Her Last Chance 6

SIX

She awoke at planetrise. She didn’t know when her rhythms had begun to synch with that of the ice giant this station orbited. Perhaps that was the way of space travelers. At first Granny was surprised to find herself curled around a small warm body. Then she remembered Dr. Jensen coming to her with her nightmare, and then the child came.

She scooted out of bed with the ease of a lifetime of practice. Dr. Jensen nestled close to little Gita as she tucked the blankets around them. She smiled. They needed this bonding experience,

She dressed lightly and proceeded to the Portal. The Visitor was still guarded, but she allowed her to speak some words of comfort tonight before she moved on. The market had her provisions ready for pickup. They could have been delivered to her quarters, but she needed to get out this one night. Part of this was selfish, something to make believe she was making an extra effort for her guests. And honestly, she didn’t mind escaping the walls of her quarters.

She carried two bags in her arms while an automated cart dogged her ankles, loaded with five more parcels, which was when she bumped into a diminutive Japanese teen—indeed, an old acquaintance. “Hoichi?” she exclaimed.

His puzzled gaze evaporated at once, superseded by an ear-to-ear grin. “Granny!” he cried, ducking under her chin to sweep her into a hug. They rocked happily together for several seconds. “I never expected to see you here!”

“Likewise,” she smiled. “How did you–?”

“Fong is practicing in this District! I’m clerking for her.”

“I’m glad you’re still together. Practicing, you say? It’s only been six weeks. What has she been practicing?”

Hoichi staggered back, with a stare akin to panic. ‘Six—it’s only been six weeks for—” Before she could inquire further, or even shift one bag in her arms, he was already backpedaling toward the main corridor. “I-I-I have to get back, Fong’s expecting me to—I’ll tell her you called—oh dear!” and he darted into the bowels of the station before she could say another syllable.

These middle of the night spells were not unusual for Lianna. It was a useful instinct she retained from those months alone on the Lost Ship. At first she was only aware of Granny’s absence, of the pillows piled around her head and shoulders. Then her attention was riveted by the small body nestled around her. She gazed down on the sleepy body pressed to her shoulder, and somehow nothing else mattered in the universe. She could easily spend a lifetime watching her nostrils softly exhaling on her skin, the circle of coils cinching tight around her waist, an uncomfortable reminder of what an extraordinary child she was.

Gita’s long lashes batted, and her deep green eyes glowed in the darkness. By that light she signed, “are we going to be okay?”

Lianna nodded. “Yeah, baby.” What would Fayd say? “This will pass. Don’t worry, I’ll make this right for you.”

Sign: “Promise?”

Sign: “Yes. I’ve got to go. I want to see what Granny’s up to. I’m gonna set you down on the bed, okay?”

Gita nodded. Reluctantly her coils eased off of Lianna’s middle, curling up beneath the blankets as Lianna set her among Granny’s pillows. She tucked her securely into the blankets, then blew her a goodnight kiss before padding into the living area.

Granny hadn’t noticed her approach. Her attention seemed fixed on the mirror hanging beside the spare bedroom door, her body shuffling back and forth while muttering, “People are crazy and times are strange…” Yet her reflection was not that of the brown skinned woman before her, but that of a blue skinned giant with red eyes and many arms—

Lianna blinked, but the illusion remained. Granny seemed oblivious to it, to everything until Lianna tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled with a yelp, snatching the headset off her head. Lianna leaned sideways, gazing past her. The back of Granny’s head and shoulders showed in the glass, and nothing else. “Whatcha doing?” Lianna asked.

“Dancing,” Granny squeaked. In a normal voice she continued, “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

“No, I just…” Lianna peered at the mirror again, but only their images remained. “Do you always go off in the middle of the night to…dance?”

Granny shrugged. “Why not? You know how it is. Sometimes you just need to.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Surely you’ve just wanted to, haven’t you, just to relax?”

“I…I don’t dance.”

Granny’s mouth turned upside down. “You’ve never danced?”

“Not exactly. I never had the time.”

