Jeanne G'Fellers - No Sister of Mine (2 page)

Two imposing shadows appeared just outside the door, hesitating to share an embrace before they entered the small birthing chamber. The smaller of the pair approached the now gray-faced midwife and reached a slender hand toward the baby. “A beautiful child.” Her whisper was thickly accented. “She will be treasured.” With an approving nod to her partner, she pulled the young one into her arms, delighting when a tiny hand grasped her finger and pulled it to a suckling mouth. Eyes reflective with understanding, she spoke something in the Taelach tongue Laiman couldn’t comprehend, drew her cloak around the baby, and departed.

Once the first Taelach was safely away, the second, room-dominating figure pulled back her hood, revealing a strong-featured face. White hair came into view, white hair that was cropped razor short save for the two braids that hung from her right temple. She gazed at Laiman, her blue eyes reflective as well, but almost cold in their intent. “Does the child have a name?”

Laiman froze at the demanding voice, staring at its owner.

“The child? Has she been named?”

The midwife broke Laiman’s silence. “The mother said a girl was to be named LaRenna.”

The Taelach nodded slowly, as if digesting the bit of information. “Then LaRenna it shall be.”

Laiman grabbed the arm of the dark-cloaked figure in desperation. “My wife? What do I—” Fear swelled into such consuming anger he shook. “You can’t take our child!” The steady stare that met his sent a spine-tingling sensation of calm washing over him. He released his handhold then stepped back, astonished by his sudden inexplicable passivity.

“The child is Taelach,” came the sedate explanation from the remaining figure. “She was born with a warrior’s spirit and a seer’s mind. Could you teach her to use her gifts as we can? She belongs with her own kind. It is for her benefit and safety she becomes one of us.” Hood now drawn, the Taelach paused on the birth room threshold, her muscular shoulders leaving room for little else. “Full separation is best. Tell your woman the child is dead.” The rhythmic clicking of her boot heels faded into the early morning mists, replaced, only briefly, by a quickly answered infant’s bawl of hunger. Taelach babies were taught to cry in silence. Laiman, heavy-hearted, turned back to his wife, wishing he could learn the same.

Listen to your Raisers. Through their wisdom and experience you will rise above Autlach prejudices.

—Taelach saying

Malley leaned out the window, eager for a better view of the courtyard below. “They’re posting! It’s about time. Where do you think they’ll send us? How about a look, LaRenna?” Malley turned to see her roommate closed-eyed and round-shouldered over the music recorder in her petite lap. The earpieces blocked all outside noise as she hummed with the music. Malley sighed and snatched a pillow from the sleeping corner. It grazed the side of LaRenna’s face, knocking an earpiece from her curl-covered head. “Hey! You gonna meditate all day or do we get to see our posts?”

“They’re posting? It’s still early, isn’t it?” LaRenna set the recorder on her chair and joined Malley by the window. “Let’s give it a few minutes to clear out.”

“How crowded can it get? There are only eighty of us up for posting this training term.”

“And all but two of us are down there right now.” LaRenna glanced at the courtyard. “Besides, Grandmaster Quall is there. You want one of her once-overs?”

Malley’s nose wrinkled with disdain. “Not particularly. Quall is still after me because I sneaked out of an Autlach customs seminar.”

“You should’ve stayed.” LaRenna’s finger spotted one of the closures of her roommate’s polished tunic buttons. “It was a damn sight more interesting than that Engineering Maintenance trainer you took in its place.”

“That’s what you say.”

LaRenna gave a cherubic grin only she could manage. “With that class on your records the only thing you’ll EVER be doing is scanning cell reading boards. And it’ll probably be on a repair dock.”

“What’s wrong with a repair dock?” Malley’s mouth puckered.

“Too tame.”

“Tame?” The remark earned LaRenna a sour glare.

“Exactly! No thrill. No challenge.”

“I’m sure the Iralians would be more than honored by your presence at the truce line.” Malley peered hard at LaRenna. “What’s it been now, twenty passes? You’d rather post there I suppose?”

A stray flounce of hair fell across LaRenna’s dimpled chin as she shook her head. “Staring down scale backs? Not me. I’ve a sense of adventure. An explorer vessel is more my style.”

