Khe (5 page)

When I woke again, the colors still floated above me but the wailing had gone, replaced by a low and pleasant hum. A round-faced helphand with dark-red skin and wearing a yellow hip wrap sat next to the bed. She lifted my hand and held it between both of her own.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure the helphand really cared about the answer. She didn’t look at me when she spoke. She kept her eyes on the machines monitoring my wellbeing.

“Confused,” I answered truthfully. “Scared.”

“Congratulations,” she said, and finally looked at me. “The procedure’s a success. It’s Resonance you feel.”

I’d seen Resonance reaction. First day resonance made doumanas silly and full of themselves. Thedra had described exquisite pleasure. No one at Lunge commune ever screamed.

“No,” I said. “It’s something else. Something horrible.”

“Sometimes it is frightening at first,” the helphand said. “Your body, so long denied a natural sense, overreacts to the onslaught. But believe me, it is nothing but Resonance. The symptoms will lessen as you adjust.”

I closed my eyes. The colors disappeared but still reflected inside me somehow, deep in my nerves, bones, and muscles. The hum continued. I began to like the sound, to love it.

My voice quivered. “What happens next?”

“You’ll be overtaken with the urge to return to your nesting site.” She sighed. “Are you seeing colors yet?”

“Yes,” I answered, but kept my eyes shut.

“One stronger than the others?”

“I don’t know.”

She pressed my hand gently. “You’ll have to look. Open your eyes and tell me what you see.”

I didn’t want to open my eyes, didn’t want the crush of colors. The helphand squeezed my hand, tightening her grip until it hurt. I knew she wouldn’t stop until my hand was broken if I didn’t open my eyes, so I did.

The colors no longer flowed over and into one another, but ran in orderly lines the width of an arm, except for the emerald that was maybe four times as broad and still shimmered where the others had gone dull.

“Green,” I said.

The helphand nodded. She turned her eyes back to the machines and spoke to herself as much as to me. “Green is your directional color. Follow it to your site.”

“How?” I asked.

“In an individual transport vehicle, of course. The research center will provide one.”

“No, I meant, how will I follow the color? Does it run like a path or a river? Will it be on the ground or in the air?”

The helphand’s mouth pinched tight. “Didn’t they explain this to you? You need only to follow your directional color. Green, is it? Follow the green to your nesting site.” She kept talking but her words were nothing but an annoying buzz. A tremendous energy rushed through my every cell and fiber. Joy filled me. And a desperate need to move. I jumped halfway off the cot, only to be pushed back down by the helphand.

She waved her hand over a depression in the wall. “The orindle will decide if you’re ready or not.”

Ready
? My pulse pounded against my temple like a fist. Hot blood roared in my veins. I drummed the fingers of both hands against the soft white sheets. It seemed to take days and days before anyone came.

My feet tapped together nervously as the orindle Pradat poked me with her instruments and fiddled with her machinery. I made myself focus on the orindle, noting how the pale-red shade of her skin made her dark-brown eyes look almost too big for her small face. I watched her jaw flex and relax as she performed the tests. The discomfort of the examination was nothing compared to the horrible confinement.

At last Pradat pronounced me fit and walked me to the vehicle lot. She seemed distracted, unable to concentrate. She couldn’t find the start switch to make my vehicle run. I had to point it out, and for me, it was just a guess.

Resonance had her in thrall, too, I realized. The helphand as well. Amazing that they could work at all.

Green. Beautiful green. Emeralds scattered in the air for me to follow.

I’d forgotten to thank the orindle and had to guide my vehicle back to where she stood.

“Be fruitful,” Pradat said. “That’s thanks enough.”

***

The emerald band shimmered, growing wider as I plowed over hills, past klers, and across fields, hardly noticing my surroundings. The day grew old, became night, became day again and still I drove on. I had no hunger, thirst, or need for sleep. Steering the vehicle with the guidance stick, I never doubted the rightness of my direction. I followed the emerald light until it led me to a small valley filled with hundreds of doumanas and males. When the light winked out, I knew I was where I had longed to be.