Now the frown tightened into a full-blown scowl. “Who had done this to you? I want their names!”

In spite of herself, Lianna started to giggle. “Huh. You’re the second person to ask me that.”

“Who was the first?”

Lianna stopped gigging, suddenly looking away. “Yeah, well…she was a goddess. She might have even been my mother.”

Granny’s features softened, her cheeks softening with a smile. “It’s not that hard. Let me show you. Stand over here with me, I’ll keep it simple,”

Lianna shuffled to her side, staring at the floor until Granny’s hand tipped her chin up. “Start with planting your right foot firmly, then extend your left leg in front of you—”

“Like this?”

“Yes and now reverse—jump as you switch feet. And reverse—jump and switch your feet in one fluid motion. Follow me.”

Lianna extended her left leg, stiffly, bouncing on her right leg, before switching legs, and nearly toppling over. “I’m sorry, I-I—”

“Don’t worry, you just need a little rhythm. Perhaps this’ll help.” She slid the headgear gingerly around Lianna’s ears, adjusting them to her head. “Hear that?”

At first it was only the drumbeat. Then the guitar kicked in, a steady thrum that sent a twitch to her legs. “Is this…?”

“Music, baby, like we haven’t heard in decades. Oh, we’ve so much to teach you.. come on, jump as you switch—baby, you’ve got feet of lead.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve never had to…”

“Don’t apologize. Practice. Let your movements be light, like…like moonwalking in half normal gravity.”

“Like a spacewalk?” She could do that. At first the back-and-forth shuffle on one leg seemed awkward. The more she did it with Granny whispering encouragement beside her, the easier it came to her. Her feet followed the steady beat and the guitar leading her on. “Sorry, I’m not very good at this,” Lianna said.

“You’re doing fine.” She might have done better if not for the battering at the door.

Lianna’s heart seemed to triple-beat. Granny raised her hand for silence. They both waited and then came another tattoo. Without a word Granny shooed Lianna back towards the bedroom, where Gita stood, rubbing her eyes. Turning to the door, she paused to fluff her boobs before touching the entry code.

The door whooshed aside, startling the dozen FAITH members standing on her threshold, with both Pastor Ludden and Reverend Bienbouw facing her. She greeted them with a smile, leaning on the door frame as her visitors shuffled nervously. “One, two…twelve of you? How disciple of you. Well, there’s not much to go around but I’m happy to share.”

“We’re not here for that, slut!” a boy in the rear—Nick, was it? —called.

Granny’s hand was open behind her back. While Lianna watched, her kettle floated across the apartment, with the handle rotating into her hand. She brought the kettle around to present to her guests. “I meant tea. What did YOU think I was offering?”

“He thought nothing,” Bienbouw interjected. “Absolutely nothing,” he reiterated to his fuming son. “We understand that you’re harboring Dr. Jensen.”

‘Someone had to,” she shrugged. “It seems some hairlips made it impossible for her to return to her ship.”

“Yes, that was a misunderstanding—”

‘It was a mob thirsty for blood. She was lucky to get here alive, not to mention what those maniacs would’ve done to her child.” She pushed off the door, fixing the crowd with a glare. “Exactly what did you intend for the child?”

“Ma’am, I don’t understand your accusation,” Ludden said. “We meant the wee one no harm. We are patrons of the Lord Christ.”

“That’s hardly reassuring. My experience has been that people are ready and willing to inflict all manner of harm on children if they’re not perceived as ‘one of us’. I’m surprised how easy it’s been to justify child butchery in the name of someone’s god.”

“Pa, we don’t have to listen to this—”

“Quiet, boy,” Bienbouw growled. But his frown was distracted. “I know you,” he said.

“I doubt that,” Granny said, “unless you been haunting old reels.”

Nick pushed through the gathering, his face a mask of hate as he stood behind his father. “We know she’s in there, Pa! I say we—”

Lianna clutched Gita to her hip. For her part Granny sighed, raised her right hand, and snapped her fingers. The sound actually seemed muted, but the effect was immediate. All of the congregants’ knees buckled, and then half of them, including Nick, flopped to the deck.

