Mary Caraker - Suffer the Children

Hangings in muted colors covered the walls, but the room was otherwise unfurnished. In its center, three gray-robed Salassans sat on the cushioned, circular rim of what Morgan guessed to be a conversation pit.

The green Salassan uttered a short sentence and motioned to the captain to join them. “You wished to speak trading,” the voder translated.

Captain Jaworski obeyed with alacrity. Morgan and Regina, still carrying Daisy and Anna, followed their remaining guide through an opening in the hangings into another, identical room where three more Salassans waited.

The brown one spoke into Regina’s voder. “We speak now for children.” He pointed to Regina. “You are elder? You are one who speaks?”

Apparently, the conference was to be limited to one human. Morgan felt the slight and once more silently cursed the Midians.

“Is it all right with you?” Regina asked. “I know what to say. We both feel the same, don’t we?”

Morgan nodded. “Just… don’t get them riled up,” she said, echoing the captain.

“I know. But I’m not giving in, either.”

Morgan believed her. Though she would have preferred to plead her own case, she knew that Regina would argue staunchly for both of them.

“You kindly to wait here,” the voder translated for the brown Salassan, and the creature led Morgan through another curtain into a third conference room. It left her there with Anna, and in a minute or so returned with a crying Daisy.

So she was to be the baby-sitter. Regina wouldn’t have liked Daisy’s removal either, Morgan told herself, and again banished hurt feelings. She tried to comfort Daisy, who only howled louder. On the Dutchman, neither Daisy nor Anna had ever been separated for long from their foster mothers. Perhaps, Morgan hoped, Daisy’s display was a good demonstration for their side.

They needed all the help they could get. Here, on this alien world, surrounded by Anna’s birth-kind, Morgan couldn’t help but feel her claim to the child slipping away. Convince them, Regina, she prayed silently.

Daisy’s screams unfortunately prevented Morgan from hearing what was being said beyond the curtain. She paced the circular, windowless room, around and around the pit, holding Daisy, with Anna clinging to the hem of her tunic. The pit was about two feet deep, with some kind of a heat coil in the bottom. Morgan imagined Regina and the Salassans in the next room, sitting around their own pit and dangling their legs. It would be an intimate grouping, conducive to truth and straight talk. She did not expect them to be long.

Please, please, she begged again. The room was not uncomfortable, though a bit cold, with glow tubes in the ceiling giving a soft light, but it nevertheless had the buried, claustrophobic feel that to Morgan marked all underground dwellings. She recalled the glaring, windswept barrenness above and sent another message through the wall, that the two fosterlings be allowed to grow up on more pleasant worlds.

Salassa was one of the most unpleasant she had seen, though she acknowledged that she had received only the briefest glimpse of it, either above ground or below. And from the way the visiting humans had been hurried and then isolated, it was the way the Salassans wanted it.

Unfriendly. Secretive. Paranoidly private. She had heard all the terms. Regina parted the curtain and came in alone. She didn’t look happy.

Daisy ran to her at once, and Regina refused to talk until the child was quiet in her arms.

“Well? Do we get to keep them?” Morgan could tell nothing from Regina’s tight expression. Though if she had been refused, surely she would be sputtering with anger.

“It all depends.”

“On what? Come on! ” Morgan could have shaken her.

“On whether we want to remain on Salassa.”

Morgan gasped. “Remain here? You’re not serious!”

“I certainly am. The Salassans won’t allow the children to be taken away. They treasure their young, and of late they’ve had too few. If we want to adopt these two, it will have to be here on Salassa.”

Morgan shook her head in silent denial, and Regina continued. “Even that was a big concession. They’d prefer to have Daisy and Anna, along with Zed’s and Hogan’s boys, go into some kind of isolation place until they change back into hatchlings—a kind of nymph stage their young go into after hatching. Then they can be adopted, as apparently all Salassan children are. Eggs and hatchlings are kept in common incubation caves and have no identities until they’re adopted, when they assume the characteristics—survival oriented or purely ornamental—of their new parents. Greens or browns or whatever. When they reach what we consider puberty, their appearance is set. Until then they can still revert, to save energy in times of trouble, like the children we found on the colony. A shock will do it—like being separated from us.”

“But… it’ll hurt them dreadfully, won’t it?”

“Of course it will. That’s why we weren’t supposed to bond with the children. It’ll hurt us, too, even more. That’s why they said we could stay, if we want to make our home on Sa-lassa.”

“And you’ve decided to do it?” Morgan understood why her friend looked so… resigned.

“Yes. I can’t leave Daisy.”

Morgan was silent for a long moment. “Do they want me to decide now?”

“In the next few minutes. If you decide to go, they want you off right away.

“And if you stay—it’s forever. No visits offworld, ever.”

“It’s impossible!” Morgan had never felt so pressured or so tom. “How can they? Regina, how could you make such a decision? We know nothing about this planet. Is it all like this—all underground?” Morgan had a phobic horror of living like a mole. It had been bad enough on the Centauri asteroids, in domes and tunnels and pressure suits, but there at least she had been with her own people. To give up all of humanity…

That, or to give up Anna.

“There are places,” Regina answered, “where they still live above ground. Something they call the big swamp, and another area near what I gathered to be the northern ice cap.”

Morgan brightened. “The climate conditions are better?”

“No, at least not according to R’th and M’rll.” Regina grimaced as she stumbled over the Salassan names. “They said it’s worse, but the inhabitants are hardier. I don’t think we’d want to live in either place.”

Morgan stared at Regina. Why had it been so easy for her? “So you’re willing to… give up everything you’ve known.”

“I’ll have Daisy.”

Yes, and perhaps it was enough. Morgan picked up Anna, and the wash of tenderness that came over her whenever she held the child was almost enough to convince her, too.

Almost. But then she thought of their lives on the planet, of Anna growing up with Salassan children, one of them yet forever a curiosity. She wondered if Regina had considered all the implications for Daisy. “Won’t it be hard for her, looking so different?” she asked.

Regina shrugged. “I suppose so, in a way. But she’ll have me. And if you decide—”

Again, the pressure. “You mustn’t depend on me!” Morgan cried.

“I’m not.” Regina kept her face expressionless. “I’ve made my decision, regardless of whether or not you stay.”

Morgan held Anna tighter, until the child whimpered in protest. She had still come to no resolution when Captain Jaworski parted the curtain and came through. His tight mouth and lowering brows proclaimed his ill humor. “Are you two ready to leave? I’m through here, and there’s no point in sticking around. We can’t, anyway—they want us gone as soon as we can get to the Dutchman. ”