Mother of Demons Read online

  She tightened her jaws. "Which was always very oppressive to women. Suttee. Purdah. Kinder, Küche, Kirche. You name it."

  Janet interrupted. "But, Indira, that's all in the past. Really, it is. Oh, yeah, sure, you still run across a few guys with some Neanderthal notions, but it's never a real problem."

  Indira was shaking her head.

  "That's beside the point, Janet. You're right—today. But the modern equality between the sexes is only possible because of the vast wealth of twenty-second century civilization. Even then, it didn't come without long and bitter struggle. But our kids aren't going to be living in that kind of world. They'll be living in the Bronze Age—"

  "If I can find any bronze," muttered Julius.

  "—and abstract ideas have very little power in the face of social forces that emerge out of the material circumstances of real life."

  She chewed her lip, unconsciously imitating Julius.

  "I'll have to give it some thought. We won't have much maneuvering room, but there'll be some. Socioeconomic forces are the locomotives of history, but they're not impervious to cultural influence. And there was always a lot of variation in human history, within a range. I'd have much rather been a woman among the Iroquois, for instance, than a woman in ancient India.

  "Or—" she frowned at Julius "—among the Hebrews."

  "Bad enough I catch hell for what I do," complained the biologist. "Now I got to catch hell for what my ancestors did three thousand years ago?"

  Unexpectedly, Hector intervened in the discussion.

  "I think you might be worrying too much, Indira. There's something you're overlooking. I don't know much about history, but I know for sure that there's a factor in the equation here that never existed on Earth."

  He jerked his head, toward the south.

  "The owoc."

  Indira was puzzled. "I don't get it, Hector. The owoc won't be able to stop—oh, hell, I wish Julius would stop calling them 'dimbulbs,' even in jest, but I can't deny that they aren't exactly mental giants."

  Hector was shaking his head.

  "You're missing the forest for the trees, Indira. It's not anything that the owoc would do. It's—just the fact that they are."

  He gazed at the blank faces staring at him.

  "Don't you see? The kids already think they're half-owoc. Hell, they're even starting to speak in their own dialect—English, basically, with a hefty dose of Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. And lots and lots of hoots. Sometimes, I can't understand what the kids are saying anymore."

  He sighed. They still didn't understand.

  "Look, folks. Just three days ago, I saw one of the littler boys—Kenny Wright—climb up onto Ludmilla's neck. For all the world like he was a tiny male owoc looking for his favorite spot. He didn't fit, of course, and at first I was afraid Ludmilla would beat him into a pulp. But she just seemed to take it for granted. Even carried Kenny around like that for half an hour.

  "So maybe you're right, Indira. You know human history, I don't. But what I do know is that our kids aren't—they aren't just human, anymore. They're something a little different. Something new."

  Indira was doubtful. But a small hope was born in her heart that day, at the deathbed of Vladimir Koresz. A small and faint glimmer, under the growing tidal wave of an historian's fear.

  They buried Koresz three days later, near the kolocluster. All the humans in the colony attended, even Adams. And it seemed that every owoc in the valley was there also. Several of them owed their wellbeing to Koresz, who had over the years managed to find cures for a number of the illnesses which afflicted the creatures. The owoc, of course, did not understand the means by which Koresz worked his magic. Nor did they seem to care. They simply called him, in their hooting language, "the Stroke of Slow Beauty." (Humans, thought Indira, would have said: "the Touch of Long Life.")

  Fortunately, not all of Koresz's skill went with him into the grave. Janet would never be his equal as a doctor, of course. Neither her own keen mind nor his careful tutorship could make up for the years which the doctor had spent learning his craft. But she was still very good. Much better—much, much better—than the medical practitioners which the human race had possessed for all but the last three centuries of its existence. And Janet had drawn around her four children who showed a deep interest in medicine. She believed that at least one of them, Maria De Los Reyes, had the potentiality for becoming a great doctor.

  It was fortunate, and not a moment too soon. For, just as Koresz had foreseen, the children soon learned a new and vastly entertaining game. Less than a year later, the first babies began arriving.

  They lost many of the babies, of course. But they lost none of the young mothers, although it was a close call with Keiko Watanabe. Janet performed her first Caesarean, and it was a success. Keiko and her child survived, although the girl would never bear another.

  Indira was aghast at the child mortality rate, but Julius was (bleakly) satisfied.

  "Twenty-five percent after one year," he said. "That's horrible, by modern Terran standards, I agree. But look, Indira—and please don't accuse me of being a cold-hearted biologist—it's better than what the human race put up with for most of its existence. In fact, a twenty-five percent child mortality rate is incredibly good, when you consider they're being born on an alien planet."

  Indira knew he was right, but the knowledge didn't help much. Not when she had to help bury the pitiful little bodies. And then look at the hurt and bewildered faces of the children who had borne them.

  But, over time, the children—teenagers, now—came to accept the facts of life. Here, of course, they were helped by the attitude of the owoc. Over time, Indira would be both appalled and fascinated by the way in which the inter-penetration of the two species' cultures would produce a unique hybrid. The humans would never share the owoc indifference toward new-born babes, of course. That was biologically precluded. They would care for them, and caress them, and nurse them, and pamper them. But they would withhold the core of their hearts, until the infants began to walk.

