The Changeling Game, Chapter 54

54.
Mommy Ree

“What is that?” Takama asked, a hint of a quaver in her normally firm, no-nonsense voice.

The enormous crustacean, still a good distance away, was bearing down upon them. Ten-legged, with pincers each as big as a human being, its thick, segmented carapace mottled shades of rose, violet, and indigo, it was moving fast, the miniature versions of itself clinging to its back.

“That,” Jack told them, “is Sebby’s mother.”

“Baraka,” six voices said in unison. Kyra immediately began snickering.

Jack released her seatbelt and clambered over the open back of the vehicle and into the truck bed, avoiding the olive trees and pulling her pack onto one shoulder before turning back and reaching for Sebby. “C’mere, kid, let’s go meet your mama.”

Sebby sprang into her arms.

“Tizzy, wait. What are you doing?” But even as Safiyya was speaking, Jack was already climbing over the side of the bed, jumping down into the field.

“What she does best,” Kyra snorted. “Diving right into the deep end…”

“It could be dangerous!” Tafrara objected.

But Jack, while she sensed nervousness from the approaching creature, also sensed curiosity and longing… and disbelief. No hostility, no anger… not even much fear. And, if “Mommy” was like Sebby, she had a stinger… but didn’t have it out.

Sebby was chirping excitedly as Jack walked forward toward “Mommy,” standing on her shoulder and holding onto her hair.

“Mommy” slowed down, coming to a halt while Jack was still a few meters away. Her antennae, stunning feathery constructions colored a mixture of rose and violet, waved forward toward Jack. Curiosity dominated the emotions coming off her, and hope, and disbelief… and only then, after all of those, nervousness. Was this strange creature a threat to her babies?

I’m no threat to you, Jack thought carefully, hoping that “Mommy” would hear her the way Sebby could. I will not hurt you or your children. I come as a friend.

My sister! Sebby added, chirping for emphasis. Saved me from the bad water!

Squeaking chatter erupted on Mommy’s back. The water, the water, the bad water!

Mommy slowly moved closer, antennae out. Jack stood still, letting her approach, letting Mommy’s feathery antennae brush against her face and Sebby’s carapace.

My child… my lost baby…

The images were sudden and powerful, almost costing Jack her balance. She was crawling along the ground, covered in her children, seeking food for them in the early dawn light. A strange roar kept jangling at her sound receptors, and she kept detecting an odd, briny scent that didn’t belong. Then a large wave crashed over the hillside, striking her. Her babies shrieked, several of them tumbling from her back and falling into the water that was suddenly sloshing around her legs. Another wave struck, and another. She struggled to hold onto the ground, to grab at her children as they floated past her and away, crying for her help…

Half of her babies had been lost to the bad water, the monster wave. There should have been twice as many riding on her back in this moment, and the loss still cut through her. But…

…But one had returned?

Gasping, Jack came back to herself. She might have fallen over, except that Mommy had reached out with one pincer, still closed, to prop her up. Both of her antennae were caressing Sebby.

Jack closed her eyes, conjuring visions of her own to share. The wave that almost took her and Kyra… learning how to move between a world that was dry and the world where the water came and went… the night of the monster wave, when, as it receded, she and Kyra had spotted a small creature clinging to a piece of driftwood… bringing Sebby over to the dry world…

Disbelief. Hope and disbelief.

All true! Sebby insisted, sharing images of his own. Exploring the apartment, discovering the delicious insects that tried to sneak into it… discovering olives…

Now there was a fantastic idea…

Jack unshouldered her pack, moving slowly so she wouldn’t alarm Mommy. Unfastening its top, she pulled out the container of olives that she had brought with her, opened it, and drew out a handful, holding them out to Mommy.

You are going to give Cedric a heart attack, Tizzy. Kyra’s “voice” was tinged with both worry and amusement, even as Mommy’s mandibles delicately touched Jack’s upraised palm.

