Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

For a while, hope was kindled. Nausea, after all, can be lived with. Only Koresz suspected the truth, from his examination of the colony's fecal waste. Diarrhea, no. But it was obvious to him that most of the "food" was being passed right through without use. Soon enough, it became obvious to everyone that the food was not sustaining them.

The children seemed somewhat more resilient than the adults. That fact, which Indira at first found reassuring, became another source of anxiety.

Who will take care of them when the adults are gone?

And the children were all very young. The oldest was only five. Most of them were three or four years old. That had been the Society's doing. The planning board had concluded, based on obscure psychological reasoning which Indira personally found suspect (but wasn't about to argue with, since she was a beneficiary), that the ideal colonists for the Magellan 's expedition would be professional single parents in their mid-thirties with young (but not crib-age) children.

When all seemed lost, the owoc had saved them. The owoc, and the quick mind of Julius Cohen.

The colonists had known the owoc were there, almost from the beginning. The large creatures were impossible to miss. At first the humans had been afraid of the things, because of their size. But, in truth, the creatures seemed very timid. Certainly they never made any threatening motions, and they soon enough began to avoid the humans, staying on the southern side of the valley.

Julius had studied them, for several days. He reported that the creatures seemed to be herbivores, and explained that herbivores are seldom dangerous, so long as they do not feel threatened. Thereafter, the colonists made it a point not to venture onto the southern portion of the valley.

Then a child wandered off, a small boy named Manuel. His absence was not noticed for some time, partly because it was hard to keep track of each individual in the swarm of children, and partly because the adults were now greatly weakened and listless.

Eventually, his absence was noticed. Indira and Julius went in search. The four other adults who were still alive were too weak to do more than watch the children in the camp.

After two hours of scouring the immediate vicinity, they began searching toward the south. After another hour, they heard the faint sounds of a crying child coming from a grove of tall, vaguely fern-like growths. As quickly as their weakened condition permitted, they plunged into the thick foliage. The cries grew louder.

They came to the edge of a small clearing. Through a screen of ferns, they could see one of the herbivores, staring down at the tiny figure of the four year old boy. Manuel was sprawled before the huge creature, crying.

He was wearing, Indira noted absently, a khaki jumpsuit.

She and Julius hesitated, frozen between their fear for the boy and their uncertainty of how to scare away such a formidable-looking beast.

The creature reached down with four of its arms and lifted the boy. It drew him toward its beak. The beak gaped open.

Indecision vanished. Indira and Julius began frantically pushing their way through the last screen of ferns.

Suddenly, a stream of thick paste gushed from the creature's beak. The paste splattered over the child's head and shoulders.

Manuel's wails were extinguished, as a large portion of the paste went into his open mouth. The boy coughed and spluttered.

Indira felt a hand on her shoulder. Then, to her astonishment, Julius forced her to the ground.

" Stop! " he hissed.

She stared back at him. Slowly, Julius lowered himself next to her.

"It's not trying to hurt the boy," he whispered urgently. "It's trying to feed him."

"What?"

"It's true. I've watched them-that's exactly how they feed their own young."

She looked back. In truth, the huge creature did not seem to be threatening the boy. It was simply holding him up, watching Manuel with its huge eyes (so uncannily like human eyes, except that they were four times larger).

The expression on the boy's face was almost comical. Utter bewilderment. His face, head and upper body were covered with paste. It was difficult to tell how much, for the color of the paste blended almost perfectly with his clothing.

Manuel's mouth gaped open again. To cry? No one would ever know, because another stream of paste gushed down his throat. He coughed, gagged. And swallowed. And then, while Indira watched in stunned silence, the bewilderment vanished from the child's face. He lifted his head, eyes closed, and opened his mouth once again.

There was no doubt now what emotion was being expressed by the child. Feed me.

Another stream of paste.

Indira tried to scramble to her feet.

"It's poison! Animal product!"

Again, Julius forced her down helplessly. (He had the great strength possessed by many large, fat men. Not all that strength had melted with the fat.)

"No! It's not milk, Indira. It's regurgitated vegetation."

"Are you certain?" she demanded.

He nodded. "Positive. This is actually quite a common method used by animals to feed their young. Especially when the food which the animals use is difficult- oh, my God! "

Julius was chewing on his upper lip, as he always did when he was pondering a problem. It was a slightly disgusting habit, in Indira's opinion, but she had not tried to break him of it. Her ex-husband had had no obnoxious personal habits; he'd just been a self-centered, unfeeling son-of-a-bitch.

She was still filled with anxiety.

"But-"

"But what, Indira? What's the worst thing that can happen to the boy? Die? He's going to die, anyway. Look at him-he seems okay."

And it was true enough. In fact, at that very moment Manuel began laughing, and playing with one of the creature's arms.

Julius frowned. "There's bound to be some of the critter's fluids mixed with it-saliva, digestive juices, that kind of thing. But-not enough, I think, to hurt the kid. It's worth the chance."

Suddenly, she understood the hope that was dawning in her lover's mind.

"You think-?"

He shrugged. "Who knows? It's a long shot, like filling an inside straight. But we're fresh out of full houses. And it's possible, just maybe. The plant life on this planet isn't deadly to us, the way meat is. But there's something in the way it's put together that makes it too tough for our digestive systems to break down. That's exactly the problem lots of young animals face. Evolution has found several solutions. The solution mammals use is mother's milk. This is another."

She made a face. "It's disgusting."

"Not as disgusting as dying."

She shook her head. "Julius, this is still no good. We can't use a helpless four-year-old boy as a guinea pig."

He nodded. "You're right."

And began slowly crawling toward the center of the clearing.

As soon as he broke through the ferns and came into the clearing, he was spotted. The creature pivoted quickly on its two rail-like fleshy "feet." Julius stopped moving. He opened his mouth.

Slowly, the creature lowered the child to the ground. And edged back.

Julius crept forward, his mouth open.

The creature edged back. Its mantle was now rippling with alternating bands of ochre and pinkish-red.

Julius stopped again. He started chewing his upper lip furiously.

The frozen tableau held for a minute, until Julius suddenly grunted.

" Of course! " Indira heard him say. Slowly, Julius turned his head back to her. His eyes, for some reason, were feverishly scanning her body.

His rubbery upper lip twisted into a grimace of self-deprecation.

"I am so stupid. It's so obvious."

Then: "Go back to the camp, Indira. Find something khaki-colored-as close a match as you get to the shade of Manuel's jumpsuit. A cloth of some kind. A big one-big enough to cover me, or as much of me as possible."