by Lyn Gala
“Wolf.”
“Excuse me?”
Ama smiled. Her expression was filled with such sweet beneficence that it was difficult to remember this woman had shoved an unfavorable deal down the maw of a thousand-year-old Rownt Grandmother. “The ship has a name. She prefers to be called Wolf.”
Liam wondered if Ama was anthropomorphizing the ship the way Zach did with Duke or if the ship did have a preference. That was a discussion for another day.
“The Rownt had conflicts with the Cy.” Ondry growled. Liam knew exactly what he was thinking about.
“Yes. Wolf has told stories of how Rownt ripped through ships in search of stolen children.”
“The ship tells those stories?” Liam hadn’t expected that.
Ama smiled at him. The expression had a touch of condescension in it, but Liam was used to arrogant old women. “To control a Cy ship requires someone in the crew to neurally connect with it. Wolf is connected to a member of our crew and often passes on stories.” Liam was stunned into silence, and after a few seconds, Ama chuckled. “I am guessing you have been sent to warn us to avoid emulating the Cy.”
Ondry touched the small of Liam’s back. Liam leaned back into that support before he asked, “Why would you say that?”
She stopped and faced Liam. “Because the Cy were monsters who experimented on and enslaved countless members of other species. They believed they had the right to, and those ships of theirs gave them the power to do that.”
“So you can see why the Rownt are worried,” Liam said. As an Earthling, he was also worried that a Ribelian now had the power to restart the damn war if she felt like it.
Ama sighed. “They have no reason to worry. Someone taught Wolf about morality. She feels guilty about the people who suffered in her, and she will not help a new generation of slavers. If we tried, I suspect she would lock us in our rooms like naughty children.” She shook her head, a fond expression on her face.
“Creatures who can live for centuries do develop a different outlook on life,” Liam said.
Ama gazed into Liam’s eyes, a strange intensity in her face. “We can all live that long, tuk-Munson. We may not remember our previous lives, but they are there, whispering in our ear when we are quiet enough to listen.”
She turned and headed through the door to her shuttle. Maybe all Ribelians were not as violent as the vids on Earth suggested; however, the press had underplayed their oddness. The shuttle doors closed. The lines of a Command doorshape were obscured by a bluish film with intricate filaments. Then the Calti’s shuttle door closed and they were, once again, alone.
“Do you feel any instinct to continue to war against her?” Ondry pulled Liam closer.
“No, not at all.” Liam leaned back into Ondry’s strength. “But some humans will. It will be a long time before the two sides stop looking for excuses to hurt each other.” Liam feared that if they’d turned the children over to Command, no one would have gone out of their way to seek out family living in rebel areas. However, if he said that, the Rownt might be driven to kidnap every child out of an orphanage on the theory that humans weren’t doing enough. But the supplies Ama wanted made it clear that the ship was struggling to support the crew they had. Rownt couldn’t start grabbing children and shoving them at Ama.
Ondry took advantage of the privacy to tighten his arms around Liam’s waist. “We should tell the Grandmothers that their message has been delivered.” Despite his words, Ondry didn’t move.
Liam closed his eyes. The kids were going to be safe, the Rownt on Desga hadn’t abandoned their ship and their Grandmothers and the Cy ship didn’t plan on taking up slavery. It felt like all was good in the world. He tilted his head back and studied Ondry’s features. He seemed content. Hell, he was dark with it.
“Did you ever find out what happened on the Desga?” Liam asked. There was no way that a ship would have so many young Grandmothers. On the Calti, there was an engineer who had redesigned the water distribution system to make the whole ship more efficient, and Agaril was still tuk-ranked. Given how often she trilled at the less technically educated Grandmothers, Liam had thought they would promote her if only to preserve their own reputations, but Rownt under ten feet were not welcome in the upper temple.
Ondry tightened his grip for a moment before backing to a more appropriate distance. At least most of him moved away. His tail was tucked into the pocket of Liam’s pants. If another Rownt saw them, it was a shockingly intimate gesture. “They had a disagreement over an aging mining platform,” Ondry said. “The eldest wished to abandon it, but others wished to salvage the parts to minimize the cost of reconstruction.”
Liam winced. An eldest Grandmother was respected, but she was not a dictator. If others had felt as though they could salvage the platform, they would have tried. And given the lack of Grandmothers of an appropriate age on the ship, Liam suspected he knew how that had ended.
“We are very lucky to have Calti Grandmothers who maintain their platforms so well,” Liam said. Space was dangerous, even with the Rownt habit of over-engineering everything. That explained why there were no egglings on the Calti. Liam had never seen a child under forty.
“If I did not trust them to maintain their equipment, I would not trust them with your safety.” Ondry rested his fingers on Liam’s neck. Ignoring propriety, Liam rested his forehead against Ondry’s shoulder. If a Rownt had seen them, she would have accused them of sharing the color of the nest pillows with the whole ship, but Liam didn’t care. He was palteia, and if he couldn’t use that to get inappropriate public cuddles, what was the point of life?