Granny smirked at the two reverends’ panic-stricken stares. “Huh. Someone hadn’t gotten enough sleep. You may want to carry these young fellows back to their bunks.”

Reverend Bienbouw barely seemed conscious of what had just transpired. His eyes were still glued on Granny. “I’ve seen you,” he insisted before bending over his son. It was only after the door slammed on her uninvited guests that Granny allowed herself to sag over her knees, “Hey, are you okay?” Lianna asked.

Granny nodded, though her back was coated in perspiration. “It’s too early for me to be dealing with these idiots. Wake me in a few hours, would you?”

As it happened, Gita ambled out of the bedroom as Granny was stumbling in. Her pet bat Gordon poked its head around her shoulder as Gita read from the book she carried. The cover was a deep maroon with a faux leather texture. “Whatcha got, sweetie?”

At first Gita extended the book in her small hands, but when Lianna only shrugged her incomprehension, she tucked the book under her arm. Then she signed some very curious questions. “What do you mean, discrepancies?”

Gita answered by bouncing onto the lounge, patting the cushion beside her. Once Lianna settled beside her, she took the book. Gita leaned over flipping through the early pages, then turned it over to the back. Lianna skipped back to the beginning, scanning each page. She read quickly, even with Gita’s serpentine trunk weighing down on her lap. She recalled everything, as she’d told Granny, and her reading comprehension had always been excellent. But damn, that child was sharp. How did this make sense?

Gita cozied into the arms of the lounge under a blanket, Gordon nestling beneath her hair and over her neck. As her trunk lay across Lianna’s legs, she asked, “Why are humans so cruel to their children?”

Lianna huffed. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, we’re not like that anymore. Centuries ago when we were more primitive it was easy to dismiss other people, other races as savages, or something less than human. One thing they taught me at the Observatory, people are the same everywhere, whatever they believe. They all want their children to grow up happy, they all want to support their families without whatever state they’re in meddling in their lives.”

(Sign) “They haven’t left you alone, though.”

“No, I guess not.”

(Sign) “I was scared they were gonna hurt you.”

She leaned in and rubbed Gita’s nose with her own. “I’ll try not to get hurt in the future, okay? Now let’s see what this book has to tell us.”

“Where did you get that?”

Lianna flinched. She hadn’t heard Granny coming out of the bedroom until she was looming over her. “What time is it?” she stammered.

“Late morning,” Granny frowned down on her. “Where?”

“Gita brought it to me, with questions,” Lianna replied, passing the book back to her host. “It’s a very detailed chronicle of misery.”

“It took a lifetime to gather,” Granny nodded, hugging it to her chest. She sighed, cocking her head. “What troubles you about it?”

“Some curious discrepancies.” Lianna pushed off the cushion, lifting Gita before settling her comfortably back on the lounge. “She’s gonna be long when she grows up…I had journals like that in school. We used them exclusively at the observatory. They register direct entries or allow for written posts. Either way the journal makes an automatic entry for the date and time a given post is entered. Each date, each hour is accurately recorded.”

Granny nodded, waiting. “A lot of these entries have contemporaneous dates, spread over the most recent decades. Then it stops, for a period of five years. Now, when it resumes, for the bulk of these entries, the dates…”

“Go on.”

Lianna snatched the book back, flipping through to the middle and rapidly on through the pages. ”The journal has been registering posts that are hundreds of years out of date. Deaths recorded as they happened, five hundred years ago, before you were even born. The book is not defective. I know that.”

Gently Granny peeled the book from Lianna’s suddenly sweaty hands. “No, it’s not defective. And the stories are all true. I was there when each of them died.”

“How? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t suppose you would. I told you, I’ve been travelling.”

“Yeah, but no one’s seen you in 20 years—”

“TIME travelling.”

Lianna stepped back, staring at the volume she cradled in her hands. The dates— “No, that’s not right. Nobody on Earth is going to experiment with temporal physics, not after Moscow.”

