“You have been busy. Are you wounded?”
“In the leg. A little.”
We go through the moss-packing routine. He has a fat shaft broken off in the big muscle of his thigh.
“That will hurt worse later. How do you like war?”
He grins and sighs together. “I think—too much!”
“Yes, it is like that.… Now, if you can walk, we must find my light and check all the wounded goldskins.”
“And kill them?” He makes an eager motion with his spear.
“Yes. All except two whom we will tie up for questioning.”
Then I feel free to do what I’d been desperately longing for. I send out a focused mind-call to the Mnerrin hiding in the water.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” A head surfaces just inshore of the reef.
“I think it is all safe now. But wait until dawn to come ashore. And—
is Kamir safe?”
What must be her head surfaces, too, and I receive a sending of such love and longing that I can scarcely resist going to her. “Till daybreak, darling. Now I have work to do.”
“Always work!” Her laugh, my mermaid’s laugh, rings out over the water, piercing me with sweet memories. I sigh, and turn back to the job.
Sintana and I go first to the pile of goldskins I created on the beach, and then start searching systematically through the marsh for gleams of gold. Their shining skins are a great liability.
“In the future we will not be able to assume all is over so soon. They will learn to take us more seriously, and arrange a second wave of attackers to come in just as the Mnerrin think all is safe.”
We also come upon three Mnerrin dead and two wounded, men whom I don’t know well, and three children who have been stabbed. To my amazement, a dark figure is there, bending over a child. I hold my fire just in time, as the mind-signal comes.
“Mavru! What are you doing here?”
“I swam upriver and waited,” he replies. “I thought I might be more needed here.”
“And you are. Wonderful. Mavru, meet my young friend from the lost village. He has worked hard in your defense.”
The two Mnerrin greet warmly. I go in search of my medical supplies to help Mavru, and we resume our search of the marsh.
Long before we are through, Sintana is weary of killing the wounded. His battle fever has ebbed; only when a “corpse” surprises him by striking at him does it return briefly. This, I think, is a good lesson for him.
We save out two captives who seem in fairly good shape, and tie them up far apart so they can’t communicate. As I’d been told, they seem to have no mind-speech except a sort of alarm call, and a threat-sending, hostile blare.
When the moons go down we rest and eat. Mavru joins us.
“Their bodies are different from ours,” he says. “I think I will cut up one or two and find where the vital centers are. Do you think that’s a good plan, ‘Om Jhared?”
I agree, and warn him about the dangers of handling cadavers. “You must wash your hands scrupulously. I, too, would like to see.”
Sintana meanwhile has been questioning the nearest prisoner. He has picked up a few words of their tongue, which sounds barbarous in contrast to the Mnerrin’s.
“I asked him why they ate children,” he reports. “He only shrugged and said, because they were hungry. So I asked him why they did not catch fish. He seems not to understand. I think anything connected with water is entirely strange to them. I remember there was a great fuss about who was going to go in the canoes.”
“And that reminds me,” I tell him. “We must go and try to salvage those canoes and fix up my boat.”
“Why do we want those ugly canoes?”
“First, to keep them out of the hands of any more goldskins who come here. And, most important, I think our people can use them on the Long Swim. They could transport the wounded; some will take a long time to heal. And babies could go in them, too.”
“Oh, good idea. Hey, it’s like you said, my leg hurts more.”
“I’m sorry. But we have a job to do.”
We check the other prisoner, who glares at us mutely, and hike down the beach to where the dinghy lies. It’s untouched, thank the gods, and the repair kit, like all my supplies, is fastened inside. The spacer’s gooey stuff really works well, but will take an hour to dry.
We leave it and climb over the headland to where two canoes float aimlessly in the little cove. A moon is rising again; I can see the glitter of bodies inside. The third canoe is only a prow sticking up. Its former contents are floating about.
“We have to go through the check again,” I tell Sintana. “And then we have to fish those corpses out so they won’t foul the sea. We can put them on the rocks up here, maybe the crabs will eat them.”
Sintana shudders. “Parts, anyway… I didn’t know, when I volunteered to fight, that it included cleaning up the battlefield!”
