by Timothy Zahn
"I know," Klnn-dawan-a said, a shiver running through her as she took stock of herself. Her face and torso were sticky with warm drudokyi blood, a stickiness that was rapidly turning to ice in the cutting wind. Her head still throbbed with the aftereffects of those blinding laser flashes, her whole body ached from that fall to the ground, and her tongue tingled with fatigue and the acrid tastes of the drudokyi's hide and blood and her own poison.
But she hadn't been raised to Eldership, and her body was still whole. She had indeed had immensely good luck.
"I'm glad you agree," Prr-eddsi growled. "I trust the lesson will find a permanent home with you. You should never, ever, go out into a dangerous situation alone. If Rka't-msotsi-a hadn't alerted us when she had, that other drudokyi would most likely have gotten to you before we did."
So that was where Rka't-msotsi-a had disappeared to just before the attack. "Believe me, I won't do it again," Klnn-dawan-a said. "I was just worried about the missing whelps."
"The whelps would have stood a considerably better chance against a pair of drudokyis than you did," Prr-eddsi countered, a shade less gruffly. "Anyway, they're fine. They're down by the creek. We've alerted the Ca Chagba family-some of them have gone down to herd them back."
"Good." Klnn-dawan-a pushed herself up and onto her left side. Her tail, freed from where it had been pinned beneath her leg, decided it was going to hurt, too. "Then I presume the sampling is still on for this latearc."
"You can't be serious," Bkar-otpo objected, clutching at her arm again. "After what you've just been through-?"
"Do be quiet, Bkar-otpo," Prr-eddsi said, running a critical eye over Klnn-dawan-a. "Are you really going to feel up to that, Searcher?"
"I'm fine," Klnn-dawan-a said, getting all the way to her feet and peering up at the sky. The wind was still pretty fierce, but the edge of the storm was markedly closer than the last time she'd looked. "Besides, we're at a critical point in the ring transmutation. We can't afford to miss even a single sampling right now."
"All right," Prr-eddsi said. "If you're sure you can handle it. But you take the time first to get cleaned up. And I meanreally cleaned up. You walk into a whelp enclosure smelling of drudokyi, and you won't get a chance to put this latearc's lesson into practice. Bkar-otpo, escort her back to the encampment. And then start getting the sampling equipment together."
The wind had died down to a bare whisper by the time Klnn-dawan-a eased open the gate of the enclosure surrounding the Za Mingchma farm. "Hello?" she called gently in the Chigin language as she and Bkar-otpo slipped inside. "Anyone home?"
"I don't see them," Bkar-otpo muttered nervously. "You suppose something's wrong?"
"I doubt it," Klnn-dawan-a said, looking around as her tail sped up with uncomfortable anticipation. She certainly hoped nothing was wrong, anyway. The drudokyi attack had taken more out of her than she'd realized, and all she really wanted to do right now was go back to her shelter and curl up in bed where she could ache in peace. The last thing she needed was a confrontation-any kind of confrontation-with a Chig.
"Then where are they?" Bkar-otpo demanded.
"They're probably just-there they are." Klnn-dawan-a pointed as the group of whelps came silently toward them around the side of the house. "They were just staying out of the wind," she added, bracing herself as she stepped forward and offered the back of her hand. Certainly the whelps had seen the two of them often enough; but as Bkar-otpo had pointed out earlier, the storm wouldn't have done their moods any good. If they got it into their limited minds that the family's grant of safe passage no longer applied to these particular intruders...
The lead whelp trotted up to Klnn-dawan-a and sniffed delicately at her outstretched hand, and for a beat he rumbled deep in his throat. Then, flattening his ears and nostrils back again, he trotted away.
Carefully, Klnn-dawan-a let out her breath. "See?" she said. "No problem. Come on."
The three chrysalises were fastened to the south side of the farmhouse, huge tangled masses of silky threads spun by the whelps that were now secreted within them-whelps in the process of metamorphosing from mindless animals that guarded the farm into the full sentience of adult Chig.