“But you’ve lived extraordinary times. You’ve crossed the event horizon of—”

Lianna threw her hands up. “I was lured there! I-it was stupid! I wanted to make damn sure that planet was destroyed! Everybody died on the Naga Sentry, never having got to see it. I didn’t think—I didn’t think they were real.”

Granny pushed the tip of Gita’s tail to the back of the lounge, patting the cushion beside her   as she sat. “Speak to me, child.”

She joined her, nerves all atingle. “It was all in my parents’ journals, all the speculation connecting Hindu cosmology to physics. They thought there might be more literal truth to it than standard cosmologists attributed to it. That was why they booked passage on the Lost Ship. It was supposed to be the beginning of a lifetime of exploration.

“My dad was there, on a spiritual plane inside the event horizon, at least his spirit, and so was my mom, kind of. I-I forgave him. I think that was part of why I was there. It wasn’t his fault, all the adults went insane. Mom sent him on his way…to atone. His atman may go through many cycles of samsara before the cycle is broken…look, what you’re asking me to believe is fantastical, even compared to what I’ve experienced. I can’t accept that without some solid evidence in support of your claim.”

“Nor would I expect you to. Twenty years ago, I was approached to join a mission of mercy. Kate was there, as were others I’ve come to call friend. They’re all gifted  people, working anonymously. I never expected it to go on for so long, but…” Granny shrugged.

“But your family seemed so important in your life. How could you give them up–?”

“They didn’t need me anymore. My sons were all grown up, with children of their own. My husband was dead. I needed a change. Now,” she smiled, laying the book on an end table. “How about breakfast?”

She and Gita joined her as she drained a bowl of chickpeas she’d been soaking overnight. This she added to a processor, along with the leaves of parsley and cilantro Gita passed to her as she requested. To this she piled in an onion, shallot, chili powder, garlic, cumin and coriander, oil, plus a dash of baking powder. Once that was sufficiently ground, they shaped the batter into balls. Lianna and Gita retreated to the living area while Granny fried them in small batches. Before long she padded to them with a serving of crispy golden brown falafel balls over fresh salad. The interior was as savory as she remembered.

“This is perfect,” Lianna said around a mouthful of falafel. “How did you know?”

Granny set her drink aside. “An old Palestinian mother taught me her family’s recipe. It’d been handed down for generations since the Nakba, and lost when she died.”

Lianna’s drink fumbled in her hand, but she kept it from spilling to the floor. Granny continued. “That’s what I do. No one explained what my power was good for, or even what it was, when I was Gita’s age. I was told to hide it and pretend I was like everyone else, even when I felt like a freak. I didn’t understand how I could be useful until my first trip to Palestine.

“The first spirit I came into contact with was a fifteen-year-old American girl named Sydney. She opened a window onto a nation long past, from a time when her proud land was fracturing into separate confederacies. I told you I was a spiritualist. I’m able to observe the living energy of things, alive or not.

“It’d been in the third year of my marriage that a sister spiritualist, a Spaniard named Yolande invited me on a pilgrimage. We saw no harm in it, so we traveled with her to Palestine. Yolande was gifted as I was, and she explained we were going to bring peace to the souls of the martyrs.

“Gods, if only it’d been so simple. Stepping off the boat at Jaffa, and the sight of so many lost souls, so many mothers and children…it was a fist between the eyes. Most of them didn’t realize they were—and the stories–!

“I could only stay a few days. Then I had to flee. There were so many needing me, pawing at my skirts, crying for their fathers, could I feed them and their brothers—well, I went back a year later. I was too ashamed not to. Yolande understood. It had been hard the first time she undertook the pilgrimage. I managed ten days the second time, and I remembered their stories about harvesting olives, and the occupation. We went back, sometimes twice a year. They needed us to hear their stories and share them in their own words so that they were never forgotten.”

Lianna reached across the end table to clutch Granny’s hand. “You must have heard hundreds of stories.”

