Lovestory

Three

Valun thought she could feel the baby swimming inside her. Impossible. The baby was no bigger than her thumb. He was blind and hairless and weak and brainless, or nearly so. Couldn’t swim, didn’t even know that he was alive.

The baby wasn’t moving; she knew that the waves she felt were made by the muscles of her own uterus. The contractions weren’t painful, more like the lurch of flying through turbulence. Only this was a predictable turbulence, a storm on a schedule. The contractions were coming more frequently, despite her fierce concentration. It was what distressed her most about giving birth. Valun had gotten used to being in control, especially of her own body.

The humans had almost complete control of their bodies; it was their astonishing medicine that had drawn her to them. They had escaped from nature, vanquished diseases, stretched life spans to the brink of immortality. They managed their emotions, commanded their thoughts, summoned inspiration at will. And on those rare occasions when they reproduced… well, they could play their genome like a flute. There were no stupid humans, no wasted space in their population. No mother was inconvenienced by labor…

Another lurch. Too soon for another contraction. Then she realized that it was the go-to decelerating. Coming to a station. The readout in the front bulkhead lit up. Uskoon. Less than half an hour until she was home. Plenty of time.

She didn’t want to be traveling while she was in labor, but this was the only way to have the baby on her terms. Mothers were supposed to give birth in the nursery with their happy families gathered around them. She would be in the nursery soon enough, only she doubted that the family would be all that happy to see her. Mam would be vastly relieved—maybe that was within sight of happiness. Silmien, however, would be furious that she was forcing this baby on him and then leaving him to care for it with Mam. He’d strike the martyr’s pose, maybe even write about it. The scrap? She probably hated Valun. Valun would’ve hated her mother, had she done something like this when she was a tween. Tweens’ deepest feelings were for themselves; she’d grow out of it. Valun had heard that he had named her Tevul, after the heroine of that story he liked so much. Was it Drinking the Rain? No, the other one. But then Silmien liked too many stories too much. The world was not a story.

Thinking about them made Valun feel like the loneliest person in the universe. Part of her desperately wanted to go back to stay. She longed to sleep and eat and breathe again with her family. But not to talk; if she told them what she had learned, it might destroy them. Living with the humans had not made her happy at all. Indeed, most of the outs in Pelotto were miserable.

Valun now knew what she had only suspected when she left the family. The world they had been born into was a lie. There was no reason for the laws of birth order. No reason why she or Silmien or Mam or their little scraps should have such brutally short life spans. Mams could be mothers, mothers could nurse, outs could have babies.

No reason why there had to be families at all.

Of course, the humans did not advocate change. They offered only information; it was up to each intelligent species to decide how to use it. Except that their message was corrosive as acid. Everything was negotiable. Reality was a decision—and no one here was making it.

This idea had infected Valun’s imagination. Even if all the families took from the humans was the ability to prolong lives, the rigid structure of their culture must surely crumble. She wasn’t sure what would come after, or who. Perhaps those people—those outs—would be happy. But how could anyone alive today bear to watch the families collapse? Valun didn’t want to inflict that future on Silmien and Mam and the scrap, so she had exercised her right of silence and cut them off entirely. If they wanted to learn what she had, they would have to choose, as she had chosen. But her silence had isolated Valun from the ones she loved most. She belonged to no family now, only to herself. She was alone, but it was not what she had wanted. Alone. She drifted alone on the whisper of the go-to.

And dreamed of smells. The sweetness of rain brushing her nose like a lace veil. The honeycup he had put behind her ear; he loved to pick flowers and give them to her. The velvet scent of grass crushed beneath the weight of warm bodies. It had been so long ago that they had made this baby—much more than the traditional two years—that she had forgotten where it happened. Under the moons, out in the fields, and her head filled with the husky father smell that was like a lick between the legs. Then the hot, silky bouquet of sex. She felt as if there were a hand inside her, squeezing. The pressure was not cruel, but rather the firm grip of a lover. “Silmien!” His name caught in her throat.

Valun started awake at the sound of her own voice. The seat beneath her was damp with the yeasty soup of her birth waters. “Oh, no,” she said. Ten more minutes. She focused all her attention on the knot under her belly and the pressure eased—a little. Lucky there were no other passengers in the compartment. Luck always, Silmien had said on the night she had left him. Why did he keep popping into her head? Concentrate. She was thinking womb thoughts when the go-to stopped at their station and she walked on candystick legs to their burrow and announced herself to their doorbot.

