Juno of Taris (13 page)

Creen smiled and shook her head. ‘Oh, Vima, the sooner you marry, the happier your life will be. You’ll see – you and Oban are perfect for each other.’

They said goodnight and left me. Vima looked back from the doorway and pulled a face.

So much to think about. Mother. My sister. Words on a screen. Knowledge. Vima. I’d been right about her – she was a misfit like me. 

I
woke earlier than usual because Dad blasted into the house shouting, ‘Have you heard? Have you heard?’

I jumped out of bed. He sounded happy. Mother must be all right. We met in the doorway of my room. ‘You’ve got a sister. A tiny, dark-haired sister.’ He grabbed me and swung me around and around. ‘Sheen and Zanin have a daughter, another stunning daughter.’

Vima was already in the kitchen, making breakfast. ‘Congratulations. Both of you. News like that makes you hungry – come and eat.’

I sat at the table and ate the omlette she put in front of me. Mother was well. My sister had arrived. She had hair. That was good; I could look at her hair. I could love that about her and if I was lucky, the love might spread.

Neighbours came in. They brought flowers, food, tiny baby clothes and toys.

All my learning stratum came during that first hour, bringing gifts they’d made. Marba had made a child-sized abacus with wooden beads that slid along tightly strung linen threads. Even Silvern seemed happy and actually smiled as she handed over a tiny tunic. ‘Congratulations.’

It sounded like she meant it, but I hardly noticed. I unfolded the delicate little tunic she’d brought. ‘Silvern! It’s gorgeous!’

I’d forgotten; babies were allowed to have non-standard tunics, and this one was a soft green and embroidered all over with leaves and flowers. ‘When she grows out of this, we’ll hang it on her wall for her to look at. It’s so pretty.’

She shrugged. ‘The GCs won’t let you.’

But I could tell she was pleased.

Dad repeated the story of the birth so often that morning that I came to feel I’d been there too.

Mother had slept until just after two in the morning, then the pains began again, fierce and sharp. Two hours later, my sister came howling into the world.

‘And I didn’t faint,’ Dad ended his story, grinning and proud.

The morning was a riotous party, fuelled by joy and excitement. Everyone was happy, everyone laughed at how Trebe had finally got a prediction wrong. People only went to their work when Dad clapped his hands and said, ‘Thank you, my friends. Thank you for celebrating our joy. But now it’s time to take Juno to meet her sister.’

They formed two lines and clapped as we ran through them onto the path. They would tidy the house, organise the gifts into neat piles and put the flowers in vases. The house would be perfect when we returned.

Dad was too hyped up to walk, so we ran all the way. That suited me fine because he didn’t talk. The beat of our feet hammered words into my head:
I will love this child. I will love this child.

Or I would pretend to.

I heard her before I saw her. ‘She’s loud,’ I said, but Dad had already gone into the room.

The baby’s yells kept on. I hugged Mother. ‘You look tired. Are you well? Are you all right?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, I’m well. And I’ve a right to be tired. It’s hard work, giving birth. But she’s lovely. Have a look.’

She didn’t sound lovely. But I could do this – I could look at this sister-non-sister and I could exclaim and say the right words. I knew what they were. It was time.

The cot was on the far side of the room. I walked around Mother’s bed, pulled by the shrieks. ‘She sounds like a siren. Is she ill?’

Mother’s voice was weary indeed. ‘No. She’s perfect. She just keeps crying. Trebe doesn’t know why.’

I bent over the cot. The baby lay on her back and had wriggled out of her swaddling blanket. Her face was scrunched up, red and roaring. Arms and legs bashed at the air. She had black hair that stood straight up about a centimetre long all over her head.

Something moved in my heart. This child was no Silvern. I stroked her cheek with a finger. ‘Hey, little sister, what’s the matter? Don’t you like it here?’ I wrapped the blanket around her again. She kept yelling, so I picked her up.

Dad said, ‘Put her down, Juno. She’ll settle. It’s a bit of shock to be born, that’s all.’

