Lights in the Deep (31 page)

I did notice that her lower limbs—which had seemed almost useless when the Professor had first removed her from her disc—appeared to be getting stronger. She was balanced on them now, with just a hand’s width of space between her belly and the stone on which she perched.

“How is she doing?” I asked the Professor.

“I do not know,” he said. “She has not spoken to me since the storm passed. I am suspecting that she is manifesting an instinctual behavior of our species, from the time before we had carriages to provide for our needs.”

“What about food?” I said.

“The carriage provides that too, though we can ingest nourishment with our mouths for the pleasure of it.”

I shuddered a bit, remembering mantis warriors devouring human flesh during the initial fighting on Purgatory.

“Can the Queen Mother eat our food?” the captain asked.

“I do not think it wise,” the Professor said. “Our nutritional requirements are not the same as yours. Besides, we have the ability to store a reserve—naturally—which should suffice for the Queen Mother’s needs for some time yet. Assuming she gets water.”

“She should go drink while the drinking’s good,” I said, pointing back to the creek bed, the water in which had begun to wane as the sun gradually began to drop towards the western horizon.

“I have already purified a supply for her,” the Professor said. “For now, I simply watch, and wait. The Queen Mother’s behavior is unusual and fascinating. I have never seen any of my people forced to live without a carriage. The Queen Mother’s actions speak to me of how my people must have lived, eons ago in the distant past, before we ourselves even had fire, or tools. Before we took to the stars.”

As the angle of the sun’s light shifted, so did the Queen Mother. Like a solar panel, she made sure her wings caught the maximum amount of direct light.

Occasionally the captain or I would get up to go check on our clothes, flapping them vigorously to try and get out every drop of remaining moisture. When evening came and the sun began to dip into the far horizon, we pulled out our emergency sleeping bags and prepared to make do on the hard stone.

“I’ll be back,” Adanaho said.

“Nature calls?” I replied.

“No.”

“Oh…well, find privacy and peace then.”

To my surprise, she went to join the Queen Mother, who’d folded up her wings, but remained staring in the direction of the setting sun.

Adanaho sat cross legged and appeared to hold something in her hands as she bowed her head. The Queen Mother’s own head tilted just a little, her antennae moving ever so slowly, as if entranced by the captain’s soft, slow words of supplication. The Professor was listening too—I could see him alert. Like before, I was too far away to make out what was being said. And, I suddenly realized, I was a little bit jealous that the captain felt perfectly fine sharing her prayer with the mantes, but not with me. A tiny spark of anger flared, and quickly died as I realized that maybe she was just doing what I’d done with the Professor many times: giving the mantes a demonstration, so that maybe the Queen Mother might enjoy a degree of understanding.

Though I couldn’t be sure what progress Adanaho hoped to make, which I hadn’t been able to make with the Professor or his students in all the years of trying back on Purgatory.

Eventually the sky faded from blue to purple, and from purple to black. Adanaho returned, and I was already in my bag, my one-piece rolled up under my head for a pillow. I averted my eyes as the captain stripped, rolled her one-piece up for a pillow, then slipped into her own bag.

I didn’t stay awake long enough to see what arrangements the Professor and the Queen Mother had made between them.

Sometime in the night I felt a hand nudging my shoulder.

“What’s happening?” I said. “Is something wrong?”

“I can’t sleep, Chief,” Adanaho said. “There’s a hole in my bag and it got damp inside, and I am freezing.”

My eyes popped open. I could barely make out the black silhouette of her shoulders and head against the perfect expanse of stars that stretched across the night sky. Clear sky meant frigid temperatures, and I could feel the cold night air on my face. I reached out and felt Adanaho’s hand in mine. Her fingers were icy.

Not even thinking about it, I unzipped my bag and beckoned her in. She slid down beside me and zipped the bag up to our chins. Not designed for comfort, as an emergency bag it could hold two in a pinch—and I certainly was glad for it, as the captain felt dangerously cold, her body shuddering next to me.

