Remnant Population

by Elizabeth Moon

  The creature touched the dough more lightly, then very slowly moved its digit to her face. What? Ofelia felt herself frowning. Again, very slowly, the creature touched the dough, and then this time her mouth. She couldn’t figure it out. She put her own finger on the bread, lifted it to her mouth—oh. Of course. Eating. It wanted to know if this was food.

  “Yes, but not yet,” she said. How to explain bread? She made an attempt anyway, moving her hands to show the dough growing fat, the second kneading, the second rising, the shaping into loaves, the baking. The creature’s expression didn’t change. Well, it would have to observe, that was all. The dough had gone silky, the way it should, firm and responsive under her hand. She covered it with a cloth, cleaned her hands, and remembered that she had meant to cook a pot of beans. She opened another container, poured out the beans into a cooking pot, and covered them with water.

  The creature watched closely as she did this, then reached out to the cloth-covered dough. “Let it alone,” Ofelia said sharply. “It needs to rise.” Again, she mimed the enlargement of the dough. The creature pulled its hand back.

  She had more work to do. She needed to air the house, sweep the floor. She eyed the creature but it didn’t go away. Well, then, let it watch. Ofelia went to work, and the creature watched. It moved away when she came toward it with the broom, staying out of her way, but not departing. When the bread dough had risen, and she punched it down, the creature stood beside her. It skipped back a step when the dough whoofed out its excess air, then came forward again as Ofelia kneaded and shaped the dough into two round loaves. She put the cloth back over the loaves, and checked the beans. They had just begun to soften.

  By the time the bread had risen the second time, Ofelia had her house cleaned to her satisfaction. Now, with the creature watching closely, she turned on her oven, and when it was hot enough, she put the loaves into it. The creature seemed fascinated by the hot gush of air from the oven when she opened it. Ofelia waved it back—it could not know what part of the stove got dangerously hot. Then she showed the creature the cooler. Like a small child, the creature stood in the cold flow of air from the open door until Ofelia pushed past to shut it.

  “You can’t waste it,” she said. The creature looked at her, and Ofelia was sure it wanted to argue, as her children had. She had no intention of arguing. She wanted to find some way to communicate with these creatures, some sound they could both make. “Cooler,” she said, laying her hand on it. “Cooler—makes things cold.” The creature stared, as always. She moved to the stove. “Stove,” she said. “Makes thing hot. Hot . . . cold.”

  The creature fumbled at the cooler latch, opened it, and waved its hand in the direction of the downward flow of cold air. The sound it made was neither cooler nor cold, but it did begin with a harsh consonant that Ofelia thought might be an attempt at a “kuh.” Somewhat to her surprise, it closed the door.

  “Cooler,” Ofelia said again. “Cold.”

  “Kuh.”

  Well, it would do. It was a start. Babies started that way, one sound at a time. It moved to the stove, held its hand safely above it. Now what? Should she say “stove” or “hot”? She had always said “hot” to babies, but these weren’t babies. It grunted, clearly impatient. She might not know the words, but she had a lifetime’s experience with impatience.

  “Hot,” she said, emphasizing the initial sound. “Hot.”

  “Kuh.” It patted at the cooler.

  They knew nothing. They would not know that flour came from grain, and the grain from grasses, from the seeds of wheat grown in the little walled plots to protect them from sheep and cattle. They would not know about cutting the grain, beating the gathered stalks to release the seeds, winnowing the seeds to remove the chaff. Or perhaps they did know that much; perhaps they harvested this world’s equivalent of grass in much the same way. Ofelia wondered how much they did know, and how she could find out. Were any of those things hanging from the belts and straps the equivalent of sickle and shears?

  She remembered that in the first years of the colony, long ago, the colonists had had to do it all by hand. The machines were too busy fabricating parts for other machines, for building materials, for cloth and crockery. She and the others had cleared and weeded and harvested with hand tools that gave them blisters and sore backs. Later, the fabricator had turned out little harvesters that fit even in the smallest enclosures and could cut the grain faster than women with sickles. The fabricator could convert rough grain to coarse or fine flour, with the waste material remade into a variety of forms. Even though she had grown up in a city, with store-bought foods, she had been almost awed by the little machines, the first harvest that she didn’t have to do all by hand.

