The Seventh Day (6 page)

I pat his head as I do the heads of his dogs, but I can not say, ‘Good Lenny. Poor Lenny,' so I say nothing.

It is a long time before he draws a deep sighing breath and rolls to his back, drawing me with him. ‘Oh, Christ,' he says. ‘Oh, girl, what have I done?'

‘You have been as the bull at the heifer and you –'

‘The little bastards will kill me.'

‘You fear too much. They are not so big as you, and tonight they were only two. You . . . you may leave now. You smell of hard work.'

He does not wish to leave me. ‘Oh, girl,' he says, again and again and again. ‘Oh, Christ. We shouldn'ta done it.'

Already he is sharing the blame of it with me, but he does not release me. I cover my nose with my hand for the close scent of him is of much perspiration, and I try to move away. In my trading for the dogs' goodwill, I was able to leave them when I wished. In the cooking of the food, I gave only of my time and as much as I wished to give. I can not walk away from Lenny, for in this thing that he has done, there is more that can be had of it. He has always been greedy with food, always wishing to fill his plate again and eat more. And he . . . he eats his fill of me.

(Excerpt from the New World Bible)

The Chosen named the first year of the borrowed calm the New Beginning, and they named the year One.

 

And in time, many worked in the rubble of the western quarter in the clearing of city streets. And in time the mother and daughter moons were accepted, and expected in the night sky.

 

And all who would labour laboured, and in time some earth was cleared and crops planted. And in time water from the ocean was cleansed of its salt and the ocean's weed harvested, for it gave nourishment enough to sustain those who laboured for the Chosen.

 

There was starvation or swift death for those who did not.

 

And there was much death, for there was raiding and plotting and great religious division amongst the greatest of the survivors and amongst the least of them.

 

And there was defilement and the ravishing of the female and of the youths who were below the least of the survivors. And there was much fear and distrust.

 

In the year 10 of the New Beginning the Chosen called for a counting and a numbering of the survivors. And they sent forth their army to the outer reaches of the eastern city where they crawled into every concrete hole that sheltered life.

 

And in the year 10, in all of the city there were 1034 males and 504 females. Of these numbers, 162 females were of breeding age.

 

And each was marked, with number and status, on the left shoulder. And her name and number was recorded in the book of records.

Lenny has a machine to calculate the days, and though he can not read Monday from Wednesday, he can recognise the colours. When it is time for the grey men to come, the light flashes red. It is a city tool, which the little men have given to him, and on each visit they set it for him with the press of colourful buttons.

It interests me. I wish to play with the buttons, which are many; I think there is much I may learn from it but Lenny says I may not touch them, though each night when he wishes to come to my bed, he thinks first to buy my goodwill with the calculator.

I have seen the colour grow more bright as time moves from Monday to Friday, from yellow to orange. Today it will be flashing red and I do not care to see it, or the day, or Lenny. I had planned to be as the rabbit and hide in my hole in the hills when the light reached the red, but this morning when I try to lift my head from the pillow, nausea rises with it, and a stream of bitter bile gushes from me.

I am afraid of this morning illness which will not leave me. Lenny is also afraid of it. When I do not rise, he comes to my room with pill and chem-tea and the smell of it is enough to make me spill more bile.

‘Pa reckons you got their frekin plague, girl.' One finger rubbing at the ginger hair of his face, he moves from boot to boot, watching me.

My reply is more bile.

He goes away, and I sleep a while in my unclean bed. It is later when he returns to strip its coverings and to pick me up and carry me to the old bath, where he has spilled a near barrel full of water.

‘Pa reckons I got the “munity”. Reckons just now he saved me from fever when I was a young 'un. Reckons a bastard searcher come down and I took his bag of pellet food and near died of it. Carried me up to the pool, Pa did, held me in it for a day.'

I look at him and his small eyes are concerned, or fearful, as he places me down in the water. ‘He reckons lay you in it. Water'll wash the ills out from you.'

I sink gratefully into the water, my face submerging, my hair waving over my breasts like the old water weed might float over one who has drowned in a watery womb, for I am drowning, drowning in this nausea, choking on it.

This breeding of Jonjan's foetus is worse by far than the Implantations. Once having been Implanted, there are changes in me, but not this continuing flip-flopping illness of the belly. Lenny watches me for a moment, then he leaves, and I float there, my belly calmed by the water.

How I love the scent, the buoyant liquidity of water. The chem-tub, supplied by the grey men, cleanses me, but Lord, this water is sweet. I remain in it until my hands are white ridged and the flip-flopping of my belly settles, stills.

Lenny does not speak when he brings his buckets to empty my bathwater onto Pa's pumpkins. Eventually I give it up and stand dripping precious water to the floor while I wrap myself in a paper towel. I think he reads this paper more hungrily than I read the newsprint, but he keeps dipping water, filling his buckets.

