Through Alien Eyes

Four

Juna was awakened by the rumble of her cell door opening. She sat up, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

“Your lawyer’s here to see you,” Sheriff Hiller told her.

“Thank you, Toni,” Juna said. Her mouth tasted sour and gummy, and her hair looked like a half-collapsed haystack. She combed her fingers through it and tried to look awake.

The sheriff escorted a slender, olive-skinned, dark-eyed older woman into the cell. The woman was elegantly dressed in a tailored silk suit that made Juna feel even more rumpled and frowzy.

“Dr. Saari, my name is Sohelia Gheisar. Your press secretary asked me to represent you.” Her voice had the clear, musical precision of someone from Persia or India.

“Hello,” Juna said, trying to make her brain function through a thick fudge of sleep. “Thank you for taking my case.”

“I seem to have caught you sleeping. Why don’t you take a few minutes to get yourself together before we go over your case.”

Juna nodded gratefully, and shuffled over to the sink. She dampened a corner of the small jail-issue washcloth and ran it over her face.

“Here,” the lawyer said, handing her toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a hairbrush.

“Thank you,” Juna said. She bent over and brushed her hair out into a full lion’s mane, then straightened, and brushed it back from her face. She still needed a haircut. She tucked in her shirt and peered into the wavy steel mirror, grateful for the lack of detail that it showed. At least she felt more awake. Filling a plastic cup with water, she sat down on the bunk across from her lawyer.

“How much did Analin tell you?”

“That you’re pregnant illegally and you need my help. She said that the aliens had somehow reversed your contraception. I told her that I would get the rest of the details from you. I must say it sounds like an interesting case.”

“I’m afraid so,” Juna agreed ruefully.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” Sohelia said, taking out a recorder and switching it on.

Juna explained what had happened. Then, when she was finished with her explanation, the lawyer went over it all again in minute detail, taking down names and dates.

“Well,” Sohelia said, switching off her recorder. “It is an interesting case. Clearly you are the victim of the Survey’s negligence.”

“I am?” Juna said, surprised. She had been too busy worrying about whether to keep the baby to give much thought to blaming anyone.

“The Survey should have checked to make sure that your contraception was intact. A contraceptive test is a standard part of any physical exam in many places. I don’t know why they didn’t perform one, especially given the radical physical transformation you underwent. The Tendu could have done almost anything to you. I’ll have to subpoena your records from the Survey. Will you give me permission to do so?”

“Of course, Counselor,” Juna said.

“Good. I’ll need to talk to your doctor. You said his name is Engle?”

“Yes, it is. He’s been my doctor since I was a small child. He gave me my contraceptive vaccination when I turned thirteen.”

“Good. That will be extremely helpful.”

“Counselor, what about Bruce— I mean, the baby’s father?”

“We’re still trying to find Mr. Bowles. Apparently he’s gone scuba diving somewhere in the Indian Ocean. I only hope that we find him before the Pop Con officials do. They’re not too easy on population violators in that part of the world.”

“I see,” Juna said. Her feelings about Bruce were decidedly mixed right now. She was angry at him for getting her pregnant, and simultaneously terrified that he might somehow take the baby away from her. And a very small, shameful part of her wanted to cling to him for help and guidance.

“What about custody issues?” she asked.

“Juna, I think that’s a problem for later.”

“I need to talk about it now,” Juna said. “I didn’t plan for this child. It was an accident, but now that I have her, I want more than anything to keep her. I don’t want Bruce, or anyone else, to take her away from me.”

“I understand, Juna, and I’ll support you in that. Since you have agreed to pay for the additional child-right, your custody position is very strong, but Bruce has rights in this matter too. Until we find out what he wants, there’s very little we can do.”

Juna looked down at the grey plasteel floor. “I see,” she said, then looked up at the lawyer. “How much longer will I be here?”

“I’m going to try to get you released on bail as soon as possible. The arraignment is tomorrow. You should be released a few hours later.”

A weight lifted from Juna’s shoulders. “Thank you, So-helia.”

“Remember now, that’s a hope, not a promise,” the lawyer said, standing and gathering her papers. “Everything depends on the judge.”

“I understand,” Juna said, feeling her giddy relief settle again. “I know you’ll do your best.” Counselor Gheisar smiled. “I always try to.” She pressed a buzzer to summon the sheriff. Toni came and let her out. With a rumble and a clang, the door shut and Juna was alone again.

The press had somehow gotten onto the station, and they were waiting for her in front of the small administrative building that did double duty as a courthouse. Sheriff Hiller escorted Juna through the surging, shouting crowd of reporters, like a small burly tugboat pulling a heavy load in high seas. Juna did her best to ignere the reporters, choosing instead to nod a greeting to the two strapping redheaded Swensen boys who let her and the sheriff in.

The door closed behind them, cutting off the clamor of the crowd. Juna let out the breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Counselor Gheisar handed her a hairbrush and a mirror as the Swensens locked the doors against the crowd of reporters.

“I’m sorry about this, Toni,” Juna apologized.

Sheriff Hiller shrugged. “We closed the spaceport as soon as we could, but this lot got in on the same shuttle as the judge. They’re all supposed to leave on the next shuttle, but that isn’t until this evening. I’m afraid we’re stuck with them until then.”

“Well,” said the judge after listening to the charges, and to the testimony of several old family friends on Juna’s excellent character. “In the ten years I’ve served on the bench in this circuit, I’ve never known Howard Engle to be mistaken on a question of character, and your other witnesses have been equally impressive. I’m going to release you with only the minimum required bond of ten thousand credits, which your father has agreed to post. You are dismissed on your own recognizance until the date of the hearing.”

He banged his gavel and climbed down from the bench. Toni and counselor Gheisar led Juna out of the courtroom, followed by her family and Analin Goudrian.

“Is there anything you need back at the jail?” Toni asked.

Juna shook her head. Her lawyer had her clothes.

“Well, then, you’re free to go.”

“Thank you, Toni. If I ever have to be arrested again, I hope you’re the one who does it.”

“Do me a favor,” Toni told her, “don’t stick me with this job again.” She squeezed Juna’s shoulder. “Keep out of trouble, okay?”

“I’ll do my best, Toni,” Juna said with a smile.

“You should make a statement to the press,” Analin urged her. “Otherwise they’ll be all over you at the farm.”

“Analin’s managed to keep them away from us so far,” her father said, “but they’ve pestered the neighbors pretty badly. It’s worse than when word first came out about the Tendu.”

“I’ve had to deputize almost a dozen people just to deal with these reporters,” Sheriff Hiller complained. “I’ll be glad when the shuttle gets here.”

“Analin, why don’t we announce a press conference at the shuttle station?” Juna said. “Once we’re through, Sheriff Hiller can keep them there until it’s time to leave. Then they won’t be bothering the neighbors in the middle of harvest.”

“It might work, if we can schedule it correctly.”

“I could provide transport to the shuttle terminal,” Sheriff Hiller offered. “My grandfather is the local historian. He’d be happy to say a word or two about the station.”

Juna met Toni’s eye, and the sheriff winked at her. Juna fought back a laugh. Grandpa Hiller’s long-windedness was notorious. Listening to him rattle on was almost more punishment than the reporters deserved.

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Sheriff,” Analin said.

The sheriff shrugged. “They’re tying up the roads. It’ll help ease congestion.”

Clearly Grandpa Hiller had outdone himself. The reporters looked slightly dazed when they got off the bus at the press conference. It took ten minutes for them to recover enough to begin asking really probing questions, and Analin was able to bring the press conference to a close after a few more minutes. One of the deputies dropped Juna at home, and she slipped quietly upstairs and gratefully into bed, even though it was only the middle of the afternoon. She was so sleepy lately. She felt like a bear, slipping in and out of hibernation.

She was awakened around dusk by a comm call.

“Good evening, Dr. Saari, I’m Counselor Tatiana Kon-stantin, from the Survey’s legal department. As you know, the Survey is most concerned about the situation that you are in, and we are doing everything in our power to help you. We’ve arranged for the charges to be dropped as soon as your pregnancy is terminated.”

Juna felt the rising hope in her fall away at the lawyer’s last words. She clutched the edge of the table and took a deep breath, reining in her anger. “There seems to be some misunderstanding here. I’m planning on keeping the baby.”

“I see,” the woman said, obviously surprised. “You realize that you are not allowed on active duty while you are pregnant?”

“That clause in my contract refers only to space travel and hazardous duty.”

“Your duties with the Tendu will require considerable travel.”

