Mary Caraker: Suffer the Children

“Quite by accident. A side effect. I lost an arm a year ago, on Midia. I was in a regen tank.” She held out her arms. The left one, while perfectly formed, was two inches shorter than the other.

Regina whistled. “What happened? I’ve never seen that kind of a result before.”

“A parting gift from the Midians. I suspect they diluted the fluid in the tank during the last weeks. They thought I was subverting their educational policies.”

“And were you?”

“Yes. But if you’d been there—”

“Hey, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’ve broken enough rules myself over the course of my checkered career. And I’m doing it again right now.” Still holding Daisy, she drew another child to her. “Someone will be screaming to high heaven when they find out, but I don’t give a damn!”

“Because you stayed with the children instead of getting off at Elyria? That doesn’t seem to me so awful.”

“No, I mean this.” She cuddled Daisy against her shoulder, then reached down to stroke the cheek of the other child. “The Salassans were very particular in their instructions. We were to have only minimal contact with the children. See that they’re fed and clean, and that’s all.”

“That sounds awfully coldhearted. But… the Salassans are an isolationist race. They’re probably afraid of contamination.” Morgan could understand Regina’s refusal to obey such an order; she had never seen children so pitifully in need of comfort. However, she was also uncomfortably aware of the Space Corps dictum to provide their clients with only the degree of assistance they requested. She groaned inwardly. It was just what she didn’t need—another battle of conscience.

“I can see that you don’t approve,” Regina said. “That’s why I wanted an older person. Someone who might have a bit of compassion.”

“I do, and I sympathize with you,” Morgan protested. “It’s just that… I can’t afford another black mark on my file.”

“And that’s more important than the welfare of the children?”

At Regina’s angry tone, the small figures on the cot shrank even farther against the wall. The child at her side tried to pull away.

“There—see what you’ve done.” The doctor turned to reassure her charges, then waved a dismissal at Morgan. “If you’re not going to help me—go on, then. Take a tour of the ship. Find yourself a place to bunk. Just don’t get in my way here.”

Morgan didn’t move. “But I am supposed to be on duty,” she insisted. “What about their meals? Can I at least see to that?”

“Keep them fed and clean,” Regina said bitterly. She checked her watch. “Sure, you can get their rations from the galley. Such as they are.”

Morgan was glad to escape. She took the same corridor, which dead-ended at the engine room. Backtracking, she blundered into an off-duty crew quarters where, over the noise of her enthusiastic reception, she received directions to the galley.

Refusing all offers for a personal guide, she made her way slowly down an even narrower passage, grasping handrails for support when the ship shuddered beneath her feet. They must be preparing to leave orbit, she thought. “A great start, Farraday,” she muttered to herself. She’d already made an enemy of Regina, and unless she changed her mind and decided to cooperate with her, it looked like three weeks of warfare.

The worst of it was, she agreed in principle with the woman. Those poor, catatonic children! After what they had seen and experienced, it would be inhuman to remain at a distance.

But they weren’t human, she reminded herself. She had to remember that, and not impose her own standards. It would be difficult, but she was no neophyte to be seduced by sentiment.

But then, neither was Regina Quarles.

Morgan decided nothing except that this time she would consider carefully before she did anything to compromise herself. She smelled the galley—scorched soy disguised by too much spice—and surprised the cook, a huge man with a pendulous belly, tippling from a flask.

He replaced it hastily in a back pocket. “You must be the teacher. Though what you can do for them kids…” He shook his Mohawk-shaven head. “A bunch of zombies, that’s what they are. You can’t teach them nothin’.”

“Probably not,” Morgan said. “For now, though, I just want their lunches. What is it they eat?”

He snorted as he pulled a bag from a shelf. “Dried grubs and seeds and raw krupa nuts.” He set six bowls on a tray. “Just pour it in. No mixing, no cooking. They’ll drink a little water, too.” He snorted again. “That’s their diet.”

“It… doesn’t seem very appetizing,” Morgan said. “Are you sure it’s nutritious?”

“According to their head honcho on Salassa, it’s all they need.”

The cook didn’t sound convinced, and Morgan wondered, too, as she traversed the corridor with her tray, why the children were to be kept on what must be a barely subsistence diet. When she returned to their quarters and saw how little they ate, and how listlessly, she felt a new rush of pity. The older children fed themselves, but Regina, with Daisy on her lap, offered her special charge food from her own fingers. Morgan couldn’t help noticing that Daisy ate twice as much as any of the other children.

The young Salassans looked so thin, surely, they were malnourished. One, only slightly larger than Daisy, swallowed barely a mouthful before putting down its bowl and staring at Morgan with dull eyes.

“Here, you’ve got to do better than that,” Morgan said. Imitating Regina, she attempted to feed the child from her fingers, but the pellets of food dribbled from its uncooperative mouth.

“It only works if you hold them,” Regina said. “Like I’m doing.”

Morgan shot her a suspicious glance, but the doctor, still absorbed with Daisy, seemed innocent of any subterfuge. We are supposed to be seeing to their health, Morgan thought as she picked up the small figure and settled it on her lap. The child was surprisingly light, its bones tiny and sharp as a bird’s through the cloth of its garment.

“Here now, Sweetie, try a little of this,” Morgan crooned. It was her tone that mattered, she guessed, and she didn’t turn on the tinny-voiced voder.

Like a bird, too, the child opened its mouth and allowed Morgan to feed it. Morgan alternated the dried mix with water, and the child drank, slowly at first and then thirstily. She finished her bowl of food (Morgan didn’t know the child’s sex, but somehow she had started to think of her as female) and then curled herself against Morgan’s chest and closed her eyes. She gave off a soft warmth and a faint, pleasant odor.

It was probably her first adequate meal in weeks, Morgan thought. She turned accusingly to Regina. “This child was starving and dehydrated. Didn’t you know?”

Regina sighed. “They all are—or were.” She nodded at Daisy and at the figure curled in Morgan’s lap. “This is all that seems to work.”

Morgan looked at the other silent, motionless children, at their bowls of barely-touched food. “Then why haven’t you…” She remembered the prohibition and thought she understood. “You were afraid of repercussions?”

“No, it’s not that,” Regina said. “I’d have fed them all, one at a time, if I could. But the others won’t let me. It’s got something to do with Daisy, I think. Apparently I’m hers. Some stamp, some smell, perhaps.”

A pheromone, Morgan thought. She looked down at the warm bundle in her lap. Was she marked, too?

When she displaced the sleeping child and attempted, with no success, to lap-feed the others, she guessed that she had, indeed, absorbed something that made them resist her. The sleeping one stirred and tried to crawl back to Morgan, and the impulse to pick her up again was almost overwhelming.