“Not exactly,” van Staaten’s voice came back to them. “You will have the data. You will have the principles. And you will have a demonstration. If you can’t take that back and build and deploy more, then you do not deserve to live.”
“He’s got you there, Colonel,” Chicanis commented, sounding a bit too pleased.
“Yes or no? I can get you in, and I can get you out. Say yes, and I will transfer the cyberrecord and then we can go from there. Say no and it stops here. Once you say yes, though, you agree to my terms and commands. There will be no going back.”
“Might as well,” N’Gana grumbled. “If we say no, he’s just going to blow us to hell anyway.”
“Very well,” the old diva told the Dutchman. She still wished, as they all did, that she knew more about this strange rogue, and she certainly had no more trust in him than N’Gana did, but she had come too far to retreat now.
“I’m transferring an exact copy to your library computer now,” the Dutchman told them. “I would suggest that only people who are familiar with the technique and can interpret the information, either scientifically or geographically, should look at it. There’s a lot of extraneous stuff there that will be difficult to filter out completely. Oh—and one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“You might get Mister Harker off your goddamned hull and inside where he might do some good. I don’t think he’s going to be any help at all out there by himself.”
ELEVEN
Something New in the Air
Littlefeet had seen women give birth a number of times while growing up; there wasn’t much concealment in the Family, nor much attempt at it. Even so, to see it happen with Spotty, and with his child coming out—that was something very different.
There was no way to stop the wail of a newborn child, so sentries were just doubled and vigilance was increased when such a thing happened.
Spotty was attended by Greenie and Bigcheeks, two girls of her own age who were well along with child themselves. That was how the women trained from the start, with each assisting and younger ones usually watching. A priest, almost always Father Alex, was also there not only to ensure that all went well but to bless and cleanse the child in water as soon as its umbilical cord was tied off. Within two days the mother would give the child a nick-name that would generally last a lifetime; a more formal name was given at puberty from the Old Names. Young girls, often called scribes, would memorize the genealogies and maintain them so that future generations could track lineage, which was always via the mother. The father was normally considered irrelevant, and unless there was a marked resemblance it was generally impossible to even know who the father was.
Not this time, though. Littlefeet knew that this had to be his.
Still, he felt somewhat crushed when Father Alex lifted up the baby and announced, “It is a fine, healthy girl!”
He’d been so sure it was a son that he’d already made plans for how he was going to bring the kid up, teach him to forage and to fight and guard, all that. Now—jeez, a girl?
And when the baby was placed back on the mother’s breast and found her first meal and quieted down, Spotty spoke to Littlefeet. “She has your kind, big eyes,” she told him. “And a bit of your face, too. I think she will look like you.”
“I—well, that’s nice,” he managed, not quite knowing what to say.
“Do not be so disappointed!” she chastened him. “I will have many more fine children, and some will be boys!”
“No, it’s not that,” he told her, but, of course, it mostly was that. Still, what the hell, the baby did look kind of cute, if a little wrinkly. Newborn babies were actually pretty ugly, he thought. He couldn’t see anything of either of them in the kid right now.
Such was the routine of the Family, though, that Littlefeet had no time to really rest beyond the night. Having had the child during the afternoon, Spotty at least had been able to sleep and recover some strength; those who bore children in the middle of the night or early in the morning had it the roughest, since often the camp would be moving. They did not move every day, but they moved more often than not. It was a given that the Family must always be on the move, and that if you remained in one place for any length of time you would be the target of a horde of Hunters, more than could be imagined, and that the Family as a result would die.
Littlefeet’s full senses had returned by now, and the wounds he’d received in the fight with the Hunters had also healed. True, his body now bore some ugly scars, scars he would take to his grave no matter when that would be, but such marks were signs of bravery and conferred status in the Family. More worrying was the fact that he continued to limp, and that did not seem to be getting any better. Oh, he felt strong enough, and certainly he could move well enough, but the limp, the result of an unsuspected break that, when discovered, had been less than perfectly set, was a problem. It slowed down his run, and gave him very slight balance problems that had cost him a step or more in speed and thrown him a hair off in accuracy with a spear. There was no room in the Family for anyone who could not perform all his duties and pull his own weight; they couldn’t afford dead wood.
He wasn’t there yet, but he was getting to be old and a potential liability faster than most in this quick-dying culture.
He was still doing his job, although Father Alex gave him no more long-range reconnaissance missions. His scars attested to his fearlessness and the fact that he was still alive showed his skills, but he was limited to close-in sentry duty and packing, hauling, and tending to weapon repairs.
The worst thing about getting back into duty, though, was that Mother Paulista insisted that Spotty move back into the women’s kraal and bring the new daughter, now named Twochins after a tiny cleft she had that Littlefeet also shared and that pretty much proved his paternity.
As soon as Spotty moved back, though, Paulista and her Sisters made a concerted effort to keep the two apart. In such close quarters this wasn’t literally impossible, but what was possible was to assign Littlefeet to duties at different hours than Spotty, and when it was time for the men to lie with the women, somehow it was always with a different girl, somebody Littlefeet knew but didn’t want. Still, just as she had done her duty, so had he. He just didn’t like it.
Father Alex was, as always, both understanding and consoling, but not a whole lot of help in solving the problem.
“In the Way of the Book, one man and one woman are to be married for life,” he told the younger man. “If we could live in any way like those of the Book or those who came after up until the coming of the demons, then it would be so. The trouble is, our first duty to God is to preserve and continue the Family, so that we may continue to worship and serve Him and do His will. When we did it the old way, we couldn’t do this. Too few children were born, their raising was too complicated, and there were terrible jealousies like what you’re feeling now. With no privacy and little modesty, there was simply no way to maintain it.”
“But why couldn’t just she and I be together? It’s not like we don’t want it, and it’s not like everybody else does!”
“Son, all that we do, we have done because it works, and the other ways, old ways, new ways, all sorts of things that were tried, did not. There was also the need, when we were reduced to so few, to ensure that there was some diversity, that brothers and sisters did not couple. This causes bad things to happen to the babies. The way around it is to make sure that all the active males and all the active females lie with as many different partners as possible.”