io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand” by Lowry Poletti; this is part two of two—read part one here. Enjoy!
“It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand” by Lowry Poletti
“You have singularly bad timing, Sun,” Hati says as he leads Sun back into the lab.
Glass cabinets overhang black-topped benches. At the end of the aisle, the hatchling is suspended in a tank of proteinaceous fluid. Sun gasps at the sight. It’s only been a few days since the poor thing was eating in the video.
“What happened?” She steps past Hati, putting a hand on the glass. Unconscious, the hatchling’s head is tucked beneath its skinny neck. It hasn’t developed all of its fat pads yet, so its tail is reminiscent of a mouse’s.
The hatchling really is so small. Sun’s reflection—dark-eyed, long and black, dressed in her “hawkish” trench, as Hati always described it—stretches across the whole of its body.
“We were seeing evidence of atypical development. Some of her—” Hati coughs. “—some of its sensory organs are fine, but its crops are too small, and its female genitalia are atrophic. It’s receiving supplemental hormones now.” “And how long does that take?”
“We’re trying to be safe. A few days.”
Arms crossed against his chest, Hati leans against the bench. The hatchling may be small, but it casts a shadow that splits his face in two. She’s relieved, for a moment, to learn that it isn’t ill or dying. But she recalls the fate of the other hatchlings, and she starts to understand.
“You’re scared,” she says. Maybe she shouldn’t have come.
“No,” he lies. “If this one fails, we will move onto the next.”
“Have you told Dossa about this?”
It surprises her how much it hurts to say his name. The suggestion rings hollow, even to her.
“What would the old man care? He’s retiring in a year.”
“Hati? Because he’s your friend?”
She leans forward, catches his eye. The sigh that leaves his body makes his shoulders fall, and suddenly he is eggshell-fragile. He says finally, “I named her Luna.”
Sun sits on the bench beside him, pressed up against him, and he is still saying, “I have met fifty of her but her—” Her, her, her. She hears the catch in his voice. Yes, Sun knows of this type of love. “I feel as if she was pulled out of me, down out of my pelvis and onto the workbench. It’s been a decade—everything of me, for a decade. If I made her out of my skin, my marrow, my sperm, it would hold less of me than Luna does.”
“You won’t lose her.”
And she won’t lose her bird either: she will keep clawing her way back.
