Khe (18 page)

I nod, and wonder how that gesture looks to the lumani, what it indicates to them if anything. I wonder why the other two have spread out over the floor while Weast has not, and why Weast has suddenly doubled in size. Are these lumani gestures, filled with significance I can’t read?

“What do you mean by being my donor?” I ask.

Weast undulates, the sides of its form swelling and shrinking in waves from top to bottom. I try to open my awareness to Weast and the others and grasp their emotions. All I feel is curiosity. But no, there is something else coming from them—desperation.

“There is an essence,” Weast says, “a bit of chemicals in every fiber of your being that makes each doumana who she is, distinct from any others. All living things are what they are because of this essence, which they received from their progenitors. We, too have this substance. Ours is different from yours, but not so different as you might think when looking at the ways we are made.

The vaporous band undulates faster. Is it excited?

“We will adjust your chemical and electrical levels,” Weast continues. “In this way, we believe you will become enough like us to provide offspring. When you are more lumani, I will donate some of my essence to yours. My essence will find a place there and grow. Our species will continue.”

My mouth drops open but I can’t speak. My emotion spots riot: gray-green of disgust, muddy-gray of fear, pale-blue of despair.

“Why?” I manage to say.

Weast’s form stops moving. Its outsides harden like a shell, so that thousands of tiny lights seem to be blinking inside a glass box.

“When we came to this world, we discovered that we aged more slowly. Perhaps something happened while we were not conscious during our traveling here. Perhaps it is something in the air, soil, or magnetic force of the planet. We have tried to discover the reason, but failed.”

My mind spins. These, then, are the same lumani who came originally to our world longer ago than I can imagine. Azlii was right when she said the Powers didn’t seem to die.

“We have discovered, too, that on this world we cannot breed,” Weast continues. “Unlike your race, we are complete in ourselves, being both what you call female and male. We do not mate within ourselves, however; we join with others for that. But here, when we join, our union bears no fruit.”

I stare at the form that is Weast. I understand the lumani’s longing, but don’t grieve for their failures. I have no pity for those who’ve brought my world anguish.

The hard shell around Weast dissolves. The again-fluid band thins to a line no thicker than my finger.

“We are like your orindles,” Weast says, its tone turning factual. “We find answers to questions. The answer to the question of when our lives will run out is very soon. The twenty-seven lumani here have perhaps another one hundred of your years left. Our
thesstrin
is destroyed. We cannot go back. Before our energies extinguish, we must pass our essence to a new generation who will call this world theirs. You will make that possible.”

I don’t know what a
thesstrin
is, but guess it must be what they used to come to our world. I do know that the lumani have no understanding of us, thinking that I would help make another generation of Powers…lumani.

“You will be the first of a new race,” Weast says. “No longer a simple doumana, groveling in the dirt for food to sustain you. Already you are superior to any other of your kind that we have found. We have probed your memory and know you are a Talent, but you did not go insane. You have eaten aruna and it increased your natural empathic abilities, again without making you insane or killing you. Your body and mind have unusual strengths. No other has as good a chance of surviving the uniting and providing us offspring.”

Sweat prickles my skin. My neck burns. I say nothing.

Weast straightens, the thin line growing tall, touching the ceiling.

“You too, are aging,” Weast says, “your natural span leaking away too quickly. We can give you what you want. We can give you back your life.”

Chapter Twenty

My heart cries out in longing.

--The Expectation of Returning

Weast and its companions have gone, leaving me alone in the room. But not before Weast advised me to come to peace with the idea of the procedure and said that someone would come to prepare me. I wait in the darkness.

The door whooshes open. Dim lights glow in the hall. A yellow-clad helphand pushes a waist-high rolling cot into the room.

The helphand sidles around from behind the cot, moving toward me in that efficient, almost silent way that helphands do. Her face shows her focus; she’s thinking about what needs to be done, not what her patient might be planning. She leans over me.

I kick her belly, knocking her backwards. She falls against the rolling cot with a thud. The cot rolls away and she falls to the floor. I leap on her, biting and clawing at her arms, face, neck, whatever I can reach. Her hands come up, defending herself. She rakes her nails across my face. I hardly notice. I press my shoulder into her belly and push up, trying to lever her onto the cot. Her hands flail, reaching for the instrument tray. I grab for her arms but she’s faster. An icy needle pricks my neck.

Against my will, my muscles begin to relax. My legs feel boneless and the floor rushes up. My arms won’t move to break the fall. I hear a crash as I crumple onto the tiles. I feel nothing, though my mind whirls.

And feel nothing as the helphand grabs me, the muscles in her arms and shoulders tensed and bunched under her skin. Lifting me onto the cot, she grunts. There's no need for restraints, but she locks them around my wrists and ankles, and fastens thick straps across my chest and upper arms, hips, and knees.

The lights are too bright. They pierce my eyes as I’m wheeled down one hallway and then another. The helphand walks with fast steps, and then breaks into a trot, as though wanting to be rid of me as quickly as possible. Is the medication short acting? She takes a fast corner and my head lolls helplessly from side to side. I try to call out, but can’t.

A door opens with a hiss and I am pushed into a new room. The helphand glares down at me and pinches my cheek between her thumb and first finger. Her teeth grit with the strain of how hard she’s squeezing. It’s horrifying to see, hear, smell, and know everything when my mind can only watch and record and my body can do nothing. Anger burns in me like a sun. The helphand pinches me again.

