Little Faces

by Vonda N. McIntyre

The blood woke Yalnis. It ran between her thighs, warm and slick, cooling,

sticky. She pushed back from the stain on the silk, bleary with sleep and love,

rousing to shock and stabbing pain.

She flung off the covers and scrambled out of bed. She cried out as the web of

nerves tore apart. Her companions shrieked a chaotic chorus.

Zorargul’s small form convulsed just below her navel. The raw edges of a throat

wound bled in diminishing gushes. Her body expelled the dying companion, closing

off veins and vesicles.

Zorargul was beyond help. She wrapped her hand around the small broken body as

it slid free. She sank to the floor. Blood dripped onto the cushioned surface.

The other companions retreated into her, exposing nothing but sharp white teeth

that parted and snapped in defense and warning.

Still in bed, blinking, yawning, Seyyan propped herself on her elbow. She gazed

at the puddle of blood. It soaked in, vanishing gradually from edge to center,

drawn away to be separated into its molecules and stored.

A smear of blood marked Seyyan’s skin. Her first companion blinked its small

bright golden eyes. It snapped its sharp teeth, spattering scarlet droplets. It

shrieked, licked its bloody lips, cleaned its teeth with its tongue. The sheet

absorbed the blood spray.

Seyyan lay back in the soft tangled nest, elegantly lounging, her luxuriant

brown hair spilling its curls around her bare shoulders and over her delicate

perfect breasts. She shone like molten gold in the starlight. Her other

companions pushed their little faces from her belly, rousing themselves and

clacking their teeth, excited and jealous.

“Zorargul,” Yalnis whispered. She had never lost a companion. She chose them

carefully, and cherished them, and Zorargul had been her first, the gift of her

first lover. She looked up at Seyyan, confused and horrified, shocked by loss

and pain.

“Come back.” Seyyan spoke with soft urgency. She stretched out her graceful

hand. “Come back to bed.” Her voice intensified. “Come back to me.”

Yalnis shrank from her touch. Seyyan followed, sliding over the fading

bloodstain in the comfortable nest of ship silk. Her first companion extruded

itself, just below her navel, staring intently at Zorargul’s body.

Seyyan stroked Yalnis’s shoulder. Yalnis pushed her away with her free hand,

leaving bloody fingerprints on Seyyan’s golden skin.

Seyyan grabbed her wrist and held her, moved to face her squarely, touched her

beneath her chin and raised her head to look her in the eyes. Baffled and dizzy,

Yalnis blinked away tears. Her remaining companions pumped molecular messages of

distress and anger into her blood.

“Come back to me,” Seyyan said again. “We’re ready for you.”

Her first companion, drawing back into her, pulsed and muttered. Seyyan caught

her breath.

“I never asked for this!” Yalnis cried.

Seyyan sat back on her heels, as lithe as a girl, but a million years old.

“I thought you wanted me,” she said. “You welcomed me—invited me—took me to your

bed—”

Yalnis shook her head, though it was true. “Not for this,” she whispered.

“It didn’t even fight,” Seyyan said, dismissing Zorargul’s remains with a quick

gesture. “It wasn’t worthy of its place with you.”

“Who are you to decide that?”

“I didn’t,” Seyyan said. “It’s the way of companions.” She touched the reddening

bulge of a son-spot just below the face of her first companion. “This one will

be worthy of you.”

Yalnis stared at her, horrified and furious. Seyyan, the legend, had come to

her, exotic, alluring, and exciting. All the amazement and attraction Yalnis

felt washed away in Zorargul’s blood.

“I don’t want it,” she said. “I won’t accept it.”

Seyyan’s companion reacted to the refusal, blinking, snarling. For a moment

Yalnis feared Seyyan too would snarl at her, assault her and force a new

companion upon her.

Seyyan sat back, frowning in confusion. “But I thought—did you invite me, just

to refuse me? Why—?”

“For pleasure,” Yalnis said. “For friendship. And maybe for love—maybe you would

offer, and I would accept—”

“How is this different?” Seyyan asked.

Yalnis leaped to her feet in a flare of fury so intense that her vision blurred.

Cradling Zorargul’s shriveling body against her with one hand, she pressed the

other against the aching bloody wound beneath her navel.

“Get out of my ship,” she said.

The ship, responding to Yalnis’s wishes, began to resorb the nest into the

floor.

Seyyan rose. “What did you think would happen,” she said, anger replacing the

confusion in her tone, “when you announced the launch of a daughter? What do you

think everyone is coming for? I was just lucky enough to be first. Or

unfortunate enough.” Again, she brushed her long fingertips against the

son-spot. It pulsed, a red glow as hot and sore as infection. It must find a

place, soon, or be stillborn. “And what am I to do with this?”

Yalnis’s flush of anger drained away, leaving her pale and shocked.

“I don’t care.” All the furnishings and softness of the room vanished, absorbed

into the pores of Yalnis’s ship, leaving bare walls and floor, and the cold

stars above. “You didn’t even ask me,” Yalnis said softly.

“You led me to believe we understood each other. But you’re so young—” Seyyan

reached toward her. Yalnis drew back, and Seyyan let her hand fall with a sigh.

“So young. So naïve.” She caught up her purple cloak from the floor and strode

past Yalnis. Though the circular chamber left plenty of room, she brushed past

close to Yalnis, touching her at shoulder and hip, bare skin to bare skin. A

lock of her hair swept across Yalnis’s belly, stroking low like a living hand,

painting a bloody streak.

Seyyan entered the pilus that connected Yalnis’s ship with her own craft. As

soon as Seyyan crossed the border, Yalnis’s ship disconnected and closed and

healed the connection.

Yalnis’s ship emitted a few handsful of plasma in an intemperate blast, moving

itself to a safer distance. Seyyan’s craft gleamed and glittered against the

starfield, growing smaller as Yalnis’s ship moved away, coruscating with a

pattern of prismatic color.

Yalnis sank to the floor again, humiliated and grief-stricken. Without her

request or thought, her ship cushioned her from its cold living bones, growing a

soft surface beneath her, dimming the light to dusk. Dusk, not the dawn she had

planned.

She gazed down at Zorargul’s small body. Its blood pooled in her palm. She drew

her other hand from the seeping wound where Zorargul had lived and cradled the

shriveling tendril of the companion’s penis. A deep ache, throbbing regularly

into pain, replaced the potential for pleasure as her body knit the wound of

Zorargul’s passing. Behind the wound, a sore, soft mass remained.

“Zorargul,” she whispered, “you gave me such pleasure.”

Of her companions, Zorargul had most closely patterned the lovemaking of its

originator. Her pleasure always mingled with a glow of pride, that Zorar thought

enough of her to offer her a companion.

Yalnis wondered where Zorar was, and if she would come to Yalnis’s daughter’s

launching. They had not communicated since they parted. Zorar anticipated other

adventures, and her ship yearned for deep space. She might be anywhere, one star

system away, or a dozen, or setting out to another cluster, voyaging through

vacuum so intense and a region so dark she must conserve every molecule of mass

and every photon of energy, using none to power a message of acceptance, or

regret, or goodwill.

Yalnis remained within parallax view of her own birthplace. She had grown up in

a dense population of stars and people. She had taken a dozen lovers in her

life, and accepted five companions: Zorargul, Vasigul, Asilgul, Hayaligul, and

Bahadirgul. With five companions, she felt mature enough, wealthy enough, to

launch a daughter with a decent, even lavish, settlement. After that, she could

grant her ship’s need—and her own desire—to set out on adventures and

explorations.

Zorar, she thought—

She reached for Zorar’s memories and reeled into loss and emptiness. The

memories ended with Zorargul’s murder. Zorar, much older than Yalnis, had given

her the gift of her own long life of journeys and observations. They brought her

the birth of stars and worlds, the energy storm of a boomerang loop around a

black hole, skirting the engulfing doom of its event horizon. They brought her

the most dangerous adventure of all, a descent through the thick atmosphere of a

planet to its living surface.

All Yalnis had left were her memories of the memories, dissolving shadows of the

gift. All the memories left in Zorargul had been wiped out by death.

By murder.

The walls and floor of her living space changed again as her ship re-created her

living room. She liked it plain but luxurious, all softness and comfort. The

large circular space lay beneath a transparent dome. It was a place for one

person alone. She patted the floor with her bloodstained hand.

“Thank you,” she said.

“True,” her ship whispered into her mind.

Its decisions often pleased her and anticipated her wishes. Strange, for ships

and people seldom conversed. When they tried, the interaction too easily

deteriorated into misunderstanding. Their consciousnesses were of different

types, different evolutionary lineages.

