Ofelia sighed, and pushed herself away from the wall, standing slowly. These people felt almost as alien as the creatures, and they had less interest in understanding her. “If you don’t listen, you can’t hear,” she said, tugging her ear for emphasis. They would make up their own minds anyway, and nothing she said would change that.
She walked away, around the far end of her house, and out into the meadow. Kira followed her a few steps, bleating something incomprehensible. Then she fell behind. Ofelia did not turn to look, but she could feel Kira’s stare on her shoulderblades.
Out among the sheep, the blessedly silent sheep, who ignored her at this time of day, Ofelia hid in plain sight from the other humans. She used the basket she had brought to gather sheep droppings. She spread them along the outer margins of the meadow, supporting the terraforming grasses with their mix of bacteria and fungi, maintaining the meadows boundaries.
The newcomers hated the droppings, hated anything that smelled alive: “stank of organics,” is how they put it. They wanted nothing to do with her while she was doing work they considered dirty. After that first rapture over fresh tomatoes, they had recoiled from the discovery that she did not sterilize the sheep and cow manure, the kitchen garbage, that went into the compost trench and then into the soil. They accepted no more tomatoes, and refused the cooling fruit drink — although they would pick fruit themselves, and then scrub it in the kitchen sink in the center.
She was tired of the newcomers’ silliness about dirt, tired of their busyness, tired of the way they interrupted her without apology, talked as long as they wanted to, and then walked off, leaving her as casually as they would leave a building. She was behind in her garden work; she could not enjoy sewing or crocheting or making jewelry when at any moment someone might come interrupt her, with that expression which meant they thought she was especially silly to be making things now, when she would have to leave. They seemed to go out of their way to make her feel unimportant. The contrast between their behavior and that of the creatures could not be ignored. The old voice, smug in its certainty, told her that was to be expected. She could mean nothing to the humans; they knew how to rate humans, and she came at the bottom. The creatures could not know. They might like her because she had been their first human; they might value her for the novelty. Whatever the reason for their respect, they could not value her for anything important; they didn’t know what was important. In the sun’s heat, the droppings had dried quickly; Ofelia did not mind picking them up, although the stooping bothered her. Her head hurt now only when she bent over, as if all the blood rushed into that swollen knob and pulsed there. Maybe it did. The shirt she wore pulled across the shoulders. The old voice told her how old she was, how weak, how useless. The new voice said nothing, but lived like a cold knot in her heart. She tried to ignore the old voice, and kept on working. Maybe if she stayed away from the other humans, the new voice would speak to her again. She missed it. A shadow, a blur of motion; one of the creatures. She looked up, attempted the chest grunt of greeting, and got one in return. This creature wore one of her necklaces draped over its own accouterments. When it had her attention, it tapped the basket and gurgled its question. This one rarely attempted human speech. “Sheep droppings,” Ofelia said, as if the words had been clear. “For the grass. It feeds the grass.” The creature moved slowly to one of the sheep, which lifted its head to stare. Even more slowly, the creature leaned down, yanked loose a tuft of grass, and offered it to the sheep. The sheep accepted it docilely and its narrow jaw worked back and forth. The creature touched the sheep’s throat, then lightly ran its hand down the body to the rump. Ofelia could follow that: food goes in here, and goes through… When the creature tried to lift the sheep’s tail, the sheep yanked away and moved off briskly. The creature gaped its mouth at Ofelia — laughter? annoyance? — and then pointed at the sheep’s rump, then droppings on the ground.
“Yes,” said Ofelia, nodding vigorously.
The creature turned to her, presenting its own rump, and lifted the decorative kilt to point to an unmistakable orifice. Ofelia looked away. She didn’t really want to see what a creature hole looked like, but she had already registered that it had the predictable puckered appearance. “Yes,” she said. “It comes out a hole in the back.” They must know that, from their observations of her; she suspected them of watching at times when she had been unaware of it. She hoped they could get off this topic quickly, but the creatures had a way of sticking to something as long as it interested them. They should know this already; it had been impossible, in the early days, to keep them from knowing what happened when she used the toilet. This one had come with Bluecloak, so perhaps it had never seen… but it should have known, from talking to the others. She knew they discussed her. “Utter uhoo,” the creature said. Other you meant the other humans; none of the creatures would attempt the word human. “What about the others?” Ofelia asked. She had become used to the creatures understanding more of her speech than she did of theirs.
It pointed to its mouth, then her mouth… its rump and then the sheep droppings.
“Oh — you mean you wonder if the other humans do this too?” What a silly question. Of course they did.
She nodded vigorously. “Yes. They do.”
“Nott ksee,” the creature said. Ofelia thought about it. The other humans still lived in the shelters they’d set up down at the shuttle field; they had moved out of the shuttle itself only in the past few days. So perhaps the creatures had never seen them eat or excrete.
Now the creature tapped its nose, and sniffed elaborately. “Nnnott sssane.” Ofelia understood that as “smells crazy,” which made no sense in terms of what they had been talking about. The creature tried again. “Utter uhoo—” then a big sniff, “—nnot saamp.” Sane… saamp… same. Other yous smell not same? Yes, that could be it.
Ofelia gestured to reinforce her own words. “You think the other humans smell… not like me? Not the same?”
“Eeeyess.” It touched her shirt, then its own kilt and belts. “Nnnott saamp klote-ss.” True enough, the others didn’t wear the same clothes; they wore long-sleeved billowy shirts and long pants, shoes, all in muted colors.
“Saamp utter uhoose purrrt nessstt passs.” The same as other yous — other humans who purrrt — burnt? — nest-something. Burrrt sounded close to hurt. Ofelia set the basket down to have the use of both hands. Had those luckless colonists hurt the creatures’ nests? Was that why they’d been attacked? “Burrrt?” She mimed pounding, kicking.
The creature looked around, as if confused. Then it said “Hah-ahttt. Purrrt aaakss hah-ahtt.” Hot. Purrrt makes hot.
“Burn!” Astonishment and horror both hit at once. Where had it learned the word “burn”? Had she used it, in warning of the hot stoves? She couldn’t remember. And the other humans had burned the nests? Burned the babies?
She thought of the mechbots dropping out of the sky to scrape away whatever grew, to make the flat landing place for shuttles… if that had been nests, if it had caught fire from the mechbot exhausts, or perhaps they even fired the heaps of grass and roots… and nestlings. She knew her face must be a mask of horror, and the creature stared at her, recognizing her shock. “Utter uhoo,” it said again, this time with a decisive jerk of the head. “Nnnott saamp. Nnnott… “ and it rattled off a quick sequence of its own language, in which Ofelia thought she heard click-kaw-keerrr. However bad they were, these humans had not destroyed the creatures’ nests and children. She had to defend them. But she couldn’t figure out how to unmake that confusion — not confusion, she realized now, but settled antagonism. And why hadn’t Bluecloak told her, when it was teaching her, learning from her, when she had played it the tapes of the other colony’s death?