"Gives me the creeps every time I think about it," Bkar-otpo muttered as Klnn-dawan-a knelt down beside the first chrysalis and opened her sampling kit.
"I don't see why it should," Klnn-dawan-a replied, selecting a probe and a tissue sampler. Using the probe to pull away some of the silk, she eased the slender needle of the sampler into the chrysalis mass. "In some ways it's parallel to our own transition from physical to Elder."
"Maybe that's what bothers me about it," Bkar-otpo said, producing a probe of his own and pulling some of the chrysalis silk back out of Klnn-dawan-a's way. "The parallels with the way the Chig treat their whelps."
Klnn-dawan-a flicked her tongue in a negative. "Now you've lost me."
"Well, just think about it a hunbeat," Bkar-otpo said. "The Chig treat their whelps like animals-"
"They are animals."
"You know what I mean. They could at least keep them in a storage outbuilding or something instead of leaving them unprotected in the open like this. You know how many of them die from exposure and predator attack before they even reach metamorphosis stage?"
"A fair number," Klnn-dawan-a conceded.
"A fair number? You call seventy percent a fair-number? And that's up here. I hear the death rate's even higher in the cities, where the whelps from different families are always fighting with each other."
"These are Chig, Bkar-otpo," Klnn-dawan-a reminded him. The tip of the sampler needle touched something solid: the whelp body sleeping within. Carefully, trying not to move the tip, she touched the button on the end, feeling the slight vibration as the tiny suction driver inside the device began the task of drawing fluids and soft tissue into the sampler's collection tube. "You can't judge aliens by Zhirrzh ethical standards."
"Maybe not," Bkar-otpo growled. "But we can certainly judge Zhirrzh by Zhirrzh standards. And I sometimes think the Elders use us physicals the same way the Chig adults use their whelps."
Klnn-dawan-a threw him a frown. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Bkar-otpo sighed. "I don't know," he said. "All I know is that we seem always to be giving up stuff for the Elders. I guess I shouldn't have said anything."
"No, I don't think you should have," Klnn-dawan-a agreed shortly. "And before you start talking such nonsense again, I suggest you think about all the ways the Elders contribute to Zhirrzh society. From interstellar communications all the way down to saving me from those drudokyis a tentharc ago."
"Yes, Searcher," Bkar-otpo muttered. "I will." The sampler stopped vibrating, indicating that the tube had been filled to its designated level. Carefully, Klnn-dawan-a eased it out of the chrysalis, wondering what all that had been about. But it was probably nothing. Bkar-otpo was only nineteen, after all, and youth was always rebelling against something. This was probably nothing more than that.
At any rate, Zhirrzh youth psychology wasn't her concern. Chigin metamorphosis was; and there were still eleven tissue samplings yet to be done this latearc. Snugging the first sampler back into its niche in her kit, she pulled out the second and got back to work.
8
Thrr-gilag's railcar switched direction at the main Cliffside Dales station, shifting onto a northward line that led all the way across the flat Kee'miss'lo River valley and ultimately into the Ghuu'rr-clan territory in the hills beyond. Once, while still back in school, Thrr-gilag had ridden this line all the way to its end, just to be able to say he'd done it. For this trip, though, he would be going less than a tenth of that distance. Just ninety-five thoustrides, as the halkling flew, to the small Frr town of Reeds Village.
The sun was glinting through the clouds near the horizon by the time the railcar pulled onto the siding and let him out. According to his father, his mother was living out in the farmland two thoustrides south of town in a small reddish ho
use with white edging and a large vymis tree growing beside the roadway.
A house that Thrr't-rokik himself had of course never seen. Reeds Village was 115 thoustrides from the Thrr family shrine, fifteen thoustrides out of Thrr't-rokik's anchor range. The more Thrr-gilag had thought about that fact, the more ominous it had loomed in his mind. Something had caused his mother to move such a deliberate distance away, and he wasn't at all sure he was going to like the reason.
