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The pounding in his head woke Liam. Either someone was playing a tuba badly behind his eyeballs or he was seriously ill. He opened his eyes, sighing with relief when he found the lights turned low. A familiar human-made medical machine whirred at his side, the light beams scanning Liam every few seconds, and the various numbers displaying respiration, temperature, heart rate and other vitals. However, he lay in a cavernous Rownt space.
“Ah, Tuk-Palteia Liam. You have woken.” An unfamiliar Grandmother bent over him and rested her hand on his arm. Apart from Ondry, Liam was not used to Rownt touching him, and he jumped. “I am checking the oxygen levels in your blood. I will explain that next time.” When she lifted her hand, Liam saw the flat sensor pressed up against her palm. She looked at the numbers.
“I am embarrassed by my reaction. I trust the Grandmothers of the ship,” Liam said.
“Said like a startled, but very polite trader.” The skin at the sides of the Grandmother’s eyes tightened.
“What has happened?” Liam asked. He struggled to sit up, and the Grandmother put a hand on his back and assisted. Liam spotted Zach Mora on the other bed. “Is Zach injured?”
“Neither of you is injured,” the Grandmother said. “The air on the Imshee ship proved unhealthful for humans. They had lowered the oxygen levels without informing us of the change.”
Zach coughed, and the Grandmother left to check on him. Liam swung his legs off the side of the bed and rubbed his temples while the Grandmother fussed over Zach.
“I feel like a bus hit me,” Zach complained. The Grandmother paled.
“The use of exaggeration as a form of humor is appreciated given that I feel horrible,” Liam said, “but given that Rownt humor precludes insulting oneself or exaggerating injury, you may want to consider your words.”
Zach looked over to Liam and then at the Grandmother. Liam could practically see the light bulb go off over Zach’s head. “Right. Sorry.” He turned to the Grandmother. “The lack of oxygen is making me stupid.” Zach threw an arm over his eyes. “And I’m not supposed to insult myself, so I think I will say I’m impressed with my own ability to breathe in and out. See. I’m very impressive.” His sigh passed heavy and went straight to melodramatic.
The Grandmother rumbled and not only regained her lost color but turned a much darker shade. She was amused at Zach’s lack of verbal grace.
“Don’t concern yourself. Your lack of experience excuses any lacking manners,” Liam said.
Zach uncovered one eye. “I know that’s an insult, but since I am young, I will accept that as reassuring.”
“I meant it that way,” Liam said. “So, how angry is everyone?” he asked the Grandmother.
“Why would anyone be angry?” Zach grabbed the Grandmother’s arm, and she helped him to sit up as she explained that the Imshee had feared high levels of oxygen and had, therefore, been steadily decreasing the amount in the atmosphere they provided.
“Has that affected the Rownt ability to think clearly and make strong trades?” Liam asked. If this had negatively affected trading, the Imshee should have to pay some sort of reparations.
The Grandmother narrowed her nose slightly. “I doubt the air would affect Rownt thinking, but the Imshee have harmed two palteia. That concerns us far more.”
“Rownt do lose their logic around palteia and children,” Liam said.
“A statement true enough that agreeing is unnecessary,” the Grandmother said easily. “The eldest Grandmother and Tuk-Ondry are particularly lacking in logic because they contributed to the low oxygen levels by holding onto you too tightly.”
“Fuck a reactor core,” Liam muttered.
The Grandmother and Zach both looked over at him with wide eyes, although for very different reasons.
“I don’t have medicine to treat the injuries you would incur, so I would suggest you not,” the Grandmother said with an amused whistle.
Liam shrugged. “Someone may wish he had done that rather than anger those two particular Rownt.”
“Spoken like one with far too much wisdom, given he is still an eggling with bits of shell clinging to his backside,” the Grandmother said. “I will go speak to them about the need to remain calm and quiet to avoid causing more pain.” The Grandmother left with a last pat on Zach’s knee.
Liam wondered if all the Grandmothers were touchy with Zach, but since that would be a rude question for a Rownt, Liam didn’t ask.
The door had closed behind the Grandmother when Zach asked, “Why would they lack logic? They clearly didn’t mean to cause any harm.”
“The idea that they harmed us out of ignorance might make them feel even more guilty. They’re going to fuss and pamper and worry about every moan and twitch. And if you exaggerate your injury to the Grandmother, I honestly don’t know what she’ll do. Injury to children or palteia is the inciting action in more than one storyscroll, and peaceful negotiation is rarely the outcome.” Some days Liam hated having to tap dance around that bone-deep protective streak the Rownt seemed hardwired for.
“Children I get,” Zach said as he slid off the table. It was high enough that he dropped two or three feet before his feet hit the floor. “But they respect palteia as full adults. Palteia can apply to the temple, their actions will raise or lower the status of the chilta-palteia pairing, and they hold full-time jobs.”
