Koban Universe 1 (10 page)

Aldry continued,
“We know what Kit has shared with us, of what her unborn cubs can sense from her and what she can sense from them. She also has some faint memories of mental sharing from her own mother, when her mother had been hunted and shot. I know you’ve heard the story of the two people at Hub City she’d attacked and killed in hunger, because she was pregnant and trapped inside their electrified compound. This was long before we formed the partnership we have today. You two were adolescents when we made our first truce with the nearby wild ripper prides.

“The
ripper knowledge Kit and Kobalt received all came as their mother lay dying, as she gave birth. It had to have been a traumatic event, but they don’t actually remember that.”

Carol asked,
“You mean they filtered it out of their memories?”

A head shake from Aldry. “No,
their mother did. She knew she was dying, and wanted them to know something of their heritage, so she gave them powerful images that they retained, but didn’t understood until older. She didn’t share terrifying images. They know a small amount of their father only because mom passed it along. He apparently died months earlier, in a dimly conveyed memory of a hunting incident. It might be why the mother was outside of her family pride and hunting alone. Somehow, she wandered into the Hub City compound when the electrified gate was briefly left open she became trapped, and found she had no wild game to hunt. She gave her cubs all the knowledge she could before dying.”

Richard raised an eyebrow.
“You mean they didn’t get any images from good old pop via direct contact? I was thinking that would be something I might try. To let Ryan know me in advance.”

Aldry both shook her head and shrugged.
“Aside from that being a risky and bad idea to try, Rich, I’m afraid your mental contact with your baby is going to be zero until after his birth. Kobalt has said he knew nothing of any of his cubs before birth, and little afterwards until they were weaned. Ripper moms and other females have the only permitted mental contact with cubs before weaning in their society, and mental contact isn’t at all what you might expect before birth. We think it’s going to be extremely limited mental contact between you and your unborn baby, Carol. If there is any at all.”

“Why? I saw his little hands
on the scan you just performed. He had one pressed against the sac just now.”

“Right,” Aldry agreed. “The p
lacental membrane sac. That protective sheath that encloses your child. It has no superconducting nerves whatsoever. It is a near insulator for a Mind Tap connection with the baby’s hands, or in the case of ripper cubs, from a neck frill contact. We designed our hands to be the primary contact point for the nervous system responsible for our mental connection to our brain, and evolution put that contact area in the neck frill for rippers. However, evolution placed no nerves in the placental sac of any mammal-like species of any world. Please note that there were no nerves in the primitive egg shells that gradually evolved into placental sacs either.” She shrugged again, and continued.

“
Of course, the human placenta isn’t identical to that of Koban mammal analogues, but one place where they do match is in the complete lack of nerve connections in the membrane of the sac. Think about it. What evolutionary advantage would there be for the mother to experience the painful tearing of that sac when giving birth?”

“
What about through the umbilical cord that connects the baby to me?” Carol sounded rather plaintive.

“Carol, the umbilical vein supplies the fetus with
oxygenated, nutrient-rich blood from the placenta, and the fetal heart pumps deoxygenated, nutrient-depleted blood through the umbilical arteries back to the placenta. However, there is no nervous system connection between you two via the cord.”

“
Ms. Anderfem, I thought Kit and Kobalt experienced mental contact with their mother before birth.” It was obvious she had expected to sense the developing mind of her fetus, and was disappointed.

“
The sac and umbilical aren’t perfect insulators, hon. Remember, we don’t have to make hand-to-hand connections to share thoughts, and any skin contact will work, even if not as strong or efficient a circuit. I think that nature has luckily provided a natural safety buffer for the fetus, who doesn’t yet have the mental faculties to process information concerning an outer world it has never experienced. I’d urge restraint and extreme caution with Mind Tap transmissions, even after the baby is born. Anything the baby sends out, you two as adults should be able to handle, but the reverse isn’t going to be true.

“Until we know more of how this ability will alter
your child’s mental development after he’s born, limit yourself to simple ‘baby thoughts’ even through the toddler years. Just as human parents have used ‘baby talk’ with their children since prehistoric times.”

Richard wasn’t satisfied yet. “Doc, how were the thoughts and impressions of ripper history passed to Kit and Kobalt by their mother
if she couldn’t frill them? I’ve shared both of those cat’s thoughts on their pre-birth knowledge, just as soon as Carol knew she was expecting. New experiences have overlaid most of that for those cats, but they say they did have some knowledge at birth.

“
They say they both were born with quite a bit of ripper lore and knowledge, and yet when I’ve played with cubs from Kit after weaning, or those from other ripper mothers, they don’t seem to know much ripper history or culture at all. As they grow older they do, but why not give it to them as fast as they can absorb? Kit and Kobalt managed OK, and thanks to our mods, we have a much larger mental storage capacity than a ripper.”

“Not a reasonable comparison.” Aldry rebutted. “Their mother was dying. She had only moments to give them information that might help them
to survive, if they could. She probably did the equivalent of mental screaming to reach them. There was no other choice, and the humans that shot her were approaching her babies, as she gave birth with her last dying breaths. If they didn’t kill the cubs, as she hoped they wouldn’t, they would need the mental images she gave them when they were old enough to put the mature ripper images in context. The emotions they grasped right away. Kit says she and Kobalt felt and always remembered her love for them.”

