Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

He couldn’t help snickering as the sibik abruptly shoved both the crackers into its eating orifice at once, with the result that crumbs started getting sprayed around again. “You’ve barely started working out how to talk,” Kit said; “learning how to count can probably wait until tomorrow.” Kit had another cracker himself. “Maybe we can get Nita over to tutor you. She’ll probably have you up to calculus by the end of the week…”

Dark eyes looked at him with interest. “What’s a calculus?”

“God, don’t ask,” Kit said.

They alternated crackers again a few times, until they were left looking at the last six in the package.

“Those are all there are?” the sibik said.

“Those are all,” Kit said.

“I am very sad,” the sibik said.

“So am I,” said Kit.

“Not because of the crackers.”

Add ‘Alien Pet Psychologist’ to the list, Kit thought. “Why are you so sad?”

“I couldn’t find them.”

The sorrow in its voice was unmistakable, and definitely had nothing to do with crackers. “Your people?” Kit said.

“My people. My person. He’s lost.”

“Well, this is the same problem you had yesterday, isn’t it?”

“No. That was just outside-smelling finding them. This is inside-smelling finding them.”

Kit held quite still.

“My person doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know where home is any more. And my person’s sires and dam are so very sad. Because everything’s ending.”

“I know,” Kit said softly.

“They came so they could see their friends one last time,” the sibik said. “The ones who’re going away, who aren’t going to end.”

Kit’s insides clenched with sorrow, for that was a thought that had occurred to him before: How many of those little campfires are hosting last meals? Some parts of a family who think it’s okay to go, and some who don’t?

Kit swallowed again. “Are you sad because you’re—” He had to say it: there was no point in not saying it, in this landscape full of thousands of people who were thinking it right this minute. “Because you’re going to die?”

“No!” the sibik said, and pulled its tentacles in around it. “Everything dies! I don’t mind dying, as long as it’s with him.”

The previous stab of pain was nothing compared to this one. And as if feeling it too, the sibik made the most pitiful small noise Kit thought he’d ever heard in his life, as if it wanted to cry but was holding it in. “But he doesn’t want to die. They don’t want to die. Yet they don’t want to leave either, they don’t feel like they can. And they’re scared, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, baby,” Kit said, which was probably the least likely thing he’d ever imagined himself saying to a space octopus, and gathered it in and hugged it close. It threw all its arms around him and squeezed him desperately.

“Believe me, you’re not the only one who’s sad,” Kit said.

The sibik pulled itself away from him so it could angle its abdomen up and study him with those odd eyes. “Why are you sad?”

“It’s just—” Kit sighed and shook his head, and leaned back against the Stone Throne. “Maybe because I’m really, really frustrated and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

The sibik cocked even more of its eyes at him. “What’s ‘frustrated’?”

“Upset at something that’s making me unhappy. Something I can’t change.”

“Why does it make you unhappy?”

Kit closed his eyes for a moment, all too willing to block it all out—the lights down by the patent gates and the hopeless glitter of the electronic campfires, the downward-crushing weight of Thesba hanging up there in the sky and waiting, waiting to fall. “It’s hard to explain.”

But the sibik was waiting too. Finally Kit opened his eyes again and looked down at the ridiculous tentacly thing in his lap. “My pop told me this story once and the other day I started thinking about it—”

“Your pop,” the sibik said, “is that like a sire?”

You get hurt sometimes, said a memory, a whisper: your sire and your dam and your littermates… That makes me sad.

“Yeah,” Kit said, and swallowed with slight difficulty. I am going to drink a whole bottle of water after this. But the connection, the connection was there right now, tenuous, maybe fragile. The water could wait.

“All right. What’s a story?”

“It’s telling how a thing happened once.” Kit laughed at himself. “This is isn’t even a story, it’s more of a joke…”

“What’s a joke?”

His laugh this time was more sardonic. “Me,” he said. “All of this. Might as well be a joke, ‘cause if we don’t laugh, we’re all going to cry.”

“What’s cry?” the sibik said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kit said. “I don’t think you’ve got the plumbing. Anyway, you comfy there?”

The sibik in his lap shifted a bit and wrapped some more tentacles around his legs. “Now I am.”

“Okay,” Kit said. “So once upon a time there was this guy—”

“What’s a guy?”

“A person,” Kit said. “A human being. One of my people.”

“All right.”

“So there was this guy, and he lived in a house not too far from a river—”

“What’s a house?”

Kit smiled, realizing that this was going to be one of those storytelling sessions. But he’d had enough of these with Ponch over the years to know that all you could do was just keep on answering the questions until the audience ran out of them. Sometimes it took a while.

“A house is a kind of building where you stay most of the time, eat and sleep and so on,” Kit said. “My people live in houses, in a lot of places.”

“Okay,” the sibik said. “I know what that is. My people had a house.”

Had, Kit thought, with yet another pang of sorrow. “And one time the weather got bad and it was going to rain a whole lot, and there was going to be a flood.”

There was no “What’s a flood?”, so Kit paused. “You know what a flood is?”

“A lot of water,” the sibik said, with profound distaste. “Everything floats away.”

“Okay, good, you get it. Well, when the people who know about weather realized that was going to happen, the local government put out notices on TV and the radio and the Internet telling everybody—”

“What’s a government?”

Kit could just hear some of the suggestions his pop would make. “Uh, the people in charge of making sure that the things people need to share work right.” At least that’s the theory.

“Like giving people food?”

“Uh, yeah, sometimes.”

“Good, I’m still hungry, may I have a cracker, please?”

“Aren’t we asking nicely,” Kit said. “Very good.” He fished out another saltine, which the sibik accepted gravely and stuffed into its eating orifice. Five crackers… “Anyway, the government sent messages to everybody saying that the rain was going to flood everything and they should leave and go up to high ground where the water wouldn’t reach.” He paused. “You with me so far?”

“I have been with you for some time,” said the sibik with a peculiar dignity; and Kit shivered with the thought that he might be hearing someone else whispering through the words.

“Right,” Kit said, his throat getting tight for a moment. He ahem-ed a little to clear it and went on. “Well, the guy we’re talking about heard the news, and he said to himself, ‘This sounds like it’s going to be really bad, this flood. But I trust God—’”

“What’s God?”

Kit laughed and covered his eyes. “Uh, yeah. You know about the One?”

The sibik actually drew away from him and stared at Kit in astonishment. “Of course.”