  Would these creatures be awed? Did they believe in magic? Or would they take it all for granted?

  The conversation began when the People first found the city ran alongside a dozen others. Was this the same kind of monster? It wore no clothes on its feet, and little on its body. Yet it had the short soft toes of the invaders, thieves, nest-destroyers. It had five of those toes, and five on the upper limbs. It had white hair instead of dark on its head, but the same arrangement of holes and protuberances.

  It is the same. There is the scar where the flying monsters landed.

  It is not the same. It is alone; it has white on top.

  It is interesting. It does things strangely.

  It is a monster, what did you expect?

  It is not a hunter. Is it prey?

  We cannot eat it. We can watch it.

  Soft skin. Wrinkles. Things hang loose.

  Things! Ornaments, seed-eater!

  Ornaments. It had ornaments hanging on it, ornaments it changed from day to day. What did that mean? A way of counting, a way of responding to the weather? Who could tell? Worth watching, worth learning from. If more came, they would know more about them.

  And so much else to learn from. All those tools, containers, fasteners, noisy boxes, picture boxes. They had drummed to an agreement that no one would touch or handle the obvious triggers except for those the monster demonstrated and offered to them: the light, the water. Hot boxes, cold boxes.

  If it had not been for the monster’s ornaments, they might have believed monsters cared only for boxes: they lived in boxes, kept things in boxes, cooked food in hot boxes, kept food in cold boxes, had pictures and noises in boxes. Some of the People carved boxes of bone or wood, or made them of the skins of grasseaters. But sacks and gourds were more comfortable to travel with. Only those who chose to live in permanent nest grounds had big boxes.

  That picture box. It is like the bird’s seeing.

  ?

  The bird, the high bird—higher and higher. Things look small, but the bird sees far.

  That high?

  The flying monsters scarred the sky. What if they actually cut through it? That far up, they could see all the world at once.

  A flurry of arguments about the shape of the world, recapitulating every theory known to the People. The world was flat. The world was not flat, but round like a gourd. It was not round like a gourd, but a rough lump like a stone. No, like the root the burrowers preferred: the gods had hidden the shape there to show that it was sacred. The arguments died down when the eldest, ignoring them, swept a clear space on the ground. They all understood that, and gathered around.

  Grass laid in a careful pattern reproduced the gullies between the boxes; the whole array less than a handspan across. The eldest crouched, one eye close to the pattern, then stood, slowly. They watched, saying nothing. So much was obvious; it had been agreed already. Bird’s seeing, high seeing, makes small, sees far. So?

  Now the eldest swept an arm around, snapped a finger-click, swept the arm again. Estimate! Heads cocked. The young hunter crouched, trying it himself. Here, the monster-box-nests. Here the gullies. So—a grass-joint wide, and when on the braced toes, so much less—then—they knew already the conversion from distance to familiar sizes. So many paces, s
o hard a throw, to hit the darting burrower. So hard a run, if the grasseaters have that much start. No word for such long distances, but a conversion—that was easy enough.

  Less than a day’s run across the grassland, more than a day’s travel in the too-tall trees. Eyes widened. A day’s run UP? They peered into the blue sky, at the puffy clouds. How far then were clouds? How large? Estimates came as effortlessly as breath: if that is a sprint at top speed, then the cloud is larger than five grasseaters, but if it would take a handspan of sunturning, then it is . . . it is the size of a hill. Someone named the hill, and someone else argued for another hill.

  Some monster thing up there watching, a monster bird with big eyes. It would have to have big eyes, to see so much, and in the dark. They had seen that the picture moved in the dark as well. The picture itself was never dark.

  A picture, the eldest reminded, is a made thing. The choice of the maker, if it is to be light or dark.

  A maker up there? A monster still in waiting?

  It watches what we do with this monster. It will learn from us as we learn from it.

  It knows we killed the monsters.

  A shiver through them all. The monsters had been wrong, had been thieving nest-burners, but. . . . if the monsters could walk UP that far, and stay and watch, perhaps . . .