‘Fever's raging in city,' he says. ‘I seen the shed of dead on the last V cube. Seen them feeding the dead to the Godsent.'

‘I believe I will vomit on you if you speak more of this, and Granny did not think that blacrap Godsent.'

‘Didn't think much was Godsent, that one. Hard old bitch. Reckon you'll be well for the little bastards tonight?'

‘Perhaps I will vomit on both of them,' I say, ringing water from my hair, wasting water on the floor.

He stands, watching each precious drip. ‘Diseased little bastards. They left you here where you was safe from their frekin plague and they bring it to you themselves.' Then he turns, carries his buckets away.

Later I walk downstairs and make a cordial, adding hot water from the kettle. I sip it slowly as I stare at the grey men's pill container, which is not empty. I pour many pills into my hand. Small they are, round and blue, smaller than the ones they bring for Pa. I crush one, mix it with a little grey spread. It makes a blue paste, but I have much good blue paint from the old ones, so I drop the pills, one by one, through a gap in the floor. There are many gaps in this creaking floor, and many rats that live beneath it. Perhaps they will enjoy my pills.

The hot cordial sits well in my belly. I eat a slice of cornbread. It remains in me. So the nausea has left me for today, but it will rise again, for it is as the sun of this season.

Granny once said that God did not make man, that man had grown from the animal, and that we each still possess a little of the animal brain. Today I believe I can feel that animal within me and it tells me danger is lurking, that I must take my basket and run to the hills.

From this window I cannot see to the top of our hill, only the woods in the distance, and as I sip, the trees grow more distant, until escape loses its importance.

It is time, girl
. She is back, her cold fingernail running down my spine. I shiver.

‘The sun is shining. The searchers may be about.'

When is a searcher less loathsome than a viper?

‘I do not like your riddles. I never liked your riddles.'

When the viper is poised to bite you, girl.

I sit down and think of Jonjan. How many times have the grey men been here since his coming? I think three, but between the first and the second was the longer period of the ten bottles of cordial, which is allowed me before the new Implanting. On the visit previous to the coming of Jonjan, they had Harvested the six. And how many visits do they make between the Implanting and the Harvesting?

Lord, I wish my mind would give me the answers I seek. I do not know this answer. How much time do they allow for the tiny foetus to grow? I do not know. Why have I not measured time?

It is time, girl.

‘You are not here, Granny. You are in the graveyard. And if you are here, then you said often to me that time is a gift. Always, you said that your time on earth was a gift.'

Follow the rabbits, girl.

I shiver, stand, walk to the window, look towards the hill. Perhaps it is time, for though the foetus gives me much discomfort, I think I do not want it Harvested.

Lenny is checking the fences. Old Pa has taken his pills. He will be sleeping somewhere, hiding his pain and his sleep. Perhaps this is the day for which my basket was prepared.

And what of the searchers?

If they are about, then they can not put their crafts down on the hill. It is rock and ridge and ravine, and the little searchers, when from their crafts, do not move well over rocky terrain. The hill is safe; I have only to get there.

I walk to the barn and do not see Pa. I take up my basket and stand in the doorway, peering at its contents while the beat of my heart grows fast, and faster still. I shake my head, think to place the basket back in its place. But . . . but why did I pack it with such care if not to use what it contains?

My eyes search the land, the sky. I see no searcher, nor sign of Lenny. The dogs are not tied. They will be with him. I listen, and believe I hear distant barking from the west.

Still I wait, checking my supplies. Only four plasti-cans of cornbeans. Why did I not take more? Three cans of fruitjell, only two of the sweetened cornmilk. Lenny's sharp knife, a cloth-wrapped lump of Pa's cheese, stolen from where he hangs it on the verandah to air-dry. Only one packet of crispbites, one bottle of cordial, a blanket.

I can not think too long on this thing, for thinking makes my fear grow stronger and, too, the sun has already come far from the eastern mountains.

Fast then, I leave the barn and walk east; the spring cave is to the north of our land, but by walking east I will come sooner to the woods where there are tall trees, both alive and dead. They will hide me from the searchers. I run across the open land, my eyes searching the sky for the glint of silver wings, searching the land for Lenny or his dogs.

Then I am in the woods where I rest a while, slow my breathing and my heartbeat before turning my footsteps towards the north, and up, for it is here where the hill begins its climb.

It is fine to walk free, to renew acquaintance with the ancient trees, grown tall towards the sun of that time before. There is one here that I remember well, its leaves and bark long fallen, its timber worn by storm to near white. Granny had named it the god tree. Still it stands, limbs outstretched, more regal than the living trees. I rest a while beside it, place my hands upon it for I love its age, and the age in which it had lived.