“Then I guess we’re both in a bind, aren’t we?” Juna said. “We’ll have to work out a compromise that will enable me to continue to work for the Survey.”

“That may be quite difficult, Dr. Saari.”

“I understand that,” Juna replied, “but Moki and Uka-tonen need my help and support, and I can best help them by remaining in the Survey.” She smiled inwardly. The Survey wasn’t the only one who could deal in veiled threats. “It would be a shame if I was forced to retire because the Survey was unable to work around the needs of me and my child.”

“I see. We will need to reconsider our position in this matter.”

“Yes, we will,” Juna said. “The Tendu and I need to have a say in the Survey’s plans for us.”

“I’m sure we’ll take your needs into account, Dr. Saari.”

“How can you do that if we’re not included in the decision-making process?” Juna demanded.

“I’m sure we’ll discuss your request, Dr. Saari,” the woman said. “I’ll talk to the director, and set up a meeting with you after your leave is up.”

“Thank you,” Juna said, doing her best to sound grateful. “We look forward to discussing our plans with you.”

“You’re welcome, Dr. Saari,” she said, and signed off.

Juna sat back with a weary sigh, rubbing her forehead. She was bone-weary. Even though she had just wrung a concession from the intransigent Survey bureaucrats, it did not feel like a victory.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

It was Anetta, carrying a tray laden with food.

“You’ve had a long hard day, dear, so I brought your dinner up on a tray. I made you pea soup. When you’re done with that, there’s roast chicken and spanakopeta,” she said, setting the tray down on the desk.

“Thank you, Tati.” Juna said gratefully. She really was too tired to go downstairs to eat.

“I remember when I was pregnant with my first.” Her aunt paused a moment, her eyes shadowed, remembering her family, lost in the war. In that moment she looked truly, frighteningly old. “I was so tired I could hardly move for the first couple of months. And you’ve had a very hard day.”

“Netta-Tati, do you think I’m being selfish?”

“Selfish, Juna? Why on earth would you think that?”

“For having this child, all by myself, without planning it. I ask myself why I want a child, and nothing comes back. All I know is that I want this child. Maybe it’s for all the wrong reasons.”

Anetta reached out and took Juna’s hands. “When I was young, surprise children happened a lot more often. A lot of women stopped the pregnancy, and for them it was a difficult choice, but the right one. But some women wanted to keep their children, and somehow they made room for them, even when it was hard. Juna, you want that child. Don’t let anyone talk you out of it. You have all of us behind you, and we’ll make it all work out somehow. It won’t be easy— children never are. But most worthwhile things are difficult.”

“Thank you, Netta.”

Anetta reached down and hugged her. “You’re like a daughter to me, Juna.”

Juna looked at her aunt’s kind face, seamed by time. She had helped fill the hole left in Juna’s life by the death of her mother. “You helped bring me back to life after the camps, Tdti” she said. “I was so afraid for so long.”

“We helped each other, Juna. That was a bad time for us all. Some days I thought the cloud would never leave us. It was like that when Toivo was hurt, too. Your father— ” She shook her head. “I thought your father was going to go crazy. Then Toivo pulled out of it. The doctors performed miracles, but it was Toivo’s stubborn spirit that made the difference. He just refused to die. Then, when he found how bad it was, it was your father and Selena who wouldn’t let go of him, who made him live.”

“I wish I’d been here when Toivo was injured,” Juna said regretfully. “The worst part was knowing he was hurt, and not being able to do anything.”

“But you brought the Tendu and their miracles, and soon he’ll walk again. He hasn’t been this happy since the accident. And that baby will be another miracle,” she said. “You’ve given us so much, veljentytar” She stood. “Now, eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

“Yes, Tdti Netta,” Juna said with a smile. She dug into her soup with sudden enthusiasm. She was still scared and uncertain about her future, but at least she wasn’t alone.

It took nearly a week to find Bruce, and then two more days to get him out of the backwater jail he was imprisoned in. Juna was settling into bed when the comm chimed. “Juna, it’s for you,” her father called from the foot of the stairs. “I think it’s Bruce. I’ll transfer it upstairs to your comm.”

Juna padded to the door, pulling on a robe as she went. “Thanks Isi,” she called down. “I’ll get it.”

She switched on the comm. Bruce’s face appeared. He looked rumpled and peevish.

“Hello, Bruce,” she said.

“Have you got any idea how bad a time I’ve been having?”

“I’m sorry, Bruce.”

“That’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? You didn’t have to spend a week in a stinking Mauritanian jail.”

“Bruce, we got you out as quickly as we could,” Juna told him.

“I wouldn’t have had to go through all this if it hadn’t been for you. First I was stuck on that damned ship— Now this.”

Juna took a deep breath and pushed away her pain and anger at Bruce’s sudden, surprising hostility.

“It was an accident, Bruce. The Tendu undid my contraception without my knowledge. They had no idea what they were doing, and I didn’t know I could get pregnant.” She considered pointing out that she would never have gotten pregnant if he had gotten his shot too, but that would only make matters worse.

“And now you want me to give up part of my child-rights so that you can have the baby.”

“Bruce— ” Juna began. “I don’t want to take your child-rights away. I’m not out to get you. I think you should get a good night’s sleep, and think things over tomorrow morning. I’d like you to come up here, meet my family, and talk the situation over. It’s your child too, Bruce, and I want what’s best for all of us. You, me, and our daughter.”

“A daughter?” Bruce said. “You mean— It’s a girl?” His angry expression was replaced by sudden amazement.

“So the Tendu tell me.”

“A girl,” he said and shook his head. “A girl,” he repeated somewhat more quietly. “I’ll be damned.”

He was pleased. Juna felt her own fear and anger vanish. Perhaps now he would be willing to talk.

“When do you want me to come up?” he asked.

“As soon as it’s convenient.”

“I’ll see what I can do, and then call you. What’s the time difference?” he asked.

“We’re plus 3 GMT,” she told him.

“Oh jeez. I woke you up,” Bruce said, looking embarrassed.

“Not quite,” she said. “It’s all right. Let me know when you’re coming up.” She felt herself relax with relief at his sudden shift in mood. Maybe she could work things out with him after all.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” He shook his head again. “A girl. 1*11 be damned,” he muttered as he reached for the disconnect button.

Juna and Counselor Gheisar picked Bruce up at the shuttle station.

“Well,” he said tightly after Juna had introduced him to her lawyer. “I guess you’ve got me surrounded.”

Juna winced inwardly. She wished Analin was here. She would have found some clever way to defuse the tension, but Analin had gone back to Earth, where she could work more directly with the major news organizations.

“Bruce, it’s not like that,” Juna protested. “Sohelia wants to find out what the Pop Con people have said and done, so that we can build the best case to keep our child.”

“I see. Perhaps I should have brought my lawyer as well.”

“If you’d like,” Sohelia broke in, “you can ask him to come up or have him present by comm link during our discussions. I’ll need to speak with him, anyway.”

“That would be good,” Bruce said.

“Your lawyer is Bernard Frishberg, I believe? I’ve worked with him before. He’s good.”

“Thanks,” Bruce replied. “He should be. He costs the Earth.”

“With a little luck, the Survey will wind up paying your legal fees. After all it was their negligence that caused this pregnancy.”

“So Bernie says.” Bruce sounded dubious.

“Moki is looking forward to seeing you, Bruce,” Juna interjected, to change the subject. “He’s busy helping my nephew repair the grape crusher. Moki’s still crazy about machines,” she added, smiling fondly. “He misses you.”

“It’ll be good to see him again. How’s Ukatonen?” Bruce asked, clearly relieved at the change of subject.

“Much better. They both perked up as soon as they got here. They’ve been a big help around the farm, and with the new vineyards we’ve put in we need all the help we can get. Ukatonen’s developed a real liking for the farm horses. My father’s asked him to help train a pair of colts to harness.” According to her father, Ukatonen had a gift for working with horses.

“You seem happy to be home,” Bruce noted. He sounded a bit wistful.

“I am,” Juna agreed. “I think living with the Tendu made me appreciate my family more.”

“I guess after four years of living in a tree with aliens, it would be nice to be home.”

“No,” Juna said. “That’s not what I meant.” She paused, trying to find the words that would bridge the gap of understanding that lay between them. “The Tendu were together so much. No one was ever alone. It was hard at first, living in everyone’s pocket, but gradually I became part of the community, even though I was an alien and a stranger. I felt more alone on the ship coming back than I did living among the Tendu. They made me realize how much strength I could draw from being a part of a community.”

Bruce looked uncomfortable. “I think you’ve been spending too much time with the aliens and not enough time with your own people,” he told her. “You need to remember that you’re home now, Juna, among human beings.”