“And chilta are hard-wired to protect them, yet our two chilta had the bad fortune to accidentally cause us harm. There will be extreme lack of logic,” Liam predicted. He eyed the floor. He would’ve liked to have jumped down, but he wasn’t sure his brain and his headache would appreciate the hard jolt when he landed. “I’ve decided that the only essential quality to life is illogic.”
Zach had been rubbing his temples, but he stopped and looked up. “Are you talking about humans or Rownt?”
“Both. They're all illogical. To hell with amino acids or fundamental philosophies, the real core of sentient life is stupidity.”
“That seems a little harsh,” Zach said slowly.
“Maybe, but it's true,” Liam said.
“Is this about our chiltas’ matching guilt trips?”
“Chilta,” Liam said. “Many titles, such as chilta or palteia, are their own plurals. However, my hypothesis is based on decades of evidence. Humans don't make sense. They spend more resources on holding on to territory they don’t need than they do in improving the territory they hold, and that does not mean I sympathize with the colonies because they started a war they knew they couldn’t win instead of pursuing legal claims that they could have. They let anger back them into a corner.”
“I’m not going to argue with you there,” Zach said. “I wish humans were more logical, but they aren’t.”
“And Rownt aren’t either,” Liam added. “Our two chilta aren’t to blame for this, but they’ll blame themselves, and I’ve been questioning Rownt logic for a while. Ondry is supposed to go into hibernation so that he can have some growth spurt that allows him to look like he matches his status. And that seems perfectly logical. A person should look like what they are. But by going into this hibernation, he would speed up the rate at which he's going to die. What sort of species is designed so that they are crushed by the weight of their own bones and muscle? How is that remotely logical?”
Liam wanted Ondry to have status and to have others recognize that status. If Ondry didn’t undergo the rotilac, then every time they moved to a new town or a new ship, he would have to justify his rank again. But he didn’t want Ondry to die sooner. That worried him far more than his own discomfort at having a tuk-sized partner. Liam could get used to that.
Zach twisted his mouth. “We have built-in countdowns in every cell of our bodies. When our cells duplicate a certain number of times, they start writing errors into the DNA code. I'm not sure humans get to claim any great victory, biologically speaking.”
“No, we don't. Which is why I come back to my basic philosophy. Life is built out of raw stupidity. If there is a God and we are built in his image, he's a moron. Inanimate objects follow logic, but the second the first thinking creature appeared in the primordial muck, stupidity was brought into creation. And on the third day, God said let supposedly intelligent creatures undermine their own best interest. Let sentience be used as a substitute for logic. I used to think that didn't apply to the Rownt. I've now changed my mind. God designed all sentient creatures to fail.”
“I'm pretty sure a preacher would disagree with you.” Zach sounded somewhat alarmed at Liam’s tone.
“Yes, but I'm one hundred percent sure that I could find a perfect example of that same preacher being stupid as hell.”
Zach crossed his arms and leaned back against the table. “Probably, but didn’t you give me a very polite, very quiet lecture about not alarming the Rownt?”
Liam sighed. “Yes, and I’m stupid too.”
“I’m wondering if you aren’t still feeling the effects of low oxygen.” Clearly Zach was searching for something to excuse Liam’s pessimism. Maybe he was even right, because Liam did have trouble thinking past the headache pounding behind his eyes.
“Probably,” Liam said.
A shuffling of feet in the corridor warned them before the Grandmother appeared in the open doorway. She didn’t say anything; she went to Zach and rested her hand against his neck. Ondry followed.
Fear and guilt were written in every line of Ondry’s body. The angle of his eyes and the stress around his thinned lips told of Ondry’s guilt. The slight tremor as he rested his palm against Liam’s neck and the heavy huffing as Ondry tried to scent Liam screamed his shame.
Liam reached up and stroked Ondry’s fora. “I’m fine.”
Ondry captured Liam’s hand in his own, a gesture he usually reserved for times when he felt like he deserved to feel bad. Well Ondry might deny himself one form of pleasure, but he wouldn’t deny Liam a kiss since that was mutual comfort. Liam leaned closer and gently kissed Ondry’s lips. Ondry traced circles on Liam’s neck with his thumb, and the tension drained from his taut muscles. When Liam pulled back, he extricated his hand from Ondry’s grip and put it back on his fora. “I am fine,” Liam said more firmly.
Perhaps Ondry believed the promise the second time because the color began to return to his face.
“I want to go to the nest and sleep,” Liam said. Giving Ondry something constructive to do was the best way to move him past any self-recrimination.
Ondry scooped Liam up and set him on the floor before he ushered him out of the medical suite. The lights were bright, and Liam closed his eyes and allowed Ondry’s touch to guide him. Tomorrow he would worry about the Imshee and the status of the trade. Today he wanted to hide in the nest with Ondry curled around him. The rest of the illogical, oxygen-phobic, stupid universe could move on without him.