Sci-Fi Space Opera: Ancient Empires by @catherinemintz #excerpt
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Ancient Empires
by Catherine Mintz
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The kit was quiet. The soldier sighed and shifted the little beast to what looked like a more comfortable position, where it remained, gray-faced and passive, until they bumped into another updraft. The diminutive varr took a deep breath, but Gerlac abruptly gathered its feet into one hand, and startled it to silence. “Be still,” he whispered.
When Gerlac sheds his battle armor to care for a varr child, he believes life in a quiet backwater signals the death of his bright ambitions. He rapidly discovers his new assignment is more dangerous and more important than combat.
An excerpt from
Ancient Empires
Becomes black night,
It is good to remember,
They can hear,
Time to sleep,
They are near,
Safe to dream:
They are here.
Traditional evensong
Click here to read more of this excerpt.
The kit was quiet. The soldier sighed and shifted the little beast to what looked like a more comfortable position, where it remained, gray-faced and passive, until they bumped into another updraft. The diminutive varr took a deep breath, but Gerlac abruptly gathered its feet into one hand, and startled it to silence. “Be still,” he whispered.
Yvandre peered into the man’s travel-bearded face, then bared its fangs and hissed. Do what I want to.
The soldier grinned, and tapped it on its fierce little nose. “Shhh,” he said. “Be still, pyrrin.”
The kit mewed its distress anyway, convinced that if it could make itself understood, then the misery would be stopped.
Wanting a quarter paper of flash himself, the guards captain scowled at nothing, and rubbed his bristly cheeks. Serving the dark lords had given Gerlac straight teeth, a false eye that looked real and saw better, and a deep respect for the traditions of the black-and-whites. Varr’s men practiced abstinence outside their own quarters.
“Oo,” said the varr.
The guards captain tensed as the flyer bumped through another column of warm air. As transportation, the device was primitive beyond belief, nonsentient, mechanical, with minimal safety margins. Airbag ruptured by lightning, one had crashed yesterday, killing all on board.
The kit gagged and he patted it, absently, thinking of the live-from-the-scene coverage. For all that, he had been lucky to be detached for this solo mission. His comrades were creeping into border skirmishes on Adzak where the odds were one in twenty they would be vaporized past the point of any recoverable remains.
They said it was a painless death.
“Mft,” said the kit, and the man joggled it gently.
His wouldn’t be if his charge didn’t survive.
It wouldn’t suckle, wasn’t replacing what it lost by retching. Gerlac smiled dourly, sloshed the mixture of powdered protein, sterile water, and fat in the bottle. Some said adult varr drank human blood. He’d willingly have opened a vein if it would do any good, but it wouldn’t. Just another legend of the dark lords.
When he was a kid, his cousin had told him the unmen came from eggs, warmed by the light of seven moons. He’d believed that one long enough to make a fool out of himself in the barracks. The truth was embryonic varr were incubated in artificial wombs for twenty-one ten-days, then decanted and checked to insure they were true to type before they were named. Those that weren’t, were culled.
“Chwuk,” said the kit, reclaiming its caretaker’s attention.
He gently tapped its nose again. This was a perfect specimen of its kind, named and accepted, and so the dark lords were obligated to raise it. But, thought Gerlac grimly, current politics did not dictate the job be done well. The guards captain slid a finger into one small, clawed hand, felt it clasp his, tugged gently so it could tug back.
“Chawl,” said the kit.
Its gray eyes were watchful, intent. Having a silent, gestural language of their own, varr were never very verbal, but this kit was doing his best to communicate across the barriers of age and species. The man could almost see Yvandre thinking, They use sounds, one of these must work.
“Bript?”
“Hey, new one,” said the man approvingly, and patted a fingertip on its sternum. The kit grabbed his hand, leaving beads of blood where its claws broke the skin. Gerlac worked his fingers free. Poor little creature, with its sire dead and no older clone-brothers to protect its interests, its long-term chances were slim. The black-and-white cradled it in his arms, hummed softly.
“O?”
