by Неизвестный
An old atmospheric image of a pastoral landscape spread out before him. Looking up, he found a familiar satellite: Earth’s moon.
Sticking his hands inside the samue sleeves, Yutaka stared up at the moon without knowing why.
The cleanup of the demolished storeroom was completed in ten days, after which rebuilding began. When the bulk of the labor was finished, Yutaka was sent to the fields for weeding.
Inside the rows of one-tan drums spinning in the main tunnel, the fields had grown darker and greener with grass, and a small-seeded plant had also emerged from the soil. Though this species of millet was edible, it was considered a weed since it robbed the rice crop of nutrients. While it was standard to kill the weeds with chemicals on Yamato, spraying chemicals was prohibited on Lakeview in order to avoid atmospheric contamination.
The weeding took place with the aid of what was called a belly plank, a kind of scaffolding laid across the length of the thirty-one-meter drum. When Yutaka and the villagers lay flat on their bellies on top of the plank, their hands could just reach the bottom of the paddies. Since the drum rotated as the plank stayed in place, the weeds appeared before them, ready for plucking. As Yutaka and the villagers pulled weeds out of the soil one after the next, their hands and faces were spattered with mud.
In some of the drums, the villagers released ducks that fed only on the weeds. Their manure also made for good fertilizer, and once they served their purpose, the ducks could be eaten. Upon hearing this from Dewey, Yutaka had to concede their usefulness.
“I have to admit, the ducks are a good idea. Are you going to raise more of them and put them to work in all of the drums?”
Shaking his head, Dewey said, “Too much manure can overnitrogenize the mud. Ruins the flavor of the rice. There aren’t plans to use any more of those noisy birds. Besides, they smell horrible.”
“So you’re going to get rid of them?”
“Not exactly.”
Dewey explained that he wasn’t about to propose either raising more ducks or ending their use. Despite being bothered by this ambiguous response, Yutaka decided to let it go, knowing that any discussion with Dewey would escalate into an ugly debate.
It was around this time that the scheduled shuttlecraft docked at Lakeview for the second time since Yutaka’s arrival. He did not know of its existence the first time. Yutaka contemplated commandeering or stowing away on the shuttle, but the dock was so congested with people that he couldn’t get close enough. To the villagers, the arrival of the shuttle was an event worthy of a festival. If Yutaka were going to escape, he would have to come up with another way.
The villagers, suspecting nothing, gave him an equal portion of the limited food supply and allowed him to freely roam the community. In fact, he soon came to realize that their treatment of him was strangely improving. Oftentimes, he was handed sweets and fruit during breaks, and villagers talked to him more. One day, after Yutaka had helped tend to the livestock in the barn, a freckled girl bashfully gave him an earthenware jar. It was filled with fresh cow’s milk.
Yutaka took the jar back to the sanitarium and dutifully handed it to Ainella, thinking better of initiating a romantic relationship or keeping the encounter a secret. But the woman laughed and returned the jar, saying, “You’re free to do what you want.”
After drinking down the raw milk, Yutaka suffered an upset stomach and had to be examined by a doctor, who scanned his genome with an outdated DNA reader.
Whatever the case with the freckled girl, it appeared the villagers had forgiven Yutaka for the damage he’d done thanks to his endless toil in the rice fields at their side. In Lakeview, it wasn’t so much that the economy revolved around raising rice but that the entire world revolved around it.
One morning the following week, Yutaka was awakened in the morning by shouting.
“Snails!”
“I see snails!”
Yutaka ran out to the paddies with Ainella and found bright pink egg sacs resembling berries or tiny grapes stuck to the rice grass above the waterline in every drum.
“What are these things?” asked Yutaka, looking down at the grass in disgust.
“Here,” said Ainella, handing him a hand shovel. “They’ll eat the rice if they hatch.”
The work of scraping off the eggs that the pesky mollusks had laid in one night continued past noon. When the eggs broke, they gave off a rotten smell, the fluid causing the skin to itch horribly.
The labor required every last villager, young and old. Even Ainella, usually housekeeping this time of day, hiked up her kimono hem and sleeves and pitched in next to Yutaka.
“They’re descended from a species called the channeled apple snail, which originally inhabited the Amazon. They were taken out of there as a possible food source, causing them to spread all over Earth.”
“Did someone bring them into this village?”
“Not out of malice, mind you. The snails were just one of many things we tried as a food source to survive on this asteroid. But the result was about the same as on Earth. You just have to accept the fact that these things happen.”
“If this were Yamato, we’d eliminate the pests chemically or mechanically.”