“Thousands. I’ve given peace to so many, posted their stories to the Palestinian Remembrance Log in Beirut. But there are so many more. Two, three of us are not enough to do it all in a single lifetime.”

“I grew up on those stories,” Lianna said. “Late nights when I was hiding in the calibration chamber, Fayd would tell me stories about his family, their survival in the Diaspora. He saved the best stories for tucking me in at bedtime.

“Everybody at the Observatory was always talking about family. I swear, Fayd’s eyes glowed when he spoke of their get togethers, their feasts and celebrations. The Professor, even Lady Smirnoff, that jealous old bag, they all had relations. Every time someone visited the station, they would always ask, where is your family?

“The Professor kept all my parents’ things in a storage bin at the far end of the Observatory, and at a very young age, I’d sneak off while the Professor was sleeping, and I’d read through their journals. It was one way to remember them. Well, the first couple of times he chased me back to bed and scolded me, I needed my sleep to be a smart young lady, blah blah.

“After a while I guess he realized how important this was to me. Because pretty soon he brought me blankets and sat with me as I read them out loud. Some of their ideas were far out. You know the rest. The Naga Sentry was blown off course by a storm of gamma ray bursts into a sector where the multiverses converge. Or maybe different dimensions. No one’s dared to investigate further.

“The quantum energies from different dimensions warped the adults’ minds. Everyone went insane…even my parents. The grown-ups all killed themselves. I spent the next seven months hiding from the culling gangs, rolling the bodies of the adults into freezer compartments. I-I thought they deserved that much. It’s funny, I’ve never told anybody that, not even the Professor.”

Granny clapped her hands, making both Lianna and Gita jump. “I’d like to get out for a while. How about you?”

“That’d be nice,” Lianna squawked, “except what about those loons haunting my ship?”

“I’ll arrange something. Get dressed.”

That was easy for her. Her skinsuit slipped on like butter, and Gita helped smooth it over her limbs. She wished she had access to the outfits she’d ordered for Gita that first night. All she had to wear was the sari that she arrived in three days ago. Granny offered her a small dress from her drawer, possibly a keepsake left over from one of her children. It was a beautiful maroon color, with a lion, a meerkat and a wild pig singing in unison, and below them a strange tag, ‘hakuna mata!’

Granny shimmied into transparent thermals that actually seemed to accentuate the glow of her ebony skin. Over this she wore a plain white dress, along with a shawl adorned with a smattering of prints featuring a pride of lions.

She was still nervous. She’d accessed the tracking mode for the clothes she’d ordered for Gita. A visual delivery record was displayed via a holographic bubble, for her customer satisfaction she supposed. Except Henri’s delivery ‘bot was bracketed by four security ‘bots from the station’s main contingent. Oddly, the crowds clotting the landing bay around her ship seemed denser. They opened a narrow corridor for the ‘bots to slip through. Henri’s DB knocked on the ship’s hatch. Ernie appeared in the entryway to accept the parcel. The hatch slammed shut and all the ‘bots made the return journey under the watchful gaze of the mob turning to dog their steps, if only with their eyes. Then the report ended.

Gita scowled at the Slosh Pit when she saw that Fries or Frieza had been shuttered. All the lights were off and the bulkheads sealed. Other restaurants were also closed to business. Evidently FAITH had driven the proprieters back to their home worlds. A deathly quiet had settled over the station’s corridors. The small bands of humans standing in every doorway had little to say to the three of them as they padded the central corridor.

Everywhere they went, there seemed to be small clusters of humans. Only humans. “I thought Cassie had deported these—” Granny shot her a look, and Lianna tightened her jaw against her first response. “Troublemakers,” she modified.

“They had an excellent solicitor,” Granny whispered. “He argued that the Commander hadn’t the authority to remove people en masse. Each individual would have to be provided legal counsel to advocate for their due process rights, as well as substantiate any allegations of religious bias—”

“Bias? The entire station is run by ‘bots!”

