Khe (4 page)

"I am pleased to announce,” Simanca said, her voice ringing out, “that for the first time in seven years, Lunge commune has surpassed the yearly quotas in the production of aromatic plants.”

We all began stamping our feet. The sound welled in the hall, rising to a loud crescendo that almost hurt my ear holes. Simanca stood on the riser, her lips crinkled in a smile. She raised her hand to quiet us. Her emotion spots flared blue with excitement. We stopped stamping to hear what news could bring out this color in her.

“Because of the fine efforts of all the doumanas of Lunge commune,” Simanca said, “we will receive three hatchlings this year.”

Three hatchlings! For lunge to receive three meant we’d surpassed quota by almost five percent.

The stamping began again, a thunder of feet on wood. My extra effort was at least some of the reason we’d done so well this season. My stomach fluttered as if wild birds flew in it. The skin on my neck prickled. My spots flared greenish-blue. I wanted to hide them, to not seem as anxious as I was, but no one seemed to be looking my way. Surely Simanca would mention my contribution. I bit my lip to hold back my excitement, my expectation.

“Doumanas of unit seven, come forward,” Simanca called out.

The five doumanas of the unit who were charged with raising aromatic plants rushed to the dais a little faster than was seemly, stepped up, and stood beside Simanca grinning, their emotion spots flaring.

“It is my great pleasure to present these outstanding workers with a prize worthy of their contribution to the community,” Simanca said.

The doors to Community House were flung open. Gintok and Min stood just outside the wide double doors next to a flatbed vehicle with a new vision stage strapped to it.

The foot stamping and cheering began again, the doumanas showing their approval for the reward.

I cheered with the rest, but a voice in the back of my mind grumbled. Our vision stage was old—we’d inherited it from the unit who had lived in our dwelling before us—and we could have used a new one. I fought the grumbling voice into silence.

Anther unit had sewn new Barren Season cloaks for the entire commune, and for their efforts received an emotions painting—a thin clear disc in which the pale-green of contentment and the bright blue of excitement constantly swirled, forming changing patterns. The painting had to be traded for in a corenta. Simanca hated the mobile trading communities. I was surprised that she’d spent any extra time in one seeking out an award.

I cheered each unit and individual as they came forward, truly pleased to see their efforts acknowledged, and waited, thinking, Simanca will call me next. When I wasn’t next, or next after that, I thought, I’ll be the last one called—the greatest honor of all.

“This season,” Simanca said, her voice raised and ringing out, “there is one doumana whose work was so outstanding that it is only right and proper that she should be held up as an example for us all.”

She paused. The silence felt like a sudden heat hitting me in the face.

“You will stand in honor of this doumana,” Simanca said.

Feet scraped across the floor. Doumanas jostled against each other, getting their balance, craning their necks toward the riser. Thedra looked at me, but her spots were quiet.

“Nosilon, come forward!” Simanca called.

I heard a squeal from the back of the hall and turned to see Nosilon hurrying down the aisle toward the riser. Her entire neck was bright blue with excitement.

Standing on the riser, Nosilon accepted her prize, a palm-sized award of merit. Her emotion spots flared bright green with pride and crimson with happiness. Her mouth worked, trying to get words out that wouldn’t come. She settled for grinning like some hatchling. Hugging her award to her chest, she hurried back down the aisle to her unit.

We all sang
We Will Tear Down the Mountain
. I made myself sing with enthusiasm, ringing out loudly on the refrain.

For the one can do nothing,

The work is too hard,

And the mountain reaches up to the sky.

But with my sisters,

We will tear down the mountain,

And a commune will stand on the site
.

I sang, but dark thoughts scratched at the back of my mind. The song was a lie. One could make a difference. Nosilon proved it. I proved it.

I wondered why I’d bothered.

Chapter Four

It is my constant prayer that Khe be made normal.

--Communiqué from Simanca to the orindle, Pradat

Thedra stood in the center of our receiving room, singing.

Kiiku is green and I’ve had a dream,

I know where I’m going.

Will you come along? Singing this song?

