Elizabeth Moon - Remnant Population 
REMNANT POPULATION
ELIZABETH MOON



Proofed and Formatted by MollyKate 11/25/2002
This is my favorite book to date from an author whose every published word I own 
in multiple editions. If you enjoyed this E-Dition, please consider supporting 
the author by buying it in treeware.



Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY




This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book 
are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely 
coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Elizabeth Moon
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions 
thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
ISBN: 0-671-87718-6
Cover art by Gary Ruddell
First printing, May 1996
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moon, Elizabeth.
Remnant population / Elizabeth Moon.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-671-87718-6
I. Title
PS3563.0557R46 1996 813'.54--dc20 95-53232
CIP
Typeset by Windhaven Press: Editorial Services, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America



DEDICATION
To Betsy, who provided the spark, and Mary, Ellen, and Carrie who responded with 
warmth and light.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book had a number of godmothers, both old and new. Its literary antecedents 
include an essay by LeGuin, The Wall, by Marlen Haushofer, and a book I had not 
yet read (but heard about) when I began it, Two Old Women, by Velma Wallis, and 
those folktales in which wise old women know something worth learning. But it 
could not have been written without the living experience of women much like 
Ofelia, from whom I learned much less than I should have. They are too many to 
name, but they should not be forgotten. Lois Parker helped in revision, 
especially her willingness to share her own experience of a long life.



CHAPTER ONE
Contents - Next
Sims Bancorp Colony, File #3245.
Between her toes the damp earth felt cool, but already sweat crept between the 
roots of her hair. It would be hotter today than yesterday, and by noon the 
lovely spice-scented red flowers of the dayvine would have furled their fragile 
cups, and drooped on the vine. Ofelia pushed the mulch deeper against the stems 
of the tomatoes with her foot. She liked the heat. If her daughter-in-law Rosara 
weren't within sight, she would take off her hat and let the sweat evaporate. 
But Rosara worried about cancer from the sun, and Rosara was sure it wasn't 
decent for an old woman to be outside with nothing on her head but thinning gray 
hair.
Not that it was so thin. Ofelia touched her temples, as if to tuck an errant 
strand in place, but really to confirm the thick strands of the braid she wore. 
Still thick, and her legs still strong, and her hands, though knotted with age 
and work, still capable. She eyed her daughter-in-law, at the far end of the 
garden. Scrawny, hair the color of scorched paper, eyes of mud. Thought she was 
beautiful, with her narrow waist and her pale hands, but Ofelia knew better. She 
had always known better, but Barto would not listen to a mothers wisdom, and now 
he had Rosara of the narrow body—like a snake, Ofelia had said once only—and no 
children.
She minded that less than the others thought. She could have welcomed a 
daughter-in-law independent enough to refuse children. No, it was Rosaras 
determination to enforce on her mother-in-law all the petty rules intended to 
preserve the virtue of virgins… that she could not tolerate.
"We should have planted more beans," Rosara called. She had said that at 
planting, knowing that Ofelia could not use all the beans she normally grew. She 
wanted Ofelia to grow beans to sell, as well as beans to eat.
"We have enough," Ofelia said.
"If the crop does not fail," Rosara said.
"If the crop fails, a bigger crop would be a bigger failure," Ofelia said. 
Rosara snorted, but did not contradict. Perhaps she was finally learning that it 
did no good to argue. Ofelia hoped so. Ofelia went on working on the tomatoes, 
pushing the mulch here and there, tying up straggling ends of the vines. Rosara 
claimed the tomato vines made her skin itch; she stayed away from them. Ofelia 
hunkered down to hide a smile as she thought of this, enjoying the strong green 
tomato smell.
She dozed off, there among the tomatoes, rousing only when the slanting 
afternoon light probed between the rows. Light in her eyes had always waked her; 
she was still sure she had not slept at all in the cryo tanks because the lights 
stayed on all the time. Humberto had said that was ridiculous, that no one was 
awake in cryo, that was the point. Ofelia had not argued, but she was sure she 
remembered the light, always stabbing through her eyelids.
Now, lying drowsy on the crumbly mulch between the rows of tomatoes, she thought 
how peaceful it looked, that little green jungle. Silent, too, for once; Rosara 
must have gone back inside without noticing she was asleep. Or perhaps the bitch 
didn't care. Ofelia rolled the insult on her tongue, silently, savoring it. 
Bitch. Slut. She didn't know many such words, which gave the few in her 
vocabulary extra richness, all the anger that some people spread over many words 
on many occasions.
Bartolomeo's voice in the street cut across her reverie, and she sat up as fast 
as she could, hissing at the pain in her hip and knees.
"Rosara! Rosara, come out!" He sounded excited or angry or both. He often did. 
Most of the time it was nothing, but he would never admit it, even afterwards. 
Of all her children, Barto was the one Ofelia had liked least, even in infancy; 
he had been a greedy nurser, yanking on her nipples as if she could never be 
enough for him. He had grown from greedy infancy to demanding childhood, the son 
whom nothing satisfied; he had quarreled incessantly with the other children, 
demanding fairness which always meant his benefit. In manhood he was the same, 
the traits she had liked least in Humberto magnified ten times. But he was her 
only living child, and she understood him.
"What?" Rosara sounded snappish; either she had been napping (something Barto 
and Ofelia both disapproved of) or working on her computer.
"It's the Company—they've lost the franchise."
A shriek from Rosara. It might mean that for once Barto was upset about 
something worth the trouble, or it might mean that she had just found a pimple 
on her chin. With Rosara, it might be either, or anything in between. Ofelia 
struggled to her knees, then, with a hand on a tomato stake, to her feet. Her 
vision grayed slightly and she waited for it to come back. Age. Everyone said it 
was age, and it would get worse. She didn't think it was that bad, except when 
people wanted her to hurry, and she couldn't."Mama!" Barto, bursting out the 
kitchen door into the garden. Ofelia was glad to be upright and obviously 
working; it gave her a tiny bit of moral leverage.
"Yes?" She had spotted a fat caterpillar, and when he loomed over her she had it 
fast in the loop. "See?"
"Yes, mama. That's nice. Listen, its important—"
"A good crop this year," Ofelia said.
"Mama!" He leaned over, pushing his face into hers. He looked more like Humberto 
than anyone else, yet Humberto had had gentle eyes.
"I'm listening," she said, putting out her hand to the tomato stake again.
"The Company's lost the franchise," he said, as if that meant something.
"The Company's lost the franchise," Ofelia repeated, to prove she'd been 
listening. He often accused her of not listening.
"You know what that means," he said impatiently, but then went on to tell her. 
"It means we have to leave. They're yanking the colony." Rosara had come out of 
the house behind him; Ofelia could see the patches of red on her cheeks.
"They can't do that! It's our home—!"
"Don't be stupid, Rosara!" Barto spat onto the tomato plants, as if they were 
her body; Ofelia flinched, and he glared at her. "Or you, mama. Of course they 
can make us leave; we're their employees."
Employees who never got paid, Ofelia said to herself. Employees with no 
retirement, no medical benefits except what they produced for each other. 
Employees who were supposed to support themselves and produce a surplus. Not 
that they had produced the regular shipments of tropical woods that they'd been 
assigned… it had been years since they'd had enough adults to continue logging.
"But I worked so hard!" Rosara wailed. For once Ofelia agreed with her; she felt 
the same way. She looked sideways at the tomato plants, avoiding Barto's glare, 
focussing on the fringed margin of the leaves, the tiny hairs bristling from the 
stems. The first flower buds hung like little chandeliers, still folded tight, 
ready to open in the light, take fire, and—
"Listen to me," Barto insisted. His hand came between Ofelia and the tomatoes, 
caught her chin and forced her face around. "You still have a vote in the 
council, mama. You have to come to the meeting. You have to vote with us. We 
have a chance to choose where we're sent."
A meeting. She hated meetings. She noticed he didn't tell Rosara, but then he 
knew Rosara would come anyway, and vote however he told her.
"A vote is a vote," he told her now, louder, as if she were deaf. "Even yours." 
He released her chin. "Go inside now; get ready" Ofelia edged past him, her bare 
toes safely distant from his hard-soled boots. "And wear shoes!" he yelled after 
her. Behind her, his voice and Rosara's were lower without being softer, harsh 
mutterings she could not quite hear.
She had bathed, washed her hair, and put on the best clothes she had left. The 
dress hung loosely now, the waist dipping where she had nothing left above to 
fill the bodice, the hem lifting behind to accommodate the stoop in her back. On 
her feet, the shoes she had not worn for months cramped her toes and rubbed her 
heels. She would have blisters from this meeting, and what good would that do? 
She had leaned her head on the kitchen door and heard Barto tell Rosara that on 
another world his mother would surely be forced to dress decently again. He 
meant wear shoes, and a dark dress like this, all the time.
She sat quietly on the bench beside Rosara, and listened to the sounds of grief 
and anger that filled the room. Only a few saw this as opportunity—a few men, a 
few women, about half the younglings. The rest saw only wasted years, loss, 
misery. They had worked so hard, and for what? How could they start over, face 
the same hard work again? Here at least they had houses already built, gardens 
already planted.
Carl and Gervaise interrupted the complaints and presented the alternatives to 
vote on, though they never said how they'd learned about them. Ofelia did not 
believe the Company would give them a choice; she was sure the vote would come 
to nothing. Still, when Barto reached across Rosara to prod her ribs and hiss at 
her, she stood when he did, voting for Neubreit rather than Olcrano. The others 
voted for Neubreit, almost two thirds of them, and only the most stubborn, like 
Walter and Sara, insisted they would not go there.
Only at the end of the meeting, when she stood up and turned around, did she 
notice the Company rep, standing at the door. He had the sleek, youthful look of 
a shipman, someone whose skin never saw starlight but through a hatch. No sun 
had baked him; no winter had frozen him; no rains had washed, or winds dried, 
him. In his crisp, clean clothes, his polished shoes, he looked like an alien. 
He said nothing. Before anyone could speak to him, he had turned and walked 
away, into the darkness. Ofelia wondered if he knew about the slimetrails, but 
of course he would have shipeyes; he would be able to see where colonists could 
not.
The next morning, Ofelia rose at dawn and went out into the garden, barefooted 
as always and wearing her oldest workshirt. Until the sun rose, she refused to 
wear her hat, and so she saw the movement along the lane beyond the garden, the 
Company reps in their crisp shipclothes. Many of them. All wearing the same 
blue-gray uniforms the color of morning fog, with the Sims Bancorp logo.
One of them stopped to stare back at her. "Ma'am," he said, unsmiling but 
polite.
The thing she loved most about dawn was the silence, the emptiness of it. He 
stood there, as if he had a right to ruin her morning solitude. He was going to 
ask questions, and in courtesy she must answer them. She sighed, and looked 
away, hoping he would think her too old and fuddled to be worth his time.
"Ma'am, did you vote last night?"
He wasn't going away. She looked at him, seeing the youth, the differentness… 
the skin untouched by weather, the eyes that stared right at her as if he had 
the right…
"Yes," she said shortly. Then, because courtesy would not allow her to be so 
abrupt, she found herself saying, "I don't know what to call you… I don't mean 
to be rude."
He smiled, genuinely amused. Was courtesy so rare among the shipfolk still? "I 
wasn't offended," he said. He came nearer. "Are those real tomatoes?"
He had not answered her question. She would have to be more direct. "I cannot 
talk to someone when I have no way to address them," she said. "My name is Sera 
Ofelia."
"Oh—I'm Jorge. Sorry. You reminded me of my grandmother; she calls me Ajo. 
But—do they really grow like this, in the open… contaminated?"
Ofelia stroked the leaves with her hand, releasing the heavy scent. "Yes, these 
are tomatoes, and yes, they grow in the open air. They have no tomatoes now, of 
course; they are just blooming." She turned up several leaves to show him the 
clusters of flower-buds.
"It's too bad," he said, in the tone of one who is politely regretting some 
inconvenience he will not himself endure. "You have such a garden, and it's 
wasted—"
"Nothing is wasted," Ofelia said.
"But you're leaving in thirty days," the young man said. She reminded herself 
that his name was Jorge and he had a grandmother who loved him. That seemed 
impossible; he could have popped from a gliss-wrapped package like the holiday 
gifts of her childhood, brightly colored and smooth all over. Surely he had not 
been born in blood and mess like real children. "You don't have to work in the 
garden any more. You should be packing."
"I like working in the garden," Ofelia said. She wanted him to go away. She 
wanted to find out what had just changed in her, somewhere inside, when he said 
"But you're leaving." She looked down. On the ground, on top of the mulch, a 
slimerod oozed along looking for something to puncture with its one hard part, 
its little hollow cylinder of shell. Ofelia picked it up by its soft hinder end 
and watched it lengthen until it was at least ten centimeters long and thin as 
yarn. Then she flicked it around with a practiced snap of the wrist, and cracked 
its shell on her other thumb. It made her thumb sting a moment, but it was worth 
the sting for the look of shocked horror on the young man's face.
"What was that?" he asked. From his expression, he expected to hear something 
terrible. Ofelia obliged."We call it a slimerod," she said. "And the piercing 
part is like a medical needle, hollow, so it can suck—" She didn't have to say 
more; the young man was backing away already.
"Can it go through… shoes?" He was staring now at her bare feet. Ofelia grinned 
to herself, and made a show of scratching the back of one leg with her other 
foot.
"It depends on the shoes," she said. She supposed it might go through a pair of 
thin cloth shoes with holes in them already. And it didn't go through human skin 
(she didn't know why) but she didn't say that. Mostly it went through the stems 
of her plants, not finding what it wanted and leaving wounds the plants spent 
precious calories mending. But if it made the young man sick enough to go away, 
she would imply horrors.
"I guess you'll be glad to leave," the young man said.
"Excuse me," Ofelia said. "I have to use the…" she gestured at the shed at the 
end of the garden. That did it; he flushed an uncomely color and turned away 
abruptly. She almost giggled. He should have known they had inside conveniences; 
the first thing the colonists had done was install their waste recycler. But she 
was glad to see him go. In case he turned back, she walked the rest of the way 
to the toolshed and went in.
Ofelia had moved before. She knew that it took longer than thirty days to move, 
if you tried to take things with you. The Company reps had told people they need 
take nothing; it would all be provided. But forty years is forty years, a 
lifetime for some, more than that for others. Few of the originals were left; 
Ofelia was the oldest of these. She had the clearest memory of other places, and 
she sometimes woke with vivid flashes of that memory. The smell of corn porridge 
spiced with mezul … a spice that could not be grown here. She remembered the day 
she had used the last of it, after Humberto died. The way the street looked 
outside their apartment in Visiazh, with the vendors' bright awnings over piles 
of ripe fruits and vegetables, mounds of colorful clothes, racks of pots and 
pans. She had thought once she could not live without that much color, that much 
noise and that many people; she had moped a whole year here, miserable until she 
found the one kind of bright flower that would grow along the edge of the 
garden.
She had little to pack. She had not drawn many clothes from the community store 
in the past decade. Her old keepsakes had vanished over the years, one after 
another—most left behind when they became colonists, the rest broken by 
children, gnawed by insects, dissolved in one or the other of the two big floods 
or rotted afterwards by fungus. She still had a chipic of Humberto and herself 
at their wedding, and one of the first two children, and a ribbon she had won in 
primary school for spelling, now faded a pale pearly gray. That and the fruit 
dish her mother-in-law had given her, an ugly thing which had survived her 
intentional carelessness when more beautiful things perished. She could easily 
be ready in less than thirty days. Except—she leaned her head against the handle 
of the hoe hanging on the toolshed wall. Somewhere inside, at the moment the 
young man had said she was leaving, things changed. She felt for that change, as 
she would have fumbled in the shadowy house for her crochet hook in its bag of 
yarn.
She wasn't going. Ofelia blinked, suddenly wider awake than she remembered being 
for a long time. A memory welled up, clear as morning dew that reflected tiny 
curved pictures of the world around it. Before she married Humberto, before she 
got involved with that fool Caitano, back when she had just finished primary, 
she had flourished that spelling ribbon in her father's face and insisted she 
was not—absolutely was not—going to quit school and go to work in the local 
branch of Sims Bancorp cleaning the floors at night.
Her mind recoiled from the memory of what had followed that defiance; the facts 
were enough without the emotion. In the misery of being only a janitor—she, who 
had won a scholarship to secondary, a scholarship Lucia had taken instead—she 
had fooled herself into a relationship with Caitano.
But—she retreated from all that to the cool dawn shadow of the toolshed. But she 
was here, and she was not going. She felt light, suddenly, as if she were 
falling, as if the ground had disappeared from under her feet and she would fall 
until she found the middle of the planet. Was this joy, or fear? She could not 
tell. She knew only that with every heartbeat her blood carried the same message 
to bone and muscle: she was not going.
"Mama!" Barto, at the kitchen door. Ofelia grabbed the first tool her hand fell 
on, and she backed out of the toolshed. Pruning shears. Why pruning shears? 
Nothing needed pruning. She turned around, and found the words to say.
"I can't find the little nippers, the ones for the tomatoes."
"Mama, forget the tomatoes. We won't be here to harvest them. Listen—we're 
having another meeting. The Company says it doesn't care about the vote."
Of course the Company didn't care. That's what it meant to be on contract. She 
understood that, if she understood nothing else, what it meant to be signed, 
sealed, delivered to the masters. They would not listen to the colonists any 
more than Humberto had listened to her. She did not say this to Barto. It would 
only provoke another argument, and she disliked arguments, especially in her 
special time, the early morning.
"Barto, I am too old for these meetings," she said.
"I know that." He sounded impatient, as always. "Rosara and I are going; we want 
you to begin the inventory."
"Yes, Barto." Easier that way. He and Rosara would go, and she could come back 
out and smell the garden in the morning, its best time. "And we need breakfast," 
he said. Ofelia sighed, and hung the pruning shears back on their hook. Already 
the sun was burning away the morning mist, and she could feel heat on her head. 
Already she could hear voices from other houses, other gardens. Rosara could 
cook breakfast; she usually did. She didn't like the way Ofelia cooked.
Inside, Ofelia mixed flour and oil and water to make the dough, patted it out, 
and flipped the thin rounds on the griddle. While they browned, she chopped 
onions and herbs, leftover sausage, cold boiled potatoes. When the flatcakes 
were done, she rolled them deftly around the cold filling, adding a dash of 
vinegar and oil. Barto liked these; Rosara wanted a hot filling. Ofelia didn't 
care. This morning she could have eaten metal shavings, or nothing. She paid no 
attention to Rosaras ritual complaint, or Barto's ritual compliment. As they 
finished dressing, she scraped the cutting board into the garden pail.
After they left, Ofelia carried the garden pail out and dumped it into the 
trench, kicking dirt over the curls of potato peels, the limp ends of carrots 
and turnip greens, the bits of onion and herbs. The sun lay a warm hand on the 
back of her neck, and she realized she'd come out without her hat again.
That would be one benefit of staying behind. No one would nag her to wear a hat.



CHAPTER TWO
Contents - Prev / Next
Barto and Rosara returned from the meeting in exactly the mood Ofelia expected: 
angry and depressed and ready to take it out on her. Luckily, the meeting had 
taken longer than she'd thought—they must have argued strongly—so she had the 
inventory well under way.
"We don't need those things," Barto said, of the first category. "I told you—all 
these things made here—they're worthless." He went into their bedroom, and from 
the sounds he made was throwing all the clothes on the floor.
"They say we have no right to choose where we go," Rosara said. She moved around 
the kitchen restlessly, picking up and putting down one utensil after another. 
"They say we have to be ready to leave in twenty-nine days, and all we can take 
is twenty kilos per person. We'll have to go in cryo, and we won't know where 
we're going until we arrive—"
"Barbarians!" Barto stood in the doorway, arms full of clothes. All, Ofelia 
noticed, were his clothes. "Everything we've done—all these years—" Ofelia did 
not remind him that he had been a baby at first; most of the time he had enjoyed 
the work of others.
"What will they do with the colony itself?" she asked.
"What do I care? Destroy it, leave it to rot, it doesn't matter." He retreated 
to the bedroom again; Ofelia heard the clothes hit the bed in a soft whumph. 
"Mama! Where's the luggage?"
Ofelia bit back a laugh and tried to answer calmly. "There's no luggage, Barto." 
Why would he think they had luggage? They had never needed it.
"You and papa had to carry things here in something."
"The Company gave us a box." The box had gone into the structure of the 
recycler; everyone's boxes had. Everything that came down had been put to use.
"They won't give us anything, they said. They said we have to pack it ourselves, 
in something that will stack in the hold." He glared at her as if that were her 
fault, as if she were supposed to solve this problem.
"We can sew something," she said. "There's all that cloth in the supply room. If 
we're not going to need it for clothes for everyone, we can make something to 
hold the allotments." She wasn't going, she reminded herself, but it was an 
interesting problem. She had always liked solving problems. Already her mind ran 
over what she could remember about luggage seen all those years ago, before they 
emigrated. Other peoples' luggage—she and Humberto had never traveled—some of it 
made of fabric shaped into boxes or tubes, some of it molded from plastics. In 
thirty days, it would be easier to sew it. She thought of the others who used 
the machines, the ones who were quickest, the ones who could make patterns.
"You take care of it," Barto said. "And while you're at it, mend all these 
things—" He gestured broadly at the piles of clothes on the bed and floor.
It would be easier to take the clothes and go to the center's sewing rooms than 
argue that most of the clothes needed no mending. Or that they might not be 
appropriate to wherever they were being sent. Ofelia picked up an armload, and 
turned to leave.
"Wait! What about these others?"
"I can't carry more than this, Barto," Ofelia said. She didn't meet his eyes. 
After a moment, he let his breath out in a huff, and she knew the worst of it 
was over. She carried the clothes to the center, where she found a small group 
of women chattering in the hall outside the sewing rooms. They fell silent when 
they saw her. Ariane finally spoke.
"Sera Ofelia… may I help you with that?"
Ofelia had always liked Ariane, who had been a friend of Adelia's. The two 
little girls—for a moment memory overcame her, a vision of the two leaning 
head-to-head whispering, under the first orange tree. When Adelia died, Ariane 
had come every day to sit with her; she had asked Ofelia to be the name-mother 
for her own first baby. Now Ofelia smiled at the younger woman.
"Its only Barto wanting to be sure all his clothes are mended—and I don't expect 
to find much to do." Should she tell Ariane about her idea, to sew luggage from 
the fabric in stores? Surely someone else would think of it.
"We haven't any boxes, Sera Ofelia," said Linda. Trust Linda to blurt out a 
problem. "I know our parents came with boxes from the Company, but something 
happened to them—and now they won't give us boxes."
"The boxes went into the walls of the recycler," Ofelia said. The children had 
been taught that in school, at least when she was helping there. Linda should 
have known.
"But what will we do, Sera Ofelia?" Several of the other women looked as annoyed 
as Ofelia felt. They knew Ofelia wasn't the right person to ask; they didn't 
expect her to have any answers.
Mischief bubbled; impossible answers raced through her mind like noisy children, 
making her mind trip and struggle to regain its balance. It is not my problem, 
she imagined herself saying. I am not going. "It is simple enough," she heard 
herself say aloud. "We will sew containers—luggage—from the fabric that will not 
be needed to make new clothes this year."
"You know how to do this?" Linda asked. Her expression showed indecent surprise. 
Ofelia smiled at the other women, one face after another, forcing their 
attention.
"I know how well the best of our sewers can plan new things and make them," she 
said. "I myself could not do it alone—" The ritual disclaimer; it was not polite 
to claim expertise, especially exclusive knowledge.
"Like a carry-sack," Kata said. Her voice sounded happier.
"More like a box, but of cloth," Ariane said.
"Is there enough cloth?" Linda asked.
"Go and see," Ariane said. "Come back and tell us how many rolls."
"If we have to ask the machines for more, we should do that today," said Kata. 
"And it must be allotted fairly."
Ofelia said nothing more, but entered the first sewing room. She laid Barto's 
clothes on one of the long tables and began looking over them. One by one, the 
other women came in after her, now talking about how they would make fabric 
boxes to hold their belongings. Ofelia found a frayed collar on one shirt and a 
small triangular tear in the leg of one pair of pants. She turned on one of the 
bright work-lamps, shifted the magnifier around, and set to work mending the 
rip. She hardly needed to see it; her fingers could feel the edges of torn cloth 
as easily as her eyes could see. But she liked the way the magnifier made the 
threads look like fat yarn.
When she returned home, the clothes neatly folded in her arms, Rosara was 
standing amid piles of their belongings in the living room. Her eyes were red; 
she looked as if she were about to be sick. Ofelia nodded at her, and went to 
put away the clothes she carried. The bedroom was tidy again; Rosara must have 
put away the clothes Barto had thrown around. A pile of mending lay on the bed. 
Ofelia picked it up and headed back to the center, hoping to avoid any 
conversations with Rosara.
Now the center was full of busy women. She could hear the fabricator humming and 
clicking; someone must have decided they needed more fabric. In both sewing 
rooms, the long tables were covered with strips of cloth. Two women—Dorotea and 
Ariane—huddled over patterns cut from the thinnest cloth, pinning together the 
first fabric box. A few children wandered in and out, looking worried,
"This is too thin," someone said, yanking a length of green from the table. "We 
must have the strongest material."
"But not too heavy," said someone else. Ariane looked up from her 
pattern-pinning and saw Ofelia.
"Ofelia—here—look at this. Will this work?" Ofelia made her way past chattering 
women to that end of the table. "We want it to be easy to make," Dorotea said. 
"As little sewing as possible, because we must be very quick. Yet strong. Safely 
fastened. Some way to mark it for each family—"
Ofelia looked at the limp pink fabric glinting with pins, and set down her pile 
of mending, "Will this go inside?" she asked. The two younger women arranged 
their bits of flimsy pink fabric around the bundle. Now it looked more like the 
shapes Ofelia remembered—flat boxlike shapes—but the limp fabric drooped against 
the contents.
"That will work," Ariane said. "But we need a way to fasten it."
"Stickystrips," Dorotea said. "The machine can make them fast; we can sew them 
on the long piece that wraps around—make it wider, so it overlaps.
Ofelia wandered away, into the other sewing room. Here Josepha and Aurelia 
headed the design team; their solution had the basic boxlike shape, but closed 
with a clever fold that required only one short length of stickystrip. It did 
use more fabric, and it required precision sewing of the folding angles.
Ariane came after her, with the stack of mending. "I did it for you," she said. 
"You don't need to be straining your eyes with little things like that, Sera 
Ofelia. Your idea of making fabric boxes—"
"It was nothing," Ofelia said automatically. "Thank you for the mending, 
Ariane."
"It is my pleasure. Sera Ofelia. And if you need help with anything—"
"No, thank you. Rosara and I can do it," Ariane, after all, had children and 
grandchildren. Besides, to admit she needed help would be to admit that she and 
Rosara did not cooperate—something everyone knew, but no one acknowledged. "I 
would like to help with the boxes," Ofelia said. "Although I am not as fast as I 
used to be, we have so little to pack—"
"If you have time, of course we would be glad of your help," Ariane said.
"Barto suggested it," Ofelia said. Ariane's mouth thinned; she understood 
exactly what that meant,
"Perhaps you could do the first one," Ariane said. "We need a model for others 
to follow"
Ofelia eased the fabric through the machine, careful to keep the tension even. 
She had once been very good at sewing, but lately had trouble keeping her mind 
on the task once she had the fabric lined up. Barto had complained about the 
uneven topstitching in the last shirt she'd made him. She had made so many 
shirts, over the years; she was tired of straight seams. But this box was 
something new, something she'd never made. She had to think how to turn such 
sharp corners—she stopped and called to Ariane.
"Do the corners need to be so square? If we rounded them, then we could put that 
cord here, and make it stronger." Ariane carried away the sample, to talk to 
Dorotea.
Ofelia sat where she was and closed her eyes. She felt divided inside. One 
little voice kept saying I'm not going, I'm not going. But the voice she was 
used to hearing continued to talk about the problem of the fabric boxes. She 
knew how to plan work with others; she knew how to listen to the voice that 
spoke for her when she did. That other voice felt strange.
Ariane came back, with Dorotea. "We'll round the corners, add the cord—anything 
else?"
"No… I was just thinking." Ofelia went back to work, stitching around the 
curves, her fingers automatically shifting the material through the machine. She 
had the box almost complete when she realized how hard it was going to be to sew 
stickystrips on the rim now that it had been sewn to the sides.
"We'll tell the others to sew the stickystrips on first," Ariane said. "You 
should rest now—it's past lunchtime."
She had not noticed. She had always enjoyed figuring out ways to do things, 
though usually someone just gave her directions. She had followed the 
directions; now she followed Ariane, slowly, aware of the kink in her shoulders 
from hunching over the machine.
"Will you eat with us?" Ariane asked. Ofelia shook her head.
"I should go home; Barto will want me. But I'll come back later. "Ariane gave 
her a little hug; for the first time Ofelia could feel the bones through 
Ariane's flesh. She looked at her daughter's friend. Ariane was aging; she had 
hardly noticed before, but there were gray streaks in Ariane's hair. In Ofelia's 
mind, she had stayed the same age as Adelia—who had never aged past twenty, when 
she died.
At home, Barto and Rosara were out somewhere; the house felt peaceful and cool 
without them. Ofelia laid the stack of completed mending on their bed, and went 
into her own room. Someone had dumped all her clothes onto her bed, pushing them 
into messy piles. Underwear, shirts, skirts, the one dress. She hated seeing her 
clothes like that. Underwear always looked vaguely indecent, even if it was 
plain and old, like hers. Limp unattractive shapes of beige and white, designed 
only to cover twice what her baggy clothes would have covered anyway.
She was not going. She would not have to wear underwear once there was no one to 
be scandalized because she did not. She felt her heart pounding, and a delicious 
sense of wickedness rose from between her toes to the top of her scalp, bathing 
her in heat. She went back to the living room and looked down the lane. Nothing. 
They would be eating in the center, more than likely.
Ofelia went back to her room and shut the door. She had no window in her room. 
Stealthily, she took off her clothes. In broad daylight, her public voice 
scolded. For no reason. Her new voice, the one that said she wasn't going, said 
nothing. For an instant, breathing hard, she stood naked in her room, and then 
she slipped her outer clothes back on, leaving a pile of underclothes on the 
floor. Indecent! shrieked her public voice. Shameless! Disgusting!
She could feel the skin on her belly, on her hips, on her thighs, touching the 
cloth of her skirt. She took a tentative step, then another. A little draft 
between her legs, coolness where she was used to heat.
No! her public voice told her. You can't do that.
The private new voice said nothing. It didn't have to say anything. She could 
not do it now, not while other people were there to condemn. But later… later 
she would wear only what felt good on her body. Whatever that was.
Quickly, without paying attention to herself or her feelings of distaste, she 
undressed and dressed again, properly. The underclothes, all of them. The outer 
clothes, all of them. For now. For twenty-nine more days.
She had just dressed, and refolded her clothes into neater stacks, when Barto 
and Rosara came back. They had a new grievance.
"They say you are too old," Barto said, glowering at her as if she had chosen 
that age on that day. "Retired," Rosara said. "Too old to work." Ridiculous. She 
had always worked; she would work until she died; that's what people did. 
"Seventy," Barto said. "You're no longer on contract, and they say it will cost 
them to send you somewhere else, and you won't be of use to the colony anyway"
It did not surprise her, but it angered her. Useless? Did they think she was of 
no use now, because she had no formal job, and only kept the garden and the 
house, and did most of the cooking?
"They are going to charge our account," Rosara said.
"We will have to pay back the cost of shipping you."
"There was a retirement guarantee in the contract."
Barto said, "but when you didn't remarry, didn't have more children, you lost a 
portion of it."
They had not told her that. They had said she would lose her productivity bonus, 
even though she kept working full time. They had said nothing about retirement. 
But of course, they made the rules. And with this rule, perhaps they had made it 
easy for her to stay behind.
"I could just stay here," Ofelia said. "Then they wouldn't charge you—"
"Of course you can't stay here!" Barto slammed his fist on the table, and the 
dishes rattled. "An old woman, alone—you would die."
"I will die anyway," Ofelia said. "That's what they mean. And if I stayed, it 
wouldn't cost you anything."
"But, mama! You can't think I'd leave you here to die alone. You know I love 
you." Barto looked as if he might cry, his great red face crumpling with the 
effort to project filial devotion.
"I might die alone anyway, in the cryo. Isn't it supposed to be more dangerous 
for old people?" She could see by the look on his face that he knew that 
already, had probably just been told that.
"That would be better than dying here, the only person on the whole planet," 
Barto said.
"I would be with your father," Ofelia said. It was an argument that might work 
with Barto, who remembered his father as a godlike person who could do no wrong. 
But she hated herself for the lie, even as she said it.
"Mama, don't be sentimental! Papa's dead. He's been dead for—" Barto had to stop 
and work it out; Ofelia knew. Thirty-six years.
"I don't want to leave his grave," Ofelia said. Having begun, she could not 
stop. "And the others—" The other two boys, the girl who had died in infancy, 
Adelia. Over those graves she had cried real tears, and she could cry over them 
now.
"Mama!" Barto stepped toward her, but Rosara came between them.
"Barto. Let her alone. Of course it matters to her, her own children, your 
father—" At least Rosara had it in the right order. "And besides—" But trust 
Rosara to ruin the effect; she was going to explain that it would, after all, be 
a solution, even though they could not allow it. "If she did stay," Rosara said, 
fulfilling Ofelias expectation, "then we would not have to pay—"
"No!" Barto slapped Rosara; Ofelia had prudently backed away, and Rosaras 
backward stagger didn't hurt her. "She is my mother; I'm not leaving her here."
Ofelia said, "I'm going to the center to sew the fabric boxes." Barto would not 
follow her into the open; he never did. He might think her remark was 
capitulation, too.
That evening, neither Barto nor Rosara mentioned the incident. Ofelia said she 
had completed a fabric box, and would do more tomorrow. "If the machines produce 
enough fabric, we can make a box for each person in the colony. It will be 
difficult, in the short time, but—"
"Rosara will help tomorrow," Barto said.
Rosara sewed slowly and clumsily. "The machines are all busy," Ofelia said. "I 
can make the other boxes for our family"
"And I am supposed to report for vocational testing tomorrow," Rosara said.
"It is ridiculous to test you before me," Barto said. That began a tirade 
against the Company. Ofelia didn't listen. After eating, she scraped the dishes 
and carried out the scraps to the garden. She had not been in the garden since 
dawn; she drew a deep breath of the evening scents. There was just enough light 
to see the slidebug’s web between the rows, and avoid it. When she came back to 
the kitchen door, she peeked. Empty. The door to Rosara and Barto's room was 
shut. That suited her. She cleaned the dishes and set them to dry.
In the morning, her first thought was Twenty-eight days. Her second thought was 
I'm not going, I will be free in twenty-eight days.
She had wakened early, as always, and when she came into the garden the dawn 
mists still blurred her view down the lane. Plant by plant she examined the 
garden: the beans, with their tiny fragrant flowers, the tomatoes, the young 
spears of corn, the exuberant vines of gourds. Some of the tomato flowers had 
opened, curling back their petals like tiny lilies.
She heard brisk steps coming down the lane, and crouched. A Company rep went by, 
hardly glancing over the garden fence. After that, she hurried her garden work, 
plucking off the leaf-eaters and stem-suckers. She knew Barto would scold if he 
found her working in the garden now, when the work was useless. He might even be 
angry, and destroy the plants. When Barto and Rosara came out of their bedroom, 
she had breakfast on the table. She smiled at them.
"I'm just leaving for the center I'll be there all day, I expect, sewing."
All day, sewing with the other women, in the rooms full of machines and women 
and children, shaping the bright cloth into fabric boxes, When her shoulders 
tired, someone always noticed and came to knead them and take a turn at the 
machine. Ofelia sat for awhile in a padded rocker in the passage, telling 
stories to small children. They were not her grandchildren, but she had been 
telling stories to small children for so long it didn't matter. Here, with 
everyone talking as they worked, speculating on where they might be sent, and 
what it would be like, she could hardly remember she wasn't going. The-women all 
called her Sera Ofelia, and asked her advice. She began to think she would be 
with them always, always have these toddlers crawling into her lap, always have 
some younger woman confiding a problem with her husband or a quarrel with a 
neighbor.
Only that night, in her bed, her skin remembered the feel of clothes without 
underclothes. Her hands swept across her belly, her sides. She was old… her 
public voice said that, the voice that knew what to say in the center to the 
other women. She was old and wrinkled and beyond any of the feelings that she 
had felt in her youth, when she had been in love with Caitano and then Humberto. 
That was what the public voice said. But the private voice, the new voice, said 
I'm not going. They'll be gone, and I'll be here. Alone. Free.
The next morning she woke remembering that it was now twenty-seven days. And 
that day, and the next, and the next, fit the same pattern. She spent the days 
at the center, helping everyone else make the fabric boxes, helping them decide 
what to take and what to leave, holding the little children when they were 
frightened, telling stories to the older children. In the days she was one of 
them, one of the group being torn away from everything they had built in forty 
years, helpless and hopeless but still enduring. In the nights, she was herself, 
a strange person she did not know, a person she might just remember, from 
childhood.
Then it was five days. Only, the Company had lied again, and already the shuttle 
was on its way back to orbit with the first passengers: thirty days to clear the 
planet, not until the first ones left. Each colonist had a number, in order of 
evacuation. Mothers and children first, because children were troublesome until 
out of the way. Single adults last. Ofelia gave a last hug to the children who 
thought of her as grandmother, and waved as they were led into the shuttle.
Another shuttle landed within the hour. The Company reps had explained how it 
would be, how perfect the schedule. By the time each new shuttle-load arrived at 
the ship, the previous load would have had its possessions marked and stored, 
and be already in the cryo tanks. Ten shuttle loads a day for five days, and the 
last shuttle would lift in time to make the legal deadline.
Ofelia had not thought how quickly the colony would seem empty. By the end of 
the first day, it reminded her of the terror after the first great flood, when 
so many had died. By the end of the second, she and the others looked at each 
other wide-eyed. The Company reps moved among them, keeping them busy, 
preventing panic. Ofelia still had meals to cook and clean up after—she would go 
up with the last shuttle, the reps reminded her. Rosara and Barto, protesting 
this separation, were scheduled for the first shuttle on the last day. She heard 
them try to explain that she could not be trusted, that she was old, that she 
forgot things. The Company reps glanced her way, and she looked down, as if she 
had not heard. She knew they would not care.
On that last day, the alarm woke them all much earlier than usual. It was still 
dark; the morning fog lay cool and damp against her skin as she walked with 
Barto and Rosara to the landing field. They joined the end of the line. A 
shuttle landed, its lights blurry glows in the darkness. The line stirred into 
motion. The moment came. Rosara hugged her, fiercely. Barto said "Mama…" in an 
uncertain voice, a boys voice.
"I love you," Ofelia said, and pushed them away. "Don't be late. They will be 
angry if you're late."
"Don't you be late," Barto said. He stared at her as if trying to see inside her 
head, hear the new little voice which sang of freedom.
"It's all right, Barto," she said. By the time he found out it wasn't, it would 
be too late. When that shuttle took off, she had the whole day until her own… 
the one she would not take. She walked back, past the line forming for the next 
shuttle, and went into the house. Her house, now. The new voice was louder, more 
insistent. She would have to find a place to hide—the Company reps would make at 
least a token search for her. They would not leave her behind easily; if they 
found her, they would force her onto the shuttle.
Behind the house, beyond the garden, lay a strip of pasture. Beyond that, the 
lanky plants that ventured out from the native scrub to dare a bout with 
terraforming soil bacteria. Behind, the wall of native plants… first head-high 
scrub, then the high ramparts of the forest. If she could get across the pasture 
unseen, she would be invisible. They would not search long. They would curse and 
call… and then they would leave.
In the first gray light of dawn, in the morning fog, Ofelia set off with several 
days' supply of food in a pillowcase, and a small sack of seeds. If they 
destroyed her garden, she could replant… she did not think further than that.
The pasture felt springy beneath her feet, the wet grass brushed her legs, 
wetting her skirt. She realized she might leave a trail, dark against the 
dew-silvered grass, if anyone looked too early this morning. Perhaps they would 
think it was an animal. In the distance, she heard one of the sheep bleat, and 
wondered if they would leave the sheep alive. She hoped so. She liked knitting 
and crocheting. The tall weedy growths beyond the pasture swiped at her with 
rough wet leaves, soaking her skirt to the hip. Behind her, she heard voices 
calling—not her, but a warning to those who should catch the next shuttle. Then 
darkness loomed out of the fog, and she passed between the first tall shrubs.
She sat down to rest once she was well into the trees; it was too dark here to 
walk anyway, and she had already stumbled over enough roots and knobs. Light 
filtered through the canopy, revealing more shapes and colors as the sun rose 
higher. Something very high up moved along the branches, rattling and squeaking. 
Ofelia stirred, but did not move.
Soon the sun began to burn away the fog. When she could see well enough, she got 
up and walked on, slowly, picking her way to save her feet any more bruises. She 
had been to the forest before, after Humberto died; she had discovered then that 
she could always find her way back. No one else had believed her; they had 
worried and nagged so that she finally quit making those trips. But she had no 
fear she would get lost.
When she felt hungry, she sat down and ate from her sack of food. She dug a 
little hole to use, and piled leaves back over it when she was done. As the 
light waned, in the afternoon, she piled sticks and leaves to make herself a 
nest for the night. Her shuttle had been supposed to leave just after sundown. 
She expected another shuttle would come for the Company reps. She would not go 
home for two days.



CHAPTER THREE
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If they called, she did not hear them. If they searched, they did not come her 
way. She lay awake long after dark, waiting, and heard nothing of humans but the 
departing roar of the shuttle. Closer, she heard rustlings in the leaves, 
something falling through the limbs above her, hitting one after another until 
it smacked into the ground an unknown distance away. A soft whirr, like a 
muffled alarm. A resonant sound like a stone dropped on another, repeating at 
intervals. Her heart raced and slowed, as exhaustion burned her eyes and wore 
out her fear. When she fell asleep at last, she had no idea how long the night 
would last.
Before dawn, she woke cold and damp at the sound of another shuttle landing; she 
could not go back to sleep, even though she forced herself to close her eyes. 
When the first light came, she wasn't sure if it was real; she half-believed her 
eyes were making it up, tired of the dark. Slowly the nearby trees took form, 
dim shapes lifting overhead, dark against colorless light. When the morning 
light was strong enough that she could see the rust-orange and pale green of the 
patchy growths on the tree nearest her, she heard the shuttle taking off, its 
roar vanishing into the sky above the trees.
It should be the last one. She could not be sure, though. If they had lied to 
the people; if they had wanted to take back more things from the 
buildings—equipment, machines, she couldn't guess—then they would have to send 
more shuttles. She had no idea how long it would take them to set the spaceship 
itself in motion. She should hide at least another day.
She wished she had brought dry clothes; she had not thought how wet she might 
be, or how stiff. She did not feel free, from having slept on the ground in the 
open; she felt sticky and miserable, her joints aching sharply. When it finally 
occurred to her that she could take off the damp garments sticking to her skin, 
she laughed aloud, then stopped abruptly, a hand to her mouth. Barto had not 
liked it when she laughed for no reason. She waited, listening; when no voice 
scolded, she felt her body relax, her hand drop from her mouth. She was safe, at 
least from that. She peeled the clothes off, peering around to be sure no one 
watched.
In the dim light, her skin gleamed, paler than anything around it. If someone 
had stayed behind—if someone were looking—he would know at once she was naked. 
She did not look at herself; she looked at her clothes as she shook them out. 
Perhaps she could hang them somewhere. She flinched as a drop of water fell onto 
her bare shoulder, whirling around at the touch. Then it struck her as funny, 
and she giggled soundlessly at herself, unable to stop until her sides ached.
That had warmed her. She felt odd, more aware of the air touching her than 
anything else, but neither hot nor cold. When another drop of water struck her 
between the shoulders, and trickled down her spine, she shivered. It felt good. 
She hung her shirt and underclothes over a drooping length of vine, then folded 
her skirt into a pad to sit on. It was still unpleasantly damp, but it touched 
her only where she sat, and the heat of her body warmed it. She took out 
yesterdays flatbread, the chunk of sausage, and ate it hungrily. Today it tasted 
different, as if it were a strange food, something new. The water in her flask 
tasted different too, in a way she could not define.
After eating, she dug another little hole and used it. Perhaps she need not—if 
she was the only person in the world now, who could be offended by her 
waste?—but lifelong habit insisted that people did something with their output. 
When she was sure the others had gone—truly gone, forever—she would see if the 
recycler would work for her. For now she pushed the reddish dirt, the 
odd-colored leaves, back over the hole.
As the day warmed, Ofelia tired of sitting still; she missed the familiar 
routine of her days, the gardening and cooking, the chores she had performed so 
long. It would have been nice to have a fire, to be able to cook, but she had no 
way to make a fire, and would not risk detection from the smoke. Lacking that 
possibility, she began picking up sticks, arranging them, almost without 
thinking. A little platform of crossed sticks, to keep her pack off the damp 
forest floor. There, a larger fallen limb, its bark already rotted away… it 
would make a comfortable brace at the back of the next hole she dug. She tidied 
the little space in which she had settled, arranging it to suit her. It took on 
more and more the shape and feel of a room, a safe place.
At noon, when the few rays of direct sun fell straight onto her head, she paused 
to eat again, and look around. Her water flask nestled into the hollow between 
two roots; she had picked large flat leaves to shade it. Another flat leaf 
served as a platter for her meal. She had contrived a comfortable seat, after 
several tries, from limbs propped against each other and a tree trunk, padded 
with her folded skirt. Her nakedness still bothered her; she felt every movement 
of the air, even the movements she made. Finally she had pulled on her 
underclothes, grimacing, a little ashamed to need privacy from nothing but her 
own awareness, and her shirt over them. She left off the long skirt that now 
served as a pillow. But her bare feet felt right.
Sometime in the afternoon, a rainstorm came up. In the colony, it had been 
possible to see storms coming. But under the forest canopy, Ofelia had no 
warning except the shadow and rush of wind that preceded a downpour. She had 
been out in rain before; she was not afraid of getting wet. When it was over, 
she would dry out again.
But she had not been in the forest in a storm before. At first, she heard only 
the wind, and assumed the water, as the canopy absorbed the first rain. Then the 
saturated canopy leaked. Just when she thought the rain might be over (light 
returned, the thunder rumbled in the distance only), this lower rain found her. 
Drop by drop, drizzling trickle by trickling stream, until she was soaked, as 
evening came on. Because she had hunched in her improvised seat, the skirt under 
her was no wetter than before, but also no drier. Her sack of food, covered with 
large leaves, still seemed damp; the flatcake tasted stale and soggy. She did 
not want to lie down on the wet forest floor to sleep; she did not want to sit 
there awake all night either. Finally she rested her head against the tree 
trunk, and slept fitfully, waking at every unfamiliar sound,
By first light, she had decided that she could not stand another wet night in 
the forest. Not without supplies she had not brought. She wanted to complain to 
someone, insist that it wasn't her fault. She had never run away before; she 
couldn't be expected to get it all right the first time.
Until then, the lack of voices had not bothered her. She had been told her 
hearing was going… or her mind; Barto couldn't decide which. She had been able 
to hear what she wanted to hear, usually; she had often wished for silence. On 
the rare nights that Barto did not snore, and Rosara did not wake three or four 
times to stumble noisily to the toilet, she had lain awake reveling in the 
silence.
And the silence of that first day had not bothered her, because she did not hear 
it as silence. Inside, she had the bickering voices, the public voice that said 
predictable things, and the new private voice that said unimaginable things. 
Outside had been the progression of shuttle flight noises, one after another. On 
the second day, the sound of her own actions—the noises she had made dragging 
limbs, picking up sticks, breathing and eating and drinking—comforted her 
without her noticing, mixed as they were with the voices inside.
Not until she wanted an answer did she notice the silence.
It was a wall It was a presence, not an absence… a pressure on her ears that 
made her swallow nervously, as if that could clear them. Silence wrapped its 
hands around her head, muffling and smothering.
When the panic subsided, she was standing rigid, mouth open, gasping for air… 
she could not remember what question she had thought to ask, that needed 
another's answer. Her ears reported that they had sound enough: rustling in the 
leaves, the drip of water, that stonelike resonant plonk. But those sounds 
carried no meaning, and the voices in her head, both the familiar and the new, 
held silence in her fear. Finally one of them—which, she did not notice—said Go 
home now. Said it firmly, with no doubts.
Ofelia looked around her room, and picked up her folded skirt. She shook it out, 
and stepped into it without thinking. She picked up the sack of supplies. Time 
to go home, even before full daylight. Her feet knew the way, through the 
strands of fog that obscured her vision, over the knotted roots, around the 
trees and stones. Light grew around her as she came to the edge of the forest, 
where the lower brush grew, and by the time she came to the edge of the cleared 
ground, soaked once more with morning dew, she could just see the dark shapes of 
the town's buildings through the fading mist.
She paused at the edge of that open grassy stretch, calmer now and remembering 
why she should not simply walk home. Here it was much quieter than in the 
forest. A breath of air flowed past her, carrying the smell of sheep somewhere 
to her right. No human sound. No voices. No machines. Would they be waiting for 
her to return? Was someone in the houses, in the center, holding his breath, 
watching her through some special machine and waiting for her to come within 
range?
She felt warmth on her right cheek and neck, the sun burning the mist away. Cool 
damp and warmth alternated, and then the sun won, and bright light shone on the 
town. Her house lay ahead—she had retraced her path so exactly that if her marks 
on the dew two mornings before had remained, she might have stepped into them as 
into familiar socks. But nothing marred the sweep of dull silver.
She stepped into the wet grass. She wanted to get home, and out of her wet 
clothes.
She changed from her wet clothes first, and used the bathroom for a hot shower. 
After that, she considered her clothes. What did she feel like wearing? Indoors… 
nothing. But she wanted to go into her garden, and she was not yet ready to stay 
outside naked. She pulled on a shirt. What she wanted to wear with it was short 
pants, like those she had worn as a child, those she had made for Barto. In his 
room—not his room, my room she told herself—she found a pair of long pants he 
had not taken. She found her scissors and cut the legs short, but did not stop 
to hem them. When she tried them on, they were too big in the waist, but she did 
not mind the feeling as they rode low on her hips. Better than her underclothes 
or her skirt.
Leaf-nibblers had been at work on the garden in those two days, but all the 
tomato flowers had opened. Ofelia worked her way from plant to plant, capturing 
the caterpillars to feed later, breaking the three slime-rods she found among 
the squash, squashing the aphids on the beans. She paid little attention to the 
time, until her stomach growled and she realized she was hungry.
She ate a cold snack from the cooler. In only two days, nothing had spoiled even 
though the light didn't come on. She flicked the kitchen light switch: again 
nothing. But the water had been hot… she puzzled over that until she remembered 
that the water tanks used the same insulation as the coolers. If the cooler 
could stay cold, the hot water could stay hot. Then she set out to find what had 
happened in the rest of the colony.
It felt strange—almost indecent—to be looking into windows and opening doors 
when the people who lived in those houses were not home to say Welcome, Sera 
Ofelia or Our house is your house, Sera Ofelia. No one had locked a door—the 
doors had no locks, anyway, only latches to keep small children in or out—and 
the first two or three times she pushed one open, she felt shy. Later it became 
a game; she felt deliciously wicked, the way she'd felt when she first took off 
her clothes and considered not wearing them. Now she could look under the 
Senyagins'bed. Now she could open Linda's closets and see if her housekeeping 
was as muddled as her mind. (It was—she found items that Linda would be sorry 
not to have when she woke up in another world, shoved in behind dirty laundry.) 
In the bright day, she hurried from house to house, flinging open doors that 
were shut, letting the light in, letting herself in. All the gardens looked the 
same as they had two days before. Dayvine's scarlet trumpets open… tomatoes and 
beans and squash and peas and chard… all the plants she could want, more than 
she could ever eat, producing more seed than she would ever need. She made note 
of certain ones: the special blue bean that the Senyagins had brought on their 
own, not part of colony seedstock, and traded at a high price. She would have 
that in her own garden at last. Melons here… the giant gourd there; she had 
never grown either giant gourds or melons, but she had traded for them. 
Lemongrass… herbs… she had always grown some cilantro and peppers for herself, 
but not tarragon and basil and parsley and dill. She would have to keep a close 
eye on the herb garden; the colony had had only one.
The center too stood open. The long sewing tables were littered with scraps and 
lengths of fabric. All the machines had been turned off, and did not come on 
when she pushed the buttons. She went to the door of the powerplant control 
room. It was closed but not locked; she pushed it open. A skylight let in ample 
light; she went to the big switches, all set at off, and pushed them on. More 
light sprang out around her. The control panel was alight now, and all the 
markers were in green segments. She knew what that meant; they all did. Every 
adult had learned to run the powerplant; it was too important to leave to a few 
specialists.
Now the centers machines would work, and the cooler and lights at home. While 
she was there, Ofelia checked the levels in the waste recycler. She might need 
to replenish the tanks sometime; one person might not make enough waste to keep 
the powerplant running. But so far the levels had not dropped enough to measure.
From the center, Ofelia went cautiously toward the shuttle field. If the Company 
still waited to trap her, this might be where they waited. She kept to the edge 
of the lane as far as the last buildings. From here she could see down to the 
shuttle field, its surface scuffed and bruised by the heavy traffic of the past 
week, but otherwise empty. No vehicles moved; she saw and heard no one. The 
breeze blew across it toward her; she smelled nothing fresh in the faint scent 
of oils and fuels. A nearer stench of decay drew her. She followed it to a 
firepit where she supposed the Company reps had feasted on the colony's sheep, 
or some of them. Eight or nine badly butchered corpses lay rotting, the fleeces 
in a separate pile, stiff and bloody. Ofelia scowled. It was a waste of good 
wool and leather, leaving them like that.
Still, it gave her a load for the waste recycler, and it would be no easier if 
she waited. The smell kept her appetite at bay, though it was noon. First she 
went back to the waste recycler for the long protective gloves she had been 
taught to use when handling animal waste. Slowly, laboriously, she dragged the 
sheep carcasses and refuse into one pile. Then she looked again at the few 
vehicles, the old logging trucks and utility wagons near the shuttle field. 
Would they work? She had not driven any machine for years, but she knew how.
They might still be in orbit. They might notice if she started an engine; they 
might have noticed when she started the powerplant again. Would they come back? 
She could always hide in the forest again, this time taking her rain cape and 
dry clothes—but why would they?
Still—she walked back to the third house on this side of the village and found 
the Arramandys' garden cart in their shed. Moving the sheep carcasses to the 
waste recycler took her the rest of the afternoon. The cart would hold two at a 
time, and she found buckets for the slimy, bloated guts and organs. With all her 
care, some of the stinking mess got onto her clothes. When she had finished, she 
washed the gloves, dipped them in disinfectant, and then stripped off her 
clothes, not touching the wet places. She would have to disinfect them, too.
She could do better than that. Grinning, she picked up the clothes with a stick, 
and shoved them, too, into the intake hopper. Then she showered in the 
convenient shower, and dried herself on the big gray towels that hung there for 
anyone who needed them. She considered wrapping one around herself for the walk 
home… or she could duck into someone's house and find real clothes.
Or. Or she could walk naked down the street where she had lived, where no one 
lived now to tell the tale. She padded to the open door and looked out. 
Twilight: the sun had sunk behind the distant forest. No one in the street, no 
one in the houses. Her belly tightened with excitement, with daring. Could she? 
She would someday, she knew that, had known it since that new voice first spoke 
inside her. And if she could do it someday, why not now, tonight, when it would 
still be a thrill?
She dropped the towel in a heap, and took one step. No. She turned, picked up 
the towel, and went back inside to hang it up. If she was going to walk down the 
street with no clothes on, she would start here, at the shower. In the building, 
already dim with evening, she felt safe enough. At the door she paused again. 
No? Yes? She did not have to hurry. She could stand there a long time, until it 
was dark if she wanted. Until no one could see, even if everyone had been there.
But she would know. And she wanted to know. One step, out from under the 
doorframe. Another step, out from under the shadow of the eaves. Another and 
another, away from that building, and into the lane, along the lane… and no eyes 
peered from the dark windows, no voices rose to shame her. The cool twilight air 
touched her everywhere, on her back and sides and breasts and belly, all along 
her arms and legs, between her legs. It felt—when she calmed enough to 
notice—very pleasant.
Then she saw the lights of the center warm against the blue dusk. Fear chilled 
her; she could scarcely breathe. Idiot! How could she have been so stupid? If 
anyone was up there in orbit, if they were watching, they would surely see it. 
They would know; they might come back.
She hurried now, no longer aware of her bare skin, rushing in to find the light 
switches and turn them off. Then home, where she put out her hand and had the 
switch in her fingers before she remembered. She stood there a moment, her 
muscles cramping with the effort of stopping a familiar movement, before she 
could take her hand away without moving the switch. Her heart pounded; she could 
feel the pulse of her fear throughout her body. As her heart slowed, as she 
calmed, she scolded herself. Foolish, foolish. She could not afford to forget 
things; there was no one to remind her any more.
She ate a cold supper in the darkness inside the house. At least she was inside 
now, and if it rained she would not get wet. She closed the shutters, making the 
inside even darker, and felt her way to her bed. Her room felt tiny, airless. 
Tomorrow she would move to Barto and Rosara's room, the room she had shared with 
her husband until he died. But tonight—tonight she would not blunder around in 
the dark. She pulled down the covers by feel, and was almost asleep when she 
remembered.
She had not been alone like this… in her whole life. She wondered for a long 
moment that she was not frightened, alone in the dark, the only person on the 
whole planet. Not frightened at all… she felt safe, safer than she could 
remember being. She fell asleep as her body found the familiar hollows of her 
bed.
In the morning, as she woke in her own bed in her own house, the familiar smells 
around her, she did not remember what had happened. She rose as usual, fumbled 
her way to the light switch in her room, and only when it came on realized that 
she was naked, and why. The past few days felt dreamlike, unreal. She caught up 
the robe hanging on its hook, and slipped into it before opening the door, 
half-expecting to hear snores from Barto and Rosara's room.
Silence greeted her, the absolute silence of a house in which no one dwells. She 
looked anyway. Already their bedroom looked different, a room in which no one 
had lived for some time. Barto had not wanted to waste their packing allotment 
on linens, so the bed still had the cream bedspread with the broad red stripe, 
and the pillows in red cases. The open closet gaped, a blind mouth with a 
rumpled sock for a tongue; Ofelia grinned, thinking how Barto would complain 
when he unpacked and found a sock missing. She picked it up, shut the closet 
door, and latched it. It never had stayed shut on its own. The room still looked 
strange, and she could not say why. A film of dew slicked the windowsill; as she 
looked, a slidebug dropped from the ceiling, trailing its tether.
In the kitchen, the cooler hummed blandly. Ofelia ignored it and went out into 
the garden. Here all felt the same, the plants responding to light and warmth 
with another day's growth. She worked her way down the rows, enjoying the 
silence. Somewhere a sheep bleated, and others answered. Far off, on the far 
side of the settlement, one of the cattle mooed. These sounds had never bothered 
her; they did not shatter her peace. She did think she ought to find the cattle 
and the sheep, and see if any of them needed anything.
But in the meantime, there was the warm sun on her head, and the smell of bean 
blossoms, tomato plants, and the dayvine flowers. When she felt too hot, she let 
the robe fall open, and finally discarded it, hanging it on a hook in the 
toolshed. The sun felt like a great warm hand cradling her body; old aches 
seemed to vanish. When she went back inside, she felt a little feverish. 
Sunburn, she warned herself, as she opened the cooler. She would have to be 
careful, at least at first.
After breakfast, she cleaned out the cooler, throwing the stale food into the 
compost trench. She should check the other coolers. Most of them could be 
unplugged, kept as spares should she need them. It would be convenient to have a 
cooler in the center, and perhaps on the far side of the town, for when she went 
to tend to the cattle.
Most of the coolers had some kind of food in them. Ofelia cleaned them 
methodically, collecting anything stale or spoiled for compost. She carried the 
good food—the hard sausages, the smoked meats, the cheeses and pickled 
vegetables—back to her own house. She was already thinking which gardens to 
maintain, which to abandon, which to replant for grain for the sheep and cattle. 
She spent the entire day at this, uncomfortably aware of food spoiling 
somewhere… something she might not find in time. Not until late afternoon did 
she realize that even if she found no more, she would still have plenty. It 
would be a nuisance to clean out smelly coolers later, but she did not have to 
push herself.
At that thought, she quit work at once, and left the Falares' cooler standing 
open, half-cleaned. She had already unplugged it. She went into the bathroom she 
still thought of as "theirs" and took a shower. It still felt daring, defiant, 
to use the facilities in someone else's home, even though the Falareses would 
never know. Still in that defiant mood, she left wet footprints across their 
tile floor and strolled back down the lane, making herself go slowly.
In the east, a storm was building, a tower of cloud snowy white at its peak, and 
dark blue-gray below. It would rain this evening; such storms moved inland from 
the coast every day or so in early summer. In the west, the highlands rose, step 
by step to distant mountains, but she could not see beyond the forest wall. She 
had heard about it—the map on the center wall showed the photomosaic made by the 
survey satellites before the colony was planted.
When she came into her house, the first puffs of wind before the storm tickled 
the back of her legs. She glanced back outside. Clouds obscured more than half 
the sky. Surely the ship, if it was still there, couldn't see her lights. She 
didn't want to spend another evening in the dark; she wanted to cook herself a 
good supper. She turned the lights on with the same feeling of defiance that had 
driven her to use the Falares' shower.
The storm rumbled, drifting nearer. Ofelia closed the shutters in the bedroom, 
leaving those in the kitchen open. She cooked with one eye on the outside, 
waiting for the wind and rain. When it came, her sausages were sizzling with 
onions and peppers and sliced potatoes; she scooped the hot mix into a fresh 
round of flatbread, and sat near the kitchen door, listening to the rain in the 
garden.
Soon the darkening evening filled with the sounds of water: the rush of the rain 
itself, the drumming on the roof, the melodious drip from eaves onto the doors 
tones, the gurgle of water moving in the house ditches to the drain beyond. Much 
better than in the forest. Ofelia finished the last of her supper, and rested 
her back against the doorpost. A fine spray of water brushed her face and arms 
as the water rebounded from the ground outside. She licked it off her lips: more 
refreshing than any shower.
The rain continued until after dark. Ofelia finally got up, grunting at her 
stiff back and legs, and moved her pillow into the other bedroom. The slidebug 
had spent the day making a web in the corner; she smacked it with her shoe—the 
only good use of a shoe, she told herself happily—and tore down the web. 
Slidebugs were not venomous, but their clawed legs prickled, and she had no 
desire to be wakened by it in the dark.
When she lay down, the bed felt odd. She had slept in this bed when Humberto was 
alive, but had given it up to Barto and Stefan a year or two later. By the time 
Stefan died, Barto had considered the room his, and he had invited his first 
wife Elise to live there. Ofelia had not complained; she had liked Elise, who 
had died in the second big flood. But then, Barto had married Rosara… so it had 
been twenty years or more since she'd slept in the big bed. Her body had become 
used to the narrow one. It took some time tossing and turning and stretching to 
find her balance in the larger space.
Waking to the light filtering through shutters… she stretched luxuriously. Her 
skin itched slightly, and when she looked it had a faint flush. She would have 
to wear a shirt again today. But when she looked at her shirts, none of them 
pleased her. She thought of the houses she'd been in, the things left behind. At 
Lindas, there'd been a fringed shawl. Somewhere near there—her mind refused to 
come up with the name—someone had left a soft blue shirt behind. Or she could 
make herself a shirt with the leftover fabric in the center.
Not today. Today she would scavenge again, because she wanted to clear out more 
of the coolers and find what else useful had been left. She went out into the 
morning coolness and the fog left behind the rain, no longer worried that 
someone might see and criticize.
The damp eased her sunburn; even when she found the blue shirt she remembered, 
embroidered with little pink flowers, she hesitated to put it on. Inside, she 
didn't need it. She wore it like a cape that day, throwing it over her shoulders 
when she went from house to house and leaving it off inside.
In the afternoon, she remembered again that she needed to look for the cattle on 
the other side of the settlement, near the river. She could check the pump 
intakes at the same time. She picked up a hat someone had discarded, and slung 
the shirt over her shoulders.
The cattle had been pastured between the settlement and the river, where 
terraforming grasses grew rank in the damp soil. She had had nothing to do with 
them for years, and had not realized that a stout calf-pen had been built to 
confine the calves. No one had thought to release them, but two cows had jumped 
the gate. A third grazed nearby. Inside the pen were two healthy calves, and one 
that looked thin and ribby. As she watched, it tried to sneak a feed from one of 
the cows, who butted it away. Ofelia looked at the cow outside the pen. She was 
not a herder but she thought its udder already looked tighter than those of the 
cows inside. Farther off, by the river, she saw the brown backs of the other 
cattle grazing. Perhaps it would be all right. Ofelia didn't want to worry about 
it. She opened the gate, standing behind it as the hungry cows surged forward, 
leading their calves out to grass. The other cow went to her calf, licked it all 
over. The calf grabbed a teat and started sucking, but Ofelia saw none of the 
milky foam on its muzzle that would mean it was getting milk.
Her conscience scolded her. It's your fault, Ofelia. If only you had bothered to 
look, even yesterday. It's because you're selfish. Willful. Vain. She walked 
over to check the water trough in the pen, even though she didn't intend to 
close any animals in it again. She noticed that the voice of her conscience 
sounded less like her own and more like… whose? Barto's? Humbertos? No, because 
it was older and not completely male. It had shadings of feminine ire, too. She 
was too tired to worry about it; she only noticed that it had been gone for 
several days, and now it was back. That evening, in the cool twilight, she sat 
at the kitchen door sniffing the healthy smells from her garden. The new voice 
murmured, happily, much in the tone of the water that had run in the 
house-ditch. The old voice lay silent as a sleeping cat. The new voice talked to 
itself: free, free, free… quiet… lovely, free, free.
She dreamed. She had a yellow dress, with ruffles on the shoulders, and yellow 
socks that matched. She had two yellow bows in her hair. She had a plaid 
bookbag… it was her first day of school. Her mother had stayed up late finishing 
the dress and the bows. She felt excited, eager. Last year Paulo had started 
school, and now it was her turn.
The room smelled of children and steam; it was in the basement of the crowded 
school, and by noon the ruffles on her yellow dress hung limply. She didn't 
care. They had computers here, real ones, and the children were allowed to touch 
them. Paulo had told her that, but she hadn't believed him. Now she stood in 
front of the computer, her fingers splayed on the touchpad, laughing at the 
colors on the screen. The teacher wanted them to touch the color squares in 
order, but Ofelia had discovered that you could make the colors drift and merge, 
and the screen before her was a riot of color.
Of course, it had been naughty. The teacher had said what to do, and she had 
done something else. That was wrong. She understood that now. But in her dream, 
the swirling colors escaped the screen and colored the room, making her memories 
more vivid than the reality had been. On the other screens, a square of color 
followed a square of color, pure and predictable, red, green, yellow, blue. On 
hers… a mess, the teacher had said, but she had already heard the other children 
exclaim over what she could see for herself. Magnificence, glory, all the things 
they weren't supposed to have.
She woke up with tears still wet on her cheeks, and blinked them out of her 
eyes. Something vividly red swung in and out of view at the window. Dayvine 
trumpets, in the breeze—the vine on that side of the house must have grown a 
foot overnight. Barto had insisted on keeping the house free of vines; she lay 
there and felt a deep happiness work out from her bones at the sight of those 
flowers dancing in the sunlight.



