Remnant Population

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I wanted to be alone. I had not been alone for years. It didn’t bother me to be alone as a child, and it didn’t bother me this time either.”

  Kira gave her perfect haircut a little shake, warding off that understanding. “Was it because your husband and children had died here? And you felt close to them?”

  Ofelia sighed, and pushed herself away from the wall, standing slowly. These people felt almost as alien as the creatures, and they had less interest in understanding her. “If you don’t listen, you can’t hear,” she said, tugging her ear for emphasis. They would make up their own minds anyway, and nothing she said would change that.

  She walked away, around the far end of her house, and out into the meadow. Kira followed her a few steps, bleating something incomprehensible. Then she fell behind. Ofelia did not turn to look, but she could feel Kira’s stare on her shoulderblades.

  Out among the sheep, the blessedly silent sheep, who ignored her at this time of day, Ofelia hid in plain sight from the other humans. She used the basket she had brought to gather sheep droppings. She spread them along the outer margins of the meadow, supporting the terraforming grasses with their mix of bacteria and fungi, maintaining the meadow’s boundaries.

  The newcomers hated the droppings, hated anything that smelled alive: “stank of organics,” is how they put it. They wanted nothing to do with her while she was doing work they considered dirty. After that first rapture over fresh tomatoes, they had recoiled from the discovery that she did not sterilize the sheep and cow manure, the kitchen garbage, that went into the compost trench and then into the soil. They accepted no more tomatoes, and refused the cooling fruit drink—although they would pick fruit themselves, and then scrub it in the kitchen sink in the center.

  She was tired of the newcomers’ silliness about dirt, tired of their busyness, tired of the way they interrupted her without apology, talked as long as they wanted to, and then walked off, leaving her as casually as they would leave a building. She was behind in her garden work; she could not enjoy sewing or crocheting or making jewelry when at any moment someone might come interrupt her, with that expression which meant they thought she was especially silly to be making things now, when she would have to leave. They seemed to go out of their way to make her feel unimportant.

  The contrast between their behavior and that of the creatures could not be ignored. The old voice, smug in its certainty, told her that was to be expected. She could mean nothing to the humans; they knew how to rate humans, and she came at the bottom. The creatures could not know. They might like her because she had been their first human; they might value her for the novelty. Whatever the reason for their respect, they could not value her for anything important; they didn’t know what was important.

  In the sun’s heat, the droppings had dried quickly; Ofelia did not mind picking them up, although the stooping bothered her. Her head hurt now only when she bent over, as if all the blood rushed into that swollen knob and pulsed there. Maybe it did. The shirt she wore pulled across the shoulders. The old voice told her how old she was, how weak, how useless. The new voice said nothing, but lived like a cold knot in her heart. She tried to ignore the old voice, and kept on working. Maybe if she stayed away from the other humans, the new voice would speak to her again. She missed it.

  A shadow, a blur of motion: one of the creatures. She looked up, attempted the chest grunt of greeting, and got one in return. This creature wore one of her necklaces draped over its own accoutrements. When it had her attention, it tapped the basket and gurgled its question. This one rarely attempted human speech.

  “Sheep droppings,” Ofelia said, as if the words had been clear. “For the grass. It feeds the grass.”

  The creature moved slowly to one of the sheep, which lifted its head to stare. Even more slowly, the creature leaned down, yanked loose a tuft of grass, and offered it to the sheep. The sheep accepted it docilely and its narrow jaw worked back and forth. The creature touched the sheep’s throat, then lightly ran its hand down the body to the rump. Ofelia could follow that: food goes in here, and goes through . . . When the creature tried to lift the sheep’s tail, the sheep yanked away and moved off briskly. The creature gaped its mouth at Ofelia—laughter? annoyance?—and then pointed at the sheep’s rump, then droppings on the ground.

  “Yes,” said Ofelia, nodding vigorously.

  The creature turned to her, presenting its own rump, and lifted the decorative kilt to point to an unmistakable orifice. Ofelia looked away. She didn’t really want to see what a creature hole looked like, but she had already registered that it had the predictable puckered appearance.