“Ssh,” he said softly. “Ssh.” As a small boy, he’d cared for the youngest child while his parents and older siblings worked the fields. Being able to change a diaper and check a bottle had made him mission-qualified when Beltar hastily broke up Yesdar’s household. With the old lord dead, the other varr might have turned on the old lord’s undefended kit and servitors.
The soldier had been traveling for more than five days and this was the last leg of his journey. He rocked forward and back, slowly, numb with fatigue. The local flyer went from Yost-port to Spintop Bay with intermediate stops at Ferlan, Kunst, Sithry, Varrdunost, and Klept. Sithry, famous for its dried fish, was next, and then came Varrdunost.
“Soon,” he whispered to his charge.
“Oon?”
“La, la, laaa,” mocked one woman, off-key, as she rocked her empty arms. The man with her snapped his fingers rhythmically in approval of her audacity.
Hands shielding the now-wary kit, Gerlac glared at the floor. On Yost, only women cared for children. If he recruited one sniggerer for the nastier chores, that would shut the rest up.
“Ssst!” said Yvandre.
The little varr would tear whomever to shreds.
On that cheering thought, Gerlac lifted the bottle from the keeper, offered it again. The kit let it drool out past the rosy curl of its tongue. A quarter shift ago, the man had made a fresh batch, hoping the problem was that the first had spoiled too subtly for his coarse adult taste to notice, but the varr refused the new as it had the old.
Plunging into a downdraft, the flyer shuddered.
“Ooo,” moaned Yvandre.
Gerlac hastily patted the kit’s back. Battle-hardened, he was indifferent to mess, stink, and even his own discomfort, but his charge might need help. He was not sure there was even a varr-qualified medical AI at their destination. The place was home to a scant fifty people, mostly workers skilled in managing the self-sowing plantings.
Gray eyes wide, the kit moaned, and drooled.
“Shhh,” said the man, rocking forward and back. “Sssh.” He pitied Yvandre, old enough to distinguish people and too young to comprehend an explanation. That didn’t mean the kit didn’t know enough to be scared. It was far too small to protect itself.
“Ng?”
The idiot woman laughed again, and the other passengers whispered among themselves. The man reached out, mimed feeling Gerlac’s non-existent breasts, and then went suddenly nonchalant and uninvolved at the soldier's expression.
Teeth gritted, the black-and-white visualized one smooth sweep with a knife at fumble-finger’s neck, the pleasant ripping sound of skin separating from flesh—
“Rrupt?” queried Yvandre.
The little creature could feel his anger, and was not sure where it was directed. The soldier made more soothing sounds, and turned his thoughts to his own position. His orders had set no term for this assignment. He might be on duty at Varrdunost for a considerable while.
They hit another rough patch of air. Yvandre gasped and spat up on Gerlac’s uniform tunic. Silently cursing the illiterate who couldn’t read a turbulence indicator, the soldier slapped the lock on the keeper, got to his feet, and headed for the personal. The kit convulsed again to an accompaniment of human laughter, and the black-and-white hunched his shoulders protectively.
These townspeople seldom saw varr, had little understanding of their distant and enigmatic rulers, but even allowing for ignorance, they were more hostile than he would have expected. A bad sign, and one the dark lords’ soldier would report. Yost was nearer human space than he liked, and it was possible the border was not secure.
Gerlac glanced back, thinking, Wait until he gets a little growth on him. He’d seen a displeased adult varr split a man open from throat to crotch: one hand, one stroke. The wretch had stood holding his steaming guts for a long moment before his brain got the message that he was dead.
Cradling the kit against the cleaner side of his tunic, the guard shouldered his way through the door at the rear of the cabin.
“Gah,” said the little beast, and heaved again.
In the field, with an emergency pack, and treating a human adult, the guard knew the drill, but he didn’t know what to do for the kit and he didn’t trust the contents of the public medical locker.
They’d do more than skin him if Yvandre died.