Mommy was careful, though. She drew the olives in but left Jack’s hand unscathed. A second later, a wave of astonished pleasure flowed over Jack. Olives, she suddenly realized, were amazing. The stuff of life itself.

Curious squeaking erupted on Mommy’s back. Her surviving babies, picking up on her enjoyment, wanted to know what was so wonderful… wanted to try some, too.

Jack wasn’t sure if she had enough olives to go around.

Don’t worry, I think we all packed some, Kyra told her.

Behind her, she heard people moving around the all-terrain vehicle, picking up their packs and opening them, and then heard the swish of the grass parting as they moved through it. The Meziane family was bringing backup.

This is my family, Jack told Mommy, who had tensed slightly. They will not hurt you or your family. They love Sebby too.

Made me their baby! Took me in! Loved me! Love them! Sebby had a lot to say.

In a way, Jack was glad that she hadn’t understood Sebby so clearly until this day; the temptation not to bring him back to his world might have been far too great, and this reunion might never have occurred.

Everyone was holding out olives as they approached. Jack pulled another handful out, too, giving one to Sebby as she did.

She felt the moment when Mommy gave permission, and the other babies began to jump off of her back and scuttle toward Jack and her family.

“Heaven help us,” muttered Usadden.

“It’s fine. It’s going to be just fine,” Izil said, stepping forward and kneeling down to offer olives to the approaching babies. They were, for the most part, roughly half the size of Sebby, or even smaller. Several of them, squeaking eagerly, headed straight for him.

“Shit, you’re gonna get swarmed,” Kyra warned him.

“Wouldn’t be the first time. I mean, with other species…” Izil began giving the nearest babies an olive each. “Start handing them out too, if you don’t want me buried in baby Sebbies.”

Cedric laughed and walked forward, kneeling down a few feet away from Izil.

Jack wasn’t sure if it was her heart that suddenly felt full to overflowing, or Mommy’s.

Soon everyone had a group of babies surrounding them, happily eating olives while Jack fed Mommy and Sebby from her container… and Sebby shared visions of his adventures in the apartment and then the ait Meziane house. He was especially proud of the visions he shared of helping Kyra and Jack fight, and defeat, Pritchard. Stung it! Stung it good!

Mommy didn’t believe at first.

Sebby saved our lives, Jack agreed, backing him up. She shared her own perspective, how dangerous and terrible Pritchard was, how badly he’d hurt Kyra and how much worse he had intended to hurt both of them, how scared for Sebby she was when he jumped from the ceiling onto Pritchard’s shoulder, and then watching as Sebby paralyzed the huge man in an instant…

Already? Mommy asked in wonder. A first kill so soon? She will be a mighty huntress.

“She?” Jack gasped. Unlike Sebby’s referent for a sibling, the concept Mommy had transmitted had definitely been gendered.

Kyra, open-mouthed, turned to look at Jack. Whoa, wait. She?

“Oh my,” Izil said. “I’m looking at these babies, and they have two different physical conformations. Some of them are shaped like their mother, and like Sebby, but some are shaped a little differently. But consistently. This is a species with sex-linked morphologies… and Sebby’s morphology is female.”

“Sebby’s a girl?” Takama asked, looking up from the group of babies surrounding her.

“Jeez,” Kyra laughed, “does she take after her big sister or what?”

Jack was astounded. How had she missed that? Especially given the way she’d run her own con, masquerading as a boy… surely she should have known?

But then, judging by Mommy’s size, Sebby was even more of a baby than they had realized. Maybe biological sex didn’t matter at this stage of her development. Takama had told her, in one of their rambling after-dinner conversations, that even human children’s remains had frequently been impossible for archaeologists to tell apart in digs, unless they had reached puberty before death or there were gender-specific artifacts preserved with them…

How do I tell your males and females apart? Mommy asked. Apparently she had been following along with Jack’s thoughts.

“Oh, um… Izil? I don’t know how to explain this exactly.”