“Valun.” Silmien flung the door open. “I can’t believe…” His nostrils flared as he took in her scent. “What have you done?”

“Come home for the holidays.” She was trying for a light touch, but when she stepped into the burrow, her body betrayed her and she stumbled. Like crunching through a skim of ice, except that ice seemed to have formed in her head too. When Silmien caught her, she slumped into his arms. She knew she ought to be embarrassed for losing control. But not now—tomorrow, maybe. Felt good not to be standing on her own.

“Tevul!” Silmien shouted. “Mam!”

They carried her to the nursery and laid her on Mam’s settle. The ice in her head cracked and began to melt. Something different about the nursery, but she couldn’t pick it out at first. The water rug still brimmed, its damp breath filling the room. Lovestory next to Mam’s settle. Wedding picture above the pool: Mam and Valun and Silmien. The tell murmured in its familiar corner. Then Valun realized the obvious. No toys, no lines of ants marching up the walls, no miniature settle in the corner. As she had expected, the scrap was home from the gardens for the lunar eclipse, but she was a visitor now and would certainly not be staying in the nursery. She was probably sleeping in Valun’s settle, next to Silmien. And where would Valun sleep that night?

She shivered and saw her whole family gathered around her, as if she had just fallen out of a tree. Valun giggled. That seemed to fluster them even more. “Tevul.” She nodded at the scrap. “Sweet name. Fills the tongue.”

Tevul stared as if she thought her mother was insane.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t at your naming,” Valun said. “Life in the gardens agrees with you?”

“It’s all right.”

“You’re learning a lot? Making new friends?”

“What do you want?” said Silmien. “What has happened?”

“Valun, did they do this to you?” said Mam. “The aliens?”

“What?” said Tevul. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”

“She’s having the baby,” said Silmien. “Smell it!”

“She can’t be.” Tevul looked from Silmien to Mam and finally at Valun. “We just learned that in biology. You have to be exposed to all Mam’s pheromones in order to bring an embryo out of latency. You’re still supposed to be in diapause!”

“This is their work,” Mam said.

Choosing what to tell them was the hardest thing Valun had ever done. She didn’t explain how she had lied about being invited to live with the humans. She had simply gotten tired of waiting and had gone to them on her own. It turned out that was the only way to gain access. The humans never actually invited anyone; all the outs in Pelotto were self-selected. Self-condemned. Nor could she tell them about the longevity treatments, the first reward for those who sought human knowledge. The problem was that pregnant mothers could not be rejuvenated, even if their embryos were latent. She said nothing of how the humans had offered to remove the embryo from her womb, and how she had almost left Pelotto then. That was too much story; her time was getting short. She could feel her womb knotting again.

“By the end of the rainy season,” she said, “I started to worry that some other family’s pheromones might be similar enough to yours to trigger a quickening. But by then, the scrap had already left for the gardens.”

“I’m Tevul,” said the scrap. “You can say my name.”

“So I had already missed the weaning,” Valun continued, “and the chance to share scents with all of you. The humans told me that they could end diapause artificially, so I could control when I had the baby. I was sure that you all still wanted him, so I agreed. And here I am. I timed him for the eclipse so that we could all, as a family, I mean…” There was a sudden, vast, and inevitable loosening inside of her, and once again she felt her body slipping from her control. Something trickling, tickling through her birth canal.

“You should have told us.” Silmien’s scent was bitter as a nut. “Why did this have to be a surprise?”

“Because she isn’t staying,” said Mam. “You want to go back to the aliens, isn’t that it? Your humans.” She made it sound like a curse. “Who are you having this baby for, us or yourself?”

“Mam, I…” Valun pumped her knees together convulsively, then spread them apart wide. “The baby…” She kneaded her belly. “Help, Silmien!”

Silmien and Tevul rallied to her. No question that she could feel the baby now, wriggling, pulling himself into her vagina with his ridiculous little arms. It occurred to her that at this moment in time she had family inside and out. What odd thoughts she was having tonight! She giggled again. The scrap was licking her face and sobbing, “Ma-ma-ma. Oh, ma!” Valun could feel Silmien’s hands on her vulva, delicately opening her as he had opened her just once before, controlling her as only a father should, fingers basketed to catch the baby. She had forgotten how much pleasure there was in giving birth, ecstasy of mind and body to smell hot, wet life scrabbling toward the world. “Oh,” she said, as the final dribble of birth waters leaked out of her, and Silmien held the baby high, offering it to the moons. “Oh.”