“It includes whatever it includes,” I tell him grimly. But I am suddenly dead tired, and my shoulder is on fire. I have been running on pure adrenaline. Do we really have to do this task? And my boat will take strength to pump up… The first pink light of dawn is in the sky.
“I have a better plan,” Sintana says. “Your people here have been idling in the sea all night.” He goes back up on the headland, and I hear him send out a mind-call.
To my astonishment, three heads pop out of the water below us almost at once.
“No need to shout,” comes a young voice. “We followed to see what you were up to. Hello, ‘Om Jhared, I’m Pelya! What do you need?”
We tell them, and soon, to my great pleasure, three sets of strong young arms are hauling dead goldskins ashore and up the rocks. The goldmen are short and compact, heavy-boned.
“How many of you in the sea are wounded?” I ask Pelya.
“Three. And Pavo’s mate got a spear through her arm. She was very weak, you know. She died soon after we got to the bar.”
“Oh, I am sorry.”
“Yes… But you did so much. We boys have been thinking. We will have to train ourselves to do this thing, to do fighting. War. Some of the older men think it is all over, but we don’t agree… But ‘Om Jhared, just
why
do the goldskins attack us?”
“I don’t really know, except that it is their nature.”
But later, when we have pumped up the dinghy and are leading the procession of canoes back to the village, I tell them what I fear.
“I’m afraid that what I have seen on other worlds may be happening here. Somewhere far to the west there may be a great many goldskins, so that beaches and food are in short supply. They would be fighting over them, and the losers may pack up and come east, looking for new homes. If that’s true, it means there will be more coming, and more after that, without end. I think they have more babies than you, so the pressure will go on and on. I hope to the gods this isn’t true, that this was just a wandering band, but as I said, I have seen this thing before. That is why I am going to appeal to the power of the Federation to help you. But that will take a long time. Meanwhile, you are wise to try to help yourselves. We can question the prisoners, and it might be good to send a couple of scouts back along their trail to see what we can find out.”
“I see,” says Pelya, and the other boys agree. For once they do not laugh.
Nor do I. In the growing light I can see the Mnerrin coming ashore. There is old Maoul, there is Agna, and Donnia, helping Kamir. I can already sense tendrils of Contact, carrying gratitude to me. I hope there are not to be speeches, I am dead. And all too keenly I realize that I have now broken all the Federation’s Rules of Contact. I have interfered massively with the Mnerrin’s life-ways, and I have taken a decisive part in a war…. So be it.
“Wake up, ‘Om Jhared! Kamir is giving birth!”
It is Agna’s voice. I come to, groggily.
We are in Agna’s birthing hut. Kamir is lying beside me on the crude bed, which is covered with moss and hay. She is on her side, curled around her vast belly, her hands pushing at it as though trying to push it away from her. Agna is beside her, doing something. I hear Kamir whimper.
Gently, Agna takes her hands and pats them.
“Here,” he says to me. “Hold.”
I take the hands. Kamir’s eyes open and meet mine. With effort, she smiles. “Don’t be afraid, darling. This is normal.”
Normal? I am looking for some sort of opening, some birth canal through which the babies will emerge. There is no sign of anything like that. Instead, Agna’s hands seem to be working on the “scar” or line I had seen, running around her abdomen. He is kneading it, carefully pulling it apart. I see that the scarlike line is starting to separate, like long, threadlike lips.
“In a moment now,” he tells Kamir. “You can push.”
Kamir puts her hands with mine up on her great belly. It is hot, hot. Then she pushes at it again.
Suddenly, with a dreadful caving-in feeling, her whole belly, containing the fetuses, starts to
separate
from the rest of her body! It tips forward, away from her, as the scarlike “lips” open. Agna is furiously working at this line, pushing his hands under her. She whimpers again. I see that the lips are actually a deep separation line, circling her whole belly, from ribs to pelvis. Oh gods, what is happening here?
Slowly, deliberately, yet too fast for me to follow, the fetal mass tips forward farther, revealing a deep cleavage. It tips, separates farther yet, and then rolls over, away from her, onto what had been the outside of her belly. Agna steadies it. Kamir gives a series of loud sighs, and then rolls away from it, onto her back.
“Whew! That feels better.”
