Remnant Population

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Uhoo nesst,” Bluecloak translated.

  Why did they want her to get into the nest? They all did; they all stood there looking expectant. Ofelia stepped in, and was surprised at how springy it was under her feet. The bowl shape held her toward the middle; she realized how comfortable it would be for a nap. She sat down, and they murmured soft sounds to her. So that was what they wanted? They wanted her to pretend to sleep, perhaps? Or did they make a nest for aunts, and then a nest for the pregnant mother?

  She curled up on her side, and wriggled around. Very comfortable indeed. Suddenly something sharp poked her side. She sat up, and felt around with her fingers until she found the cause—a stone about the size of a chicken egg, with sharp angles. That didn’t belong in a nest, and how had the pregnant one missed it? She held it up, scowling at them.

  Their left toes drummed; she knew now that meant approval. The pregnant one snatched the stone from her and held it aloft; the drumming deepened, including fingertips on torsos, and finally the pregnant one’s throat sac.

  Obviously, they had planted the stone in the nest for her to find, but why? It was just an ordinary stone. One of them held out a hand to her, and helped her out of the nest. The pregnant one clasped her wrists and bent her head; she felt the dry, ticklish touch of a tongue on her hands. The pregnant one released her, and the others did the same, even Bluecloak. Her hands tingled from the touch of so many tongues.

  Her stomach recoiled, knotted in fear. She was in over her head; she was committed now to something she did not understand. What if she made a mistake? What if she did something that hurt the baby? She looked around for Bluecloak. If she could read their expressions at all, Bluecloak looked satisfied, even smug. The others looked relaxed; the pregnant one stretched out in a patch of sun on the floor and one of the others squatted beside her, running its fingers lightly along her back.

  Then Bluecloak urged Ofelia out of the house; the others left the pregnant one and her—birth attendant? best friend? husband? Ofelia didn’t know—alone in the house. Two of the creatures settled outside the house, squatting in the lane, and pulled out their long knives. The rest went back to the center, Ofelia with them. Behind her, she could hear the ring and rasp of sharpening; it made her shiver. She was hungry for lunch, but she was even hungrier for knowledge. She still didn’t know whether to expect eggs or a wiggly baby. She didn’t know why those knives were being sharpened . . . to guard the pregnant one and the baby from predators, or to carve up a clumsy, ignorant aunt if she made mistakes?

  She was just opening her mouth to ask Bluecloak, when an alarm went off in the control room. Ofelia jumped, then led the way there, heart pounding. It was the wrong season for sea-storms, and that morning she had seen nothing in the gauges to indicate any problem.

  The gauges were still steady, still in the safe range for all functions. The flashing red light was on the weathersat board. Which meant someone had queried the weathersat, which meant another ship had arrived.

  She had known it would happen someday. Eventually someone would come to investigate the attack on that second colony, and the creatures who had made it. That was why she’d set the alarm as she had, so that she would know when to hide. She had even explained that to Bluecloak, as best she could; she wasn’t at all sure that the creatures understood space flight, or how far away things were. She had hoped she wouldn’t be alive when the other humans came, but she was.

  And far worse, the pregnant one was nesting. Ofelia had no idea how long it would be before she gave birth or laid her eggs or whatever, but she knew it was a bad time for the other humans to come.

  She conveyed this to Bluecloak: others like herself were coming, were in a boat—they had agreed on the term—far up in the sky. They would come down—she was sure of that—and they would most likely come down here, at the shuttle strip. She had no idea how long it would be. They might sit up there for days looking at things through orbital scanners, making sure they would be safe. They might already have been there for days, in which case it was no use trying to get the creatures to conceal themselves in the houses because they had already been seen. Besides, if they could strip the records from the weathersat, they would find plenty of evidence that Ofelia and the creatures were both living here.

  And what if they decided the creatures here knew too much, and killed them? Ofelia felt a cold sweat break out all over her. She could not let that happen. She would not. She did not know what she could do, but she would not let that happen.

