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He was silent, victim of this outpouring of old things, frightening things, because he saw the buildings growing too, constantly changing.
“Your father was my oldest boy. You look like him, those eyes.”
“Where’d you get my grandfather?” He went brave of a sudden, and twisted about and looked into her eyes.
“Don’t know,” she said. “I found that boy.” That was always the answer. And then: “I think I got him off a born‑man’s son.” She ruffled his hair. “Maybe off a Weird, what would you say?”
His face went hot.
“No,” she said. “I don’t remember. That’s the way it is. It’s cold. I’m walking back.”
“Tell me.”
The old lips pursed. “I think I got him off this born‑man. I do think I did. He was a pretty boy. Such pretty hair, like yours. Name was Mayes. He came into the hills but he never stood the first winter. So fine he was–but he just faded out. My boy had none of that. He was strong. But your mother–”
“She died birthing a baby. I know.”
“Birthing’s hard.”
“Lots do it.”
“Lots die.” She gripped his face in a hard, thin hand, turned his eyes toward her, and the blanket fell away, so that he was cold. “She was Elly Flanahan‑Gutierrez; and she had hair like yours. She was a born‑man’s daughter. Her mother went down in the mounds and came out pregnant.”
He shook his head, teeth chattering. She would not let him go. “My father was Jin, my mother Pia; they had numbers. Born‑men made them. They had me, and Jin; Mark–he’s dead, long time, and Zed–you never knew him: he hunted, and one day he didn’t come back; and Tam Oldest; and me; and Green who went into the mounds. And Old Jin, the second Jin, he had Jin Younger; and Pia Younger; and Tam Younger; and Cloud Eldest; and Su
“I’m a Hiller.” It was protest. His shivers were convulsive. “My ma she wasn’t what you say.”
“Call your oldest Elly,” the old woman said, making him believe she was crazy as they said. “Or Green. And you teach them to talk, hear me, Cloud?” She drew with her finger on the ground, among the dead grass, as if she had forgotten him. “This is the sun rising.” A backwards spiral. “This is setting. Or change. Pebbles one on the other, that’s building. There’s the big browns and the stupid grays and the little greens. And there’s those have seen the seafolk beach in the river in the dark before the ships came back. There’s a thing I saw–it was like caliban but not. Only one. It was big, Cloud. In the river near the sea. I never saw the like again. Lots of things I could never tell the olders. And now there’s lots of things I can’t tell the youngers. Is that fair?”
“I’m cold, ma Pia. I’m cold. Please let’s go. My father told me come.”
“Here.” She took off the blanket from about her shoulders–she wore leather with fringes, all the clothes she ever wore–she wrapped it about his shoulders and stood up with the staff she had had by her in the grass. She moved slowly, grimacing lines deeper into her wrinkled face. And when he got to his feet she tousled his hair again, touched his face in a gentle way ma Pia had never used. And then she walked away toward the north.
“Ma Pia!” Cloud cried, exasperated. He clutched her blanket about him and ran after, the edges fluttering as he hurried. “Ma Pia, that’s the wrong way. That’s the river that way.” The old were like that, forgetting where they were. He was embarrassed for her, for fierce old Pia, and angry for all she had said, and grateful for the blanket. “It’s this way.”
She stopped and stood. “Thought I might go down to the camp today. But there’s no one there to see. Thought I might like a hot meal and maybe look at the machines, like old days. But they make fences down there, and you have to ask to come in and ask to come out and they might think I was old and sick, eh? I’d die if they shut me in. And that’s no way to go. Our village stinks, you know that, Cloud, it smells like the town down there smells, like it smelled the day the first Jin died. I’m tired of stink. I think I’ll take a walk upriver, see where the calibans have gone.”
“Ma Pia, that’s a long walk. I don’t think you ought to do that.”
She smiled, a face that was set with years of scowls. It shook his world, that smile, so that he knew he had never known her. “I think I might about make it,” she said. “Mind you talk, Cloud. Mind you read and write.”
And she walked away. He was guilty, coward, standing there, but she never called him after her. She’s an older, he thought, she’s oldest of the old, like the hills themselves, she is. She knows whether she wants a boy at her heels. She knows how to find her way to home. She knows where she’s going and how far she means to walk. And: She’s beautiful, he thought, which he had never thought in his life about Pia Oldest, but she was, tall and straight and thin, with the wind dancing in the fringes of her clothes and the gray ropes of her hair–going away from him because she wanted to.
He ran back to the village in the hills and told his father, who sent young ru
It was days before he cried, and then only for a moment. He imagined she found the calibans, that being what she wanted.
He thought of calibans all his life, thought of them in getting his son and telling him tales, and seeing some of his kin go down to the camp in the plain. Calibans moved close again after ma Pia went away. He was never sure if she had found them, but that thing was sure.
x
Year 72, day 198 CR
Main Base, Gehe
“Are you,” the man asked, “scared?”
The boy Dean stared at him, sitting where he was on the edge of the doctor’s table in the center of the Base, and the answer was yes, but he was not about to say as much to this Base doctor. Children did this, he knew, went into the Base and learned. And he was here halfgrown as he was because they started taking older ones now, special older ones, who ran off from their work in the fields and lazed about working with their hands or being a problem to the supervisors. He had been a problem. He had told the field boss how to arrange the shifts, and the boss had not liked that; so he had walked offshift, that was all. He had had enough of the man.
Only they took people who bucked what was and soldiers visited their houses and brought them into the Base, behind the inmost wire, to go into the study like they took the children their families sold into going here every day for extra credit at the store.
They did this to children, so he was not going to admit he was scared. They went on asking him questions… Do you read or write? Does anyone you know read and write?–He said nothing. His name was Dean, which was a born‑man name. His mother had told him that, and taught him to write his name and read the signs. But he figured it was theirs to find out.
“My mother get the store allowance?” he asked finally, reckoning if there was good to be gotten out of this, it might as well be hers.
“Depends on how you do,” the man with the book said, turning him back his own kind of answer. “You do real well, Dean, and you might get a lot more than that.”