was an example of it. They were two people who had . . . grown together by pupating, like a caterpillar. Two people, imitating a third person.
How could I hope to understand such a people as this? I was supposed to act like this was normal? We walked around a corner, passing two Krell. Even still, whenever I saw one of them the hair stood up on the back of my neck and a chill passed through me. The images of their armor had been used in Defiant iconography since before I’d been born.
“Can you feel them?” I found myself asking Morriumur as we passed the Krell. “Your parents?”
“Kind of,” Morriumur said. “It is difficult to describe. I’m made up of them. In the end, they will decide whether to give birth, or whether to pupate and try again. So they’re watching, and they’re conscious—but at the same time they are not. Because I am using their brains to think, as I am using their melded bodies to move.”
Scud. It was just so . . . well, alien.
We turned around a wall, stepping through an archway into the garden that Morriumur had been leading me to.
I froze in place and gaped. I’d been imagining some streams and maybe a waterfall, but the “water garden” was something far more grand. Enormous shimmering globs of water—easily a meter across—floated above the ground. They undulated and reflected light, hanging some two meters or more in the air.
Below, smaller globs emerged from spigots in the ground and floated upward as well, merging or splitting apart. Children of a hundred different species ran through the park, chasing the bubblelike chunks of water. It was like zero G, but only for the water. Indeed, when children would catch a glob of water and slap it, it would splash into a thousand smaller globs that rippled, catching light.
I ate lunch in the cockpit each day during training, and was quite familiar with how odd it could be to drink in zero G. I’d sometimes squeeze a glob of water out to hover in front of me, then stick my lips into it and suck it down. This was the same thing, only on an enormous scale.
It was gorgeous.
“Come!” Morriumur said. “It’s my favorite place in the city. Just be careful! The water might splash on you.”
We stepped into the park and followed a path between spigots. The children didn’t all smile and laugh—diones had their characteristic lax, nonthreatening expressions, while other species would howl. One very pink child I passed was making a hiccupping sound.
Yet, seeing them together, their joy was palpable. Varied though they were, they were all having fun.
“How do they do this?” I asked, reaching out and tapping a bubble of water as it passed. It shook in the air, vibrating, looking a little like the way the sound of a deep drum felt.
“I’m not sure, entirely,” Morriumur said. “It has something to do with specific uses of artificial gravity and certain ionizations.” Morriumur bowed their head. I was pretty sure that was a dione method of shrugging. “My parents came here often. I inherited a love of the place from both. Here! Come sit. See that timer over there? This is the best part!”
We settled onto a bench, Morriumur leaning forward, watching a timer on the far side of the park. Most of this ground was a stone patio, without much ornamentation other than pathways of a light blue rock, lined with benches. When the timer on the far wall hit zero, all of the water bubbles in the air burst and came crashing down in a sudden rain, which made the playing children squeal and laugh, and excitedly call out to each other and their parents.
I found the sounds transfixing.
“My parents met here,” Morriumur said. “About five years ago. They’d been coming as children for many years, but it wasn’t until they were just out of training that they actually started talking to each other.”
“And they decided to pair?”
“Well, first they fell in love,” Morriumur said.
It was obvious. Of course the diones could love. Even though it was hard to imagine something as human as love existing between these creatures who were so strange.
A few Krell children ran past, wearing smaller suits of armor with two extra legs, perhaps to make it easier for the young crablike creatures to keep balanced upright. They waved arms wildly with excited joy. This . . . this is the Superiority . . . , I