Conquerors' Heritage

8

The sun was glinting through the clouds near the horizon by the time the railcar pulled onto the siding and let him out. According to his father, his mother was living out in the farmland two thoustrides south of town in a small reddish house with white edging and a large vymis tree growing beside the roadway.

A house that Thrr't-rokik himself had of course never seen. Reeds Village was 115 thoustrides from the Thrr family shrine, fifteen thoustrides out of Thrr't-rokik's anchor range. The more Thrr-gilag had thought about that fact, the more ominous it had loomed in his mind. Something had caused his mother to move such a deliberate distance away, and he wasn't at all sure he was going to like the reason.

The darkness of latearc was filling the sky by the time he reached the house, which stood alone at the edge of the farmland, looking just the way his father had described it. Stepping up to the door, he knocked.

"Why, hello, my son."

Thrr-gilag jumped, turning to his left toward the voice. His mother Thrr-pifix-a was kneeling in a small garden beside the house, almost invisible in the gloom. "Hello, Mother," he said, starting toward her and letting his lowlight pupils dilate. She looked reasonably good: a couple of cyclics older than he remembered her, but strong and alert and capable. "Sorry I didn't notice you there."

"That makes us even, then," Thrr-pifix-a said, easing to her feet. "No, that's all right." She waved Thrr-gilag's hand away as he moved forward to help her. "I can manage. Sorry if I startled you; I didn't notice you myself until you knocked. I was trying to get the last of my seeds planted before it got too dark to see. I'm afraid my lowlight vision isn't all it used to be. Not to mention my hearing."

"Next time I come by so late, I'll be sure to whistle," Thrr-gilag promised lightly, touching his tongue gently to her cheek. "So what are you planting this cyclic?"

"Flowers, mostly," she said, taking his arm and returning the kiss. "Plus a few vegetables. The home-grown ones always taste so much better than mass-cultivated, don't they? Goodness, I must look terrible. Please excuse me—I didn't know you were coming."

"I tried sending you a message," Thrr-gilag said, eying his mother closely. "The communicator said you wouldn't accept it."

"Oh, I don't talk to Elders much anymore," Thrr-pifix-a said equably. "Have you eaten?"

"Ah—no, not recently," Thrr-gilag said, frowning down at her. "Is there some reason you don't talk to Elders?"

"Well, as long as your timing has worked out so well, we might as well put you to work," Thrr-pifix-a said. "I'll get you started on di

The meal was, for Thrr-gilag, a strange and rather discomfiting experience. On the one side, it was a warm, comfortable reunion with his mother, a time for food and conversation after too many cyclics of hurried neglect as he flew back and forth across Zhirrzh space studying alien races and artifacts. But even as he tried to relax in the warmth of family love, he couldn't ignore the taste of apprehension at the back of his tongue. Thrr-pifix-a was his mother; and yet, somehow, she wasn't. She had changed, in a way Thrr-gilag couldn't seem to get a grip on.

And she wouldn't talk about it. That was the most disturbing part of it. Every attempt he made during di

So they sat and ate and talked... and it was only as the meal drew to an end that Thrr-gilag caught the new look on his mother's face and realized that she hadn't been ignoring the issue at all. She had, instead, been postponing it.

Until now.

"Well," Thrr-pifix-a said, setting down her utensils and getting carefully up from her meal couch. "That was excellent, Thrr-gilag; thank you. You must be getting a lot of practice in cooking out there on all those study worlds."

"Actually, you'd be surprised at how little cooking we try to get by with out in the field," Thrr-gilag confessed, stepping around the table and taking her arm. "And the meals out there certainly suffer for it. Why don't you go sit down in the conversation room while I get the dishware cleared away?"

"The dishware can wait," Thrr-pifix-a said, her voice quiet and serious. "Let's go sit down together, my son. We need to talk."

The conversation room was tiny, less than half the size of the one in their old house. "Small, isn't it?" Thrr-pifix-a commented, looking around her as she eased down onto one of the couches. "Nothing like the house I raised you and your brother in. Or the house I was raised in myself, for that matter."

"The size of the house isn't important," Thrr-gilag said. "As long as you're happy."

"Happy." Thrr-pifix-a looked down at her hands. "Well. I'm sure you've talked with your brother. And... others. What have they told you?"

"Absolutely nothing," Thrr-gilag said. "I didn't even know you'd moved until a few fullarcs ago."

She looked up at him again, and he felt his tongue stiffen against the side of his mouth. Here it came. "It's really very simple, Thrr-gilag," she said softly. "I've come to the conclusion—and the decision—that I don't wish to become an Elder."

Thrr-gilag stared at her, his heart thudding out the beats as an unreal sort of silence filled the room. Had she really said what he thought he'd heard her say? His own mother? "I don't understand," he managed at last.

She smiled slightly. "Which part don't you understand? Eldership, or my not wanting it?"

"I'm glad you're not taking this lightly or anything," Thrr-gilag shot back with a force that startled him. "Mother, what in the eighteen worlds are you thinking of?"

"Please." Thrr-pifix-a held up a hand. "Please. This isn't some bright new idea I dreamed up last latearc and haven't properly thought through. Nor is it the product of insanity or a broken mind. This decision has grown gradually, with a great deal of thought and study and meditation behind it. The least you can do is hear me out."

Thrr-gilag took a slow breath, willing his tail to calm its dizzying spin. No wonder Thrr-mezaz hadn't wanted to talk about this through a communicator pathway. "I'm listening."

Thrr-pifix-a looked around the room again. "I know it's rather a cliché, my son, but the older I get, the more I've begun to realize that it really is the smaller things in life that make that life worth living. The taste of one's food; the delicate smell of flowers or rainfall or the sea; the touch of a loved one's hand. Things we all too often seem to take for granted. I know I did when I was your age. But not anymore. My senses are fading—have been fading slowly for a long time now. I can't see or hear nearly as well as I used to, or taste or smell."

She lowered her gaze to her hands again. "I can still touch. But with all too many of my old friends, touch is no longer possible."

She looked up at him. "Eldership isn't life, Thrr-gilag. That's the long and the short of it. It may be a shadowy illusion of life—a wonderfully clever imitation, even. But it's not real life. And I've enjoyed life too much to settle for an imitation."

Thrr-gilag seemed to be having trouble breathing. "But there's no alternative, Mother. Without Eldership there's nothing afterward but..."

"Death?" Thrr-pifix-a said gently. "It's all right, you can say it."

"But you can't do that."

"Why not?" she asked. "Zhirrzh did it all the time, you know, until we learned how to remove and preserve fsss organs. Millions of Elders were summarily thrown into the great unknown during the various Eldership Wars. Even now some are lost each cyclic to accidents or the simple weight of age of their fsss organs. Eventually, we'll all have to face death."