  “Yes,” she said. “It comes out a hole in the back.” They must know that, from their observations of her; she suspected them of watching at times when she had been unaware of it. She hoped they could get off this topic quickly, but the creatures had a way of sticking to something as long as it interested them. They should know this already; it had been impossible, in the early days, to keep them from knowing what happened when she used the toilet. This one had come with Bluecloak, so perhaps it had never seen . . . but it should have known, from talking to the others. She knew they discussed her.

  “Utter uhoo,” the creature said. Other you meant the other humans; none of the creatures would attempt the word human. “What about the others?” Ofelia asked. She had become used to the creatures understanding more of her speech than she did of theirs.

  It pointed to its mouth, then her mouth . . . its rump and then the sheep droppings.

  “Oh—you mean you wonder if the other humans do this too?” What a silly question. Of course they did. She nodded vigorously. “Yes. They do.”

  “Nott ksee,” the creature said. Ofelia thought about it. The other humans still lived in the shelters they’d set up down at the shuttle field; they had moved out of the shuttle itself only in the past few days. So perhaps the creatures had never seen them eat or excrete.

  Now the creature tapped its nose, and sniffed elaborately. “Nnnott sssane.” Ofelia understood that as “smells crazy,” which made no sense in terms of what they had been talking about. The creature tried again. “Utter uhoo—” then a big sniff, “—nnot saamp.” Sane . . . saamp . . . same. Other yous smell not same? Yes, that could be it.

  Ofelia gestured to reinforce her own words. “You think the other humans smell . . . not like me? Not the same?”

  “Eeeyess.” It touched her shirt, then its own kilt and belts. “Nnnott saamp klote-ss.”

  True enough, the others didn’t wear the same clothes; they wore long-sleeved billowy shirts and long pants, shoes, all in muted colors.

  “Saamp utter uhoose purrrt nessstt passs.” The same as other yous—other humans who purrrt—burrrt?—nest-something. Burrrt sounded close to hurt. Ofelia set the basket down to have the use of both hands. Had those luckless colonists hurt the creatures’ nests? Was that why they’d been attacked?

  “Burrrt?” She mimed pounding, kicking.

  The creature looked around, as if confused. Then it said “Hah-ahttt. Purrrt aaakss hah-ahtt.” Hot. Purrrt makes hot.

  “Burn!” Astonishment and horror both hit at once. Where had it learned the word “burn”? Had she used it, in warning of the hot stoves? She couldn’t remember. And the other humans had burned the nests? Burned the babies?

  She thought of the mechbots dropping out of the sky to scrape away whatever grew, to make the flat landing place for shuttles . . . if that had been nests, if it had caught fire from the mechbot exhausts, or perhaps they even fired the heaps of grass and roots . . . and nestlings.

  She knew her face must be a mask of horror, and the creature stared at her, recognizing her shock.

  “Utter uhoo,” it said again, this time with a decisive jerk of the head. “Nnnott saamp. Nnnott . . .” and it rattled off a quick sequence of its own language, in which Ofelia thought she heard click-kaw-keerrr.

  However bad they were, these humans had not destroyed the creatures’ nest
s and children. She had to defend them. But she couldn’t figure out how to unmake that confusion—not confusion, she realized now, but settled antagonism. And why hadn’t Bluecloak told her, when it was teaching her, learning from her, when she had played it the tapes of the other colony’s death?

  Had it been a wish to spare her pain, or a deeper mistrust?

  “Click-kaw-keerrr,” she said, that being the word which usually settled them. “Gurgle-click-cough?”

  The creature touched her head, delicately. “Uhoo kud click-kaw-keerrr.”

  She might be a good click-kaw-keerrr, but she still didn’t know all her responsibilities . . . responsibilities to both people, she thought suddenly. She didn’t want this—they weren’t going to listen to her—but she could not leave the humans ignorant of what she’d learned. She needed to find out more first, though, and that meant finding the best source.

  “Bluecloak?” she asked the creature. “Where is Bluecloak?”

