Damia Page 14

  “Play with me! Look at me! Talk to me!” she was screaming. As soon as she exhausted the objects on the shelf beside her, she moved to the box of connectable shapes. Fortunately her aim was skewed or—and Afra couldn’t quite believe this—Jeran and Cera were deflecting the projectiles, for most items dropped well short of the targets who blithely ignored her.

  Instantly Afra ’ported the box out of reach and, when she squealed in outrage, cleared the next likely ammunition out of range.

  No, Damia, he said in as disapproving a tone as he had ever used with her. That is not allowed.

  “They won’t talk to me!” Damia cried, sobbing with frustration. “S’not fair! They never talk to me! They never play with me.” Then she ran to the pile of things that had fallen short of their mark and would have pelted Jeran and Cera with them if Afra had not made a clean sweep. “And that’s not fair, Afra. That’s not fair at all!”

  Tanya! Afra called. Grab that little minx and make her take a nap! Damia, you will go with Tanya this instant and stop making such a display of bad manners. Such a temper for someone who will run a Tower! He was slightly appalled to hear one of his mother’s favorite admonitions emerge from his lips.

  To his amazement, Damia gulped back the next of her indignant sobs and submitted to Tanya’s ministrations. She was asleep before Tanya got through the first verse. Jeran and Cera continued their game as if nothing had happened.

  * * *

  “I think, Rowan, that you had better speak to Jeran and Cera,” Afra told her when Jupiter occluded Callisto and everyone could take a break.

  “Why? What have they done?”

  So Afra explained the scene in the daycare room. “It’s my opinion that they do that deliberately, knowing it will upset her. She does indeed feel left out.”

  The Rowan considered this, slightly defensively. “They have this bonding. And Damia is much younger . . .”

  “That doesn’t give them the right to exclude her, especially when they do it deliberately.”

  “She shouldn’t lose her temper that way.” The Rowan set her mouth firmly. “She’s constantly demanding attention.”

  “Perhaps, but Jeran and Cera could include her in their games once in a while. You know they never do. And don’t tell me they’re more advanced. Damia’s advanced, too.”

  The Rowan had to admit that, for Damia’s vocabulary was at least as extensive as her siblings’, and certainly her small muscle control was excellent. So she did have a talk with her elder children, quietly and positively, and, after they had listened attentively to her, they had one of their short-speak conversations that so excluded her she experienced reluctant sympathy for her youngest.

  “We will teach Damia to play one of our simpler games, Mother,” Jeran said in his prosaic way. “That should satisfy her.”

  The Rowan told Afra later that it had been all she could do to keep from giggling at his pomposity.

  “You see, then, Damia had a valid complaint,” Afra said.

  “Yes, she did,” and then the Rowan sighed deeply. “I want all my children to love and understand each other.”

  Afra gave a derisive snort. “Wait till they’re old enough, my dear. Right now, they’re cruel, heartless, mean little monsters.” Rowan gave him a startled stare. “Well, they are, but I’m sure they’ll grow out of it.”

  * * *

  Tanya contacted the Tower ten days later, tactfully waiting until the break.

  “Jeran and Cera played a new game with Damia, and with half the other children,” she told the Rowan, trying very hard not to laugh.

  “Then why . . .”

  “Because the game was color-oriented,” and now Tanya did burble with laughter. “Your three are green and the others are a sort of pied-piper of whatever other colors were left in the water paints. I can’t get nine children clean by myself, so could parents be excused for fifteen minutes? Fortunately it is a water-soluble emulsion. And they did take their clothes off first.”

  * * *

  That mischief had not originated with Damia, but she did her own variation several days later when she tried to paint Rascal and every Coonie in the Compound. This time with an oil-based paint she had evidently found where the maintenance man had left it while he ate lunch.

  Everyone was annoyed with her for that one and the Rowan insisted that she help the owners clean their pets’ fur. She also insisted that everyone let Damia know how much they disapproved.

