136 - Like I Spit in His Soup

“Mother, I understand that you need to go to Lainz with His Radiance and the warmaster and them, but actually taking the warbird flock is totally unnecessary! Prime is hardly going to send humans on the ground to wipe everybody out! We saw! We SAW how he does it! He killed father and everybody and... and...” Archie flung his arms over his head and started bawling.

“Shhh. Yes. We saw. We certainly didn't see Prime taking that route since it was so illogical. Your father thought that logic would win the day.” The Head's tone was smooth, with only the faintest hint of any kind of emotion in it at all. She patted Archibald while he bawled, then sighed and pulled him into a hug. “He would have been so mortified,” she said faintly. “But he would have been glad to know that we got away as far as he knew.”

“I... suppose.”

“Archibald...” she sighed again, unsure what to say to her son. “We've always thought that these barbarians, with their weapons and their fighting and their savage birds and wild horses would all just... leave us alone when we showed them our superior status and technology. Your father truly thought that they'd eventually kill themselves and each other off.”

“There wasn't a lot of good data for him to reach that conclusion, mother,” Archie said, straightening away from her, scrubbing his face dry but just spreading mucus.  She held out a cloth for him. “Bad science.”

“Wishful thinking, I believe. Now we are allied with, and beholden to these self-same savages.”

“Mother, why doesn't the Lainz siwion like me? I keep trying to talk to him and the more I say the more he goes quiet and looks like I spit in his soup or something.”

“Archibald, I know I asked you to make friends with the young man, but things have changed. You don't need to try so hard. If your talking to him is somehow upsetting him, try listening instead.”

“But mother, he's just so weird. He's so much in that honourable warrior stuff and he and his friend are wingbrothers and I think they're lovers and he's just jealous.”

“Archibald.” She folded her hands in her lap. “That may very well be true. It is something to fix, not something to gloat over! You might consider, as well, that he has a lover or two. And you do not. I think that you might be jealous of him in some ways.”

The boy sat, chastened and thinking at last. “Emotions seem illogical, but they have an internal, organic logic of their own. It is a matter of learning the language, the same way you learn code and you're good at code.”

“Aw, mama.” She checked her reaction. When had he called her by that informal name last? Perhaps the last time she'd addressed him as 'Archfluffball'. “It sounds so messy.”

“Arch... you're too big for me to call you Archfluffball or Archi-Warchi...”

“... Mama! Don't you dare, I'd die of embarrassment!” He was blushing, his face still showing signs of his grief for his father. It didn't matter to him that they had been apart for years. He still needed to mourn. For that matter, she owned to herself, so did she.

“My Arch... just breathe a bit more easily around those bluff warrior boys and listen. You'll learn the language soon enough.”

“Maybe before they try to hoist those monsters of theirs into the air!”

“No, dear. Let them try. You cannot logically predict what Prime will do.”