Children of God

16

Trucha Sai

2047, Earth-Relative

"SUPAARI, DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE ASKING?" SAID SOFIA. "I can’t promise that anyone will ever bring you home—"

"You home," said Isaac.

"I will not wish to come back! There is no reason to come back! I am nothing here. I am less than nothing—"

"Than nothing," said Isaac.

"Then think of Ha’anala!" Sofia urged, the child in question then only a season old and asleep in her arms, a curled ball of fur and latent energy. "What kind of future can she have among my people?"

"Mong my people," said Isaac.

Sofia glanced down, the rare error in pronunciation catching her attention. There had been a time when the sound of Isaac’s voice had flooded her with joy and relief; now she knew this was merely echolalia— compulsive, toneless parroting—meaningless, and intensely irritating.

"I do think of Ha’anala," Supaari cried. "She is all I think of!"

"Think of."

Supaari rose abruptly from their leafy asylum and walked away, only to face Sofia again, his heavy tail sweeping a circular swath in the ground litter. He seemed completely unaware of the gesture, but Sofia had seen it often enough in the past few months to know that it was a mime of staking out territory. He meant to hold his ground in this argument. "No one will marry the child of a VaHaptaa, Sofia. And if we stay here among the Runa, Ha’anala is as dead. I am as dead—worse than dead! We are all four trapped here among people who are not our own—"

Supaari stopped and inhaled, checking for scent.

"Our own," said Isaac.

Sofia watched tensely as Supaari sampled the air. They listened, alert for the sounds of their Runa patrons waking up after the midday siesta, but there was nothing beyond the normal noise of biomass and the fecundity that enveloped the embowered hut where Sofia sheltered a few days a month, when her scent became temporarily obnoxious to the Runa. Sometimes she and Supaari came here simply to get away for a while; even in seclusion, they used English as a private language, the way Sofia’s parents had used Hebrew when she was a child in Istanbul.

Only Isaac had followed them here today. It was the closest he came to expressing a desire to be near others—this willingness to walk along behind his mother and her friend, never looking at them, but matching their direction and speed, stopping when they did, sitting quietly until they moved again. He seemed oblivious to their existence, but Sofia was increasingly convinced that Isaac took in a great deal more than he let on, and this could be infuriating. It was as though he were refusing to speak, as though he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of speaking because she wanted it so desperately—

"Sandoz told me you have stupid meat on Earth," Supaari said, breaking into her thoughts. "Meat of not-people—"

("Not-people.")

"Supaari, this place is rich with meat! You could eat piyanot. Or cranil—"

("Cranil.")

"And how shall I catch them?" Supaari demanded coldly. "Piyanot are too fast and cranil too big—they’d roll and crush a hunter who tried to take them! We have always only eaten Runa, who can be caught—" He shot a prehensile foot out and gripped Isaac’s ankle. "Do you see this?" Supaari snarled, in anger and in anguish. "We are made only for prey so slow as this child! If the Runa did not come to us to be killed, the cities would starve in less than a season. This is why we have to breed them. We need them—"

"Supaari, let Isaac go."

The child’s habitual stillness had become utter immobility, but he did not cry out or weep in fear. Supaari released the boy instantly, his ears dropping in apology. There was no visible response from Isaac, but Sofia let out a breath and looked up at the Jana’ata looming over her. "Come back here and sit down," she said evenly, and when Supaari did, she told him, "There are other ways to hunt! The Runa can build deadfalls for you. Or traps."

"Traps," said Isaac, as tonelessly as before.

"Take us back to your H’earth, and my daughter and I can eat without shame," Supaari insisted. Kneeling, he stared at the baby lying in her arms, but then lifted his eyes. "Sofia, I can never go back to my people. I can never be as I was. But I don’t think I can stand to stay with the Runa," he said with soft desperation. "They are good. They are honorable people, but…"

"But." They both noticed Isaac’s word this time, and it hung in the air with everything it implied left unsaid.

She reached out to run the back of her hand along a lupine cheek. "I know, Supaari. I understand."

("Understand.")

"I think I can live with your people. Ha’an. You. Your Djimi. Djorj. You were friends to me and I believe I could—" He stopped again, gathering courage, throwing his head back to look at her from the distance of his pride. "I wish also to find Sandoz and offer my neck to him." She tried to say something, but he went on resolutely, before Isaac could mimic his words. "If he does not kill me, then Ha’anala and I will live with you and learn your songs."

"Learn your songs," said Isaac. He glanced at the adults then: a momentary flicker of direct attention so fleeting that neither noticed it.

"Whither thou goest, there go I, and thy ways shall be my ways," Sofia was murmuring in rueful Hebrew. Mama, she thought, I know he has a tail, but I think he wants to convert.

How could she say no? She had waited out these six endless, fruitless months on the bare chance that her radio beacon might bring a response from unknown humans. Right here, so close she could feel the heat from his body, was a man she knew and cared for, and was begi

"All right," she said at last. "If this is truly what you think is best for Ha’anala. If you wish this—"

("Wish this.")

"Yes. I wish it."

("Wish it.")

They sat a while longer, each sunk in thought. "We should get back to the village," Sofia said after a time. "It’ll be redlight soon."

("Redlight soon. Supaari sings.")

She almost missed it, so nearly immune was she to her son’s toneless voice.

Supaari sings.

She had to replay the sound in her head to be certain. My God, she thought. Isaac said, Supaari sings.

She did not engulf her son in an embrace or scream or weep or even move, but only glanced at Supaari, as surprised as she and as immobile. She had seen too often the way Isaac drained himself away—became Not There in some mysterious fashion when he was touched. "Yes, Isaac," Sofia said in an ordinary voice, as though this was a normal child who had simply made a comment for his mother to confirm. "Supaari sings at second sundown. For Ha’anala."

"Supaari sings at second sundown." They waited, breathless in the heat. "For Isaac."

Supaari blinked, mouth open, so human in his reaction Sofia nearly laughed. His daughter in her arms, Sofia lifted her chin: For Isaac, Supaari.

He stood then and went nearer to Isaac, alert to the smooth, small muscles, to the barely perceptible quiver that would precede flight. By some instinct never before exercised in such a ma

Sofia held her breath as the first notes of the evening chant floated out to join the forest choir of cries and hoots, of buzzing rasps and fluting whistles. Listened as Supaari’s bass—melodic and fluid—was joined by a child’s soprano, unerringly on pitch, word-perfect, but in miraculous harmony. Gazed with her one myopic, tear-blurred eye at her son’s face, incandescent in the roseate light: transfigured, alive—truly alive for the first time. And blessed the God of her ancestors, for granting them life, for sustaining them, for allowing them to reach this new season.