Yalnis stepped inside for the first, and perhaps the only, time.
The living space was very plain, very beautiful in its elegant simplicity, its walls and floor a black as deep and vibrant as space without stars. Its storage bulged with the unique gifts Yalnis's guests had brought: new foods, new information, new bacteria, stories, songs, and maps of places unimaginably distant.
The soft silver skin of Yalnis's ship hugged it close, covering its transparent dome.
The new ship awoke to her presence. It created a nest for her. She cuddled into its alien warmth, and slept.
She woke to birth pangs, her own and her ship's. Extensions and monitors retracted from her body. "Time for launch," she said to her ship.
"True," it said, without hesitation or alternation. It shuddered with a powerful labor pang. It had recovered its strength during the long rest.
"Bahadirgul," Yalnis said, "it's time."
Bahadirgul yawned hugely, blinked, and came wide awake.
Yalnis and Bahadirgul combined again. The pleasure of their mental combining matched that of their physical combining, rose in intensity, and exceeded it. At the climax, they presented their daughter with a copy of Yalnis's memories and the memories of her lover Bahadir.
A moment of pressure, a stab of pain—
Yalnis picked up the blinking gynuncula. Her daughter had Bahadir's ebony skin and hair of deepest brown, and Yalnis's own dark blue eyes. Delighted, she showed her to Bahadirgul, wondering, as she always did, how much the companion understood beyond pleasure, satiation, and occasional fear or fury. It sighed and retreated to its usual position, face exposed, calm. The other companions hissed and blinked and looked away. Yalnis let the mesh of her shirt slip over their faces.
Yalnis carried her daughter through the new ship, from farm space to power plant, pausing to wash away the stickiness of birth in the pretty little bathing stream. The delicate fuzz on her head dried as soft as fur.
The daughter blinked at Yalnis. Everyone said a daughter always knew her mother from the beginning. Yalnis believed it, looking into the new being's eyes, though neither she nor anyone she knew could recall that first moment of life and consciousness.
By the time she returned to the living space at the top of the new ship, the connecting neck had separated, one end healing against the daughter ship in a faint navel pucker, the other slowly opening to the outside. Yalnis's ship shuddered again, pushing at the daughter ship. The transparent dome pressed out, to reveal space and the great surrounding web of stars.
Yalnis's breasts ached. She sank cross-legged on the warmmidnight floor and let her daughter suck, giving her a physical record of dangers and attractions as she and Bahadirgul had given her a mental record of the past.
"Karime," Yalnis whispered, as her daughter fell asleep. Above them the opening widened. The older ship groaned. The new ship quaked as it pressed out into the world.
"Karime, daughter, live well," Yalnis said.
She gave her daughter to her ship's daughter, placing the chubby sleeping creature in the soft nest. She petted the ship-silk surface.
"Take good care of her," she said.
"True," the new ship whispered.
Yalnis smiled, stood up, watched the new ship cuddle the new person for a moment, then hurried through the interior connection before it closed.
She slipped out, glanced back to be sure all was well, and returned to her living space to watch.
Yalnis's ship gave one last heavy shudder. The new ship slipped free.
It floated nearby, getting its bearings, observing its surroundings. Soon—staying near another ship always carried an element of danger, as well as opportunity—it whispered into motion, accelerating itself carefully toward a higher, more distant orbit.
Yalnis smiled at its audacity. Farther from the star, moving through the star's dust belt, it could collect mass and grow quickly. In a thousand, perhaps only half a thousand, orbits, Karime would emerge to take her place as a girl of her people.
"We could follow," Yalnis said. "Rest, recoup ..."
"False," her ship whispered, displaying its strength, and its desire, and its need. "False, false."
"We could go on our adventure."
"True," her ship replied, and turned outward toward the web of space, to travel forever, to feast on stardust.
The End
© 2005 by Vonda N. McIntyre and SCIFI.COM