His words saddened Juna. She realized that she was seeing an aspect of his personality that she had refused to acknowledge on board ship. If only she could make him understand how much her time with the Tendu meant to her, how deeply it had changed her.

“Bruce, I wouldn’t change what happened to me on Tiangi. The Tendu taught me so much. I can’t imagine my life without the Tendu in it.”

“Juna, I— ” Bruce began, “You shouldn’t— Dammit Juna, I don’t want my daughter raised by aliens!”

She placed one hand protectively on her stomach, and took a deep breath, pushing away her fear that he would take the baby away.

“Bruce,” she said gently, “I’ll be her mother, not Uka-tonen, not Moki. I want to marry into a family that will love her as much as I will. Ukatonen and Moki will be part of her life, but she’ll also be surrounded by humans.”

“Then marry me, Juna. We can make it work— you’ll see.”

She felt a wave of sadness wash over her. She couldn’t marry Bruce, not after what he had said about the Tendu.

“I’m honored that you would ask me, Bruce. It’s very kind of you to offer, but we’re too different. It wouldn’t work.”

She hoped that she had turned him down gently enough. If he got angry at her, he might make things even more difficult.

“But, Juna, the child needs a father!” he exclaimed.

“Bruce, the child needs a family, a happy one, not two people married to each other out of obligation.”

“And what about me, what about my rights?” he demanded.

“That’s one of the reasons you’re here, to help settle the custody issues,” Sohelia pointed out. “I don’t expect any final agreement to come out of this, but perhaps we can find out what each of you wants, and start to outline some kind of settlement. However, you two may be arguing over something that will never happen. Pop Con could force Juna to end the pregnancy. I’m going to do everything in my power to prevent that,” the lawyer continued, “but until the hearing, custody is a moot point. If you want this child to live, you must work together to make that happen.”

They drove on in sullen silence until they passed the Ueno place. “We’re nearly home,” Juna said, trying to break the mood. “I hope you’re hungry. My aunt’s making a big dinner for us. She’s a wonderful cook.”

“Actually, I’m starved,” Bruce admitted. “I don’t eat much when I’m shuttling between stations. All those gravity changes do strange things to my stomach.”

Sohelia nodded sympathetically. “Mine, too.”

“I guess I got used to shifting gravity, growing up here,” Juna remarked. “They sent us to school out on the outer rim, where the gravity is heavier, so our bones would be strong. After the first month, I hardly noticed the change anymore.”

Juna turned in at the gate to her family’s farm. “Here we are.”

Bruce looked out the window at the solid-looking stone house. “I expected something a little more spartan.”

“The house was built by the first colonists, a group of Reform Amish,” Juna explained. “The Amish had big families, so they built big. And they built to last. The stone was left over from building the station. Most of the original houses are made of it. It was the cheapest building material they had.”

“It’s a nice place,” Bruce said.

“Thank you,” Juna replied. She stopped in front of the house, and pulled Bruce’s bag out of the back of the truck. Anetta came out on the porch, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, and nodding at Sohelia as the lawyer went inside.

“So you’re the father of my new niece!” Anetta said when Juna had introduced them.

“Well, I suppose I am,” Bruce acknowledged, looking suddenly embarrassed.

Just then, Moki came out of the barn. “Bruce!” he shouted, and broke into a run. He took his bag. “Bruce! I’m going to have a sister! Isn’t that great!”

“Moki, why don’t you help Bruce get settled, and show him around the farm?” Juna suggested, relieved to be passing Bruce along to someone else for a while. “I’ll go help Anetta in the kitchen.”

“Okay,” Moki said. “Danan and I got the crusher put back together. It runs much better now.”

“Good for you!” Juna said. “You’re turning into a real mechanic.” She smiled. Moki was sounding more like Danan every day. Sometimes he sounded deceptively like a ten-year-old boy.

Bruce followed Moki around the farm. Moki clearly liked the vineyard, and was intrigued by the winery, with its tall steel vats, and the crushing and bottling machines, as well as the small, immaculately clean lab for testing the wine. But it was clear that the little alien was even more excited by the prospect of having a sister. Listening to him made Bruce’s blood run cold.

How could this alien child blithely assume such a close relationship to his daughter? And how could Juna and her family allow it? It all seemed deeply, profoundly wrong to Bruce. Finally, he excused himself and retreated to his room on the pretext that he needed to wash up before dinner. He winced as he lay down on the bed. The bruises from the beating he had received during his arrest were still tender. He closed his eyes, shutting out the high-ceilinged room, and tried to remember how he had gotten himself into this situation.

Juna had seemed improbably beautiful when he had first seen her on Tiangi. Brilliant colors and patterns flickered and slid across her naked body like some strange light-show. Walking in the forest with her was like stepping into Eden. She was graceful and completely at home in the alien forests of Tiangi. Then she had cried in his arms like an abandoned child. He had been touched by her loneliness and vulnerability, and flattered that someone as famous as she was would be drawn to him.

She remained beautiful after the aliens had given her back her original creamy brown skin. But on board ship she had gotten more and more wrapped up with the aliens and their problems. The final frantic flurry of sex during the quarantine had been exciting, but he had been secretly relieved to have the relationship end. Only, now, it wasn’t over.

At first he’d thought the arrest was a joke, some kind of mistake. He had argued with the police, and instead of reasoning with him, they hit him with their rubber truncheons, threw him in their hot, filthy jail. He swallowed against the tightness in his throat as he remembered the smell of the place. And here he was, his life turned inside out by a woman he thought he had said goodbye to.

Dinner was long and tense. The food was good, the wine was excellent, but it was all ashes in his mouth. Juna’s father, Teuvo, tried to draw him out, but Bruce felt too nervous and out of place to talk. Instead he worried about what he was going to say at the upcoming meeting.

At last the dessert plates were empty. Bruce pushed away from the table with a sense of guilty relief.

“Mr. Bowles,” Juna’s lawyer said, consulting her watch, “it’s nearly time to call Bernie Frishberg for our conference. Is there anything you need before we start.”

Bruce shook his head. “We might as well get it over with,” he said.

“You can use the library,” Juna’s father offered. “It’s very private.”

Bruce followed the others into the library. He felt like a condemned man being led to the firing squad. At least, he thought sourly, it was a handsome room, lined with books. One whole set of shelves was devoted to technical books on winemaking and grape-growing. They looked well-thumbed. There was a low table in the middle of the room with comfortable chairs set around it. But the comfort and dignity of the room did nothing to quell his worries as he sat down and set up his comm unit.

“Well,” Counselor Gheisar said when they were all settled and Brace’s lawyer was listening in on the comm link, “Juna has expressed an interest in trying to work out the custody issues with your desires in mind, Mr. Bowles. But in order to do that, we need to know what you want.”

Bruce took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Before all this happened, I was planning on getting on with the rest of my life, hoping to get married. I’ve worked for years to get enough money to afford a second child. I don’t want to lose my child-rights.” Anger surged as he spoke.

“Bruce, I— ” Juna began.

“And now you’ve involved me in this scandal, I’m going to have to spend all my savings on legal fees.” All his plans were in ruins because Juna hadn’t thought to have her contraception checked.

“Bruce, don’t worry, the Survey is clearly negligent. They’ll wind up paying the court costs on this one,” Bernie said reassuringly. Bruce’s lips tightened. He would believe that when it happened.

“Juna intends to pay for the fractional child-right,” her lawyer told him. “You’ll still be able to afford a second child.”

Bruce nodded grudgingly. It was the least she could do.

“What are your feelings about custody?” Counselor Gheisar asked.

Bruce looked down at the worn rag rug that covered the floor. This was the hardest question to answer. “It bothers me to know that the child is going to be raised with the aliens. I mean, I like Moki and Ukatonen well enough,” he said, glancing up at Juna’s lawyer, “but I don’t want them looking after a child of mine. Juna’s all alone. What kind of mother can she be, without support? And she has the aliens to take care of. That’s a pretty demanding job. I don’t want my daughter raised in a situation like that.”

“Do you want custody?” Sohelia asked him.

Bruce looked at Juna, who was watching him, her dark eyes intent on his face. He dropped his gaze to the rug. This was going to be hard enough to say without looking at her. “I think the whole thing is a bad idea,” he said quietly. “I don’t think Juna should have the baby.”

“Bruce, I— ” Juna began again, but her lawyer laid a cautionary hand on her arm.