The personal stank of the perfumes used to conceal the odors of elimination and sickness. Gerlac would have preferred the honest stenches. He shucked the kit’s clothes off, put it into the deep, padded sink. Punching for towels and a diaper, he stripped to the waist to send his uniform tunic through the cleaner for the fourth time, and stuck his pellet-projector into the back waistband of his pants.
The figure that looked back at him from the video-plane was getting thinner on top, and permanently grim about the mouth. The left eye was bloodshot. The right, of course, never changed, although there was a piercing pain behind it at the moment. Gerlac vectored its magnification in and out, hoping the shift would reset something farther in—
“Aap!” announced the kit to its reflection, having spotted a potential acquaintance.
Sorry, fellow, thought the guard. You’re definitely the only one.
Yvandre’s tassels flared, it batted at the video-plane, then hissed at its rival and scared itself wide-eyed.
The guard blanked the screen, gathered his charge up and distracted it by turning on the lukewarm water.
The kit tried to paw the stream from the faucet, then began to piss, probably in reaction to the sound and wetness.
The man hastily set it in the sink and interposed his hand to make sure the urine went down the drain, not onto the wall, floor, and himself. Even diluted by the flow from the tap, it was easy to see the output was scanty and far too dark.
The black-and-white made a through job of washing and oiling the crotch and buttocks, then let Yvandre play with the spray for a while before he lifted it out, and swaddled it in a towel. With any luck, he thought, that’ll be the last time before we get there. You, he tickled its pointed chin, should drink something.
“Aaahh,” it said and tried to clamber up the man’s bare arm.
“No,” said Gerlac, and peeled it off.
“Phfitt!” Ordinarily Yvandre didn’t like being thwarted, but this time it didn’t argue.
The guard diapered his charge, then got yet another tube of sterile water. The kit wasn’t interested in drinking but it would watch the drop form and fall—target, its mouth—and it would swallow when the man scored a hit. “Bruuum,” said Gerlac, and flew the bomber in a tight circle—
The personal bumped and joggled, sending the water flying.
The frightened kit sank its claws into him and wailed, full volume.
The soldier got up slowly from his defensive crouch, one hand protecting the howling Yvandre’s head while the other put up his weapon.
They were on the ground again, the last stop before their own, and the crew would be laughing their asses off. Gerlac scowled at the monitor, made a one-handed, one-gesture suggestion, and thought, I’ll be sure to mention the service in my report. The dark lords might be indifferent to the kit’s misery, might even be quietly relieved if it died, but insolence always got a varr’s attention.
He remembered Joldan’s expression, hands full of his own viscera.
When the guards captain finally got out of the personal, there was a new passenger in the cabin, a woman, hardly thirty, very well-dressed, lost in her own thoughts. Gerlac resettled himself, felt his freshly cleaned tunic crease and fold, thought, They must have designed these seats to be uncomfortable, chance could never—
The black-and-white jerked alert.
Yvandre was watching something.
The guard blinked, focused, saw the new passenger was now sitting directly across from him, staring. Shit, Gerlac thought, sick of amused and curious people. He shifted his charge on his shoulder and glared at her.
She flushed, looked away.
Gerlac felt abruptly apologetic. He was an odd sight, a fully uniformed guards captain carrying a tiny varr. Most people thought the unmen were popped from tanks and walked away, fully functioning from the moment they began breathing air, and here was one nearly as soft and vulnerable as their own offspring, for all the tassels and the tiny claws proclaimed its heritage.
The kit mewed.
“He’s hungry,” said the woman with the brevity of one driven to speak, but unhappy about it.
“We’ll be on the ground soon,” said Gerlac.
She reached for the bottle in its unlocked keeper.
“Don’t,” said the soldier, reaching to keep her from touching it. Burdened with Yvandre, he was too slow.
The woman plucked it out, sniffed, disapproving.
As if she can tell anything about what they feed a varr. Now he’d have to make another batch. “Listen,” he said, and ground to a stop, having assumed his angry tone would be enough.
Unperturbed, she tilted the purloined bottle, squeezed a drop onto her fingertip, and tasted. Then she put her palm against the kit’s cheek.
It snapped at her and howled with indignation, fully aware of who should touch it and who not.