The darkness of latearc was filling the sky by the time he reached the house, which stood alone at the edge of the farmland, looking just the way his father had described it. Stepping up to the door, he knocked.
"Why, hello, my son."
Thrr-gilag jumped, turning to his left toward the voice. His mother Thrr-pifix-a was kneeling in a small garden beside the house, almost invisible in the gloom. "Hello, Mother," he said, starting toward her and letting his lowlight pupils dilate. She looked reasonably good: a couple of cyclics older than he remembered her, but strong and alert and capable. "Sorry I didn't notice you there."
"That makes us even, then," Thrr-pifix-a said, easing to her feet. "No, that's all right." She waved Thrr-gilag's hand away as he moved forward to help her. "I can manage. Sorry if I startled you; I didn't notice you myself until you knocked. I was trying to get the last of my seeds planted before it got too dark to see. I'm afraid my lowlight vision isn't all it used to be. Not to mention my hearing."
"Next time I come by so late, I'll be sure to whistle," Thrr-gilag promised lightly, touching his tongue gently to her cheek. "So what are you planting this cyclic?"
"Flowers, mostly," she said, taking his arm and returning the kiss. "Plus a few vegetables. The home-grown ones always taste so much better than mass-cultivated, don't they? Goodness, I must look terrible. Please excuse me-I didn't know you were coming."
"I tried sending you a message," Thrr-gilag said, eying his mother closely. "The communicator said you wouldn't accept it."
"Oh, I don't talk to Elders much anymore," Thrr-pifix-a said equably. "Have you eaten?"
"Ah-no, not recently," Thrr-gilag said, frowning down at her. "Is there some reason you don't talk to Elders?"
"Well, as long as your timing has worked out so well, we might as well put you to work," Thrr-pifix-a said. "I'll get you started on dinner while I go clean up. Come, I'll show you to the kitchen."
The meal was, for Thrr-gilag, a strange and rather discomfiting experience. On the one side, it was a warm, comfortable reunion with his mother, a time for food and conversation after too many cyclics of hurried neglect as he flew back and forth across Zhirrzh space studying alien races and artifacts. But even as he tried to relax in the warmth of family love, he couldn't ignore the taste of apprehension at the back of his tongue. Thrr-pifix-a was his mother; and yet, somehow, she wasn't. She had changed, in a way Thrr-gilag couldn't seem to get a grip on.
And she wouldn't talk about it. That was the most disturbing part of it. Every attempt he made during dinner to reintroduce her comment about Elders-every delicate probe he floated as to why she'd left home and come out here to the edge of a tiny Frr village-all were deftly deflected and instantly buried under a new flurry of news about distant cousins or friends.
So they sat and ate and talked... and it was only as the meal drew to an end that Thrr-gilag caught the new look on his mother's face and realized that she hadn't been ignoring the issue at all. She had, instead, been postponing it.
Until now.
"Well," Thrr-pifix-a said, setting down her utensils and getting carefully up from her meal couch. "That was excellent, Thrr-gilag; thank you. You must be getting a lot of practice in cooking out there on all those study worlds."
"Actually, you'd be surprised at how little cooking we try to get by with out in the field," Thrr-gilag confessed, stepping around the table and taking her arm. "And the meals out there certainly suffer for it. Why don't you go sit down in the conversation room while I get the dishware cleared away?"
"The dishware can wait," Thrr-pifix-a said, her voice quiet and serious. "Let's go sit down together, my son. We need to talk."
The conversation room was tiny, less than half the size of the one in their old house. "Small, isn't it?" Thrr-pifix-a commented, looking around her as she eased down onto one of the couches. "Nothing like the house I raised you and your brother in. Or the house I was raised in myself, for that matter."
"The size of the house isn't important," Thrr-gilag said. "As long as you're happy."
"Happy." Thrr-pifix-a looked down at her hands. "Well. I'm sure you've talked with your brother. And... others. What have they told you?"