She rose, lacking her usual ease of motion. Anger and pain and grief drained

her, and exhaustion trembled in her bones.

She carried Zorargul’s body down through the ship, down into its heart, down to

the misty power plant. Blood, her own and her companion’s, spattered and smeared

her hands, her stomach, her legs, the defending teeth or withdrawn crowns of her

remaining companions, and Zorargul’s pale and flaccid corpse. Its nerve ends

dried to silver threads. Expulsion had reduced the testicles to wrinkled empty

sacs.

Water ran in streams and pools through the power plant’s housing, cold as it

came in, steaming too hot to touch as it led away. Where steam from the hot pool

met cold air, mist formed. Yalnis knelt and washed Zorargul’s remains in the

cold pool. When she was done, a square of scarlet ship silk lay on the velvety

floor, flat and new where it had formed. She wrapped Zorargul in its shining

folds.

“Good-bye,” she said, and gave the small bundle tenderly to the elemental heat.

A long time later, Yalnis made her way to the living space and climbed into the

bath, into water hot but not scalding. The bath swirled around her, sweeping

away flecks of dried blood. She massaged the wound gently, making sure the nerve

roots were cleanly ejected. She let the expulsion lump alone, though it was

already hardening.

The remaining companions opened their little faces, protruding from the shelter

of her body. They peered around, craning themselves above her skin, glaring at

each other and gnashing their teeth in a great show, then closing their lips,

humming to attract her attention.

She attended each companion in turn, stroking the little faces, flicking warm

drops of water between their lips, quieting and calming them, murmuring, “Shh,

shh.” They felt no sympathy for her loss, no grief for Zorargul, only the

consciousness of opportunity. She felt a moment of contempt for the quartet,

each member jostling for primacy.

They are what they are, she thought, and submerged herself and them in the bath,

drawing their little faces beneath the surface. They fell silent, holding their

breaths and closing their eyes and mouths, reaching to draw their oxygen as well

as their sustenance from her blood. A wash of dizziness took her; she breathed

deep till it passed.

Each of the companions tried to please her—no, Bahadirgul held back. Her most

recent companion had always been restrained in its approaches, fierce in its

affections when it achieved release. Now, instead of squirming toward her

center, it relaxed and blew streams of delicate bubbles from the air in its

residual lungs.

Yalnis smiled, and when she closed herself off from the companions, she shut

Bahadirgul away more gently than the others. She did not want to consider any of

the companions now. Zorargul had been the best, the most deeply connected, as

lively and considerate as her first lover.

Tears leaked from beneath her lashes, hot against her cheeks, washing away when

she submerged. She looked up at the stars through the shimmering surface,

through the steam.

She lifted her head to breathe. Water rippled and splashed; air cooled her face.

The companions remained underwater, silent. Yalnis’s tears flowed again and she

sobbed, keening, grieving, wishing to take back the whole last time of waking.

She wanted to change all her plans. If she did, Seyyan might take it as a

triumph. She might make demands. Yalnis sneaked a look at the messages her ship

kept ready for her attention. She declined to reply or even to acknowledge them.

She felt it a weakness to read them. After she had, she wished she had resisted.

Why did you tantalize and tease me? Seyyan’s message asked. You know this was

what you wanted. I’m what you wanted.

Yalnis eliminated everything else Seyyan had sent her.

“Please refuse Seyyan’s messages,” she said to her ship.

“True,” it replied.

“Disappear them, destroy them. No response.”

“True.”

“Seyyan, you took my admiration and my awe, and you perverted it,” she said, as

if Seyyan stood before her. “I might have accepted you. I might have, if you’d

given me a chance. If you’d given me time. What do we have, but time? I’ll never

forgive you.”

The bath flowed away, resorbing into the ship’s substance. Warm air dried her

and drew off the steam. She wrapped herself in a new swath of ship silk without

bothering to give it a design. Some people went naked at home, but Yalnis liked

clothes. For now, though, a cloak sufficed.

She wandered through her ship, visiting each chamber in the current

configuration, looking with amazement and apprehension at the daughter ship

growing in the ship’s lower flank. What would the person be like, this new being

who would accompany this new ship into the universe? She thought she had known,

but everything had changed.

She returned, finally, to her living chamber.

“Please defend yourself,” she said.

“True.”

Yalnis snuggled into the ship’s substance, comforted by its caress. She laid her

hand over her belly, pressing her palm against the hot, healing wound, then

petting each of the little faces. They bumped against her palm, yearning,

stretching from their shafts so she could tickle behind Asilgul’s vestigial

ears, beneath Vasigul’s powerful lower jaw. Even Bahadirgul advanced from its

reserve, blinking its long-lashed eyelids to caress her fingers, touching her

palm with its sharp hot tongue.

Each one wished to pleasure her, but she felt no wish for pleasure. Even the

idea of joy vanished, in grief and guilt.

The nest drew around her, covering her legs, her sex, her stomach. It flowed

over the faces and extruded a nipple for each sharp set of teeth. The ship took

over feeding the companions so they would not drain Yalnis as she slept.

“Please, a thousand orbits,” she said.

“True,” said the ship, making her aware it was content to have time to complete

and polish the daughter ship, to prepare for the launch. But, afterward, it

wanted to stretch and to explore. She accepted its need, and she would comply.

For now she would sleep for a thousand orbits. If anyone besides Seyyan accepted

the invitation to her daughter’s launch, they would arrive in good time, and

then they could wait for her, as she waited for them. Perhaps a thousand

orbits—a thousand years in the old way of speaking—would give her time to dream

of a proper revenge. Perhaps a thousand years of sleep would let her dream away

the edges of her grief. The ship’s support extensions grew against her, into

her. She accepted the excretion extensions and swallowed the feeding extension.

The monitor gloved one hand and wrist.

The view through the dome swept the orbit’s plane, facing outward toward the

thick carpet of multicolored stars, the glowing gas clouds.

Yalnis slept for a thousand years.

· · · · ·

The kiss of her ship woke her. Water exuded from the feeding extension,

moistening her lips and tongue. The tangy fragrance touched her consciousness.

She drifted into the last, hypnopompic layer of sleep, finding and losing

dreams.

She thought: It would be good if … I would like …

Loss hit her unaware. A chill of regret and grief swept through her and to her

four remaining companions; they woke from their doze and released the nipples

and squeaked and shrilled. The ship, after a thousand orbits of the irritation

of their little sharp teeth, drew away its fabric.

The ship made Yalnis aware of everything around them: the ship’s own safety, the

star and its planets, the astronomical landscape glowing through the transparent

dome.

And it displayed to her the swarm of other ships, sending to her in their

individual voices that ships and people had come to celebrate the launch of her

daughter and her ship’s daughter. She recognized friends and acquaintances, she

noted strangers. She looked for former lovers, and found, to her joy and

apprehension, that Zorar’s ship sailed nearby.

And, of course, Seyyan remained.

During Yalnis’s long rest, Seyyan had never approached, never tried to attach or

attack. Yalnis felt glad of this. Her ship would have surrounded itself with an

impermeable shell, one that induced a severe allergic reaction in other ships. A

defensive shell drew heavily on a ship’s resources. Her ship was sleek and

well-provisioned, but growing defenses while developing a daughter ship would

strain any resources.

Instead of approaching, Seyyan’s craft’s course had closely paralleled her own

for all this time, as if it were herding and protecting Yalnis.

Annoyed that she had not anticipated such a move—she had expected aggression,

not a show of protection—Yalnis nudged her ship to a different course, to a

mathematical center along the long curved line of other craft. Her ship agreed

and complied, even to skirting the bounds of safety and good manners, in moving

itself into a position where Seyyan would have difficulty acting as their

shadow.

Yalnis stretched. The ship, understanding that she wished to rise, withdrew its

extensions from her body. She gagged a little, as she always did, when the

nutrient extension slid up her throat, across her tongue, between her lips,

leaving a trace of sweetness. The extension collapsed; the ship’s skin absorbed

it. Excretion extensions and the monitor followed, and disappeared.

She raised her head slowly. The weight of her hair, grown long, held her down.

She turned the dome reflective and gazed up.

Her hair spread in a wide shining fan across the floor, covering the whole

diameter of the living room, drawn out by the living carpet as it lengthened.

Its color ranged in concentric circles. The outer circle, spread out so wide

that each hair was a single ray, glowed an attenuated platinum blond, the color

she had worn her hair when she first met Seyyan. It changed dramatically to

black, then progressed from honey to auburn to dark brown, and the sequence

started over. She removed the palest color from the growth sequence for the

future. It would only remind her.

Instead of cutting her hair to the short and easy length she usually favored,

she asked the ship to sever it at a length that would touch the ground when she

stood.

