FSF, March-April 2010 (38 page)

The old woman peers out from the protective cover of the tanglefern, watching her younger self snore.
Borm was right,
she thinks, smiling.
There
is
a grammar to mammaries.

In her hand she cups the thing with which she has intended to slay the past. She is still not sure she will use it. If she does, then sleeping Pink will never know the worlds upon worlds which the old woman and her
sledh
have found, explored, mapped. She will never know the excitement of observing sentient races in their infancies, adolescences, maturities, or of being the first to welcome the three who have joined the Concordat. The old woman smiles again, thinking of Sister Skylark. The Flex!tibb, the Údh, and the Háharaháhahárraha do not resemble in the slightest the crew of the
Beatific Vision,
or, for that matter, the crew of the
Indolent Tesseract,
her own vessel.
How very provincial of us to have always assumed that alien sentients would have faces,
she thinks wryly.

She is irritated to realize that she is weeping. They have always been an embarrassment to her, her sudden tears. Sleeping Pink mutters and turns over in the circle of young Slídhadhrup's protective tail. Seeing co alive and well has been the hardest thing of all, for adult Juliana knows the terrible fate that awaits co if she does not release the thing she holds.
Whom do I love most,
she thinks,
myself as I am, myself as I was, or Slídha? God damn Sútchdhu for Dreaming up this little scenario!
There is no hope for it. She must decide, and very soon, before the
Tesseract
falls out of phase with this nexus of the Tangles.

On cue, she feels a touch on her right shoulder, and a faint perfume of curry.
Yes, yes, I'm coming, Vuwénno,
she subvocalizes.

Her partner's soft voices sound in her cerebrum.
We love you, dearest lung, but Taugie's anxious to be gone, and Pléppli does not wish to go through cos Change here in the Tangles. Let us know soon,
add the voices,
what you decide. Are you going to kill us all, or aren't you
? Then the voices, the touch, and the curry are withdrawn.

Are you going to kill us all
? A simple enough question, thinks old Juliana. For weeks,
Tesseract
-time, she has hiked the Tangles, seeking the proper nexi, planting her warnings throughout Pink's main probability-lines; and now, here before her old eyes lies ur-Pink, the most probable Pink, the Pink who most closely resembles the Pink she recalls herself as having been: Pink, lying leggy and logey before her. All it will take is for old Juliana to release the nanoplex carried in her hand, and it will seek out just the right neural bundle in little Pink's orange cranium, and sleeping Pink will wake, shorn of the curious brain-tweak that might have made her into the most highly skilled Human skip-navigator known to history so far. Then Pink and dear Slídha will find their way back to their disembarkation bay and go on to live long, long, productive, domestic lives. Old Juliana finds that she cannot imagine Slídha as an
unésta
.

It was, she realizes, an impossible choice. Impossible. On the one hand, Slídha. And some sweet handsome Human, someone like what-was-his-name, perhaps: Swann? Hans? Sven, that was it, Sven, with the veins—and then,
bébés
born of their mutual conjoined DNA, luck-of-the-gloriously-random-draw progeny, not test-tube monuments to an exozoologist's vanity and fear of surprises. On the other hand, Vuwénno. Thájjarup. Andrew. Pléppilil. Taugie. Herself, too, of course. And one thousand seventy-nine worlds of wonder.

Time to choose,
thinks Juliana. “
Au revoir, ma chérie
,” she whispers to the sleeping elf-stork, and makes her decision.

"But what about the Bird?” demands Bad Boy Mitch “The what-d'you-call-it, the Vigilante Bird? And how could y'all have these so-called adventures in the five whole minutes from the tahm we-all first stepped into Shiphome's disembarkation bay from the
An-dro-gyne
and the tahm you caught up with us from the rear?” (He pronounces it “re-yah.")

"It's
Vigilant
Bird,” snaps Gwendolyn Rice-Chakrabarty, who by now thinks she has had enough of Texas to last her a lifetime. “And the Tangles is not a reality so much as a kind of dream. Isn't that correct,
Mrizh
Borm?"

"But ah thought the Tangles wuz a
place
,” complains Mitch.

"Pink?” says Borm with cos three tenor voices. Cos eyes are bright, bright. Pink looks down, flustered; then up again, directly into the centaur's face.

"It's a sort of place,” she says. “But it's an indecisive place. It's a place that hasn't made up its mind what to be, or when."

"And how did you get out?” asks Elena Belicista, who is wondering, in an offhand way, why the girl smells distinctly of menudo.

Pink shrugs her thin shoulders. They are back on the
Androgyne
, all twenty-four classmembers and their chaperones, awaiting departure for Concord Station. Everybody stinks. “I'm not really sure. Slídha and I kept walking toward the yellow, as the dream told me to, and then, when we couldn't walk any farther, we sat down and waited for the Bird to find us. I guess we fell asleep waiting."

