Oh, I think they’ll pull round once they’re over the shock of hearing Zara defending the Queen.
I don’t think she’s defending the Queen so much as empathizing with her. And she’s thrown up a very tight mental shield about her thoughts. We must allow her the privacy we always permit other Talents, Afra said.
She’s not adult yet.
But nearly. I seem to remember.
Afra!
There was such an intimacy in their minds that Rojer hastily closed off the intriguing conversation.
That mental exchange was not the only one he inadvertently `overheard’ in the next few days for there were `pathed messages filtering in from all the Primes. Some of the messages Rojer would rather not have heard: others were curious and fascinating.
Especially the badinage his mother enjoyed with her father, or her pithy remarks to her brother, Jeran, and her sister, Cera, both of them Towered Primes.
Rojer now caught Laria’s reports from Clarf. Those he was glad Zara couldn’t hear.
There was a faction on Clarf that mirrored the Aurigae City wish for summary execution as public as possible.
He also caught all the reports from Heinlein Base.
The Queen had remained stationary for seventy-six hours, ignoring replenishments of the foods she had been seen to eat. Xenobiologists and xenozoologists were doing their best to be sure the offerings covered all nutritional requirements for they were certain she would be laying the eggs that strained her lower body to the point where striations or cracks were visible in the bulb of it.
There had been several more failed attempts in laboratories within the Alliance to vitalize the larvae and their numbers were dwindling rapidly. That was when someone suggested that perhaps the remaining larvae should be sent to Heinlein Base in the hope that the Queen could hatch them. Perhaps she required attendants for the egg-laying and, with these missing, she would be unable to function.
Some of the larvae of each type were therefore `ported into the base, to see if their appearance would activate the Queen. Men seemed to dominate the push to give the Queen the larvae. Women seemed less inclined to sympathize with her condition. For, apart from eating again, the Queen had done nothing else, though her egg-filled bulb continued to expand.
However, when the decision to give her some of the three types of larvae was implemented, Rojer got Zara off by herself to give her what he felt should be good news.
`The least they can do,’ was all Zara said in a disgusted tone, though, for the rest of the day, Rojer thought she was more cheerful.
Certainly she was on hand to see a screening of the transfer. The scene was even more dramatic than the Queen’s emergence.
The Queen rushed to the larvae, running her upper limbs across each sac, emitting a low hum.
She deftly turned each larva so she could inspect all round, then she awkwardly swept a path to the nearest building. This, the experts said, had to be some sort of instinctive behaviour for the paving had been brushed clear of any dust or grit when the base was cleaned for her occupancy. She ran back to collect the day’s green offerings and piled them in the big entrance hall. When she’d done that, she patiently rolled each larva to its new site, with many pattings and turnings and hummings. The day’s efforts seemed to exhaust her for she resumed the immobile post-prandial position, propped up by her hind limbs.
Biologists and zpologists – including two eminent human orthopediterists – argued over what sort of `bedding’ would suit her needs, and chose straw and wood shavings, as well as several types of artificial chips, bits and bobbles. A quantity of fine artificial `wax’ and natural tallow were added to the offerings, in case she was more apiarian than insectoid.
When she settled on the shavings, heaping them in mounds over the larvae, more was sent in. Rojer had a private smile for the things cousin Roddie had to do as the Observation Talent.
Zara brightened at each new concession granted the `prisoner’ and kept within viewing distance of the screen, waiting for the next development. Her mother let her because, as Damia privately admitted to Afra, she was more use in the house than in the Tower. Zara was certainly not the only one so involved in what happened at Heinlein Base. Queenwatching had replaced piece-finding as a galactic pastime.