Me Ma Supial!

by Ged Maybury

  “Thank you,” she replied blankly.

  She heard the main temple door close softly a few moments later. With an angry sigh she stripped off the old T-shirt and pulled on a clean one, then flung herself back onto her bed, careless of the pain, and gazed for a long sleepless time into the near-darkness.

  She had to do something, had to! But the Lord only knew what.

  OUTRAGE

  MICA DID NOT JOIN THE nervous whispering throng that moved past Manta Ray’s house the next morning. She had forbidden him. “You are to stay right here! There is no telling what they might do to you.”

  Feldspar, who looked tired and deeply troubled, added a few more words to this, “And tonight you are to go back to your village. I have advised Burrawang of your foolishness, and she will no doubt have something to say to you when she gets home herself.”

  Mica said nothing, just bowed his head in shame.

  Still, when it was time for them to leave for the big meeting, they hugged him long and hard. Manta Ray looked grim as she moved off. But Feldspar looked at him fondly for a long moment, then turned quickly to follow her out.

  Once the curtain had rattled to stillness, Mica took a deep breath, wiped a few tears from his face, and cautiously peeked outside. Three Supials came hurrying by as if late, glancing behind themselves nervously. Mica soon saw why. Six Humans came swaggering through the village, their strange metal damage-sticks slung at waist-level, and their eyes shifting about, searching for any stragglers.

  Mica silently slunk back, his heart thudding fast. He felt like he was going to sick up his breakfast at any moment. Then he felt a wild urge to burst out, shouting ‘Here I am!’ but he forced himself to keep still.

  The Humans went past. Creeping silently back to the curtain he watched them from behind. They had stopped, talking together, pointing at the houses. Then the group split up into two sets of three. Three went off and the rest of them stayed. Then one human began climbing the ladder of the nearest house.

  They were searching!

  Mica remembered how he had left this house once before. Silently, with shaking fingers, he loosened the tapes on the back wall, eased open the stiff woven panel, and looked out towards the beach. There were no Humans in sight. He eased his way out and hung by a hand and a tail while he re-set the panel, the lowered his head to peer under the house. The Humans were facing away from him. He dropped lightly to the ground. A clutch of chookies scattered in alarm, clucking crossly. Mica went flat behind Manta Ray’s fishing baskets and waited anxiously.

  GRIFFINSON JUMPED WITH fright, swinging his weapon in a quick arch towards the sound. “What was that?” he hissed.

  “Relax,” said the sergeant, “it’s just their domestic fowl.”

  Griffinson relaxed slowly as a clutch of chookies took a nervous dash for cover, their wings flapping and their spare-limbs dangling uselessly against their chests. “Ugly ungodly things,” he muttered, fumbling out his cigarette lighter and flicking the flame a few times.

  “Domestic foul, more like,” added the third man dryly, “like everything around here. Foul!”

  “Won’t be for much longer,” grunted the sergeant, “Don’t waste your gas, soldier! Go and check that one.” He pointed his semi-automatic at the house they were now facing.

  “Yessir.”

  Griffinson went up the ladder and looked in through the dangling shell curtain, “Hey you stinking beasts! “Anyone hiding in here?”

  MICA HEARD A WEIGHT on the front ladder, then a creak of timbers as the big clumsy human stood for a moment on the verandah. The Human shouted something, his loudness not covering his fear. There was a pause, then the weight moved again, creaking down the ladder.

  Peering through the weave of the fishing pots, Mica saw the Human pull out that small metal thing again and flick on it nervously. Each time he flicked, a neat little flame would spring up. The Human spoke something to his companions, words Mica didn’t know. He was looking straight up at the house, flicking that flame up and down. The other Human seemed to be agreeing. He moved his hands up and out, making the noise of a huge fire roaring.

  They all seemed to relax. Smiling, they moved on to the next house.

  Mica waited as long as he could, terrified that he would soon hear the crackle of fire, but everything remained quiet. He watched the Humans move on, checking house after house, calling now and again to their fellows in the strange silence, until they were out of sight. Then he silently hurried towards the gates of the Humans’ village, almost weeping with fear.