She looked at the young couple e
arnestly. “Showing that you love your unborn fetus and the newborn infant is one thing, and those purely emotional images are surely helpful and healthy. Nevertheless, do you want to risk passing a kaleidoscopic lifetime of images to your child before, or just after birth? With no experience or context for any of them? As Kit and Kobalt’s mother had to do for them, in a final act of desperation?” She answered her own rhetorical question with a shake of her head.

“You have both been on raids against the Krall. You’ve felt fear, seen fighting, experienced terror,
deaths, and considerable violence and gore. Those are extreme images and you’d never inflict them on your baby. However, even benign images for you might not be suitable for an infant. They have no knowledge of the wider world. How do you know what will frighten them, distort their perceptions of other people and life in general? What their boogeyman will be?

“
We humans have tens of thousands of years of experience rearing our children, and we have always exposed them to the world incrementally. Were you allowed to watch the more graphic Tri-Vid news broadcasts, the violent entertainment dramas, or sexually explicit programs when small? With Mind Tap, that experience would feel far more real and frightening than when seen on Tri-Vid, which only enters their awareness through eyes and ears, not via direct mind-to-mind contact. Don’t be too quick to abandon tried and true methods simply because you can.”

They nodded, and listened. Like most young parents, Aldry knew they’d make mistakes, learn
from them, and strive to correct them. At least a full Kobani could directly experience the unshielded mind of their child. A parent would know exactly what bothered them or frightened and confused them.

At least until the smart
, rapid learning little demons learned they could block their thoughts, and tell mental lies with false images. Then, when they were inevitably caught at this activity, the modern equivalent of washing their mouth out with soap, or standing them in the corner would apply.

Probably
, the most severe punishment imaginable to a child would be ruthlessly administered. The dreaded
long lecture
, delivered in a manner where tuning the parent out would not be possible. A Mind Tap could be sheer adolescent torture in that case.

Please, mom and dad. Stop. I won’t do it again. I promise
!
” The parents would know a kid meant that, when they thought and said those words.

“Uh…, Doc,” Rich started tentatively, “you said Kit and Kobalt’s mom
probably reached her children’s minds by mental shouting while under duress.” Would Carol or I be likely to inadvertently do this when under some form of intense…, uh… feelings?” His face reddened.

Aldry didn’t need to touch his hand for a quick Mind Tap to figure this one out. “You mean sex?” She smiled at his discomfort, and
then chuckled at Carol’s shocked realization of the subject he’d just brought up.

“Well
, yea... Last night we…, uh, you know.”

Aldry
pretended to look shocked. “My goodness, your neighbors in the nearby apartments heard you two? Didn’t you display any restraint or discretion?”

Carol slugged her husband’s arm. “You made it sound li
ke we did something in public!”

She looked at Aldry, red faced.
“It was passionate, but very private. We’d never disturb our neighbors.”

Aldry grinned.
“I assumed as much. I was making a point.

“
The normal tact you would use to guard your privacy is exactly the sort of mental privacy you maintain when using Mind Taps with friends, family, and of course with nosey strangers. You don’t accidentally reveal your personal and intimate thoughts to them because you wouldn’t want to do so.

“
Parents have made quiet love with children in the next room, or even the same room, for as long as there have been people. You won’t warp a fragile little mind with your adult thoughts, because you wouldn’t
want
to do that. It won’t get past the mental privacy all of us with Mind Tap ability maintain continuously. Before birth, it won’t easily get past the placental sac to the fetus anyway.”

She grinned wickedly. “I shook hands with you both when I arrived
and sensed nothing. I had no
idea
you were such animals.”

****

Four years later,
Ryan Seeker, the human ripper,
as he thought of himself, was playing in his fully enclosed compound in the backyard of his mom and dad’s settlement home. He had played all morning with Kam, the young male ripper his parents had recently adopted, only a year after they moved out of the more congested Prime City dome. They thought Ryan would bond better with Kam in a more natural setting than an enclosed dome. As if that was even in doubt. Of course, he and Kam had instantly bonded.

At age n
ine months, Kam had been weaned for three months, and he liked his surrogate temporary mom, but he knew she was not to be his permanent family. He was the sole survivor of his litter, and was told his wild mother had died in a rhinolo stampede when he was four months old. Aunt Beverly was nice to him, but she wouldn’t let the little orphan get out and run in the woods and plains. She had made it clear that he soon would have a permanent mother and father. An actual human family pride to join.

Playing outside was s
omething Kam knew wild rippers a little older than himself were allowed to do. Aunt Beverly was only protecting him she said. There were bad things outside that he wasn’t ready to face. Nonsense, he was a ripper! He could face any threat.

Ryan had
been begging his own mom and dad to adopt a ripper cub since he’d turned two, over a year and a half ago. One of his other kindergarten friends had a cub in her family now, and she was younger than he was! He was ready to take care of a cub!