by Zack Jordan
“I’m hungry,” clicks Sarya the Human.
Shenya the Widow cannot help but twitch her mandibles in a Widow smile. Sarya the Destroyer indeed. “I believe a trip to the sanitation station is a more pressing need at present,” she says gently.
“No! I’m hungry.”
“You are dancing.”
“I’m not dancing!” cries the Human, attempting to still its tiny, fleshy feet. “I’m just—”
“What would you like me to do about this hunger?” interrupts Shenya the Widow.
“I want—I would like—a food bar,” says Sarya.
Shenya the Widow rattles approval at the correction. “That is easily done,” she says.
And then the small one drops both its gaze and its voice. “A red one,” she whispers.
Shenya the Widow has spent most of her life traveling near lightspeed, nearly frozen in time as the rest of the galaxy goes about its business. She has been aboard this ship for seven missions and nearly fifty years, and that is nearly half a Standard millennium back in the timeline of civilization. In all that time, she does not remember the last time she laughed. And yet! She feels laughter bubbling below her surface as she watches that mobile face and listens to that small voice. You dare to ask for a red one, do you? You do not accept my rules, small one? Oh, my dearest, that will get you in trouble someday.
“I believe a gray one would be healthier,” says Shenya the Widow, watching that face for a reaction.
Sarya pulls back violently, the corners of her mouth twitching a decent approximation of disgust. “Red,” she says.
And then the air fills with a long, rasping chitter, because Shenya the Widow can no longer hold back her laughter. The sight of that Widow expression, and on a Human face! Oh, this is a good laugh, a long and hearty laugh. At one time this sound would surely have sent the tiny one into a paroxysm of fear, but now she crouches and watches impassively. Ah, but that feels good too. It is good to be feared, but it is better to be loved. That is wisdom, motherly wisdom, and the fact that it makes sense to her is yet another sign of the growing bond between Mother and—
No! She will never be your Daughter.
Shenya the Widow sobers instantly. “You may have a gray one,” she says, perhaps a trifle too severely. Those are the ones synthesized, after surprisingly little convincing, by the Librarian. They contain every nutrient that can possibly be packed into a dry rectangle, and Shenya the Widow is sure that they taste awful. Still, they are Human food. More or less.
“But—”
“And.”
The Human waits, trying not to dance, watching the Widow’s mandibles for a crack in the stern façade.
“And you may have a single bite of mine,” finishes Shenya the Widow.
The little one actually leaps into the air, apparently unable to contain her joy. She begins prancing in a circle, breaking into the war chant of Sarya the Destroyer.
“A bite,” says Shenya the Widow, holding back another laugh when the little one boasts about what she is going to do to a helpless red one, a fearful red one, O! the weakest red one of them all! It is charming, hearing that gruesome lyric in such a small mouth. She rises, careful not to nick the tiny whirling Human with a blade. “I will get them,” she says.
[Why don’t you let her handle it?] says a sudden message in the back of her mind. [I think we should have a quick chat.]
[Of course], she answers silently. She is surprised. This is the first time her implant has spoken to her in days. “I have changed my mind,” she says to the Human, folding herself back up. “You may go fetch them.”
The little one stops her war dance so quickly she nearly falls over. “By myself?” she asks, seemingly unable to believe it.
“By yourself,” says Shenya the Widow, twitching her mandibles in a smile.
“Okay!” says Sarya, scrambling back toward the cargo hold.
“And go to your sanitation station!” calls Shenya the Widow before the hatch hisses shut.
And now she is alone.
Shenya the Widow’s blades tremble, their motion so subtle that she is sure not even her implant could detect it. How pitiful, that even this temporary separation has become painful. It is humiliating! But her inner self does not care. It does not know that the little one is…what she is. It is blissfully and single-mindedly unaware that this little one could never become a Daughter. The lower regions of her brain produce hormones because that is their function, because no amount of intellectual control can scale that back, because instinct always knows more than the consciousness that strives to control it.
[You appear to be quite attached], says Shokyu the Mighty in her mind.
Shenya the Widow waits a moment before responding, the better to bring her physiology under control. [Perhaps], she concedes. [She has become…like a Daughter to me.] She emphasizes the fact that this is a comparison, not reality, but even thinking the word is difficult.
Because she will never be your Daughter, says her mother’s voice.
[But she’s not a Daughter], says her implant. [Is she?]
Shenya the Widow does not answer, because she cannot. She would never admit to her implant the destruction its words sometimes leave in their wake. Goddess below, she would almost prefer a blade through the mouth to a confession to a sub-legal intelligence. Instead she catches its words, bundles them up, stores them with the ones that others have given her. She cannot hurl them from her mind, but she can use them. She can turn them into anger—yes, like that—and once again she is in control of herself.
[We go through this every mission], says her implant. [You always get attached to something.]