  Eighteen months. That seemed to be the critical point. If a child could survive that long, and struggle to its uncertain little feet, he or she stood an excellent chance.

  Janet Mbateng was the next to die. She knew it was coming months before it finally happened, just as Koresz had known.

  "It's like something turned off, inside," she explained to them. "I'm just going through the motions, now."

  She groped for words. "I can't explain it. It's not that I want to die, or anything like that. It's just—I don't know. Somehow I can just tell my body's given up."

  The final weeks of her life, Janet spent every hour of the day surrounded by her pupils. (The nights, of course, were given to Hector; who held her wasted body in his arms, until he cried himself to sleep.) Hour after hour, passing on to them everything she had learned from Koresz. Hector tried to convince her to rest, but the little woman—no bigger than a child herself, now—adamantly refused.

  In the end, she was satisfied she had done all she could. The day before her death, she administered the Hippocratic Oath to Maria De Los Reyes, and urged her other students to continue their efforts so that they too could become Doctors. (And they all did, over time.)

  The last night, and day, she gave to Hector.

  Hector followed her into the grave soon after. He claimed that he felt the same sensations that Janet and Koresz had described. Indira believed him, but Julius knew he was lying. The pilot's muscular physique never showed more than a trace of the horrible wasting symptoms which Janet and Koresz had exhibited. True, he grew very thin. But Julius knew that Hector hardly ate anything.

  No, Julius knew the truth. Hector Quintero had become the closest friend he'd ever had. Over the years, working side by side, he had come to cherish the man's intelligence, cheerfulness, wit and courage. Inexhaustible courage, it had seemed.

  But courage comes in different ways, to different people. Hector could face anything, except
the empty vision of a future without Janet.

  * * *

  Francis Adams, strangely, seemed indestructible. The physicist was a total recluse—had been since before Koresz's death. And for at least a year prior to that, he had stopped giving classes to the children. (Which Indira regretted not at all; Adams had been an unbelievably bad teacher, totally incapable of explaining things in a way which would be comprehensible to his students.) He dwelt by himself, as he had for years, alone in the landing boat. The last time Julius saw the portion of the boat where Adams lived, the place looked like a pigsty. Adams himself—formerly so fastidious—looked like a complete savage. He acted like one, too. He had screeched at Julius, his voice filled with fear and rage, ordering him to leave. The physicist had even seized a spear which he had secreted in his lair, brandishing it in a manner which would have been frightening if it hadn't been so pitifully awkward.

  But Julius obeyed. There was no purpose to be served in doing otherwise.

  For years, now, the only time the colonists saw Adams was at mealtimes. These had become the central institution of daily social life for the colony—a time of festivity and relief from the morning's labor in the upunu fields and the afternoon's labor in the large longhouse which served as a school. Twice a day, mid-morning and late afternoon, the entire colony would gather in the center of the valley. There, in a cleared space surrounded on three sides by the long houses and the adults' huts, and on the fourth side by an oruc grove, a line of owoc would slowly enter. Each in turn would regurgitate her childfood into six huge basket/tureens, made of ruporeeds coated with dried resin.

  The baskets had been Indira's invention. She felt that receiving the childfood directly into little personal bowls was undignified and wasteful, since much of it slopped over the sides. (It also made her nauseous.) Once the childfood was in the tureens, each human would approach with a bowl and scoop out their own portion. Before retiring to eat in animated circles, the humans would stand before the watching owoc, bowing deeply. The gesture of respect had not been taught to the human young. They had invented it themselves, drawing on some deep pool of cultural inheritance.

  Indira herself never scooped her own bowl. She insisted on having a bowl brought to her, so that she could put out of her mind (more or less) the knowledge of where it came from. She was the only member of the human colony who felt that way, but the others had long since accepted her wishes.

  Almost always, Julius was the one who brought her bowl. She wished it were otherwise, but she never said so, knowing it would hurt his feelings. Much as she loved Julius, she would have preferred another bowl-bringer, one who wouldn't smack his lips in anticipation of the meal, and make gross remarks such as: "Hey, the barf's good today!"

  Adams would always make his appearance after the owoc left. The half-crazed physicist would emerge from his lair and scurry down the hillside. He would stop at the edge of the clearing, hunched, glaring at nothing in particular, saying not a word.

  After a moment, Joseph would arise from whichever circle he was eating with and scoop out a bowl. He would approach Adams slowly and solemnly, and extend the bowl. After a moment, Adams would take the bowl and devour the contents like a wolf. Then, he would return the bowl and scuttle back to his lair.

  The ritual was one of the many ways—unconsciously, thought Indira—that Joseph had established his position as the unquestioned leader of the younger generation. The children were afraid of Adams, she knew. The fear was not rational. Adams had never been a physically prepossessing man, even in his prime. Any number of the teenagers, of either sex, could have easily handled him. Jens Knudsen, who already had the size and musculature of a heavyweight wrestler, could have broken him with one hand. Ludmilla might have needed two hands.