Despite the ship’s constant care when she slept, she always had difficulty

rising after a long hibernation. The ship eased the gravity to help her. She

rose on shaky legs, and stumbled when she left the nest. The companions squealed

with alarm.

“Oh, be quiet,” she said. “What cause have I ever given you, to fear I’d fall on

you?” Besides, their instincts would pull them inside her if she ever did fall,

and the only bruises would form on her own body.

But even if I’ve never fallen on them, she thought, I have left them

reason to fear. To doubt my protection.

Her hair draped around her shoulders, over her breasts, along her hips and legs

to the ground. The companions peered through the thick curtain, chittering with

annoyance. Bahadirgul sneezed. In sudden sympathy, she pushed her hair back to

leave them free.

The wound beneath her navel had healed, leaving a pale white scar. Beneath her

skin, the sperm packet Zorargul emitted as its last living action made a jagged

capsule, invisible, but perceptible to her fingers and vaguely painful to her

nerves. She had to decide whether to use it, or to finish encapsulating it and

expel it in turn.

Without being asked, the ship absorbed the shorn ends of her hair. She and the

ship had been born together; despite the mysteries each species kept from the

other, each knew the other’s habits. It produced a length of ship silk formed

into comfortable and neutral garments: loose pants with a filmy lace panel to

obscure the companions, a sleeveless shirt with a similar lace panel. She wore

clothes that allowed the companions some view of the world, for they could be

troublesome when bored. She left the silk its natural soft beige, for the

horizontal stripes of her hair gave plenty of drama. She twisted her hair into a

thick rope to keep it from tangling as she dressed, then let it loose again. It

lay heavy on her neck and shoulders.

I may reconsider this haircut, she thought. But not till after the launch. I can

be formal for that long, at least.

Messages flowed in from the other ships. It pleased her that so many had

accepted her invitation. Still she did not reply, even to welcome them. Her ship

looked out a long distance, but no other craft approached. The party was

complete.

Yalnis closed her eyes to inspect her ship’s status and records. The ship ran a

slight fever, reflecting its increasing metabolism. Its flank, smooth before her

sleep, now bulged. The daughter ship lay in its birth pouch, shiny-skinned and

adorned with a pattern of small knots. The knots would sink into the new ship’s

skin, giving it the potential of openings, connections, ports, antennae,

undifferentiated tissue for experiment and play.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered to the ship.

“True.”

The companions squeaked with hunger, though they had spent the last thousand

years dozing and feeding without any exertion. They were fat and sleek. They

were always hungry, or always greedy, rising for a treat or a snack, though they

connected directly to her bloodstream as well as to her nerves and could draw

their sustenance from her without ever opening their little mouths or exposing

their sharp little teeth.

But Yalnis had been attached to the ship’s nutrients for just as long, and she

too was ravenous.

She left the living room and descended to the garden. The light was different,

brighter and warmer. The filter her ship used to convey light to the garden

mimicked a blanket of atmosphere.

She arrived at garden’s dawn. Birds chirped and sang in the surrounding trees,

and a covey of quail foraged along borders and edges. Several rabbits, nibbling

grass in the pasture, raised their heads when she walked in, then, unafraid,

went back to grazing. They had not seen a person for thousands of their

generations.

The garden smelled different from the rest of the ship, the way she believed the

surface of a planet might smell. She liked it, but it frightened her, too, for

it held living organisms she would never see. The health of the garden demanded

flotillas of bacteria, armies of worms, swarms of bugs. She thought it might be

safer to grow everything in hydroponic tanks, as had been the fashion last time

she paid attention, but she liked the spice of apprehension. Besides, the ship

preferred this method. If it thought change necessary, it would change.

She walked barefoot into the garden, trying not to step on any adventurous worm

or careless bug. The bacteria would have to look out for themselves.

She captured a meal of fruit, corn, and a handful of squash blossoms. She liked

the blossoms. When she was awake, and hunted regularly, she picked them before

they turned to vegetables. The neglected plants emitted huge squashes of all

kinds, some perfect, some attacked and nibbled by vegetarian predators.

The companions, reacting to the smell of food, fidgeted and writhed, craning

their thick necks to snap at each other. She calmed and soothed them, and fed

them bits of apple and pomegranate seeds.

They had already begun to jostle for primacy, each slowly moving toward her

center, migrating across skin and muscle toward the spot where Zorargul had

lived, as if she would not notice. Her skin felt stretched and sore. No

companion had the confidence or nerve to risk detaching from its position to

reinsert itself in the primary spot.

A good thing, too, she thought. I wouldn’t answer for my temper if one of them

did that without my permission.

Leaving her garden, she faced the task of welcoming her guests.

I don’t want to, she thought, like a whiny girl: I want to keep my privacy, I

want to enjoy my companions. I want to be left alone. To grieve alone.

In the living room, beneath the transparent dome, the ship created a raised

seat. She slipped in among the cushions, sat on her hair, cursed at the sharp

pull, swept the long locks out from under her and coiled them—bits of dirt and

leaves tangled in the ends; she shook them off with a shudder and left the

detritus for the carpet to take away. She settled herself again.

“I would like to visit Zorar,” she said to her ship.

“True.”

She dozed until the two ships matched, extruded, connected. A small shiver ran

through Yalnis’s ship, barely perceptible.

Yalnis hesitated at the boundary, took a deep breath, and entered the pilus

where the fabric of her ship and the fabric of Zorar’s met, mingled, and

communicated, exchanging unique bits of genetic information to savor and

explore.

At the border of Zorar’s ship, she waited until her friend appeared.

“Zorar,” she said.

Zorar blinked at her, in her kindly, languorous way. She extended her hand to

Yalnis and drew her over the border, a gesture of trust that broke Yalnis’s

heart. She wanted to throw herself into Zorar’s arms.

Do I still have the right? she thought.

She burst into tears.

Zorar enfolded Yalnis, murmuring, “Oh, my dear, oh, what is it?”

Between sobs and sniffles, and an embarrassing bout of hiccups, Yalnis told her.

Zorar held her hand, patting it gently, and fell still and silent.

“I’m so sorry,” Yalnis whispered. “I was so fond of Zorargul. I could always

remember you, when … I feel so empty.”

Zorar glanced down. The lace of Yalnis’s clothes modestly concealed the

companions.

“Let me see,” she said. Her voice remained calm. Yalnis had always admired her

serenity. Now, though, tears brightened her brown eyes.

Yalnis parted the lace panels. The four remaining companions blinked and

squirmed in the increased light, the unfamiliar gaze. Bahadirgul retreated, the

most modest of them all, but the others stretched and extended and stared and

bared their teeth.

“You haven’t chosen a replacement.”

“How could I replace Zorargul?”

Zorar shook her head. “You can’t duplicate. But you can replace.”

Yalnis gripped Zorar’s hands. “Do you mean …” She stopped, confused and

embarrassed, as inarticulate as the girl she had been when she first met Zorar.

That time, everything that happened was her choice. This time, by rights, it

should be Zorar’s.

“A daughter between us,” Zorar said. “She would be worth knowing.”

“Yes,” Yalnis said. Zorar laid her palm against Yalnis’s cheek.

Instead of leaning into her touch, Yalnis shivered.

Zorar immediately drew back her hand and gazed at Yalnis.

“What do you want, my dear?” she asked.

“I want …” She sniffled, embarrassed. “I want everything to be the way it was

before I ever met Seyyan!” She took Zorar’s hand and held it, clutched it. “I

wanted a daughter with Zorargul, but Zorargul is gone, and I …” She stopped. She

did not want to inflict her pain on Zorar.

“You aren’t ready for another lover,” Zorar said. “I understand entirely.”

Zorar glanced at Yalnis’s bare stomach, at the one shy and three bold little

faces, at the scar left from Zorargul’s murder.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Zorar said

Yalnis touched the scar, where Zorargul’s jagged remains pricked her skin from

underneath.

“Maybe I should—”

“No.” Zorar spoke sharply.

Discouraged, Yalnis let the lacy panels slip back into place.

“It’s our memories Seyyan killed,” Zorar said. “Would you send out a daughter

with only one parent’s experience?”

Zorar was kind; she refrained from saying that the one parent would be Yalnis,

young and relatively inexperienced. Yalnis’s tears welled up again. She

struggled to control them, but she failed. She fought the knowledge that Zorar

was right. Zorar was mature and established, with several long and distant

adventures to her credit. Her memories were an irreplaceable gift, to be

conveyed to a daughter through Zorargul. The sperm packet alone could not convey

those memories. “Let time pass,” Zorar said. “We might see each other again, in

some other millennium.”

