Moon glanced at Gundhalinu, saw the life go out of his eyes and the animation out of his face, leaving bleak resignation. But Blodwed beamed as she dropped the box, stood before him, inspecting him like an inquisitor. “I don’t believe it, he’s all right! See—” She caught his sleeve, tugged on his arm. “I got a real sibyl just to keep you alive, Blue-boy.” He pulled free, sitting up. “Now you can finish reading to me.”

“Leave me alone.” He put his feet over the cot’s edge, propped his head on his hands. He began to cough, sullenly.

Blodwed shrugged; looked back at Moon, scratching her beaky nose. “You okay too? I thought you were both dead this morning.” A bare hint of deference crept into her voice.

Moon nodded, controlling her own voice, picking the words cautiously. “I’m all right… Thank you for bringing me clothes to wear.” She touched the front of the tunic. “This is very beautiful.” She couldn’t keep the incredulity out of it.

Blodwed’s sky-blue eyes were full of pride for an instant; she glanced down. “They’re just old stuff. They belonged to my great grandmother. Nobody wears those things any more; nobody here even knows how to make them.” She tugged at the hem of her dirty white parka, as though she really preferred it. She rummaged in the carton, pulled out a fist-sized cube of plastic. Unintelligible noise filled the air like ram. Blodwed began to hum a tune, and Moon realized that she was picking it out of the radio static. “Reception really stinks back in this cave. Of course it didn’t help that old Blue boy here tried to take this apart and make a transmitter.” She made a face at him. “Here’s your dinner,” tossing a can onto the cot. A sudden shriek behind them jerked Moon around. The toddler stood wailing, waving his hands by the cages. “Well, don’t stick your fingers in there, damn it! Here’s yours.”

Moon caught the can as it arced into her hands, sat down and pulled the lid up. It vaguely resembled stew. She watched Gundhalinu open his own can, with a twinge of relief. “Is… he your brother?” to Blodwed.

“No.” Blodwed moved away, carrying handfuls of meat and a box with an animal’s picture on it. She made the circuit from tethered creature to caged one, giving them each their evening meal. Moon watched them nutter up or cringe away from her rough movements, slink forward again after she passed.

Blodwed came back, scowling, sat down with her own can. The little boy appeared beside her, pulling at her jacket and whining. “Not now!” She pushed a spoonful of stew into his mouth. “You know anything about animals?” She glanced at Moon, looked back over her shoulder at the cages.

“Not these.” Moon looked away from the boy, whose face was as perfectly pink and white as a porcelain figurine.

“Then you’re going to do what you did yesterday again — only this time tell me about the animals.” She glared, expecting a refusal. “I think some of them are sick too. I — I don’t know how to take care of them either.” Her gaze broke. “I want to know how.”

Moon nodded, swallowing the last of her stew, and got slowly to her feet. “Where did you get all these animals?”

“Stole them from the spaceport. Or got them from traders, or out trapping… the elf fox and the gray birds there, and the conics. But I don’t even know the names of the rest.”

Moon felt Gundhalinu’s eyes trail her with dark accusation, ignored it as she walked toward the closest of the animals, the hardest one to face — the shivering pouch of wrinkles that squatted on a nest of dried grass. It blubbered obscenely, showing her a wide sucker mouth as she opened the cage door. Biting back her disgust, she crouched before it, offered it a handful of food pellets at arm’s length, holding very still.

Its burbling hysteria gradually died away, and after another endless moment it floundered forward, inch by inch, to touch her hand tentatively with its mouth. She shuddered; it scuttled back, worked its way forward again. It took the pellets one by one from her palm with great delicacy. She dared to stroke it with her free hand; its brain like convolutions were smooth and cool to her touch, like the surface of a smocked satin pillow. It settled contentedly under her hand, making a sound like bubbles popping.

She left it slowly, went on to the pair of lithe, pacing carnivores in the next cage. Their ears flattened, their tusks showed white against the black-on-black patterning of their fur. There was something feline about them, and so she began to whistle softly, creating the overtones that had made cats come purring into her lap at home. The long, tufted ears flicked, swiveled, tuned like radar… the animals came toward her almost reluctantly, drawn by the sound. She offered them her fingers to sniff, felt a thrill of pleasure when an ebony cheek brushed her hand in a gesture of acceptance. The cat creatures sidled along the bars, demanding her touch with guttural cries.

She moved on more confidently to the leather-winged reptile with a head like a pickax; the feather-soft oblongs with no heads at all; the bird with emerald plumage and ruby crest that lay listlessly in the bottom of its cage. She lost track of time or any purpose beyond the need to communicate even to the smallest degree with every creature, and earn for herself the reward of its embryonic trust… Until she reached the end of the circuit at last, found the little boy lying asleep on Blodwed’s knee, and Blodwed staring up at her in silent envy.

Moon glanced away, understanding the look in one final moment of empathy. “I — I’m ready to begin Transfer, Blodwed; whenever you say.”

“How did you do that?” Blodwed’s words struck her like blows. “Why do they come to you, and not to me? They’re my pets! They’re supposed to love me!” The boy woke at the sound of her anger, and began to cry.

“That should be obvious,” Gundhalinu muttered sourly. “She treats animals like human beings, and you treat human beings like animals.”

Blodwed stood up furiously, and Gundhalinu stiffened; but no words came out of her, and she did not bring up her white-knuckled fists to strike him.

“Blodwed… they’re afraid of you. Because…” Moon struggled, fitting reluctant words to her thoughts. “Because you’re afraid of them.”

“I’m not afraid of them! You were afraid of them.”

Moon shook her head. “Not that way. I mean… I’m not afraid to let them see I care about them.” She twisted a braid.

Blodwed’s mouth worked, her scowl faded. “Well, I feed them, I do everything for them! What else am I supposed to do?”

“Learn to be — gentle with them. Learn that… that gentleness isn’t… weakness.”

The little boy clung to Blodwed’s leg, still crying. She looked down at him, put her hand on his head hesitantly, before she followed Moon back to the cages.

Moon began the circuit again with the brain creature, luring it into her hands, making it the focus of her senses. “Ask me about them. Input—” She heard Blodwed’s question and carried it down…

“…analysis!” She found herself sitting on the floor, exhausted, with the snub-nosed elf fox cub suckling her braid. She smoothed its thick white crest, removed the braid from its mouth and its pinprick claws from her tunic with great care, held it out to Blodwed in both hands. “Here,” faintly, “take him.”

Blodwed reached out, uncertainty slowing her movements; the cub did not struggle or protest as Moon slipped it into her waiting hands. Blodwed settled it against her stomach, held it there almost timidly. She giggled as it worked its way in through the opening of her parka and settled against her side. The toddler sat at her feet reaching up after it with one hand, his thumb in his mouth.

“Did I tell you — enough?” Moon glanced away, along the circle of bare cages, still overlaid by the shadowy green and gold of an imported-pet shop somewhere on another world. So far away… all of us so far away from home.