Children of God

Ha’anala sighed, saddened by the memory, and settled back against a sun-warmed boulder, closing her eyes. Midday heat and boredom joined with an adolescent carnivore’s physiology to conspire against consciousness, but her drowsiness that day was compounded by Isaac’s latest craze. He had set himself the task of memorizing every base pair in human DNA, having assigned a musical note to represent each of the four bases—adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. He would listen to the monotonous four-note sequences for hours.

"Sipaj, Isaac," she’d asked when this jag started, "what are you doing?"

"Remembering," he said, and this struck Ha’anala as unusually pointless, even for Isaac.

Even Sofia had become more distant in the past few years, often doing several things at once, listening to the Runa discussions while working through reports or preparing weather data for dissemination to the officers or coordinating the delivery of supplies to a salient. Over and over, Ha’anala tried to help, distressed by Sofia’s isolation, wanting to be her partner even while she resented her mother’s patent, unspoken needs. "It has nothing to do with you," Sofia would say, closing Ha’anala out as effectively as Isaac could. Sofia seemed to come fully alive only when she spoke of justice, but as the years went by, even that topic elicited silence. None of the people welcomed Ha’anala’s interest in the war, and her questions were adroitly deflected—

They are ashamed, Ha’anala realized. They wish me not to know, but I do. I will be the last of my kind. They have begun something that can end only one way. Sofia and Isaac might be right, she thought, drowsing. Stay distant, keep your heart hidden, don’t want what you can’t have…

She had been asleep for some time when she heard Isaac’s blaring, toneless voice a

"All right," she murmured, without really rousing. "Someone will meet you back at the village."

"SIPAJ, PEOPLE," SOFIA CALLED OUT HOURS LATER. "IT’S ALMOST REDLIGHT! Has anyone seen Isaac and Ha’anala?"

Puska VaTrucha-Sai separated from the knot of girls chattering about their assignments, and looked around curiously. "They left this morning for Isaac’s hut," she reminded Fia.

"Sipaj, Puska," her father, Kanchay, called, "you will please us if you go out and bring them back."

"Oh, eat me," Puska muttered, to the scandalized laughter of the other girls. Puska didn’t care. A year in the army was more than enough to coarsen a woman’s attitudes and language, and she had chosen the mildest of the vulgarities that came to mind—these recruits would learn the others soon enough. Puska smiled at the girls and said, "A good soldier is responsible," with the exaggerated sincerity that covers rock-hard cynicism, and loped off to find Fia’s children.

It took her perhaps twice-twelve paces to get beyond the shelters and storage huts, and again that many to pass out of earshot of the village noise. Puska had dreamed of home nearly every night of her first month in the city of Mo’arl; yearning for the forest’s peace and security, she’d sought refuge there in sleep when daylight was filled with shock and outrage and sadness. For a time, she’d envied Ha’anala, safe forever in the village. Now, Trucha Sai seemed cramped and limited, and Puska could understand why Ha’anala was so often bad-tempered and restless.

The roofline of Isaac’s shelter came into view, a cha’ar past the settlement’s edge. Imantat’s work was not as sturdy as that of his father, who was a master thatcher, but the boy showed promise: the shelter had held up well during the last storm. Someone will need a husband soon, Puska thought, and made a mental note to bring this up with the council, for she had seen enough of war to know that babies should not be postponed, and the people would need a child to replace her if she fell in battle.

"Sipaj, Ha’anala," Puska called as she approached the hut, "everyone’s waiting for you! It’s almost redlight!" There was no response—the shelter was empty. "Stew," she swore under her breath. Ha’anala couldn’t see in redlight and Isaac could see too well. He needed to get under the sleeping shelters, where he couldn’t see the red in the sky, or there’d be trouble. "Ha’anala! Someone will have to carry you back!" Puska teased loudly. "And Isaac will make a fierno!"

"Over here!" Ha’anala yelled from a distance.

"Where’s Isaac?" Puska shouted back, cocking her ears toward the sound, relieved to hear Ha’anala’s voice at last.

Already losing contrast, hands out in front of her, Ha’anala moved uncertainly toward Isaac’s hut. "He’s not here," she cried, lifting a foot to rub the opposite shin where she’d crashed into a fallen log a moment earlier. "Isaac left!"

Puska’s ears came up. "Left? No—someone would have seen him. He’s not in the village and he wasn’t on the path home—"

Stumbling over a root, Ha’anala snarled in frustration. "Sipaj, Puska: he’s left! Out into the forest! Can’t you smell it? He said he was leaving, but someone was sleepy—"

Puska strode decisively to Ha’anala’s side and began to smooth the younger girl’s face, ru

And it would wipe out Isaac’s scent, Ha’anala realized, before she could dispute the meteorological effects of emotional distress. She stood at full height. "We have to find him. Right away, Puska. His scent trail is very clear now, but if it rains, someone will lose him. He’ll be gone. Fia will—"

"But you can’t see—" Puska started to protest.

"Not with eyes," Ha’anala said carefully. Evidence of Isaac’s passage fairly glowed for her: his footprints bright with scent, the leaves he’d brushed past powdered with shed skin cells and misted with his expelled breath. "It’s like firespore—remember? Like small points of light, along the path he took. Sipaj, Puska, someone can follow him if you will help. But we have to leave now, or the trail might stop glowing."

Puska swayed from side to side as she considered this. On the left foot: Isaac might be lost. On the right foot: she should go back to the village and get permission. On the left foot: it smelled like rain. On the right—

"Sipaj, Puska," Ha’anala pleaded, "someone’s heart will stop if she has to tell Fia that Isaac is gone! Someone thinks she can follow him, and when we two catch up with him, we shall be three, and we’ll be back before full night."

Which settled it for Puska. One person made a puzzle. Two people made a discussion. Three made a plan.

"THE PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE THAT THE DJANADA GOT US," PUSKA POINTED out, worried from the moment she awoke the next morning. She looked up at Ha’anala, who was a little distance away, poised on a tail and one leg. "Someone should have gone back to tell the others."

Ha’anala didn’t respond, afraid she’d alarm her breakfast, which was about to move within reach, directly beneath her suspended foot. Patience… patience… "Got it!" she cried, grasping a small, scaly lonat. "We don’t need help," she told Puska firmly, pinching the animal’s neck between a pedal thumb and forefinger. "If we go back now, someone will lose the scent."

Puska’s face contorted, watching the lonat’s twitches subside into limp stillness. "Are you really going to eat that?"

"Consider the alternative," Ha’anala said, shooting a foot out to grip Puska’s ankle. "Oh, Puska! Someone was joking!" she cried when Puska jumped and wrenched her leg free.

"Well, don’t. Don’t ever joke like that!" Puska shuddered. "If you’d seen what I’ve seen in Mo’arl—" Ha’anala’s mouth dropped open and Puska stopped, embarrassed by her own self-referential crudity. I really have gotten bad, she thought. "Sorry," she apologized and held out a hand for the lonat, holding her breath as she scraped the scales from its legs. "Someone thinks such jokes are in very poor taste."