Little Faces Read online

  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, Ihave 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.
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  "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 doyou 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./ had to comforther. "

  "She accused me of teasing and deceiving her," Yalnis said. "And shekilled 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."
r />   "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.