But I have a horrifying look at the shell of her body left after the fetal mass tore loose. From diaphragm to hips it is
empty,
covered by a rapidly thickening gel membrane. Through it I can see, under her ribs, a dark mass pulsing: her heart. Below that, by her spine, I can see the great cords of nerve and blood vessel running along her backbone, inside her empty flanks, to her hips and pelvis. Nothing more.
Agna is looking, too, as the membrane becomes opaque.
“See? Almost no fat at all. My poor little sister will not live long.”
“Why?” But the answer is before me. Stomach, intestines, digestive organs, all are gone, taken away with the fetus-bearing mass of her belly. She has no means of taking in food. A fast-sealing tube end that must be her esophagus is visible near her heart. I can only hope that her kidneys are left, so she won’t die of thirst.
I am squeezing her hands so tightly I must be hurting her. I relax them and make myself kiss her face, despite the ghastly display of her body. She strokes my hair with trembling hands.
Tm fine. See to the babies.”
The babies? Dimly I am realizing that this is no catastrophe, but a natural process of parturition. Or rather, it is a catastrophic process, deadly to the mother. But the babies are alive, the fetuses; through the gel of the torn-away side I can glimpse aqueous forms moving vaguely. Clearly they are too young for independent life. A great placenta lies on them, with coils running to each fetus—there are three. And there must be some sort of secondary heart with them, there is the throb of circulation.
Indeed, this mass that has torn itself loose from Kamir is almost a primitive animal in its own right, with organs it has stolen from Kamir.
To me it is a monster, which has mutilated and killed my mermaiden, my girl.
But Kamir is gazing at it with fond eyes. Her babies.
I make myself look at it. It is a globular mass about half a meter in diameter, lying on what had been the outside of Kamir’s abdomen. All the part that had been inside Kamir is covered with this gel membrane, now fast thickening to opacity. Agna is bent over it, inspecting and feeling it all with tender hands. He points out a circular ring, or tube, set in the “top.”
“That is where we feed the babies.”
Oh gods; it is the remains of Kamir’s esophagus, leading to her stolen stomach. I begin to shake with delayed horror, scarcely noticing that Donnia has come in, and is offering to me, of all things, a great bowl of butterfish, cut in pieces. When I see it, I am revolted at his apparent callousness.
“Fathers first,” says Agna. He and Donnia each take some and begin to chew.
Then I am even more revolted by the understanding of what they are doing. They are taking food for the fetuses, substituting for their mother’s missing mouth. Preparing it for digestion by her stomach, somewhere inside that monstrous package. Grimly I force myself to take some and begin to chew. A vaguely consoling thought comes to me: many Terran birds feed their new-hatched chicks like this.
Weakly, Kamir demands some, too. Now that her huge pregnancy has gone, I can see how thin the rest of her has become. Her limbs are no longer slender, but bone-thin, and her beautiful face has been fined to where it seems all great dark blue eyes. But how short a time ago it was that we played and tussled with each other on our magic isles! What a terrible thing I have wrought on my little mermaid, what evil I have done! Yet she seems strangely content, her eyes are luminous with joy when she gazes on the dreadful lump that contains our babies. Mysterious are the ways of instinct! Something in her makes her accept happily the shortness of her life for its irrational reward.
Agna is speaking to me. “Empty your mouth into this, new father.” He grasps the tube opening on the monster and pulls it free. I realize, for Kamir’s sake, I must.
It would have been appalling were it not that the fetus-monster has an oddly attractive smell. Organic, but very sweet and clean. A lure to feed it, I think. Well, it works.
After I have fed it in this strange fashion, Agna and Donnia follow suit, and last, Kamir. “Are there three?” she asks.
“Yes,” says Agna. “Lucky you did not make more. It will be a job to feed these, they also have no fat.”
“I wonder what they will look like,” Kamir says dreamily. She is sinking into sleep. Yet she turns to me and hugs me, with a momentary return of her old strength.
“Oh, my darling strange one, I am so happy! Never did I think I would have babies to watch over. Never! And you came from the skies and gave them to me.” She kisses me again.
“But—” As I look at her exquisite young face, my heart feels as though it will burst then and there. How can she be so truly happy? Wait; is it conceivable she doesn’t know her fate?