Remnant Population

First, could she find out something about the ship that had arrived? She queried the weathersat herself, but got no answer. Apparently the people on the arriving ship had pre-empted all local requests. That might mean they didn’t yet know she was here, that she used the weathersat, or it might mean they didn’t care. She turned to Bluecloak again, and tried to ask how long it would be before the pregnant one — she stumbled over Gurgle-click-cough — delivered. Blue-cloak’s answering gestures were not reassuring. It might be today, or tomorrow, or the day after. It was Gurgle-click-cough’s first birth, and its timing was more uncertain than for a subsequent one. Ofelia understood that well enough; it was the same with humans. She conveyed that to Bluecloak fairly easily More difficult was the concept that the arriving humans presented a special danger to Gurgle-click-cough and her young. Bluecloak cocked its head to one side; its right toes tapped the floor. She had tried to explain before that the humans killed far to the north were not the same as those who had lived here, and the ones who lived here went somewhere else, very far away. Now she tried to say that the ones coming were more like those who had been killed, not like her.

“Nesst click-kaw-keerrr,” Bluecloak said, as if that would end the discussion. “Aant” “It doesn’t matter,” Ofelia said. “They won’t care.” She tried to think how to say that

in gestures, but when she looked at Bluecloak it was standing rigid, its throat-sac swollen and pulsing, its eyelids partly shut. Then it blinked.

“Nesst click-kaw-keerrr nnot kkaerrr?” A pause. “Kkilll?”

“Not kill,” Ofelia said, hoping it was so. “But they won’t care about me. I’m not one of them. Not their… “ what was the word Bluecloak had used about its people? She opted instead for gestures that included her, Bluecloak, others who lived here, as opposed to others who lived someplace else. “Uhoo,” Bluecloak said, pointing to make it clear. “Click-kaw-keerrr.” She was the click-kaw-keerrr; whatever click-kaw-keerrrs had to do, she had to do. She was uncomfortably certain that this meant she was supposed to protect Gurgle-click-cough and her young from the other humans… or die trying.

She chose to interpret the hollow feeling in her belly as hunger, and went back to her house to cook something.

They had seen the white streaks of the shuttle’s flight; they had heard the brief transmissions between the shuttle and the orbiting ship. Ofelia wondered how much the creatures understood of this. She herself couldn’t follow much of the talk; the accent was strange, and the utterances perhaps intentionally cryptic. She thought of trying to use the colony transmitter, even keyed it once, but the signal had to go through the weathersat, and she couldn’t get it locked open. Apparently, they were still using the weathersat themselves. She felt a guilty relief. In her inmost heart, she still hoped they would simply go away. Meanwhile, Gurgle-click-cough had settled into the house next to the center — not in the nest itself yet — and the others brought her food and sat with her. She seemed larger to Ofelia, her lean form now bulging under her kilt. She rarely left the house, and had no interest in the news. Every time Ofelia visited, Gurgle-click-cough leaned against her and licked her hands. Ofelia felt helpless and protective all at once. » On the third day, Bluecloak roused her before dawn when the voices came again. Ofelia hobbled across to the center, stiff as she always was in the early morning, and grumpy with being awakened in that last sweet deep slumber before she would have awakened on her own. “They’re landing this time,” Ofelia said. “They’re coming here.” She had known they would — it was the only reasonable thing for them to do, and they must by now have noticed that a human and some of the creatures were here — but she had hoped very much they would do the unreasonable thing and go away. Bluecloak’s throat-sac expanded, and it thrummed at her.