Remnant Population (22 page)

“Its all right,” she said. “I’m not really hurt.” They offered her support — she was glad to lean on their arms — to the bed, and when she sat down, the other creature bent and lifted her legs gently. Bluecloak moved to the other side of the bed and turned down the cover, then paused, looking at her. She was so tired… but she managed to roll over, into the open bed, and Bluecloak pulled the covers over her as tenderly as any mother.

They were frightening in a way they had never been frightening before — she had no idea what they thought had happened, or what it meant, or what would happen tomorrow. She was too tired to say anything; Bluecloak turned the lights out, and she waited to hear the front door open and close, but fell asleep first.

When Ofelia woke in the pearly light of early morning, she heard soft voices from the next room. She stretched, and then winced as the bruises from yesterday’s blow and fall intruded on her. She hurt all over, in more places than she remembered being hurt yesterday. And who was in her front room? She didn’t want to get up. She wanted to lie there until she died, or her body quit hurting, whichever came first. She moved her left arm cautiously up to feel the lump on her head. It felt as large as it had been, if not larger. She let her arm fall back, and imagined the commotion if the humans returned and found her dead. Would they realize they had done it, or would they blame the creatures? She needed to use the toilet, too. It was one thing to lie here, sullenly determined to die from a few bruises, and another to lie here miserable because her bladder ached with fullness. Besides, if they blamed Bluecloak, what would happen to Gurgle-click-cough’s babies?

Even with that thought, when she first tried to sit up, it hurt so much she caught her breath hard and felt tears stinging her eyes. She scolded herself; the old voice was happy to provide the terms she had not used for several years. Coward. Weakling. Sissy. Just a few bruises and you act like a baby. She tried to make no noise, but she felt shaky and weak from the pain by the time she had pulled herself to her feet. Her arm had bled again in the night, sticking to the sheet, and the bright pain when she pulled it free was too much. A sob came loose in her throat.

The door to her room opened. Bluecloak, throat-sac expanded. It hissed when it saw her, and came to her quickly, offering an arm. Ofelia took it, hating her weakness. It put its finger on the slow ooze of blood, sniffed it, and drummed — she could not tell with what part of its body, but the sound filled the room. “I’m all right,” Ofelia said, wishing her voice didn’t tremble. “I’ll be better after a hot shower.” Bluecloak helped her into the bathroom. She felt better after she’d used the toilet, and the hot shower eased some of the aches, though she knew she would stiffen later. She came out of the hot water to find that Bluecloak had fetched extra towels. It waited, towels in hand, to help her dry off. The mirror had fogged with the steam; she could not see herself, and she was glad. What she had to see, as she dried herself, was ugly enough, dark bruises all along her right side where she had fallen.

It was hard to find something to wear. The garments she had made for this season, that she would have worn, left the bruises exposed and obvious. The old voice told her that was shameful, that it would embarrass her guests, that she must appear to them as if yesterdays blow had done no harm. After all, her old skin tore so easily that any minor injury could make it bleed. It wasn’t their fault; they couldn’t be expected to realize how fragile she was.

The new voice said nothing; she wondered where it had gone. She hunted through her closet for a shirt with long sleeves, something that would cover her arms and her torso completely. All the long-sleeved shirts were hot, meant for the rare cool spells in the rainy season. She put one on anyway, wincing at the rasp of the coarser cloth against the tender bruises. She put on the longest pants she had; they came just below her knees.

She felt hot, and breathless, but safer. She looked down at her bare feet. The others had all worn boots. They had not actually stepped on her, but her bare toes now seemed vulnerable, as her bare skin was vulnerable, so that even a gaze could menace it. She had no shoes; she had put her last pair in the recycler, she reminded herself. For a moment, she felt happy; she remembered the little dance of celebration she’d done as she’d put them in, along with the ugly dress Barto and Rosara had wanted her to wear more often, Bluecloak churred softly. Ofelia tried to smile at it. “I’m much better,” she said. “Thank you for your help.” Bluecloak knew “thank you” — she had used all the ritual courtesies with it, and the creatures had done their best to reciprocate.

Ofelia looked at her bed with distaste. She did not leave beds unmade, or sheets with bloodstains on them, but she did not think she could pull the sheets free this morning. Bluecloak, following her glance, pointed to the bloodstains then touched her arm. “Uhoo plud?”

“Yes, its my blood. But not bad. Just a little,” She hoped Bluecloak would understand that. Bluecloak said something in their language, and another creature came in, Bluecloak pointed to the bed; the creature hissed, its throat-sac expanding for a moment. Then it grabbed the sheets and pulled them off into a heap on the floor. Bluecloak spoke again, and it picked up the heap. “Where are you — ?” Ofelia began. “Ahshhh it,” Bluecloak said. Then, with great satisfaction, all the consonants emphasized, “Dddirrrttih! Ig iss ddirrttih, ahshhh it!”

