by J. D. Moyer
“I think Jisepu enjoys the sound of his own voice. But I don’t think he’s lying.”
Sperancia nodded. “Nor do I.”
“Who do you think they are?”
“Not Corsicans. They could have travelled a long way. From Jisepu’s description their vehicle sounds like a hovercraft – a type of flying machine.”
If the visitors could build complex machines – and some machines could perform what seemed like miracles, from Sperancia’s descriptions – then they were powerful. “Are we in danger?”
“I don’t think so. But we shouldn’t let them get too close. They might carry diseases for which we have no protection.”
Sperancia was the village healer, and had taught Jana many of her remedies: garlic and sage for flu, eucalyptus honey for skin infections, chamomile and fennel seed tea for menstrual cramps. But there were many conditions and diseases the maghiarja could not treat. Like Pietro, a sweet, charming boy whose muscles wasted away for no apparent reason, and who had lost the ability to walk. Sperancia said the condition was the result of heredity, though neither of Pietro’s parents was sick. Whatever the reason, Jana knew that Sperancia was frustrated and upset at her inability to help the boy, even though no one in the town blamed her or expected a cure.
“Are they from the mainland?” Jana asked. “Jisepu said they spoke Italian. Maybe they’re descendants of people who lived in Rome or Naples.”
Sperancia’s face changed suddenly, as it sometimes did. She looked older, and angry. “Everyone died on the mainland. The air was hot enough to cook flesh. And if you didn’t burn alive, you suffocated. The volcanoes sucked all the oxygen out of the air.”
It frightened Jana when Sperancia spoke like that, as if she were someone else. Someone who had lived through the destruction of the world. She wondered if she would be the same way after the Crucible ceremony.
But now Sperancia seemed herself again. “There’s something I want to show you.” She looked up at the sky. “If it stays clear, come to my house after dinner.”
Sperancia bid her goodbye and re-entered Micheli’s. Jana considered following her to say goodbye to Filumena, but her friend knew that she couldn’t stand bodies packed close together, and would understand. Instead she retrieved the rope from where she’d left it and headed back up to the field.
Antonio and Cristo were gone. Pinna the ox was wandering loose. The idiots had tied him to a thin branch that Pinna had easily snapped off to graze at his pleasure.
“Thank you, Pinna, for not wandering far. But now we have work to do.”
She tried several configurations of ox, plow, and rope, and finally found one that looked promising. But the oak-bark rope snapped as soon as Pinna pulled. She retied the rope and tried again, with the same result. Tired, frustrated, and running out of light, she led Pinna back to town, wondering what kind of material would make a stronger rope. Not wool – it would pull apart too easily. You could weave cord and rope from long grass, but that wasn’t even as strong as rope woven from twisted bark strips. She would discuss the problem with her father, and maybe ask Sperancia later that night.
***
Papà was unusually talkative – almost agitated – as they prepared dinner together.
“I wish your mother could be here to meet them.”
“You always say that, Papà, whenever anything happens.”
“Well it’s true. I still miss her.”
Jana’s mother was a huge presence in Papà’s life, but to Jana she was just a hazy memory. She’d drowned when Jana was just a baby. Papà had never remarried, despite interest from several women in town. Not only widows, but also from unmarried women just a few years older than Jana. But Papà insisted to everyone that he had already remarried – to his tomato vines and mirto berry bushes. Jana had been relieved at first, but now she worried what would happen after the Crucible ceremony. According to Sperancia, Jana wouldn’t be the same person. Jana’s father would notice the change and might feel as if a stranger were living in his house. Sperancia recommended that she find a new place to live, but that would leave Papà alone.
Jana tried to bring up rope making, but Papà dismissed the topic. “Just get Sperancia to move the rock.”
“But she has so much else to do.”
“Then gather a group of men to do the job.”