Wild plants dotted the brown soil, a stand of tall thin trees with flat blue-green leaves here, a sudden burst of sun-yellow from bushes there. Off to the side, a wave of dark red-purple flowers rippled and bent as anxious doumanas and males pushed through them to reach each other.

I joined a group of doumanas watching thirty or so males dancing. They’d woven large, grass hoops that they jumped in and out of as they danced, to show us how strong and lithe they were.

I’d expected the males to look different from us, but not as different as they did. They had the same hairless, furless, featherless skin as we, in the same various shades of red. The same dark eyes, thin or broad noses, and small or wide mouths, but their arms, shoulders, and chests were slimmer and their hands more delicate, like two tiny birds—one bird with hard talons, the digger claws, for routing out the nest, the other as soft as hatchling’s down.

Most of the males wore hip wraps—some brightly colored, probably from the klers, and some plain, like the sort commune doumanas wore—but some wore nothing. I couldn’t help but stare at those. They didn’t have the protective skin flap covering the egg channel like we did. Well, why would they?

The males were beautiful. Exotic. Exciting. My neck was nearly humming with all the colors playing there—joyous crimson, the bright blue of excitement, the dark lavender of curiosity gone crazy. At Lunge, a doumana who had lavender that shade on her neck would surely get a talking to from Simanca. I didn’t care about Simanca. The colors could swirl on my skin for all to see.

As the males danced, they scanned the doumanas ringing them, just as we scanned them. When one saw someone he liked, he’d pass his hoop over her head in invitation. If the doumana was attracted back, she’d take hold of his hoop and they’d leave together. Sometimes a bold doumana would wade in among the dancers and finding one she liked, sway her hips until the male either offered his hoop or turned away.

Three hoops passed over my head. I didn’t take any of them. But there was something I liked in the fourth male who approached; his neck splotched violet with desire. He sang a wild song to me, like branches whipped by a storm, like worlds cracking apart.

I took firm hold of his hoop, threw back my head and joined my wordless song with his, note and timbre of longing, of desire and fear, and of hope. Side by side, we went away from the dancing, to where other pairs were mating. I watched as my mate dug a shallow nest with his long claw. He settled himself in the hollow and reached up to me. I lay down beside him and felt my egg move, swelling, sliding down the channel. I felt his hand move slowly, carefully, tenderly down my side. His skin tasted spicy. He smelled of fresh loam and leaves. If I weren’t already crazy from Resonance, I’d surely have gone mad from the sweetness of his touch.

Then, in the moment when I thought I would die of delight and didn’t care if I did, my mate slipped his soft hand up the channel, burst my egg sac and scooped out my egg. My body shook, quivering with pleasure. With dim awareness, I saw the male lift my fist-sized egg and cradle it in his arms. His digger claw swelled to twice its size and opened at the end. My mate screamed as his essence dripped over the soft shell and was absorbed through the egg for the new being that we were making together. I sat up—frightened that he was hurt. But his mouth crinkled and he fell on his knees beside me, panting hard. I knew that it wasn’t pain that had made him scream.

He lay beside me again. I stroked his neck. We’d said nothing. To feel your mate and know his soul needed no words. We closed our eyes and slept.

I left my egg there, in that valley, and felt finally whole.

Chapter Five

Singing over the bones of the land, our hearts become glad
.

--The Song of Growing

Planting always followed Resonance. Our unit was assigned to grow kiiku, thick-rinded gourds whose seeds were ground for flour. Several units grew kiiku since it was not only a staple for the commune, but also our major trading crop. The units competed fiercely to produce the most poundage each season and to secure the prizes that abundance won. Jit, Thedra, Stoss, and I made up our minds that this season we would win.

Most big chores on the commune were done by group—either the whole commune together, or unitmates. But not crop growing. I would plant, water, weed, and care for my own area within my units’ field. No one could tell me why we did it this way. Simanca didn’t have a handy phrase from
The Rules of a Good Life
to explain it. It just
was
.

Jit, Stoss, Thedra, and I went to the fields together, but spread out to begin planting our assigned areas. With each planted seed I thought of my egg cocooned in its warm nest, the new life within it growing, soon to hatch. I pretended each seed was my egg, that I was the life force itself, giving growth and vitality to the tiny, waiting thing in my hand.

