Earthsong

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  He smiled down at her, hearing her say that … he was much taller than she was, though she was nearly six feet tall herself … and he tapped his lower lip with one long forefinger to indicate his pleasure. Luke Stringbinder was fond of Sister Cecily’s songs. He had a particular fondness for the A-minor ones.

  “When the moons rise, then, Sister,” he said, and she nodded her agreement as he made the intricate leave-taking gestures her role in his culture required of him. He turned then to go back along the narrow path of stones to the village of New Birmingham and the compound where he lived with his wife and son, and his son’s wife, and his grandchild. And a recently arrived aunt, she thought, remembering that she hadn’t yet gone to welcome that aunt and must put it on her schedule immediately.

  If there had been food, people would have brought it on platters and in bowls to set out on the ground all around her bubblehut. They would have spent hours eating and talking; only when all the food was gone would they have turned to singing. People from other towns on Savannah would have joined in by comset, though for some of them the hour would have been inconvenient. She could remember evenings like that still, because Motherchurch had sent her here well ahead of the predicted famine.

  There had been food enough during her first year. Often there had been more than enough. There had still been great fields of the dryness-loving grass that had given this asteroid its name; the cattle brought out here by settlers in better times as tiny flasks of embryos had already died, but there had still been goats. She’d had a lovely little brown nannygoat named Cocoa as a pet, that had followed her everywhere she went like the most devoted of dogs, carrying things for her in small saddlebags that Cecily had made herself from thick gray felt and stitched in brilliant patterns of blue and rose and yellow. The day had come when she’d had to send Cocoa to the slaughtering-woman in New Birmingham. It had been her duty to do that, and she’d done it; but it had broken her heart. Cecily still missed that little goat. And that, of course, is attachment. She was far from free of the tendency to attachment.

  She watched Luke Stringbinder go, and thought about the moons; if she’d had a chapel to fly she would have visited each of them. Lolldory, the smallest and palest one; Quince, the bluest of the three; and bright Craw Moon, that hung in the sky like a round white melon. After so many generations, they had lost all the marks of manufacture; you could no longer tell that it hadn’t been the Holy One’s hand that hung them over Savannah to stabilize its orbit. Suppose the time came when she could not work any longer, she intended to ask the church to let her retire to Craw Moon. Luke would be long dead then, she suspected; perhaps one of his grandchildren would like to go with the creaking ancient nun she would be, to the black-rock moon, to live with her in a cave that was arched and ribbed with stone like the inside of a giant walnut shell. A cave that might as well have been designed for singing in, it was that perfect for the purpose.

  Careful, Cecily! she told herself sternly. Start lusting after that cave and you’ll find yourself posted to Detroit! But she chuckled softly, and Luke Stringbinder grinned back at her approvingly over his shoulder, waving the two-handed we-are-greatly-blessed-this-day wave, happy to hear her laughter. It was a joke; she could never go back to Old Earth, and she was sure no one there cared any longer about the unruly and varied passions of a sister who was still not broken to the yoke though she’d learned to look subdued enough. The missionaries of the StarTangle were too far away for anyone Terran to fret over, even in less troubled times.

  She had known by the time she was five years old that she would join the Order. Standing in the hallway of Jefferson Womanhouse before a dozen women who were pretending to be mightily shocked, she had set her hands on her hips with her stickskinny arms akimbo and stamped her foot, declaring her intentions. “I will not get married!” she told them. “I will not have ten children! I am going to be a nun!”

  In earlier times she could have stamped till she wore her toes away; it would have made no difference. The Head of Jefferson Household would have selected a husband for her and chosen her wedding date, and she would have married. And she would have borne as many children for the Line as could decently be fit between puberty and menopause. Each one borne to go for hours daily into the Interface, separated from the current Alien-in-Residence by a barrier that kept back the AIRY’s atmosphere but let its speech and bodyparl pass without hindrance; each one borne to match the Alien’s brain waves by entrainment and acquire yet one more Alien language for the governments of Earth and of her colonies.