“Please,” said Gerlac, pulling away. His pellet-projector, reholstered under the front flap of his tunic, jabbed him in the gut at every dip and sway, and his orders allowed him to kill her where she sat. He had hoped to not even have to raise his voice this trip.
She flushed again, then gathered herself, rose to go, and said, finally, with awkward bluntness, “I’m in milk.”
“You’re offering to nurse it?” He pointed to the well-chewed nipple she had somehow overlooked, then added, “It bites.”
Yvandre bared dainty little fangs, and hissed.
She proffered her ID, had had it in the palm of one hand from the time she sat down.
Gerlac took it reluctantly, wishing he’d just ignored her.
The card chirped as the list read it off and sorted its files for additional information. Pardovelman Ayana. Only child of the previous planetary governor, and, Gerlac hoped his face didn’t change as he read, her husband and child had died in yesterday’s flyer crash.
The guard looked at her, asking permission, but she was gazing out the window, so he pressed his list to her forearm anyway. It signaled, genome match, confirmed identity.
Embarrassed, fingers awkward on the touch pads, he ran a health-code. She was healthy, sane, and human milk, although less rich than the kit’s own formula, would do. Given Yvandre needed fluids, the medical program suggested, the watery stuff might even be the better choice.
Ayana interrogated him with a look.
Gerlac nodded brusquely, and reached to drag down the privacy screen. He hated being unable to see around him, but he wasn’t going to stage a show for the other passengers. Let them entertain themselves with their own imaginings.
Seeing what he was doing, the gaggle of women gave shrill little shrieks. One man gave a tongue-lolling grin and vigorously pumped a middle finger in the air, before the jade-green pigment clouding the pull-down occluded his gesture.
Shit, thought the black-and-white.
Ayana’s top was a modest, wrap-around affair that could be loosened by untying the strings at the waist. The guard showed her how to block the fangs with a finger—interested, Yvandre still got in a resentful nip—but the woman simply cleaned her nipples with a practiced hand and slid the tasseled head beneath the loosened cloth.
She jumped, and then sat back, tears clinging to her lashes. The soldier winced and stared down at the treetops below, putting his right eye through its paces. What a thing. The man knew from watching his mother and sisters it could be pleasant to be suckled, but no human child had fangs.
Milk had stained the dark cloth of Ayana’s blouse, and Gerlac wondered why she had not been medicated to dry her up. Perhaps it was too soon for her to admit the deaths. The soldier hoped she hadn’t seen the official record. The man, neck snapped by the force of the explosion, must have died instantly, but the baby—
Yvandre peered into the man’s travel-bearded face, then bared its fangs and hissed. Do what I want to.
The soldier grinned, and tapped it on its fierce little nose. “Shhh,” he said. “Be still, pyrrin.”
The kit mewed its distress anyway, convinced that if it could make itself understood, then the misery would be stopped.
Wanting a quarter paper of flash himself, the guards captain scowled at nothing, and rubbed his bristly cheeks. Serving the dark lords had given Gerlac straight teeth, a false eye that looked real and saw better, and a deep respect for the traditions of the black-and-whites. Varr’s men practiced abstinence outside their own quarters.
“Oo,” said the varr.
The guards captain tensed as the flyer bumped through another column of warm air. As transportation, the device was primitive beyond belief, nonsentient, mechanical, with minimal safety margins. Airbag ruptured by lightning, one had crashed yesterday, killing all on board.
The kit gagged and he patted it, absently, thinking of the live-from-the-scene coverage. For all that, he had been lucky to be detached for this solo mission. His comrades were creeping into border skirmishes on Adzak where the odds were one in twenty they would be vaporized past the point of any recoverable remains.
They said it was a painless death.
“Mft,” said the kit, and the man joggled it gently.
His wouldn’t be if his charge didn’t survive.
It wouldn’t suckle, wasn’t replacing what it lost by retching. Gerlac smiled dourly, sloshed the mixture of powdered protein, sterile water, and fat in the bottle. Some said adult varr drank human blood. He’d willingly have opened a vein if it would do any good, but it wouldn’t. Just another legend of the dark lords.
