Chapter 61

The cavern was as spectacular as Igwanda remembered. The phosphorescence, which was merely a steady glow in the passage, now rippled richly across the entire surface as well as the bodies of the four mothers and even the neat array of eggs behind them. It must be biologically active here, he thought. Something on the order of coral, and just the shells in the tunnel. It was too simplistic an analogy, he realized, but he felt there had to be some element of accuracy in it as well.

Joe had already started toward the mothers, motioning for them to follow. They moved forward until they were directly in front of one—the one, Igwanda thought, who had spoken to them before. Gagugakhing, oldest mother. Her long upper limbs reached out toward them. Realizing immediately what was happening, Meiersdottir reached out to touch them, and gave the same brief bow with which she had greeted Joe so many weeks before—so many eons, in terms of how their relationship had changed. Igwanda quickly followed suit, offering his own bow. He was surprised to feel a slight tingle in his hands; they exude some small electrical charge, he thought. The mother responded with bows to each in turn.

"Please stand a small time more, I wish see," came the same harsh voice they had heard before. Abruptly self-conscious in their nakedness, they nevertheless stood obediently while the mother's eyes shifted slightly to take them in.

"We will sit now," she finally said. Igwanda realized that she, too, had been on her feet, though her diminutive legs had made it difficult to recognize. But she moved slightly to settle back.

Even standing Gagugakhing's head had been considerably higher than theirs; seated, they almost had to crane their necks to look up at her. Both shifted quickly to semi-reclining positions to reduce the strain. "You are not comfortable?" the alien queen asked.

"You're much higher than we are, we must look up at you," answered Meiersdottir.

"Wait." Joe and Akakha, who had unobtrusively taken up positions flanking the four mothers, moved quickly to retrieve two meter-high platforms that Igwanda hadn't noticed before. They carried the platforms over, and the two humans lifted themselves up to sit chair-like, their legs dangling. "That is better?" the mother asked.

"Much better," said Meiersdottir. In fact they still had to look up, but the angle was sufficiently reduced that it caused no neck strain.

"You are different," Gagugakhing said. "Amanda, you are mother?"

"I— yes."

"You hesitate. Do you have children?"

"No, I don't. Well, not yet. But I'm carrying a child," she finished proudly.

"I do not understand."

"We don't have children as you do," Meiersdottir explained. "Your children, your babies, grow in those, do they not?" She gestured to the array of globes.

"Yes."

"We call them eggs. We have eggs, too, but my eggs grow inside. My baby is here." She touched her belly. "It will grow there until it's ready to be born, and it will be fully formed as a child then."

"How does it come out?" asked the alien with evident interest.

"Well ... there."

Sex life in a fishbowl, thought Igwanda with amusement, as he mentally pictured the entire crew listening avidly to the overhead.

"That appears so small."

"It, er, stretches," said Meiersdottir, obviously uncomfortable with the unexpected turn the conversation had taken. "It opens very wide when the child comes."

That is enough, turnabout is fair play, thought Igwanda. For the first time he spoke. "How is it that your eggs come out, Gagugakhing?" he asked.

Her head turned toward him. "Igwanda. You speak to help Amanda I think. I have seen the memories. It is not your custom to speak of these things. You think of them as private. I know you are a guard, but you are much more, you are a together with Amanda."

"My partner," put in Meiersdottir. "Yes."

Her eyes shifted back. "We have seen singles on our world. We know how the others will protect the mothers, keep them safe."

"The males," murmured Meiersdottir.

"Males?"

"That's our word for what you called the 'others.'"

"The males. We have seen how the males protect. Our males protect us." The alien gestured to Joe and Akakha. "But we have never seen a male and a mother—"

"Female."

"Female is a word for mother?"

"Yes."

"We have never seen a male and a female do together as you and Igwanda," Gagugakhing continued. "You are same as one. We know you cannot think together, but it is almost as if you do. I think Igwanda knows you are not easy with our talk and speaks to help you feel more easy. Is that correct?"

Meiersdottir laughed. "I think so. But still, it's a fair question. We've told you about how we make babies, make children, and I suppose we've given you demonstrations—we've shown you. Now he asks how you do that."

Gagugakhing gave the Edenites' snort of her own laughter. "We show you. We give ... demonstration." Immediately Joe moved toward the mother nearest him. "You see place there?" She pointed. Neither Igwanda nor Meiersdottir had noticed before, but there was a vaguely discolored marking on the abdomen of the mother Joe was approaching, an area where the luminescence pulsated in different rhythm from the rest of her body.

With quick movements Joe shed his clothes. He moved and pulled over a third platform like the ones on which Meiersdottir and Igwanda were sitting, then leaped in a single movement upward to land with his feet on the platform. His own abdomen pressed insistently on that of the female in front of him. For perhaps thirty seconds they held the position unmoving. Abruptly both Joe's and the mother's expressions changed, grew vapid in the same way Igwanda had seen when the interference signal had cut off their think-together weeks before at the conclusion of the first attack and again when he had experimentally used the signal a second time to verify their program deactivation three days ago. It lasted perhaps another fifteen or twenty seconds. Then their expressions returned to normal, and Joe—rather wearily, Igwanda thought—moved away and dropped back to the floor.

Leaving behind, as they both could see, a tiny nub where the mother's discoloration had been, which pulsated strongly with light. "That is egg," said Gagugakhing. "It will grow, ten or twelve days, until it is the same size as those." She pointed. "Then it will fall. These"—she pointed to the children, who had been so utterly still that neither Igwanda nor Meiersdottir had been really aware of them to that point—"will take it to there. In fifty days more, perhaps one or two days more or fewer, a child will come out. This one will be..." She paused, seeming to consult something mentally. Then she snorted again. "This one will be like Joe. To meet you, talk with you. It is very well that you see.

