Mary Caraker: Suffer the Children

Morgan stared, aghast, at the speaker. If she understood correctly, they meant that Anna, in order to be adopted, must become again a catatonic sort of a tadpole! Anna whimpered, and Morgan stroked the child’s soft hair and shook her head emphatically. “But I want to take in this one. And she’s fine the way she is.”

Regina added her own plea, and the voder presented them both. The Salassans listened, and without conferring spoke in unison. This time there was no difficulty with the translation. “No, it is not possible.”

Regina started to protest, but Captain Jaworski intervened. He switched off his voder. “Now don’t get them riled up. Just hand over the kids. If I’m going to make a profit out of this trip—”

“Profit!” Regina glared. “How can you think about profits when you heard what they want to do? Another separation, another shock—why it could kill these little ones!”

“You shouldn’t have messed with them in the first place. And whatever you might think about their intentions—the kids aren’t yours.”

Morgan and Regina exchanged desperate glances. “Ask if we can go down with the children,” Morgan begged the captain. Perhaps someone on the planet would be more reasonable. Most of all, they needed time. She wheedled: “The longer we stay, the more chance you have to make your trade deal.”

He agreed. “But remember—you’ve got to use diplomacy. These folks haven’t wanted anything to do with us, up to now.”

Morgan couldn’t help a testy response. “You don’t have to tell me—I’ve probably been on as many alien worlds as you have. I know the rules.” Unfortunately, the main SEF rule was not to interfere with an alien culture. Somehow, without seeming to criticize, she had to generate sympathy.

The Salassans agreed to Jaworski’s request, and the party made its way to the shuttle. The Salassans carried the two children they had called hatchlings, who were too weak to walk, and Morgan and Regina shepherded the others. Anna maintained a viselike grip on Morgan’s leg, impeding her progress, but this time Morgan refused to pick her up. See how strong she is, she wanted to say to the hooded ones. See how she won’t be parted from me, even for a minute.

Zed and Hogan were waiting at the airlock, with long faces. Captain Jaworski had to order them twice to cut short their goodbyes to their charges, and they obeyed with reluctance. When the lock irised shut, the two small boys moaned and refused to move.

The captain pulled them into the shuttle. “See what you’ve done?” he hissed at Regina.

Once inside, Morgan held Anna again. The captain strapped himself in beside them and continued to harangue Morgan about friendly relations with the Salassans. Regina, a seat ahead with Daisy, maintained a fierce, determined expression that boded ill for the captain’s diplomacy.

The Salassans, across the aisle, watched anxiously over the hatchlings and the two still sobbing changed ones. When the temperature inside the shuttle dropped, they removed their outer robes to cover the children, and Morgan at last saw their faces clearly.

She tried not to stare. The nearer Salassan had a scaly, green-mottled skin and a plume of hair of the same shade. He—or she or it—had a flat nose that spread over a third of a reptilian face. The other, whose brown, leathery skin hung in folds from a thin beak of a nose, had sunken eyes half covered by a nictitating eyelid and a dense mat of white, moss-like hair.

Morgan shifted her gaze to Anna. No, it wasn’t possible… But then, it didn’t seem possible that she had ever been like one of the hatchlings, either. Anna buried her face in Morgan’s neck, and Morgan rocked her gently. “Whatever you were, you’re mine now,” she whispered.

There was little conversation during the descent. The Salassan shuttle had no grav units, and the passengers remained in their harnesses. Captain Jaworski did calculations on his compad, the Salassans fussed over the children in their care, and Morgan and Regina held their fosterlings in steely-armed grips.

The Salassans couldn’t be without feelings, Morgan told herself. Their activities across the aisle—the hovering, the constant adjustment of harness straps, all showed a clear concern for the children’s well-being. If they truly wanted the best for all of them…

Anna awoke from a nap with an initial cry of distress, then snuggled closer to Morgan. Her fist closed on an errant lock of Morgan’s hair and she closed her eyes again, a small smile reflecting her contentment.

Morgan looked across the aisle. See. Don’t you see?

The green-skinned Salassan was indeed watching, but Morgan had no clue what was going through the creature’s mind as it studied Anna’s hand and then looked down at its own webbed fingers.

Was it thinking to turn her lovely ward into a replica of itself? Chamelons, she had once called Daisy and Anna. Well, maybe they were, but she couldn’t believe Anna wasn’t irrevocably changed. She put her cheek next to Anna’s soft one and inhaled her fragrance, a scent that was sweetness and innocence and childhood and love, a scent that was Anna and no one else, and that was now a part of herself, as Anna was, so much so that surely the alien would know it too.

They entered the atmosphere, and through the viewports the planet expanded beneath them. Once Morgan would have been wild with excitement—a new adventure, a new world. Now her concentration was all centered on Anna and the possible separation. She scarcely glanced at the bloody sun in the red sky, the jagged mountains and the barren, rocky plain below them as they circled for landing. She wondered, fleetingly, why there was no city, and why what must be a main spaceport consisted of only a few scattered hanger-like buildings around a not very large landing field.

She understood as soon as they left the shuttle. The fierce, grit-laden wind bit into her face, and she slitted her eyes against both it and the red glare. Sheltering Anna against her doubled-up body, she followed the others into a wheeled ground vehicle that drove up to the nearest building and through its open doors. An elevator took them down, vehicle and all, to the bustling underground warren that she guessed must be a population center of some importance.

Morgan’s impression was of a series of vaulted caves, filled with what looked like shops and with milling hordes of Salassans. Most resembled the brown-skinned one from the shuttle, but Morgan caught glimpses of various skin colors and facial configurations as a crowd began to gather. A gabble of clicks and squawks and hisses resolved itself into exclamations over the children, particularly Anna and Daisy.

Morgan attempted to shield Anna, and Regina, too, placed a protective hand over Daisy’s face. The exclamations grew louder, and Morgan sensed that the crowd wasn’t entirely friendly.

“Here. This way.” The two Salassans from the shuttle spoke into the captain’s voder and cleared a way for the three humans and Anna and Daisy.

The four other children were taken off in another direction. “They are well. They will have much care,” came from the voder, when Morgan looked back and expressed concern. The Salassan hurried her along.

They passed through a gate and into a connecting tunnel that contained a rail line. After a few minutes they boarded a train—a rather primitive one, Morgan thought, with hard benches in the car and no attempts at decoration. The ride, though, was quiet and smooth, and their hosts seemed solicitous of their comfort and safety, closing the car to other passengers and standing guard at the doors.

They arrived soon at what seemed to be another station or public area, this one smaller and less crowded. There was another commotion as soon as they were spotted, and their hosts led them quickly through a doorway into a private room.