“I know. Listen, baby. I’m afraid the deportation order was so broad, their solicitor Mr. Hobson was able to pick it apart. Here we are.”

“Here we are what?” They’d stopped in a shadowy alcove facing a viewscreen displaying a wide-angle vista of Uranus’ spinning cloud-tops. At the moment the polar regions were illuminated by a burst of auroral cascades. Granny’s answer was to drop to her knees, pressing her hand to the floor while keeping her eyelids shut. “Enhance magnification,” she called, “factor of nine.”

A panopoly of moons juggled around the ice giant, with Miranda surging into the spotlight. After Granny’s request was processed, the view obediently zoomed in, penetrating thousands of kilometers into the cloud cover, past a layer where diamond-hard methane dropped like hail toward the slushy layer that was the mantle. Granny clasped Lianna’s small hand in her much larger one. And then she saw.

At first it appeared as a random plasmoid, a cumulous rising from the ammonia-and-methane gush from below. Then it spread its wings like a manta ray, and floated through the dense fluid layer. Beings of living energy with a translucent membrane of diamond, skimming through the planet’s interior while feasting on the energy generated by the superionic layers that composed Uranus’ mantle.

“Baby, come here,” Lianna whispered. She too had fallen to her knees, her right hand open to receive Gita’s. When the child touched her, she uttered the first word she’d ever heard her say: “Wow.”

White hot sparks traversed its every nerve fibre, made visible by the electrical impulses traveling along its transparent wingspan. “I don’t know if they’re indigenous to Uranus,” Granny said, “or some invasive species from outside our solar system who found this planet hospitable. Wouldn’t that tickle our religious friends’ funny bones to ponder that?”

“Who’ve you told about this?” Lianna asked, eyes fixed on the image.

“No one.”

Lianna swerved to stare at Granny’s profile. “I don’t understand. Something this monumental, on a body supposedly devoid of—”

A heavy sigh exhaled from her with what Lianna sensed was exaggerated patience. “I don’t trust people. We virtually rendered our mother planet uninhabitable for our own children. Luna originated as a labour camp before declaring its independence. Mars is nothing but a glittering tax shelter for trillionaires and their scion. I love people…I love children. But our leaders have a penchant towards exploitation. Why would I inflict that on another species?…Forgive me, it’s too much. Let’s go back.”

No one harassed them on their return to room 1263. The little clusters of Anglo-Saxon FAITH members, for that seemed to be all who were left on the station, ignored them as they passed. Some even turned their backs to them. The lift hummed quietly, like a sleeping quadruped, depositing them on the upper level with the gentlest of bumps. The corridor was ghostly silent as they strolled to Granny’s suite. The keypad accepted her entry code, and they piled into the living area without a word between them.

Granny was halfway across the apartment, headed for the bedroom before Lianna dared broach the subject foremost in her mind. “What was your mother like?”

Time seemed to freeze around her. Her shawl was halfway down her back, shoulders tense beneath her dress. The temperature actually seemed to dip in the room. But then her shoulders relaxed. The shawl slipped into her arms, tossed lightly over a seat. “She was a very spirited woman. She cared very deeply for me. Why are you asking?”

“I-I’m worried. My mum died when I was very little. I didn’t have a chance to learn anything about mothering before I lost her. I don’t want to—what if I screw this up?” She turned a tear-filled gaze toward Gita.

Granny laughed then, a soft gentle chuckle that welcomed rather than ridiculed her. “This is so familiar. You’re experiencing First Mother Jitters!” She crossed to her, pulling Lianna into a hug. “There’s no field guide to parenting, baby. Every parent has had to learn the ropes. You’re going to have to make some adjustments. You can’t take the same foolhardy risks you have as before. You must teach her discipline while giving her wings. You must set the rules and then kiss their booboos when they stumble. Have faith in yourself, baby, you can do this.”

“But my life is not over, is that what you’re saying?’

“It’ll never be the same, but no, your life is not—” But then a polite rap on the door stiffened both their spines.

