“There were those who used her cruelly,” the mind-speaker continued. “We were on the same farm, but I escaped the worst torment, being male. There were Owners who liked to play with the new girls, and, a few of them took a special interest in Kaya. The rest of us could do nothing, but we knew what was going on. They never stopped bothering her, like they usually did. Finally, some of the caretakers had seen enough, and they figured out a way to sneak her out—I got away at the same time—but by then she was pregnant, and her mind was damaged.”
Kati swore—then wondered if she had spoken out loud in the room of the Rebel Base.
She took hold of herself, controlling the anger that had swamped her for a moment. It was not a good idea to indulge in negative emotions while doing mental healing; she remembered that much from her collaboration with Master Healer Vorlund. It was hard to deal with another person’s mental thicket if you were growing one yourself!
“Well, let’s do what we can, and what we must,” she subvocalized to the Granda and the minds following hers. “We need to find out what causes the convulsions, and clear out that particular tangle. The rest will have to be left for later.”
She considered for a moment while the others waited.
“My guess is that it’s foetus-related,” she finally informed The Monk. “Her feelings about the baby are probably pretty mixed up. Can you see anything in that thicket that makes you think of an unborn child, Old Brown-robe?”
“Oh, it’ll be about the baby, all right,” a feminine subvocalization came to her from the group behind her. “On the farms they treated us like brood animals. I bore a child; they cut it out of me when I was ready to give birth, and took it away, without even showing it to me. I only know that I have a son because I could sense him while I was pregnant with him. I never saw him afterwards, not even once. By the time the drug that was used to put me out had worn off, he was gone and I had been sewed up. The next time they needed us to work, I was back at it.”
“I need to hear your stories,” Kati sighed, “but not right now. They’re making me angry, and that interferes with what I’m trying to do. Can you people hang onto your tales for the time being, and I’ll get the Granda to record them later? We really do have to help Kaya before the convulsions do more damage to her.”
“Of course. We want to help you help Kaya; we don’t want to hinder your efforts.”
And with that Kati’s followers subsided into a mental silence.
“Here’s a growth that looks like an umbilical cord,” The Monk who had been examining the edge of the thicket, said.
Kati slid over to take a look. He was right. The reddish growth that he was holding looked like a fleshy tube and it was pulsating, fast. Kati remembered from the days of her own pregnancy and childbirth that an unborn child’s heartbeat is much faster than an adult’s. Kaya had grown the mental equivalent of her baby’s umbilicus into the thicket of her troubled mind; following it surely would lead them to where her psyche was the most distressed about the imminent birth.
“It’s as good a lead as anything,” she muttered mentally, following The Monk as he picked up the umbilicus-analog and began to force his way through the thicket.
At first they struggled. The apparent plant growths around them obstructed their passage, and the umbilicus-analog was slippery. A couple of times The Monk lost his hold on it, but Kati, noticing how slithery a snake it was, also grasped hold of it, and when The Monk, fighting to get through the thicket, lost it, she still had her hold, and could help him recover his. The first time it happened she glanced behind her after securing the Granda’s hold, to see that Zass, too, had his hand clasped around the imaginary body part. She smiled and nodded to him gratefully, and noted that Zass and the ones following him had drawn wisps of the Forest Spirit with them into the messy growth that was Kaya’s troubled mind. At first that had not seemed significant to her, but as they travelled on, she realized that walking was becoming easier, and the plants of the thicket had begun to make room for them, leaning away from them, instead of obstructing their passage. Then she began to hear crooning coming from behind her; it was a forest croon, reminding her of running water, of tree leaves trembling in a passing breeze, of birds singing and the rustling of the forest floor under the passing of small paws or claws. The Spirit of the Forest had made its way through Kaya’s defences, and was trying to calm her!