  “Maybe she’ll come to realize that she could hurt the animals with a trick like this. They’ve feelings, too.”

  Damia was indeed much chastened by human censure, but neither Rascal nor any of the Coonies seemed to avoid her. In fact, there were half a dozen who would happily throng to her at her peculiar warbling whistle. During the outdoor activities that Tanya conducted every afternoon, Damia was usually surrounded by the pets while she waited for her turn. As her brother and sister could ignore extraneous matters, Damia could inhabit a world that consisted of herself and the animals.

  One afternoon, while others were gathered around Tanya, Damia was cajoling her four-footed cohorts to try and catch the ball on a string that she was dragging behind her as she ran pell-mell around the Park. She ran out of breath by the pool door that someone had left slightly ajar.

  She peered inside. This pool was much much larger than the one in her house where she often swam with her parents. While she knew that the pool was here, she’d never had occasion to visit it. And at this time of the day, it was empty. Suddenly Ringle batted her string ball through the door, onto the tiled surface around the pool. The string whipped out of her hand and Ringle triumphantly carried it off down the pool side.

  “Ringle, that’s not playing the game,” she said, running after him. But the soles of her sandals were slick and she skidded, her feet going out from under her. She fell heavily on her shoulder and tipped over into the pool with a huge splash.

  She was competent enough in water not to panic, and surfaced. The Coonies shrieked at the top of their lungs and Rascal, who’d been the last one in the pool, responded by throwing himself into the water, raising a wave that hit her right in the face, swamping mouth and nose. She started to choke, couldn’t get her breath, and became frightened.

  Afra! Help me! she cried, flailing her arms about in panic, trying to reach the pool ledge. The Coonies, in trying to reach her, got in her way and she went under the water.

  The next thing she knew, hands were dragging her to the surface, hauling her from the pool, pounding her back to open her airways.

  It’s all right, baby, it’s all right. Afra’s here, and she was held against a wet but reassuring human body.

  DAMIA! cried her mother, and suddenly the Rowan was there, reaching to take her from Afra, holding her so close that Damia was amazed to discover that her mother could tremble. She could “feel” her mother’s fear and that so shattered her confidence that she burst into tears.

  It took time to calm her down, calm the Rowan down, dry soaking Coonies and Rascal, and then more time for Damia to insist that it had not been their fault. The door had been open and she had slipped on the wet edge.

  “But you know you’re not supposed to go into a pool room without someone with you, Damia,” her mother said, with an edge to her voice that Damia now recognized as disapproval. “And Coonies do not constitute someone else!”

  “I wasn’t going swimming, Mommie, I was playing with my friends.”

  Over her head, the Rowan looked hopelessly up at Afra, who was wringing out his shirt. “She’s never in the wrong, is she?”

  “Actually,” and Afra paused to tower his sopping hair, “she often isn’t. She’s simply inquisitive, inventive, isolated.”

  “Well, I’m doing something about that!” the Rowan said, “with or without Jeff Raven’s complete cooperation. Damia needs a companion.”

  Afra managed to hide his grimace in the towel and then stopped rubbing his hair as he reviewed her phrasing. “With or withou
t Jeff’s complete cooperation”? He dropped the towel and stared at her.

  “Angharad Gwyn-Raven, do you mean what I think you mean?”

  She gave him a wide-eyed stare of innocence, still rocking her daughter. “I want my children to have a happy childhood, and not feel excluded or forced to play with animals.”

  “Damia loves the Coonies.”

  “Exactly! I want her to have a brother to love.”

  When told of the afternoon’s escapade, Jeff sighed deeply. “She’s like me at the same age. Mother couldn’t keep me in the yard with a logging chain.”

  “So how did she keep track of you?”