It was silly, this fantasy. Kiiku was only a plant and I was only Khe. Still, I enjoyed my pretense with only a touch of shame. “Imagination and fancy distract us from our work in the true world,” Simanca had said, but I could see no harm in it and it made the work seem easier.

***

Thedra’s seeds sprouted first, their thin white stems backing slowly from the dirt as if hesitant to leave warm soil for the uncertainties of life above ground. Small, green, pointed, first-leaves appeared, followed days later by true leaves—thick and leathery, red as a blood-rich heart, expert at capturing nutrients from the air and converting them into plant fuel.

My seeds sprouted, as did Jit’s and Stoss’s—row after row of perfection. We bent our backs under the furious heat of the sun, and dug our fingers into the rich soil to thin the seedlings. Insects we removed by hand, dropping the hungry little beasts into tightly woven bags slung across our shoulders. At night we sorted through the bugs, selecting the most delicious to go into the meal pot. We saved the ones that didn’t taste good to feed the preslets. Those that weren’t suitable for food we killed in the field, leaving their smashed bodies to nourish the soil.

We watered, hoed, and nurtured our kiiku with dedication, telling each other the extra work would be worth it when we won our prizes. At harvest we watched the crop being weighed and cheered when our poundage topped the next closest unit’s by almost a quarter.

“It’s all your doing,” Thedra said after we’d returned to our dwelling.

Three of my spots lit green with pride, but I said, “We’re a unit. We all contributed equally.”

“That’s not true,” Thedra said. “Your section had huge gourds. Bigger than anything the rest of us grew.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. But it was true. The smallest of my gourds easily outweighed the largest anyone else had grown. “My soil was probably prepared better by the doumanas doing the fertilizing. Maybe they should share our prize.”

Thedra tsked. “Fertilizer.” She glanced at me strangely then, as though a revelation skittered through her mind but left before she could properly catch hold of it.

***

I sat on my cot, alone, my left arm turned up, and stared at the inside of my wrist. The rising moon threw its thick light into the darkening room. The sounds from the vision stage leaked under the door. My neck prickled, hot and itchy. A seventh dot showed on my wrist, but I was only six.

I pulled myself to my feet and went into the receiving room. My unitmates lay sprawled on the floor, watching the presentation on the vision stage.

Jit looked up. “Khe! What’s wrong? Your throat is practically all red-purple.”

“This.” I turned my arm so that she could see.

“What?” Thedra said, levering herself up. Jit and Stoss were already coming across the room toward me.

“There’s an extra age dot,” I said.

Jit sucked in a breath of air, then put her hand over her mouth, as if afraid of the words that might fly out. She didn’t need words. The colors on her neck said everything. Stoss’s neck was the same as Jit’s, covered in the purple-gray of worry.

Thedra had come over to look, too. She put her hand on her hip and peered closely at the dot. No color showed on her neck. “How did that happen?”

I half shrugged. “I don’t know. I noticed just a little bit ago. It could have been there a while.”

“You have to tell Simanca,” Thedra said.

Jit said, “It’s probably nothing.”

Thedra reached out to touch the spot, then drew her hand back as if she were burned. “It’s something all right. You have to tell. A secret is no different than a lie.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m going now.”

As the door closed behind me, I thought I heard Thedra say, “Freak,” but I must have heard wrong.

***

I knocked on Simanca’s door and walked in. Tav was so surprised at my unexpected appearance that three of her spots flared yellow-green.

“Please excuse my coming uninvited,” I said, looking down at my feet. “I need to speak with Simanca, if she will see me.”

Tav nodded and called to Simanca.

Simanca strode immediately out from the back of the dwelling into the receiving room. She didn't look pleased.

"What is it, Khe?" she said. Her two unitmates, Min and Gintok, were seated in front of the vision stage. Like Tav, their emotion spots showed their surprise at seeing me. Simanca’s neck showed nothing.

I glanced nervously across the room. I didn't mind speaking in front of Tav, but I wished Min and Gintok, cold-necked doumanas both, weren’t there. My heart beat against my ribs. Turning my left arm palm up, I held it out for Simanca to see. My pulse was jumping, making my dots rise and fall.