  First, could she find out something about the ship that had arrived? She queried the weathersat herself, but got no answer. Apparently the people on the arriving ship had pre-empted all local requests. That might mean they didn’t yet know she was here, that she used the weathersat, or it might mean they didn’t care.

  She turned to Bluecloak again, and tried to ask how long it would be before the pregnant one—she stumbled over Gurgle-click-cough—delivered. Bluecloak’s answering gestures were not reassuring. It might be today, or tomorrow, or the day after. It was Gurgle-click-cough’s first birth, and its timing was more uncertain than for a subsequent one. Ofelia understood that well enough; it was the same with humans. She conveyed that to Bluecloak fairly easily.

  More difficult was the concept that the arriving humans presented a special danger to Gurgle-click-cough and her young. Bluecloak cocked its head to one side; its right toes tapped the floor. She had tried to explain before that the humans killed far to the north were not the same as those who had lived here, and the ones who lived here went somewhere else, very far away. Now she tried to say that the ones coming were more like those who had been killed, not like her.

  “Nesst click-kaw-keerrr,” Bluecloak said, as if that would end the discussion. “Aant.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ofelia said. “They won’t care.” She tried to think how to say that in gestures, but when she looked at Bluecloak it was standing rigid, its throat-sac swollen and pulsing, its eyelids partly shut. Then it blinked.

  “Nesst click-kaw-keerrr nnot kkaerrr?” A pause. “Kkilll?”

  “Not kill,” Ofelia said, hoping it was so. “But they won’t care about me. I’m not one of them. Not their . . .” what was the word Bluecloak had used about its people? She opted instead for gestures that included her, Bluecloak, others who lived here, as opposed to others who lived someplace else.

  “Uhoo,” Bluecloak said, pointing to make it clear. “Click-kaw-keerrr.”

  She was the click-kaw-keerrr; whatever click-kaw-keerrrs had to do, she had to do. She was uncomfortably certain that this meant she was supposed to protect Gurgle-click-cough and her young from the other humans . . . or die trying.

  She chose to interpret the hollow feeling in her belly as hunger, and went back to her house to cook something.

  They had seen the white streaks of the shuttle’s flight; they had heard the brief transmissions between the shuttle and the orbiting ship. Ofelia wondered how much the creatures understood of this. She herself couldn’t follow much of the talk; the accent was strange, and the utterances perhaps intentionally cryptic. She thought of trying to use the colony transmitter, even keyed it once, but the signal had to go through the weathersat, and she couldn’t get it locked open. Apparently, they were still using the weathersat themselves. She felt a guilty relief. In her inmost heart, she still hoped they would simply go away.

  Meanwhile, Gurgle-click-cough had settled into the house next to the center—not in the nest itself yet—and the others brought her food and sat with her. She seemed larger to Ofelia, her lean form now bulging under her kilt. She rarely left the house, and had no interest in the news. Every time Ofelia visited, Gurgle-click-cough leaned against her and licked her hands. Ofelia felt helpless and protective all at once.

  On the third day, Bluecloak roused her before dawn when the voices came again. Ofelia hobbled across to the center, stiff as she always was in the early morning, and grumpy with being awakened in that last sweet deep slumber befo
re she would have awakened on her own.

  “They’re landing this time,” Ofelia said. “They’re coming here.” She had known they would—it was the only reasonable thing for them to do, and they must by now have noticed that a human and some of the creatures were here—but she had hoped very much they would do the unreasonable thing and go away.

  Bluecloak’s throat-sac expanded, and it thrummed at her.

  “I know,” Ofelia said. “I have to do something.” What, she had no idea. She listened to the pilot of the shuttle describing his descent, his plan for landing. They would make one low-altitude pass to look again at the colony and check for weapons. It would be noisy, then, worse than just landing. They had made a low-altitude pass the day before, scaring all the creatures, sending the sheep and cattle into panicky stampedes around the meadows. Ofelia looked at Bluecloak, pointed up, and covered her ears.

