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Mriba goes against everything she believes about herself when she befriends the two human visitors to the Pikhren colony. Now her friends are dead, and she is left with the overwhelming task of rearing a human infant named Thomas.
Fiction
Science Fiction
When her dial-fiddling resolved the image from Endeavor, shock drove Mriba’s crest flat to her skull. Overnight, the human plague had wrecked Lauren Bates, kindling fever-blotches in her cheeks and pricking the whites of her eyes until they bled. A respirator mask covered her nose and mouth. “You did contract it,” Mriba said in Terran Standard; clearly Lauren didn’t need the strain of translating Pikhren.
“We both did,” Lauren wheezed. “Jonathan—he died last night.”
Sorrow sparked in Mriba’s core. What were the right words? “I am sorry,” was all she dared to venture in an alien tongue.
“A hundred thirty-nine dead. Nine of us left, but we’re all infected.”
“Can’t the Getty help?”
“Getty brought in the virus, along with the new colonists. Half its crew’s already dead. It’s gone. Endeavor’s gone, Mriba.”
There’d been a time when Mriba would have welcomed those words. Behind her, over her house-Gol’s soothing hum, she heard the human infant mewling. Don’t let him bleat, not now, when tension was already pushing her claws from their sheaths.
“The Endeavor mining engineer, he’s rigged the power plant for blowout. That will incinerate the colony, the mines and a good patch of desert. Sorry about the desert, but we’ve got to sterilize.”
“I understand,” Mriba said. “No shame to you.”
“I should have made Jonathan stay in Haalat. For Thomas.”
For Lauren’s peace of mind, Mriba contradicted her: “Jonathan couldn’t stay. He had to fly you to Endeavor, and could he come back and expose Thomas? No.”
“Let me see him.”
Mriba gave a low shrill, and Kyleh lumbered over with the infant. He had battened onto one of the Gol’s teats—the liquid that leaked from the corner of his working lips had the same sour odor Lauren had exuded since his birth. The universe be thanked that Gol lactation could adapt even to humans.
Kyleh detached the infant and set him in front of the monitor. His flat, ugly face contorted until he saw Lauren’s image. Then he pressed grubby palms to the screen and babbled.
Lauren removed the respirator mask. Her words came in labored bursts. “Hello, baby. Is Kyleh good to you? You can nurse him, Kyleh?”
“He drinks greatly,” the Gol said. “Our youngling now. Ours for you.”
“Mriba?”
“I’m here.”
“I’ve left a beacon buried outside the blast radius, to warn human ships, and to ask them, to pick up Thomas.”
Would it be unkind to say thank you? Lauren was looking at Thomas with moisture streaming from her eyes. Tears, the moisture was called. It meant grieving. “We’ll take care of Thomas until someone better comes.”
“No one better. But you’ll remember what we talked about. And the blue book. Keep it for Thomas.”
Though he couldn’t understand what they were saying, the infant began to whimper. Mriba hid her hands, with their unsheathed claws. “Lauren, I will feel the greatest loss in you and Jonathan. I will remember everything about you.”
“Maybe you’ll welcome other humans to Haalat. Some time.”
“I don’t know. If they are like you.”
Lauren reached out to her own screen and the infant’s clutching hands. Then the screen went dark.
Kyleh whined deep in her throat, but more obnoxious were the howls that erupted from the infant the second his mother’s image vanished. Worse, a sudden stink of ammonia welled out of his wrappings.
Mriba struck off the comunit and quit the fouled room.
Before leaving her home, Mriba raked double furrows of mourning from the corners of her eyes to her nostrils. She’d reopened those scars too many times since her adherence to the Old Way had driven her off Pikh and out of Star-Empire. The fragile desert morning had flared into noon. Unmet, Mriba walked past Haalat’s sand-molded houses, the grow-domes, the pitted hulk of Voor’alnir’s landing module. The webs of water-collectors reared over her head, then the spiky branches of the young chu-chural grove. Then she was alone in the waste that had called to her. She walked on, earveils furled, toward Sib’kibhoor.
Tripletop, Lauren had named the mesa, which meant just the same as Sib’kibhoor. But what else would one call a mesa weathered into three peaks? Such accidents of nomenclature had been no sign of human-Pikh compatibility, and so Mriba had opposed letting humans settle in Haalat. Bad enough that the FreeTrade Compact had started a colony on Zib. Galling enough that the Old Way in exile was too weak to resent the intrusion. This Compact was nothing but a front for pirates—it was blatant cowardice that had driven Haalat Council to endorse cohabitation, fear of the Compact’s displeasure, fear of Star-Empire finding out where Old Way had run.