CHAPTER FOUR
Contents - Prev / Next
Internal memo: Gaai Olaani, Sims Bancorp representative aboard sublight vessel 
Diang Zhi, to Division Head, Colonial Operations.
"In accordance with instructions, Colony 3245.12 was evacuated as per 
regulations. See enclosed appendices A for personnel list, B for equipment 
abandoned as uneconomic to recover, C for evidence of indigenous biological 
inhibition of standard terraforming biochemistry, perhaps explaining colony 
failure, including inadequate reproductive rate. Further research into the 
effect of local biologicals on the terraforming process should precede an 
attempt at recolonization. Whoever picks up the franchise might have a claim on 
us if we don't file this."
Internal memo: Moussi Shar, Vice President for Xenexploration to Guillermo 
Ansad, Project Manager,
"I don't care how reliable your agent, this is something they concocted to worry 
us. We know Sims didn't give adequate support of materiel or personnel and they 
planted their people in a flood plain in the path of tropical storms. If the 
cows and sheep are still alive, the terraforming didn't fail. Stick to the 
schedule."
≈ ≈ ≈ 
Ofelia was not even sure which day it was that she lost track of time. She had 
been so busy those first few days—four? Five? And then, when she had all the 
coolers clean and disconnected, when she had checked each building for fire 
hazards, when she had established a routine that felt comfortable, she spent 
some days in a haze of pleasure.
Day after day, she was doing what she wanted. No interruptions. No angry voices. 
No demands that she quit this and start that. Day by day the tomatoes swelled 
from tiny green buttons to fat green globes. Beans pushed out of the wrinkled 
dry bean flowers, lengthened into fattening green strings. Early squash formed 
under the flamboyant flowers and puffed up, balloon-like. She worked in the 
gardens every morning, picking off suckers and leaf-eaters, snapping the 
slimerods, hardly having to think at all.
In the afternoons, she made a regular check of the machinery: the waste 
recycler, the powerplant, the pumps and filters. Though it had not been her duty 
for years, she had no trouble remembering what to do. So far all the gauges and 
readouts were in green zones. The power never flickered; the water never ran 
yellow or murky from the taps. After that daily check, she continued to gather 
what she wanted from the various buildings, storing things mostly in the 
center's sewing rooms. She felt comfortable there; she dozed off sometimes, 
toward late afternoon, waking when the sun sank behind the trees, alert and 
ready for to look for the animals.
That bothered her a little; she did not want the animals to be like children, 
expecting her care. But she would need them, she supposed. She would want meat, 
more than lay frozen in the big center lockers. She would want new wool to spin. 
She did not look forward to washing and carding it. But the sheep had already 
been sheared; she would not have to worry about that until next spring.
Meantime, she made sure every day that she knew where the animals were. Neither 
sheep nor cattle strayed from the pastures; they could not eat the native 
plants. The sheep had been skittish for days after her return; she supposed the 
Company reps had been noisy and clumsy hunting the ones they killed for their 
feast. But they went back to their earlier blind trust in her; she had been 
familiar to them, and now their own shepherds were gone. The cattle, more 
standoffish to begin with, watched her with alert eyes and spread ears when she 
walked through the water meadows, but they did not run.
When she thought about it, she was angry all over again with the Company reps. 
If they had wanted fresh meat, they could have taken it from the community 
freezers; they hadn't had to spook the sheep and leave the mess for her to clean 
up. Even though they had not known she would be there to do the work, they 
should not have left such a mess.
In the evenings, before she was tired enough to sleep, she made herself 
comfortable clothes from the scraps and ends of others. With no one watching, 
she found her fingers straying to brighter colors than she had worn for years. 
The dayvine's red, the remembered yellow of that childhood dress, the fiery 
green of young tomato leaves, the cool pearly green of the swelling globes. 
Barto's hacked-off trousers went into the recycler; she had her own shorts now, 
fringed at the bottom.
The first tomatoes to change color startled her with a recognition of time 
passing. How long had it been? She tried to count back, but she had no events to 
prick her memory after the first few days. The machines could tell her, she 
realized after the first panic. They had an indelible calendar function. And she 
could enter things in the log, if she wished.
She didn't care, really. She would need to know when to plant, although in this 
climate some plants grew year round, and the machines could tell her. No one 
would read her report if she did log it, and she was sure she would not want to 
read her own words.
Finally she opened the log file and looked. It had been thirty-two days. That 
seemed too long. She tapped the screen suspiciously. The numbers didn't change. 
She scrolled back, to the last regular log report, counting the days on her 
fingers to be sure. Yes: the last entry had been thirty-two days back, a terse 
comment. "Log copied onto cube for transport; colony abandoned; surviving 
personnel evacuated" Back another thirty days, to the entries before the Company 
reps arrived. She had never been one to waste time reading the log, let alone 
writing it, but once she began the entries fascinated her. Someone had bothered 
to check the machines four times a day and enter all the gauge readings; someone 
had checked the river level, the temperature, the rainfall, the windspeed. There 
were brief mentions of the animals—"Another stillborn calf today"—and plants—"No 
bluemold on corn seedlings this season."
Yet so much had been left out. She kept scrolling, looking for the events she 
remembered. Births were there, and deaths, family transfers, serious illnesses, 
trauma… but no mention of what lay behind them. From "C. Herodis transferred 
from K. Botha to R. Stephanos" you would think someone had picked up a sack of 
personal belongings and moved across the street. Ofelia remembered the years of 
quarrels that had preceded Cara's departure from the Botha house. The stillborn 
children, the way Kostan accused her of witchcraft, the way she accused Kostan 
of withholding his seed for the benefit of "that whore Linda"… and Linda's 
subsequent revenge on Cara, that had cost the colony their last remaining 
chickens. Reynaldo was the only man who would dare take Cara in after Kostan 
threw her out… and then she had died a half-year later, and no one had wanted to 
investigate too closely how someone could fall forward and hit the back of her 
head on the stone hard enough to kill.
It made no sense, to have a log that told nothing but numbers and dates. Ofelia 
hesitated. It had been impressed on all of them that this was the official log, 
that no one was to enter anything but those assigned the duty, those with 
training. No one would see what she did, but… but it could be right. She could 
know it was right.
She peered at the controls. The machine might not accept her changes. But she 
found the right combination; the display shifted to show only one day's entry, 
with an arrow pointing to a space where she could insert something.
It took most of that day to get the story of Cara and Kostan the way she wanted 
it. She knew how to tell stories; she knew the shape such a story should have. 
But to put the words down with her hands, to see them come up on the screen, 
that was much harder. She kept going back to explain: Kostan's mother had never 
liked Cara. His father had. His brother had been involved with Linda. Everything 
connected, everything had to be in the story, and things she could have conveyed 
with a wink, a tilt of the head, a shift in voice now looked clumsy and even 
unbelievable set down in book-words.
When she quit, it was already dark. She had spent thirty-two days alone on the 
planet without noticing it, and today she had not done any of the maintenance. 
Her back ached; her hips hurt so much it took her a long time to stand. How did 
those people who worked at desks all day do it? She would not make that mistake 
again. She went home through a night that felt much darker, though when she 
looked up she could see the stars clearly. No storms tonight; the air felt mild 
and moist all around her body.
Her foot landed on a slimetrail, and she grunted. She hated slipping and 
sliding, and besides it would make her foot itch. In her own house, she 
showered, scrubbing at the foot, bracing herself on the wall so she wouldn't 
fall. She was aware that she had not worried about that before. All through 
supper, she could feel that she was holding something away, not letting herself 
think something. She scraped the plate, washed the dishes, and closed the 
shutters. Though it was almost too warm inside, she wanted to feel closed-in.
In bed, in the dark, she relaxed her hold on her thoughts, and let them wander. 
Thirty-two days. A great fear stood like a mountain on the edge of her mind. Was 
it coming nearer? No—the odd thing was she had already climbed over it, without 
even realizing the size or shape of it. This had happened before, with other 
fears. When she and Caitano first made love… when she and Humberto married… when 
the first baby forced its way out of her… each time, afterwards, she had been 
aware of a great fear not so much faced as ignored, passed without notice, 
without recognition. Here, too.
I was afraid. She remembered that one silent scream, forced back down her throat 
as if she had swallowed a child half-birthed. Now, in memory, she would have 
explored that mountain of her fear, but could not remember it. It stood there, 
vague and ominous, forever unknowable, at the end of her sight.
It was better so. Don't brood over things, her mother had always said. Don't 
waste time on the past; its already gone, paper on the wind. She had meant the 
bad times; she also preached the value of remembering all the good.
Ofelia stretched wide on the bed in the darkness, and considered what she was 
feeling right now. Her left hip hurt more than the right, and her shoulders felt 
stiff—she would like to have had someone knead them for her. But was she afraid? 
No, not any more. The machines worked. The animals had not all died, and even if 
they did she would have food enough for years and years. She was not lonely 
either, not as most people meant it. She had not yet tired of the freedom from 
the demands others made on her. Yet the next morning, in the garden, she felt 
tears on her face. Why? She could not tell. The garden itself soothed her. The 
tomatoes, ripening day by day; one might be ready to eat this very afternoon. 
The green bean pods, the tall corn with its rich smell that always reminded her 
of Caitano's body. It was not that she wanted anyone to talk to her, but she 
would have liked someone to listen… and that thought brought her back to the 
machine at the center, with its log so full of data and so empty of stories.
It was too hard to put the stories down in full. It would take the rest of her 
life, and she would not have finished. She put clues to herself: Eva's bad 
headaches. Rosara's sister's birthday when the pitcher broke. How she had felt 
when the second flood destroyed the last of their boats, and no one could 
venture to the far side of the river, even in the dry season.
From these clues, she could fill in the whole story—the real story—later. She 
did not write every day; she wrote when she wanted to, when the memories itched 
worse than a slimerod trail, when she had to see them outside herself to be sure 
they had an end. Other days, she put only the official sort of entry, noting the 
readings from the machine gauges, the temperature, the rainfall, the harvest 
notes.
She sat on the doorstep, eating another ripe tomato. This year, she would have 
far more than she could eat.
The noon sun lay hot on her feet; she did not move them into the shade, but slid 
them backwards and forwards until the sun felt exactly like hot shoes, covering 
just so much of her toes and insteps. Her feet were browner now that she spent 
longer hours in the open. So were her arms and legs. She put one hand out into 
the sun, admiring the bracelet she had twined, of the dayvine seed capsules. 
They rattled like tiny castanets. Something stung her back, and itched; she 
picked up the flyswitch she had made herself of a twig and fabric scraps and 
brushed her back with it.
These were the easy days, she knew. It would not be so easy, half a year from 
now. But she could not believe that. It would always be easy, thanks to the 
machines. If they kept running. She had checked them every day, and every day 
they were running, and all the gauges showed green. It must be easier for them, 
with only one person to maintain.
Away to the east, a bank of cloud rose to glaring turrets too bright to look at, 
but the bottoms had a dirty, smeared look. Sea-storms, the big storms of summer; 
it might rain for days. Some years they missed the colony entirely; some years 
they had suffered through two or three of them, losing most of a harvest. Though 
she usually slept in the heat of afternoon, she pushed herself to her feet, 
sighing, and picked up the basket. She would harvest anything ripe today, and 
check the machines yet again before the storm arrived.
That afternoon, fitful gusts turned the leaves of the garden plants over, 
showing the pale undersides. She picked steadily, moving from house to house. At 
each, she checked that shutters and doors were closed and barred, that toolsheds 
were properly secured. A skin of cloud moved across the sky, high up, changing 
the warm yellow of the sun to a milky glare. The air thickened; she felt 
breathless, stifled yet shivering from time to time with an odd chill. The house 
filled with baskets of ripe tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, gourds, melons; 
their rich scent lay in drifts. When the first spatter of rain fell, she left 
off picking, and went to the center.
The barometer showed falling pressure, as she expected, and the weather warning 
buzzed. She shut it off, and called up the satellite display. She had not 
realized that it still worked, that the company had left a weather satellite 
aloft. Now the screen showed the cloudy spiral still offshore, the edge of the 
clouds just touching land. She looked at the numbers displayed on the margins of 
the screen, and wondered what they meant. Enough that it was a big storm, and 
about to engulf her. She should get the animals into the town, if she could… in 
such storms the river flooded, and the cattle could be swept away.
When she went back to the outside door, windblown rain scoured the lane, and a 
fine mist sprayed her when she looked out. It was almost dark; she could barely 
see the shapes of the buildings. She was not going out in the dark and rain to 
find stupid cattle who ought to have the sense to find high ground. She was 
going home, when the squall passed.
Between squalls, the air lay heavily around her, moist and intrusive as an 
unwanted lover. She splashed through the puddles, aware of odd noises from a 
distance. Was that oncoming wind rushing in the forest? Were those squeaks and 
grunts from wind-bent wood, or animals? In her own house, the scent of all those 
vegetables and fruits was overpowering in the damp warmth. She found a 
handlight, and went around the house checking the shutters, barring them with 
the heavy boards needed in storms. Then the kitchen door, the outside louvered 
door and the inside solid one. She came in through the door to the lane, and 
shut the louvered outer door, latching it firmly. She would leave the inner door 
open until later, when the wind came that way.
She had time to make more flatbread, fry onions and fresh vegetables to eat with 
it, and eat a peaceful supper, before the next squall came with a blast of wind 
that forced a draft through the kitchen door. Just try it, she thought to the 
storm. She and Humberto had built the house solidly, and kept it in repair. It 
had held in worse wind than this.
She went to bed in the squall, and fell asleep, hardly waking when one squall 
followed another with breathless pauses between. In the morning, no light 
filtered through the double shutters. She didn't need to look to know that the 
main storm pressed on the village now. She could hear the howl of the wind 
between the buildings, feel the drafts squeezed through every crevice by that 
immense force. She turned on the lights, glad that they still worked. They had 
worked in other storms, but she remembered from her childhood on another world 
that the power plants could fail in storms.
It was strange to feel so hot and breathless, with all that wind outside, and 
those little drafts tickling her feet like mice. She made herself fix a 
breakfast she didn't really want, one of the golden melons from someone else's 
garden. She hoped she would smell it less once she had eaten it, but the cloying 
scent hung in the air. She could open a window on the downwind side. She went 
back in the bedroom, and opened the inside shutters. The smell of melon followed 
her, oozed past her out the window. She stepped into the corner of the room, 
then jumped as a bolt of lightning struck nearby, the white light spearing in 
through the louvers; the crack of thunder sounded as if someone had hit her head 
with a shovel.
She could stand the heavy smell of melon better than that. When her breath 
steadied, she closed the inner shutters and lay down on the bed. The bed did not 
feel safe enough. Reluctantly, she got up, and dragged off the bedspread and 
pillows. The closet would be airless, but safe from lightning. She made a nest 
there, and curled up.
The noise increased; the wind began to seem like a live thing, a demon 
determined to get to her and rip her apart. Ofelia cowered into the nest of 
bedclothes and pillows, trying to force herself into sleep. It didn't work; it 
had never worked. Every crash of thunder brought her alert, her breath short. 
Every new noise meant something wrong—something loose to blow against the doors 
and windows, something unmended that could break and let the storm in.
Phrases she had not said in years came to mind, prayers her grandmother had 
taught her, that she herself had said. In the storm it was easy to believe in 
powers and spirits. She had given all that up when she married Humberto; he had 
not so much forbidden it as ignored such concepts out of existence. Later, when 
they were trying to apply for a colony slot, he'd put "none" in the blank for 
religion and Ofelia hadn't argued. Away from her family, here with others who 
expressed no superstitions, whatever they believed, with no structure to support 
her, the last of her childhood faith had frayed away to nothing.
She murmured the phrases now, stumbling over forgotten words, but comforted 
nonetheless. She dozed and woke in jerky alternation, miserable in the cramped 
stuffy closet, until she fell asleep at last, to waken in eerie silence.
Never go out in the middle of the storm. She had known that; she had always 
obeyed. She had made her children stay inside too, though she had heard, through 
the tight-shut doors, the wondering cries of other people and their children, 
and the scolding voices of those who sent them back inside.
Was it day or night? Was this the storm's center, or the storm's end? She peeked 
out of the closet and saw only the motionless rooms, lit by electricity as 
usual. Slowly, grumbling at the pain in her joints—always worse in these 
storms—she crawled out of the closet and clambered to her feet.
If it was the storm's middle, it would come back from the other way, which meant 
she should not open the bedroom shutters. The door to the lane, rather… She took 
one step and another across the chill, damp floor, listening for any returning 
threat. Far in the distance, thunder muttered. That meant nothing, either way.
She opened the inner door. It had been soaked by rain driven through the outer, 
louvered door. It dripped onto the floor, leaving a track of water. Now she 
could see that it was lighter outside. She slid the latch aside, and pushed the 
outer door. Rain-swollen, it did not budge until she hit it with her right hip. 
Even then, she had to shove hard to get it open; the little tree by the front 
door had blown down onto it.
Outside, a pale clear light filled the street, showing ditches abrim with moving 
water, and mud streaks down the lane. Ofelia looked up. Far overhead, a circle 
of clear blue… and all around, the wall of cloud, its tops brushed gold by the 
rising sun. Just as she'd been told, just like the pictures. But different, when 
she herself was out in it, her feet in the slick mud, and no one to tell it to.
She could go over to the center for the second half of the storm; she would be 
as safe there, or safer. But she wanted to see it come, wanted to see how fast 
it would come. Dangerous. The old voice said that, in the warning tones of her 
childhood. It could kill her, this storm, as easily as she swatted slidebugs or 
snapped slimerods. She should go back inside, hide in the closet again.
She stepped away from the house, eyeing the cloud to the east. It seemed no 
closer. Another few steps, and she stood in the lane, where she could look 
eastward down the length of it, and see that all the houses were standing. Her 
garden fence was down, and had taken with it all the tomatoes. Cornstalks lay 
flat, all pointing toward the forest. In the distance, she heard the animals.
The cloud wall looked closer, but it was hard to tell. She would like to wait 
until it reached the shuttle field, even the last houses at the end of the lane. 
Surely she could run back to the house in time. The wind would come from behind 
the house this time; the house itself would shield her.
She went eastward a few steps, feeling almost as naughty as when she first went 
naked. Then she backed up. It would be stupid to meet a sea-storm like this, in 
the open. Lightning flickered, in the wall cloud; when she looked, she could see 
that the far side of the open space was definitely farther away, and the east 
side nearer.
It was so beautiful. She had always liked the pictures of such storms from 
space, the graceful spirals of white cloud on blue water, but she had not 
imagined how beautiful it could be from within. Every shade of blue and gray and 
purple in those walls of cloud, the gold tops now white as day brightened, the 
clear deep blue above. She had no words for what she felt, as the beauty 
contended with fear, and she took a few steps forward and then back again, in 
the cool mud that soothed her feet.
Then the wall of cloud loomed over her; the end of the lane vanished in a howl 
of water and wind, and she fled into her house, fighting through the writhing 
limbs of the fallen tree, as the first gust slammed against the other side of 
the house. That vision of silent gold and white and blue shifted in an instant 
to gray rain, wind, and intolerable noise.
She stood by the door, holding it open a crack, to watch. She could feel the 
house shudder with the winds blows, but she had no desire now to retreat to her 
safe closet. Hour after hour she watched the rain stream by, watched it thrash 
the houses opposite. When her feet ached too much, she brought a chair near the 
door and sat. All day the wind and rain… but gradually it eased, the wind 
blowing less and less, the gusts more sharply separated from each other. By 
nightfall, squall succeeded squall again, with a steady, slower, wind between 
them.
The rain continued, a steady downpour. Ofelia slept that night on the bed, 
leaving a light on in the kitchen for no reason she could name, except it made 
her feel better. The room seemed breathless again, too full of the smells of the 
harvest, already musty from damp. She could not open the shutters in that rain, 
but she left the front door propped open. Her sleep was broken by dreams of 
water: waterfalls, rivers, tears streaming from stone faces, leaks in the roof, 
burst pipes. Each time she woke, certain that the dream was real, only to find 
herself safe in bed, and no damper than the air itself would make her.
In the morning, rain fell from high gray clouds, steadily as misery but without 
violence. Occasional squalls hustled past, a roil of lower, darker clouds and 
gusty winds, but in the east she could see a few patches of blue sky. Heat 
wrapped her, and moisture. She pushed her way past the fallen tree to the lane, 
and let the rain wash the sweat off her body. It felt warm, hardly cooler than 
her blood, and she put back her head and drank it in.
She could see no real damage to any of the buildings, though she did not check 
all of them that day. First to the center, where the essential machines had gone 
on as if the storm meant nothing. Perhaps it didn't mean anything to machines. 
The air smelled faintly of machine oil, and more strongly of damp and mold.
Ofelia turned blowers on, to circulate the air in the sewing rooms. She 
remembered the last big sea-storm, when the needles had rusted and they had had 
to polish them again. In the last light, she carried across to the center the 
most strongly scented of the harvest. She would not have to smell melons again 
tonight.
That night, when a last squall shook the shutters, and bright light spiked 
through them, she lay in her bed and wondered why she had ever feared it. Her 
body felt heavy, but new, washed clean by the rain. When thunder rumbled, she 
felt it in her chest and belly; it shook her bones. It reminded her of Caitano.
She was a wicked old woman, and she deserved to die. The old voice scolded her, 
scolded her naked skin and her discoveries of herself. Beautiful, the new voice 
said. She had no more words than that, but the visions flashed, one after 
another: the dark rain, the winds, the tall clouds rising to the light.
She dreamed of castles and stars and the mountains she had never seen.
Tomatoes and corn were gone completely; most of the beans turned pale yellow and 
drooped: they had drowned. Along the edge of the garden, squash vines lifted 
ruffled fanlike leaves, unmarred by the assault of wind and water. Ofelia pushed 
the welter of tomato vines back off the paths, pulled the cornstalks for the 
compost, and went on to check other gardens. Anything tall had gone; anything 
low and leafy had survived. Some fruit trees still stood; others had been 
uprooted.
Checking the animals meant a muddy trek into the pastures. The sheep had drifted 
before the first onslaught of the storm into the brushy edge between grassland 
and forest; she found their muddy track. She followed it, and found most of 
them, fleeces waterlogged, nibbling dispiritedly at the native vegetation. She 
drove them back to grass with a stick, wondering again why the gengineers had 
done nothing about sheep stupidity. Surely any animal so stupid that it would 
gnaw on brush it could not digest, rather than follow its own trail back to good 
pasture, needed some improvement.
The cattle grazed nearer to town than usual, since the river had begun to flood. 
She would have driven them nearer yet, but they could wade in water too deep for 
her, and when she tried to move them, a small group fled splashing into the 
water where two of them lost their footing, and were swirled away downstream, 
lowing miserably.
Ofelia glared at the cattle. They deserved to be drowned, to be eaten by 
monsters, to be marooned on a sandbar with no grass. She had only tried to help 
them. They were too much like people, that was their problem. Run from help, run 
to danger. She pulled her feet out of the muck with the determination not to 
risk herself again for beasts so ungrateful, and splashed back into the village.
The next day, more showers, mixed with hot, steamy sun. She thought of writing 
her feelings about the storm in the log, but she didn't want to struggle with 
the words. Yet she wanted to do something; she felt restless. In the center, the 
bright scraps in the sewing rooms drew her. No one had bothered to decorate the 
fabric boxes for travel; she found drawers full of decorative braid, beads, 
fringes, short runs on the fabricator which had, most likely, not been approved 
by the supervisors.
She couldn't find what she wanted. She looked in the manual for the fabricator. 
She wanted rain and wind and lightning, clouds and sunlight above them. Noise. 
Beauty. Destruction. She pushed buttons and set gauges. The fabricator squealed, 
as it always did on startup, and emitted a wrinkled strand of silvery-gray, 
followed by crinkly purple material. Ofelia took it out of the fabricator's bin, 
and laid it with the other scraps on the tables. Her fingers shifted this shape 
and that, this color and that, played texture against texture, and matte against 
glitter.
By dark she had… something. She wrapped herself in it, unsure. It felt right. 
Heavy here, light there. Long fringes rippling and tickling her legs. She had 
sewn metal shapes, rings and arcs, so they rang together. When she looked in the 
long mirrors, it was no garment she recognized, but it looked the way she had 
seen it in her mind. She wore it home, in the thick moist dark, and slept in it.
That was the only sea-storm of the summer. She added a check of the weather 
screen to her daily chores. Day by day she tracked two other sea-storms, that 
came to land hundreds of kilometers away. Her weather returned to the usual 
late-summer heat and sun, with one or two afternoon rainstorms a week. She 
cleared the gardens of storm debris, and planned which to use for winter gardens 
this year. She cut and dried the tomatoes she'd harvested, blanched and froze 
the beans. Some of the squash would store in the centers cool rooms; some she 
cut in strips to dry. The peppers, onions, and garlic went on strings, which she 
hung in the center's cooler, breezy rooms.
Then it was time to plant the late garden. For the first time, Ofelia really 
missed the others, when she struggled with the smallest of the tillers. She had 
never done the tilling herself; one of the strongest colonists had usually 
tilled for the whole community, trading that work for credits on the others. She 
got the little tiller out of the storage shed, but rolling it up the gently 
sloping lane to her house made her breathless and sweaty; her shoulders and hips 
hurt already.
When she turned the machine on, the loud raucous noise hurt her ears, and the 
machine dug itself a hole. She had to bounce all her weight on the handles to 
get the spinning tines up, and then she could not push it straight. She had made 
irregular grooves and holes in about a third of her garden when she quit in 
disgust. Her hands stung; she hurt all over. Her ears still rang from the noise. 
When she had rested, she rolled the tiller back down the lane. She would not 
leave it outside to rust; she had that much justice. But if she could have found 
the designers of such machines, she would have given them an earful. Why not 
make a machine that small people could use? A quiet machine? The next day, she 
took the fork and shovel from the toolshed, and began to turn the soil by hand. 
It wasn't so hard, if she went slowly. She would not try to prepare all the 
gardens; she needed much less space. Then she took the garden cart, and went out 
into the pastures to pick up dung. Even with all the rain, some of it had not 
melted into the soil; she found enough to mix with the soil, adding the terran 
bacteria and fungi the plants needed.
The winter crops included more roots and tubers: onions again, but also carrots, 
radishes, beets, potatoes, yams, leeks. Leafy vegetables, that could not stand 
the hot summer sun. And the heat-shunning legumes. With a choice of all the 
colony's seedstocks, Ofelia planted more of the ones she liked best: Tina peas 
and Barque lettuce, long white snowdrop radishes, yellow potatoes, Cardonnean 
parsnips. She planted the others as well, to freshen the seedstocks, but in less 
abundance.
With the planting done, she spent more time at the center, reading and revising 
the old logs again. She had almost forgotten Molly Suppert until she ran across 
the death notice: poor Molly, who had not been part of the original colony, but 
an assigned special technician. For five years, Molly had run the health clinic 
alone, as she trained her replacements from among the colonists. She was 
supposed to have been evacuated after five years, but when the ship came, Molly 
was dead.
Ofelia had never known what world Molly came from, but they had all known it was 
someplace strange, if its inhabitants had been anything like Molly, with her 
bone-white skin and yellow-green eyes, her orange frizzy hair. And her 
attitudes. It had been Molly who suggested that girls need not marry so young, 
that children need not be slapped into obedience. If she had stuck to giving 
immunizations and pregnancy tests, and teaching midwives how to use the 
diagnostic machines, she would not have been found with a knife in her neck out 
behind the center.
It had taken considerable work to make it appear that she had fallen on a scythe 
while chasing cattle down by the river, and Ofelia had wondered if the Company 
really believed that. She had rather liked Molly, although she had not been 
foolish enough to confide in her, like the younger girls. It was all very well 
to say those things Molly had said, but the world was the way it was, and had 
always been, slapped children and all.
In the log, she added what she remembered about Molly. She had never known for 
sure who killed her, and she wasn't about to accuse without certainty. But the 
sun in her frizzy hair, that she put down, the way it glowed in a halo around 
her head as if she were a saint, but she wasn't a saint because she cursed 
vividly in two languages. At least, Ofelia supposed that from the tone and vigor 
with which she spoke in her native tongue, whatever it was. She remembered none 
of the words; she had never really understood.



CHAPTER FIVE
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It had been so long that when she heard the voices she did not know what they 
were. They sounded alien as the shrieks and squawks that came from the distant 
forest. She stood still in the street, her heart pounding. What? Where?
Her ears led her to the center, to the control rooms, where one of the gray 
boxes emitted a gabble that her brain finally sorted into words. She stared at 
the box for some time before realizing that it was not speaking to her, and it 
was not the machines speaking to the human caretakers they expected.
"Correct your course, eighteen-six-forty one—" The speaker had an accent 
different enough that she had to strain to follow it, but it was the language 
she knew. A male voice. A voice she could tell was used to command.
"Done," said another voice. "Shuttle One Sapphire, correcting. Get a six-oh-two 
and a thirty-twelve." A hiss and crackle, then, "—Any sign of the other colony?"
"Sticks out on infrared like a blasted beacon," said the first voice. "The 
boundary between terraformed and indigenous vegetation looks stable. Shuttle 
field. Some buildings. Why? We aren't going near it."
"Just wondered. They—" Hiss, crackle.
A longish pause, then: "Well, we haven't made that mistake," from the first 
voice. "They were idiots to pick a tropical site anyway. I heard that they 
retrieved fewer colonists than they inserted." A pause, as if someone had asked 
a question, though Ofelia couldn't hear anything but the open, soft hissing. 
"No, not renegades—that many losses. Poor chills. Not like ours."
Ofelia sat, hardly aware of the sudden cold sweat that ran down her ribs. 
Shuttle? Coming down? Chills? Colonists?
They would find her. They would find her and send her away, back to space, to 
some cryo tank… or, almost as bad, they would expect her to join them. They 
would expect her to fit her schedule to theirs, to do what she was told.
Her heart fluttered; she felt shaky and cold. She did not want that; she did not 
want to be caught, caged, ordered here and there. She tried to think what she 
could do. Move into the forest again? She might have the time to gather more 
things, but she could not live in the forest; she could not eat anything that 
grew there.
She went outside and looked up. Of course she could see nothing. The sky was a 
pale blue dome streaked with white clouds. If a ship hung up there in orbit, she 
could not see it. Could it see her? Unlikely, she thought, in daylight. But at 
night?
She could not turn on the lights. Although she had chosen to do without them 
many a summer evening, now she felt confined by the dark. She had things to do, 
if she was going to escape, and she needed the light. She sat in the dark that 
night, peering up at the stars. Could they see her even without light? Infrared… 
that was heat, she remembered; the colonists had once had goggles for seeing 
animals in the dark, but over the years these had failed. So the spaceship up 
there might see her anyway, would certainly see the heat plume of the waste 
recycler. Would they believe it had been working by itself since the other 
colony left? That someone had merely forgotten to turn off the automatics?
After the months alone, it was hard to fit her thoughts to the shape someone 
else's mind might make. If it were Barto up there, what would he be thinking? 
How long until the shift is over… when is it my turn… is supper ready?
Dawn woke her; she had fallen asleep sitting against the wall, and her neck 
hurt. Her eyes felt gummy. She stretched slowly, painfully, and finally levered 
herself up beside the wall. Inside the center, it was just light enough to find 
her way from room to room. She went into the offices, and stared at the gray 
box, from which no voices came. Just as she began to wonder if she'd dreamed it, 
it crackled again and the voices resumed.
"Local sunrise," said another male voice. Ofelia wondered where they were; the 
sun would not rise here for another hour. East of her? Only the sea lay to the 
east, unless you traveled far to the north. She flicked on the weather screen, 
which generated a map of the continent, showing the dawnline. Somewhere along 
that line was the place they'd landed. It had to be over a thousand kilometers 
away.
Perhaps they would never find her. They would be too busy. In all the forty 
years of this colony, none of them had ventured more than a few kilometers from 
the base. They had planned to go farther, but things happened. She might be safe 
yet.
"Eight-eight will drop the heavies in two."
"On it."
Ofelia spent that day hunched over the receiver, following the invasion—she 
could not help thinking of it like that—in the half-understood comments. She 
remembered enough of her own landing to know the necessary sequence. The first 
shuttles could land without prepared ground; they carried the mechbots that 
scraped out a shuttle field. Then the main cargo shuttles could land, with the 
construction crews that quickly set up the temporary structures for storage and 
surfaced the strip. Finally, the passenger shuttles, with the newly-wakened 
colonists, in order of specialty. She imagined another woman like her young 
self, waking from the cryo tank, trying to comfort her children as they were 
revived, trying to keep them calm as they were herded into a shuttle… they had 
landed in the rain, she remembered, and Barto had screamed and butted his hard 
round head into her breast.
But that would be later. Today, somewhere east and north, the hard shuttles were 
unloading mechbots, and the big construction machines were gouging the native 
plants—she wondered if it was forest or brush up there—to make a longer landing 
strip.
That night, she went back to her house to sleep, trusting that she would hear 
any shuttle landing at the nearby field. She didn't turn any lights on—that 
would be stupid, as long as she knew a ship hung up there, watching. But it 
would leave, eventually, and the colonists would have hard work to do in their 
own place. Then she could turn the lights on. She began to be sure that they 
would not find her. She had heard them say that the tropical site had been a 
stupid choice; that should mean they wouldn't want to explore that way. And by 
the time they did—in ten or twenty years, in thirty years or forty—she would be 
safely dead.
They might read the colony logs—her additions to them, as well. It made her 
grin, lying there in the darkness, to think of them reading the truth, the 
stories of real people, instead of the official version, all dates and names…•
"Pass six. On course." Just like all the others, Ofelia thought. Five passenger 
shuttles had already landed; she had listened less tensely than before. Clearly 
no one was paying any attention to the site of an abandoned colony they had no 
use for. She had even left the center to tend the gardens, to cook and eat her 
meals, to sleep in her own comfortable bed. Although she had started to assemble 
a survival pack to take into the forest, she had not finished it. Now she 
relaxed in a chair in the sewing room, with the volume up high on the radio as 
she strung the beads she'd painted.
"Cleared to land." A new voice, no doubt one of the colonists with special 
training, wakened first and put to work as soon as she landed. Ofelia tried to 
picture the woman in her mind. Young, of course. Did she have children? She 
sounded earnest, someone very serious about her work. If she had children, their 
clothes would always be neat. Ofelia looked at the pattern of beads she was 
making, and decided to put another blue one between the greens. That meant 
sliding off a yellow and a green; she squinted at the thread."We've got 
trouble," she heard. The voice was trying to stay calm, and not succeeding. 
Ofelia looked up, half-expecting to see someone in the doorway talking to her. 
No. It was still in the gray box, happening somewhere else, whatever it was.
"What?" Bored, unworried response from the orbiting ship.
"There's some kind of—its—there's not supposed to be any intelligent life, but 
that's—"
"Make sense, will you?"
"There's about a hundred or so big… brownish animals. Moving toward us. In 
formation. Bright patterns on them, and some kind of—" A noise Ofelia did not 
recognize, though it sounded dangerous, a noise her body understood before her 
brain could analyze it. "—They're trying to kill—" Incredulity from that voice. 
Ofelia felt the same way. Something—some animals—trying to kill them? 
Ridiculous! Storms, yes, floods and droughts and fevers, but not animals. 
Nothing capable of real damage had attacked the original colony in forty years; 
the planet had been surveyed; they were crazy up there.
She put down the beads and went into the control room. If these people were 
transmitting video as well as audio, she might be able to see them. She tried 
one channel after another, but found no images. She would have to listen.
Even her imagination could not make it clear. What the creatures were, no one 
seemed to know. More than one voice, in the next hours, said they were big. More 
than one exclaimed over their speed. How big was big? How fast was fast? Ofelia 
no more than those who actually saw them could guess if they were more like 
mammals or reptiles, how intelligent they were.
However intelligent, the creatures seemed determined to kill the colonists. 
Ofelia hunched over the speakers, listening to the now-familiar sounds: she had 
heard from the voices that this was an explosive, and that was the impact of 
stones hurled by some kind of machine. People were dead already, killed by the 
falling stones, the explosions. Only a few of the people had weapons. Some of 
them cowered in the shuttle presently on the ground; the pilot asked permission 
to return to space.
"You're overloaded for return—unload your cargo—"
"—Can't. They won't go out—we can make it—"
"Marginal. You've got to—"
"If they blow a hole in the strip, we won't have a chance; we have to go now—" 
No answer, but Ofelia heard the pilot mutter. "Damned idiots—c'mon Tig, get that 
booster primed, we're going to need every bit of it—"
Then an explosion that hurt Ofelia's ears even attenuated by distance and the 
speakers' dampers. A few seconds of silence, then a call from the ship.
"—Come in—Carver, answer!"
"—Too late, you bastards—they got the shuttle and the strip!" That from one of 
the other local sources. Ofelia felt a pressure in her chest. The creatures had 
blown up a shuttle? "Get us out of here!"
"Three hours until another shuttle can make it." A new voice from the ship, 
older, with more authority. "That will be after local sunset… they'll need 
lights for landing. We've put every trained person aboard—"
"In three hours, we won't be here to save!" the voice said. "Lights—how can 
we—Dammit, do something now! These things are coming in—we can't—"
Ofelia felt wetness on her face and tasted it. Tears. She was crying for them, 
for the hopeless, helpless colonists, waked from cryo to be killed on a planet 
they had not even met. It was far worse than her own fate, far worse than 
working forty years for nothing. She knew, as they would learn, that Company 
ships hanging safe in space never risked themselves down in the dirty atmosphere 
for mere colonists. Cheaper to lose a few colonists than a deep-space carrier.
"We don't have any space-to-surface weapons," the ship's voice said. "Recommend 
you lay out a defensive perimeter—"
"With what?" The bitterness in that made Ofelia wince. "I'll leave this on 
transmit, and you can get your precious record—tell whoever surveyed this place 
they were blind, deaf, and crazy—"
Ofelia hardly breathed as the distant sounds made clear what happened. The 
creatures overran the landing site; Ofelia could hear screaming, most of it 
incoherent, and sounds she supposed were made by the creatures themselves. The 
last sound transmitted was the thud, then crunch, of something knocking over and 
squashing the transmitter. Ofelia went outside; it was dusk, dusk of the same 
day. She heard a distant roar, then a crashing boom: a shuttle coming down fast, 
not on the course of the others.
She went back inside to listen. The shuttle crew was reporting to the orbiting 
ship. "Visible light, yes. Thermal profile suggests burning debris, not any 
civilized source of light. Lots of infrared—thousands, tens of thousands of 
whatever-they-are. Recording in all frequencies. Its—Gods, look at that! Get us 
UP, Shin!"
And, over a gabble of returning questions from the ship, "—No doubt at all 
they're intelligent. Tool-users, absolutely. No way we can set down there in the 
dark. In the morning—"
"—Make a full report to the Ministry," the calm voice from the ship said. "A 
daylight survey, high-altitude. No use risking more lives. The Company can get a 
refund, I'm sure, on grounds of misrepresentation by the former franchise 
holder, and let the pols decide if they want to send a diplomatic expedition. 
Not our problem."
"—consider old colony landing site?"
"No. If there's an indigenous intelligent species, the rules have changed. We 
won't touch it; we'll report. If your data are good enough, we won't even bother 
with the daylight survey. We've got the direct transmissions from the landing 
site, anyway."
"I'd like to know how they missed this—these whatevers."
"Not our problem."
Ofelia had heard that tone before. Whoever it was up there in the safe, 
air-conditioned space ship, never considered it his problem when people were 
dying somewhere else. Her lip curled. She would like to tell him what she 
thought. The transmission switch suddenly caught her eye; she had not even 
considered it before. Now, though: if she could hear them, they could hear her. 
If she spoke.
It would do no good. It would only get her in trouble.
For a day or so, she could believe nothing had changed. The threat was gone; the 
new colony didn't exist. If the creatures had not found her in over forty years, 
why would they now? She could go on as before, living peacefully in the deserted 
village, stringing beads, playing with paints, gardening the small amount 
necessary to grow her own food.
Resolutely, she walked out among the animals, strolled the margin of the grassy 
pastures. In the sun, in the haze of pollen blown from the flowering grass, she 
could pretend nothing had happened. The sun warmed her shoulders; the sheep 
smelled like sheep, and the cattle… the cattle wagged their ears at her, snuffed 
with wet black noses, and edged away. The bull huffed, swinging his head back 
and forth. Not at her. At something across the river.
They were no more nervous than usual. She told herself that even as her breath 
came short and the back of her neck itched. She went back to the sheep, telling 
herself they were more restful, and then all of them jerked their heads up at 
once, staring at one point in the forest where she saw and heard nothing at all.
Sheep were stupid. Cattle were flighty. Ofelia glared at the forest, and went 
back to her garden. It was only accident that she kept ending up in the corner 
nearest the kitchen, hoeing the same bit of ground, staring across the tangle of 
dayvines on the fence she had never quite mended at the pasture and the brush 
beyond it.
Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing. She had heard, in school, that no one 
could live long alone without going crazy, without thinking they heard and saw 
other people. She had never believed it, but she had been told. So if she had 
gone crazy, without noticing it, she could have imagined the whole thing. The 
other ship had never really come, and nothing had happened to it. Why she had 
imagined such a gruesome fate for its colonists she did not know; it must be 
some evil streak in her, probably the same one that made her decide to stay here 
alone.
That idea, once rooted, bore tempting fruit: it would be easy to find out the 
truth. The machines would have recorded the transmissions, if there had been 
transmissions. All she had to do was play them back. Or play back nothing, and 
know she had made it all up.
She knew what she knew; she didn't need any machine to tell her the truth. Day 
after day, she went into the center to check the gauges, the weather, to record 
the necessary items in the log. Day after day, she eyed the machine records and 
did not play them back.
It was, in the end, an accident. She had meant to check the date she'd planted 
carrots the year before. Something interrupted; her finger slipped off the 
control that reversed the calendar search.
"—With what?" asked a frightened, angry voice that was not her own.
It was real. It had happened. The machines did not lie, could not lie, and that 
meant the voice on the tape had been a real person, real in fright and pain.
And now was dead. She began to shake without realizing it; her hands and then 
her arms, her feet and then her legs, her whole body, shaking with the same 
fear, with the same shock. They had been human—people she could have known, 
could have talked to—and now they were all dead.
With shaking hands, she fumbled over the controls until she turned the recording 
off. Silence rushed in on her, the silence she had grown used to, that she had 
thought of as peace. No voices. No voices anymore.
Slowly, slowly, her breath steadied. She felt tired; she wanted to go to sleep. 
When she looked at her hands, with their red, swollen knuckles and knotted veins 
and age spots, they looked more fragile than flowers. Her gaze slid downwards, 
caught on the fringed drape she had made for herself. It seemed more indecent 
than her body; she yanked it off as she stood, balled it in her hands and threw 
it on the floor.
"They're dead!" she said aloud, in a voice she hardly remembered using. Her mind 
divided like water running down a slope: she wondered why she was outraged, she 
wondered why she was afraid, why she was not more afraid. She would not have 
killed them, those strangers, though she had not wanted them here.
She went outside again, into another day that insisted on being like any other. 
Again it was hot, humid, the sky clotted with clouds moving slowly before a 
steady wind. Why did it matter if they were all dead? They had come; they had 
gone; she was alone again, and she had wanted to be alone.
It was not the same.
It would never be the same.
Something—no, someone, some creatures—lived on this world that wanted to kill 
her—that had killed humans—and she had not known any such danger existed. She 
could not unknow it, struggle though she might.
The air stank of strange smoke; a grassfire burned on in the distance, its smoke 
plume mourning the nests. Though the grass would return and cover the nakedness 
of the land with her shawl, the People would always know where the scars were. 
This smell would last.
Defeat, drummed the righthand. Not defeat, victory: they are gone and we are 
here, drummed the lefthand. One by one, the righthand changed places, until the 
lefthand drumming carried all the power of the People.
Far above, a sinuous white streak where the monster had flown, scarring the very 
air. The righthand reminded that generations ago such streaks had been seen far 
off to the south. The lefthand continued drumming Victory, victory, safety, 
haven, return.
The scar in the sky blew away to nothing. No more monster noises from the air, 
no more bad smells. The People danced, winding around the burnt earth, sending 
out a long spiral coil of dancers to find live sprigs of grass, passed from one 
to another inward, until the site had been replanted. They danced on, drumming 
and dancing, until the wind drums answered, until the sky people gathered to 
dance in their own coils and spirals, weeping at the monster tracks, filling 
them with sweet tears that nourished the grass.
On the move again after the rain, following the wind drums across the grass, 
laden with the gourds of skylight-maker, drum-beater, the youngest troop of the 
People called questions to each other. Why scars in the sky? Why monsters in 
gray and green? Why flat-faced? Why wingless, toeless—
Not toeless, one called back. Short-toed, foot-clothed in toeless garments.
Garments, not shells?
Not shells, garments.
None without them… shells.
No flesh-bond. Garments.
Then—the sky creatures also garments? A lively debate followed, whether the 
stinking corpses of great flyers had been shells or garments or separate 
creatures, allies of the monsters. One held out for machines, no more than 
complicated mechanisms like those of the stone-tossers. The others laughed 
scornfully. A city tale, something the shore-dwellers thought up when their 
brains were smoke-dimmed. Machines could not fly… who could draw the strings 
tightly enough to have the wings flap.
Those wings did not flap.
That we saw.
It could work. The same enthusiast; they knew that eagerness for machines. The 
People had good machines; they were proud of this enthusiast. It could work, but 
it would need a new idea. They loped on, silent now. Never distract someone on 
the path of a new idea; it is like distracting a hunter on the trail of game, 
and means missing a feast.
The enthusiast fell behind; they knew what that meant. A time of sitting still, 
a time of seeking out other enthusiasts, a time of playing with sticks and 
little stones and sinew, and eventually there would be a new machine, something 
no one had ever seen. It did not concern the rest of them until then.
If there are others, someone called, free now to call.
Others? Where?
The legends. The sky-scars. Somewhere south. Others. Allies of allies, allies of 
monsters.
All alert, they crowded around. More monsters? More nest-burners, nest-scrapers? 
More thieves and children of thieves? It would be broodseasons before the nests 
just replanted were ready for young again; in the meantime they would have to 
nest elsewhere, which meant unfriendly seasons contesting for marginal sites 
with the others who roamed the grasslands. And would they come back, eager for 
the great nestmass, only to find more monsters?
An elder troop overheard their keening and swept them up. No monsters had been 
seen after that earlier sky-scar. Chances were it had been a scouting raid, no 
more.
No one ever looked.
Many broodseasons. Monsters are hasty. No need. No one ever looked. That from a 
youngling as enthusiastic this way as the machine-enthusiast had been. They all 
knew that, as they all knew everything about each other.
Too far. The desert. The thornbrush. Then too wet, and trees too tall. Worse 
than cities. The final insult, strong enough to discourage anyone but this 
youngling, who had the hunter's own determination to follow any trail where it 
led.
Stinking trail, one of the oldest finally said. No good at the end. Empty belly, 
can't eat monsters.
They had tried, only to be spectacularly sick in the burnt grass.
Nestmass, said one of the shy younglings. Many grumbled at that. If the shy ones 
started, the whole People might turn aside, and that at a time when new nests 
must come first.
Go… drummed the lefthand, passing the drumming from troop to troop on that 
flank, and then through the center. Go, go, go. Seek, seek. Take enough, but not 
too many.
After nesting? The youngling troop were not that eager to wander into dryness 
and salt and thorn and then swamp and tall trees for inedible monsters.
Now go, drummed the lefthand. Now, now, now. GO.
The youngling troop split, and split again. The enthusiast, not so enthusiastic 
now, but like any hunter intrigued with a new quarry. The shy youngling, only a 
broodseason from needing a nest. A few more of the raucous type which the older 
troops were glad enough to see leaving. And the elders who, on second or third 
thought decided that it might be an adventure, who had heard about the fishing 
on that more southern coast, who had a relative who had seen the sky-scar. With 
them, in the gourds and sacks and pouches of a nomad People, went their 
knowledge, their skills. However far they went, however long it took, the People 
relished travel, relished the chance to learn, the flavor and fiber of novelty.
As they went they discussed the monsters, reminding each other of every last 
detail, all that had been seen, heard, smelt, tasted (ugh! that disgusting 
flavor, turning the belly), surmised. Inbrooders, like the grasseaters they 
hunted? Likely. Two-formed, one with sticks and one with holes. Two-everything, 
except where on the ends of arms and legs the little bits stuck out in fives. 
Odd number, fives. Sacred to some, mostly fisheaters. How well could they see 
with those two eyes in the flat face? Well enough to aim fire tubes; they'd 
noticed that. Flaps on the side of the head: might be ears. Or tasters. Little 
ones big-headed, otherwise similar. Only a few little ones, most big ones. Big 
ones all dark-hairy on top, shades of earth-color. They passed the images back 
and forth. Yes. They would all know a monster if they saw one again.
The question of sense took longer. The monsters had sense enough to recognize 
threat, but so had most creatures, even the very stupid. Quick response meant 
nothing; the People knew that. Carriers had little sense, although they 
responded quickly to anything, even training. Some of those things had been 
machines, some very large machines, but how hard was it to build a machine to 
carry dirt? Any child could do that.
It moved on its own.
It didn't. It had a spell cast on it.
It didn't. A monster guided it.
Who saw? The answer to that quelled all doubt; a monster had guided the machine 
that moved the dirt (and the nests! Filthy thieves!) and although no one had 
seen the twisted sinew or string, it must have been in there somewhere.
We should have looked harder.
Machine-lovers look at machines.
They would, too. That distraction shrugged off, they went back to considering 
whether monsters had sense. Had they known they were robbing nests? How could 
they not, with the People's sigil in plain view, the braids and coils of grass 
that warned of nestmass and named the nest guardians. If they were not blind, 
they must have seen. If they had sense, they must have understood.
The arguments went back and forth, across the open grass, until someone scented 
game, and drummed a short signal.