Family
Zach stood outside the hospital room and leaned against the door. His current Grandmother was young, barely nine-and-a-half-feet tall and able to fit into the hospital, but she had waited outside the room. Now she studied Zach, her eyes wide with confusion. But bless her—she didn’t say anything.
Zach moved to lean against her comforting bulk, and she rested the back of her fingers against his neck where he would have a fora if he were Rownt. “He's dying.” An era was ending. It was as if the ties between Zach and Earth that had begun to fray when the last of his siblings died were now snapping.
Zach remembered how excited John had been when Jackson was born. He’d held that baby like a precious gift and unexploded ordnance. John had been on the front lines when his kids had been born. His wife had gotten pregnant once while John was on leave, and twice by using artificial insemination. She hadn’t been willing to wait for the war to end to have her family.
But then the grandchildren had shown up, and Zach’s baby brother had turned into the posterchild for grandparenting. John would have given a Rownt Grandmother a run for her money.
And now the last grandchild was dying. There were lots of great and great-great grandchildren from all Zach’s siblings. The Mora genes had proved very prolific. But Zach didn’t feel any connection to those people. They were family in theory and in blood, but they weren’t in Zach’s heart.
But Jackson was different. John had been Zach’s baby brother—the one who followed when Zach tried to run off to play with his friends, the one who had tattled when Zach hidden behind the bleachers and had kissed a girl. And Jackson had been the joy of John’s last years.
Zach’s declaration that Jackson was dying didn't inspire any reaction from his Grandmother, but why would it? Rownt didn't have the same sort of family structures.
Zach walked toward the exit, trusting that his grandmother would follow. The colonel who had escorted them to the hospital was waiting at the exit. “Can we help you with anything, sir?” he asked.
Zach found it amusing that the colonel would refer to him as “sir,” but then Command was very careful to honor Rownt titles, and by Rownt standards, he was a general. He had status. And age. Zach had lost track at this point, but he had to be close to a hundred and fifty or two hundred.
“We require nothing,” Zach said. All he wanted was to be in the ship wi
th his Grandmother where he could grieve. Even if she would never understand the reason for his pain, she would still support him because she loved him.
They walked in silence back to the ship, but his Grandmother stayed close enough that their arms would sometimes brush against one another or her hand would rest on the small of his back. The colonel followed several steps behind.
Zach studied the changes his birth planet had undergone.
When he'd been young, this port city with its ability to fling ships out into space had been filled with military symbols. Military uniforms had walked the street, military posters had covered walls, and the strain of supporting the military was evident in the cracked driving avenues and the dead foliage. Earth had bled herself dry to win a war.
And they had.
Sort of. However, the planet was recovering from the war. New trees were planted along the avenue and the surface had been repaved. Buildings sported obnoxious paint jobs and advertising had replaced the ubiquitous military posters. This resembled the Earth of Zach’s childhood. Or rather, the Earth he had grown up watching on vids. Even when he’d been a kid, politicians had spent more money on space than on the home world. Now that Earthlings had lost their vast empire in space, they seemed to be taking better care of the planet.
They reached the fence that marked the beginning of restricted territory. Zach was insanely grateful that Command had brought his great-nephew to the military hospital so he could visit him, but the effort hadn’t been worth it. Jackson could’ve been floating in space or lying in feces and he wouldn’t have known the difference. He certainly hadn’t noticed Zach’s visit.
His Grandmother stopped and considered the newest amenity with narrowed nostrils. The portable moving sidewalk was built to handle the oldest of Grandmothers, so it could handle Zach’s Grandmother, but she looked at it as if it were a rotting corpse. Zach found it ironic that a species that travelled space had such a visceral dislike of mechanical transportation.
“Can we get you anything?” the colonel asked.
Zach had already answered that once. “No thank you,” he said.
The Grandmother stepped up onto the walk before she turned to watch Zach. She was probably wondering why the officer kept repeating the same question. Zach didn’t have a good explanation, so he hurried onto the mechanical walk where he stood with his back to the colonel and waited for the man to activate the machinery.
An awkward silence fell, and Zach listened to a distant truck engine rumbling near the Calti shuttle. Trade goods were being delivered. Considering that the Calti rarely came to Earth, the traders were taking advantage of this opportunity.
Zach’s Grandmother put a hand on his shoulder when the mechanical sidewalk started, taking them through the shipyard. Ships squatted under the Earth sun, their interiors exposed as workers stripped off the valuable metals. They rode in silence until they reached the ship. Then she offered a comforting glurble as one of the older Grandmothers watched them climb the ramp.
Inside, Zach paused, and his Grandmother stopped with him, studying him. She couldn’t understand how Zach felt as the last of his family lay dying in a hospital bed, his brain too shriveled to even recognize anyone. Jackson had been Kip’s youngest, born not long before a series of complicated trades had required the Calti to spend time on Earth. Every time the Calti had landed, John had been there with his pictures of Jackson.
Jackson had been such an ugly baby—red and squinty and constantly balled up in infantile fury. But John had been so proud. And then John dragged Kip, Jackson’s father, and Kip’s wife along to show off the baby. John’s love for his family had spilled over onto Zach, and losing Jackson was like losing John again.