"Absolutely nothing," Thrr-gilag said. "I didn't even know you'd moved until a few fullarcs ago."
She looked up at him again, and he felt his tongue stiffen against the side of his mouth. Here it came. "It's really very simple, Thrr-gilag," she said softly. "I've come to the conclusion-and the decision-that I don't wish to become an Elder."
Thrr-gilag stared at her, his heart thudding out the beats as an unreal sort of silence filled the room. Had she really said what he thought he'd heard her say? His own mother? "I don't understand," he managed at last.
She smiled slightly. "Which part don't you understand? Eldership, or my not wanting it?"
"I'm glad you're not taking this lightly or anything," Thrr-gilag shot back with a force that startled him. "Mother, what in the eighteen worlds are you thinking of?"
"Please." Thrr-pifix-a held up a hand. "Please. This isn't some bright new idea I dreamed up last latearc and haven't properly thought through. Nor is it the product of insanity or a broken mind. This decision has grown gradually, with a great deal of thought and study and meditation behind it. The least you can do is hear me out."
Thrr-gilag took a slow breath, willing his tail to calm its dizzying spin. No wonder Thrr-mezaz hadn't wanted to talk about this through a communicator pathway. "I'm listening."
Thrr-pifix-a looked around the room again. "I know it's rather a clich‚, my son, but the older I get, the more I've begun to realize that it really is the smaller things in life that make that life worth living. The taste of one's food; the delicate smell of flowers or rainfall or the sea; the touch of a loved one's hand. Things we all too often seem to take for granted. I know I did when I was your age. But not anymore. My senses are fading-have been fading slowly for a long time now. I can't see or hear nearly as well as I used to, or taste or smell."
She lowered her gaze to her hands again. "I can still touch. But with all too many of my old friends, touch is no longer possible."
She looked up at him. "Eldership isn't life, Thrr-gilag. That's the long and the short of it. It may be a shadowy illusion of life-a wonderfully clever imitation, even. But it's not real life. And I've enjoyed life too much to settle for an imitation."
Thrr-gilag seemed to be having trouble breathing. "But there's no alternative, Mother. Without Eldership there's nothing afterward but..."
"Death?" Thrr-pifix-a said gently. "It's all right, you can say it."
"But you can't do that."
"Why not?" she asked. "Zhirrzh did it all the time, you know, until we learned how to remove and preservefsss organs. Millions of Elders were summarily thrown into the great unknown during the various Eldership Wars. Even now some are lost each cyclic to accidents or the simple weight of age of theirfsss organs. Eventually, we'll all have to face death."
"Eventually, maybe," Thrr-gilag said. "But not now. Not while you're still-" He broke off.
"While I'm still what?" Thrr-pifix-a asked. "Young? Capable? Able to impart the wisdom of my cyclics to my descendants?"
"All of those," Thrr-gilag insisted. "And more. We need you, Mother. More than that, we want you. How can you think of taking yourself away from us?"
She looked him straight in the eye. "How can you think of demanding that I stay?"
There was no answer to that. Only an ache deep within Thrr-gilag, an ache that had no words. "Couldn't you at leas
t give it a try?" he asked at last. "Perhaps it's not as frightening as you think."
Thrr-pifix-a flicked her tongue in a negative. "I'm not frightened, Thrr-gilag. You've missed the point entirely if you think that. I know what the grayworld is like-I've heard all the descriptions and talked to many Elders. If anything, all the fear lies on the other side, with the unknowns and uncertainties of death. It's simply a matter of not wanting to live the way an Elder must."
"But you can't make that kind of decision without giving it a try," Thrr-gilag persisted. "You can't."
"But I have to," Thrr-pifix-a said. "Don't you see? If I wait until I've been raised to Eldership, I'll have lost my chance to decide otherwise."
Thrr-gilag stared at her, sudden realization sending a jolt from his tongue straight through to his tail. "Mother, what are you talking about?" he asked carefully.