When he was a kid, his cousin had told him the unmen came from eggs, warmed by the light of seven moons. He’d believed that one long enough to make a fool out of himself in the barracks. The truth was embryonic varr were incubated in artificial wombs for twenty-one ten-days, then decanted and checked to insure they were true to type before they were named. Those that weren’t, were culled.
“Chwuk,” said the kit, reclaiming its caretaker’s attention.
He gently tapped its nose again. This was a perfect specimen of its kind, named and accepted, and so the dark lords were obligated to raise it. But, thought Gerlac grimly, current politics did not dictate the job be done well. The guards captain slid a finger into one small, clawed hand, felt it clasp his, tugged gently so it could tug back.
“Chawl,” said the kit.
Its gray eyes were watchful, intent. Having a silent, gestural language of their own, varr were never very verbal, but this kit was doing his best to communicate across the barriers of age and species. The man could almost see Yvandre thinking, They use sounds, one of these must work.
“Bript?”
“Hey, new one,” said the man approvingly, and patted a fingertip on its sternum. The kit grabbed his hand, leaving beads of blood where its claws broke the skin. Gerlac worked his fingers free. Poor little creature, with its sire dead and no older clone-brothers to protect its interests, its long-term chances were slim. The black-and-white cradled it in his arms, hummed softly.
“O?”
“Ssh,” he said softly. “Ssh.” As a small boy, he’d cared for the youngest child while his parents and older siblings worked the fields. Being able to change a diaper and check a bottle had made him mission-qualified when Beltar hastily broke up Yesdar’s household. With the old lord dead, the other varr might have turned on the old lord’s undefended kit and servitors.
The soldier had been traveling for more than five days and this was the last leg of his journey. He rocked forward and back, slowly, numb with fatigue. The local flyer went from Yost-port to Spintop Bay with intermediate stops at Ferlan, Kunst, Sithry, Varrdunost, and Klept. Sithry, famous for its dried fish, was next, and then came Varrdunost.
“Soon,” he whispered to his charge.
“Oon?”
“La, la, laaa,” mocked one woman, off-key, as she rocked her empty arms. The man with her snapped his fingers rhythmically in approval of her audacity.
Hands shielding the now-wary kit, Gerlac glared at the floor. On Yost, only women cared for children. If he recruited one sniggerer for the nastier chores, that would shut the rest up.
“Ssst!” said Yvandre.
The little varr would tear whomever to shreds.
On that cheering thought, Gerlac lifted the bottle from the keeper, offered it again. The kit let it drool out past the rosy curl of its tongue. A quarter shift ago, the man had made a fresh batch, hoping the problem was that the first had spoiled too subtly for his coarse adult taste to notice, but the varr refused the new as it had the old.
Plunging into a downdraft, the flyer shuddered.
“Ooo,” moaned Yvandre.
Gerlac hastily patted the kit’s back. Battle-hardened, he was indifferent to mess, stink, and even his own discomfort, but his charge might need help. He was not sure there was even a varr-qualified medical AI at their destination. The place was home to a scant fifty people, mostly workers skilled in managing the self-sowing plantings.
Gray eyes wide, the kit moaned, and drooled.
“Shhh,” said the man, rocking forward and back. “Sssh.” He pitied Yvandre, old enough to distinguish people and too young to comprehend an explanation. That didn’t mean the kit didn’t know enough to be scared. It was far too small to protect itself.
“Ng?”
The idiot woman laughed again, and the other passengers whispered among themselves. The man reached out, mimed feeling Gerlac’s non-existent breasts, and then went suddenly nonchalant and uninvolved at the soldier's expression.
Teeth gritted, the black-and-white visualized one smooth sweep with a knife at fumble-finger’s neck, the pleasant ripping sound of skin separating from flesh—
“Rrupt?” queried Yvandre.
The little creature could feel his anger, and was not sure where it was directed. The soldier made more soothing sounds, and turned his thoughts to his own position. His orders had set no term for this assignment. He might be on duty at Varrdunost for a considerable while.
