Jonathan hefted the weapon and cradled it on a cushioned depression in the top edge of the partition.
Bill helped him hold the gun; sight; aim. The pantomime of death, Andrea thought.
“OK, son, just relax a minute.” Bill pulled the rope. The cage sprang open and the reptant, which had been caught in the wilds during its very first steps away from its birth tree, now resumed an interrupted quest.
Its faltering, agonized movements showed that it was almost blind and very immature. Not premature, though. Like a terrestrial marsupial, it knew exactly what to do, and where to go. With constant swings of its head back and forth, to triangulate on the faint scent of the virgin sapling, it made a slow straight line course to the tree.
Watching, Andrea saw another infant’s journey toward another reptant tree. She was reliving it all again now, and glimpsing some hints of answers in the xenobiological mysteries being played out in front of her.
When the infant reptant reached the tree, it climbed unhesitatingly up the specially textured pot. Half way up the sapling’s trunk it stopped, exhausted. Within a minute it began to rub the branches nearby with the inside of its legs and arms.
“Just watch, Jon,” Bill whispered. “ ’Til it finishes marking its territory.”
Jonathan watched, his face mirroring Andrea’s own inner turbulence. When Bill was satisfied with the reptant’s progress, he placed a big hand, feather soft, on his son’s shoulder. “OK, son,” he whispered, “Now”
Jonathan tore his eyes away from the tree, laid his cheek on the rifle’s stock, and reacquired the target through the scope.
“Nice slow squeeze.”
Nothing happened.
“Son?”
Eyes still on his target, Jonathan’s voice was small and pleading. “I can’t.”
Bill gave Jonathan’s shoulder a small reassuring pat. Andrea could almost feel it. But Bill’s reasonable words were almost lost in the buzzing in her ears.
Softly, Bill coaxed, “Remember what it grows into, son. Remember, the new baby has to eat. We’re counting on you.”
“But—”
“You’re fine. Remember… detachment.”
Her husband must have known that Jonathan was crying, but he didn’t acknowledge it.
“But it’s just a baby,” Jonathan sobbed. Yes, Andrea thought, in sudden despair, Like the sister you don’t even know about.
“I know, son.”
The genuine sympathy in his father’s voice must have pushed Jonathan to accept the inescapability of it all. Miserably, eyes closed, he pulled the trigger.
The reptant was only stunned by the tranquilizer. Jonathan would actually have to kill, skin, and dissect it with the surgical knife.
Wondering if Anna had still been alive when the reptant had begun to cut her to pieces, Andrea watched in a daze as her son became a man.
Replant Eve. Children finally asleep. Andrea on the couch, her back against Bill, his arm around her, his hand on her stomach. Shared smiles whenever the baby moved.
A collage of memories distracted Andrea from her reading.
Decorating the Christmas tree. Riding on her father’s shoulders to put the angel on the very tip.
Jonathan riding Bill’s shoulders to put the dried skin of the infant reptant on the top of the reptant tree in the living room. The leathery skin, splayed wide open before being dried, looked something like an angel. An ugly angel of death, perched like a vulture in her living room; before that, in her oven; before that, in her freezer, along with the frozen Replant dinner victuals.
Christmas dinners on Earth. Cooking. The wonderful smells.
The gory, bloody dissection at the nursery. The skinning. The removal of scent glands. The bureaucracy of the Chemplex. Tomorrow’s dinner of Earth Apples, baby reptant organs and meager, stringy reptant flesh.
“Do you think he’s got his part memorized?” Bill asked, probably in response to the tension he felt building in her.
“I guess.”
“How about you?”
“Oh… sure. I’m just afraid of gagging on the meat again.”
“You’ll do fine. Be sure to make a big fuss over Jonathan for providing it.”
Bill had been hovering protectively over Jonathan since the nursery, helping the boy deal with the doublepunch trauma of killing and then butchering.
“Bill, tell me again why we can’t just kill the reptants in the tree where Anna died.”
Wearily, Bill answered, “Please, Andrea. Not tonight. We’ve been over this. You know they’ll never leave that. tree. We’re safe as long as we stay away from it.”
“But how can you stand it, knowing that they’re still so close?”
“Do you think I like it? But there’s more at stake here.”
“Of course.” Andrea spat the words out contemptuously. “Your precious ahimsa. ‘Don’t touch the natural order.’ ” She felt her frustration more sharply during the holidays. “She was our baby, Bill!”
He tried to comfort her, but she stiffened. Her cynicism about the moral and ethical codes of Phoenix was exploding inside her. “Tell me,” she said, in challenge, “Tell me so I can understand why we do all this ritual butchering around Replant Day anyway.”
Bill looked confused. “It’s all in the Sayings. You’ve been reading about it constantly for the past few weeks… few years. What can I add?”
Andrea sat up and looked Bill in the eyes. “I don’t mean that Neo-Jainist liturgy cobbled together from 300-year-old lab books and diaries. I mean why? Why put so much on a little boy?”
“Dear, in Earth years, he’s almost ten.”
“Even so. I don’t understand what it accomplishes. None of it is really necessary. Others do that dirty work for us the rest of the year. Besides, can’t they make our trees bear fruit without having to use the reptants at all?”
“They’re not even close. They don’t have the equipment. It’s all they can do to figure out the formulas and manufacture the sprays. Considering that every guardian reptant produces a one-of-a-kind marker, it’s amazing they can keep up as well as they do. You know all that.”
“Yes, but—”
“And besides, if we all did only what’s necessary—no rituals… no ceremonies—that’d be so… I don’t know… boring… shallow.”
“Well, it’s still not right. It hurt Jon. Maybe even scarred him. You must have seen that. He’s only a child.”
“Honey, he’s not scarred, and he’s not a child anymore. This isn’t only about him. Replant time is for the family, too. You’ve never grasped that. This year I was hoping—”
“I lost everything on Earth by coming here, Bill. I accepted that, but there’s nothing here I can call my own. Jon and Cindy make up for that a little. I created them. They’re mine. But I lost Anna, and now I’m losing Jon—”
“You’re not losing—”
“And I want to know why!”
Bill sighed. He sat up, put elbows on knees, and began massaging his hands and the long scar on his right forearm. “You won’t accept the standard answers. Even I can’t be sure if it’s to ‘make us one with the land,’ or, ‘to exorcise the shame of having to kill in order to survive.’ I only know the ceremony feels right—important. It gives us clarity… perspective. Phoenix is still a dangerous place, and innocence is something we can’t afford forever. But if I had to tell you why? I really don’t know I shouldn’t have to.”
He’d spoken in dismay, not anger, but Andrea knew that she had, once again, pushed him too far—to a wall he couldn’t scale. She was, again, demanding explanations for his mysteries when she had none for mysteries of her own. There was no rational component to the beliefs of her youth, so it was unfair to demand reasons for his.