Ofelia recovered from astonishment in time to say “Cold water!” to the creature departing with her sheets.

“Wash blood in cold water.”

Bluecloak’s eyes widened. “Kuh?” It pointed to itself. “Mih plud, mih ahshhh in kuh… ah… ssoo.” “You also wash off blood in cold water?” Ofelia had not realized they washed their clothes at all, though they didn’t stink like people who failed to wash.

“Ahshhh in hah, plud tick.” Wash in hot, blood sticks, Ofelia translated. “Llihff pron.” Ofelia worried at that for a long moment. She had not heard even Bluecloak make an f sound before, and she didn’t think this was “lif’ or “leaf.” Pron was probably bron… brown. Leave brown. Yes. “Ours too,” she said. She felt hungry now, and in the kitchen found that someone — Bluecloak? — had tried to make flatbread dough and made a mess instead, Bluecloak, when she looked at it, fluttered its eyelids. “Ssorrrih,” it said.

“Thank you,” Ofelia said. “It was a kind thought, anyway.” It had also tried to clean up the mess, but it had left streaks of flour, pellets of something that was supposed to be dough, and wasn’t. Probably it had watched her making dough and thought it was easy. She scraped the residual mess off, then mixed the dough herself, her hands glad to take up familiar tasks. Bluecloak turned on the stove for her, and handed her the griddle just as she reached for it. Then it closed the containers she had left open, and put them away. She had shared kitchens with women less helpful. As she was laying the flatbread on the griddle, the kitchen door opened, and another creature — not the one who had taken the sheets — brought in two tomatoes and a handful of green beans, handling them carefully.

“Thank you,” Ofelia said again, wondering what was going on. The creatures had been friendly enough before, but they had not gone out of their way to help her. She sliced the tomato, found that Bluecloak had fetched an onion from her bin, and chopped that. Onion fumes made her eyes water — they always had — but she could no more cook without onions than onions could grow without water. Again, Bluecloak anticipated what she would want next and handed her a stalk of parsley, one of cilantro, one of rosemary. She chopped the fresh herbs, mixed them with the tomato and onion, and folded the first round of flatbread around them.

She felt better when she’d eaten. The side of her head was still sore, and she was still stiff, but she didn’t feel sick. As if they could sense that, Bluecloak and the other creature left her house while she cleaned the dishes, brushed her teeth, and wrapped a soft cloth around the oozing tear on her arm. The sun was well up when the humans returned. Only two of them this time, the stocky man — Ori something — and the older woman, Kira, Ofelia had gone back to work in her garden, both because it soothed her and because she had missed several days. One of the creatures was with her, eating the slimerods she found; another had insisted on pushing a broom in her house. The hot sun eased her bruises, though sweat stung in the scrapes… and then the creature churred, and she looked up, “Tuh-hoo,” it said, It held up two fingers in case she didn’t understand. What she didn’t understand was when this one had learned so much human speech.

“Did Bluecloak teach you that?” she asked. It tipped its head to one side and said “Uhoo.” Ofelia didn’t believe that; she hadn’t spent much time with any of them trying to teach them her words, not since the beginning. But if it wanted to give her credit, that was polite. “Good morning,” the stocky man said, when he came close enough. “How are you today?” “Fine,” Ofelia said. She had a basket nearly full of tomatoes; they were ripening far faster than she could eat them. “Would you like some tomatoes? They’re not very big yet—” “They’re beautiful,” the man said. “We don’t get fresh foods like this on the ship, you know.” She didn’t know; she’d spent her ship time in cryo. But he might not know that.

“Your arm—” the woman said. Ofelia glanced down; the sleeve didn’t quite cover the bruise and scab.

“It’s nothing,” she said, looking away. She didn’t want to talk about it. “That’s—” the woman began; Ofelia saw the man hush her with a gesture. So much for that one’s arrogance; she still had to be quiet when a man told her to hush. Ofelia found another slimerod and clicked to get the creature’s attention. It came eagerly, and gulped the slimerod down. Ofelia glanced at the humans. They were wide-eyed. The man recovered first.

“You… get along well with them,” he said.

Ofelia shrugged, then wished she hadn’t. Her shoulder was still sore, and the man might think a shrug was rude. “They’re good neighbors,” she said. “They don’t bother me.”

“You can talk to them?”

“It’s not so much talk,” Ofelia said. “We understand things.” She gestured with one hand. “We use our hands a lot.”

“Can you tell us which is the leader?” the man asked. “Is it the one you call Bluecloak?” Ofelia wondered if Bluecloak thought it was the leader, in the way this man clearly meant. “Bluecloak is… the one good at learning new things,” she said finally. “Learning words, for instance. I understand Bluecloak best.”