Resonance wind is blowing.

“Stop, Thedra,” Jit said, and gestured with her chin to where I stood in the prep room, plucking gray-and-blue preslet feathers for a quilt. A thin shell of wall pierced by a large arch separated the two rooms. I was in full view of my unitmates. My hand stopped in mid-air. Jit came and stood close to me, a show of solidarity for which I was grateful.

“It’s all right,” I said.

In the almost four years since we’d reached maturity, I'd gone past resenting the others for their ability to know what I could not. I tilted back my head and sang the next verse.

Fruit in the bough, do you wonder how

I know where I’m going?

Creator will give us to feel

When Resonance wind is blowing
.

Thedra’s laughter rang through our dwelling.

“Good for you,” she said. “I wondered when you’d get over that sickening self-pity you’d wrapped around yourself.”

Jit remained angry, pleating the faded blue fabric of her hip wrap between her hands. “If Khe wants to feel bad, I think she’s entitled. Leave her be.”

“I don’t feel bad,” I said. “Just curious. I’d like to know how Resonance feels, what the males are like. Every time I ask—” My words faded away.

Thedra and Jit looked at me a long, silent moment.

“What it feels like,” Thedra said, “is wonderful. When Resonance starts your body is flooded with pleasure. There’s lightness to your being. Your skin tingles and your eyes sharpen so that you can see the tiniest details in the grass or sky or water. And the energy! You feel you’ll never need to rest or eat or drink again. Then the color comes, shimmering in the air, and the pull begins. And you know you must, just must go where the color is leading you. You want to go more than anything. There’s such joy in it.”

Setting down the half-plucked preslet, I leaned against the table listening.

“Go on,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

“Mating,” Thedra said, “is slow and lovely. The males have long claws on one hand that they use to rout out the nest. All around, pairs are digging and singing. Not singing like we do here, but something else, something raw. I’ve tried to do it outside of Resonance, but can’t.”

Thedra looked away, as though hearing again the music that I would never know. She drew a deep breath and turned her attention back to me.

“At the right moment, the male reaches inside you and bursts your egg sac, not with the claw hand, which might damage the egg, but with his other. Then he scoops out the egg.”

She stopped talking. A long, slow shiver shook down her body. Colors flared on her neck—bright blue of excitement and the light lavender of blissful memories.

Thedra cleared her throat and said, “Then exhaustion hits. You lie down with your mate and sleep. Contented. When you wake, you go back to your commune.”

I’d almost stopped breathing, listening to her. I glanced at Jit. Her eyes had closed. Her spots glowed light lavender, remembering. I sighed. It sounded so lovely.

Jit opened her dark eyes and looked at me. “It had to hurt to hear it, Khe. Why did you ask?”

I shrugged. “I wanted to know what it was like, even if second-hand.”

The front door banged open and Stoss burst in.

“Turn on the vision stage,” she gasped. “Oh, Khe. Turn it on!”

The “listen carefully” voice of the holographic newsreader filled the room. A written transcription of the words hung in the air above the stage. The print caught my attention before the speech.

…
announced today partial success in an experimental procedure that stimulates hormone release from previously nonfunctional Resonance sacs
.

My heart thumped. My hands and scalp began to sweat. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the spoken words.

“Orindles at Morvat Research Center report that they’ve successfully restored Resonance feeling in three patients. While calling it a breakthrough destined to change the lives of doumanas unable to reproduce due to dysfunctional Resonance sacs, doumanas are warned that the procedure is not yet ready for mass usage and that it is not always successful.”

I turned my back to the vision stage and ran to my sleep quarters.

Experimental procedure
.
Not always successful
. Then why talk about it?

***

The evening of the following day I sat in our receiving room repairing a handplow that I’d broken that morning. I’d cracked the elbow-to-wrist length metal blade against a stubborn rock. “Because you were too lazy to dig the rock free from the furrow,” Thedra had said. Trust her to have a nasty comment and you’d never be disappointed.

