineteenth-grandfather's chest expanded as he sucked at the air in the flask.
The kailun disappeared past his teeth.
As we watched, nineteenth-grandfather, whom I'd always known as an old man, became young again.
"Pehlu!" I called out. "Pehlu!" My feet sank into the sand as I ran toward the waves. I spun in a circle, searching. The sandpipers scattered at the sound of my voice; none responded. My breath formed a mist in the early morning air.
"Pehlu, Ulaa comes for you!"
A lone sandpiper emerged from the sea grass. "I'm here, Ulaa, no need to shout."
I dropped to the ground, heedless of the sand upon my nightgown. "I'm so glad you came."
"Me too. I mean, glad that you came. I didn't think you would. Your mother seemed very angry."
I shrugged, though my stomach flipped at the thought of her scolding. "I do what she says, except for this. What is it like, being a sandpiper?"
He folded his legs beneath him and told me. And told me more than that. Before he was a sandpiper, he was a sparrow. Before a sparrow, he was a clam. The first thing he remembered being was a spider.
I told him of my grandparents, of my cousins, of my aunts and uncles.
"There are so many people," he said.
"Yes, there are."
We lapsed into a comfortable silence, listening to the waves upon the shore and the wind through the rushes, until my mother came for me.
He stayed a sandpiper for an entire year. I should have known it wouldn't last forever. When I was fourteen, I went to the beach and called for him. I walked up and down our usual stretch of sand twice.
At last, when I'd begun to cry, he emerged from the sea grass. He held his pincers in the air, in a gesture of surrender.
"It's me, Ulaa." He was a crab at least twice the size of a sandpiper. "I tried to hold off the change as long as I could. I don't like this form at all." His mandibles trembled as he spoke, like the moustache on an old man.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and spoke without thinking. "I think you're very pretty."
Pehlu lowered his claws. "Pretty? Me?"
I blinked until my vision cleared. Now that I examined him closer, I found that he was pretty. His carapace was a dusky violet, faded at the edges, his legs orange and white, and his claws green. "Yes. You have all the colors of a blooming flower."
The crab held his pincers in front of his eyes, turning them this way and that.
I laughed. "Are all the kailun so vain?"
"I . . ." He clutched his claws close, his mandibles clicking. "I shouldn't be. Mother says that all life on an island has its purpose. It's something I'm supposed to learn before I'm grown."
And the kailun's purpose was to feed the grandparents. I shook off the morose thought, seized a twig, and tapped it on Pehlu's shell until he grabbed it. "See? We can't run races across the sand anymore, but you can pick things up now."
He thrust the twig in the air, like a boy playing at spear-fishing. "Thank you. You've made me feel much better."
In the distance, the sound of someone sawing through bamboo echoed. The city was awakening.
"Your people are always building," Pehlu said.
I cradled my cheeks in my palms. "First-grandmother says we cannot spread the city out any further, or we'll have no land to grow food. So we keep building up, taller and taller. I'm lucky to have a fourth-level bed."
"Someday you won't be able to keep building up."
Someday you will become a deer and I won't be able to protect you. But I didn't say it. I focused on the spot where my mother would appear at any moment. "Then we'll have to find another island."
My mother ran her fingers through my hair, lingering on the tangles. We stood outside, in the shadow of our sleeper. Sunlight peeked through the tiny gaps between buildings, hazed with dust and pollen. I kept my gaze up, because when I lowered it I had to look at all the people around us, and though their shouts filled my ears and rattled my bones, I could pretend they weren't there.
"Ulaa." My mother bent a little, her face blocking my line of sight. "Why do you keep running to the shore in the morning? I've told you so many times not to. There isn't anyone there except the fishermen. You could be washed out to sea and I'd never know."
"I want to be alone." It was only a half-truth, but I could lie when I didn't have to look her straight in the eye.
She tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. "You should play with your cousins."
I twisted from her grip. "They only want to play at hunting kailun."
Her lips pursed. "What's wrong with that?"
A thousand angry retorts boiled in my throat and I swallowed them. My cousins would never want to play the games Pehlu and I did; they couldn't tell me what life was like as a crab or a sandpiper. "If the kailun talk, why don't we talk back to th
em?"
My mother took my hand, and led me into the crush of people. We pushed toward the city square, where she'd buy me breakfast and start her work making bread. "Why would we talk to them?" she called back to me. "We eat them. If we spoke to them, it would make hunting them harder, wouldn't it?"
"But we eat them when they become deer. What do the kailun become after deer?"
She was silent for a long time. The crowd around us smelled of fish and sweat. This close to the square, the flow of people began to move more swiftly, like a stream that had just become unblocked. My hand nearly slipped from her grasp.
The press of people eased as the street opened into the square. My mother cleared her throat. " I suppose we may never know."
I wanted to rail at her. Not knowing was one thing, but how could she not care? Why didn't she want to know? But then she found the stall with the tea eggs and bought me three of them, and I forgot my troubles, savoring the salty-sweet taste as they slid past my teeth.
A few months later, Pehlu became an eagle. In the early morning hours, before my people came to the beach, I tossed pebbles into the air and laughed as Pehlu caught them. We played near a half-built ship, its ribs rising into the sky like the bones of a giant whale.
He landed on the sand. "This is quite the boat your people are building."
"We're looking for another island," I said. I fingered another stone, turning it over and over in my palm.
"What if there are no kailun there?"
"There will be. Just like there will be crabs and sandpipers and eagles."
"Ulaa . . ." He hesitated. "What will you do when I become a deer?"
I chewed the side of my cheek as I thought. "Do you know what you'll grow into next?"
"No."
"I'm not sure. I'll do something, I just don't know what yet," I said.
"Will you eat a kailun when you become a grandparent?"
"No!" I dropped the pebble to the sand. "Why would you ask me that?"
He ruffled his wings and looked to the sea. "I don't know. I know we are friends, but the bigger I grow, the more I think about the things beyond myself. "