Afterwards Kati wondered whether the Forest Spirit’s crooning didn’t somehow shrink the tangle that was Kaya’s pained psyche; shortly after she noticed the soothing effects of the croon, they found the source of the umbilicus-analog. It was attached to a beautiful baby girl, a long, thin, Vultairian baby, but beautifully formed, with lovely , open eyes, a rosebud of a mouth, and masses of hair. The child looked already born, lying on a bed of large flower petals, but as The Monk and Kati approached, the vegetation around the bed suddenly grew taller and more tangled, hiding the baby from their sight.
“If that’s how Kaya sees her child, I’m very hopeful for her,” Kati subvocalized as the baby disappeared behind the plants.
“She’s afraid of losing the child,” The Monk said. “That’s likely the reason for the convulsions. She’s afraid of having the baby taken away from her—a sensible fear, judging from what the other Klenser woman told us—so her mind is at odds with her body which is readying itself to give birth, and the conflict creates the convulsions.”
“Hmm. Master Healer Vorlund would probably agree with your assessment,” Kati conceded. “Which leaves the problem: how do we deal with her fears when clearly she does not trust us with her child, or even the mental image of her?”
She stared at the little thicket which hid the baby. It was growing more tangled every moment.
“I’ll have to leave that one to you,” The Monk subvocalized. “The last few times that I was in a female body—and I’ve mostly avoided women in the last centuries—those women had very little interest in motherhood.”
Kati gave him a jaundiced glance.
“Yeah, I suppose rape and pillage were more your style while you existed among the lowlifes of the Fringe Worlds,” she snapped. “Well, I have given birth—and I have lost a child. So maybe I can relate to Kaya, and her distress.”
The last words brought back to her the enormity of her own loss, the loss of her only child, Jake. For a moment, she stood perfectly still beside the tangle that hid Kaya’s baby, her hands on her face, willing back the tears that were threatening to spill. A comforting presence slid around her from behind her, crooning to her this time; the Forest Spirit, aided by the Klensers accompanying it, was reaching to her, to ease her sorrow. And as that happened, the whole landscape around her became electrified.
“Did you lose a baby, too?” a mental voice asked her, seeming to come from all around her.
“Not a baby,” she forced herself to respond. “I got to keep him for five years. Five wonderful years.”
She realized immediately that she would have to—in spite of her own hurt—use this opening to reach the pregnant woman’s mind, to convince her that no-one would take her daughter from her, that she would be allowed to keep her—would have to leave her habitual trance, and become a resident of the physical world, to look after the child.
“Kaya, I caught a glimpse of the baby you have created,” she said, forcing her own emotions under control, and choosing words carefully. “She is absolutely beautiful.”
“I don’t want anyone to cut her out from me, and take her away,” came the answer.
“No-one will, Kaya. You’re not on The Farm anymore. The workers helped you to escape, remember? You’re at the Rebel Base now, and treating people well is what the Resistance is all about.”
“She’s not on The Farm anymore,” the crooner behind her murmured, and repeated the words several time in a soothing cadence.
Had the tangled bush around the baby stopped growing? Kati crossed her imaginary fingers in a gesture of hope that she remembered from her childhood. Bu
t....
“I’m not a person.” Kaya’s forlorn thought echoed through the landscape. “I’m an animal, a Farm animal, born to cleanse and to do whatever I’m told to do.”
“That’s not true,” Kati protested immediately. “You are a human being, a beautiful, healthy human being with some amazing and unique talents.” How the heck did the Oligarchs live with themselves? They were a frigging blot on the face of The Star Federation!
“You better be recording this,” she muttered to The Monk beside her. He nodded his head vigorously.
Kati drew a non-existent breath and plunged in again:
“Your baby wants to be born,” she said gently. “She’s getting ready to leave your body, and your body is getting ready to push her out. She’s going to be born the natural way, travelling head first, down the birth canal, and once she’s out, the women helping with the birth will slap her on the bum to make her take her first breath; they’ll clean her, and then place her on your breast to suckle milk as her very first meal. You need to leave the trance you’re in, and join the world, for a while anyway, to help with the birth, and to welcome your baby.”
