"Having babies?" Johanna's hands were sticky with the blood on the quilt. Obviously this had been hard, but that's how all lives must start on a world like this. It was pain that needed the support of friends, pain that led to joy.
"No. Having the babies isn't it. I've borne more than a hundred in my memory's time. But these two… are the ending of me. How can you understand? You humans don't even have the choice to keep on living; your offspring can never be you. But for me, it's the end of a soul six hundred years old. You see, I'm going to keep these two to be part of me… and for the first time in all the centuries, I am not both the mother and the father. A newby I'll become."
Johanna looked at the blind one and the drooler. Six hundred years of incest. How much longer could Woodcarver have continued before the mind itself decayed? Not both the mother and the father. "But then who is father?" she blurted out.
"Who do you think?" The voice came from just beyond the door. One of Peregrine Wickwrackscar's heads peered around the corner just far enough to show an eye. "When Woodcarver makes a decision, she goes for extremes. She's been the most tightly held soul of all time. But now she has blood — genes, Dataset would say — from packs all over the world, from one of the flakiest pilgrims who ever cast his soul upon the wind."
"Also from one of the smartest," said Woodcarver, her voice wry and wistful at the same time. "The new soul will be at least as intelligent as before, and probably a lot more flexible."
"And I'm a little bit pregnant, myself," said Pilgrim. "But I'm not the least bit sad. I've been a foursome for too long. Imagine, having pups by Woodcarver herself! Maybe I'll turn all conservative and settle down."
"Hah! Even two from me is not enough to slow your pilgrim soul."
Johanna listened to the banter. The ideas were so alien, and yet the overtones of affection and humor were somehow very familiar. Somewhere… then she had it: When Johanna was just five years old, and Mom and Dad brought little Jefri home. Johanna couldn't remember the words, or even the sense of what they'd said — but the tone was the same as what went between Woodcarver and Pilgrim.
Johanna slid back to a sitting position, the tension of the day evaporating. Scrupilo's artillery really worked; there was a chance of getting the ship. And even if they failed… she felt a little bit like she was back home.
"C-can I pet your puppy?"
The voyage of the Out of Band II had begun in catastrophe, where life and death were a difference of hours or minutes. In the first weeks there had been terror and loneliness and the resurrection of Pham. The OOB had fallen quickly toward the galactic plane, away from Relay. Day by day the whorl of stars tilted up to meet them, till it was the single band of light, the Milky Way as seen from the perspective of Nyjora and Old Earth — and from most all the habitable planets of the Galaxy.
Twenty thousand light-years in three weeks. But that had been on a path through the Middle Beyond. Now in the galactic plane, they were still six thousand light-years from their goal at the Bottom of the Beyond. The Zone interfaces roughly followed surfaces of constant mean density; on a galactic scale, the Bottom was a vaguely lens-shaped surface, surrounding much of the galactic disk. The OOB was moving in the plane of the disk now, more or less toward the galactic center. Every week took them deeper toward the Slowness. Worse, their path, and all variants that made any progress, extended right through a region of massive Zone shifting. The Net News had called it the Great Zone Storm, though of course there was not the slightest physical feeling of turbulence within the volume. But some days their progress was less that eighty percent what they'd expected.
Early on they'd known that it was not only the storm that was slowing them. Blueshell had gone outside, looking over the damage that still remained from their escape.
"So it's the ship itself?" Ravna had glared out from the bridge, watching the now imperceptible crawl of near stars across the heavens. The confirmation was no revelation. But what to do?
Blueshell trundled back and forth across the ceiling. Every time he reached the far wall, he'd query ship's management about the pressure seal on the nose lock. Ravna glared at him, "Hey, that was the n'th time you've checked status in the last three minutes. If you really think something is wrong, then fix it."
The Skroderider's wheeled progress came to an abrupt halt. Fronds waved uncertainly. "But I was just outside. I want to be sure I shut the port correctly… Oh, you mean I've already checked it?"
Ravna looked up at him, and tried to get the sting out of her voice. Blueshell wasn't the proper target for her frustration. "Yup. At least five times."