CHAPTER SIX
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Loneliness weighed on Ofelia like stones. She struggled through each day, 
forcing herself to work in the gardens, forcing herself to check on the animals. 
Too many times she came back to herself and found that she'd stopped what she 
was doing to stand gape-mouthed, rigid, listening for sounds she knew she could 
not hear.
She didn't understand it. It hadn't been like this when the others left, her own 
son and daughter-in-law, people she had known most of her life. Then she had 
felt free. Then the empty streets and the quiet houses had given her chances she 
had never had before. Then no voices had been welcome, and over the days even 
the memory of them had fallen away, leaving her mind at peace.
Now she felt trapped, confined in a narrower place than she remembered. The 
empty streets might be full of enemies; the quiet houses gave hiding place to 
her fears. She could not forget the strange voices, voices of people she had 
never seen, crying out for help, crying out in fear and pain. And death.
She had not cried long when Humberto died, or the children. She had not cried at 
the thought of her own death; death was death, and it came to all, and there was 
no help for it. But now she cried, feeling the wobbling of her face, the wet 
tears, the runny nose, the spittle that ran down her chin—the ungraceful tears 
of the old—for people she had never seen, and had not wanted to see. They had 
come so far to die, and she had not wanted them.
It made no sense. When the tears finally ran out, she wiped her face with a 
rag—it had been a scrap of fabric from the center, carried home without 
noticing—and peered into the street. Nothing. Yesterday and the day before and 
the day before that, nothing, and nothing would be there tomorrow or the day 
after or the day after that. She lived in the center of nothing, in a moment 
always suspended between the eternity behind and the eternity before. It had 
never bothered her, and now it did.
Slowly, as slowly as the retreat of pain from a serious injury, the loneliness 
wore itself out. The fear remained. Something had killed all those people, and 
would kill her if it found her. She had been ready enough to die alone on this 
world, when she chose to stay. But she had believed age would kill her, or 
accident. Not malice.
She felt fragile, exposed, helpless. There were a few weapons in the 
storehouses, but she knew they would not save her. No one could be alert all the 
time; she was human, she had to eat and sleep and use the toilet. One person 
alone, even with the help of all the machines, was not a human presence. If 
those things found her, they could kill her easily. She had no doubt they would, 
as quickly as they had killed dozens of people younger and stronger.
But the fear wore itself out too, more slowly than loneliness. Days at a time 
she managed to forget—not trying, but simply immersed in the irregular routines 
of her life. They had not found her yet. They had not killed her yet. And she 
still enjoyed things, and still wanted things.
She retrieved the beads she had dropped from under the sewing tables, and strung 
them again. She made and painted more beads, added the slimerod cores she had 
dried, the seed pods of this plant, tufts of long hair from cows' tails caught 
in brush… she wasn't sure what she was making, only that she liked the patterns 
of chunky things and thin ones, color and texture and line. When she put the 
construction on her body, she realized it needed a bit more here—another length 
of beads—and something else there to balance the weight and keep it from 
slipping off her shoulders. She looked in the mirror. Odd how seldom she'd done 
that, not since before the other landing. She had not wanted to see her 
expression; she had been afraid that she might frighten herself. But now the 
figure in the mirror hardly looked human.
She stared. She felt the same—mostly the same—and in the mirror her own face 
scowled at her, the familiar scowl with which she had always greeted her 
mirror-self. Her eyebrows were thinner and whiter; her white hair a tousled bush 
of silver. But the inner self that had been so intent on stringing beads and 
feathers and wool and cows' hair and seedpods, that had been so sure where to 
lace this string to that, and how to hang the tassels—that self had not imagined 
how she would look in anything but the old drab workshirts and skirts and 
bonnets of earlier years.
Indecent, the old voice said. Amazing, the new voice said, with approval. Her 
body was old, wrinkled, sagging, splotched with the wear-marks of nearly eighty 
years… but hanging on it in weblike patterns were the brilliant colors and 
textures of her creation. When she shifted her weight from her sore hip, the 
whole mass swayed, as if she were the breeze. The big beads across the back 
rolled in the hollow of her back, comforting. The plant fibers she'd used across 
her shoulders scratched itches she always found it hard to reach.
She stood looking a long time, then carefully took the garment off. It would not 
be comfortable for many of the things she needed to do, but she liked the way it 
felt. She would wear it often, she knew In the meantime, she tied on the wrap 
she now wore most of the time, and made herself grin into the mirror. Rosara 
would not have approved of this, which left her legs bare, which had nothing 
underneath it but her raddled skin. Defiantly, thinking of Rosara, she stuck a 
finger in the pot of red paint she had used on the beads, and streaked it across 
her chest. Black paint: spots on her cheeks, on her forehead, on the sides of 
her thighs. Blue: a narrow line down her nose. She began to giggle; she had not 
imagined how much fun it could be to treat her body as the material of art. She 
made green handprints on her belly, on the front of her thighs, one each on 
buttocks. She splashed yellow on hands and feet. Then, leaving yellow 
footprints, she walked out into the street, unafraid, unthinking, for the first 
time.
It was drizzling, a warm drizzle that hovered as much as fell. Ofelia walked up 
and down the street, touching the doors of the houses she passed, leaving 
handprints splotched yellow and green. Suddenly she wanted to mark them all; she 
ran back into the center, snatched up the pot of yellow paint, and strode from 
house to house, touching every door. By the time she was halfway through, it was 
more than a game; fear returned in a rush, demanding that she finish, insisting 
that something dire would come if she stopped for anything, if she were 
interrupted, if the paint ran out before the last door was marked with her 
sigil. Breathless, her legs aching, she ran from door to door, house to house, 
even the toolsheds, the storage sheds, the waste recycler, back to the center, 
every door in the center…
The panic subsided. Thunder muttered outside, and the drizzle thickened to rain. 
She remembered other times of strange feelings before storms, forebodings, crazy 
feelings, wild actions. It was just the storm. When it was over, she would feel 
better.
Wind slapped harder rain against the center windows. Ofelia looked down at her 
decorated body, and laughed. What a mess. She couldn't go to bed like this. The 
rain would wash off the paint. She went outside and let the warm rain flow over 
her, scrubbing at her spots and stripes with her yellow hands, until she stood 
in a rainbow puddle. How odd that the colors didn't merge into one muddy mess… 
for a moment her mind caught on that oddity, as the colors avoided each other 
and made rings and blotches on the ground. Then a closer peal of thunder sent 
her dashing across to her own hand-marked door. Warm rain it might be, but she 
felt cold now.
Inside, she dried herself and began humming. Memories of childhood naughtiness 
tumbled through her mind. Mudpies, messes in the kitchen, the time she had used 
colored chalk to make her sisters foot look swollen and infected… they had both 
thought it was funny, but her mother had been first scared, then furious. Her 
cheeks felt hot even now, remembering the slapping she'd gotten for that. Silly, 
"silly, silly… she had been a silly child, and she was a silly old woman, but it 
had been fun. Painting herself had been fun, and she would do it again. Why not? 
If she was going to be killed by some strange animals, she might as well have 
what fun she could first.
After the storm, the cattle were unsettled. Ofelia squinted across the meadow to 
the river, trying to count the restless animals. Fourteen… no, thirteen, she had 
counted the red one with the black face twice… no, fourteen, because there was 
the rusty-black one with the white spot. And the bull. She couldn't see the 
calves in the tall grass. The sun was out; she had put on a wide hat tied with a 
long narrow piece of pink, and a blue cape beaded with green and yellow in 
flower patterns. She didn't like it that much now, but that meant she didn't 
mind if it got dirty while she hunted for the cattle.
One of the cows shied and broke into a bouncing trot away from the river; two 
more followed, moving faster. Ofelia caught a glimpse of a calf's head between 
the cows, then the rest of the little herd lunged away from the river, grunting. 
The bull swung around to confront whatever had spooked them. Ofelia could see 
nothing. Halfway to the buildings, the cattle slowed and milled uneasily. Ofelia 
walked past the calf pen, angling upriver where the dust wasn't so bad. The 
cattle watched her now, ears wide; the bull moved away from the river to rejoin 
the herd. She counted again: black-faced red cow, solid red cow, rusty black, 
brindle with white spot, plain brindle, red-and-white, rusty black with white 
spot… fourteen cows, one bull, at least one calf. From a distance she heard 
others, probably the younger bulls, who ran in a clump together.
She really needed to know how many calves there were. She angled nearer the 
herd, not directly at it. A dark red calf, paired with the black-faced red cow. 
And there, another one, brindle with white legs, beside one of the brindle cows. 
The cows shook their heads; she kept her distance, trying to see between bodies 
and legs and wide ears. Was that another? Yes—a lighter red calf, tucked into 
the middle. Ofelia walked back to the village, keeping an eye on the cows to be 
sure none of them charged her. The black-faced red cow had a bad temper.
On the far side of the buildings, the sheep were grazing peacefully, the lambs 
scattered like bundles of wool, sunning themselves. Ofelia walked out among 
them, rubbing the hard little heads and noticing that none of them had 
disappeared in the past few days. In the forest, something screeched, the usual 
midday screech that she had learned to ignore. Even the sheep ignored it, hardly 
twitching their ears. One of the lambs woke, lifting its head. It looked around, 
shook its ears, and rolled over, then folded and unfolded its legs quickly and 
stood, emitting a faint bleat. One of the ewes looked up and replied; the lamb 
gamboled over to its mother and began nursing. Within a minute or two, the other 
lambs were up and nursing too.
Back among the buildings, she noticed that the rain had not obliterated all her 
wild handprints on the doors. Some were still bright, unblurred; others had 
half-melted away, clearly dissolved by falling water. One looked smeared. Ofelia 
stared at it—how had that happened? How had something stroked across it, almost 
like another hand wiping it out…?
A gusty breeze billowed her cape out behind her, and she laughed at herself. She 
had been wild and crazy, dancing around; it had been wet. She had certainly done 
it herself, in her haste. She had slipped, and put out her own hand… slowly, she 
raised her hand to the smear. The right height, perhaps, if she'd slipped in the 
wet. If she'd caught herself there, it could have happened. She didn't remember 
it, but she did remember slipping and sliding a lot as she hurried from house to 
house, desperate to mark all the doors.
She felt cold anyway. She wanted the sun on her shoulders. She took off the blue 
cape, and folded it over her arm, untied the hat and held it in her hand. The 
sun's heat eased her, calmed her. It was all right. The animals were all right, 
and she was safe, and she would take a long nap this afternoon. In fact—she 
looked around. She had long since slept in other beds than the one she thought 
of as "her own." On a day like this, with the wind in this quarter, her own 
bedroom would be muggy and unpleasant. Two houses down, though, she knew of an 
east-side bedroom with two windows. Since she opened the houses only when she 
was in them, it would have stayed shady and cool in the morning.
On this door, the yellow hand-print had dripped only a little. Ofelia pushed the 
door open and went inside, leaving it open behind her. Dim light came from the 
shuttered windows; she smelled a faint mustiness. She really should air the 
houses out more often, she thought. She opened the bedroom shutters and felt the 
mattress on the bed. Not damp at all; something else must have been damp. 
Possibly clothes left in a closet. She tried to remember whose house this had 
been, but she wasn't sure. On this side of the settlement, some houses had been 
lost to the two big floods; people who survived the flood had insisted on moving 
to the higher side, and younger people moved into the rebuilt houses.
Not that it mattered now. Ofelia lay down on the bed and stretched. While she 
liked the familiar hollows and humps of her own mattress, it was sometimes nice 
to sleep on a different one. Her hips felt a little too high, her shoulders a 
little too low, but she was tired enough to doze off anyway. When she woke, the 
light outside had a pearly quality; the sun must have gone down. She was aware 
that she had been dreaming, a vivid dream involving colors and music and 
movement, but it vanished so fast that she could not retrieve any of it. She 
stretched again, and stood up slowly. Again that musty smell; her nose wrinkled. 
Perhaps she should leave the lights on in this house, to dry it out.
She closed the shutters, turned on the lights, and went out, shutting the door 
behind her. In the twilight, colors and shapes seemed to float, unrelated to 
daytime geometry. Ofelia blinked, shrugged, and walked back home. With such a 
good nap behind her, she would have the energy to work on her beading tonight.
Or even the log… she felt a little guilty when she realized how long it had been 
since she added anything interesting to the log.
The current date surprised her again. Had it been that long since the other 
colonists had come… had died? Ofelia sat a long time, wondering what to write. 
She had been lonely; she had been frightened; she still didn't want to think 
about what had happened.
They were not my people, she wrote finally. But I am sorry, sorrier because I 
did not want them to come. And their families think they died alone; they do not 
know someone is here to grieve for them.
Then she scrolled through the calendar, making short notes when anything caught 
her notice. Her back ached; her hip had stiffened. She turned off the computer 
finally, and pushed herself up. How it hurt to move when she had been still too 
long! It seemed impossible that she could get older, feel older, but she was 
definitely stiffer than when Barto had left.
In the sewing room, she eyed her beadwork with distaste. If she sat down again, 
she would stiffen into place. But she wasn't sleepy yet. She leaned on the 
table, pushing the beads around idly. When she was young, she had had a necklace 
of brilliant blue beads streaked with silver and copper. She had left them 
behind, for her sister, when she married Humberto. He had never liked that 
necklace; he had suspected it was a gift from Caitano. He had been right, though 
she never admitted it to him. She wished she knew how to make such a beautiful 
color. The fabricator had color settings, but its version of dark blue was a 
dull, muddy color, nothing like the color she remembered.
She touched the dried cornhusks; they rustled under her fingers. Twisted into 
fat, stiff ropes, cornhusks might be the edging she wanted for the new cloak. 
She could dye them—she stopped, her skin puckering suddenly with alarm. What…? 
Not a sound, though her ears strained to hear past the pounding of her own 
blood. Nothing to see when she turned slowly, eyeing everything around her. 
Nothing. Nothing, but—she was still alert, still certain of danger.
That smell. The same smell as at the other house. Musty, she had thought, and 
yet when she came to think about it, not the same as mildew. A thicker smell 
than mildew. Her heart hammered in her chest; when she put her fist to her side 
she was not surprised to feel the rapid throb on her chest wall. She had to 
swallow, though her mouth was suddenly dry.
"I am here," she said to the darkness outside, the silence, the emptiness. Her 
voice sounded odd, scratchy like a bad broadcast. "Come out if you are there." 
She had no idea who, or what, she was talking to. Ghosts of the slain? She did 
not believe in ghosts, exactly, although she had seen Humberto once, six months 
after he died. He had been wearing a white suit, and a blue hat; he had been 
smiling at another woman, and when she said his name, he vanished. But did 
ghosts smell? Humberto had not smelled, as a ghost; he had merely slid, an 
immaculate and dimensionless image, across her sight that one time.
Ofelia held her breath a moment, then breathed in, not quite sniffing. Yes, 
whatever this was smelled, and smelled different. New. It was most likely an 
animal, something from the forest grown bold enough to venture into the town, 
though the forest creatures had never done so before.
With what confidence she could muster, Ofelia walked out of the sewing room to 
the front door of the center. Light spilled out the doorway from behind her, and 
her shadow stretched away from her feet. She could see nothing but the light 
patches on either side of her shadow. Inside the door were the switches for the 
exterior lights, rarely used even when the colony had been there. Now she turned 
them on. Only two of the bulbs came on; the others must have been damaged by 
storms. But in that skewed light, she saw something move, down the street.
A monster. An animal. An alien.
A deadly alien, which had already killed humans.
Ofelia could not make herself walk out into the street, or back into the center. 
She could not even turn off the lights. She looked the other way. Something else 
moved there, a dark shape against darker night. It came closer, a massive 
bluntness, manylegged, eyes glowing in the light…
Cows. Ofelia sagged against the doorframe as several cows strolled up the lane. 
Between them, a calf pranced. One of the cows, with a switch of her tail, 
slapped the handprint on a door. So that had been cows. And the smell—was that 
cow? Hard to tell, but the cows added a ripe, complex odor to the lane.
"Cows," Ofelia said aloud. The cows startled, ears wide, seeming almost to lean 
away from her voice. She wanted to laugh; she wanted to butcher the cows for 
scaring her so. "AAOOH!" she bellowed, without knowing it was coming, a bellow 
from her gut that hurt her throat coming out. The cows ducked, whirled, and 
galloped off, loud thunder of hooves in the lane. "Stupid cows!" Ofelia yelled 
after them. Full of righteous indignation, she flicked off the lights in the 
center, and stalked across to her own house. Now that she had spoken, she found 
she wanted to keep talking, to feel words in her throat again, to hear her voice 
in her outside ears, not just in her head. "Silly of me to be scared of cows. I 
should have known they came into the streets at night—there's no gate, after 
all." But even as she said it, she wondered… she had never found manure between 
the houses, and why would they come? If they foraged in the gardens regularly, 
she'd have found damage from that.
Her voice dried up suddenly, as if she had had only so many words to say, and 
now they were gone. The cows came into the town. The cows came in and the cows 
don't come in and the cows came in because… because… because they wanted to 
because something scared them away from the river.
It hurt to be so scared again the same night. Her ribs hurt from the beating of 
her heart, from the painful clench of her breath. She stood in the kitchen, 
unable to move in any direction, until a cramp in her foot stabbed her with such 
pain that mere terror was forgotten. She leaned her weight onto the cramping 
foot, and her breath sobbed in and out, and finally the cramp eased. She was 
tired and she hurt all over. If the aliens wanted to kill her, they could do it 
while she was asleep.
Her foot cramped again once she was in bed, and she rolled out clumsily to stand 
on it again. She was too old for this. Familiar anger warmed her. She was too 
old, her foot hurt too much, things were too hard and it wasn't her fault. When 
the cramp eased, she got back into bed and pulled the bedclothes over her. Then 
she remembered she hadn't barred the door to the lane. She never did, but now… 
if there were aliens… Sighing, muttering a curse she was surprised to remember, 
she got up again and went out to bar the useless door.
She had to peek out. In the darkness, she heard the distant sound of cattle 
grazing, the rhythmic ripping of grass. A light breeze moved between the houses 
and stroked her body. She could see nothing, nothing at all, but the sparkles 
that she knew were inside her eyes. She stood until she shivered, then shut the 
door, barred it carefully, and went back to the bed. On the way, she stubbed her 
toe on something left out of place—she was not about to turn on the light again 
tonight—and she came to the bed in the mood to dare bad dreams.
Instead, she had good dreams. She could not remember them, but she did remember 
that they were good. She had slept late; sunlight striped the kitchen floor from 
the garden door. She scowled. Garden door? Had she blundered around in the dark 
barring the front door and forgotten the kitchen door to the garden? Surely it 
had been shut all along.
She couldn't remember. This had happened before, her thinking she had shut 
something that was open later, or opened something that was shut later. And it 
wasn't new; it had started even before Barto left. She hated not remembering; it 
made her feel foolish. She got up and looked for the toe-stubbing object of the 
night before. That, at least, she would put out of the way, while she remembered 
it.
She couldn't find anything between the front door (still barred: she hadn't 
botched that) and the bedroom door that could have given her toe that nasty 
clonk. The chairs were neatly pushed under the kitchen table. Nothing… unless 
she'd lost her way entirely, in the dark, and had stubbed her toe on the 
doorframe to her old bedroom. And if that had happened, surely her hands would 
have felt the wall.
She looked from the open kitchen door to the bedroom door, from window to 
window, back to the chairs and the table. Nothing was out of place. In the 
bright morning sunlight, with the rich growing smells of her garden coming in on 
the breeze, she could not believe that anything had been really wrong in the 
night. She sniffed. No strange smells, though the scent of cow was strong. When 
she opened the door to the lane, she saw cowflops dotting the lane like stepping 
stones.
She fetched the garden cart and the light shovel, and spent the morning picking 
up cow manure for the compost trench. The cows were back in the meadow, grazing 
peacefully as if nothing had ever bothered them. It was much easier to get the 
manure off the lanes than out of the grass; she told herself that if the cows 
would only come into town every night, she could manure every garden plot every 
season and keep the waste recycler topped up. Of course, she didn't want to 
spend every day picking up manure; she didn't like the smell of it. When the 
trench was full, she put the rest of the manure into the waste recycler, then 
showered to get the smell off. At the center, she noted in the log that the cows 
had come into the streets at night. It probably meant nothing, but it was a 
change. When she checked the weather display, she saw one of the big 
sea-storms—the first of the year—far out in the ocean. That was more dangerous 
than any imagined aliens. She jotted down a list of chores to finish before the 
storm could arrive—if it did. Repairing shutters, doors, making sure nothing was 
loose to blow free in the winds. She might spend the storm in the center this 
time, she thought. She could move a mattress into one of the sewing rooms. The 
one from her old bedroom would do, and it was nearby.
It was also too heavy to carry by herself, and the lane was damp, smudged with 
the remains of the cowflops. Ofelia glared at the stains. She was not about to 
drag her bed through cow manure and then sleep on it, even days later. And the 
garden cart still smelled of manure, too. In the waste recycler's storerooms 
were larger, heavier carts once used for hauling; Ofelia fetched one of those. 
It wouldn't fit through the front door. She dragged the mattress to the door, 
wrestled it onto the cart, and then pulled the cart to the center. The centers 
door was wider; the cart just fit through it… but not through the inside door to 
the sewing room. Ofelia dragged her mattress off the cart and left it where it 
was. She was too tired now to drag it into the sewing room.
By the time she got the cart back to the waste recycler storage, it was 
twilight, and she felt grumpy and ill-used. Stupid storm, stupid cows, stupid 
mattress, stupid cart. Stupidest of all, the people who built doorways too 
narrow for carts to get through them. And stupid Ofelia, because she had not 
checked the garden today, and the slimerods had probably cut through half the 
tomato plants.
She went outside in a rush, and found no damage, but a crushed slimerod core 
between the tomatoes. A fresh one, still glistening. She picked all the ripe 
tomatoes she could find in the gathering darkness, and took them inside. She was 
not going to think about that slimerod. Perhaps a cow had stepped on it. Perhaps 
a sheep. Perhaps a murderous alien planning to cut off her head… but at the 
moment, she was not going to worry about it.
She took a shower, and the streaming water soothed her irritation as well as her 
muscles. When she came out, and toweled herself dry, she felt like putting on 
some of her beads. White ones, red ones, brown ones. Then she remembered that 
she had not made dough that day; she would have to start supper from scratch. 
She dipped a handful of flour, a finger of shortening, a dash of salt, a little 
water. Beneath her hands, the dough formed into a plump, firm ball, from which 
she pinched smaller lumps. She reached out one hand to the stove and set the 
griddle to heat. Then she rolled the little lumps into flat rounds with her 
second-best rolling pin (Rosara had taken the best rolling pin, and she still 
resented that, though Rosara was probably still in cryo, on her way to someplace 
she wouldn't like—worse punishment than Ofelia would have given anyone.)
She crumbled sausage into a pan, chopped onion, and started them frying. She 
would not have pork sausage much longer; she had finally eaten her way through 
nearly all the pork in the freezers at the center. Eventually, she would have to 
butcher a cow or sheep.
She should do that while she was still strong enough, she told herself. She had 
told herself that last winter, too, and then she had gone on eating the frozen 
meat on the grounds that it might spoil and that would be a waste. The truth was 
that she liked pork sausage. If only the pigs had not disappeared… the colonists 
had finally butchered the remainder when it became obvious that the pigs, unlike 
the sheep and cattle, would not stay in the terraformed area near the 
settlement.
When the sausage and onion were half done, Ofelia flicked the rounds of dough 
onto the hot griddle, and flipped them with a twig, then onto her plate. Another 
minute or two for sausage and onions; she sliced the fresh tomatoes as she let 
the meat sizzle, and added sprigs of mint and basil.
She had never grown tired of good food. Some old people did; she could remember 
them complaining about the lack of flavor, or simply not eating, but she was 
luckier than that. A bite of warm tomato, then of hot sausage and onion in 
flatbread, a nip of mint… yes. And tomorrow, she would finish planning for the 
storm, if it came. She would go back to her regular checks of the machines; it 
had been several days since she inspected the pumps. She would make sure 
everything was ready for the storm. She would even wrestle that be-damned 
mattress into the sewing room.



CHAPTER SEVEN
Contents - Prev / Next
In the morning, the sea-storm had moved closer. The weather monitor projected 
its track; if it did not swerve away, it would romp right over the settlement in 
four or five days. It wasn't as big as the storm two years before, but it would 
grow until it reached shore. She walked out over her mattress. She could drag it 
into the sewing room later; if she stopped to do that now, she might be 
distracted by her beadwork.
Outside, the weather was clear and bright, with the spurious calm that Ofelia 
had learned preceded the squalls. She looked at her list. The pumps first, and 
then the other machines. She would take a pad along to note which buildings 
needed repair. Dayvine had overgrown the pumphouse door, its brilliant red 
flowers and delicate seedpods draped elegantly from the roof across the opening. 
Ofelia yanked it loose, and pulled the door open with difficulty. Inside, the 
pumps throbbed, the same steady rhythm she was used to. All the gauges were 
normal. She wondered how high the river would go in the rains. If it rose too 
high, she should shut off the pumps, but she could do that from the center if 
she had to.
The door jammed on the vines again when she tried to shut it. Grumbling, Ofelia 
sawed at the tough vine stems and cleared them away from the door, then shoved 
the door shut and barred it. She hated to cut dayvine; the flowers would wilt 
within a few minutes, even if she got them to water. Still, for the few moments 
of beauty, she twined the severed stems around her neck and arms. She would 
throw them in the waste recycler when she reached it.
The cattle this morning were grazing steadily, as if anticipating the need to 
store up fuel before the storm. Ofelia remembered how some had been lost to the 
last flood. Should she try to drive them up into town, even shelter them in one 
of the buildings? Would the doors and garden gates hold, even if she could get 
them into one of the few walled courtyards? No. She would stick to her list.
All the machines were in working order, but she knew a number of light bulbs had 
burnt out. That was a resource she could not replace once the stores were gone. 
Her attempts to get the fabricator to make light bulbs—they were on its menu—had 
never worked, and she didn't understand the machine well enough to know why not. 
Rather than replace bulbs now, she removed those that might be damaged by the 
approaching storm. That left no outside lights on the center or waste recycler, 
but she rarely used them anyway.
After a quick lunch, she took her tools and began to repair shutters and doors 
that seemed likely to break loose in a high wind, leaky roofs and sagging eaves. 
She found more than she had expected. She tried to remember when she had last 
worked on them, fighting off the guilty feeling that she should have checked 
every single house, door, and shutter every day. That would have been 
impossible, she knew. She would have had no time to garden, sew, or anything 
else. Still, in the oppressive weather before a major storm, her old voice 
harassed her, talking of duty and pointing out that she had not really needed to 
make all those pretty necklaces.
Yes, she had needed that. She had needed it all her life, without knowing that 
was what she needed. The joy of creation, of play, had been the empty place 
unfilled by family and social duties. She would have loved her children better, 
she thought now, if she had realized how much she herself needed to play, to 
follow her own childish desire to handle beautiful things and make more beauty.
In this argument, she passed the afternoon, mending a half-dozen loose shutters 
and refitting the latch to one door from which the catch had come loose. Not 
until that door did she stop to consider how many of the things she'd fixed 
looked more damaged than worn. This latch, for instance. The colonists had found 
the native trees to produce hard, tight, straight-grained wood. It held nails 
and screws both; it required sharp tools for working. In forty years, most of 
the original attachments had not loosened. In her own house, the hinges and 
latches still fit tightly. What usually went wrong was a broken louver, where 
something heavy hit it, or metal fatigue in the fittings themselves.
Here… here something had pried the latch loose. When she looked, she could see 
the little gouges in the hard wood, showing a fresh surface next to the 
weathering of the rest. A cold chill shook her body. She tried to talk herself 
out of that panic. Some animal had done this. Some animal from the forest, one 
of the clever climbers. She had seen how they could grasp and pull, how they 
poked into things with long-nailed fingers. They had been slow to come into the 
village after the colonists left, but they had come at last. That would explain 
all the little oddities of the past few days.
If it were the creatures who had killed the other colonists, they would already 
have killed her. So they were not here, and the treeclimbers were. She had not 
seen them because they were shy. They were not so shy in the forest, but that 
was their natural place. Of course they would be shy here, and they would have 
better hearing than she did, and maybe better eyesight. They could easily keep 
out of her way.
She tightened the screws that held the latch, and checked the fit. It caught 
snugly. Then she made herself go into the house. Empty, as she'd expected. The 
scuffed dust on the floor fit with her idea of forest animals; it could even 
have been scuffed the last time she came through. She went out, latched and 
barred the door, and told herself she would not give in to the temptation to 
come back later that evening and see if it had been disturbed. Time enough 
tomorrow, when she would have to mend the shutters at the next house. One slat 
had broken away completely; she could see that a limb of a fruit tree touched it 
even with no wind.
Why did she even bother to maintain the other buildings, she wondered as she 
went back to the center. She didn't need them all; she had long since outworn 
the half-guilty pleasure of sleeping in other people's houses, using other 
people's bathrooms. She used four or five houses regularly, depending on the 
weather, but the others were just something else to look after. It was the old 
guilt, which insisted that she be responsible for everything, that things must 
be conserved in case of later need.
She would not waste the next day or so fixing houses she didn't care about. She 
would make sure of her own and the few others that were especially cool in muggy 
weather, exceptionally snug in the rare cold spells, or handy for a shower if 
she had been working nearby. She would let the rest go.
Panic gripped her for a second. If she let the wind and rain begin to erode the 
buildings, she might end up old and feeble, helpless and exposed in the storm 
herself.
If she fell off a roof or ladder while trying to keep everything in repair, she 
could end up in pain, helpless, and exposed while the buildings stayed healthy. 
The new voice—it still seemed new after these years—which had urged her to wear 
what felt good on her body now urged her to conserve her strength and health 
with the same care she lavished on buildings. They existed for her. She owed 
them nothing except what made them serve her better.
She felt uncomfortable with this argument. If she extended it to living things, 
she did not like it at all. But tools and buildings? A little breeze tickled the 
backs of her legs; when she looked up, the cloud wisps warned of the storm 
coming. The breeze did not die, but continued a steady push. She imagined 
herself on a roof tomorrow, or even a ladder… no. She would let it go. Her own 
roof, at dawn. The center's roof, perhaps.
In the morning, despite a thick mugginess, a slow unrefreshing movement of air 
proved the storm's location off to the southeast. Ofelia placed a ladder 
carefully and climbed up to check her own roof. The fabricator had produced 
rooftiles of some composite material, lighter than clay tiles but tough and 
long-lasting. The colonists had re-roofed only five years before they left, as 
much from prudence as need. As Ofelia expected, the rooftiles were sound, 
uncracked. A few had loosened; these she beat down into place with new spikes.
From her roof it was easy to see across the sheep meadow to the brush and forest 
beyond. The sheep were down at the far end, near the shuttle field, a dirty 
grayish mass. She could not see most of the meadow near the river; it was hidden 
by other buildings. But she could see part of the shuttle field, now mostly 
overgrown with terraforming grasses.
She climbed down, dragged the ladder to the center, and climbed up again. The 
center's roof was more complex, since it covered a larger building and had been 
designed to gather rainwater as well. In the early days, the colonists had not 
known how easy it would be to purify the river water, and they had depended on 
rainwater stored in cisterns.
Ofelia hated climbing around on the center roof. Parts were steeper; the valleys 
where angles came together were slippery and difficult. The roof had not leaked 
in the other sea-storm; she could probably let it go this time. A stubborn sense 
of duty took her up to the first ridgeline. It felt harder than the last time 
she'd climbed up. She got a knee across the ridgeline and sank down to rest. Her 
heart thudded; her breath came short; she could not see as well as she wanted.
When she looked back across the roof of her house to the sheep meadow, she saw 
movement in the brush. She sat motionless; she could not have moved if someone 
had prodded her. Out of the brush came a trio of reddish animals smaller than 
the sheep. Tails high, they ran across the grass, disappearing behind her house.
Climbers. Her breath came back with a rush as she recognized them. Forest 
climbers, as she'd thought. One appeared on the roof of her house, long arms 
busy… was it prying up her roof tiles? A long slender paw to its mouth—it was 
eating something that nested there. Sweat broke out, relief. The climbers had 
never been a menace. She had nothing to worry about unless they pried rooftiles 
off, and even that was not a serious threat.
She waved her own arms, and the climber froze, tail stiffly raised. "Shoo!" she 
yelled. The climber jerked as if shot, then scampered over the roof and 
disappeared. Moments later, all three appeared again, racing across the grass to 
the brush. She caught little glimpses of red bodies moving between the scrub, 
then they were gone.
There was something to be said for climbing on roofs after all. She felt 
lighthearted, childish again, and had to remind herself firmly that she could 
not caper here. She looked around, and saw nothing else interesting. The 
center's rooftiles all fit snugly; none were cracked. The only real danger would 
be a stoppage in the cistern overflow outlets. Slowly, carefully, she climbed 
back down the roof, and the ladder. She could check the cistern overflows from 
the ground.
The weather monitor displayed the storm's track and projected course. The first 
squalls should hit the next day, and the main storm on the day following. Ofelia 
dragged her mattress the rest of the way into the sewing room, and put it under 
one of the tables. She felt restless; she could not settle to her beadwork or 
any other activity. She had gathered in the food—she would make a last couple of 
rounds through the gardens until the storm closed in, since the vegetables would 
continue to ripen. But otherwise—she watched the cap of clouds cross the sky, a 
great arc that hour by hour closed over her world like a lid, first white and 
then darker and darker gray.
The first squalls were actually a relief. Ofelia was in the center; she stood by 
the door to the lane and watched the wind drive the rain before it. She wished 
the center had a second floor, a place from which she could see farther, perhaps 
even to the forest. She wondered if the big trees bent and swayed like the small 
ones in the village. She wondered how the forest climbers survived such storms… 
did they stay in the trees, which must be swaying back and forth, or did they 
huddle on the ground?
All day the squalls continued, the breaks between them shorter and the wind 
never completely still. Ofelia laid out the project she intended to work on, and 
between squalls went back to her own house for things she had forgotten: seeds 
she had collected, ends of yarn from old projects, her favorite yarn needle, her 
best thimble.
She was going to make another of the network garments… this one more festive 
than the last. She put on the first, to remind herself where she wanted to make 
changes. She wanted something that made her feel like the storms: something that 
evoked wind and rain and lightning and thunder.
Beating the scraps of metal into bell-shapes had taken longest. She could have 
had the fabricator mold bell-shapes, but then she could not have listened to 
them, choosing the shape that fit the sound she wanted. Far back in her memory 
lay a field-trip to a costume museum; the guide—docent, her mind said, casting 
up the old word along with the memory of sound—had shaken the costumes made for 
carnival wear, and she had thought then how like rain some of them sounded. Now 
she had small thin cylinders to crimp onto fringe… it tinkled coolly Yes. 
Bigger, rounder shapes of copper gave a mellower sound, water trickling into 
deep water.
The weather monitor beeped its main storm warning while she was still playing 
with the sounds, still making tinkling fringe and tonkling strings to hang from 
her shoulders. She went in and turned off the warning signal. The storm would 
strike full force the next morning. She should sleep while she could.
It was surprisingly hard to sleep. Although she'd napped in several houses, she 
had not spent the night in any but her own after the first few months alone. She 
had become used to the bigger bed, the wider mattress. The center had its own 
set of night noises, and outside the squalls rolled over, boisterous and loud. 
She finally slept in spite of herself, and woke late to a steady sustained roar. 
It was still dark outside; she checked the weather monitor and found that the 
storm had accelerated slightly, coming onshore several hours before the 
prediction.
Dawn came slowly under that blanket of cloud and flying water. Ofelia wasn't 
really hungry for breakfast; she went back to her project, trying not to hear 
the noise outside. But the wind's noise rose and rose; even the center shivered 
from time to time in the gusts. Was her house all right? It was tempting to open 
the door and look, but she knew better. She quit working with the metal 
dangles—she couldn't hear their various tones—and went back to painting and 
stringing beads.
Her ears ached slightly as the pressure dropped and dropped. She felt tired, and 
finally lay down again in midmorning. Silence woke her. She went to open the 
door. There it was again—the eerie center of the storm, with bright sunlight 
shining from a deep blue sky. Later in the day than last time; it was afternoon. 
Ofelia walked over to her house. Windblown rain had pried its way around the 
front door seals, leaving a wet patch on her floor, but she found no other 
damage.
She went back outside. It was as beautiful as the other times she'd seen it. To 
the east, sunlight turned the entire cloudface to a snow-and-silver-and-azure 
sculpture, as decorative as a pile of meringue. Ofelia splashed along the lane, 
keeping a cautious eye on that eastern rampart. This storm had seemed slightly 
stronger than the other. That should mean she had a little more time to roam, 
but she intended to be safely under cover again before it hit.
Down the lane to the right, she saw a pile of debris, a tangle of mud-gray and 
brown, streaks of bleached white. What had that blown from? She picked her way 
to it, enjoying the squish of mud between her toes.
Eyes stared back at her, great golden brown eyes whose pupils widened 
enormously. The pile stirred; a noise like the cooing of an entire flock of 
pigeons came from it. Ofelia stared; she could hardly breathe. That sodden mass 
of—of what she could not say—it had eyes—it was big—it—
From a distance, a rhythmic drumming that could only be intentional. The pile 
produced a weaker drumming of its own. Communication. Ofelia knew what this had 
to be. The aliens, the monsters, who had killed all those people. They had found 
her at last; only the storm had saved her, and only if it killed them. This one, 
at least, she could outrun back to the center. She hoped. Maybe the storm would 
kill them all. She turned. At the far end of the lane shapes moved. Upright, 
taller than she was, they danced nearer, high-stepping as the cows through 
shallow water. They fit no pattern she had seen, or imagined. They were 
earth-colored, streaked in beiges, browns, pale and shifting grays. Ofelia could 
not tell if that was skin, or short fur. Their faces—if those were faces—stuck 
out like birds' faces, but they had no feathers, and no wings. Like her, they 
had lower and upper limbs in pairs, but—but it was wrong. Ofelia backed against 
the wall. She could not outrun these. Elemental fear dragged at her bowels; her 
mouth tasted foul suddenly and her vision blurred.
Whatever they were, they looked at her, directly at her, in the way of people, 
not animals. Big eyes, fringed with stiff lashes. Three of them stopped to stare 
at her; four others moved to the fallen one and, with much noisy birdlike 
chatter, helped it up. It seemed weak; it leaned on them. It had what might be 
fingers, she saw now, though they made a very odd looking hand.
She glanced back at the ones staring at her. They looked nothing like the forest 
creatures she had seen. Taller, leggier, long toes tipped with hard blue-black 
nails. On their bodies, beaded straps held sacks and gourds in the arrangement 
Ofelia associated with pictures of soldiers. A short fringed leather skirt hung 
about what must be their hips. But aside from long sheathed knives, they carried 
nothing she recognized as weapons.
She shifted her weight; one of those watching her uttered a raucous noise that 
caught the attention of the rest. All of them stared at her; she felt she might 
melt in the regard of all those eyes.
The light failed suddenly, as the approaching cloud wall cut off the sunlight. 
Ofelia glanced upward. It was close—she should get back to the center now. The 
creatures also looked up at the rumble of thunder. She took a step sideways. 
Instantly their heads snapped back to stare at her, and several of them made 
that raucous noise. She wondered if they understood about the storm, that it was 
coming back, that it would hit with full force when it did. If only she could 
get into cover, and leave them outside, the storm might still blow them all 
away.
The injured one coughed, a sound so close to human that Ofelia had to look. Its 
supporters patted its back, for all the world like humans. It hawked and spat, a 
gritty spittle. Ofelia glanced sideways. She had barely time to get to the 
center, if she went now—but only a few meters away was the door to one of the 
other houses. If she could make it that far… she took another cautious step. 
Again the quick response, but the creatures did not move. It was as if they 
merely commented to themselves on what she did.
Emboldened, she took another step, and another. Thunder grumbled louder; one of 
the things drummed again. Two more drummed, and then the entire group. Their 
pupils contracted when they drummed. Ofelia moved crabwise, watching them; they 
seemed to ignore her now. A fine mist of windshredded rain cooled her skin—the 
storm would be on them in a few seconds. She was at the door—she struggled to 
lift the bar, to open it, to drag the bar with her inside. She took a last look 
at the little group in the lane. They were all looking at the sky, as if 
worried. Stupids. They would be blown down the lane to crash into something if 
they stood there.
Killers. Aliens. Troublemakers. She hadn't wanted them, any more than she'd 
wanted the other colony. But she would feel guilty if they died because she 
barred them out—and if they survived, they would be angry.
"Hey!" All the heads turned her way. "It's coming back." She knew they wouldn't 
understand her words, anymore than she would have understood their noises. She 
pointed at the sky. "Whoooo. Bang." She made a whirling motion with her arm. The 
creatures looked at each other and back to her. "Come on," she said. She swept 
her arm inside. The two supporting the injured one moved toward her; others made 
throaty sounds. "Hurry," she said, as the light darkened, as she heard the howl 
of wind on the other end of the village.
In a rush, they dashed to the house. She had just time to duck out of the way as 
they came through the door, all eight of them, the injured one limping. Wind and 
rain roared down the street outside; the door tore itself out of her hands and 
banged wildly. Wet wind swirled inside. Ofelia grabbed the door again and 
pushed; she felt warmth beside her as a creature joined her. And when the door 
finally shut the storm outside, another of them picked up the bar and set it 
across the brackets.
Then she was alone with them in the dimness, in the loud fury of the storm 
outside. Ofelia reached for the light switch, and touched strangeness instead; 
the surface felt slightly warm, and bristly, like the stem of a tomato plant. 
Beside her the creature grunted and caught her hand in hard-nailed fingers. 
Ofelia yanked back; she felt her skin stretch but the thing did not let go. 
Panic would not help. She reached carefully around with her other hand, and 
found the switch. In that sudden light, she saw all their eyes change, the wide 
pupils narrowing sharply. The one who held her moved its face closer to hers, 
then released her hand. Ofelia shook it, and looked; the grip had reddened, but 
not broken, her skin.
She could smell them, in here. It was the smell she had noticed before, the one 
she had lacked a name for. Up close, in the bright indoor light, they looked 
larger and more dangerous. Their narrowed eyes and beaky faces looked 
ill-tempered; their long limbs with the hard-nailed digits suggested both speed 
and cruelty.
She needed to use the toilet. She was not going to disgrace herself here, in 
front of them. She took a step toward the middle of the room, and the one who 
had grabbed her hand before now grabbed her shoulder. Again a soft grunt.
"Let go," Ofelia said, without heat. "I'm just going to the other room." A 
deeper grunt from one of the others, one wearing a string of some bright blue 
stones, and the one holding her shoulder let go. Slowly, trying to look 
harmless, Ofelia made her way around them—they did not move aside—to the 
bathroom door. She could hide in there, she thought suddenly, until after the 
storm. And if this house had a bathroom window, she could even escape.
The bathroom door had only the simplest latch, and it opened inward. The storm 
battered the shutters of the window; it shook in its frame. Ofelia sat down on 
the toilet, her brief calm over. If the creatures wanted in here, they could get 
in easily enough, and it would be hours before she could get out the window. If 
she could; it was a high window, and she didn't relish the thought of clambering 
up on the toilet to get out of it.
When she was through, she sat on the toilet lid until she heard something 
bumping at the door. Fear cramped her again. But better to go out than to have 
them drag her out; it had always been so with Humberto. She opened the door. One 
of the creatures stood there with its head cocked. Could it want the toilet? Of 
course not—they could not know what it was.
Ofelia opened the lid… but what if it thought that was drinking water? Perhaps 
it would not hurt them, perhaps it would kill them. She would try to make it 
clear there was another source.
She edged past the creature and went to the kitchen end of the main room. She 
turned on the water in the sink. All their heads came up; she felt pinned in 
place by the intensity of their gaze. The one who had been peering into the 
bathroom now came to her side. She demonstrated: the twist of the controls to 
turn the water on and off.
The creature reached out to the controls; its hard nails slipped on the metal 
control. Ofelia put her hand out to help, and the creature slapped her aside, 
hard enough to sting, but not a damaging blow. Ofelia glared, but years of 
marriage to Humberto suggested that the best thing to do was stand there looking 
subdued. Anger throbbed in her. She had not wanted to be in this situation 
again, where someone could bat her aside.
The creature continued to struggle with the control; one of the others made a 
sound, just loud enough to hear over the storm. The one struggling stopped, 
shook itself, and fished a short length of what looked like suede from one of 
its pouches. Wrapping that about the control to give itself purchase, it turned 
the control easily. Water spurted out; water ceased. Raucous sound now, from 
several of the things. The first one fumbled at a strap, unfastening a gourd, 
then held it under the stream of water. When the gourd overflowed, it handed it 
to one of the others, who sniffed and tasted cautiously.
All this time it left the water running. Ofelia risked another slap to reach out 
and turn the water off. Again they all looked at her. Then one of them looked at 
the light bulb overhead and jerked its snout at it—an unmistakable gesture. 
Ofelia walked to the light switch, and demonstrated that. More loud noises… 
discussion, she was sure. Another, not the one at the sink, came to test the 
switch for itself. This was easier for a hard fingernail to work. Lights on 
lights off lights on. More noise.
Suddenly something hit the house from outside, a blow that shook the walls and 
shattered the shutters in one of the bedrooms. Wind howled through, wet wind 
that smacked her face like a damp towel. The creatures scattered to the main 
room's corners, out of the direct blast of the wind. Ofelia huddled near the 
front door and wondered what had hit them. When she ventured to peek into the 
bedroom, she saw the floor already slick with water, and the window full of tree 
branches.
It would only get worse. Ofelia could see a bedstead, a soggy mattress, a crib. 
She splashed across the floor, worked her way to the outside wall. Water 
streamed off the tree limbs and down the wall, but the wall itself held. 
Lightning flashed outside; she heard a startled yelp from the doorway. When she 
looked over, two of the creatures were watching her. One of them lifted its foot 
from the puddle near the door with an expression she was sure meant dislike of 
wet feet.
Typical. They would let her do the work. She didn't want to. She made her way 
back across the floor, pulled the bedroom door shut, and latched it. With the 
wind behind it blowing it shut, the weak indoor latch should be enough. A wicked 
draft came under the door; it would blow water under it soon. She looked around 
for something to stop the draft. The creatures watched her still. She finally 
found some dish towels in a drawer, and rolled them up to stuff under the door.
It was getting dark now. She was tired and hungry. If she had been in the 
center, she would have had plenty of food. It was their fault, she told herself. 
If not for the stupid creature that got itself blown around in the storm," she 
might have been safe in the center, and they might all have been storm-blown… or 
at least sheltering somewhere else.
She could have had a last day or night of peace—as much peace as the storm 
allowed—before her death. She could at least have had food and a familiar bed, 
and something pleasant to do. Instead, she was stuck here with—she counted—eight 
aliens, murderers, and no food, and no comfortable bed. There was the other 
bedroom, but… it occurred to her then to look for the damaged one, the one whose 
plight had gotten her into this mess.
She could not be sure which it was. Three of them lounged together on the worn 
bench, but none looked as bedraggled as the sodden heap she'd seen in the 
street. When had they found the towels that now lay in dirty piles on the floor? 
She was too tired to think how long it had been, or exactly what they had done. 
Even as panic told her that they would kill her in her sleep, that she must not 
sleep, exhaustion dragged her down. Either she would die, or she wouldn't, and 
either way she would sleep.



CHAPTER EIGHT
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Ofelia woke in a panic, sure she was suffocating. It was dark, too warm, too 
damp, and something stirred against her in the darkness. She gasped, found she 
could breathe, and even as that panic eased remembered that she had fallen 
asleep in a houseful of aliens. In the light. She forced herself to lie still. 
She could feel something along her back, something warmer than the air, 
something that felt… alive. She blinked, but saw only the wandering bright spots 
that haunted her eyes at night anyway. What had happened to the lights?
Thunder muttered in the distance, but the storm's roar had died; she could hear 
the steady drip of rain off the roof. The main storm must be past. But where was 
she, and when? Her back and shoulder hurt; her bad hip stabbed her when she 
tried to move, and she bit back a gasp.
The creature beside her stirred; she was aware of its sudden alertness. It made 
a sound like water coming to a boil in a kettle, and she felt it move closer, 
She tensed… some part of it touched her lightly, felt along her body and paused 
on her chest where her racing heart felt as if it would burst free. Then the 
touch vanished. Ofelia blinked, surprised. What had it been feeling for?
As she lay there, she began to pick out vague shapes in the darkness. Light 
seeped through the shutters; it must be past dawn. Her stomach growled; she 
needed to use the toilet again. She would need the lights, or she'd step on some 
of the creatures, and she didn't want to do that. She tried to stretch, and her 
hip stabbed her again. Stupid hip. She would need it to run with, if she got the 
chance. Slowly, she moved her leg back and forth until the pain eased.
When she turned on her side to push herself up, the creature beside her roused 
again. She could see the dim shape looming, taller even sitting than she was. 
But it didn't touch her. Slowly, because that was what she could do in the 
morning after sleeping on the floor, she clambered to her feet. Now she could 
see the other shapes slumped in corners, huddled together… and she could walk 
between them.
The one who had been at her side watched her, the great eyes gleaming in the dim 
light. She walked across to the bathroom, shut the door behind her, and used the 
toilet. The flush was loud, in the quiet aftermath of the storm. She heard 
startled noises from the other room; when she went back out, they were all 
awake, all looking at her.
She could not be as afraid now; her body was more interested in food. Her 
stomach growled; one of the creatures made a similar sound. Was it hungry? Or 
was it mocking her? She made her way across the room to the door, wondering if 
they would let her walk out, and she would go back to the center and bar them 
out of it. Then she could eat breakfast, and…
Of course they would follow. She turned on the lights; as they all blinked, 
their pupils contracting, she unbarred the door and opened it. Soft warm rain 
fell steadily from high clouds. She could smell rotting vegetation, cow manure, 
even wet wool. She took a step outside. The rain was so'warm it felt more like a 
second coating of sweat than a cleansing bath. Ofelia looked back. Two of the 
creatures stood in the doorway, watching her.
"I'm going back," she said. And walked away.
That raucous sound, from more than one of them. Ofelia looked over her shoulder. 
One of them moved out into the rain, shook itself, and kept walking after her. 
Not running, just walking, stepping high through the puddles. Ofelia walked on, 
ignoring it. She was hungry, she was tired, her hip ached, and she wanted to be 
back in her own space. Even if they were going to kill her.
At the center, she found water draining out the front door. Had she forgotten to 
close it when she came out to walk around? Or had the creatures found it and 
opened it? She walked into a mess. Wind had driven the rain all the way back 
down the central hallway; water had run into adjacent rooms and soaked the 
mattress she'd left on the floor in the sewing room. Apparently the interior 
doors had blown shut, though, and prevented worse damage.
She would have to sweep out the worst of the water before she could cook in the 
center. Perhaps her house was dryer. She went back out the door, nearly 
colliding with the creature who had followed her, and across the lane. Inside 
her house it was dry… until she and the wet creature following her came in and 
dripped on the floor. Ofelia toweled herself off and handed dry towels to the 
creature. It took the towel and held it aside, looking at her with those great 
eyes.
Muttering, Ofelia took the towel back. Worse than a child. Surely it knew it was 
wet; surely it had seen her dry herself off. She reached out very slowly and ran 
the towel along one of its upper limbs. It shivered, but did not move. She tried 
to hand the towel back, but it didn't take it. And it was still dripping on her 
floor. Stupid creature. How had they been smart enough to kill the other 
colonists? She touched its other upper limb with the towel, and when it didn't 
resist dried its front and back, and finally its legs. Then she wrapped the damp 
towel around its feet, sopping up the puddle it had made.
It grunted. What did that mean? It twitched its lower limbs and grunted again. 
Ofelia glared at it. Was it too stupid, or too lazy, to get its own feet out of 
the towel? "Take it off," she said. It grunted again, and jerked its… she had to 
think of it as a leg. "Stupid baby," Ofelia said, and bent down to take the 
towel away. "Stupid, lazy, inconsiderate…" Luckily it could not understand her 
speech. She was out of the habit of holding her tongue.
At least it was drier, and not dripping on her floor. She moved to the kitchen, 
turned on her stove, and pulled out her canisters. She needed bread, and meat, 
and vegetables. She would make flatbread first. She had a handful of flour when 
something hard touched her shoulder; she jumped, spilling the flour.
"Idiot!" she said. The thing grunted; it let go. "I'm cooking," she said, as if 
it could understand. "I'm hungry, and I'm cooking," She got another handful of 
flour, the shortening, the salt, the water, and mixed them. The dough in her 
hands felt comforting, a familiar presence she understood better than most. 
Knead, knead, flatten, knead, knead, flatten. Pinch off bits, flatten them, roll 
them, lay them on the griddle. Already her mouth watered; the smell of the dough 
alone had done that. The creature, when she looked around, had retreated to the 
front door, its eyes fixed on the hot griddle where the flatbread steamed. 
Afraid of fire, was it? That might be useful, but not until she'd eaten. She 
opened the cooler door and took out a chunk of sausage. The first flatbread was 
done; she rolled it around nothing but her hunger, and ate it so hot it burned 
her tongue. On the second, she remembered to spread some jam she had made that 
spring. Better. The sausage sizzled now; she sliced potatoes to fry in its fat. 
She looked for the creature, and found it in the middle of the room, staring 
with apparent fascination at the cooler door. She opened it again, watching the 
creature; its eyes met hers and it grunted.
"You can't leave it open too long," she said, and shut the door. She wondered if 
it was hungry too, and thought of offering it food, but when she turned around 
again, it had disappeared. Only the damp towel on the floor proved it had been 
there.
She had finished a meal, and gone back across to the center to sweep out the 
water when they came back. The rain was lighter, though still steady; she swept 
the water out into a lane streaming with it, the side ditches brimming. She 
didn't see them until they stood in the doorway as she swept toward it, three or 
four of them at once. They didn't move. Ofelia pushed the broom toward them.
"Get back."
They still did not move. Rude. She pushed the broom hard, and a cascade of dirty 
water rolled over their feet. One squawked, and backed away; the other two 
didn't.
"I'll do it again," Ofelia said. When they stood there, stupid as cows, she 
thought, she pushed another slosh of water over their feet. Two more squawks, 
and they all backed up, glancing at each other. She went back down the hall. 
When she came to the door again, they were back, but this time they moved aside 
before she pushed the water out.
And this time they followed her inside. She ignored the wet smack of their feet 
on the floor; it didn't matter, this floor was dirty and wet already. She wished 
they would dry themselves, rather than stand around in her way dripping, but she 
wasn't about to stop and find towels for them. They moved out of her way as she 
came past with the broom, but otherwise simply stood watching her work.
Lazy and spoiled, she decided. Rude, lazy, and spoiled. If they had mothers, 
their mothers had never taught them to help out around the house. If they had 
houses. She paused at that thought and looked at them. Surely they had houses. 
Intelligent animals built dwellings, it was one of the ways you knew if they 
were intelligent. Who wanted to be out in storms and blown about and rained on? 
Not these things; she had seen one injured by the storm. So they had to have 
houses, and if they had houses someone had to clean them. And they should know 
how.
On that, she went to the storage closet and pulled out a mop and a broom. If 
they were going to kill her, they might as well earn the privilege. She dragged 
the mop and brooms back up the hall; the creatures stood there, passive.
"Here," she said, holding out the broom. One of them reached out and took it. 
She held out the mop to another, and it also took it, in the way of a child who 
is not sure what its for. She could teach them. She had taught her own children. 
And she was not about to become the unpaid housekeeper for a band of aliens.
"Like this," she said, demonstrating the push of the broom. The one holding the 
broom looked and looked, with those wide eyes, and then looked at its companions 
and grunted, a series of little grunts ending in a high squawk. They squawked 
back. Ofelia made assumptions. "Yes, I do expect you to use it," she said 
severely. "The floor is wet. You are bigger than I am, and stronger. Push the 
broom."
The creature holding the broom made a tentative pass at the floor, waggling the 
broom exactly like a child. "Harder," said Ofelia. "Push it harder on the 
floor." She demonstrated again. The creature pushed a little harder, not hard 
enough but a start. "Go ahead," Ofelia said, waving her arm at a puddle where 
the floor was uneven. It glanced at her, at its companions, and pushed the broom 
through the puddle, not very effectively.
"And you," Ofelia said to the mop holder. "Like this." Since she had no mop, she 
put her hands over its grip on the mop and forcibly moved it into the right 
position. "The mop sops up the water," she said. Even if it couldn't understand, 
she felt better explaining aloud. When there were people there, you talked to 
them. Under her hands, its hands felt big and bony, harder than human hands and 
oddly constructed. "When its full of water, you wring it out," she said. It 
stiffened when she tried to raise the mop to wringing height, resisting her 
direction. It churred, and the other two grunted in reply.
Ofelia looked at its face, and saw that its eyelids were almost closed. 
Something was wrong. She let go of its hands on the mop handle, and its lids 
raised. It grunted. Well. Perhaps she could find another broom. She handed her 
broom to the third creature and pointed to the puddle its companion was more 
stirring than sweeping. Then she went back to the closet for another broom.
With gestures and nudges, she had them pushing water more or less toward the 
door, while she herself mopped. She didn't like mopping, but she also didn't 
like wet floors. Outside, the post-storm rain continued steadily.
She was hungry again when the rest of the creatures showed up, and noisily 
interfered with what "her" creatures were doing. That was what it seemed like, 
anyway. The newcomers grunted, squawked, and gabbled; the ones holding the 
brooms dropped them. They all stared at her, and again she felt the pressure of 
all their attention. She did not like it. She wished they would all kill her, or 
go away, anything but bother her by looking at her like that.
The floor was merely damp now; she didn't really need the help. "Go on," she 
said, sweeping at them with her arm. "Let me alone, then." Instead of that, the 
newcomers came all the way in and dripped; new puddles formed under them. 
"Idiots!" Ofelia said. "Babies!" She picked up the mop again and pushed it at 
their feet. Behind her, the ones who had been sweeping gabbled at the newcomers, 
who gabbled back. The newcomers stood their ground; she had to flop the mophead 
against their long dark toes with the thick black nails, and push past them to 
wring it out into the lane. They made no move to help her, or to get out of her 
way.
Just like them. They would. The complete meaning of that pronoun—the source of 
her experience—she did not bother to consider When she had mopped the new 
puddles, she wrung out the mop a last time and propped it by the door. They were 
discussing something—possibly how she would taste, she thought—and ignoring her. 
She was still hungry. Down the central hall, past the rooms for machines, was 
the center kitchen and its pantries. She gave them a last disgusted look and 
walked away. Behind her, she heard startled noises, and the click of toenails on 
the hard floor. It took her a moment to think why she hadn't noticed it 
before—it had been too noisy during the storm, and she'd been talking to them 
here.The center pantries held staples: flour, sugar, salt, dried yeast, baking 
powder and baking soda, dried beans and peas, and freezers less full than they 
had been of meats and other perishables. Ofelia had turned on the kitchen lights 
when she came in; now she turned on lights in the lefthand pantry. She was too 
hungry to wait for dried beans to cook. She looked in the freezer. Every 
household had contributed some finished dishes, for emergencies: casseroles and 
stews and soups. She had eaten little of that in these years, because she liked 
her own cooking. Now she took out a packet Ariane had contributed; it had her 
name and family name on it, and the contents: lamb stew. Ofelia put the packet 
in the kitchen's quick-thaw machine, and rummaged for a saucepan to cook it in. 
By the time she found the pan, the packet was soft. She opened it and put the 
lumpy cold contents into the saucepan.
As she heated the stew, the creatures came into the kitchen. They were like 
children, prying into everything. They tried the water controls of the sinks—so 
they had remembered what she taught them in the house. They opened cabinets, 
picked up and put down everything they could move, and even turned on the light 
in the other pantry. One of them came to her side, and very slowly touched her 
hand on the stirring spoon. It grunted softly.
As long as they weren't actually killing her, she might as well be polite. "I'm 
cooking stew," she said. "That's a spoon, this is a pot, this is a stove." As 
she spoke, she pointed. Did they understand pointing? The creature dipped its 
head low over the pan, then jerked back as the stew bubbled. "Hot," Ofelia said, 
as she would have to a toddler. "Be careful, its hot."
A crash behind her made her jump, and she whirled around. One of the creatures 
had tried to take plates out of a cabinet, and had dropped several. Now it stood 
stiffly, arms away from its sides, while two others advanced on it slowly. 
Ofelia giggled before she could stop herself. It was so much like a child who'd 
had an accident, being scolded by siblings. She didn't really mind about those 
plates; they were dull beige with a brown stripe, a preprogrammed design in the 
fabricator, and she had never liked them.
She turned back to the stew, which was hot enough now, and turned the stove 
down. She would need a bowl. If she remembered right, the small bowls were at 
this end of the china cabinets. She opened one, and found serving bowls; in the 
next were the small bowls. The creatures watched as she took out a bowl, and 
then a spoon from the drawer underneath. She poured her stew—Ariane's stew, 
actually—into the bowl.
She tasted it. Ariane was a good cook, but she had been more conservative with 
this dish, meant for the community as a whole, than at home. Ofelia would have 
added more marjoram and more pepper. Still, it was good enough, and she was 
hungry. She looked at the creatures, who were now exploring again, all ignoring 
her except for the nearest, and decided to eat where she was, standing up. She 
finished that bowl of stew, and then another, and put the remainder into the 
cooler, in the cooking pot she'd used. Then she started for the sink with her 
dirty bowl and spoon.
They still hadn't cleaned up the broken bits of plate. Ofelia looked at them, 
and sighed. One of them looked back, and churred. "Its your mess," Ofelia said, 
without much hope that this would make any difference. It grunted. "Not my 
mess," Ofelia went on. She didn't want to stoop down and pick up those pieces; 
she was already tired and sore. She walked on past and turned on the water in 
the sink. One of the creatures came close and peered at her while she washed the 
bowl. Didn't they wash their dishes? Or didn't they have dishes? Ofelia put the 
bowl upside down to drain. When she turned around, one of them was trying to 
pick up the pieces of plate in one hand, and hold them in the other.
Perhaps they didn't have trash collectors. Ofelia opened the cabinet under the 
sink, and got out the trash collector. She took it over to the creature and 
mimed putting the broken pieces in. It stared at her a moment, then dropped them 
in. Ofelia smiled, and it stepped back, its pupils dilating. Was it scared? 
Ofelia looked away, and found the others watching. Was it embarrassed? She 
couldn't tell. And she wanted to go home and take a nap, before she tackled the 
rest of the cleaning. Although she really should get that soggy mattress up off 
the floor. Her joints ached at the thought of heaving it up.
She started back down the passage, and heard behind her the clicking of many 
toenails. Drat. She couldn't leave them here alone in the center. What if they 
got into the control rooms and started pushing buttons? What if they broke the 
machines she depended on? She turned around, and there they were, close behind 
her, bright-eyed and bouncy.
Go away, she wanted to say. Go away and let me sleep and maybe later I can think 
how to deal with you. Go away and leave everything as it is, don't touch 
anything… It wouldn't work. It didn't work with toddlers, who never cared how 
sleepy you were, or how much you needed to get done, or how dangerous the 
machine was they were determined to explore. These creatures were not toddlers 
to themselves, but they were as dangerous, even if they didn't mean to kill her.
She would have to stay awake. She wondered if she could make locks for the doors 
she didn't want them to open. Their hands were not as dexterous as hers; they 
had fumbled at first with the water faucets. She suspected that they would 
interfere if they saw her blocking their way. Even as she thought that, one of 
them opened the door to the control room and squawked loudly.
No. Ofelia pushed past them, using her elbows even as they squawked and grunted. 
Then she faced them, arms spread. "Get out of here," she said. "No." It was like 
talking to a new puppy, or someone else's baby: they were staring past her at 
the colored lights, the gauges, the monitor screens flickering with status 
reports. They grunted at each other and pushed forward.
"NO!" Ofelia stamped her foot; they stopped as if she'd hit them with something 
heavy and stared at her.
"This is not for you/' she said. "You'll break it. You'll ruin it."
The one in front gave a long rolling churr and waved its forelimb at the room.
Ofelia shook her head. "No. Not. For. You. Dangerous." She wondered how to mime 
danger to them. Did they know about electricity? "Zzzzt!" she said, pretending 
to touch something and then jerking back, shaking her hand.
"Zzzzt…" It was the first sound of hers any of them had copied. What did zzzzt 
mean in their language? More importantly, would it stop them from poking around 
in here and destroying things? Ofelia tried to remember childhood lessons in 
electricity. Lightning was also electricity; they had to know about lightning. 
Could she get that across?
The one in front slowly extended its long dark nails toward one of the control 
boards. "Zzzzt…" it uttered, more softly than Ofelia had, and yanked its limb 
back as if stung. Ofelia nodded; at least they had that right.
"Yes—zzzzt. Hurts you. Big ouch." She felt silly, talking to them as if they 
were babies just reaching for trouble, but it had worked.
The creature extended its limb to her, not quite touching. It tilted its head to 
one side, presenting her with more of one eye than the other. "Zzzzt…" it 
uttered again, and then touched her very gently on the chest.
Ofelia frowned. It meant something, she was sure of it. It wanted to say 
something to her… but she could not think what that meant. She rehearsed it in 
her head. She had tried to convey that the things in here could hurt if you 
touched them—and the creature had copied her actions, which might mean it 
understood, although she had known plenty of children who couldn't learn from a 
pretense like that, who had to be hurt themselves before they understood that 
fire would burn. Then it had uttered the sound, while almost touching her, and 
then had touched her.
Was it saying that she might hurt it, the same way as the machines? That she did 
hurt? But no—they had touched her already, and as near as she could tell, it 
hadn't hurt them. They hadn't jerked or jumped back or shown any other sign of 
pain. If they showed pain the way people did.
"Zzzzt…" the creature uttered, repeating its earlier sequence. Then it seemed to 
point to the machines behind her, with an emphatic little stab on the end of the 
gesture. "Zzzzt." Then it pointed at her again.
Oh. Ofelia laughed aloud before she could stop herself. Of course. It wanted to 
know if the machines would zzzzt her. Or it wanted to see her get a zzzzt. Or 
something that connected her with the machines and the action she had claimed 
they had.
She held up one finger; the creatures stared at it. "The wrong place will go 
Zzzzt," she said. She walked over to the outlet where the cables linked to the 
power system. "Here it will make anyone go Zzzzt." Again she pretended to touch 
it, made the noise, and jerked back. "But here—IF you know what you're doing, I 
can touch it." As she spoke, she mimed: finger tapping head… knows… a careful 
approach, looking all over the control board before deciding which button to 
push… a careful touch with one finger on one button. No zzzzt. The lights 
blinked; she had enabled a warning circuit that put all the center lights on 
slow flash.
Squawks and grunts and gabbles, restless stirring in the hall behind the 
frontmost creatures. Ofelia prodded the button again and the lights returned to 
a steady glow. While she was there, she touched other controls, storing all 
monitor displays for later analysis, disabling all but the board she was using, 
choosing the most resistant of systems to run things. Just in case they got 
eager and tried to poke around, she could prevent much of the trouble they'd 
cause. They would be unlikely to hit the enabling sequences with random attempts 
to get something to happen. And she would disable this board when she was 
through. Let them have another scare first. "If you aren't very careful," she 
said. "If you just swipe at the controls, bad things will happen." She laid her 
hand on the board, carefully across the emergency alert panel. Sirens wailed 
outside, higher and higher; bells rang in every room in the center; the lights 
changed to a different flash sequence, from normal to brighter and back. Ofelia 
turned it off, and locked the board down. "And that's why you shouldn't mess—"
But they had. At least half of them had left stinking piles on the floor they 
had just cleaned. All of them stared at her. She didn't have to know their 
language to know they were angry. Ofelia glared back. It wasn't her fault. She 
hadn't meant to scare them that much—only to convince them to leave the controls 
alone. And they'd dirtied the floor.
"I'm not cleaning that up," Ofelia said. "Get the brooms." It would take mops. 
It would take… but it didn't. One of them grunted something especially emphatic, 
and the guilty parties—as Ofelia saw it—bounced away at high speed, to return 
with scoops that she recognized too late as the big stirring paddles from the 
kitchens. Oh well. They could be sterilized. She didn't care that the 
biochemistry wasn't supposed to be compatible: she was not going to use stirring 
paddles that had picked up alien waste until they'd been properly disinfected.
The creatures picked up their messes and went down the hall in the direction of 
the outside door. Perhaps she should have told them about the toilets. She 
looked back at the ones still staring at her. Perhaps she should not upset them 
any more. A lifetime's experience reminded her that upsetting those who 
outnumber you and have weapons is a bad idea. It was because they hadn't hurt 
her yet… she had begun to think of them as harmless, or at least not immediately 
threatening.
The cleanup crew returned; she noticed that the stirring paddles looked clean, 
as if they'd been scrubbed in the rainwater. Looks weren't everything; she'd put 
them through a hot water cycle. With a little shudder, the others relaxed; their 
intent gaze left her, and Ofelia felt herself relaxing too. Perhaps they weren't 
going to kill her. At least not now. At least not if she kept them pacified. If 
they had been children, she would have cooked something sweet, but they had not 
seemed attracted to the food in the kitchen.
She moved toward the door, and the creatures moved back. They followed her down 
the passage, and into the sewing room where her wet mattress lay under the long 
work table. She counted—all of them. No one was lurking in the control room, 
tinkering with the switches.
As in the kitchen, they moved around, looking at everything making soft noises 
that she could not help but assume were language of some sort. Ofelia squatted 
down with a grunt of her own and tried to drag the wet mattress out from under 
the table. It had absorbed enough water to add kilos to its weight, and it stuck 
to the damp floor beneath it. She yanked harder, wishing she had had the sense 
to prop it up on something in the first place. Of course, she hadn't meant to 
have the door open and rain blowing in. She still couldn't remember whether she 
herself had left it open when she went out to walk in the calm at the heart of 
the storm. Not that it mattered, really.
She tugged again and again, and the mattress resisted. Suddenly, four bony 
odd-shaped hands with long dark nails gripped it; it slid suddenly towards her 
and she fell backwards. The mattress landed on her feet. She looked over; two of 
the creatures, still holding the mattress, were watching her. "Thank you," she 
said. It was important to thank children, if they were trying to help, even if 
they got it wrong. That way they would keep trying. She dragged her feet out 
from under the mattress, levered herself up to a squat again, and tugged. They 
tugged. With her guidance, they got the mattress out from under the table and up 
on end, propped sagging against a wall.
Ofelia put her hands to her back, and sighed. Tonight she would sleep in her own 
bed, if she was still alive, and rest. She looked around. One of the creatures 
was poking at the loose beads; another had picked up her beaded and fringed 
netted garment and was shaking it softly, listening to the sounds it made. 
Children! Always into things, always moving things, always making messes.
"That's mine," she said. The heads turned, the eyes stared. It wasn't quite as 
bad now; she knew they could stare very well without doing anything else. She 
took the garment from the one who held it—it released it to her without 
resistance—and then realized they could have no idea what it was for. "It's a 
dress," she said. She might as well show them; it wasn't as if they were people, 
who might make comments about her handiwork.
She wriggled into the garment, enjoying as before the feel of it against her—she 
had finally gotten that set of beads in just the right place, and the itchy 
place just under her shoulderblade now had an automatic scratcher every time she 
moved. Her hands moved without her thought, touching the beads, the bits of 
bright color and softness and smoothness and texture.
"That's better," she said.
"Zzzzt…" said one of them, pointing its long hard fingernail at her.
"No. Not zzzzt. I made this." Her hands spread, then she picked up a loose bead 
and threaded it onto one of her twisted-grass strings. "I like to make things." 
She picked up another bead, a tiny spacer, then another larger one, and showed 
them. They all approached; she sensed real interest.



