"Her face!"
Saluez's face was a whole face. Like Lutha's. Like Snark's. No bone showing through. No mutilated lips or eyelids. One ear was still slightly battered looking, but even that flesh was smooth.
"How?" breathed Snark.
Lutha had no idea. The woman between them moaned, a remote, careless sound. Her eyes stayed blank. She wasn't there. She didn't know what had happened to her.
They propped Saluez's knees on folded blankets.
"What else?" asked Lutha.
"We wait."
"I'm tired of waiting."
Lutha stared at Saluez, her face, her form, the skin of her legs. She'd never seen a natural birth before. Leely, of course, but there had been medical people there, able to handle any emergency. What would they do if Saluez was in trouble?
"What?" asked Snark.
"Just … my mind, pestering me. I need to think about something else."
Snark grinned ferociously. "Think about this. I hated you, you know?"
Lutha swallowed. "So you said."
Snark squirmed, settling herself, her eyes on Saluez. "I got to thinking about that. Truth was, it wasn't just you. I hated ever'body. Ever since they called me a liar and thief in that home, I hated 'em."
She scowled, lines of concentration between her eyebrows. "Thing is, I got to figuring, it wasn't just me! It'd been the same for any female. If it'd been a boy and they'd called him a liar, he'd have said so what and who wants his nose flattened over it?"
"Probably," Lutha said, intrigued.
"Boys get in a fight, nobody thinks much about it. Boys tell a few stories, or thief a few things, boys'll be boys, an' nobody says civilization's coming to an end. Do they?"
"Not usually," Lutha agreed. "But you think it's different with girls?"
"Girls go for somebody, they're out of control! People at the home said that; justice machine said that. Snark, you're out of control! I never done anything men I knew didn't do, and they're still back on Central, scavenging and telling lies, just like always. Men a lot like Mitigan, killing folks right and left. Men like Leelson, doing whatever he wants … "
Saluez moaned. Snark's voice trailed off, waiting. The moan didn't go anywhere. It fell off into quiet, and Snark resumed her discourse.
"It's different for women. And for some men. Men like the old Procurator, I guess. And for the king too."
"Jiacare?"
"Him, yeah. Old Proc and the king, they're more like Saluez, trying to be in control all the time. More like you."
"Like me?" Lutha was astonished.
"Yeah. You carry on—crying, laughing. Flapping around sometimes like a bird. Lotsa drama, you know, but down at the bottom of it, you're like Saluez too. Trying to hang on."
Lutha laughed, a hollow sound. "Drama," she said. "My family does have a tendency toward … drama."
Snark accepted this. "What I think is, men, they can rape and ruin, maim and murder, kill each other off in dozen lots, so long as there's one left, he can make babies enough for the next go-round without even working very hard at it. If you're a woman or a king, though, you got more invested than that, right? You got yourself invested in civility, 'cause that's what's safe for people. You get invested like that, you got to be righteous and do the looking out for other people. There's the young ones, the old ones, the sick ones. Got to stay in there, hoping for something different … "
Saluez moaned again. Snark wrapped several folds of her shirt around her hands, like clumsy mittens, watching intently while Lutha wet a cloth and wiped Saluez's sweaty face.
Lutha asked, "You think that's what Saluez is doing? Hoping for something different?"
"Saluez says she wants to lie in sweet grass, eating apples," said Snark. "That's different. That's paradise. Like it was on Breadh."
"Were there many people on Breadh?"
Snark laughed, abruptly joyous. "Hardly any! That's what made it paradise! I told Kane the Brain about Breadh. He said we all make up an Eden. Some old-time place. Some never-never place. Someplace just over the hill, maybe, where things're the way things used to be, ought to be, the way they never were."
Lutha caught her breath, aware of a sudden pain behind her breastbone. Not her heart. Lung and stomach, probably, contending for the title of chief dramatist. It hurt, nonetheless. "Can't there be a real Eden?" she gasped, astonished at the pain the question evoked. "Somewhere? Can't there?"
Snark shrugged. "We could make one here if we wanted. We could make one anywhere, if we would. Instead it's apples and sweet grass, long gone, long past. Kane said we ate them all—"
Saluez shrieked abruptly, a senseless sound that accompanied a seemingly endless convulsion. Her teeth ground together. Her belly heaved and clenched.
