Remnant Population

by Elizabeth Moon

  She continued the sequence, wondering what the little dips in the horizontal flutter meant to the creatures—she had no idea whether they marked time by seasons, years, or something else—but continued the horizontal longer than the cloaked creature had. She wanted credit for every year she’d lived. The short period from now—the still hand—to the final decline she gestured differently, waving her hand more widely. She didn’t know what the creature would understand, but what she meant was uncertainty. She might die today, or a year from now, or three years; she could not know.

  The creatures were silent until she finished, then the ones she knew began talking. The cloaked one silenced them with a gesture. It took a step nearer Ofelia, and slowly extended a talon to her cloak, pointing to the three-eyed face on it, and then, very slowly, to her eyes, and back to the face on the cloak.

  No, she couldn’t explain that. She didn’t know herself why she had put three eyes on that face. She shrugged, and spread her hands. They wouldn’t understand, but what else could she do? After a long moment of silence, Player squawked something at the one in the cloak, who grunted back. Then Player touched Ofelia’s arm, gently, and nudged her toward the center door.

  She wanted to say it was her door, and she would decide for herself when to let them in. She wanted them to go away, all of them, for she could tell that this was going to mean more work, more interruptions, less privacy. She glared at Player, who had locked eyes with Bluecloak, as she now thought of it. Bluecloak grunted something at Player, who stepped back at once. Bluecloak bowed.

  She might as well get it over with. Ofelia opened the center door, and waved them in.

  Only Bluecloak followed her. Here, in the confined space of the passage, she could hear its breathing, the click of its nails on the floor; she could smell its scent. Ofelia moved slowly, opening the doors on either side as she headed toward the back of the building. Sewing rooms, control room, storage, the big communal kitchen. At each door, Bluecloak paused and looked in. Ofelia named the rooms, but did not enter them; Bluecloak did not enter either, but followed her.

  In the kitchen, she turned the water on and off, remembering how that had fascinated the first creatures. Bluecloak hissed, but otherwise did not react. Perhaps they had already told it about the water that came from the walls. Then she opened the big storage freezers; Bluecloak leaned closer, waved cold air up onto its face. Then it picked at the frost with its dark talon, and tasted it, just as her own creatures had.

  “Kuh . . .” it said. Ofelia stared. Had one of her creatures carried that word to this one? Had they really understood that her words were language?

  “Cold,” she said. Then she patted the side of the box. “Freezer. The freezer makes cold.”

  “Kuh . . . ghrihzhuh . . .” The second sound, clearly different from the first, sounded like nothing Ofelia had said. She tried to remember her exact words. Freezer. Freezer makes cold. Was that an attempt at “freezer”?

  “Freezer,” she said, stretching it out. “Freezer makes cold.” Slowly, distinctly.

  “Ghrihzhuh aaaaks kuh,” Bluecloak said, separating each word as carefully as she had. Did that mean it was trying to say what she said? She wanted to think that. She had believed it of children.

  “Freezer,” she said again. She opened it again, reached in, and took out a package of food. She held up the package of food. “Food in freezer.”

  “Dhuh ih ghrihzhuh,” it said. It reached in and took out another package. “Dhuh . . .” Clearly a question, but the intonation was the opposite of her own, dropping instead of rising.

  “Food,” she agreed. Of course it couldn’t understand “food” yet. But Bluecloak seemed so much more responsive than the original creatures. Was this why they had brought it? If they were anything like her own people, if the first ones who found her were scouts of some kind, then Bluecloak might be a specialist of some kind. A specialist in languages?

  Bluecloak put its package back in the freezer and turned away. Ofelia replaced her own and shut the lid. Bluecloak had moved to the row of sinks. It touched the faucet control. Of course it would want to know more words; children learning to talk were that way too. They didn’t want to practice until they got one word right; they wanted to learn the names of everything they saw.

  Ofelia turned the water on. “Water,” she said, putting her hand in it. Bluecloak put its talons in the water.

  “Yahtuh,” it said, producing a sort of gurgled snarl at the beginning of the word.

  “Waah-ter,” Ofelia said, again stretching it out. Bluecloak moved its talons from the water to the control.

  “Aaaks yahtuh . . .” with the dropping intonation that she suspected meant a question.