  No, it was not a physical fear. It was that the teenagers knew there was something deeply wrong about Adams, something that was utterly unlike anything else they had encountered. People fear the unknown.

  But Joseph did not. He had not feared Adams as a boy. He did not fear him now.

  His fearlessness, like the fear which the other teenagers felt, had little to do with physique. In that respect, of course, Adams posed no danger. The time when Adams could loom threateningly over Joseph Adekunle was long gone. Instead, Joseph towered over the physicist—and would have, even were Adams erect. At the age of seventeen, he was already almost two hundred centimeters tall. And while Indira thought that he would not grow much taller, she knew that his frame—already muscular—would fill out even further. By the time Joseph was twenty, he would be as magnificent a physical specimen as the human race had ever produced. Joseph would never have the sheer brute strength that Jens Knudsen possessed, but Indira had noted that he beat Jens as often as Jens beat him whenever they engaged in one of their frequent (and good-natured) wrestling matches. Joseph's speed, reflexes, and balanced poise were positively awesome.

  But, as she watched the scene, Indira knew that the essence of it was not physical, but spiritual. The calm, confident serenity that exuded from Joseph's person as he watched the physicist take and gobble down his food did not stem from simple confidence in his muscles. They stemmed from the very soul of the boy.

  Indira recognized what she was seeing. It was that vision the human race had always possessed of youth in its glory. Not arrogant, not callous, not vainglorious—simply the calm certainty of young strength and courage. Utter fearlessness in the face of danger; total willingness to stand against it.

  The vision was found in all human cultures, expressed in a myriad ways. But Indira thought it had been completely captured only once, by the greatest artist the human race perhaps ever produced.

  The superficial appearance was, of course, different. Joseph's skin was black; his hair was kinky; his features were African. But those were meaningless things. The soul of the boy was the same as that captured by the artist's genius.

  The young shepherd, guarding his flock. Sling in hand. Poised, yet not tense; calmly gazing forward, secure in his youth, ready to deal with whatever horrors might come over the horizon. Lions; or bears; or perhaps even a giant. Whatever. It made no difference, for he would slay the monster without fail.

  She had seen it once, that vision. In Florence.

  The David, by Michelangelo.

  David had not failed. Nor did Joseph, when the monsters came to his people, three months after Hector died.

  The long years of the colony's peaceful existence ended, and gave way to the washing of the spears.

  Chapter 10

  The first slaver raid caught the colony by surprise.

  It shouldn't have, in theory. The colonists had been preparing to defend themselves, and the owoc, for over ten years. Enough spears had been produced to arm every single human down to the new-born babies, with a number left over. The teenagers had been organized into five-person squads, which, in turn, had been organized into three platoons.

  Hector, who was the only adult with any military training at all, had been selected as the commander of the defense force. The organizational structure was his idea, and it had been he who had drilled the young humans in basic tactics.

  The other adults had participated in the training, in the first few years. But once the children became teenagers, all the adults except Julius stopped engaging in the exercises. And if Hector had had his way, Julius would have been barred as well.

  "It's a young person's game, man."

  "You're saying I'm too old and feeble and slow?" demanded Julius.

  "Yes. Exactly. Precisely."

  But Julius had refused to quit, to Indira's disgust. Indira had never been an avid supporter of the military exercises in the first place. And as the years went by without any signs of trouble, she came to the private conclusion that the training was a waste of time and energy. But she did not interfere, except in three ways.

  First, she made clear to Julius that she considered his insistence on remaining in the defense guard to be a prime example of delayed adolescence, of
which, to his discomfort, she pointed to numerous other symptoms.

  Secondly, she insisted that if there was going to be a defense guard, the girls would participate on an equal basis. This had caused no difficulty, for Hector was quite favorable to the idea. In fact, he had appointed Ludmilla Rozkowski one of the three platoon leaders (the others were Joseph Adekunle and Takashi Mizoguchi). After the babies began arriving, Hector maintained the sexual egalitarianism by establishing a platoon rotation system. Each month one of the platoons was assigned the primary duty of rounding up and protecting the children in the event of a military crisis.

  Finally, and most forcefully, Indira refused to accept Hector's proposed title for his own position.

  "What's wrong with it?" he complained.

  "Admiral of the Ocean Sea?" demanded Indira.

  He pouted. "It's got a nice ring to it."

  "Not a chance. You can be Captain Quintero."

  The training had been maintained for several years, but it had slowly become more and more lackadaisical. After Hector died, the defense guard essentially disintegrated. Julius assumed the mantle of Captain, but he was too preoccupied with other matters to pay any real attention to the task.

  In the last weeks prior to the raid, only a handful of the teenagers continued their training and exercises. They formed themselves into an informal squad, consisting of the three former platoon leaders, as well as Jens Knudsen and a few others.

  The first sign of trouble was a sudden flurry of hoots coming from the southernmost end of the valley. When Julius first heard the hooting, while he was writing in his notebook, he shrugged it off. He was curious, for the owoc rarely hooted loudly, but he was not alarmed.