Page 20 of Alliance
“No,” I admitted. “Is that what you are? Ayee-runny?”
He chuckled. “Yiwreni, plural. Yiwren, singular.”
His laugh was rough but not aggressive, and I stopped my slow march down the market. It was a nice sound that cut through all the digital noise crawling through the air in little staticky ribbons of information. I closed my eyes and drank in his sound until it faded.
“Anyway, yiwreni are predator-prey-fluid. Rapid muscle growth and such when we’re in a role that requires a lot of physical labor. Sensory sensitivity and fine muscle control when we’re caregiving or studying.”
“It’s an adaptive feature.”
“Exactly. Say our hunter gets injured. Instead of risking starvation, another yiwren will take on hunting while they recover. Within a couple weeks, they’ll be able to take down the same game. And becoming prey-fluid also means a slower metabolic rate–”
“Which saves resources like sentinel mode!” I realized out loud.
“Actually, I guess sentinel mode is a lot like yiwreni estivation. The hjarna first came to Byd Farrwell to study our self-induced healing comas.”
“So your shirts are only too big right now,” I deduced.
“That’s right.”
“Because of… the girls?”
He chirped thoughtfully. “They’ve been mine for a while now, and I don’t do the sort of work that kept me predatory anymore… but I’ll need to transition again.”
Fásach grew quiet and I looked back down the road, following the signal of our commlink through the crowds. [Magnify] He stood with his face upturned to the sooty clouds, ears back, expression shuttered with tension. He glanced at his shoes and drew in a breath.
“I’ve never felt more desperate in my life,” he admitted to the ground. The confession skated across my back and my skin pebbled. “You really know how to get to Renata?”
“I do,” I said with absolute conviction. It was written within me like a map carved into the bowl of my skull casing. Fragments of data from my memories of life there pressed against the tendrils of my thoughts as clear as the recordings inmy LMem. I might not have been able to display them in the same way, and they might have corrupted during the download from my originator, but I could follow the echoes even in my sleep.
“I’m entrusting you with my children, Roz. You get that, right?”
Fásach bared his teeth, then rubbed at his shoulders with one thick palm. I scarcely breathed, watching his personal conflict.
He was so different from Master. I was coded for Master to be my father, but he’d had no qualms about entrusting me to clients that were guaranteed to damage my unit. He was an unshakable bastion, full of perfect guidance and instruction. Master’s word was law, and even if I was damaged or decommissioned in the pursuit of his instruction, he had deemed my sacrifice necessary by calculations I couldn’t fathom and had no right to question.
Fásach, though, was so unsure by comparison. His vitals suggested he was nervous, exhausted, on edge… And suddenly, I wished that Master hadn’t been so sure of himself when he dug into my skin and removed my markings. Maybe if I still had them, I would have grown fond of them.
“I will choose a path that will not damage them. I promise.”
I thought of my papi on Earth. He’d been hardworking, with orange grove soil ground so deep into the cracks of his calloused hands that no amount of washing would ever clean them. He’d been sweet and soft spoken like Fásach, but he’d had shortcomings. He’d spoken no English, and instead relied on me to deal with immigration services, taxes, tuition, rent, and bills, even as a teenager. He didn’t know how to cook, either and expected me to clean house like my mom always had before she died.
What he’d given me, though, was unwavering support and unending love. I’d felt it every day, even when we fought about how he was treated at the farm, or how he needed to do his own dishes, or the sores on his feet from cheap boots. Despite all the frustration, we had been enough for each other, just as we were. While Master stood behind me and pushed me forward onto his chessboard, my dad had walked ahead of me, buffeting the wind and rain while the world weathered him in my place. He’d been my shield so I could be the fruit of his labor.
“How are your boots? They okay?” Fásach asked, his tone still rough. Dad’s voice layered over his like slow-burning tobacco.
“Ven aquí, azaharita. ¿Te gusta tu nueva chaqueta? ¿Es cómodo?”
“Están bien,”I answered.
“What was that?”
I shook my head, rubbing my ears. A venandi merchant held up a round, metal object in his talon to entice me, but all I saw was a dark hand with a pink palm covered in soil. When I drew in a breath, it was the familiar scent of fertilizer and oranges rather than hot sulfur. I shook my head and pulled Fásach’s hood closer around my face.
“Please disregard.” I squeezed my eyes closed so I could focus on separating my LMem files from my sensory input. They were sharing channels, perhaps, commandeering each other as one took priority over another. The confusion made managing digital noise more difficult, halos blurring my vision, encrypted comms muddying my hearing. A cacophony that battered my nerves and rooted me to the spot. I couldn’t—
A warm, thick hand settled on my shoulder. Fásach looked down at me with a frown of concern. “Doesn’t seem like you’re okay.”
I blinked rapidly, then closed my eyes again when my lenses flared with a painful flash of overexposed light. The deluge of input overwhelmed my gyroscopic sensor, and I swayed on my feet as if I were on a ship at sea. “Too much-chuh-chuh-ch–01101001 0110…”