  But the Aliens had been long gone and the Interfaces empty and cold; and at thirteen, as soon as she had finished the mass-ed curriculum, Cecily had gone to the StarTangle Motherhouse as a novice.

  It had been easy for her. Linguist children, especially linguist girlchildren, were accustomed to communal life, to voluntary poverty, to hard work, and to obedience. As a Lingoe child she had had two tunics—one for work and one for formal occasions—plus a jumpsuit to be worn in the fields and orchards, and she had slept on a cot in an underground dormitory with dozens of other little girls. As a nun she had had twice that much clothing (and fancier!), and a room ten feet by nine feet that was hers alone and looked out on the gardens. She had found the convent downright luxurious. The conditions of the post here on Savannah—a post so primitive that Jefferson Household was paid yearly bonuses for her service there—had not bothered her at all.

  Not being a pilot was what bothered her; not traveling. Staying always in one place. That had taught her what obedience really meant, and in her dreams, now and perhaps forever, she still flew a skychapel through the endless seas of space.

  It’s worth it, she told herself, meaning it with all her heart. It has always been worth it.

  She turned and went into the bubblehut and called the computer link to the nearest Department of Agriculture satellite. It was time to turn in another report on the Savannah harvest. She would not be reporting only the eucalyptus that were the major product of this planet—and that did grow. Apparently they were as indifferent to conditions around them as the rocks were, and as astonishingly varied. She would be reporting sweet potatoes and yellow squash and several varieties of beans; corn had never grown here, but there had been an abundance of a plant very like corn, called pseudomaize, and she would report some of that. Grain … she would report grain. The figures she used would be based on formulas memorized before leaving Earth and worked in her head, the inner space of the mind being the only area relatively safe from possible surveillance. She would report total tons for the harvest on Savannah that were reasonable predictions from known conditions; she would report the harvest substantially down, far below what it had been even ten years ago. But the figures would show food enough. Food enough so that no DA official would feel inclined to send out relief ships or do flyover inspections or focus a satellite camera on Savannah. The computer would ask her: “Can you manage?” And she would reply that it would be a bit tight, but that she could.

  And then, even if there is an earthquake … a savannahquake? … thought Sister Cecily, I will get out the male anatomy holos and work with them until time for tonight’s sing. No matter what happens! So that I will not be caught again failing in my duties. The fact that she genuinely disliked doing resonance medicine, because there was nothing to hold … you could scarcely call the strings of tiny lights and bells, designed to help attract and hold the attention of the patient, medical instruments. Whatever she did, Cecily liked something in her hand to be used. Something that sawed, or cut, or pierced, or polished … something she could grip and turn and point. Something that she could feel doing its task. Even singing was like that for her; she could feel the sounds her mouth and tongue and throat were shaping as she released them.

  But resonance … she understood it, but she could not feel it, and because of that she knew she would never understand it. Not really understand it, as she understood the flying of a skychapel or the digging of a well.

&nbs
p; “Never mind!” she told herself sternly. “You must try!”

  THE TRANCER IS TIRED …

  WHAT’S ON THE SOAPS?

  Caroline hears the crying in the night; she knows that the women do weep for the ones who die. In the daytime she never sees or hears them cry, though she can feel the choked-back weeping when she is close to them and she can smell it on their breaths the same way you can smell snow coming. The women work tight-lipped and tightfaced, stumbling out of the bedrolls half-stunned long before dawn and setting themselves swiftly to the brutal work of keeping life going, stopping only seconds for a cup of tea swallowed on the run. There’s been no coffee for a long time, and there’s no more of the strong black tea that used to help so much; Caroline doesn’t know what kind of leaves are in the tea now, only that the women warn her sharply not to drink it.

  She melts ice and drinks water, first letting it percolate through the mats of charcoal at the bottom of the watertrough. “It doesn’t get everything awful out of it,” her mother tells her, “but it helps. Never drink water you haven’t filtered, child.”