Oh, but Mriba was short-sighted, Councillor Lirandohk had whispered in her ear. Who could say when Haalat would need allies? If Mriba thought Old Way could hide forever, she was like a ranyi in its burrow, calling the thud of the hunter’s spade thunder.
She had still voted no, no humans in Haalat. No one had voted with her, and the two humans had come, Lauren Bates, a physician and exobiologist, and Jonathan Allen, a sociologist. They had moved into a hastily sculpted house apart from the others, and soon their supporters’ ardor had cooled. No one had been more than coolly polite. Mriba had ignored them.
Then Mriba had become their one real friend.
Wind blew dust into her mourning wounds. They had already scabbed over, but the alkaline dust cracked the scabs and found raw flesh to burn. It was good. The pain spurred her to remember, like she’d promised Lauren she would do.
Jonathan had spent his time accosting Pikhs, struggling to increase the humans’ meager Pikhren vocabulary. Lauren had wandered alone between Haalat and Sib’kibhoor, too often crossing Mriba’s collecting routes and forcing her to detour. She, too, was interested in the jhormin’ghats and hibi’gants; often Mriba had spotted her peering into their mounds. One fine time, Lauren had snatched at a fleeing ghat, and her yowl had made Mriba flare her earveils until they’d nearly split. The ghat had shocked her, of course. Maybe Lauren had mistaken it for a harmless gant, or maybe she hadn’t yet known about the ghat’s lateral electrostorage cells. Either way, she’d looked satisfyingly foolish.
The Universe repays. The day had come when Mriba had looked worse than foolish. Deep in speculation about the ghat-gant symbiosis, she had stepped on suspiciously well-packed sand and broken through into a figaal’s lair. In the space of a gasp, its lashes had ensnared her, ankles to waist. She had commed Haalat for help, but Lauren had come first, and Lauren hadn’t ignored her. Instead, braving stings that had left her hands swollen, she had cut Mriba free.
Halfway to Sib’kibhoor, Mriba stopped. She’d reached nothing in particular, not even a shady outcropping, but her legs had lost the will to carry her further. She sank to her knees and scooped up handfuls of orange dust. One handful for Lauren, one for Jonathan. She flung the desert earth skyward and watched the wind catch it. An offering for their talks, she and Lauren first, exchanging data on the ghats and gants; then she and Jonathan, comparing the structures of Star-Empire and Compact. To both of them, Mriba had recited Pikh poetry, from children’s doggerel to epics. They had read her human poetry in return, and fed by a hundred topics, their talk had broadened into a river.
Now the river was dry.
Mriba flung dust to the wind. For their laughter, a wild sound in humans. Jonathan had laughed himself to choking when he’d realized the Pikhs on Zib were outcasts, not the avenue into Star-Empire he’d hoped to find.
The river was dry.
Dust to the glaring sky, where it floated off in wispy orange clouds. For their trust. It had been exasperating but weirdly touching, how they’d believed humans and Pikhs could live as equals, losing no integrity. No good to tell them Star-Empire’s policy toward all things alien—until the time to strike came, the alien would be ignored, but when Star-Empire struck, the alien would be conquered. No other outcome was possible.
Dry.
Jonathan was gone. Lauren was gone. Only Thomas remained.
The infant was a bitter legacy. Mriba had told Lauren why there were no children in Haalat: while the settlement was a new and uncertain place, all had agreed to put off procreation, even the child-doting Gols. But Lauren and Jonathan had mated in their shared house, and Thomas was the result.
It had been their one disrespectful act, but it had offended Haalat. Only the Gols had been happy about Thomas. For Mriba, it hadn’t helped that the infant was a noisy creature and that his toilet habits were so spectacularly uncontrolled. He was normal, Lauren had claimed. Well, if so, Mriba pitied humans more for their parenting duties than for their unadorned homeliness and their feeble memories.
Now Thomas was hers.
Mriba stood. No. Not hers. Lauren had set up a beacon. The stricken Getty had to be putting out distress calls. An uninfected human ship would respond, pick up Lauren’s message, and send someone to collect Thomas. The idea of leaving one of their own among Pikhs would have to horrify the humans.