“Explain what, Tizzy?” Izil’s little brood of sebbies seemed to have been sated on olives and now were running their antennae over him. He had sat down on the ground, cross-legged, so that they would have better access. One or two were even climbing up his shirt. They were all still the size of ferrets.

“Mommy—that’s Sebby’s name for her—wants to know how we tell our males and females apart. I uh…” Now Jack felt incredibly embarrassed, aware of just how little concrete information about that she’d actually learned. She felt like—at least most of the time—she could generally tell… but then, she’d put a lot of effort into counterfeiting masculinity by replicating as many of its stereotypical traits as she could. What was the real difference? A zoologist, surely, could explain it better than she could. Humans were, after all, part of the animal kingdom.

“Can you translate for me?” Izil asked. “I’m not hearing anything.”

“Yeah.”

“Among humans—that’s what we’re called—males tend to be larger in size than females. Males tend to have more upper-body strength and narrower hips, while females have wider hips to accommodate gestation—we do that internally, not by laying eggs—and mammary glands on their chests to feed offspring. We often depict this in symbols by giving males a straight rectangular body form and females a form that curves. That is accurate for most, but not all, human beings. Size varies widely enough that there are small males and large females, for instance, and much more variety in body shape than just ‘rectangle’ and ‘curved.’”

Jack could feel Mommy listening through her, fascinated, as Jack visualized what Izil was describing. She conjured up images of her father, Cedric, Ewan, Tomlin, Izil, Usadden, and Riddick. Male. Then she conjured up images of her mother, Shazza, Fry, Takama, Safiyya, Tafrara, and Kyra. Female.

She sensed Mommy’s understanding and fascination, and then Mommy showed her what the humans in front of her looked like, to her. Entirely different colors characterized them, including some that Jack had never seen before and could barely comprehend. Heat signatures, she realized after a moment, mapping out the warmest and coolest parts of their bodies. Izil, cross-legged on the ground… Male? Mommy asked.

Yes, she answered. That’s Izil. He’s been making sure Sebby has lots to eat.

Sebby?

Me! Sebby bounced.

Jack could feel Mommy marveling at just how much food Izil must have been providing her daughter, in order for her to grow so large and begin articulated speech so young.

Maybe, Jack suddenly wondered, it was the olives?

Mommy looked from human to human, showing Jack how she saw them and confirming whether they were male or female. She guessed right every time and was fascinated by the sound patterns of their names.

“May I ask her some questions?” Izil asked.

“Absolutely.”

Izil began asking Mommy about herself, whether the brood climbing over the family was her first or if she’d had more in the past, and other questions about the cycles of the world and how they affected her biological cycles. Soon they knew that she had lived twelve full Tangiers Prime years, making her the equivalent of thirty-two Standard years old, and had first reproduced when she was ten Tangiers Prime years old, roughly five Standard years earlier. That brood had been tiny and unsuccessful, as most first broods frequently were. This new brood had hatched in the spring, making them almost a Standard year old.

Safiyya and Takama started unpacking lunch foods as Izil and Mommy continued their discussion, with Jack and Kyra providing translations. Many of the babies were fascinated by human food and were curious to try some. Sebby, still full from her large breakfast and olive snack, was climbing on Mommy and running her antennae over her mother’s huge carapace, trilling happily.

Soon they knew that Mommy’s species was a solitary predator species that mostly hunted a variety of plain and steppe insects, some of which were bigger than a human. They also ate some kinds of fruit—but nothing, Mommy told them, as impressive as those olives—and a flying animal that looked, to Jack, like someone had stapled bat wings onto a feathered snake. It took a minimum of a full Tangiers Prime year for offspring to grow large enough and strong enough to stop riding their mother’s back, and they would travel alongside her for at least another four of the world’s 32-month-long years after that.