  Ofelia tried to back her mind up: if “ghrihzhuh aaaaks kuh” meant “freezer makes cold” then maybe “aaaaks” was the closest it could come to “make.” In that case, it had just said “make water.” Ofelia felt smug. It wasn’t that hard, to someone who had dealt with generations of babies learning to talk. She was too old to learn their language, but they could learn hers.

  “Make water on,” she said, turning the control to strengthen the stream. “Water on.” She turned it off. “Make water off. Water off.”

  “Aaaaks yahtuh on.” Ofelia was surprised; the “on” sounded quite accurate. Why couldn’t it say “make” if it could say “on”? Bluecloak tapped the control. “Aaaaks yahtuh on.”

  Ofelia turned the control again. Bluecloak dipped its head. Approval? Agreement? Thanks? She didn’t know.

  “Aaaaks yahtuh awk.” Make water . . . awk? Off. Ofelia turned the control.

  “Water off,” she said. Again that bob of the head, then Bluecloak turned away, clearly searching the room for something it expected. Something the others had told it about, no doubt, but which of the many things? Ofelia decided on the obvious, and went to the door. When it followed, she pointed out the light switches, then up to the ceiling lights.

  “Lights,” she said. Then, with a touch, “Lights off. Lights on.” Its “l” trilled, a wavering sound prolonged beyond anything Ofelia had heard before. “Llllahtsss.” The word ended in an explosive tss. “Llllahtsss on. Aaaaks lllahtsss awk.” Ofelia turned them off. Bluecloak reached out and turned them back on, repeating its new phrases: “lights off; lights on.” Then it tapped the switch itself, not hard enough to trigger the control.

  “Switch,” Ofelia said. “Light switch. Switch turns lights on and off.” She said it slowly, a careful pause after each word.

  The creature attempted a sound. Ofelia recognized only the “chuh” of the word’s end; whatever the creature had heard and tried to reproduce didn’t resemble “swih” at all. The creature cocked its head at her, and she tried again. “Switch” did not lend itself to the slow stretching she had used on the other words: when she tried to slow it down, her own version didn’t sound right to her.

  This time Bluecloak produced “khuhtch.” That must be the best it could do. Ofelia could accept that, for now. It was a lot closer than she’d come to making most of their sounds.

  “Khuhtch aaaaks lllahtsss.”

  Ofelia translated as she would for a toddler’s speech. Switch makes lights? Now how was she going to explain that the switch didn’t make the light, but controlled it? Did she need to explain that yet? If she didn’t, she’d have more trouble later on—she knew that from experience. She’d already gone astray when she’d agreed that the faucet controls made the water on or off.

  Suddenly the task of teaching the creatures her language looked hard again. She needed the simplest words human children learned by themselves, the no and yes of every mother’s discourse.

  “Switch makes the lights on,” she said. “Switch makes the lights off.” She demonstrated again; Bluecloak looked at her with slightly widened eyes. Now she went very slowly indeed. “Switch not make light.” Bluecloak blinked. “Not make light,” Ofelia repeated. “Make light on. Make light off.”

  “Nnnaht.” A cock of the head. Then B
luecloak touched its talons to the light switch again, and turned the lights off. “Lllahtss awk. Nnnnaht lllahtss.”

  “Not lights,” Ofelia agreed, in the dark room. She turned the lights back on. “Switch makes lights on. Makes lights off.”

  “Aaaks lllahtss on. Aaaks lllahtss awk. Nnnnaht aaaaks lllahtss . . .”

  “That’s it,” Ofelia said. It was going to work after all. It was quicker than a child, quick to realize what “not” meant. But it was walking back to the freezer. Ofelia followed.

  “Ghrihzhuh aaaaks kuh.”

  “Freezer makes cold, yes.”

  Bluecloak moved to the sinks, and tapped the faucet control. “Aaaks yahtuh.” Ofelia shook her head. “Makes water on. Makes water off.”

  Bluecloak waved its hand under the faucet. “Nnnaht yahtuh.”

  “That’s right,” Ofelia said. “Not water now.” She touched the control. “This makes water on.”

  “Aaaks yahtuh naht.”

