So Long Been Dreaming (43 page)

“Waiting for the train to the coast,” Sunlight Beam answered. “We have a community there. And a school for bilingual education. You speak English?”

“I heard about your school,” Mist finger-spelled in English. “Lingua Franca good. Cutting? Not good. Cut people there all-you? Implants put in?”

Sunlight Beam made the same shoulder gesture again. “I just teach you people our ways,” he signed. “Funny, but you people are the only humanoids we’ve met in all the galaxy who don’t really use their ears.”

Mist could not quite figure out if he meant to praise their uniqueness or if he thought they were freaks. Either way, she found the Earther rude. Turning, she walked away without giving him the customary goodbye gesture. What would such a gesture mean to rude Earthers anyway? Had he really said that he was teaching her people his ways?

She walked back to where she had been previously standing and studied the “implanted baby” who was holding its small hands in a clenched fist. Tears streamed down its little brown cheeks. Its tiny feet kicked at the air. Mist wondered if an infection had set in. She almost hoped it had. Perhaps if there were rampant infection, the women of the council would stop the procedure for medical reasons. Not that she wanted the baby to suffer, but one or two deaths here and there might not be such a bad thing after all.

The green lights flashed, indicating that the train was on its way. Beside them, Mist noticed, were “speakers” attached to the eaves of the train station. The Earthers had touted bi-lingualism and had convinced many elders of many towns to create some kind of communication system that ears could respond to. But lately, Mist told herself, the “speakers” were proliferating to a dangerous degree. She thought of the long tube and of the off-worlders “fixing the air.” If the dense air makes things loud, aren’t there technical problems with having speakers and other sound-based technologies? she asked herself. She grew nervous. What are they going to do with our atmosphere?

Mist pondered again the Earther’s words. Teach our thousand-year-old culture? She thought. Those Earthers think highly of themselves, don’t they? Our families have roamed the starry seas for centuries. Others accepted us; they saw our gifts, not our lack. But these Federation Earthers are used to seeing things their way, so they change everyone else’s way of seeing.

Her downcast eyes saw four flowers blooming in a small shaded corner near the tracks. She thought of Flowers-in-the-Sun.

My child, my life, she thought. You are living in a time when another planet’s sun overshadows yours. I hope you will change your mind about the cutting.

She reminded herself that she and Flowers-in-the-Sun would both be revitalized by their visit to the Mother-Infant festival later in the week.

Arriving home, she found Flowers-in-the-Sun in the family gathering room surrounded by her aunts. Flowers-in-the-Sun had been implanted. When Mist entered her apartment, the aunts and cousins rose almost as one and formed a barrier between her and her daughter. The Earth doctor and a woman of the medical caste stood beside the sedated patient. Their lips were moving and they were giving Ion a small bottle of tiny balls with writing on it.

Shadow-of-Light-Turning looked immensely pleased. “Can’t you see?” her mother-in-law signed. “Your daughter is no longer being isolated by her cousins.”

Ion’s face was turned toward the ground and not once did he lift his eyes to look at her. Not even as she sank into a chair near the door, too shocked and amazed at the conspiracy and betrayal to speak.

Her old self might have spoken. She had been a warrior woman once. The chief of barterers, the villages had nicknamed her. Now, she could hardly lift her hand to argue. Her emotional and physical strength failed her. She looked up at Ion and thought, what use is fighting if my family, my husband, and my village won’t fight for me? What was the use of fighting what could not be undone? She felt old, like a living ghost.

A day or two later, after she had taken enough of the little white pills, Flowers-in-the-Sun began to smile in that sweet way she always had. Seemingly gone was the sadness that had accompanied her when the cousins ignored her. Seeing her daughter’s happiness, Mist’s anger melted into resignation and grief and lost its edge. And yet she felt old. But she was not truly old, not yet.

That happened at the end of the month, when Flowers-in-the-Sun was fully healed and Mist took her and a niece to the Mother-Infant festival.

Mist was one who always tried to mind her own business and so she did not ask her niece why her mother had not accompanied her to the festival. Besides, few of Mist’s sisters-in-laws had attended the festival this year. No doubt the lack of interest in celebrating children was because of the increasing tension caused by children ignoring their elders. Mist wished her mother-in-law would call a family meeting about it. As it was now, a brooding “silence” hovered in the house.

Mist, her daughter, and her niece disembarked from the train at its terminal in the Valley of Living-Water-White-Light. The flashing multicoloured lights pulsated in rhythm to the choreographed water fountains. Dancing young girls in ribbons marched gaily beside their mothers who walked regally behind, their clothing proclaiming the number of children they had borne. Mist was dressed in the green science caste colours, shells, and flowers. And Shadow-of-Light-Turning had crowned Mist’s plaited hair with a floral wreath and adorned those arms that had once held a child and given a new immortal soul to the Creator with gems and semi-precious stones. Her mother-in-law’s kindness to her was a new thing. And she felt young again. New birth and change were everywhere.

The parade route followed the river valley, meandering through the hilly cliffs. Visiting Earthers stood atop the ridges or near the ridges with their VID-machines in their hands, giggling and recording the festival as if the people on Mist’s planet were some strange backward civilization. She tried to ignore them.

She reached towards Flowers-in-the-Sun. “The procession of the older mothers is about to start. In ten years you’ll be married with your own children and I won’t be able to come to the Mother-Infant festival anymore. You’ll be all grown up.”