They hit another rough patch of air. Yvandre gasped and spat up on Gerlac’s uniform tunic. Silently cursing the illiterate who couldn’t read a turbulence indicator, the soldier slapped the lock on the keeper, got to his feet, and headed for the personal. The kit convulsed again to an accompaniment of human laughter, and the black-and-white hunched his shoulders protectively.
These townspeople seldom saw varr, had little understanding of their distant and enigmatic rulers, but even allowing for ignorance, they were more hostile than he would have expected. A bad sign, and one the dark lords’ soldier would report. Yost was nearer human space than he liked, and it was possible the border was not secure.
Gerlac glanced back, thinking, Wait until he gets a little growth on him. He’d seen a displeased adult varr split a man open from throat to crotch: one hand, one stroke. The wretch had stood holding his steaming guts for a long moment before his brain got the message that he was dead.
Cradling the kit against the cleaner side of his tunic, the guard shouldered his way through the door at the rear of the cabin.
“Gah,” said the little beast, and heaved again.
In the field, with an emergency pack, and treating a human adult, the guard knew the drill, but he didn’t know what to do for the kit and he didn’t trust the contents of the public medical locker.
They’d do more than skin him if Yvandre died.
The personal stank of the perfumes used to conceal the odors of elimination and sickness. Gerlac would have preferred the honest stenches. He shucked the kit’s clothes off, put it into the deep, padded sink. Punching for towels and a diaper, he stripped to the waist to send his uniform tunic through the cleaner for the fourth time, and stuck his pellet-projector into the back waistband of his pants.
The figure that looked back at him from the video-plane was getting thinner on top, and permanently grim about the mouth. The left eye was bloodshot. The right, of course, never changed, although there was a piercing pain behind it at the moment. Gerlac vectored its magnification in and out, hoping the shift would reset something farther in—
“Aap!” announced the kit to its reflection, having spotted a potential acquaintance.
Sorry, fellow, thought the guard. You’re definitely the only one.
Yvandre’s tassels flared, it batted at the video-plane, then hissed at its rival and scared itself wide-eyed.
The guard blanked the screen, gathered his charge up and distracted it by turning on the lukewarm water.
The kit tried to paw the stream from the faucet, then began to piss, probably in reaction to the sound and wetness.
The man hastily set it in the sink and interposed his hand to make sure the urine went down the drain, not onto the wall, floor, and himself. Even diluted by the flow from the tap, it was easy to see the output was scanty and far too dark.
The black-and-white made a through job of washing and oiling the crotch and buttocks, then let Yvandre play with the spray for a while before he lifted it out, and swaddled it in a towel. With any luck, he thought, that’ll be the last time before we get there. You, he tickled its pointed chin, should drink something.
“Aaahh,” it said and tried to clamber up the man’s bare arm.
“No,” said Gerlac, and peeled it off.
“Phfitt!” Ordinarily Yvandre didn’t like being thwarted, but this time it didn’t argue.
The guard diapered his charge, then got yet another tube of sterile water. The kit wasn’t interested in drinking but it would watch the drop form and fall—target, its mouth—and it would swallow when the man scored a hit. “Bruuum,” said Gerlac, and flew the bomber in a tight circle—
The personal bumped and joggled, sending the water flying.
The frightened kit sank its claws into him and wailed, full volume.
The soldier got up slowly from his defensive crouch, one hand protecting the howling Yvandre’s head while the other put up his weapon.
They were on the ground again, the last stop before their own, and the crew would be laughing their asses off. Gerlac scowled at the monitor, made a one-handed, one-gesture suggestion, and thought, I’ll be sure to mention the service in my report. The dark lords might be indifferent to the kit’s misery, might even be quietly relieved if it died, but insolence always got a varr’s attention.
He remembered Joldan’s expression, hands full of his own viscera.
