Remnant Population

“Babies! What do you know about their babies?” Kira sat up straight, and put down the pie she had held. This was the part that scared Ofelia most. She had not wanted to admit that the People had babies here, but Bluecloak and Gurgle-click-cough had insisted. She must tell her people about the babies; they must see the babies.

“They have cute babies,” Ofelia said. “Very affectionate, very quick to learn.”

“You’ve seen their babies?!” all of them at once, practically. “There are babies here?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kira asked.

“You didn’t ask me,” Ofelia said, with great satisfaction. Just as anger flowered from the remains of surprise, she stood up. “Come along, if you want to see them.”

Nothing would have stopped them. They crowded her heels across the lane to the center, where Ofelia knocked on the closed door. Bluecloak opened it; she winked at Bluecloak and led the others in. When they were all inside, she shut the door behind them.

“Why are you shutting the door?” Likisi asked.

“We don’t want the babies to run out in the street,” Ofelia said, as she led them down the passage to the schoolroom. She could hear the others following her. Ahead, light spilled out the schoolroom door, and she could hear the squeaky voices of the babies.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ofelia did not know herself exactly what Bluecloak had pla

“Huhooaht hooeee sssee, hooeee aaak.” Bluecloak said, waving its arm to encompass everything in the room.

“It means,” Bilong said to Likisi, “what we see, we make. They do, I mean. He says they can make anything they’ve seen. They can’t really, but—” “Aaakss zzzzt!” Bluecloak said, and spoke in his own language to the creatures with the gourds. Ofelia held her breath. She could hardly believe it would work again; it had seemed too much like magic the first time.

The lights went out, and before the startled humans could exclaim, a string of smaller bulbs flared in the center of the room. The room lights came back on, and the one beside the gourds puffed its throat-sac twice at the humans, then moved a switch and the little lights went off.

“That’s impossible!” Likisi said. “They’ve used an extension cord — a hidden battery—”

“The battery is the gourds,” Ofelia said. Bluecloak had explained it to her. “They brew some stuff that

works like the acid in a liquid battery—”

“They can’t do that — there’s no way—”

“It could be.” Kira went over to look. “If they’ve come up with an acid—” “They make explosives, you know,” Ofelia said. “That shuttle—” “Zzzzt i

“Government and science aren’t mutually necessary,” Ori said dryly. He looked more amused than alarmed now, and clearly he enjoyed Likisi’s distress. “Frankly I don’t think Sera Falfurrias has the background to set up this demonstration.” He turned to Ofelia. “Tell me, Sera, what kind of ‘brew’ would it take to generate electricity chemically — do you know?”

“Batteries use acid,” she said. “Its dangerous, and it makes fumes.”

“Yes. As I thought. And I suspect, Vasil, if we analyze what the indigenes have in their flasks, it will not be the same as the acid Sera Falfurrias may have seen in batteries. As I’ve tried to tell you several times since we came, these indigenes are quite unlike other cultures I’ve studied.” “Well, they’re aliens!” Likisi said. “Of course they’re different.”

“Excuse me.” Ori turned away from Likisi and went over to Kira. “Have you any idea what’s in there?” “This plant — I have no idea what it is, or where they got it—” She held out a handful of leaves and some orange-red globes smaller than plums. “I have no idea how they make the liquid from it—” “It doesn’t matter how they do it,” Likisi said. “It only matters that they’re aliens, and they didn’t have electricity when they met up with Grandma here, and now they do. It’s her fault—” Ofelia flinched away as he loomed over her; perhaps he didn’t mean to hit her, but she knew that tone, that attitude. Then long, hard fingers closed around his arms, and two of the People held him… not so much still, as unable to break free. The other humans froze, staring, then their eyes slid to Ofelia’s face. “Bluecloak is the singer for most of the nest-guardians of the hunting tribes,” Ofelia said, ignoring Likisi’s struggles and the others’ expressions. She hoped she was using the right human words for the concepts Bluecloak had conveyed so carefully. “Singers are not ‘entertainers’—” That with a pointed look at Ori. “Singers make contact between the nest-guardians who want to make agreements about nesting places or hunting range; they are what we would call diplomats. Nest-guardians are the only ones who can make agreements binding on the People.”

“The… rulers?” Ori asked. Give him credit; he was more curious to know the truth than a

“No. Not rulers… exactly. They are in charge of the young — from the nest to the stage where they begin roaming with the People — and so they are the ones who decide what is important, what must be taught, what agreements must be kept.”

“I don’t see how that works,” Kira said, frowning. “If they stay behind, at the nests with the babies, how can they know what the others decide?”

Ofelia had no idea how they knew, or if they knew. She went on as if Kira had not interrupted. “Bluecloak came when the first ones here reported that I was the same kind of animal as those they’d killed, but also different. Because I am old, and have had children, and because I stayed behind when my people left, they think of me as a nest-guardian for humans. For my humans.”

“I suppose that’s reasonable,” Ori said. “In their terms, anyway… they had to fit you into some category.”

“And now I’m a nest-guardian for them as well,” Ofelia said.

“What? How?”

“When these babies were born, I was there; they accept me as click-kaw-keerrr—” At this, the babies all looked at Ofelia and squeaked; the ones on the floor ran to her and leaned against her legs. She squatted slowly, her knees creaking, and they grasped her hands. She felt the now-familiar touch of their tongues on her wrist.

“Imprinting… chemotaxis…” Kira said softly. “They’ve imprinted on her.”

“Which is why I can’t leave,” Ofelia said. “I’m their click-kaw-keerrr, the only one they have. Ordinarily,

they’d have had several, but it’s too late for them to get another—”

“But these others could have—” began Kira. Ofelia shook her head,

“No. Only the mothers past nesting can become nest-guardians; no one else. I was the only one available, and they asked me… I agreed. Who wouldn’t want to care for these — ?” She smiled down at the big-eyed babies who looked back at her with the trust and eagerness she remembered so well from her own children. She would do better by these, she promised herself. And them. She looked over at Likisi, red-faced and sweating; though he no longer struggled, every line of his body expressed resentment and anger.