|
21
Malinu excused Jory from work. Jory stayed as close as he could. They moved her to the intensive care unit, and Jory sat outside, sleeping or reading.
A doctor came out—a human doctor, an intelligent looking woman with yellow skin and high-cornered eyes. "I'm Doctor Pren. How are you?" They shook hands. "Is she a relative of yours?"
Jory almost laughed. "What do you mean?" He'd almost blurted that she was an alien.
"She asked for two persons—you, and someone named baba."
Jory explained: "They are trisexual. There's a male, a female, and a baba..."
"Sir, what are you talking about? That is a human being in there, same as you and I."
"What?"
Dr. Pren put a finger over her lips. "Sh! Come and peek, only for a minute."
Jory followed her into the sick bay, where instruments flowed on the walls, monitors hummed, and intravenous fluids dripped above a sterile white bed. On the bed lay a naked human woman. Instead of a russet ball of fuzz, she had red hair that glowed like wet copper. She had horn-like plates like Jory, he saw with a sinking feeling, but smaller than his. They would not detract from her beauty—actually, they seemed to add something that Nolani's had not added. Ramy's skin was not transparent, but pale pink. Her slender and lovely body bore galaxies of orange freckles. She was hooked up with tubes at every orifice, and wires ran to skin patches over much of her torso and on the major arteries of her limbs. A net-cap robot performed an ongoing brain scan. She had small, firm breasts, a bushy Venus-mound covered with orange curls, and a distinctly human kjoni. Jory looked closely at her fingertips—the fingernails were like his own.
And yet, standing back, he recognized her exact form as that of Ramy.
"Is she—?"
"She is perfectly normal," Dr. Pern said. "I've never actually seen anything like it. She's newborn, but has mature brain wave function. What was that entity who gave birth to her?"
Jory explained about life on Oba Island and about the babas. Someone brought kjaba and Jory welcomed its warmth and bitter taste.
Dr. Pern took a speculative breath and nodded slowly as she ushered Jory out of the room. They spoke outside in the waiting room. Jory explained about their love affair.
"My guess," said Dr. Pern, "is that she will enjoy full human body and brain function. She asked for people by name—that's a sure sign. One thing puzzles me. These babas may be natural wizards of fungi and genetics and finance back there on Shur, but there is no way the baba could have obtained genes for the female from you. You see, the female genetic material can only come from a human woman's egg. And there was no human female involved."
"Oh yes there was." Jory put his hands over his face in horror, remembering Xinda. What else had they taken from the child before blinding her and thrusting her into the night into the arms of her terrified parents? "The babas collect things, Doctor. They have thousands of kjirs of baba-craft behind them. Who knows how many human females they collected eggs from, who knows for what purpose?"
|