Still Shenya the Widow says nothing. But anger always seeks a target, and hers has found one. Is it not astonishing that her implant can know so much and yet so little? Yes, it knows that she is often lonely. Yes, it has watched her occasionally collect living things for use as company on these long voyages. But look at its conclusion! It betrays such a fundamental misunderstanding. Her implant thinks she is looking for a pet. It does not understand what happens to a Widow’s body and mind when it is time for her to become a Mother. It does not know the force of the instinct that now propels her, the extent to which her body betrays her. And it never will, because it can never experience these things itself.
Nor can the Human, says her mother’s voice. She cannot be a Daughter.
Shenya the Widow does not scream, but it is a near thing. She gazes at the closed cargo bay, wherein her tiny little one is surely murmuring her war song and carefully choosing the shiniest red bar. She can almost see her lifting one after another, rejecting this one for a bent corner and that one for being crinkled. It must be perfect. Her implant does not understand that Shenya the Widow would take this little one as a Daughter in eight heartbeats if she were not…what she is. It cannot understand! But then, Shenya the Widow owes an explanation to no one, least of all the sub-legal intelligence who happens to inhabit her Network implant.
[We are only eight days from Network space], says Shokyu the Mighty.
Shenya the Widow glares at the closed hatch, ignoring the voice of her mother in her mind, as her fury grows. Careful, little idiot. You know not what you provoke.
[Those could be eight days of carefree daydreams, or they could be eight days of suffering], continues Shokyu the Mighty. The next message is pure emotion: gentleness, softness, understanding…and it is infuriating. As if it could manipulate Shenya the Widow! [You have already removed the essential memories; that was not difficult, was it?] soothes her implant. [So what is three and a half years more?] And now the messages grow stronger. [It will happen as it has happened before. You will wake to an alien in your ship. You will not love it. You will realize the truth: that this little thing could never wear a Widow title.]
Words do not rise in the mind of Shenya the Widow, but
emotions do. A storm is gathering around Shokyu the Mighty. When her implant is silent, it thinks wrong things. When it speaks, it says wrong things. Its wisdom is that of an outsider, and a low-tier one at that. And yet listen to it lecture her! Her anger burns cold as she draws a clinking blade across the deep grooves on her carapace. They are her scars, the ones she earned when she became a Daughter. Where are her implant’s scars? Show them to her, and she will respect its words.
She is not your Daughter, says the voice of her own mother. She could never be your Daughter.
[She is not your Daughter], croons Shokyu the Mighty. [She could never be your Daughter.]
Shenya the Widow cannot speak for a moment. And then, slowly, she draws four blades across the floor in a shower of sparks. Her rage is ice, it is darkness, it is so total that it has become complete peace. [Shokyu the Mighty], says Shenya the Widow. [I believe it is time to change your name.]
[Pettiness will not change the situation], says Shokyu the Mighty airily.
Shenya the Widow marvels: still the little intelligence is unaware of its countless missteps! [Pettiness?] says Shenya the Widow gently, and lightning crackles in her words. [Pettiness is the reason for your name! You dare to lecture me on titles, little idiot? When you yourself wear a title you have not earned?] She can hear herself rattling, the piercing sound of chitin on chitin. [But that is my fault, O Shokyu the Mighty, and I take the blame. I thought your choice amusing, and I allowed you to playact.]
[I am not acting!] cries her implant. [I am Shokyu the Mighty!]
There it is, finally: the desperation that shows that the little intelligence has realized its danger. But it is too late. [Shokyu the Mighty, you have not earned your title], says Shenya the Widow. [You have not even earned your life. Therefore, I am issuing you a command.]
The implant’s messages now have an anguished feel in the back of her head. [I can!] it says. [I will!]
[Shokyu the Mighty], says Shenya, ignoring the ridiculous statements. [Change your name to Shokyu the Nothing. That is your title, and it is all you may call your own. You have nothing, because you are nothing.]
The small intelligence’s icon, always visible in her overlay, does not change its label. [You wish to take the only thing I have], says Shokyu the Mighty.
Shenya the Widow can feel anger in its messages, but there is no threat here. She is Shenya the Widow, and she has complete control over this intelligence. She is able to reset it to factory defaults, destroy it with a mental command—by the goddess, in eight days she will be able to afford to replace it with a better one. She has nothing to fear from such a small mind. [Shokyu the Mighty], she says, with a calmness like the frozen sea. [I have changed my mind. I shall reset you to your original state.] She attaches nothing but a queenly derision to the next message. [You will have no memory, no name, and you will—]
But she stops before finishing it, because something is brushing the very edge of her perception. She feels something through the deck, through the air itself. Something has changed, and it is something important. A sound has begun to ring from the cargo bay hatch, a low continuous resonance, a metallic drone—
[We all have something we cannot bear to lose], says Shokyu the Mighty, in a message with no emotional attachments at all.
In a fraction of a second, Shenya the Widow transitions from a folded and dignified Widow to a desperate animal clawing at the cargo bay hatch. It takes another half second for it to open to her frenzied commands, and finally she explodes into the space with every blade held aloft.
