Robert Reed: Marrow

When she concentrated, Washen could recall dozens of fights with her parents. Childhood issues of freedom and responsibility never seemed to change, and she remembered enough of their politics and personalities to picture little spats and giant, ugly explosions—the sorts of emotional maelstroms that would make good engineers sit in the dark, quietly asking themselves how they had become such awful, ineffectual parents.

To Washen and her closest friends, the Phoenixes became a cause, a rallying point, and an extraordinarily useful thorn.

A ragged little political movement was born. Its bravest followers, including Washen, publically protested the prison. Their efforts culminated in a march to the Masters station. Hundreds chanted about freedom and decency. They held holosigns showing wingless Phoenixes bound up in black iron chains. It was a brave, remarkable event, and it ended in a small victory: little delegations were free to visit the prison, observe conditions firsthand, and speak to the pitiable aliens under the careful gaze of the captains.

That’s where Washen met her first alien.

Phoenix males were always beautiful, but he was exceptionally so. What passed for feathers were a brilliant gold fringed with the darkest black, and an elegant, efficient face seemed to be all eyes and beak. The eyes were a lush copper^’ green, bright as polished gemstones.The beak was a vivid jade color, hard and obviously sharp. It was open when he sang, and it remained open afterward, always gulping down the liters of air that he required just to perch in one place and live.

The apparatus on his chest translated his elaborate song.

“Hello,” he said to Washen. Then he called her ‘human egg-bearer’.”

Several young humans were in the delegation, but Washen was their leader. Following Phoenix protocol, she fielded every question and spoke for the others, following a shopping list of subjects agreed upon weeks ago.

“We want to help you,” Washen promised.

Her translator sang those words in a half-moment, if that.

“We want you free to move and live wherever you wish on board the ship,” she told them.” And until that can happen, we want to make your life here as comfortable as possible.”

The Phoenix sang his reply.

“Fuck comfort,” said his box.

A deep unease passed through the human delegation. “What is your name, human egg-bearer?”

“Washen.”

There was no translation, which meant that it was an impossible sound. So the young Phoenix gulped a breath and sang a note that came out as ‘Snowfeather’.”

She liked the name, and said so. Then she thought to inquire, “What’s your name?”

“Supreme-example-of-manhood,” he replied.

Washen laughed, but only for a moment. Then quietly, carefully, she said, “Manly. May I call you Manly?”

“Yes, Snowfeather. You may.” Then the feathers around the jade beak lifted—a Phoenix smile, she recalled—and he reached out with one of his long arms, reaching past Washen’s shoulder, a strong Little hand gently, ever so gently, caressing the leading edge of her own great wing.

Everyone in the delegation wore strap-ons.

Their wings were powered by thumb-sized reactors and guided both by the wearer’s muscles, and more importantly, by elaborate sensors and embedded reflexes. For the next ten days, human-time, they were to live among the Phoenixes as observers and as delegates. Since no portion of the facility lay out of surveillance range, there wasn’t any overt danger. Regardless how thick the intervening clouds or how loud the thunder, the children couldn’t do anything that wasn’t observed, and recorded, every one of their well-intended words spoken to a larger, infinitely suspicious audience.

Perhaps that’s why Snowfeather took Manly as her lover.

It was a provocative and defiant and absolutely public act, and she could only hope that news of it slinked its way to her parents.

Or set aside the cynicism. Maybe it was something like love, or at least lust. Maybe it was stirred by the alien himself, and the gorgeous dreamy-strange scenery, and the sheer sensual joy that came with those powerful wings and the feel of wind slipping across your naked flesh.

Or deny love, leaving curiosity as the root cause.

Or put aside curiosity, and call it a deeply political act brought on by courage, or idealism, or the simplest, most wicked forms of naivety.

Whatever the reason, she seduced Manly.

On the summit of an airborne jungle, with her long back pressed against the warm and slick skin of a vegetable bladder, Snowfeather invited the alien’s affections. Demanded them, even. He was quick to finish and quick to begin again, and he was tireless, his powerful, furnace-like body held over her with an impossible grace. Yet their geometries didn’t mesh. In the end, she was the one who begged, “Enough. Stop. Let me rest, all right…?”

Her body was damaged, and not just a little bit damaged.

Curious but plainly untroubled, her lover watched the blood flow from between her exhausted legs, crimson at first but turning black in the hyper-oxygenated air. Then her blood clotted, and the ripped flesh began to heal. Without scars and with minimal pain, what would have been a mortal wound in an earlier age had simply vanished. Had never been.

Manly grinned in the Phoenix way, saying nothing.

Snowfeather wanted words. “How old are you?” she blurted. And when there wasn’t an answer, she asked it again. Louder this time. “How old?”

He answered, using the Phoenix calendar.

Manly was a little more than twenty standards old. Which was middle-aged. Late middle-aged, in fact.

She grimaced, then told her lover, “I can help you.”

He sang a reply, and his translator asked, “In what fashion, help?”

“Medically. I can have your DNA replaced with better genetics. Your lipid membranes supplanted with more durable kinds. And so on.” She surprised herself more than him, telling him, “The techniques are complicated, but proven. I have friends whose doctor-parents would adore the chance to reconfigure your flesh.”

The squawk meant, “No.”

She recognized that defiant sound before the translator said, “No,” with a cold, abrasive tone.

Then he roared, “Never,” as those lovely golden feathers stood on end, making his face and great body appear even larger. “I do not believe in your magic”

“It’s not magic,” she countered, “and most species use it.”

“Most species are weak,” was his instant reply.

She knew she should let the topic drop. But with a mixture of compassion and pity, plus a heavy dose of hopeful defiance, she warned her lover, “Changes aren’t coming soon. Unless you can extend your life, you’ll never be anywhere but here, inside your little prison.” Silence.

“You’ll never fly on another world, much less your home world.”

There was a musical whine, feathers swirling in a Phoenix shrug.

“One home is enough for a true soul,” the translator reported. “Even if that home is a tiny cage.”

Another whine.

Manly told her, “Only the weak and the soulless need to live for aeons.”

Snowfeather didn’t bristle, or complain. Her voice was steady and grave, remarking, “By that logic, I’m weak.”

“And soulless,” he agreed. “And doomed.”

“You could try to save me, couldn’t you?”

The alien face was puzzled, if anything. The beak came close, the girl smelling the windlike breath, and for the first time, for a terrible instant, Washen was disgusted by that rich, meat-fed stink.

“Am I not worth saving?” she pressed.

The green eyes closed, supplying the answer.

She shook her head, human-fashion. Then she sat up and swirled her wings, her thick, aching voice asking, “Don’t you love me?”