When the guards captain finally got out of the personal, there was a new passenger in the cabin, a woman, hardly thirty, very well-dressed, lost in her own thoughts. Gerlac resettled himself, felt his freshly cleaned tunic crease and fold, thought, They must have designed these seats to be uncomfortable, chance could never—
The black-and-white jerked alert.
Yvandre was watching something.
The guard blinked, focused, saw the new passenger was now sitting directly across from him, staring. Shit, Gerlac thought, sick of amused and curious people. He shifted his charge on his shoulder and glared at her.
She flushed, looked away.
Gerlac felt abruptly apologetic. He was an odd sight, a fully uniformed guards captain carrying a tiny varr. Most people thought the unmen were popped from tanks and walked away, fully functioning from the moment they began breathing air, and here was one nearly as soft and vulnerable as their own offspring, for all the tassels and the tiny claws proclaimed its heritage.
The kit mewed.
“He’s hungry,” said the woman with the brevity of one driven to speak, but unhappy about it.
“We’ll be on the ground soon,” said Gerlac.
She reached for the bottle in its unlocked keeper.
“Don’t,” said the soldier, reaching to keep her from touching it. Burdened with Yvandre, he was too slow.
The woman plucked it out, sniffed, disapproving.
As if she can tell anything about what they feed a varr. Now he’d have to make another batch. “Listen,” he said, and ground to a stop, having assumed his angry tone would be enough.
Unperturbed, she tilted the purloined bottle, squeezed a drop onto her fingertip, and tasted. Then she put her palm against the kit’s cheek.
It snapped at her and howled with indignation, fully aware of who should touch it and who not.
“Please,” said Gerlac, pulling away. His pellet-projector, reholstered under the front flap of his tunic, jabbed him in the gut at every dip and sway, and his orders allowed him to kill her where she sat. He had hoped to not even have to raise his voice this trip.
She flushed again, then gathered herself, rose to go, and said, finally, with awkward bluntness, “I’m in milk.”
“You’re offering to nurse it?” He pointed to the well-chewed nipple she had somehow overlooked, then added, “It bites.”
Yvandre bared dainty little fangs, and hissed.
She proffered her ID, had had it in the palm of one hand from the time she sat down.
Gerlac took it reluctantly, wishing he’d just ignored her.
The card chirped as the list read it off and sorted its files for additional information. Pardovelman Ayana. Only child of the previous planetary governor, and, Gerlac hoped his face didn’t change as he read, her husband and child had died in yesterday’s flyer crash.
The guard looked at her, asking permission, but she was gazing out the window, so he pressed his list to her forearm anyway. It signaled, genome match, confirmed identity.
Embarrassed, fingers awkward on the touch pads, he ran a health-code. She was healthy, sane, and human milk, although less rich than the kit’s own formula, would do. Given Yvandre needed fluids, the medical program suggested, the watery stuff might even be the better choice.
Ayana interrogated him with a look.
Gerlac nodded brusquely, and reached to drag down the privacy screen. He hated being unable to see around him, but he wasn’t going to stage a show for the other passengers. Let them entertain themselves with their own imaginings.
Seeing what he was doing, the gaggle of women gave shrill little shrieks. One man gave a tongue-lolling grin and vigorously pumped a middle finger in the air, before the jade-green pigment clouding the pull-down occluded his gesture.
Shit, thought the black-and-white.
Ayana’s top was a modest, wrap-around affair that could be loosened by untying the strings at the waist. The guard showed her how to block the fangs with a finger—interested, Yvandre still got in a resentful nip—but the woman simply cleaned her nipples with a practiced hand and slid the tasseled head beneath the loosened cloth.
She jumped, and then sat back, tears clinging to her lashes. The soldier winced and stared down at the treetops below, putting his right eye through its paces. What a thing. The man knew from watching his mother and sisters it could be pleasant to be suckled, but no human child had fangs.
Milk had stained the dark cloth of Ayana’s blouse, and Gerlac wondered why she had not been medicated to dry her up. Perhaps it was too soon for her to admit the deaths. The soldier hoped she hadn’t seen the official record. The man, neck snapped by the force of the explosion, must have died instantly, but the baby—
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