Chapter 19

As the lander lifted back off—it would return when they called on their communicators—Igwanda, Meiersdottir and the baby went easily with those who had met them.

They'd been greeted courteously, even effusively, as soon as they exited the ship. Their greeter was one they'd not met before, but it was evident that he'd been practicing his Standard speech; his enunciation was nearly as good as Joe's. When Meiersdottir asked for a name to call him, he simply told her to pick the one she preferred and she chose "Greg" out of deference to the aliens' principally glottal enunciation.

"Then I will be Greg," he said obligingly. "You are welcome among us, we are glad that you have come. It is the wish of the one you know as Akeelakhing that we take you to our nest."

They seem to share the same sense of urgency as the original group, Igwanda thought. Perhaps even more so with the time window narrowing, it took the others three days to invite us to the nest.

Unlike in the original settlement the entrance to this nest was not central to the building that housed it. It lay within a few feet of the entrance, whereas the building itself went on for a goodly distance to shelter the mining and extracting operations. But Igwanda got only a glimpse of the latter as Greg and his cohorts relieved them of their lasers and backpacks; they, too, had apparently worked out that without the backpacks the clothing was inert.

There was a brief moment of confusion as Meiersdottir insisted on extracting supplies for the baby—a full bottle, fresh diapers, a sealable container for a soiled one should it become necessary to change him, and a pacifier if he grew restless. In short order, though, they were ready to begin the descent as the Edenites drew aside a trap that, as in the other nest, pivoted smoothly to allow their passage.

The entry tunnel had few of the amenities of the other. Like that one, it was protected with a narrow bottleneck at the surface end, but the middle section was scarcely much larger and only dimly lit with the natives' phosphorescence. Meier quickly became anxious, and his mother had to spend considerable effort soothing him as she struggled to carry him along the passage. Ultimately she was able to put him down, and he toddled along beside her as she and Igwanda made the traverse, a good part of it on their knees. Greg and another alien followed them.

Much sooner than they would have in the original nest they reached the second bottleneck that marked the entrance to the nest itself. First Igwanda, then Meier and lastly Meiers­dottir, made the traverse, with their two alien companions behind.

Although better lit than the tunnel, the nest was much dimmer than the splendor of the other, with only patches of the pulsating light that Igwanda now knew was a symbiotic life-form inhabiting the mature females' bodies. It was considerably smaller, too, though still large enough to house the dozen eggs he could see glowing at the distant end. The eggs, he noted, were attended only by two newly hatched infants and another pair of males—the last something of a surprise, since in the original settlement the males ordinarily were in the nest only briefly, primarily for mating. But he ascribed it to the obvious state of the new nest as still under construc­tion.

The two females before him were also appreciably smaller than Gagugakhing and her counterparts, though still much larger than the males. They have only newly bred, and their body changes are not yet complete, he thought—a predictable state of affairs, he recognized, since these had to be two of the four females who had made the trip there before beginning their reproductive cycles.

On their right one of the mothers rose immediately to her feet. "Amanda," she said in a voice already showing the beginnings of the harshness that was the mothers' hallmark, "it is very good to see you again." She moved forward with arms outstretched.

Meiersdottir responded immediately, reaching out to touch both hands to the mother's. "Akeelakhing?" she said questioningly.

"Yes, that was the name you used," the alien female said. "I have changed, as you see, I have begun my work of bringing new children. So I can no longer be Akeelakhing." The name, as they both knew, meant merely young mother. "But neither may I be Gagugakhing, though I am oldest here. You may call me now Kalogakhing, that is first mother, because I am first here."

Igwanda could see Meiersdottir react to that with a start. The Edenites worshiped no gods and generally gave little thought to their ancestors by individual name, but both knew that "Kalogakhing" was an exception to that rule, perhaps their only one. It was the name they gave to the first female in whom the telepathic mutation had manifested itself, the one who had started their entire species some hundreds of their years ago when the mutated gene proved dominant. The designation had never been used since.

"I see you are surprised," the mother went on. "You know that it was the first Kaloga­khing who began us. But here we have a new beginning, different from what has gone before us, and we have decided, all of us together, that the first should again be marked. I am Kalogakhing of Strong."

She makes it sound almost like a cult, thought Igwanda bemusedly, or what would be one back on Earth. But how can there be a cult here, with the natives sharing minds? On the other hand, they are refusing to share minds between the groups now, both of them.

Amanda may have a more difficult task than either of us believed, his thought concluded.

"Very well, Kalogakhing," he heard Meiersdottir say smoothly. "It is very good to see you again by any name."

For a few minutes the two females spoke of secondary matters. The newly dubbed Kalogakhing was especially interested in Meier, whose birth she had attended and to whom she'd paid one or two further visits, as Akeelakhing still, when he was a newborn.

Meantime the colonel was unobtrusively cataloging his surroundings. There were now a total of four males, and they appeared to be armed; at least he could see several spears leaning against a wall of the cave, not in hand but readily available, and he assumed they were also carrying concealed knives in their clothing.

The armaments could be explained by the fact that this was a pioneer settlement and there was a need for protection from marauding carnivores who might still lurk nearby. Even so, the situation made him decidedly uneasy, and he was very well aware that his own weaponry lay out of his reach several meters above their heads.