"Why is she unconscious?" Lutha demanded. She hadn't been unconscious when Leely was born. Women who chose to give birth usually chose to experience it.
"She's Dinadhi," Snark replied, as though this meant something. Then she shook her head in momentary confusion. "I think I remember what Mother told me. I hope I haven't forgotten. I think we have to do this thing first … "
"Do what first?"
The question was answered, but not by Snark. Saluez shrieked mindlessly. Out from between her legs came a white thing, a bloody white thing, a small head with closed and bulging eyes, a wide mouth that showed the tips of sharp little teeth. The moment the head came into the light, the eyes opened and the teeth began snapping, snapping at them, the eyes glaring.
"Quick!" shouted Snark, grabbing at the thing with her mittened hands, wrenching it from Saluez's body, and thrusting it through the narrow neck of her recently manufactured catch bucket. Despite the wrappings of cloth, the thing brought blood from her arm, leaving a nasty gash.
"Watch out," she cried. "There may be more!"
There were two more. Snark got one, and Lutha got the other one, while one part of herself gibbered mindlessly and some other part demanded that she should not behave stupidly in front of Snark. The creatures were slimy and pale, they shrieked and gnashed, and the gaping slits along their backs quivered like gills as grim-faced Snark thrust them into her bucket and fastened the lid down tight.
When the contractions stopped and it was clear there were to be no more of them, Snark tied the catch bucket top with line and put it inside one of the larger supply cases, which she also lashed closed. The entire bundle rocked and shrieked at them as they returned their attentions to Saluez. She had expelled the afterbirth. With it was what remained of the infant she had carried.
Snark wrapped the bloody fragments in the clean cloths they had intended to receive a living child.
"Did you get bitten?" she asked matter-of-factly.
"A little," said Lutha faintly. "What … ?"
"It most always happens," Snark said, her eyes wide and unfocused. "Mother said it's a rare thing that a first baby lives. Sometimes it does, if there's only one scourge inside, but usually there's at least three or four of them."
Lutha trembled, unable to get any words out. Now she knew where the next generation of Kachis were on Dinadh. Even now they were being incubated and born.
"They didn't have wings," she said stupidly.
"Those slits down the back," Snark replied. "As soon as they dry, the wings pop out. They can fly almost right away." She shook her head. "These looked sort of not ripe, though, didn't they?"
Lutha had no idea what a ripe Kachis would look like. "How does this happen?"
Snark made a face, a spitting sound. "It's the Dinadhi way. It's part of the choice the songfathers made. First time a woman's pregnant, a helper takes her to the House Without a Name. They take food and water so the scourges won't be hungry or thirsty. And the helper ties her down on the table and then rings a gong, and maybe one or two scourges come and lay eggs in her. They've got these long pricky-looking ovipositors. But sometimes instead of one or two coming, lots of them come and eat on the woman's face. Only the face, though. No other parts."
&n
bsp; She wiped at her cheeks with the back of one bloody hand. "And when comes time for the woman to have the baby, the scourges get born first. The midwives take 'em and feed 'em and turn 'em loose as soon as their wings're dry. And then, if the scourges didn't eat it, the baby is born."
"But why do the Dinadhi do it?" Lutha screamed.
"I'm tellin' you! The songfathers command it, so's there'll be beautiful people to hold all the people who die. Places for their souls to go. The women are supposed to have this duty so the people can live forever."
Snark took a deep breath. "If the baby's messed up but alive, they take it away somewhere."
"By the Great and Glorious Org Gauphin," Lutha said fervently. "Knowing all this, why does any Dinadhi woman get pregnant!"
Snark shared a bitter half smile. "They don't know it. It's taboo to talk about it. All the girls know is there's a kind of a trial they have to go through to become a woman, but they don't get told about it until after it's happened."
Saluez shifted and groaned.
"What shall we tell her?" Lutha demanded.
"How about telling her the truth. That she had scourges inside her. That we've got 'em in a box. That her baby died."
"That her baby never developed. That's true, too, and it'll be easier for her."
