Rift (51 page)

Dooley nodded his head at the clear sky. “Volcano’s settled down for now, wherever it was. But these folks came a long way, looks like, and now they want their chance at inturning.” He looked around at each of his traveling companions. “Guess I’ll go help them get adjusted. It’s not easy, transforming, but lots of times I can help people get into the spirit of it.”

“Dooley,” Reeve said. “Don’t you want to come with us?”

Dooley’s eyes were round with true surprise. “With you? You’re inviting me along with you?”

Reeve caught Spar’s vivid body language, but he nodded at the young man who’d risked so much for them.

Dooley smiled a small, worried smile. “Thank you all. I am deeply touched, because most people don’t want me around. Just Lillie, and we’re base pairs, so I guess she’s used to me.” He looked out of the hole, shaking his head. “No, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m staying with Brecca. See, out in the world … well, you’re doomed, you know? I wish it could be different. But Lithia doesn’t think much of humans.”

Spar nodded, muttering, “First right thing I ever heard you say.”

Below them, the crowd surged forward for processing into the Pool.

6

Nerys looked up into the brilliant outfold. A light snow powdered the growths, catching glints of late-afternoon sun. She pulled her hide jacket more snugly around her and searched the upper reaches for any sign of movement.

Here in this glade, a stone’s throw from the path, a
series of lavender, velvety humps spread out like umbrellas embedded in the soil. It was Nerys’ custom to sit on one, legs drawn up to wait for her visitor. She patted her belly, feeling the answering kick from the pup growing inside her. She wasn’t like Pila—the fetus elicited no maternal feelings. But neither did it bring revulsion or shame. This was her choice. She was neither slave nor whore; she was a trader, had traded this use of her body for several things she wanted, among them knowledge, status, and respect.

True, Salidifor could still gall her. When he’d taken her for impregnation, she’d asked how the body managed not to reject the foreign egg. It was then she learned that Salidifor had been altering her with chemicals in her food for many weeks. Not that she would have objected, this being a necessary thing, but she hated that he had done so without even mentioning it. She allowed her anger to show, and Salidifor did not chastise her for the display.

Little by little she taught Salidifor to notice her and know her, to alter his behavior accordingly, even if only in small ways. Small things were a victory, and she savored them even while dreaming of larger breakthroughs.

The canopy shook for a moment. Nerys rose, peering at the vibrating bridge above her. She arched upward pressing her hands into the small of her back as she had seen her mother do when heavy with child. Even though Nerys was only two weeks into bearing, with only a small protruding belly, the stretch seemed right—as long as she never forgot that this issue was not a baby, but a product of her gestation. A pup, nothing more.

The other pup had not yet come. But she would, Nerys felt sure.

It was forbidden, of course, for her to have converse with Pila’s pup. The breeding stock weren’t supposed to interact with the precious orthong pups, or the precious
orthong females, or any other interesting aspect of orthong society. Salidifor had made a great point about how she must stay away from the pups. That caused her curiosity to deepen, a thing Salidifor might have anticipated if he’d been paying closer attention.

Meanwhile Salidifor, true to their bargain, taught her some things about the orthong: that weavers raised female pups and the lords raised male pups, in the orthong way of imprinting sexual roles, chemically and behaviorally. The weavers were the supreme manipulators of the outfold, natural biochemists, pursuing both the physical needs of the habitation’s residents and pure knowledge of molecular processes. What the weavers could do with depth and relative ease, the lords could also undertake, but more crudely. The lords pursued political arts, trade, war, and teaching of the in-between, young orthong coming into their chemical knowing.

Males were the apparent lords of the outfold, except that the high chief was a female, one whom Nerys understood to be very old and never seen by humans. She was in what Salidifor termed
end cycle
, which meant she took little interest in outside affairs. When someone of her rank moved to the final stage of the weaver life pattern, she would pursue what Salidifor could only describe as
very deep knowing
. At this point she would never speak again, and soon die. The chief’s name was Tulonerat.

The weavers gained prestige from molecular manipulation, each according to her talents, whether in humble tasks like building clothes or growing homes, or in the planetary studies of Lithia, or—highest of all—in the outfolding of progeny. But despite these abilities, the weavers had failed to bear many pups on Lithia, causing their settlement’s survival to be in doubt until the human breeders had helped to build up the orthong population. The alternative of nonsentient crèches had been rejected in favor of the emotional-chemical
makeup of the human host mothers. But, as Nerys knew, the human women
were
in fact considered by the orthong merely crèches. Animal-like crèches. And human men were lower than beasts.

A movement in the canopy caught her attention. Vikal was here.

The pup stood on the narrow bridge high in the outfold, a small, upright figure, effortlessly balanced upon the swaying footpath. Half-hidden by a bulge from an adjacent tree, she peered shyly down on Nerys.

Nerys bent her knees deeply and swept her knuckles along the ground in the way of an afternoon greeting. Vikal raised her arms and bent forward, her wrists bent backward in a way that Nerys could not replicate, but had learned to read from Salidifor:
You bring pleasure to the afternoon
.

