by Vonda N. McIntyre
This story copyright 1979 by Vonda N. McIntyre. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.
Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.
* * *
The smell from the ship's animal room, at first tantalizing, grew to an overpowering strength. Years before, the odor of so many closely caged animals had sickened the old one, but now it urged on her slow hunger. When she was a youth, her hunger demanded satiation, but now even her interior responses were aging. The hunger merely ached.
Inside the animal room, three dimensions of cages stretched up the floor's curvature, enclosing fat and lethargic animals that slept, unafraid. She lifted a young one by the back of its neck. Blinking, it hung in her hand; it would not respond in fear even when she extended her silver claws into its flesh. Its ancestors had run shrieking across the desert when the old one's shadow passed over them, but fear and speed and the chemical reactions of terror had been bred out of these beasts. Their meat was tasteless.
"Good day."
Startled, the old one turned. The youth's habit of approaching silently from behind was annoying; it made her fancy that her hearing was failing as badly as her sight. Still, she felt a certain fondness for this child, who was not quite so weak as the others. The youth was beautifuclass="underline" wide wings and delicate ears, large eyes and triangular face, soft body-covering of fur as short as fur can be, patterned in tan against the normal lustrous black. The abnormality occurred among the first ship-generation's children. On the home world, any infant so changed would have been exposed, but on the sailship infanticide was seldom practiced. This the old one disapproved of, fearing a deterioration in her people, but she had grown used to the streaked and swirling fur pattern.
"I greet thee," she said, "but I'm hungry. Go away before I make thee ill."
"I've become accustomed to it," the youth said.
The old one shrugged, leaned down, and slashed the animal's throat with her sharp teeth. Warm blood spurted over her lips. As she swallowed it, she wished she were soaring and eating bits of warm meat from the fingers of a mate or a lover, feeding him in turn. Thus she, when still a youth and not yet "she," had courted her eldermate; thus her youngermate had never been able to court her. Two generations of her kind had missed that experience, but she seemed to regret the loss more than they did. She dismembered and gutted the animal and crunched its bones for marrow and brains.
She glanced up. The youth watched, seeming fascinated yet revolted. She offered a shred of meat.
"No. Thank you."
"Then eat thy meat cold, like the rest of them."
"I'll try it. Sometime."
"Yes, of course," the old one said. "And all our people will live on the lowest level and grow strong, and fly every day."
"I fly. Almost every day."
The old one smiled, half cynically, half with pity. "I would show thee what it is to fly," she said. "Across deserts so hot the heat snatches thee, and over mountains so tall they outreach clouds, and into the air until the radiation explodes in thine eyes and steals thy direction and shatters thee against the earth, if thou art not strong enough to overcome it."
"I'd like that."
"It's too late." The old one wiped the clotting blood from her hands and lips. "It's much too late." She turned to leave; behind her, the youth spoke so softly that she almost did not hear. "It's my choice. Must you refuse me?"
She let the door close between them.
* * *
In the corridor, she passed others of her people, youths and adults made spindly by their existence on the inner levels of the ship, where the gravity was low. Many greeted her with apparent deference, but she believed she heard contempt. She ignored them. She had the right; she was the oldest of them all, the only one alive who could remember their home.
Her meal had not yet revived her; the slightly curved floor seemed to rise in fact rather than in appearance. The contempt she imagined in others grew in herself. It was past her time to die.
Ladders connected the levels of the ship, in wells not designed for flying. With difficulty, the old one let herself down to the habitation's rim. She felt happier, despite the pain, when the centrifugal force increased her weight.
The voyage had been exciting, before she grew old. She had not minded trading hunting grounds for sailship cubicles: the universe lay waiting. She entered the ship young and eager, newly eldermated, newly changed from youth to adult; loved, loving, sharing her people's dreams as they abandoned their small, dull world.
The old one's compartment was on the lowest level, where the gravity was greatest. Slowly, painfully, she sat cross-legged beside the window, unfolding her wings against the stiffness of her wing-fingers to wrap the soft membranes around her body. Outside, the stars raced by, to the old one's failing sight a multicolored, swirling blur, like mica flakes in sand.
The habitation spun, and the sails came into view. The huge reflective sheets billowed in the pressure of the stellar winds, decelerating the ship and holding it against gravity as it approached the first new world the old one's people would ever see.
* * *
She dreamed of her youth, of flying high enough to see the planet's curvature, of skimming through high-altitude winds, gambling that no capricious current could overcome her and break her hollow bones. Other youths fell in their games; they died, but few mourned: that was the way of things.
She dreamed of her dead eldermate, and reached for him, but his form was insubstantial and slipped through her fingers.
Claws skittered against the door, waking her. Her dreams dissolved.
"Enter."
The door opened; against the dimness of her room light shadowed the one who stood there. The old one's eyes adjusted slowly; she recognized the piebald youth. She felt that she should send the youth away, but the vision of her eldermate lingered in her sight, and the words would not come.
"What dost thou wish?"
"To speak with you. To listen to you."
"If that's all."
"Of course it isn't. But if it's all you will allow, I will accept it."
The old one unwrapped her wings and sat slowly up. "I outlived my youngermate," she said.
"Wouldst thou have me disgust our people again?"
"They don't care. It isn't like that anymore. We've changed."
"I know... my children have forgotten our customs, and I have no right to criticize. Why should they listen to a crippled parent who refuses to die?"
The youth heel-sat before her, silent for a moment. "I wish... "
She stretched out her hand, extending the sharp claws. "Our people should never have left our home. I would long be dead, and thou wouldst not have met me."
The youth took her hand and grasped it tightly. "If you were dead-- "
She drew back, opening long fingers so her wing spread across her body. "I will die," she said. "Soon. But I want to fly again. I will see one new world, and then I will have seen enough."
"I wish you wouldn't talk of dying."
"Why? Why have we become so frightened of death?" The youth rose, shrugging, and let the tips of the striped wings touch the floor. The vestigial claws clicked against the metal. "Maybe we're not used to it anymore."
The old one perceived the remark's unconscious depth. She smiled, and began to laugh. The youth looked at her, as if thinking her mad. But she could not explain what was so funny, that they had reached for the perils of the stellar winds, and found only safety and trepidation.
"What's the matter? Are you all right? What is it?"
"Nothing," she said. "Thou wouldst not understand." She no longer felt like laughing, but exhausted and ill. "I will sleep," she said, having regained her dignity. She turned her gaze from the beautiful youth.