This room is well lit, the walls painted blue-gray, the color of acceptance. A bank of machinery stands in the middle of the room—dark orbs on long, spindly silver legs. Red, white, and yellow lights blink across their black faces. The helphand pushes the rolling cot to the machines and busies herself hooking me to them with wires and tubes. She focuses light beams from other machines on precise areas of my body—one on a spot in the middle of my forehead, one on my belly—on the place where, beneath the skin, the egg quickens during Resonance. She steps back to judge her work, then comes forward and makes adjustments until she’s satisfied.

The helphand leans across me and twists a dial. A machine hums with a low-pitched sound. Greenish black liquid seeps down a tube into my arm. My mouth tastes of brackish water. My muscles jump and begin to tingle.

She starts a second machine. Almost immediately I begin to feel drowsy and fight against it. The helphand flips another dial that starts a slow drip of red liquid leaking into me.

Another yellow-clad doumana slips into the room, all efficiency and bustle, a textbox clutched to her chest. She hands the box to the helphand, whose lips draw into a tight line as she reads. Contempt, but also fear, fills her eyes.

“Our orders are to leave you,” the helphand says. “Someone will come.”

I’m no longer drowsy and have gained back some command over my muscles. I turn my head to watch the doumanas leave. As soon as the door squeezes shut behind them, I try the restraints at my wrists and ankles, but it’s no use. I’m too weak and they are too securely fastened.

I slump back on the cot. Greenish black liquid trickles down the tube into my blood.

Chapter Twenty-One

We hear the wind blowing,

Generation to generation,

Carrying the seed.

--The Song of Growing

The air in the room grows warm. A vaporous form takes shape between the rolling cot I’m strapped to and the closed round door. The thin, hazy band twists slowly in the still air.

“Some time will pass before you are prepared properly by the machines to accept my essence,” Weast says. “You will find your natural electrical energy magnified; your chemistry changed. Then we will bond.”

Nausea makes my stomach heave—drugs or disgust? I clamp my jaws shut.

The whirring sound of one of the machines suddenly speeds up, its pitch rising.

A tremendous mental strength rushes through me. From the drugs. I am … keenly aware. I realize that there are six separate chemicals mixed with the oxygen in the room. I don’t know their names, but can tell each from the other by the subtle differences in their odors. I see suddenly how the haze of Weast is made of millions of tiny sparks, that each spark is made of three different elements, how two of the parts circle in a specific order around a central core. It seems natural that I should know these things, as though I have lived my life muffled in blankets, and now they have been lifted away.

“I, in particular, will monitor your progress,” Weast says. It glimmers, then bends over me.

“Much time has passed since I’ve been this near to a soumyo,” Weast says softly, as though speaking to itself. “To sense the slow rhythms of the electric fields, to study the hard container around the fields is a pleasure. But we must keep distance. To be among them invites familiarity. Familiarity invites dissent. Yes, we were right to stay away.”

The vaporous band straightens and drifts off a short distance. My mouth is dry. I never got the water I asked for when I could still speak. Does Weast know that I can no longer speak? Does it matter to the lumani?

Weast drifts back to the cot. “But we are not common, you and I” it says, plainly talking to me now, and just as plainly knowing that I heard what it said before. “We should be companionable.”

My mind is crowded with questions only a lumani can answer. I try to form words and speak, but no sound comes out. I’m tired of this one-way conversation. My teeth grind together in frustration. It sounds like a crash of boulders careening down a hillside. My heart thuds. What is happening to me?

I need to speak. I need my voice.

I think, maybe I can “talk” to Weast the way Azlii said sentients of differing species do. Like using a firestarter, Azlii said. Little different from asking the plants to grow. I form my question and concentrate on sending thought-energy to the lumani.

Weast has no reaction.

I concentrate harder and try again.

You can think-talk!
Weast sends, its electrical bits whirling fast
. Did I not say that you were superior within your species? No other soumyo has communicated this way
.

I can’t speak in words
, I send.
My voice won’t work
.

Because you would not come easily, you were given a relaxant
, Weast replies.
The speech areas return last
.

Weast’s thoughts come to me clearly, but it’s different from when it spoke before. The lumani must have been sending all along, but now I hear its words not only in my mind, but also with my entire being. I catch emotions, too—Weast’s amazement and excitement. The emotions don’t come as colors or feelings. More like a knowing. I worry that I might send thoughts I’d rather keep to myself, though Weast doesn’t seem to know all that I’m thinking, only what I send.

I’m thirsty
, I send.
Can I have some water?

Weast doesn’t react. Maybe it doesn’t understand “thirst.” I try a different tact.

Weast,
I send,
what do you want to tell me?

So many things
, it answers immediately.
Everything
.

Why?

The haze that is Weast shrinks to a line the width of my smallest finger. The line coils around itself, forming a spring-like shape. A moment passes, and then another.

There is a small chance
, Weast sends,
that sharing essence with you will disrupt my energies until I cease to exist
.

If I could count on that, it almost would be worth going through the procedure.

Whether I disrupt or not
,
you will of course raise our offspring. This is our way. Lumani offspring stay with the “doumana” half of any pairing
.

You said lumani don’t have doumana and male
.

Indeed, we do not,
Weast sends.
Not as you understand them
.
We are both. We can be growing an offspring within our form at the same moment we are providing what you call “the male essence” to another
.
It is of course efficient.

Your offspring don’t grow in an egg
?