Part 26 (1/2)
”I don't think any of us Pans have actively enjoyed our rank,” Hans said, drumming his fingers on the table between them. ”Am I right? But I'm faced with problems none of you faced. Political problems. Psychological problems. We don't have any real work to do. We have plenty of time on our hands. The only thing I can think of to keep us occupied is sports. I don't like it, but there it is.”
Cham raised one hand to shoulder level.
”Yes?”
”We should begin thinking about after,” he said.
”After what?”
”After the Job is done. We should work on a const.i.tution. Laws, and so on. Get ready for when we look for another world...”
Hans considered with a thoughtfulness that somehow did not convince Martin. ”Right,” he said. ”Joe, get on it. Cham, for your sins, organize some games and compet.i.tions. Start with races from nose to tail, like we used to do. Think up rewards. Shake them up, get their blood moving. Martin, perhaps you should work on intellectual games...More your speed, no? Get together with Hakim. Jennifer. Whoever. Compet.i.tion. If we're cast on our own resources, we have to be resourceful.”
Am I right? Martin predicted. Hans smiled and said nothing. Martin predicted. Hans smiled and said nothing.
Rosa Sequoia sat comfortably in the middle of thirty-two of the crew-a broad selection, including Erin Eire and Paola Birdsong. Martin stood to one side of the schoolroom, listening, observing.
With all of her words, she made gentle, sweeping hand gestures, drawing in but not demanding or a.s.sertive. Her voice soothed, low and soft, yet authoritative. Something had come together for her, Martin saw; and her newfound grace and ease of expression worried him. A special time. A special time.
Hans entered behind him, leaned against the wall next to Martin, nodded in greeting, folded his arms, and listened.
”...To have lost the home we all cherished, we all grew up with, is like the farmer who lost his farm, when the wind came and blew it away. One day he awoke and walked out his door to see barren dirt, the crops smashed flat, dead and brown, and he told himself, 'I have worked this land all my life, why didn't the wind take me as well? This farm is like an arm or a leg to me-why wasn't 1 s.n.a.t.c.hed away with it?'”
Martin listened intently, waiting to see if Rosa's fairy tale or parable or whatever it was came close to those he had experienced in the volumetric fields.
Rosa looked down, lowered her arms as if resting. ”The farmer became bitter. He thought he would fight the wind. He built walls against the wind, higher and higher, making them out of the dust and straw and the mud that ran in rivers across the dead fields. But the wind knocked the walls down, and still the farmer was alive. The wind took his family one by one, and still the farmer lived, and cursed the wind, and finally he began to curse the Maker of Winds-”
”He became a wind breaker!” Rex Live Oak called out.
Rosa smiled, unperturbed. ”He tried magic when the walls wouldn't work. He chanted against the wind, and sang songs, and all the while, he grew to hate the land, the wind, the water. He cursed them all and he became more and more bitter, until it seemed bad water ran in his veins, and his mind was poisoned with hate and fear and change. He no longer missed his family; he no longer missed the farm. It seemed nothing meant anything to him but revenge against the wind-”
”Sounds subversive to me,” Hans whispered to Martin.
”And he grew thinner and thinner each day, more and more wrinkled, until he looked like a dead stalk of corn-”
”I don't remember what corn looked like, growing on a stalk,” Bonita Imperial Valley said. ”I grew up in a farm town, and I just don't remember don't remember”
”He couldn't remember, either,” Rosa continued smoothly. ”He couldn't remember what the crops looked like, or what had been important to him. He fought the wind with the only weapon he had left, useless empty words, and the wind howled and howled. Finally, the farmer became so bitter and dry and dead inside, the wind sucked him up through the air like a leaf. He lived inside the wind, empty as a husk, and the wind filled his dry lungs, and reached into his dry stomach, and then into his dry, rattling head.”
”So what's the point?” Jack Sand asked, looking around the a.s.sembled group with a puzzled expression.
”It's a story,” Kimberly Quartz said. ”Just listen.”
”I don't listen to stories unless they have a point. It's a waste of time,” Jack said. He got up and left, glancing at Hans and Martin and shaking his head.
”In the wind,” Rosa continued, hardly missing a beat, ”the farmer knew what he was up against, and that he had no power. He stopped cursing and he started listening. He stopped resisting-I mean, how can you resist something so powerful?-and he began to live in the wind, as part of the howl and the whirl and the swirling. He saw other people in the wind-”
Hans motioned for Martin to follow him outside. Martin walked through the door and they stayed in step down the corridor, past Jack Sand, past Andrew Jaguar and Kirsten Two Bites.
Out of the others' hearing, Hans said, ”When I was a little kid, back on Earth, my folks took television and video games away from me for a week to punish me for something I did. I went nuts. I even started to read books. Well,” he said, ”our TV's gone now. Rosa is better than nothing.” He shook his head. ”But not much.”
”Did you slick Paola Birdsong?” Ariel asked. Martin picked up his tray of food and walked away from her, face pinking.
”Did you?” she asked innocently, following with her own tray. He sat, got up when she sat next to him, moved to another table, started to get up again as she kept pace with him, and finally dropped the tray a few inches to the table, slapped the tabletop once with his fist, and said, ”Who the h.e.l.l cares?”
Martin ate and tried to ignore her.
”I'm not trying to be nosy,” Ariel said. ”I want to know what it means to be devoted to someone for a long time, even after they're dead.”
Martin found the situation intensely uncomfortable. ”I'd like to eat in peace,” he said.
”I'm sorry. I'm bothering you. I apologize.” She got up, carried her tray out of the cafeteria, and left him feeling guilty, mad, and confused.
That sleep, he cried again, thinking of Theresa, but he did not remember any dreams.
Two moms appeared in the schoolroom for the next crew tenday report. There had been no announcement, no fanfare, but the crew cheered, taking it as a sign that things were improving. Hans announced the results of the previous day's nose-to-tail races. Hakim had five minutes to squeeze in a report on science.
Jennifer Hyacinth came up to Martin after the meeting.
”Maybe you'd like to be in on what we're doing,” she said. She sounded almost conspiratorial, but he could not imagine Jennifer involved in intrigue.
”About what?” he asked.
”The noach. We're having a little conference to share results.”
”Oh.” He had planned to attend the next trial for the main race, but that was certainly trivial enough to ignore. ”Sure,” he said.
”In the nose in ten minutes. Hakim Hadj, Giacomo Sicilia and Thorkild Lax are coming.”
”I'll be there,” he said.
Hakim, Giacomo, Thorkild and Jennifer had formed a Noach Studies Society some tendays before. Martin had not attended the meetings-they were reportedly dry and mathematical, the chief excitement being momerath challenges.
The reports were wrong.
Jennifer, with Giacomo's help, had put together a comprehensive description of how the noach could work, how matter could change character under the influence of noach-transmitted information, and what that meant for the ultimate shape of Benefactor society as they imagined it.
Hakim spent a few minutes projecting graphics for Martin, filling him in on the key points.
Jennifer and Giacomo held hands and contemplated momerath until the meeting was convened by Thorkild.
”We've been trying to piece together an overview of Benefactor technology,” Thorkild began. ”Jennifer's done most of the tough work, laying a foundation for the rest of us. Giacomo has erected the frame on that foundation...”
Giacomo smiled.
”You might say they work together intimately,” Thorkild added. Hakim clapped his hand on Giacomo's shoulder as if in congratulations. Jennifer's face remained set in solid neutrality, but her eyes flashed.
”Hakim has put on the siding and I've painted,” Thorkild concluded. ”Mind you, none of what we've come up with has much meaning for our mission. It's all theoretical-”
”I disagree,” Jennifer said.