“We’re a monogamous couple within the larger family of our group marriage. My primary relationship is with Toivo; he’s Danan’s father.”
“So a group marriage is like a village?”
Selena shrugged. “I don’t know. What is a Tendu village like?”
“A village is a group of Tendu who share the same territory, and live in the same tree or school in the same waters. They are rarely genetically “related.”
“We’re more closely linked than a village, then. Our branch of the family has twenty-two adults and eight children. We share child care and household chores and pool our child-rights in order to have more children.”
“I’m afraid that I still don’t understand how the child-right system works. Could you explain it to me?”
“The regulations are complicated, but basically, we’re trying to reduce the population on Earth, keep it stable on the stations, and allow it to grow slowly on the Moon, Mars, and eventually, on Terra Nova. So, on Earth and the stations, each person has three-fourths of a child-right. On the Moon and Mars, where there’s room to expand, you get a bigger child-right, one full child-right per person on the Moon, and one and one-half of a child-right on Mars. When you get married, you pool your child-rights, which enables you to have one child. You can either sell the remaining fractional child-right, or purchase half a child-right in order to have a second child. If you’re part of a group marriage, you can pool the family’s child-rights. For example, a group marriage of four people can have three children without having to buy any extra child-rights.”
“How do you decide who gets the third child?”
“That depends,” Selena said. “There are all kinds of group marriages, and each one has different ways of assigning children.” She looked over at Eerin and Toivo talking earnestly in one corner of the yard, and her smile disappeared. “Toivo and I were planning to have a second child. But then he got hurt, and he can’t— ” Her voice caught for a moment. “We can’t have any more children,” she finished quietly. Ukatonen realized that she was on the edge of tears.
“I’m sorry. Is there something I can do to help?” Ukatonen asked. Humans were so fragile. They lived their lives on the edge of disaster. The Tendu were vulnerable to accident and injury too, but they either chose to die or recovered in a matter of days. There was nothing like this lifelong helplessness among his people. How could the humans stand such misery?
He looked over at Eerin’s brother, surrounded by his family. He was laughing at something someone said. His life had been torn apart, and yet, he could still laugh. Humans, for all their physical weakness, could be very strong. He had seen that strength in Eerin. Where did it come from?
Selena touched his hand. “Ukatonen, I— ”
But she was interrupted by Eerin’s aunt Anetta, who wanted to introduce Ukatonen to some neighbors, and the moment passed.
Moki and Danan came back, and the three of them sat in the shade and drank big glasses of tart, sweet lemonade as the light grew more mellow, then began to dim. The light had the warm golden color of late afternoon, and sunset, but the strange double shadows cast by the trees and the people never grew any longer. It was eerie. As the light reddened and dimmed toward sunset, the guests left, one by one, until only the family was left.
Juna said good-bye to the last group of guests, and then sat down on a stone bench near Tbivo.
“Toivo, why don’t you keep your sister company while we finish clearing up?” Anetta suggested.
“Sure, Netta,” Toivo replied. A quick, resentful frown passed across his face almost too quickly to be seen.
“Is it hard being stuck in that chair?” Juna asked in Amharic.
Toivo looked grim. “It’s been more than a year since the accident, and I still can’t get used to it. Even in zero-gee it was hard, dragging all this useless flesh around.”
“Toivo— ” Juna began, then paused, uncertain how he would react to what she wanted to tell him. “You know that Ukatonen is one of the Tendu’s finest healers. Please, let him look at you. He may be able to help you walk again.”
Toivo took one of her hands, and enfolded it in both of his. “Big sister, I know that you mean well, but the best doctors in the system have done everything they can. My spinal cord wasn’t just severed; they could have fixed that. Six inches of my spine was crushed by the impact. My pelvis was shattered, and my legs were broken in half-a-dozen places. They haven’t healed right. Even if my spine was repaired, I couldn’t walk again. I’m in this chair for the rest of my life.”
“Toivo,” Juna persisted, “I’ve seen the Tendu do amazing things. You’ve seen the pictures of how they transformed me. Please, Toivo, let him look at you.”
“Juna, it hurts too much to hope anymore.”
“Toivo, don’t turn your back on this. It will only take a few minutes. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t believe it was going to work.” She grasped his hands and gazed directly into his eyes. “Please, Toivo. We’ve come all this long way because we wanted to help you walk again. At least let him try.”
Ukatonen and Moki had come up while they were speaking. Ukatonen touched Toivo on the shoulder. “Your sister is right. What we do is different than what human doctors do. I believe that we can help you, if you’ll let us, but I won’t know until I look.”
Toivo was silent for a long time, his face carefully expressionless, his eyes guarded. Juna waited, afraid to hope.
“All right,” he said, looking up at them. “I guess it’s worth a try. What do I do?” Ukatonen sat down next to Eerin on the rough cool stone bench.
“Come closer,” Ukatonen told Toivo. “Put your arms out like this,” he said, showing Toivo how to place his arms for linking. He pierced Toivo’s skin with his spurs, and entered the link.
Toivo’s body was so much like that of his sister’s that for a brief, confusing moment, Ukatonen thought he had somehow entered Eerin’s body. If he had seen a group of villagers this closely related, he would have taken drastic action, possibly even resettling the villagers. But this close genetic relatedness was normal for humans, though he recoiled at the idea.
Although they resembled each other physically, the emotional flavor of Toivo’s presence was very different. Toivo’s injury had wounded him emotionally as well as physically. Everything was flavored with the bitter astrin-gency of deep depression. Where there should have been hope, there was only a slow, pungent fear. What sustained Toivo in the face of such profound despair?
Such deep, pervading sadness could easily drag the healer down into the same emotional morass as the patient. He gently adjusted Toivo’s emotional chemistry to lighten his despair. Toivo, enfolded in the deep reassurance of Ukatonen’s presence, didn’t seem to notice the shift in his mood.
Ukatonen turned his attention to Toivo’s injuries, tracing the healed breaks on his shoulder, collarbone, an arm, and several ribs. Most had healed cleanly, but there were a couple of breaks that needed work. Then he moved down Toivo’s back, tracing the spinal column. There was a severed nerve just above the break. Ukatonen teased the frayed fibers together, feeling the bright, tart taste as nerve impulses began to spark across the healed break. He encouraged the nerves to branch and grow toward each other again. There was a sharp upward spike of sweet hope as Toivo sensed the new nerve connection. The intensity of it made even Ukatonen’s rock-solid control waver for a moment.
He waited until Toivo’s emotional storm subsided. Then the enkar moved into the strange, subdued world below the break in Toivo’s spinal column. It was like swimming down into dark, stagnant water. It was strange to feel the cells doing their work and the blood moving through the veins without the bright aliveness of the nerves. It was hard to navigate; even the solid mineral presence of the bones was uncertain. Toivo’s pelvis was like a broken gourd. Ukatonen groped his way down past the distorted pelvis to the crookedly healed femurs, and the shattered knees. Past that, there was one cleanly healed break on the left tibia, and a couple of rougher breaks on the other leg. Several broken bones in Toivo’s right foot completed the catalog of damage. Ukatonen made his way back up to where the nerves were functioning, then broke the link, emerging from Toivo’s damaged body with a feeling of profound relief.