CHAPTER NINE
Contents - Prev / Next
Ofelia finally elected to sleep in the control room. She simply could not be 
sure that the creatures would leave it alone otherwise. Not that they couldn't 
push her aside, if they chose to, but so far they hadn't. She collected an 
armful of dry fabric from the sewing rooms, and spread it on the floor for a 
mattress. She had slept on worse. The night before, she reminded herself, she 
had slept on the bare damp floor with a roomful of aliens.
She shut the door in their faces. They made noises through the door, and she 
ignored them. She spread her material next to the door, and lay down, grunting 
with exhaustion and aching joints. She really was too old for this. She could 
not think of a time when it would have been easy, but now she resented it with 
additional vigor. She had been living exactly as she pleased since the other 
colonists left, constrained only by what she thought of as real things: weather, 
the needs of her garden crops, or the animals.
Now she was sleeping—or rather, not sleeping—on a hard floor instead of her own 
bed simply because some pesky aliens that reminded her too much of demanding 
children couldn't be trusted to stay out of the control room. Like children, 
they could do immense harm without even knowing it, and unlike children they 
offered no compensations: she had no desire at all to cuddle them. If she slept, 
she would wake up stiff and sore. If she didn't sleep, she would be exhausted in 
the morning, and there they would be, bright-eyed as children, who always got 
the sleep they needed, no matter what happened to the adults.
It was the end of her life. It was supposed to be simple. She had been so sure 
she'd worked it out at last. The end, she'd assumed, would be unpleasant, but at 
least it would be private. No one would disturb her; no one would wake her up, 
demand things from her.
She dozed for awhile, waking as uncomfortably as she'd expected, but 
unaccountably happy. From outside soft sounds came through the door… rhythmic 
sounds, harmonious sounds. Music? Were the alien creatures making music?
She had never thought of aliens as making music. She had never known any 
musicians at all. Music came from boxes: from cube players, from transmitted 
entertainment. Sometimes she had seen, in a cube drama, someone actually making 
music, and far back in her life, in the primary school, the children had been 
taught music appreciation. She could still remember the field trip to the 
symphony rehearsal. But no one she knew could play an instrument. Everyone sang, 
of course. Some better, some worse, but all mothers, she supposed, hummed to 
their babies. All couples in love sometimes sang along with favorite songs, 
strolling down a crowded street… she and Caitano had. But Humberto had told her 
she couldn't carry a tune, and after that she sang only for the babies, tuneless 
murmurings that soothed them. The other women had sung, sometimes, as they 
worked together, but she had never joined in.
How did those creatures make music? She tried to think of the things they 
carried on those straps slung around them. Sacks and gourds, mostly, and the 
long knives in their sheaths. No instrument she had seen a picture of would fit 
into those shapes. Were they just singing and pounding the floor?
She edged off her inadequate pad of cloth and cautiously opened the door a 
crack. She could not see them; they must be down the hall somewhere. But she 
could hear better, and what she heard had a lilting, laughing quality that made 
her chuckle even as she told herself it was ridiculous. DA-dah-dah DIM-duh 
DIM-duh DIM-duh… and a tune that tickled her ears. It wasn't quite right, she 
thought; perhaps they all sang flat, the way Humberto had said she did, or 
perhaps their music was simply that different. But it was music, and she had to 
know how it was made. She told herself that her joints hurt too much to go back 
to sleep.
She opened the door wider and put her head out. Nothing to see. Light spreading 
from the open door of one of the sewing rooms. A faint whiff of unpleasant odor 
from the floor, where they'd cleaned up their messes. And that sound.
Slowly, silently, Ofelia crawled down the hall toward the light. Now she could 
hear complex under-rhythms, little sounds much like seeds in a seed pod, or a 
handful of beads. A haunting, breathy sound carrying the tune, a sound she 
identified with no instrument she knew. And something else, something that 
tingled in her ears.
When she peered around the door, they were all sitting in a ring; they had 
pushed the long tables to one side. She could not see much, but she could see 
that one of them had a set of tubes up to its mouth. It must be blowing them. 
The elbows of one with its back to her moved, and a tangle of notes rang out 
above the melody. Ofelia felt tears burning her eyes. What was that? Suddenly 
the others began to chant something, more or less along with the instruments. 
One held up a hand, and they lowered their voices abruptly; several glanced in 
the direction Ofelia would have been had she been in the control room. If they 
had been humans, that would have been awareness of someone sleeping, someone who 
should not be disturbed. But these were aliens. What were they thinking? She 
crouched against the wall of the hall, not looking, just listening. Their voices 
together had a roughspun quality, more like thick crochet or knitted fabric than 
fine weaving. Her ears liked it, as her hands liked thick soft yarn better than 
thin thread.
She did not know she had gone to sleep in their music until she woke to find 
them standing over her. She had fallen asleep half-sitting against the wall; she 
had a crick in her neck, and her mouth felt dirty and used. She blinked up at 
them. One still held the handful of tubes. It blew into them now, soft breathy 
sounds, notes that might have been no more than the wind around corners except 
they were so pure. Then the creature cocked its head to one side.
Was it asking if she'd heard? Or if it had woken her? Or if it had put her to 
sleep? She had no idea. She liked the sound. She reached out, meaning to gesture 
Go on, and the creature handed her the tubes.
There were seven of them, polished, tied together with braided strips of grass 
almost as fine as thread. Ofelia bent her head to look closely at the work. 
Someone had made those narrow strips, then braided them—evenly, she noticed—and 
then braided the braid with others, and wrapped the tubes. The tubes themselves 
felt light, like the bones of birds or stems of great reeds. They had been 
stained a deep vermilion, so she could not tell what color they had been. Unless 
that was the color. They smelled like the creatures themselves, a pungent but 
unclassifiable odor.
The creature's hand came close now, pointing to one end of the tubes. Ofelia saw 
little notches carved in the tubes. She blew experimentally into the end of one; 
a sound came out, not musical at all but breathy and harsh. She tried another 
with the same result.
"I'm sorry," she said, handing it back to the creature. "I can't play it.
Was that satisfaction on its face? It blew a ruffling flourish, triumphant, then 
stared at her.
Ofelia grinned. "Its lovely," she said. "I wish I could do that."
She looked at the others. One held a gourd covered with a network of laces 
strung with beads. It shook the gourd, and produced the light rattling rhythm 
she'd heard. It held the gourd out. Ofelia took it, and shaking it remembered a 
rhythm from her childhood, a song she and Caitano had danced to. She felt her 
toes wiggling as she tried to match the memory with present sound. A deeper 
drumming joined her; she looked up, startled. One of them bounced a stick—a 
stick that looked remarkably like a bone—against its torso. She lost her rhythm, 
found it again. Now one of them clicked long black toenails against the floor. 
The one with the collection of tubes blew into them again.
Ofelia concentrated on the rhythm she was trying to make, but she kept losing it 
in the confusion with the other sounds. Finally she quit trying, and simply 
shook the gourd back and forth. Around her the creatures made a variety of 
sounds, all of which wove together in ways she enjoyed without understanding. 
When her arm got tired, she quit shaking the gourd and just listened. She had 
not ever imagined what it would be like to make music in a group… it was fun, 
she decided, but it would be more fun if she knew what they were doing.
When they stopped, she grinned and handed up the gourd to whichever one would 
take it. Then she shook her arm, to explain why she had quit. She thought she 
might look for some of the old cubes, the ones the colonists had played for 
recreation nights, and let them hear what human music was like. Most of the 
cubes were gone, of course; people had combined their cube libraries when they 
came, but reclaimed favorites when they left.
Tomorrow. She was too tired tonight, too ready to go back to sleep. She got to 
her feet, grunting a little, then shuffled back down the hall to the control 
room. They watched, but did not follow. She shut herself in, lay down on the 
thin pallet and wondered if they would keep making music. If they did, she did 
not hear it. She woke when one of them bumped against the door, woke all at once 
in a fright, her heart racing. But they didn't try to push their way in. It was 
nothing like that other time, the time she woke to the bump on the door and it 
was the shadow in shadows pushing his way in, wanting her, wanting her despite 
her refusal. Ofelia sat still until she regained her breath. Not the same at 
all. Now that she could hear something other than the blood rushing in her own 
ears, she could hear them down the hall, grunts and squawks.
She looked at the chronometer before she opened the door. Midmorning already; 
she had had plenty of sleep. When she opened the door, sunlight streamed in the 
open front door. No creatures. Ofelia closed the control room door behind her 
and went to look in the kitchen. Another mess—one of them had broken a jar of 
kilfa and the pungent smell of the green berries filled the room. Ofelia 
grumbled to herself as she swept up the spice and the glass shards. Like 
children indeed—you had to keep after them, after them every time.
But they seemed to be gone. They weren't in the sewing rooms, or the hall, or 
the assembly room where Ofelia had heard the colonists debating which 
destination to choose. When she looked out into the muddy lane, she saw tracks 
leading away eastward, but no creatures.
They would be back, but in the meantime, she could check on her own house and 
garden. The mud in the lane squished between her toes; in the ditches, the water 
trickled clear at the bottom. It was a hot, muggy day, typical of the weather 
after sea-storms; the sun felt like a soggy hot towel on her shoulders as she 
walked across to her house.
There on the floor were the blurred marks left by the one who had followed her 
inside, the wet towels, already mildewing, she had used to dry it. Ofelia hated 
the mildew smell. She took the towels outside and spread them on the garden 
fence. This time it had not blown over. The plants, flattened by wind and rain, 
were beginning to recover, lifting a few leaves above those still beaten flat. 
Ofelia picked the tomatoes that hadn't been turned to mush, gathered a handful 
of beans, and four ears of corn. She had pulled most of the cornstalks upright 
again when shrieks erupted in the forest.
Now what? Ofelia noticed that the sheep were ignoring the din, nibbling placidly 
at the meadowgrass nearby. The shrieks and yelps came nearer. She could see 
nothing, but whatever it was must be in the lower brush now. Then it came 
nearer—a troop of the treeclimbers, tails high, loping toward the village and 
screaming. The sheep lifted their heads, ears stiff. Behind the treeclimbers—on 
either side—were the aliens, their high-stepping gait now lengthened into an 
easy, efficient run. They were herding the tree-climbers… herding them to the 
village. The sheep bolted, scattering with frightened noises of their own.
As she watched, one of the creatures lengthened its stride, caught up with a 
treeclimber, and caught it by the neck. At once, it slung the treeclimber 
around, like a child swinging a doll by the arm, and at the same time drew its 
long knife with its other forelimb. No, Ofelia wanted to cry. No. But it was far 
too late; the knife finished what the snap of the neck had begun, and the dead 
treeclimber twitched, its blood draining out into the grass. Two more had been 
killed; the surviving treeclimbers made it to the village, where they raced up 
to the rooftops and chittered wildly.
Ofelia unclenched her fingers from the fence. So the creatures hunted. She had 
known they could not eat human food. They would have been hungry after the days 
of storm. And those were only treeclimbers.
Yet… it was hard for her to reconcile her memory of the night before, making 
music with the creatures, with this: with the creatures lapping the blood as it 
flowed from the necks of their prey, with the quick, efficient gutting of the 
carcasses. Would they eat them raw? She couldn't stand to see it if they did, 
yet she could not look away. The little troop had formed again, the dead 
treeclimbers slung by their tails from the belts of those who had caught them 
(she thought—she was just beginning to know the differences between them).
They saw her. One of them waved a bloody knife, as if in greeting. Or threat. 
Ofelia swallowed. Behind them, the pile of innards had already attracted a swarm 
of black buzzing things that Ofelia knew were not really flies. She turned away 
and went inside her house, but did not shut the door. She hoped they would leave 
her alone (that bloody knife) but if they didn't, she did not want to be 
surprised by a knock on the door. She looked at the orange-red tomatoes, the 
green beans, the green husks of corn over the yellow kernels. She wasn't hungry.
Through the window, she saw them pass, high-stepping over her garden fence, 
walking through as if they owned it. Most went on over the lane fence, but one 
looked in the kitchen door and squawked.
"I saw you," Ofelia said. "Go away." As if it understood, it turned away. Then 
it swung back, and pointed at the vegetables on her table. "You can't eat that," 
Ofelia said. "That's my food."
A grunt. A complicated movement of the upper limbs that she thought might be 
like a shrug in meaning, and it left, hopping nimbly over the lane fence. She 
could hear its feet squelch in the mud.
Where were they going, muddy-footed, with bloody prey slung from their belts? 
Not to center—! Ofelia looked out to see. They were strolling along the lane, 
pointing at one of the treeclimbers that squatted on a roof-edge. They were 
strolling east, toward the shuttle field. Her stomach turned, remembering the 
bloated corpses the Company reps had left.
All day she told herself it was only natural. Of course they had to eat, and of 
course nothing in the village could feed them, any more than she could eat the 
fruit of the great forest trees. Why shouldn't they hunt? Humans hunted, if they 
lived on worlds with game they could eat, and they ate farm animals elsewhere. 
She herself liked meat. She didn't like killing, but then she hadn't learned how 
early enough. These things had been hunting from childhood, she supposed. It 
didn't mean they were killers, really. Killing things to eat was not the same 
thing as killing them just to kill.
But the treeclimbers were just as dead. And she had not seen them eating the 
treeclimbers. Suppose it had been only sport, only for fun. She shivered. Those 
long knives… had that been how the other colonists died? No, because she had 
heard explosions. They had spoken of other weapons.
She had seen no weapons but the knives, no tools but the musical instruments. 
Were these the same aliens that killed, or something else? And how had they 
lived here for forty years without meeting them before?
In the afternoon, she went back to the center, secured the door to the control 
room as well as she could, and latched the other doors, including the outside 
door. Then she went back to her house. It was not secure—nothing was secure—but 
she wanted to sleep in her own bed again. If it was the last night, very well: 
she would be comfortable for that night, at least. No more sleeping on floors, 
whatever happened.
She had stretched out on her bed, her body happily finding its hollows and 
bulges again, when she heard them coming back up the lane in the dark. Grunts, 
squawks, more of the low churring that sounded like contentment. The one with 
the set of tubes was blowing into it again; she could hear the notes above their 
gabble.
She knew when they came to the locked center by the chorus of squawks. Anger? 
Disappointment? Who could tell, with aliens? Thumps against that door. Would it 
hold? More gabble. Then, inevitably, thumps against her own door, followed by a 
trill from that odd collection of tubes. Ofelia felt a rush of hot anger. They 
had the whole village to live in: why did they have to bother her? Why couldn't 
they let her rest? Didn't they know she was an old woman, a tired old woman who 
needed her sleep?
Of course they didn't. She had no idea how old they were. Grumbling, she got off 
the bed, turned on the light, and went to the door, in no humor to cooperate 
with them, whatever they wanted.
The one with the instrument held it up, shook it, and then gestured to the 
center. It probably meant it wanted to hold another musical night there. She 
didn't. She wanted to sleep in her own bed, all night long, without 
interruption. And she wasn't about to turn them loose in the center without her 
supervision.
"Sleep somewhere else," she said. "All the houses are open." Except hers; she 
stood in the door determined not to let them in.
The one with the instrument shook it again, pointed again, and this time held 
out two of its long-nailed digits. Two? Two what? Two musical evenings, two 
nights, two of the creatures? Now it pointed at the instrument, and then at the 
center door, then held up two digits.
"I don't want you in there alone," Ofelia said, "You'll make more mess." The 
many eyes blinked at her. The creatures did not go away; they did not move. She 
knew if she shut the door, they would bang on it again. She knew she could not 
get to sleep until they were satisfied. It was as bad as having the family 
again. She knew she had given up a long moment before she was ready to admit it 
to them, "All right," she said. "But you're not spending the night there." They 
would, and she couldn't stop them. She would have to decide where to sleep, and 
her body had already made that decision. She needed her own bed.
When she opened the center door, two of them slipped past her and darted into 
the sewing room on the right. The rest stayed in the lane. In the light 
streaming out from the hall, Ofelia saw that no tree-climber bodies hung from 
their belts; they must have eaten them. She shivered. The two creatures 
reappeared, one with another bundle of tubes, and one with the gourd hung with 
strings and beads. They waved these at the others, and with a series of rapid 
grunts the whole company moved off down the lane, eastward as they had come.
All they had wanted was their instruments. Ofelia could hardly believe it. She 
turned off the lights, relatched the door, and watched as the shadowy forms 
melted into the darkness farther down the lane. Back in her own house she lay a 
long time awake in her bed. Who could imagine how aliens thought? Who could 
imagine why they did what they did? The music she enjoyed, but the killing… so 
quick, so easy, so casual… though she had seen people kill like that, the quick 
twist of the neck for chickens, the quick thrust of the knife for sheep, for 
calves. But not at a run, not loping across the grass. She could not help but 
imagine herself, her old stiff body in a shambling, hopeless run, with the 
creatures chasing her, laughing to each other, enjoying the chase, until one of 
those hard-taloned hands caught her by the neck, and one of those long sharp 
knives emptied her belly onto the grass.
The soft music trickled in through the closed shutters of her windows. They had 
settled somewhere nearby, perhaps in a corner of some garden, and now they made 
music. She imagined the comfort of having full bellies after several hungry days 
during the storm, and heard that in the music. Not that it made sense. She fell 
asleep at last, arguing with herself about whether it made more sense to sing or 
sleep after a feast. Her dreams terrified, but never quite woke her. Morning. 
Still muggy, but less so. A stronger breeze from the sea, damp but fresher. 
Ofelia woke comforted by her own bed, by the familiar shapes and smells of her 
own room. The terrors of the dreams translated quickly to the comfort of her own 
space, her own time.
She went into her garden before the sun was high, for the first time in too many 
days. The tracks of the creatures didn't bother her; they had mashed only two 
bean plants and one of the green squashes. She busied herself restaking the 
tomatoes, raking away the rotting leaves, loosening the soil. She found a little 
yellow tomato, one of the sweet ones, that she had missed the evening before, 
and put it straight into her mouth. Sweet, juicy. A grunt across the fence; 
Ofelia looked up to see one of the creatures watching her. How had it come so 
silently? She kept turning up leaves, looking for crawlers, for slimerods, for 
aphids, for another ripe yellow tomato. A slimerod halfway up the stem; she 
picked it off and cracked it.
The creature squawked. Ofelia looked at it. It held out its digits.
"You want the slimerod?" She could not believe that. Slimerods were slimy, itchy 
nuisances. But she walked over and dropped the slimerod into that waiting hand. 
The creature grunted at her, and flipped the slimerod into its mouth.
Ofelia tasted bile at the back of her throat. Eating a slimerod. "That's 
disgusting," she said, even though she knew it couldn't understand. Its 
expression didn't change. She wasn't sure what its expression meant anyway. She 
went back to her work. When she found another slimerod, she looked over her 
shoulder. There it was, watching her. She held up the slimerod. It reached out; 
this time she gave it the slimerod uncracked. Again that flip of the hand, that 
quick crunch and gulp. Utterly disgusting. Yet slimerods were native here, so 
something must eat them. Why not these creatures?
She found another slimerod under one of the squash plants, already halfway 
through the stem. Dratted tiling. She pulled it out, handed it to the waiting 
creature as it leaned over the fence, and then pulled off the unripe squashes. 
The vine would die; she would save what she could. She could pickle the little 
squashes just like cucumbers, at this stage. Sometimes she even ate them raw, 
though most were too bitter. She nibbled the end of one. Not too bad. The 
creature grunted sharply, and when she looked up, its eyes had narrowed, just 
like the one with the mop. Distress? Well, she had been distressed when it ate 
the slimerod. Defiantly, she bit a larger chunk from the squash, only to find it 
too bitter after all. She swallowed with difficulty, tossed the rest of the 
squash across the garden toward the compost trench, and smiled at the creature.
It did not move for a long moment, then seemed to shake itself slightly before 
turning to walk off. Westward down the lane, she saw three others, walking with 
that high-stepping easy stride that made her think of them all as exuberant 
children. Ofelia shrugged and went back to work. She had a lot to do, and today 
she really must check on the animals.
The sheep, when she found them, were huddled at the west end of their long 
meadow, ears twitching nervously. When she tried to approach them, they broke 
into a panicky run as if she were a wolf. She didn't try to chase them; she knew 
better. Instead she tried to count… were there as many? It seemed so, though in 
the flowing mass of gray backs and twinkling feet she could not be sure. Had the 
alien creatures been tormenting them? It seemed possible, but she had no proof. 
She went on around the west end of the village to the river meadows. The river 
had risen, spreading out from its banks. The cattle, unlike the sheep, seemed 
calm, spread out grazing between the pump house and the old calf-pen. Ofelia 
counted them; none were missing.
Back in the village itself, she began to make her rounds looking for damage from 
the storm. Broken shutters, damage to roofs, fallen trees. From time to time she 
saw the creatures in the distance, but none of them approached her. She couldn't 
figure out what they were doing, but if they didn't bother her or the animals 
she really didn't care.
By nightfall, Ofelia had surveyed the village and knew all the repairs she would 
have to make. She remembered that she had considered letting some of the 
buildings go, not worrying about them any more, but that had been pre-storm 
depression. She never had any energy before a big storm. Now it was over, and 
she could not imagine just letting things slide, no matter how tired she was.
She opened the center to check the weather monitor. No storms approaching, 
though far to the east another whirl of clouds might become one. Two storms in 
one season were very rare; it had happened only twice in forty-odd years. 
Probably that storm would veer away and go somewhere else. She hoped so.
She unlocked the keyboards to enter a brief report on the past few days. How 
could she say this? Even though she knew no one would ever read it, she didn't 
want it to be as crazy as it was. "In the middle of the storm, I went out and 
there was an alien in the street." That sounded like an entertainment cube, 
something made up by the crazy people. She wasn't crazy. They were real. How 
could she make them sound real?
Clicking in the hall. Of course they would have come in; she hadn't closed the 
door. She looked around. One was watching her, its eyes bright and interested. 
Of course they were real. It held the gourd with the beaded strings wrapped 
around it; when she met its gaze, it shook the gourd.
What was that? Invitation? Explanation? She didn't know. She didn't really want 
to think about it; she wanted to get this into the record in some way that made 
sense to her, that might make sense to another human, even though another human 
wouldn't see it.
Her experience in writing about the colony's past was not enough. She could tell 
about the loves and hates, the betrayals, the quarrels, because she understood 
them fully. She knew exactly how the wife felt when the husband was jealous for 
no cause—or with cause. She knew how the human feelings acted on each other, 
flavoring the simplest interaction with complicated swirls of hidden meaning. 
But these? It would be like writing about animals, and she had never written 
about animals. It would be like writing about animals that could think, and she 
had never known animals that could think.
She waved dismissively at the creature; it withdrew. Was it understanding her 
gesture, or just not that interested in what she was doing?
"In the middle of the storm…" She read what she had written. "Alien" was the 
wrong word, really. These were native animals, like the treeclimbers. What was 
the word for that? She didn't know, and she wasn't going to ask the dictionary 
function now. Aliens would do for the moment, or native beings. Creatures.
"I thought it was a pile of trash, and then it looked at me." That sounded 
sufficiently crazy too. But that's what she'd seen, a pile of trash with eyes. 
Let them laugh at her, the ones who might read this if anyone ever came to find 
out about those who had died.
Slowly, with many corrections, she tried to put it down. It was not, as she'd 
hoped, a short task. For it to make any sense at all, she had to put in her 
feelings, her inferences, her assumptions. She had to put in everything she had 
done, and everything they had done. She had to try to reproduce the sounds they 
made… no, she didn't. The automatic recorders would have recorded some of it. 
She could insert that into her own record, if she could retrieve the right 
segment.
When she leaned over to the other control board, to enter the search criteria 
for the segments she wanted, her back cramped. She gasped with the pain, and a 
squawk from outside let her know that the creatures were still observing her, as 
much as she was observing them.
It was late. It was very, very late and she would sleep late in the morning and 
feel groggy and miserable half the day if she didn't go home and go to sleep 
now. She shut the boards down, resetting the alarms, and got herself upright 
with many pops and creaks from her joints. Three of the creatures were sitting 
in the hall when she came out. She shut the door behind her, retied the latch 
she'd improvised, and said firmly "Let it alone. It's not for you." They said 
nothing, only watched her as she went down the hall.
Would they follow? No. They wanted to be in the center without her, and she was 
not strong enough to get them out. At the moment she didn't care. She wanted 
sleep, in her own bed, and if they destroyed all the machines that had helped 
her stay alive, then she would die. But she would not worry about it now.



CHAPTER TEN
Contents - Prev / Next
The next morning, Ofelia woke with the sensation that she had been fuzzy-headed 
for days, missing things she should have seen. Aliens, yes. Intelligent aliens, 
yes. And they hadn't killed her yet. They had… studied her. They had arrived 
before the storm, how long before she could not know. The houses she had found 
open, the things she had found moved… they had moved them. They were not 
thinking of her as prey, or as an enemy, but as something interesting.
She did not have to fear the chase, the long knives.
Unless they were like some people she had known.
She could not know that. She could not know anything, unless she studied them as 
well. She had no idea how to do that, but she could try, as she had tried to 
understand Sara's third child, who had been born without the gift of speech, who 
had mewed and screamed.
They did not scream. When she went out into her garden, one of them was there, 
carefully looking among her plants. She suspected it wanted more slimerods, but 
it would not find them among the maize rows. She found one under the tomatoes, a 
favorite haunt, and called to the creature.
"Here's one." It looked around; she pointed to the slimerod. It came, picked it 
up deftly, and flipped it into its mouth. Ofelia managed not to shudder. "We 
call them slimerods," Ofelia said. She realized that she had not really looked 
at the creatures more than she had to. She had resisted thinking of those 
taloned digits as fingers… of the collection of them as hands. Yet they 
functioned as her hands functioned.
Now she looked. Four digits, not five. One, as in her own hand, broader and 
thicker, angled to oppose the others. This made the hand look longer and 
narrower than it really was. The wrist too was different, though she could not 
define it. Did the creature have two bones in its lower arm, or only one? One 
bone in the upper arm, or more? Were the bones bones or something else?
Four fingers, she told herself. Four-fingered hands. She watched, as the 
creature turned over more tomato leaves itself. The long, hard talons didn't 
interfere with precise, delicate movement. It didn't tear the leaves; it didn't 
miss turning any of them.
She looked down at the creature's feet. All she had seen at first were long feet 
with splayed toes. Now she noticed four toes, three almost parallel and one 
angled aside, all with heavy dark toenails blunted at the tips. No… the angled 
one had a narrow front, almost spike-like. This creature, placidly squatting in 
her garden and turning up leaves, had its feet flat on the soil, but the tracks 
she had seen didn't show the heel. How, then, did it walk? On its toes? She 
turned away and looked over the lane fence. There were two of them far down the 
lane; she couldn't tell.
She wasn't a… whatever it was that studied animals or aliens. She didn't know 
how to do this.
It grunted, and she turned back to it. It held a ripening tomato in the pincer 
of its digits; it had not bruised the tomato nor broken the stem.
"It's not ripe yet" Ofelia said, shaking her head. Gesture might be easier than 
words; certainly she had learned none of their words yet. Assuming the grunts 
and squawks were words, and she had to assume that now. She spotted a ripe 
tomato on another plant and touched it. "This one is ready. Ripe." She nodded, 
then pulled it off. The creature looked at her a long moment, then let go of the 
one it had touched. Ofelia put the tomato in the basket and then picked a 
handful of beans. The creature touched the beans, then the tomato. Different. Of 
course they were different, beans and tomatoes. Green beans, orange tomato. Long 
skinny beans, fat round tomato. "Beans," Ofelia said, touching the beans. 
"Beans." Then the tomato. "Tomato."
The creature grunted, making no attempt to say the words.
"Beans," Ofelia said again. "These are beans. Tomato."
A series of grunts, none resembling the words she had spoken. Why should she 
expect words? They were aliens; they might not be able to make the same sounds. 
Terran animals couldn't. Besides, she had more work to do. She picked more 
beans, aware of the creature watching her closely. When she had as much as she 
wanted, she stood, grunting. Did the creatures think her involuntary grunts and 
groans were attempts at speech? She couldn't tell. This one had not reacted in 
any way she could detect to the noise she made.
It followed her to the door of the house, but did not come in. She rubbed her 
feet on the doorstone, scraping off the bits of mulch that clung to them. The 
creature watched that, head tilted. She did not shut the door, but she glanced 
that way often. She put the beans in the drawer of the cooler; she would cook 
them in the evening. The tomatoes went in a bowl on the table.
When she opened the containers of flour, salt, sugar, the creature leaned in the 
door. Ofelia decided to make raised bread instead of flatbread. Yeast breads had 
always been a festival bread, made but once or twice a year. The waste recycler 
was capable of maintaining a yeast culture, but the flatbread was familiar, and 
so much faster. She had not made yeast bread since before the colonists left. 
Could she remember exactly how much sugar? She really should look it up.
When she took down the stained little book that had been her mothers, she 
glanced again at the creature. Would it understand reading? Did it have any 
similar system for making words last? She paged through the book. Some people 
insisted that there was no need for hardcopy cookbooks, but Ofelia liked this 
one. It reminded her of her mother.
She put the lump of yeast culture from the cooler into warm water with a pinch 
of sugar and flour. Sugar, salt, fat—she could use the fat she'd saved from the 
sausages. Rosara had not approved of using that fat, but Ofelia saw no reason to 
make the waste recycler clean it. She melted the fat and strained it into her 
big mixing bowl through a clean cloth cut from one of Bartos old shirts. Then 
she mixed the fat, the sugar, the salt, with warm water and tested it with her 
wrist. Warm enough, cool enough.
She glanced at the door. Two of the creatures now, both watching intently. 
Ofelia scooped flour into the big mixing bowl, stirring with a wooden paddle. 
She didn't measure the flour; she knew that by feel. The lump of yeast culture 
had softened, was beginning to bubble in its little cup of water and sugar. She 
poured it in and kept stirring. When it was smooth, she worked in more flour, 
and more, until the dough pulled away from the bowl. Now flour on the table, 
plenty of it—her mother had said there was no use making raised bread if you 
were going to worry about wasting a little flour—and she turned the dough out.
It was fun to knead. This was something else she had missed, without realizing 
it. A few of the women had made raised bread more often; they had said they 
enjoyed it. At the time, Ofelia had thought of the mess it made, the flour 
drifting onto the floor, their hands sticky with dough. Now, her fingers sank 
into the warm dough, enjoying its resilience, the way it pushed back against 
her. She turned it, flattened it, rolled it up and flattened it again.
The creatures chittered. Ofelia looked at them. One had cocked its head, and now 
lifted a foot, as if to step forward. Was it asking permission? She chose to 
think it was.
"Yes, come on," she said, sweeping a welcome with one floury hand. It came to 
the table, and leaned over, peering closely at the bread dough. One taloned 
digit hovered over the dough. She could see the dirt around the long, dark nail, 
and who knew what else under it? "You have to wash," Ofelia said. She nodded at 
the sink, and when the creature didn't move, she sighed. Just like children, who 
never believed they were that dirty. She brushed the flour off her hands, and 
reached slowly to take the creature's arm. "Wash," she said. "Over here." She 
led it to the sink, and nodded again.
It looked at its hands, and then at hers. With only a little fumbling, it turned 
the water on and held its hands under the flow. It eyed Ofelia. She didn't want 
to get her hands wet, not when she still had more kneading to do, so she mimed 
scrubbing. The creature blinked, but complied, and she could see the dirt coming 
away from its nails. Ofelia turned off the water when she thought it was clean 
enough, and handed it a dishcloth.
"Dry off," she said. As if it could understand, it squeezed the cloth in its 
hands, drying them well enough. Then it followed her back to the table. Again it 
extended a tentative digit. Ofelia nodded this time, and it poked at the dough, 
giving a sharp Eerp when its digit sank into the dough and came out sticky. 
Ofelia grinned, and went back to kneading the dough.
The creature touched the dough more lightly, then very slowly moved its digit to 
her face. What? Ofelia felt herself frowning. Again, very slowly, the creature 
touched the dough, and then this time her mouth. She couldn't figure it out. She 
put her own finger on the bread, lifted it to her mouth—oh. Of course. Eating. 
It wanted to know if this was food.
"Yes, but not yet," she said. How to explain bread? She made an attempt anyway, 
moving her hands to show the dough growing fat, the second kneading, the second 
rising, the shaping into loaves, the baking. The creature's expression didn't 
change. Well, it would have to observe, that was all. The dough had gone silky, 
the way it should, firm and responsive under her hand. She covered it with a 
cloth, cleaned her hands, and remembered that she had meant to cook a pot of 
beans. She opened another container, poured out the beans into a cooking pot, 
and covered them with water.
The creature watched closely as she did this, then reached out to the 
cloth-covered dough. "Let it alone," Ofelia said sharply. "It needs to rise." 
Again, she mimed the enlargement of the dough. The creature pulled its hand 
back.
She had more work to do. She needed to air the house, sweep the floor. She eyed 
the creature but it didn't go away. Well, then, let it watch. Ofelia went to 
work, and the creature watched. It moved away when she came toward it with the 
broom, staying out of her way, but not departing. When the bread dough had 
risen, and she punched it down, the creature stood beside her. It skipped back a 
step when the dough whoofed out its excess air, then came forward again as 
Ofelia kneaded and shaped the dough into two round loaves. She put the cloth 
back over the loaves, and checked the beans. They had just begun to soften.
By the time the bread had risen the second time, Ofelia had her house cleaned to 
her satisfaction. Now, with the creature watching closely, she turned on her 
oven, and when it was hot enough, she put the loaves into it. The creature 
seemed fascinated by the hot gush of air from the oven when she opened it. 
Ofelia waved it back—it could not know what part of the stove got dangerously 
hot. Then she showed the creature the cooler. Like a small child, the creature 
stood in the cold flow of air from the open door until Ofelia pushed past to 
shut it.
"You can't waste it," she said. The creature looked at her, and Ofelia was sure 
it wanted to argue, as her children had. She had no intention of arguing. She 
wanted to find some way to communicate with these creatures, some sound they 
could both make. "Cooler," she said, laying her hand on it. "Cooler—makes things 
cold." The creature stared, as always. She moved to the stove. "Stove," she 
said. "Makes thing hot. Hot… cold."
The creature fumbled at the cooler latch, opened it, and waved its hand in the 
direction of the downward flow of cold air. The sound it made was neither cooler 
nor cold, but it did begin with a harsh consonant that Ofelia thought might be 
an attempt at a "kuh." Somewhat to her surprise, it closed the door.
"Cooler," Ofelia said again. "Cold."
"Kuh."
Well, it would do. It was a start. Babies started that way, one sound at a time. 
It moved to the stove, held its hand safely above it. Now what? Should she say 
"stove" or "hot"? She had always said "hot" to babies, but these weren't babies. 
It grunted, clearly impatient. She might not know the words, but she had a 
lifetimes experience with impatience.
"Hot" she said, emphasizing the initial sound. "Hot."
"Kuh." It patted at the cooler.
They knew nothing. They would not know that flour came from grain, and the grain 
from grasses, from the seeds of wheat grown in the little walled plots to 
protect them from sheep and cattle. They would not know about cutting the grain, 
beating the gathered stalks to release the seeds, winnowing the seeds to remove 
the chaff. Or perhaps they did know that much; perhaps they harvested this 
world's equivalent of grass in much the same way. Ofelia wondered how much they 
did know, and how she could find out. Were any of those things hanging from the 
belts and straps the equivalent of sickle and shears?
She remembered that in the first years of the colony, long ago, the colonists 
had had to do it all by hand. The machines were too busy fabricating parts for 
other machines, for building materials, for cloth and crockery. She and the 
others had cleared and weeded and harvested with hand tools that gave them 
blisters and sore backs. Later, the fabricator had turned out little harvesters 
that fit even in the smallest enclosures and could cut the grain faster than 
women with sickles. The fabricator could convert rough grain to coarse or fine 
flour, with the waste material remade into a variety of forms. Even though she 
had grown up in a city, with store-bought foods, she had been almost awed by the 
little machines, the first harvest that she didn't have to do all by hand.
Would these creatures be awed? Did they believe in magic? Or would they take it 
all for granted?
The conversation begun when the People first found the city ran alongside a 
dozen others. Was this the same kind of monster? It wore no clothes on its feet, 
and little on its body. Yet it had the short soft toes of the invaders, thieves, 
nest-destroyers. It had five of those toes, and five on the upper limbs. It had 
white hair instead of dark on its head, but the same arrangement of holes and 
protuberances.
It is the same. There is the scar where the flying monsters landed.
It is not the same. It is alone; it has white on top.
It is interesting. It does things strangely.
It is a monster, what did you expect?
It is not a hunter. Is it prey?
We cannot eat it. We can watch it.
Soft skin. Wrinkles. Things hang loose.
Things! Ornaments, seed-eater!
Ornaments. It had ornaments hanging on it, ornaments it changed from day to day. 
What did that mean? A way of counting, a way of responding to the weather? Who 
could tell? Worth watching, worth learning from. If more came, they would know 
more about them.
And so much else to learn from. All those tools, containers, fasteners, noisy 
boxes, picture boxes. They had drummed to an agreement that no one would touch 
or handle the obvious triggers except for those the monster demonstrated and 
offered to them: the light, the water. Hot boxes, cold boxes.
If it had not been for the monster's ornaments, they might have believed 
monsters cared only for boxes: they lived in boxes, kept things in boxes, cooked 
food in hot boxes, kept food in cold boxes, had pictures and noises in boxes. 
Some of the People carved boxes of bone or wood, or made them of the skins of 
grasseaters. But sacks and gourds were more comfortable to travel with. Only 
those who chose to live in permanent nest grounds had big boxes.
That picture box. It is like the birds seeing.
?
The bird, the high bird—higher and higher. Things look small, but the bird sees 
far.
That high?
The flying monsters scarred the sky. What if they actually cut through it? That 
far up, they could see all the world at once.
A flurry of arguments about the shape of the world, recapitulating every theory 
known to the People. The world was flat. The world was not flat, but round like 
a gourd. It was not round like a gourd, but a rough lump like a stone. No, like 
the root the burrowers preferred: the gods had hidden the shape there to show 
that it was sacred. The arguments died down when the eldest, ignoring them, 
swept a clear space on the ground. They all understood that, and gathered 
around.
Grass laid in a careful pattern reproduced the gullies between the boxes; the 
whole array less than a handspan across. The eldest crouched, one eye close to 
the pattern, then stood, slowly. They watched, saying nothing. So much was 
obvious; it had been agreed already. Birds seeing, high seeing, makes small, 
sees far. So?
Now the eldest swept an arm around, snapped a finger-click, swept the arm again. 
Estimate! Heads cocked. The young hunter crouched, trying it himself. Here, the 
monster-box-nests. Here the gullies. So—a grass-joint wide, and when on the 
braced toes, so much less—then—they knew already the conversion from distance to 
familiar sizes. So many paces, so hard a throw, to hit the darting burrower. So 
hard a run, if the grasseaters have that much start. No word for such long 
distances, but a conversion—that was easy enough.
Less than a days run across the grassland, more than a days travel in the 
too-tall trees. Eyes widened. A day's run UP? They peered into the blue sky, at 
the puffy clouds. How far then were clouds? How large? Estimates came as 
effortlessly as breath: if that is a sprint at top speed, then the cloud is 
larger than five grass-eaters, but if it would take a handspan of sunturning, 
then it is… it is the size of a hill. Someone named the hill, and someone else 
argued for another hill.
Some monster thing up there watching, a monster bird with big eyes. It would 
have to have big eyes, to see so much, and in the dark. They had seen that the 
picture moved in the dark as well. The picture itself was never dark.
A picture, the eldest reminded, is a made thing. The choice of the maker, if it 
is to be light or dark.
A maker up there? A monster still in waiting?
It watches what we do with this monster. It will learn from us as we learn from 
it.
It knows we killed the monsters.
A shiver through them all. The monsters had been wrong, had been thieving 
nest-burners, but… if the monsters could walk UP that far, and stay and watch, 
perhaps…
Nests first! said the fierce young one who would soon require a nesting ground. 
Lose nests, lose People.
Comforting murmurs. Nests will be. Will find nests. A nest for you, for the 
younglings. Always nests. Nests…
Nest here. The brashest of them looked around at the monster boxes. Right hand 
drumming, no agreement. The brashest twisted a neck suddenly too thick for the 
straps of the travel harness, and looked away. Sorry. No offense meant. Sorry.
The eldest stretched, one long arm after another. Enough now. Relax. Safe here. 
Rest.
One by one they settled. The eldest opened a stoppered gourd and removed the 
whistler. The brashest stretched fingers. A few slow notes, up and down. Someone 
shook the gourd, and seeds and beads shivered, danced, made a rhythm. Long toes 
curled, tapped on the dirt. Another whistler, wavering at first until the tones 
met, clasped fingers, and danced together. Now the voices.
Good hunting, good hunting. New hunting, new hunting. The music curled around 
familiar patterns, engulfing new learning, shaping it to the arch and spring of 
the known. Monster, monster, dancing, dancing. Monster, monster, boxes, boxes.
"Kuh," said the creature when it came in the kitchen. Ofelia grinned. So it 
could remember. She had thought it would. They were not stupid, after all. She 
went to the cooler and opened it. The creature came to stand beside her. Ofelia 
scraped some of the frost off the inside of the freezer section with her 
fingernail and showed it to the creature. It sniffed, its eyes disconcertingly 
focussed on her instead of the frost.
She felt the shock of its tongue on her finger before she realized it—she had 
been looking back at its eye, not at her finger. The dry rasp startled her; she 
felt the air gusting out of her, and jerked her hand away. Its eyelid blinked; 
it too pulled back with a little burst of air that felt warm on her hand.
Warm. Warmblooded. She had known that. She had felt the heat of their bodies 
against hers that stormy night. But she had not been so aware of the warmth of 
their breath. Her hand was across her mouth before she knew it; she could only 
think of the smell of her own breath, how it might offend. That breath, its 
breath, had an odd smell, but it wasn't bad.
It was looking at her now, at her finger. Its tongue came out again, and licked 
what she had to think of as lips. Not so soft and mobile as human lips, but not 
like the skin of its face. Browner… a purplish brown on this one. The tongue, 
too, was darker than the bright pink of human tongues. It had felt stiffer, 
dryer, than a child's tongue.
Now, as she watched, the creature reached into the cooler and scraped off some 
of the frost with its talon. It licked that off with quick little strokes of its 
tongue. Then it scraped up another lump, and reached toward Ofelia, holding its 
hand in front of her mouth.
What did it mean? Ofelia looked from the hard dark fingernail with its coating 
of melting frost, to the golden-brown eyes, and back. Did it expect her to lick 
its finger? It moved the finger closer to her lips. She swallowed, watching the 
first drop of water ooze down from the cap of frost.
Courtesy overcame caution. She put out her tongue and touched it gingerly to the 
frost. Cold, of course. Under the frost, her tongue felt the hard, smooth 
surface of the nail—talon—whatever it was. Like her own nail; her tongue felt 
nothing disgusting, only a hard smooth surface topped with cold.
"Kuh," the creature uttered.
"Kuh," Ofelia agreed. Her children had liked to eat the frost in the freezer; 
most children did, in hot weather. She turned away, found a shallow bowl and a 
wooden spoon, and scraped more of the frost into the bowl. She handed it to the 
creature, who took it and stood there as if it had no idea what to do next. At 
least it couldn't expect her to lick its fingers if they were all engaged in 
holding the bowl. Perhaps it didn't even know the frost would melt into water.
Meanwhile, the cool air was chilling her feet and ankles, and the open door 
wasted electricity. "Don't stand in the door," Ofelia said, and gently nudged 
the creature away so that she could close it. It moved back, holding the bowl 
but not looking at the frost. Instead it watched her. She wished it wouldn't. 
She had had enough for the moment. She poked her finger into the bowl. "Cold," 
she said. "You can eat all this, if you want."
It turned its head, then set the bowl on the table, and picked up another 
finger-tip of frost. She watched as its tongue came out—dark, yes, and more 
bristly than human tongues, and dryer—and licked at the frost. It looked at 
Ofelia. She sighed, and took a fingerful of frost she didn't particularly want, 
just to be polite. If that's what it had meant. It dipped another fingerful, and 
licked it dry, then paused. That must be what it had meant. Take turns. Did it 
think she was trying to poison it, or was it being polite? She had no idea. The 
cold felt good in her mouth, better than she remembered. She let the frost melt 
on her tongue, trickle down the sides of her mouth.
The last of the frost had melted before they had taken many turns. The creature 
dipped its finger in the water and touched it to the long protrusion she now 
thought of as its nose, above the mouth. Then again, to touch the lids of each 
eye. It pushed the bowl a little towards her. Ofelia, frowning, put her own 
finger in the cold water. She didn't know what the gestures meant; she was half 
afraid to copy them, but she was also afraid not to copy them. What was she 
saying, if she touched water to her nose, to her eyelids? It would be something 
about smelling, something about seeing… but what? She put her wet finger on her 
nose, then on her eyelids.
The creature grunted, and walked out of the kitchen without looking back. Now 
what? Had she insulted it, or was it running off to tell its friends what she 
had done? She went to the door to see. It hopped over the fence between the lane 
and the garden and started down the lane. Now she could see that the 
high-stepping stride was mostly on the toes, with the heel knob touching down 
only occasionally.
Ofelia shrugged to herself. She had raised bread to eat today; she didn't have 
to worry about the creatures all the time. She cut herself several slices off 
one loaf and ate. It was good, from the hard crust to the soft, yielding inner 
crumb.
Were the creatures like bread? She had touched them several times now, and she 
still wasn't sure. Their skin—if it was skin—felt harder than hers, but no 
harder than the calluses she remembered on feet and hands. Were they soft 
inside? Were their muscles as soft as human muscles, or hard like their skin? 
Did their shape come from bones in the middle or the hard skin on the outside?
She found herself looking at her bread with new attention. Her science lessons 
had been a long way back, and no one had seemed to care much whether she really 
understood living things. A special class understood that, just as a special 
class understood spaceships or government. What they cared about, all they 
really cared about, was that she learned to do what she was told and not make 
messes. Even when Humberto insisted that they both take night classes to qualify 
as colonists, the instructors had not cared whether she understood the machines 
she was taught to tend and repair. Follow the instructions, she was told. Follow 
the diagrams. It's no harder than making a dress from a pattern, one of them 
told her. Even homemakers like you can do that. She had clenched herself around 
the pain of his scorn and proved that she could, indeed, follow the diagram 
accurately.
Of living things she remembered scattered words and images: cells, with skins 
called membranes around them, endoskeletons like humans and exoskeletons like 
flies. Cells were round or oval, with more round shapes inside. They looked 
rather like the holes in the bread, except smaller. She remembered watching a 
cube presentation of dissection, the way the instructor's knife slit the 
trembling rat up the belly, the oozing blood that made the boys in class snicker 
and say cruel things. Some girls had looked away, but she had seen the intricate 
tangle of intestines, the bright pink lungs, the little dark red pulsing heart.
She had felt her heart pulsing, the first time she had really noticed it, and 
imagined someone looming over her with a huge knife ready for her belly. And it 
had happened, but not to her, when her childhood friend had needed her belly 
opened to have her child. Donna had never forgiven her for not coming to the 
hospital to visit; Donna had guessed that it was something more than packing to 
leave.
But the creatures here and now—she made herself quit sending mental apologies to 
Donna, who had probably died by now, on that distant world where they had been 
childhood friends—these creatures fit none of the categories she had been 
taught. She knew she had not learned them all; in her school children had been 
taught only the biology they needed, that of the living things immediately 
around them, a small selection of the original rich Terran biology.
These were not plants, she was sure. So they were animals: insects, fish, 
mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians. They weren't insects, because insects 
didn't have warm breath. They weren't fish, because they lived on land and 
breathed air. They might be amphibians, though they didn't look much like frogs 
or toads, and she could not tell if they laid eggs. Birds? Birds had feathers 
and wings, beaks and not mouths. People raised flightless birds for meat, but 
even those had feathers and small wings. She had seen them. These creatures had 
no feathers, and no wings; they had mouths, with teeth. Reptiles? Reptiles had 
scales, were not hot-breathed, were much smaller. Mammals? Mammals had hair and 
gave milk: she saw no hair on them, and nothing that looked like breasts.
On other worlds where animal life had been found, people had made new 
classifications, but Ofelia knew only that they existed. She had no idea what 
they were, or what features had been used to make them. She didn't know what 
their cells looked like or their blood (could she even call it blood if she saw 
it? Or were they dry inside? No, because their mess had been wet.)
Ofelia chewed her bread slowly, trying to pull out of her memory information 
that had not been stored securely in the first place. It was a long time before 
she realized she could probably find more information in the computer tutorials.