Stoss sat next to me on the floor, engrossed in a vision stage presentation about composting methods. Thedra sprawled over several floor pillows and watched the presentation with half an eye. Jit dozed, her head on what bit of pillow Thedra hadn’t taken over. A knock came at the door. Jit roused with a little yelp.

“Khe,” Tav said from the doorway, “Simanca wants to talk to you.”

I’ve always wondered why doumanas knocked to let you know someone was there when they were just going to open the door and start talking anyway.

“Come to our dwelling when you’ve finished your evening chores,” Tav said, and was gone.

Thedra hissed a long stream of air through her brown lips. “My, my,” she said. “My, my, my.”

Jit and Stoss said nothing, but their eyes spoke it all. We lived as a community. Individuals, yes, but units. Reward, condemnation, and conversation were all handled publicly. I had been summoned for a private meeting.

I searched my memory, wondering what I had done wrong, but could think of nothing. I tried to concentrate on fixing the handplow, but my palms were wet and the handle kept slipping from my fingers.

Thedra tsked. “I’ll finish that. Go see what Simanca wants.”

“I wish I could go with you,” Jit said.

“I wish you could, too.”

My stomach heaving, my emotion spots blazing blue-red, I shut the door behind me and walked the short distance to where Tav, Simanca, and their unitmates lived.

I knocked on the door and pushed it open.

I’d never been inside Simanca’s dwelling before. It was much grander than ours. Bigger, with plastered walls painted light-green, not like our plain wood ones, and softly padded chairs—not like our slat-backed ones—set around a large table of polished glass-stone.

“Sit down,” Simanca said.

I sat in a padded chair that felt like it was made of rocks. My eyes fell to Simanca’s hands, to the twenty-four blue dots on the inside of her left wrist that marked the years since she’d emerged. Six dots lay on my wrist. It was my duty to respect the wisdom of my elders and to obey their commands.

“I will come right to the point,” Simanca said and settled into a chair to my right side. Tav and the others remained standing behind her like leafless trees in Barren Season.

“I have been in touch with the orindle, Pradat, at Morvat Research Center One,” Simanca said. “She has agreed to accept you as a volunteer in the resonance restoration trials. Tomorrow a guided vehicle will arrive to transport you there.”

I stared at her. I knew that Simanca hadn’t arranged this because she thought I wanted it. She’d done what was best for the commune and the species, and expected that I would do my duty. That she’d given me the thing I most desired, the chance to mate and lay my egg, was not the point for her. Still, I wished, just for a moment, that she’d asked if I
wanted
to join these trials.

“You may return to your dwelling now,” Simanca said.

I nodded and stood to go. At the door, Tav put her bony hand on the small of my back.

“Don’t hope too much, Khe. The procedure doesn’t always work.”

The skin on my throat tingled. My spots glowed bright blue with excitement. Tav’s warning had come much too late.

***

The orindle, Pradat, explained what to expect so many times, always in the same cold, unemotional way, that I’d begun to find it funny and had to stop myself from mouthing the words along with her. In the white room I shared with three other doumanas, I whispered the words to myself like a prayer.

Resonance begins in four days. The success or failure of the procedure will be immediately apparent. You will either respond to Resonance, or you will not. If you do not, the procedure is not repeatable. You will return immediately to your community. If you do respond, due to your years of deprivation, you may experience Resonance more intensely than other doumanas. If you wish, medication to lessen the symptoms is available. An individual transportation vehicle will be provided by Morvat Research Center so that you may travel to your mating site
.

I tried not to pick at the healing wound where skull and spine joined, and watched the post-surgery drugs and food solutions designed to fatten me up drip through tubes inserted into my belly.

Resonance began in four days.

Three days.

Two days.

Tomorrow.

***

I awoke screaming. The pristine, white room, absent of any stimulant that might jar a recovering patient, shook with color. Swirls of emerald, vermillion, amber, cerulean, and brilliant orange merged and flowed out in the air above my cot. The colors vibrated in concert with a high-pitched wail that came from everywhere and nowhere. My head throbbed. My back arched in pain. A helphand rushed in, plunged a needle into my neck, and all went black.