Colony worlds, p.17
Colony Worlds, page 17
Zorex breathed a sigh of relief. They were good again. He was aware from his first pairing, a good relationship required constant attention but did it have to be so hard, to be always on guard, never able to relax and be himself?
During breaks in work, the remotes he'd set up in their quarters so Tuya could check on the Viruz children, showed they were fine. Mostly it was boring to watch. The male had stepped in to care for the younger two and the older child, a male nearly ready for sale Tuya had said, could take care of himself.
Zorex disagreed. His observations suggested that ten solar years were not enough for oomans to learn much. When the adult male was busy with the two youngest, the oldest one often strayed close to the Maran boundary in spite of what had happened to the adult female. Zorex felt his crest rising when the aggressive Maran, who showed no appreciation of neighbourliness, suddenly ran toward the young Viruz. Zorex zoomed and saw that the child’s fingers protruded through the boundary field. Startled by the Maran's rush the Viruz withdrew as the blade flashed down. Further zooming showed the Viruz had lost part of a finger.
Tuya looked up at that moment and squeaked at Zorex, "Why didn’t you warn me."
Zorex's crest rose fully, "because from up here there is nothing you can do. The Viruz was stupid."
Tuya stormed off and called Novur, their neighbour, pleading with her to rush over and save her bleeding Viruz.
Zorex found out later that it was Novur's idea to take all the children, 'better to keep them together do they don’t fret' she'd told Tuya who readily agreed. Novur, thought Zorex, would chirp behind her wing about this for a good many seasons.
Her damage report to Tuya told him nothing he hadn’t seen. The first segment of young Viruz's middle finger was missing, chopped off. Hardly worth all the excitement, and expense, thought Zorex. The disfigurement would lower his selling price though not by much since his ability to breed had not impaired.
Perspective
Margaret inspected the long white scar across her chest, the only sign of her near-death experience. She was fit and well but still here in the room with no sky. She wondered if this was where her mother's disappeared people went. She had always feared that disappeared meant killed. That the aliens had made her well gave Margaret hope.
Big Bird had not replaced her clothing and showed her off naked to a host of other alien birds, multi-coloured feathers so vibrant Margaret felt positively plain. At first, she had tried to cover her body with her hands but soon decided it didn’t matter, they were only aliens. When she bled it was embarrassing, which Big Bird obviously sensed for she didn’t show her at those times.
After one such showing, Big Bird took her into a dark cavern lit only by a bright sliver of blue white radiance pouring in through what to Margaret looked like large windows. The magnificent sight beyond took on an unreal quality. The edge of the sliver, partially obscured by a greyish pockmarked object, was fuzzy and beyond it was a night sky that felt almost familiar. Big Bird was making sounds at her. The unintelligible squeaks gave Margaret the distinct impression the alien was trying to speak to her, demonstrating something about the window. Too bad, she couldn’t make sense of it.
Counting her bleeds, Margaret worked out she been here nine or ten moons. She was beginning to think she was never going back to her family when after a recent bleed Big Bird came in carrying the same small box Margaret had arrived in, which brought tears to her eyes. I'm going home she thought and constructed in her mind the tales she would tell Frank and the children, if they were still there.
The box swayed as Big Bird and another alien Margaret had come believe was Big Bird's mate, made short hopping flights through a maze of rooms to an area so huge it could contain more than five hovering craft, the limit of her ability to count. A soon as they entered one of the craft, Big Bird strapped the box to the vibrating floor. The noise and vibration reached a peak as an image block sprang up between the two aliens, showing a vast impossibly flat grey plain ending in blackness. The plain jumped and with increasing speed moved underneath them. Margaret gripped the invisible mesh and closed her eyes.
The abrupt cessation of both noise and vibration caught her by surprise. She opened her eyes cautiously then snapped them shut again. She was floating in her box anchored only by her fingers through the mesh. When she ventured a longer look, the image between Big Bird and her mate had changed to a blue white ball with a fuzzy border, similar to the sliver she had seen earlier, except it was now overhead. Of all the strange experiences in recent times, this was by far the strangest for despite floating free, she felt as if she were falling up to the growing ball. Looking up at Big Bird for reassurance, she saw the alien had her eyes closed. The realisation that she could sleep while all this was happening stunned Margaret.
Over the next few hours, the ball grew to fill the image block and at some point, she couldn’t recall when, up and down changed places. The ball appeared to be a flat disc beneath the windows and the blue now showed patches of green and brown as if diseased. Sometime later Margaret was pleased to start feeling heavier and that the blue was lighter, more familiar. By the time she was solidly back on the floor of her box, the view had resolved into land slashed by a long narrow inlet of sea like a picture she had seen in one of Big Bird's rooms.
The image collapsed revealing large dark windows in front of the aliens where a horizontal strip of light expanded vertically across the windows into a square. The floor again vibrated but smoother this time, although it still jerked when the craft started moving straight at the square of light. Margaret watched this time as they burst out into a clear blue sky and sped toward a flat-topped mountain she instantly recognised.
