“Thank you,” he remembered to say.
As they climbed steps cut in the bluff Jakko asked, “What are you working at?”
“Oh, everything. Right now it’s bees.”
“Bees!” he marveled. “They made what—honey? I thought they were all gone.”
“I have a lot of old things.” She kept glancing at him intently as they climbed. “Are you quite healthy?”
“Oh, yes. Why not? I’m all alpha so far as I know. Everybody is.”
“Was,” she corrected. “Here are my bee skeps.”
They came around a low wall and stopped by five small wicker huts. A buzzing insect whizzed by Jakko’s face, coming from some feathery shrubs. He saw that the bloom-tipped foliage was alive with the golden humming things. Recalling that they could sting, he stepped back.
“You better go around the other way.” She pointed. “They might hurt a stranger.” She pulled her veil down, hiding her face. Just as he turned away, she added, “I thought you might impregnate me.”
He wheeled back, not really able to react because of the distracting bees. “But isn’t that terribly complicated?”
“I don’t think so. I have the pills.” She pulled on her gloves.
“Yes, the pills. I know.” He frowned. “But you’d have to stay, I mean one just can’t—”
“I know that. I have to do my bees now. We can talk later.”
“Of course.” He started away and suddenly turned back.
“Look!” He didn’t know her name. “You, look!”
“What?” She was a strange little figure, black and orange with huge hands and a big veil-muffled head. “What?”
“I felt it. Just then, desire. Can’t you see?”
They both gazed at his wet shorts.
“I guess not,” he said finally. “But I felt it, I swear. Sexual desire.”
She pushed back her veil, frowning. “It will stay, won’t it? Or come back? This isn’t a very good place. I mean, the bees. And it’s no use without the pills.”
“That’s so.”
He went away then, walking carefully because of the tension around his pubic bone. Like a keel, snug and tight. His whole body felt reorganized. It had been years since he’d felt flashes like that, not since he was fifteen at least. Most people never did. That was variously thought to be because of the River, or from their parents’ surviving the Poison Centuries, or because the general alpha strain was so forebrain-dominant. It gave him an archaic, secret pride. Maybe he was a throwback.
He passed under cool archways, and found himself in a green protected place behind the seaward wall. A garden, he saw, looking round surprised at clumps of large tied-up fruiting plants, peculiar trees with green balls at their tops, disorderly rows of rather unaesthetic greenery. Tentatively he identified tomatoes, peppers, a feathery leaf which he thought had an edible root. A utilitarian planting. His uncle had once amused the family by doing something of the sort, but not on this scale. Jakko shook his head.
In the center of the garden stood a round stone coping with a primitive apparatus on top. He walked over and looked down. Water, a bucket on a rope. Then he saw that there was also an ordinary tap. He opened it and drank, looking at the odd implements leaning on the coping. Earth tools. He did not really want to think about what the strange woman had said.
A shadow moved by his foot. The largest moondog had come quite close, inhaling dreamily. “Hello,” he said to it. Some of these dogs could talk a little. This one opened its eyes wide but said nothing.
He stared about, wiping his mouth, feeling his clothes almost dry now in the hot sun. On three sides the garden was surrounded by arcades; above him on the ruined side was a square cracked masonry tower with no roof. A large place, whatever it was. He walked into the shade of the nearest arcade, which turned out to be littered with myriad disassembled or partly assembled objects: tools, containers, who knew what. Her “work”? The place felt strange, vibrant and busy. He realized he had entered only empty houses on his yearlong journey. This one was alive, lived-in. Messy. It hummed like the bee skeps. He turned down a cool corridor, looking into rooms piled with more stuff. In one, three white animals he couldn’t identify were asleep in a heap of cloth on a bed. They moved their ears at him like big pale shells but did not awaken.
He heard staccato noises and came out into another courtyard where plump white birds walked with jerking heads. “Chickens!” he decided, delighted by the irrational variety of this place. He went from there into a large room with windows on the sea, and heard a door close.
It was the woman, or girl, coming to him, holding her hat and gloves. Her hair was a dark curly cap, her head elegantly small; an effect he had always admired. He remembered something to say.
“I’m called Jakko. What’s your name?”
“Jakko.” She tasted the sound. “Hello, Jakko. I’m Peachthief.” She smiled very briefly, entirely changing her face.
“Peachthief.” On impulse he moved toward her, holding out his hands. She tucked her bundle under her arm and took both of his. They stood like that a moment, not quite looking at each other. Jakko felt excited. Not sexually, but more as if the air was electrically charged.
“Well.” She took her hands away and began unwrapping a leafy wad. “I brought a honeycomb even if it isn’t quite ready.” She showed him a sticky-looking frame with two dead bees on it. “Come on.”
She walked rapidly out into another corridor and entered a shiny room he thought might be a laboratory.
“My food room,” she told him. Again Jakko was amazed. There stood a synthesizer, to be sure, but beside it were shelves full of pots and bags and jars and containers of all descriptions. Unknown implements lay about, and there was a fireplace which had been partly sealed up. Bunches of plant parts hung from racks overhead. He identified some brownish ovoids in a bowl as eggs. From the chickens?
