The nomarch came later, and Dad, who’d been at the power plant loading thorium pellets. They looked at Kho, and Dad had to sit down, too. The nomarch looked like he wanted to, but he was always on his dignity. He asked for the story twice.
“How,” he said, hesitant, “do you know…she’s a girl?”
“I just knew when I saw her,” Sriyani said. “And I helped wash her: she’s not a boy.”
“Ah.” The nomarch looked at the nurse. “What accounts for her…shape?”
Nurse Vanderbilt nibbled the inside of her mouth. “I think,” she said slowly, “she’s had a birth defect, but she deals with it well. She blind, but her hearing’s sensitive.”
“She doesn’t talk.”
“She can say her name,” Sri contradicted. “And mine,” she added.
“She might not know Iphigenian,” Mum said. “Maybe a settlement hasn’t given up their old languages.”
“Everyone’s switched over,” the nomarch said flatly. “Since I was a boy.”
“She could be, well—” Dad stopped.
“She’s got multiple deformities,” the nomarch said. “She can’t talk, she can’t see. She might be mentally disabled as well, why not?”
“She can say her name and mine,” Sriyani repeated louder, defensive.
“What else can she say?” the nomarch said, not quite sarcastic.
“Turn’p,” Kho said.
“She can say turnip,” Mum said, getting another bowl.
People started coming to see Kho as the rain passed: first a few, then a lot, until the nomarch sent a broadcast convo to everyone’s tablet to please leave them be for now.
But he, the three schoolteachers, the nurse, Dad, and Mum stood on the porch talking, and Sri and Senarath could hear them from inside.
“Of course she’s human,” Mum said. “Two arms, two legs, a face…” She trailed off.
“More to the point,” the upper-school teacher said, “she can eat turnip, and there’s nothing native to Iphigenia that can metabolize fully carbon-based food. Even more to the point, there’s no large animal life on land. None. She’s human.”
“But so deformed!” the lower-school teacher said. “The hands—they don’t seem human at all. Like scoops.”
“Who knows what exotic chemistry her parents ran into up in the badlands,” Nurse Vanderbilt said.
“In eighty years, has anyone had a baby that badly deformed?” the nomarch asked.
“I can try to find out,” Nurse Vanderbilt said.
Sri had her arms around Kho. Kho made a pleasant vibration in her face, a low, ongoing tingly hum. If Sriyani listened carefully, she could hear it echoing off the walls.
“I’d cover her ears if I knew where she kept them,” she said. “Of course she’s human.”
“Of course,” agreed Senarath. “And she’s not deformed! What’s deformed mean?”
“Made different. A lot different. Accidentally. Because of damaged genes. But people all look different. Dark like us, or lighter, or real light. They’re tall or short. Thin and fat, boys and girls. And old Mist’ Pauloviĉ is blind. And so is she. But I think she can see,” Sri said softer. “In a secret way.”
“It would explain,” the nurse said outside, “why she was put in a boat. By herself.”
The adults fell silent.
“What do you want to do?” the nomarch asked after a while.
“It’s a terrible thing to do to a little girl,” Mum said. “If that’s what they did, her parents are awful people.” Her voice shook.
“If that happened to her,” Dad said, “we’ll take her in. How couldn’t we?”
“I always wanted another daughter,” said Mum. “But we’ll need a better ration. She seems to like turnips. A lot.”