“You’ve brought up some very genuine concerns,” Counselor Gheisar said. “First, the matter of money. You are not being asked to give up any of your child-rights. Juna has agreed to buy the remaining fraction of a child-right that she needs on the open market. Second, as Bernie pointed out, the Survey will very likely pay all legal fees and fines. They should have checked to see if her contraception was still intact, and they’re clearly negligent under current law. They’re responsible for Juna’s becoming pregnant.”

Gheisar stood. “The matter of custody is a good deal more complex. As an unmarried man whose child-rights are not involved, you have very little say in the custody of the child. Juna would be well within her rights to never allow you any access to her child at all. Instead, she has agreed to allow very liberal visitation rights. As far as your other reservations are concerned, Juna has the support of her family, and of her brother’s family. They will help her raise the child. It’s not a marriage, perhaps, but it is a family, and a solid one.”

“Bernie, what do you think?” Bruce asked, appealing to his lawyer for support.

“Basically, Counselor Gheisar is correct. Juna is being extremely generous here. Custody is a long shot. You have some options, but they’re expensive and time-consuming. If you like, we can discuss them later.”

Bruce examined the carpet again. There was no easy way out of this. He raged inwardly at the situation.

“This brings us to the matter of the Tendu,” Counselor Gheisar continued, “Why, exactly, do you object to them?”

“Because Moki is planning on being my daughter’s brother! It isn’t right, it isn’t natural! It can’t be good for the child!” Bruce exploded, venting his frustration.

“Bruce, I don’t understand,” Juna said. “You like Moki. Why don’t you want him around our daughter?”

“I don’t trust the Tendu,” Bruce replied, scowling. Juna and her lawyer were herding him into a very small corral, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. Why couldn’t Juna let go of the baby? She already had fame, money, and the Tendu. Wasn’t that enough? Why was she dragging him through this?

“Bruce, I’ve known Moki and Ukatonen for years,” Juna told him. “I’ve trusted them with my life. I wouldn’t go through with this if I thought that the Tendu would harm our daughter.”

“But Juna, they eat their young!” Bruce blurted out. “How can you let them near a baby!”

Juna’s eyes widened in surprise. “Ukatonen and Moki understand the difference between a human baby and a Tendu tadpole. If you don’t believe me, we can call them in and ask them!”

“That’s an excellent idea, Juna,” Counselor Gheisar said. “I can’t think of a better way to deal with this question. Please, go ahead.”

Bruce glared at her lawyer as Juna went to the door and called the Tendu in. The aliens came-in and sat down, deep purple with curiosity.

“Go ahead,” she told Bruce. “Ask them.”

Bruce stared at the floor, embarrassed and angry at being put on the spot like this. He mumbled a curse under his breath.

“What did you say, Bruce?” Moki asked.

“Are you— ” he began, then shook his head. “You called them in here, you ask them,” he said, looking up at Juna.

“Bruce is concerned that you might eat the baby,” Juna said.

Ukatonen’s ears spread wide, and he turned a deep purple in puzzlement. Moki sat up indignantly, a lightning fork of red anger flickering across his chest.

“Why would we do a thing like that?” he demanded. “Why would I eat my own sister?”

Ukatonen touched Moki on the shoulder, and said something in skin speech. Bruce couldn’t follow what he was saying with the rudimentary skin speech he had picked up from them on the ship. Ukatonen stood, drawing himself up proudly. Suddenly the alien seemed like the largest person in the room, even though he didn’t even come up to Brace’s shoulder.

“I am an enkar of the Three Rivers Council,” Ukatonen declared. “I am about to render a formal judgment. As Eerin knows, my life is forfeit if this judgment is wrong. I say that no Tendu will harm Eerin’s daughter.”

He relaxed his formal pose, yet still seemed to dominate the room.

“We promised, when we came here, that we would abide by the Contact Protocols,” Ukatonen continued. “Eating a human child would be a clear violation of those protocols.” Bruce recognized the amusement that flickered across the alien’s chest, and his lips tightened in anger.

The amusement vanished as the alien turned to speak to Bruce. “Eerin’s child is important to both our people. By growing up with Moki and myself, she will learn about the Tendu. When she is grown, Eerin’s daughter will help provide a link between our two peoples. There is too much to gain for us to want to hurt her.”

“Eerin’s daughter this, Eerin’s daughter that,” Bruce complained. “She’s my daughter too. I want her to be a normal, happy little girl, not some half-alien thing I can’t understand! I don’t want her to grow up to be an alien. I don’t want to sacrifice her on the altar of alien diplomacy! She’s just a little girl who isn’t even born yet!”

“Bruce!” his lawyer cautioned. “That’s enough.”

“We don’t want to turn her into a Tendu, Bruce,” Ukatonen told him. “We want her to be a human with a deeper understanding of the Tendu. We will help Eerin raise her, but she will be Eerin’s child, and if Eerin does as good a job with her daughter as she has with Moki, then I think the child will be exceptional.”

Bruce looked down at the carpet once again, unable to find words that would express the dread he felt. They wouldn’t listen, anyway.

Juna’s lawyer began gathering up her notes.

“Perhaps we should all get a good night’s sleep and think things over,” she suggested. “We’ve gotten a good idea of how everyone feels, and that’s an important first step. Now we need to arrive at an agreement that we can all live with. We can work on that tomorrow.

“Bruce, we all realize that you’re hesitant about the child being raised around aliens, but the Tendu seem to care about her, and mean her no harm. Also, you should be aware that Juna is being extremely generous. She’s offering you liberal visitation rights, and carrying the financial burden of bearing and raising this child herself, freeing you to marry as you wish.

“Juna, you understand that Bruce has deep misgivings about the way you wish to raise your child. You need to think about how to reassure him that your daughter will have a normal childhood. Now, go,” Sohelia said, making shooing motions with her hands. “Go and think things over.”

As Bruce left the meeting, he saw Moki glance at him and turn away, his skin clouded with grey.

“Damn,” Bruce muttered under his breath. He had not wanted to hurt the little alien’s feelings. He headed upstairs to his room with a heavy heart. It had been a very long, hard day.

Moki walked out onto the front porch and stood in the darkness for a few moments, his skin a smoky roil of grey and purple. Bruce liked him. Why was he so afraid that he would hurt the baby?

Moki stood on the porch until the cold made him feel sluggish and dull. The cold numbed his body, but did nothing to erase the hurt he felt. With a slow ripple of sadness, he turned and went back into the house and all the troubles it contained.

He went into the kitchen to brew a cup of peppermint tea. He liked the warmth and reassurance of tea, and the sweet, pungent scent reminded him of the smell of fresh aka leaves. He huddled in front of the stove, waiting for the water to boil.

“Hei, pikkuinen, what are you doing?” It was Eerin’s father.

“Making some tea, Isoisi” he said, using the Finnish word for Grandfather. “Would you like some?”

“You look cold, Moki. Go sit by the heater and warm yourself. I’ll make the tea. Let me guess, you want peppermint, right?”

“Yes, Isoisi” Moki said, “but I should do it. You are an elder, after all, and the father of my sitik.”

Teuvo smiled. “It’s all right, Moki, I may be an elder, but I’m not so ancient that I can’t make a mug of tea for my daughter’s bami. Besides, Juna just stalked up to her room without saying a word, and I want to hear about what went on in the library.”

“Now,” he prompted when they were settled near the heater in the living room, “tell me what happened.”

Moki told him about Bruce’s fears for the child.

“I don’t understand, Isoisi, I thought he was my friend. I thought he liked me. Why is he afraid to let me help Juna with her baby?”

Teuvo stared into his mug of tea. “Many humans are afraid of what’s different, Moki. When I married Juna’s mother, Mariam, both our families were extremely upset.”

“Why?” Moki asked, puzzled.

“Mariam’s skin was even darker than Juna’s, and my skin, as you can see, is light. She and I came from very different people. Our families were afraid of how different we were from each other. They wanted their children to marry someone like them.

“To be honest, it was hard at first. There were some terrible arguments.” Teuvo smiled, remembering. “Sometimes I think the only reason we stayed together was because we couldn’t understand each other’s insults. But there were good times too, lots of them. When she died, I felt like I’d lost my other half.” He paused for a moment, his gaze turned inward, lost in remembrance.

“Most of our relatives forgave us when Juna was born,” Teuvo continued. “It’s amazing how grandchildren can bring a family together again. Our children and grandchildren are very precious to us.

“I’ve had some misgivings about you and Ukatonen and the child,” he admitted. “But I know Juna better than Bruce does, and I trust her judgment. If she’s willing to trust you and Ukatonen, then you must be worthy of that trust.”

