“We can’t go onward so soon,” Torlyri told Koshmar. “Threyne has come to her time.”
For an instant unconcealed disappointment flickered in Koshmar’s eyes. Koshmar was in a fever to race onward to Vengiboneeza, Torlyri knew, now that she had learned the great city was so close. But she would have to wait. The birth of a child took precedence over everything. Threyne must be made comfortable; the child must be brought safely into the world.
In the cocoon days the birth of each new child had carried with it not only joy but also a hidden darker aspect, for the only time someone new was allowed into the world was when someone else was nearing the time when it was necessary to leave it: there was no room for expansion within the cocoon, and birth was inextricably mixed with death. Thus the limit-age, so that the People would not be faced with a choice between an intolerable smothered existence and a virtual prohibition against new births. Out here, where so much was altogether different for the tribe, there was no need to fear overcrowding. Quite the opposite: they needed all the new life they could produce, and more beyond that. No one would have to die to make room for children any longer. Whoever had the childbearing power, Torlyri thought, owed it to the tribe to be hatching an unborn of her own. She was beginning to toy with the idea even for herself.
They went as far as they could get from the bog and its black lake. No one wanted the water-strider bursting forth again to fill the air with its horrifying laughter while Threyne was having her baby.
Some of the men cut down saplings to make a leafy bower for her. Minbain and Galihine and a couple of the other older women washed her and held her hands as the pains grew strong. Preyne, who was the child’s father, crouched beside her for a while, touching his sensing-organ to hers and taking some of the discomfort from her, as was his obligation and privilege. Torlyri prepared birth-offerings to Mueri in her role as Comforter and to Yissou the Protector and also to Friit the Healer, for afterward. The labor was a long one, and Threyne groaned more than most women did. It was the hardship of the trek, Torlyri thought, that had put this pain in her.
Koshmar, who had been pacing tensely all afternoon, came to the bower toward sunset and stared down at Threyne’s swollen middle. To Torlyri she said, “Well? Is everything going as it should?”
Torlyri beckoned Koshmar aside, out of Threyne’s hearing, and said, “It’s taking too long. And she’s in great pain.”
“Let Preyne take the pain from her.”
“He’s doing his best.”
“Is she going to die?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Torlyri said. “But she’s suffering. She’ll be very weak for days afterward, if she lives.”
“What are you saying, Torlyri?”
“We won’t be able to break camp for a while.”
“But Vengiboneeza—”
“—has waited seven hundred thousand years for us,” Torlyri said. “It can wait another few weeks. We can’t risk Threyne’s life with your impatience. And Nettin’s baby is almost due also: two days, three. We might as well stay here until they’re strong enough to go onward. Or else divide the tribe, send Harruel and some of the other men ahead to look for the city, and we stay here to care for the mothers.”
Koshmar looked bothered. “If anything happens to Threyne I’d never forgive myself. But can you see how I feel, with the city so close?”
Tenderly Torlyri put her hands to Koshmar’s shoulders a moment, and held her. “I know,” she said softly. “You’ve fought so hard to bring us here.”
From Threyne just then came a new sound, higher, sharper.
“Her time has arrived,” Torlyri said. “I’ll have to go to her. We’ll be on the march again soon, I promise you that.”
Koshmar nodded and walked off. Torlyri, watching her go, shook her head. It amazed her that Koshmar, ordinarily so level-headed and clear-minded, had needed to be told that they would have to halt here for a while, and probably even now was having trouble accepting the idea. But Koshmar lacked all aptitude for these matters of women. She had never let a man put his hand to her thighs; she had never thought for a moment of bearing a child; she had aimed herself from childhood on for the chieftainship and nothing but the chieftainship, and to Koshmar that had excluded the idea of motherhood. Chieftains did not bear children: it was the tradition. But only because it had been necessary to regulate population within the cocoon so strictly, Torlyri thought. All sorts of traditions about who could bear children and who could not had sprung up over the centuries, but the underlying reason was always the fear that unlimited breeding would choke the cocoon and drive the tribe out into the harshness of winter before the true time.
Minbain called to her. The child was coming.
Torlyri hurried to the bower, just barely soon enough. Already a tiny head was jutting from between Threyne’s thighs. Torlyri smiled. Koshmar could never bear to watch the moment of birth, but Torlyri thought it was beautiful. She knelt at the foot of the bower, holding Threyne lightly by her ankles as she uttered the prayers to Mueri the Mother.
“A boy,” Minbain announced.
He was very small, noisy, wrinkled, pink all over, with scattered patches of thin grayish fur that would eventually expand to cover his entire body. His little sensing-organ moved stiffly from side to side, beating the air: a good sign, a sign of vigor and passion. Torlyri remembered when she had helped at Minbain’s own childbed nine years before, when Minbain had been delivered of Hresh, how Hresh had whipped the air furiously with his sensing-organ. Certainly he had lived up to the omen, had Hresh.
“The old man,” one of the women said. “We need the old man here now, to give the birth-name.”
Minbain made a muffled sound, a smothered laugh. Some of the other women laughed also.
“The old man!” Galihine said. “Who ever heard of a child as old man!”
“Or a child presiding at a childbirth,” said Preyne.
“Nevertheless,” Torlyri said firmly. “We need him to do what must be done.”
She turned to a girl named Kailii, who was almost of the age of motherhood herself and watching the delivery with fascination, and sent her off to fetch Hresh.
He arrived in a moment. Torlyri saw his sharp little eyes take in the scene in a series of quick sweeps: the women clustering close about the bower, the exhausted Threyne with streaks of blood staining the fur of her thighs, the little wrinkled babe, more like a radish than a man. Hresh looked uneasy, perhaps because his mother was here, or perhaps because he knew these matters were not ordinarily things for boys to witness.
“A child has been born, as you can see,” Torlyri said. “A name must be provided, and it is your office to do so.”
At once Hresh seemed to put his uneasiness beside him. He stood tall — though how absurdly small he still was, Torlyri thought! — and appeared to cloak himself in the majesty of his position.
Solemnly he made the sign of Yissou, and then that of Emakkis the Provider, and then that of Mueri the Mother, and then that of Friit the Healer. And then, finally, the sign of Dawinno the Destroyer, subtlest of gods.
Torlyri felt a surge of pride and delight. Hresh was doing the proper things, and in the right order! Old Thaggoran would have done no better. And Hresh had never been present at the giving of a birth-name. He must have looked up the rite in his books. The shrewd boy: how remarkable he was!
“A male child has been given us,” said Hresh resonantly. “By Preyne, from Threyne, to us all. I name him for the great one who has been taken from us so cruelly. Thaggoran shall he be.”
“Thaggoran!” Preyne boomed. “Thaggoran son of Preyne, Thaggoran son of Threyne!”
“Thaggoran!” cried the women at the bower. “Thaggoran!” said Threyne faintly.