Snark shook her head, mimicking Lutha viciously, "Oh, yeah, by all means, make it easier."
"Snark! Why not?"
"I was just thinking of my flippin' life," she growled. "That nobody was much concerned about making easier."
"Your mother was! Whatever else happened, she saved you from this!" Lutha waved at the shrieking box, the supine form, the bloody rags. "You didn't have to experience this!"
Snark flushed, then her eyes filled and she sobbed, once only. "Yeah," she whispered. "Yeah." She sounded so sad that Lutha reached for her, but Snark evaded the embrace, ducking her head and stepping away.
They bathed Saluez again and wrapped her warmly. She began to breathe more easily.
Snark said, "She'll wake up anytime now. Once the scourges have time to get dry and fly away, then the mother can wake up."
Saluez's eyelids fluttered.
Lutha said, "You're all right, Saluez."
Saluez murmured something, about a baby.
"Rest," said Lutha, helplessly.
Snark shook her head disapprovingly, saying in a firm voice, "You didn't have a baby, Saluez. It never developed. You had scourge … Kachis eggs in you and they kept the baby from growing."
Saluez made a lost, lonely sound. She was not truly there, had not truly heard.
Lutha held her, whispering, "They're gone, Saluez. The things are gone. Snark knew what to do."
"Sad," murmured Saluez. "No baby. So sad."
"No baby, but a miracle," said Snark. "Feel your face, Saluez. Feel your face!" She took Saluez's hand and thrust it almost roughly against her cheek, the one that had been riven so the teeth showed through. "It's healed, Saluez."
"It's a miracle," said Lutha. "Weaving Woman did it."
" … not," breathed Saluez. "Leely … "
"He's safe," said Lutha. "He's fine."
"Has to be fine," Saluez whispered. "Nothing else for him … "
Then she shuddered and was gone again, her breast moving gently, her face calm.
"Now that's normal sleep," said Snark, wiping her face again. There were bloody streaks on both cheeks. "And she needs it."
Behind them the lashed box rocked and rustled.
"What do we do with them?" Lutha asked.
"Drown 'em," said Snark. "I'll do it."
"Drown what?" asked Jiacare from among the stones. He came into the entrance, water still beaded on his skin, his hair streaming down his back.
Snark went to him and they muttered together, his voice rising angrily. Lutha went to the stove to heat more water. She was filthy. She smelled to herself like a tidal flat. She resolved to wash her hair, at least, while she kept an eye on Saluez.
The ex-king came to fetch the lashed box, his face hard and furious. He started to speak to Lutha, then merely shook his head, making a gesture of frustration. Lutha gulped, getting hold of herself. Jiacare felt as she herself did. As Snark did. Angry at … what? The songfathers? Much good would that do Saluez. At the Kachis, the Ularians, the whatevers? Much good would that do anybody!
She poured water over her head, surprised that it didn't go up in steam, then set about soaping and rinsing, interrupting the task whenever Saluez made a sound or changed position. She was stripping the water from her hair when Leelson arrived.
"Leelson … "
"Snark told me," he muttered as he knelt beside Saluez and closed his eyes. After a long moment he said, "She's not grieving."
"I think she knew," Lutha replied, combing her wet hair with her fingers. "A secret like that can't be kept. No doubt there were whispers, even on Dinadh. I think she knew, but she didn't admit it to herself. I'm so thankful Snark was here."
"She says you were bitten."
"It's really only a scratch." A scratch that burned like fire. She rummaged among the odds and ends, looking for a comb, finding one at the bottom of a personal kit.
"Jiacare and Snark went to drown the things."
She grunted angrily. Good for them!
He drummed his fingers, a little rat-a-tat to accompany thought. "Do you have any explanation for what happened?"
"To Saluez?"
"No. Snark explained that. I mean with Leely. How he is capable of … doing what he's done?"
So here they were at last, at the subject of her revelation, at the answer that had come to her, finally, when it was too late to solve anything between her and Leelson!
She put down the comb, folded her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, found a knob of stone over Leelson's left shoulder, and fixed her eyes on it intently. She would not be bellicose. She would be calm.