Other predator species existed, and sometimes posed a threat to her babies, but Mommy herself was now far too large for any of them to try to take on. One or two might pose a threat to a visiting human. She showed them, via highly colorized images, what to watch out for. When she projected deliberately and carefully, the others could “hear” her almost as well as Jack and Kyra could.

“Now for the really important question,” Cedric said during a small lull in the conversation. “Is there a place where she dens, or frequents, that would be a good place for the olive trees?”

It took a few minutes to fully unpack his question for Mommy. Then she insisted upon looking over the young trees, touching them with her antennae and examining the maturing fruits forming on them already.

You brought these for us?

“We wanted to make sure Sebby could still have olives, yeah,” Jack told her. “We didn’t know about you. We didn’t know Sebby was still a baby. But yeah, they’re for all of you now.”

I will show you our home. You will always be welcome there. Jack could feel Mommy marveling at it all, these strange creatures, unarmored yet so oddly powerful, who had not merely brought her daughter back to her but had made her flourish almost beyond comprehension… and had brought precious gifts as well! You will come back again, yes?

“I will find a way,” Izil promised. “There are others who know how to come here. Tizzy and Dihya must leave soon, but I will find someone who can help me come back. I want to learn everything I can about you and this world.”

“And we will come back too, one day,” Kyra said. “Once it’s safe for us to return.” She transmitted an impression of something hunting her and Jack, something that hadn’t found them yet but might if they stayed too long in one place, something they were going to lead away from this world before shaking it off their trails so they could safely return.

What hunts you? I will help you fight it.

“I wish you could,” Jack told her sadly. “But it’s too big. The last time someone tried to fight it…”

She closed her eyes, visualizing Tomlin. Sebby squeaked, contributing her own image of Tomlin’s visit to the apartment and the way he had emanated both distress and kindness, but how sad both Kyra and Jack had soon been, a sadness somehow centered upon him. Sighing, Jack showed both Mommy and Sebby why they had been so sad, visualizing Makarov and Pritchard following Tomlin to the spaceport, trapping him in the pilots’ lounge, and then setting off an explosion that laid waste to everything and killed hundreds, including her first intense crush since Riddick…

Monsters! What terrible creatures are these, who would kill so many of their own?

Jack visualized the envoy. They look a lot like us, but they’re not. She showed Mommy what else the envoy was, the darkness that rode undetected upon her…

Wait, was the envoy one of the—

She blinked, shaking her head. For a moment her mind had wandered off on a weird tangent.

“They can’t come here,” she told Mommy. “We’ve made sure of it.”

“You mean,” Kyra said, “you made sure they’ll be afraid to try to access this universe again.”

“I don’t know if I did anything,” Jack sighed. “I don’t remember. But I don’t think they’d have experimented with the Star Jump drive like they did if the ship it was attached to had still been spaceworthy. Whatever happened with that test—”

“I’m pretty damn sure we know what happened—”

“Whatever it was, I doubt they’d risk that happening again. Not without anything to gain. And as long as we break our trails and stay un-Quantified, they’ll never think there’s anything worth gaining.”

We will fight them beside you if you need help. Mommy’s mental voice was firm. This land is full of my brothers and sisters. The People will rise to help you.

That, it turned out, was the name of Mommy’s species: the People. Takama laughed softly, murmuring that the name of virtually every tribe that had developed on Earth had meant that, too, although the Imazighen had taken it one small step further, naming themselves the Free People.

After a few moments, Jack and the others had settled on their name for Mommy’s People, that their tongues could reproduce—and it really was the obvious choice: the Ree. Mommy seemed both amused and approving. She, herself, was known among her people as the Dawn Huntress… but she liked the way “Mommy” sounded when her human visitors said it aloud.

Once her babies had climbed onto her back, Sebby settled among them, Mommy led them uphill. Cedric drove the all-terrain vehicle slowly after her with everybody back inside it and the top still down. Jack, now sitting next to him, focused her vision on U1 periodically; the area that they were entering was increasingly rural back there. Whenever she saw a good stretch of level, empty road, she shifted her vision back to Elsewhere to pick out nearby landmarks. They were going far enough afield that trying to follow their backtrail and isomorph in the confines of the hangar might be more trouble than it was worth.