This time at least the rapping was muted, even apologetic. Granny almost floated to the entry humming, “who can it be now…?”, in a singsong voice. Outside the door stood a crimson, boxey android on treads that hardly appeared suited for its frame. Without a word it pushed a sheet-covered handcart inside, whose contents bubbled volcanically. “Ernie!” Lianna screeched, catapulting across the floor into his spindly metallic arms. Gita leaped onto his chassis, delivering her hugs there.

“I presume you missed me,” Ernie pronounced. Lianna nodded, nuzzling her oldest friend, ignoring the stare she sensed poring onto her back. After a moment she stepped back. “Granny, this is Ernie. He took care of me on the Lost Ship. How’d you get past those religious freaks?” she asked.

“Protocol 47,” Ernie replied. “I’m allowed to prevaricate in extraordinary circumstances. In this instance I assured the individuals clustered around the ship that this cart carried radioactive isotopes emitting 90,000 rads that required disposal in the station’s disposal chute. They provided ample space for our passage. Once outside of earshot, I explained to station security my true intent. They were receptive to my entreaties.”

–You lied, Gita signed.

“As you wish. Now, if I may.” Like a true magician Ernie rolled back from the cart, swishing the sheet over the top of it. This unveiled two circular tubs, 30 liters each. Granny yelped as crimson and aquamarine tongues like pythons stretched over the rim of each tub. Each tongue planted themselves on the floor, where they pooled into two-meter pylons which took on humanoid form, arms snaking from both sides.

The lower portions of each column separated into shapely legs, the middle narrowing into approximate waists. The upper portions became rounded, sprouting humanoid ‘hair’ and features much like Lianna’s. Before long there they were, proud aquamarine Amba and bashful crimson Stavros. “Wait, where’s Little Stavros?” Lianna asked.

“In here.” Ernie flicked two stubs on his upper carriage. Swinging open his chest plate, he revealed the inner cavity, small enough for a child to curl up inside of. And indeed a child sized ameboid waved at them, sharing Stavros’ crimson membrane. “I recalled that you could hide there in your younger days. It appeared the safest option for her.”

Little Stavros flowed from Ernie’s interior, reconstituting herself inside Lianna’s arms. She joined Gita and Stavros, and even Ernie in a group hug. Granny sensed the joy emanating from them all and smiled, But Lianna frowned as Amba stood back, her expression almost blank.

“You’re not going to lose her.”

Lianna and Amba both spun at Granny’s words. She reached out a hand, gripping Amba’s ameboid mitt as she would any other humans’. “Come, sit with me. We have much to talk about.” She smiled at Lianna. “Why don’t you catch up? We’ll be all right.” Amba appeared bewildered as Granny guided her toward the lounge, where they sat.

She wondered if she should say something. She had a connection to Amba she didn’t quite understand herself, a bond that operated on an empathic level. Amba was herself part of a gestalt mind, separate but linked to the host body she’d willingly peeled herself away from, so many years ago. Telepathy, empathy were just words that didn’t begin to describe the depths to which she’d penetrated Lianna’s consciousness.  

But Granny was conversing with her, counseling her as she would any other being. As if with a word she could open up her ameboid heart and soothe her troubled thoughts. Amba pressed her right palm to Granny’s forehead, and from that moment they seemed to be communing on some higher level. “Would you look at that?” Lianna muttered.

“Miss Hadebe has a reputation as a valuable counselor,” Ernie said. “Of more immediate concern is the promise of FAITH.”

“I didn’t know you had the inclination,” Lianna teased, tapping Ernie’s casing with her knuckles.

“An unfortunate turn of phrase.” Taking her upper arm, he steered her toward the kitchenette. “What I meant to say was I have overheard them conversing outside the ship. I listened in, for security’s sake of course.”

“Yeah,” Lianna nodded. “Summerize?”

“That’s more like it. Certain members are imminently satisfied at having driven off the filth and riffraff, so to speak, to wit every migrant to our solar system. ‘Only Dr Jensen and her alien brood mares are left’, they said, ‘and they’re next.’…”

TBC