“Ma’am,” I said, “why didn’t you come earlier? You’re a popsicle.”

“I feel like a popsicle,” she said, her nose stuffed.

“Here,” I said, and closed my arms around her. Despite the frigidity of her skin, it was smooth, and womanly, and all of a sudden I realized I hadn’t lain in bed with a girl since before I’d joined the Fleet, and that had been a long, long time ago.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” I said, clearing my throat.

“For what?” She said. And then, because of the impossibly close quarters of the bag, she said, “Oh. I get it.”

I felt a rush of blood to my face.

“It’s okay, Chief,” she said, sensing my mortal embarrassment.

“I hope you’re not married,” I said. “Explaining to your husband how you spent the night naked in a sleeping bag with another man who was unable to contain his…ahhh,
excitement
, could be problematic.”

“No, I am not married,” she said, laughing a bit. Then began to cough.

I suddenly realized that pneumonia could kill as easily as low temperatures, and held her tighter. She squirmed in my grasp and was suddenly face to face with me, her nose like a cold, damp button in the nape of my neck. She coughed a few more times, snuffling, and clung tightly to me. I rubbed my hands vigorously along her bare back to try and accelerate the process of warming. Gradually, her body relaxed. I then heard a small, quiet snore.

I shifted and repositioned my rolled-up smock so that her head rested on it, not mine, crooked an elbow up to my ear, kept my other arm wrapped tightly around her, and let myself drift off.

Chapter 10

I woke early.

The captain was still snoring softly, so I slid out of the bag as slowly and as stealthily as I could, letting my superior curl the fabric around herself and bury her face deeper into my jumper. The sun wasn’t yet up, but I could see well enough. Being both naked and cold, now seemed as good a time as any to go see if my uniform had dried. But first, business. I spied a low mound of split rock not too far off, and headed directly for it.

The Professor caught me halfway back.

I felt a bit awkward over my nudity, then decided it was silly to be modest in front of the alien. Though I also thought this is how the Queen Mother must have felt when she was forced to disengage from her disc.

“Good morning,” the Professor said.

“Hello,” I replied.

“The female still sleeps?”

“For the moment.”

“Did you mate with her?”

I sputtered a quietly exclamatory denial. Then asked, “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“On Purgatory you once told me that when male and female humans wish to copulate, they will share the same bed.”

“On Purgatory, sure, and then only if the male and the female know each other well enough and have agreed to have that kind of relationship.”

“It is not an automatic biological function?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Is it for you mantes?”

The Professor considered, a forelimb gently running along the edge of his disc.

“In some ways, yes. The egg-laying females—like the Queen Mother—when they enter what you would call estrus, they exude a pheromone that is both sexually rapturous and psychologically debilitating for males. Any male within reach of the pheromone becomes somewhat mindless in his pursuit of intercourse. The only way to avoid it is to avoid being where the pheromone can get to you.”

“But once you get a whiff—”

“Then the male is in for a delightfully stupid time of physical pleasure, followed by a lengthy period of slumber.”

“Well,” I said, smiling, “at least
one
thing is shared between human males and mantis males.”

“Still,” said the Professor, “with Adanaho, if she is available to you and there is the possibility of sex, are you not…tempted?”

“Of course I’m tempted,” I snapped. Then apologized for being harsh. “It’s been at least a dozen or more years since I had a woman in my arms like that. But when a human male gets excited, he’s still in full command of his faculties. He can still choose. Or at least he’s expected to behave as if he has a choice. Personally, I think it’s one of the few things that actually makes us different from mere animals. We can deny our lusts, even during moments of opportunity.”

“So you chose to abstain.”

“Yes.”

“Is she not attractive?”

“Yes, she’s attractive.”

“Forgive me Harry, I am still struggling to understand.”

“Look,” I said, my hands on my hips as I walked slowly over to the rocks where my uniform and boots were spread out, “attraction is only part of it. There’s other factors too. Like, she’s too young. Much younger than I am. I’d feel like I was taking advantage of her. Plus, she’s my superior officer in the Fleet. It’s against the rules for a superior and a subordinate to engage in sexual congress.”

