“Your what?”
“My atwa. An atwa is a piece of the world that we are responsible for. It is our job to keep that piece of the world in harmony with everything else. Every Tendu elder has an atwa. My atwa will be to understand humans. I will be the first Tendu ever to practice this atwa. It will be hard, and I have a lot to learn before I’m ready.”
“What about Ukatonen?” Bruce asked. “I thought he was here to learn about humans. Doesn’t he have one of these at-thingies?”
“He is an enkar. His atwa is the Tendu. I will be something different.” Moki shrugged. “But I don’t know what that will be yet. Your daughter will be something new, like me.”
“I don’t want my daughter to be something new,” Bruce told him. “I just want my daughter to be happy.”
“I don’t understand. What does being happy mean?”
“Don’t you know what it means to be happy?”
“I know what it means for me. I know some of what it means for my sitik and for Ukatonen, and even a little for Eerin’s family. But I don’t know what happiness means for you, and I don’t understand how you can know what happiness will mean for your daughter. She isn’t even born yet.”
Bruce opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. “Moki, did anyone ever tell you that you have a knack for asking hard questions?”
“Is that good?” Moki wanted to know.
“It’s not a widely appreciated skill,” Bruce observed. “I want to be left alone. I don’t want to be pushed around. That’s what would make me happy.”
“I don’t understand,” Moki said. “How are you being pushed around?”
“I have no say in what happens to my daughter. That lawyer’s telling me what I can and cannot do about my own flesh and blood.”
“What do you mean by ‘flesh and blood,’ Bruce?”
Bruce looked impatient. “The baby, Moki. She’s my daughter.”
“Why are you talking about her as though she were like your arm? She isn’t part of your body,” Moki pointed out.
“Half of her genetic material came from me. That makes her partly mine.”
“How can you own another person?” Moki asked, his confusion growing.
“Moki, I’m her father, I should have a say in how my daughter is raised.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s right that I should,” Bruce snapped.
Moki’s head was whirling. He was beginning to understand his sitik’s difficulty. This argument was like being sucked into a whirlpool; you went round and round and each circle drew you further down into it. There was simply no way to get Bruce to see another point of view.
“Bruce, can’t you see beyond yourself? This child could make a real difference both to your people and to mine. Please, let your daughter belong to herself. Give her the chance to know the Tendu and decide what she wants to do with her own life.”
“Moki, stop trying to make me give in. She’s my daughter, and I don’t want her raised by aliens, not even you.”
“I’m not trying to make you give in,” Moki said quietly. “I’m trying to find out how to bring us all into harmony. Everyone else involved is in harmony with Eerin’s desire to raise this child with the^help of Ukatonen and myself. You don’t want this because your daughter might grow up to be different from you. Is my understanding incomplete? Is there another explanation?”
Bruce was silent for a long while, scuffing the fallen leaves with his toe. At last he shook his head. “Moki, this is a human thing. You wouldn’t understand, and I can’t explain it.”
Sadness clouded Moki’s skin. He couldn’t get Bruce to see the path to harmony that stretched out at his feet. All he had to do was to turn his gaze outward, and he would see.
“It pains me to be out of harmony with you, my friend,” Moki said, looking up at Bruce. “I have done what I can. The rest is up to you.”
Not knowing what else to do, Moki turned and walked away through the drifting rain of angry leaves. Despite his warmsuit, the chill in the air seemed to have settled in his bones.
Juna drove Bruce to the shuttle station. He settled resentfully into the passenger seat of the truck, waving a grudging goodbye to Juna’s family and to the aliens. They drove through the orchards and the fields of golden stubble in tense silence.
“I wish we could have come to an agreement, Bruce. It bothers me that we* re still so far apart on this,” Juna said as they pulled up to the station entrance.
“She’s my daughter too, Juna,” he said, as he climbed out. He was glad to be leaving. He was tired of this endless wrangling that went nowhere. He stole a longing glance at the door to the station.
“I know, Bruce, and I’ve done everything I can to include you, but you keep shutting us out. If you want to be part of our daughter’s life, you’re going to have to accept the fact that Moki and Ukatonen will be part of her family.”
Brace’s lips tightened in frustration as he pulled his bag out of the back of the truck. “I guess I’ll see you at the hearing, Juna.” There was simply no more to be said. Juna was adamant about having the child, and he was equally adamant that the child should not be raised by aliens. There was no foothold for compromise.
“I’m sorry that you got dragged into this, Bruce,” Juna told him.
“I know,” Bruce said, and picked up his bag and walked away, feeling the weight of dissension slide from his shoulders as he entered the terminal. He glanced back at Juna one last time as the doors swung shut. She was standing by the truck looking after him. He thought of those aliens, with their wet, clingy skin holding a child of his and shuddered. It must not happen.
Juna stood looking after Bruce for a minute, wishing there was something she could say to make things right between them, but it was impossible. Still, she had been among the Tendu so long that the inability to reach harmony was almost a physical ache. She got back into the truck, leaned back, and closed her eyes, wishing somehow to make it all right. Then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and started the engine.
Juna sat down at the comm unit and told it to get her mail. She had neglected her mail since she got home, at first because she was on vacation, and then because she had been too busy. Lately she had caught herself avoiding her comm because of the enormous backlog that she knew would be waiting for her.
The accumulation was even bigger than she had imagined. There were over two thousand messages, far too many for a download of her personal mail, especially given the tightness of her filters. Why was there so much mail? She sorted the messages by subject heading, and found that there were about one hundred and fifty personal messages, and thousands of proposals of marriage.
She scanned the proposals, shaking her head in amazement. Some were only a few sentences long, inviting her to visit them and consider their offer of marriage, but many were elaborate proposals, some with graphics of their house, grounds, and families. She replied to the proposals, with a polite notice that she was not accepting marriage offers via E-mail, and set her filters to auto-reply to any other proposals with the same message.
She was being foolish, she knew. In her condition, she should look through these offers, but this was not how she wished to be courted. If they wanted to marry her, let them come in person to make their offers.
“Oh, little one,” she said, rubbing her belly. “What am I getting you into?”
Perhaps, she thought, I could contact a marriage broker when my leave is up. They could filter out the people I wouldn’t be interested in. She sat down on the bed, tears filling her eyes. She didn’t want to do that either. She knuckled the tears out of her eyes, and pulled on a shirt. It gapped open over her breasts. She sighed and pulled it off and put on a larger shirt. She needed to get some new clothes. Now that she was pregnant, nothing fit right anymore.