  Far in the distance, she heard the approaching growl of the shuttle. They would circle out to sea, then come back and land. She would have to go meet them, and say . . . what? What could she say that would keep them from bothering Gurgle-click-cough? She stood up, only then realizing that she had come from her bed wearing nothing at all but the string of beads she rarely took off these days.

  And she had no idea where her dress was, the only dress that strange humans would find decent. Or shoes . . . she had thrown that last pair of shoes in the recycler, she remembered.

  As fast as she could, she hobbled back to her house through the predawn twilight, and grabbed the green embroidered cloak that had impressed Bluecloak. At least one of the peoples here would find it appropriate. The shuttle thundered overhead; she did not go outside to look at it. She used the toilet, splashed water on her face, scrubbed at her teeth, swiped at her flyaway hair with both hands. Then she wrapped a length of cloth around her hips, and looped more strands of beads around her neck. They might think she had gone native, but at least they would recognize an effort made to look festive.

  This took longer than she wanted; she had to use the toilet again. Now she heard the great roar of the shuttle approaching, descending. She went out her front door, and shooed the creatures back into shelter. If there was only one old woman, she did not think the other humans would shoot first—and if they did, at least the creatures might have a chance to escape.

  She saw the shuttle angling in, but ignored it to look in the doorway of the house where Gurgle-click-cough was. The two creatures on guard waited just inside the door, looking tense even in the dimness. They could have turned the light on, Ofelia thought, but when she reached for the switch, one of them caught her wrist. She heard a wheezy rasp from the closet. Ofelia sighed. Naturally it would happen now, at the worst possible moment. And she would not get to see it, because she had to go deal with her own kind. It seemed as unfair as the rest of life.

  “Good luck to you,” she said softly.

  “Click-kaw-keerrr,” they all replied in soft chorus. As if she could forget that responsibility. By the time she reached the shuttle strip, the sun was just up, shining right in her face, making it hard to see anything but a great dark blur that stank of scorched plastics and oils. Ofelia squinted into the light, moving slowly over the rough pavement where grass was doing its best to reclaim its domain. No one called out to her; no one came toward her.

  When she got into the shadow of the shuttle, she could see them clumped on the ramp above, all wearing bulky suits that would be intolerable later in the day. Ofelia could have laughed at them, but then they would think she was crazy. They might think that anyway—with their eyes on her, she was far more aware of how she must look. She felt herself going hot, but perhaps they wouldn’t notice with her dark tanned skin and the early light.

  Two of them held weapons, and looked past her to the village with professional intensity. The unarmed man in front was probably the one in charge. He had that expression, of one used to telling others what to do. She had forgotten how much she disliked that expression. Beside him, crowding him, stood a woman who looked as disgruntled as Ofelia felt. Remembered resentment gave her the courage to speak first.

  “This was not a good time,” she said. She put into it all the reproach of the experienced mother. “You’ve upset them.” No need to specify who was upset; they would know.

  The man puffed out his chest; he didn’t like it that she had spoken first. Ofelia didn’t care, and she didn’t listen past the first “. . . authority . . .” She interrupted, telling him again that it wasn’t a good time. “You could have listened when I tried to talk to you,” she said. They didn’t have to know that she’d only keyed the transmitter once.

  This time the woman answered. Her voice sounded mature, but she was certainly younger than Ofelia. Perhaps middle-aged, but it was hard to tell with shipfolk, who hardly ever saw weather. Ofelia answered her, trying to think ahead to what would impress this woman. She wasn’t afraid of the man who thought he was the leader, that was clear. Perhaps this woman would be sensible, and listen. The men, of course, did not; she had hardly started talking to the woman when two of them interrupted. But their voices clashed over each other, and the woman spoke again.

  “Who are you?” she asked, as if she had a right to know.

  Ofelia turned the question back on her—would she recognize that as the insult it was?—and the woman did not answer, but reassured Ofelia that they had not come to hurt her, but to help her.

  Help! She had not asked for help; she didn’t need help; she needed them to go away and let her alone. She snorted before she could stop herself, and the woman looked embarrassed, as if she realized how preposterous that was.