"You used to talk to me about your great-great-grandpop. You told me he was the biochemist to end all biochemists, a genius, a savant, a polymath. We both know he went off to investigate the Ularians and ended up on Dinadh. We can assume he saw Kachis on Dinadh, and they raised certain questions in his mind. There was an analyzer among his equipment at Cochim-Mahn. Just as Snark has fed pieces of the shaggies into her analyzer, Bernesohn no doubt fed pieces of Kachis into his. Then Tospia visited him. She went home pregnant. One hundred years later, precisely when he is needed, a boy of Bernesohn's lineage, your son Leely, turns up with this trait deadly to the Ularians … "
She paused, shifting her eyes to his face. He had gone rigid, eyes staring at nothing, in that moment resembling Limia, feature for feature, his expression of rejection and repudiation exactly like hers. Limia and her damned Fastigat lineage! Limia grieving over Leelson's posterity! Oh, by the Great Gauphin, Lutha prayed, let me live long enough to tell her!
She couldn't keep the anger from her voice. "What part of that do you find hard to understand?"
"Impossible!" he growled, very red in the face. "That's impossible. Ridiculous!"
Well, well. In all the time they had been together, she had never seen Leelson truly dismayed until now. How marvelous!
"How would you know?" she cried, boiling with five years' fury. "You're only an ordinary Fastigat. Bernesohn was out of your class, or so you've told me."
"But none of the family … not my father, not his father, and not me, certainly … "
"So? Somehow Bernesohn arranged this talent to lie low for a few generations. Until it was needed!"
"I don't know how he'd do that."
A new speaker heard from! Snark, leaning against a pillar at the entrance of the chamber, where she'd obviously been listening for some time. "They force-fed me a pretty fair technical education, and I don't know a way this could happen all at once, out of nothing."
"Maybe the trait emerges only if the taste of Rottens is in the air," Lutha muttered.
"Then I'd have it," said Leelson. "I've tasted Rottens."
These were mere quibbles. "I don't know how Bernesohn did it, but I'm damned sure it's not coincidence. It happened because he's your son!"
"Dananana," caroled Leely, waving his hands and plucking at his trousers. "Dananana."
Oh, marvelous anticlimax! "I need to take him out," Lutha said furiously. "Is it safe to go out?"
Snark shrugged, her go-to-hell shrug, but her eyes were wary. "Safe as it ever is, but don't get careless, Lutha. I've had a bath at the edge of the water, and you look like you could use one, but keep an eye out."
Lutha did not reply. She stalked out past Leelson, Leely trotting along at her side, sometimes moistly kissing Lutha's wounded wrist, sometimes petting her arm. They passed Jiacare Lostre as he returned empty-handed from the sea, and Mitigan, who sat quietly on a rock, his face flushed with sunset, both of them looking like shiny new people. Lutha lusted for water, much water, and for clean air after all those hours of tasting rottenness in the claustrophobic stone chamber. She wanted to wash it away! She wanted to wash Leelson away!
Leely tugged at her hand, leading her over the ridge and down toward the scarlet shine of water and sky. The first line of shaggies seemed a safe distance away. At the shore, Leely peeled his trousers off and waded into the water to do his business. He liked to do that, whenever water was available. He'd been born able to swim. She watched him paddle, sometimes diving, feet in air, taking mouthfuls of water and spurting them like the legendary whale, he all silver and rose like the waters, like the sky. She took off her filthy clothes and waded in far enough that she could dunk all of herself. The water was cleansing, not very salty, but chill. She scrubbed at her body with handfuls of the powdery bottom sand, then waded out and sat like a monument on a pedestal of stone, letting the soft wind dry her while her filthy clothing soaked in the nearest pool.
Leely came up a good way out, clutching a fish, laughing. Not far beyond him, a shaggy lowered its tentacles. Leely took a bite out of the flapping fish, then threw the remainder into the lowered tentacles. Lutha shuddered, again aware of her son's surpassing strangeness. For years this uncanny presence had shared her days, clear as noon, while she denied and refused to see that he wasn't just a little boy, not just a child, not just her beloved son. She had been like Saluez, facing the unbearable, rejecting it.