“You honor me. I will try to be a good brother to your grandchild,” Moki told Teuvo. He spoke as formally as he could, given the limitations of human sound speech.

Juna’s father chuckled. “Of course you will, pojanpoika, of course you will.”

“But what about Bruce?” Moki asked. “How can I achieve harmony with him?”

Teuvo shook his head, “I don’t know, Moki. You should talk to him, but he may not be as interested in harmony as you are. There may be no solution to this problem, Moki. But if there is, I’m sure you will find it.”

Ukatonen turned up the heat on his warmsuit. It was deadly cold this morning. In the shadow of the barn, the ground was covered with a thin white coating. He took off one of his gloves and touched a stone* covered with the white stuff. The rime coating the stone burned with cold, but disappeared when he touched it, leaving only a dark wet spot on the rock where his finger had been. Ukatonen sniffed his finger, smelling nothing but moisture. He shoved his hand back into his glove, grateful for the heated glove’s warmth. His whole body felt suddenly warmer, as though he had stepped into a warm room. He stood, feeling his hand slowly stop aching from the cold.

“What is this white stuff, Teuvo?” he asked Juna’s father, who was watching him.

“It’s frost, frozen water vapor. It settles onto the ground on cold nights. It’ll be gone as soon as it warms up a bit.”

“It will get warmer, then?” Ukatonen asked. He felt smothered inside the muffling warmsuit. While wearing it, he was restricted to human speech, or to small private words on his face, but in the cold, his skin became sluggish and unresponsive to his thoughts. He pulled his hood more closely around his face, leaving only his eyes and muzzle exposed to the numbing, burning cold.

Teuvo laughed, his breath becoming a white cloud in the cold air. “Of course it will. The pickers are already out in the vineyard, picking the grapes before they thaw for eiswein. I’ll have to go and oversee the crushing in about an hour. But for now”—he held up a pair of halters—“we have a little time to train the colts. They’ll be full of ginger this morning!”

“Ginger?” Ukatonen said, trying to put a questioning inflection into his voice.

“The cold will make them frisky and full of energy.”

“You mammals!” Ukatonen said reprovingly. “No sensible creature would live in a climate like this.”

“Come on, then, Mr. Cold-blood. A little work will warm you up.”

Ukatonen followed Juna’s father out to the relative warmth of the sunlit paddock. Helping Eerin unharness her horse had aroused his curiosity about the massive but gentle animals. They were so big, and yet so amazingly gentle and eager to please. Teuvo had noticed Ukatonen watching the horses, and had invited him to help work with them.

He enjoyed working with the horses. Teuvo seemed to think that he had a real gift for it, but it was just like taming pets at home, only easier. It helped that the horses had a real sweet-tooth, and weren’t afraid of him, but the rest was just patience and timing. Once you understood that they were herd animals, and hated being alone, the rest was easy.

Teuvo was the master of the horse atwa. He moved with the sureness of long practice around the flighty young colts. They were training these two colts to be light draft and riding horses for the Fortunati family, in exchange for help with the harvest. The colts had come up from the outer ring of the station, where the higher gravity helped them put on bone and muscle. According to Teuvo, horses raised in the outer ring were ready to ride four months earlier than horses on Earth.

Teuvo stood at the gate and gave a loud whistle. The horses trotted up, ears forward, eager for their treats, and for company. Ukatonen haltered the animals and led them to the smaller fenced ring to work with them.

“Today,” Teuvo said, “we’re going to work them on the lunge line to take the edge off, then start working them together as a team.”

The morning went well, the horses moving sweetly through their paces. At first they were skittish, but Teuvo and Ukatonen spoke soothingly, doling out treats with a liberal hand, and the colts soon settled down. Then it was a matter of walking the paired horses over carefully spaced poles on the ground to encourage them to synchronize their strides. Ukatonen led the colts, while Teuvo followed along behind, holding the long harness reins and giving commands. Soon they were moving in perfect unison.

The day’s training completed, Ukatonen and Teuvo unharnessed the horses, rubbed them down, and turned them loose in the paddock. Leaning against a metal fence rail, they watched the young horses settle down to graze.

“We did good work today, Ukatonen,” Teuvo said. “I’ve never seen two horses learn to move together that quickly. Look at them now. They’re even grazing in sync.”

Ukatonen nodded, watching the two horses eating in precisely the same rhythm.

“You linked with them, didn’t you?” Teuvo asked.

“I synchronized their body rhythms while I was leading them,” Ukatonen told him. “It is a thing my people do when they need to work together. It will wear off in an hour or two.”

Teuvo shrugged. “It’s a little spooky, watching them. Do you think it’ll make a difference tomorrow?”

“We will both find out. This is a new thing. I’ve never tried it before. I won’t do it again, if you don’t want me to.”

“Just tell me first.”

They stood silently together watching the horses.

“I wish they weren’t going back to the outer level after we’ve finished with the harvest,” Teuvo said with a regretful grimace. “It’s so much more convenient working with them here. And I’m getting too old to deal with the gravity out there.”

“I don’t understand getting old, Teuvo. What’s it like?”

Teuvo looked at him, one white eyebrow raised. “From what Juna tells me, you know a lot more about it than I do.”

“We grow older but we do not”—Ukatonen paused, searching for the right word—“age as you do. Our bodies do not wear out. Unless we are unlucky, we get to tell our bodies when to die. Here it is your bodies that tell you when you will die. What is that like for you?”

“Our lives have a rhythm to them, Ukatonen. At first we are young and active— our lives are full of exploration and discovery. Then we mature, and have children. Then we get old. We have some time to enjoy the fruits of our lives, and watch our children and grandchildren grow up. There’s nearly ninety years of experience inside this head. That’s a lot of good memories. I like being able to look back on a broad sweep of time. Soon it’ll be time to let go, let the next generation come up to take my place.”

He sighed. “But as nice as all that sounds, I don’t want to die yet, Ukatonen. I like the life that I have. I built this vineyard, planted those grapes. Now it’s doing well, and I want to enjoy that. I want to see what happens to my children and grandchildren. I’m not ready to leave yet, but I know that no matter what, my body is going to continue to decline.

“To tell the truth, growing old is mostly unpleasant. Everything hurts. You get tired more easily. Every time you forget something, you wonder whether your mind is going.” He sighed again. “That’s what I worry about most, you know, my body keeping on going while my mind is gone. Though the other option, having an intact mind while my body doesn’t work, is pretty bad too. I don’t want to wind up like— ” He paused.

“Toivo?” Ukatonen prompted.

Teuvo nodded and looked down at the ground. Ukatonen watched him, wishing he understood human expressions as well as Moki did. Clearly Teuvo was saddened by his son’s injury, but he sensed that there was more to it than that.

“There were times when I wanted Toivo to die,” Teuvo confessed. “I actually wanted my own son to die.”

“I don’t understand you humans,” the enkar said. “A Tendu crippled beyond healing would have chosen death. Why do you humans try so hard to live?”

“I think you said it yourself, Ukatonen. The Tendu choose when to die, and we humans have death forced on us. As a result, we cling to life, even when it is easier and sometimes better to die. Toivo did try to kill himself once. We managed to save him.”

“Why?”

“When Toivo was injured, we didn’t know if Juna was still alive. I thought that Toivo was the only child I had left,” he said. “Besides, there wasn’t much time for thinking about it when we found him. We got him to the hospital immediately.” Teuvo looked back at the horses, still grazing in sync. “After he got out of the hospital, he left for the zero-gee satellite. Being,here broke his heart, I think. Every day he was reminded of all the things he couldn’t do anymore. I’m still amazed that he came back to see Juna. I guess he hadn’t said goodbye to her yet.”

They stood silently in the morning light, watching the horses.

“How soon will Toivo be well again?” Teuvo asked.

“We’ll be done with our work in a week or so. It would be faster if Juna weren’t pregnant, but we have to be careful about the baby. After we’re done, then Toivo will have to learn to use his body again. That could take months.”

“Could I—?” Teuvo began.

“Yes, Teuvo?” Ukatonen prompted.

“I wanted to know what it was like. Linking, I mean. Perhaps I could help when Juna gets tired?”

“Thank you,” Ukatonen said, “We’d be honored to have your help. It will make the work go much faster.”

They gathered up the bucket of treats and the lead rope and headed back to the barn.

“I’m worried about Moki,” Teuvo remarked as they put their gear away in the tack room. “He wants to try to work things out with Bruce, to ‘achieve harmony’ as he puts it. I don’t think he understands how irrational we humans can be when it comes to our children. I’m afraid that he’s going to get hurt. Keep an eye on him, please.”

