Saluez moaned again. Snark wrapped several folds of her shirt around her hands, like clumsy mittens, watching intently while Lutha wet a cloth and wiped Saluez’s sweaty face.
Lutha asked, “You think that’s what Saluez is doing? Hoping for something different?”
“Saluez says she wants to lie in sweet grass, eating apples,” said Snark. “That’s different. That’s paradise. Like it was on Breadh.”
“Were there many people on Breadh?”
Snark laughed, abruptly joyous. “Hardly any! That’s what made it paradise! I told Kane the Brain about Breadh. He said we all make up an Eden. Some old-time place. Some never-never place. Someplace just over the hill, maybe, where things’re the way things used to be, ought to be, the way they never were.”
Lutha caught her breath, aware of a sudden pain behind her breastbone. Not her heart. Lung and stomach, probably, contending for the title of chief dramatist. It hurt, nonetheless. “Can’t there be a real Eden?” she gasped, astonished at the pain the question evoked. “Somewhere? Can’t there?”
Snark shrugged. “We could make one here if we wanted. We could make one anywhere, if we would. Instead it’s apples and sweet grass, long gone, long past. Kane said we ate them all—”
Saluez shrieked abruptly, a senseless sound that accompanied a seemingly endless convulsion. Her teeth ground together. Her belly heaved and clenched.
“Why is she unconscious?” Lutha demanded. She hadn’t been unconscious when Leely was born. Women who chose to give birth usually chose to experience it.
“She’s Dinadhi,” Snark replied, as though this meant something. Then she shook her head in momentary confusion. “I think I remember what Mother told me. I hope I haven’t forgotten. I think we have to do this thing first … ”
“Do what first?”
The question was answered, but not by Snark. Saluez shrieked mindlessly. Out from between her legs came a white thing, a bloody white thing, a small head with closed and bulging eyes, a wide mouth that showed the tips of sharp little teeth. The moment the head came into the light, the eyes opened and the teeth began snapping, snapping at them, the eyes glaring.
“Quick!” shouted Snark, grabbing at the thing with her mittened hands, wrenching it from Saluez’s body, and thrusting it through the narrow neck of her recently manufactured catch bucket. Despite the wrappings of cloth, the thing brought blood from her arm, leaving a nasty gash.
“Watch out,” she cried. “There may be more!”
There were two more. Snark got one, and Lutha got the other one, while one part of herself gibbered mindlessly and some other part demanded that she should not behave stupidly in front of Snark. The creatures were slimy and pale, they shrieked and gnashed, and the gaping slits along their backs quivered like gills as grim-faced Snark thrust them into her bucket and fastened the lid down tight.
When the contractions stopped and it was clear there were to be no more of them, Snark tied the catch bucket top with line and put it inside one of the larger supply cases, which she also lashed closed. The entire bundle rocked and shrieked at them as they returned their attentions to Saluez. She had expelled the afterbirth. With it was what remained of the infant she had carried.
Snark wrapped the bloody fragments in the clean cloths they had intended to receive a living child.
“Did you get bitten?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“A little,” said Lutha faintly. “What … ?”
“It most always happens,” Snark said, her eyes wide and unfocused. “Mother said it’s a rare thing that a first baby lives. Sometimes it does, if there’s only one scourge inside, but usually there’s at least three or four of them.”
Lutha trembled, unable to get any words out. Now she knew where the next generation of Kachis were on Dinadh. Even now they were being incubated and born.
“They didn’t have wings,” she said stupidly.
“Those slits down the back,” Snark replied. “As soon as they dry, the wings pop out. They can fly almost right away.” She shook her head. “These looked sort of not ripe, though, didn’t they?”
Lutha had no idea what a ripe Kachis would look like. “How does this happen?”