  Nests first! said the fierce young one who would soon require a nesting ground. Lose nests, lose People.

  Comforting murmurs. Nests will be. Will find nests. A nest for you, for the younglings. Always nests. Nests . . .

  Nest here. The brashest of them looked around at the monster boxes. Right hand drumming, no agreement. The brashest twisted a neck suddenly too thick for the straps of the travel harness, and looked away. Sorry. No offense meant. Sorry.

  The eldest stretched, one long arm after another. Enough now. Relax. Safe here. Rest.

  One by one they settled. The eldest opened a stoppered gourd and removed the whistler. The brashest stretched fingers. A few slow notes, up and down. Someone shook the gourd, and seeds and beads shivered, danced, made a rhythm. Long toes curled, tapped on the dirt. Another whistler, wavering at first until the tones met, clasped fingers, and danced together. Now the voices.

  Good hunting, good hunting. New hunting, new hunting. The music curled around familiar patterns, engulfing new learning, shaping it to the arch and spring of the known. Monster, monster, dancing, dancing. Monster, monster, boxes, boxes.

  “Kuh,” said the creature when it came in the kitchen. Ofelia grinned. So it could remember. She had thought it would. They were not stupid, after all. She went to the cooler and opened it. The creature came to stand beside her. Ofelia scraped some of the frost off the inside of the freezer section with her fingernail and showed it to the creature. It sniffed, its eyes disconcertingly focused on her instead of the frost.

  She felt the shock of its tongue on her finger before she realized it—she had been looking back at its eye, not at her finger. The dry rasp startled her; she felt the air gusting out of her, and jerked her hand away. Its eyelid blinked; it too pulled back with a little burst of air that felt warm on her hand.

  Warm. Warmblooded. She had known that. She had felt the heat of their bodies against hers that stormy night. But she had not been so aware of the warmth of their breath. Her hand was across her mouth before she knew it; she could only think of the smell of her own breath, how it might offend. That breath, its breath, had an odd smell, but it wasn’t bad.

  It was looking at her now, at her finger. Its tongue came out again, and licked what she had to think of as lips. Not so soft and mobile as human lips, but not like the skin of its face. Browner . . . a purplish brown on this one. The tongue, too, was darker than the bright pink of human tongues. It had felt stiffer, dryer, than a child’s tongue.

  Now, as she watched, the creature reached into the cooler and scraped off some of the frost with its talon. It licked that off with quick little strokes of its tongue. Then it scraped up another lump, and reached toward Ofelia, holding its hand in front of her mouth.

  What did it mean? Ofelia looked from the hard dark fingernail with its coating of melting frost, to the golden-brown eyes, and back. Did it expect her to lick its finger? It moved the finger closer to her lips. She swallowed, watching the first drop of water ooze down from the cap of frost.

  Courtesy overcame caution. She put out her tongue and touched it gingerly to the frost. Cold, of course. Under the frost, her tongue felt the hard, smooth surface of the nail—talon—whatever it was. Like her own nail; her tongue felt nothing disgusting, only a hard smooth surface topped with cold.

  “Kuh,” the creature uttered.

  “Kuh,” Ofelia agreed. Her children had liked to eat the frost in the freezer; most children did, in hot weather. She turned away, found a shallow bowl and a wooden spoon, and scraped more of the frost into the bowl. She handed it to the creature, who took it and stood there as if it had no idea what to do next. At least it couldn’t expect her to lick its fingers if they were all engaged in holding the bowl. Perhaps it didn’t even know the frost would melt into water.

  Meanwhile, the cool air was chilling her feet and ankles, and the open door wasted electricity. “Don’t stand in the door,” Ofelia said, and gently nudged the creature away so that she could close it. It moved back, holding the bowl but not looking at the frost. Instead it watched her. She wished it wouldn’t. She had had enough for the moment. She poked her finger into the bowl. “Cold,” she said. “You can eat all this, if you want.”

