"I know where the Andes are," Moon assured her. "They're still right in the same place."
"Yeah. I suppose they would be. Anyway," Daisy Fay said, her tone suddenly harsh, "we crashed."
"Crashed? The plane fell out of the sky?"
"That's right—remember, Moon, this was a long time ago. Planes weren't all that reliable then. There were six of us in the plane, an old DC-2—that's a kind of small commercial propeller plane. Marco was the copilot. While we were trying to pick our way through the passes a storm came up and we flew right into a mountain."
She stopped for a moment, only her tentacle gently stroking the Taur's shoulder. The face on her belly plate looked sad. Then she made a sudden movement of her tentacles and went on. "It wasn't anybody's fault, you know. Least of all Marco's; he wasn't even at the controls just then. But there we were. The pilot was killed outright, and so were two passengers. The only other passenger, a woman, was badly hurt. So Marco and I tried to get her down the mountain in a litter, because we knew she'd freeze to death out there, at that altitude, in the blizzard. ..."
She stopped. The gentle waving of her arms slowed, as though saddened. "Well, there was an avalanche. We were carried down the mountain. Buried under snow. Really messed up—both Marco's legs were broken, and so was his back. He couldn't move. I was a little better off—just one arm broken, but it was a compound fracture and it hurt like—well, we were in bad shape. And freezing, of course. Our only hope was the Mae West radio that we'd carried with us."
"What's that?"
"A Mae West? It's a kind of portable radio—you powered it by hand cranking it. But that wasn't a good chance, because we were in a high valley, and the radio wouldn't go through mountains."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh. "It turned out that it didn't have to. I didn't expect any planes would find us, and I was right about that. They didn't. But then down came this funny-looking thing—it looked like a banana with tiny wings, long, and a little bent, and it was shooting out pale blue flame from the bottom. I thought I'd died, or was dreaming—well, you know what it was."
"The Turtles?"
"Right the first time! It was a Turtle scout ship. Believe me, when I saw what was coming out of that ship to pick us up I thought I was really crazy! And then I passed out—and when I woke up again I was like this."
"So the Turtles turned you into a—" Moon bit her tongue to keep from saying the next word.
"They repaired me," Daisy Fay corrected. "They did the best they could, Moon. Marco and I were among the first human beings they'd ever seen. They knew what Turtles were like, which is why they sort of used themselves as a model for rebuilding us—but what did they know about human anatomy then?"
"They learned from experimenting on you?"
"That, and the cadavers. Mostly from the cadavers." Daisy Fay sounded sad. "Because not everybody they tried to save survived. We were lucky." She roused herself, her tentacles waving gently. "But the tea's ready now, Moon. How do you like yours?"
Curiously, Moon Bunderan found herself relaxing in the warmth of Daisy Fay's friendship. It was almost like being home again, sitting in a friend's kitchen—not that this wave-ship cabin was in any way like a New Mexican kitchen, or
Daisy Fay at all like the friends of her life back home. But it was all so comforting—
Comforting, at least, until she saw what Daisy Fay was doing with her tea. She must have gasped, because the eyes swiveled toward her.
"Sorry," Moon managed to get out, averting her eyes. The robot-woman had fastidiously opened a little hatch just under the video screen and with two tentacles delicately poured a bit of the tea into it.
Then the face on the belly screen smiled up at her. "I'm sorry," Daisy Fay said ruefully. "I forget how funny it must look. The food tastes just as good, though.
You see, Moon," she said earnestly, "we're still human. Our brains, most of the circulatory and digestive system, all the glands and so on—they're all still inside here. It was only the peripherals of our bodies that were totally destroyed."
Moon pushed her luck one step farther. "And, uh, can you and Marco—?"
Daisy Fay sighed. "I wish," she said regretfully. "No, that's as far as our biological parts go. We can't have sexual relations. The Turtles just never bothered with that part—I guess because they just didn't understand that human beings might have a need for such things. They never do it themselves, you know—except for the Mother and the one-in-a-billion lucky male who gets the chance when a new Mother's ready. And it—" she hesitated. "It's really a pity," she said, "because you should have seen Marco before the accident. He was gorgeous. He wasn't really tall. I think I had an inch or so on him when I was wearing heels, but that didn't matter. Marco was beautifully built, with those soft brown eyes—the kind of Latin lover we used to hear so much about, back in those days. Oh, I had a real case on him, all right. I wouldn't have been on that plane if I hadn't. And then we crashed, and that was the end of that. We never did get a chance to make love. ...
She was silent for a mourning moment. Then the face on the belly screen brightened again. "But at least we're alive," she said staunchly. "And we're together!"
Later on, affectionately feeding her Taur, Moon shivered, thinking about how "lucky" Daisy Fay McQueen and Marco Ramos had been. "I don't know, Thrayl," she murmured, rubbing the soft spot between his horns. "It's better to be alive than dead, sure, so that was good luck. . . . But what kind of life is it for Daisy Fay?"
The Taur, squatting beside her, turned his huge purple-blue eyes on her but did not stop delicately munching at the redfruit in his hard three-fingered hands.
"When you come right down to it," she went on, "what kind of life is it going to be for us? These are all good people we're with, Thrayl, I'm sure of that—well, not counting the Turtles, I mean. I don't understand the Turtles real well. But Captain Krake and the others—I trust them. Only all this is getting pretty scary."
The Taur mooed gently at her—not a word, just a sympathetic sound. It was all she expected—or needed; this was the way she had talked to Thrayl when he was a tiny calf, bringing him all her litde problems, not needing answers from him only the comfort of his listening ear. She smiled, feeling better.
Then, finishing the last of his redfruit, the Taur stood up, gazing at her expectantly. "Time to go to see what the others are doing?" she asked. "The Turdes are taking so long—I wish I knew what they were thinking about." She sighed and took the huge, hard hand. "We did the right thing, Thrayl," she told him seriously as they walked toward the control room.
"We couldn't let them maim you, could we? But, oh, I'd be really happy if I just knew what was going to happen next." But an hour later, when she did know, she wasn't happy at all.
Though the aiodoi are not guardians, they do observe. Sometimes what they observe makes a song for them to sing, sometimes only a song they hear; for they are aiodoi, and singing is their life.
"You remember we were talking about interuniversal travel through wormholes, and we said there were a couple of tough problems that faced any prospective voyager.
"One thing you could do would be to find a wormhole and go there. You're not likely to find one in Low Earth Orbit, of course, because a wormhole is enough like a black hole that you'd have a hell of a problem with gravitational attraction. It would tear the Earth into confetti, even if there weren't also the certainty of damaging radiation from its accretion disk. So there surely isn't one nearby, or we'd know it.