“For you, maybe, but not me. Besides, explorer vessels have little call for Kimshees, or”—Malley made a dramatic pause and poked LaRenna’s upper arm—“snipers either.”

“Sniper?”

“Come on, Renna.” Malley chortled. “Everybody knows your perfect kill ratio on your last three plasma bow exams.”

“I didn’t tell you that.”

“Didn’t have to. Everyone in your training squad’s pissed that you ruined the point curve. And seeing as I’m your roommate . . .” Malley shrugged.

“They should have practiced more.”

“Practice my eye! The only thing you’ve ever practiced hard at is a recorder box. Oh yeah, and bitterwine.”

LaRenna crossed her arms. “Not true! I had to work to get a decent score in linguistics and you know it.”

“Decent?” Malley snorted indignantly and pulled a hair from the corner of LaRenna’s pouting mouth. “You scored fluent in ten Aut dialects.”

“So? You have to be good at something. I seem to recall you gliding through engineering courses I barely scored proficiency in. I’ll never get pilot qualified at this rate.”

“It fascinates me. That’s all.”

“And bores me.” LaRenna’s lighter mood seemed to return. “Too many dry numbers and schematics to memorize.”

Malley’s slowly reacting features started to pull with concern. “Guess we like different things, don’t we?”

“Then why have you bunked with me the last three passes? I’ve kept you in trouble.” Malley, with an expression now on the verge of piteous, joined LaRenna and fingered the fringed edge of the blanket roll nearest her. The reason was plain enough, but Malley always proved too reserved to admit it. “I don’t know. Maybe because you never let me take myself too seriously.”

“What’s the use? Life’s no fun if you can’t see the humor in things.” LaRenna winked at her friend, a gesture that sent Malley’s heart soaring. “Sometimes, the humor has to be coaxed out. Call it creativity.”

Malley lowered her head as an embarrassed chuckle escaped her happy mouth. “Like the time you switched activation agents in Master Riles’s lab? I think she failed to see the humor in the test fuel cells foaming and freezing when they were supposed to be charging. I don’t remember you laughing about those seven off days you spent on night sentry post as punishment either. Mighty creative of you, Renna.”

“You laughed enough for both of us,” LaRenna said.

“That’s because it took an entire moon cycle for the green discoloration to wear off your hands and arms. Was body art what you had in mind?”

“Bet I’ll never be posted on a cell maintenance station.” LaRenna punctuated the retort with a smart flick of her tongue. “That’d have to be boring duty. Worse than a stinking repair dock.” She checked the courtyard again.

“Quall still down there?” queried Malley in futile hope.

“Of course.” LaRenna settled her back against the sill. “She even gives the graduates a hard time. Right now she’s doing a number on poor Salu. Isn’t she senior level?”

“Think so. I wonder what she did.” Malley’s voice remained low, as if believing Quall long-eared enough to hear three floors up. “We’d best stay out of sight. Get back from the window.”

LaRenna cast her roommate an all too familiar grin. She loved to push things one step further whenever possible, a fact that had landed her at disciplinary hearings on several occasions. “But Malley,” she cried with a wave to the courtyard’s occupants. “If I lean out a little more I can spit in the center of Quall’s head!”

Malley gasped. “You wouldn’t?”

LaRenna cleared her throat and pursed her lips. “Watch me.”

“Oh no!” Malley’s normal monotone disappeared into a shriek. “You’re not getting me in deep this time!” She grabbed LaRenna’s boot tops, pulling her to the floor. The weapons belt circling LaRenna’s curving waist gave a metallic clank as it bounced on the floor tiles.

“Ouch!” LaRenna rubbed her insulted backside. “Would you give me a warning or a cushion?”

“Let me know before you decide to wash Quall’s hair and you won’t need a cushion for your rump,” grumped Malley, offering a pillow.

“Thanks, Mal. What hair? Quall’s guardian, remember?”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Malley snapped. “Or do you forget what I am?”

“How could I?” A brief, intimate familiarity swept into LaRenna’s tone. “Besides, I knew you were when we first met.”