  It tipped its head toward the forest—the forest? What was Bluecloak doing in the forest? The most likely thing was hunting, and although Ofelia no longer feared the long knives for herself, she didn’t really want to see Bluecloak butchering treeclimbers. But the creature with her had started walking that way, and Ofelia followed. She dumped her basket of sheep droppings at the edge of the meadow, and stepped carefully through the taller weeds and scrubby growth in the intermediate ground.

  She had intended to visit the forest more when she lived alone, but she had always been too busy in the village. After seeing the hunt, that time, she had not wanted to go in among the tall trees with the creatures. Now, it felt no different from following the creature anywhere. Cooler, perhaps. She watched the creature move, its high-stepping gait constrained in the forest by the coils of roots and vines. It led her a way she had no reason to know, but when they came to the place where she had sheltered, she recognized it as if she had left it only the day before. There was the fallen log, there the curve of root where she had put her sack of food.

  And there were the creatures she knew, nearly all of them. Bluecloak, formally cloaked. Gurgle-click-cough. Her three babies, hedged about with the bodies of four creatures, who had stretched out to form a living playpen within which the babies tumbled and sprawled. They squeaked when they saw Ofelia, and staggered over to someone’s legs, where they bounced up and down on feet that seemed bigger every day.

  As Bluecloak greeted Ofelia, she saw two of the creatures slip away, back toward the village. Long knives gleamed in their hands. Had they planned a massacre—? She would have gone, but Bluecloak had her hands.

  “Nnnott killll,” it said, as if it had read her thoughts. Her expression, most likely; human faces were so mobile, so flexible. “Nnot killll utter uhoo. Yahtch.” Not kill, but watch. Keep them away from this meeting, which the creatures had carefully held far from the scanners and recorders that had been planted all over the village by the industrious Bilong.

  Ofelia realized that the one who had talked to her in the sheep meadow must have been waiting for that chance. She wanted to know how long—surely they had been in the village the day before—but that was not the most important question.

  Bluecloak’s throat-sac swelled abruptly, and it began thrumming. Soon they all were, fingers and toes and bodies, in a complex of rhythms that had the babies lurching from one side of their enclosure to another, their little feet twitching first in one rhythm then another. Finally it all steadied; Ofelia could feel it all through her body, could feel her own toes tapping, her own heart slowing to match the left-hand drumming that meant concord.

  Then silence, abrupt, into which the babies’ squeaks sounded loud. Ofelia put out her hand to them, and they ran to her, licking her wrist, grabbing with their little fingers, so much weaker still than their toes, though apt for manipulating everything they got hold of. The talons felt like tiny pins.

  When Bluecloak spoke, Ofelia could hardly believe it. He sounded exactly like Vasil Likisi, down to the accent and the pomposity. “I have been empowered by the government . . .” He stopped, and rattled off a long string in his own language. Ofelia stared.

  “But you—”

  Now in the voice she knew, the one which changed some sounds of human tongue. “It izh kud cahpih, ss?”

  Better than a good copy; better than some recordings Ofelia had heard. “You can . . . can you do that all the time?”

  “Nnno. Cahpih foyss, eehess, hut he ssay. Ssay die thoughtss, aaakss utter ssondss.”

  Ofelia did not understand. If he could copy Likisi’s voice so exactly, even to the accent and tone, why couldn’t he say the words right when he said his own thoughts? For the first time, she had something to ask Bilong—assuming Bilong would listen, and then understand the question—but she didn’t have Bilong handy.

  Bluecloak didn’t wait for her to understand. It went on, now uttering a phrase in Kira Stavi’s voice, and another in the flat monotone the military advisors murmured into their suit mics. Finally it repeated the song Ofelia had sung to the babies, in a voice she realized must be hers, though it sounded breathier, more like an old woman’s voice than she heard it inside. She had never heard her voice recorded. Maybe she did sound like that, and Bluecloak had been accurate with the others.

  “Do you understand all that?” Ofelia asked. “Or just—”

  “Eehess,” Bluecloak said. “Know peeninks.” The meanings, he meant, but how? How could he understand so much, when she had learned so little of their language? She had known they were smart, but this—Bilong had made such a fuss about how hard it was to learn other languages, even human language families.

