Lovestory

One

Mam should have guessed something was wrong as soon as the father entered the nursery. His ears were slanted back, his ruby fur fluffed. He smelled as sad as a cracked egg. But Mam ignored him, skimming her reading finger down the leaf of her lovestory. It was about a family just like theirs, except that they lived in a big house in the city with a pool in every room and lots of robot servants. That family loved one another, but bad people kept trying to drive them apart.

“How’s the scrap tonight?” The father shut the door behind him as if it were made of glass.

It was then that Mam realized the mother wasn’t with him. “What is it?” She bent the corner of the leaf back to mark her place. The father and mother always visited together. She loosened her grip on the lovestory and it rewound into its watertight case.

“Wa-wa, it’s the lucky father!” The scrap tumbled out of the dark corner where she had been hiding and hugged the father’s legs. “Luck always, Pa-pa-pa!” The father staggered, almost toppled onto the damp, spongy rug, but then caught himself.

The scrap had been running wild all night, talking back to the jokestory she was only half-watching on the tell, choreographing battles with her mechanical ants, making up nonsense songs, trying to crawl in and out of Mam’s pouch for no good reason. It was almost dawn and the scrap was still skittering around the nursery like a loose button.

“Oh, when the father swims near,” sang the scrap, “and he comes up for air, all the families cheer.”

He reached down, scooped her into his arms and smoothed her silky brown fur, which was wet where it had touched the floor. It had only been in the last month that the scrap had let anyone but Mam hold her. Now she happily licked the father’s face.

“Who’s been teaching you rhyme?” he said. “Your mam?” He laughed then, but his wide, yellow eyes were empty.

“Mam is fat and Mam is slow. If I’m a brat, well, she don’t know.”

“Hush, little scrap,” said the father. “Your tongue is so long we might have to cut some off.” He snipped two fingers at her.

“Eeep!” The scrap wriggled in his arms and he set her down. She scrambled across the room to Mam’s settle and would’ve wormed into her pouch, but Mam was in no mood and cuffed her lightly away. The scrap was almost a tween, too old for such clowning. Soon it would be time for them to part; she was giving Mam stretch marks.

“Silmien, what is it?” Mam waved at the tell to turn the scrap’s annoying jokestory off. “Something has happened.”

The father stiffened when she named him. This was no longer idle family chatter; by saying his name, she had made a truth claim on her mate. For a moment, she thought he might not answer, as was his right. But whatever it was, he must have wanted to tell her or why else had he come to them?

“It’s Valun,” he said. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” said Mam. “Where?”

“To Pelotto.” There was an angry stink to the father now. “She went to Pelotto, to live with the aliens.”

“Pelotto?” Mam was confused. “But the scrap is almost weaned.”

“Obviously,” said the father. “She knows that.”

Mam was confused. If she knew, then how could she leave? “What about her patients?”

“Gone?” The scrap whimpered. “Mother gone, mother?”

“Who will give the scrap her name?” Mam reached an arm around the little one to comfort her. “And it’s time to quicken the new baby. The mother, Valun and I have to . ..” She paused, uneasy talking about birthing with the father. “What about the baby?” she said weakly.

“Don’t you understand? She has left us!” The father’s anger was not only in his scent, but spilled over into his words. “You. Me. She has left the family. She’s an out, now. Or maybe the aliens are her family.”

Mam rose from her settle. She felt as if she were hefting a great weight; if she did not bear the load, the whole house might collapse around them. “This is my fault,” she said. “She does not trust me to carry the baby, nurse it into a scrap.”

“It’s not you!” the father shouted. “It’s her.” The scrap shrank from the crack of his voice. “We’re still here, aren’t we? Where is she?”

Mam stooped to let the scrap wriggle into the pouch.

“She thinks I’m stupid,” said Mam. She felt the moisture in the rug creep between her toes. “She has nothing to say to me anymore.”

“That’s not true.”

“I heard her tell you. And that all I read are lovestories.”

The father squished across the room to her then, and she let him stroke the short fur on her foreleg. She knew he meant to comfort, but this unaccustomed closeness felt like more weight that she must bear. “This has gone very badly,” he said. He brought his face up to hers. “I’m sorry. It’s probably my fault that she’s gone.” He smelled as sincere as newly split wood, and Mam remembered when she had fallen in love with them, back at the gardens. Then it was only Valun and Silmien and her. “Something I did, or didn’t do. Maybe we should’ve stayed in the city, I don’t know. It has nothing to do with you, though. Or the scrap.”

“But what will happen to the new baby?” Mam said. Her voice sounded very small, even to her.

“I love you, Mam.” The father pricked his ears forward, giving her complete attention. “Maybe Valun loves you too, in her way. But I don’t think you and I will ever see that baby.”

Mam felt the scrap shiver inside her.

The father lingered for a few moments more, although everything important had been said. Mam coaxed the scrap out of hiding and she slipped her head from the pouch. She stared at the father as he rubbed the fluff around her nose, saying nothing. The scrap had just started her tween scents, another sign that it was time for them to part; she gave off the thin, bright smell of fear, sharp as a razor. The father made warbling sounds and her edge dulled a little. Then he licked the side of her face. He straightened and took Mam by surprise when he gave her an abrupt good-day lick, too. “I’m sorry, Mam,” he said, and then he was gone.

Mam collapsed onto her settle. The heated cushion was blood hot, but did little to ease the chill that gripped her neck. For a moment she sat, brittle as ice, unsure what to do. The next ten minutes without Valun were harder to face than the next ten years. In ten years they’d probably be dead, Mam and the father and the mother, their story forgotten. But just now Valun’s absence was a hole in Mam’s life that was too wide to cross over. Then the scrap stirred restlessly against her.

