The moan snaked through the room again, but Laki could not see who was making the sound. She put her hand over the top edge of the opening and elongated it. She leaned in closer and looked up. There, hanging from the ceiling in a shimmering sling, was a woman. Her head was tilted back, her lips parted in a painful grimace. Laki was so struck by the woman’s expression that a few seconds passed before she realized that the woman was unshrouded. The woman grasped the sling and groaned again. She shifted her body sideways and revealed a long purplish tube attached to her stomach.
Entranced and frightened, Laki followed the tube’s path downward and saw that it was connected to a large globe that was floating just below the woman. The woman gritted her teeth, and the tube pulsed. In synchronicity, the mothers inhaled and exhaled. It seemed as if the room itself were breathing. Silky white strands shot out of the large globe and attached themselves to the small globes that were hovering over the mothers’ hands. The globes filled with light and, for a brief second, Laki could see the curled up forms of embryos within the globes. She let out a loud gasp. A few mothers turned and saw her as the globes’ glittering illuminated the room with an explosion of incandescence.
Before Laki could see anything else, a body blocked her view. The small opening she had made parted completely. A mother glided out of the room, the expression on her face unreadable behind her veil. The mother sealed the room, took Laki by the hand, and led her away from the mothers’ quarters. She stopped at the hallway that led to Laki’s room and turned to face Laki. Laki opened her mouth, but found she could not speak. The mother waited patiently.
“That was one of my mothers, wasn’t it?” Laki asked.
“Yes,” the mother sang. She took both of Laki’s hands and pressed against Laki’s palms with her fingers.
“How many do I have?”
“Nineteen.”
Laki was briefly shocked into silence. “I thought there were only six of you.”
“How do you think we can be everywhere at once?”
Laki heard a smile in the mother’s voice, though she could not see it through the blur of the mother’s veil.
“What is happening in there?”
The mother brushed her hand over Laki’s bald head.
“We received new babies today,” she sang. “We are nurturing them.”
Despite the mother’s calming presence, Laki’s heart began to beat rapidly.
“Will I have to do that? Hang from the ceiling…”
“You will not have to, it will be your choice.”
“But it’s hurting her.”
“It hurts, yes, but it’s not hurting her. She asked to nurture them.”
Laki looked at this lone mother incredulously.
“You will learn, Laki. Mothering makes you want to give, even if it exhausts you.”
Laki shook her head.
“You don’t need to understand now, Laki, but that feeling will find you. Weeks or months into your time with the babies, it will sneak up on you.”
Laki’s face was frozen in an expression of horror.
“You’re thinking only about the pain, La-Laki. Don’t. It is pointless. Every drop of pain is balanced by waves of pleasure.”
“Pleasure?”
“Pleasure. Pleasure at your successes. Pleasure in watching the children mature. Pleasure with the other mothers. Emotions you never imagined.”
“But what if I never find those pleasures. What if I wasn’t made to be a mother?”
The mother burst into laughter. “No one was born a mother, Laki. Yet all of us are able to mother if we allow ourselves to be guided by the needs of the children.”
“But the babies…”
“Laki, you do not need to think about babies right now.”
“But tomorrow—when I join my mother-unit, will I get babies? Will I have to take care of the wombs?”
The mother shook her head and rubbed Laki’s back.
“Tomorrow you will meet with the others in your unit. You will begin the process of melding the cloak. Were you not listening to anything we told you in preparation for the mother-unit?”
“You didn’t tell me about the wombs!” Laki tried to wound the mother with an accusation, but the rage died in her throat. Every word that came out of her mouth was softened by the power of the mother’s love.
“We told you what you need to know before you join the unit. No one learns about the babies until after they join their unit…which you won’t until tomorrow. This is your last day at home. Why are you wandering around the house? There’s no more training today. Take off your uniform. Enjoy the rest of your time, go see your friends.”
Laki didn’t answer. She imagined herself hanging in a sling suspended over a huge womb. Panic welled up in her chest; she found it hard to breathe. The mother hugged Laki.
“Go,” she said.
Laki turned away from the mother and ran down the hall, choking on the urge to scream. When she reached her room, she waved her hand over the sealed entrance. The wall thinned and parted down the middle. She stepped over the threshold, and a softly modulated voice rang out:
“One day to maturation.”
Laki winced. Grabbing the edges of her robe, she yanked the white fabric from her shoulders. Her elbow flung out wildly, triggering the voice to repeat itself:
“One day to maturation.”
“Shut up!” Laki snapped. She stumbled toward her wardrobe portal while pulling off the robe and dropping it on the ground. As she fumbled to release the waist of her dress, she caught sight of her reflection. Startled, she fell still. Swathed in mother-unit whites, she could be any girl on the brink of maturation. A young mother, perhaps, anyone but herself.
Just beyond her reflection, Laki saw a message globe float into the room. She looked at it over her shoulder, then turned back to the reflective wall. She squinted her eyes and tried to imagine what she would look like draped in her mother-unit veil. She envisioned a group of faceless women gathered around her. A disgusted hiss spilled out through her lips. She waved her hand over her reflection, and the reflective wall went dark.
When Laki walked to the wardrobe portal, the message globe followed her. She passed her hand over a flat, round disc embedded in the wall. A rod slid out from where the disc had been and presented her with a row of cloths dancing around on hangers. Even her wardrobe had ceased to be an accurate reflection of her. Mixed in with her customary black cloths, were the mother-unit whites, permanently shaped into formless robes and dresses that, after tomorrow, would become her daily uniform.
At the thought of tomorrow, Laki felt a tightening in her chest. The terror that she had been carefully containing flooded her body. She rifled through the cloths, seizing anything white and flinging it to the ground. When there was nothing left but black cloths and empty hangers, Laki collapsed to the floor. Every wild scheme she had concocted to avoid her fate trampled through her memory. Breathing heavily, she looked around the room manically as if through feverish effort she could find the secret and escape her future. The message globe chirped, and her panic deflated. She let out a resigned sigh. She was powerless to change the thrust of her future, and nothing she did could alleviate that fact.
The globe drifted down to hang next to her shoulder. She blew on it, triggering the release of its message.
“Greetings elder sister,” a high-pitched voice chanted.
Laki shifted so that she was sitting cross-legged on the floor and opened her hand to accept the message. The globe floated down to rest in her palm. An image of her sister—cinnamon-colored skin, freckles, a dark mouth—sprouted in her mind. She heard Se-se whispering, “I think it’s going to work. We’re going to get you out of the mother-unit. You have to meet me later. I’ll send another message.”