“Why?”

“Bad for discipline in the chain-of-command, among other things.”

“And that’s all?”

“No,” I said, testing the fabric between my fingers. It felt dry enough. I started to put my undergarments on. “The male and the female should really love each other first, before they have sex. When sex happens before love, or without love, it gets…complicated.”

“Also immoral,” said the Professor.

“If the man and the woman subscribe to certain ‘flavors’ of religious or moral tradition, yes. That too. Though most religious proscriptions surrounding intercourse simply involve matrimony, not love. A few centuries ago, before humanity went into space, it was quite common for young men and women to be married off by their families. For political and social reasons, among other things. Love didn’t really enter into it.”

“Fascinating,” said the Professor. “Among my people we mate for genetic enhancement and advantage. Many, many males. A few females. In the far distant past males engaged in mortal combat to determine which ones would mate during a given cycle of estrus. Now we select for genetic traits we consider positive and bar those who don’t meet the standards. Those of us who meet the standards are then chosen via lottery to attend to the females when they are ready. I have copulated six times in my life. I am considered somewhat fortunate in this regard.”

“Because you’re smart, or because you simply got lucky?” I said, sliding on pants, then socks, then boots.

“Intelligence is key,” he said. “But luck rules the final selection process, yes.”

“Assuming you win the lottery,” I asked while buttoning up my topcoat, “do you choose the females or do the females choose you?”

“The females choose us,” he said. “In descending order of matriarchal seniority.”

“Did you ever mate with the Queen Mother?”

The Professor paused. A small flush of color along the semi-soft portions of his chitin told me I had embarrassed him.

“No.”

“I’m sorry if I intruded into a private area where I should not have,” I said honestly.

“No, Harry, it is I who began this conversation. The discomfort comes from knowing that no female of the Queen Mother’s stature has ever selected a scholar for mating. They prefer warriors to thinkers.”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nevermind,” I said.

The sun’s first rays peaked over the horizon.

I observed the Queen Mother’s silhouette in the distance. Just like the day before. She was immobile, faced directly into the growing light as it slowly bathed the landscape. The Professor and I watched her for a time, then I asked, “Penny for her thoughts.”

“If by that you mean to say you wonder what’s in her mind at this time, I wish I knew. I have inquired, and she will not tell me. I sense in conversation with her that the Queen Mother is both fascinated and troubled by her experience living without the disc.”

A rustling to our left told me the captain was arising.

“Clothes are dry,” I called, deliberately loud.

“Roger that,” she said, her nose sounding stuffed up.

I walked away from the rocks where her uniform still lay, and kept my back turned while she shuffled up and slowly put on her uniform in silence.

“Okay,” she said.

I turned around.

“You look like shit, ma’am,” I said.

“I feel sick,” she admitted. Wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“We should have checked your bag sooner. We’ll have to let it dry out before nightfall if we don’t want a repeat of last night. Meanwhile, perhaps the Professor can spare room on the back of his disc for you while we travel today.”

“I’d be grateful for that,” she said, eyes drawn and puffy-looking.

“It could be managed,” the Professor said, after looking down at the captain—his antennae moving thoughtfully.

The captain and I did what we could with the ration bars still in our packs, chewing because we needed the fuel, not because it tasted good. I’d never been a heavy chap. I realized that too much time on this nameless world would thin me down even more.

When we’d collected our gear and re-secured our packs, I helped Adanaho climb onto the back of the Professor’s disc—following his having helped the Queen Mother climb onto the front. The Queen Mother and Adanaho both seemed unusually quiet this morning, and I shouldered my burden wondering what the day would bring. The captain had taken some pills from her pack’s emergency medical kit, and wrapped her sleeping bag around herself inside-out so as to let the liner properly dry. Her belt had been looped into a small cleat on the back of the disc so that she wouldn’t slide off.

A cool breeze started up.

We moved out, due southwest in the direction of the hinted-at mantis signals the Professor had previously detected.