Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 Read Online Free PDF Page B

laughter instead of the silence of the war, when every month had added new holos to the altar of the ancestors.
    â€œI’ll go present our respects,” Akanlam said.
    â€œYou never had much taste for cooking,” Mau pointed out, and Akanlam snorted.
    â€œElder Aunt cooks quite well,” she said with a smile. “Better to leave everyone do what they excel at, no?”
    â€œYou impossible child,” Rechan said as she so often did, with a little of her usual amusement. Akanlam was the niece with the closest quarters to her own; and she and Mau and Rechan often got together for dinners and after-work drinks—though none of them ever let Akanlam cook. As Mau had said: not only did she not have much taste for it, but left without supervision she’d burn a noodle soup to a charred mess before anyone could intervene. She did mix superb fruit chunks, though. “What are you going to do when you get married?”
    â€œYou’re assuming I want to get married,” Akanlam said, without missing a beat. “And even if I did, I’d stay with you. You’re going to need help with raising those children of yours. How many did you say you wanted?”
    â€œI’d be lucky to have one,” Rechan said, finally. But she’d dreamt of a larger family; of the dozens brothers and sisters and cousins of her youth, before war carved a swathe through them—a horde of giggling children always ready to get into trouble. If she could find her breath-sibling again . . . “And I’m old enough to do what I’m doing.”
    â€œOh, I have no doubt. But it’s still a job for two people. Or three.” Akanlam smiled. “I’ll see you outside.”
    After Akanlam had gone, Mau swung from her wooden stool and came to stand by Rechan. “Let me have a look.”
    Rechan almost said no, almost asked what the point was. But she knew; too many things could go wrong at this stage. It wasn’t only birth without her stoneman that could kill her baby.
    Mau’s hands ran over the bulge of her belly, lingered on a point above her hips. “The head is here,” she said, massaging it. “He’s shifted positions. It’s pointing downwards, into your birth canal. It’s very large.”
    â€œI know,” Rechan said. “My doctor said the same after the scan. Said I’d have difficulty with the birth.” There were new systems; new scanners brought by the Galactics, to show a profusion of almost obscene details about the baby in her belly, down to every fine hair on its skin. But none of them had the abilities and experience of a stoneman.
    â€œMmm.” Mau ran her hands downwards. “May I?” After a short examination, she looked up, and her face lay in shadow.
    â€œWhat is it?” Rechan asked. What could she possibly have found?
    â€œYou’re partly open,” Mau said, finally. “You’ll have to be careful, elder aunt, or you’re going to enter labour early.”
    â€œI can’t—” Rechan started, and then realised how ridiculous it would sound to Mau, who could do little more in the way of medical attention. “I have to get back to the plateaux.”
    Mau shook her head. “I didn’t tell Akanlam—because you know this already—but the path gets impracticable by aircar after a while. You’ll have to walk.”
    As she had, all those years ago. “You’re right,” Rechan said. “I did know.” She braced herself for Mau to castigate her, to tell her she couldn’t possibly think of taking a mountain trail in her state. But the stonewoman’s face was expressionless, her hands quite still on Rechan’s belly.
    â€œYou’ll have to be careful,” she repeated at last.
    She couldn’t read Mau at all. Perhaps it came from never having lived with a breath-sibling of her own. “You never told me why you came,”