  AT DAWN KYNN’S MOTHER came in, carrying plain ship-bread and a cup of water, with something white draped over one shoulder. She scowled when she saw Kynn in bed, and covered her ears when Kynn whimpered involuntarily as she struggled upright.

  “You shush your mouth!” she snapped at her daughter, “You’ve no right to complain! You’re a disgrace!” She put down the food and drink and her tone softened slightly, “Even so the Lord smiles upon you. I have persuaded your father to wait till tomorrow for your next Cleansing.” She bent to pick up Kynn’s ruined garment, then immediately dropped it again in disgust, “Urgh! Supial blood!”

  Using two wash-rags, Kynn’s mother bundled up the robe and stuffed it into a laundry bag, “It’s straight to the incinerator with this, and it served him right! Now,” she handed Kynn the temple robe from off her shoulder, “this is my second best, for after the Cleansing. Put it away until then.”

  “Yes, Mother,” murmured Kynn, feeling too sick to be defiant.

  “Now, ” continued her mother “you are not to go into the Temple until your Cleansing. You are to stay right here in this room. Do anything else and I will not be responsible for what he does! Understand?”

  Kynn murmured again, making no discernible words, but her eyes had begun to flare with some deep anger.

  Her mother’s voice then softened. “One day, when we live in peace and plenty, you will look back and realise that he is a kind man. You will. So be a good girl, just like you used to be, and it will make it all so much easier for everybody. And please, don’t ever do that to your father again!”

  “But I did nothing to him,” Kynn whispered, her eyes full of tears and her voice pleading for understanding, “he has brought all of this upon himself.”

  “Quiet, now,” growled her mother, some of her kindness already evaporating, “you must not speak of him like that. It is not our way.”

  “But he doesn’t see what they are, Mother! They saved us from the flood, they have been so peaceful. But he doesn’t want to see that. He just wants to shoot them! Where will it end, Mother? Where will it end?”

  Her mother was shaking her head, more and more violently, as if trying to deflect Kynn’s words from her ears. “Quiet, girl! You...you just be quiet!”

  “But Mother, doesn’t it say in the Wordolord that the Lord shall judge us by our actions and not by our words?”

  Her mother snorted, her face suddenly hard again, and her voice quickly rose to a panicked shriek, “And who are you to be giving sermons, girl? Who are you?”

  Kynn snapped back, “I am someone who at least cares!”

  Silence. The two of them faced off, the remnants of their goodwill scattered. Kynn took her meagre breakfast and turned away. “Just leave me alone,” she whispered, her throat hurting as she tried not to sob, “please leave me alone.”

  Her mother, grim and silent, left the Temple with her bundle and went straight to the incinerator. As the fire consumed the crumpled and bloodied remains of Kynn’s temple robe the wretched woman cried – just a few quivering sobs. Then she quickly straightened herself, wiped her face clean and hurried to join her husband at the main gates, murmuring almost silently as she ran, “Please let this end, please bring this to an end...”

  MICA REACHED THE OUTER edge of the crowd, slipped in amongst his own kind, feeling like something other than a Supial. The Human guards saw him arrive, stirred nervously, then relaxed. Just another latecomer. Their team-m
ates must have flushed him out of hiding and sent him on up. Still, they caressed their weapons nervously. They were outnumbered ten-to-one.

  Mica peered around, seeking a familiar face. Where was Feldspar? Or Manta Ray? He could not see them. Somewhere up the front a loud voice began to speak, in faltering Supial, explaining that Pastor Wheeler would soon be speaking. It was the one called Judkins and his voice sounded unnaturally loud – some Human trick with their gizmos, no doubt.

  But Mica was too distracted to pay attention. Where were his friends? He needed to tell them! In the crowd there was a dread nervousness.

  Then he saw Lorikeet. Tall thin Lorikeet, her soft brown eyes flickering nervously about. Beside her, much shorter, stood Burrawang, and with them the Healer who had attended Mica’s cut those many long days ago. And there too, lower than those standing, was another elder, resting in a carry-chair with his leg propped up, swathed in stained bandages. No, not a whole leg. A part was missing.