I didn’t obey. She wouldn’t settle if we left her. Not this baby, not until she yelled herself into exhaustion. I held her against my shoulder. It was tricky because she wriggled and bawled. So my parents watched me break yet another of the accepted Tarian ways of doing things. I turned away from the pain in their eyes. ‘There there, little one. All is well. You’ve arrived safely. Don’t fuss.’

She lowered the volume. Her yells bubbled out into hiccups, she sighed hugely and closed her eyes. She wasn’t very big when she was asleep. I held my breath and put her back in the cot. She didn’t wake.

‘Thank you, Juno,’ Mother whispered. She smiled at me. ‘I’m glad she’s asleep.’

I couldn’t stop looking at her. She was lovely. I loved her. She was going to be a tricky character, ornery and difficult: fine, very fine. ‘What name are you giving her?’

Dad rubbed his eyes, tiredness kicking in with him too. ‘We can’t decide. None of the ones we were thinking about seems right.’

I left my sister sleeping and sat by Mother’s bed. ‘I thought of one.’

‘What is it?’ Dad asked. ‘It’ll be good to have a name before we bring her home.’

‘Hera. It came to me last night.’ Well, so it had, but not in the way they would assume.

They considered it. ‘Hera,’ Mother repeated. ‘I like it.’

‘I think it could be exactly right,’ Dad said.

We had to run it past the Governance Companions first, but by the afternoon they let us know that the name was acceptable.

Juno and Hera. Two ancient goddesses on the island of Taris in the year 2225. I was extremely pleased with myself.

Mother and Hera came home the next day. Hera yelled all the way. The grandparents were there to greet us. Grif took the shouting baby. ‘You’re a noisy one, little girl. Sh, sh, all is well.’ But Hera kept yelling until she fell asleep.

We had the naming ceremony two weeks after her birth. Fisa conducted it, and Hera yelled all the way through. She only stopped when the music began and we sang her the welcome songs. She kept quiet as I performed the official dance that always accompanied this ceremony. It was the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ from a ballet called
The Nutcracker
. We didn’t have toe-shoes like the dancers had on our recordings, and I didn’t have the tutu either, but I performed it perfectly. Hilto watched with mean eyes, looking for a deviation, but I danced for Mother, Dad and my sister. It was perfect.

The community cheered. Hera slept on.

Creen caught me as we left the arena. ‘You have to do the dance apprenticeship. You’re so good, so graceful. And who will teach us if you don’t? We’ll grow fat and lazy and our ceremonies will be dull.’

I didn’t need to reply, because people pressed all around us – congratulating me, peeping at Hera.

‘She’s got strong lungs,’ Nixie said. ‘She’ll make her voice heard.’

Oh. I stepped back and let him take my place beside Mother. Yes, Hera would make her voice heard – I was suddenly one hundred per cent certain that she wasn’t the child of the logical, restrained parents who had been chosen for her. She was Derrick and Margaretta’s child.

Oh dear goodness. I wanted to shout with triumph and relief. But I also wanted to hide away and never come out. I wanted … well, I don’t know what I wanted, and anyway, it was too late for that. I had what I had, what I myself had chosen.

I watched my parents make their way through the crowd. I watched their pride, their quiet joy. I wouldn’t be able to tell. Not anyone, not ever.

While babies were very young, their mothers always took them to work with them. Mother went back to teaching when Hera was a month old.

We walked to school together. Mother had Hera in a carry pack and I toted her bag of gear. Hera slept as long as we walked, but then yelled for most of the morning. I could hear her from our room and I couldn’t concentrate. None of my class made any comment, not even Silvern, which astonished me. Maybe she’d gone deaf.

Hera kept on making her presence felt. The grandmothers took it in turns to look after her in the mornings while Mother taught. Dad took her in the afternoons and carried her in the backpack while he worked. We always heard her yelling as Grif or Leebar brought her back at break for Mother to feed her.

Trebe shook her head over her. ‘She’s a mystery. I think she just likes the sound of her own voice. But I’ll check the gene selection programme.’

But I thought my sister was impatient. I thought she was angry with being a baby – angry that she couldn’t walk and talk and make us understand what she wanted.

I wished I could tell them how it was all my fault that she cried. I wished I could tell them she’d been born of parents keyed in without thought or consideration. I stifled my guilt by helping in any way I could to care for her.

