The woman had more weathered skin than she’d expected, as if she’d spent much of her life outside. She had a thick mop of caramel-colored hair, cut short but shaped with care. Her gray-green eyes were trying to look earnest and friendly, but Ofelia distrusted them. Something about the woman exuded authority, not the natural authority of experience, but the authority of position. And she was out of breath, probably from wearing that heavy protective suit and trying to run in it. Ofelia took a deep breath and smiled at her. The woman started to speak, but Ofelia interrupted her. She had to understand that Ofelia had a message more important than hers. “It’s a bad time,” she said firmly. She let the other woman’s eyes rove over her, inspecting her hair, her face, her body, her strange clothes. Would she believe Ofelia made sense, if obscure sense, or would she dismiss her out of hand because of her age, her strange appearance? The conversation teetered back and forth, never quite finding a balance where both women could be comfortable and exchange the information Ofelia was sure the other both wanted and had to impart. Ofelia learned, as she expected, that they knew about the creatures being here. The woman was shocked that she had cooperated with them — but what did she expect? That Ofelia would have killed them all off by herself? That by herself she could have kept them from learning? The other humans had a lot to learn about the creatures.
She saw the moment when the other woman’s attitude shifted, when she decided that Ofelia was negligible, probably crazy. She kept trying to get Ofelia to take her home, to let them have a cozy chat. Ofelia was not about to go into any enclosed space with this young, strong woman in her protective suit. Finally she had to be rude to get the woman to go away. She saw in the woman’s expression that she recognized the rudeness, that it hurt.
Fine. Let it hurt. Maybe she would be more careful next time. And maybe — just maybe — she would convince the others to stay away until tomorrow. By then, if Ofelia guessed right, Gurgle-click-cough would have had her young, and perhaps in the night — if they were very lucky — they could get the mother and child away to safety.
Ofelia went to her own garden first, in case the woman followed or watched where she went. She was not going to lead them to the nest-house. She poked among the rows for a few minutes, not really seeing the plants. When she looked back, from the corner of her garden, she could not see anything of the shuttle but its tall tail sticking up beyond the roofs. The lane behind her was empty; the woman was out of sight, presumably on her way back to the shuttle.
She went in through the kitchen door, and felt the emptiness of her belly as hunger. She had cold flatbread from the night before; she rolled it up and stuffed it in her mouth so fast she almost choked. That would be silly, to choke herself at a time like this. She spit out half the mouthful, chewed and swallowed the rest carefully. Then she ate it all, slowly, trying to concentrate on the flavor and not what had happened.
They had not looked the way she expected, those people. She had become used to the creatures, to the narrow big-eyed faces, the long graceful legs with the bouncy gait, the long four-fingered hands with the hard black talons. These people looked pale, soft, squashy as dough, with little eyes sunk like raisins in their broad faces, with soft hands sprouting too many soft-tipped fingers like tentacles. She avoided the mirror; she did not want to remind herself how like them she looked. When she had eaten, she went back out her kitchen door and looked around the corner of the next house down the lane. Nothing. That didn’t mean none of them had sneaked into the village, to hide between houses. But curiosity tickled her; she had to know how the delivery was going. In the low sunlight of early morning, she walked across the lane and down to the house they had chosen.