Yalnis scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m so angry!” she cried. “How

could Seyyan betray me like this?”

“How did you find her?” Zorar asked, as if to change the subject. “She’s not

been heard of for …” She paused to think, to shrug. “Sixty or eighty millennia,

at least. I thought she was lost.”

“Did you hope it?”

Zorar gave her a quizzical glance. “Don’t you remember?”

Yalnis looked away, ashamed. “I don’t have all Zorargul’s memories,” she said.

“I savored them—anticipated them. I didn’t want to gobble them all up at once.

It would be too greedy.”

“How old are you now?” Zorar asked gently, as if to change the subject.

“My ship is eleven millennia,” she replied. “In waking time, I’m twenty-five

years old.”

“You young ones always have to find out everything for yourselves,” Zorar said

with a sigh. “Didn’t you ask Zorargul, when you took up with Seyyan?”

Yalnis stared at her, deeply shocked. “Ask Zorargul about Seyyan?” Zorar might

as well have suggested she make love in a cluster of ships with the dome

transparent, everyone looking in. It had never occurred to Yalnis to tell the

companions each others’ names, or even to wonder if they would understand her if

she did. She had a right to some privacy, as did her other lovers.

“You young ones!” Zorar said with impatience. “What do you think memories are

for? Are they just a toy for your entertainment?”

“I was trying to treat them respectfully!” Yalnis exclaimed.

Zorar snorted.

Yalnis wondered if she would ever be so confident, so well-established, that she

could dispense with caring what others thought about her. She yearned for such

audacity, such bravery.

“I asked about her, of course!” she exclaimed, trying to redeem herself. “Not

the companions, but Shai and Kinli and Tasmin were all near enough to talk to.

They all said, Oh, is she found? Or, She’s a legend, how lucky you are to meet

her! Or, Give her my loving regard.”

“Tasmin has a daughter with her. She’d never hear anything against her. I

suppose Seyyan never asked anything of Tasmin that she wasn’t willing to give.

Kinli wasn’t even born last time anyone heard anything from Seyyan, and Shai …”

She glanced down at her hands and slowly, gradually, unclenched her fists. “Shai

fears her.”

“She could have warned me.”

“Seyyan terrifies her. Is she here?” She closed her eyes, a habitual movement

that Yalnis did, too, when she wanted information from her ship’s senses.

“No,” Yalnis said, as Zorar said, “No, I see she’s not.”

“She said she would, but she changed her mind. It hurt my feelings when she

disappeared without a word, and she never replied when I asked her what was

wrong.”

“She changed her mind after you mentioned Seyyan.”

Yalnis thought back. “Yes.”

“Would you have believed her, if she’d warned you?”

Yalnis remembered Seyyan’s word and touch and beauty, the flush Yalnis felt just

to see her, the excitement when she knew Seyyan looked at her. She shivered, for

now all that had changed.

“I doubt it,” she said. “Oh, you’re right, I wouldn’t have believed her. I would

have suspected jealousy.”

Zorar brushed away Yalnis’s tears.

“What did she do to you?” Yalnis whispered.

Zorar took a deep breath, and drew up the gauzy hem of her shirt.

She carried the same companions as when she and Yalnis first met: five, the same

number Yalnis had accepted. Yalnis would have expected someone of Zorar’s age

and status to take a few more. Five was the right number for a person of

Yalnis’s age and minor prosperity.

“You noticed this scar,” Zorar said, tracing an erratic line of pale silver that

skipped from her breastbone to her navel, nearly invisible against her

translucently delicate skin. “And I shrugged away your question.”

“You said it happened when you walked on the surface of a planet,” Yalnis said.

“You said a flesh-eating plant attacked you.”

“Yes, well, one did,” Zorar said, unabashed. “But it didn’t leave that scar.”

She stroked the chin of her central little face. Just below her navel, the

companion roused itself, blinking and gnashing its teeth. It neither stretched

up aggressively nor retreated defensively. Yalnis had never seen its face; like

the others, it had remained nearly concealed, only the top of its head showing,

while Yalnis and Zorar made love. Yalnis had thought the companions admirably

modest, but now she wondered if their reaction had been fear.

Zorar pressed her fingers beneath the companion’s chin, scratching it gently,

revealing its neck.

The scar did not stop at Zorar’s navel. It continued, crossing the back of the

companion’s neck and the side of its throat. “Seyyan claimed she behaved as

she’d been taught. As she thought was proper, and right. She was horrified at my

distress.”

She stroked the companion’s downy scalp. It closed its eyes.

Her voice hardened.

“I had to comfort her, she acted so distraught. I had to comfort her.”

“She accused me of teasing and deceiving her,” Yalnis said. “And she killed

Zorargul.”

Under Zorar’s gentle hand, the scarred companion relaxed and slept, its teeth no

longer bared.

“Perhaps she’s learned efficiency,” Zorar whispered, as if the companion might

hear and understand her. “Or … mercy.”

“Mercy!” Yalnis exclaimed. “Cruelty and sarcasm, more likely.”

“She killed Zorargul,” Zorar said. “This one, mine, she left paralyzed.

Impotent.”

Yalnis imagined: Zorargul, cut off from her, unable to communicate with either

pleasure or memory, parasitic, its pride destroyed. She gazed at Zorar with

astonishment and pity, and she flushed with embarrassment. She had felt piqued

when Zorar created Zorargul with a secondary little face, instead of with her

first companion. Now Yalnis knew why.

Yalnis laid her hand on Zorar’s. Her own fingers touched the downy fur of the

damaged companion. Involuntarily, she shuddered. Zorar glanced away.

Could I have kept Zorargul? Yalnis wondered. No matter how much I loved Zorar …

She thought Zorar was the bravest person she had ever met.

Would it be right to say so? She wondered. Any more right than to ask the

questions I know not to ask: How could you—? Why didn’t you—?

“What do you think, now?” Zorar said.

“I’m outraged!” Yalnis said.

“Outraged enough to tell?”

“I told you.”

“You confessed to me. You confessed the death of Zorargul, as if it were your

fault. Do you believe Seyyan, that you deceived her? Are you outraged enough to

accuse her, instead of yourself?”

Yalnis sat quite still, considering. After a long while, she patted Zorar’s hand

again, collected herself, and brushed her fingertips across Zorar’s companion’s

hair with sympathy. She kissed Zorar quickly and returned to her own ship.

· · · · ·

Preparations, messages of welcome to old acquaintances, greetings to new ones,

occupied her. Zorar’s question always hovered in the back of her mind, and

sometimes pushed itself forward to claim her attention:

What do you think, now?

While she prepared, the ships moved closer, extruded connections, grew together.

Yalnis’s ship became the center, till the colony obscured her wide vistas of

space and clouds of stars and glowing dust. She felt her ship’s discomfort at

being so constricted; she shared it. She felt her ship’s exhilaration at intense

genetic exchange: those sensations, she avoided.

She continued to ignore Seyyan, but never rescinded her invitation. Yalnis’s

ship allowed no direct connection to Seyyan’s glittering craft. Seyyan remained

on the outskirts of the colony, forming her own connections with others. The

ships floated in an intricately delicate dance of balance and reciprocity. As

the people exchanged greetings, reminiscences, gifts, the ships exchanged

information and new genetic code.

Most of their communications were cryptic. Oftentimes even the ships had no idea

what the new information would do, but they collected and exchanged it

promiscuously, played with it, rearranged it, tested it. The shimmery pattern of

rainbow reflections spread from Seyyan’s craft’s skin to another, and another,

and the pattern mutated from solid to stripes to spots.

Yalnis’s ship remained its customary reflective silver.

“The ships have chosen a new fashion,” Yalnis said.

“True,” her ship said. Then, “False.”

Yalnis frowned, confused, as her ship displayed a genetic sequence and its

genealogy tag. Yalnis left all those matters to the ship, so she took a moment

to understand that her ship rejected the pattern because it descended from

Seyyan’s craft. Her ship led her further into its concerns, showing how many new

sequences it had considered but rejected and stopped taking in when it

encountered Seyyan’s tag.

“Thank you,” Yalnis said.

“True.”

That was a long conversation, between ship and human. She was glad it had ended

without misunderstanding.

The ship did understand “Thank you,” Yalnis believed, and Yalnis did understand

its response of appreciation.

Maybe Seyyan was right, Yalnis said to herself. Maybe I am naïve. I

feared direct assault, but never thought of a sneak attack on my ship.

She wondered if her encounter with Seyyan had changed the balance between the

two ships, or if their estrangement had its own source. She wondered if she

should try to exclude Seyyan’s craft from the colony. But that would be an

extreme insult, and Seyyan had more friends than Yalnis, and many admirers. She

was older, wealthier, more experienced and accomplished, more limber of voice

and of body.