Each new revelation astounded Margaret but as the abstract landforms revealed detail, she put together a world she knew, fitting the various remembered images with what she could see.
Before the craft settled, they passed directly over the cages, identifiable because there were three in a row, something she knew from looking through Claude and Connie's cage and because inside each there were no trees, only a small two room house one end and a pond the other. She could see both the captives and the Wilds out in the bush at the same time, all looking up. She had always known the Wilds were out there but it was a shock to see them in the context of such vast amounts of free range. Why did they risk capture and hang around here when they could go off in any direction? It is so big out there.
With her heightened perspective, she could see how small and barren the cages were against the lush expanse of surrounding bush yet despite this, the closer Margaret got the more excited she became. The cage was home and she was looking forward to her reunion with Frank and the children.
Returns
Zorex sat with Tuya in the main room of the planetary nest they were trying to establish, watching the oomans in cage three running around in the image block their state-of the-art-holographic monitor had created. The projection, which occupied half the room, not only gave them a rotatable view in three dimensions but also in three senses; sight sound and unfortunately, thought Zorex, smell.
All Tuya's cages had taller than usual weeds in great abundance. As always, the wet season happened in the middle of their work schedule. It would mean a big clean up as soon as Tuya sorted out how to return the healed female to her cage.
The exovet's advice had warned against immediate reintroduction of the young, saying they would probably have to be hand reared but not until Tuya had resettled the female. Zorex groaned but helped her with hand rearing the three young Viruz for several diurns while the restored female, "readjusted to her mate," as Tuya put it.
It didn’t go well from the start. There was an immediate outburst of screaming and arm waving, which was about all they’re capable of, thought Zorex.
To Tuya's disappointment, once that settled and they went into the nest box, the female emerged with rags again covering her body. Worse from Zorex's viewpoint she went straight over to the Maran boundary waving something. Bravado or stupidity, he wondered, has she learnt nothing? The Maran waved back with a long stick that glinted in the sunlight.
"The blade," Zorex said, but Tuya was already gone. He heard a huge double flap as she took off and seconds later saw her open the cage and land next to the Maran knocking him over in the process.
When she returned, she was wheezing a little. "It's cold out," she said dropping the tiny blade on the floor and continuing without pause. "I liked your idea of a barrier. We should put it up first light."
"Then can we get rid - give the pair their children back?" Zorex asked.
"It's too soon."
Zorex pointed out she had no option if she wanted to give them time to adjust. "Our extended break planetside ends soon and we can't afford for Novur to host them again."
"I wouldn’t anyway," said Tuya. "Have you seen the condition of the young female? It isn’t as good as when we left."
Zorex took his cue, "As I've said, you're the better Viruz breeder."
Tuya groomed him and he relaxed into her attentions.
"I'll keep the oldest male here for potential buyers. Showing off his mother at work generated a lot of interest, people asked about purchasing her offspring."
Home
When Big Bird released Margaret, Frank’s reaction took her by such surprise she didn’t get to ask, 'where are the children?' His face a distraught misery, he ranted, hurling accusations at her as if she had contrived her absence as a holiday without them. He didn’t even notice her nakedness until she had calmed him. He gave her his shirt and they sat on the doorstep overlooking the annual spring meadow while Frank told her all that had happened in her absence.
In late autumn, he had woken to find the children gone and in his frantic searching, he had found the top of a child-sized finger over by the mesh. Margaret wondered if going from twenty plus years of family to being alone had sent him mad, until he showed her the dried-out finger. Tom, she thought, staring aghast at a finger she knew well, that had touched her on the cheek and caught in her hair. She had to force herself not to berate Frank for letting it happen.
"Didn’t you see this happen?"
"I must have been asleep. Rachel and Peter have been very tiring. I've been alone since. Then you turn up full of life as if nothing has happened. I’m sorry I got upset," he said before continuing his story. Winter brought rain that flooded the cage and filled the pond to overflowing. As it eased, Frank scooped out a trench from it to the mesh to let it flow away taking all the floating rubbish with it. At the exit point, the turbulent water had dug a big hole but he never saw an end to the mesh. After such heavy winter rains, the grass grew like wildfire, which is why this year's meadow was so tall.
"What about you?" Frank asked.
As difficult as Margaret found it to comprehend why they took Peter and Rachel not just Tom, she found it doubly difficult to explain to Frank where Big Bird had taken her.
"I was up there," she said pointing skywards. "So far up there that all this," she turned a full circle sweeping her arm through three hundred and sixty degrees to indicate everything she could see and all that she knew was beyond it, "looked like it would fit in my hands."
Frank looked at her quizzically.
"The whole cage you mean?"
"All the cages and all the bush around our cages," she said, words failing her when she tried to describe everything together as a coloured plate. She had seen it as a ball at first but that made even less sense so she used plate.
Once she and Frank had exhausted talking about the missing children and her absence, Margaret went and confronted Claude, holding up the stub of Tom's finger, "You will pay for this, I promise."
Claude grinned and waved the machete at her as he pulled a finger across his throat, "Next time," he said in his strange accent. He did not approach. Margaret had taken care to stand well back.