  “That’s it. It doesn’t—” She realized it couldn’t follow that yet. “Not make water, make water on. Like lights.” She was amazed at the quickness of its thinking, the way it checked its understanding.

  Now it gestured, as if throwing something outward. “Aaaks lllahtss.”

  Oh. It wanted to know what did make the lights. She was too tired to deal with this; it would take days and days and days to explain the powerplant, electricity, wires, tubes . . . even if she could remember it all, which she couldn’t.

  Perhaps it would understand the pictures in the control room, though the others hadn’t seemed to catch on. Ofelia led the way to the control room. Behind her, she heard a click. When she looked back, Bluecloak had turned the lights off. Amazing.

  The control room, with its many banks of switches, keyboards, display screens, and light panels, brought a hiss from Bluecloak. Ofelia brought up the maintenance manual for the electrical supply, and scowled at the illustrations as she scrolled past them. All too complicated. She knew what they meant, but they would confuse another human, let alone one of these creatures. She turned to say something to Bluecloak, and saw that it was staring at the screen.

  “Aaaks . . .” Its hand gestured up, rolling, as the screen display scrolled. What makes move? Ofelia wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t know how to explain the scrolling image to children, let alone to an alien creature who didn’t speak her language. She worked her way out of the maintenance manual, ignoring Bluecloak’s noises, and found the education files. Here, at the simplest level, with the clearest illustrations, she might find something Bluecloak could follow.

  There was the sketch she remembered, a cutaway of the power plant, showing the connections to the other buildings. “Powerplant,” said Ofelia, pointing to the drawing. “Makes electricity.” No, that was too hard. “Makes zzzzt. Zzzzt in wires.” She moved her finger along the lines. “Zzzzt makes light.”

  Bluecloak’s unreadable expression could have been anything from eager comprehension to total confusion. It reached a talon to the screen, pointing to the blocky drawing of the power station. “How-huh laaant.” Close enough. Power plant. Then Bluecloak moved back, to the door, and waved a circle.

  “Oh—where is it? I can show you.” Ofelia heaved herself up, locked the controls with the drawing still on the screen, and headed for the door. Bluecloak, unlike her first creatures, moved aside readily. She led the way outside. The other creatures were huddled in the lane, noisily discussing something in louder voices than she’d heard before. At the sight of Bluecloak, they all fell silent. Bluecloak uttered a single complex squawk, and two of them fell in behind it.

  Ofelia did not hurry. She had already done that dance; her knees crackled. Besides, she wasn’t sure she should show Bluecloak the power station. Right now her creatures respected the limits she had set; they respected her, because she could make the lights work, the water flow. They had never asked to see the power station; they didn’t understand how everything worked. Surely Bluecloak couldn’t possibly understand, just from looking . . . but what if it did? What if these creatures could use the tools, the machines? If they could control that themselves, if they didn’t need her, what would happen to her?

  Bluecloak seemed in no hurry either. It stopped outside the first doorway, and churred. One of the creatures answered. Bluecloak tipped its head toward Ofelia. It had to be a question. The logical question was whether this was her house. But the others could have told it that. Perhaps it wanted to know what this was.

  “House,” Ofelia said. Whose had it been? She was surprised to discover that her memory of who had which house had blurred. Surely it hadn’t been that long. Tomas and Serafina? Luis and Ysabel? Still thinking, she unlatched the outer door and pulled it open. Inside, the house was dark and smelled musty. Ofelia ducked into the cool dimness, and made her way to the windows, where she opened shutters. When she turned around, Bluecloak stood poised at the door, head cocked.

  “Come in,” Ofelia said, gesturing. Bluecloak stepped in, its toenails clicking on the tile floor. Ofelia opened the other doors, showing Bluecloak the bedrooms, the closets—there, a scrap of rotting cloth that pricked her memory and reminded her that this had been Ysabel’s closet, the scrap part of an old coverlet that Ysabel had cut up for rags before the colony’s removal. The bathroom, with its shower head—Ofelia turned the water spray on and off to demonstrate—the garden door from the kitchen. Bluecloak followed her, attentive. One of the others touched the cooler—one of those Ofelia had disconnected long before—and said “Kuh,” then grunted. It opened the door; Bluecloak uttered a sharp squawk, and it shut the door as if its fingers had been stung.