  Mica’s stomach rolled over but he forced himself towards this little group, reaching Lorikeet first. She turned, recognised him, her eyes going wide with dismay. But before she could speak he told her, “I heard them, the Humans, I think they want to burn the village. Burn every house!”

  Faces turned. Eyes darkened. Voices began to murmur.

  “Be shut up in there, you!” shouted a Human nearby, and a strangely loud voice repeated in Supial, “Silence in there, please! May we please have some respect for the Pastor?” The voice seemed to come from two black boxes on top of poles, up near the Humans’ main gate.

  Then a moment later the same voice announced, “Now here he is, Pastor Wheeler, Illustrious Leader of the Human Colony and Marshal of our Military Forces, Preacher and Healer, Our Wisdom and Our Guide!”

  The humans made a slapping sound with their hands. The Supials, with their natural respect, began to mimic it. But it still did not seem right.

  A new voice now began, loud like the other, but as different as a tree lizard to a warble bird. Mica knew it at once. The angry voice in the dark that had been shouting at Kynn! It spoke out of the black boxes and immediately after came the first voice, saying the same thing in Supial.

  “He is not spilling your day because much of you will be busy later...”

  KYNN HEARD HER FATHER’S voice start like a hammer, amplified by the portable PA that had just been unpacked from the latest pod, “I will not waste your time, for you will soon have a lot to do...”

  She heard Judkins’s voice take over, translating it badly into Supial: “He is not spilling your day because much of you will be busy later...”

  “You are but pests to us, vermin to be got rid of...”

  “You are all bed bugs to be squashed...”

  “This place is not big enough for us superior beings...”

  “You village is too small and us Humans are better at all things...”

  “And you are nothing but trouble, always in our way. You invade our place, you try to rape our children, you attack our sacred buildings...”

  “You make conflict, you give us fever, you walk on our paths and have sex with our babies. You hunt against our House of Singing...”

  As this went on, she heard a murmur grow beyond the amplified voices, an angry muttering in the crowd. Hunched behind the slightly opened temple door she began to shudder, feeling sick and faint. How could he say all this to them? And how could Judkins just stand there and translate it into such garbage?

  “Preacher and Healer,” she whispered bitterly to herself, “Wisdom and Guide? What... what...” She remembered a word from one of the secret books Dr K had lent her; the worst word she knew: “... what crap!”

  “So it is time you lot just cleared out!” continued the Pastor, “Go away from here! You stink! You are less than animals! You disgust me! ...”

  Judkins could barely keep up, “...so now it is leaving time. Go walkabout far away... you are not good, you have less... less thinking than... than fish...” He was getting flustered, and getting the words wildly wrong, “...you are toilets... you make him vomit...”

  THE MURMUR OF THE CROWD grew stronger, anger upon outrage, boiling up with each new word from the black boxes. Mica noticed that Old Leatherback had roused himself enough to croak out his own version of the Pastor’s speech, less confusing, and even more insulting. His translation shot through the crowd, Supial to Supial, and the effect was worse even than that of the Human.

  But when he heard “...you are toilets, you make him vomit...” Leatherback stopped translating, heaved himself up with a howl of pain and shouted angrily over the heads of the crowd, “We are Supials! We are BETTER THAN YOU!”

  In moments these words were taken up, “We are Supials! Better than you! We are SUPIALS! WE ARE SUPIALS!! ... ”

  After that the voices of the Humans could no longer be heard.

  KYNN HEARD IT THEN, the steady rising of a single chant, “Me Ma Supial! ME - MA - SUPIAL!!” over and over. She knew the Pastor had done it now. He had really done it! She shook with uncontrollable fear, ready to vomit, waiting for the guns to start.

  There was a bang, but not of gunfire. A sort of loud muffled bursting noise. Then another, and another. She flung open her door again, less than a day since her last excursion. Thick white clouds of smoke were billowing up beyond the main gate, already wafting her way in the light sea breeze. She heard amplified coughing and the Pastor’s voice roaring, “Damn the tear gas! Just shoot them!”

