Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  “I still wonder,” he admitted.

  She laughed quietly, then took a breath as the tightening came on again.

  The transition came, with shuddering swiftness, a rising wall of pain that she could only push through, over and over. For an interminable time it seemed that nothing else existed, not even Blackbear’s eyes and the hypnotic voice of the lifeshaper. But the head of the child inside, that she could feel, tunneling out to daylight.

  A cry burst the air, a short gasp of a cry, and a little wrinkled creature flung out its arms and legs. Then the infant was in Blackbear’s arms. He wrapped it in the blanket, the same one that had once wrapped Hawktalon, and then Sunflower. Cradling the infant for a moment, he laid it upon her to find her breast. What a thrill to feel one suck again, for she missed nursing Sunny.

  “It’s a girl,” Blackbear whispered, as the lifeshaper had not seemed to notice. “What good luck for the clan!”

  The lifeshaper apologized, “Sorry about the transition. Some pain is needed, to draw out the little sharer. Otherwise, you’d never let her out.”

  “You’re right, I’ll miss her in there,” Raincloud said half-seriously. “But how much better to see her…”

  From several feet off came Hawktalon’s voice. “Where’s Mother? Where’s my baby?” She came over and peered at her new sister. “Ooh, she’s little. She’s even uglier than Sunny was.”

  “Hawktalon,” said Blackbear reprovingly. The infant’s head was rather flattened, and her nose was pushed to one side. Her skin was pallid, for the rich darkness of Clicker skin would only come later. But for Raincloud, all of these features became in an instant the highest standard of beauty.

  Sunflower pushed his face eagerly beneath Raincloud’s arm. “It’s my baby,” he insisted. “When can I have my baby?”

  “Does she have a name yet?” Blackbear ventured to ask.

  Raincloud tried to recall her last dreams as she caressed Sunflower’s hair, for a moment overcome by the sense of the two little furry heads on her breast. Then her face wrinkled. “You know what I dreamed of? That trainsweep, clambering over the raft. We can’t very well call her that.”

  “‘Trainsweep!’” Hawktalon exclaimed. “What a name!”

  “Anything else?” asked Blackbear.

  She thought hard, dazed with exhaustion. “The sky was blue, and the sound of the wind was in my ears. Blueskywind.” She heard Blackbear catch his breath. It was a good name for the Windclan, and yet different, for few Clickers ever came to light beneath a blue sky.

  Beyond them the sea gasped against the raft, enveloping everyone with a fine mist. Yshri said, “Now the sea has named her too.”

  Chapter 17

  FOR THE NEXT DAY SHE RESTED, AWAKING ONLY TO FEED the little one, and herself. During the day, she occasionally let her rock to sleep in a shon: a cradle that floated in a bed of water, swaying as the baby moved. At other times Blackbear hoisted the baby up into a leather pouch secure on his chest. A true rei-gi expert would be able to deflect any attacker while keeping the child safe.

  Verid came to pay Raincloud and her newborn a visit.

  “It’s good to see you, Subguardian.” Raincloud felt a bit nervous, for her milk was coming in, and her breasts leaked beneath her clothes.

  Verid took up the newborn, handling her with surprising ease; a former generen, after all. Blueskywind’s head had rounded up beautifully, and her nose was beginning to spring back. “How alert she is,” Verid said. “Wait till Iras sees her.”

  A particularly big wave crashed upon the raft, and the surface shifted beneath their feet. “The ocean’s getting rough,” Verid added. “The shuttle will take us out before the storm.”

  “That’s okay; we told Yshri we’d stay on.” The Sharers knew what they were doing, she figured.

  “You’ve heard, about the witnessers in Helicon?” Verid asked.

  “I’ve heard nothing since yesterday,” said Raincloud.

  “Sharer witnessers have appeared outside the Nucleus in whitetrance, in the middle of the main thoroughfare. If we don’t work something out, there will soon be more.”

  Raincloud nodded. “It’s a shame.”

  “Disastrous,” Verid exclaimed. “Absolutely disastrous.”

  She nodded again, although Verid’s reaction seemed a bit extreme, she thought. Diplomacy would sort things out.