CHAPTER ELEVEN
Contents - Prev / Next
<Archives of the Consortium, Report on the Attempted Recolonization of 3245.12 
after the failure of the Sims Bancorp Ltd. colony and the subsequent loss of 
license.>
Study of documents entered in evidence by Sims Bancorp at the time of the 
hearings indicated that the failure of their colony might have been due, in 
part, to a poor choice of location. Subsequent followup was certainly a factor, 
in that losses resulting from climatic conditions were not replaced, but had the 
colony been planted appropriately, it might have made at least moderate 
progress. According to meteorological records, recurrent cyclonic sea-storms 
with associated flooding caused loss of life, loss of livestock, loss of 
equipment (boats, other vehicles) and crop failures.
For this reason, Zeoteka O.S. chose to place its newly licensed colony in the 
North Temperate Zone, close to but not in the flood plain of a river (see 
attached charts and scan data.) It was believed that weathersat data indicated 
the site chosen for the colony's shuttle field had not been flooded in the 42 
years of observation.
The colony insertion followed standard practice as specified in the 14th edition 
of the Unified Field Manual.
Captain Gian Vasoni, commanding the cargo vessel Ma Jun Vi, logged several days' 
observation. Clearance of the Sims Bancorp tropical colony had been completed on 
schedule; that colony site was clearly visible on broadband scanning. Infrared 
spectra indicated that the powerplant had not been properly shut down, but there 
was no activity indicative of remnant population.
Sims Bancorp has claimed that by their records the plant was shut down, but that 
there were native animals in the region which might, in the intervening time, 
have accidentally turned it on: the abandoned machines had not been destroyed 
because there was believed to be no intelligent native life (see original survey 
data).
Captain Vasoni authorized survey shuttle flights to provide current data about 
the proposed colony site. The flights recorded data similar to that of the 
original survey. Temperature, humidity, gas mix, were all within limits. There 
were small herds or bands of wild animals moving nearby but none within five 
kilometers of the planned shuttle field. Nor was there any sign of purposeful 
activity that would have suggested the presence of intelligent, let alone 
hostile, life forms to nonspecialist personnel. No xenotechnologist or 
equivalent was available for consultation.
Upon completion of the required survey flights, Captain Vasoni then authorized 
the retrieval of colonists' capsules, and the first unmanned landings of heavy 
equipment robotics. Site preparation proceeded normally, and the first shuttle 
flights containing colonists landed uneventfully. As the facility was extended, 
and assembly of the prefab shelters began, the ground controller reported the 
sudden appearance of massed wildlife to the east (sunrising).
The massed wildlife initially appeared to be a stampede of some kind, perhaps 
frightened by the noise of the shuttles. The ground controller fired smoke 
cartridges to deter the wildlife. It became apparent that the wildlife were 
hostile, and were attacking the landing party. It is not known for certain what 
weapons were used (see attached military analysis) but some of them were 
definitely projectile and explosive. One shuttle was lost on the parking pad to 
a projectile which exploded on impact with sufficient force to breach the fuel 
tanks and explode the fuel. It is assumed that this was not an aimed hit; 
whatever these creatures are, they could not have had experience with shuttles 
before.
Captain Vasoni quite properly refused to send additional support to the ground 
party. Court records show that Captain Vasoni had no resources for a military 
ground action, nor experienced personnel with which to conduct it. Moreover, 
Captain Vasoni realized that the actions of the putative wildlife reflected 
possible intelligence as defined in Section XXXII, Subsection 14, of the General 
Treaty on Space Exploration and Development, and that the regulations governing 
Alien Contact now superseded all others. Unfortunately, those colonists already 
on the ground were overrun by the creatures, with great loss of life. Captain 
Vasoni faced considerable resistance aboard ship to abandoning the personnel on 
the ground; it became necessary to avert a mutiny by forceful means.
Because of the delay resulting from loss of personnel in both the attempted 
landing and the mutiny, and the delay caused by lengthy adjudication, the full 
story of this tragic affair has only now come to the attention of the Bureau of 
Alien Affairs. Clearly it is imperative that we send an experienced Contact team 
to assess the native (?) culture and its technological level. Since the Sims 
Bancorp colony left behind a number of advanced devices prohibited on non-treaty 
worlds, we must be concerned with the fate of that equipment. What little data 
we have suggests that the native (?) intelligent (?) culture responsible for the 
recent debacle is a social nomad living in one region only, and herding the 
local equivalent of grass-eating cattle. Since neither grow in the tropics, it 
may not yet have found the Sims Bancorp site. But if it should, and if that 
powerplant is indeed functional (as Captain Vasoni's data suggest) then we have 
a crisis. Such an aggressive, hostile species must not be handed advanced 
technology too soon.
Authorization 86.2110. Alien Contact, Secondary. Team Leader: Vasil Likisi. 
Mission definition: assess for
  intelligence
  social organization
  technological level
  hostility index.
If suitable, attempt to gain level one agreement to the General Treaty. At all 
events, secure Sims Bancorp colony powerplant and other prohibited technology.
"It was stupid from start to finish. I don't care what they said, I'll bet Sims 
knew all about it—they were pissed enough to be losing the license."
"It's not in any of their internal datastream. I say they didn't know, and the 
critters just hit I-critical about the time the first survey was done."
"Poppycock. They had to know. Unless no one reviewed the weathersat's 
recordings—look—there—you can't call that undisturbed ground."
Kira Stavi sat back and listened to the bickering. Vasil Likisi, experienced 
team leader her left little toe. Vasil Likisi corporate bootlicker was more like 
it. Vasil holding forth about Sims… and hadn't he once worked for ConsolVaris, 
one of Sims' minor acquisitions? She looked at the display instead of getting 
into the argument that Vasil clearly wanted to have with Ori… Ori could handle 
it. And the display had its interest. Although it had no legend, she knew from 
experience that the purple and yellow streaks were enhanced-contrast 
thermal-emission spectra. Regular streaks and blobs, too regular entirely. Vasil 
was right about that, at least.
Ori brought up the point she would have, the point he had tried to bring up 
before. "Is it possible that we're seeing a species at emergence?"
"Impossible," Vasil huffed. "It's those clods at Sims—"
"I don't see why it's impossible." Ori's voice didn't go up, but he had not been 
intimidated by Vasil, and he made that clear. "Just because we've never observed 
it before doesn't mean it can't happen. In theory, it has to happen sometime."
"The odds—"
"Make no difference now. What matters is what is." Ori could never leave out his 
Pelorist tags. Vasil went redder, if possible. Kira decided it was time to cool 
things off.
"What about the thermal source at the old Sims site? Are we quite sure that 
doesn't imply illegal occupancy?" Vasil scowled, but held his peace when Ori 
turned to her.
"They said not." Ori rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It did surprise Captain 
Vasoni, but there was no organized movement. He did look for that. Here—" He 
touched the display, and it shifted location, then scale. The shuttle 
field'soriginal outline had blurred already—tropical vegetation, Kira reminded 
herself, could do that in a short time. Buildings still crisply upright—well, 
they would have made them stout in the first place. A cluster of hotdots here, 
labeled sheep, and another near the river, labeled cattle. Those were the right 
size, and temperature, and perhaps livestock could survive without human care 
that long.
"Has anyone asked the vets?"
"Oh yes. And the original herd sizes. That's well within possible limits. They 
won't survive another decade without care, but they're well below the carrying 
capacity of their pasture, and they can forage in the village gardens as well."
"We have one hotspot in the village itself," Vasil said, but more calmly. 
"Vasoni wasn't scanning it the whole time, so we can't be sure it's the same 
one, but whatever it is isn't human. Wrong patterns. The Sims colonists reported 
a treeclimbing, dexterous species in the nearby forest, which came into the 
settlement at first. If it were Terran, it would be a monkey. The experts think 
this is one of those. It's smaller than the big fellows up north."
"Mmm." Kira wasn't convinced. "Anyone check the personnel list of the Sims 
pickup?"
"As well as we can. The colony database they brought with them could have been 
doctored, of course, but they claim to have accounted for everyone. A few of the 
elderly died in transit, as you'd expect. We could confirm if Vasoni had had the 
sense to get a fine-grain visual of the old colony beforehand, but by the time 
he realized he needed one, he had a mutiny to deal with."
"Well, then." Kira hoped to get them back on the real problem, the aliens. "Any 
ideas on where these folks would fit on the Varinge Scale?"
That brought them back all right. Scowls from both, sighs, the sort of thing 
that made her wonder why she stayed in the service at all. Teamwork, ha!
"No artifacts," said Vasil. "We don't even know if they have metal."
"And our ship leaves in less than ten days, and we won't learn anything more 
until we come out of FTL at the beacon and can strip it. Vasoni did have sense 
enough to put a permanent watch on the area."
Kira looked at the rest of the list. A specialist in linguistics, of course, 
though so far the record of the alien linguistics staff was something below 
encouraging. By picking alternates with slightly different specialties, they 
could cover a fairly broad range of biology, technology assessment, linguistics, 
anthropology… but something this important really needed a larger team. 
Particularly when the team leader was a political appointee who had used his 
degree, such as it was, in corporate and government service. The problem was the 
capacity of the transport vessel. No one wanted to waste the time it would have 
taken for an ordinary ship to crawl inward from the jump point to the planet 
they wanted… which meant squeezing them into a military ship that could make the 
inward transit in days, not months.
And that meant putting up with a military presence. Kira wondered what the 
others thought about that. After all, these things had killed the colonists, all 
of them, so they were certainly dangerous. The military could protect them. On 
the other hand, the military tended to think they were in charge of things, even 
when they weren't. This was supposed to be a scientific and diplomatic mission.
They all loved the coolers, Ofelia discovered, especially the frost that formed 
on the freezing compartment walls. Twice she came into her kitchen to find the 
cooler door open, and one of them scraping away with its horny fingernail, while 
a second held the bowl. The first time, the one holding the bowl dropped it, 
exactly like a guilty child, when she came in; they both bobbed a little, and 
sidled out. The second time—was this a different pair?—they both stared at her 
coolly and went right on eating frost until she pushed them aside and shut the 
door firmly. The difference in reaction struck her as very human: some 
recognized rules to observe, even as they broke them, and some didn't care.
She was glad she had disconnected the coolers in nearly all the other houses. 
She would have to have spent all her time checking cooler doors. It wasn't just 
the waste of electricity; it was the wear and tear on cooler motors. At least 
they didn't mess with the motors. She had managed to convince them—how, she 
wasn't sure—that they must not take things apart. They did turn the lights on 
and off, and the water, but that did no harm. She had worried that they might 
start up some of the vehicles down by the shuttle field, but they hadn't. 
Perhaps those vehicles wouldn't work now anyway, sitting out in the storms all 
this time. She had not tried to start them since… she couldn't quite remember. 
Before the creatures came, anyway. Perhaps that was why they hadn't 
experimented.
They were not as bad as children, really. Endlessly curious, as children were, 
but unlike children they understood limits. The worst was not being able to 
settle to her own pursuits any more without being aware of their curiosity and 
attention. When she tried to paint beads, one of them was sure to stick a talon 
into the different paints; when she tried to string beads, a large beaky head 
hung over the work, watching. When she crocheted, one of them would reach to 
feel the yarn, "helping" by taking it off the ball and holding it slack. She had 
no way to explain that she needed the slight tension against the ball to gauge 
the tension of her stitches. If she tried to work on the log, they clustered in 
the door, watching as the words scrolled across the screen.
That was like having children around, never being allowed to settle to anything 
in peace. When she knew someone watched her, noticing her choice of colors, 
textures, shapes, stitches, words, she could not concentrate. Even when the 
creatures didn't interrupt intentionally, their very interest was an 
interruption.
She tried to get them involved in projects of their own, as she would have with 
children. If only they would settle to something, then she could get on with her 
own activities. She offered dull beige beads from the fabricator for them to 
paint, bits of cloth and colored yarn. But although they would twine the yarn 
into twists and curls, and even dip the beads in color, they would not settle to 
any of it. Just when she thought they were engrossed, so that she could mutter 
to herself as she worked out what she wanted to do next, there they would be 
again. Clustered around, hanging over her. Watching.
Outside, it wasn't so bad. In the open, they didn't seem quite as large; she 
didn't feel their presence as overpowering. She grew used to having one of them 
in the garden with her, eager for the slimerods she tossed it. They no longer 
knocked down the corn, or trampled the ruffled leaves of gourds and squash. They 
followed her as she made her regular tour of the meadows to check the sheep and 
cattle. Eventually the animals grew used to them, and quit shying away. It could 
be almost companionable, walking along on a breezy day with one or two of them. 
She found herself talking to them quite naturally, and imagining the meanings of 
the grunts and squawks she got in return.
But inside, they were always a nuisance: slightly too big to share the working 
spaces comfortably, yet determined to learn what she did and how. She felt 
constrained, crowded. They would not attempt entry if she locked a door against 
them, but she could not relax inside, wondering what they were getting into 
outside. That, too, was like having children around. She had more than once used 
the bathroom for sanctuary when her children were little, but she had never 
stayed long. She knew too well what might happen… at least with children. With 
these, she didn't know; she could only worry.
The near-nesting one decided first. It is a guardian. It is a nest-guardian.
Right hand drumming wavered, steadied. It cannot be; these are not nests.
Nests were. Quick gestures evoked the picture-machine and its images. Nests 
were… the guardian stays.
Left-hand drumming. It is so, these were nests, and it is so, that this could be 
the guardian… the only guardian left.
Old… it must be so old. Shivers of shoulders, a courteous glance at their 
eldest, so much younger than the eldest of their People, but an elder still.
And, the near-nesting one added, it knows so much about all those boxes and 
things that light and move and speak…
If it is speech.
It is speech. It answers them.
Things that talk.
That in a tone that expressed hunger better than words, a visceral growl. They 
all straightened a little, breathing faster: game in view. Things that talked, 
that did things, things they could recognize as useful, to move water, to make 
heat and cold, to draw pictures and make noises. More dangerous things like 
those the invading monsters had used to destroy the nestmass. They could taste 
that bright blood, that wriggling intelligence.
It would nourish the young, the near-nester said. That went without saying, but 
a near-nester always said the obvious, and repeatedly; that was how to tell they 
were close. That knowledge in the monster's head, those things, would nourish 
their young if only…
It cannot be eaten, the eldest reminded them. It is monster; it will not 
nourish. A quick flurry of right hand drumming, then left hand, then confusion 
of rhythms as they worked it out. Of course it could not be eaten; guardians 
were guardians, not prey.
Not eaten. Not eaten but… tasted? No. A lurch to the rhythm, of the nausea they 
had felt tasting the dead monsters at the nesting grounds. Breathed, said 
someone finally. A vast gasp, as they all tried that idea. Breathed. Yes. As 
they passed new things to each other, breathing them into the air and catching 
them in again, so they could breathe the monster's wisdom.
Its speech. Who will learn to breathe it?
A harsh, guttural exhalation from all of them. A soft flurry of knuckle-beats on 
belly and breast, mouths open, trying out the sounds.
It is hard. That from the youngest. Eyes rolled.
It is a monster; it would not be easy.
The singers would do better. Eyes rolled that way. No true singers had come with 
them; none had been interested enough, not with the story of the invasion and 
war to sing.
Who will go?
Silence. Without drumming, they knew their choices now, and their decision 
formed in silence. One stood, then another. A moment's pause, then a third 
stood.
It is too important. We must have all three legs of the stool.
Left hand drumming, slow and sad, but without any flutter of weakness.
Tell the monster?
Show the monster. We will learn.
In the morning, the whole crowd of them—if that was indeed all—waited outside 
her house. Ofelia looked them over, wondering what was coming. Three of them 
came nearer, and one at a time curved over until their heads were at the level 
of her waist. What was this?
"Do you need something?" she asked. Bowing, it must be, and what did bowing mean 
to them? No answer, not even the grunts they were now producing regularly in 
response to her speech. "Want cold?" She opened the door wider and waved them 
in. They didn't come. Instead, the others moved apart, and let the three begin 
to walk away down the lane.
Puzzled, Ofelia followed. Were they trying to lead her to something that needed 
repair? When they turned into the lane that led to the river side of the 
settlement, she was sure of that. It must be the pumps—although water had 
spurted out of her faucet and shower normally that morning. Perhaps they wanted 
her to show them how the pump controls worked. She had been expecting them to 
want that.
The three walked on past the pump house, with her behind them, the others 
trailing. It reminded her of processions, of something ceremonious in which she 
did not know her part. Past the pump house, down the meadow into the tall grass 
by the river. Ofelia slowed. She didn't like to walk in the tall grass; it cut 
her feet and made fine stinging lines on her bare skin.
Now the three stopped, and turned to face her. They bowed again. One of them 
approached, and touched one of her necklaces with its talon. A soft trill. Then 
a wide-armed gesture, as if waving to the whole area, then a jerk of the head to 
the river. Certainty flared in her mind: they were leaving. All of them? She 
turned to look at those behind. They stood in a ragged line, unmoving. Were they 
going to try to make her leave? She couldn't. She couldn't eat their food—they 
had to know that.
The one who had touched her necklace did so again, this time slipping the talon 
under it, delicately, hardly grazing her skin. What? Did it want that? And why? 
Ofelia lifted her hands to the necklace, and slowly lifted it over her head. It 
was the one with slimerod cores among the beads she had made and painted; the 
colors of this one were greens and yellows with a few blue beads. Not her 
favorite; she didn't mind giving it up, if that was the question.
She held it out, and the creature took it, looking in her eyes as if memorizing 
her face. If it was leaving, perhaps that's exactly what it was doing. When it 
finally looked away, it stowed the necklace in one of the stoppered gourds 
hanging from its shoulder belt, pushing the stopper in firmly. Then another bow, 
and the three turned away.
She had not seen them near the river before; she did not know if they could 
swim… she felt a stab of fear for them, as if they had been her children after 
all. Things lived in the river that ate other water-creatures; the colony had 
once lost a child to something scaly with large teeth. Then she saw the slender 
boat move out of the reeds, into the river, and realized all over again how 
alien they were, how adapted to their world. They had made a long narrow craft 
of a something—skins?—sewn around a framework of bent wood. The seams formed a 
brickwork pattern; she wondered what sealed them from the water. And the 
paddles—long double-bladed paddles, the tips of the long blades pointed, dipped 
in and out of the water, moving the strange craft along the surface of the water 
as quickly and easily as one of the water-striders.
The colonists had had nothing like that; she had never imagined something like 
that. The colony boats had been one-piece shells, large enough to hold twelve 
adults, square on the ends, with a small engine mounted on one end. She 
remembered helping to build the launch site for the boats, that first season. 
The fabricator could not make anything that size, so when the last boats were 
lost, they had done without. It had not occurred to anyone to build something 
this small. Ofelia stared at it, trying to imagine wrapping cowhide around a 
wooden framework. Perhaps it could be done… if someone thought of it first.
She looked back at the ones left behind; they watched intently until the craft 
reached the far shore of the river, a tiny sliver it seemed, and with a last 
wave their companions disappeared into the forest there. Boat builders. Boat 
designers. They must have built that boat after they got to the river; she could 
not imagine them carrying boats like that across the grasslands where they 
lived.
Even if she had spoken their language she would not have had to ask why they 
left. They had gone to tell the others about her. They hadn't killed her (yet, 
she tried to keep in mind), and they had now learned enough to go tell others. 
Would the others come? Or would all of these eventually leave? That was a 
thought—maybe they'd go away and leave her in peace once more, to pursue her own 
life the way she wanted, without having to pay attention to them.
For a moment she gave herself up to contemplation of that possibility, that 
blissful state, but she didn't believe in it. Her peace had already been 
shattered, by the new colony, then by the creatures, and she knew, as if she sat 
on the committees where the decisions were made, that eventually someone would 
come to investigate the creatures who had killed humans.
Her creatures were still there in the morning. She had thought they might desert 
her, move on, hunting in the forest perhaps, now that they had sent word back. 
But they stayed close, almost as obtrusive as the whole group had been. Very 
gradually, she found herself mimicking their grunts and squawks, cautious, 
fitting her mouth into the strange shapes. They stared, and grunted or squawked 
back, and she did not understand. It just seemed more comfortable to make the 
sounds they made, as she might have done with babies.
They had become individuals, though she did not know what the individuality 
meant. She had no sense of male or female, old or young, or any social role. Her 
names for them came from what she noticed. The player, whose blowing through 
their tubular instrument she liked best. The killer, who had swung its knife at 
the treeclimber… she wished that one had gone away with the others, but it 
hadn't. The gardener, who did not garden, but accompanied her most often, 
appreciating the slimerods.
Days passed. The player painted and strung a necklace of beads… blues mostly, 
with a few green and yellow ones. It could not hold the brush as she did, in 
those hard slippery talons. Instead, it pared a sliver away from a twig, slid 
the bead down onto that stop, then dipped the whole bead in the paint. Ofelia 
watched, amazed, as it waited for the excess paint to run off then upended the 
twig (neatly holding the painty end in the very tips of talons) so that the bead 
slid off onto a waiting stand, this made from a larger branch fixed to a base 
with its twigs uppermost. Bead after bead, dipped the same way, released to land 
on another of the empty twigs… the branch began to look like the holiday trees 
Ofelia vaguely remembered from the public buildings of her childhood. To her 
further surprise, the creature pared a separate dipping twig for each color of 
paint. Children had to be taught to clean a brush after using each color… these 
were not children. Nor were they human, though that became harder to remember as 
the days passed.
When the beads dried, the creature strung them on twisted grass, not the cord 
Ofelia offered. And when it had finished its work, it held the completed 
necklace out to her, hooked on one talon. A gift to replace the one she had 
given? She could not be sure of anything but the intent. She took it, and put it 
on. It bobbed at her, and made one of its noises; this one sounded happy, she 
decided. She smiled and said her thanks aloud, as she would to a person.
The one she thought of as the killer roamed the meadows; Ofelia feared for the 
livestock at first, but day after day none were missing. When she walked around 
to check, the killer walked with her, stopping at times to scratch with its long 
taloned toes at the tallest clumps of grass. Once it even threw itself down, in 
the tall grass near the river, and rolled on its back like the chickens having a 
dust bath. Ofelia grinned before she caught herself. It looked ridiculous, 
wallowing in the grass like that, even without feathers to fluff. She could not 
imagine what it was doing, unless the grass eased some itch.
The gardener continued to help her find and exterminate slimerods. It seemed to 
have no other interest; it was often missing from the group that plagued her in 
the center, hovering when she tried to settle to some task. Several times she 
found scratch-marks in the dirt around the plants, as if it had cultivated or 
weeded while she was not there. Perhaps it was only gathering slime-rods, or 
perhaps it understood what her hoe and rake were for.
She heard the sound from inside, where she was drying herself after a shower. A 
long, rhythmic cry, several voices. Her heart lurched, then raced. In the lane 
outside, she heard a nearer, answering cry, and then the quick click-and-thud of 
the creatures running.
Their friends—their families?—must have arrived. Ofelia finished drying between 
her toes, very slowly, so that she could think. It would be different again. She 
was tired of difference, but the world had never yet shaped itself to her 
measure. How many had come this time? And would they, like her creatures (she 
almost allowed herself to think friends) allow her the freedom to do what she 
wished?
She put on the necklaces she had left on the kitchen table. It did not feel like 
enough. She opened her door and saw nothing in the lane. Down by the river she 
heard excited voices, then the cattle. She considered. The garment she had been 
working on, ribbonlike strips of cloth in brilliant colors… or the sea-storm 
one, or the cloak she had embroidered with flowers and faces? The voices came 
nearer. The cloak: it took less time to put on, and she had it here at home.With 
the cloak over her shoulders, and her necklaces layered over it, she felt she 
still lacked something. Bracelets around her wrists, yes, and the bit of 
crocheted netting that she had once put over her head: the creatures had widened 
their eyes at that, she recalled.
She went out, along the lane to the turning and then toward the river. She would 
meet them, not wait at home. It was her place, after all. The cloak lifted a 
little from her shoulders in the breeze; she peered down it at the upside-down 
faces with their staring eyes. She could not quite remember why that one had 
three eyes, and why she had run a double row of eyes down either side, between 
the faces in front and the flowers behind. Ahead, a cluster of the creatures 
coming up from the river. She recognized her necklace on one of them—had the 
original three returned? And newcomers, one much darker than the others, and one 
wearing a sky-blue cloak that came halfway to the ground. She paused beside the 
last house. They were moving now, coming toward her, carrying sacks. Food? 
Equipment? And the new ones—at least the one in the blue cloak—moved more slowly 
than the ones she was used to.
Close to, they were obviously the same kind of creatures, but she felt a 
different intelligence. She had never noticed much organization among her 
creatures, never been sure who was in charge. Except when going off to hunt, 
they had seemed to drift through the days intent on nothing but following her, 
studying her. Now she noticed that her creatures had shifted to the back of the 
group; the cloaked creature went first, as if it had the right.
Her heart pounded; her blood hissed in her ears. Was it fright or excitement? 
She stared at the cloaked one, trying to find some clue in its features. Under 
the cloak she could just see criss-crossing straps and slings, hung with the 
same sort of gourds and sacks she was used to.
It halted some five meters from her. The others halted behind it. The breeze 
tugged at her cloak, lifted its cloak in a ripple. It moved its hands out 
slowly, turned them up, spread its fingers. That she could recognize: empty 
hands, no threat. She did not have to believe it to answer. She spread her own 
hands, palms up. It brought its hands together, talon to talon, posed as 
carefully as the devotional figurines she remembered from her childhood. Again 
she imitated the pose. Whatever these creatures meant, it was not what her 
people meant. She had never believed in what her people meant. Guilt stabbed for 
a moment, then she drove it away. These creatures could not know that she had 
never believed.
The cloaked one spread its arms now, in a slow gesture that evoked the village 
behind Ofelia, and then seemed to wrap it into a tidy package, which it handed 
her. If she had any understanding at all, that meant "This whole place is 
yours." Or it might be asking. Ofelia, remembering a childhood song, drew a big 
circle in the air with her hands, swept a hand from that to the horizon, and 
then repeated the wrapping-up gesture the creature had used. She handed the 
invisible package to the cloaked one, as if it were both large and precious. 
This whole world is yours, she meant to say.
Behind the newcomers, her own creatures bounced a little, though the cloaked one 
showed little reaction for a long moment. Then it looked around, and gestured to 
the other creatures. Two of them—one her own player, and one new—brought out 
instruments and piped a thin tune against the wind. Then the drumming began.
She had known they had drums of course. She had heard drumming before, night 
after night. But she had not imagined how they did this, or how it would affect 
her.