“At sixteen?” Malley’s hands found their way to her mussed crop of flaxen hair. “I wasn’t even quite sure myself at that age.”

“Everyone decides in their own time. I’d just decided before we met.” LaRenna tousled her roommate’s short, unruly locks as she ran her free hand over her own loosely tacked spirals. “You chose well.”

Malley reveled in the warmth of her touch. How she loved LaRenna’s caresses, infrequent and platonic as they might be. Malley had always been attracted to women like her roommate— their curves, their gentle smell when she bent to kiss them, but with LaRenna her attraction neared obsession. Familiarity and trust led to the mind linking required of Taelach mates, they said. Malley held tight to those words. “Where do you think they’ll send us?”

“Who knows?” said LaRenna softly. “But at least we won’t be alone.”

“Yes, we will.” Malley’s head now rested fully against LaRenna’s shoulder. Should her urges, her emotions be expressed before they were separated? No, the timing just wasn’t right.

“You’re assigned to a Kimshee your first post.”

“That’s only temporary.” Malley’s return sounded almost angry. “Maybe it’s me, but I always feel so uneasy when I’m in a room of Auts.”

“When were you ever in a room of Auts?” Malley’s teeth clenched and released at LaRenna’s biting observation. “Most of them accept us these days. They depend on us as much as we do them.” LaRenna continued stroking Malley’s hair and smiled thoughtfully. Her high-shouldered roommate was demonstrating some of the customary Taelach reservations. Besides, a strong sense of protection was part of a guardian’s nature, and Malley’s had come to include LaRenna. It was all right that it be extended to her. They had been roommates for quite some time. “Like it or not, we are related to them.”

“Yeah, we’re mutant cousins.” Malley slid down to use LaRenna’s thigh as a headrest, affording her the lingering physical contact she longed for.

“That’s not our fault.”

“They treat you differently if you’re Taelach. It’s as if they don’t trust us.” Malley toyed with the holder loops of LaRenna’s loose belt. “You’re losing weight again. Get much smaller and someone will mistake you for a child.”

LaRenna ignored the affectionate concern. Malley knew well enough that she was frequently mistaken for a Taelach youth. “Look at our history. We’re like them but nothing like them. Too hu-man—” she stumbled over the pronunciation—“in appearance. Physically too similar to the witches the Autlach’s Raskhallak deity warns against. Besides, would you trust a people who obtain their young by taking yours? Even if what they take are your castoffs, your misfits, your cursed?”

“Your gay.”

“There’re gay Auts.”

“Not if they’re caught at it.” Malley shuddered a bit. “The way they cleanse . . . it’s so . . .”

“Fire cleansing’s been banned so there’s not as many disfigurements as there used to be. Kimshees are helping in that regard.” LaRenna sat up a bit taller.

“Only ’cause we forced the Auts into it as part of the treaty.”

“Doesn’t matter how it came to be, only that Kimshees are opening Aut eyes. A Kimshee’s purpose, besides bringing infants to their raisers, is to help us adapt to the Aut and them to us. That’s why I chose to become one.”

“Well, I certainly couldn’t do it.”

“Why?” asked LaRenna, though she had no doubt about the answer.

“Too much bad blood.” Malley’s lean face darkened with contempt. Autlach blood might course through Taelach veins, but it certainly didn’t mean they had to be an intricate part of their lives. Malley couldn’t understand why a beautiful, bright woman like LaRenna would want to either. Taelachs who never dealt with Autlachs seemed to live much happier lives. “They used to hunt us. Slave us. Burn us alive. Cleanse us en masse. Worse. Many Auts would still have it that way if it weren’t for our technology. How can you possibly get past that enough to deal with them on a daily basis?”

Malley’s bitterness deeply disturbed LaRenna but it was something she knew she’d never change. Like Autlach prejudices, they were ingrained into the Taelach mentality. “I think about the future. I think about the young ones I will get to hold before their own raisers do. I think of how lucky we are that now we no longer have to abduct mothers carrying Taelach sisters to ensure the baby’s survival. I think of how the Kinship’s numbers are growing because we finally convinced the Autlach to accept us.”