Besides, she needn’t do anything herself—Kyleh could take care of the infant. She’d fed Thomas on sweetpap from her sugar teats until her lactation system had learned to produce a milk he could grow on. She’d changed and bathed him, hummed him out of his inexplicable squalls, and she’d done it gladly, because she was a Gol, and the poor Gols in Haalat had taken to raising the very jhormin’ghats, so profound was their drive to adopt other species into their aggregations. Not that they could adopt Thomas. Mriba would have to make it clear: Thomas was here only temporarily.
Under the toxic midday sun, Mriba trudged back to Haalat. As she passed the remains of Voor’ahnir, Breatas ran out to her. “There was a seismic impulse from Endeavor,” he said. “Vrikha thinks they’ve blown up the colony!”
Mriba turned and showed the young Pikh her mourning furrows.
He dropped his crest in belated respect. “You spoke to Endeavor this morning, Didhar Mriba, or I wouldn’t trouble you. The humans were all dying, then?”
“They were dying. Now they’re dead.”
Breatas drew back and let her pass.
A week later, Breatas brought her word that a human ship had fallen into tandem orbit with the long-silent Getty. Perhaps if she’d speak to the ship in Terran Standard, it would respond.
Mriba outran Breatas to Voor’ahlnir. Old Pvil gave her his seat at the comm console. She touched pads. The console screen lit up, but the image from the human ship remained a system-incompatible blur. She touched another pad and said, “This is Didhar Mriba, of the Pikh colony Haalat.”
A human voice, female, responded: “You I understand. Where’d you learn Standard?”
“Could you identify yourself, please?”
“Captain Kerzer, of the Compact ship Anya. Do you know what happened at Endeavor?”
“The colony was infected with fever by colonists from the Getty. The colony engineer rigged the power plant to blow and sterilize the area.”
“That jibes with what we’ve gathered. Damn waste, but the Getty’s got to go, too. Look, if you people care, the Compact’s pulling out of this system. It’s all yours again. Enjoy it.”
Afraid the human was about to break their connection, Mriba probably spoke too loudly: “Captain!”
“Signing off, Haalat.”
“Wait, please! Did you pick up a transmission from a beacon near Endeavor?”
“We did.”
She prickled with relief. “Then you know about Dr. Bates’s child. He’s still here at Haalat. When will you pick him up?”
Silence, before Kerzer said, “Sorry, Haalat. We can’t risk taking the child aboard.”
Could Mriba have misunderstood? This human spoke faster than Lauren and Jonathan. “Risk?”
“The baby could be carrying the virus.”
“But he never had contact with the infected humans.”
“He’s on Zib, and Zib’s been infected.”
“Only Endeavor, and it’s half the planet away from here!”
“Sorry. We’re not touching anything from Zib. You’ll have to keep the baby.”
Mriba stared at the gray blur on the screen, struck dumb by the captain’s indifference. But she had to speak: “Captain, please. Contact another human ship. Perhaps another could take the infant safely.”
“Right, I’ll do that. Good luck, Haalat. Anya out.”
The screen went blank even of a blur. All hells. If Mriba knew anything about humans, Kerzer had answered too quickly, with no intention of keeping her word.
“Will someone come for the human?” Pvil asked.
She felt her earveils quivering on her shoulders. “I don’t think so,” she said.
Filtered through a storyglass roof panel depicting Ha’al and the sea maidens, the light in Lirandohk’s chamber was water-blue. The Councilor squatted placid in his false grotto. “Didhar Mriba,” he said. “Haalat never contracted to raise human children. Didhar Bates and Didh Allen were indiscreet to produce this one.”
“They were indiscreet, Didh Councilor,” Mriba conceded. “But I still need help.”
“You say your servant tends the infant. Let her teach the other Gols to help her.”
“Kyleh’s already teaching the others.”
“Well, then. What more help do you need?”
Mriba looked at the roof panel, trying to internalize the tranquility of its ocean hues. “We can’t leave Thomas to the Gols alone. He’s a high-sapient. He’ll need schooling.”
“And so?”
Untranquilized, Mriba dropped her eyes to Lirandohk. “We have to decide how to educate Thomas. When there are Pikh children, they’ll have a school. Should he attend it?”
“I shouldn’t think so. No one will want his children associating with a human.”
She had to raise her voice at that: “Yet you wanted the humans here. And the rest agreed.”
Lirandohk dipped his crest, but briefly, unquailed: “Didhar Mriba, we wanted adult representatives, who could be kept apart, minimizing corrupting influences.”
“Corrupting influences can go both ways. I might not want Thomas in a Pikh school. Don’t we need to raise him as a human would be raised?”