The land grows steep now, and with no path to follow, I climb, my feet picking their way carefully. I begin to think my sandals not a sensible choice, for sticks strike at bare skin and rocks bruise, as if bidding me to turn my feet for home. Too soon I come upon the fence. It sings today. I can not climb over, or through it. My hands can not touch it to part the cutting wires; like some cushioning wave of energy it impels them away. The city is surrounded by such a fence. The newsprint says that many of the lower order try to leave the city, that at times escapees cut these wires with special tools.

I do not have the special tools, only my knife, and when I try to touch it to the wire, it is flung from my hand. I retrieve it, place it again in my basket as I look towards the hill. I have come only one-third of the distance and can go no further.

This fence was brought here, piece by piece, in the grey men's flying machine. Two city men, aided by many sowmen, built it. Those beasts have a usefulness when flogged into use, or so it is written in the newsprint. I did not see them. I was locked in my room during the many days of the fence-building, but at times I heard the wailing in the night, for at sunset they were chained in the barn.

Granny would not have had such things on her land. Had she lived, her dart gun would have put the sowman beasts out of their misery, and perhaps also their keepers. She once sent a dart through a searcher's heart when he put his craft down on our land and came with his strange shoulder pack a hop-hopping towards the barn. She did not give him the greeting Pa gave to Jonjan, but felled him without greeting – and one swift dart. So small he was, smaller than the grey men. Pa burned him and Lenny cut up his craft.

She once put an end to a crazed sowman who fought with our old male dog, then she killed the dog, for she was afraid of city disease. Pa was not pleased. It was one of the infrequent times I heard her speak to Pa.

‘If you'd been where I've been, boy . . . If you'd seen what I've seen,' she had said to him.

So pitiless she was, but strong. She would not have tolerated this fence; in the time before the Great Ending, all of this hill belonged to Granny's family, all of the caves, and the place she named the falls. All of these woods had belonged to the Morgans.

The western mountains are bare now, and further down our own hill, across the remains of Morgan Road, few trees survive. Our woods sent roots deep within the earth to the water below. This is what Granny told me, as her father had told her. ‘The Morgan woods did not give up and die,' she had said. ‘Nor did my people.'

Thus I will not give up my plan to escape because of a city fence.

I walk east again, keeping the fence in sight. It takes me far from the house and deeper into the trees, but no nearer to the spring cave. For a long distance I follow that fence, seeking a break in the wires, or a tree I might climb that will offer me a branch to bridge the fence, but to no avail.

Then the fence leaves the woods to wander open ground. This is a dangerous place with only rocks for shelter.

The day is hot and my mouth grows dry with the knowledge of what I carry, and of what I do not carry. I did not think to bring water. My mind at times is such a misty, useless thing, but I understand well that to wet my throat with the cordial and grow drowsy and careless in the sun would be a mistake, and I know where I will find both water and shelter. Shading my eyes with my hand I look up to Morgan Hill.

‘You are a city thing like the searchers and you can not climb those rocks,' I tell the fence as I follow it onwards, speaking to it as I walk. ‘You will give up before I do,' I say, and together the fence and I continue.

My sandals rub with each step; I should have thought to wear my boots, but I did not think. I should have thought to bring water. This plan was ill planned. I look at a smooth rock, think to sit a while. My toe bleeds and I have a fat blister on my heel, but I shake my head and I walk on, not daring to stop, for the bottle in my basket is growing heavy with its presence. It will quench more than my thirst. Each of my muscles can taste it, my sinews cry out for it and my tongue grows thick with memory of it. ‘Later,' I whisper. ‘Later,' I promise. ‘Later.'

It is in the worst of the heat that I come upon an animal track, so I leave the fence and become an animal; surely this track will take me to water.

A scattering of twisted trees survive where it leads me, though they are little taller than I, and I could count the number of their leaves on my hands, their seeking roots cling to rock and delve beneath the rock, fight to live. Also there is ground growth here, grey clusterings that shelter beside rocks and amid the tree roots. Lenny cuts this stuff for the stock and brings it down on his wheel-sled and I think the cows like it better than pumpkin.

I can not now see the fence, but if I look up, I believe I can see the place of the spring cave for there is a glimpse of the green weeping trees which shelter its mouth. They are the only true green on our land and they retain their colour in all except the coldest season; the group is well watered by the spring, and how the stock like their leaves and also the small grasses that grow in their shelter. Too high, too far above me it is today, and a fence between. I need water.

I turn back, look towards the house, now hidden behind the woods. I will retrace my footsteps and tonight wait for the grey men to come and carry me away in their machine.

This thought is enough to send my feet hurrying forward along the animal track, though the way is not easy. In truth, I begin to fear my thirst, and my hand, which is reaching, reaching, ever reaching for the cordial.