CHAPTER TWELVE
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Their throats swelled, bulged into grotesque sacs; their arms twitched; they 
seemed to vibrate all over. And from the distended throats came the sharp pulse 
of rhythm. Ofelia felt it shaking the air, rolling through her body as if she 
were one of them, much louder than the drumming her creatures had done before. 
The soles of her feet itched with a different, unmatched rhythm, as if an army 
marched in step with each other, out of step with music. When she looked, the 
creatures were stamping in unison, but not in time with the higher drumming.
She didn't like the feel of the discordance; her body wanted to move with one or 
the other, but could not move with both. Or could she? Her feet twitched; she 
felt the discordance move into syncopation, and her arms lifted, swayed… she 
moved into what she felt as both dance and song, though she had never danced so 
before, and had no idea what her movements sang to the creatures who had begun 
the music.
Beat and beat, step and step again. Now the crosscurrent of rhythm steadied; she 
found she was marking the accented beats, and their feet matched hers. Which had 
changed? She could not be sure. She felt breathless, and yet light-footed, ready 
to dance a long way.
Her creatures moved from the rear of the group, moving to flank it like wings. 
Ofelia looked from one to the other. Player, Hunter/Killer, Gardener, the others 
for whom she had found no name. They danced a step nearer. Ofelia moved back; 
they moved forward. Comprehension came with a quickening beat, with the unison 
movement of their feet toward hers. They would not enter the village without her 
lead, her… permission?
A moment's rebellion: what did she want with all these creatures, who would 
plague her even more than the ones she knew? But the music held her, steadied 
her. She could not stop them if they wanted to come, and this way they would 
come at her pace, at her will. She turned a full circle, one arm extended: this, 
too, may be yours.
Then, to the combined drumming of vocal sacs and feet, she led the way into the 
village. Behind her, the drumming steadied to a single pulse she felt in her 
entire body, as if the earth itself pulsed. She led them up the lane, past the 
shuttered homes, past the place where she had seen the first storm-battered one, 
the house where they had sheltered together. She came to the turn, the lane past 
her own house, and then to the center. Here her breath stabbed at her; she 
stopped, leaning over with her hand pressed to her side.
The drumming slowed, became softer and more vocal, almost a song, almost words. 
Her creatures approached. Were they concerned, or merely hungry? Ofelia put out 
a hand to steady herself on the wall. It could be funny… here she was, the 
center of attention, the attraction that had drawn alien creatures across 
thousands of kilometers, and because she was just an old lady she might die of 
excitement and waste all their time. The thought made her chuckle against the 
pain; the chuckle made her cough.
When she could draw an easy breath again, they were all waiting, silent, poised 
in a circle around her. The cloaked one faced her, head tipped to one side.
"I'm fine now," Ofelia said. "Its just that I'm old."
It blinked. Then, slowly, it leaned over the way she had, pressed its hand to 
its side the way she had, and coughed. The cough had the stagy quality of a 
child who has just learned about social coughs. Then it held its hand low, and 
raised it in short steps to her present height… and fluttered those long-taloned 
fingers along a horizontal path, dipping and rising as if to mark intervals. It 
held that hand still finally. The other hand rose to meet it, matching 
fluttering the same way, a little distance beyond it, then dropped suddenly. 
Then both hands down, and the creature bobbed its head.
Ofelia stood thinking. If she had done that, what would she mean? She put her 
own hand low, and began the sequence. Growth, of course. Then the level 
fluttering would be adult life, and the sudden drop, death. Her heart raced 
suddenly. She felt dizzy. Was it a question or an observation, that she was 
close to death? She could not tell how old they were… how could they tell she 
was old?
She continued the sequence, wondering what the little dips in the horizontal 
flutter meant to the creatures—she had no idea whether they marked time by 
seasons, years, or something else—but continued the horizontal longer than the 
cloaked creature had. She wanted credit for every year she'd lived. The short 
period from now—the still hand—to the final decline she gestured differently, 
waving her hand more widely. She didn't know what the creature would understand, 
but what she meant was uncertainty. She might die today, or a year from now, or 
three years; she could not know.
The creatures were silent until she finished, then the ones she knew began 
talking. The cloaked one silenced them with a gesture. It took a step nearer 
Ofelia, and slowly extended a talon to her cloak, pointing to the three-eyed 
face on it, and then, very slowly, to her eyes, and back to the face on the 
cloak.
No, she couldn't explain that. She didn't know herself why she had put three 
eyes on that face. She shrugged, and spread her hands. They wouldn't understand, 
but what else could she do? After a long moment of silence, Player squawked 
something at the one in the cloak, who grunted back. Then Player touched 
Ofelia's arm, gently, and nudged her toward the center door.
She wanted to say it was her door, and she would decide for herself when to let 
them in. She wanted them to go away, all of them, for she could tell that this 
was going to mean more work, more interruptions, less privacy. She glared at 
Player, who had locked eyes with Bluecloak, as she now thought of it. Bluecloak 
grunted something at Player, who stepped back at once. Bluecloak bowed.
She might as well get it over with. Ofelia opened the center door, and waved 
them in.
Only Bluecloak followed her. Here, in the confined space of the passage, she 
could hear its breathing, the click of its nails on the floor; she could smell 
its scent. Ofelia moved slowly, opening the doors on either side as she headed 
toward the back of the building. Sewing rooms, control room, storage, the big 
communal kitchen. At each door, Bluecloak paused and looked in. Ofelia named the 
rooms, but did not enter them; Bluecloak did not enter either, but followed her.
In the kitchen, she turned the water on and off, remembering how that had 
fascinated the first creatures. Bluecloak hissed, but otherwise did not react. 
Perhaps they had already told it about the water that came from the walls. Then 
she opened the big storage freezers; Bluecloak leaned closer, waved cold air up 
onto its face. Then it picked at the frost with its dark talon, and tasted it, 
just as her own creatures had.
"Kuh…" it said. Ofelia stared. Had one of her creatures carried that word to 
this one? Had they really understood that her words were language?
"Cold," she said. Then she patted the side of the box. "Freezer. The freezer 
makes cold."
"Kuh… ghrihzhuh…" The second sound, clearly different from the first, sounded 
like nothing Ofelia had said. She tried to remember her exact words. Freezer. 
Freezer makes cold. Was that an attempt at "freezer"?
"Freezer," she said, stretching it out. "Freezer makes cold." Slowly, 
distinctly.
"Ghrihzhuh aaaaks kuh," Bluecloak said, separating each word as carefully as she 
had. Did that mean it was trying to say what she said? She wanted to think that. 
She had believed it of children.
"Freezer," she said again. She opened it again, reached in, and took out a 
package of food. She held up the package of food. "Food in freezer."
"Dhuh ih ghrihzhuh," it said. It reached in and took out another package. 
"Dhuh…" Clearly a question, but the intonation was the opposite of her own, 
dropping instead of rising.
"Food," she agreed. Of course it couldn't understand "food" yet. But Bluecloak 
seemed so much more responsive than the original creatures. Was this why they 
had brought it? If they were anything like her own people, if the first ones who 
found her were scouts of some kind, then Bluecloak might be a specialist of some 
kind. A specialist in languages?
Bluecloak put its package back in the freezer and turned away. Ofelia replaced 
her own and shut the lid. Bluecloak had moved to the row of sinks. It touched 
the faucet control. Of course it would want to know more words; children 
learning to talk were that way too. They didn't want to practice until they got 
one word right; they wanted to learn the names of everything they saw.
Ofelia turned the water on. "Water," she said, putting her hand in it. Bluecloak 
put its talons in the water.
"Yahtuh," it said, producing a sort of gurgled snarl at the beginning of the 
word.
"Waah-ter," Ofelia said, again stretching it out. Bluecloak moved its talons 
from the water to the control.
"Aaaks yahtuh…" with the dropping intonation that she suspected meant a 
question.
Ofelia tried to back her mind up: if "ghrihzhuh aaaaks kuh" meant "freezer makes 
cold" then maybe "aaaaks" was the closest it could come to "make." In that case, 
it had just said "make water." Ofelia felt smug. It wasn't that hard, to someone 
who had dealt with generations of babies learning to talk. She was too old to 
learn their language, but they could learn hers.
"Make water on," she said, turning the control to strengthen the stream. "Water 
on." She turned it off. "Make water off. Water off."
"Aaaaks yahtuh on." Ofelia was surprised; the "on" sounded quite accurate. Why 
couldn't it say "make" if it could say "on"? Bluecloak tapped the control. 
"Aaaaks yahtuh on."
Ofelia turned the control again. Bluecloak dipped its head. Approval? Agreement? 
Thanks? She didn't know.
"Aaaaks yahtuh awk." Make water… awk? Off. Ofelia turned the control.
"Water off," she said. Again that bob of the head, then Bluecloak turned away, 
clearly searching the room for something it expected. Something the others had 
told it about, no doubt, but which of the many things? Ofelia decided on the 
obvious, and went to the door.
When it followed, she pointed out the light switches, then up to the ceiling 
lights.
"Lights," she said. Then, with a touch. "Lights off. Lights on."Its "l" trilled, 
a wavering sound prolonged beyond anything Ofelia had heard before. 
"Llllahtsss." The word ended in an explosive tss. "Llllahtsss on. Aaaaks 
lllahtsss awk." Ofelia turned them off. Bluecloak reached out and turned them 
back on, repeating its new phrases: "lights off; lights on." Then it tapped the 
switch itself, not hard enough to trigger the control.
"Switch," Ofelia said. "Light switch. Switch turns lights on and off." She said 
it slowly, a careful pause after each word.
The creature attempted a sound. Ofelia recognized only the "chuh" of the word's 
end; whatever the creature had heard and tried to reproduce didn't resemble 
"swih" at all. The creature cocked its head at her, and she tried again. 
"Switch" did not lend itself to the slow stretching she had used on the other 
words: when she tried to slow it down, her own version didn't sound right to 
her.
This time Bluecloak produced "khuhtch." That must be the best it could do. 
Ofelia could accept that, for now. It was a lot closer than she'd come to making 
most of their sounds.
"Khuhtch aaaaks lllahtsss."
Ofelia translated as she would for a toddlers speech. Switch makes lights? Now 
how was she going to explain that the switch didn't make the light, but 
controlled it? Did she need to explain that yet? If she didn't, she'd have more 
trouble later on—she knew that from experience. She'd already gone astray when 
she'd agreed that the faucet controls made the water on or off.
Suddenly the task of teaching the creatures her language looked hard again. She 
needed the simplest words human children learned by themselves, the no and yes 
of every mother's discourse.
"Switch makes the lights on," she said. "Switch makes the lights off." She 
demonstrated again; Bluecloak looked at her with slightly widened eyes. Now she 
went very slowly indeed. "Switch not make light." Bluecloak blinked. "Not make 
light," Ofelia repeated. "Make light on. Make light off."
"Nnnaht." A cock of the head. Then Bluecloak touched its talons to the light 
switch again, and turned the lights off. "Lllahtss awk. Nnnnaht lllahtss."
"Not lights," Ofelia agreed, in the dark room. She turned the lights back on. 
"Switch makes lights on. Makes lights off."
"Aaaks lllahtss on..Aaaks lllahtss awk. Nnnnaht aaaaks lllahtss
"That's it," Ofelia said. It was going to work after all. It was quicker than a 
child, quick to realize what "not" meant. But it was walking back to the 
freezer. Ofelia followed.
"Ghrihzhuh aaaaks kuh."
"Freezer makes cold, yes."
Bluecloak moved to the sinks, and tapped the faucet control. "Aaaks 
yahtuh."Ofelia shook her head. "Makes water on. Makes water off"
Bluecloak waved its hand under the faucet. "Nnnaht yahtuh."
"That's right," Ofelia said. "Not water now." She touched the control. "This 
makes water on."
"Aaaks yahtuh naht."
"That's it. It doesn't—" She realized it couldn't follow that yet. "Not make 
water, make water on. Like lights." She was amazed at the quickness of its 
thinking, the way it checked its understanding.
Now it gestured, as if throwing something outward. "Aaaks lllahtss."
Oh. It wanted to know what did make the lights. She was too tired to deal with 
this; it would take days and days and days to explain the powerplant, 
electricity, wires, tubes… even if she could remember it all, which she 
couldn't.
Perhaps it would understand the pictures in the control room, though the others 
hadn't seemed to catch on. Ofelia led the way to the control room. Behind her, 
she heard a click. When she looked back, Bluecloak had turned the lights off. 
Amazing.
The control room, with its many banks of switches, keyboards, display screens, 
and light panels, brought a hiss from Bluecloak. Ofelia brought up the 
maintenance manual for the electrical supply, and scowled at the illustrations 
as she scrolled past them. All too complicated. She knew what they meant, but 
they would confuse another human, let alone one of these creatures. She turned 
to say something to Bluecloak, and saw that it was staring at the screen.
"Aaaks…" Its hand gestured up, rolling, as the screen display scrolled. What 
makes move? Ofelia wasn't ready for this. She didn't know how to explain the 
scrolling image to children, let alone to an alien creature who didn't speak her 
language. She worked her way out of the maintenance manual, ignoring Bluecloak's 
noises, and found the education files. Here, at the simplest level, with the 
clearest illustrations, she might find something Bluecloak could follow.
There was the sketch she remembered, a cutaway of the power plant, showing the 
connections to the other buildings. "Power plant," said Ofelia, pointing to the 
drawing. "Makes electricity." No, that was too hard. "Makes zzzzt. Zzzzt in 
wires." She moved her finger along the lines. "Zzzzt makes light."
Bluecloak's unreadable expression could have been anything from eager 
comprehension to total confusion. It reached a talon to the screen, pointing to 
the blocky drawing of the power station. "How-huh laaant." Close enough. Power 
plant. Then Bluecloak moved back, to the door, and waved a circle.
"Oh—where is it? I can show you." Ofelia heaved herself up, locked the controls 
with the drawing still on the screen, and headed for the door. Bluecloak, unlike 
her first creatures, moved aside readily. She led the way outside. The other 
creatures were huddled in the lane, noisily discussing something in louder 
voices than she'd heard before. At the sight of Bluecloak, they all fell silent. 
Bluecloak uttered a single complex squawk, and two of them fell in behind it.
Ofelia did not hurry. She had already done that dance; her knees crackled. 
Besides, she wasn't sure she should show Bluecloak the power station. Right now 
her creatures respected the limits she had set; they respected her, because she 
could make the lights work, the water flow. They had never asked to see the 
power station; they didn't understand how everything worked. Surely Bluecloak 
couldn't possibly understand, just from looking… but what if it did? What if 
these creatures could use the tools, the machines? If they could control that 
themselves, if they didn't need her, what would happen to her?
Bluecloak seemed in no hurry either, It stopped outside the first doorway, and 
churred. One of the creatures answered. Bluecloak tipped its head toward Ofelia. 
It had to be a question. The logical question was whether this was her house. 
But the others could have told it that. Perhaps it wanted to know what this was,
"House," Ofelia said. Whose had it been? She was surprised to discover that her 
memory of who had which house had blurred, Surely it hadn't been that long. 
Tomas and Serafina? Luis and Ysabel? Still thinking, she unlatched the outer 
door and pulled it open. Inside, the house was dark and smelled musty. Ofelia 
ducked into the cool dimness, and made her way to the windows, where she opened 
shutters. When she turned around, Bluecloak stood poised at the door, head 
cocked.
"Come in," Ofelia said, gesturing. Bluecloak stepped in, its toenails clicking 
on the tile floor. Ofelia opened the other doors, showing Bluecloak the 
bedrooms, the closets—there, a scrap of rotting cloth that pricked her memory 
and reminded her that this had been Ysabel's closet, the scrap part of an old 
coverlet that Ysabel had cut up for rags before the colony's removal. The 
bathroom, with its shower head—Ofelia turned the water spray on and off to 
demonstrate—the garden door from the kitchen. Bluecloak followed her, attentive. 
One of the others touched the cooler—one of those Ofelia had disconnected long 
before—and said "Kuh," then grunted. It opened the door; Bluecloak uttered a 
sharp squawk, and it shut the door as if its fingers had been stung.
Or as if Bluecloak were its parent, and it had disobeyed. Ofelia digested that 
thought. Was Bluecloak an adult, and were these others really children? She 
liked the idea that Killer might be an undisciplined child, but she had not 
failed to notice the long knives the newcomers also wore, even Bluecloak.
Bluecloak touched the cooler gently, and looked at Ofelia. Asking permission? 
She nodded, then reached out to open the door herself.
"No cold now," she said. "Cold off."
"Kuh awk," Bluecloak said. Cold off. It looked the box over; Ofelia held her 
breath. It could not know what made the box work or not work. It had not had 
time enough with the cooler at the center. It could not… Leaning over, Bluecloak 
peered behind the cooler. With a glance at Ofelia, it leaned lower, reached, and 
came up with the end of the power cord. "Aaaks kuh," it said, with the falling 
intonation that Ofelia now thought meant a question.
She felt colder than the cooler had ever been. How had it caught on so quickly? 
Small children learned… but they saw someone plug and unplug appliances.
These creatures had no electricity… did they? They could not have understood, 
with no common language, how it worked. Yet Bluecloaks questions were so direct… 
it must be smarter than she had thought. Smarter than humans? She didn't want to 
consider that question.
"Bzzz makes cold," Ofelia said. Should she give a label for the cord? She might 
as well; it would be easier to talk about if she did. "That's a cord," she said, 
touching it. "Cord. Bzzz in cord makes cold."
"Zzzz…" Bluecloak said. "Howhuh laaant aaaks zzzzt." It paused, giving Ofelia 
time to arrange Power plant makes electricity in her mind. "Zzzz in cort, zzzz 
aaaks kuh."
Yes, electricity in the cord made the cooler cold, but how had it figured out 
that the electricity traveled in the cord? It should not have been obvious. It 
could not have seen the wires behind the coolers in the center; they were hidden 
by the bulk of the boxes. Ofelia nodded, forgetting again that they did not 
understand nods.
Bluecloak flipped its cloak back, and opened a mesh bag hanging from one of the 
straps around its body. From the bag, it took a thin cylinder as long as 
Ofelia's forearm. She thought it looked like wood or thick-stemmed grass. 
Bluecloak lifted it with one hand, and blew into it, holding the other hand 
before the open end. Then, very gently, it took her hand, and placed it before 
the open end. She felt the stream of air. But why?
Bluecloak spoke, a rapid gabble she couldn't follow. Then it slowed. A breathy 
whushing, a pause, then "in" and a talon tapped on the cylinder. Air in 
cylinder? Ofelia nodded, hoping that was right. "Yahtuh in…" a guttural squawk. 
Ofelia blinked. Water in… something. Air in the cylinder, water in the cylinder? 
In something like the cylinder? In a pipe, she would say… had that been their 
word for pipe?
"Pipe," Ofelia said. "Water in pipe." Her breath came short; she could not 
believe the creature was making these connections.
Bluecloak tipped its head to one side. Was that their nod? It repeated the 
sequence: [Whoosh] "in" gesture to cylinder. "Yahtuh in kye… kye…" It must be 
trying to say pipe. Ofelia tried again. "Pipe."
"Kite." It tapped the cylinder again, preventing another correction. "Yahtuh in 
kite… zzzz in cort."
It had the whole idea. Like air in a tube, like water in a pipe, electricity 
flowed through cords, cables, wires. Ofelia had known children who found that 
hard to grasp, who had insisted that electricity could not flow, because wires 
were not hollow. And this creature had figured it out with no more than a few 
glances at the appliances and cords, at the elementary sketches of the teaching 
programs.
Ofelia felt cold all over. These were dangerous creatures; they had killed 
humans. And she was exposing them to human technology… at the rate this one was 
learning, it would not be long before they were building their own starships.
She could not stop them, either. Even before she had known they were there, they 
must have acquired enough information to be dangerous. By the time she realized 
they were learning too much, they had already learned it.
Her mind cycled through the reasoning, discussing with the old voice whether or 
not it was her fault. The old voice accused, as always; the new voice defended. 
The old voice frayed, audible at last as the separate strands that had formed 
it: her mother, her father, the primary teacher who had been incensed when she 
learned too fast, the secondary teacher who had been incensed when she turned 
down the scholarship; Humberto, Barto… even Rosara.
The new voice… she thought the new voice sounded like herself, but younger. But 
how could she be sure? It insisted she was not to blame. It went on to point out 
how exciting this was, what an opportunity.
Ofelia burst out laughing, and Bluecloak shied away. "Sorry," Ofelia said, 
pulling her mouth back to its normal expression. Bluecloak could not know why 
she laughed; it might not know her laughter was laughter. Could she explain, 
even to herself, why she was laughing? Just that the internal argument seemed so 
silly, both the worry that she was responsible for endangering the whole human 
race, and the newer voice's enthusiasm for learning about an alien race.
Whatever she learned would be of use to no one; she would be dead and if the 
others came back they would pay no attention to anything she tried to leave 
behind… assuming the creatures would not destroy it. For a moment she was shaken 
with grief and despair as sudden as the laughter. Death, that she had not 
feared, now stood at the end of the lane: darkness, and nothing beyond. She had 
not known she counted on leaving her memories as glosses on the official 
log—something that would survive her, whether anyone read it or not—until she 
realized that those additions might not survive.
With the grief, every ache in her body made itself known, as if her nerves 
transmuted emotion to physical signs. The heavy stutter of her heart, the sharp 
pain in her hip, in her knee, the burning beneath her ribs. Exhaustion dragged 
at her, and she fumbled behind her for one of the chairs that still stood around 
the wide kitchen table. She pulled it toward her, scraping its legs across the 
floor; Bluecloak stiffened and spread its arms a little away from its body. 
Ofelia sat heavily. It would pass; it always did. In a few minutes her breathing 
would ease; she would think of something pleasant, and help it along.
She glanced around the kitchen, out the garden door she'd opened. This was one 
of the gardens she had not kept up, beyond the odd shovelful of terraforming 
inoculant from the recycler. Runner beans with creamy flowers had gone rampant, 
sprawling over the whole space, reaching up with waving tendrils for the 
supports she had not supplied. The breeze set the tendrils waving even more 
wildly, and sent a gust of bean-scent through the open door.
Ofelia breathed it in. Yes. Always something to overcome the body's momentary 
collapse, if you only gave it a chance. A color, a scent, a scrap of music. She 
waited until she was sure her heart had settled to a steady rhythm, then pushed 
her chair back and levered herself up. She really should shut the house up again 
before she left, but she was very tired, and if she was to make it to the power 
plant, she could not spare the energy.
When she turned to the front door, Bluecloak churred, Ofelia looked back. It had 
its hands on the garden door; it swung the door a few centimeters, then cocked 
its head. As clear as words, she thought. Do you want me to shut the door? 
Ofelia nodded and gestured with her hands, one the closing door and the other 
the wall it closed against, Bluecloak shut the door, and then, as she watched, 
the shutters. At the front door, it shut the door behind them, and fastened the 
latch.
She would have been surprised except that she had been surprised too many times 
that day already. She was old, she reminded herself. She didn't have that many 
surprises left.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Contents - Prev / Next
In the powerplant, Bluecloak peered around at the readouts and warning signs 
just as a human might who had wandered into so strange a place. The big 
greenish-gray boxes and cylinders, the glossy black insulators, the steady 
thrum… Ofelia had not really seen or heard it in years, not since it was new to 
her, when she and the other adult colonists were taught how to run and maintain 
it. Now it looked almost as alien to her as the creatures themselves. She could 
not imagine how to explain any of it to Bluecloak; she could remember the words, 
but she had never really understood it. The waste recycler provided fuel; the 
powerplant converted that fuel to electricity as long as someone made sure the 
parts all worked.
"Zzzzt," Bluecloak said. It walked carefully toward one of the greenish rounded 
humps; Ofelia fended it off.
"No!" she said. "Hurts you." She mimed touching the machine and yanking her hand 
back.
Bluecloak stared at her a moment, then looked around again. Its throat sac 
pulsed. Slowly, with obvious care, it moved to the other machines, staying at 
the distance Ofelia had indicated. It shivered suddenly, then leaned to one 
side. Ofelia watched, baffled. It leaned to the other side, then stood upright 
again. It extended one arm, hand open, toward the machine, but with no intent to 
touch it. It looked almost like someone warming hands before a fire, searching 
out the comfortable level of heat.
Ofelia stood still until the ache in her hip forced her to shift her weight, and 
then walk around. Bluecloak still stood by the machine, holding out first one 
hand then another. She was bored. What was it doing? She was thirsty, and 
possibly hungry; she knew she wanted to use the toilet.
Moment by moment her irritation increased; she had felt an obligation to this 
creature as her guest, and then a fascination with its quick learning. But if it 
was going to stand there doing nothing, she had better things to do.
She hoped it wouldn't fry itself to a crisp in something. It wasn't likely; the 
powerplant had been designed with a colony in mind, with the expectation that 
children might occasionally get inside without supervision. Touching the casing 
wouldn't even give it a shock. With a final dramatic sigh, Ofelia headed for the 
toilet down the hall.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," she said. Bluecloak didn't move or answer. 
Fine. Let it be rude; she would take care of herself. In the hall, the other 
creatures moved out of her way. None tried to follow her into the little room; 
they understood now that she wanted to be in these places alone.
Sitting on the toilet, she calmed down and told herself that Bluecloak might not 
intend to be rude. Perhaps it was fascinated by the faint hum she could barely 
hear. She could remember, as a young woman, standing and listening—it had 
sounded clearer then, with her young ears, even loud—soothed by that even, 
steady sound.
When she came out, she went back to the main room, and found Bluecloak still in 
the same place, still moving its hands slowly toward and away from the machine. 
That couldn't be healthy. Perhaps its ears were more sensitive than hers, 
perhaps it had some animal reason to respond more strongly to those sounds, as 
the sheep and cows responded to sounds she could not hear at all. She looked 
back at the doorway to see the other creatures clustered there. Were they 
worried? She was.
She went up to Bluecloak. Its eyes seemed glazed; it didn't seem to focus on 
her. She touched its arm gently. It jerked away as if she had transferred a 
shock, and grunted. Then it looked at her. "I was worried," Ofelia said. "It was 
so long." She thought it would not matter what she said, if she said something 
quietly. "I'm hungry," she went on, and mimed putting food in her mouth. "Time 
to eat."
Another soft grunt, then it looked beyond her to the others and began talking in 
its own language. When it turned back to her, it leaned a little to her and said 
"Zzzzt… kruzh." Kruzh? Ofelia had no idea what that meant.
"I'm hungry," she said again, and again put her hand to her mouth. This time 
when she turned away, it followed.
She had not meant to take it into her own house, but it followed, and her own 
creatures had already gone in, They had been doing that for some time now; 
unless she shut the door against them, or pushed them out, they wandered in and 
out as if it were their house. Bluecloak watched as she took cheese from the 
cooler, as she went outside to pick fresh greens, as she mixed and cooked the 
flatbread and wrapped it around shredded cheese and sliced tomato. She had 
become used to eating in front of those who were not eating—clearly, the 
creatures could not eat her food—but Bluecloak's presence bothered her.
"I wish I could share with you," she said, before taking the first bite. Then it 
occurred to her that perhaps it could use salt… salt was inorganic, a simple 
compound. She uncovered the salt bowl and took a pinch of salt on her palm. She 
reached across the table.Bluecloak leaned closer. Then it put one talon into the 
salt on her hand, and took it to its mouth.
"Salt," Ofelia said. "If you can use it—"
It wet its talon this time and touched her palm again. Against the dark shiny 
talon, the salt grains glistened. This time she could see its tongue touch the 
talon, a quick swipe that wasted no single grain. She felt stupid for not having 
realized before that the creatures might be able to share salt with her.
Bluecloak reached out and took her hand gently. Ofelia waited. It opened its 
mouth, and showed its tongue, then briefly dipped its head toward her hand and 
came back up to stare at her. It wanted to lick the salt off her palm, that was 
clear enough. Ofelia wavered. She would rather give it more salt in a spoon or 
saucer… and yet she wondered what it would feel like. She was old; she might not 
have another chance to find out.
She moved her hand slightly toward Bluecloak, and nodded. At once it dipped its 
head again, and licked the salt off her palm. It tickled, then rasped more than 
tickled, and finally tickled again. Then Bluecloak withdrew its tongue, and 
pressed its firm mouth against her palm before releasing her hand.
Ofelia realized only then that she had held her breath; it gusted out of her. If 
Humberto had done that—! But that was ridiculous; this was an alien creature, a 
monster, and she was an old woman. A nervous giggle wormed out of her, and then 
she remembered her food. She bit into it roughly, as if she could destroy that 
feeling, that sudden thought. She almost choked on that mouthful before she made 
herself slow down, and chew properly, carefully. It would be truly silly to 
choke herself in front of Bluecloak, who would not understand, who might even 
feel responsible. If these creatures had such notions.
She ate the rest of her food with exaggerated care. By the end of the meal she 
was so tired she felt she could put her head on the table and sleep through 
until morning. She wanted a nap; she needed a nap. How could she convey that to 
this creature, even if it was smart enough to figure out that electricity ran in 
wires just as water ran in pipes?
Bluecloak stood, and pointed at the ceiling. What now? It ran its arm through an 
arc that Ofelia recognized as the sun's path. Then it began again, stopping its 
arm high, and closed its eyes. Slowly, eyes closed, it moved its arm down to 
what Ofelia thought of as late afternoon, then opened them.
It takes naps, she thought. And after all, it has already traveled today. Of 
course it is tired too. Ofelia nodded, then closed her own eyes a long moment. 
When she opened them, Bluecloak was going out the door into the lane, leaving 
her alone. The other creatures clustered around it, chattering like children 
released from school. Ofelia watched them go into the center, and hoped she'd 
remembered to shut and latch the control room door. She was far too tired to go 
check.
Ofelia woke with the memory of that day, and awareness of the things she should 
have found a way to convey. It had asked how old she was; she had not asked it 
how old it was. It had asked so much, so many intelligent questions, and she had 
not thought of hers, even the old questions, until now.
It was only age. She could not be expected to remember everything, think of 
everything, do everything.
That old defense felt shaky. This was not some supervisor, for whom a shaky old 
woman was just a nuisance, who could get his questions answered elsewhere, or 
any time. She was the only person available; she had to think clearly, or… or 
she was not sure what, only that it would be worse. How worse, or what kind of 
worse, she didn't know.
She had not wanted more responsibility. She had not wanted more tasks. But the 
world, her mother had often said, does not shape itself to your wish, any more 
than dough mixes itself when you're hungry. That was truth; she had never found 
it otherwise. Unlike the more hopeful things she had read, in school and the 
literature of Sims Bancorp Colony Division, her mother's bleaker statements had 
always matched reality as she lived it. So now to mix the dough, and hope—she 
could not be sure—the bread would be edible. Sighing, she got up and went in 
search of Bluecloak.
She found the creatures where she expected, in the center's hall. Bluecloak 
bowed to her; Ofelia bobbed her head in return. It pointed to the door of the 
control room. Ofelia shook her head—her creatures had learned to understand that 
meant no, and she now believed they'd told Bluecloak everything about her. 
Ofelia went instead to one of the doors she had not opened since the colonists 
left. This had been the primary schoolroom, and she thought some of the teaching 
models might be left.
Bluecloak followed, as she expected. So did one of the others. Ofelia searched 
the cabinets along the walls, and found the model she had hoped for. If you 
turned the little crank, part of it rotated on a shaft, and in some way that 
Ofelia had never quite understood provided a weak current that would light a 
tiny bulb. If the bulb still worked. She knew the names of all the parts; she 
knew how to fix it when it went out of adjustment, but she had never understood 
why spinning little magnets past bundles of wire called brushes made a current 
in the wire connected to the bulb. She could recite what the training tapes had 
said, but it didn't make sense.
Still, it was the best she could do. Ofelia pulled out the model, and removed 
its dust cover. It was difficult to dust; she remembered that well enough, and 
if it was too dusty it didn't work right. She pushed at the crank. It didn't 
move; it had always taken a strong arm to turn it at the speed required. She 
pushed harder, and the shaft moved grudgingly, with a gritty noise.
It hadn't always been this hard. Was she really so weak she couldn't turn a 
child's toy? Ofelia peered at it, and suddenly remembered the safety lock. Where 
was the release? There. She prodded it, and finally got it free. Now the shaft 
turned, faster and faster, as she cranked. Once it had made a tiny, 
characteristic noise, but she couldn't hear that now. She kept her eye on the 
bulb… was that a weak glow?
"Turn the light off," she said to Bluecloak, as if it could understand. It 
reached out to the switch and the room light flicked off. Now they could both 
see the little orange glow. Ofelia pushed harder, and it brightened to a weak 
yellow.
"Aaaks lllahtss," Bluecloak said. It touched her hand with its talons, and 
Ofelia let go the crank. Before it had slowed, Bluecloak was pushing, faster and 
harder than Ofelia had managed. Had it used a crank before? Usually little 
children had trouble learning how to make that round and round motion, rather 
than the back-and-forth that came so naturally. The light brightened, orange to 
yellow to almost-white. By that light, Ofelia could see Bluecloak's other hand, 
held near the dynamo, moving closer and back as he had in the powerplant. He 
could get a nasty shock… but he didn't try to touch it. It was as if he felt his 
way along a surface she could not see.
Ofelia decided it was time for more light on the subject. She walked over and 
turned the room lights back on. Bluecloaks great eyes seemed to flash gold as 
its pupils contracted. It released the crank, and the shaft slowed, the light 
dimming until it could not be seen in the room's lights. Both hands now hovered 
about the dynamo, fluttering in and out. Curious, Ofelia came and put her own 
hand beside Bluecloaks. She felt nothing. Of course not; there was nothing to 
feel.
Nest guardian, the singer-to-strangers had said at once. Wearing the holy 
symbols, the eyes of the body and the eyes of the spirit, this is the one who 
births the minds of the nestlings.
I hope you have showed respect, the singer-to-strangers added after a pause. No 
one had interrupted; no one would interrupt a singer engaged in the ticklish 
matter of bringing harmony between strangers. Only the nest guardians were more 
sacred. The singer waited, until the impatience of the youngling near nesting 
burst out in a flutter of toes that produced a soothing answering rhythm from 
the group.
Of course we showed respect. Of course we knew…
Not from the beginning.
I knew. That discourtesy passed unremarked; younglings approaching a first 
nesting were expected to be hasty and abrupt. The singer-to-strangers throbbed a 
rhythm more complex than the others, and the youngling settled back, mouth 
slightly open. Yes… it would not be long, and then this one would feel better.
A nest guardian, the singer sang. And where are the nestlings?
Gone away, one of the hunters ventured. The monster—the nest guardian—moved that 
way. The hunter moved in imitation of the old woman's gestures, the sweeping arm 
that indicated the village, the walking fingers that must mean others of like 
kind, then the upflung arm and pointing finger.
It has a winged hunter far above, another said. A winged hunter with good eyes, 
that tells it how the world looks—it tells of storms coming from far away.
It can walk the air without wings?
We have not seen it do so. But the flying monsters we did see, near the 
nestmass… and the little monsters were swallowed within.
Its people travel far, the singer mused. And when they return, heavy for 
nesting, they will know of us. The singer shivered, and gave a single resonant 
throb. The others shivered as well. Those who returned with the singer had told 
of the longer and more sober discussions that followed the successful 
elimination of the nestmass marauders. It had been less skill than luck, the 
leaders had decided; the monsters of the sky had not expected trouble, and that 
by itself suggested a measure of their power.
We are juicy leapers too far from the burrow, one of the hunters said. Known, 
visible, no place to hide. Hunted by those who could see from far above, even 
with no hills near; hunted by those who could scar the very sky with the speed 
and power of their passage. Leapers have teeth, one reminded.
But fall to the knife anyway, another said. As teeth to the knife are our knives 
to the weapons such sky-monsters might carry.
The nest guardian's people will return, the singer said. If they are the same 
people as the ones we killed, then… it will be difficult to drum harmony.
A long way, and no travel camps between, one of the youngest said. It had a hard 
journey both ways, and this one had had a thorn in the left foot, making most 
steps painful even after it was out. Perhaps they are not the same beings at all
They are the same in some things, the singer said.
No one argued with this. The singers, along with the surviving nest guardians, 
had examined the dead monsters carefully; the singer would have noted details 
that escaped a hunter in the battle. The difference, the singer went on, is 
mostly age, and the garments of the nest guardian. These creatures change with 
age, as all do. The long grass of their heads bleaches like grass in the coming 
of cold; the skin dapples and loosens. If they are like us, they become slower 
of movement.
This one's skin is so hot, one of the hunters said.
I do not know about the others; they were all dead. But certainly this is a 
hotblooded creature, more like us than like the flaked skins. Has anyone seen it 
swim?
No. It does not swim, but it sprinkles itself with water daily… sometimes more 
than once, in the hottest weather.
Unclothed, another added, it has attached sacks here—the hunter rubbed the 
chest—and yet we have never seen anything in them, or any opening.
The singer tapped left toes. Yes, so had some of the dead ones, but those were 
not empty. I saw one slashed by a knife; it was the creature's self inside, all 
part of its body. One of the nest guardians looked at many such, and noticed 
that the larger ones went with the kind with an extra hole between the legs.
Nest-ready! cried the one who was.
Perhaps. These are monsters, after all. The nest guardian thought perhaps it was 
a way of storing fat for the production of young.
We could ask this one, a hunter said.
The singer drummed again, this time with the right toes, disagreement. It would 
be intrusive to notice that a nest guardian has not completed the change. What 
if it became angry? Refused to talk with us?
Perhaps it talks with us only because it has no nestlings to instruct?
It is too quick of mind to mistake us for nestlings.
It is alone, said the one nearing nesting, in a quavering voice. It is alone, 
and its people have abandoned it.
The others drew near, drumming softly with left toes, with left fingers, 
soothing, reassuring… you are not alone; we are here, your people…
But I have no nest guardian for my nestlings! That in a wail that drew 
involuntary squeals from some of the younger ones; neck sacs puffed and flared 
in the bright orange of menace.
The singer took over, drumming a stronger rhythm, and shifting to the 
traditional counterpoint of the nestchant. Here is safe nestmass, here is safe 
place, here your nestlings will be guarded. A powerful guardian is here, the 
singer continued, powerful against the new dangers, more powerful than those you 
knew before. The nest-ready shivered again, then slowly relaxed into the 
comforting hands of the others.
It will guard my nestlings? Half question, half statement.
Singers did not lie, but they created new truths with their songs, new ways for 
the People to drum agreement.
Guardians are wise, the singer said. This guardian is very old; this guardian 
nourishes our minds as well as those of the nestlings. This guardian will guard 
your nestlings; I will sing it so.
The nest-ready fell asleep, in the abrupt way of those carrying young, and the 
singer gestured to the others for silence.
They did not know what the monster called itself. The singer considered that so 
wise an old one would surely have a preferred name. It had been withheld out of 
courtesy, not grasping; this one, like all guardians, was generous to all needs. 
The singer was sure the guardian would agree to protect their nestlings. Almost 
sure. Unless its own people came back, when its duty to its own nestlings might 
take precedence.
The singer leaned against the wall, remembering the feel of the guidestone. 
Guidestones! So strong, in the building where the zzzzt came from. Among the 
People were those who would ache to find such… though he doubted the guardian 
would say where they came from. Such a treasure. And the smaller guidestones, in 
the little machine. Those interested in making new devices could copy that, if 
they had the chance. The singer was sure that zzzzt alone would not give the 
People mastery of all the monster tools, but if they could make zzzzt 
themselves—whatever it was—then they could make their own tools.
The singer's mind drifted, as it often did, along the dream paths of night, 
where the drumming shifted sides as often as the dreams. A day of marvels, 
indeed: seeing a monster alive, hearing it speak, realizing that it was indeed a 
nest guardian, most sacred of mortal beings. It walked in the singers dreams 
less awkwardly than in reality; it moved swiftly and gracefully, more smoothly 
than the People with its flat-footed gait. It wore the guardian's cloak, all 
covered with eyes to signify that the wearer saw with all eyes: outward, inward, 
high, and low.
Ofelia found, in the next days, that she was under a curious scrutiny, both more 
intense and less constant than before. Bluecloak must be very important, because 
the other creatures acted on its slightest whim. And its whim included her. When 
Bluecloak saw one of the original creatures walk into her kitchen as if it owned 
it, and open the cooler to get a fingerful of frost—something it had done all 
along—Bluecloak said something in their language and the startled intruder 
sprang back half its length. Bluecloak said something else, and the creature 
sprang forward to shut the door and give Ofelia a look she had no way to 
interpret. Then it edged out past Bluecloak, and went off down the lane.
"I didn't mind that much," Ofelia said, out of politeness, because she had in 
fact become tired of the creatures coming in so casually for frost-scrapings. 
She had often wished they would learn manners and wait to be invited. Now 
Bluecloak simply looked at her, standing beside the lane door. "Thank you," 
Ofelia said finally. It tipped its head and withdrew.
Within a couple of days, she realized that the other creatures no longer came 
into her house, and Bluecloak came in only when a wave of her arm invited it. If 
she wanted a few hours alone—and she still did—they did not intrude. She could 
cook her meals in peace; she could even, she discovered, shoo them out of the 
sewing room she preferred, and work on her jewelry again without those 
inquisitive eyes on her.
It felt comfortable. She relaxed in this new privacy, realizing how she had 
missed it in the time they had been with her. All over again, this time in 
familiar sequences, she felt her muscles relaxing, her mind relaxing. It was not 
quite like having the planet to herself, but it was better than it had been when 
the creatures first arrived. She no longer felt smothered by their presence.
And she could have companionship too. She had never in her life experienced 
companionship with the opportunity to shut it out when she needed to be alone. 
Bluecloak seemed to understand, or perhaps these creatures did not intrude on 
each other all the time as humans did. When she looked, peering from her new 
privacy as if from behind a veil, she saw that they seemed to let each other 
alone at times… not as she remembered people doing with each other in the 
village, grudgingly or angrily, but as if it were natural for any of them to 
desire time alone. When they were ready for companionship they returned, as she 
did with more willingness than she had expected ever to feel.
She realized that she was willing because Bluecloak's lively interest, both in 
learning and in teaching her, made it worthwhile. Day by day—almost hour by 
hour—she found that Bluecloak understood her better, and she understood it. 
Bluecloak now understood—she thought—that humans bore their young inside, and 
birthed helpless infants. That the things on her chest were organs to nourish 
those infants. She understood—she thought—that the creatures made some sort of 
nest, but whether they laid eggs or had babies she could not determine. Her 
questions to Bluecloak about that didn't seem to get through.
It would have bothered her more, if she hadn't been reveling in her new—if 
limited—freedom. It was still a nuisance to have them around, because she knew 
that they could intrude even though they didn't. Her privacy depended on their 
courtesy, not on herself, and in the time alone she had enjoyed most of all her 
freedom from anyone else's decisions. But she could shower in peace, singing if 
she wanted to, without listening for the click of their talons on the tile. She 
could sit muttering over a tricky bit of crochet, without those great eyes 
peering her, the hands hovering as if to mimic the motions of her fingers, until 
their interest made her own hands clumsy.
And when she wanted companionship—when she wanted to listen to their music, or 
let Bluecloak try out its rapidly increasing store of words and expressions—they 
were there. Quiet, polite, and eager. She didn't mind being the center of 
attention when she could choose the time. In the evenings, when they played 
music, they offered her any of their musical instruments. She usually shook the 
gourd with its seeds, but she had finally coaxed a note—breathy but musical—from 
the handful of hollow reeds. They listened when she played music cubes for them; 
they even tried to sing along with the children's songs, and came surprisingly 
close to the melodies. She tried to hum along with their songs, but worried that 
she would sing the wrong notes; it was easier to keep a rhythm on the gourd. 
Bluecloak and one of the others seemed determined to learn to read; they 
encouraged her to read from the children's books in the center schoolrooms. She 
explained about letters and numbers, and soon saw them tracing letters in the 
air, on walls, in the dust of the lane. They seemed to learn very fast, but she 
had no idea how fast adults could learn letters if they had not been to school 
as children. She wondered if the creatures had any written language of their 
own. Again, her questions to Bluecloak didn't seem to get through. Did it not 
understand, or did it not want to answer? She couldn't tell.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Contents - Prev / Next
Aboard the Mias Vir, en route to former Sims colony #3245.12
Kira Stavi reminded herself frequently that she had not expected this trip to be 
pleasant. It didn't need to be pleasant; it was a chance to meet the first alien 
intelligence ever found on a colony world. On any world, for that matter. What 
did the usual shipboard nonsense matter, with that in view?
Still, it was annoying. All of them had superior academic qualifications—that 
went without saying—so there was really no need for the covert pushing and 
shoving, the backbiting, the attempts to impress. They'd all get publications 
out of this, no matter how it turned out—material for a lifetime's maneuvering 
in the academic or bureaucratic jungle. They were not competing with each other.
Except that they were. Primary and backup teams, two sets of paired specialists, 
eight active minds each determined to make or complete a reputation out of this 
trip, and too much shipboard time with too little to do besides worry about how 
the others might frustrate that ambition.
The primary team alone could generate, Kira thought, a storycube of problems. 
Bilong Oliausau had to impress them with her knowledge of neolinguistic AI, and 
her sexual attractiveness. Ori Lavin, normally a calm, pragmatic Pelorist, 
almost a caricature of that sect, had reacted to Bilong as if to a shot of 
rejuvenating hormones, and sleeked his moustache every time she undulated by. He 
had engaged in one fierce argument after another with Vasil, most of them 
unnecessary. Vasil, for his part, interpreted "team leader" to mean that both 
Bilong and the lion's share of transmission time were his by rights.
Kira didn't care about Bilong's behavior—she even had a sneaking sympathy for 
the girl, off on her first long expedition, given a place on the primary team 
only because the director of the linguistics faculty had chosen this 
inauspicious time to collapse with a richly deserved bleeding ulcer. Kira had 
heard about the almost-mythical Dr. Lowaasi, who went through secretaries and 
graduate assistants with equal voracity. Rumor had it that the linguistics 
faculty cheered as the ambulance drove away. Anyway, it was no wonder Bilong 
seemed immature and unstable, and threw herself at Vasil while flirting over her 
shoulder with Ori. What really upset Kira was the way Vasil hogged the 
transmission time.
Kira reminded herself that her own position was secure. She had tenure; she had 
a high citation index, and after this it would go even higher. The 
xeno-biologist on the backup team, whose unpronounceable name everyone rendered 
as Chesva, respected her without embarrassing hero worship, leaving Kira free to 
do the thinking, and treat Chesva as a normal assistant. Whether the creatures 
were intelligent or not, whether they signed a treaty or not, she would have 
exclusive access to the biota… wish fulfillment for a xenobiologist. She had 
samples already—Sims Bancorp had deposited the requisite samples with the 
colonial office decades before—but samples were no substitute for observing 
living organisms in their native ecosystem. All she had to do was survive the 
voyage without committing assault on her team members.
She reminded herself of this day after tedious day, through the intermediate 
jumps and the long insystem crawl to the planet. She reminded herself that it 
would have been worse—it would have taken longer—on most ships. Although it was 
tempting to think that a larger team would have been less difficult, she knew 
from previous field experience that large teams could offer just as many 
opportunities for interpersonal unpleasantness. Here, the small size of the team 
would force them to cooperate once they were on the planet. And she, the only 
one presently acting like a responsible adult, would make sure of that.
When they were close enough, she joined the others at the wardroom viewscreen. 
Blue, white, tan, dark green… polar caps, mountain ranges, forests… no wonder 
someone wanted to colonize it, she thought. If it had been purpose-built for 
humans, it could not have been closer to ideal.
"Needs a moon," Ori said, as if reading her mind. Sometimes he could; they had 
been on several expeditions together. Kira took it as a sign that he was getting 
over his infatuation with Bilong. She smiled at him without saying anything.
"We're going to sit out here for awhile and really look at things," Vasil said. 
He had said this before, more than once; Kira felt her shoulders tighten now. 
She didn't like being treated as an idiot who couldn't remember. Perhaps that 
was what he was used to; unlike the others, he had no academic appointment. She 
tried to convince herself that this explained his attitude. "We're going to 
launch a low-orbit scanner," he went on. Kira could have repeated his next words 
with him; she did it silently, careful not to move her lips. "And only when we 
know what we're getting into, will we decide where to land."
The obvious place was the old colony site, since their mission included shutting 
down that powerplant. Vasil knew that. The shuttle pilot knew that. Kira glared 
at the viewscreen and told herself she'd feel better when she got out of the 
ship for awhile.
She watched the launch of the low-orbit scanner, and then went to the lab to put 
the first transmissions through her own special filters. She didn't expect the 
analysis of atmospheric gases to have changed from the baseline data filed 
before Sims Bancorp was issued the first development license, but she would be 
more comfortable with her instruments than the tension in the wardroom.
Chesva followed her, "Would you like me to do the atmospheric stuff, and let you 
get right to the surface data?"
"I don't think there'll be any surface data for awhile, but we can check the 
response of the visuals."
"I'll load the old data for comparison." They knew it by heart, but the computer 
would catch subtle changes they might miss.
"Thanks," Kira said. She wished Chesva were on the primary team with her… but 
then she might have had someone like Bilong for her backup. Better this way, 
probably.
The atmospheric data began to show up on her screen. She pulled up the old, and 
had the computer highlight any changes. Nothing showed. Just as she'd expected.
"What about that old weathersat?" Chesva asked. "Do we have the access codes?"
"I'll check," Kira ran through the expedition manual, which was supposed to 
contain a precis of all relevant data, including enabling codes for any 
equipment Sims Bancorp had left behind. "Yes—and I'll just give it a shove—"
The weathersat'scomputer obligingly dumped a long file of weather observations, 
graphics and all. Kira called up the current image. Blue water, swirling white 
clouds in streaks along the wind patterns, a mass of clouds lumped up over 
something on the western side of the image. She muttered her way through the 
selection tree to pull up information about that. Mountains, it turned out to 
be.
Chesva had moved over to her workstation. "Do you suppose the weathersat has any 
idle scanners? If so, maybe we could get an early peek—"
"Good idea. Have you ever peeled this kind of system?"
Chesva grinned. "Actually, yes. And it nearly got me drafted into the military."
"Sounds like a good story," Kira said. "But in that case, why don't you fiddle 
with this, and I'll watch and learn."
Chesva explained as he went along, but Kira was more interested in the incoming 
data than in the way he convinced the weathersat to realign scanners and 
antennae to pick up and transmit the data he wanted. By the time he had it 
running to his satisfaction, the weathersat's area of observation was moving 
toward the nightside.
"Handy that the powerplant's still on," Chesva said. "It's the thermal peak 
there which has let the weathersat stay in position all these years."
"Really." Kira wasn't that interested. She could see the bright dot on the 
infrared herself. Around it were the softer, dimmer blurs of buildings radiating 
heat absorbed from the sun, distinctly different from the ground only on the 
side where shadows had cooled the soil… they all seemed to have one sharp edge, 
and the rest blurry.
"Now if we can just get the magnification working—" Chesva said. "Ah. There. Now 
what do you suppose that is?"
A visible light scan, this time, the low slanting rays of the setting sun making 
bold shadows… there were the buildings of the abandoned colony, arranged in neat 
rows, the forest ramparts with their longer shadows… and something moving 
between the houses.
Kira felt a shiver run down her back. Animals. Probably only animals, either the 
surviving domestic animals abandoned by the colonists, or the forest animals 
they had described. The aliens had been thousands of kilometers away; the 
colonists had lived there forty years without seeing anything dangerous. But the 
shadows they cast were long, upright.
"Thermal sources," Chesva said. "Whatever they are, they're warm-blooded, but 
not as hot as the power-plant."
"Upright," Kira said. She was glad to hear that her voice was steady.
"Yes." His voice was as calm as hers. They were professionals, academics, 
adults… but her heart pounded. She knew… she knew these were not cows or sheep 
or monkeylike forest climbers. These were the ones who had destroyed a 
colony—blown up a shuttle—and now prowled about, learning entirely too much.
Sunlight vanished from the scene, and without the stark contrast of sun and 
shadow she could see nothing-not even movement. On the infrared, she could see 
the buildings radiating their stored heat. At a little distance, two clumps of 
brighter dots might be cattle and sheep. And between the blurred shapes of the 
buildings, she could see little pale dots moving. Abruptly they disappeared.
"Went inside something," Chesva said. "One of the buildings." She heard him 
swallow. "They're really there."
"We're theorizing ahead of our data," Kira said, trying to sound professional. 
Chesva snorted.
"You know we're not," he said. "We just got more data than anyone else has had."
"Yeah," Kira said. "I think so."
Suddenly the visual scan changed. Lights sparkled on the dark screen.
"We know so," Kira amended. "They've figured out the lights—"
"Wouldn't be hard," Chesva said. He sucked his teeth, his only irritating habit, 
and then went on. "It wouldn't take digits, necessarily. A hand-swipe—if those 
are standard toggle switches. A tentacle. Even a beak."
"Bipedal," Kira said. "Those upright shadows."
"Not necessarily bi," Chesva said. "But I agree, they're upright. Let's pull up 
one of the earlier frames and really go over it."
"You do that. I want to watch this—" Kira waved at the screens. Lights. The 
computer said four lights. She put a trace on the IR pattern that had moved, the 
little dots that had crossed the street and gone inside. Now that she had a 
moment to think, she called up the village street plan furnished by Sims 
Bancorp, and decided that the—indigenes, she had better think of them, rather 
than aliens—had gone into the multipurpose building that housed the control and 
monitoring functions, the rainwater storage tanks, schoolrooms, communal 
workrooms, and so on.
The computer bleeped; when she glanced at the visual display, another light had 
come on. She looked back at the village plan. Falfurrias, Bartolomeo et u. et 
m., it said. She translated the archaic notation: et ux et mater, "and wife and 
mother." Originally built and occupied by Humberto and Ofelia Falfurrias. She 
looked up the evacuation report. Bartolomeo and Rosara Falfurrias had been taken 
up on shuttle 3-F; Ofelia Falfurrias on shuttle 3-H.
Kira wondered why they'd been separated. She had always assumed families were 
transported together. Not that it mattered, really. She did wish they had an 
arrival manifest for the Sims Bancorp colony transport, but it hadn't yet 
arrived where it was going. She wrinkled her nose, glad that she didn't have to 
travel on the old, slow, sublight ships. Cryo made such travel possible, but 
nothing could make it efficient.
"I've got another light source," she said to Chesva, who merely grunted. She 
glanced over, and saw that he was doing something to a single frame of the 
earlier visual data. His screen changed color, the images shifting to more 
contrasting hues.
Kira went back to her own investigations. Something—she was sure it was the same 
indigenes that had wiped out the second colony at landing—was in the buildings, 
and using at least the light switches. What else could they be using? She 
glanced at the Sims Bancorp material to remind herself what was down there. 
Waste recycler, which provided fuel for the basic powerplant producing 
electricity for the lights, the coolers, the fans, the pumps. The vehicles… some 
electrical, some running off biofuels. No aircraft, thank the Luck. No surviving 
boats… Kira wondered what had happened to them. With the electricity on, the 
indigenes could make the stoves hot and the coolers cold, but they couldn't get 
into real trouble. She hoped. Like most colonies, this one had had few weapons, 
and the evacuation teams reported that they'd removed them.
Of course, they'd also reported turning off the powerplant. Kira had another 
cold feeling, along with the certainty that "What else?" was a question that 
should have been asked long ago. She checked the low-orbital scanner. It was 
behind the planet now, probably still doing its first run of pre-programmed 
tasks. She no longer cared about atmospheric gases, about tidal reflectance 
data.
"Aha!" Chesva said. "Come see this."
Kira moved over. It was a single motionless screen, again visual, but not what 
they'd seen before. For one thing, the sun was higher, the shadows shorter, and 
in the other direction.
"Midmorning," Chesva said. "I threw in some search parameters based on those few 
frames we had, and this is the best I've found so far."
"Why was the weathersat doing an optical scan? It was turned off when you 
queried, wasn't it?"
"Probably one of those things put its foot on the controls," Chesva said. 
Clearly he didn't care how the weathersat had come by its images, now that he 
had them. Kira felt the same way.
"Two legs," Kira said instead of commenting on the unlikelihood of some animal 
stepping in the right place and then stepping there again to turn the same scan 
off.
"Yeah… you were right about bipedal. The theory's always said it's more likely. 
Two upper limbs, too—the shadows show that clearly. But look here—" He pointed 
to a shorter figure among the others. Shorter, its proportions familiar. Human.
Kira choked back all the rude expressions she knew, and said instead, "Vasil 
will not be happy about this."
"No," Chesva said. He grinned at her. "But it should get his mind off Bilong, 
don't you think?"
There was now no question of landing anywhere but the Sims Bancorp shuttle 
strip. They had been lent a military-grade drop shuttle, supposedly impervious 
to anything but "extremely advanced technology," the military pilots said. The 
pilots had come with the shuttle, along with a small contingent of "advisors" 
who had not mingled at all with the scientific and diplomatic specialists during 
the voyage.
The shuttle had made several reconnaissance flights after the low-orbital 
scanner showed no evidence of technology that could blow them from the sky. 
Evidence of lower-level technology filled the datastrips and cubes. Stone 
buildings—obvious permanent settlements—clustered on the rocky coast far north 
and east of the Sims Bancorp colony, and troops of nomads accompanied by herds 
of quadruped grazers in the grasslands west of the settlements.
"I'm not surprised they missed the nomads," Vasil said. "They could be other 
migrating animals, nothing special. They don't seem to build fires, or 
structures. Its only that we know to look for them. But how they could have 
missed those cities—!" He shook his head dramatically.
Kira refused to restart the discussion of critical points and emergence, 
gradualism versus cultural discontinuity. They didn't have the historical data 
they needed to determine when the indigenes had achieved the cognitive and 
cultural complexity needed for this level of technology, and they couldn't get 
it up here. Down there, if Ori and his backup were good enough, might be the 
data they needed to settle the question. Instead, she concentrated on biota: the 
four-legged herds the nomads accompanied… hunted? Herded? Herbivores, surely; 
only abundant plant growth would support that mass of flesh. Prey animals, 
certainly, with those eyes set on the sides of longish heads, eyes that could 
see behind and around. Were the indigenes the only predators? She looked for, 
but did not find, something equivalent to canids.
"Boats, with rowers, and sails," Ori said, gloating over the pictures taken of 
the coastal settlements. "They can work wood—I wonder if it's all as hard as the 
stuff Sims exported from the tropics. We have to have metal for that. If they 
have metal tools—"
Kira looked at the creatures themselves. Indigenes, she reminded herself. She 
couldn't tell what they were most like, mammals or reptiles or birds… they had 
no visible hair or feathers, but their surface looked more like skin than 
scales. Their gait, with its long-legged, bouncing quality, reminded her of 
ratites, the large flightless birds of old Earth, but the obvious joint in the 
leg faced forward, like the human knee. Large eyes, placed slightly more to the 
side of the head than human eyes; they would have both binocular and monocular 
vision, she suspected. Four-toed, four-fingered… an opposable digit on the hand, 
and one of the toes looked as if it were almost opposable.
"Look at those buildings," Ori said, breaking her concentration for a moment. 
"And I'd swear those are pipes—maybe just hollow reeds or something, but tubes 
to carry—yes! Something just came out of that one." Kira had looked just too 
late; she saw the tubes, but not whatever had been in them.
Memnin, the anthropologist on the backup team, spoke up. "I'm noticing how aware 
they are. Did you notice, Ori, how they looked up at the shuttle? No panic, no 
real surprise, and that one there—" he pointed at a corner of the image. "It's 
sketching something, I'd bet."
Bilong and Apos, the linguists, stood in the corners watching. They had nothing 
to do, since the scanners had not picked up any sound. Apos looked alert, but 
Bilong pouted. Kira wished again that Bilong hadn't been chosen for the primary 
team. Apos might be younger and less experienced, but at least he wasn't trying 
to make trouble.
Several days of overflights and data analysis—enough new data to keep an entire 
faculty busy; Kira felt she was drowning in it—and finally the military pilots 
agreed that they could risk a landing at the old colony. They insisted that 
everyone wear protective gear, hot, heavy, clumsy, and unfamiliar to the 
civilians. Kira was sure the military advisors were laughing at them. They 
probably did look ridiculous, she told herself, trying to see the funny side as 
she struggled with the toggles and slides that held the thick panels together. 
At least they were going to see the real world at last; it was worth this 
inconvenience on the way.
Unfortunately, from her point of view, the military version of a shuttle had no 
viewports, nor any of the other amenities of civilian shuttles. She had expected 
to watch the approach, seeing for herself how the atmosphere changed color and 
affected the look of the landscape. The exterior cameras would capture that for 
later analysis, but that didn't make up for not seeing it herself. She had to 
sit staring at the back of Vasil's head all the way down, her rump going numb on 
the hard seat, her ears assaulted by the roar and rattle. She had no idea how 
far along they were until the pilot's announcement that they would be landing in 
two minutes. The shuttle dipped, swayed, and shuddered in the disconcerting way 
of all shuttles, and Kira very consciously did not clench her hands. She hated 
this; she couldn't even see the runway. Then the seat smacked against her 
backside, and she felt the uneven rumble of the wheels rolling on the rough, 
overgrown surface.
At first view, the abandoned colony looked exactly like an abandoned colony. 
They had landed at local dawn, and a hazy pink light glowed from the walls of 
the shabby little one-story houses. Nothing moved. Parked in a ragged row beside 
the shuttle strip were the colony vehicles, streaked with rust, tires deflated. 
Tough grass, and even a few shrubs, had encroached on the runway itself. A moist 
warm breeze stirred the grass and carried the strange alien smell of a different 
world.
The shuttle skin popped and hissed; Kira could hear nothing more at first, until 
her own ears popped. Far off, something groaned horribly; she jumped. Ori said 
"That must be the cows" and she could have kicked herself for not recognizing 
the sound. She was the xenobiologist, after all; she was supposed to know 
animals. Vasil started down the ramp, but one of the advisors stopped him.
"We aren't sure yet," the advisor said. Sure of what, Kira wondered. They were 
sure the indigenes were here, and at least one human. They had speculated 
endlessly about that human, seen only on the weathersat visual scans: who was 
it, how had he or she found this place, and why? Some drunken crewman left 
behind after the colony was evacuated? Some exploring entrepreneur come to 
salvage the leftover equipment? Someone who wanted to claim the planet for 
himself?
"Somebody—" said another of the advisors. Despite Vasil's arguments, they had 
brought weapons along. He might be the team leader, the future ambassador, but 
they had traveled on a military ship, landed on a military shuttle; he had not 
been able to change the captain's orders. "To defend the shuttle" the captain 
had said to Vasil; Kira, standing behind him, had seen his ears redden. He had 
told the others he would take care of it, meaning get rid of the weapons, but 
his bluster had gotten him nowhere. Now the advisors had their weapons out. Kira 
was not surprised.
"Don't do anything," Vasil pleaded. They ignored him. Kira, sweating in her 
protective suit, ignored him too.
"One individual," the advisor said. He was speaking into a mic more than to 
them. "Appears to be human, female…" Then in a tone of surprise, "Old. An old 
woman, alone."
Kira couldn't see what they were seeing; the advisors and Vasil, all in bulky 
suits, blocked her view up the village lane. They could have moved enough to let 
those behind see, but they were all standing foursquare, as if intending to be 
as obtrusive as possible. She looked sideways instead, back down the runway with 
its ragged rows of grass, to the river—a surface gleaming in the early 
light—then the other direction, where a distant green wall was the forest. Kira 
could not tell this second-growth forest from the uncut primary forest a little 
to the west, even though it had shown up clearly on the scans from space.
"She's…" A long pause, almost a gulp, then the advisor found the right official 
phrase for it. "Inappropriately attired. Wearing… uh… just some sort of 
cape-like garment and some beads. Barefoot. Uh… this individual may be 
disturbed…"
Kira couldn't stand it. She was the assistant leader of this expedition, and 
they were ignoring her. She pushed forward, not too carefully, and Vasil 
staggered into the advisor, who almost went over the edge of the ramp. She 
didn't care; she wanted to see. And there, walking slowly toward the shuttle, 
came a scrawny little woman with an untidy bush of white hair. Barefoot, yes, 
and wearing an embroidered cape over her tanned skin… some kind of garment slung 
around her hips. And beads.
She didn't look disturbed, not like the senile clinic patients shown in 
newscubes to remind people to take their anti-senility pills. She looked 
annoyed, like someone who has had unexpected company drop by on a day when she 
had planned to do something else. It was this very assurance, the way she 
planted her gnarled old feet carefully on the ground, one after another, that 
silenced them all, Kira thought. The old woman was not embarrassed by her odd 
attire; she was not impressed with them.
They stood, sweating in their protective suits, as the old woman walked slowly 
up to the foot of the ramp. Kira tried to make out the design embroidered on the 
cape, and suddenly realized it was faces—faces and eyes. Too many eyes. The old 
woman tipped back her head and glared at them with her bright black eyes.
"This was not a good time," she said. "You've upset them."
Vasil shook himself into action first. "By the authority vested in me—" he 
began. The old woman interrupted.
"I said it wasn't a good time," she said. "You could have listened when I tried 
to talk to you."
"Talk to us?" Kira asked, cutting off Vasil's angry sputter.
"Yes." The woman's head bobbed, then came up again. "But you folk have done 
something to the weathersat, so I can't get it to listen."
"You took those pictures?" Ori asked. "You made it do the visual scanning of 
this location?"
"Of course," the old woman said. "They wanted to see what it looked like, not 
just the weather. It helped them understand." They. Kira shivered as she 
realized what the old woman must mean by they. Perhaps she was crazy, if she had 
been showing them the technology. Surely even an uneducated old woman knew 
better.
"By what right—!" began Vasil, just as the senior advisor said, "Under whose 
authority—?" The two men glared at each other.
"Who are you?" asked Kira, into the moment of silence.
"Who are you?" the old woman asked, without answering the question. If she was 
senile, perhaps she had forgotten her own name.
"We won't hurt you," Kira said, trying to sound gentle and patient. "We want to 
help you—" That sounded stupid, even to her, and she was not surprised when the 
old woman made a scornful noise.
"I don't need help," the old woman said. "If you're one of that other lot, 
you're in the wrong place."
"That other lot?" Vasil got that out, silencing the advisor with another glare.
"Come awhile back, tried to land—you must know about them."
"Yes," the advisor said, this time beating out Vasil. "What do you know about 
them?"
"Heard it on the com," the old woman said. "Heard them coming down, heard them 
calling for help." She clamped her mouth together, then said "Heard them die." 
She looked down.
"Didn't you try to help?" Vasil asked. Kira was cheered to find that someone 
could say something stupider than she had. Did Vasil really think that this 
frail old woman could have stopped a massacre that had happened thousands of 
kilometers away? The old woman said nothing, just kept looking up at them. Vasil 
turned red, and cleared his throat. The advisor, Kira noted, looked amused.
"Have you been here all along?" Kira asked, since no one else broke the silence.
"Of course," the old woman said. "Forty years and more, by now."
"But Sims Bancorp said—"
The old woman grinned, "Company wasn't going to waste time hunting down one old 
woman they didn't want anyway. Already charged my family extra for me being 
overage, figured I'd die in cryo."
Kira shivered. She had not imagined that kind of crassness, even from Sims 
Bancorp. Surely it was against the law—but who would enforce such a law, out 
here in the frontiers?
"So I stayed," the old woman said. She was still grinning; it looked grotesque.
"On purpose?" Vasil asked, as if he still couldn't believe it. The old woman 
scowled now.
"Yes," she said shortly. Kira wondered how—how had she survived all alone? Or 
had someone else stayed behind? But she could not ask that angry face.
"Well," Vasil said, doing his best to get back in control. "Whatever your 
reasons, you are in violation of the order to evacuate, and by your actions you 
have jeopardized the position of Sims Bancorp—"
The old woman muttered something Kira could not hear, but from the expression on 
her face it had not been complimentary.
"—And you have presented us with an unnecessary dilemma," Vasil went on. "What 
are we going to do with you?"
Kira was not surprised when the old woman gave the obvious answer. "Let me 
alone," she said, and turned away.
"But—but you must understand the seriousness of the situation," Vasil said. The 
old woman turned back. "I'm not stupid," she said. "I understand—but you came at 
a bad time. Now go away." Then she turned and walked off, the long fringe on the 
back of her cape brushing the backs of her crooked tanned legs. The back of the 
cape had a single large face on it, in glittery embroidery; the overlarge eyes 
had long eyelashes like rays extending to the margin of the face. Kira felt 
uncomfortable, as if the eyes were staring at her, and more uncomfortable for 
having that reaction. She was not a primitive; she shouldn't be affected by such 
obvious symbolism.
"Come back here!" Vasil ordered, but the woman did not turn around. Vasil turned 
to one of the advisors, but Kira tapped his arm.
"Let me try. She's a woman, after all, and if she's been here alone for several 
years, she may be overwhelmed by all of us."
"Ma'am, I don't think—" began one of the advisors, but Kira had already started 
down the ramp. "You want an escort?" asked the advisor.
"No—she's not going to hurt me," Kira said. She was finding it surprisingly hard 
to walk down a ramp in the protective suit. She fumbled at its fastenings, and 
opened the front seam. As hot and humid as it was, that wouldn't help much, but 
anything—
She made it to the foot of the ramp without stumbling, and then found that the 
suit's weight slowed her so that she could hardly overtake the old woman—and the 
old woman had a twenty meter lead. Already she was at the end of the lane, 
between the first houses.
"Don't get out of our sight," the advisor called. "If you go too far—" She waved 
vaguely backward, meaning she had heard and would do what she thought best. 
Admittedly, she probably shouldn't get out of their sight, when she knew the 
aliens—no, the indigenes—were somewhere in the area.
"Please—" Kira called to the old woman. "Wait for me. They'll stay back, but one 
of us must talk to you."
The old woman stopped and turned slowly, as if she were stiff. Kira tried to 
take a longer stride, tripped, and nearly fell. Now she could see the old 
woman's expression clearly. The dark eyes sparkled with amusement.
"Sorry," Kira said, out of breath. "But—we really do—"
"It's a bad time," the woman said again. This close, Kira could see the 
remaining dark strands in the white hair, the warts and patchy discoloration of 
a lifetime's unprotected existence in open air and sunlight. The old woman's 
hands were wrinkled and weathered, the knuckles swollen and distorted. She 
should have looked sick—any individual feature Kira noted had pathology all over 
it—but the general impression was one of vigor, both mental and physical.
"Which is your house?" Kira asked. She would have to be firm, she knew that. 
With the ignorant—and colonists like this had almost no education, not real 
education—and the wavering old, it was necessary to be firm. "We can go there, 
and you can rest, and we can talk."
The old woman just stared at her, eyes no longer sparkling. She sighed. Then she 
scratched the back of one leg with the dirty toes of the other foot. "It will be 
hot today," she said.
A local custom, to start with the weather? "Is this the hot season?" Kira asked, 
hoping courtesy would engender trust.
Another long stare. "You'll sweat in that thing," the woman said, pointing to 
Kira's protective suit.
"Yes." Kira made herself laugh. "It was the advisors. They were afraid someone 
would shoot us, or something."
"Advisors… Company advisors?"
"No, the military." The old woman's expression did not change; Kira felt she was 
talking to a computer with a defective I/O subroutine. "Let me explain," Kira 
said. "When the other colony was attacked, the orbiting ship went back and told 
the government—" Never mind the delay caused by the mutiny; she didn't want to 
overload the old woman's capacity. "And then they decided to send us to assess 
the situation."
"To kill the aliens," the old lady said, as if it were the most natural thing in 
the world.
"No!" Kira surprised herself with vehemence of her answer "Not to kill, to 
study. To see if they can become allies. We did want to dismantle the 
powerplant, so they wouldn't have access to our technology…"
Now the old woman was smiling, but it was not a nice smile. "They are very 
smart," she said. "They understand it."
Kira hoped she had misunderstood. "Understand—?"
"The powerplant. Electricity. Machines."
Impossible. This old woman didn't know what she was talking about; she herself 
couldn't understand all that. She probably thought being able to move a switch 
was the same thing as understanding. But perhaps she and the other colonists had 
known of the indigenes before, even though they hadn't reported it for some 
reason. "Did you know about them before—before the evacuation?"
"No. We never saw such creatures, not in all my years here, until after that 
other colony tried to land." She scuffed one foot in the dirt. "Then they came. 
They found me."
"And you showed them everything?" Kira could not keep the tone of disapproval 
out of her voice. Even an ignorant colonist should have known better than that; 
she was sure that was part of the lectures given all outgoing colonists. If 
anyone found an alien intelligence, it was to be reported, not allowed contact 
with human technology.
The old woman ducked her head, and shrugged, much like a guilty child hoping to 
escape punishment. She probably wasn't too bright—possibly mentally ill, or why 
else would she have stayed behind? Ignorant, disturbed, and a little slow, she 
had probably seen the indigenes as something interesting. A wonder they hadn't 
killed her.
"Come on," Kira urged, being consciously gentle again, charming, as she would 
have been to a slow child. "Show me where you live; let's have a little chat."
Now the black eyes were opaque as obsidian, and the old woman's body seemed to 
settle, as if she'd turned to stone. "Its a bad time," she said. "Come back 
later."
"You don't have to worry about cleaning up, if that's what you meant," Kira 
said, imagining the kind of housekeeping this woman might do, she with her cape 
and loincloth and bare feet. She probably hadn't washed a dish in the years 
she'd been here; it would be squalid and horrible, but…
"It's not that," the old woman said. "It's just a bad time. Come back later." 
She turned away again. "Tomorrow. And don't follow me." She walked off, slowly 
and steadily. The morning sun had burned through the mist, and revealed all the 
varicose veins on the backs of the old woman's legs.
Kira stood staring after her. She had not had anyone snub her like that since 
childhood. She hoped she was not one of those academic terrors who demanded 
deference beyond their rights, but a little common courtesy… she fought down the 
irritation. She was hot and sweaty, that was all, and the old woman wasn't quite 
right in the head. What could you expect of someone who would choose to stay 
behind, alone—although the old woman hadn't said that. Perhaps she had had 
another companion, another old person who'd stayed and now was sick. That would 
explain a lot.
Kira watched as the old woman kept going, up the street—hardly more than an open 
way between the houses, not paved at all, though it had a ditch to either side. 
The old woman turned aside, finally, entering what seemed to be a gap between 
the houses, or a garden. From here, Kira couldn't see for sure. She turned, and 
lumbered back to the shuttle, uncomfortably aware of the warmth of the sun. 
Sweat soaked her clothes inside the suit already; she could smell herself. It 
would be stifling by midmorning, and she didn't like to think about the 
afternoon.
"And what did you accomplish, Kira?" Vasil asked. He sounded very sure she had 
accomplished nothing.
Kira stopped at the foot of the ramp, and deliberately unfastened the rest of 
the protective suit. She clambered out of it, nested the segments and folded 
them, then looked up at the others. She could feel a faint breath of breeze on 
her wet clothes.
"She still says it's a bad time for her, and we should come back tomorrow. She 
thought we came to kill the indigenes, because they killed the people at the 
other colony site."
"Did you make her understand our mission?" Vasil asked.
"I tried. She's not too bright, ill-educated, and as the advisor said, possibly 
disturbed. Very old, I would say, but not senile in the usual sense. Not that 
much there to start with." As she said this, Kira felt a guilty twinge. Was the 
old woman really stupid and crazy… or was she taking out her own discomfort on 
someone who had made her uncomfortable?
"She has no right to tell us to wait," Vasil said.
"If we want her cooperation," Ori said, "it would be wise to wait. This is her 
space, in one sense. She has been here a long time. Speaking as an 
anthropologist."
Vasil glared at him. Bilong heaved a dramatic sigh that got the attention of 
both men. For once, Kira approved—anything to forestall another turf battle: 
Vasil hated it when Ori called himself an anthropologist rather than a 
technology assessment specialist.
"It is too hot for these suits, and no one is shooting at us. We might as well 
be comfortable." Bilong began peeling out of hers with conscious grace. Kira 
glanced at the military advisors, who looked disgusted, but said nothing.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Contents - Prev / Next
Ofelia had finally understood from Bluecloak what the odd behavior of one of the 
creatures meant. Pregnant, needing a nest. She eyed the creature; she still 
could not tell male from female, not with those little skirt things. She 
presumed they had some sort of organs under there but her curiosity didn't run 
that direction. The creature about to give birth certainly didn't have the 
hugely swollen belly she associated with pregnancy.
It had scratched out a hollow in the tall grass by the river, but the others had 
discouraged it. Ofelia could follow some of the explanation now: big biting 
things that lived in the water might eat the nestlings. The grass in the sheep 
meadow, while far enough away from the river, wasn't tall enough. The pregnant 
creature scratched at it with obvious distress, kicking the loose bits away.
Despite the progress made with Bluecloak, Ofelia had great difficulty 
understanding what the creature needed in a nest site. Tall grass for 
cushioning? She offered a bundle of soft cloths, which the pregnant one snatched 
away and threw into the air. The others retrieved them, bringing them to Ofelia 
with averted faces, as if expecting her to be angry. Ofelia knew better than 
that; if the creature was about to give birth, she—it—would naturally be edgy 
and irritable. Tall grass for concealment? From what? Bluecloak gestured to the 
air; Ofelia looked up, seeing nothing. Bluecloak made wings of its arms, mimed a 
soaring hunter that might swoop on young. That made sense, except that Ofelia 
had never seen a winged thing big enough to bother the creatures. Maybe that, 
too, came from the far north.
Why not give birth inside, in one of the houses? She tried to convey this with 
gesture and the few grunts and squawks she could now make. Bluecloak stared at 
her, and she wondered if she'd said something rude by accident. Then it led the 
way to the center, to the schoolroom. It fumbled through the books on the 
shelves until it found the one it wanted. Ofelia took it. This was now a 
familiar routine. She could page through the old textbooks more easily than it 
could, especially if she had a clue—ah, yes. This one told of a child whose aunt 
took care of her while her mother went away to work in the city.
She turned the pages, looking for the picture she thought Bluecloak would want, 
the one it had chosen many times before, where the child waved goodbye to her 
mother and the aunt had a hand on her shoulder. Sure enough, Bluecloaks talon 
came down on the page when she opened the book to that picture. It tapped the 
book.
"I'm looking," Ofelia said.
"Uhoo," Bluecloak said, its version of "you." It pointed at the aunt. It had 
done that before. Ofelia thought it meant that she had cared for other children 
than her own, and that was true.
"Yes," she said. "I've done that."
It made the sound she now thought of as the pregnant one's name, though she 
couldn't ever get it right herself: "Gurgle-click-cough" was the closest she 
could come. Then it pointed to the departing mother. That was clear 
enough—Gurgle-click-cough was going to be a mother. It pointed again to the 
picture of the aunt and to her. And she was to be the aunt of 
Gurgle-click-cough's baby? She felt her face growing warm. It could only be an 
honorary position, but—but it was nice of them to trust her.
"Nesst…" Bluecloak gestured around, clearly meaning inside a building. "Uhoo 
aant". If Gurgle-click-cough nested inside, Ofelia would be the aunt? Clear 
enough, but… that sounded like an obligation more than an honor. "Aant iss… " 
another unpronounceable cluster of sounds that Ofelia tried silently, only to 
find her tongue wandering around the roof of her mouth looking for the place 
that worked. Bluecloak said the word again, and again, until she tried it aloud. 
Then it said it again, while she tried to shape her pronunciation to what she 
heard.
When she had come as close as she could—it still sounded like 
"click-kaw-keerrrr" to her—Bluecloak called in the others, and spoke briefly to 
them. They enacted a pantomime of the soaring hunter, the creeping hunter, the 
hunter that leapt from behind things… Ofelia watched in amazement and delight. 
She had not realized how many things might hunt these efficient hunters, and she 
had not realized how cleverly they could mimic other creatures. Did they mimic 
her like that, when they were alone? She had no time to think about that, for 
Bluecloak was making sure she understood. The click-kaw-keerrrr, equivalent to 
the aunt in the storybook, protected nestlings from the various threats, and 
between times held the nestlings, soothed them, sang to them.
It seemed to Ofelia more the mother's role than the aunt's, unless all their 
mothers went away after the birthing. Why would that be? It also seemed that 
they would expect a lot from her for letting the pregnant one nest in one of the 
buildings. Did they really expect her, all alone, to take care of a baby she 
knew nothing about? Bluecloak halted the performance with a gesture, then spoke 
again. "Alll click-kaw-keerrrr-llluk putt uhoo click-kaw-keerrr ost." The mix of 
languages confused her for a moment, then she worked it out. All of them were 
sort of click-kaw-keerrrs, but she would be the most click-kaw-keerrr, if she 
invited the pregnant one to nest inside.
She wondered then what obligations she had taken on when she invited the 
original group inside in the sea-storm. Perhaps that explained their familiar 
behavior, and the odd moments of respect. Still… she could not see a pregnant 
creature, even an alien, give birth in a place it thought dangerous, when she 
had a place it might find more comfortable.
But which place might it find more comfortable? They had all spent time in the 
center, but the center rooms were big, cluttered with machines. The size of the 
nest-cavity it had scratched out in the tall grass suggested to Ofelia that a 
closet in one of the houses might suit it better. She led Bluecloak to the house 
next to the center, and offered the closet in the main bedroom. It smelled a bit 
damp, but airing would help. At least it was not the wet season. She still had 
the armful of cloths; she mimed putting them on the floor.
Bluecloak conferred with those who had trailed along, the language far too fast 
for Ofelia to follow. Some moved away immediately, to begin opening windows. One 
left the house; she could hear it running away up the lane. To tell the pregnant 
one? Ofelia wasn't sure. She wasn't sure about anything except that she was 
about to become an aunt. And a click-kaw-keerrr, which she hoped would be within 
her ability. The ones in the house began to clean it, using the brooms from the 
center. When they took the brooms back, they disappeared for a time. Ofelia went 
to the herb garden she maintained three houses down, and came back with 
clean-smelling herbs. She had seen the creatures leaning over these plants as if 
they, too, enjoyed the scents. Already one of the others was back, with 
fresh-cut tall grass which it spread on the closet floor. The pregnant one came 
in, stepping warily through the door. She—Ofelia could not think of a pregnant 
creature as "it"—grunted when she saw the closet with its layer of grass. Two 
others arrived with more grass, and the pregnant one went into the closet and 
began trampling the grass in a pattern that resulted in a compact coiled 
arrangement looking very much like pictures of birds' nests. Ofelia noticed that 
she hardly touched the grass with her hands. This went on until the nest rose 
half a meter above the closet floor. Then the others brought finer grasses and 
other fine-leaved plants that looked softer than the coarse tall grass used so 
far. This the pregnant one worked into the interior of the nest. Then the 
pregnant one stepped out and churred at Ofelia.
"Uhoo nesst," Bluecloak translated.
Why did they want her to get into the nest? They all did; they all stood there 
looking expectant. Ofelia stepped in, and was surprised at how springy it was 
under her feet. The bowl shape held her toward the middle; she realized how 
comfortable it would be for a nap. She sat down, and they murmured soft sounds 
to her. So that was what they wanted? They wanted her to pretend to sleep, 
perhaps? Or did they make a nest for aunts, and then a nest for the pregnant 
mother?
She curled up on her side, and wriggled around. Very comfortable indeed. 
Suddenly something sharp poked her side. She sat up, and felt around with her 
fingers until she found the cause—a stone about the size of a chicken egg, with 
sharp angles. That didn't belong in a nest, and how had the pregnant one missed 
it? She held it up, scowling at them.
Their left toes drummed; she knew now that meant approval. The pregnant one 
snatched the stone from her and held it aloft; the drumming deepened, including 
fingertips on torsos, and finally the pregnant one's throat sac.
Obviously, they had planted the stone in the nest for her to find, but why? It 
was just an ordinary stone. One of them held out a hand to her, and helped her 
out of the nest. The pregnant one clasped her wrists and bent her head; she felt 
the dry, ticklish touch of a tongue on her hands. The pregnant one released her, 
and the others did the same, even Bluecloak. Her hands tingled from the touch of 
so many tongues.
Her stomach recoiled, knotted in fear. She was in over her head; she was 
committed now to something she did not understand. What if she made a mistake? 
What if she did something that hurt the baby? She looked around for Bluecloak. 
If she could read their expressions at all, Bluecloak looked satisfied, even 
smug. The others looked relaxed; the pregnant one stretched out in a patch of 
sun on the floor and one of the others squatted beside her, running its fingers 
lightly along her back.
Then Bluecloak urged Ofelia out of the house; the others left the pregnant one 
and her—birth attendant? best friend? husband? Ofelia didn't know—alone in the 
house. Two of the creatures settled outside the house, squatting in the lane, 
and pulled out their long knives. The rest went back to the center, Ofelia with 
them. Behind her, she could hear the ring and rasp of sharpening; it made her 
shiver. She was hungry for lunch, but she was even hungrier for knowledge. She 
still didn't know whether to expect eggs or a a wiggly baby. She didn't know why 
those knives were being sharpened… to guard the pregnant one and the baby from 
predators, or to carve up a clumsy, ignorant aunt if she made mistakes?
She was just opening her mouth to ask Bluecloak, when an alarm went off in the 
control room. Ofelia jumped, then led the way there, heart pounding. It was the 
wrong season for sea-storms, and that morning she had seen nothing in the gauges 
to indicate any problem.
The gauges were still steady, still in the safe range for all functions. The 
flashing red light was on the weathersat board. Which meant someone had queried 
the weathersat, which meant another ship had arrived.
She had known it would happen someday. Eventually someone would come to 
investigate the attack on that second colony, and the creatures who had made it. 
That was why she'd set the alarm as she had, so that she would know when to 
hide. She had even explained that to Bluecloak, as best she could; she wasn't at 
all sure that the creatures understood space flight, or how far away things 
were. She had hoped she wouldn't be alive when the other humans came, but she 
was.
And far worse, the pregnant one was nesting. Ofelia had no idea how long it 
would be before she gave birth or laid her eggs or whatever, but she knew it was 
a bad time for the other humans to come.
She conveyed this to Bluecloak: others like herself were coming, were in a 
boat—they had agreed on the term—far up in the sky. They would come down—she was 
sure of that—and they would most likely come down here, at the shuttle strip. 
She had no idea how long it would be. They might sit up there for days looking 
at things through orbital scanners, making sure they would be safe. They might 
already have been there for days, in which case it was no use trying to get the 
creatures to conceal themselves in the houses because they had already been 
seen. Besides, if they could strip the records from the weathersat, they would 
find plenty of evidence that Ofelia and the creatures were both living here.
And what if they decided the creatures here knew too much, and killed them? 
Ofelia felt a cold sweat break out all over her. She could not let that happen. 
She would not. She did not know what she could do, but she would not let that 
happen.
First, could she find out something about the ship that had arrived? She queried 
the weathersat herself, but got no answer. Apparently the people on the arriving 
ship had pre-empted all local requests. That might mean they didn't yet know she 
was here, that she used the weathersat, or it might mean they didn't care.
She turned to Bluecloak again, and tried to ask how long it would be before the 
pregnant one—she stumbled over Gurgle-click-cough—delivered. Blue-cloak's 
answering gestures were not reassuring. It might be today, or tomorrow, or the 
day after. It was Gurgle-click-cough's first birth, and its timing was more 
uncertain than for a subsequent one. Ofelia understood that well enough; it was 
the same with humans. She conveyed that to Bluecloak fairly easily
More difficult was the concept that the arriving humans presented a special 
danger to Gurgle-click-cough and her young. Bluecloak cocked its head to one 
side; its right toes tapped the floor. She had tried to explain before that the 
humans killed far to the north were not the same as those who had lived here, 
and the ones who lived here went somewhere else, very far away. Now she tried to 
say that the ones coming were more like those who had been killed, not like her.
"Nesst click-kaw-keerrr," Bluecloak said, as if that would end the discussion. 
"Aant"
"It doesn't matter," Ofelia said. "They won't care." She tried to think how to 
say that in gestures, but when she looked at Bluecloak it was standing rigid, 
its throat-sac swollen and pulsing, its eyelids partly shut. Then it blinked.
"Nesst click-kaw-keerrr nnot kkaerrr?" A pause. "Kkilll?"
"Not kill," Ofelia said, hoping it was so. "But they won't care about me. I'm 
not one of them. Not their… " what was the word Bluecloak had used about its 
people? She opted instead for gestures that included her, Bluecloak, others who 
lived here, as opposed to others who lived someplace else.
"Uhoo," Bluecloak said, pointing to make it clear. "Click-kaw-keerrr."
She was the click-kaw-keerrr; whatever click-kaw-keerrrs had to do, she had to 
do. She was uncomfortably certain that this meant she was supposed to protect 
Gurgle-click-cough and her young from the other humans… or die trying.
She chose to interpret the hollow feeling in her belly as hunger, and went back 
to her house to cook something.
They had seen the white streaks of the shuttle's flight; they had heard the 
brief transmissions between the shuttle and the orbiting ship. Ofelia wondered 
how much the creatures understood of this. She herself couldn't follow much of 
the talk; the accent was strange, and the utterances perhaps intentionally 
cryptic. She thought of trying to use the colony transmitter, even keyed it 
once, but the signal had to go through the weathersat, and she couldn't get it 
locked open. Apparently, they were still using the weathersat themselves. She 
felt a guilty relief. In her inmost heart, she still hoped they would simply go 
away.
Meanwhile, Gurgle-click-cough had settled into the house next to the center—not 
in the nest itself yet—and the others brought her food and sat with her. She 
seemed larger to Ofelia, her lean form now bulging under her kilt. She rarely 
left the house, and had no interest in the news. Every time Ofelia visited, 
Gurgle-click-cough leaned against her and licked her hands. Ofelia felt helpless 
and protective all at once. » On the third day, Bluecloak roused her before dawn 
when the voices came again. Ofelia hobbled across to the center, stiff as she 
always was in the early morning, and grumpy with being awakened in that last 
sweet deep slumber before she would have awakened on her own.
"They're landing this time," Ofelia said. "They're coming here." She had known 
they would—it was the only reasonable thing for them to do, and they must by now 
have noticed that a human and some of the creatures were here—but she had hoped 
very much they would do the unreasonable thing and go away.
Bluecloaks throat-sac expanded, and it thrummed at her.
"I know," Ofelia said. "I have to do something." What, she had no idea. She 
listened to the pilot of the shuttle describing his descent, his plan for 
landing. They would make one low-altitude pass to look again at the colony and 
check for weapons. It would be noisy, then, worse than just landing. They had 
made a low-altitude pass the day before, scaring all the creatures, sending the 
sheep and cattle into panicky stampedes around the meadows. Ofelia looked at 
Bluecloak, pointed up, and covered her ears.
Far in the distance, she heard the approaching growl of the shuttle. They would 
circle out to sea, then come back and land. She would have to go meet them, and 
say… what? What could she say that would keep them from bothering 
Gurgle-click-cough? She stood up, only then realizing that she had come from her 
bed wearing nothing at all but the string of beads she rarely took off these 
days.
And she had no idea where her dress was, the only dress that strange humans 
would find decent. Or shoes… she had thrown that last pair of shoes in the 
recycler, she remembered.
As fast as she could, she hobbled back to her house through the predawn 
twilight, and grabbed the green embroidered cloak that had impressed Bluecloak. 
At least one of the peoples here would find it appropriate. The shuttle 
thundered overhead; she did not go outside to look at it. She used the toilet, 
splashed water on her face, scrubbed at her teeth, swiped at her flyaway hair 
with both hands. Then she wrapped a length of cloth around her hips, and looped 
more strands of beads around her neck. They might think she had gone native, but 
at least they would recognize an effort made to look festive.
This took longer than she wanted; she had to use the toilet again. Now she heard 
the great roar of the shuttle approaching, descending. She went out her front 
door, and shooed the creatures back into shelter. If there was only one old 
woman, she did not think the other humans would shoot first—and if they did, at 
least the creatures might have a chance to escape.
She saw the shuttle angling in, but ignored it to look in the doorway of the 
house where Gurgle-click-cough was. The two creatures on guard waited just 
inside the door, looking tense even in the dimness. They could have turned the 
light on, Ofelia thought, but when she reached for the switch, one of them 
caught her wrist. She heard a wheezy rasp from the closet. Ofelia sighed. 
Naturally it would happen now, at the worst possible moment. And she would not 
get to see it, because she had to go deal with her own kind. It seemed as unfair 
as the rest of life.
"Good luck to you," she said softly.
"Click-kaw-keerrr," they all replied in soft chorus. As if she could forget that 
responsibility. By the time she reached the shuttle strip, the sun was just up, 
shining right in her face, making it hard to see anything but a great dark blur 
that stank of scorched plastics and oils. Ofelia squinted into the light, moving 
slowly over the rough pavement where grass was doing its best to reclaim its 
domain. No one called out to her; no one came toward her.
When she got into the shadow of the shuttle, she could see them clumped on the 
ramp above, all wearing bulky suits that would be intolerable later in the day. 
Ofelia could have laughed at them, but then they would think she was crazy. They 
might think that anyway—with their eyes on her, she was far more aware of how 
she must look. She felt herself going hot, but perhaps they wouldn't notice with 
her dark tanned skin and the early light.
Two of them held weapons, and looked past her to the village with professional 
intensity. The unarmed man in front was probably the one in charge. He had that 
expression, of one used to telling others what to do. She had forgotten how much 
she disliked that expression. Beside him, crowding him, stood a woman who looked 
as disgruntled as Ofelia felt. Remembered resentment gave her the courage to 
speak first.
"This was not a good time," she said. She put into it all the reproach of the 
experienced mother. "You've upset them." No need to specify who was upset; they 
would know.
The man puffed out his chest; he didn't like it that she had spoken first. 
Ofelia didn't care, and she didn't listen past the first "… authority…" She 
interrupted, telling him again that it wasn't a good time. "You could have 
listened when I tried to talk to you," she said. They didn't have to know that 
she'd only keyed the transmitter once.
This time the woman answered. Her voice sounded mature, but she was certainly 
younger than Ofelia. Perhaps middle-aged, but it was hard to tell with 
ship-folk, who hardly ever saw weather. Ofelia answered her, trying to think 
ahead to what would impress this woman. She wasn't afraid of the man who thought 
he was the leader, that was clear. Perhaps this woman would be sensible, and 
listen. The men, of course, did not; she had hardly started talking to the woman 
when two of them interrupted. But their voices clashed over each other, and the 
woman spoke again.
"Who are you?" she asked, as if she had a right to know.
Ofelia turned the question back on her—would she recognize that as the insult it 
was?—and the woman did not answer, but reassured Ofelia that they had not come 
to hurt her, but to help her.
Help! She had not asked for help; she didn't need help; she needed them to go 
away and let her alone. She snorted before she could stop herself, and the woman 
looked embarrassed, as if she realized how preposterous that was.
She made it very clear, spelling it out. "I don't need help." And they might as 
well know that she knew about the other colony. "If you're here about that other 
lot—"
The man interrupted, and then the armed man; it was as if they had a contest on, 
which could ask questions the fastest. Ofelia answered, shortly She was not a 
schoolchild in a contest; they might at least have had the courtesy to come down 
to her level, offer her a seat, before pouncing on her with all these questions. 
The creatures, alien as they were, had shown more courtesy.
"Didn't you try to help?" the unarmed man said finally. Ofelia glared at him, 
wishing boils on his posterior and head lice to his children. One moment he 
questioned her as if she were a stupid child, and the next he thought she had 
magical powers and could fly thousands of kilometers to rescue healthy young 
people from disaster? Ridiculous, insulting… she ran through her store of 
invective, in grim silence, until he turned red.
The woman spoke again, asking how long she'd been there. Another stupid 
question, if less insulting; it was just possible, Ofelia thought, that some 
silly old woman with a spaceship might have crashed here, or even come here 
prospecting or something. She explained, briefly; she enjoyed the shock on the 
woman's face when she told the truth about the Company'sattitude towards old 
colonists. Didn't know everything, she didn't, no matter what fancy job she had. 
Wait until she was old enough to face her company's scorn… then she'd know. But 
the man broke in again, this time scolding her for being there. Like the 
Company, he thought she was just a nuisance, just something to be dealt with. 
The old resentment boiled up, making a bad taste in Ofelia's mouth. That one had 
not even been a colonist, was not due the respect she had paid to the men who 
worked with their women to build the village she lived in. She had not liked all 
of them, or all the things they did, but the slackers had died early on, one way 
and another, and the men who had been evacuated had earned her respect if not 
her affection. This one, with his smooth ship-bred skin, hiding in that 
protective suit as if one old woman were a threat to his safety… She probably 
was, she thought.
"Let me alone," she said, with more bitterness than she intended. He glared back 
at her, and began trying to convince her of the seriousness of "the situation." 
She could have laughed; he didn't know himself how serious the situation was.
"I'm not stupid," she said, putting an edge on it; his eyes widened. Would it 
help to say again that they had come at a bad time? Probably not, but she said 
it anyway. "Go away," she said finally, and turned and walked off, feeling their 
gaze on her back as if the embroidered eyes were crawling over her skin.
She heard clumsy footsteps and an argument behind her. From the voices, it was 
the woman following her. All right. Let the woman come, down on the same level 
where she wouldn't get such a crick in her neck trying to talk to her. She kept 
walking, hoping to lead the woman clear into the village, where the others could 
not hear them. Of course there were sound pickups, she knew that, but at least 
they might not interfere as much.
When the other woman called, politely enough, she had made it to the end of the 
lane. Not as far as she'd hoped, but better than standing beside the shuttle. 
From here, the creatures could see her, if they wanted. She turned.
The woman had more weathered skin than she'd expected, as if she'd spent much of 
her life outside. She had a thick mop of caramel-colored hair, cut short but 
shaped with care. Her gray-green eyes were trying to look earnest and friendly, 
but Ofelia distrusted them. Something about the woman exuded authority, not the 
natural authority of experience, but the authority of position. And she was out 
of breath, probably from wearing that heavy protective suit and trying to run in 
it. Ofelia took a deep breath and smiled at her.
The woman started to speak, but Ofelia interrupted her. She had to understand 
that Ofelia had a message more important than hers. "It's a bad time," she said 
firmly. She let the other woman's eyes rove over her, inspecting her hair, her 
face, her body, her strange clothes. Would she believe Ofelia made sense, if 
obscure sense, or would she dismiss her out of hand because of her age, her 
strange appearance?
The conversation teetered back and forth, never quite finding a balance where 
both women could be comfortable and exchange the information Ofelia was sure the 
other both wanted and had to impart. Ofelia learned, as she expected, that they 
knew about the creatures being here. The woman was shocked that she had 
cooperated with them—but what did she expect? That Ofelia would have killed them 
all off by herself? That by herself she could have kept them from learning? The 
other humans had a lot to learn about the creatures.
She saw the moment when the other woman's attitude shifted, when she decided 
that Ofelia was negligible, probably crazy. She kept trying to get Ofelia to 
take her home, to let them have a cozy chat. Ofelia was not about to go into any 
enclosed space with this young, strong woman in her protective suit. Finally she 
had to be rude to get the woman to go away. She saw in the woman's expression 
that she recognized the rudeness, that it hurt.
Fine. Let it hurt. Maybe she would be more careful next time. And maybe—just 
maybe—she would convince the others to stay away until tomorrow. By then, if 
Ofelia guessed right, Gurgle-click-cough would have had her young, and perhaps 
in the night—if they were very lucky—they could get the mother and child away to 
safety.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Contents - Prev / Next
Ofelia went to her own garden first, in case the woman followed or watched where 
she went. She was not going to lead them to the nest-house. She poked among the 
rows for a few minutes, not really seeing the plants. When she looked back, from 
the corner of her garden, she could not see anything of the shuttle but its tall 
tail sticking up beyond the roofs. The lane behind her was empty; the woman was 
out of sight, presumably on her way back to the shuttle.
She went in through the kitchen door, and felt the emptiness of her belly as 
hunger. She had cold flatbread from the night before; she rolled it up and 
stuffed it in her mouth so fast she almost choked.
That would be silly, to choke herself at a time like this. She spit out half the 
mouthful, chewed and swallowed the rest carefully. Then she ate it all, slowly, 
trying to concentrate on the flavor and not what had happened.
They had not looked the way she expected, those people. She had become used to 
the creatures, to the narrow big-eyed faces, the long graceful legs with the 
bouncy gait, the long four-fingered hands with the hard black talons. These 
people looked pale, soft, squashy as dough, with little eyes sunk like raisins 
in their broad faces, with soft hands sprouting too many soft-tipped fingers 
like tentacles.
She avoided the mirror; she did not want to remind herself how like them she 
looked. When she had eaten, she went back out her kitchen door and looked around 
the corner of the next house down the lane. Nothing. That didn't mean none of 
them had sneaked into the village, to hide between houses. But curiosity tickled 
her; she had to know how the delivery was going. In the low sunlight of early 
morning, she walked across the lane and down to the house they had chosen.
Inside the door, the two guards were drumming softly; she could see now that 
their throat-sacs were distended. They said nothing to Ofelia, and made no move 
to stop her as she went on through to the bedroom. Here were two more of the 
creatures, including Bluecloak. Where were the others? Ofelia hoped they were 
staying safe under cover somewhere. They had closed the shutters on the morning 
side of the room, and half-closed the others, to make a quiet blue shade. In the 
closet, it was even darker, but she could see the hunched form of the laboring 
mother. Hissing, gurgling, occasionally letting out a loud chuff… she was in the 
midst of the process, whatever it was. Ofelia sat down on the bedframe to wait.
Her back hurt and her eyes felt gritty; she had been wakened too early. Before 
she knew it, she dozed off, leaning against the wall. She woke to a chorus of 
hisses and squeaks. Bluecloak stood by the closet door, its throat-sac bobbing 
in and out, vivid orange in the shadowed room. It was a minute or so before she 
realized that the chorus—the multiple voices—came from inside the closet. 
Whatever it was had been born.
Ofelia pushed herself up, wondering if she needed to apologize. Bluecloaks great 
eyes stared at her, and a moment later Gurgle-click-cough peered over the edge 
of the nest. Invitation or warning? She looked outside instead, at the glaring 
sunlight near midday. No sign of the other humans, and from this window she 
could not see the shuttle'stail anyway. She went back to the living room, where 
the guards squatted by the door, their knives out, and glanced down the lane. 
Nothing. That woman must have made them stay at the shuttle, or at least not 
come into the village.
Ofelia went back to the bedroom. Now Gurgle-click-cough was leaning out of the 
nest, one arm stretched out to Ofelia. Ofelia went closer. The smell of birth 
was never entirely pleasant; she had not expected their births to be any neater 
than those of humans. Sure enough, the closet now smelled strongly of creatures 
and their waste, and something else—not unpleasant, this last, but new.
Ofelia leaned closer, and Gurgle-click-cough took her hand and guided it. 
Something damp, and hot, with a quick pulse shaking its fragile body. It seemed 
very small. And another one, and another. Gurgle-click-cough moved aside, and 
now Ofelia could see them. Striped vividly in dark and light, big-headed, the 
heads mostly eyes, skinny little legs, and arms hardly noticeable, folded 
against the body. And tails.
They hissed, one after the other, and one of them squeaked. Gurgle-click-cough 
picked that one up, delicately balanced in her long narrow hand. She reached 
towards Ofelia, and Ofelia put out both hands to take it. It felt hot, light, 
perilous. It squirmed the way babies squirmed, the little tail writhing across 
her wrist. Ofelia almost dropped it, but didn't, and brought it to her as she 
would have cuddled a human baby. The eyes opened—they were pale gold, with an 
even lighter rim around the pupil—:and it squeaked at her.
She leaned her cheek to it, and murmured, the way everyone murmured to babies. 
There, there, there, and easy, it's all right, everything's fine, take it easy. 
It pushed its hard little snout against her breastbone, and she had to giggle. 
Nothing there for anyone anymore, certainly not an alien that looked far more 
like a lizard than its mother. Then she felt the touch of that tiny, raspy 
tongue. Tears stung her eyes. She had always cried when she first held newborns; 
one corner of her mind was a little surprised that the same reflex worked with 
these creatures.
Gurgle-click-cough insisted on handing Ofelia each of the young, one at a time, 
and each of the young licked Ofelia on wrist or hand or chest, as she held it. 
Bluecloak approved; its throat-sac throbbed softly.
"Click-kaw-keerrr," it said.
"Click-kaw-keerrr," Ofelia answered. Of course she wanted to protect these 
little ones, odd as they were; she could wish them no harm. Hard to believe they 
could grow into the tall bright adults she knew, but then human babies were red, 
slimy, squalling little messes right after birth. She supposed an alien would 
find them every bit as unlikely precursors to adults as these. She looked again 
at the squirming newborns; she could not tell one from the other, at least not 
in that dimness.
In the afternoon, at the hottest hour, when Ofelia was stooped over her own 
kitchen sink washing out the soft cloths which Gurgle-click-cough had used after 
all, one of the creatures let out a squawk, and bolted into Ofelia's house."All 
right," she said. She knew what it had to be. The humans had not waited until 
the next day, as she'd told them. She hadn't expected them to, but at least they 
had not interrupted the birth. She glanced out her kitchen door and saw them 
coming along the lane. The woman she had talked to before, now in cream-colored 
slacks and shirt, with a big hat on her head, accompanied by another woman and 
two men in variations of that outfit, and two obviously dangerous men in the 
dark protective suits, with weapons. The armed men had faces even redder than 
the others, dripping sweat under their helmets.
Ofelia pulled all the ice trays from her cooler, and emptied them into her 
largest pitcher. She had already squeezed the juice of lemons and limes; she 
poured this into the pitcher with water and sugar. Hot humans were grumpy 
humans; if she could get them comfortable, they might listen to reason.
When she went out the door to invite them in, they were halfway to her house, 
peering curiously into the houses on either side. She didn't want them to find 
Gurgle-click-cough yet; she called out, and they looked at her.
"Come have juice," she said. They looked at each other doubtfully, then came 
forward, the armed men making it obvious by their movements and expressions how 
little they trusted her.
She ignored the armed men, and looked at the others. The woman she had met, 
Kira. A much younger woman—or a woman who acted younger—who reminded her too 
much of Linda. The man she had seen, who said he was in charge, and a shorter, 
stockier man who kept glancing at the younger woman. That kind of thing already! 
She felt tired before she started.
The two armed men would not come in her house; one stood by either door. She 
handed them glasses of cold juice, and they stared at her, blank-faced, before 
finally taking sips. The others crowded the main room, staring around them at 
her things.
"This is the Falfurrias house," Kira said, to the others. "It's on the plat Sims 
furnished." She leaned into the bedrooms, looking, clearly unconcerned about 
Ofelia's privacy.
"Are you sure?" the taller man said. He spoke as if Ofelia were not there, as if 
she might not know where she was.
"That's right," Ofelia said. He glanced at her and away, as if he did not like 
what he saw. She had changed from the green cape to a shirt with fringed sleeves 
and bands of color across the front and back. It was too hot for this time of 
day—for this season, in fact—but she was not comfortable with her bare skin in 
front of these strangers. It made her angry to be embarrassed again.
"It's my house," she went on. "I helped build this house. I am Ofelia 
Falfurrias."
"You were supposed to be evacuated," the man said, without giving his own name. 
Such rudeness. Ofelia felt her dislike harden, as if it were sap drying in the 
sun. "None of you were supposed to be here, and this colony's equipment was 
supposed to be properly shut down. If it hadn't been for you—"
"It's not her fault," Kira said, again as if Ofelia could not speak for herself. 
"She's only an old woman—"
Only. So Kira was as bad as the rest, thinking an old woman of no importance.
"Perhaps we should introduce ourselves," said the shorter man. He smiled at 
Ofelia. "I'm Orisan Almarest, a cultural anthropologist, Sera Falfurrias. I'm an 
anthropologist; I study the way people and their tools work together."
"Kira Stavi," the older woman said shortly.
"Vasil Likisi, leader of this team, and designated representative of the 
government," said the taller man.
"Bilong," said the younger woman, with a wide artificial smile. "Just call me 
Bilong, that's fine."
It wasn't fine. She didn't want to call Bilong anything except what the other 
women had called Linda. The only one with any manners was the shorter man, 
Orisan Almarest. That one she recognized with a little nod. "Ser Almarest." She 
gestured at the iced juice on the table. "Would you like something cool to 
drink?"
"Thank you, Sera Falfurrias," he said. She poured him a glass, and he took it 
and sipped. "It is very good," he said.
Ofelia relaxed slightly; this was the ritual she knew. "The fruit is more bitter 
this year," she said. "You are too gracious with your thanks."
"It is delicious on such a hot day," he said. He smiled at her over the glass as 
he took a large swallow. The others still stood around like untrained children. 
Finally the older woman moved.
"Thank you for inviting us in, Sera Falfurrias," she said.
Ofelia smiled the required smile. "You are welcome in my home," she said. 
"Unfortunately, I have only this juice to offer you."
"Thank you," said the woman, with a smile as forced as Ofelia's. She sipped, and 
her brows lifted. So she had really expected it to be bitter; Ofelia nearly 
laughed,
"Oh, please may I have some of that?" the younger woman asked, like a child who 
cannot remember to wait until food is offered.
"Of course," Ofelia said, pouring it out and handing it to her without other 
comment, as she would have to a child. The stocky man smiled at her.
"Bilong is our linguist," he said. "She will study the indigenes' language."
"Indigenes?" Ofelia hated herself for asking the moment the unfamiliar word was 
out of her mouth. All of them but the stocky man smiled in a way that meant they 
enjoyed her ignorance.
"It's the academic term for anything native to a place," said the stocky man. 
"You and I are not indigenous here, but the creatures who attacked the second 
colony landing are. At least, we think they are." He said this in a 
matter-of-fact voice, as if there were nothing strange in her not knowing. 
Ofelia appreciated this courtesy even though she didn't trust him. He went on. 
"Kira—Sera Stavi—is a xenozoologist; she studies animals alien to human worlds. 
Of course, that means they are native, or indigenous, where they are. She will 
study the biology of animals here."
"They are not just animals," Ofelia said, looking at the woman.
"No, but like us they are animals in part," the woman said. Her voice had 
softened—was it the cold juice, or was she trying to be more polite? "It is my 
job to find out how their bodies work, what foods they eat, and so on.
Ofelia transferred her gaze to the tall man who had been so quick to claim 
authority. He took that cue instantly.
"I'm the team leader, as I said, and the representative of the government, here 
to ascertain whether these things are intelligent enough to warrant protection 
under the law. If it seems warranted, I also have the authority to make an 
official representation from the government to their government, concerning 
recent events and our desire for some kind of arrangement whereby our scientists 
can study them. As you may not know, they are unique in the history of human 
stellar exploration."
He seemed ready to go on a lot longer but Ofelia was not in the mood to listen 
to him. She poured out another glass of the juice and handed it to him as he 
drew breath. He looked surprised. Finally he blurted, "Thank you," and took a 
sip.
"Please sit down," Ofelia said. She had just enough chairs, if she herself 
perched on the stool she used while cooking and chopping vegetables. Slowly, 
awkwardly, they all sat. Ofelia made up another pitcher of the fruit drink, and 
refilled their glasses before she sat down herself.
"I have lived here alone since the others left," Ofelia began. They would know 
that, but starting with the obvious and known was both polite and sensible. From 
this known, she could lead them by her own paths to the view she wanted them to 
see. "I had come here as a young woman—" She had felt middle-aged then, a mother 
of three, no longer in her first youth, but now she knew how young she had been. 
"My husband and I built this house, and my last children were born here. Then my 
husband died, and one by one all the children but Barto. When they said we must 
leave, they told Barto that I would be of no use, that I would very likely die 
in cryo. They made him pay extra. I did not want to cost him that, and I did not 
want to leave the place my husband and children had lived and died."
"Poor thing," said the younger woman, with such fake sweetness dripping off her 
tongue that Ofelia felt she could scrape it off and make jam with it.
"You could have died here," the older woman said, as if accusing her of a 
crime."! could have died in cryo," Ofelia said. "Old people die; it is the way 
of nature. I am not afraid to die." That was not quite true, but she had not 
been afraid the way this person meant it.
"It was irresponsible, nonetheless," said the leader. "Look at the results."
Ofelia gave him a blank look. "Results, Ser Likisi?"
He waved his arm expansively, almost hitting the younger woman in the face. 
"These… things here, knowing about humans, seeing the technology in use. The 
government has strict standards on the use of advanced technology in front of 
primitive cultures."
"They would have found it anyway," Ofelia said.
"But you were here to show them how to use it."
Ofelia had wondered about that, in those first intoxicating moments of 
communication with the creatures, but then she had had no time to think… they 
were learning so fast. She had finally decided that the creatures would have 
found the master switches on their own. She had at least taught them to use 
caution, to respect the machines. She opened her mouth to say that, but the 
armed man by the front door moved suddenly, bringing up his weapon.
"Halt where you are!" he said, as if he thought anyone in the universe could 
understand his words.
"No!" said Ofelia. He was going to shoot one of her creatures; she couldn't let 
him. That was all she thought. She pushed herself off the stool, stumbled as her 
bad hip stabbed at her, and pushed between the two men in chairs to get to her 
front door. The broad dark back of the armed man in his protective suit was in 
her way.
"Move," she said, poking a finger in his back.
His reaction came so fast she was on the floor before she knew he was moving. 
Her head rang. Outside, a loud squawk and the rapid thud of feet—the creatures—
"Don't hurt them!" she said, as loudly as she could.
"Dont—
"They're attacking," the armed man said. She could see between his legs. 
Bluecloak, formally dressed in that blue cloak, throat-sac fully expanded, 
throbbing. Two of the others, knives drawn, eyes partly hooded by the extra 
eyelid.
"They're not," Ofelia said from the floor. Her head ached, and it was going to 
ache worse, and none of these people had the courtesy to help an old woman up 
off the floor—she rolled over, glared at the ones in chairs, who were sitting 
there with their mouths open as if they were children at a play. She tried to 
sit up, and discovered that her ribs hurt too, and so did her arm, where she had 
fallen on it.
"Click-kaw-keerrr!" came from outside. Bluecloak's throat-sac pulsed.
"Click-kaw-keerrr," Ofelia said. At least she could talk clearly enough to 
reassure them. She got to her knees, shook her dizzy head, and got all the way 
up. She limped back to the door. "Let me out," she said to the man with the 
weapon. "They're not attacking; they want to see that I'm not hurt."
"Could have killed you," the man muttered angrily. Stupid bitch hovered on his 
lips; Ofelia said nothing. "Sorry," he said finally "Reflex."
"Let me out," she said again. Slowly, still aiming his weapon at the creatures, 
he moved aside.
"Don't get between us," he said. "If I have to blow you away, I will."
"Don't start anything, then," Ofelia said. She was in no more mood to be 
gracious than he was. "They're not attacking, and they've never hurt me." Not as 
much as you have, she thought at him as loudly as she could.
She limped out into the lane, and extended her hands to Bluecloak. It took them 
gently; its throat-sac shrank. Then it touched her head, her side, with one 
gentle finger. Ofelia hissed; it hurt already, and she could imagine the dark 
bruise swelling on her scalp.
Behind her, she heard the team leader talking to the armed man; she could not 
quite hear the words, but the tone was angry. So was the armed man's reply. Let 
them argue; that would give her time. Time for what, she was not sure. Her head 
hurt a lot; she felt dizzy; she wanted to lie down in a cool dark place and have 
someone offer her cool drinks.
Bluecloak touched its own head, thumping it with a fist, then making the same 
jerk-away motion she had used to mime the pain of electric shock.
"Yes," Ofelia said. "My head got banged on the floor; it hurts. But I'm all 
right."
Bluecloak pointed to the armed man, and made a motion of swinging an elbow back 
to hit someone.
"Yes," Ofelia said. "But I scared him."
Bluecloak said "Click-kaw-keerrr." Ofelia frowned past her headache. What did 
being a click-kaw-keerrr have to do with being hit by the man at the door? Did 
he think the man shouldn't hit a click-kaw-keerrr? If so, what was a 
click-kaw-keerrr? Did they never hit theirs?
"He didn't know," she said. "I haven't had time to tell them about the babies." 
She wasn't sure she wanted to; she remembered having her babies before in the 
hospital, where some of the staff handled them as if they were dolls or animals. 
She thought that was how Kira Stavi would handle these babies; she was sure the 
woman had never borne children.
"Nnot know uhoo click-kaw-keerrr?' Bluecloak asked.
"Not know," Ofelia repeated. "He did not know."
Bluecloak said something to the other two, and they slid their long knives back 
into their belts. Ofelia still couldn't understand them when they talked so 
fast, but she did catch the word click-kaw-keerrr in the midst of the utterance.
"Gurgle-click-cough?" she asked. "And the little ones?"
Bluecloak let out one grunt, and its eyelids sagged shut. Sleeping, was she? 
Natural, after a birth. Ofelia wondered if she nursed the babies, or if they ate 
other food. And if so, who brought it?
"Is that their leader?" asked Vasil from behind her. "Is that why it's wearing 
that blue thing?"
Ofelia turned, trying not to wince visibly as her ribs and leg twinged. "This is 
Bluecloak," she said. "I call it that because of the cloak; I can't say its real 
name." She turned back to Bluecloak. "This is Ser Vasil Likisi," she said. "He's 
the leader." The others were in the doorway now; as they came out, Ofelia said 
their names: Kira, On, Bilong. Bluecloak said nothing, only standing there in 
the hot sunlight, head slightly tilted.
"You were talking to it," the young woman said. "I heard you—can you make it say 
something?"
Ofelia said to Bluecloak. "This is the linguist, who will study how you talk." 
From the glint in his eye, she thought he had been understanding more of this 
than he let on.
Bluecloak looked past her at Bilong. "Uhoo Pihlog." Ofelia could have laughed at 
the expression on the girls face.
"It said my name," she said, almost dancing.
Bluecloak rattled off a long sequence of squawks, grunts, clicks, and other 
sounds which seemed to delight Bilong; Ofelia suspected it was something as 
meaningless as the alphabet.
"Are you all right?" the other woman asked. She looked truly concerned.
"My head hurts," Ofelia said.
"No wonder. I was so shocked I couldn't move—I'm sorry, but I just froze—"
"Its all right," Ofelia said. The woman must be really ashamed, to say so much. 
Perhaps she had some proper feelings.
"Uhoo Kirrahhh," Bluecloak said. It extended a hand, which the other woman took 
warily.
"Four fingers…" she breathed.
"And toes," Ofelia said.
"Bi-sexed?" the woman asked, as if Bluecloak had not just shown that he could 
understand much of what was said.
"I haven't looked," Ofelia said primly. She wasn't going to admit she still 
couldn't tell. It was quite true that she hadn't looked; it would have been 
rude.
"Of course, it's not your field," the woman said, as if Ofelia were an idiot for 
not knowing. Ofelia's momentary sympathy for her vanished.
The whole team clustered around now, the four civilians staring, pointing, 
talking among themselves, as if the creatures were statues in an art gallery, or 
animals in a zoo. The two armed men stood stiffly by the house, glaring at them. 
It was stupid, out here in the hot sun. Ofelia's head throbbed; she wanted to be 
in the shade. Her house didn't have enough seats for all these, but the center 
did.
"You could come into the center, out of the sun," Ofelia said. "There are plenty 
of chairs in the center."
"That's very kind of you," the stocky man said, looking around. Of course, they 
wouldn't know where it was.
"It's over there," said the older woman, the one who had known Ofelia's house by 
the family name. She started that way, and Ofelia repressed a desire to hit her. 
She should have let Ofelia lead her there; it was not her center.
Bluecloak touched her shoulder. "Kuh?" Yes, she thought, cold is exactly what I 
want. Cold ice on my head, cold drink in my throat. Bluecloak walked beside her, 
the others still chattering, and Kira Stavi in the lead. Then Kira stopped 
short. In the doorway of the center, three more of the creatures, standing 
stiffly and looking at the group with those intense eyes. Ofelia felt the wicked 
giggle in her throat, and her hand rose to cover her mouth.
"Explain to them," the tall man said. "Explain that it's all right for us to go 
inside."
Ofelia walked past Kira and the others with Blue-cloak. The creatures in the 
door stepped back, and Ofelia waved the others inside.
"You really shouldn't—" she heard from behind her. The two armed men, she 
supposed, didn't want their charges to be out of sight and surrounded by alien 
killers. She didn't want the humans there either, but she had no better idea.
"It's all right," the tall man called back. "If they haven't hurt the old woman, 
they won't hurt us."
Ofelia pondered all the faults in that assumption as Kira led the way into the 
left-hand workroom. Why should they hurt an old woman who had never threatened 
them, once they found out she wouldn't? And why would they not hurt those who 
did pose a threat? But she was not going to argue. She didn't know how in the 
first place, and in the second place her head hurt too much.
Bluecloak said something to the other creatures, and one of them walked away 
quickly toward the kitchen.
"Did you notice," Kira said to the stocky man. "They don't walk flat-footed all 
the time. I'd love to see the bone structure—"
The stocky man nodded, then narrowed his eyes at Ofelia. "You're not feeling 
well, are you, Sera Falfurrias? Perhaps you need to lie down for awhile?"
Nothing she would like better, but not while these people were poking around. 
Might as well leave a roomful of toddlers to play in the kitchen with no one 
watching. "I'm all right," she said, but she sat in the chair he placed for her. 
Then the creature came back with a bowl of crushed ice—when had they learned to 
use the ice-crusher?—and folded a towel around a handful of ice as deftly as any 
nurse. It put the ice on the bruise; she sucked in air, but it did help after a 
moment. She put up her hand to hold the ice in place, but there was no need. The 
creature stood behind her, holding it.
"Well," said the tall man, She struggled to remember his name. Vasil Likisi. 
"Its clear you've made friends with them. How did you teach them to do that?"
"Ahhnt," Bluecloak said. They all stared at it. It pointed at Ofelia. "Ahhnt."
"Aunt?" That was the young woman, Bilong, "You mean like… aunt? Mother's 
sister?"
Bluecloak took the book that another of the creatures had brought it from the 
schoolroom, the storybook about the girl who stayed with her aunt. It showed the 
book to Bilong, "Ahhnt."
It fumbled through the pages until it found the picture it wanted, then pointed 
to Ofelia, and the picture of the girl and her aunt.
"It can't possibly understand," Kira said impatiently. "A storybook? Whatever it 
means by aunt, that's not what we mean by aunt." She glanced at Ofelia. "Do you 
know what it'stalking about?"
She did, but how could she explain it to this woman, who was in her way as alien 
as Bluecloak? This woman so impatient she was already fidgeting, already 
unwilling to listen to more than a word or two? No. Her head hurt too much. 
Courtesy demanded some answer, but not a complete one.
"I took care of some children other than mine," she said. "I think that's what 
Bluecloak means."
"Oh." The other woman sat back, looking unconvinced.
"How did you tell it that?' asked the younger woman.
Her head was pounding. Ofelia shifted, and other bruises stabbed her. "I—used 
gestures," she said. "And I'm really very tired now." She closed her eyes.
"Do you suppose she'sreally hurt?" asked the tall man. When she didn't have to 
listen to him, his voice still sounded tall and self-important, as if he had a 
lime in his mouth. He was ready to be annoyed with her for being hurt.
"I hope not," said the other man. "She's our best source for understanding this 
alien culture; she's been living with the indigenes—"
"But she's so—" Ofelia presumed a gesture went with that, and probably a 
sideways glance to see if she was really asleep or just pretending. "She hasn't 
the background," the tall man said finally, Playing it safe.
"Vasil, you are the most—!" But that was cut off, Ofelia heard the stealthy 
sound of people rising from chairs and trying to walk off quietly. Let them. She 
didn't care. She dozed off, and when she woke found that someone had put a row 
of chairs under her legs, and padded them with a blanket. Her head still hurt, 
but not so badly.
Bluecloak stood beside her. "Ghouls," it said. Her mind wavered. Ghouls? Then 
she made the transformation: it meant "fools." And she didn't have to ask who it 
meant. It meant the other humans.
Ofelia made no attempt to get up; she didn't want to move. But she winked at 
Bluecloak. "They are fools," she agreed. And ghouls too, she thought privately.
"Uhoo nnot—" Bluecloak gestured away, meaning those others she was sure. 
"Nnot—click-kaw-keerrrr?"
"Not," she said again, reassuring it. "They're not my people, and I'm not their 
click-kaw-keerrrr, not their aunt."
Bluecloak offered an arm, and she managed to sit up, biting off a groan at the 
pain in her side and leg. Another of the creatures moved to her other side, and 
the two of them helped her along the passage. Outside, it was dark, with stars 
glowing softly in the warm damp wind.
"Where are they?" Ofelia asked. Bluecloak pointed down the lane; she could see a 
bright glow of light at the shuttle field. Had they gone back to the shuttle? 
She didn't really care. Bluecloak and the other one helped her to her house, and 
inside, flicking on the light for her. Bluecloak opened her cooler and clucked 
at the contents. Ofelia wasn't hungry, and tried to say so, but Bluecloak wasn't 
deterred. It rootled around until it found some dry flatbread, and offered it to 
her, sprinkled with salt.It tasted surprisingly good, and her stomach let it 
stay. Bluecloak poured her a glass of fruit drink, and stood over her while she 
drank it. She could feel it's determination that she would eat. After that, she 
wanted only her familiar bed. For the first time since Bluecloak arrived in the 
village, the creatures came with her to the bathroom. She was not embarrassed; 
they had seen it before, and she was too tired. She glanced in the mirror 
accidentally and stopped, staring at the purple lump on her head. She looked 
down at her arm, where the skin over the bruise had torn, leaving a dark crust. 
Bluecloak's expression, when she looked up at it, was grim. She sensed anger and 
disapproval, but not of her.
"Its all right," she said. "I'm not really hurt." They offered her support—she 
was glad to lean on their arms—to the bed, and when she sat down, the other 
creature bent and lifted her legs gently. Bluecloak moved to the other side of 
the bed and turned down the cover, then paused, looking at her.
She was so tired… but she managed to roll over, into the open bed, and Bluecloak 
pulled the covers over her as tenderly as any mother.
They were frightening in a way they had never been frightening before—she had no 
idea what they thought had happened, or what it meant, or what would happen 
tomorrow. She was too tired to say anything; Bluecloak turned the lights out, 
and she waited to hear the front door open and close, but fell asleep first.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Contents - Prev / Next
When Ofelia woke in the pearly light of early morning, she heard soft voices 
from the next room. She stretched, and then winced as the bruises from 
yesterday's blow and fall intruded on her. She hurt all over, in more places 
than she remembered being hurt yesterday. And who was in her front room?
She didn't want to get up. She wanted to lie there until she died, or her body 
quit hurting, whichever came first. She moved her left arm cautiously up to feel 
the lump on her head. It felt as large as it had been, if not larger. She let 
her arm fall back, and imagined the commotion if the humans returned and found 
her dead. Would they realize they had done it, or would they blame the 
creatures?
She needed to use the toilet, too. It was one thing to lie here, sullenly 
determined to die from a few bruises, and another to lie here miserable because 
her bladder ached with fullness. Besides, if they blamed Bluecloak, what would 
happen to Gurgle-click-cough's babies?
Even with that thought, when she first tried to sit up, it hurt so much she 
caught her breath hard and felt tears stinging her eyes. She scolded herself; 
the old voice was happy to provide the terms she had not used for several years. 
Coward. Weakling. Sissy. Just a few bruises and you act like a baby.
She tried to make no noise, but she felt shaky and weak from the pain by the 
time she had pulled herself to her feet. Her arm had bled again in the night, 
sticking to the sheet, and the bright pain when she pulled it free was too much. 
A sob came loose in her throat.
The door to her room opened. Bluecloak, throat-sac expanded. It hissed when it 
saw her, and came to her quickly, offering an arm. Ofelia took it, hating her 
weakness. It put its finger on the slow ooze of blood, sniffed it, and 
drummed—she could not tell with what part of its body, but the sound filled the 
room.
"I'm all right," Ofelia said, wishing her voice didn't tremble. "I'll be better 
after a hot shower."Bluecloak helped her into the bathroom. She felt better 
after she'd used the toilet, and the hot shower eased some of the aches, though 
she knew she would stiffen later. She came out of the hot water to find that 
Bluecloak had fetched extra towels. It waited, towels in hand, to help her dry 
off. The mirror had fogged with the steam; she could not see herself, and she 
was glad. What she had to see, as she dried herself, was ugly enough, dark 
bruises all along her right side where she had fallen.
It was hard to find something to wear. The garments she had made for this 
season, that she would have worn, left the bruises exposed and obvious. The old 
voice told her that was shameful, that it would embarrass her guests, that she 
must appear to them as if yesterdays blow had done no harm. After all, her old 
skin tore so easily that any minor injury could make it bleed. It wasn't their 
fault; they couldn't be expected to realize how fragile she was.
The new voice said nothing; she wondered where it had gone. She hunted through 
her closet for a shirt with long sleeves, something that would cover her arms 
and her torso completely. All the long-sleeved shirts were hot, meant for the 
rare cool spells in the rainy season. She put one on anyway, wincing at the rasp 
of the coarser cloth against the tender bruises. She put on the longest pants 
she had; they came just below her knees.
She felt hot, and breathless, but safer. She looked down at her bare feet. The 
others had all worn boots. They had not actually stepped on her, but her bare 
toes now seemed vulnerable, as her bare skin was vulnerable, so that even a gaze 
could menace it. She had no shoes; she had put her last pair in the recycler, 
she reminded herself. For a moment, she felt happy; she remembered the little 
dance of celebration she'd done as she'd put them in, along with the ugly dress 
Barto and Rosara had wanted her to wear more often,
Bluecloak churred softly. Ofelia tried to smile at it. "I'm much better," she 
said. "Thank you for your help." Bluecloak knew "thank you"—she had used all the 
ritual courtesies with it, and the creatures had done their best to reciprocate.
Ofelia looked at her bed with distaste. She did not leave beds unmade, or sheets 
with bloodstains on them, but she did not think she could pull the sheets free 
this morning. Bluecloak, following her glance, pointed to the bloodstains then 
touched her arm. "Uhoo plud?"
"Yes, its my blood. But not bad. Just a little," She hoped Bluecloak would 
understand that.
Bluecloak said something in their language, and another creature came in, 
Bluecloak pointed to the bed; the creature hissed, its throat-sac expanding for 
a moment. Then it grabbed the sheets and pulled them off into a heap on the 
floor. Bluecloak spoke again, and it picked up the heap.
"Where are you—?" Ofelia began. "Ahshhh it," Bluecloak said. Then, with great 
satisfaction, all the consonants emphasized, "Dddirrrttih! Ig iss ddirrttih, 
ahshhh it!"
Ofelia recovered from astonishment in time to say "Cold water!" to the creature 
departing with her sheets. "Wash blood in cold water."
Bluecloaks eyes widened. "Kuh?" It pointed to itself. "Mih plud, mih ahshhh in 
kuh… ah… ssoo."
"You also wash off blood in cold water?" Ofelia had not realized they washed 
their clothes at all, though they didn't stink like people who failed to wash.
"Ahshhh in hah, plud tick." Wash in hot, blood sticks, Ofelia translated. 
"Llihff pron." Ofelia worried at that for a long moment. She had not heard even 
Bluecloak make an f sound before, and she didn't think this was "lif' or "leaf." 
Pron was probably bron… brown. Leave brown. Yes.
"Ours too," she said. She felt hungry now, and in the kitchen found that 
someone—Bluecloak?—had tried to make flatbread dough and made a mess instead, 
Bluecloak, when she looked at it, fluttered its eyelids.
"Ssorrrih," it said.
"Thank you," Ofelia said. "It was a kind thought, anyway." It had also tried to 
clean up the mess, but it had left streaks of flour, pellets of something that 
was supposed to be dough, and wasn't. Probably it had watched her making dough 
and thought it was easy. She scraped the residual mess off, then mixed the dough 
herself, her hands glad to take up familiar tasks. Bluecloak turned on the stove 
for her, and handed her the griddle just as she reached for it. Then it closed 
the containers she had left open, and put them away. She had shared kitchens 
with women less helpful. As she was laying the flatbread on the griddle, the 
kitchen door opened, and another creature—not the one who had taken the 
sheets—brought in two tomatoes and a handful of green beans, handling them 
carefully.
"Thank you," Ofelia said again, wondering what was going on. The creatures had 
been friendly enough before, but they had not gone out of their way to help her. 
She sliced the tomato, found that Bluecloak had fetched an onion from her bin, 
and chopped that. Onion fumes made her eyes water—they always had—but she could 
no more cook without onions than onions could grow without water. Again, 
Bluecloak anticipated what she would want next and handed her a stalk of 
parsley, one of cilantro, one of rosemary. She chopped the fresh herbs, mixed 
them with the tomato and onion, and folded the first round of flatbread around 
them.
She felt better when she'd eaten. The side of her head was still sore, and she 
was still stiff, but she didn't feel sick. As if they could sense that, 
Bluecloak and the other creature left her house while she cleaned the dishes, 
brushed her teeth, and wrapped a soft cloth around the oozing tear on her arm.
The sun was well up when the humans returned. Only two of them this time, the 
stocky man—Ori something—and the older woman, Kira, Ofelia had gone back to work 
in her garden, both because it soothed her and because she had missed several 
days. One of the creatures was with her, eating the slimerods she found; another 
had insisted on pushing a broom in her house. The hot sun eased her bruises, 
though sweat stung in the scrapes… and then the creature churred, and she looked 
up,
"Tuh-hoo," it said, It held up two fingers in case she didn't understand. What 
she didn't understand was when this one had learned so much human speech.
"Did Bluecloak teach you that?" she asked. It tipped its head to one side and 
said "Uhoo."
Ofelia didn't believe that; she hadn't spent much time with any of them trying 
to teach them her words, not since the beginning. But if it wanted to give her 
credit, that was polite.
"Good morning," the stocky man said, when he came close enough. "How are you 
today?"
"Fine," Ofelia said. She had a basket nearly full of tomatoes; they were 
ripening far faster than she could eat them. "Would you like some tomatoes? 
They're not very big yet—"
"They're beautiful," the man said. "We don't get fresh foods like this on the 
ship, you know."
She didn't know; she'd spent her ship time in cryo. But he might not know that.
"Your arm—" the woman said. Ofelia glanced down; the sleeve didn't quite cover 
the bruise and scab.
"It's nothing," she said, looking away. She didn't want to talk about it.
"That's—" the woman began; Ofelia saw the man hush her with a gesture. So much 
for that one's arrogance; she still had to be quiet when a man told her to hush. 
Ofelia found another slimerod and clicked to get the creature's attention. It 
came eagerly, and gulped the slimerod down. Ofelia glanced at the humans. They 
were wide-eyed. The man recovered first.
"You… get along well with them," he said.
Ofelia shrugged, then wished she hadn't. Her shoulder was still sore, and the 
man might think a shrug was rude. "They're good neighbors," she said. "They 
don't bother me."
"You can talk to them?"
"It's not so much talk," Ofelia said. "We understand things." She gestured with 
one hand. "We use our hands a lot."
"Can you tell us which is the leader?" the man asked. "Is it the one you call 
Bluecloak?"
Ofelia wondered if Bluecloak thought it was the leader, in the way this man 
clearly meant. "Bluecloak is… the one good at learning new things," she said 
finally. "Learning words, for instance. I understand Bluecloak best."
"But is Bluecloak the one in charge?" the woman asked.
Ofelia shook her head, another mistake. For an instant, the world whirled around 
her, then steadied again. "Only on some things," she said, when she could speak 
again. She knew she couldn't really explain which things; she was only feeling 
her way into that understanding herself.
"It's a small group," the man murmured to his companion. "It may be government 
by consensus; they may just hash it out."
"Surely not everything," the woman said. "After all, they attacked the colony 
landing; that had to have organization, leadership. And those coastal cities…"
"Cities?" Ofelia said. "They have cities?" She felt betrayed; Bluecloak had said 
nothing about cities, any of the times he'd seen the pictures of cities in her 
books.
"We saw them from the shuttle flights," the woman said. "Some of them live along 
the northern coast of this continent, in what look like stone and wood-built 
cities. They have boats—"
Ofelia remembered the boats she had seen. But she could not imagine her 
creatures, the ones she knew, living in cities. Something about their attitude 
toward this village suggested that they had no settled home. Except the 
nestmass.
"We won't keep you," the man said, as she was wondering whether or not to 
mention the nestmass. "A couple of your lovely tomatoes, and we'll be on our 
way. We'll be surveying the area today, just wandering around looking at things. 
We won't touch anything of yours," he added, as if his being here weren't 
intrusion enough.
Ofelia held the basket over the fence and they each picked out a tomato.
"If it's convenient," the man said, "I'd like to interview you later. After all, 
you were the first contact, even if you weren't trained for it." He chuckled, in 
a way that he probably intended to sound good-natured. It did sound 
good-natured; Ofelia could not have said why it made her so angry. She wanted to 
hit him, and that frightened her. She had never been one to hit people.
"I am always here," she said, not quite rudely. He smiled, and nodded at her, 
and turned away, already biting into the tomato. Ofelia looked down the lane; 
she saw nothing of the other humans. Maybe now she could go across and look at 
Gurgle-click-cough's babies.
Her escort of creatures followed her, and exchanged greetings with the door 
guards; Ofelia noticed that today the door guards had their knives out. In the 
bedroom, Bluecloak lounged on the old bedstead, singing with eyes half-closed. 
He rose when Ofelia came in, and reached out to her hands. He lifted them 
gently, and touched his tongue to her palms.
"Click-kaw-keerrr." It was greeting and commentary both; Ofelia felt cheered. 
She turned to the closet. Gurgle-click-cough looked out, alert and calm; Ofelia 
wondered how she was reading the expression so well. Gurgle-click-cough held out 
a hand, and Ofelia came nearer. The babies were piled in an untidy heap in the 
middle of the nest, between their mother's legs, Ofelia could not tell which 
striped tail belonged to which set of spindly legs… but she would have sworn 
they'd grown noticeably since the day before.
The nest smelled better too. Fresh herbs packed the inner surface. Ofelia 
wondered if the Terran-origin herbs would hurt the babies. One of them opened 
its eyes, and peeped, a sharp imperative. Gurgle-click-cough leaned closer; the 
tiny mouth opened, and its mother spit into it. Ofelia almost gagged, but choked 
it down. Spit? Vomit? She didn't want to know, really, and it was none of her 
business. The baby swallowed again and again, blinking its eyes. Then it hissed 
contentedly, and curled up again. Gurgle-click-cough picked it up, and handed it 
to Ofelia. Ofelia cradled it, no longer flinching when it licked her wrist with 
its catlike tongue.
Bluecloak said something; Ofelia turned, and he gestured her over. She sat on 
the bedstead beside him, the baby in her lap. It seemed content, and 
Gurgle-click-cough was feeding one of the others now. She looked at it closely, 
in more light than she'd had yesterday. The bold stripes on back and tail were 
dark brown on cream. Its head was large for its size, but nowhere near as large 
as a human baby's. Bluecloak hummed; the baby cocked its little head at the 
sound. When the hum became rhythmic, the baby's left foot twitched in rhythm.
Left foot drumming meant agreement… the baby was learning to agree, or… or 
what?"Sssinng," Bluecloak said. "Click-kaw-keerrr sssinng."
She didn't know what to sing to an alien's child with stripes and a tail; the 
only songs she knew were the cradle songs she had sung her own children. She 
started, self-conscious at first until the babys intent stare took all her 
concentration,
"Baby, baby, go to sleep… " It didn't; it crouched in her lap watching her face, 
its gaze flicking from eyes to mouth to eyes again. "Little sweetling, never 
weep… " She had no sense that these babies wept; it seemed almost tingling with 
eagerness for something… for life itself?
She sang herself hoarse, and stopped with a crick in her back and the little 
creature still watching her, showing no sign of boredom or tiredness. She 
levered herself up, and carried it back to the nest stiffly. She couldn't 
possibly do that with all of them… but Gurgle-click-cough was asleep herself, 
and the one Ofelia carried squirmed into the central pile without waking any of 
the others and closed its eyes.
"Click-kaw-keerrr," Bluecloak said, and it came outside with her.
Down the lane, she saw the young woman talking to one of the creatures. Ofelia's 
stomach knotted; she looked at Bluecloak, but it seemed not to care. The 
creature stood awkwardly, like a halfwit, Ofelia thought, which it was not. The 
tall man, the one in charge, stood in the lane outside the center, looking west; 
Ofelia could see nothing beyond him but the lane itself dwindling into grass. He 
turned, caught sight of her, and frowned.
"I was looking for you," he said, as if she had missed an appointment. Ofelia 
did not want to be ungracious, but there was nothing to say to that. They had 
not looked where she was; they had not called loudly enough to get her 
attention. That was not her fault. She smiled, as tension and resentment knotted 
her belly. "You need to understand how we'll go about our mission," he said, 
after a moment. "We will study and make official contact with these… indigenes. 
I'm sure you think you have already made contact, but after all you have had no 
training in this sort of thing. You were a… a what?… housewife?"
Ofelia did not correct him. Whatever she had been, on the work rolls of the 
company, that was long ago, and it made no difference. Whatever training she had 
had would mean nothing to such a one.
"It's not your responsibility, is what I'm trying to say," he went on, his face 
shining in the sun. "You did very well, I'm sure, to have gotten along 
peacefully with them, but now we're here, and we'll take it off your hands." He 
took a deep breath, as if to say more, then let it out slowly. "You do 
understand, don't you?"
She didn't understand all, but she understood enough. She didn't matter, she 
didn't count, she was nothing. Exactly right, the old voice said to her. This is 
how it is; this is how it has always been. Accept it, and they will accept you 
as what you are. Old woman. Nothing.
"And well have to figure out something…" he said vaguely, not looking at her. 
"About the machines…"
Fear chilled her. She needed the machines. "What about the machines?" she asked, 
though she was afraid she knew.
He made an impatient gesture. "Advanced technology. They shouldn't have it. They 
shouldn't even have seen it. Part of our mission was to shut it all down. I 
suppose we can find you a place somewhere—it's Sims' fault; they'll have to pay 
some kind of fine, and that should be enough for a place in some residence…"
"You mean… leave?" Her vision darkened; she forced herself to breathe. She would 
not faint in front of this person,
"Well, you can't stay here," he said, as if that were obvious. "Even if we have 
a permanent mission… there's no post for someone like—someone your age, you see. 
And the need to secure the technology, prevent cultural contamination… it will 
be difficult, even for trained personnel. You can move aboard the shuttle with 
us; then we can shut down the powerplant—"
"Not now," Ofelia said, hating the quaver in her voice that left her desire as 
vulnerable to his will as her naked skin had been to his eyes.
"Oh, not today," the man said, as if it didn't matter. "I suppose they've been 
here for some time; it's not as if we could prevent what they've already seen. 
But they can't have understood much of it, and the longer we let them have 
access, the more chance they'll learn too much. When the preliminary works done… 
then you should prepare to leave." He smiled, the wide smile of someone whose 
decisions cannot be changed. "Don't worry… uh… Sera Falfurry… we'll take care of 
you. You won't be alone any more."
He went into the center, his body swinging, satisfied with the power he'd shown. 
Ofelia could not have moved if someone had poked her; she wished she could be 
blown away in a gust of wind. She was not so lucky; no wind stirred the leaves. 
Bluecloak chirped, and she looked at it. It nodded at the departed human.
"Kuss-cough-click," it said.
"Stuck-up bossy lout," Ofelia said; she had no doubt they meant the same thing.
In her own house, alone because Bluecloak called the others out and set them as 
guards at her door, she raged silently, yanking clean sheets onto the bed, 
slamming pillows down. She would not leave. She had not left before, and she 
would not leave now. They could not make her.
They can, said the old voice. They will. They know you evaded once; you can't do 
that again.
It isn't fair, she wailed silently. I worked so hard; I did so much; it's their 
fault.
It doesn't matter, said the old voice. You are nothing to them; they have the 
power, and they will take you away. The old voice reminded her how much her 
protests sounded like those Rosara and others had made, protests she had been 
contemptuous of, back when she thought she could escape. She raged at that, too.
Finally, exhausted, she lay down and napped, waking to quiet afternoon. She 
heard voices outside, human voices; when she peeked out the front windows, the 
two women were walking along side by side, so much like her former neighbors 
that she almost called out to them.
They were not neighbors. They were enemies who would take her away. They were 
enemies who would destroy everything she had worked for, the life she had made 
for herself, the new friends she had found."
The next morning, the shorter man, Ori, appeared at her garden fence to 
interview her. He was willing to ask his questions and listen while she worked; 
he even asked intelligent questions about the varieties of beans and tomatoes 
and corn she chose to grow. Despite herself, she found it easy to tell him which 
strains had been supplied by the Company, and which the colonists had developed 
on their own.
"Then you had geneticists among you?" he asked. If he had had ears, they would 
have been pricked up, alert.
"Not… like in colleges," Ofelia said. How to explain? "They taught us all what 
they thought we could use," she said finally. "Practical things. How to choose 
the best progeny for seeds. How to repair the pumps and power plant and waste 
recycler. But they wouldn't tell us why, on most things."
"Did that bother you?" he asked, this time without much interest. Ofelia was 
surprised at her own ability to tell that; she didn't know how she knew.
"Not really," she said. "We had much to learn, and little time." It had not 
seemed like little time, all those nights in class or studying, when the 
children were small and she could have been mending or cleaning or simply 
resting. But in terms of absolute hours, they had had too much practical 
material to fit in to allow of much theoretical digression.
Ori leaned back, satisfied with her answer; she did not explain further.
"Now—the first time you saw the creatures, what did you do? What did you think? 
Did you recognize them right away?"
The first time… she had to start with the sea-storm, with her attempt to ready 
the village. That bored him, though he didn't say so; his eyes drifted away, 
seeing something else entirely, something beyond her head. When Bilong crossed 
her own view, a minute or two later, she knew what it had been.
She told of that first storm-bound afternoon and night, the first few days. At 
first he let her talk on without interruption, only urging her to continue when 
she stopped. But then he wanted to ask questions. How had she first noticed that 
they were intelligent? How did she know who was in charge? What had she learned 
of their social structure? How territorial were they?
"I don't know," she kept saying. "They don't do it like that—" Whatever it had 
been, from dividing up food to making decisions to marking rank. The more he 
asked, the more she felt she knew nothing about the creatures at all. It had 
never occurred to her to wonder if both sexes had extensible throat-sacs; she 
tried not to think about their sexes at all. When she said that, shyly, he gave 
her the smile of an adult to a backward child.
"Its all right," he said. "Anthropologists look at these things differently." 
The right way, he meant. That he was too polite to say it didn't really take the 
sting out of it. He asked more, and she told what she knew… except about the 
babies, about being Click-kaw-keerrr. She was afraid someone would harm the 
babies; she hated herself for the knowledge that humans would certainly kill 
those babies if they thought it prudent. This man himself, with his gentle 
voice, she might have trusted, except that his eyes slid too often to the young 
woman… and his rival was the tall man, the cold-eyed team leader that Ofelia did 
not trust at all.
After that one long interview, Ori did not come back. She saw him following the 
creatures around, sitting where he could watch them with a sketchpad on his 
knee. He had told her that the act of drawing sometimes taught him more than the 
best video clips. He had showed her a few of his first sketches, and she had 
admired the graceful lines, drawn surely and quickly, that did seem to capture 
the essence of the creatures' forms and movements. She would like to have seen 
his sketches of the babies, the alert way they carried their snouted heads on 
those flexible necks, the brisk swipes of their striped tails.
The team leader ignored her completely, barely nodding as he strode up and down 
the streets, in and out of most buildings. He talked endlessly into a recorder 
that hung from his belt. He seemed to be making an inventory of every item of 
human origin in the village, even to the number of tomato plants. He avoided the 
one where Gurgle-click-cough nested; Ori had insisted that humans not intrude 
when the creatures made it clear they were unwelcome.
The tall woman took short trips into the forest, collecting samples of plant 
life from the intermediate zone as well as areas of pure native growth. She set 
out fishing lines in the river, put out traps for small animals. The creatures 
watched her, with expressions that Ofelia interpreted as a mixture of avid 
curiosity and mild disgust. Ofelia did not know how to ask what she herself 
wanted to know: did they mind another hunter in their territory, and one that 
did not even eat the catch?
The young woman, Bilong, seemed to spend most of her time wandering from man to 
man; she had a recorder, and she had placed pickups in the center—Ofelia saw 
that, and assumed she had put them other places as well—to gather language 
samples. What Ofelia knew, and Bilong did not, was that the creatures knew 
exactly where the pickups were, and amused themselves by standing under them 
reciting… reciting what Ofelia suspected were merely lists, possibly even 
nonsense words. Certainly their speech then had none of the rhythm and feel that 
it had most of the time.
Ofelia went back to her old life, as much as she could, slipping across to play 
with the babies—the rapidly growing and very active babies—when the humans were 
not in evidence. Quite often they were not in evidence. She suspected the 
creatures of having something to do with that, of intervening to be sure that 
the Click-kaw-keerrr had ample time with the babies.
The babies changed faster than human babies, in those first days. In this they 
were more like young calves or lambs, quickly alert and active. Ofelia had 
always assumed that the slow early development of human babies went with their 
higher intelligence—that anything which was born able to run around was also 
born limited, close to its adult potential of wit. She remembered parenting 
classes, early-childhood-development classes, in which she was taught precisely 
this. Children took a long time to grow, because they had a long way to go; the 
human brain had to organize itself, teach itself how to learn. Other baby 
animals could be born with more behaviors wired in, because they didn't have to 
be able to learn much later.
These babies… already their high squeaks sounded speechlike. Already their busy 
four-fingered hands manipulated the stalks of grass and sprigs of herb in their 
nest. Handed empty gourds by an adult, they put in pebbles, and poured them out. 
They squabbled with each other, shoving and nipping, using their tails to hold 
one another down… but these squabbles quickly shifted into cooperative play, if 
someone offered a toy. At ten days, twenty days of age, they were more like 
children of three years.
Ofelia could not merely observe; she found herself being used as a plaything, a 
living obstacle course. The other creatures handed her the items they thought 
the babies should have: gourds, beads, pebbles, bits of string. She was the one 
who hissed disapproval when one of them wound string around its throat. It 
froze, eyes wide. Ofelia mimed strangulation, producing a guttural squawk. The 
baby blinked; the others, sitting up on legs and tail, squeaked softly. To her 
surprise, none of them tried that again.
If they were like human toddlers, then… she wondered if they could learn letters 
and numbers. If the other humans hadn't been there, she would have taken them to 
the center, would have shown them the books and the teaching computers. She 
couldn't do that now. Her conscience nagged her; she shouldn't want to do that. 
She should protect human technology from them, and them from human technology.
Water rushed into the sink, startling her out of that reverie. One of them stood 
on the long faucet of the deep sink, its talons hooked around the cold-water 
tap, pulling; the other two, braced against the wall, had pushed at the same tap 
with their feet. Now, as she watched, they reversed their force: the ones who 
had been pushing hooked their talons over and tried to pull. The one on the 
faucet tried to push… and lost its footing, to splash into the sink. Ofelia 
heaved herself up, and put her arm into the water. The talons dug in, as the 
baby climbed her arm, squeaking furiously.
So much for protection, either way. They would have to learn how to use the 
technology safely; there was no way to keep them from using it.
Although the daily sessions with the babies delighted her, Ofelia felt a steady 
weight of apprehension. Someday—some one of these hardly numbered days—the team 
leader would think they had done enough, seen enough, and would order Ofelia to 
the shuttle. She would have to leave, or die. She had not thought of any way to 
escape this time, not with her inability to eat the local food, not with the 
determination of these people to find her and bring her back. She would have to 
leave, and leave her creatures—her responsibility, the babies—to these others, 
whom she did not trust.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Contents - Prev / Next
After days of scant contact with the other humans—polite but distant greetings 
that made it clear they didn't have time to waste with an ignorant old 
woman—Ofelia noticed that she had become real to them again. She wasn't sure she 
liked it. She suspected it meant that they were finishing up their contact work, 
as they called it, and getting ready to "make a final determination" (the team 
leader's phrase) about her, and the colony, and the creatures.
The change began with slightly warmer greetings when they saw her, politely 
asking how she was, how her garden prospered. The tall woman commented on a 
necklace Ofelia had made. The stocky man told her he had discovered that 
Bluecloak was a minstrel or entertainer, a singer. The younger woman began 
hanging around Ofelia without saying much, just like a pesky child. Ofelia 
noticed that she had pilfered a necklace to wear, and that she left too many of 
her shirt buttons undone. After a few days of hovering that nearly drove Ofelia 
to rudeness, she actually began a conversation. She asked how Ofelia had taught 
the creatures to speak.
Ofelia explained, as well as she could. She had tried to teach them as she had 
taught babies—human babies, she repeated, though Bilong didn't know about the 
others.
"That's not how you teach a language," the woman said. "I know you probably 
thought you taught your children to talk, but human children don't have to be 
taught—they just learn." Bilong was trying to be polite. Ofelia could tell that, 
just as she could tell that the woman was treating her with exaggerated 
patience, as if she were a naughty child. She herself tried not to resent the 
rudeness which was not intended.
"Some do," Ofelia conceded. Most, probably. But had any mother ever been able to 
resist teaching?
"All of them," Bilong said, emphasizing it, "—all human children learn to talk 
on their own, because they're designed to speak human language."
Ofelia wished she could remember how to do what she had done for so many years, 
remove herself from the talk and let it pass by, but it was impossible to put 
that chicken back in the egg. "Sara's child," she heard herself saying, even as 
the old, cautious voice implored her to keep quiet. "It couldn't talk, no matter 
what."
"I meant normal children," the woman said, less patiently "But these are aliens, 
Ofelia—I can call you Ofelia, can't I?"
A girl from this neighborhood has no business getting a swelled head, her father 
had said. Pride goes before damnation, someone had said. The tall stalk asks for 
the knife. You are nothing.
"Sera Ofelia," she said, with the least emphasis.
"Oh—Sarah? I'm sorry; I thought you were called Ofelia." The woman seemed 
confused, but willing. Her accent, Ofelia realized, meant that she could not 
hear the difference between the name Sara and the title Sera. Nor had she paid 
attention when the stocky man addressed her correctly as Sera Falfurrias. Ofelia 
did not enlighten her. She waited, hoping her face would remember the bland 
expressions that had kept her out of trouble before.
"Sarah," the linguist said. "Let me explain about alien languages." Ofelia 
waited in silence, but her mind crackled with comments. "They aren't like human 
languages," the linguist went on. Oh really? Did she think Ofelia hadn't 
noticed? "Since their biological nature is different, the very structure of 
their brains—if we can call them brains, which is doubtful—determines a 
different structure of language."
Ofelia repressed a snort with difficulty: Whatever the brain had to do with 
language, some of the messages would have to be the same. I'm hungry, feed me. 
I'm hurt, comfort me. Come here. Go away. OUCH. Do it again. What is that and 
how does it work?
"They may not intend any of the same meanings," the linguist said, completing 
the picture of an idiot. Prudence lost out; she had been too long free to speak 
her mind, if only to herself. "They have to say some of the same things," she 
said. "If they're hungry. If they hurt."
The younger woman's eyebrows went up. "Well… there are a few nearly universal 
messages. But those are least interesting; even a nonlanguage species may have 
vocalizations associated with hunger or pain. Besides, in the languages we know, 
these aren't expressed the same way. The goetiae, for instance, actually say 'my 
sap dries' when they mean I'm hungry,' and in one dialect of your language—" The 
linguist said "your language" as if it were particularly silly. "—the South 
Naryan, I think it is, no one ever says 'I hurt'—they always use the form 'it 
pains me.'"
Ofelia rubbed her foot a little backwards and forwards on the ground, reminding 
herself of that reality. She had never heard of the goetiae—were they 
aliens?—but she had had an aunt who was South Naryan, and she knew perfectly 
well that her aunt said "I hurt myself' when she fell over something. Did this 
linguist say "I hurt" when she had a backache? Or did she say, more sensibly, 
"My back hurts"? She thought of a question she could ask.
"How many alien languages do you know?"
The woman flushed. "Well… actually… not any. Not truly alien, that is. No ones 
ever found one. This will be the first." As if Ofelia had said what she was 
thinking, the linguist hurried on. "Of course, we practiced with computer 
generated languages. The neural modelers created alien networks, and we 
practiced with the languages they generated."
Ofelia kept her face blank. She understood what that meant: they had created 
machines that talked machine languages, and from this they thought they had 
learned how to understand alien languages. Stupid. Machines would not think like 
aliens, but like machines. The creatures were not machines—very far from it.
But the linguist was leaning closer, confiding now, as if Ofelia were a favorite 
aunt or grandmother.
She did not want to be Bilongs mother, or her grand-mother. She had done with 
these roles, with being a good child, a good wife, a good mother. She had put 
seventy-odd years into it; she had worked hard at it; now she wanted to be that 
Ofelia who painted and carved and sang in an old cracked voice with strange 
creatures and their stranger music. The role the creatures had given her was 
more than enough.
"It's all this tension," the linguist was saying. "I probably shouldn't be 
telling you this—" Then don't, Ofelia thought. Don't tell me. I don't want to 
hear it. "—but you're wise, even if you don't have an education." The arrogance 
in that almost yanked a reply from her, but she managed to squeeze it back. Wise 
even if she had no education? What did wisdom have to do with education? 
Besides, she had an education; she had spent hours studying, nights and early 
mornings studying, long before this child was born. This… this chit of a girl 
who hadn't known how to repair the pumps, who had blithely walked between a cow 
and her calf.
"The thing is," the girl went on, in happy unawareness of Ofelia's thoughts, 
"they don't like each other and never have. So they're using me as an excuse. 
One says I'm flirting, and the other one says I'm not flirting, and—"
"Are you flirting?" Ofelia asked. She thought so; why else wear that perfume? 
Why else swing her ripe young body back and forth like fruit on a vine, every 
motion declaring her readiness to be picked and eaten?
"Of course not." A flounce, an outraged glance. Just like Linda, who had always 
denied with her mouth while proclaiming with her hips. But this was not Linda. 
"Well… maybe. But not seriously, you know. It's not like your culture, you 
know." Again that gentle condescension. "We don't have the same rules—" As if 
human biology would shift aside for her convenience, as if men were not animals 
born to respond to smells and motions. "I do rather like one of them, and 
there's no reason he shouldn't know it. But that's not really flirting."
"Do you have sex with him?" Ofelia asked. The girl flushed and scowled,
"It's none of your—" She stopped abruptly and her face changed, as if someone 
had wiped a thumb across clay. "Oh, hi Kira. How's the tech survey going?"
Ofelia looked up at the other woman. Older, warier, than the young one, but 
still young to Ofelia. She was angry about something; Ofelia suspected it was 
the girl's antics.
"There's a staff meeting in twenty minutes, Bilong, and you're supposed to have 
the preliminary analysis ready—"
"I can't—it's too soon—all I can do is discuss the raw data—"
"Then do that." Kira stood there, as threatening as a sea-storm wall cloud until 
the younger woman got up and walked away, her shoulders stiff.
"You are angry?" Ofelia said. She leaned back against the sun-warmed wall and 
hoped she looked old and stupid.
"She is not supposed to waste her time talking to you," Kira said. "She has work 
to do." Ofelia waited. She had seen just this maneuver in older children who 
chased young ones away. What they really wanted was their own chance at the 
mother or grandmother.
Kira sighed, the kind of dramatic sigh that meant she too was going to confide. 
Ofelia let her eyelids sag almost shut. Maybe she would change her mind if 
Ofelia looked stupid enough.
"You're not a chatterbox," Kira said. Mistake, This woman had wanted a safe 
confidant, and for that purpose stupid and quiet would do well enough. Ofelia 
opened her eyes but it was too late to pretend alert garrulity. Kira's mouth 
quirked. "And I don't think you're half so dim as you pretend, either A stupid 
woman couldn't have survived alone so long." Good observation, if unflattering. 
Just once, Ofelia would have liked people to see her as she was, not as their 
ideas painted her.
She looked at Kira, the short hair so carefully shaped that it must be a style 
of some sort, the smooth young-woman skin just showing the first lines of age. 
Who was this person, really? "I don't think I'm stupid," she said.
Kiras eyes widened, then narrowed
"No. I can see that. What I can't see is why you chose to stay behind."
"No," Ofelia said, mimicing Kiras intonation, "I can see you don't. But you are 
too young."
"You didn't want to die aboard the ship, in suspension?"
Ofelia shrugged, annoyed. They always came back to death, these young ones; they 
were obsessed with it. She tried again to explain. "It was not about death. It 
was about life. If I stayed, I would be alone—"
"But no one can survive isolation," Kira said, interrupting Ofelia as she had 
done before, as they had all done. "You must have been terribly lonely. It's 
lucky for you that the indigenes showed up when they did."
It would do no good to argue that she had not been lonely. She had tried that, 
and they had looked at her with such pity, and such certainty.
"Perhaps I am crazy," Ofelia said.
"Your psych profile didn't show anything before," Kira said. So they had snooped 
into her personnel file, something she had never done herself. Again the slow 
anger burned. What right had they? They were not her people: not family, not 
friends, not fellow colonists, not even someone she had gone to for help. "Its 
not… normal," Kira said. "Wanting to be the only human on the whole world—that's 
not normal."
"So I am not normal," Ofelia said. Silence would not work with this one; she 
knew that already.
"But why?"
Ofelia shrugged. "You did not like my answers before; you told me I didn't 
understand. Should I tell you the truth I know, or try to guess the untruth you 
want?"
Kira's eyes widened. Surprise, the old lady has teeth. "You don't have to be 
so—so vehement. I only wondered." She sounded offended. Fine. Let her be 
offended."I wanted to be alone. I had not been alone for years. It didn't bother 
me to be alone as a child, and it didn't bother me this time either."
Kira gave her perfect haircut a little shake, warding off that understanding. 
"Was it because your husband and children had died here? And you felt close to 
them?"
Ofelia sighed, and pushed herself away from the wall, standing slowly. These 
people felt almost as alien as the creatures, and they had less interest in 
understanding her. "If you don't listen, you can't hear," she said, tugging her 
ear for emphasis. They would make up their own minds anyway, and nothing she 
said would change that.
She walked away, around the far end of her house, and out into the meadow. Kira 
followed her a few steps, bleating something incomprehensible. Then she fell 
behind. Ofelia did not turn to look, but she could feel Kira's stare on her 
shoulderblades.
Out among the sheep, the blessedly silent sheep, who ignored her at this time of 
day, Ofelia hid in plain sight from the other humans. She used the basket she 
had brought to gather sheep droppings. She spread them along the outer margins 
of the meadow, supporting the terraforming grasses with their mix of bacteria 
and fungi, maintaining the meadows boundaries.
The newcomers hated the droppings, hated anything that smelled alive: "stank of 
organics," is how they put it. They wanted nothing to do with her while she was 
doing work they considered dirty. After that first rapture over fresh tomatoes, 
they had recoiled from the discovery that she did not sterilize the sheep and 
cow manure, the kitchen garbage, that went into the compost trench and then into 
the soil. They accepted no more tomatoes, and refused the cooling fruit 
drink—although they would pick fruit themselves, and then scrub it in the 
kitchen sink in the center.
She was tired of the newcomers' silliness about dirt, tired of their busyness, 
tired of the way they interrupted her without apology, talked as long as they 
wanted to, and then walked off, leaving her as casually as they would leave a 
building. She was behind in her garden work; she could not enjoy sewing or 
crocheting or making jewelry when at any moment someone might come interrupt 
her, with that expression which meant they thought she was especially silly to 
be making things now, when she would have to leave. They seemed to go out of 
their way to make her feel unimportant.
The contrast between their behavior and that of the creatures could not be 
ignored. The old voice, smug in its certainty, told her that was to be expected. 
She could mean nothing to the humans; they knew how to rate humans, and she came 
at the bottom. The creatures could not know. They might like her because she had 
been their first human; they might value her for the novelty. Whatever the 
reason for their respect, they could not value her for anything important; they 
didn't know what was important.
In the sun's heat, the droppings had dried quickly; Ofelia did not mind picking 
them up, although the stooping bothered her. Her head hurt now only when she 
bent over, as if all the blood rushed into that swollen knob and pulsed there. 
Maybe it did. The shirt she wore pulled across the shoulders. The old voice told 
her how old she was, how weak, how useless. The new voice said nothing, but 
lived like a cold knot in her heart. She tried to ignore the old voice, and kept 
on working. Maybe if she stayed away from the other humans, the new voice would 
speak to her again. She missed it.
A shadow, a blur of motion; one of the creatures. She looked up, attempted the 
chest grunt of greeting, and got one in return. This creature wore one of her 
necklaces draped over its own accouterments. When it had her attention, it 
tapped the basket and gurgled its question. This one rarely attempted human 
speech.
"Sheep droppings," Ofelia said, as if the words had been clear. "For the grass. 
It feeds the grass."
The creature moved slowly to one of the sheep, which lifted its head to stare. 
Even more slowly, the creature leaned down, yanked loose a tuft of grass, and 
offered it to the sheep. The sheep accepted it docilely and its narrow jaw 
worked back and forth. The creature touched the sheep's throat, then lightly ran 
its hand down the body to the rump. Ofelia could follow that: food goes in here, 
and goes through… When the creature tried to lift the sheep's tail, the sheep 
yanked away and moved off briskly. The creature gaped its mouth at 
Ofelia—laughter? annoyance?—and then pointed at the sheep's rump, then droppings 
on the ground.
"Yes," said Ofelia, nodding vigorously.
The creature turned to her, presenting its own rump, and lifted the decorative 
kilt to point to an unmistakable orifice. Ofelia looked away. She didn't really 
want to see what a creature hole looked like, but she had already registered 
that it had the predictable puckered appearance.
"Yes," she said. "It comes out a hole in the back." They must know that, from 
their observations of her; she suspected them of watching at times when she had 
been unaware of it. She hoped they could get off this topic quickly, but the 
creatures had a way of sticking to something as long as it interested them. They 
should know this already; it had been impossible, in the early days, to keep 
them from knowing what happened when she used the toilet. This one had come with 
Bluecloak, so perhaps it had never seen… but it should have known, from talking 
to the others. She knew they discussed her.
"Utter uhoo," the creature said. Other you meant the other humans; none of the 
creatures would attempt the word human."What about the others?" Ofelia asked. 
She had become used to the creatures understanding more of her speech than she 
did of theirs.
It pointed to its mouth, then her mouth… its rump and then the sheep droppings.
"Oh—you mean you wonder if the other humans do this too?" What a silly question. 
Of course they did. She nodded vigorously. "Yes. They do."
"Nott ksee," the creature said. Ofelia thought about it. The other humans still 
lived in the shelters they'd set up down at the shuttle field; they had moved 
out of the shuttle itself only in the past few days. So perhaps the creatures 
had never seen them eat or excrete.
Now the creature tapped its nose, and sniffed elaborately. "Nnnott sssane." 
Ofelia understood that as "smells crazy," which made no sense in terms of what 
they had been talking about. The creature tried again. "Utter uhoo—" then a big 
sniff, "—nnot saamp." Sane… saamp… same. Other yous smell not same? Yes, that 
could be it.
Ofelia gestured to reinforce her own words. "You think the other humans smell… 
not like me? Not the same?"
"Eeeyess." It touched her shirt, then its own kilt and belts. "Nnnott saamp 
klote-ss."
True enough, the others didn't wear the same clothes; they wore long-sleeved 
billowy shirts and long pants, shoes, all in muted colors.
"Saamp utter uhoose purrrt nessstt passs." The same as other yous—other humans 
who purrrt—burnt?—nest-something. Burrrt sounded close to hurt. Ofelia set the 
basket down to have the use of both hands. Had those luckless colonists hurt the 
creatures' nests? Was that why they'd been attacked?
"Burrrt?" She mimed pounding, kicking.
The creature looked around, as if confused. Then it said "Hah-ahttt. Purrrt 
aaakss hah-ahtt." Hot. Purrrt makes hot.
"Burn!" Astonishment and horror both hit at once. Where had it learned the word 
"burn"? Had she used it, in warning of the hot stoves? She couldn't remember. 
And the other humans had burned the nests? Burned the babies?
She thought of the mechbots dropping out of the sky to scrape away whatever 
grew, to make the flat landing place for shuttles… if that had been nests, if it 
had caught fire from the mechbot exhausts, or perhaps they even fired the heaps 
of grass and roots… and nestlings.
She knew her face must be a mask of horror, and the creature stared at her, 
recognizing her shock.
"Utter uhoo," it said again, this time with a decisive jerk of the head. "Nnnott 
saamp. Nnnott… " and it rattled off a quick sequence of its own language, in 
which Ofelia thought she heard click-kaw-keerrr.
However bad they were, these humans had not destroyed the creatures' nests and 
children. She had to defend them. But she couldn't figure out how to unmake that 
confusion—not confusion, she realized now, but settled antagonism. And why 
hadn't Bluecloak told her, when it was teaching her, learning from her, when she 
had played it the tapes of the other colony's death?
Had it been a wish to spare her pain, or a deeper mistrust?
"Click-kaw-keerrr," she said, that being the word which usually settled them. 
"Gurgle-click-cough?"
The creature touched her head, delicately. "Uhoo kud click-kaw-keerrr."
She might be a good click-kaw-keerrr, but she still didn't know all her 
responsibilities… responsibilities to both people, she thought suddenly. She 
didn't want this—they weren't going to listen to her—but she could not leave the 
humans ignorant of what she'd learned. She needed to find out more first, 
though, and that meant finding the best source.
"Bluecloak?" she asked the creature. "Where is Bluecloak?"
It tipped its head toward the forest—the forest? What was Bluecloak doing in the 
forest? The most likely thing was hunting, and although Ofelia no longer feared 
the long knives for herself, she didn't really want to see Bluecloak butchering 
treeclimbers. But the creature with her had started walking that way, and Ofelia 
followed. She dumped her basket of sheep droppings at the edge of the meadow, 
and stepped carefully through the taller weeds and scrubby growth in the 
intermediate ground.
She had intended to visit the forest more when she lived alone, but she had 
always been too busy in the village. After seeing the hunt, that time, she had 
not wanted to go in among the tall trees with the creatures. Now, it felt no 
different from following the creature anywhere. Cooler, perhaps. She watched the 
creature move, its high-stepping gait constrained in the forest by the coils of 
roots and vines. It led her a way she had no reason to know, but when they came 
to the place where she had sheltered, she recognized it as if she had left it 
only the day before. There was the fallen log, there the curve of root where she 
had put her sack of food.
And there were the creatures she knew, nearly all of them. Bluecloak, formally 
cloaked. Gurgle-click-cough. Her three babies, hedged about with the bodies of 
four creatures, who had stretched out to form a living playpen within which the 
babies tumbled and sprawled. They squeaked when they saw Ofelia, and staggered 
over to someone's legs, where they bounced up and down on feet that seemed 
bigger every day.
As Bluecloak greeted Ofelia, she saw two of the creatures slip away, back toward 
the village. Long knives gleamed in their hands. Had they planned a massacre—? 
She would have gone, but Bluecloak had her hands,
"Nnnott killll," it said, as if it had read her thoughts. Her expression, most 
likely; human faces were so mobile, so flexible, "Nnot killll utter uhoo. 
Yahtch." Not kill, but watch. Keep them away from this meeting, which the 
creatures had carefully held far from the scanners and recorders that had been 
planted all over the village by the industrious Bilong.
Ofelia realized that the one who had talked to her in the sheep meadow must have 
been waiting for that chance. She wanted to know how long—surely they had been 
in the village the day before—but that was not the most important question.
Bluecloak's throat-sac swelled abruptly, and it began thrumming. Soon they all 
were, fingers and toes and bodies, in a complex of rhythms that had the babies 
lurching from one side of their enclosure to another, their little feet 
twitching first in one rhythm then another. Finally it all steadied; Ofelia 
could feel it all through her body, could feel her own toes tapping, her own 
heart slowing to match the left-hand drumming that meant concord.
Then silence, abrupt, into which the babies' squeaks sounded loud. Ofelia put 
out her hand to them, and they ran to her, licking her wrist, grabbing with 
their little fingers, so much weaker still than their toes, though apt for 
manipulating everything they got hold of. The talons felt like tiny pins.
When Bluecloak spoke, Ofelia could hardly believe it. He sounded exactly like 
Vasil Likisi, down to the accent and the pomposity. "I have been empowered by 
the government…" He stopped, and rattled off a long string in his own language. 
Ofelia stared.
"But you—"
Now in the voice she knew, the one which changed some sounds of human tongue, 
"It izh kud cahpih?"
Better than a good copy; better than some recordings Ofelia had heard. "You can… 
can you do that all the time?"
"Nnno. Cahpih foyss, eehess, hut he ssay. Ssay die thoughtss, aaakss utter 
ssondss."
Ofelia did not understand. If he could copy Likisi'svoice so exactly, even to 
the accent and tone, why couldn't he say the words right when he said his own 
thoughts? For the first time, she had something to ask Bilong—assuming Bilong 
would listen, and then understand the question—but she didn't have Bilong handy.
Bluecloak didn't wait for her to understand. It went on, now uttering a phrase 
in Kira Stavi's voice, and another in the flat monotone the military advisors 
murmured into their suit mics. Finally it repeated the song Ofelia had sung to 
the babies, in a voice she realized must be hers, though it sounded breathier, 
more like an old woman's voice than she heard it inside. She had never heard her 
voice recorded. Maybe she did sound like that, and Bluecloak had been accurate 
with the others.
"Do you understand all that?" Ofelia asked. "Or just—
"Eehess," Bluecloak said. "Know peeninks." The meanings, he meant, but how? How 
could he understand so much, when she had learned so little of their language? 
She had known they were smart, but this—Bilong had made such a fuss about how 
hard it was to learn other languages, even human language families.
"All of you?" Ofelia asked.
"Alll know. Nnnott all tsay."
If they understood it all—they couldn't really, but if they did, if they thought 
they did—then what they had heard, in these last decems, must have given them a 
very… strange… idea of humans.
Ofelia sat on the pillow one of them produced from behind the log. Her mind ran 
from one corner of her brain to another like the babies now playing chase in 
their playpen. How long had they understood? How much? And why this meeting now? 
What were they planning? What would they expect her to do?
One of the babies squeaked, trying to climb adult legs to get to her. 
Gurgle-click-cough picked it up, licked its neck, and handed it to Ofelia. She 
cradled it, letting it lick the insides of both wrists, and then curl into a 
ball on her lap.
"Ahee," said Bluecloak, pointing to itself. "Thry aaakss clearrr tub uhoo hut he 
hoo-ahnt." Ofelia found she understood this much easily; she was reshaping the 
words almost without thought to the sounds she knew. They wanted to make clear 
to her what they wanted? That was what she most wanted to know, right now… and 
then she could find out more.
Only occasionally in the next few hours, did she have to ask Bluecloak to repeat 
or clarify what it said; the combination of near-human language and gestures 
conveyed more complicated meanings than she had thought possible. Much as she 
disliked the team members, she kept thinking that they should be here instead of 
her—or with her. They had the education, the training, to understand what she 
struggled to grasp. She was being given the knowledge they had come so far to 
obtain, knowledge the creatures still withheld (they made that clear) from the 
team.
"You should tell them," she argued, early in the session. "They're… official." 
How could she explain official? How could she explain that no one would listen 
to her, that she was nothing in that social order? But Bluecloak interrupted 
firmly. They would tell her, and she must pay attention, She could do nothing 
else,
Ori would be intrigued by the creatures' social structure, she thought, the 
combination of nomadic hunting and herding for most adults with permanent, safe 
child-rearing locations in which the young, protected from predators and the 
rigors of migration, could be tutored as well as protected by the wisest of the 
adults. The special positions within the troops: singer-to-strangers, war 
leader, wayfinder, and click-kaw-keerrr.
Then the loose confederacy of most troops, the constant testing of opinion with 
right and left-hand drumming. They had no concept of disobedience; dissent could 
always leave, with any who drummed the same rhythm, and the world itself defined 
error and right.
Now Bluecloak explained more about her special position and his. 
Click-kaw-keerrr: more than aunt, a combination midwife, infant nurse, preschool 
and elementary teacher… and protector. Singer-to-strangers: those who made 
contact with other troops, and negotiated the sharing of lands and duties, 
bringing the drumming into the left hand if possible.
Kira and Ori both would have wanted to hear about the creatures' understanding 
of their world's living beings… how they classified the plants and animals, how 
they had learned to use them, how they bred their grass-eating herd animals, how 
they replanted the ruined nestmass.
Ofelia realized that she was dividing what Bluecloak said into what this one and 
that would like to know—but Bluecloak wasn't thinking that way. To Bluecloak, 
all "mind-hunting" was the same, each scent-trail leading to a different prey, 
but all the same in the joy of the hunt. She remembered how even the first of 
them had seemed so eager to learn, like young children before they are taught 
that most curiosity is idle, useless.
She pulled her mind back to what Bluecloak was saying. For a people like this, 
there could be no single government; nothing they did, in fact, resembled 
anything she knew about governments. Bluecloak sang for some large fraction of 
the People (she heard the capital of that now, and accepted it) who roamed the 
plains, but singing for them did not mean ruling them. And while Bluecloak had 
sung to (different from singing for) some of the People who lived on the stone 
coast, this did not mean that agreement had come.
Ofelia had to hear more about the people on the stone coast; the humans, when 
asked, had cut her off. Bluecloak explained, and in the process Ofelia 
understood why the idea of water and electricity in pipes had come easily to 
them. Their People ran water, other liquids, and particulates like sand in pipes 
of wood and hollow reeds, and brewed things in gourds made of clay or burnt 
sand. They had no electricity—yet—and their water pumps ran on water or foot 
power… but the idea of pumped water was not strange to them, even to the nomads.
But the core of what Bluecloak wanted to say had to do with the colony that had 
destroyed their nestmass, and which they had killed in shocked revenge… and 
these new humans, who had come because of that, who now wanted to make their 
rules for the People, what they could learn and what they could not. 
Nestmass—which meant, Ofelia thought, the nestlings and nest-guards as well as 
the nests themselves—were untouchable in the People's own culture.
Bluecloak understood—they all understood—that perhaps the strange monsters from 
the sky hadn't known what they destroyed. But that was an excuse no 
click-kaw-keerrr would accept from a nestling. To see the end of a deed in its 
beginning was the prime virtue—to lay a trap where only prey, not allies, 
walked, was the first lesson of the stalker. In all the lessons of hunting that 
continued: go hungry rather than kill and eat the last mother of the prey. Go 
thirsty rather than take water of the those who will be eaten. Leave sweet 
fruits on the tree for the climbers you hunt.
Ofelia understood that, but not the lengths to which the People took it. She had 
no training in logic; she had been taught only enough math to use the necessary 
manuals and work the necessary machines. She remembered seeing Bluecloak hunched 
over the old math textbooks; now it held one out, pointing to a long proof. 
That, it explained to her, was easy; its People thought in longer and more 
winding trails than that.
"But you…" There was no way to say tactfully that for such smart people, they 
hadn't got very far. No real cities—well, she hadn't seen the ones of the stone 
coast yet. But no vehicles, no big machines—she remembered something from the 
doomed colony tape about a catapult that threw something explosive. No big metal 
machines, no mechbots. No computers.
"Papiess," Bluecloak said. If she understood him, if he understood what had 
happened, they considered themselves a young People, almost babies. They had 
once been other, only ten or twenty generations back. With the math book, with 
stones laid out in rows, Bluecloak conveyed that their recent ancestors could 
think along only few-step chains, whereas they could think along many-step 
chains. Something had happened; they didn't know what. Someday they would figure 
it out, but in the meantime, they had other things to deal with.
Such as intrusive humans who wanted to set limits to their learning. Which 
brought them back to nest-guardians.
The good nest-guardians, Bluecloak explained, wanted the nestlings to learn all 
they could about everything, to be ready for—eager for—new things. Bad 
nest-guardians wanted to make life easy on themselves by keeping the nestlings 
content with sameness. These humans, Bluecloak said slowly, watching Ofelia's 
face. They destroyed nestmass. Now they want to keep us from learning new 
things. They are bad nest-guardians. Not like you. And they do not properly 
respect you. It sounded as if these were equally bad.
Ofelia thought of all the times she had resented the questions her children 
asked, the times she had resented the intrusive curiosity of the creatures. She 
had been snubbed that way herself; she had been kept from learning all she 
could. Once she had believed that necessary. You couldn't let children waste 
their time that way; they would never learn discipline if they weren't made to 
learn what they needed. In her memory she saw the bright faces, the sparkling 
eyes, heard the eager voices… and she remembered how they had changed, how she 
had changed, all that curiosity and eagerness settling into a mold of passive 
obedience, more or less sullen depending on how much the child had to abandon.
"I was not a good nest-guardian for my children," she said. The baby in her lap 
stirred, and grabbed her thumb with both its hands. She looked down, and stroked 
the line of knobs along its back.
She was a good nest-guardian now, Bluecloak said. And mothers were not 
nest-guardians anyway. Only the old, those who were no longer nesting mothers, 
who understood things, were nest-guardians. Perhaps she had not had the right 
nest-guardians to help her.
"Not fathers?"
"Nnott" No more explanation. Qfelia could see where mothers—grandmothers—if they 
were still physically strong and able, would know things about babies and 
children that the men she knew would not. But these were not human, and she 
could not assume that their fathers had limitations. If they even had fathers… 
Bluecloak had still not explained how they reproduced.
They trusted Ofelia, Bluecloak went on. She was a nest-guardian; she had proved 
herself so with Gurgle-click-cough's nesting; the nestlings accepted her. 
Bluecloak could sing for her, but only the nest-guardian could make the 
agreement when all the People could not drum together, because of distance.
"Agreement?"
"Or not agreement" What followed took her breath away; she felt as if she'd been 
hit in the chest. She was their nest-guardian; the People would deal with other 
humans only through her. She must make the other humans understand this, now 
that she understood.
"But that won't work. They won't listen to me. Besides, they say I must leave," 
Ofelia said. "They say they will take me when they go."
"NO!" All of them, throat-sacs expanded. The baby in her lap came wide awake, 
wrapped legs and tail around her arm, and squeaked loudly. She soothed it 
automatically with her other hand.
"I don't want to go," Ofelia said. "I want to stay. That's why I stayed before, 
but—" But she was only one old woman, and they were four strong younger adults, 
and two military advisors, and the pilot—they could carry her off kicking and 
screaming, if it came to that. Or just give her a shot, put her to sleep, and 
she would wake up—if she did—somewhere else.
"Nnot go!" Bluecloak said loudly. "Ssstopp tim."
Were they saying they would protect her? Looking at them, she did not doubt they 
would try. But had they believed anything she'd told them of the humans' 
weapons? Bright as they were, they would have no chance against those chunky 
firearms the military advisors carried, the weaponry mounted on the shuttle 
itself, let alone what the ship aloft might have. She didn't want them to die 
for her; she wasn't worth it.
She tried to say that, and Bluecloak hissed; so did all the babies, like a 
multiple leak in an air line, three slightly different notes.
She was worth it; she was their nest-guardian, and the nest-guardian was the 
most important position the People had. All the eyes, adult and baby, stared at 
her as the toes drummed agreement. She: nest-guardian. She: important. Tears 
burned her eyes; she had never felt such affirmation.
The toes stilled, and Bluecloak went on, as if explaining one plus one to a 
small child. What she had to do was make those other humans understand. They 
must let the People learn; they must help the People learn; they must be 
respectful of Ofelia and all nest guardians, and all nestmass. And the People 
would deal only with Ofelia… if Ofelia were taken away, they would not deal at 
all.
Demands Ofelia understood, though she was not used to them from this direction. 
The creatures—the People—had been so reasonable before, so childlike… she pushed 
that thought back. Children demanded; she had demanded, when she was a child. 
The part of her that stayed behind had not been the oldest part, but the child 
part, the part determined to get its own way, to grow its own way… or, as these 
People would say, hunt its own scent-trail.
She could imagine how the team members—especially pompous Likisi—would react to 
all this. They were supposed to listen to her, to the person they thought of as 
a nuisance, almost an embarrassment? Her old voice embroidered this design at 
length, as the People sat waiting for her response. She had no education; she 
had no profession; she had no powerful family She was bringing a message they 
would not want to hear; neither messenger nor message would please them, and she 
would be the one to take the brunt of their displeasure. They would laugh at 
her; they would be angry; they would ignore her.
The baby in her lap sat up, and tapped its right foot. She glanced down, and it 
stared at her, still tapping the right foot. Disagreement. Dissent. What was it 
disagreeing with? The bright eyes stared into hers, unblinking. Ofelia sighed.
This time, with this child, she would do it right. This time she would give what 
she had never really wanted to withhold. "You," she said to the baby, feeling a 
red smile relaxing her face. "You want me to do the impossible, don't you?"
Now it blinked, once, and the left foot drummed. Impossible. Do it. It couldn't 
possibly understand; it was only days old. But other humans thought she couldn't 
possibly understand, because she was too old, too stupid. Maybe all the humans 
were wrong—she about this child, the others about her. But these are aliens, the 
old voice argued. No. These were people, people with babies and children and 
grandmothers who took care of the babies, and she could not refuse the eagerness 
in those bright eyes, the desire in those little taloned hands.
It was impossible, it was all impossible, and she might as well get on with it. 
Impossible things didn't get done by sitting around in the shade playing with 
children.
Nonetheless, before she left, she played with all three of them, even bending 
down so they could explore her hair, which seemed to fascinate them most.