  It turned its head, then set the bowl on the table, and picked up another finger-tip of frost. She watched as its tongue came out—dark, yes, and more bristly than human tongues, and dryer—and licked at the frost. It looked at Ofelia. She sighed, and took a fingerful of frost she didn’t particularly want, just to be polite. If that’s what it had meant. It dipped another fingerful, and licked it dry, then paused. That must be what it had meant. Take turns. Did it think she was trying to poison it, or was it being polite? She had no idea. The cold felt good in her mouth, better than she remembered. She let the frost melt on her tongue, trickle down the sides of her mouth.

  The last of the frost had melted before they had taken many turns. The creature dipped its finger in the water and touched it to the long protrusion she now thought of as its nose, above the mouth. Then again, to touch the lids of each eye. It pushed the bowl a little toward her. Ofelia, frowning, put her own finger in the cold water. She didn’t know what the gestures meant; she was half afraid to copy them, but she was also afraid not to copy them. What was she saying, if she touched water to her nose, to her eyelids? It would be something about smelling, something about seeing . . . but what? She put her wet finger on her nose, then on her eyelids.

  The creature grunted, and walked out of the kitchen without looking back. Now what? Had she insulted it, or was it running off to tell its friends what she had done? She went to the door to see. It hopped over the fence between the lane and the garden and started down the lane. Now she could see that the high-stepping stride was mostly on the toes, with the heel knob touching down only occasionally.

  Ofelia shrugged to herself. She had raised bread to eat today; she didn’t have to worry about the creatures all the time. She cut herself several slices off one loaf and ate. It was good, from the hard crust to the soft, yielding inner crumb.

  Were the creatures like bread? She had touched them several times now, and she still wasn’t sure. Their skin—if it was skin—felt harder than hers, but no harder than the calluses she remembered on feet and hands. Were they soft inside? Were their muscles as soft as human muscles, or hard like their skin? Did their shape come from bones in the middle or the hard skin on the outside?

  She found herself looking at her bread with new attention. Her science lessons had been a long way back, and no one had seemed to care much whether she really understood living things. A special class understood that, just as a special class understood spaceships or government. What they car
ed about, all they really cared about, was that she learned to do what she was told and not make messes. Even when Humberto insisted that they both take night classes to qualify as colonists, the instructors had not cared whether she understood the machines she was taught to tend and repair. Follow the instructions, she was told. Follow the diagrams. It’s no harder than making a dress from a pattern, one of them told her. Even homemakers like you can do that. She had clenched herself around the pain of his scorn and proved that she could, indeed, follow the diagram accurately.

  Of living things she remembered scattered words and images: cells, with skins called membranes around them, endoskeletons like humans and exoskeletons like flies. Cells were round or oval, with more round shapes inside. They looked rather like the holes in the bread, except smaller. She remembered watching a cube presentation of dissection, the way the instructor’s knife slit the trembling rat up the belly, the oozing blood that made the boys in class snicker and say cruel things. Some girls had looked away, but she had seen the intricate tangle of intestines, the bright pink lungs, the little dark red pulsing heart.

  She had felt her heart pulsing, the first time she had really noticed it, and imagined someone looming over her with a huge knife ready for her belly. And it had happened, but not to her, when her childhood friend had needed her belly opened to have her child. Donna had never forgiven her for not coming to the hospital to visit; Donna had guessed that it was something more than packing to leave.

  But the creatures here and now—she made herself quit sending mental apologies to Donna, who had probably died by now, on that distant world where they had been childhood friends—these creatures fit none of the categories she had been taught. She knew she had not learned them all; in her school children had been taught only the biology they needed, that of the living things immediately around them, a small selection of the original rich Terran biology.

  These were not plants, she was sure. So they were animals: insects, fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians. They weren’t insects, because insects didn’t have warm breath. They weren’t fish, because they lived on land and breathed air. They might be amphibians, though they didn’t look much like frogs or toads, and she could not tell if they laid eggs. Birds? Birds had feathers and wings, beaks and not mouths. People raised flightless birds for meat, but even those had feathers and small wings. She had seen them. These creatures had no feathers, and no wings; they had mouths, with teeth. Reptiles? Reptiles had scales, were not hot-breathed, were much smaller. Mammals? Mammals had hair and gave milk: she saw no hair on them, and nothing that looked like breasts.