Nina Osier: Matushka

Katy Romanova had never expected to encounter the cloud-folk again. Certainly not here, in her home star system; and certainly not with the cloud-creatures traveling in ships the way humanoids traveled. But they were here, she recognized them unmistakably now, and the soft voice inside her mind was continuing to speak.

“When you understood what we were, you led your people to make peace with us. And there are some among your own kind who condemn you for that even now, because to them it seemed an unnatural act on your part.”

The voice was gentle, as if its owner or owners understood perfectly what losing her boys had meant to this human mother. But other humans had indeed accused her of lacking normal feelings, for negotiating peace with the beings responsible for her children’s deaths; and the first to charge her with that had been George Fralick, arriving on the first ship to reach Mistworld in response to her appeal for diplomatic and scientific back-up. And while Katy had never been able to blame her former husband for his grief-driven fury, at her and at the cloud-folk, the memory of how viciously he had raged at her was just as hurtful now as it had been then.

“Of course I did.” She felt herself swallowing painfully as she acknowledged that recollection. “If I couldn’t have done that, I’d have had no right to call myself a captain. Being able to admit it when a fight is caused by misunderstanding is something every command officer has to be able to do, otherwise you go on wasting lives long after you could have stopped the killing.”

“That is why we are willing to deal with you now, on behalf of the many humans and other corporeals—on our own world, and on less hospitable worlds nearby—who have become our responsibility.” The word “responsibility” was not a precise rendering of the alien concept, Romanova knew that; but it was as close as her own thoughts could express its true meaning. “We came to Narsai because Narsai is best able to supply the support that our charges need, but finding you here is good fortune. For us, and for those who think of themselves as your superior authorities. There are many beings now among our corporeal charges who can communicate as we do, but we nevertheless need you or someone like you to speak for them with those of your own kind who have the power to change that which needs changing.”

“So you want me to stand in the middle for you again?” It was very clear now.

“Someone must. Your superiors trust you, we trust you, and it is your world that will suffer most if war comes because the aid our corporeals need is not given. Will you help us, Katy?”

She would not be forced to do this. If she refused, she would not even be blamed. But no one needed to force her, because this was what she wanted; and Linc was with her in it, and so was Maddy.

She said softly, and with all her being: “Yes.”

What felt so much like a single being, an individual, was not that at all. The divisions among the cloud-dwellers were not distinct boundaries, as was the case with every other life form Katy Romanova had ever encountered.

Deliberately planted colonists from some far-off other world? Castaways, stranded in a place to which they had managed to adapt? At any rate these beings had not evolved on the planet whose atmosphere they now inhabited, and when they had come there they had been corporeal. And until humans also came there to explore and to colonize, they had been unable to leave.

“We allowed the original band of humans to remain on our planet’s surface because it seemed to us that what they did there would not affect us, and because it saddened us that so many like them were killed when we were forced to protect ourselves,” the single voice that represented all of the cloud-folk told Katy now, as she sat with Linc and Maddy in the university library in the middle of the circle formed by Narsai’s councilors and commissioners. Calling those people together for a second meeting had taken some doing, because they were almost all frightened of traveling so soon after the battle that had taken place in their star system—the first battle to be fought there, or even nearby, in centuries.

But at last they had come, most of them anyway. And now they were listening as a perfectly normal human female whom they had known all her life told them what these “Others” (as the cloud-folk now chose to designate themselves) wanted.

On those ships out there, Katy Romanova said, were not just the mysterious Others; but also humans, and displaced Morthans, and assorted people of other species. And gens—because the Others could see nothing different about gens, to the Others a human was a human was a human.

“How can they travel in ships, if they don’t have bodies?”

That intriguing question was posed by Cab Barrett. The doctor was free to attend this gathering because Rachel Kane, once safely admitted to a modern medical facility, had agreed to let her unborn children be transferred from her body to incubation fields where the three fetuses could develop just as normally as if she had been able to continue her pregnancy.

She had been unwilling to consider that before, because as long as she was property her babies were property too. But that was no longer an issue, and for her safety and theirs the transfer had been made. Now she was recovering, with Dan Archer still hovering protectively at her side as though he could not quite let himself believe no second corporate marshal would arrive and try to take her away.

“Each of them travels in concert with a humanoid, with a corporeal person,” Kerle Marin supplied, and looked at Romanova for confirmation as he spoke. He was finding this experience new and exciting, and not unsettling at all. “It’s not ‘possession’ in the way I’m afraid some of you may be inclined to think about it, though! The Others can be one being, or a billion beings; which, and how many, depends on what seems needed from moment to moment.”

“And just why would such a being bother with trying to help displaced humans, and Morthans who are cast-offs because they lack healing gifts, and gens who’ve escaped from their owners? Especially why would they take responsibility for them, in such numbers that their own planet’s resources can’t keep pace?” That was Cabanne Romanova, speaking calmly because she was too old to be afraid of anything now except harm to her mate or her daughter or her granddaughter. And clearly this fascinating new turn of events did not threaten any of them, so she was enjoying it instead of shrinking from it.

“Because they’re compassionate people and dislike seeing others suffer, is one reason. But also because although you might not think so, living in a body has its advantages.” Lincoln Casey was participating in this set of negotiations openly, instead of covertly as he had done thirteen years earlier. Then his intimacy with Katy had been newly disclosed even to her, and he had been afraid of spoiling it forever before she could discover its possibilities for shared joy; but he had no such fears now. His bond to his wife was solid and tested and secure, and although he still did not relish intrusion on its sanctity by the Others he could tolerate the encroachment without having to fight against Katy’s fear and his own resentment.

“Such as?” Cab Romanova asked. She smiled as she did so, because she liked her daughter’s husband and she no longer bothered to hide that fact.

“Such as being able to operate the controls of a ship. Such as being able to build a ship; or to reactivate ships that have been stored in caverns on Mistworld, for thousands of years since the time when the Others’ ancestors came there.” Casey answered that question, too. It was knowledge he hadn’t possessed until the words came out of his mouth, and he looked toward his wife in astonishment. Of his own volition he asked her, “Did you know that already, Katy?” It didn’t seem possible that she could have picked up something that had bypassed him, while he was serving as her conduit in communicating with the Others; but the information had come to him so matter-of-factly that he wondered if he was expected to possess it already, and had somehow missed it during the turmoil that had been a constant part of this process thirteen years earlier.