ship.
Three and a half years to go. Three and a half years. There is absolutely no way she will be able to stand this thing for that amount of time. It is laughable to her that she ever thought she could. Was she inebriated? Well…most likely. But even if she locked it in the cargo bay, even if she could persuade the Librarian to produce some sort of food for it, even if it learned to use a sanitation station instead of the floor—look at it! Look at it leak on the floor, even now! That red liquid continues to soil her perfectly clean deck—
“Why,” hisses Shenya the Widow, “do you not stop the leakage?”
[Perhaps it can’t], says Shokyu the Mighty. [And perhaps you should do some research before continuing with your Widow discipline methods.]
Shenya the Widow hisses softly, deciding if she is going to speak further or just end the thing’s life now. She began intentionally speaking aloud as a drunken experiment, as a bet with her own Network implant. Can a Human learn Standard? Was the question, but so far the answer has been a resounding no. She should have given up days ago, but Shenya the Widow does not easily admit defeat. That, and it seemed a waste to be blessed with the galaxy’s only captive Human and not run at least a few experiments on it. But now she is sober, and within her burns a mighty annoyance. Wager be cursed! If this thing is going to continue scurrying and squeaking and cowering and soiling the floor on a daily basis, well, this experiment will be coming to a very final close, and very soon.
And then the screaming transitions from piercing to painful.
“Enough,” hisses Shenya the Widow, unfolding to her full height. Yes, enough is enough. Into the Librarian you go, you disgusting Human. She stalks toward it, blades out, fully expecting to have to catch the slippery thing when it scrambles away from her.
“No!” shrieks the Human, staying where it is. It clutches its wounded appendage and leans forward, as if to give more force to the word. “No!”
Shenya the Widow stops dead. [Was that…Standard I just heard?] she says in her head.
[Looks like I lost a bet], says Shokyu the Mighty. [Perhaps you should publish this fear- and pain-based curriculum.]
Shenya the Widow watches the small thing carefully. “So you can learn,” she says out loud.
[Raising Your Human: A Guide to Training Your Offspring with Fear], says Shokyu the Mighty.
“But you heard it as well, did you not?”
[Secrets of Cross-Species Child-Rearing: A Terror-Based Approach.]
“If you have better ideas for disciplining vicious aliens, I am listening,” snaps Shenya the Widow. “My mother actually removed parts of me as a method of discipline.”
[That’s the mother with whom you shared such a joyous relationship?]
“It is,” hisses Shenya the Widow.
[Far be it for me to judge the parenting techniques of another species], says her implant, [but if I’m not mistaken, your pieces grow back.]
Shenya the Widow taps her damaged blade against a mandible with an audible click. Fortunately they do, or she would be left with a Librarian love bite for the rest of her life. “True,” she says. “But just because I grow back doesn’t mean—”
And then her instincts flatten her to the deck. An object flies through the space her head recently occupied, ricochets off the bulkhead behind her, and bounces to a stop on the floor. Shenya shifts her gaze from the object to the Human, amazed.
[Did it just throw its foot covering at you?] asks Shokyu the Mighty.
Shenya the Widow is nearly too shocked to reply. “I…believe it did,” she says.
[Let me guess], says Shokyu the Mighty. [Now you’re going to have some Widow fun with it before it goes into the Librarian.]
But Shenya the Widow does not respond. She examines the small figure. Even if it were not a Human—and the name alone brings her internal fluid pressure up—it would be a hideous mess of a being. Between its general pudginess, its skin wrapping, and the various fluids it seems to produce nonstop from everywhere, it is the least attractive thing she has ever seen. And yet…do not the proverbs say that the carapace tells only half the story? This repulsive little thing attacked something larger than itself, something it had no hope of defeating, and it did so while wounded. That, to a Widow, deserves some thought.
“No,” hisses Shenya the Widow, softly.
[Well then, your experiment in motherhood continues], says Shokyu