“I trust your judgment,” she said, remaining within the relative safety of

simple declarative statements. She would leave decisions about Seyyan’s craft to

her own ship.

“True.”

The shimmering new fashion continued to extend from Seyyan’s to other craft,

each vying with the next to elaborate upon her pattern.

Seyyan’s popularity created a second center for the colony, decreasing the

stability of the delicate rotation, but there was nothing to be done about it.

It was ships’ business, not people’s.

Yalnis was ready. She made her last decisions, dressed in intricate lace, took a

deep, shaky breath, and welcomed her guests.

Zorar arrived first, too well-established to concern herself with being

fashionably late. Yalnis embraced her, grateful for her presence. Zorar kissed

her gently and handed her a sealed glass ampoule.

“For your daughter’s vineyard,” she said. “I think the culture’s improved even

over what I gave your mother, when she launched you and your ship.”

“Thank you,” Yalnis said, honored by the gift. She put it on the central table,

in a place of distinction.

More guests arrived; an hour passed in a blur of greetings, reunions,

introductions, gifts. People brought works of art, stories, and songs. They

brought ship silk as refined as fog, seeds of newly adapted plants, embryos of

newly discovered creatures, unique cultures of yeast and bacteria. Yalnis

accepted them all with thanks and gratitude. Her daughter would be well and

truly launched; her ship would be rich, and unique.

Her guests ate and drank, wished each other long life and adventures,

congratulated voyagers on their safe return. They exchanged compliments and

gossip, they flirted, they told tales, they even bragged: Kinli had, of course,

been on another great adventure that made all others pale by comparison. Guests

complimented Yalnis’s ship’s cooking, especially the savory rabbit, and the

complexity and quality of her wine. Everyone wore their best ship silk, and

most, like Yalnis, wore lace so their companions could remain decently modest

while watching the party. A few guests wore opaque garments to enforce a

complete modesty; Yalnis thought the choice a little cruel. The very youngest

people, recently debuted from solitary girl to adult, revealed their virgin

midriffs.

Yalnis found herself always aware of the new connections leading from other

ships to her living space. The openings, glowing in the cool pastels of

biological light, changed her living area from one of comfortable intimacy to

one of open vulnerability.

Zorar handed her a glass of wine. Yalnis had based the vintage on the yeast

Zorar gave her ship when it and Yalnis were born and launched.

Yalnis sipped it, glanced around, swallowed a whole mouthful. The effects spread

through her. The companions squeaked with pleasure, leaning into her, absorbing

the alcohol, yearning. She brushed her hand across the lace of her shirt. She

had been neglecting the companions since Zorargul’s murder. She drank more wine,

and Zorar refilled their glasses.

Yalnis blocked out the rising level of conversation. She was unused to noise,

and it tired her.

“What do you think?” she said.

Zorar raised one eyebrow. “That’s the question I want you to answer.”

“Oh,” said Yalnis. “Yes, of course.” She blushed at her misstep. “But I meant,

about the wine.”

“It’s excellent,” Zorar said, “as you well know. Your ship is of a line that

seldom makes a recombinant error, and I can only approve of the changes. What

about Seyyan? Did you ban her?”

“No. I want her here. So she knows she failed. Maybe she banned herself.”

“Maybe she’s trying to unnerve you. Or to wait till you drink too much.”

Yalnis drained her glass again.

“Maybe if I do, I’ll be ready for her.”

She was ignoring the noise, but she noticed the sudden silence.

“And then I—” Kinli said, and stopped.

Seyyan stood in the largest new entryway, silhouetted by golden bioluminescence,

her face shadowed, dramatized, by the softer party light. Yalnis’s heart

pounded; her face flushed.

“I thought she was so beautiful,” Yalnis whispered to Zorar, amazed, appalled.

She thought she whispered: a few people nearby glanced toward her, most amused,

but one at least pale with jealousy for her relationship with the renowned

adventurer.

If you only knew, Yalnis thought. I wonder what you’d think then?

Yalnis mourned the loss of the joy she had felt when Seyyan chose her, but she

mourned the loss of Zorargul much more.

Seyyan strode into the party, greeting allies, her gaze moving unchecked past

the few who had rejected her craft’s fashionable offerings. Misty ship silk

flowed around her legs and hips, shimmering with the pattern that newly

decorated the flanks of so many craft. No one else had thought to apply it to

clothing. She wore a shawl of the same fabric around her shoulders, over her

breasts, across her companions.

But her hands were empty of gifts. Yalnis declined to notice, but others did,

and whispered, shocked.

Then she flung back the end of the shawl, revealing herself from breastbone to

pubis.

She had accepted more companions since she was with Yalnis. She bore so many

Yalnis could not count them without staring, and she would not stare. Her gaze

hesitated only long enough to see that the son-spot had erupted and healed over.

The other guests did stare.

How could any person support so many companions? And yet Seyyan displayed health

and strength, an overwhelming physical wealth.

She turned to draw another guest from the shadows behind her. Ekarete stepped

shyly into the attention of the party. Ekarete, one of the newly debuted adults,

already wore new lace. Seyyan bent to kiss her, to slip her hand beneath the

filmy panel of her shirt, so everyone would know that if she had neglected a

launching gift for Yalnis’s daughter, she had given a more intimate one to

Ekarete.

Seyyan wanted Yalnis to know what had happened to the new companion, that she

had easily found someone to accept it.

Seyyan whispered to Ekarete, drew her hand down her cheek, and continued toward

Yalnis and Zorar. Ekarete followed, several steps behind, shy and attentive,

excited and intimidated by her first adult gathering.

Seyyan’s first companion, the assassin, protruded all the way to the base of his

neck, eyes wide, teeth exposed and snapping sharply. Her other companions,

responding to him, gnashed their teeth and blinked their eyes.

“What a pleasant little party,” Seyyan said. “I so admire people who aren’t

caught up in the latest fashion.”

“Do have some wine,” Yalnis said. She meant to speak in a pleasant tone. Her

voice came out flat, and hard.

Seyyan accepted a glass, and sipped, and nodded. “As good as I remember.”

Yalnis wished for the ancient days Seyyan came from, when poison could still

wreak havoc with a person’s biochemistry, undetected till too late. She wished

for a poisoned apple, a single bite, and no one ever to kiss Seyyan again.

Maybe I can have that last wish, she thought, and took action on her decision.

She let Zorargul’s wound break open. The stab of pain struck through her. Her

companions shrieked, crying like terrified birds, reacting to her distress.

Blood blossomed through the lace panel of her shirt. All around her, people

gasped.

Yalnis reached beneath the scarlet stain. Her hand slid across the blood on her

skin. The wound gaped beneath her fingers.

Her body had treated Zorargul’s sperm packet like an intrusion, an irritation,

as something to encapsulate like the seed of a pearl. At the same time, the

packet struggled for its own survival, extending spines to remain in contact

with her flesh. As it worked its way out, scraping her raw, she caught her

breath against a whimper.

Finally the capsule dropped into her hand. She held it up. Her body had covered

the sperm packet’s extrusions with shining white enamel. All that remained of

Zorargul was a sphere of bloody fangs. “This is your work, Seyyan,” she said.

Blood flowed over her stomach, through her pubic hair, down her legs, dripping

onto the rug, which absorbed it and carried it away. Yalnis went cold,

light-headed, pale. She took courage from Zorar, standing at her elbow.

“You took me as your lover,” Seyyan said. “I thought you wanted me. I thought

you wanted a companion from me. My lineage always fought for place and

position.”

“I wasn’t at war with you,” Yalnis said. “I loved you. If you’d asked, instead

of …” She glanced down at the gory remains.

“Asked?” Seyyan whispered. “But you asked me.”

Whispers, exclamations, agreement, objections all quivered around them.

Tasmin moved to stand near Seyyan, taking her side.

“You must have been neglectful,” she said to Yalnis. “I think you’re too young

to support so many companions.”

Seyyan glanced at Tasmin, silencing her. Anyone could see that Yalnis was

healthy and well supplied with resources. She was her own evidence, and her ship

the final proof.

As they confronted each other, the guests sorted themselves, most in a neutral

circle, some behind Yalnis, more flanking Seyyan. Yalnis wished Shai had

remained for the gathering. She might have sided with Seyyan, but the others

might have seen her fear.

Ekarete, in her new lace shirt, moved shyly between the opponents.

“Seyyan was very gentle with me,” she whispered. “She acceded to my choice.” She

twitched the hem of her shirt aside, just far enough, just long enough, to

reveal the fading inflammation of a new attachment, and the golden skin and deep

brown eyes of Seyyan’s offspring, Ekarete’s first little face.