  “All of you?” Ofelia asked.

  “Alll know. Nnnott all tsay.”

  If they understood it all—they couldn’t really, but if they did, if they thought they did—then what they had heard, in these last decems, must have given them a very . . . strange . . . idea of humans.

  Ofelia sat on the pillow one of them produced from behind the log. Her mind ran from one corner of her brain to another like the babies now playing chase in their playpen. How long had they understood? How much? And why this meeting now? What were they planning? What would they expect her to do?

  One of the babies squeaked, trying to climb adult legs to get to her. Gurgle-click-cough picked it up, licked its neck, and handed it to Ofelia. She cradled it, letting it lick the insides of both wrists, and then curl into a ball on her lap.

  “Ahee,” said Bluecloak, pointing to itself. “Thry aaakss clearrr tuh uhoo hut he hoo-ahnt.” Ofelia found she understood this much easily; she was reshaping the words almost without thought to the sounds she knew. They wanted to make clear to her what they wanted? That was what she most wanted to know, right now . . . and then she could find out more.

  Only occasionally in the next few hours, did she have to ask Bluecloak to repeat or clarify what it said; the combination of near-human language and gestures conveyed more complicated meanings than she had thought possible. Much as she disliked the team members, she kept thinking that they should be here instead of her—or with her. They had the education, the training, to understand what she struggled to grasp. She was being given the knowledge they had come so far to obtain, knowledge the creatures still withheld (they made that clear) from the team.

  “You should tell them,” she argued, early in the session. “They’re . . . official.” How could she explain official? How could she explain that no one would listen to her, that she was nothing in that social order? But Bluecloak interrupted firmly. They would tell her, and she must pay attention. She could do nothing else.

  Ori would be intrigued by the creatures’ social structure, she thought, the combination of nomadic hunting and herding for most adults with permanent, safe child-rearing locations in which the young, protected from predators and the rigors of migration, could be tutored as well as protected by the wisest of the adults. The special positions within the troops: singer-to-strangers, war leader, wayfinder, and cl
ick-kaw-keerrr. Then the loose confederacy of most troops, the constant testing of opinion with right and left-hand drumming. They had no concept of disobedience; dissent could always leave, with any who drummed the same rhythm, and the world itself defined error and right.

  Now Bluecloak explained more about her special position and his. Click-kaw-keerrr: more than aunt, a combination midwife, infant nurse, preschool and elementary teacher . . . and protector. Singer-to-strangers: those who made contact with other troops, and negotiated the sharing of lands and duties, bringing the drumming into the left hand if possible.

  Kira and Ori both would have wanted to hear about the creatures’ understanding of their world’s living beings . . . how they classified the plants and animals, how they had learned to use them, how they bred their grass-eating herd animals, how they replanted the ruined nestmass.

  Ofelia realized that she was dividing what Bluecloak said into what this one and that would like to know—but Bluecloak wasn’t thinking that way. To Bluecloak, all “mind-hunting” was the same, each scent-trail leading to a different prey, but all the same in the joy of the hunt. She remembered how even the first of them had seemed so eager to learn, like young children before they are taught that most curiosity is idle, useless.

  She pulled her mind back to what Bluecloak was saying. For a people like this, there could be no single government; nothing they did, in fact, resembled anything she knew about governments. Bluecloak sang for some large fraction of the People (she heard the capital of that now, and accepted it) who roamed the plains, but singing for them did not mean ruling them. And while Bluecloak had sung to (different from singing for) some of the People who lived on the stone coast, this did not mean that agreement had come.

  Ofelia had to hear more about the people on the stone coast; the humans, when asked, had cut her off. Bluecloak explained, and in the process Ofelia understood why the idea of water and electricity in pipes had come easily to them. Their People ran water, other liquids, and particulates like sand in pipes of wood and hollow reeds, and brewed things in gourds made of clay or burnt sand. They had no electricity—yet—and their water pumps ran on water or foot power . . . but the idea of pumped water was not strange to them, even to the nomads.