  She made it very clear, spelling it out. “I don’t need help.” And they might as well know that she knew about the other colony. “If you’re here about that other lot—”

  The man interrupted, and then the armed man; it was as if they had a contest on, which could ask questions the fastest. Ofelia answered, shortly. She was not a schoolchild in a contest; they might at least have had the courtesy to come down to her level, offer her a seat, before pouncing on her with all these questions. The creatures, alien as they were, had shown more courtesy.

  “Didn’t you try to help?” the unarmed man said finally. Ofelia glared at him, wishing boils on his posterior and head lice to his children. One moment he questioned her as if she were a stupid child, and the next he thought she had magical powers and could fly thousands of kilometers to rescue healthy young people from disaster? Ridiculous, insulting . . . she ran through her store of invective, in grim silence, until he turned red.

  The woman spoke again, asking how long she’d been there. Another stupid question, if less insulting; it was just possible, Ofelia thought, that some silly old woman with a spaceship might have crashed here, or even come here prospecting or something. She explained, briefly; she enjoyed the shock on the woman’s face when she told the truth about the Company’s attitude toward old colonists. Didn’t know everything, she didn’t, no matter what fancy job she had. Wait until she was old enough to face her company’s scorn . . . then she’d know. But the man broke in again, this time scolding her for being there. Like the Company, he thought she was just a nuisance, just something to be dealt with. The old resentment boiled up, making a bad taste in Ofelia’s mouth. That one had not even been a colonist, was not due the respect she had paid to the men who worked with their women to build the village she lived in. She had not liked all of them, or all the things they did, but the slackers had died early on, one way and another, and the men who had been evacuated had earned her respect if not her affection. This one, with his smooth ship-bred skin, hiding in that protective suit as if one old woman were a threat to his safety . . . She probably was, she thought.

  “Let me alone,” she said, with more bitterness than she intended. He glared back at her, and began trying to convince her of the seriousness of “the situation.” She could have laughed; he didn’t know himself how serious the situation was.

  “I
’m not stupid,” she said, putting an edge on it; his eyes widened. Would it help to say again that they had come at a bad time? Probably not, but she said it anyway. “Go away,” she said finally, and turned and walked off, feeling their gaze on her back as if the embroidered eyes were crawling over her skin.

  She heard clumsy footsteps and an argument behind her. From the voices, it was the woman following her. All right. Let the woman come, down on the same level where she wouldn’t get such a crick in her neck trying to talk to her. She kept walking, hoping to lead the woman clear into the village, where the others could not hear them. Of course there were sound pickups, she knew that, but at least they might not interfere as much.

  When the other woman called, politely enough, she had made it to the end of the lane. Not as far as she’d hoped, but better than standing beside the shuttle. From here, the creatures could see her, if they wanted. She turned.

  The woman had more weathered skin than she’d expected, as if she’d spent much of her life outside. She had a thick mop of caramel-colored hair, cut short but shaped with care. Her gray-green eyes were trying to look earnest and friendly, but Ofelia distrusted them. Something about the woman exuded authority, not the natural authority of experience, but the authority of position. And she was out of breath, probably from wearing that heavy protective suit and trying to run in it. Ofelia took a deep breath and smiled at her.

  The woman started to speak, but Ofelia interrupted her. She had to understand that Ofelia had a message more important than hers. “It’s a bad time,” she said firmly. She let the other woman’s eyes rove over her, inspecting her hair, her face, her body, her strange clothes. Would she believe Ofelia made sense, if obscure sense, or would she dismiss her out of hand because of her age, her strange appearance?

  The conversation teetered back and forth, never quite finding a balance where both women could be comfortable and exchange the information Ofelia was sure both wanted and had to impart. Ofelia learned, as she expected, that they knew about the creatures being here. The woman was shocked that she had cooperated with them—but what did she expect? That Ofelia would have killed them all off by herself? That by herself she could have kept them from learning? The other humans had a lot to learn about the creatures.