  Or as if Bluecloak were its parent, and it had disobeyed. Ofelia digested that thought. Was Bluecloak an adult, and were these others really children? She liked the idea that Killer might be an undisciplined child, but she had not failed to notice the long knives the newcomers also wore, even Bluecloak.

  Bluecloak touched the cooler gently, and looked at Ofelia. Asking permission? She nodded, then reached out to open the door herself.

  “No cold now,” she said. “Cold off.”

  “Kuh awk,” Bluecloak said. Cold off. It looked the box over; Ofelia held her breath. It could not know what made the box work or not work. It had not had time enough with the cooler at the center. It could not . . . Leaning over, Bluecloak peered behind the cooler. With a glance at Ofelia, it leaned lower, reached, and came up with the end of the power cord. “Aaaks kuh,” it said, with the falling intonation that Ofelia now thought meant a question.

  She felt colder than the cooler had ever been. How had it caught on so quickly? Small children learned . . . but they saw someone plug and unplug appliances. These creatures had no electricity . . . did they? They could not have understood, with no common language, how it worked. Yet Bluecloak’s questions were so direct . . . it must be smarter than she had thought. Smarter than humans? She didn’t want to consider that question.

  “Zzzzt makes cold,” Ofelia said. Should she give a label for the cord? She might as well; it would be easier to talk about if she did. “That’s a cord,” she said, touching it. “Cord. Zzzzt in cord makes cold.”

  “Zzzz . . .” Bluecloak said. “Howhuh laaant aaaks zzzzt.” It paused, giving Ofelia time to arrange Powerplant makes electricity in her mind. “Zzzzt in cort, zzzzt aaaks kuh.”

  Yes, electricity in the cord made the cooler cold, but how had it figured out that the electricity traveled in the cord? It should not have been obvious. It could not have seen the wires behind the coolers in the center; they were hidden by the bulk of the boxes. Ofelia nodded, forgetting again that they did not understand nods.

  Bluecloak flipped its cloak back, and opened a mesh bag hanging from one of the straps around its body. From the bag, it took a thin cylinder as long as Ofelia’s forearm. She thought it looked like wood or thick-stemmed grass. Bluecloak lifted it with one hand, and blew into it, holding the other hand before the open end. Then, very gently, it took her
hand, and placed it before the open end. She felt the stream of air. But why?

  Bluecloak spoke, a rapid gabble she couldn’t follow. Then it slowed. A breathy whushing, a pause, then “in” and a talon tapped on the cylinder. Air in cylinder? Ofelia nodded, hoping that was right. “Yahtuh in . . .” a guttural squawk. Ofelia blinked. Water in . . . something. Air in the cylinder, water in the cylinder? In something like the cylinder? In a pipe, she would say . . . had that been their word for pipe?

  “Pipe,” Ofelia said. “Water in pipe.” Her breath came short; she could not believe the creature was making these connections.

  Bluecloak tipped its head to one side. Was that their nod? It repeated the sequence: [Whoosh] “in” gesture to cylinder. “Yahtuh in kye . . . kye . . .” It must be trying to say pipe. Ofelia tried again. “Pipe.”

  “Kite.” It tapped the cylinder again, preventing another correction. “Yahtuh in kite . . . zzzzt in cort.”

  It had the whole idea. Like air in a tube, like water in a pipe, electricity flowed through cords, cables, wires. Ofelia had known children who found that hard to grasp, who had insisted that electricity could not flow, because wires were not hollow. And this creature had figured it out with no more than a few glances at the appliances and cords, at the elementary sketches of the teaching programs.

  Ofelia felt cold all over. These were dangerous creatures; they had killed humans. And she was exposing them to human technology . . . at the rate this one was learning, it would not be long before they were building their own starships.

  She could not stop them, either. Even before she had known they were there, they must have acquired enough information to be dangerous. By the time she realized they were learning too much, they had already learned it.

  Her mind cycled through the reasoning, discussing with the old voice whether or not it was her fault. The old voice accused, as always; the new voice defended. The old voice frayed, audible at last as the separate strands that had formed it: her mother, her father, the primary teacher who had been incensed when she learned too fast, the secondary teacher who had been incensed when she turned down the scholarship; Humberto, Barto . . . even Rosara.