Vima came by one recreation hour when Hera was six weeks old. She was yelling, as usual. I was carrying her around and singing to her, but she didn’t appear too impressed. Vima laughed when she saw us. She turned to my parents. ‘Shall I take these two swimming? It’ll give you and Zanin a rest.’

Mother rubbed her hands over her face. ‘Would you mind, Vima? Only she’ll wreck everyone else’s recreation hour.’

Vima strapped on the backpack. ‘Then we’ll go to Calico Bay. They’ll probably still hear her from the Bay of Clowns, but she won’t be too loud.’

They almost pushed us out the door.

We jogged along the path to Calico Bay with Hera’s sobs bouncing from her throat to the rhythm of Vima’s feet. Halfway there she fell asleep.

‘Thank goodness,’ Vima remarked. ‘It’s like carrying a siren on your back, right next to your ear.’

We didn’t talk as we ran. I was totally sure Vima would have the transponder in her pocket. We were going to isolated Calico Bay to read the secrets of the Outside world. ‘It’s lucky she’s such a non-compliant baby,’ I said, glancing at Vima.

She grinned back but didn’t speak.

We settled Hera under a bush in the shade. Vima took the transponder from her pocket and handed it to me. ‘What do you want to know?’ I asked.

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Like why the GCs don’t tell us things. Like why they can read and we can’t.’

‘Wait!’ I held up a hand. ‘How do you know they can read? Why would they be able to? That’s stupid.’

‘Think, Juno – for goodness’ sake use your brain. Of course they must be able to read – all that generation must be able to, and your grandmother’s too since she taught you. But they pretend not to. And I want to know why.’

Hera muttered but slept on. ‘What do you want me to look up?’ I held danger in my hand, danger that could flare and burn us at any second.

‘Power,’ she said.

I keyed it in. ‘D’you really think …’

She flashed me one of her reckless grins. ‘I think it’s worth thinking about.’ She paused and the grin faded. ‘No, actually, I think it’s essential.’ She nudged me. ‘What does it say?’

I wished I could read faster. ‘I don’t think this is what we want. There are lots of meanings.’

‘Choose a word you don’t know,’ she ordered. ‘We’ll look that up.’

I chose ‘political’. That led us to ‘government’, and it was there that we found the word ‘dictatorship’.

Hera slept while I stumbled over words and happenings that blew the boundaries of our minds.

‘Who was this Hitler person?’ Vima asked. ‘Why does his name keep coming up? If he’s so important, how come we’ve heard of Einstein, Rutherford and Galilleo but not him?’

I shrugged and kept trying to figure out words. She grew impatient. ‘Read it to me – just leave out what you can’t understand.’

I complied. ‘“All educational and artistic institutions and media were forced into the pattern of N …”’ I shook my head and stumbled on. ‘“regimentation, and, through schools and the compulsory Hitler Youth Movement,
something
efforts were made to
something
the young”’.

We sat, puzzling over it, trying to find the meaning.

‘I think,’ Vima said at last, ‘that it means get the kids, tell them how to think and then you’ll never have any trouble.’ She glared at me. ‘And wouldn’t you say that’s exactly what they’ve done to us?’ She waved the transponder at me. ‘All this stuff is here. Available to us. And that’s why they didn’t teach us to read.’ She threw the transponder down.

‘Careful, you’ll wake Hera.’

She snarled and splashed into the water. She didn’t stop to shuck off her tunic, but swam straight out into the bay, arms and legs sending up explosions of spray.

I watched. Why was she so furious? I didn’t like it either, but for Vima it was far more than simply not liking it. I stroked Hera’s fuzz of hair. ‘She’s going to want to know how to read,’ I told her. ‘And guess who’s going to have to teach her.’

I looked around. There were plenty of leaves we could use, but the problem would be destroying them so completely that no trace of the lesson remained. The sand. If I could draw the letters in the sand, they would be easy to obliterate. I experimented. Wet sand makes sharper letters than dry sand does. I sat facing the land so that nobody could creep up on me.

Vima turned and swam back. She kicked up less spray and she sped through the water. Her feet hit the bottom. ‘Teach me to read,’ she ordered, wading towards me.