His Grandmother led them to the temple and then up the stairs to the more private areas. Perhaps the other Grandmothers sensed his pain because they averted their gazes when Zach came through. Once they were upstairs, his Grandmother led him to their private room.
Pillows lined their nest, and Zach nearly threw himself into the familiar comfort. He tried to cry. He did. But he was too confused about his own feelings to manage it. Instead he lay with his face buried in a pillow as his breath stuttered.
His Grandmother squatted beside him, her hand on the small of his back. Zach turned his head to smile at her.
“Are you distraught?” she asked.
That word implied a palteia who could not regulate her own emotions. The most reasonable thing for a chilta to do in the face of a distraught palteia was to get out the nictel. Zach shook his head. “That word is too strong. Jackson’s death reminds me of the death of John.”
“Did you feel distraught over the death of the male raised by your parent?” she asked. Zach found it fascinating that Rownt didn’t have a word for sibling. Any number of English words had found their way into the Rownt vocabulary, but not that one.
“I was upset.”
She settled down next to him. “Upset is a word best used when one finds oneself bested in trade or watching a flood take away a field of grain ready to harvest.”
“It is also used to describe the pain of watching a person you are fond of die.”
She huffed. Zach shifted closer, and she draped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close.
“He’s the last link I have to my siblings,” he said, resorting to English. “Humans might lose some family members, but I feel like I’ve lost all my family. I remember being excited when Jackson was born because John was excited. John was my baby brother, and I have all these memories of us when we were young, and so I love what he loved.”
She tightened her arm, and that comfort made the emotions rise like a tidal wave. Most of the time, Zach didn’t think about his human family, but he mourned every person he had loved—every person who had passed on to the next world before him. “How can I help?” she asked.
“Don’t die before me,” Zach begged.
She wrapped both arms around him. “I will outlive you. The Imshee cannot give a human enough years to outlive a Grandmother.”
“I outlived my first one.” Zach still felt the echo of that grief.
“I wish she had been wise enough to give you to one who was younger.” She showed a hint of tooth. Zach laughed, and those drove away some of his more maudlin thoughts.
“She would have skinned your tail if you showed her a tooth.”
“She should show her teeth to herself.” She glurbled. “She likely did once she realized the Imshee had given you more years than she could tend. She never would have intended to leave you behind.”
“I would have walked into the wilderness with her.” Zach still hated that she had walked away from the ship so she could die alone. He had fought to go with her, but in a ship full of Rownt, he had been doomed to lose that fight.
“Do you suffer for a lack of emotional connections?”
Zach sighed. Sometimes he felt like he had too many emotional connections, and the pain of each breaking was becoming a burden he didn’t know how to carry. “I don’t know that I would phrase it that way. I feel like I’ve lost something with Jackson dying, but I don’t know how to fill the hole in my soul.”
She paled.
“Hey.” Zach shifted around so he could look her in the eye. “This has nothing to do with you. If I need more connections, it’s because I have always had more people in my life.” Zach knew she was comparing him to Liam. All the Rownt did the same. But even worse, she would be comparing herself to Ondry and wondering why he was enough for Liam, but she wasn’t enough for Zach. Rownt were competitive—the Grandmothers more than most.
“Would you wish to form connections? We could procure another predator while we are here.”
Zach sighed. He still missed Duke, but the two dogs that had followed had lived such short lives. Zach tried to stand, but his Grandmother held on. “I’m fine. I would like to go wash up.” Zach made it very clear that he did not want company when he was in the toilet or cleaning himself, and the Grandmothers resp
ected that boundary. However, apparently that didn’t extend to letting him go so he could reach the hygiene rooms.
Zach struggled for a minute before sagging back down onto her. No doubt she recognized his emotional turmoil. “Unless you can talk the Imshee into extending the predator’s life for free, I would rather we not.”
“You regret your long life,” she said. Maybe the other Grandmothers wouldn’t say that because they had helped negotiate the Imshee deal, but his Grandmother had been a tuk-ranked engineer back when the Calti had made that trade. She could say the Grandmothers had made a bad deal without implicating herself.
“I don’t regret it.” He reached up and traced a circle around her fora. “I will never regret more time with you and my work is fascinating. The linguistic similarities and differences in the various alien languages is a subject worthy of several lifetimes of study.” Zach loved studying the Cy and how they had interacted with humans, even back before humans could travel in space.
She studied him for long minutes, her eyes wide with confusion. “What part do you regret?” she asked.
Zach sucked in a breath. She might’ve been an expert in the great engines that drove the Calti, but she had a rare insight into how he worked as well. “I regret that I don’t have family still alive to talk to. I can’t go to any of my siblings and share memories of Jackson, and no one alive today even remembers any of my brothers or sisters or my parents.”
“Would you like to raise an eggling?”
Shock robbed Zach of any words. She blinked at him, her expression as calm as if she hadn’t dropped a verbal bomb. Zach opened his mouth, closed it, and had to kick-start his brain before he could respond. “Egglings can’t live in the temple.” Experiments and dangerous equipment and confidential information made it the worst place for any child.
“We can move to private quarters.” She made that sound so casual.