Nerys repeated the movement as best she could. And she
did
feel pleasure—a forbidden pleasure to be sure, for there might be hell to pay for interacting with the pup. Yet the pup had sought her out after the first week, sometimes appearing for only a few minutes in the high outfold, darting out to watch Nerys and then disappearing. But each day the pup had grown stronger and had spoken as her instinct bade her, without knowing what she should and shouldn’t say. This glade had become their meeting place, and now Vikal often stayed for an hour or more, and they—well, they
danced
together.

Vikal, the pup said her name was, a short name that Nerys thought might take on added syllables as the pup grew older. Vikal’s communication was childlike, talking of what she saw in the outfold—the colors, the tastes—and expressing simple curiosity about Nerys and why she looked strange, and smelled different. And from the body speech that Salidifor was teaching her, Nerys followed along in clumsy and halting expression. Here was a simple sharing free of the endless
orthong rules of conduct. It was a relief to talk without trying to win or to defend herself.

Vikal scooped snow from a polyp towering next to the ribbonway. In her hands the scoop melted and Nerys ran to let the water fall on her, laughing at its icy slap on her skin. When Nerys looked up to share the moment with Vikal, the pup had vanished. A noise in the outfold drew Nerys’ attention, and there stood Galen.

“What are you doing?” Galen asked.

Nerys wiped the water from her face and turned to face the woman. Galen was not her friend. Ever since they had arrived together at the outfold, Galen seemed to think they had a special relationship. But Nerys avoided the plodding woman, taking up friendships instead with Pila and Odel.

She shrugged. “I was dancing.”

Galen’s eyes flicked up at the high outfold. “I know what you were doing. We’ve seen you with the pup.”

Nerys’ face reddened. They’d been spying on her. She wouldn’t have put it past Mave, Himirinan’s woman, who seemed to take on her lord’s disdain of Nerys, but now Galen was reproaching her for a harmless pastime.

“It’s
not
harmless,” Galen said in answer to Nerys. “We’re not supposed to be around the youngsters—you know that. Look what happened to Pila.”

Nerys bit her tongue. What had really happened to Pila was something Galen would never know.

Galen followed as Nerys shouldered past her and headed toward the path. “You could endanger all of us! What do you think Salidifor would do if he knew what you were up to? Or Himirinan, for that matter?”

Nerys swung around. “And who’s going to tell them?”

“That’s not the point!”

“Isn’t it? Aren’t you just terrified of breaking the
rules, so terrified you could even betray one of your own people?”

Galen stormed after Nerys, raising her voice louder than was prudent, given the subject matter. “My own people? What about you? You don’t care about what the freewomen have built here. We have a kind of peace with the orthong. We’re comfortable and live long lives. All they ask is for us to follow a few simple rules.”

On the edge of the compound Nerys stopped. “Simple rules like pretending we aren’t cattle? Like pretending that we have relationships with our lords? Like never seeing a female orthong, much less ever talking with one, and never touching one of their babes? I don’t think that’s
simple
, Galen. That’s really troubling and profound, but I don’t expect you to understand.”

“
I
understand.” Haval had joined them, followed by a group of her followers. “You want to change the balance of power. You want to achieve distinction. You’re ambitious, Nerys. And you’re going to fall a long way.”

Mave nodded darkly. “I just hope you’re not going to take us all down with you.”

Haval, Galen, and Mave stood before her, frowning and hostile. A number of other women put down their afternoon chores and joined the group, eyeing Nerys coldly. Odel wound her way into the group, smiling encouragement at Nerys, her white hair lending some authority to her presence. Nerys managed to swallow the sharp retort she had planned, and took a deep breath instead. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We could learn something about these people.”

“Oh, it’s
people
now, is it?” This from Galen.

Nerys looked at her and smiled at the woman’s contradictions. “Whatever they are, it’s clear we share a place with them. This forest. This planet. We do bear their young. Aren’t you curious about them?”

“We know a lot about them—we’ve been studying them longer than you have,” Haval said.

“With
sign language
. You talk to them in a dumbeddown slang. Because you don’t need to talk, and neither do they, except to say,
How would you like your venison steak
? And,
Are you content?
You know why they want you content?” Nerys stopped herself. She’d promised Salidifor.

Haval knitted her brows. “Why?”

“Just so you’ll stay,” muttered Nerys.

“They know we’ll stay. They don’t have to be solicitous. Most of us would stay for the food alone. It’s no small thing, if you don’t remember the old days.”

“I remember the old days,” Nerys snapped back. “I remember being able to sit in on councils and having the respect of my neighbors and going begging to no one.”

Mave put her hands on her hips. “If it was so great, why don’t you go back?”

Nerys advanced on Mave. “If it comes to that, I think
you’ll
be the one to move on.”

“Stop, stop,” implored Haval. She held up her hands, trying to silence the group. But tempers were high, and people had things they’d been dying to say to Nerys for a long time. They said some of them now. Comments about her arrogance as Salidifor’s freewoman, her troublemaking attitude, her condescension toward the other women.

Nerys stood stock-still, hearing them out. Then, when their voices subsided, she said, “Did you know their leader is female? That only weavers tend the outfold because they’re masters at it, and can build and change the inner essence of matter? Did you know that they’ve been traveling for thousands of years, and had come to their last ounce of strength when they found Lithia? And now their women need help to bear the young while they chemically adjust to this world?”