Страница 11 из 72
Finally she opened the log file and looked. It had been thirty-two days. That seemed too long. She tapped the screen suspiciously. The numbers didn’t change. She scrolled back, to the last regular log report, counting the days on her fingers to be sure. Yes: the last entry had been thirty-two days back, a terse comment. “Log copied onto cube for transport; colony abandoned; surviving perso
It made no sense, to have a log that told nothing but numbers and dates. Ofelia hesitated. It had been impressed on all of them that this was the official log, that no one was to enter anything but those assigned the duty, those with training. No one would see what she did, but… but it could be right. She could know it was right.
She peered at the controls. The machine might not accept her changes. But she found the right combination; the display shifted to show only one day’s entry, with an arrow pointing to a space where she could insert something.
It took most of that day to get the story of Cara and Kostan the way she wanted it. She knew how to tell stories; she knew the shape such a story should have. But to put the words down with her hands, to see them come up on the screen, that was much harder. She kept going back to explain: Kostan’s mother had never liked Cara. His father had. His brother had been involved with Linda. Everything co
In bed, in the dark, she relaxed her hold on her thoughts, and let them wander. Thirty-two days. A great fear stood like a mountain on the edge of her mind. Was it coming nearer? No — the odd thing was she had already climbed over it, without even realizing the size or shape of it. This had happened before, with other fears. When she and Caitano first made love… when she and Humberto married… when the first baby forced its way out of her… each time, afterwards, she had been aware of a great fear not so much faced as ignored, passed without notice, without recognition. Here, too. I was afraid. She remembered that one silent scream, forced back down her throat as if she had swallowed a child half-birthed. Now, in memory, she would have explored that mountain of her fear, but could not remember it. It stood there, vague and ominous, forever unknowable, at the end of her sight. It was better so. Don’t brood over things, her mother had always said. Don’t waste time on the past; its already gone, paper on the wind. She had meant the bad times; she also preached the value of remembering all the good.
Ofelia stretched wide on the bed in the darkness, and considered what she was feeling right now. Her left hip hurt more than the right, and her shoulders felt stiff — she would like to have had someone knead them for her. But was she afraid? No, not any more. The machines worked. The animals had not all died, and even if they did she would have food enough for years and years. She was not lonely either, not as most people meant it. She had not yet tired of the freedom from the demands others made on her. Yet the next morning, in the garden, she felt tears on her face. Why? She could not tell. The garden itself soothed her. The tomatoes, ripening day by day; one might be ready to eat this very afternoon. The green bean pods, the tall corn with its rich smell that always reminded her of Caitano’s body. It was not that she wanted anyone to talk to her, but she would have liked someone to listen… and that thought brought her back to the machine at the center, with its log so full of data and so empty of stories. It was too hard to put the stories down in full. It would take the rest of her life, and she would not have finished. She put clues to herself: Eva’s bad headaches. Rosara’s sister’s birthday when the pitcher broke. How she had felt when the second flood destroyed the last of their boats, and no one could venture to the far side of the river, even in the dry season.
From these clues, she could fill in the whole story — the real story — later. She did not write every day; she wrote when she wanted to, when the memories itched worse than a slimerod trail, when she had to see them outside herself to be sure they had an end. Other days, she put only the official sort of entry, noting the readings from the machine gauges, the temperature, the rainfall, the harvest notes. She sat on the doorstep, eating another ripe tomato. This year, she would have far more than she could eat.
The noon sun lay hot on her feet; she did not move them into the shade, but slid them backwards and forwards until the sun felt exactly like hot shoes, covering just so much of her toes and insteps. Her feet were browner now that she spent longer hours in the open. So were her arms and legs. She put one hand out into the sun, admiring the bracelet she had twined, of the dayvine seed capsules. They rattled like tiny castanets. Something stung her back, and itched; she picked up the flyswitch she had made herself of a twig and fabric scraps and brushed her back with it.
These were the easy days, she knew. It would not be so easy, half a year from now. But she could not believe that. It would always be easy, thanks to the machines. If they kept ru