  “In the summertime we didn’t filter it,” her sister Chella has told her. “We didn’t have to.” Caroline is only nine; she doesn’t remember a summertime. Their mother is on her way to the pits, so wrapped in quilts that she has no recognizable human shape; she is a walking bundle, and it cheers Caroline to look at the colors. “It costs no more,” the women say, “to make the quilts beautiful.” They don’t use the old patterns that meant cutting and stitching flowers and garlands and stars, because they can’t spare the time. But it takes no longer to use colored scraps. “Red’s as quick as anything else,” the women say, “and blue’s no slower.” In a world so white and so gray, the quilts bless the eye.

  “Caroline,” her mother calls back over her shoulder as she ducks into the exit tunnel, “you listen to your music! You hear me? Chella, you too! Both of you—mind you don’t forget!”

  Caroline and Chella watch her go, wishing she could stay with them at least until the shade of grayness that passes for light appears, knowing it’s not possible. And then they hear her make a sudden sharp noise of distress, and the sound of the quilts brushing against the tunnel walls stops.

  “Mama?” Chella goes to the tunnel entrance and opens the little talkdoor. Leaning over it, her lips close to the tiny slot, she calls, “Mama! Are you all right?”

  The silence goes on a long time, and then, just as they are beginning to be afraid, the voice comes back at them, sorrowful and slow. “I’m all right,” their mother answers. “I’m fine. But you girls stay out of the tunnel. I’ll deal with it when I get back.”

  Chella swallows hard; behind her, Caroline begins to whimper with her fist stuffed into her mouth. Another one. Another one that they will have to leave there.

  “Mama,” Chella asks, talking fast because the cold air is pouring in through the slot, “Carrie and I know what to do! Let us try, okay? We can—”

  “Chella Mary,” says their mother, “please hush. It would be cruel; don’t ask me.”

  Caroline opens her mouth and then shuts it again; Chella is already asking.

  “Can’t we come sit by him, then, Mama? So there’s somebody with him till it’s over?”

  The girls wish they could see their mother’s face. It’s hard to know whether she’s telling them everything or treating them like babies. But her voice is firm, and they hear the tone that means DO NOT ARGUE riding on every syllable.

  “Dearloves,” she says to them, “he wouldn’t know you were here. I give you my word. He doesn’t know he’s dying all alone … he hasn’t known anything for some hours now. Truly.”

  Caroline moans, and her stomach hurts her, but she understands. You do not risk one of the living, whose work is desperately needed, on slim possibilities. Such as the possibility that a man seemingly long unconscious might still be able to hear a word, feel a touch, take comfort in not being alone. You don’t do that, because it is a stupid and criminal thing to do. You could die of the cold yourself, sitting there beside him in the silence, and then there would be four hands fewer to do the work. She understands; but that doesn’t make it easier.

  Chella is pulling at her sleeve. “Come on, Carrie-O,” she’s saying, trying to sound ordinary. “Music!”

  “Chella?”

  “Yes?”

  “How many men are left now?”

  “Don’t be dumb, Caroline!”

  “How many? I want to know!”

  Chella shakes her head. “I don’t know any more about it than you do—they don’t tell me anything. You know that! They say there are even men still working, some places on Earth … but I don’t know anything for sure.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Hush!”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “Believe what you like!” Chella snaps. “But come along.”

  “I won’t.”

  That startles the older child; she steps back and puts her hands on her hips. She looks just like their mother. “You will, too!” she says. “Mother has enough to worry about, without you worrying her more!”

  “It’s wrong,” Caroline says sullenly, staring at the floor. “If we didn’t use the power to run the comsets, we could heat one of the rooms—we could put pallets in there, Chella. We could get them warm again, so they wouldn’t die. We could sing to them around the clock—we could take turns. We could—”

  Chella is kneeling then in front of her sister, pulling the little girl close, wrapping her arms around her and laying her face against her hood, rocking her gently.