She thought back to when she herself had given birth to Jake, to the long, painful process that that had been, and then the triumphant joy with which she had greeted his arrival. How wonderful it had been to hold her son, even though she had been so-o-o tired by then!
Carefully not shielding her thoughts, she was hoping that Kaya was following their flow. Maybe she was; those behind her seemed to be doing so. The crooning had become a lullaby, one The Spirit had clearly picked out of her memories:
“Toorah loorah, loorah lie, my mother sang to me....”
“If I do that, if I allow my baby to be born into the world, I want to be the one to mother her,” Kaya stated suddenly, fiercely. “I’ll do whatever I have to, to do that.”
“And the rest of us Klensers on the Base will be her aunt and uncles,” someone crooned behind Kati, joyously.
“I think that everyone on the Base will want to be her aunts and uncles,” said Kati as the undergrowth untangled around the foetus to reveal it again in all its loveliness.
*****
When Kati returned to her body, which was slumped in a cross-legged position beside Kaya’s pallet, it was to discover a stirring in the room. Zass, across the pallet from her was rubbing his eyes and Kaya’s eyes were half-open, and she seemed to be looking around her with the air of someone who had just awakened from a deep and refreshing sleep. There were sounds coming from the mattresses on the other side of the room, and Cathe, Sira and Mathilde were all on their feet, looking around at the Klensers and Kati with wide-open eyes.
Cathe seemed to be the first one to recover, rushing to the table at the back of the room which held a couple of pitchers of water and glasses, beside the piles of equipment that the women apparently had collected while Kati had been out.
“Anybody need a drink of water?” she asked solicitously, grabbing one of the glasses.
“Yes, likely everybody,” Kati replied, even as Zass said: “Me,” and Kaya croaked something unintelligible and further croaks came from the other pallets.
Cathe, Joaley, Sira and Mathilde got busy passing around glasses of water, thankfully holding off with their questions until all the parched throats had been looked after.
“So how long were we out?” Kati asked Mathilde after she had downed a gulp of water from the glass the girl handed to her.
“About an hour—maybe a bit more,” she answered, with a quick glance at Sira who nodded.
“That long? Hmm, it felt to me like only minutes,” was Kati’s response. “But time can be tricky in these experiences. It doesn’t run at the same speed as it does in the physical world. And you never know whether it is going faster or slower than the clocks run, until you’ve come back, and can check the time elapsed.
“Did Kaya have any seizures while we were doing our thing?”
“A couple—both in the first half hour,” Sira replied. “They were actually pretty bad—the second one worse than the first. We were pretty worried. But then there were no more, and we started to breathe a little more easily.”
“I take it that you found the trouble and dealt with it,” said Cathe from where, on her knees, she had propped Kaya into a sitting position, and was helping her to drink water.
Kati watched the gentleness of her motions as she helped the pregnant Klenser, and was glad that this woman was the one in charge of the room. In her hands, and those of Sira, Kaya would be kindly attended to, in spite of the fact that neither of the women were professionals. What they lacked in practical skills, they made up with their caring attitudes.
Zass had taken his glass of water over to the other side of the room and, with Sira’s help was talking encouragingly to the Klensers there, all of whom seemed to be struggling to release themselves from the trance that up until now had been their habitual mode of existence.
“You can do it,” she heard Zass saying to someone. “I’m a Klenser, and I’m now living in the world most of the time, functioning the same as any other person. You only have to want to do it; it’s good if there’s a reason why you want to stop hiding. I had two reasons: music, and my sister. I knew that my sister would have been terribly lonesome if she had lost me to one of The Farms, and because I had played music with her before my change, I knew that I really wanted to do that again. And then the off-world musicians handed me a drum, and asked me to play with them, so as to hide the fact that I was a Klenser.”
“I used to make and play sea-reed pipes when I was a boy,” one of the men said in a rusty voice. “I’d like to do that again.”
