“Hot no,” Onjr snarled to no one in particular. “Fire leave.”
Leeg emitted a terrible, shrill scream, arching backward before rolling onto her stomach. Minnie switched optics and observed the female’s massively swollen lower back. Similar to marsupials, Hynka birthed an under-developed fetus to then carry in a pouch for several months. However, a face-attached umbilical remained bonded, and the birth canal squeezed the fetus directly into the bottom of the pouch. From the lumpy look of Leeg’s pouch, her baby had either already arrived, or was making solid progress.
Onjr turned his back to Minnie, tending to Leeg.
Fitchsher poked a thumb at the heater and searched for Minnie. “Nnn-neee,” he called.
Minnie took a few steps toward the clearing.
“Fire in?” he said.
“Fire no,” Minnie replied. “Onjr kill fire. Onjr kill Minnie.”
“No kill,” Fitchsher said, standing and facing her. Minnie stepped back again. “Onjr no.”
Right, she thought. Like I didn’t just witness that fight.
Fitchsher persisted. “Onjr no kill. Onjr…” he seemed to search for the words. “… speak smell. Nnn-nee food smell. Food no. Smell yes.” He turned and slapped Onjr’s back. Onjr grumbled, pushed him away, returning his focus to Leeg. Fitchsher barked at him in mostly uncatalogued words. “Speak… Nnn-neee… smell… kill.”
Onjr reared up, shoved Fitchsher, and faced Minnie. “No kill! Nnn-nee Onjr no kill!” He kicked the heater. “Fire in!” He returned to Leeg’s side, where she now breathed slower, almost purring with each exhalation.
Fitchsher took a tentative step toward Minnie, disarmingly human in his pleading. “Yes? Fire in?”
Resigned to her own weakness, Minnie walked to the heater and picked it up, reactivating it. She kicked the metal disc back into the icy depression it had earlier formed, setting the heater down facing the backs of Onjr’s ankles, and beyond them, Leeg. Onjr moved an arm and peeked at Minnie through the gap. She kept her eyes fixed on his, and the MW primed.
“Move,” Minnie said to him as she withdrew backward. “Leeg fire.”
Onjr snorted and leaned right onto a knee, shuffling from between the heater and Leeg. Leeg murmured something to him and he continued around to her other side. Thick fingers wedged under her, and Onjr lifted Leeg’s far side, rolling her until she ordered him to stop. Now, her back—and the fetus in the pouch—faced the heater.
Minnie gazed through the wall of flesh to the writhing being inside, already the size of a human preteen. She could see the membrane gluing its toothless gums to a thick umbilical tube. There was a bit of a kink between baby and the quivering sphincter from which it’d come, and Leeg seemed to be aware of the danger. She’d reached behind her and was smushing sections of pouch next to the baby, trying to spin it around to face downward.
“Turn,” she said, and Onjr obeyed, using both hands to reorient the fetus.
Minnie heard the crackling of joints and glanced Fitchsher’s way, observing him sitting down. She hadn’t been paying attention to him all this time, subconsciously trusting that she had nothing to fear from him, but this was foolish of her. She moved back a few more steps and also sat.
“Baby turn,” Fitchsher said. “Baby hot.” Perhaps it was a thank you.
Onjr rolled around beside Leeg’s head, took a riverbear skin from one of his shoulders, and lay it over Leeg’s exposed face. With her baby and back to the fire, her front would be feeling the bite of midnight cold. Onjr settled onto his rump and faced the heater, peering over it to Minnie, his eyes unreadable and disconcerting.
After a few moments of silence, with everyone’s focus on the heater—like any classic, late-night campfire scene, orange glow casting shadows—Fitchsher broke the silence.
“Baby kill all.”
Onjr stole a glance his way, then back to the heater.
Fitchsher went on. “Leeg birthed Udartsh. Udartsh Lesser. Udartsh no turn. Udartsh die small. Leeg birthed Fitchsher. Fitchsher Lesser. Fitchsher turn. Fitchsher big.” His shining eyes turned to Minnie. “Leeg birth Greater baby. Greater baby turn. Greater baby big. Greater baby kill Fitchsher, kill Onjr.”
Leeg turned her slumped head a degree, and uttered with a feeble, defeated voice, “Greater baby kill Leeg.”
Minnie unclasped her sore fingers from the MW, curled her arms around her knees, and pulled them to her chest. Fitchsher’s gaze drifted back to the heater, unblinking eyes alight with emotion. Minnie didn’t think she was only imagining it, or projecting her own feelings: the bleak bewilderment, the absolute horror of knowing with certainty that one’s sibling—and for Leeg and Onjr, one’s own child—would grow, mature, and eventually slaughter their entire family.
3.8
Their afvrik handler, Heshper, was a real hole. Even the fourteen crewmembers seemed to despise her, for as much as a labor class Threck would reveal such feelings. Their responses were usually subtle—a delayed response to an order, or reconfirming they’d heard her orders correctly, voicing their objection in the least direct manner possible.
“You two: go down, find bottom-grabbers, and bring back up. You that way, you the other.”
A beat.
A crewmember replies,“We go separate. Down there… for bottom-grabbers.”
“Yes,” Heshper confirms.
“In this water, away from harbor safety, we go down alone.”
“Yes. Quickly!”
And then they comply.
Aether had a firm grasp on her own conflicts with the handler. Heshper had legitimate complaints, and Aether wished she’d been exhaustively explicit about their travel needs with Massoss Pakte. Not only had misunderstandings created an antagonism between Aether and Heshper, their ETA to the recovery location had been tremendously underestimated.
Fishing and exploratory voyages had never been restricted to the ocean surface. In fact, afvrik spent very little time above water. The bands of rope that crossed the top of every afvrik were used by handlers and crew as anchoring points. The crew coiled their legs several times around these holds, and the afvrik would swim as usual, with only slight drag from the tagalongs’ profiles. Threck even slept this way underwater—quite enjoyably, it seemed—tapping into some primal comfort source. Submerged, afvrik rotated so their broad fins faced behind them, their thrust system obviously at its optimal output with this orientation. Compared to propulsion on the surface, it was the difference between powerboat and paddle.
Further, afvrik had to eat. Go figure. Normally, this was accomplished by the creature descending to lightless depth, opening its mouth wide, and drifting downward over dense concentrations of tiny sea life, much like many whales or the whale shark. This fact wasn’t shared until well after losing sight of land, when Heshper told Aether and Pablo that it was time to “stick” so the afvrik could feed. While the suits and supply bins were fully sealable, and they technically could have gone under long enough for their vessel to feed, the skimmer strapped to the holds at the center of the afvrik’s back eliminated immersion from the realm of possibility. Skimmers were weather resistant, but neither Aether nor Pablo believed they could survive a full plunge.
Heshper had threatened to turn around, call off the voyage. Aether had to repeatedly emphasize the conditions of her arrangement with the Thinkers and Council, highlighting the fact that hundreds of Makers and Materials workers were on their way north to begin construction. That all these moving parts hinged on this rescue mission.