Jack thought maybe half an hour passed before they reached a long, lovely glen. She could see why Mommy had picked this spot for her burrow… which, they soon discovered, was large, well ventilated, and kept meticulously clean. A shallow, babbling creek ran through the glen, while springy moss grew over much of the ground. Although parts of it were shaded by extraordinary, primordial trees with towering, slender trunks topped by wild crowns of long leaves, much of it would be sunny throughout the day and, at one end, it looked out over the foothills stretching down toward the distant ocean. Cedric’s altimeter said that they were almost 200 meters above sea level, safe from even a monster wave produced by a true syzygy.

Soon Mommy and Tafrara were picking out the best spots to plant the young olive trees while Sebby and her siblings played in the creek, splashing each other and doing little variations on the Sebby Dance. As soon as the first location for an olive tree had been chosen, Cedric began digging. Usadden started digging the second hole, and Izil began on the third. Jack grabbed a shovel to tackle the fourth hole, wanting to be actively involved in the planting; after a little while, Kyra took a turn.

As they all worked on settling the trees into their holes, Tafrara explained to Mommy what the olive trees would need, aside from light and water, to grow well and how to tell if they needed special care. She promised that she would find a way to return, too, to check on their progress and help with any problems that arose.

“This is a bit of a complication,” Cedric murmured to Jack. “We thought, if we got everyone connected to Elsewhere as far away from New Marrakesh as possible, that would be the end of the risk. But now… I think we need that connection again. We need to be able to come back to this world… to continue this friendship… but I don’t know how we can do this without risking the Quintessa Corporation discovering that you, Dihya, and Gavin rescued the Matador passengers.”

Jack had found herself thinking the same thing. The passengers had been sent much further and higher into the New Atlas Mountains; there was no telling what kind of life waited on the other side there, or whether friendly enough contact could be made with it to ensure safe passage between there and this location down in the foothills. But…

She took a deep breath, feeling her heart lurch a little as she realized what she was about to do. “What if there was a way to… infect… someone who wasn’t on board the Matador with Threshold Syndrome? Someone the Quintessa Corporation would have no reason to suspect?”

Cedric had gone still, studying her face intently. “You think you can do it.”

“I… think I can try to do it…”

“Here?”

Jack shook her head. “I think it’d be best to try back at the house. Where there’s more control. And mattresses. The way Dihya and I learned to orient ourselves between universes involved using the tides… floating on the water and then making it let us go. Works best with a mattress under you. I think… I could pull someone halfway between the two universes, the way we started out… and then show them how to navigate between both spaces. Worst case, if they can’t, I just pull them all the way back into U1 and it’s over. I think.”

“I’m in,” Izil said from behind her. “I volunteer. I want to come back here. My zoology degree isn’t all that useful to me right now, especially up in the mountains where everything was brought in from Earth centuries ago… but in these mountains… my whole life I’ve dreamed of getting a chance to explore a whole new world and learn about new creatures, and here it is. Whatever the risks may be, it’s worth them.”

“We volunteer,” Tafrara said, joining them. “As much as I love our world in U1, I need this, too.”

Jack suddenly laughed. “Damn, it’s a shame General Toal already blew up the old apartment building. The top floor would’ve been perfect to practice in during high tide. But we can make it work at the house, too, as the tide’s coming and going. Kyra and I have worked out lots of tricks.”

“It means you’ll need to stay in New Marrakesh until it’s time for us to leave,” Kyra told Izil, joining them. “We won’t have time to teach you much if you’re leaving this evening-day.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere now,” Izil replied. “If you’re willing to teach me, I’m completely at your disposal until you have to leave.”

“Then I think it’s settled,” Cedric said, looking pleased.

Only one thing remained: saying good-bye to Sebby.