“Very gentle,” Ekarete said again. “Very kind. I love her.”

“For giving you a cast-off?” Yalnis said. “For inducing you to take the

companion I refused?”

Ekarete stared at her. Yalnis felt sorry for her, sorry to have humiliated her.

Tasmin stood forward with Ekarete. “Yalnis, you’re speaking out of grief,” she

said. “You lost a companion—I grieve with you. But don’t blame Seyyan or

embarrass Ekarete. We all know Seyyan for her generosity. My daughter by her

launched gloriously.”

“You’re hardly disinterested,” said Yalnis.

“But I am,” said Kinli, “and I know nothing against her.”

Yalnis started to say, When did you ever listen to anyone but yourself?

Zorar yanked up the hem of her shirt, revealing the scar and her emasculated

companion with its drooping mouth and dull eyes. It roused far enough to bare

its teeth. It drooled.

The older people understood; the younger ones started in horror at the mangled

thing, heard quick whispers of explanation, and stared at Seyyan.

“I loved you, too,” Zorar said. “I told myself, it must have been my fault. I

should have understood. I consoled you. After you did this.”

“I came for a celebration,” Seyyan said, holding herself tall and aloof. “I

expect to be taken as I am—not ambushed with lies and insults.”

She spun, the hem of her dress flaring dramatically, and strode away.

Ekarete ran after her. Seyyan halted, angry in the set of her shoulders; she

paused, softened, bent to speak, kissed Ekarete, and continued away, alone. The

main entrance silhouetted her formidable figure as she left Yalnis’s ship.

Ekarete stood shivering, gazing after her, pulling the hem of her shirt down all

the way around. Finally she scurried after her. Tasmin glared at Yalnis, heaved

a heavy sigh, and followed.

The others, even Kinli, clustered around Yalnis and Zorar.

“You’ve spoiled your own party,” Kinli said, petulant. “What now? A permanent

break? A feud?”

“I shun her,” Yalnis said.

“That’s extreme!”

Yalnis hesitated, hoping for support if not acclaim. She shrugged into the

silence. “If the community doesn’t agree, why should she care if only I shun

her?”

“And I,” Zorar said, which made more difference to more people.

The light of the connecting corridors faded as she spoke. The openings slowly

ensmalled. No one had to be told the party had ended. The guests hurried to slip

through the connections before they vanished. Their finery went dim.

All around, the tables resorbed into the floor, leaving crumbs and scraps and

disintegrating utensils. The rug’s cilia carried them away in a slow-motion

whirlpool of dissolving bits, into pores, to be metabolized. The gifts all sank

away, to be circulated to the new ship.

Only Zorar remained. Yalnis’s knees gave out. She crouched, breathing hard,

dizzy. Zorar knelt beside her.

“I’m— I have to—”

“Hush. Lie back.”

“But—”

“It’s waited this long. It can wait longer.”

Yalnis let Zorar ease her down. The ship received her, nestling her, creeping

around and over her with its warm skin. The pain eased and the flow of blood

ceased. The blood she had shed moved from her skin, from her clothes, red-brown

drying specks flowing in tiny lines across the comforter, and disappeared.

She dozed, for a moment or an hour. When she woke, Zorar remained beside her.

“Thank you,” Yalnis whispered. She closed her eyes again. She desperately wanted

to be alone.

Zorar kissed Yalnis and slipped through the last exit. It sealed itself and

disappeared.

Yalnis wanted only to go back to sleep. A thousand years might not be enough

this time. She had never been among so many people for so long, and she had

never been in such a confrontation. Exhaustion crept over her, but she must stay

awake a little longer.

“I shun Seyyan,” she said. Her companions quivered at her distress.

“True,” the ship said, and let all its connections to all the other ships

shrivel and drop away. The primary colony broke apart, resolving into individual

ships. They moved to safer distances, and the stars reappeared above Yalnis’s

living space.

Seyyan’s glittering secondary colony remained, with her craft protected in its

center. None broke away to shun her. Yalnis turned her back on the sight. She no

longer had anything to do with Seyyan.

“It’s time,” she said aloud.

“True,” her ship replied. It created a nest for her, a luxurious bed of ship

silk. It dimmed the light and mirrored the outer surface of the transparent

dome. The stars took on a ghostly appearance. Yalnis could see out, but no one

could see inside.

Yalnis pulled off her shirt. Her long hair tangled in it. Annoyed, she shook her

hair free. She stepped out of her loose trousers. Naked, she reclined in the

nest.

“Please, cut my hair.”

“True,” the ship said. The nest cropped her hair, leaving a cap of dark brown.

The weight fell away; the strands moved across the carpet, fading to a dust of

molecules.

Yalnis relaxed, gazed at her companions, and let her hand slide down her body.

The little faces knew her intent. Each stretched itself to its greatest extent,

into her and out of her, whispering and offering.

She made her choice.

Bahadirgul stretched up to seek her hand, moaning softly through its clenched

sharp teeth. The other companions contracted, hiding their little faces in

modesty or disappointment till they nearly disappeared. Yalnis stroked

Bahadirgul’s head, its nape, and caressed its neck and shaft. She opened herself

to her companion.

The pleasure started slowly, spreading from Bahadirgul’s attachment point deeper

into her body. It reached the level of their ordinary couplings, which always

gave Yalnis joy, and gave the companion days of pride and satiation. It

continued, and intensified. Yalnis cried out, panting, arching her back.

Bahadirgul shivered and extended. Yalnis and her companion released, and

combined.

Their daughter formed. Yalnis curled up, quivering occasionally with a flush of

pleasure, listening to their daughter grow. The pleasure faded to a background

throb.

Inside her, her daughter grew.

Content, she nestled deeper into the ship silk and prepared to sleep.

Instead, the dome went transparent. Seyyan’s colony of connected ships gleamed

in the distance. The connecting pili stretched thin, preparing to detach and

resorb.

Yalnis sighed. Seyyan was none of her concern anymore. She had sworn to take no

more notice of her.

What happened next, Yalnis would never forget, no matter how many millennia she

lived or how many adventures filled her memory.

The connections deformed, shifted, arched in waves. They contracted, forcing the

craft closer even as they tried to separate and depart.

Seyyan commanded her supporters, and they discovered the limits of their

choices. They tried to free their ships, tried to dissolve the connections, but

Seyyan drew them ever nearer.

Seyyan’s craft had infected their ships not only with beauty, but with

obedience.

Tasmin’s craft, old and powerful, broke free. Its pilus tore, shredding and

bleeding. Yalnis’s ship quivered in response to the sight or to a cry of

distress imperceptible to people. The destruction and distraction allowed a few

other people to overcome the wills of their craft and wrench away, breaking more

connections. After the painful and distressing process, the freed craft fled

into a wider orbit, or set a course to escape entirely from the star system and

from Seyyan.

Person and ship alike suffered when fighting the illness of a malignant genetic

interchange. Yalnis hoped they would all survive.

“What’s she doing?” Yalnis whispered. Her ship interpreted her words, correctly,

as a question for people, not for ships. It opened all her silenced message

ports and let in exclamations, cries of outrage, excuses, argument, wild

speculation.

Seyyan’s craft gleamed and shimmered and proclaimed its ascension and gathered

the remaining captives into a shield colony. With its imprisoned allies, it

moved toward Yalnis and her ship.

Yalnis went cold with fear, shock, and the responsibility for all that had

happened: she had brought all the others here; she had succumbed to Seyyan and

then challenged her; she had forced people to take sides.

“Seyyan infected their defenses,” Yalnis said. That’s what the fashionable

pattern was for, she thought. A temptation, and a betrayal.

“True,” her ship replied.

Yalnis’s ship moved toward Seyyan’s craft. It quivered around her, like the

companions within her. It had made its decision, a decision that risked damage.

This was ship’s business. Yalnis could fight it, or she could add her will to

her ship’s and join the struggle. She chose her ship.

Zorar followed, and, reluctantly, so did Tasmin’s craft, its torn pili leaking

fluid that broke into clouds of mist and dissipated in sunlit sparkles. The skin

of the craft dulled to its former blue sheen, but patches of shimmering

infection broke out, spread, contracted.

After all too brief a time, the stars vanished again, obscured by the

coruscating flanks of Seyyan’s shield. Yalnis’s ship pushed dangerously into the

muddle. Yalnis crouched beneath the transparent dome, overcome with

claustrophobia. No escape remained, except perhaps for Seyyan.

Seyyan forced her captive allies to grow extensions, but when they touched

Yalnis’s ship, they withdrew abruptly, stung by its immune response. In

appreciation, Yalnis stroked the fabric of her ship.