“We’ll get the Forest Spirit to show us where there are reeds,” Zass said to him with a smile. “Maybe they won’t be sea-reeds, but I bet there are those that will do just as well.”
“Wow, Zass,” Sari said, “that’s an excellent idea! I can’t believe that none of us here thought of something like that! Here we are, rebels supposedly, and still our thoughts have been running down the same old ruts!”
“Change is hard,” Kati spoke up from where she was still sitting. “Often what initiates it, are new game pieces that shake things up and force other people to start thinking new thoughts.”
Joaley who had sat down in a chair by the table, now spoke up:
“Lamanians know that. That’s why they welcome all the mongrels of the known universe into The Second City. We help to keep them from getting stuck in old ruts; instead, they are able to keep on changing, and improving their society.
“But, be that as it may, Kati; did you succeed in healing Kaya’s hurts?”
“Only in a very small way,” Kati answered, sighing. “She understands now that she can give birth to this baby and look after it herself—no-one will take the child away from her, but everyone will help her with its care.”
She smiled at the pregnant woman, while Cathe, beside Kaya, hugged her gently, looking very pleased.
“So I can let the baby come out,” Kaya whispered in a voice which crackled with disuse. “I won’t mind that it’ll hurt. She’ll drink milk from my breasts.”
“Birthing babies is a painful process, that’s the truth,” Cathe said, her arm firmly around Kaya’s shoulders. “Breastfeeding hurts, too, to begin with. But it’s worth it; babies are wonderful.”
“Yeah. She showed me.” Kaya nodded at Kati. “She showed me that having a baby was worth it even if you lose it later.”
“The pains that we suffer don’t necessarily negate the good things that we experience,” Cathe said in a soft voice, her eyes darting from Kaya to Kati and back again.
*****
“So you’ll help us with the show, Roxanna?” Rakil asked, as Roxanna led him, Jock and Lank around the Base.
“I can sing and I can dance,” she laughed. “Just don’t ask me to play an instrument.”
“I expect that Mathilde and Zass will come to take part, if at all possible,” Lank said. “I
n that case, we’ll have enough instrumentalists, although we’ll miss Joaley. She’s pretty darn good with that pipe of hers.”
“We won’t have to start the show until sometime after supper,” Jock pointed out. “By that time Kati and Joaley may have finished whatever it is that Kati wanted Mathilde and Zass for.”
“Joaley and Kati, however, will hang around with the birthing women until the Healer arrives,” Rakil mused. “Kati is dutiful if she’s anything, and Joaley has a soft spot for the oppressed.”
“Can Kati really do something to ease Kaya’s convulsions, do you think?” Roxanna asked. “When I knew her she had just discovered her ESP abilities and had very little idea of their extent. Has she discovered some psychic healing powers?”
“It seems so,” Rakil replied. “Lank and I were there when she helped the Shelonian Master Healer Vorlund heal Kerris. Kerris had been abused by the Vultairian couple who claimed to have adopted him, but had actually bought him.”
“Master Healer Vorlund would have liked to have taken her on as an apprentice after they worked together, but she wanted to come here to see if she could follow the trail of the slave traders,” added Lank.
“She said that she had promised to get help for the slaves on that space vessel that she—and you—were kept on,” Rakil added. “She was not about to go back on that promise.”
“As you said, Kati is dutiful if she is anything,” Roxanna said softly. “She didn’t even tell anybody except Murra about the escape plan, to save us as much trouble as she could. I think she would have kept Murra in the dark, too, if that had been possible, but it wasn’t, since he was feeding her information from the Xeonsaur.”
“So we Vultairians are just a sidebar in your Team Leader’s Master Plan,” Jock protested, but with a grin. “Our miserable world gets help with its problems because that happens to advance the battle against slavery.”
“Don’t you dare complain,” Rakil said, shaking a large fist. “Kerris’ situation is what Maryse r’ma Darien is using to get official Federation action on Vultaire.”
On Assignment to the Planet of the Exalted Page 39