Silmien brought the baby down so that she and Tevul could see. He was just four centimeters long and almost lost in the palm of his proud father’s hand.

“He’s so tiny, so pink,” said Tevul. “Where are his eyes?”

“They’ll grow.” Silmien’s voice was husky. He brought the baby to his face and cleaned him gently with the tip of his tongue. The baby’s mouth opened and closed. The arms wriggled uselessly.

“Stop.” The harshness of Mam’s voice startled Valun. “What are you doing?”

“Washing the baby,” said Silmien.

“There is no baby.”

Valun propped herself on an elbow, her head savagely cleared of the moist joy of birth. Mam’s scent was like a hook up her nose; Valun had never smelled anyone so angry.

“Here.” Silmien offered it to her. “See it.”

“A baby has a mother,” said Mam. “There is no mother here, only a father. This is an experiment by the humans. Take it back to them. Tell them that it has failed.”

“Mam, no, Mam!” said Tevul. “He can only live outside a few minutes. He has to start crawling to your pouch now. Look, he’s already shivering.”

“Mam,” said Silmien. “Our baby will die.”

“Then put it on her.” Main turned contemptuously to Valun. “Let her open her pouch. Let her love it.”

“I have no pouch, Mam,” said Valun. “Only you can take care of him.” She could see that the baby was distressed. “Please, tell me what you want.” He curled into a ball and unrolled with a spasm. “Mam, I’ll do anything!” Whatever crumb of brain the baby had must have registered that something was wrong. He should already be threading through his Mam’s fur, not still flailing across his father’s hand.

“I have nothing to say to an out,” said Mam. “I will talk to its mother. Does anyone know where she is?”

“There’s no time for this,” said Silmien.

“What do you want from me, Totta?” Valun could tell that it had been a long time since anyone had used Mam’s name. “I’m Valun. The mother.”

Mam’s eyes narrowed. “I want you to care about someone else other than yourself,” she said. “I want your story to be a lovestory, Valun.”

Valun struggled up off the settle. The world spun crazily for a few seconds, but she got it under control. She cupped her hands and extended them to Silmien. “Give him to me.”

He brought his hands on top of hers and opened them. Silmien was sobbing as the baby slid onto her palm. Valun had never held a baby before. It weighed less than a berry and yet it was as heavy a burden as she had ever carried. “Will you take my place, Totta?” She nodded at the settle.

Mam hesitated for a moment, but then stretched out, facing Valun. She kept her legs closed, however, and clutched her knees to her chest to cover her pouch. Valun held the baby just above her.

“Totta, Silmien, Tevul, I will stay with you and be this one’s mother.” Valun astonished herself. In just one season the humans had taught her more about her own biology than she had learned in a lifetime of study. How could she turn away from that knowledge? “I’ll be here to give him his name,” she continued, “and I won’t leave until he has come out of the gardens with his own family. I will do this for the love of him and against my best interests. But I will not sleep with you, Silmien, and there will be no mam baby from this family. No more babies at all. I can’t be what you want, and you must all accept that. When Tevul and this scrap are grown up, I will go back to Pelotto again and study with the humans. I hope it won’t be too late. Until then, I will study patience.”

Mam did not unbend. “I heard many words, but hardly anything of love. What kind of mother are you?”

The baby was on the move again, scrambling up the side of Valun’s cupped hands. “I will love this baby because I have given up so much for him,” she said. “That is the truth, by my name.”

“It’s not a happy ending.” Mam was still not convinced.

“Totta,” said Silmien, “this is not a story.”

“Mam.” Valun tilted her hands to show her the baby’s blunt head. “Someone’s hungry.”

Mam closed her eyes. Her face was hard with grief as she opened her legs. Valun laid her hands on Mam’s belly and let the baby slip through her fingers. He landed on his back but flipped himself immediately. Driven by instinct, guided by scent, he crawled unerringly for the pouch. With each heroic wriggle forward that the baby took, Mam’s face softened. When she opened her eyes again, they were bright as stars. Valun tried to imagine herself as a mam. A difference in her family’s birth order and it could have been.

Valun could smell the buttery scent of relief melting from Silmien and Tevul. And once the baby had found the nipple, Mam’s nursing bliss filled Valun’s nose like spilled perfume. All these happy smells made Valun a little ill. This had certainly not turned out the way she had wanted. She wondered what fool had made all those promises. How could Valun keep them?

How could she not?

“Ma-ma-ma!” Tevul hugged Valun, just like she used to, but then she was still a tween and had so much to learn about being a mother.