Flowers-in-the-Sun looked at the festival-goers and at the Earthers with their VID-recorders. Her eyes stared pensively out at the passing villagers.

“Mother Mine,” she began, then paused.

“What is it, Daughter Mine?” Mist asked, staring at the tattoo on her daughter’s neck. “The implants have healed, have they not? You aren’t in pain, are you?”

“It’s very loud,” Flowers-in-the-Sun signed. “Everywhere. It hurts my ears. We are a very loud people.”

“By whose standard?” Mist asked, annoyed. “I hear the Earthers are fixing our air, making the world less noisy for you implanted ones. I doubt, though, that the air density can be changed.” She extended her hand towards her daughter. “Coming?”

Flowers-in-the-Sun did not take her mother’s hand. She glanced at her cousin, then turned to her mother. “Perhaps,” she signed, “we should not hold hands.”

“We must hold hands,” Mist answered. “It’s part of the festival. The Mothers and Daughters walk the procession together until we reach the town square. Then we do the responsive dance.”

Flowers-in-the-Sun shrugged. “Mother, look around. The Earthers are watching us. And the girls my age aren’t holding their mothers’ hands.”

Mist lifted up her eyes and studied the crowd around her. It was true –true and strange – the mothers of older children were definitely not holding their children. They weren’t even walking with them. In fact, the mothers all seemed lost, forgotten, childless as they stood on the edge of the road, their backs against the high walls of the cliff. Their lost eyes watched dejectedly as their children chattered on in animated mouth-talk with other children.

In her new green dress and green marriage scarf, Mist stood in the middle of the road glaring at Flowers-in-the-Sun. “Am I to be like those women?” she asked. “Standing on the sidelines like a childless woman, while your life passes me by?”

She grabbed Flowers-in-the-Sun’s hand and the child stared up guiltily into her mother’s eyes and began walking by her mother’s side. But as her mother marched ahead, she looked behind at her cousin, smiled, and whispered something her mother could not hear.

Ven Begamudré
was born in Bangalore, India, emigrated to Canada when he was six, and has lived in Mauritius and the United States. His six books are
The Phantom Queen
(2002),
Isaac Brock: Larger than Life
(2000),
Laterna Magika
(1997),
Van de Graaff Days
(1993),
A Planet of Eccentrics
(1990), and
Sacrifices
(1986). His half-dozen appointments as a writer-in-residence include the Canada-Scotland Exchange. An earlier version of “Out of Sync” appeared in
Laterna Magika
(Oolichan Books).

Out of Sync
Ven Begamudré

They were at it again. I listened closely, and I knew. It was more than just the wind.

I must be the only adult in Andaman Bay who falls asleep unaided. Sometimes, though, when the wind rises in pitch and windows shudder, or when it slides down the scale and walls rumble, I flick on the white noise. Its soothing hiss can block out everything, even thoughts of the Ah-Devasi, out there in the aurora. No one wants to believe the aurora is alive. That’s only a tale, we claim, invented long ago to keep children from wandering too far. Especially north, where the mountains rise so high an entire search party can lose its way in the canyons. I sighed, got out of bed, and pulled on my robe. From the doorway of the children’s room I listened to the twins’ breathing, the rise and fall of their breath out of sync. I’m sure they dream of birthdays. They’re hoping for a Khond magic show at their upcoming party, and how can I refuse? But, oh, that Cora! She must have been teasing during all that talk about the Khond murdering us in our beds. Teasing even when I asked her point-blank:

“Could you really kill me and the twins?”

“Oh no, Miss,” Cora said. “I could never kill the family I work for.” She put breakfast in the oven. “But someone else’s children –”

“That’s enough!” I ordered.

“Yes, Miss.”

Now I closed the door to the children’s room and slipped their breathing monitor into my pocket. Like me, they rarely need white noise to sleep. I double-checked the alarms before leaving the flat, and the lift arrived at once. Inside I pressed the button for the dome lounge. Even through the whine of the motor, I could distinguish two sets of breathing. It comforted me, as it does even now.

Leaving the lights off in the lounge, I sank into the padded observation chair and strapped myself in. I raised it until the lights on the arm shone dimly in the top of the dome. Around us rise the domes of other buildings, forty-seven in all. More are under construction. In another ten years, the population of Andaman Bay will double. Architects call this planetary sprawl. A hundred kilometers to the east, the lights of Tonkin Bay twinkled in the night. I turned the chair south. Here I could see a faint glow. A cloud of ammonia crystals reflected the lights of Corinth Bay. I turned the chair west and saw nothing. There’s no bay out there. Not yet. Then something flickered in a corner of my eye, so I turned the chair north. I was right. It was more than just the wind. The Ah-Devasi were at it again.

The aurora hangs in the sky like a drape spanning the spectrum from yellow to blue. Its shimmer hides the stars in the whole quadrant from northwest past north into northeast. The aurora begins fifty kilometers up and falls in strands. They weave in and out, sometimes even braid, but only for a moment before waving free again, reaching out, curling up, crossing yellow on green. I watched the blue. Sometimes, where the aurora dips below the Pyrrhic Range, I’m sure I can see a strand pull away: one that glimmers in blue shading to indigo. Violet. I wait for shades of violet. I think I saw a violet last month, there at the end of Bight Pass. A violet so faint it verged on ultraviolet. I couldn’t be sure, though, since earlier that day we had cremated Cassie Papandreou. We were all upset.