Silence drops over the group. They have all found their partners, even Mitch (an exuberant
dyéñe
much given to poking and grabbing and licking and rubbing), and they are all excited; but something else has happened; they all feel it. Pink wonders whether the Bird came and found them asleep and went away again, but Slídha has explained
kek! kek!
[no, no!],
that is not how it occurs, when one encounters Úüv'élleblét/immo one is always consumed, always.
Though what precisely that means, if it means anything, Slídha has not been able to explain to her.

The skip-navigator's voices sound over the comm. “Time to strap in, friends. We shall have you back home before you can grow an hour older. Goodnight for now.” Straps slide into place all over the passenger bay. The workpartners will be following in a separate skip.

A fog of nano mist rises briefly around them: sleeptime! In the berth next to Pink's, the Spanish particle physicist says to Pink sleepily, “And your partner? Slídhadhrup? What is co like,
niña
?"

"Big,” murmurs Pink. “Really, really big.” And she falls asleep, but not before she is pierced with an inexplicable deep sorrow. Then night falls, and the starfields open wide before her, familiar and unknown.

"
Qu'est-ce que c'est un clone, maman
?” [What's a clone, Mama?] asks little Juliana. It is New Year's Eve, 2188. Pink is a few days shy of five years old, and the two of them are sitting together in the parlour of Professor Sévigny's Paris apt, while fireworks burst over the Seine and the Turtle rattles dishes in the kitchen.

Andrea Sévigny stiffens at her daughter's question, then asks, “
Où entends-tu parler de ce mot-là
?” [Where did you hear that word?]

"
De la Tortue
.” [From the Turtle.] The Turtle is their teenage au pair. Juliana's red red hair is sticking out all over her head as she plays with her
Doufí-Bébé,
her D'/fü doll. “
Il dit que je suis ton clone. Qu'est-ce que c'est un clone
?” [He says that I'm a clone of you. What's a clone?]

From the kitchen there comes the sound of something frangible being dropped upon a hard surface. Andrea kisses her daughter on the top of her head and smoothes her fine hair. “
Eh bien
,” says the soon-to-be-tenured Professor Sévigny. “
Sais-tu bien que Pierre jamais fait pousser une rose d'une bouture? Souviens-toi cela
?” [Well, you know how Peter always makes a rose grow from a cutting? Remember that?]

"
Oui
,” says little Pink. “
Dans le jardin
.” [Yes. In the garden.] Peter is the gardener in charge of the building's rooftop gardens.

"
C'est exact
,” says her mother. [Just so.] “
Pierre enleve une pièce de la rose-maman, et il plonge la pièce dans le gel de bouture.
[He takes a piece of the mama rose and he dips the piece into rooting gel.]
Il nourrît la pièce afin qu'elle développe les racines, et finalement, voilà! Une petite belle rose précisement comme sa maman!
” [He nourishes the piece so that it develops roots, and eventually, look! A little pretty rose exactly like her mama!] “
Comprends-tu
?” [Understand?]

Her daughter has not looked up from her doll. Eventually she says, “
A-t'elle un papa
?” [Has she a daddy?]

"
Qui, ma chérie
?” [Who, my dear?]

"
La petite belle rose.
” [The little pretty rose.]

"
Non. Elle vient de sa maman toute seule. Voilà pourquoi la petite et sa maman se ressemblent.
” [No. She comes from her mama only. That's why the little one and her mama look alike.]

"
Jésus vint de sa maman tout seul. Les soeurs le dirent à moi.
” [Jesus came from his mama only. The nuns told me.] “
Jésus et sa maman, se ressemblent-t'ils
?” [Do Jesus and his mother look alike?] Pink looks up at her mother then. Her innocent green eyes are the color of a Petri dish culture. Andrea shrinks ever so slightly away from her daughter, then immediately readjusts, wrapping her arms even more tightly about her; but Pink unconsciously notes the momentary withdrawal, and many years later she will remember the entire scene vividly as she raises the nanoplex capsule and makes her irrevocable choice.

When she gets back to the
Indolent Tesseract,
old Juliana is greeted by the others with licks, caresses, nuzzles, sematophore farts, warm voices of pleasure. For a crew that has placed their entire probability-line in the hands of a flat-chested madwoman, they are remarkably cheerful. Lying back in their dreamchairs, the five observe her calmly while she silently plugs herself into the nav console.

"Right,” says Taugie in his Scots burr. “We're still here, it seems.” Old Juliana smiles fondly at him, her old, old friend, and thinks,
How could I have ever thought I could give them up, my five sweetest loves, for a load of soiled nappies and a bloody pension? Forgive me, dearest Slídha. Dear Buddha, forgive me.

Vuwénno rustles cos golden wings. “
Brúshfye/ásvyennu, Bórmwu/te'dámik
?” [Where to, star-swimmer?]

"
Óllowe/dvyénnu,
” replies the old woman. [Somewhere new.]

And off they go again.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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