Free Motherlines by Suzy McKee Charnas Page A

do you keep me with you? I’m no more like you than those other fems are.’
    ‘You brought us a live child. Only one other fem did that, and that child we couldn’t save. Your child is alive; that makes you kin to us.’
    Her slim fingers brushed Alldera’s very lightly. ‘We change little, do you understand? Some, of course: the Wasting left slow, strong poisons in the earth and water of the world. They sometimes alter a child from its mother’s traits. We don’t try to judge whether a change is good or not. The child survives the childpack or not, that’s all. Sometimes a cousinline, even a whole Motherline, is lost. No new ones are gained, only variations of the old.’
    ‘Then my cub – ’
    ‘New seed, new traits, the beginning of the first new Motherline since our ancestors came out of the lab. That’s how important your child is to us. My ancestor, a woman almost exactly like me, stepped out of the lab and lived, and now though she’s generations dead there are many of us Conors. So it will be for your child’s blood descendants.’
    She sounded moved by what she said, and still she was blind to how every word she spoke folded in Alldera’s child but shut out Alldera herself. Alldera turned on her in the darkness: ‘But it’s a Holdfastish cub, with dam and father! How can it be like you? You’re raising a free fem among you, that’s all.’
    ‘No, we don’t think so. When you came to us, that child was still forming inside you. We made you sleep to rest and strengthen you both. We fed you the milk of our breasts and the food chewed in our mouths, the food of Motherlines that we feed our babies. We fed your child, through your blood while she was still in your womb. We think she’s become like our own children. We still feed her – that’s why we do all her nursing. You see how healthily she grows, how fast, just like other babies here. We don’t have our forebears’ wisdom or the wonders of the lab to change her to be like us, but we’ve tried to do it with what we have.’
    ‘So you hid her from the free fems.’ Why did that make Alldera uncomfortable? The women had saved the cub’s life, they had fed it their food, they had made it theirs.
    Nenisi said, ‘What sort of life would she have among a dying race?’
    ‘Well, what life will she have with you if she turns out to be barren without men, like the free fems?’
    Nenisi answered quickly, ‘It would still be better. There are those among us who have no children, out of necessity or by choice. They still have relatives, sharedaughters, kindred. Do you see? Does that satisfy you?’
    Alldera could not explain without sounding selfish and ungrateful; if she had known about the free fems sooner, she would have had a chance to consider the cub’s future as if there were choices to be made about it. The women had not kept the free ferns’ existence secret from her, exactly; their plans as Nenisi outlined them were clearly good ones, probably the best choice that could have been made anyway. Alldera saw no way to voice her unease, nor even exactly what there was to object to.
    Nenisi got up. ‘Come to the tent soon, there are sharu wandering tonight.’ She left.
    The stars threw a dim light by which Alldera could dimly see the wide tents. The ferns’ wagon was invisible. Their fire had gone out. It was true, she thought, their road came from destruction and led to destruction, and if she found herself fortunate enough to be on another path, why turn back? She reminded herself of the prime lesson of a slave’s life: protect youself, be selfish.
    Next morning she put on her belt with the knife sheathed in back and she said, ‘Nenisi, will you teach me to ride?’
    Nenisi grinned. ‘I was afraid you’d never ask.’
     
    Alldera, responsible today for raking out horse dung to dry into usable fuel, was late to the chief tent and had to sit outside with the overflow. They were debating not the usual personal complaints beyond the