  “Well, never mind, dear; you did your best. The fault was on my end.” Verid set Blueskywind back in her water cradle, but the infant cried out and waved her little cupped hands, until Raincloud took her up on her shoulder.

  Raincloud managed a wan smile. She had long known, of course, what Bronze Sky’s Sharer delegates thought of terraforming; but for her, it had been ancient history, just a part of life’s impermanence. “I wish I could do more.”

  “You need to rest. I’ll deal with Leresha and Ooruwen myself, tonight, for all the good it will do. If only I could address the Gathering myself…” Verid shook her head.

  “I’ll be back to the Nucleus soon. I’ll have to bring the baby in from now on.” The baby would need to nurse.

  “That’s fine. We can even borrow a nana for you.”

  Raincloud shuddered. “No thanks.”

  Verid drew nearer and sat on the floor next to the silken mat where Raincloud lay. Her eyebrows arched expressively. “There is one thing you can do for us. It’s highly classified, you understand.”

  She looked up. “Yes?”

  “Zheron is back. He wants us to visit the new Imperator, as soon as possible. He’s serious; he’ll even let us tag their missiles, do you see?”

  Raincloud lay back and closed her eyes. The image of her teacher filled her brain with longing, while the newborn slept trustingly on her shoulder. Whom do I owe more, she wondered; a dead teacher, or a suckling child with a life ahead of her? Do I dare bring her to that cursed planet?

  But there were newborns on that world too, and mothers weak with hunger.

  “We need you,” Verid insisted. “We’ve got to know what we’re doing, to make the right moves. Zheron wants you; he called you a ‘man of honor.’”

  She smiled despite herself, then grew serious. “I’ll have to tell Blackbear.” She could foresee the explosion.

  Verid hesitated. “Very well, but discuss it here—never in Helicon.”

  “I’ll expect another raise,” she added, practical as always.

  “Of course.”

  “And I’ll need six months to train in high gravity.”

  Verid gave her a quizzical look.

  “Well, what do you think they’ll expect from of a ‘man of honor’?”

  THE OCEAN GREW MOUNTAINOUS, ITS WAVES LEAVING deep troughs that exposed the coral-encrusted underside of the outer raft branches. By nightfall the storm struck, a furious tumult of wind that built waves nearly tall as the Caldera Hills.

  The Sharers all moved down to their tunnels at the heart of the raft, sealing off the upper entrance from the silkhouse. For hours the ocean rocked them to and fro, like a giant shona. The Clicker children huddled between Raincloud and Blackbear, Sunflower’s eyes wide, with his thumb in his mouth. The Sharers took the opportunity for a marathon recounting of their most ancient tales. But Raincloud’s newborn slept like the dead, rousing only for an occasional sip at her breast, where the clear substance was gradually turning to milk.

  When at last the motion quieted and the Sharers climbed out again, all their silkhouses had been washed away. Stunned, Raincloud and Blackbear sought in vain for the few clothes and toiletries they had forgotten to take down. It was as bad as a springtime mudslide in Tumbling Rock.

  But the Sharers immediately began hauling new panels of seasilk out from storage below, and set to work twisting and lashing them together. Now Raincloud understood the feel of impermanence about the silken dwellings, and the reason why Sharers spent so much of their time at their looms weaving seasilk. Blackbear, who was handy at that sort of thing, immediately joined in.

&nbs
p; “Share the day,” Yshri greeted her. “Your little one looks well. Eating greedily as a legfish, I expect.”

  “Yes,” Raincloud admitted proudly, holding up Blueskywind’s head carefully as she overlooked her mother’s shoulder, alert and wakeful.

  “Share wisely,” Yshri warned. “It’s not easy, raising a devil to learn goodness.”

  Raincloud considered this. “You’re right. She won’t have it easy either, raising me.”

  Yshri laughed. “I think she’ll do well enough. She’ll have good help,” she pointed out, nodding to Hawktalon, who had Sunflower by the hand, tugging him away from the water’s edge. “Will she take you to the Gathering tonight?”

  Startled, Raincloud looked up.

  “You have shared life-threat with us thrice over,” Yshri pointed out. “You shared a fugitive with us in swallower season; shared birth with a child; and stayed through the storm to share rebuilding. Your presence tonight would bring the deepest honor.”

