“Yes,” said Ofelia, nodding vigorously.
The creature turned to her, presenting its own rump, and lifted the decorative kilt to point to an unmistakable orifice. Ofelia looked away. She didn’t really want to see what a creature hole looked like, but she had already registered that it had the predictable puckered appearance. “Yes,” she said. “It comes out a hole in the back.” They must know that, from their observations of her; she suspected them of watching at times when she had been unaware of it. She hoped they could get off this topic quickly, but the creatures had a way of sticking to something as long as it interested them. They should know this already; it had been impossible, in the early days, to keep them from knowing what happened when she used the toilet. This one had come with Bluecloak, so perhaps it had never seen… but it should have known, from talking to the others. She knew they discussed her. “Utter uhoo,” the creature said. Other you meant the other humans; none of the creatures would attempt the word human. “What about the others?” Ofelia asked. She had become used to the creatures understanding more of her speech than she did of theirs.
It pointed to its mouth, then her mouth… its rump and then the sheep droppings.
“Oh — you mean you wonder if the other humans do this too?” What a silly question. Of course they did.
She nodded vigorously. “Yes. They do.”
“Nott ksee,” the creature said. Ofelia thought about it. The other humans still lived in the shelters they’d set up down at the shuttle field; they had moved out of the shuttle itself only in the past few days. So perhaps the creatures had never seen them eat or excrete.
Now the creature tapped its nose, and sniffed elaborately. “Nnnott sssane.” Ofelia understood that as “smells crazy,” which made no sense in terms of what they had been talking about. The creature tried again. “Utter uhoo—” then a big sniff, “—nnot saamp.” Sane… saamp… same. Other yous smell not same? Yes, that could be it.
Ofelia gestured to reinforce her own words. “You think the other humans smell… not like me? Not the same?”
“Eeeyess.” It touched her shirt, then its own kilt and belts. “Nnnott saamp klote-ss.” True enough, the others didn’t wear the same clothes; they wore long-sleeved billowy shirts and long pants, shoes, all in muted colors.
“Saamp utter uhoose purrrt nessstt passs.” The same as other yous — other humans who purrrt — burnt? — nest-something. Burrrt sounded close to hurt. Ofelia set the basket down to have the use of both hands. Had those luckless colonists hurt the creatures’ nests? Was that why they’d been attacked? “Burrrt?” She mimed pounding, kicking.
The creature looked around, as if confused. Then it said “Hah-ahttt. Purrrt aaakss hah-ahtt.” Hot. Purrrt makes hot.
“Burn!” Astonishment and horror both hit at once. Where had it learned the word “burn”? Had she used it, in warning of the hot stoves? She couldn’t remember. And the other humans had burned the nests? Burned the babies?
She thought of the mechbots dropping out of the sky to scrape away whatever grew, to make the flat landing place for shuttles… if that had been nests, if it had caught fire from the mechbot exhausts, or perhaps they even fired the heaps of grass and roots… and nestlings. She knew her face must be a mask of horror, and the creature stared at her, recognizing her shock. “Utter uhoo,” it said again, this time with a decisive jerk of the head. “Nnnott saamp. Nnnott… “ and it rattled off a quick sequence of its own language, in which Ofelia thought she heard click-kaw-keerrr. However bad they were, these humans had not destroyed the creatures’ nests and children. She had to defend them. But she couldn’t figure out how to unmake that confusion — not confusion, she realized now, but settled antagonism. And why hadn’t Bluecloak told her, when it was teaching her, learning from her, when she had played it the tapes of the other colony’s death?
Had it been a wish to spare her pain, or a deeper mistrust?
“Click-kaw-keerrr,” she said, that being the word which usually settled them. “Gurgle-click-cough?”
The creature touched her head, delicately. “Uhoo kud click-kaw-keerrr.” She might be a good click-kaw-keerrr, but she still didn’t know all her responsibilities… responsibilities to both people, she thought suddenly. She didn’t want this — they weren’t going to listen to her — but she could not leave the humans ignorant of what she’d learned. She needed to find out more first, though, and that meant finding the best source.
“Bluecloak?” she asked the creature. “Where is Bluecloak?”
It tipped its head toward the forest — the forest? What was Bluecloak doing in the forest? The most likely thing was hunting, and although Ofelia no longer feared the long knives for herself, she didn’t really want to see Bluecloak butchering treeclimbers. But the creature with her had started walking that way, and Ofelia followed. She dumped her basket of sheep droppings at the edge of the meadow, and stepped carefully through the taller weeds and scrubby growth in the intermediate ground. She had intended to visit the forest more when she lived alone, but she had always been too busy in the village. After seeing the hunt, that time, she had not wanted to go in among the tall trees with the creatures. Now, it felt no different from following the creature anywhere. Cooler, perhaps. She watched the creature move, its high-stepping gait constrained in the forest by the coils of roots and vines. It led her a way she had no reason to know, but when they came to the place where she had sheltered, she recognized it as if she had left it only the day before. There was the fallen log, there the curve of root where she had put her sack of food.
And there were the creatures she knew, nearly all of them. Bluecloak, formally cloaked. Gurgle-clickcough. Her three babies, hedged about with the bodies of four creatures, who had stretched out to form a living playpen within which the babies tumbled and sprawled. They squeaked when they saw Ofelia, and staggered over to someone’s legs, where they bounced up and down on feet that seemed bigger every day. As Bluecloak greeted Ofelia, she saw two of the creatures slip away, back toward the village. Long knives gleamed in their hands. Had they planned a massacre — ? She would have gone, but Bluecloak had her hands, “Nnnott killll,” it said, as if it had read her thoughts. Her expression, most likely; human faces were so mobile, so flexible, “Nnot killll utter uhoo. Yahtch.” Not kill, but watch. Keep them away from this meeting, which the creatures had carefully held far from the scanners and recorders that had been planted all over the village by the industrious Bilong.
Ofelia realized that the one who had talked to her in the sheep meadow must have been waiting for that chance. She wanted to know how long — surely they had been in the village the day before — but that was not the most important question.
Bluecloak’s throat-sac swelled abruptly, and it began thrumming. Soon they all were, fingers and toes and bodies, in a complex of rhythms that had the babies lurching from one side of their enclosure to another, their little feet twitching first in one rhythm then another. Finally it all steadied; Ofelia could feel it all through her body, could feel her own toes tapping, her own heart slowing to match the left-hand drumming that meant concord.
Then silence, abrupt, into which the babies’ squeaks sounded loud. Ofelia put out her hand to them, and they ran to her, licking her wrist, grabbing with their little fingers, so much weaker still than their toes, though apt for manipulating everything they got hold of. The talons felt like tiny pins. When Bluecloak spoke, Ofelia could hardly believe it. He sounded exactly like Vasil Likisi, down to the accent and the pomposity. “I have been empowered by the government…” He stopped, and rattled off a long string in his own language. Ofelia stared.
“But you—”
Now in the voice she knew, the one which changed some sounds of human tongue, “It izh kud cahpih?” Better than a good copy; better than some recordings Ofelia had heard. “You can… can you do that all the time?”