Women of War by Alexander Potter Page A

tall mound of crystal that was Ersh in her preferred form gave an ominous chime. “Should I not ask you, Youngest?”
    One of those “examine your soul for spots” questions . I was suddenly alert, if incapable of figuring out a safe answer.
    Before I needed to do so, Ersh continued. “You would know more about Skalet’s fascination with war.”
    How? I didn’t quite gnash my teeth. I should have realized Ersh would have shared with each before they left her again. I couldn’t blame Ansky. All Ersh had to do was take a nibble and she’d know all we’d done and experienced.
    On the bright side, while I couldn’t deny my question, she might answer it. “Yes, Ersh,” I said hopefully.
    Ersh leaned forward and I eased back, careful of my toes should she decide to tumble. A graceful and powerful mode of locomotion, but one I judged safer observed from a distance. “You wonder why I tolerate it?”
    This being a far less comfortable question, I did my best to shrink in place without appearing defensive. It was a posture I’d yet to master, but the effort sometimes mollified Ersh. At least it made me feel a smaller target. Then, as usual, my inconvenient curiosity overwhelmed my sense of self-preservation. “You let her do terrible things,” I whispered. “Why?”
    â€œI let her be her form’s self, Youngest,” a correction, but mild. “The consequences are as they are.”
    â€œBeings suffer and die.”
    â€œSkalet engages in war, Youngest.” As if this was an answer.
    I tilted my head, wary but wanting more. “What of the Prime Laws? She ends sentience before its time.”
    â€œThe Kraal are a violent species.”
    â€œTheir species is Human,” I corrected automatically.
    Ersh’s chime grew a shade testy. “A technicality. The Kraal refuse to mingle their genetic material with others of that heritage. It will not be long—as we measure time—before this is a matter of inability, not social preference. You would be wise to pay attention to this process. It is not uncommon among ephemeral cultures.”
    The ploy was familiar. Distract the youngest and she’ll follow along. “Why—” I said stubbornly, “do you let Skalet participate so fully in this culture?”
    Ersh settled herself with a slide of crystal over crystal. Reflected light ran over the floor, walls, and ceiling, making me squint. “You know the beginnings of that answer, Youngest.” There was no doubt in her voice. “You were there, when Ansky and I discussed Skalet’s first mission with the Kraal. From that, everything else has followed.”
    I’d been there? Before I could open my mouth to dispute this, however poor a decision that might have been, memory rearranged itself. To be more exact, memory reared up and shook me in sickening fashion from head to paw, recollections of that time before I had words of my own to use abruptly gaining coherance. With the perfect memory of my kind, it seemed I had recorded much I knew Skalet herself would have wished to know—
    Or not.
    Pressure mattered. Little else. Time. I knew the passage of days, marked them by movement conveyed by waves pressing against me.
    Me. Me. Me. I knew me, that I existed, if then I had had no language in which to express that knowledge.
    But the memory of a Web-being is perfect in every detail. So it was that when Ersh challenged me to consider such things as beginnings, I recalled my own—and by so doing, I applied what I’d learned since to the experiences so precisely recalled. The result was—interesting.
    The waves of pressure which so entertained my proto-self had been generated by three sources. The inner workings of Ansky’s body—the pulse of heart and lungs, the rush of blood through arteries, the gurgling of her digestive tract—all of these transferred through the ammniotic fluid