It was easy to spot their little sister, playing among her many siblings in the creek. She was handily two to three times larger than any of them. Jack took off her shoes and rolled up her pants, wading into the water.

“It’s time for us to go, Sebby,” she said, feeling her throat tighten.

She barely had time to put her arms out to catch Sebby as the cat-sized crustacean leapt onto her chest for a hug.

Love my Tizzy… Sebby stroked Jack’s face with her antennae.

“Love my Sebby too,” Jack managed, hearing her voice crack as she cuddled her little sister close and stroked her carapace. “You’re going to be okay here, right?”

Happy… with Mommy… will still miss you… come back when I’m big.

“You’re gonna get so big…” Jack laughed. “I’ve got to come back to see it, don’t I?”

I will be here…

It was hard to let go, but Kyra needed to cuddle Sebby, too… and everyone else had waded into the water to give her hugs as well. Jack retreated from the water and found herself face to face with Mommy.

You are good friends. Always welcome. Those other beings… they are dangerous. Conquerors. An image of strange locust-like creatures, swarming over the land and eating everything in their path, came to her. Mommy had seen such creatures when she was small, had joined in the fight against them and worried that one day such things might return. She was, Jack realized, drawing a comparison between those swarms and the Quintessa Corporation. Do not let them catch you.

“That’s the plan. I can’t come back until I’m sure they won’t know.”

But come back. You are family. You are Sebby’s sister. You are my brood.

“I will, Mommy,” Jack said, reaching out to stroke her face. What a strange and wonderful honor, to be the “daughter” of this magnificent creature…

People keep adopting you everywhere you go, Kyra whispered in her mind with silent laughter.

She’s adopting you, too, you know, Jack whispered back.

The drive back was almost completely silent, broken only by Jack’s directions as she spotted familiar landmarks leading to a stretch of empty, unmonitored rural road in U1. Everyone was, Jack thought, feeling as awed and humbled as she was. Like her, they were all sad to be parted from Sebby, but confident that they had given her the best possible life. Jack could also feel six people processing, in wonderment, the telepathic contact they had experienced for the first time.

Would something like that show up in a Quantification test, she found herself pondering. If so, and the whole family began traveling between ’verses regularly, they might all end up needing neurofeedback units from General Toal.

The road in U1 was still deserted; Jack transferred them back as soon as Cedric reached a stretch that was level in both universes. Once their comms reconnected to the local system, Safiyya took over telling Cedric which way to drive to take them home.

“You know, I’m wondering why you thought Sebby was a boy in the first place,” Kyra said after a few minutes more.

Jack shrugged. “I guess… I had no idea. So I just went with ‘boy.’”

“How come? Me, I usually go with ‘girl’ there. I think most girls do.”

Jack thought about it for a moment. “When I was younger, right before my parents split up… I started having dreams for a while that I was gonna have a baby brother soon. My mom and dad were fighting constantly, and I kept hoping that maybe my dream would come true and they’d be too happy to fight anymore when it did. Instead, the dreams stopped and my dad moved out, but… I guess I’ve always wished for that little brother, ever since.”

Takama put a gentle arm around Jack’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Tizzy. That must have been such a difficult time for you.”

“Yeah…” Jack sighed. Sometimes, part of her still wondered if the divorce was somehow her fault, as stupid as it sounded when she articulated it. “I knew if I ever had a little brother, my parents wanted to name him Spencer. After this twentieth century actor, Spencer Tracy. They’d named me after—”

Shit, she couldn’t say that part. Nor that she’d almost had an older sister, who would have been named Katharine, if she hadn’t been born too early to survive. She’d spilled far too many details already.

“…a twentieth century actress. But I wanted to name my little brother Sebastian… so that’s what I named Sebby. Kinda.”

Kyra was staring at her as if some great revelation had struck.

“What?” she asked, confused.

Her sister just shrugged. “It’s probably nothing.”

But Jack was almost certain she was lying.