Chapter 16

To Miller's evident consternation, isolated as he was on the Gardener, both that day and the next went forward completely without incident. The major continued to veto Meiersdottir's repeated suggestions that a second contingent of scientists be allowed to join the first, but his objections grew noticeably weaker as she kept renewing the idea, and it was clear that he was also getting considerable shipboard pressure.

"Probably tomorrow," Meiersdottir told Igwanda their third evening on the planet. "He's still suspicious—hell, I'll bet he suspected his mother of trying to poison him the first time she put him to her breast—but I think he's actually starting to get the picture. Who knows, he might even turn out to be human after all."

"Are you sure about that?" asked her husband dryly.

"Well..."

But the next morning brought instead an abrupt departure from the routine they'd started to re-establish. Joe, together with Akakha, sought Meiersdottir and her husband out very shortly after their morning arrival at the pavilion.

"Amanda, Igwanda, I bring today message from Gagugakhing," the native said. "She wishes that you both come to the nest this day. Will you do this?"

Surprised, Meiersdottir and Igwanda exchanged glances. "Of course, Joe," she told him. "But we must first find someone to watch the baby while we're gone. Give us a few minutes, OK?"

The two aliens withdrew, leaving the human couple to wonder why the sudden summons. "Just a welcome back?" Meiersdottir speculated.

"I think it may be more," her husband told her. "She asked for me as well as you, when it should be clear that I no longer lead the military here."

"You think? I mean, she saw us together last time."

"Perhaps," he said. "But there seemed also to be some sense of urgency from Joe. In any event, we shall soon learn."

Locating a babysitter wasn't difficult. Zo, who was frequently to be found somewhere in Igwanda's vicinity, had overheard Joe's invitation and immediately offered. "Aurora and I will be happy to take care of Meier," he said.

" Aurora and I? " thought Meiersdottir in surprise. She'd noticed that Hill was continuing to spend her evenings and, especially, nights with the sergeant, but had put it down mainly to the relative scarcity of available masculine companions. Was Zo presuming too much?

But no, it appeared that he wasn't when he called her over and explained his proposal. "Sure, Amanda, we'd be delighted," she said enthusiastically. "He's the cutest little kid, and it'll be fun to play mommy for a while."

This was a Rory she hadn't seen before. "Well, thanks," she said, slightly befuddled. Meier was playing with one of the Edenites who'd apparently been assigned to keep him company, and Meiersdottir took Hill and Zo over to explain. The child seemed ready to burst into tears until Hill plumped herself down on the ground beside him and reached out to tickle him. In the way of all babies he segued from misery to joy in an instant and giggled at her.

Meiersdottir and Igwanda walked away a few paces, but lingered to make sure the new bond was holding. It was; within minutes Zo had lifted the boy to his shoulders, and Hill continued to tease at him while he alternately looked around from his new vantage and laughed happily at her playfulness.

"Now there's the odd couple for you," Meiersdottir remarked to her husband as they moved away to Joe and Akakha.

"I wonder how long it will last," he said.

"No idea, but it's already a couple of days longer than her usual. You know, she's still fetching him drinks and food—that is, when he isn't fetching them for her. She said 'we, ' too, when I asked her about baby-sitting, and that's a word you don't hear her use much. And I never, ever expected to hear her talking about 'playing mommy.'"

There was no conversation as the quartet walked to the natives' original structure that housed the entrance to their underground nest. But as soon as they had entered Akakha turned to Igwanda.

"We think it is that your clothing cannot burn if you do not have these," he said, touching the fairly unobtrusive backpack that the colonel, like every other human, wore. "Is this right?"

"Yes, but you know that they also have our communicators, our hand-talk," the colonel replied.

"This time Gagugakhing does not wish for others to hear what is said. She asks that you leave these here, but you may keep your clothes."

Igwanda and Meiersdottir exchanged glances. It was a remarkable turn of affairs, completely different from their last visit to the natives' nest—their only invited visit—when they'd been required to strip completely bare but allowed to keep their communicators active.

For a moment he hesitated, then activated his communicator to Zo's private frequency. "Sergeant, we are asked to divest ourselves of our communicators, and we will do so now," he said. "There is no need to inform the Gardener"—meaning, clearly, Miller—"but be aware that we now go to their original nest."

"Got it, Colonel," he heard the sergeant reply in short order. "Want to fix a time limit?"

"The end of the day will be enough," he said. "I greatly doubt we will be anything like that long. That is all."