  THE SKY WAS CLOUDLESS, AS BLACK AS THE PUPIL OF an eye. Yet the stars shone sharp as pinpoints, piercing the blackness down to the horizon. A moment’s slip of gravity, she imagined, would be enough to let her fall off into the void.

  Beneath the sky sat the Sharers, each with her plantlight glowing softly before her crossed feet. When the greenish glow grew dim, a carafe of water was passed along to revive the plant. The light etched their faces in sharp relief, and their oval heads cast long shadows.

  Across the Gathering, a plantlight was lifted overhead. The Sharer rose, a tall one, thin as a reed. “Those Elysians,” she said, “give them a chance and they will breed like snails.” The “chance” she referred to was of course Blackbear’s genome project. “They have no sense of the Web. We should have shared a stronger message, Yshri.”

  “That’s right,” agreed another voice nearby. Her face had a prominent chin; Raincloud recognized her as Yshri’s lovesharer. “They have no business raising their own children. You know how it is, Yshri. Children are seductive: once you have one, you can’t help wanting more.”

  “By next year,” said a third, “you’ll change your mind, and the Gathering can act. But then it may be too late.”

  Her infant asleep in her arms, Raincloud listened with surprise. Leresha had said the Gathering was “divided,” implying a more or less equal division. In fact, however, all but Yshri opposed the genome project; they did not want Elysian individuals to raise their own children. For Sharers, one vote was as good as a majority, but for the Elysians, Raincloud knew, it would be small comfort.

  Yshri at last replied, somewhat defensively. “The Elysians care well enough for Shora,” said the lifeshaper. “They clean up their wastes, offer food for fish, and share work with Sharers. They manage their own numbers better than we do. We Sharers actually produce surplus population now, as some of our children migrate to other worlds.”

  Voices stirred nearby, and several plantlights lifted. The convener of the Gathering, a woman several months pregnant, held her light out toward one.

  “A shocking state of affairs. We should not produce children who add to the surplus population of other worlds.”

  “But we can’t manage all the webs of the universe. It’s more than enough for us to share our own, the Web of Shora.”

  “Foolish One—we’re long past that. There is only one Web of life in the entire universe. All worlds are connected. Compassion anywhere breeds caring everywhere.”

  “Don’t forget why we shared learning with the Heliconians in the first place. They protect us from other worlds whose people behave like fleshborers. We could be consumed by them.”

  “But now our trust is broken.”

  “Yes, we have shared breaking faith with them,” agreed Ooruwen, whose voice Raincloud recognized. “Not for the first time, either. Well, it’s our duty to repair the breach. So let’s get on with it. Let’s remind them who keeps this world habitable. Let’s share those beautiful green-eyed flies with the rest of their twelve city-rafts. Better yet, let the breathmicrobes color their skin.”

  Raincloud smiled to herself. It was a Sharer principle only to take actions whose consequences they might willingly share. Nonetheless, those finicky Elysians would go crazy to see themselves turn purple in the mirror like Draeg.

  “Not yet,” some one objected. “We have to share reason first, before we share flies and breathmicrobes. Elysians are capable of reason.”

  “Exactly,” said Yshri’s lovesharer. “Let our witnessers do their work. Let the Elysians face into truth every moment of their days from now on. Who can withstand that?”

  “Perhaps,” spoke Leresha suddenly, “it’s actually too late.” The voice of the wordweaver resonated differently, somehow, from the others. “Perhaps it’s too late for reason or breathmicrobes. We forget that humans throughout the Fold outnumber Sharers by a factor of ten thousand; and their numbers only grow.”

  There was silence.

  “Other worlds can hold more people than ours,” Yshri pointed out. “On other worlds people inhabit the land of the dead.” The Sharer term for “dry land” also meant “ocean floor” or “land of the dead.”

  “But they overflow their land,” Leresha insisted, “crowding out even the dead. That is why they seek to ‘terraform,’ to colonize other dead lands.”

  “So what can we do about that?” Yshri asked.

  “What do we do when the snails overgrow the coral, consuming all and leaving nothing?”