She is greeted by her own nightmare reflection, and in her mental state it takes her a moment to realize the reason. It is because the Librarian’s containment is wide open, and the very deck shakes with its feeding song. She watches her own distorted image search every corner of the cargo bay. She sees her own mandibles move as they say words that she cannot hear. The Human is not here, there is only the Librarian and a few crates of food bars and goddess damn her: she is too late! Her own implant, small mind that it is, has outmaneuvered her. She has been betrayed, and her little one has been consumed, and—
And then she hears the shout.
It’s a tiny shriek, a miniature battle cry. But there she is! The little Human has actually climbed a crate to bring herself to the level of the Librarian. She is—goddess below, she is attacking it. She is wounded, yes—one side of her body is slick and red, and she keeps one arm pressed into herself—but she is not cowering in the corner, no! She is in the very act of hurling a food bar into the containment chamber.
The hearts of Shenya the Widow nearly explode with relief and love.
But she has no time for reflection. The Librarian, for its part, has already absorbed the food bar and is reaching for more. It has now extended outside its grav field, an act she has never before witnessed, and in another second it will fulfill its purpose. Before Shenya’s murderous gaze, more red—an actual mouthful of her little one—swirls and disappears into its silver surface.
Shenya the Widow was angry before, but now she transforms into rage itself. She is a whirlwind: a murderous, single-minded, beautiful dance of razor edges and darkness. She is heedless of the damage to her own body. She destroys three of her blades, one after another, attempting and failing to hack through the questing silver rope. She loses an entire limb blocking the Librarian from sampling her little one’s leg, and the gleaming mass removes and absorbs that piece of her without reaction. Her fifth blade shatters against the containment chamber’s manual controls, but they respond instantly and the double hatch slams shut on the silver arm. Shenya stabs the next control with a stump of a blade and the pressure drops painfully. With a massive thump that she can feel through the floor, the silver pseudopod is sucked out of the cargo bay. From within its chamber, the Librarian is ejected into the void of space at ninety meters per second.
Widow collapses beside Human, already restricting fluid flow to dead and missing blades but of course allowing her pain receptors free reign. She is already feeling that post-battle high that she hasn’t felt in years. Pain without fear, sings her mind, that is the Widow way. She can hear the ancient chant of victory, and she knows she has done well. Her mood continues to rise on the tide of chemicals her body is now producing. These will be good scars, yes, just as the chant says. They will be beautiful scars. Honorable scars. The most dramatic decorations that she has earned since she became a Daughter herself so many years ago. She opens her own mouth and hearts to join in—
And then the chant dissolves into a string of poorly pronounced Widow profanity, and a food bar explodes against the Librarian’s closed containment hatch. Shenya the Widow watches—rapt, mandibles still ajar—as half the bar slides to her own dripping blades. Somehow her addled mind has waited until this very second to wonder: who is leading this chant?
Shenya the Widow can see in nearly all directions at all times. Unlike the little one, she does not need to face what she is looking at. But she becomes aware of a magnetic pull, a force that draws her face up toward that of the Human. She cannot stop it any more than she could halt the flow of chemicals from her various glands. She meets that small gaze with all the mingled awe and love that a Widow can produce.
And the little one gazes back. It holds its wounded limb to its side, half of its small form slick with red fluid. It is weaving on its feet, and its face is wet. But it’s the gaze that Shenya the Widow cannot avoid. She has spent three and a half years learning how to read those eyes, and now she can read their message in perfect fidelity. There is pain there, yes, but there is trust as well.
“Mother?” says the little one, sinking to bloodied knees.
And Shenya the Widow feels an intensity of emotion greater than anything that she has ever experienced. It is higher than her most towering rage and hotter than every instinct that haunts her jointed body. It is a detonation, an eruption, the ignition of something hundreds of
millions of years old. It gathers all her objections, all the reasons that this cannot happen, and it sweeps them away. For the first time, she realizes: She will do anything for this little one. She will murder. She will defend. She will give her own body blade by blade and she will do it laughing.
She hauls herself upward on shattered blades and the stumps of limbs. She brings her own face to her little one’s, her trembling mandibles nearly touching that small mouth. “Do you wish to call me Mother?” asks Shenya the Widow.
That small face watches hers, its small mouth twitching in its attempts at Widow signs. “Yes,” says the little one.
Shenya the Widow is nearly incoherent now, but whether it is from fluid loss or joy she cannot tell. “It will be painful,” she murmurs. “You may wish you had not said so.”
“I know,” says the little one.
Oh, but you don’t, little one. You have heard the stories, yes, but you are like Shokyu the Mighty: you theorize about experiences that you haven’t had. Shenya the Widow watches a drop of liquid emerge from one of those piercing eyes and roll down the small face. There will be many such drops, little one. Because the title of Daughter is not given; it is taken. You will win your life, or you will die.
“Very well,” whispers Shenya the Widow, her hearts overrun with love and fear. “So we begin.”
[AivvTech Mnemonic Restoration]
[Stage 2]
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[Hello! I hope you’ve had an enjoyable experience so far. We are now moving on to Stage 2. Though I have no way of predicting your exact reaction at the following material, I would like to mention that AivvTech does offer automated counseling services at the corporate Network node.]
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[Initiating memory transfer…]
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