Jana bristled at this. A group of women could do the job just as well. Even if they weren’t as strong, on average, they wouldn’t waste time uselessly grunting and straining against the boulder. But even more so, Papà didn’t understand how people responded to her. Papà could go to the town square and rally workers as easily as he could pluck mirto berries. So could Filumena, for that matter; in two seconds she’d have a dozen amorous volunteers begging to do her bidding. But people didn’t respond to Jana that way. Maybe they were a little scared of her because she would presumably be the next maghiarja, but they didn’t love her the way they loved Papà and Filumena.
She was different. She wasn’t one of them.
But Papà loved her, so she let it go and returned her attention to making dinner: a tomato stew, potatoes fried in olive oil, hunks of soft sheep cheese seasoned with oil, vinegar, sea salt, and fresh basil.
After they ate, she started to clean, but Papà took over. “Let me do it. You must be tired from plowing the field all day. And from what you said, Cristo and Antonio weren’t much help. I’ll talk to Iginu.”
“Please don’t, Papà. It won’t help.”
He grunted noncommittally, making no promises, but Jana hoped he would stay out of it. She could handle those boys on her own, and she didn’t want relations between Cristo and Iginu to sour any further.
She told Papà she was going to visit Sperancia and would be back soon. Her muscles were tired from the labor, and her back was sore, but her mind was wide awake. She imagined greeting the visitors in the morning, and what questions she would ask them. And she was curious as to what Sperancia wanted to show her.
Sperancia lived in an ancient stone house at the top of the hill, practically in the shadow of the castle ruins. She owned several goats, a dozen chickens, and tended a large garden. But the maghiarja received even more food from townsfolk paying her for services: healer, teacher, advisor, strongwoman. Sperancia opened the door seconds after Jana knocked and wordlessly led her to the roof.
Jana had been to Sperancia’s rooftop only a few times. In the moonlight she saw a few familiar things: an herb garden, a small wooden table and chair, a cistern. But there was something new as well: a long, tapering tube mounted on a sturdy stand.
“It’s called a telescope,” Sperancia explained. “I’ve been grinding the lenses by hand, for weeks, from glass. Pietro’s father built the casing for me.”
“Like a giant spyglass?”
“Precisely. Have a look.” Sperancia pointed to the eyepiece on the narrow end of the tube. “Be careful not to touch it or move it.”
Jana looked through the eyepiece, expecting to see a blurry smudge of light, a star or planet or ring, or maybe the crescent moon. But instead she saw a clearly defined oval ring of light. She gasped when she realized what it was: a giant structure, slowing turning on a central hub, high in the sky.
“The rings are machines!” she said. She’d seen the rings in the sky, several of them, her entire life. Each was a slightly different shape and color, and occupied the same place in the sky, staying still even as the rotation of the planet made the constellations appear to move. The rings were dimmer than the stars and planets, but were visible on clear nights, even without a spyglass. “You always suspected they were machines, but this proves it.”
“I always knew they were.”
“What do you mean? If you knew, why didn’t you tell us before?”
Sperancia furrowed her brow. “I couldn’t prove it. And I didn’t know if it would help anyone, or do any go
od. But maybe I should have.”
“The visitors – are they from the rings? Have they come down from the sky?”
“Maybe. It seems likely.”
“Tell me everything you know about the rings.”
Sperancia explained that in the century of economic and political collapse triggered by climate disruption, reduced birth rates, and political corruption, some enterprising nations, corporations, and wealthy individuals had collaborated to design and assemble vast ringships. These orbiting habitats contained everything needed to support life for thousands of people. When the great Campi Flegrei eruption dealt the final, eventually fatal blow to global civilization, those in the ringships were fully protected.
“The knowledge that I have preserved in my many selves – it is only a fraction of what they must possess. Medicine, biology, physics, mathematics. And not just the sciences, but the arts. They still have everything.”