“I’ll try,” Ukatonen promised. “I would like to achieve harmony with Bruce, too, but I will keep your words in mind when we speak to him. Tell me, what would be the best way to approach this?”

“To be honest,” Teuvo admitted, “I don’t think you can work this one out, Ukatonen. Bruce has made up his mind that this is a bad idea. If I thought I could stop Moki from interfering, I would, but he’s such a determined youngster.”

Under the muffling confinement of his warm suit, Ukatonen rippled amusement. “Determination is what Moki’s best at,” he agreed, remembering the little one’s dogged pursuit of Eerin through the forest, determined to either be adopted or die.

“Well, Ukatonen, enough playing with horses. It’s time to get back to work,” Teuvo said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Same time tomorrow, eh? and we’ll see how well those two work together.”

Ukatonen nodded, a pale blue flicker of affection appearing on his skin as he watched Teuvo head to the winery.

Moki didn’t have a chance to talk to Bruce until after lunch, when he went out for a walk.

“Can I show you the forest?” Moki asked. “It’s beautiful, and very quiet. I think you’d like it.”

Bruce accepted, and the two of them walked in silence through the vineyards and the orchards. The leaves on the trees and vines were bright red and yellow, as though the plants were angry at the cold weather. Moki mentioned this to Bruce, and he smiled and shook his head.

“You say the damnedest things, Moki. What makes you think they’re angry?”

“Yellow and red are the colors for irritation and anger,” Moki explained. “If the trees were Tendu, that’s what they’d be feeling.” He looked up at Bruce. “What makes you think I would harm your daughter?”

Bruce let out a long sigh, and stopped walking. “Moki, I’ve just spent all morning going over this with Juna and that damned lawyer of hers. I came out here to get away from all of that shit for a while.”

Moki turned contritely tan all over. “I’m sorry, Bruce, but it’s important for me to understand what you’re thinking. I don’t want to be out of harmony with a friend.”

“Moki, I— Dammit Moki, if it weren’t for the Tendu, I wouldn’t be in this mess!”

“That’s true,” Moki observed, “and if it weren’t for Juna, I would be dead. We can’t change the past, Bruce, we can only live with what is. Adopting me has made my sitik’s life more difficult. Even so simple a thing as having a child is a struggle for her now. That shames me, because a bami is supposed to make a sitik’s life easier. But we care about each other, and that helps.”

“If Juna cared about me, she wouldn’t be putting me through this!”

“But if you cared more about Eerin, perhaps you would understand why she is doing this,” Moki replied. “Eerin wants this child with her whole heart. She was willing to be put in a cage for this child. She is willing to be out of harmony with the Survey, and with Population Control and even with me. She is frightened by how much she wants this baby. It is a human thing. I do not understand it, but I wish to learn. I wish to understand something that is so precious to Eerin, and to you. It is important, because it will help me understand my atwa.”

“Your what?”

“My atwa. An atwa is a piece of the world that we are responsible for. It is our job to keep that piece of the world in harmony with everything else. Every Tendu elder has an atwa. My atwa will be to understand humans. I will be the first Tendu ever to practice this atwa. It will be hard, and I have a lot to learn before I’m ready.”

“What about Ukatonen?” Bruce asked. “I thought he was here to learn about humans. Doesn’t he have one of these at-thingies?”

“He is an enkar. His atwa is the Tendu. I will be something different.” Moki shrugged. “But I don’t know what that will be yet. Your daughter will be something new, like me.”

“I don’t want my daughter to be something new,” Bruce told him. “I just want my daughter to be happy.”

“I don’t understand. What does being happy mean?”

“Don’t you know what it means to be happy?”

“I know what it means for me. I know some of what it means for my sitik and for Ukatonen, and even a little for Eerin’s family. But I don’t know what happiness means for you, and I don’t understand how you can know what happiness will mean for your daughter. She isn’t even born yet.”

Bruce opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. “Moki, did anyone ever tell you that you have a knack for asking hard questions?”

“Is that good?” Moki wanted to know.

“It’s not a widely appreciated skill,” Bruce observed. “I want to be left alone. I don’t want to be pushed around. That’s what would make me happy.”

“I don’t understand,” Moki said. “How are you being pushed around?”

“I have no say in what happens to my daughter. That lawyer’s telling me what I can and cannot do about my own flesh and blood.”

“What do you mean by ‘flesh and blood,’ Bruce?”

Bruce looked impatient. “The baby, Moki. She’s my daughter.”

“Why are you talking about her as though she were like your arm? She isn’t part of your body,” Moki pointed out.

“Half of her genetic material came from me. That makes her partly mine.”

“How can you own another person?” Moki asked, his confusion growing.

“Moki, I’m her father, I should have a say in how my daughter is raised.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s right that I should,” Bruce snapped.

Moki’s head was whirling. He was beginning to understand his sitik’s difficulty. This argument was like being sucked into a whirlpool; you went round and round and each circle drew you further down into it. There was simply no way to get Bruce to see another point of view.

“Bruce, can’t you see beyond yourself? This child could make a real difference both to your people and to mine. Please, let your daughter belong to herself. Give her the chance to know the Tendu and decide what she wants to do with her own life.”

“Moki, stop trying to make me give in. She’s my daughter, and I don’t want her raised by aliens, not even you.”

“I’m not trying to make you give in,” Moki said quietly. “I’m trying to find out how to bring us all into harmony. Everyone else involved is in harmony with Eerin’s desire to raise this child with the^help of Ukatonen and myself. You don’t want this because your daughter might grow up to be different from you. Is my understanding incomplete? Is there another explanation?”

Bruce was silent for a long while, scuffing the fallen leaves with his toe. At last he shook his head. “Moki, this is a human thing. You wouldn’t understand, and I can’t explain it.”

Sadness clouded Moki’s skin. He couldn’t get Bruce to see the path to harmony that stretched out at his feet. All he had to do was to turn his gaze outward, and he would see.

“It pains me to be out of harmony with you, my friend,” Moki said, looking up at Bruce. “I have done what I can. The rest is up to you.”

Not knowing what else to do, Moki turned and walked away through the drifting rain of angry leaves. Despite his warmsuit, the chill in the air seemed to have settled in his bones.

Juna drove Bruce to the shuttle station. He settled resentfully into the passenger seat of the truck, waving a grudging goodbye to Juna’s family and to the aliens. They drove through the orchards and the fields of golden stubble in tense silence.

“I wish we could have come to an agreement, Bruce. It bothers me that we* re still so far apart on this,” Juna said as they pulled up to the station entrance.

“She’s my daughter too, Juna,” he said, as he climbed out. He was glad to be leaving. He was tired of this endless wrangling that went nowhere. He stole a longing glance at the door to the station.

“I know, Bruce, and I’ve done everything I can to include you, but you keep shutting us out. If you want to be part of our daughter’s life, you’re going to have to accept the fact that Moki and Ukatonen will be part of her family.”

Brace’s lips tightened in frustration as he pulled his bag out of the back of the truck. “I guess I’ll see you at the hearing, Juna.” There was simply no more to be said. Juna was adamant about having the child, and he was equally adamant that the child should not be raised by aliens. There was no foothold for compromise.

“I’m sorry that you got dragged into this, Bruce,” Juna told him.

“I know,” Bruce said, and picked up his bag and walked away, feeling the weight of dissension slide from his shoulders as he entered the terminal. He glanced back at Juna one last time as the doors swung shut. She was standing by the truck looking after him. He thought of those aliens, with their wet, clingy skin holding a child of his and shuddered. It must not happen.

Juna stood looking after Bruce for a minute, wishing there was something she could say to make things right between them, but it was impossible. Still, she had been among the Tendu so long that the inability to reach harmony was almost a physical ache. She got back into the truck, leaned back, and closed her eyes, wishing somehow to make it all right. Then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and started the engine.

Juna sat down at the comm unit and told it to get her mail. She had neglected her mail since she got home, at first because she was on vacation, and then because she had been too busy. Lately she had caught herself avoiding her comm because of the enormous backlog that she knew would be waiting for her.

The accumulation was even bigger than she had imagined. There were over two thousand messages, far too many for a download of her personal mail, especially given the tightness of her filters. Why was there so much mail? She sorted the messages by subject heading, and found that there were about one hundred and fifty personal messages, and thousands of proposals of marriage.

She scanned the proposals, shaking her head in amazement. Some were only a few sentences long, inviting her to visit them and consider their offer of marriage, but many were elaborate proposals, some with graphics of their house, grounds, and families. She replied to the proposals, with a polite notice that she was not accepting marriage offers via E-mail, and set her filters to auto-reply to any other proposals with the same message.