  “Caroline, sweet Carrie,” she says softly, fiercely, “come on! Think! If that would help, don’t you think they’d do it? Carrie, you’re talking about our mother, and everybody else’s mothers, and all our grandmothers! Do you really think they’d use power to run the comsets if it wasn’t something they had to do? Come on!”

  “I don’t know,” says Caroline miserably. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “You’re not,” Chella says firmly. She straightens Caroline up and backs off enough to look at her, her eyes level with the little girl’s eyes. “You’re not supposed to know, you’re supposed to trust. You’re supposed to take a good hard look at the way our mother and all the other women work from dawn to dark, just trying to keep us alive, just trying to keep this world going, and have brains enough to trust them! Caroline, they just plain don’t have time to sit around and explain everything to us. Do you want the generators to stop because some stupid kids have to have explanations?”

  “No.”

  It’s a sullen answer; Caroline intends it to be sullen. It was a mean question.

  “Are you going to go on like this all morning?” Chella asks, her brows drawn together and her lips narrowed. “Are you?”

  When Caroline doesn’t answer, Chella shakes her gently and reaches out to brush her hair back under the quilted border of the thick hood. “Caroline, darlin’,” she murmurs, soothing, “everything the women know is being used. Every single thing. Everything they think is safe … everything that won’t make the colding worse. And someday, when Earth starts to warm up again—”

  “Will it warm up again, Chella? Will it?”

  “When Earth begins warming up again,” Chella goes on, steadily, “things will be different. People won’t have to live like this. I promise. But right now, dearlove, we have to trust. And we have to help.”

  “Chella, listening to music isn’t helping!”

  “Listening to music while we melt water is helping. And we have an awful lot to do before Mama comes back! Caroline, please—be a good kid? The Icehouse Effect isn’t my fault, and I breathe out warm air just like you do. Just keep on breathing out warm, Caroline, and the time will come when this is all over.”

  “Before I die, Chella?”

  Chella lets her arms fall to her sides and stands up. “Probably not,” she says, telling the truth as best she knows it. Lies are either laziness
or incompetence, the women say. There is always some true thing you could say instead. “But perhaps before your grandchildren die.”

  Your grandchildren!

  I will have children born of the frozen sperm of dead men, Caroline thinks, because it has all been explained to her many times. And my children will have children the same way. Unless the little boys that are my children and my grandchildren can learn to stay alive in this terrible icy world.

  I am going to have fat little boys for my children, she thinks. Promising herself; promising those little boys. The reason most of the women survive and most of the men die is the layer of fat that lies under the womanskin—I will make sure there is fat, thick and thick and thick, underneath my little boys’ skins!

  She doesn’t know how she will manage that, exactly. The women can’t bury the ponics pits any deeper than they are now, and the yield from them is getting smaller and smaller all the time. Even with all of the mouthfood going to the male human beings, even with choirs on duty day and night for the ones that are willing—and still able—to listen, the men go right on dying. But Caroline is determined. She will have fat little boys who go out into the cold and come cheerfully back alive. She will.

  In the center of the burrow Chella has turned the music on, and Caroline hurries. She knows this one, this ancient song, and she loves it dearly. Its name is “How Can I Keep From Singing?”

  As the—

  BORING!

  CHANGE THE CHANNEL!

  Marilisa is braiding light. She is getting better at it; better at selecting the strands, better at choosing her patterns, better even at the task of finding and undoing what has been badly done. She knows when she has done a braid well because it begins to chime. She has finished three of the chiming braids in this past month and coiled them into glowing wreaths; she has set them free and gloried to see them sail away from her toward the angels, still chiming. She is very proud of that. It takes great skill, and tremendous patience, but it is work she loves. If she could work at it without being interrupted, she is sure she would be expert, but her children prevent that. They are at her constantly.