Peachthief was cleaning the honeycomb with a manually operated knife. “I use the wax for my loom, and for candles. Light.”
“What’s wrong with the lights?”
“Nothing.” She turned around, gesturing emphatically with the knife. “Don’t you understand? All these machines, they’ll go. They won’t run forever. They’ll break or wear out or run down. There won’t be any, anymore. Then we’ll have to use natural things.”
“But that won’t be for centuries!” he protested. “Decades, anyhow. They’re all still going, they’ll last for us.”
“For you,” she said scornfully. “Not for me. I intend to stay. With my children.” She turned her back on him and added in a friendlier voice, “Besides, the old things are aesthetic. I’ll show you, when it gets dark.”
“But you haven’t any children! Have you?” He was purely astonished.
“Not yet.” Her back was still turned.
“I’m hungry,” he said, and went to work the synthesizer. He made it give him a bar with a hard filler; for some reason he wanted to crunch it in his teeth.
She finished with the honey and turned around. “Have you ever had a natural meal?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, chewing. “One of my uncles tried that. It was very nice,” he added politely.
She looked at him sharply and smiled again, on—off. They went out of the food room. The afternoon was fading into great gold-and-orange streamers above the courtyard, colored like Peachthief’s garment.
“You can sleep here.” She opened a slatted door. The room was small and bare, with a window on the sea.
“There isn’t any bed,” he objected.
She opened a chest and took out a big wad of string. “Hang this end on that hook over there.”
When she hung up the other end he saw it was a large mesh hammock.
“That’s what I sleep in. They’re comfortable. Try it.”
He climbed in awkwardly. The thing came up around him like a bag. She gave a short sweet laugh as brief as her smile.
“No, you lie on the diagonal. Like this.” She tugged
his legs, sending a peculiar shudder through him. “That straightens it, see?”
It would probably be all right, he decided, struggling out. Peachthief was pointing to a covered pail.
“That’s for your wastes. It goes on the garden, in the end.”
He was appalled, but said nothing, letting her lead him out through a room with glass tanks in the walls to a big screened-in porch fronting the ocean. It was badly in need of cleaners. The sky was glorious with opalescent domes and spires, reflections of the sunset behind them, painting amazing colors on the sea.
“This is where I eat.”
“What is this place?”
“It was a sea station last, I think. Station Juliet. They monitored the fish and the ocean traffic, and rescued people and so on.”
He was distracted by noticing long convergent dove-blue rays like mysterious paths into the horizon; cloud shadows cast across the world. Beauty of the dust. Why must it move him so?
“—even a medical section,” she was saying. “I really could have babies, I mean in case of trouble.”
“You don’t mean it.” He felt only irritation now. “I don’t feel any more desire,” he told her.
She shrugged. “I don’t either. We’ll talk about it later on.”
“Have you always lived here?”
“Oh, no.” She began taking pots and dishes out of an insulated case. The three moondogs had joined them silently; she set bowls before them. They lapped, stealing glances at Jakko. They were, he knew, very strong despite their sticklike appearance.
“Let’s sit here.” She plumped down on one end of the lounge and began biting forcefully into a crusty thing like a slab of drybar. He noticed she had magnificent teeth. Her dark skin set them off beautifully, as it enhanced her eyes. He had never met anyone so different in every way from himself and his family. He vacillated between interest and a vague alarm.
“Try some of the honey.” She handed him a container and spoon. It looked quite clean. He tasted it eagerly; honey was much spoken of in antique writings. At first he sensed nothing but a waxy sliding, but then an overpowering sweetness enveloped his tongue, quite unlike the sweets he was used to. It did not die away but seemed to run up his nose and almost into his ears, in a peculiar physical way. An animal food. He took some more, gingerly.
“I didn’t offer you my bread. It needs some chemical, I don’t know what. To make it lighter.”
“Don’t you have an access terminal?”
“Something’s wrong with part of it,” she said with her mouth full. “Maybe I don’t work it right. We never had a big one like this, my tribe were travelers. They believed in sensory experiences.” She nodded, licking her fingers. “They went to the River when I was fourteen.”
“That’s very young to be alone. My people waited till this year, my eighteenth birthday.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had two older cousins. But they wanted to take an aircar up north, to the part of the River called Rideout. I stayed here. I mean, we never stopped traveling, we never lived anywhere. I wanted to do like the plants, make roots.”
“I could look at your program,” he offered. “I’ve seen a lot of different models, I spent nearly a year in cities.”
“What I need is a cow. Or a goat.”
“Why?”
“For the milk. I need a pair, I guess.”
Another animal thing; he winced a little. But it was pleasant, sitting here in the deep blue light beside her, hearing the surf plash quietly below.
“I saw quite a number of horses,” he told her. “Don’t they use milk?”
“I don’t think horses are much good for milk.” She sighed in an alert, busy way. He had the impression that her head was tremendously energic, humming with plans and intentions. Suddenly she looked up and began making a high squeaky noise between her front teeth, “Sssswwt! Sssswwwt!”
Startled, he saw a white flying thing swooping above them, and then two more. They whirled so wildly he ducked.