Sperancia sounded envious, which Jana didn’t understand. Their lives in Bosa were rich and good. Most people were happy and everyone had plenty to eat. From what Sperancia had taught her of history – wars that lasted centuries, horrible plagues, the destruction of nature, terrible crowding, human cruelty beyond imagining – life on the island was blessed and relatively free of strife. So why would Sperancia lust for lost knowledge? What good had it done their ancestors?
She said as much. She wasn’t afraid to express herself freely around Sperancia.
“Yes, our lives are good. But everything depends on knowledge, and how it is passed along. Imagine if we didn’t know how to fish, or grow food in our gardens, or treat the sick.”
“We’d be hungry and miserable.”
“And far fewer in number.”
Sperancia didn’t need to spell it out. When she referred to knowledge, she referred to her own knowledge, though she shared most of what she knew freely. Whenever people had a question, they came to the maghiarja. How to cure a sty? Ask Sperancia. How to grow beans? Ask Sperancia. Even the mirto liqueur that Micheli distilled from berry mash – Sperancia had taught him how to do that. Micheli had remembered his great-grandmother making the stuff but had no idea how. Sperancia had remembered the exact recipe and methods.
Without Sperancia, they would be a poor, wretched, hungry lot, like the Corsican savages. As a child she’d once seen Corsicans fishing on a crude raft. Even from far away the north islanders looked dirty, ungroomed, dangerously thin. They’d stared at her and Papà, in her father’s newly painted red fishing boat, with resentment and hatred. She’d started to wave but Papà had scolded her. “They’re not like us,” he’d explained. “They’re not friendly. If they could, they’d run you through with a spear, roast you over a fire, and eat you with pepper sauce.”
To this day she wasn’t sure if the Corsicans were truly cannibals or if Papà had just been scaring her for her own good. And what was pepper sauce, anyway?
Sperancia had been adjusting the telescope. “There it is,” she said. “Have a look.”
Jana lowered her eye to the eyepiece again. This time, instead of a slowly spinning, dim, yellow-orange ring, she saw a bluish, rotating cylinder. “What is it?”
“Another space habitat. I can’t be sure, but I think it appeared for the first time only three days ago.”
Jana stood straight and tried to find the object without the aid of the telescope. Sperancia pointed to a still blue dot, with no starlike flicker. Jana didn’t have the same knowledge and perfect memory of the sky as Sperancia, but it did look out of place. “I think I would have noticed that before.”
“So do I,” said Sperancia.
“Do you think its appearance has something to do with the visitors?”
“Maybe we should expect more than one group of visitors.”
Sperancia offered Jana herb tea with wildflower honey, which she politely declined. There were many more things she wanted to ask the old woman, but she needed some time alone to think.
“Sperancia – I have a favor to ask, though it’s nothing urgent. If you’re too busy I can probably find another way.”
“What?”
“There’s a large boulder in the field I’m plowing….”
“I’ll move it tomorrow, after we talk to the visitors. Whatever you need, child. You should never hesitate to ask.”
Jana thanked her, though she didn’t understand Sperancia’s constant willingness to help her, no matter the inconvenience. Certainly that wasn’t true for everyone in town; most had to pay fairly, if not dearly, for Sperancia’s assistance.
Though it made sense in a certain light. They were separate people now, but after the Crucible ceremony, they would become one. By helping her, Sperancia was helping her future self.
Chapter Two
Jana and her father arrived at the docks early, but so had everyone else. Half the town was there, at least, talking excitedly in anticipation of the visitors. She was as curious as everyone else, but this was too much – too many people in too small an area.
As she turned to leave, Sperancia roughly grabbed her arm from behind. “You need to be here. Suppress your feelings, for now.”
“You’re hurting me.”
Sperancia instantly released her. “I’m sorry. Can you control yourself?”
“Of course.”
“Stand over there, away from the crowd.” Sperancia pointed to an empty fishmonger’s stall. “When the visitors come, force your way to the front, and find me.”
