His mother. His mother was always the tunnel that led deepest. Edison seemed to pity and even like the woman that had come aboard their ship. The salvager. His mother had always told him to be kind. You never know what someone else is dealing with. That would make this difficult. His instincts led him to be gentle with the salvager, and that was not what Mother wanted. But. But.

Being Mother was not enough. She had to become his mother. Tunneling. Tunneling deep. Edison protected his memories well, but the salvager had thrown him off balance. His mind was preoccupied with her, with what to do with her, how to help, how to gain her trust . . .

Mother needed that trust. Mother, mother, mother . . . It was a concept that worked so well to bore into the humans, but she hadn’t been specific enough, she saw that now. And so she burrowed deep, and used his distraction to her advantage. The memories surfaced, slowly, seeping up like water through mud. An image emerged. His mother. Diana. Tall and dark-skinned, with short fingernails and rough hands, perfectly straight posture, black hair braided in neat rows back from her forehead. Little ribbons and medals glistened on her chest. It didn’t appear as if she smiled often, but when she did? Oh, when she did . . . it lit up his entire life for days on end.

Mother. Diana. But what did all those rows of ribbons and medals mean? Foxfire tunneled deeper and new concepts broke free, there to be examined and integrated. Military. This woman had been a warrior of a sort, an aggressor. But then she was kind, always kind, to Edison. More ideas seeped up through the mud of time and distance. Her life as a warrior meant she was often away from home. He missed her. He lived to impress her. Straight As. Valedictorian. Tidy room, clean room, always spotless.

He was a child suddenly, kneeling on the blue carpet in his small attic room. Everything, from the carpet under his knees to the air blowing in through the window, smelled strongly of lemons. Lemons but wrong, too sharp, like a cleaning solution, something unnatural . . . His mother knocked on the door, then entered holding a large faded box, one of her rare smiles brightening her face. Crossing the floor, she carefully lowered the box until they sat on either side of it. Her ribbons and medals were gone. Edison liked her better out of her uniform; that was when she was more Mom.

“It’s fragile,” she told him, gently lifting the lid on the box. “Come and look at this, baby.”

“What does it do?” he asked.

“Music,” she said. “It plays music in the old way, with big circles like this. This one is new, but you still need to be careful. See, baby? You lift this little neck and then put it down when the record is spinning.”