Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

The children, once they got over an initial hesitation, fell in love with the maia. Like giant, walking teddy bears. At first, the adult humans grew nervous at the sight of swarms of children romping around the maia-especially after crawling under a maia became a popular game. But it soon became obvious that the creatures were conscious of the childrens' actions. The maia never harmed a human child, not even inadvertantly. And they never seemed to become irritated at the children's antics-even after the children invented a new game, which they called "ride-the-maia."

The day came when Indira saw a maia pick up a child and gently place the girl on the cowl of its mantle. And she wondered.

Then the day came when Joseph Adekunle, the son of the Magellan 's electronics officer, came running to her.

She watched him approach with fondness. She would never admit it to anyone (for she maintained a public stance of being an impartial mother who loved all her children equally), but the truth was that Joseph was one of her favorites. He was one of the oldest children in the colony (six, now), and big for his age. Big, and extraordinarily athletic. Only Jens Knudsen, among the boys, and Ludmilla Rozkowski, among the girls, came near to him in physical prowess. But Joseph never abused his strength, never acted the bully, never boasted or bragged. To the contrary. He was invariably helpful to the smaller children. And on two occasions that Indira knew of, when Joseph had witnessed a larger child abuse a smaller, the boy had taken the perpetrator aside and quietly informed him that if he thought he was such hot stuff Joseph would be glad to prove him wrong. He was a charismatic figure, even at the age of six, and he had become, almost as if it were a law of nature, the central figure in the children's generation.

He was also-it was obvious to Indira, even at his age-extraordinarily intelligent.

You would have been so proud of him, Susan, thought Indira, as she watched the boy race across the valley floor and begin climbing the hillside toward the camp. She remembered the electronics officer of the Magellan, with some sadness, but not much. It had been over a year since the disaster. She had even finally been able to stop grieving for her own children.

She had not known Susan Adekunle well, but on the few occasions when they had met she had taken an immediate liking to her. It was impossible not to. The Yoruba woman had been invariably witty and cheerful, in her inimitable big and booming style.

Big. Susan Adekunle had been at least six feet tall, and not at all slender.

And judging from the evidence, thought Susan, Joseph's father must have been even bigger.

The boy was now halfway up the hillside.

He certainly inherited his mother's color.

Joseph's skin color was something of a rarity in the modern age, after two centuries of unparalleled war and migration (and then, blessedly, a world at peace for the first time in millenia) had thoroughly mixed up the human gene pool. The majority of the human species had blended into various shades of brown, usually accompanied by dark hair and, more often than not, at least a trace of epicanthic fold to the eyes.

Joseph, on the other hand, is going to look like an ancient Ashanti king when he grows up.

Among the children in the colony, only Jens Knudsen and Karin Schmidt exhibited the same kind of extreme racial differentiation. They were by no means the only white children in the colony, but they were the only two who would grow up looking like Nordic stereotypes-yellow hair, bright blue eyes, skin as white as milk.

Indira's idle musings vanished as Joseph came near. Tears, she suddenly realized, were pouring from the boy's eyes.

She rose to her feet hastily.

"What's the matter?"

"There's something wrong with one of the maia!" cried Joseph. "With Wolugo!"

She had time, before she started hurrying down the hillside, to wonder at Joseph's use of the name "Wolugo." Since they began playing with the maia, the children had begun imitating the creatures' hoots. Over time, they became adept at producing the strange sounds. They even began mixing maia hoots into their own conversations.

The children began insisting that the hooting was a language. Excited, Julius had immediately experimented with his own attempts at hooting. But he had given up, after a few days, in total frustration.

"There's no way I can do it," he'd grumbled to Indira. "I had a hard enough time with Spanish, and if that hooting's a language it's totally unlike any language on Earth. Although I think it's tonal, like Chinese."

Then, snarling: "And if I have to listen to one more snotty little brat make fun of me, I'll commit mass infanticide."

Indira's interest had been aroused. She herself, unlike Julius, had an extraordinary aptitude for languages. She was fluent in seven, including all four of the global tongues (English, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese), and could make her way fairly well in a number of others.

But when she tried learning "hoot," she hit a brick wall. It did, in fact, remind her in a certain way of Chinese. (A very vague, generic, way.) But she couldn't wrap her mind around any concepts. More than once, she felt she was on the edge of grasping the inner logic of the hoots. But, always, the moment slipped away.

In the end, she gave up. Had she been certain that the hoots were really a conscious language, she would have persevered to her last breath. But she was still not convinced that Julius was right.

The children, on the other hand, for all that they had teased Julius' hopeless attempts at hooting, often expressed the opinion that-at least on the subject of the maia-Julius was the only adult in the colony who had any brains.

And for the past three months, the children had started referring to individual maia with proper names.

Even as she ran through the valley alongside Joseph, Indira could not help but smile at the memory of a conversation between the boy and Francis Adams the previous month.

Joseph had casually referred to one of the maia as "Yuloc." Adams had smiled, in his condescending way, and remarked:

"Is that what you've decided to call it?"

Joseph had given the man a look which belied his years.

"Yuloc's not an 'it.' She's a she -like almost all of the maia are. And I didn't give her the name. It's her own."

Then:

"People don't decide what to call other people. You call them by their own names."

"Is that so?" mocked Adams.

The next words, coming from a six-year-old, had astonished her.

"Yes, Francis, it is."

Adams shot to his feet like a rocket.

"You will call me Doctor Adams, young man!"

Joseph had said nothing. He had simply stared back, and up, at the man looming over him. Without a trace of fear or cringing, his face filled with a dignity she would never have imagined possible in a boy that age.

Gasping for breath, she and Joseph reached the spot in the valley where the boy was leading her. As she drew near, she saw that a large number of maia, and what looked like every child in the colony, were clustered near a grove of tubular, fleshy plants. She recognized the plants. They were the favorite food of the maia. The humans had called it "sortasaguaro," until, beginning a few months earlier, the children had started calling it "oruc," insisting that that was the proper name for the plant according to the maia. Julius immediately adopted the name, with the other adults eventually following suit.

She edged her way through the throng. At the center, she came upon a pitiable tableau. One of the maia had collapsed. The creature was lying on its side, hooting softly. Indira immediately knew the position was unnatural. She had never seen a maia lying on its side before. When the creatures slept, they simply lowered themselves straight to the ground.