Remnant Population

These babies… already their high squeaks sounded speechlike. Already their busy four-fingered hands manipulated the stalks of grass and sprigs of herb in their nest. Handed empty gourds by an adult, they put in pebbles, and poured them out. They squabbled with each other, shoving and nipping, using their tails to hold one another down… but these squabbles quickly shifted into cooperative play, if someone offered a toy. At ten days, twenty days of age, they were more like children of three years. Ofelia could not merely observe; she found herself being used as a plaything, a living obstacle course. The other creatures handed her the items they thought the babies should have: gourds, beads, pebbles, bits of string. She was the one who hissed disapproval when one of them wound string around its throat. It froze, eyes wide. Ofelia mimed strangulation, producing a guttural squawk. The baby blinked; the others, sitting up on legs and tail, squeaked softly. To her surprise, none of them tried that again. If they were like human toddlers, then… she wondered if they could learn letters and numbers. If the other humans hadn’t been there, she would have taken them to the center, would have shown them the books and the teaching computers. She couldn’t do that now. Her conscience nagged her; she shouldn’t want to do that. She should protect human technology from them, and them from human technology. Water rushed into the sink, startling her out of that reverie. One of them stood on the long faucet of the deep sink, its talons hooked around the cold-water tap, pulling; the other two, braced against the wall, had pushed at the same tap with their feet. Now, as she watched, they reversed their force: the ones who had been pushing hooked their talons over and tried to pull. The one on the faucet tried to push… and lost its footing, to splash into the sink. Ofelia heaved herself up, and put her arm into the water. The talons dug in, as the baby climbed her arm, squeaking furiously.

So much for protection, either way. They would have to learn how to use the technology safely; there was no way to keep them from using it.

Although the daily sessions with the babies delighted her, Ofelia felt a steady weight of apprehension. Someday — some one of these hardly numbered days — the team leader would think they had done enough, seen enough, and would order Ofelia to the shuttle. She would have to leave, or die. She had not thought of any way to escape this time, not with her inability to eat the local food, not with the determination of these people to find her and bring her back. She would have to leave, and leave her creatures — her responsibility, the babies — to these others, whom she did not trust.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After days of scant contact with the other humans — polite but distant greetings that made it clear they didn’t have time to waste with an ignorant old woman — Ofelia noticed that she had become real to them again. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She suspected it meant that they were finishing up their contact work, as they called it, and getting ready to “make a final determination” (the team leader’s phrase) about her, and the colony, and the creatures.

The change began with slightly warmer greetings when they saw her, politely asking how she was, how her garden prospered. The tall woman commented on a necklace Ofelia had made. The stocky man told her he had discovered that Bluecloak was a minstrel or entertainer, a singer. The younger woman began hanging around Ofelia without saying much, just like a pesky child. Ofelia noticed that she had pilfered a necklace to wear, and that she left too many of her shirt buttons undone. After a few days of hovering that nearly drove Ofelia to rudeness, she actually began a conversation. She asked how Ofelia had taught the creatures to speak.

Ofelia explained, as well as she could. She had tried to teach them as she had taught babies — human babies, she repeated, though Bilong didn’t know about the others.

“That’s not how you teach a language,” the woman said. “I know you probably thought you taught your children to talk, but human children don’t have to be taught — they just learn.” Bilong was trying to be polite. Ofelia could tell that, just as she could tell that the woman was treating her with exaggerated patience, as if she were a naughty child. She herself tried not to resent the rudeness which was not intended.

“Some do,” Ofelia conceded. Most, probably. But had any mother ever been able to resist teaching? “All of them,” Bilong said, emphasizing it, “—all human children learn to talk on their own, because they’re designed to speak human language.”