“Time to sleep,” Mam said, tugging at the scrap’s left ear. “Almost dawn.” No matter what happened, she was still this one’s mam.

The scrap shook her head. “Not tired not.”

“You want the sun to scratch your eyes out?” Mam rippled her stomach muscles, squeezing her from the pouch like a seed. The scrap mewled and then slopped across the wet rug as if she had no bones. “You pick up your things and get ready.” Mam gave the scrap a nudge with her foot. She might have indulged the little one; after all, the scrap had just lost her mother. But then Mam had just lost her mate and there was nobody to indulge her. “Make sure you clear all your projects off the tell.”

The scrap formed up her ants and marched the little robots back into the drawer of her settle. She ejected her ID from the tell, flipped it onto the tangle of ants and shut the drawer. She sorted the pillows she had formed into a nest. She turned off the pump that circulated water through her rug, dove into the nursery’s shallow egg-shaped pool at the narrow end and immediately slid out at the wide end. “Does this mean I can’t go to the gardens?” She shook the water from her fur.

“Of course not. This has nothing to do with growing up. You’ll be a tween soon, too big for the pouch.”

“But what about my name?”

“The father will give you one. I’ll help him.”

“Won’t be the same.”

“No.” Mam hesitated. “But it will be enough.”

The scrap smoothed the fur flat against her chest. She was almost two and her coat had begun to turn the color of her mother’s: blood red, deepening like a sunset. “They’re the parents,” she said. “They were supposed to take care of us.”

Mam tried not to resent her. The scrap had been taken care of. She was about to leave the family, go off to the gardens to live. She’d fall in love with a father and a mam and start a new family. It was Mam who had not been taken care of, Mam and the new baby. “They did their best.”

“I wish she were dead,” said the scrap. “Dead, red, spread on a bed.” She was careful as she wriggled into Mam’s pouch. “Do you think she’ll come to visit me at the gardens?”

“I don’t know.” Mam realized then that she didn’t know anything about Valun. The mother had always been restless, yes, and being a doctor in this little nowhere had only made things worse. But how could aliens be more important than the family? “But I’ll come visit.”

“You have to, you.” said the scrap. “You’re my old, fat mam.”

“That’s right.” Mam tickled her behind the ears. “And I will never leave you.” Although she knew that the scrap would leave her soon enough, just like she had left her mam.

Mam got up to darken the windows against the rising sun. It was a chore getting around; the scrap bobbed heavily against her belly as she crossed the room. In the last few days, the scrap had begun to doze off on her own settle; Mam was once again getting used to the luxury of an uninterrupted day’s sleep. But it felt right to carry the little one just now, to keep her close.

Mam waddled back to her settle through the soothing gloom. She wasn’t tired, and with the scrap in the pouch, it was hard to find a comfortable position. The scrap was fidgety too. Mam wondered whether the father was sleeping and decided he was probably not. He’d be making a story about what had happened, trying to understand. And the mother? No, Valun wasn’t a mother any more. She was an out. Mam focused on the gurgle of water in the pool and tried to let the sound quench her thoughts.

There were never aliens in the kinds of lovestories Mam liked to read. Fathers and mothers might run off to be an out for a while, but everyone would be so unhappy that they’d come back at the end. Of course, mams never ran. Or else one of the three mates might die and the others would go to the city and try to find a good out to take their place.

She started when the scrap’s lips brushed the tender skin near her nipple. At first she thought it was an accident, but then she felt it again, tentative but clearly deliberate, a question posed as loving touch. Her first impulse was to push her away; the scrap had fed that afternoon. But as the nubbly little tongue probed the edges of her aureole, Mam knew that it wasn’t hunger that the scrap sought to ease. It was grief. Mam shivered and the underfur on her neck bristled. Had the scrap tried to nurse out of turn on any other day, Mam would certainly have shaken her from the pouch. But this day they had each been wounded; this feeding would ease not only the scrap’s pain but Mam’s as well. It was something they could do for each other—maybe the only thing. With a twitch of excitement, she felt her milk letting down. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t time, but the scrap had such a warm, clever mouth.

“Oh,” said Mam. “Oh.”

The father had told her once that, when she nursed, chemicals flooded her brain and seeped into her milk. He said this was how Mam was making the scrap into who she was. He told her the names of all the chemicals, but she had forgotten them. Mam had a simpler explanation. She was a mam, which meant that her emotions were much bigger than she was, so they spilled onto whoever was nearest. The mother always used to say that she was a different person when she was with Mam, because of her smell. Even the father relaxed when the family came together. But it was the scrap Mam was closest to, into whom she had most often poured the overflow of feelings. Now, as they bonded for one of the last times, perhaps the last time, Mam was filled with ecstasy and regret. Of all the pleasure the scrap had given her, this was the most carnal. When she sucked, she made a wet, little sound, between a squeak and a click, that made the top of Mam’s head tingle. Mam enfolded her bulging pouch with both arms and shifted the scrap slightly so that she came at the nipple from a different angle. She could smell the bloom of her own excitement, heady as wine, thick as mud. She thought she might scream—but what would the father say if he heard her through the walls? He would not understand why she was taking pleasure with the scrap on this night of all nights. He would… not… understand. When the urgent sound finally welled up from the deepest part of her, she closed her throat and strangled it. “My… little,” she gasped, and it was as if Valun had never gone, the aliens had never come to plague the families with their wicked wisdom. “My little… scrap.”

The weight lifted from her and for a brief, never-ending moment, she felt as light as air.