Malinu excused Jory from work. Jory stayed as close as he could. They moved her to the intensive care unit, and Jory sat outside, sleeping or reading.
A doctor came out—a human doctor, an intelligent looking woman with yellow skin and high-cornered eyes. “I'm Doctor Pren. How are you?” They shook hands. “Is she a relative of yours?"
Jory almost laughed. “What do you mean?” He'd almost blurted that she was an alien.
“She asked for two persons—you, and someone named baba."
Jory explained: “They are trisexual. There's a male, a female, and a baba..."
“Sir, what are you talking about? That is a human being in there, same as you and I."
“What?"
Dr. Pren put a finger over her lips. “Sh! Come and peek, only for a minute."
Jory followed her into the sick bay, where instruments flowed on the walls, monitors hummed, and intravenous fluids dripped above a sterile white bed. On the bed lay a naked human woman. Instead of a russet ball of fuzz, she had red hair that glowed like wet copper. She had horn-like plates like Jory, he saw with a sinking feeling, but smaller than his. They would not detract from her beauty—actually, they seemed to add something that Nolani's had not added. Ramy's skin was not transparent, but pale pink. Her slender and lovely body bore galaxies of orange freckles. She was hooked up with tubes at every orifice, and wires ran to skin patches over much of her torso and on the major arteries of her limbs. A net-cap robot performed an ongoing brain scan. She had small, firm breasts, a bushy Venus-mound covered with orange curls, and a distinctly human kjoni. Jory looked closely at her fingertips—the fingernails were like his own.
And yet, standing back, he recognized her exact form as that of Ramy.
“Is she—?"
“She is perfectly normal,” Dr. Pern said. “I've never actually seen anything like it. She's newborn, but has mature brain wave function. What was that entity who gave birth to her?"
Jory explained about life on Oba Island and about the babas. Someone brought kjaba and Jory welcomed its warmth and bitter taste.
Dr. Pern took a speculative breath and nodded slowly as she ushered Jory out of the room. They spoke outside in the waiting room. Jory explained about their love affair.
“My guess,” said Dr. Pern, “is that she will enjoy full human body and brain function. She asked for people by name—that's a sure sign. One thing puzzles me. These babas may be natural wizards of fungi and genetics and finance back there on Shur, but there is no way the baba could have obtained genes for the female from you. You see, the female genetic material can only come from a human woman's egg. And there was no human female involved."
“Oh yes there was.” Jory put his hands over his face in horror, remembering Xinda. What else had they taken from the child before blinding her and thrusting her into the night into the arms of her terrified parents? “The babas collect things, Doctor. They have thousands of kjirs of baba-craft behind them. Who knows how many human females they collected eggs from, who knows for what purpose?"
* * * *
Ramy woke a few days later. Jory stayed outside for the first few hours while Ramy was taken to Human Less Acute, where human nurses fussed over her. They had not told her about her sister's death, or about Jory. Ramy was still on i.v. fluids, and very confused, but she received her first cup of citrus juice.
Dr. Pern met Jory in the hall. “Our young lady is doing fine. Now would be a good time to gently appear and take her hand. We'll monitor her respiration and other vital signs."
Jory stepped inside. Ramy did not see him yet. He heard her speak in Oban, asking for her sister. She sounded dazed.
Jory rounded the corner and stood before her bed. Ramy seemed not to recognize him. She wore a plain white smock that barely covered her torso. She was Ramy in a human incarnation—her sister's immense gift of atonement.
Ramy stared at Jory and her face betrayed a distant recognition, a horror. She reached up with both hands and touched the astropath plates. She made an unpleasant face. She reached anxiously around the side of her neck, on both sides, looking for the sex organs that weren't there any more. She must have realized the full story just then, for she let out a long wail of grief that rose up and down like a siren, like an animal keening for the loss of its mate. People held their ears. She threw herself on her back, then on her front, pounding the bed with her fists. A Ruandap doctor came running, as did a Fril nurse and human nurses. Dr. Pern stepped in with a look of concern, of speculation, weighing one plan against another.
“Leave her alone,” Jory told them all. “She is grieving for her sister. There is nothing we can do until she is ready to receive our comfort."
Ramy screamed and threw herself on her back. She felt her mouth with both hands. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and screamed again—hoarse, anguished screams of rage and denial—she'd died in her natural body, and now awakened as an alien. She grew silent with shock as she probed her belly with both hands, looking for the male-taking hole that wasn't there. Her fingers didn't dally over her new navel, for Shurians had that too.
Then she discovered that, before everyone, she'd let her new bladder and her bowels go, and she held up her hands which were smeared with blood and feces. She swayed from side to side, uttering a distressed animal's groaning.
Dr. Pern clapped a curtain shut, cutting Jory out. “She wouldn't want you to see her like this.” She added: “Not the scene we'd hoped for, is it? But she's alive, and she's got normal function. And she has spoken. I suspect she is in total shock, and it will take time. Will you work with us?"
“Of course."
* * * *
Jory went to see Captain Aptath and said: “Captain, we must ensure that the baba's remains are enurned to give to her sister.
Aptath bowed slightly and whispered a Ruandap saying of respect: “You always show us the honorable way."
Ramy-baba's remains were gathered, cremated, and sealed into an Oban-style burial tube with dark blue calligraphy on a cream-colored background. Jory took the burial tube to the hospital. Ramy tearfully accepted the tube, thanked him, and placed it by her pillow. She wore a plain, rumpled hospital gown, and pushed an i.v. pole as she walked slowly, but the mouth and nose tubes were gone, and she could eat nearly solid food now. “My organs are new, and they are helping me to train myself. I have to get used to this person I now am. I am human.” She wrapped her free arm through his. She glanced at the burial tube. “That is all I have left of who I was, and of her. She was the love of my life."
“I know she was."
“Can you accept who I was?"
“I accepted you then, when we were willing to die for each other."
“I was right about you.” She embraced him and rested her cheek against his chest. “I can hear your heart beating. I used to listen to it after you fell asleep, when we were children."
“I never knew that."
She grinned. “You didn't have to know everything."
They kissed, rubbing the tips of their tongues together in circles. They broke up laughing. “Not the same, is it?” she said.
“It will serve us."
* * * *
The very next day, she was released from the hospital. Jory took her home, and she set up her nest as any human woman would, putting this here and that there, standing back, shaking her head, and reversing where the things sat. They made love in the human manner. Soon, she would begin training as an astropath. Aptath wrung his hands in delight every day. Malinu cast covetous glances, but he saw from Ramy's expression she would share herself with nobody but Jory. Malinu needed to glance at Jory only once.
The day came when Jory explained the nature of their gift, and she touched her own keradz with a mix of annoyance and awe. Jory took her to their place of work. She gasped as they entered the small theater where the ship's astropath chairs stood in a row under a huge glass bubble beyond which stretched the eternity of the universe.
As she stared into space, her eyes wide at th
e sight of so many stars, so many swirling galaxies, she cried out: “The Obayyo!"
He looked at fields upon fields of stars. For a moment he digested her confusion, then reached his arm around her. “Yes, a Lantern Road. It will be good to travel.” He squeezed her close to him and added: “Together."
* * *
Also By John T. Cullen:
SF Novels:
Pioneers
This Shoal of Space
SF Anthology:
Lantern Road: 8 By Argo
Suspense Novel:
Neon Blue
Shorter Works:
Terror In My Arms (Suspense)
Lantern Road (SF)
See John T. Cullen's website for the latest information: www.johnargo.com/
* * *
Visit www.clocktowerbooks.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.
Lantern Road: 8 by Cullen Page 9