CHAPTER NINETEEN
Contents - Prev / Next
When she got back to the village, in the hot afternoon, she still couldn't quite 
believe what had happened. The old voice insisted she couldn't possibly do what 
the creatures wanted. She had no talent, no training, no letters after her name. 
She was too old, too stupid, too ignorant. She closed her eyes a moment, and the 
babies' golden eyes stared at her from the darkness behind her eyelids. She had 
promised the babies… she, the click-kaw-keerrr. She had to do it, possible or 
not.
She could not even find the team members at first. They weren't in the center, 
or in the lane. They hadn't been in the sheep meadow, and she didn't see them in 
the part of the river meadow visible from the lane angle. She looked into a few 
houses, but saw no one. It was too hot to walk all the lanes, look into all the 
houses and gardens. Could they be eating or resting in their own shelter? Ofelia 
walked down the lane, and saw the military advisors hunched over one of the old 
rusty trucks. One of them spotted her and nudged the other. They both stared.
She didn't like to turn her back on them; they made her uneasy enough when they 
were in front of her. She came nearer, slowly, cautiously. She wasn't even sure 
which one had hit her. They were both so big, so much the same shape, and their 
expressions seemed fixed in wary contempt.
"What do you want?" one of them said, when she was close enough. He spoke 
loudly, as if he thought she was deaf.
"I wanted to speak to one of them," she said. "Ser Likisi, or—"
"They're not here," the man said shortly, cutting her off. He turned back to the 
truck.
"Do you know when—" Ofelia began; again he interrupted, this time without 
looking at her.
"No. They don't tell me their schedule." After a moment, she realized he was not 
angry with her, but with the others. He didn't like them. She had suspected that 
before, but she had seen these men only in company with the others, where they 
would naturally mask their feelings. "I'm sorry to have bothered you," Ofelia 
said formally. That got another look, this time of mild surprise, from both men.
"Its nothing," the other man said, not as loudly. "Was there anything else?"
"No," Ofelia said. "I just wanted to talk to them." But curiosity held her. 
"What are you doing to the truck? Do you want to use it?"
They both laughed. "No, grandma," said the second one. "It's past that. But 
bossyboots told us to dismantle the engines, just in case those lizards could 
learn to use them."
Ofelia blinked. Bossyboots? Was that Ser Likisi, who certainly deserved that or 
a worse nickname, or Sera Stavi? And lizards? Was that how they saw the 
creatures?
"Shut up!" said the other one. He glared at Ofelia. "You won't go telling our 
noble leader what we call him, will you." It was not a question, but a command. 
His voice was heavy with threat.
"No," Ofelia said. "I won't tell him." Nor would she tell these two how much she 
agreed with them… or should she? "He's very… sure of himself," she said, making 
it obvious that she could have said it another way. The two men looked at each 
other and laughed.
"You could say that," the milder one said. "You don't like him either? He was a 
Sims corpsucker, I heard; switched to government work when he got his ass in a 
crack—"
"Kedrick!"
"Never mind, Bo, this little grandma isn't going to tell any tales. She doesn't 
like lickspittle Likisi any better than we do, do you?" Ofelia grinned, but said 
nothing. Interesting how little humans varied, from one organization to another. 
She had heard comments like this before, from disgruntled colonist-trainees. 
"Want a little… refreshment?" the man asked her, miming a drink.
It had to mean something contraband; they would have something illegal, all such 
men did. She remembered how quickly after the colony's Company advisors left 
someone had rigged a still to make alcohol from whatever they grew. She 
remembered the arguments, the fights, the smashing of one still, and the quick 
reappearance of foul-tasting fiery liquid passed from one to another in little 
flasks…
"I'm too old," she said, but she smiled at them. Men like this—she had known men 
like this all her life, even though these men would not have recognized the 
resemblance. "But thank you," she said. One did not dare to act superior to men 
who dosed themselves with illegal substances.
"'S all right, grandma," the loud one said. "Just you don't go tellin' peerless 
leader, huh?"
"Of course not," Ofelia said. "Not that he listens to me anyway."
They regarded her tolerantly. Clearly she was no threat, and she was behaving 
just as an ignorant old woman should. "Of course he doesn't listen to you," the 
quiet one—Bo?—said. "He's the team leader, isn't he? He doesn't listen to 
anybody but maybe the oversoul of the universe—"
Ofelia wanted to ask if anyone still believed in that, but she knew better. 
Never ask about religion; it makes people angry.
"I guess you had it good, here by yourself?" the quiet one went on. "All the 
machines working, all the food for yourself, huh?"
"It was very quiet," Ofelia said. "But yes, the machines made it easier."
"That bitch Kira said you were mucking about with the official log. Writing 
stories or something? Were you some kind of writer or something before they sent 
you here?"
Ofelia shook her head. "No, Serin. I did not write anything before. The log—I 
was reading it, and it seemed boring, just names and dates. I thought no one 
would ever see."
"So you spiced it up. Kira says you put in about love affairs and stuff—"
Ofelia realized that he wanted to read it… that he wanted to hear about the 
sneaking around, the betrayals, the fights… and yet he had no excuse. She 
grinned, an intentionally complicit grin, the dirty-minded old woman to the 
dirty-minded younger man. "It was like a storycube," she said, lowering her 
voice and glancing around as if to be sure virtuous Kira were not in hearing. 
"You must understand, Serin, how isolated we were. And the stress—"
The man snorted. "Stress! What do civvies know about stress? But sex—"
"Well, of course there was sex," Ofelia said, in the most insinuating voice she 
could produce. "We were here to breed and enlarge the colony. No birth-limits, 
bonuses for every child above four. And there are some who stay more—more 
comely, you understand." Was she being too obvious for them? No. The loud one 
had put down his tools and was leaning on the side of the truck, ready to hear 
more.
"I don't know if I should be telling you this," Ofelia said with fake piety. 
"Sera Stavi doesn't like it that I added to the official log, and perhaps—"
The loud one said what Sera Stavi could do with her opinions; it did not differ 
from the things the men in the colony had said. Not for the first time, Ofelia 
wondered if humans had thought of anything really new in the past ten thousand 
years. Had they only wandered the stars because they were tired of their stale 
jokes and curses?
But she began on a juicy story that wasn't even in the log, because the 
creatures had come and she had never finished—the story of the young girl Ampara 
and her teasing ways that had half the grown men—let alone the few boys her 
age—upset for half a year.
"And what did she look like?" the loud man asked. The other, quieter one had 
continued to work on the truck, banging loudly to indicate his annoyance with 
his lazy co-worker. Ofelia grinned even wider, until her jaw hurt.
"You expect me, an old woman, to know how to tell you that?" But that was only 
the teasing, part of the ritual of storytelling. She went into explicit detail, 
more than she knew of her own knowledge, remembering what such men liked to hear 
about abundant soft hair flowing down long supple backs, about curves and round 
firmness and soft moistness. He was breathing fast now, and she was running out 
of ideas.
"Look out!" the quiet man said suddenly, in his professional voice. "They're 
coming."
Ofelia stopped short, and turned slowly, Ser Likisi and Kira Stavi, striding 
along as if in a walking race, and both looking grumpy.
"Sera Falfurrias!" Kira sounded annoyed with her, and Ofelia wondered why.
"Yes, Sera," Ofelia said meekly. She stood with her hands folded in front of 
her, the servant ready for orders. Inside her head, the new voice mocked her. 
"What are those things up to, do you know?"
"Up to, Sera?" Ofelia asked.
"The indigenes. They've disappeared, all but one, and it's not communicative. 
Have they gone back where they came from, or what? I saw you going into the 
forest with one this morning, so don't tell me you have no idea."
Her first plan frustrated, Ofelia went after a side issue. "Why would you think 
I lie to you, Sera?"
"I didn't say that," Kira began, impatiently.
"Excuse me, Sera, but you said—"
Kira stamped the ground like a cow beset by flies. "I only meant that if you 
were going to say you didn't know, I had already seen you—oh, never mind." She 
glared at Ofelia; behind her, Ofelia saw the loud man's mocking grin.
By then Ofelia had thought what she could say. "They had found the place I hid 
when the colony was evacuated," she said. "I had left something behind, and they 
wanted to know if it was mine, or yours."
"Oh." Kira did not want to believe it; Ofelia could tell she was in the mood to 
disbelieve anything Ofelia said, but that was so ordinary. Reluctant belief; her 
brows relaxed. "Well. We just wondered."
Ofelia thought of embroidering that tale, and decided against it.
"I guess they saw me go out in the forest to take tissue samples… they might 
have thought I left equipment behind."
"I believe that's what they thought, Sera," Ofelia said,
"Did you want something in particular?" Likisi said. "Or were you just keeping 
our guardians and advisors company?" He made it sound as if she had been doing 
bad things with them, and even though she had been retailing filthy gossip, 
Ofelia resented it.
"I wanted to speak with you, Ser Likisi," she said. "And with Sera Stavi, if 
that is permissible."
He rolled his eyes. "Oh, very well. But if you're going to argue about staying, 
you might as well save your breath and my patience."
"That's not it, Ser Likisi," Ofelia said. She was trying to sound humble, but it 
came out less humble than she intended. The woman Kira glanced at her sharply, 
but said nothing.
"Oh, come on," Likisi said. "Come inside—it's too hot out here." He led her past 
the truck and the advisors, who both looked as if they were sucking lemons, 
through the doorseal and into the big softsided shelter.
Inside, it was stuffy despite the rushing sound of the aircooler, and not as 
cool as a shady room in one of the houses. Likisi flung out his arms,
"Ah—that's better." Then he flung himself down on a padded bench. "Kira—be a 
dear and get us something cold, will you?"
Now it was the other woman who looked as if she'd bitten a lemon. But she bit 
back what she wanted to say, and instead asked mildly what Sera Falfurrias would 
like. Ofelia politely refused anything twice, then accepted water. Kira 
disappeared around a partition. She had not asked Likisi what he wanted; that 
meant she had fetched drinks for him before.
Likisi watched her between narrowed lids. "What is it now? Were you wildly 
curious about this shelter? Do you want to know how much you can bring with you 
when we leave?"
"No, Ser Likisi," Ofelia said. He had not her to sit down, and she stood, hands 
folded in front of her.
The air moved by the aircooler fans dried the sweat on her back, and chilled 
her.
"Here—" Kira handed Ofelia a glass of water with ice blocks in it. "Sit down, 
for goodness sakes. You don't have to stand there." She handed Likisi a glass of 
something purplish, and took her own glass of clear liquid to one of the chairs 
arranged around a low table. "Here—sit by me, if you want."
Ofelia walked over and sat. The chair squirmed under her, and she jumped up, 
glaring at Kira.
"Sorry," the woman said; her expression said she meant it. "I didn't 
realize—these chairs adjust to each person who sits in them. Please—forgive me."
Ofelia sat back down, her back stiff. The chair squirmed under her buttocks, her 
thighs, trying to make her relax. It was hard to sit stiffly, and she felt her 
resistance giving way. As she relaxed, the chair molded itself to her. It was 
comfortable, she had to admit, She sipped her water. It tasted cold and flat, 
nothing like the live water she was used to. "Thank you, Sera," she said 
politely. "This is very nice."
"They use similar furniture in geriatric residence units," Kira said. "It 
prevents sores."
"How interesting," Ofelia said, She still had no plan for how she was going to 
convince them. She sipped again. "Sera—the… indigenes, you call them…"
"What about them?" Likisi asked.
"I think they are upset. By you."
He laughed. "I rather expect they are. They ran off the first humans they saw 
easily enough, and now we're back. And they've seen the technology here—while 
that's regrettable, in a way, it's also made it clear to them that they have a 
long way to go before they can compete with us."
"We won't hurt them, Sera Falfurrias," Kira said. "We know they didn't 
understand what was happening, when they attacked the colonists. It was all very 
unfortunate; they aren't really so bloodthirsty. They're quite intelligent, as 
you said, and when Bilong completes the linguistic analysis, and we can actually 
talk to them, explain what we know—"
Misunderstandings hid in those words like seeds in an orange. The People had 
understood; these people didn't.
"The colonists," Ofelia said. "They destroyed the nests."
"Nests?" Likisi stared at her. "These indigenes build nests? That's not what 
Bilong said."
"Bilong said she thought the colony landed at a special place, some land of 
sacred ground or something," Kira said to Ofelia.
"It was nests," Ofelia said.
"They didn't know that," Kira said. "They couldn't—they had no idea there were 
intelligent indigenes." Clear in that was the unconcern about the nests of less 
intelligent indigenes. Ofelia felt ashamed.
"Whatever… nests, sacred ground… it doesn't matter; what matters is that we 
understand why they reacted so violently. If they're afraid of vengeance, they 
need to know that we have no wish for more violence, so long as they are 
peaceful."
She could not jump up and scream Fools! at these two; it would do no good. To 
say that the deaths of the nestlings and nest-guardians didn't matter… to 
believe that the People were afraid of human vengeance… to think that the power 
lay with them and not with those who belonged here… fools they were, whether she 
named them so or not.
"It mattered to them, that it was nests," Ofelia said quietly. Then she stood; 
she could not stay in the same space with them any longer.
The doorseal behind her rasped, and she jumped. It was only the other two, 
returning from wherever they'd been.
"Led us a merry chase," Ori said. "I think it had something to do with 
demonstrating hunting techniques, but I'm not sure. I'm parched. Hello, Sera 
Falfurrias… forgive me for not greeting you first."
"You would not believe how many palatals they can produce," Bilong said. She 
patted a gray case hung at her side. "I got good recordings this time, very 
clean sound. When the waveform subroutine's through with it, we ought to have a 
complete—or almost complete—phonetic analysis."
"That may be why our mighty hunter didn't catch anything; it was too busy 
producing pretty sounds for Bilong's box." Ori sounded grumpy; if he had been 
following one of the creatures assigned to keep him out of the way, he had had a 
hot and miserable day, Ofelia was sure. It would be better to wait until he was 
not in this mood. But she was here, and when would she have the chance again to 
talk to all four of them? She could almost feel her own left toes twitching: 
now.
She held her silence. What good was a nest-guardians experience if you ignored 
it? Experience said they would not listen now, not with one of them excited and 
the other one miserable.
"Perhaps you would come to dinner," she said. "I have not yet had the honor of 
entertaining you in my home."
"What?" Likisi, looking blurred around the edges (what was that purple stuff?) 
gaped, then remembered his manners. "Uh—thank you, Sera, but not this evening, I 
think. Ori's exhausted, and frankly I am too."
"Another day?" Ofelia asked. "Tomorrow or the next?" The creatures had made it 
clear that they wanted the confrontation as soon as possible. They were ready. 
She did not understand all they intended, but she trusted them.
"Tomorrow would be very nice," Kira said. "Perhaps you would allow us to bring 
treats from the ship?"
Ofelia saw through that; they didn't trust the food she raised in the garden. 
Anger made her stubborn; she felt heavier, as if she were a rock resisting 
movement.
"It will all be carefully cleaned, Sera," Ofelia said. "I have cooked many 
years." And I am still alive and healthy, she did not add.
"Of course," Ori said, sighing. "We are too concerned about these things, Sera 
Falfurrias. We will be honored to eat with you." The others looked even less 
enthusiastic, but they did not argue.
"Thank you," Ofelia said, and escaped to the late afternoon sunlight. The two 
advisors were still bent over the truck, but they were talking, not doing 
anything. When they caught sight of her, they stood up as she passed; the loud 
one grinned but said nothing.
All the way up the lane to her house, the old voice told her what she had said 
wrong, what she should have said, and how it would never work. The new voice 
held its peace, but she knew it was stirring things, down where she couldn't 
quite see or hear, but only feel. Left hand and right hand. Bluecloak was 
waiting, as she had expected. "They did not listen today," she said. "They told 
me they intended no vengeance because the People killed the colonists. They 
thought you were afraid of that." A single tap of his foot; she didn't have to 
look to know which foot. "They expect to make the rules for your people and mine 
to know each other. They think you will accept this." She grinned at him. "They 
think you have no choice. They do not understand, but they will. Tomorrow, I 
will feed them in the evening. It is what they expect old women to do—feed them, 
care for them, listen to them."
Bluecloak's speech sounded even clearer this afternoon; she had no trouble 
following his accent when he asked how much she'd told them.
"Not much," Ofelia said. "They were hot and hungry; they didn't listen well to 
what I did say. And I need to find out more." What weapons were on the shuttle 
and the ship above, for instance. What orders had been left with the ship's 
captain. If it came to force, they were doomed. It must not come to force. It 
must be done by persuasion.
Early the next morning, Ofelia went into her gardens to gather the fresh foods. 
She watched with amusement as several of the People kept the other humans busy 
and away from Ofelia. She had uninterrupted time in the gardens, time to plan 
what to make with what she had, lay out the table and prepare the meal. It had 
been so long since she cooked anything but what she herself wanted to eat. She 
tried to think what would appeal to these younger ones, these strangers. She put 
chunks of the hard-shelled squash on to boil; she would make two kinds of little 
pies, one squash and one fruit. She had put away packets of sweetened berries in 
the freezer. She took the berries, and a lamb roast from the meat section.
Although she had invited only the team itself, she carried a jug of fruit juices 
down the lane to the advisors, who today were working on another vehicle. "I 
have only a small house," she said, looking down as if ashamed.
"That's all right," the quiet one said. "Thank you for this."
"I don't suppose you have time to finish that story?" the loud one said, not 
quite asking for it. Ofelia hoped he was the one who had hit her; he would be 
easy to dislike. Reason said the quiet one was just as dangerous, but she felt a 
sneaking admiration for someone who was courteous without need.
"I'm sorry," Ofelia said. "I have cooking. Later I can bring little pies—"
"There's the pilot, too," the loud one said. "He wouldn't mind some of this 
stuff—"
"Don't—" said the quiet one.
"I would be honored," Ofelia said.
She went away, before they could say more. She expected that they would put the 
fruit drink into one of their machines and make sure she was not trying to drug 
them. She would not be so foolish, but they would not know that. She did not 
look back to see if they drank it or not.
In her house, she made the pastry, rolled it out flat, and shaped the little 
rounds. Into each she put a spoonful of sweetened fruit or spiced cooked squash. 
She put the little pies in the oven, then went to the center for a large serving 
platter. If she had thought ahead, she could have had the fabricator make 
prettier dishes, or she could even have painted designs on some. How could she 
have thought ahead, with those people pestering her?
The pies were done early enough that the house did not get too hot. She would 
bake the roast in the house next door, or in the center. Ofelia set the pies on 
racks, then moved the kitchen table into the other end of the main room. She 
went back to the center, and found a length of heavy material in blue which 
would serve as a tablecloth. On it, the plain dishes looked almost festive. The 
dayvine flowers would not stay fresh when cut, but she made a centerpiece of 
herbs and fruit.
She had just time to hurry down the lane with a tray of little pies, one of the 
loaves of bread she'd baked, a pot of jam, a length of hard beef sausage, some 
fresh fruit, before the final rush of cooking. The advisors and the pilot—she 
had not seen the pilot before—were doing something to a third vehicle, but they 
noticed her quickly. This time, they came forward to take the tray.
"Thank you," the quiet one said. "This is very kind of you." He took one of the 
pies. "I hope your head feels better… it was unfortunate that you startled me 
that way."
Ofelia smiled at him. She still wished it had been the other one, the one she 
could not have liked anyway. "It does not hurt now," she said. "I did not mean 
to startle you."
"Of course not," he said. He bit into the pie, and his expression changed from 
polite neutrality to surprise. "This is really good," he said, as if he had 
expected to bite into a bitter lime.
"Excuse me," Ofelia said. "I must get back to the cooking. I'm making a roast—" 
She gave enough details to make them thoroughly jealous of the ones who were 
coming. She could see the envy and dissatisfaction rise in them like bubbles in 
bean soup. They eyed the tray with less appreciation now that they knew what 
they were going to miss.
When her guests arrived, she had it all laid out on the serving dishes. The 
sliced tomatoes and onions in vinegar and oil, with rosemary and basil making a 
wreath around the whole. The roast lamb, which had been rolled in crushed herbs… 
it was unfortunate how baked rosemary looked like bits of burnt insect, but it 
smelled good. And when she sliced it—her guests sucked in their breath. She had 
boned the roast and laid it flat, then stuffed it with cheese and vegetables and 
herbs. Each slice made its own unique design.
She herself had no appetite, not only because she had nibbled as she cooked. She 
was on her feet more than sitting, as she fetched new dishes, and took away 
those they had finished.
"I had no idea you could do this, Sera Falfurrias," said Likisi, when he saw the 
slices of stuffed roast lamb. "Were you the cook here, for the whole colony?"
"No, Ser Likisi. After the first time, before we had houses, each family cooked 
for itself. We all cooked some extra to store in the center, for those who might 
be sick. We used the big kitchens to cook for the school, or special times when 
more workers were needed in the fields." Or during the floods, or the epidemics, 
but she didn't say that.
After the first cautious nibbles, all four of the team had begun eating as if 
they had not eaten in days. By the time Ofelia brought over the remaining little 
pies, they were leaning back in their chairs with the half-sleepy look of those 
whose bellies are overfull. Just as she'd hoped. Ofelia took away the messy 
serving dishes and platters, and cleared the dirty plates. She offered them 
little plates for the pies, then sat down herself in the chair she'd hardly used 
all evening.
Her legs ached, and her back; she had been working too hard to notice until now. 
Aches never killed anyone. Wars did. She smiled at her guests, and they all 
smiled back, their mouths full of sweet pies. They were as mellow as they were 
going to get. Beyond them, in the twilight, she saw Bluecloak and two others go 
into the center.
This time when she began talking, she had their silence, if not their full 
attention. She began where she had begun the day before: the indigenes were 
upset, because they thought the humans did not understand what had happened. The 
attack on their nests had caused the attack on the colonists, but the indigenes 
were not worried about retaliation.
"They believe their action was just," Ofelia said. "They will not tolerate more 
intrusion."
"Surely you told them there was no question of further colonization?" Likisi 
said, looking at Bilong.
"I tried," Bilong said. "I thought I'd gotten it across."
"You see, Sera Falfurrias," Likisi said to her, "they are protected under our 
laws—no one will try to colonize here—but they can't just go around killing 
people because they're upset—"
"The colonists killed their people—their children and nest-guardians," Ofelia 
said.
"But that was an accident," Likisi said, "They must understand that—the 
colonists made a mistake, but what they did was deliberate. We can accept that 
it was also a mistake—no one is howling for revenge… well, some are, but the 
government won't allow it. But they can't use violence against us again. And we 
will be sure they don't have the technology to do us any real damage, until 
they've matured enough not to use it."
Ofelia felt as if someone had crocheted her insides into one big complicated 
knot. She forced herself to go on. "But from what you and the others have told 
me, they have cities far north of here, and boats with sails. How can you keep 
them from learning on their own?"
Likisi laughed. "It will take them years—centuries—to get to a real industrial 
base. Its unfortunate that they came down here and found out about electricity, 
but they'll have to figure out how to make generators and batteries… it took 
humans thousands of years, and they won't figure it out in less. Anyway, as long 
as they can't get offplanet, they can't do us any real harm."
Humans had not had the finished product to look at, Ofelia thought. How long had 
it taken the humans who didn't invent the new things to learn to use them? To 
make and repair them?
Bilong spoke up. "I don't understand, Sera, how you know all this. You haven't 
really studied the language—"
"I have lived with them longer," Ofelia said. "They want to talk to me."
"Yes, but you can misunderstand so much," Bilong said. "For instance, that word 
I've heard you say… I did an acoustic analysis, and you don't say it anything 
like they do." Bilong took a breath and produced a "click-kaw-keerrr" that 
sounded right to Ofelia. "That's how they say it, and what you do 
is—'click-kaw-keerrr'—can you hear the difference?" Ofelia couldn't.
She wasn't sure there really was any difference; Blue-cloak understood her well 
enough when she said it.
"My point is," Bilong said, leaning on the table with both elbows, "you don't 
really understand them; you just think you do. And they came when you were all 
alone, probably even psychotic from the solitude, and you think of them as 
friends. They aren't friends; they're aliens. Indigenes, I mean," she added with 
a quick glance at the others.
Ofelia looked out the window. It was dark outside, the brief tropical twilight 
was over. If she knew anything about humans, the two military advisors and the 
pilot, sure that their nominal bosses would be away for hours, would have 
accompanied their lesser feast with whatever illicit drink they had offered her 
the day before. If they had any form of amusement, entertainment cubes or 
hardcopy, they would be gathered around it now. It was too early to worry, too 
early for "anything to happen," They would be more alert later, when they might 
be expecting their boss to return.
What she could not know was what kind of safeguards might be on the shuttle 
itself. She had explained to Bluecloak the kinds she knew about, the little 
beams of light or sound that reacted if interrupted, the pressure plates, the 
locks that required known palmprints or retinal patterns. Bluecloak had not 
seemed concerned. And that was not her problem now."They are very intelligent," 
Ofelia said. "They learn very fast, even as babies."
"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
Contents - Prev 
Ofelia did not know herself exactly what Bluecloak had planned in the way of 
demonstrations. What she saw—what they all saw—exceeded anything she had 
imagined. One of the babies, perched on Gurgle-click-cough's lap, poked at the 
controls of a classroom computer. On the display, colored patterns swirled. Two 
of the adults were hunched over a couple of gourds, fiddling with wires that 
connected to… Ofelia blinked… they had connected half the rooms electrical 
demonstrations to their gourds. The other two babies played on the floor with 
models of gears and screws, constructing something intricate. Ofelia wondered 
what it was, and if it would work when it was done."Oh… my… God." That was 
Likisi; Ofelia had not suspected him of any religious beliefs. "They're—they're 
using a computer?"
Bluecloak came forward; he had shut the door behind them, silently. "Iss dun."
"But how did he learn—did you teach them? After we warned you?" Likisi glared at 
Ofelia. Bluecloak stepped between them forcing a confrontation.
"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 inn ssky," Bluecloak said. "Sssane zzzzt inn ires, aaakss lahtt, aaakss 
kuhll, aaakss tuurn…"
"You told them!" Likisi rounded on Ofelia. "You had to tell them this; they 
couldn't have figured it out. They don't even have a government—!"
"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 annoyed that he had been wrong.
"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.
"I'm sorry, Ser Likisi, for your embarrassment, but you see I had to tell you 
this, convince you. I cannot leave, even if I wanted to leave, and I don't. 
These babies need me; I'm the only one who can do for them what the 
click-kaw-keerrr must do."
"They're aliens ," he said hoarsely. "You can't do whatever it is—you're only an 
ignorant, interfering old woman."
The ones holding him expanded their throat sacs and throbbed. Likisi paled; 
Ofelia could see the sweat break out on his face.
"They respect and trust nest-guardians, Ser Likisi," Ofelia said. "They do not 
like those who don't."
"But—"
"Be quiet, man," Ori said. "You're messing this up." He sat down where he was, 
by the tangle of wires and little bulbs, then looked at Ofelia. "Please go on." 
Likisi said nothing; Ofelia felt the shift of power within the team, and hoped 
it was final.
Her knees hurt too much to keep squatting like this; she sat down, and the 
babies crawled into her lap. "What they said—what Bluecloak told me—is that they 
accept me as the nest-guardian for them as well as for humans. That means I'm 
the one who can make the agreements. But I have to stay here."
"I suppose that makes sense," Ori said. He didn't even glance at Likisi. "We can 
explain it to you, and you can explain it to them…"
He still did not understand. Ofelia hoped he would stay this calm when he did 
understand it, "I'm sorry, Ser, but it goes the other way. They explain it to 
me, and I explain it to you."
"Yes, of course… but I meant the terms of the agreement."
"So did they," said Ofelia. He stared at her a long moment, his face 
expressionless as he worked it out.
"The… terms of… their agreement."
"Yes, Ser." She tried to sound unthreatening.
"I… see." Ori looked up at the other three, who were still standing, Likisi 
still held by two of the People. "I think we need to go talk about this. With 
all respect, Sera Falfurrias, without you. You are too… involved… to have a 
completely open mind."
"Nnno." That was Bluecloak, who had let Ofelia carry the basket this far.
"Don't be silly," Kira said, heading for the door. No one stopped her She 
grabbed the handle and pulled, but it didn't open.
"Its locked," Ofelia said, unnecessarily. She felt a wicked glee at the look on 
Kira's face. Had the women she thought bad felt this way? She had seen such 
looks as she felt inside on others' faces, "So is the main door. You will have 
to discuss it here."
Their hands reached for pockets, for belts, and only then did they remember that 
they had not brought their working tools, their handcomps and shirtcoms, to a 
quiet dinner in the small house of an ignorant old woman who could after all do 
them no harm.
Power, Ofelia realized, could indeed beget wickedness; her old voice scolded her 
soundly for the laughter that wanted to break out as she saw their expressions 
shift, and shift again.
"No harm will come to you," Ofelia said. "But you will have to listen, and you 
will have to make up your mind to what is necessary."
"Do you know what they want?" Ori asked. Practical, that one, and still calm. 
She hoped he would stay, later.
"They want to learn," Ofelia said. "It is their greatest joy." She pushed the 
babies in her lap gently, and Gurgle-click-cough murmured to them. They tumbled 
out onto the floor, and skittered over to their abandoned creation. "Watch 
them," she said.
"Rready," said Bluecloak, and one of the People picked up the contraption and 
set it on a display table. The babies squeaked; Ofelia could not quite 
distinguish the words, but by the way the elders were listening, they were 
making sense. The adult picked the thing up again and put it into the 
schoolroom's deep sink. Bluecloak offered Ofelia an arm, and helped her up so 
that she could see. More urgent squeaks from the floor, and Bluecloak picked up 
all three babies; one scampered up its arm to the shoulder. Another reached out 
to Ofelia, who took it and cradled it.
When the adult turned the water on, and adjusted the faucet, everyone could see 
that the babies had contrived a water-driven machine that turned geared wheels 
faster and faster… "Zzzzt!" cried a tiny voice. "Aaaaksss zzzzt!"
"Impossible," breathed Likisi, but this time with no anger in his voice, only 
awe. "Let me go," he said to those holding his arms. "I want to see…" They let 
go at once, and he walked over to the sink, peering in. "They can't—there's not 
a water-driven generator for light-years in any direction… and yet… this might 
actually work," He put out a finger, drew it back.
"Do you want them for friends, for nest-guardians, or as enemies?" Ofelia asked. 
She still didn't understand the thing the babies had built, although if they 
said it would make electricity, she believed them. "If you try to stifle 
them—you can't do it, you can only make them angry. That's your choice."
"But its too fast—they're so… so smart…" Likisi looked around at the adults, 
then at the babies, then at her.
Ofelia tried not to sound impatient. "The choice is between smart and friendly, 
or smart and angry. They believe that good nest-guardians—good teachers, good 
friends—help the young ones grow and learn… everything."
"I wonder what their Varinge score would be," Likisi said, with envy in every 
syllable.
"Higher than ours," Kira said. "We'll need larger samples, but if this group's 
representative, then their population mean is a good twenty points above human. 
And they've had these textbooks, these computer manuals… their development's 
already explosive, and with this—I'd say starflight in less than a hundred 
years. Without our help."
"And aggressive in defense of nesting territory," Ori added. "Aiee. It's scary." 
He didn't sound that scared; he sounded eager.
Ofelia stroked the baby's knobbly back. "Not that scary, Ser… here…" She held 
out the baby. They had discussed this; Ori had been the gentlest of the humans 
on the team, when trying to observe and interact with the People, and the People 
thought he should be given a chance to hold a baby. Ofelia still thought it 
wasn't safe, but… but it was hard to fear and hate anyone whose baby you had 
cuddled. Now Ori stared at her… then reached out gingerly. The baby went into 
his hands eagerly—a chance for something new—and licked his wrist. Then it 
looked back at Ofelia and squeaked. Not the same flavor—she didn't need to hear 
all the sounds to know that's what it meant. It focussed those remarkable eyes 
on Ori'sface, and stretched up to lick his chin. His expression softened, and 
Ofelia relaxed. Kira grinned, a wide natural smile of pleasure; so did Bilong.
In that moment when everyone else relaxed, Likisi grabbed. Not the baby in Ori's 
arms, but the one on Bluecloaks shoulders, when Bluecloak turned to watch Ori. 
The baby hissed, and clawed at Likisi's wrist, but he had it by the neck, and 
the baby was choking.
Ofelia lunged at him, but he pushed her away easily and backed to the door.
"They have tails," he snarled. "Trained animals—smart lizards—I can't believe 
you're falling for this. A whole rich world, for a lot of little scaly lizards 
and a crazy old woman who wants to rule it? I don't think so." The baby writhed, 
the stripes fading, the eyes dulling. "Don't come closer, or I'll wring its 
filthy neck." For a breathless instant no one moved. Then he pointed at Ofelia 
with his free hand. "You. Crawl over here and get this door open… don't tell me 
you don't know the lock-code. Don't stand up—crawl. Or this babys dead."
Ofelia looked at Bluecloak, at the other humans, at Gurgle-click-cough, and 
finally at Likisi and the small creature writhing in his grasp. Slowly—her 
joints would not have it any other way—she lowered herself to the floor and 
started crawling toward him.
"That's better," he said. "It's people like you who cause all the trouble 
anyway… they should never have taught you to read."
Let him talk, the new voice said, coming out of its hiding, When he is talking, 
he is not listening. Or thinking. It was hard enough to crawl; she hadn't 
crawled in years, what with her knees and her hip, and now her shoulders added 
to the pains,
"Faster!" Likisi said, but anyone could see that an old woman couldn't crawl 
very fast at the best of times, and this old woman was clumsier than most. She 
glanced up to apologize, and saw his foot drawn back to kick, kicking… and 
Ofelia grabbed his foot and yanked. She was not strong enough to pull him over, 
but in that shift of weight he loosened his grip on the baby, which squirmed 
around and sank its small but very sharp teeth into the skin between his thumb 
and fingers, at the same moment its long sharp toes got a purchase on his arm, 
and raked hard. "OW!" he yelled, reflex opening his hand; the baby dropped away 
with a triumphant squeak, and four blurs past Ofelias head became four long 
knives in Likisi'sbody.
She crouched there for an unknowable time while others moved around her, and 
Likisi's pain ended in a quick slice of his throat. Then it was softness and 
warmth, and friendly voices, someone carrying her back to her own house, her own 
bed, the smell of the food she had cooked…
She was in her own bed, wrapped in a blanket, with the babies—all three of 
them—curled along her side. Bluecloak stood at the left side of the bed; the 
humans—Kira and Ori pale but calm, Bilong sobbing—stood at the foot of the bed, 
and the other People crowded behind them. She did not know how long it had been, 
or what else had happened; the smell of Likisi's death pinched her nose,
Gurgle-click-cough brought her a glass of cold water; she sipped it and the 
confusion in her mind settled back into recognizable shapes. She was safe. The 
babies were safe. Everyone was safe but Likisi, and he had been the only one to 
threaten the children.
If anyone had to die, that was the right one.
Before the armed men took alarm—long before midnight, that is—Ori had agreed to 
accept reality; he and Kira went back to explain what had happened (Likisi had 
"gone ballistic" and threatened one of the babies and Ofelia; the creatures had 
naturally defended them), Bilong played the role of grieving lover almost too 
well; Ofelia began to wonder if she really believed all she said about Likisi, 
if those sobs were genuine.
By the time the advisors appeared, armed and dangerous, the apparatus had all 
been tidied away. Likisi's body, Ofelia supposed, still sprawled in its blood on 
the schoolroom floor, but she didn't have to see it. The advisors could see her 
bruises, and the marks on the baby's throat; they could see that Ori was 
well-satisfied with what had happened.
"Idiot," one of them said, in the front room of Ofelias house, where they came 
to interview the team members. Not that they had any authority to do so, Kira 
muttered to Ofelia, while waiting her turn. Likisi had had the civilian 
authority, and now it passed to her, as assistant team leader, but it was as 
well not to upset them. "Idiot," the man went on. It was the loud one. "Old 
Bossyboots never did have the sense—"
"May I touch one?" Kira asked, her face gentler now as she peered at the 
sleeping babies."Yes," Ofelia said. "They like to be stroked here—" She 
demonstrated; Kira copied her, and the baby opened bright eyes, swiped Kira's 
hand with its tongue, and went back to sleep. "Cute is the wrong word," Kira 
said. "But—"
"There isn't a word," Ofelia said, "because they're not human. They need their 
own words."
"Bilong—"
"Bilong," Ofelia said, more tartly than she meant, "is a fool. She may or may 
not know anything in her own field, but in person—"
Kira grinned down at her. "I thought a woman like you would like someone like 
her better… she's more traditional…"
"Go read my log notes on Linda," Ofelia said. The baby had liked Kira; she would 
not have chosen her, but the baby had. So she might as well learn to like Kira 
herself. Kira was smarter than Rosara; maybe she could be retrained into a 
reasonable sort of daughter,
"And do not miss your chance when Bilong quits making such a loud noise about 
Likisi and notices that Ori is still here."
Kira flushed. "What do you mean? I'm not—"
Ofelia stopped her with a look. "I am an old woman, but I am not stupid, or a 
fool. You like this Ori—"
"Well, yes, but not like that—"
"He wants to stay. You will stay. You will like him enough to become a mother. 
You already do; its why you hate Bilong." Wicked, wicked glee, to see that 
strong-minded woman's jaw drop as if she'd been hit with a brick. Wicked 
pleasure bubbling in her veins to see that woman discover that she had been 
seen, that her mind had been as naked to an old woman's knowledge of human 
nature as the old woman's body had been to her external eye.
Ofelia lay back, watching Kira through the hedge of her eyelashes. "You will 
call me Sera Ofelia," she said. "You will help me with these babies, and the 
next, and you will have a click-kaw-keerrr for your own."
"But—but—" She did not look so formidable when she sputtered like that, but she 
did look beautiful with the color of outrage on her cheeks.
"Good night," Ofelia said, and shut her eyes. After awhile, she felt the 
mattress shift as Kira stood up, heard the whispers on the far side of the room. 
The babies squirmed contentedly all along her body, and she went to sleep.
The formal duties of nest-guardianship lay lightly on Ofelia; she spent the 
early mornings in her garden, with the babies scampering around beneath the 
great frilled leaves of squash vines grabbing slimerods, Later in the morning, 
she took them over to the center, where they joined the elders in the 
schoolroom. Unlike the People's own nest-guardians, she had help from other 
elders; they understood that she alone could not keep up with three active 
babies. When she needed a nap, someone was always there… and sometimes that 
someone was Kira or Ori, who had both elected to stay as her human assistants.
If it was not quite as free a life as her solitary existence, it was in other 
ways more satisfying. What she had least liked about community life had 
vanished. No one told her what to do; no one told her she didn't matter. Even 
the old voice finally died away, frustrated by her lack of response.
She still got a wicked thrill from speaking into the special communications link 
that carried her voice (she was told) instantly to the government buildings back 
on the world she had not thought of as home for decades. Back there, where she 
had been born, and lived, in the obscurity of a crowded inner city tenement, 
back where she had been told what she could not learn, the men who made laws 
listened to her. They could not even tell her to be quiet, because the link was 
only one way at a time. First she would give her report, and days later a batch 
transmission would come back for her.
She let Kira and Ori listen to it first. They felt more important, and she felt 
sheltered a little from the tone of the first transmissions, before they 
realized they had no possible way to control her. They were past panic then, 
enjoying each other too much, enjoying the company of the bright, endlessly 
curious People who came to visit.
Profile, The Journal of Political Science.
  