There were only two leads to disconnect, and they soon had shed their packs. Joe moved the pivoting trap in the floor and motioned the two humans into the tunnel that was revealed, but this time he and Akakha made no move to follow and as soon as both humans were in the trap slid back into place.

As before, the tunnel was quite adequately lit with the natives' phosphorescence and, slightly hunched over as dictated by the passage's height—quite enough for Edenites, but too low for a human to stand erect—they moved forward.

"I guess you're right, Carlos, something's up," said Meiersdottir quietly. "I wonder what."

"No need for speculation, I am sure we shall soon know," he told her. They moved along the tunnel and were soon at the second bottleneck, the final entry into the underground cave—perhaps a little natural, but most painstakingly dug out by the aliens—that sheltered the females and their eggs and young.

"Go ahead, my love, I shall follow," he said, gesturing. She smiled, leaned over to kiss him quickly, and then feet first she half slid, half crawled through the narrow passageway.

The nest itself was as spectacular as on their prior visits, the walls, floor and ceiling aglow with undulating light. As she waited for her husband to emerge from the entry passage she found herself almost breathless from its beauty and the sense of aliveness that permeated the entire area. "You know, I wonder if even heaven could be as grand as this," she said quietly to Igwanda as he came through behind her.

"Amanda, Igwanda, you are welcome here," came the harsh sound, very different from the voices of the native males, that they recognized as the speech of Gagugakhing, the Edenites' oldest mother. "Please come forward that we all may greet you."

There had been only four mothers in this nest when Igwanda and Meiersdottir had visited before. Now there seemed to be six; and the same level of increase was also visible in the carefully sequestered eggs and the number of Edenite children clustered near them. Starting with Gagugakhing both humans touched extended hands to the almost tentacle-like arms of each female, feeling as they did so the now-familiar small tingle of the electrical charge that each exuded.

"We have made chairs for your visit," the mother said, gesturing. Hitherto unnoticed by either Igwanda or Meiersdottir, two chairs similar to those that had been provided at the pavilion were positioned directly in front of Gagugakhing. Igwanda wondered idly how the chairs had been maneuvered through the entrance bottlenecks; they could not fit, he realized, they must have been assembled here. On their last visit the natives had provided them with simple platforms on which to sit so they could look at the mothers, with their grossly oversized upper bodies, without craning their necks uncomfortably. This had clearly been remembered.

"Thank you very much," Meiersdottir said as they both walked over and took their seats. Igwanda simply waited as she looked at the mother expectantly.

"We ask you here, first, to greet you ourselves on your return to our world," Gaguga­khing began. "It was only you who came here before, and it is only you that we, we mothers, know from that time."

Meiersdottir inclined her head in acknowledgment, and the next few minutes were filled with small talk about how matters had been progressing aboveground and polite inquiries from Gagugakhing about Meier. In time, however, the native ran out of conversational topics and a silence fell, stretching out until Igwanda recognized that whatever reason for which they'd been summoned, it was something that made the mothers profoundly uncomfortable. His wife's patient waiting would in time elicit an explanation, he knew, but he saw no purpose to prolonging the natives' evident embarrassment.

"I believe there is something else, though, Gagugakhing," he prompted gently. The native female's posture relaxed slightly, a tension he'd previously noted only subliminally now visibly evaporating.

"You two are still as one, are you not?" the alien mother said. "We think it is not as it was before, you are no longer a leader, Igwanda, but even though Amanda remains a leader it is still the same between you."

"Who we are to other people, other humans, is only a small thing," Meiersdottir replied. "We're the same to each other as we were before, and that's what's important."

"This is not easy for us to know, to understand," said the mother. "And yet it is now very important that we understand. It is partly to know this that we asked you to come here today, to know whether it is still the same with you, but it is also that each of you, each one separately, has knowing that we may need."

The two humans simply looked at her, waiting.

"It is time that we speak, knowing that you are both the same as in our memory," she went on. "A thing has happened that we do not know how we may act, such a thing has never happened before, and we think perhaps you may help us in this.

"We must tell slowly, so that you will know. We begin with what we think you know already, that we send out ... party, is what you said before, a separate group of us with a young mother who can still move as I no longer can to help in their thinking. Do you remember this?"

"Yes," the colonel said. "There is no copper to be mined here. You sent them to where we told you it was."

Igwanda thought wryly that the copper was not after all usable for its primary intended purpose of providing the nucleus of a system of electric power, at least not immediately, but comforted himself with the knowledge that the metal also had other valuable uses of which the natives might take advantage and that ultimately alternative sources of electrical generation would probably be found.