  “We shape a virus to deplete their numbers eightfold.”

  The silence lasted longer this time. The distant waves groaned softly, and the scent of raftblossoms mingled with that of damp mosses.

  “It could be done,” Yshri added dryly. “We could shape a virus to cut our own numbers by eight. Its disease would have a delayed onset, enabling it to spread across the Fold before it’s noticed.”

  “What are you saying?” cried Ooruwen. “The Gathering ought to unspeak you. Humans are more than snails.”

  Leresha said, “We are more dangerous.”

  THE NEXT DAY, AFTER RAINCLOUD HAD SLEPT, VERID insisted on hearing every word. She ought to have taped it, Raincloud thought wearily, but the treaty forbade that too. She had slept badly, slipping in and out of dreams that her memory did not catch.

  “They can’t be serious, can they?” Raincloud asked. “It’s not like pacifists to make such…threats.”

  “It was no empty threat,” Verid assured her. “The Sharers have always known how dangerous they are. The Valans were damned lucky they lost their war.”

  “You think the Sharers really would loose a plague on us?”

  “No,” said Verid. “Remember, they’d have to let the plague infect themselves, too. One might propose it—knowing the rest would be too sensible.”

  Recalling the pull of Leresha’s voice in the night, Raincloud shuddered. “One wordweaver might persuade the rest.”

  “Yes,” Verid admitted, as if this were just another possibility to consider.

  “But—but this is horrible. What are we going to do about it?”

  “The World Gathering is done, for this year,” Verid pointed out. “They’ll all be off to their home rafts. For now, I’ll head back to the Nucleus. I have other worlds to deal with, you know.”

  DAZED, BLACKBEAR SANK ONTO THE MAT OF SEASILK. From outside arose a haunting song interwoven with a flute melody. The Sharers were singing their traditional thanks to the ocean for providing their evening meal. “So now you tell me those Elysians have managed to start a ‘war’ with the Sharers?”

  “At least it’s a peaceful war—on both sides.” She hoped.

  “And they still plan to take you to Urulan? With our baby?” he pointed out, for the nursing infant could not be left behind.

  “They have lots of worlds to deal with.”

  “I wish we’d never left Tumbling Rock,” he exclaimed suddenly. “Everything’s mixed up. Why don’t we just go home?”

  Raincloud watched Blues
kywind, who was gazing up at her as she nursed. She did not like to admit how unsettled she felt.

  “Those Sharers,” he added suddenly. “They are thoroughly mad.”

  “No they’re not,” Raincloud assured him. “That’s just the point; they’re not mad…quite.”

  Blackbear looked unconvinced.

  “You’ll see. I’ll read you the next part of The Web.”

  The Web

  Part II

  THE SUN WAS GETTING HIGH ABOVE THE GATHERING PLACE, so the four of us took shade within a clump of treeferns along the eastern edge of the rim. Weia and Adeisha looked expectantly to Merwen, while I sat apart. Merwen then took up the task we had demanded, though it might drive us to madness: to find compassion in the Web.

  “Cassi,” Merwen asked, “why do living things exist in a web of life, instead of in isolation?”

  Before I could answer, Weia said, “Living things are food for others.”

  “Living things need others,” said Adeisha, her dark hair lifting in the breeze, like mine. “Plants make food out of sun and minerals; but whence come the minerals, if not from the waste of animals?”

  “Just so,” said Merwen. “Does each kind of living thing have its calling, then, its service to the others…its strand of the Web?”

  “The legfish consumes plants and puts out rich wastes,” said Adeisha. “The fanwing consumes the legfish…”

  “And we consume legfish,” said Weia. Some of us do, I amended silently. For Merwen ate only plants.

  “Are some callings, some strands of the Web, more important than others?” Merwen asked. “Those of the larger, hungrier creatures, perhaps?”

  Adeisha shook her head. “The microbes fix nitrogen to make protein; not even plants could get on without them. And the fungi scavenge dead flesh, returning its nutrients to the Web. Their role is central.”

  “Then perhaps only the smallest strands are essential,” said Merwen. “Are the little ones all that’s really needed? Perhaps the Web could get on without legfish and fanwings.”

  “Or Sharers,” added Weia.