“True,” her ship whispered.

Please, Yalnis thought, Seyyan, please, just flee. Let everyone go. Announce a

new adventure. Declare that you’ve shamed me enough already, that you won our

altercation.

She had no wish to speak to Seyyan, but she had an obligation. She created a

message port. Seyyan answered, and smiled.

“Your shunning didn’t last long,” she said. “Shall I tell my friends to

withdraw?”

Yalnis flushed, embarrassed and angry, but refused to let Seyyan divert her.

“What do you want?” Yalnis cried. “Why do you care anymore what I think? Leave

us all alone. Go on more of your marvelous and legendary adventures—”

“Flee?” Seyyan said. “From you?”

Ekarete’s craft, willingly loyal to Seyyan, interposed itself between Seyyan and

Yalnis. A pore opened in its skin. A spray of scintillating liquid exploded

outward, pushed violently into vacuum by the pressure behind it. The fluid

spattered over the dome of Yalnis’s ship. It spread, trying to penetrate, trying

to infect. Yalnis flinched, as if the stuff could reach her.

Her ship shuddered. Yalnis gasped. The temperature in her living space rose: her

ship’s skin reacted to the assault, marshalling a powerful immune response,

fighting off the infection. The foreign matter sublimated, rose in a foggy

sparkle, and dispersed.

Seyyan lost patience. The flank of her craft bulged outward, touching Ekarete’s.

It burst, like an abscess, exploding ship’s fluids onto the flank of Ekarete’s

craft. The lines of fluid solidified in the vacuum and radiation of space, then

contracted, pulling the captive craft closer, drawing it in to feed upon.

Ekarete’s craft, its responses compromised, had no defense.

“Seyyan!” Ekarete cried. “I never agreed— How—” And then, “Help us!”

Seyyan’s craft engulfed Ekarete’s, overwhelming the smaller ship’s pattern

variations with the stronger design. The captive ship matched the captor, and

waves of color and light swept smoothly from one across the other.

“You must be put away,” Yalnis said to Seyyan, and ended their communication

forever.

Tasmin’s craft, its blue skin blotched with shimmer, its torn connections

hovering and leaking, approached Seyyan’s craft.

“Don’t touch it again!” Yalnis cried. “You’ll be caught too!”

“She must stop,” Tasmin said, with remarkable calm.

Yalnis took a deep breath.

“True,” she said. Her ship responded to her assent, pressing forward.

To Tasmin, she said, “Yes. But you can’t stop her. You can only destroy

yourself.”

Tasmin’s ship decelerated and hovered, for Seyyan had already damaged it badly.

A desperate pilus stretched from the outer flank of Ekarete’s ship. Yalnis

allowed it to touch, her heart bounding with apprehension. Her ship reached for

it, and the connecting outgrowths met. Her ship declined to fuse, but engulfed

the tip to create a temporary connection. It opened its outgrowth, briefly, into

Yalnis’s living room.

The outlines of the younger craft blurred as Seyyan’s ship incorporated it,

dissolved it, and took over its strength. The pilus ripped free of Yalnis’s ship

and sank into the substance of Seyyan’s craft.

Air rushed past Yalnis in a quick blast; the wind fell still as her ship

clenched its pilus and resorbed it.

The shrinking pilus pulled Ekarete inside. Naked, crying, her hair flying, she

held her hand over her stomach for modesty. Her palm hid the little face of her

companion, muffling its squeals and the clash of its sharp teeth.

Maybe it will bite her, Yalnis thought, distracted, and chided herself for the

uncharitable thought.

“How could she, how could she?” Ekarete said.

“Yalnis,” Zorar said from the depths of her own ship, “what are you doing? What

should I do?”

“Come and get me if we dissolve,” Yalnis said. And then she wondered, Could I

leave my ship, if Seyyan bests us? Should I?

If Seyyan had been patient, Yalnis thought, she might have persuaded her friends

to defend her willingly. If she’d asked them, they might have agreed I’d

outraged her unjustly. If she’d trusted them, they might have joined her out of

love.

No shield colony had existed in Yalnis’s lifetime, or in the memories of the

lovers whose companions she had accepted: no great danger had threatened any

group of people. A shield was a desperate act, a last effort, an assault.

Extricating and healing the ships afterward was a long and expensive task. But

Seyyan’s friends might have done it willingly, for Seyyan’s love. Instead they

tore themselves away from her, one by one, desperately damaging themselves to

avoid Ekarete’s fate, but weakening Seyyan as well.

They dispersed, fleeing. Seyyan’s craft loomed, huge and old, sucking in the

antennae desperately growing outward from the vestiges of Ekarete’s craft.

Ekarete cried softly as her ship vanished.

“Do be quiet,” Yalnis said.

Until the last moment of possibility, Yalnis hoped Seyyan would relent. Yalnis

and Zorar and Tasmin, and a few others, hovered around her, but she had room to

escape. Seyyan’s former allies gathered beyond the first rank of defense,

fearful of being trapped again but resolving to defend themselves.

Yalnis’s ship emitted the first wave of ship silk, a silver plume of sticky

fibers that caught against the other ship and wrapped around its skin. Yalnis’s

ship balanced itself: action and reaction.

The other ships followed her lead, spraying Seyyan’s craft with plume after

plume: silver, scarlet, midnight blue, ultraviolet, every color but the

holographic pattern their defenses covered. Seyyan’s craft reacted, but the

concerted effort overwhelmed it. It drew inward, shrinking from the touch of the

silk to avoid allergic reaction. Gradually it disappeared beneath the layers of

solidifying color.

Yalnis listened for a plea, a cry for mercy, even a shout of defiance. But

Seyyan maintained a public silence.

Is she secretly giving orders to her allies? Yalnis wondered. Does she have

allies anymore? She glanced over her shoulder at Ekarete.

Ekarete, creeping up behind her, launched herself at Yalnis, her teeth bared in

an eerie mirror of her angry companion’s. She reached for Yalnis’s face, her

hand pouring blood, and they fell in a tangle. Yalnis struggled, fending off

Ekarete’s fists and fingernails, desperate to protect her tiny growing daughter,

desperate to defend her companions against Ekarete’s, which was after all the

spawn of Seyyan and her murderous first companion.

All the companions squealed and gnashed their teeth, ready to defend themselves,

as aware of danger as they were of opportunity.

“Why are you doing this?” Yalnis cried. “I’m not your enemy!”

“I want my ship! I want Seyyan!”

“It’s gone! She’s gone!” Yalnis wrestled Ekarete and grabbed her, holding tight

and ducking her head as Ekarete slapped and struck her. The companions writhed

and lunged at their opponent. Their movements gave Yalnis weird sensations of

sexual arousal and pleasure in the midst of anger and fear.

The floor slipped beneath her, startling her as it built loose lobes of ship

silk. She grabbed one and flung herself forward, pulling the gossamer fabric

over Ekarete, letting go, rolling free, leaving Ekarete trapped. The silk closed

in. Yalnis struggled to her feet, brushing her hand across her stomach to

reassure herself that her companions and her daughter remained uninjured. She

wiped sweat from her face and realized it was not sweat, but blood, not

Ekarete’s but her own, flowing from a stinging scratch down her cheek.

Both she and her ship had been distracted. Seyyan’s craft struggled against a

thin spot that should have been covered by more silver silk from Yalnis’s ship.

The tangled shape rippled and roiled, and the craft bulged to tear at the

restraint. Glowing plasma from the propulsion system spurted in tiny jets

beneath the surface of the silk. The craft convulsed. Yalnis flinched to think

of the searing plasma trapped between the craft’s skin and the imprisoning

cover.

“Finish it,” Yalnis said to her ship. “Please, finish it.” Tears ran hot down

her face. Ekarete’s muffled cries and curses filled the living space, and

Yalnis’s knees shook.

“True,” her ship said. A cloak of silver spread to cover the weak spot, to seal

in the plasma.

The roiling abruptly stopped.

Yalnis’s friends flung coat after coat of imprisoning silk over Seyyan’s craft,

until they were all exhausted.

When it was over, Yalnis’s ship accelerated away with the last of its strength.

Her friends began a slow dispersal, anxious to end the gathering. Seyyan’s craft

drifted alone and silent, turning in a slow rotation, its glimmer extinguished

by a patchwork of hardening colors

Yalnis wondered how much damage the plasma had done, how badly Seyyan’s craft

had been hurt, and whether it and Seyyan had survived.

“Tasmin,” she said, quietly, privately, “will you come for Ekarete? She can’t be

content here.”