"Another time we will show you how child come from egg. None is ready now. Will you also let us see how child come out?"

Meiersdottir turned to Igwanda in slack-jawed amazement. He pointed to her; it was her decision. "Yes, Gagugakhing, you may see. Or Joe, or someone else, may see for you. I can't come here in your nest to have my baby."

"Yes. That is good. When does your baby come?"

"Seven months— I'm sorry, that is ... about two hundred twenty or thirty of your days. It might be sooner, or perhaps a very little later, but that is the usual."

There was a brief pause. "Are there more mothers, more females on your ship?"

"Yes, there are a number of them. Janet is female, and Wanda, you've seen them here. And the captain—the leader—of our ship, she hasn't been here, and there are ... nine, no, ten others who also haven't been here yet."

"And there were three of my troopers, the guards, who were female," added Igwanda. "There was Dolly Dzenda, who was one of the two who wanted to kill you, there is Mikita O'Hara, and Carol van Damm who ... died when—"

"We kill mother?" Akakha burst out in obvious shock.

"Yes," said Igwanda flatly.

"We regret that we killed a ... female," said Gagugakhing.

"We regret that you killed anyone," said Igwanda. "We also regret that we killed many of your males. But these things are done, they cannot be changed now. What we can change is the future, in which I hope there will be no more killing by any of us."

"What is this word 'hope?'" asked Gagugakhing. "You use it often, but we have not understood completely."

"It's wishful anticipation," Meiersdottir explained. "To think what you want to happen in the future."

"Then we too hope there will be no more killing. We will not kill again."

Igwanda inclined his head. "Thank you. We will not kill again either."

"You say you have fifty on your ship. Now you say seventeen of these are females. That is for us many mothers for few males."

"It's not the same with us, Gagugakhing," Meiersdottir said. "More than half of all human children who are born are female. Our females often do the same work as the males."

"I think you and Igwanda are leaders of your people," said the alien. "Is this correct?"

"Yes, Carlos and I share leadership with our captain."

"Three leaders. Two are female, one is male. That is very different. Amanda, you say are seventeen females. Are any truly mothers? Do they have children?"

"Yes," Meiersdottir replied. "Our captain has three children, they are grown—out of the nest. Janet has two, they are still at home, in the nest. I think four or five others also have children."

"With us when a mother begins to have children, she becomes as you see me and the others before you. She can no longer move well, she must stay in the nest and care for children and make new children, she cannot do same work as males. It is not so for you."

"No, it isn't. We usually have only one child at a time, and I've told you it takes nine ... about three hundred of your days, a little less. Then the child must stay home, stay in the nest for many years after and be taught and helped and cared for while it grows ready to leave."

"If the mothers do not stay in nest to do these things, who does them?"

"Many people help. The fathers, the males, do part. Grandparents—the mothers and fathers of the child's mother and father—sometimes do part. Other people. We also have institutions—places where children can go for part of the time to be cared for, such as schools where they go to learn as they become older. There are many ways."

"You say Janet has two children still in nest. Are they with her on your ship?"

"No, they're at home. Her husband, her male cares for them while she's away."

"Your males care for children?"

"Yes. We mate for life, one female and one male who stay together. As Carlos and I will do, have done," she added proudly.

"This is very strange to understand. Igwanda, you will help care for child?"

"Oh, yes," the colonel said with a small chuckle, smiling at Meiersdottir. "I want very much to do that." She reached out to squeeze his hand.

"You have more females than males on your world," mused Gagugakhing. "Females work together with males even after they have children. Females can do all work, even guard work." The alien paused for a moment, and then looked squarely at Meiersdottir. "Amanda, do you know why I ask these things?"

"I think so, yes," said Meiersdottir softly. When there was no immediate response she went on. "For as long as you've been able to think together you've had two kinds of thinking. There's the thinking that's for mothers alone, to make children and care for them and do other things that are needed in the nest. There's the other thinking that you help your males do and concerns what's outside the nest"—she gestured broadly—"to grow your food and hunt your food and make your iron and build your houses and do all the things that must be done outside. Am I correct?"

"Yes."

"Before it was two different things. What was outside"—again the gesture—"didn't come in here to your nest. Your nest was just to you mothers. But when we came, when we learned what you had planned and stopped your attack and your thinking-together and we threatened to kill the mothers, then the outside and the inside were no longer separate."

"Yes. We..." Meiersdottir had seen the collective hesitate before. She simply waited.

"The day that you told us about the mothers—that you would not kill the mothers," the alien finally continued. "That is why you are here, now." There was another pause.

"We had decided to move mothers—to move us, and children, and eggs. The ... males, you say ... began work the day before, worked all night and all next day. It was this nest we planned to move, we planned to do it in that night." Again the hesitation.

"I cannot move now, too old. I would die. Mothers must move when they are very young. I show you." One of the children stirred, moved toward Gagugakhing. Igwanda and Meiersdottir could see that she, too, glowed, albeit faintly. Gagugakhing reached out one of her upper limbs to grasp the child's. "This will be mother. She may move to where she is needed. Or stay here. But we do not decide yet, she may move just as ... male?"

Meiersdottir nodded.

"But I cannot move. Not from here. I will die. Most other mothers will die, eggs will die, many children will die. If you did not speak, that is what happen. But you speak. You said do not move mothers, it may hurt them, it may hurt children. We did not do. None died in that move we did not make, because you spoke.

"We did not understand why you spoke. For us it was something to learn later if we can, and we not think of it more. That is all of us, together. But as you say, mothers also think together only mothers. Nest-think. And in nest-think that thing you did was most important. For us it is not good if any die, but if male dies that one is still alive in our thinking, is still part of us— I do not say this right, I do not know your words and for some things I think you do not have words. Do you understand what I have said until now?"