Mriba saw claws flex from Lirandohk’s fingers. Still, give him credit, he kept his voice low. “We’ll keep the infant safe. As for his education, it would be cruel to teach him as we teach our own—that could only daunt him with his limitations. As for raising him human, what advice can I give? You’re the one who’s learned the most about them.”
“Yet I feel I know too little to teach.”
“You know the human language. You’ve learned to—read, isn’t that the word? Teach the infant those things, and you’ll have done enough. The Compact won’t abandon their mines forever. Someone will come for him. Humans can’t all lack natural feeling.”
Was it sense in the Councilor’s words, or seduction? Mriba rose and swept back her veils. “Thank you, Didh Councilor.”
“The Universe will provide,” he said, eyes raised to the watery light. “And I hope, as the infant grows, you’ll find his company less onerous. After all, you did enjoy the company of his parents, didn’t you?”
Lirandohk couldn’t quite honey over the contempt in his voice, but Mriba chose to swallow it unanswered and left the chamber.
At the end of the street, she saw Kyleh flaunting Thomas in the breastpouch she’d devised as a carrier. Mriba walked in the other direction. She was too frustrated to endure the infant’s noise. Besides, she had business in Lauren and Jonathan’s house.
No one but Kyleh had been there since the humans had left, and Mriba had instructed her to touch nothing except the infant clothes she’d gone for. Kyleh had followed the instruction with Gol concreteness—she hadn’t even disturbed the half-eaten meal in the galley. Mriba scraped shriveled rinds and moldy crusts into the trash bin and stowed the plates in the cleaner. Two mugs stood on the counter, but these she left alone, for ru’bil spores had drifted into the liquid they’d held, and now the mugs burst with succulent foliage and sprays of white blossom, living things in the death-house.
In the main room, the fragrance of the ru’bili was overwhelmed. A basket of rumpled clothing overflowed by the door. Mriba dumped its contents into a plasbag and sealed in the acrid reek of sweat and skin oils. The bedding in the sleep loft went into another plasbag; it too stank of sweat, and of Lauren’s milk.
Mriba squatted to rest. As always, she marveled at the furniture Jonathan had built. The sleep loft was a stilted platform softened with foam couching pads from the Haalat infirmary. Humans slept lying down, for hours at a time, just as if they were direly ill. It was another sign of their weakness, many had said, Mriba among them. She still found the table and chairs excessive. What was wrong with spreading one’s work on the floor? One simply had to keep the floor clean, a minimal requirement of civilization.
She rose and perched awkwardly on the edge of a chair. On the table was Jonathan’s computer in its black case and Lauren’s in its gray case. The storage box between them was open, and prismatic data lozenges were scattered about. Mriba lifted one: Population Genetics: An Extraterran Perspective, a compendium of information Lauren was incapable of keeping in her head. Mriba slotted it and the other lozenges in the box. Then, happy to escape from the chair, she carried computers and box to the wall case and shut them inside, away from dust.
The last place she checked was the single-shelf case by the sleeping loft, which Jonathan had built for their books. Its door closed tight—the books were fabricated in from leather and cloth, thread and paper and glue, and were therefore delicate. Mriba lifted the door and ran her fingertips over the book spines. The pebbly texture of one binding pleased her; she drew out this book and decoded the symbol-groups on its cover. The Origin of Species. Inside, crowded onto hundreds of sheets, were more symbol-groups, which stood for sounds, for words, for speech. Books were silent recitation. She held a piece of human memory in her hands.
Mriba replaced the pebbly book and took down the blue one, Lauren’s book of poems and pictures. Opening it at random, she saw robed humans mounted on quadrupeds, a winged reptile swooping down on a burning town, a square of deep space studded with galaxies. As she flipped through the pages, one fluttered loose. Mriba grabbed the escapee, core-cold at having damaged Lauren’s legacy. But it wasn’t part of the book. It was a folded square of paper that had been stuck inside it.
On the paper was Mriba’s name. So the paper was meant for her, a missive, a letter. Mriba slipped the blue book into her hip pouch and squatted to read the document.
I should be asleep, Lauren had written. But I keep getting up to look at Thomas. The outbreak in Endeavor sounds serious. If the worst happens, give this book to the people who come for Thomas, to hold for him. Our other things you can keep or send with him, as you think best.
I hate leaving Haalat. You see, we’ve decided to stay on, even when Thomas is old enough to go to school in Endeavor. We’re going to teach him here, and I hope you’ll help. Remember the experiment we discussed? I believe it can work, that Thomas can learn to understand and value human and Pikh cultures equally. You were skeptical, but I’m sure he needs to do this.