Ekarete was a refugee, stripped of all her possessions, indigent and pitiable,

squeaking angrily beneath ship silk like a completely hidden companion.

After a hesitation Yalnis could hardly believe, or forgive, Tasmin replied.

“Very well.”

Yalnis saw to her ship. Severely depleted, it arced through space in a stable

enough orbit. It had expended its energy and drawn on its structural mass.

Between defending itself and the demands of its unborn daughter ship, it would

need a long period of recovery.

She sent one more message, a broadcast to everyone, but intended for Seyyan’s

former friends.

“I haven’t the resources to correct her orbit.” She felt too tired even to check

its stability, and reluctant to ask her ship to exert itself. “Someone who still

cares for her must take that responsibility.”

“Let me up!” Ekarete shouted. Yalnis gave her a moment of attention.

“Tasmin will be here soon,” Yalnis said. “She’ll help you.”

“We’re bleeding.”

Yalnis said, “I don’t care.”

She pulled her shirt aside to see to her own companions. Three of the four had

retracted, showing only their teeth. She stroked around them till they relaxed,

dozed, and exposed the tops of their downy little heads, gold and copper and

softly freckled. Only Bahadirgul, ebony against Yalnis’s pale skin, remained

bravely awake and alert.

Drying blood slashed its mouth, but the companion itself had sustained only a

shallow scratch. Yalnis petted the soft black fur of Bahadirgul’s hair.

“You’re gallant,” Yalnis said. “Yes, gallant. I made the right choice, didn’t

I?” Bahadirgul trembled with pleasure against her fingers, within her body.

When Bahadirgul slept, exhausted and content, Yalnis saw to her daughter, who

grew unmolested and unconcerned; she saw to herself and to her companions, icing

the bruises of Ekarete’s attack, washing her scratches and the companion’s. She

looked in the mirror and wondered if she would have a scar down her cheek,

across her perfect skin.

And, if I do, will I keep it? she wondered. As a reminder?

As she bathed and put on new clothes, Tasmin’s ship approached, sent greetings,

asked for permission to attach. Yalnis let her ship make that decision and felt

relieved when the ship approved. A pilus extended from Tasmin’s ship; Yalnis’s

ship accepted it. Perhaps it carried some risk, but they were sufficiently

exhausted that growing a capsule for Ekarete’s transport felt beyond their

resources.

As the pilus widened into a passage, Zorar whispered to her through a message

port, “Shall I come and help? I think I should.”

“No, my friend,” Yalnis whispered in reply. “Thank you, but no.”

Tasmin entered, as elegant and perfect as ever. Yalnis surprised herself by

taking contrary pride in her own casual appearance. Zorar’s concern and worry

reached her. Yalnis should be afraid, but she was not.

“Please release Ekarete,” she said to her ship.

“True,” it said, its voice soft. The net of silk withdrew, resorbed. As soon as

one hand came free, Ekarete clutched and scratched and dragged herself loose.

She sprang to her feet, blood-smeared and tangle-haired.

She took one step toward Yalnis, then stopped, staring over Yalnis’s shoulder.

Yalnis glanced quickly back.

As if deliberately framed, Seyyan’s craft loomed beyond the transparent dome of

the living space, bound in multicolored layers of the heaviest ship silk, each

layer permeated with allergens particular to the ship that had created it.

Seyyan’s craft lay cramped within the sphere, shrinking from its painful touch,

immobilized and put away until time wore the restraints to dust.

Ekarete keened with grief. The wail filled Yalnis’s hearing and thickened the

air.

Tasmin hurried to her, putting one arm around her shaking shoulders, covering

her with a wing of her dress.

“Take her,” Yalnis said to Tasmin. “Please, take her.”

Tasmin turned Ekarete and guided her to the pilus. The connection’s rim had

already begun to swell inward as Yalnis’s ship reacted to the touch of Tasmin’s

with inflammation. Tasmin and Ekarete hurried through and disappeared.

Seyyan’s former friends would have to decide how to treat Ekarete. They might

abandon her, adopt her, or spawn a new craft for her. Yalnis had no idea what

they would choose to do, whether they would decide she was pure fool for her

loyalty or pure hero for the same reason.

When the connector had healed over, leaving the wall a little swollen and

irritated, when Tasmin’s ship moved safely away, Yalnis took a long deep breath

and let it out slowly. Silence and solitude calmed her.

“It’s time, I think,” she said aloud.

“True,” replied her ship.

Yalnis descended to the growing chamber, where the daughter ship lay fat and

sleek, bulging toward the outer skin. It had formed as a pocket of Yalnis’s

ship, growing inward. A thick neck connected the two craft, but now the neck was

thinning, with only an occasional pulse of nutrients and information. The neck

would part, healing over on the daughter’s side, opening wide on the outer skin

of Yalnis’s ship.

Yalnis stepped inside for the first, and perhaps the only, time.

The living space was very plain, very beautiful in its elegant simplicity, its

walls and floor a black as deep and vibrant as space without stars. Its storage

bulged with the unique gifts Yalnis’s guests had brought: new foods, new

information, new bacteria, stories, songs, and maps of places unimaginably

distant.

The soft silver skin of Yalnis’s ship hugged it close, covering its transparent

dome.

The new ship awoke to her presence. It created a nest for her. She cuddled into

its alien warmth, and slept.

· · · · ·

She woke to birth pangs, her own and her ship’s. Extensions and monitors

retracted from her body.

“Time for launch,” she said to her ship.

“True,” it said, without hesitation or alternation. It shuddered with a powerful

labor pang. It had recovered its strength during the long rest.

“Bahadirgul,” Yalnis said, “it’s time.”

Bahadirgul yawned hugely, blinked, and came wide awake.

Yalnis and Bahadirgul combined again. The pleasure of their mental combining

matched that of their physical combining, rose in intensity, and exceeded it. At

the climax, they presented their daughter with a copy of Yalnis’s memories and

the memories of her lover Bahadir.

A moment of pressure, a stab of pain—

Yalnis picked up the blinking gynuncula. Her daughter had Bahadir’s ebony skin

and hair of deepest brown, and Yalnis’s own dark blue eyes. Delighted, she

showed her to Bahadirgul, wondering, as she always did, how much the companion

understood beyond pleasure, satiation, and occasional fear or fury. It sighed

and retreated to its usual position, face exposed, calm. The other companions

hissed and blinked and looked away. Yalnis let the mesh of her shirt slip over

their faces.

Yalnis carried her daughter through the new ship, from farm space to power

plant, pausing to wash away the stickiness of birth in the pretty little bathing

stream. The delicate fuzz on her head dried as soft as fur.

The daughter blinked at Yalnis. Everyone said a daughter always knew her mother

from the beginning. Yalnis believed it, looking into the new being’s eyes,

though neither she nor anyone she knew could recall that first moment of life

and consciousness.

By the time she returned to the living space at the top of the new ship, the

connecting neck had separated, one end healing against the daughter ship in a

faint navel pucker, the other slowly opening to the outside. Yalnis’s ship

shuddered again, pushing at the daughter ship. The transparent dome pressed out,

to reveal space and the great surrounding web of stars.

Yalnis’s breasts ached. She sank cross-legged on the warm midnight floor and let

her daughter suck, giving her a physical record of dangers and attractions as

she and Bahadirgul had given her a mental record of the past.

“Karime,” Yalnis whispered, as her daughter fell asleep. Above them the opening

widened. The older ship groaned. The new ship quaked as it pressed out into the

world.

“Karime, daughter, live well,” Yalnis said.

She gave her daughter to her ship’s daughter, placing the chubby sleeping

creature in the soft nest. She petted the ship-silk surface.

“Take good care of her,” she said.

“True,” the new ship whispered.

Yalnis smiled, stood up, watched the new ship cuddle the new person for a

moment, then hurried through the interior connection before it closed.

She slipped out, glanced back to be sure all was well, and returned to her

living space to watch.

Yalnis’s ship gave one last heavy shudder. The new ship slipped free.

It floated nearby, getting its bearings, observing its surroundings.

Soon—staying near another ship always carried an element of danger, as well as

opportunity—it whispered into motion, accelerating itself carefully toward a

higher, more distant orbit.

Yalnis smiled at its audacity. Farther from the star, moving through the star’s

dust belt, it could collect mass and grow quickly. In a thousand, perhaps only

half a thousand, orbits, Karime would emerge to take her place as a girl of her

people.

“We could follow,” Yalnis said. “Rest, recoup …”

“False,” her ship whispered, displaying its strength, and its desire, and its

need. “False, false.”

“We could go on our adventure.”

“True,” her ship replied, and turned outward toward the web of space, to travel

forever, to feast on stardust.

The End

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