“Go read my log notes on Linda,” Ofelia said. The baby had liked Kira; she would not have chosen her, but the baby had. So she might as well learn to like Kira herself. Kira was smarter than Rosara; maybe she could be retrained into a reasonable sort of daughter. “And do not miss your chance when Bilong quits making such a loud noise about Likisi and notices that Ori is still here.”
Kira flushed. “What do you mean? I’m not—”
Ofelia stopped her with a look. “I am an old woman, but I am not stupid, or a fool. You like this Ori—”
“Well, yes, but not like that—”
“He wants to stay. You will stay. You will like him enough to become a mother. You already do; it’s why you hate Bilong.” Wicked, wicked glee, to see that strong-minded woman’s jaw drop as if she’d been hit with a brick. Wicked pleasure bubbling in her veins to see that woman discover that she had been seen, that her mind had been as naked to an old woman’s knowledge of human nature as the old woman’s body had been to her external eye.
Ofelia lay back, watching Kira through the hedge of her eyelashes. “You will call me Sera Ofelia,” she said. “You will help me with these babies, and the next, and you will have a click-kaw-keerrr for your own.”
“But—but—” She did not look so formidable when she sputtered like that, but she did look beautiful with the color of outrage on her cheeks.
“Good night,” Ofelia said, and shut her eyes. After awhile, she felt the mattress shift as Kira stood up, heard the whispers on the far side of the room. The babies squirmed contentedly all along her body, and she went to sleep.
The formal duties of nest-guardianship lay lightly on Ofelia; she spent the early mornings in her garden, with the babies scampering around beneath the great frilled leaves of squash vines grabbing slimerods. Later in the morning, she took them over to the center, where they joined the elders in the schoolroom. Unlike the People’s own nest-guardians, she had help from other elders; they understood that she alone could not keep up with three active babies. When she needed a nap, someone was always there . . . and sometimes that someone was Kira or Ori, who had both elected to stay as her human assistants.
If it was not quite as free a life as her solitary existence, it was in other ways more satisfying. What she had least liked about community life had vanished. No one told her what to do; no one told her she didn’t matter. Even the old voice finally died away, frustrated by her lack of response.
She still got a wicked thrill from speaking into the special communications link that carried her voice (she was told) instantly to the government buildings back on the world she had not thought of as home for decades. Back there, where she had been born, and lived, in the obscurity of a crowded inner city tenement, back where she had been told what she could not learn, the men who made laws listened to her. They could not even tell her to be quiet, because the link was only one way at a time. First she would give her report, and days later a batch transmission would come back for her.
She let Kira and Ori listen to it first. They felt more important, and she felt sheltered a little from the tone of the first transmissions, before they realized they had no possible way to control her. They were past panic then, enjoying each other too much, enjoying the company of the bright, endlessly curious People who came to visit.
Profile,
The human ambassador to the first nonhuman intelligence encountered in Man’s inexorable advance across the stars is a short, gray-haired, barefooted old woman without a single qualification for the position . . . except that the aliens like her. Born Ofelia Damareux, in the working-class neighborhood of South Rock, Porter City, on Esclanz, Sera Ofelia Falfurrias now holds the most prestigious—and some say the most perilous—diplomatic post in the history of mankind. What kind of government would put an amateur—no, not even an amateur, a complete nonentity—in this post?
To answer that question, we interviewed the Director of Colonial Affairs. “In my opinion,” Ser Andreys Valpraiz said, “it was a major blunder. My predecessor, appointed by the previous administration, lacked the decisiveness to intervene in what was, admittedly, a confusing situation in which the designated contact had apparently become mentally unbalanced and died following an attempt to assault one of the native species. I inherited this mess. At least I have ensured the proper replacement for Sera Falfurrias, a professional with the right credentials, with a clear understanding of the needs of both peoples. We’ll have no more of this sentimental ‘nest-guardian’ nonsense when the next ambassador is appointed . . . and of course Sera Falfurrias is quite elderly . . .”