I think about that song you taught me, about how Pikhs exiled from their home world felt their native souls crying out for it. Thomas is a native soul here, the very first child born on Zib. It seems right for him to be the bridge between us, and more, a new creature, the sum of our cultures, and perhaps even greater than the parts.
Jonathan’s waking up. I don’t want him to see this and laugh at how solemn I’m being. You won’t laugh, because if you’re reading it, we’re already gone, and Thomas will be leaving, and the opportunity to do the experiment will be lost. I hope I’ll get to tear this letter up and tell you our decision in person, and then we’ll have a glorious argument about it.
The Universe favor you, Mriba.
Lauren.
For a long time, Mriba squatted, drooping with renewed grief. A native soul. A new creature. A compound. Take iron, an elemental metal. Combine it with other elemental metals, manganese or copper or cobalt or nickel, and one had steel, a thing stronger, more durable, more malleable, than its constituents. On the other hand, combine iron and oxygen, and one had rust.
In the Lay of Exile she’d taught Lauren, there’d been a scrap of myth, how the Universe-Maker had descended to nascent Pikh and discovered its soul trapped in the hot, primal rock. When the Maker had carved out that soul, it had become the Mother of Pikhs. What tools did she, Mriba, have, with which she could shape a plastic spirit? And if her tools proved inadequate, did she have the brains and audacity to cast new ones?
She looked at the letter, which had fallen from her fingers to the dusty floor. Lauren hadn’t asked her to take up the experiment she and Jonathan had planned. She’d assumed Mriba would want to send Thomas away.
Shame. Mriba couldn’t deny feeling it, couldn’t take shelter in Lirandohk’s advice to do as little for Thomas as possible. To make a friend was to incur obligation, which was why the wisest person made the fewest friends.
But wisdom wasn’t all. Sometimes honor and fellowship stood apart from it, and higher.
She retrieved the letter. She didn’t need the paper mnemonic, but she tucked it into the hip pouch with the blue book. Lauren had written it, and Lauren had said that every writer’s hand was unique.
Carrying the bags of trash and dirty clothing, Mriba left the humans’ house. The trash she chuted at the incinerator, the clothing she left to be cleaned at the communal workcenter. Kyleh was at the water depot in the courtyard. A dozen Gols had besieged her and her charge. The females were licking the infant’s face and sampling the strange new milk seeping from Kyleh’s teats. Soon they, too, would adapt their lactation to the human’s needs.
Mriba found herself envying the Gols and their easy acceptance of poor, ugly Thomas. What part did they think he could play in their aggregation? Then again, on their home world, Gols found a place for every adoptee, or, if the adoptee proved intractable, they let it go its own way without resentment. “We like that everything should live and be,” Kyleh had told Mriba once, and that had been the extent of her philosophy, repeated word for word no matter how Mriba had later varied her interrogations.
She walked up to the group at the depot. The Gols drew aside, and she passed through their furred bulks to Kyleh. Thomas looked up at her bravely enough. His eyes had white-cradled irises the same odd blue as Lauren’s, the color of the evening sky on Pikh.
“I have something for you,” Mriba said, in Standard. “But you have to let me keep it for a while. At night I’ll read to you from it.”
Thomas blinked. One tiny hand detached itself from Kyleh’s fur and reached for Mriba’s earveil.
She suffered him to grab it. In return, she touched the top of his head. His reddish hair felt not unlike an infant Pikh’s crest, but without the prickle of budding spines. She stroked it, gingerly at first, but soon she found herself enjoying its pumikh-silk smoothness.
Thomas’s eyes widened. His lips curved upwards at their corners. Around the three of them, Pikh and human and Kyleh the Gol, the other Gols began to hum. Kyleh hummed, vibrating with pleasure. Thomas smiled. Mriba’s touch pleased him, it seemed.
At the least, for this time, it sufficed.
If this contribution met with your satisfaction, please consider making a contribution of your own so we may pay our authors and keep the magazine delivering great speculative fiction far into the future. Thank you for visiting.
Copyright 2009, Anne M. Pillsworth. All rights reserved. Anne lives and works in Lovecraft country, near Providence, Rhode Island. She has recently completed her third novel. Her short story, "Geldman's Pharmacy," appeared in Night Terrors #8 and was given honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Thirteenth Annual Collection. She currently has stories pending publication at Bellowing Ark, Zahir and Arkham Tales.
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