"I'm not joking, I'll find a way."
Claude performed a dance, elegant slashing and stabbing moves with the machete, quite graceful in a macabre sort of way. Margaret was about to turn away when a large shadow fell across them both. She looked up to see Big Bird, wings stretched to their full width, land on Claude and Connie's cage. Wingtip to wingtip must be fifty feet, thought Margaret, it spread across the whole cage.
Claude dropped his machete in the grass and tried to kick dirt over it as Big Bird opened the cage roof, folded her wing and with a sound of rushing air, dropped beside him, the force of her landing knocking him over. A single flap of giant wings later the big alien bird sprang up through the hole and flew away. For a long while, Claude scrabbled around on the ground searching.
"Bitch, he screamed at the sky when he finally stopped and before he stormed off to the house, he shared with Connie he directed a nasty stare at Margaret, "You fault," he shouted at her.
They heard Connie's screams long into the night. Margaret felt for her but was unable to help. She couldn’t communicate with the aliens and they didn’t seem to notice Connie's plight.
"See Frank, at least they're looking out for us," she said when the following day the aliens hung an opaque brown fabric on their side of the mesh.
"How do you figure that?"
"This will stop Claude bothering us, and I reckon Big Bird took his machete, which is why he beat Connie last night. If only they'd done it before he slashed me, I would never have left. Tom wouldn’t be missing part of a finger and my children would have been here to greet me."
The next day the hoverer dropped the cleaner through the opened mesh and her meadow, now a rich yellow, soared up the beam and jetted out into the bush like golden rain, leaving nothing in the cage but stubble, stones and dirt.
Margaret wept. They take everything, she told Frank that night as they lay in bed on the grass, they had saved from the cleaner listening for sounds from the next room but Peter and Rachel's bedroom remained silent.
* * *
The first thing Margaret noticed when Big Bird did return Peter and Rachel was that Rachel appeared flushed. The children were in separate closed boxes, isolating them from and each other. On arrival, Peter sat up but Rachel didn’t stir. Frank reached a finger through and felt her forehead. "She's burning up."
Margaret was confused. What was Big Bird thinking? Why fix an old breeder like me but not one with the potential for years of breeding ahead of her. What were the closed boxes about, were they worried the children might not be welcome? Margaret turned toward the alien complex. What signal did Big Bird want before she would release them?
"Why aren’t you helping her?" Frank asked as he fed bits of banana through the mesh to Peter. “If we don’t do something she might die."
"No, she won't, in fact the opposite is true. Anything we try won't help her and without help she will die."
"I won't stand by doing nothing while she dies."
"Trust me. It’s the only hope she has. I was nearly dead and woke up healed."
She saw that Rachel, unable to speak and barely able to move her eyes, followed their conversation. The three-year-old looked at her father with mute appeal.
As she did so, the mesh on both their boxes disappeared. Peter jumped out and went straight to Frank.
"Can you get Rachel?"
"No."
"What?” Frank sounded astonished at her callousness. For the first time in their relationship, he ignored her put Peter down and went to pick up Rachel.
Margaret stood in his way. "Please don’t Frank, all the food we have is not going to help her. If we leave her alone, the aliens will take her and heal her as they did me." She detailed her experience with the tube down her throat, leaving out the needle in her backside. The pleading, or maybe the truth in her voice, delayed him.
"One more day, I won't let her die."
"Do you think I would,” Margaret shouted at him. “She's my daughter too, you have to trust me. The aliens won't let her die she hasn’t given them children yet."
Peter eyes conveyed a powerful sense of anger, five years old and already very protective of his sister. Margaret turned away from her son’s anger and Frank took him into the house.
Margaret followed later and sat in the doorway to watch. The small triangular area of floor between the rooms and the outside was he favourite spot. An hour after dusk Big Bird swooped in and took Rachel away. Frank and Peter were asleep.
For Margaret it was now a waiting game. She was confident they would heal Rachel but would they return her so Frank and Peter could see she'd been right.
Humans
Maybe the exovet was right after all, thought Zorex, watching the return of the two youngest Viruz to the cage. It caused another outburst between the parents. He hoped the parents wouldn’t reject the children as the exovet predicted. He and Tuya couldn’t afford to stay down here and continue hand rearing, any more than they could afford Novur to do it for them. They could get away with selling the chopped digit male in the box behind them but not his two smaller siblings they had just repatriated.
Despite his general dislike of her ooman pets, their behaviour fascinated Zorex. The adult male tried to care for both, the adult female neither. The closed boxes would make it difficult. As strange as that was, the more perplexing behaviour was the abrupt withdrawal of attention to the smaller unmoving child by both adults.
Tuya excused the returned female saying she probably wasn't feeling well after her journey. "She was severely wounded, removed from her family and when finally returned to her cage her children were missing. How would you feel?" she said, which prompted an outburst from Zorex.
"Really Tuya you have to stop personifying them. It’s one thing to name them ...
Tuya's feathers bristled, "I don’t name them."
"... but to ascribe our motives to their behaviour is silly. We have no idea what goes on in their tiny brains."