“That’s right,” she said to them. “Get busy.”
“What are they?”
“My bats. They eat mosquitoes and insects.” She squeaked again, and the biggest bat was suddenly clinging to her hand, licking honey. It had a small, fiercely complicated face.
Jakko relaxed again. This place and its strange inhabitant were giving him remarkable memories for the River, anyway. He noticed a faint glow moving where the dark sky joined the darker sea.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, the seatrain. It goes to the River landing.”
“Are there people on it?”
“Not anymore. Look, I’ll show you.” She jumped up and was opening a console in the corner, when a sweet computer voice spoke into the air.
“Seatrain Foxtrot Niner calling Station Juliet! Come in, Station Juliet!”
“It hasn’t done that for years,” Peachthief said. She tripped tumblers. “Seatrain, this is Station Juliet, I hear you. Do you have a problem?”
“Affirmative. Passenger is engaging in nonstandard activities. He-slash-she does not conform to parameters. Request instructions.”
Peachthief thought a minute. Then she grinned. “Is your passenger moving on four legs?”
“Affirmative! Affirmative!” Seatrain Foxtrot sounded relieved.
“Supply it with bowls of meat food and water on the floor and do not interfere with it. Juliet out.”
She clicked off, and they watched the far web of lights go by on the horizon, carrying an animal.
“Probably a dog following the smell of people,” Peachthief said. “I hope it gets off all right. . . . We’re quite a wide genetic spread,” she went on in a different voice. “I mean, you’re so light, in body type and all.”
“I noticed that.”
“It would give good heterosis. Vigor.”
She was talking about being impregnated, about the fantasy child. He felt angry.
“Look, you don’t know what you’re saying. Don’t you realize you’d have to stay and raise it for years? You’d be ethically and morally bound. And the River places are shrinking fast, you must know that. Maybe you’d be too late.”
“Yes,” she said somberly. “Now it’s sucked everybody out it’s going. But I still mean to stay.”
“But you’d hate it, even if there’s still time. My mother hated it, toward the end. She felt she had begun to deteriorate energically, that her life would be lessened. And me—what about me? I mean, I should stay, too.”
“You’d only have to stay a month. For my ovulation. The male parent isn’t ethically bound.”
“Yes, but I think that’s wrong. My father stayed. He never said he minded it, but he must have.”
“You only have to do a month,” she said sullenly. “I thought you weren’t going on the River right now.”
“I’m not. I just don’t want to feel bound, I want to travel. To see more of the world, first. After I say good-bye.”
She made an angry sound. “You have no insight. You’re going, all right. You just don’t want to admit it. You’re going just like Mungo and Ferrocil.”
“Who are they?”
“People who came by. Males, like you. Mungo was last year, I guess. He had an aircar. He said he was going to stay, he talked and talked. But two days later he went right on again. To the River. Ferrocil was earlier, he was walking through. Until he stole my bicycle.”
A sudden note of fury in her voice startled him; she seemed to have some peculiar primitive relation to her bicycle, to her things.
“Did you want them to impregnate you, too?” Jakko noticed an odd intensity in his own voice as well.
“Oh, I was thinking about it, with Mungo.” Suddenly she turned on him, her eyes wide open in the dimness like white-ringed jewels. “Look! Once and for all, I’m not going! I’m alive, I’m a human woman. I am going to stay on this Earth and do human things. I’m going to make young ones to carry on the race, even if I have to die here. You can go on out, you—you pitifu
l shadows!”
Her voice rang in the dark room, jarring him down to his sleeping marrow. He sat silent as though some deep buried bell had tolled.
She was breathing hard. Then she moved, and to his surprise a small live flame sprang up between her cupped hands, making the room a cave.
“That’s a candle. That’s me. Now go ahead, make fun like Mungo did.”
“I’m not making fun,” he said, shocked. “It’s just that I don’t know what to think. Maybe you’re right. I really . . . I really don’t want to go, in one way,” he said haltingly. “I love this Earth, too. But it’s all so fast. Let me. . . .”
His voice trailed off.
“Tell me about your family,” she said, quietly now.
“Oh, they studied. They tried every access you can imagine. Ancient languages, history, lore. My aunt made poems in English. . . . The layers of the Earth, the names of body cells and tissues, jewels, everything. Especially stars. They made us memorize star maps. So we’ll know where we are, you know, for a while. At least the Earth-names. My father kept saying, when you go on the River you can’t come back and look anything up. All you have is what you remember. Of course you could ask others, but there’ll be so much more, so much new. . . .”
He fell silent, wondering for the millionth time: is it possible that I shall go out forever between the stars, in the great streaming company of strange sentiences?
“How many children were in your tribe?” Peachthief was asking.
“Six. I was the youngest.”
“The others all went on the River?”
“I don’t know. When I came back from the cities the whole family had gone on, but maybe they’ll wait awhile, too. My father left a letter asking me to come and say good-bye, and to bring him anything new I learned. They say you go slowly, you know. If I hurry there’ll still be enough of his mind left there to tell him what I saw.”
“What did you see? We were at a city once,” Peachthief said dreamily. “But I was too young, I don’t remember anything but people.”
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) Page 57