Page 52 of Invasive Species (Outcasts of Oloria #2)
THIRTY-SIX
GARA
As the All-Mother’s ship is prepared for launch by dutiful Pranastock pilots, I hold Arra-bellah's hand tight in case she is snatched away from me. The likelihood is I'd be the one taken out of the two of us, but I still can't help feeling the operation isn’t over yet.
Arra-bellah keeps me distracted with multiple rapid-fire questions about the construction of the ship and its designs, but something about the Pranastocks digs at me like a sore scale. They sway when they walk as if constantly in low gravity; they don't prowl like Arture, our Pranastock.
“Gara,” Arra-bellah says gently, and I whip my attention back to her. Her lips quirk with amusement. “You're really jumpy. It's okay, you can relax. We're almost out of here.”
“Almost. Not quite,” I say, voice rough. “I won't relax until we're out of Olorian air space because at any moment they can?—”
One of the Pranastocks comes to my seat at the console. “The All-Mother and her guest are here to see you. You are to disembark and follow me.”
Drok na . “I knew it,” I mutter, scales hardening as I stand .
Arra-bellah rockets out of her seat, or tries to, the straps holding her fast. “Let me out! I'm coming too.”
The Pranastock can't understand her but he reaches for her, probably to undo her belt. I get there first, glowering at him. Our mate bond simmers at the idea of another male’s hands near Arra-bellah, settling when she rises to my side.
Her skin throbs with warmth, and my scales melt as I wrap my arm around her shoulders.
“Let's go see what Shara wants,” she says with a chill as cold as the lake in her voice.
We disembark from the sleek stealth craft to find a set of tables and four chairs set up in the hangar bay.
Two of the chairs are occupied, and clones stare openly from their workstations ringing the space, all labor halted.
The All-Mother’s glittering silver scales are their entire focus: our mother, our genetic donor.
Next to her, an Olorian female gets to her feet, her green scales flashing as bright as Tibset moss under the harsh, artificial lights of the ship bay. They weren't that bright the last time I'd seen her.
“Gara,” she says in a choked voice, rushing to us in a flurry of skirts.
“Mother.” I can barely hear myself, but my voice is calm and steady, focus sharpening as always under stress conditions.
She stops a step from me, as if she suddenly remembers who and what she is. She’s an untouchable female to us lowly clones; she isn't going to throw her arms around me like my mate would.
We stare at each other across the short distance which gapes like a vast expanse between us and our stations.
“Holy shit,” Arra-bellah whispers, then louder. “What the fuck? Who do you think you are? Why did you abandon him, what's wrong with you?”
Possibly my mother’s nanites—no, the woman who raised me as an experiment’s nanites—aren’t attuned to the Earth variety of trade speak yet. She doesn't even look at my mate even though she's an exotic sight to most, smooth and scaleless and tiny even compared to smaller Olorian females.
“Do you remember me?” the female asks, scales flickering to a dark, shaded forest green.
“Yes, female,” I answer. She doesn't need to know how much memories of her used to cut me, how our parting shaped me, giving me blunt edges that Arra-bellah softened. This female won't care.
But then tears rise in her emerald eyes, and the years fall away. “I've missed you so much. Look how much you've grown. You've done so much for our understanding of Selthiastocks, and you even have a special mate of your very own.”
She turns a smile onto Arra-bellah, who folds her arms across her chest with a thump and spits out more expletives at her.
She missed me? That doesn't compute. But there's one thing we agree on at least. “Yes, she’s very special.”
The All-Mother calls, “Let's sit and talk.”
Wonderful. Only a high-ranking female would feel comfortable taking refreshments in a greasy workshop with hundreds of clones staring at us.
But I have no choice, so I lead Arra-bellah to the table, the female who raised me following a few steps behind.
“Gara, please,” she begs as I hold a chair out for my mate.
“What can I do for you, female?” I thank my genetics that I can maintain such a stoic face despite my emotions churning like the river at the roots of the Milagrove.
“Gara.” Her plea hits my hearts hard.
I turn to face her, this female who once towered over me, who held my hand, who laid next to me in my sleep pod when my scales were too soft and uncoordinated to heat me on cold nights, and who left me at the Euthanization Center .
Pain and despair twist her face. “I never wanted to give you up,” she blurts. “When the Prif pulled our funding I kept you, we all did. We'd raised you from little scalelings, how could we not?
“But then the Prif ordered the return of the Selthiastocks, saying the experiment was over, it had failed.