Jana nodded and did as Sperancia asked. The stall had a pungent smell and the wooden counter was slick and glistening with fish scales, but no one bothered her there.
She watched the crowd. Some of the young men had brought weapons: Cristo was carrying a crossbow; Antonio was hefting a long pike that looked far too heavy for him. Jana thought that was ridiculous. If the visitors had a boat that could fly, then surely they had weapons that outclassed bows and spears. Guns or missiles, maybe, as their ancestors had used in wars that spanned the planet. Those who wanted safety should have stayed at home.
Though maybe there was sense in not appearing defenseless. Bows were enough to ensure the Corsicans kept their distance.
Whatever the visitors had meant by ‘morning’, they had not meant dawn or any time close. Two hours passed without any sign of them. What if the whole thing had been a distraction, and the visitors were attacking the old town even now? She shared this thought with Filumena when her friend stopped by to say hello.
“You sound like Iginu with your suspicions.”
“But admit it, we’re acting like sheep. All gathering here at the docks, exactly as they asked.”
“They didn’t ask us all to gather here. Besides, the men are well-armed.”
“The visitors could have better weapons. They probably do.”
“You worry too much. And you look like a fishmonger with no fish.” Filumena laughed, which made her even more beautiful.
Jana laughed with her because there was no meanness in her friend, only playfulness. But maybe Filumena was right about her worrying too much. “I worry that you’re too trusting,” Jana said.
“You’re not trusting enough.”
“I trust you.”
Filumena gave her a serious look that she had trouble interpreting. Was it sadness, or regret? But both women were distracted by the noise of the crowd. The visitors had arrived.
Jana and Filumena ran down to the dock. Jana waded through the crowd toward the front, which was not as difficult as she’d expected. She was tall, with sharp elbows, and people made way with only a few resentful grumbles. And Jana carried some of Sperancia’s authority by proxy.
As Jisepu had described, the visitors were on a floating vehicle. They slowly glided over the water, about twenty meters away. Directly beneath their hovercraft – as Sperancia had called it – the water was turbulent; a down-blowing wind was
keeping them in the air.
Jisepu had described three people, but there were four today: two women about Papà’s age, one with orange hair and one with brown hair streaked with gray; a handsome man with light-brown skin and long, dark hair, older than Cristo and Antonio but still young; and a pale woman with long, black hair, a broad face, and attractive but unusual features.
“Hello!” shouted the woman with orange hair, in Italian. “My name is Ingrid. These are my companions, Lydia, Tem, and Maggie.” She gestured to the older woman and the young man and woman in turn. “We need to give you some blood tests before we get any closer. Can I get a few volunteers?”
Sperancia stepped forward. “Why do you need blood tests? We don’t consent to genetic testing.” Jana recognized the word – genetic – from Sperancia’s description of Pietro’s disease, but she didn’t understand its exact meaning.
“We need to test for various antibodies, to get a picture of your general immune profile. We’ll look for indicators of your virome and phage ecology. We might be carrying pathogens that are harmless in our own bodies, but that could make you sick. We only need a drop of blood from three or four people.”
Sperancia appeared to understand this explanation. “How will you collect the samples?”
In response, the young black-haired woman produced a canister and sprayed a liquid over a number of small objects. She then picked up the pebble-like objects and tossed them in the air. Jana expected them to fall to the water, but the pebbles took flight. Moments later a tiny swarm of metallic black beetles were buzzing around them. Jana stepped back instinctively.
“Extend your arm, if you’re willing,” Ingrid shouted. “The drones will take blood samples and return them to us.”
Jana looked to Sperancia, who nodded. Jana extended both arms, palms up. One of the beetles landed on her left forearm; a moment later she felt a quick, almost painless prick. Up close the beetle was iridescent, and glimmered as if wet. It lifted a double set of wings, perhaps to say thank you, and flittered off. Jana examined her arm but there was no blood nor redness. And no lingering pain.