It went better than Mia could have hoped. When the ship had gone — she’d seen it leave orbit, a fleeting stream of light — Mia went to Esefeb.
“Mia etej efef,” Esefeb said with her rosy smile. Mia come home. Mia walked toward her, hugged the girl, and slapped the tranq patch on her neck.
For the next week, Mia barely slept. After the makeshift surgery, she tended Esefeb through the seizures, vomiting, diarrhea, pain. On the morning the girl woke up, herself again, Esefeb was there to bathe the feeble body, feed it, nurse Esefeb. She recovered very fast; the cure was violent on the body but not as debilitating as everyone had feared. And afterwards Esefeb was quieter, meeker, and surprisingly intelligent as Mia taught her the rudiments of water purification, sanitation, safe food storage, health care. By the time Mia moved on to Esefeb’s mother’s house, Esefeb was free of most parasites, and Mia was working on the rest. Esefeb never mentioned her former hallucinations. It was possible she didn’t remember them.
“Esefeb ekebet,” Mia said as she hefted her pack to leave. Esefeb be well.
Esefeb nodded. She stood quietly as Mia trudged away, and when Mia turned to wave at her, Esefeb waved back.
Mia shifted the pack on her shoulders. It seemed heavier than before. Or maybe Mia was just older. Two weeks older, merely, but two weeks could make a big difference. An enormous difference.
Two weeks could start to save a civilization.
Night fell. Esefeb sat on the stairs to her bed, clutching the blue-green sheet of plastic in both hands. She sobbed and shivered, her clean face contorted. Around her, the unpopulated shadows grew thicker and darker. Eventually, she wailed aloud to the empty night.
“Ej-es! O, Ej-es! Ej-es, Esefeb eket! Ej-es… etej efef! O, etej efef!”
Nancy Kress, "EJ-ES", 2003
Нэнси Кресс, "ЭЙ-ЭС"
В сборнике "Lightspeed: Year One", Prime Books, 2011
Первая публикация в антологии "Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian", DAW Books, 2003. [1]