  Jeff grinned in reminiscence. “Dad was good at training animals . . .” and he laughed when he saw the exasperated expression on the Rowan’s face, “. . . and he sicced a wolf bitch on me as guardian. She followed me everywhere and if she thought I was likely to get in trouble, she’d trip me up, knock me down, sit on my back and howl. Sometimes she was howling a long time, but I didn’t come another cropper even if my knees and ribs were always bruised from being knocked flat by thirty kilos of white wolf.”

  “Barque cats and Coonies are sufficient livestock in a dome.”

  “Oh, I know that. Merely apprising you that Damia’s escapades follow a well-established genetic pattern.”

  “We can’t have more animals, but we can provide her with another sort of suitable companion,” the Rowan went on, bringing the conversation neatly to where she wanted it.

  “I gather that you are in the process of providing that companion,” Jeff remarked with a bite in his tone.

  The Rowan took a backwards step, nervously biting her lip. “How did you know?”

  “It’s been what? Two months? It shows,” Jeff returned. He stepped forward, laid a hand on her belly. “How did you do it?”

  The Rowan dipped her head. “A lady must keep some secrets. It’s a boy, you know.”

  “To give Damia someone to care for.”

  “Besides Afra,” the Rowan added.

  “Her affection for him is natural. He’s family.”

  “But she called him, not me.”

  Jeff perceived her conflict. “And how many times have you impressed upon the children that they are not to call you when you’re in the Tower?”

  The Rowan slumped disconsolately. “But I have to make them understand that.”

  “I agree. So Afra becomes the next best person to turn to. Let us be thankful that he is also willing and extremely able. We might even get him to like the feel of trusting young arms about his neck enough to do something about starting his own family.”

  “Your last effort at matchmaking did not work?” The Rowan was secretly pleased. “You should leave matchmaking to the women of your family, love.”

  “I don’t recall any efforts on your part.”

  “I’ve yet to meet a woman good enough,” the Rowan said brusquely. When Jeff raised an eyebrow in turn, she added, “Afra should have someone really special. I owe so much of my happiness to him.”

  * * *

  Her pregnancy was not going well. She had managed to endure three months of morning sickness, clinging to the consolation that those symptoms would gradually ease. But they persisted; her waspishness grew to uncontrollable proportions, her ankles hurt abominably, and she was absolutely convinced that the gravity in Callisto Station was set too high. She blamed everyone in sight for her condition, including Brian Ackerman, who defused it with his best “would that it were true” look, but especially Damia for her requirement of a little brother and Jeff for not stopping her in her willful theft of his sperm.

  Her condition established a vicious cycle where her temper would set off the children and depress the station staff such that her mood would get worse and so the effect would escalate. By the sixth month of her pregnancy, the staff was completely gaunt-faced and jittery.

  What she absolutely hated, and could not admit to herself, was the fact that Afra would not get irritated with her no matter how irascible she became. She longed for the chance to rant at him so desperately that she knew it was completely irrational. He was nearly obsequious in his genuine concern for her and always caringly thoughtful of her needs and condition.

  In her pregnancy with Damia and Cera before her, Afra had always been willing to take the children off her hands so that she might rest as best she could in her condition. This time, however, she was unwilling to let Damia out of her sight, letting, instead, the elder two stay with “Uncle Afra.”

  Afra took the whole situation phlegmatically, which irritated the Rowan because it did not irritate him. He even went to the extreme of getting Damia’s solemn promise to be extra careful of her mother in her gravid state, a promise which the child carried out faithfully until the Rowan shrieked at her one day as she attempted to serve breakfast in bed. After that Damia became a sullen, dispirited child prone to unprovoked fits of crying.

  But a prolonged sulk was not in Damia’s nature. Heartened by the solicitous nature of the Coonies and by Rascal’s steadfast loyalty, she took to exploring the nooks and crannies of Callisto Station escorted only by the felines. She was not “heard” by anyone as she traipsed about on her great adventures because she had learned of necessity to shield herself from the Rowan, projecting a totally false image of her surroundings: generally her own room.