She was being foolish, she knew. In her condition, she should look through these offers, but this was not how she wished to be courted. If they wanted to marry her, let them come in person to make their offers.

“Oh, little one,” she said, rubbing her belly. “What am I getting you into?”

Perhaps, she thought, I could contact a marriage broker when my leave is up. They could filter out the people I wouldn’t be interested in. She sat down on the bed, tears filling her eyes. She didn’t want to do that either. She knuckled the tears out of her eyes, and pulled on a shirt. It gapped open over her breasts. She sighed and pulled it off and put on a larger shirt. She needed to get some new clothes. Now that she was pregnant, nothing fit right anymore.

The proposals dealt with, Juna got herself a cup of coffee and settled in to deal with the rest of her mail. She dispensed with several dozen trivial messages, and composed a personal letter that went out to another twenty-odd friends. Another batch was sent to Analin to deal with. There was a note from Mark Manning, to her and Moki.

I went to Snyder Research Hospital, and had my lungs checked out by the doctors there. They said that my lungs were in remarkably healthy condition. You know, I really think the Tendu should consider working with some medical researchers. If you’d like, I’ll pull a few strings to get you posted to Snyder. There’s several beautiful parks with lots of big trees for Moki and Ukatonen. And you could do so much good for so many people.

Juna smiled, and printed the letter out for the Tendu. They would be glad to hear from Manning. And working at Snyder sounded like a good idea, at least until they had a chance to work out a more permanent assignment. Healing people would improve the Tendu’s public image, and she would be near the courthouse where her Pop Con hearing would be held. It was definitely worth thinking about.

There was also mail from the Survey. They wanted to discuss her next assignment with the Tendu. Juna sent back a polite request for a conference with the Survey personnel in charge of the Tendu, and suggested Snyder as a possible short-term assignment.

That done, she turned off the comm unit, and headed out into the bright autumn sunlight to show Manning’s letter to the Tendu, and to discuss her plans with them.

“Well?” Toivo asked after Ukatonen finished his examination.

“The bones have set nicely. We’re ready to do the final work on your spinal cord. Is that all right with you?”

Toivo nodded, his throat suddenly too tight to speak. He had believed Juna when she said that Ukatonen could work miracles, but now that the Tendu were almost done, he was terrified. He’d held his hope in check before, but now it was soaring out of control. If this didn’t work, he was in for one hell of a fall.

“It will take some time for this to work,” Ukatonen reminded him. “Your nerves will take a week or two to grow together after we link.”

Toivo held out his arms. “I’m ready,” he managed to say.

“Teuvo?” Ukatonen asked, turning the light purple shade that Toivo had learned meant polite inquiry. “Are you ready?”

His father nodded. Toivo saw him swallow nervously, and smiled at how alike they were.

Ukatonen glanced at Moki and the little alien flickered a response that must have meant yes.

“All right then, let’s begin.”

Ukatonen sat beside him and grasped his arm. Moki took the other arm, and reached out to his father, who sat next to Ukatonen. Toivo felt their^spurs prick his arms as the link was made and then he was plunged into the now-familiar sensory landscape of linking.

Toivo felt Ukatonen’s presence in the link, and through the enkar, the warm, reassuring presence of his father, familiar and human. His presence reminded Toivo of all the times he had fallen asleep as a child with his father sitting on a chair beside the bed, watching over him, keeping bad memories and the demons of the imagination away from him. Toivo relaxed into his father’s reassurance and love.

He felt, distantly, the Tendu working on the border between feeling and not-feeling, where his nerves were severed. They flickered in and out of existence like shadows, as they crossed over into the part of his body where his nerves no longer functioned. He felt a warm tingling all along the boundary between feeling and not-feeling. Then the Tendu broke the link.

“Well?” Toivo asked. This link was over so quickly, and he felt almost the same as he had before. There was a barely discernible warmth along the boundary of feeling, but no other change.

“We’re done. Your nerves are beginning to grow back and reattach themselves.”

“How long will this take?”

A ripple of purple flowed over the Tendu’s body. “We don’t know. It will be at least a month before your nerves are fully functional again. But you should start to regain some feeling after several days.”

Toivo nodded wordlessly. He had irrationally hoped, despite all of the Tendu’s warnings, that he would be able to leap out of bed and dance across the room.

“How— how much better will I be?”

Ukatonen rippled purple again. “We don’t know. Much of that will depend on you. Once you regain feeling, you will need to relearn to use your body and regain the strength you once had. That will be hard. For now, you should get out of bed and move around as much as you can.”

At first there was no change at all. Several days passed before Toivo realized that the boundary between feeling and not-feeling had moved a few inches farther down his body. Then, as he was helping Juna fold some laundry, he felt a sudden pang, and realized that his bladder was full.

“Juna, I need to piss!” he said excitedly.

“Just a minute and I’ll help you,” Juna said as she finished folding a shirt.

“No, Juna, you don’t understand,” he said. “I can feel that I need to piss. It’s working, Juna, I’m really getting better!”

Juna squeezed his shoulder. “Of course you are, Toivo. Ukatonen does good work. Now, let me help you.”

“You know, back before the accident, I never dreamed that such a small thing would make me so happy,” he confided. “But now…” He shook his head. “It’s the simplest things that matter the most. I never knew how much I’d miss them. And now you’re giving it all back to me.”

“Toivo, the Tendu were the ones who healed you,” Juna pointed out.

“But they wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

“Thank you, little brother,” Juna said. She bent over and hugged him.

“I’m glad you’re my sister,” he told her, feeling a rush of love and gratitude.

“I wish I could stay longer,” Juna said wistfully. “I want to be here to see you walk again.”

“Actually, since you’re going to the medical research center over on Snyder Station, I thought I’d go to the rehabilitation wing there for some physical therapy in a couple of weeks. It’s a wonderful facility. If anyone can help me get back on my feet, they can.”

“Really? Oh, Toivo, that’s great! But this is just a temporary posting. The Survey hasn’t figured out what they want to do with us yet. I don’t know how long we’ll be there.”

“Juna, once they find out what Ukatonen and Moki are capable of, the trick will be getting the doctors to let go of you.”

“Toivo, what about you? Once the doctors find out what the Tendu did to you, they’re going to try to turn you into some kind of lab rat.”

“Let them. Maybe they’ll learn something that will help other people.”

“It can be a pretty demoralizing experience,” Juna cautioned.

“Then I’ll go home. They can’t make me stay against my will, Juna. I want to help, if I can. Do you want me there?”

“More than I can say, Toivo. I’m going to feel very alone on Snyder. And it’ll be hard on the Tendu, too. They’re going to miss all this green.”

“The park area has some big trees, and there’s a really nice garden designed by Motoyoshi. I bet the Tendu will like that. It’ll be all right.”

“I suppose, but it’ll be good to have you there.”

“Thanks, big sister. I wish I knew how to thank you for all you’ve done.”

Juna squeezed his shoulder. “Just get better, little brother. That would be the best present of all.”

Ukatonen walked out to the horse pasture with Teuvo. He would miss the old man, and the daily rituals of the horse atwa. The horses were coming along well. They moved as one animal through their paces, and were already hauling light loads. The close synchronization of their movements made them a very strong team.

“I’m going to hate to give these two youngsters up,” Teuvo remarked as they led the horses to the pasture after their training session. “I’ve never seen two* horses move so well together. They’re wasted as farm horses. These two could win championship prizes.”

“The effect will diminish over time, Teuvo,” Ukatonen pointed out.

“Yes, I know, but you haven’t linked with them for four days, and they’re moving almost as well as they did before, in some ways even better.”

“But that’s your doing, Teuvo. I gave you the seed, but you’re the one who has made it grow.”

“Ah, they’re good kids,” Teuvo said as he opened the gate to the pasture. “If they weren’t so bright and eager to please, none of our training would have stuck.” He fed the horses each another carrot, and then they ambled off to join the other horses.

“It is what we would call ruwar-a,” Ukatonen said, pushing up the sleeve of his warmsuit so that he could display the word in skin speech for Teuvo.

“What is that?”

“It does not really translate easily,” the enkar said. “It means that all the parts of the whole are working well together. Each part of a system makes the other parts stronger, better. It is the kind of harmony we Tendu strive for. In a well-run village, it is common as the rain. Everything flows as easily as water flows downhill, or a wave slides back into the ocean. This seems to be a much rarer quality among humans. Perhaps this is a flaw in my understanding. Your world is so complex, it may be happening all around me and I am unable to see it.”