We hadn't even gotten halfway through; we were meant to see you to full adulthood. But any who refused would see their child arrested and…” She bowed her head.
“She made us promise we wouldn't try to look for you, our children, and any attempt would mean your death. I… I had to, Gara, I had no other choice. I did what I thought was best.”
Arra-bellah is ramrod straight listening to her story spooling out around us, and I can't feel anything except the pulse of pain along our bond reminding me I’m alive.
Shara says quietly, “Amashi is one of our best scientists, so I chose her for the experiment of raising Tubers as True Born, and… to prove that Tubers do feel, can think, and are worthy to join our society.”
My mind reels. This is Shara’s plan? The current regime would crumble if Tubers weren't forced to provide labor.
Shara shakes her head, gray and silver hair shivering.
“I was naive, moving in the open, and Prif Samara… well.” The All-Mother's smile grows hard.
“She has vid feeds and spies everywhere, so here is not the time and place, but it's no secret our theories and methods oppose one another.” She lays a hand over Amashi's.
“We are doing what we can,” she soothes her.
Amashi—my mother—takes a shaky breath. “I know.
But… Gara, it must have been so hard for you, going through that so young when you didn't understand. I tried to follow your career, pleased when you joined a crew going off world, but news of your exile devastated me. And now…” A sob shakes her fragile frame. “Now I'll never see you again.”
I'm moving before I realize it, wrapping my arms around her. She needs comfort, yes, but I need it too. As she clings to me, sobbing quietly into my scales the way I did when I had taken a tumble when I was small. Now I hold her in return.
My mother. She did love me.
“But it does mean I was targeted by the Prif when she saw my record.” I glance at Shara.
“Perhaps,” Shara says. “I’m not entirely sure. But I can't say more, not here, and you're not safe here. You have to leave soon.”
“Please, just… one cycle,” Amashi begs.
Shara gives her a sad look. “It's too risky.”
Shaking her head against me, Amashi regains her composure, and I shield her from view until she does. The Tubers here will tell everyone they meet how they saw a female crying over a clone; they don't need the details.
“How have you been?” I ask her.
She sniffles as she sits next to me, and Arra-bellah reaches across the table to extend her cloth napkin to her. “Thank you, human. I've been… working. We cannot talk much, as Shara says, except… I want you to know you have lots of little brothers.”
“True Born? Congratulations,” I say automatically.
She shakes her head with a small smile, but doesn't correct me verbally. “Thank you. Each are a handful for sure, just as you were. Why, it seems they were born running around until I can settle them.”
The coded message is clear enough for me. She's taking in runaway clones. My mother… wait, my mothers, both of them… they’re working to save as many as they can.
My head swims as if I’m on a spacewalk. They can't openly disobey the Prif, but Amashi and Shara are doing what they can to… what? Improve our lot?
“Thank you,” I tell them, because it seems the right thing to say .
“No, Gara. I'm just sorry it's not enough, not for you,” Amashi says.
“Please do not worry over me.” My gaze slides to my mate. “I find my exile very agreeable.”
Arra-bellah nods firmly. “I'll take very good care of him,” she promises. “I wish I had time to… well, I can do a quick sketch.”
My darling mate produces a marker from somewhere about her person with a flourish, then begins making sweeping marks on the sheet protecting the table. Shara watches with interest.
Amashi touches my hand. “I'm so glad I got to see you again, even if it's for one last time.
I always wanted to talk to you, to explain, to help you understand it wasn't your fault, but I know it won't ever be enough.
You were part of something big, bigger than both of us, but what mattered to me was you.
Words can't ever heal what you went through.”
“It… hurt,” I admit. “Knowing I played a part in some experiment that failed didn't help. But now I see the experiment is even bigger than that.”
I glance at the All-Mother and her small smile which hides so much. Shara is a general, but instead of huge battleships, she tweaks circumstances and nudges pieces into place. Am I still just a pawn to her? It’s hard to tell behind her silver smile, giving little away.
But I can tell my mother loves me.
“Ta da!” Arra-bellah says, spreading her hands above her latest creation. It's a black and white image of me and my mother from the chest up sitting at this table, her hand on my forearm, love dancing in her eyes as she looks at me.
I glance at Amashi to see the same expression now. “I love it, thank you,” she says, lifting her eyes to mine. “And I love you. ”
The words I thought I'd never say flow from my lips as easily as breathing. “I love you, Mother.”