Since Liam lacked any words to convince Zach of something that wasn’t in his heart, he changed the subject. “When these Grandmothers look at me for answers, I don't know what to say.”
“Is it strange they would ask you for answers? I've noticed that the Grandmothers do a lot of listening, but not a lot of asking.”
Liam shrugged. “Shows you how upset they are.” He suspected they had their own guilt about not answering that call for help earlier.
“We should ask my Grandmother to go over.” Zach stood, like he might ask her right now.
Liam caught his arm. “We can't!”
Zach dropped back onto the bench. “Why not? With children in danger, she would drop everything.”
“Of course she would.” Liam never doubted that. Hell, after meeting Liam, she had changed theCalti'scourse and postponed her trade missions to make sure that palteia on Earth weren't in need of evacuation. “The problem is that Grandmothers don't enter one another’s territory.”
“These are extenuating circumstances.” Zach wore a stubborn expression.
“I understand that,” Liam said softly. “And those Grandmothers have bent to give you permission to come over. You have the status of your Grandmother, but because you're a palteia and a human, they’re inviting not only you but an unknown alien predator to come onto the ship.” Liam didn’t see Duke that way, but he was fairly sure the Grandmothers on theDesgadid. He remembered how Ondry had reacted when he learned the Grandmothers were allowing a dog on the ship. “They’re bending as far as they can without breaking their own backs. But if your Grandmother goes over there it will put far too much strain on everyone.”
“What do you mean?”
Liam wasn't even sure where to start. By the time he was in a relationship with Ondry, he had read so many storyscrolls that Rownt psychology was all there, waiting for that one keystone that would make all the pieces fit together. But Zach tried to understand Rownt rationally, through explanations. Sometimes Liam suspected that Zach would develop faster if he would stop doing the linguistic work of a Grandmother and lock himself in his room with a stack of storyscrolls. But it wasn't Liam’s place to say that. “I want you to imagine that instead of being two spaceships that we were two towns that stood a short distance from each other, and one town encountered a situation that was so stressful and difficult that they had to ask someone else for help when that is antithetical to anything in Rownt psychology.”
Zach nodded. “So the Rownt in the first town would be under a lot of stress. And the Rownt in the second town could choose to ignore the request, but if kids are involved, they won’t.”
“Exactly. TheCaltican't fly away knowing that children are in trouble, even psychological danger. So Grandmothers feel the need to get involved, but they can't get too involved.”
Zach frowned. “I see a moral coming.”
“It's a potential outcome. Many storyscrolls that talk about what happens when a town is under so much stress that even the Grandmothers can't chart an ethical course. That’s a favorite in Rownt literature.”
“And?”
“As tuk and ka-ranked individuals travel to other towns that are more settled and that feel less conflicted, they may choose to settle there.”
Zach tilted his head, and Liam could practically hear the gears turning. If these were two towns, the situation would be easier to resolve, but not any less messy. “Ship-Rownt can't travel that way.”
“No, they can't,” Liam said, “but a shuttle between our two ships is a pathway that they could walk. And if those lower-ranked Rownt saw a large, old, settled Grandmother walking that path—”
“They’d be tempted to follow her back to theCalti,” Zach finished. “If too many of the crew decide to abandon the Degsa, the ship could flounder.”
“And there wouldn't be room for all of them here,” Liam said. In storyscrolls, the chaos of a town collapse often gave the hero a chance to shine; however, that made a good story because most Rownt caught in that sort of social upheaval suffered. Rownt were not built for change. “Most of the Rownt would lose some status. And that's why some of the Rownt, including the Grandmothers, would never come over here.”
A slow horror crossed Zach’s face. “But if there aren't enough people to run the ship, the systems would fail. The ship would die.”
“And some of the Rownt would choose to die with it,” Liam said coldly. He needed Zach to understand this. “If you invite your Grandmother to get involved, she might think she has to go in order to protect the children.”
Zach rubbed his face. “Fuck. If she does, Rownt could die.”
“Theywilldie; I just don’t know how many,” Liam corrected him. “Rownt don't handle change or stress well.”
“So what are we supposed to do about this?” Zach threw his hands up in frustration.
Liam wasn’t sure. “Comfort the children. Distract them with a pretty dog. Give theDesgaGrandmothers lots of options so they can make an ethical choice. Beyond that, I don’t know. I'm making this up as I go.”
For a time they sat in silence. Liam suspected the Grandmothers in the upper level of the temple were equally at a loss. Rownt children were orphaned. If Ondry hadn’t been so precocious, he might have still been in his mother’s home when she was killed while traveling between towns. However, mass numbers of orphans were less common.
Eventually Zach asked, “Do you think officers who got their promotions the traditional way ever feel this useless?”
“Maybe? I don't know.” Liam thought back to his days on Landing when the sound of weapons’ fire and bombs had punctuated his nights. At the time he’d thought the officers were calm, self-assured. Powerful. Now he suspected only one of those three was accurate. Maybe they were in the same spot Liam was in now—facing a situation with no good outcome and moving forward only because there wasn’t any other choice.