  “No!” shouted the other amplified voice, “Don’t shoot!” But three shots had already be fired, then two more as if fired by an uncertain hand. A terrible screaming began. The smoke billowed higher, and wider, stirred up by running people. The microphone noise grew intense, a clumping and rattling and scraping, and with it the sound of a snarling voice, like an animal in a trap, “Give me that, you maggoty fool!”

  “Don’t shoot!” came Judkins’ voice once more, then with an electronic crash and squeal the sound system went silent.

  Not that there was any silence. The screaming continued, the coughing and shouting of both Human and Supial, and that chanting, more ragged as Supial lungs filled with smoke but ever more determined, “Me Ma Supial! Me Ma Supial!!”

  Smoke and colonists came pouring back through the gateway. The people were coughing and gasping, clutching at their faces, running to fetch water. A few of the guards ran about, seeking targets within the smoke. Three more shots sounded outside, followed by a roar of anger. More shots. One of the young soldiers within the compound lost his cool and started firing into the smoke. A scream. Voices shouting, “Stop. Stop! You’ve hit one of us! STOP!!!” Someone ran to the soldier, cuffed him across the face, wrenched away his rifle, and hit him again.

  The smoke was nearly upon her, yet Kynn still stood frozen in horror.

  “Close the gates!” shouted the sergeant-at-arms, “Get this area secured!”

  “We’re not all in!”

  “Where’s the Pastor? Is he in?”

  “Get this area cleared! Everyone move back! Where are the medics?”

  “Just get the gates closed!” she heard her father bellow.

  The smoke had reached her now and she covered her face, retreating into the temple, closing the door hastily. Her heart was racing and her mind was almost blank with horror. Yet her only thought was, I have to help, I have to help...

  But it meant going out there. She felt the scabs on her back tearing again, fear rushing up from below. He would do it again. She could not take it! Not again!

  What to do? What to do? Pass something out the door? Face-packs!

  Racing to her little back room she ran water and tore up clean rags, hastily making six crude face-packs. Her eyes were stinging and her lungs convulsed involuntarily, ripping more scabs open on her back. Smoke had entered the temple.

  Slapping a face-pack across her nose and mouth she gathered up the others, ready to go back, when an urgent hammering came at her side door. She opened it, ready with her d
ripping bundle, but there were no desperate colonists outside as she had expected, just Mica the Supial.

  FLIGHT

  KYNN STARED AT HIM, delighted to see him and at the same time terrified for his life.

  “Get in!” she hissed, reaching out and hauling him inside. As she shut the door, all the hope she had, (and there was so little left) fell to despair. “Oh Lordie,” she whispered, “oh Lordie.”

  “Kynn Wheeler,” he begged, seizing her hand and dragging her attention back to him, “please save us! Please do something!”

  She shook her head hopelessly. The tear gas had already set her eyes streaming, otherwise she would have been crying anyway. But the Supial still stood there, expectantly gazing at her, and suddenly she felt naked. She was dressed only in a T-shirt and her underpants. She glanced around. The only thing she could see, aside from the new temple robe, was the St Curran's Day altar-cloth, carefully folded after being hand-washed a few days ago. She hastily wrapped it around her waist, folding and tucking the top to keep it secure. This gave her an idea.

  Snatched up the new white temple robe she shoved it at Mica. “Put this on! I’m got to get you out of here!”

  For long seconds he fumbled about underneath, trying to get his arms through the sleeves, and she fussed around him like a flustered parent, terrified that someone would come bursting in at any moment. As soon as he was dressed she flicked up the gown’s hood and tugged it well forwards to shadow his face.

  “Now follow me, and don’t say a word!”

  She peeked out the door. The noise of battle had ceased but voices still called back and forth near the main gates. Thin smoke drifted everywhere. Holding a wet pad to her face she slipped out and peered around the corner towards the main concourse. Two colonists hurried by carrying a table towards the gates, then another group came back with someone on a stretcher. They were like coughing ghosts in a fog. She couldn’t recognise them.