“But is Bluecloak the one in charge?” the woman asked.

Ofelia shook her head, another mistake. For an instant, the world whirled around her, then steadied again. “Only on some things,” she said, when she could speak again. She knew she couldn’t really explain which things; she was only feeling her way into that understanding herself.

“It’s a small group,” the man murmured to his companion. “It may be government by consensus; they may just hash it out.”

“Surely not everything,” the woman said. “After all, they attacked the colony landing; that had to have organization, leadership. And those coastal cities…” “Cities?” Ofelia said. “They have cities?” She felt betrayed; Bluecloak had said nothing about cities, any of the times he’d seen the pictures of cities in her books.

“We saw them from the shuttle flights,” the woman said. “Some of them live along the northern coast of this continent, in what look like stone and wood-built cities. They have boats—” Ofelia remembered the boats she had seen. But she could not imagine her creatures, the ones she knew, living in cities. Something about their attitude toward this village suggested that they had no settled home. Except the nestmass.

“We won’t keep you,” the man said, as she was wondering whether or not to mention the nestmass. “A couple of your lovely tomatoes, and we’ll be on our way. We’ll be surveying the area today, just wandering around looking at things. We won’t touch anything of yours,” he added, as if his being here weren’t intrusion enough.

Ofelia held the basket over the fence and they each picked out a tomato. “If it’s convenient,” the man said, “I’d like to interview you later. After all, you were the first contact, even if you weren’t trained for it.” He chuckled, in a way that he probably intended to sound good-natured. It did sound good-natured; Ofelia could not have said why it made her so angry. She wanted to hit him, and that frightened her. She had never been one to hit people.

“I am always here,” she said, not quite rudely. He smiled, and nodded at her, and turned away, already biting into the tomato. Ofelia looked down the lane; she saw nothing of the other humans. Maybe now she could go across and look at Gurgle-click-cough’s babies.

Her escort of creatures followed her, and exchanged greetings with the door guards; Ofelia noticed that today the door guards had their knives out. In the bedroom, Bluecloak lounged on the old bedstead, singing with eyes half-closed. He rose when Ofelia came in, and reached out to her hands. He lifted them gently, and touched his tongue to her palms.

“Click-kaw-keerrr.” It was greeting and commentary both; Ofelia felt cheered. She turned to the closet. Gurgle-click-cough looked out, alert and calm; Ofelia wondered how she was reading the expression so well. Gurgle-click-cough held out a hand, and Ofelia came nearer. The babies were piled in an untidy heap in the middle of the nest, between their mother’s legs, Ofelia could not tell which striped tail belonged to which set of spindly legs… but she would have sworn they’d grown noticeably since the day before.

The nest smelled better too. Fresh herbs packed the inner surface. Ofelia wondered if the Terran-origin herbs would hurt the babies. One of them opened its eyes, and peeped, a sharp imperative. Gurgle-clickcough leaned closer; the tiny mouth opened, and its mother spit into it. Ofelia almost gagged, but choked it down. Spit? Vomit? She didn’t want to know, really, and it was none of her business. The baby swallowed again and again, blinking its eyes. Then it hissed contentedly, and curled up again. Gurgleclick-cough picked it up, and handed it to Ofelia. Ofelia cradled it, no longer flinching when it licked her wrist with its catlike tongue.

Bluecloak said something; Ofelia turned, and he gestured her over. She sat on the bedstead beside him, the baby in her lap. It seemed content, and Gurgle-click-cough was feeding one of the others now. She looked at it closely, in more light than she’d had yesterday. The bold stripes on back and tail were dark brown on cream. Its head was large for its size, but nowhere near as large as a human baby’s. Bluecloak hummed; the baby cocked its little head at the sound. When the hum became rhythmic, the baby’s left foot twitched in rhythm.

Left foot drumming meant agreement… the baby was learning to agree, or… or what? “Sssinng,” Bluecloak said. “Click-kaw-keerrr sssinng.”

She didn’t know what to sing to an alien’s child with stripes and a tail; the only songs she knew were the cradle songs she had sung her own children. She started, self-conscious at first until the baby’s intent stare took all her concentration, “Baby, baby, go to sleep… “ It didn’t; it crouched in her lap watching her face, its gaze flicking from eyes to mouth to eyes again. “Little sweetling, never weep… “ She had no sense that these babies wept; it seemed almost tingling with eagerness for something… for life itself? She sang herself hoarse, and stopped with a crick in her back and the little creature still watching her, showing no sign of boredom or tiredness. She levered herself up, and carried it back to the nest stiffly. She couldn’t possibly do that with all of them… but Gurgle-click-cough was asleep herself, and the one Ofelia carried squirmed into the central pile without waking any of the others and closed its eyes. “Click-kaw-keerrr,” Bluecloak said, and it came outside with her.