Jeanne G'Fellers - No Sister of Mine

LaRenna scratched at her hand. “Who hasn’t? But I don’t very often. Belsas and Chandrey raised me with love. I feel almost guilty asking for more.” She pushed Malley away, rose to her knees, and peeked hopefully at the courtyard. “All clear. Let’s check our postings.”
“What was it like?” Malley lingered on the floor, still holding LaRenna’s hand.
“Being raised by the Taelach of All?” LaRenna settled cross-legged beside her.
“Uh-huh.”
“My gahrah is like most of your brooding types, pretty reserved, sometimes unemotional. I never could read her well enough to tell when I had overstepped my bounds.”
Malley raised a high arched eyebrow in suspicion. “Really?”
“She’d just smile like nothing happened and find me the most horrid chores to do around the housing compound.”
“She never smacked you?”
Shock sprang into LaRenna’s long-lashed eyes. “Why, no! Mamma would have exploded if Belsas ever had. When things got intense, Bel would just walk away. I probably would have preferred a thrashing to those chores or Chandrey’s lectures. It certainly would’ve been quicker.” LaRenna shook her head as childhood memories encroached her thoughts. “Those lectures made me feel so small.”
Malley dropped her handhold to smooth the bedrolls into inspection perfection. “I would have taken chores or words over a belt to the back end any day. Believe me, LaRenna, you would have too.”
LaRenna offered her friend a considering stare. Malley’s childhood had been impossibly rough, plagued by a pair of raisers who had never gotten along and had taken their problems out on their only child with regular ferocity. No wonder Malley had gone into military schooling at such a young age; it was an escape mechanism. “You make me feel privileged to have been raised by them. Chandrey and Belsas have always been close. That’s probably why they waited so long before they took a child to raise. I guess they were making sure of themselves.”
“Lucky you.” Malley’s expression turned dourer than ever. “Dressa and Whellen seemed to think raising me involved intense screaming and yelling. Not that it matters. I survived it.”
“And managed to rise above it, Third Engineer Malley Whellen.” LaRenna gave Malley’s hand a confident squeeze and then tugged her toward the door. “Come on, you overcharged sodium cell.” Laughing, she vaulted down the corridor to the floor-level lifts, dragging her reluctant roommate behind. “Let’s check our posts.”

Chapter Three
Speak not of your Taelach daughters. Their birth is substantiation of your sin.
—Autlach saying
In the high plains of southern Vartoch, deep within the Taelach-owned lands opened for Autlach settlement, Sentry Commander Trazar Laiman watched his father polish two names listed on the Death Stone. Unlike the other forgotten names, these two were meticulously kept. “You keep their memory well.”
“You’ll be going soon, won’t you?” His father’s hands never wavered from their task.
“My launch leaves in an hour.” Trazar ran his palm over the top of the weathered boulder. “I wish I had better memories of M’ma.”
Laiman nodded slowly. “You weren’t yet six when she died. Mercy barely seven. Neither of you was old enough for many memories. I did what I could to make her seem real.”
At the sound of his father’s anguish, Trazar offered what comfort he could. “You did well by us.”
“I’m proud of my children.” But Laiman avoided his eyes. “I sometimes wonder how things would have been if she’d lived. Losing the baby destroyed her so. It wasn’t half a moon cycle later that she . . .” Laiman’s voice trailed off.
Curiosity topped Trazar’s better judgment, driving him to question what no one dare speak of. Minor inconsistencies in what little he had been told indicated his mother’s suicide but not his infant sister’s fate. “Why did the baby die? Nobody ever told me.”
Laiman gave his son a long, pained look. Memories hurt. So did lies. “She was a lot like you in the face, same chin, same jaw line. She even had the same birthmark on her ear. If only . . .”
“If only what? What happened to the baby?” Trazar stopped his father’s polishing hand with his own. “What happened?”
“It’s a long trip to the launches and two hard days to Langus. You’d best go.”
“Answer me!”
Laiman bowed his head, shoulders slouched and arms drawn as if cuddling the lost child. “She was perfect except—” He paused. “Then, despite my efforts, she was gone. No one could have prevented it. It doesn’t matter what took her, only that she’s gone.”
“I wish I’d known her.”
“Me, too,” mumbled Laiman, pushing away the invisible bundle. “Me, too.”
Trazar looked at the sun’s place in the afternoon sky, aware of the time but reluctant to leave. “I have to go. I’ll send word as soon as my post on Langus grants time.”
“Safe journey to you.” Laiman wrapped his arms around his son in a gruff embrace. Trazar had matured well. He was a full head taller than Laiman and almost twice as broad in the shoulder which, though not astounding for an Autlach, was unusual for the family’s small-statured genetics. Laiman admitted military training could fill one out in such a way, but liked to think a childhood spent in the fresh air of Vartoch’s single expansive continent had. “Be careful. Langus can be dangerous.”
“Not the base, Dah, and that’s where I’ll be.” Trazar turned and walked down the hillside toward the launch stop, his shoulder pack swaying with his pace. He wondered if things were really as his father said, or if possibly . . . ?
Laiman ran his hand over one of the Death Stone’s names. The ridged letters stung his fingers with the lie they contained.
LARENNA NELL LAIMAN
BIRTH/DEATH
DAY 4–CYCLE 10–RECORDED PZ4428
Turning back, Laiman watched his son fade from view. He longed to stop him and tell everything, something, anything about that morning twenty-two passes ago. It had been unfortunate, a terrifying event, and if anyone ever found out . . . Laiman shook his head. If anyone found out, the family lineage would be marred for generations. They would be known as producers of Taelachs, of