  So while her ailing mother thought her safely playing at home, she conducted her personal rebellion. She loved the personal-safety pods the most. These lined the corridors and subterranean ways of Callisto Station, provided against catastrophic pressure loss. Gaining entrance was easy: she merely walked up to one and the translucent panel slid open. Inside there were marvelous accoutrements: a plush seat with all sorts of computer controls adorning a keypad, a computer ready to aid her in any emergency, and room enough for her coven of Coonies. Best of all, the computer would carefully and patiently explain every aspect of the capsule until she had it memorized. She would play in these for hours; Damia Queen of Space, Damia Space Police, Damia Rescue Run.

  At the end of every game, where Coonies played medics, pirates, injured, and police at her whim, Damia would carefully peer outside her capsule and, the coast clear, quietly exit it, carefully closing the door and observing the green “A-OK” light. Then, depending on the hour and her hunger, she would either return to the Rowan’s quarters or traipse on to the next capsule and the next game.

  Her discovery of the cargo cradles at the base of the Tower was an eye-popping revelation. She scrunched herself tight up against the corridor wall, watching in awe as the cradles magically filled and emptied again as cargo was shunted back and forth to the large composite ships waiting patiently in orbit above for their cargo to be marshaled and the Rowan to push the result off to its destination planet.

  Cargo capsules were long and box-like, exactly the same as those used on ships and trains for surface transport on worlds. Passenger capsules were different and came in many shapes and sizes. All had airlocks at various strategic locations and most had view panels. But most intriguing to Damia were the personal-safety pods, which blistered the sides of the larger passenger transporters.

  She was sufficiently sensitive psychically to know that the capsules were being manipulated by various Talents in the Tower. Once, with a thrill of recognition, she felt Afra’s sure mental touch as a string of passenger capsules were separated and landed in individual cradles. Small domes enclosed them and soon maintenance personnel were busy, working around them.

  “That Altairian freighter’s late!” the Rowan snapped at Afra up in her Tower. The expedient of reducing the gravity on Callisto had eased the weight on her swollen feet but did nothing to alleviate her temper. Afra turned carefully to face her, eyes showing the strain of his mental manipulations.

  “There’s a problem in the life-support system of the passenger and crew quarters,” he explained. He closed his eyes in concentration, something he normally did not require, and looked back up at her. “Powers is
handling it.”

  “We’re going to blow the whole day’s schedule!” the Rowan replied in what was nearly a wail. She directed her frustration solidly at Afra.

  “No, we’re not,” Brian Ackerman returned steadily, relieving Afra of the brunt of the Rowan’s ill-will. “I’ve already worked around the problem. I’ve got a fifteen-minute window before things start piling up.”

  Afra considered that and nodded. “Should be about right.” He sent a thought to Powers. “Bill says it’ll be tight but he’ll push for it.”

  “In the meantime, Rowan, while it’s not normally your task, if you could pull apart that Procyon composite, that’ll keep Afra free to stitch together the Altairian.”

  The Rowan started to protest, but Ackerman gave her such a pleading look that she relented. “Where’re the sheets?”

  “On two.”

  The Rowan turned to her second console and, referring to it, commenced to pull the capsules off the Procyon ship Lysis.

  The passenger capsules called to Damia. They screamed of adventure of far-off places of Damia StarGuard. She glanced backwards at the cats for support, ignored Rascal’s counsel of caution, and proceeded boldly forward toward the tunnel leading to the first passenger capsule.

  Bill, Bill, she’ll blow a fuse if it’s not ready! Ackerman sent privately to the Assistant Supercargo.

  Power’s response was laced with strain. We’re pushing it now, Brian.

  In the Tower, unseen, Ackerman nodded approvingly. Just keep it up.

  Damia marched unconcerned by techs and maintenance personnel on her way to the passenger capsule. The cats followed her at a discreet distance, blending into the landscape in the way of all cats.

  One of the shipboard personnel looked at her and mistook her for a passenger.