The human ambassador to the first nonhuman intelligence encountered in Man's 
inexorable advance across the stars is a short, gray-haired, barefooted old 
woman without a single qualification for the position… except that the aliens 
like her. Born Ofelia Damareux, in the working-class neighborhood of South Rock, 
Porter City, on Esclanz, Sera Ofelia Falfurrias now holds the most 
prestigious—and some say the most perilous—diplomatic post in the history of 
mankind. What kind of government would put an amateur—no, not even an amateur, a 
complete nonentity—in this post?
  
To answer that question, we interviewed the Director of Colonial Affairs. "In my 
opinion," Ser Andreys Valpraiz said, "it was a major blunder. My predecessor, 
appointed by the previous administration, lacked the decisiveness to intervene 
in what was, admittedly, a confusing situation in which the designated contact 
had apparently become mentally unbalanced and died following an attempt to 
assault one of the native species. I inherited this mess. At least I have 
ensured the proper replacement for Sera Falfurrias, a professional with the 
right credentials, with a clear understanding of the needs of both peoples. 
We'll have no more of this sentimental 'nest guardian' nonsense when the next 
ambassador is appointed… and of course Sera Falfurrias is quite elderly…"
Charlotte Gathers peered at the thick silvery envelope suspiciously. "Silver 
Century Tours announces a Free Vacation Prize Package for senior ladies." She 
opened it, to find an application for the prize drawing. She was old enough, 
yes, and she had children and grandchildren. Was she willing to take a long 
voyage? Yes, after that last miserable holiday week at the coast, when her 
daughters made it clear just how much they resented having to pay for the 
two-bedroom apartment. They were so selfish—and after all she'd done for them! 
Possibilities for emigration? She checked the "yes" box. Maybe things would be 
better on the outer worlds. She had seen something on a news show about a planet 
where a little old lady was the ambassador. For a moment she imagined herself as 
an ambassador to an alien race, but on the whole she didn't like odd smells and 
funny accents. Perhaps not an ambassador, but an ambassador's friend… someone to 
lunch with, to play cards with… if she could just get away to someplace exotic, 
and show her daughters that she didn't need them.
Charlotte Gathers did not pass the screening for nest-guardian: one look at her 
sour face and beady eyes, and the polite young woman told her she had won the 
minor prize of a week at White Spring Resort. Others made it past the 
receptionist to the real screening committee, and some of these emigrated to 
become nest-guardians, their passage paid by profits on the inventions of a very 
inventive People.
Slowly, the village filled again. Now people lived in more than half the 
cottages. Gray-and-white haired nest-guardians with striped nestlings, pale 
nest-guardians of the People with the slower-growing children of the humans who 
had moved here—Kira and Ori's children, for instance, who had learned the 
People's language from birth. Most mornings Ofelia woke to the sound of voices 
in the lane, People and human both. She had begun sleeping later, these last few 
years; she rarely saw sunrise these days. Gurgle-click-cough's first nesting had 
grown out of their bold stripes, and into the hunting pattern; they were no 
longer her responsibility. She had been intrigued to find that their tails and 
the loud stripes disappeared at the same rate. As with humans, they were least 
appealing in an awkward intermediate stage, when their tails were stubby stumps 
no longer capable of twining around things, and their stripes looked faded and 
dingy.
One of them hunted ideas more than game; it had helped build the first flying 
machine designed by the People. Ofelia heard that all the cities on the stone 
coast had electricity now, and even the nomadic tribes had small computers 
running off batteries whose fuel was now being grown for that purpose. She 
didn't understand most of it; she spent more time dozing, and less time 
teaching.
She wasn't worried. She did sometimes wonder which version of her life Barto and 
Rosara would hear when they wakened from cryo thirty years hence, far away. 
Would they be told she'd died in transit… or would they know she had stayed 
behind and become famous? It was a good joke either way, and while she did not, 
as she had once planned, die alone, she did die smiling.
The End