“I think I understand,” Teuvo said. “At least I know what it feels like when the horses and I are working well together. You’re right, it is a rare thing.” He smiled, looking out at the two horses, grazing in unison. “What a world Tiangi must be. I wish I could see it.”

“And why not, someday?”

“Because I’m old, Ukatonen, and at my age, ‘someday’ will never come. In another few years I’ll either be too feeble to travel, or dead.” Teuvo turned away and looked out over the fields, and Ukatonen realized that the old man was sad.

“I am sorry, Teuvo,” the enkar said. “Please forgive me if I have upset you.”

Teuvo shrugged. “Old age happens to all humans. It’s just hard for us to accept. We’re greedy. We want to live forever.” He slung the halters over his shoulder, and headed for the barn.

Ukatonen trudged beside him, feeling an emptiness where the comforting feeling of ruwar-a had been. He liked Teuvo, and the old man had taught him much. He was in his debt. It would be so easy to help him live longer.

“Teuvo, let me help,” he said as they were hanging up the harnesses in the tack room.

“You are helping,” Teuvo said.

“No, I meant let me help you live longer.”

Teuvo froze in the midst of hanging up a bridle. He carefully set the bridle on its hanger, and turned to face Ukatonen.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are not ready to die yet, and I can help you live longer.”

“How long?”

Ukatonen rippled a shrug. “I don’t know. How long would you like?”

Teuvo sat down on the old, blanket-covered couch with a whoosh of pent-up breath.

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” he replied, “particularly at my age. I’ve had a good life, with more good fortune than most. It would be greedy to want more, but”—he sighed heavily—“God help me, I do. But living forever?” Teuvo shook his head ruefully. “I don’t think so. I’d be leaving too much behind. But it would be nice if my joints didn’t hurt and my bowels worked right.”

“What if I just fixed the things that are wrong with you? You would live longer and feel better, but you would continue to age.”

“How much longer would I live?” Teuvo asked.

“I don’t know, Teuvo— perhaps ten or twenty years more than you would as you are now. Enough time to watch your grandchildren grow up and have children of their own, and perhaps to visit Tiangi.”

“I’d like that,” Teuvo said. “I’d like that very much.”

“Then link with me now, and I will do it,” Ukatonen said, holding out his arms.

Teuvo did, and Ukatonen linked with him. He could feel the old man’s excitement, sharply tinged with the cleanly pungent smell of wonder. Gently, he calmed Teuvo down, then moved through his body, easing and rebuilding swollen joints, cleaning out clogged arteries, removing cells that showed potential for becoming cancerous. Then Ukatonen swept away the accumulated detritus of years out of Teuvo’s retinas and cleared the cloudy lenses of his eyes, restoring his sight to youthful sharpness. He strengthened the arterial wall of a bulging aneurysm. He gently awakened Teuvo’s brain cells, stimulating them to divide and grow for a few weeks, replacing dead and dying cells, and building new neural pathways, returning his mind to the supple quickness of youth, while keeping the wisdom and experience of his years.

“How do you feel?” Ukatonen asked as Teuvo awoke.

“I’m hungry.” He stood, slowly at first, then more quickly as he realized that it didn’t hurt, and walked over to the door of the tack room and stood looking out over the vineyard. “I can see better and my joints don’t hurt.” He took a deep breath and turned back to the enkar. “It’s like the whole world just got a little brighter. Thank you, Ukatonen.”

“You will improve over the next few weeks. Eat well during that time, your body will be busy rebuilding and repairing itself. You’ll want to eat a lot of meat, vegetables, and fruit.”

“I’m ready to get a start on that!” Teuvo exclaimed with a smile. “Let’s go get some breakfast!”

Juna closed her suitcase and started to lug it downstairs.

“Here, Juna, let me take that,” her father said. “You shouldn’t be carrying such things.”

“Isi, it’s all right, I can manage.”

“I know you can, dear, but humor your poor old dad,” he said.

Juna let him carry the bag downstairs. Toivo’s recovery seemed to have taken years off her father.

She stepped onto the porch and looked out over the harvested vineyards, bright with red and golden leaves. The arched vault of the station curved overhead, colored in tones of earth and gold and green. She didn’t want to leave, but there was so much the Tendu had to do before she was tied down by maternity.

“Breakfast is ready,” her aunt called.

“Coming, Netta-7ati,” she replied, taking a last look out over the vineyards before she went inside.

Breakfast was slow and difficult. Juna pushed her food around her plate, her throat tight with nausea. Anetta fussed over her, concerned by her lack of appetite, while Moki looked on anxiously. Her father meanwhile piled his plate high, and ate like a farmhand in the middle of harvest.

At last the ordeal of breakfast was over. Juna and the Tendu gathered their things together and loaded them into the truck. Then they drove over to the Fortunati house to say goodbye. The whole family was waiting for them as they drove up. Toivo was sitting up straighter today.

“Look!” he said. Slowly, painfully, he raised first one knee and then the other.

“That’s wonderful, Toivo!” Juna enthused. “I’m so glad that you’ll be coming to Snyder, too. It’ll be nice to have some family close by.”

Danan came running up. “Juna! I’m coming to the shuttle station to see you off. Can I ride in back with Moki?”

Juna glanced at Selena, who nodded. “Of course, Danan.”

“So I hear you’re planning on putting me out of business,” a voice said.

“Dr. Engle!” Juna cried in delight.

“I couldn’t let my favorite patient go away without saying good-bye,” he said, giving her a hug.

“I’m glad you could come,” Juna told the doctor.

“What you’ve done for Toivo is just amazing,” he told her.

“That was the Tendu. I couldn’t even help out much, because of the baby.”

“Well, it was miraculous, no matter who did it. I understand you’re off to Snyder Research Hospital.”

“Yes. They’re going to study how the Tendu heal.”

“I wish I could be there,” the doctor said wistfully. “I envy those researchers, Juna. I only hope they appreciate what they’re getting.”

“Come visit us,” she said. “You hardly ever take time off, and we’d love to see you. You can tell those researchers what to do.”

Dr. Engle patted her hand. “Maybe, Juna. But you know I’m needed here.”

She smiled. “I know. I wouldn’t want to trust my baby to anyone else.”

“Thank you, Juna. I’ll see you when you come back for the last few months of your term. Just remember to eat well, and don’t tire yourself out.”

“Moki and Ukatonen won’t let me,” she said. “They’ll take good care of me.”

“Good.”

Then Toivo was pulling on her sleeve. “Juna, it’s time to go.”

Juna headed for the truck, hugging people as she went. It had never been this hard before to leave home, but now it felt as though her heart were being pulled out of her chest with every step. What had changed? Not Berry Station or her family. It was still the home she remembered, though the people were older. She was the one that had changed. Living among the Tendu had changed her from a solitary person to someone who needed to be part of a community. How strange that being the only human in a world full of aliens would make her appreciate her family more. She climbed into the truck and waved good-bye to her friends and family.

Moki watched Danan’s house recede into the distance. They had been here only a few short weeks, less time than the months spent on the ship, but the time had been so full of people and events that it seemed as though a year had passed since they left the ship. He liked it here, and was sorry to be leaving. He„ would miss Danan, and the horses, and Netta-Tdti’s good cooking, and the grapes. He pulled his warmsuit closer around him. It would be warmer where they were going, but there wouldn’t be as many trees. It would be more like the space station where the ship had landed. A cloud of regret passed over him at that thought. He could hardly wait to come back here again.

Ukatonen saw the shuttle station draw closer. He had learned a great deal, living here, but it was time to go somewhere else and learn more. He was becoming too close to Eerin’s family, and was in danger of losing the detachment expected from an enkar. It would be a good place to come back to, especially when he needed to see green things growing again. The trees here were nice, but he missed the forests of Tiangi, with its dense canopy of vines and leaves. It was strange, seeing trees without their leaves, and he was glad to be leaving them behind, even though the place they were going to didn’t have nearly as many trees. But there were healers there, and he was sure that they had much to teach him.

He looked up at the naked trees, and wondered when they would go to a place that was like Tiangi. Juna had said there were places like it on Earth.

Earth. That was where he really wanted to go. He wouldn’t fully understand humans until he had seen their world, the place they had come from. He was tired of living in boxes, even in a big, beautiful box like this one. He wanted to be someplace where there was a horizon, and wind, and living things as far as you could see, with the knowledge that there was even more life beyond the horizon. A flicker of impatience passed over him, and he schooled himself to patience. Sooner or later, they would reach Earth, and then everything would make sense.