Ainella stopped her work and shot him an icy look. Yutaka ignored her, but he couldn’t hide his discomfort.
“Haven’t you gotten used to this place yet?”
“What do you mean yet?” shouted Yutaka. “I’m a pilot of the Yamato military, understand? Don’t expect me to get used to—” Suddenly he started coughing, choking on the force of his own voice.
Far from anger, there was a tranquil light in Ainella’s blue eyes. The woman removed the towel covering her head and wiped the egg fluid from Yutaka’s cheek with the edge of the cloth. “Why would you want to go back to a place that forces eighteen-year-old kids to fly fighters …”
Apparently some people didn’t recognize the honor of flying a fighter at eighteen. Yutaka felt offended and oddly unsettled at the same time.
The eggs were gone by afternoon. Only some pink fluid, spoor of the removal process, remained on the edges of the drums. Just as Yutaka was heading back, spent from the unexpected labor, he happened upon a strange sight.
Several of the drums in one corner of the main tunnel had not a trace of the pink fluid splattered along their edges.
When he approached one of the drums to investigate, a plump duck swam past him leaving a V-shaped wake.
There were more of them gathered against the far wall, eating something.
Yutaka looked around for someone to whom he should report this finding. Diagonally across was the ruddy-faced old man with the pipe spinning on the edge of the drum.
There was no one else looking in his direction. Both Yutaka and the ducks were past the point of drawing any concern from the village.
Along with hotter weather came more weeds. As the temperature on Lakeview rose, Yutaka and the villagers spent much of the day weeding. Yutaka realized that the summer weather was not something this village was simulating; it was caused by the external environment. He decided to ask Dewey about it.
“Does it get hot here because the asteroid has an elliptical orbit or because the sun’s rays hit the asteroid at a more direct angle?”
Hearing this, Dewey laughed and patted Yutaka on the shoulder. “You’re going to tell me that it’s different where you came from, right? That on Yamato the temperature is the same year round because the planet rotates on a perpendicular axis and has a circular orbit.”
“How did you know?”
“Why would you assume that we didn’t? The Yamato government is a thousand times more industrious about publicizing how great they are than you.”
“I didn’t know … We don’t see the external reports. No, I don’t mean to compare this place to Yamato. Just tell me, am I on the right track?”
“Why are you asking?” said Dewey, his face clouding suddenly.
“Why? I guess I’m just curious about the temperature o
n Lakeview, that’s all.”
“Oh.” After a beat, Dewey said, “It’s both. The asteroid isn’t quite a spheroid—it’s deformed. Even if it doesn’t have a perfectly circular orbit, we have no choice but to go on living here.”
“But if you’ve been able to continue to grow rice in spite of all that, you must be able to maintain the temperature somehow. How are you buffering the external effects when it gets too hot or too cold? Do you have some sort of heat exchanger somewhere?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Dewey walked away, saying nothing more. So curt was his response that Yutaka felt as if he’d been brushed aside.
Later, Yutaka learned of the existence of giant water tanks near the surface, and that in addition to providing water to the village, they also acted as radiation barriers and heat buffers. Since this was not necessarily a matter of public record, he had come upon this discovery through some old-fashioned footwork—or jumpwork.
Yutaka could not let go of the feeling that Dewey had tried to conceal the existence of these water tanks.
As July passed into August, the water was drained out of all the drums to dry out the soil. Then the drums were shut down one by one so the rollers could be inspected.
Once the one hundred or so drums stopped spinning for the first time since spring, the hitherto omnipresent low hum also disappeared. Only the light tubes remained on, blazing down over the crops to coax their growth, and a suffocating silence and light filled the main tunnel. Yutaka stripped down to the sleeveless shirt and short pants he knew not the names of and sweated in the fields as he scattered manure. Several of the men working in the fields, who had taken a liking to him, invited him to the summer festival, and on two separate occasions he was approached by women with romantic interests.
Yutaka grew more troubled by the day.
The summer festival began in mid-August. Four of the drums were removed from the main tunnel. Three different drums filled with booths and refreshment stands were installed in their place, and another empty drum served as the main stage, in the center of which was an enormous drum—the percussion instrument, that is.
When the drum began to rotate along with the beat of the drum, the villagers jumped in at once, and with their feet planted against the wall on a higher gravity setting, began to dance.
Boom! Boom! Badoom! What a thrill it would be to join these Caucasian men and women dressed in their best clothes and dance to the thunderous drumbeat, Yutaka thought. Unable to bring himself to do so, Yutaka roamed the darkness away from the festivities. When he returned, he took up a corner of a concession drum and idly played with a chocolate-colored puppy that was inexplicably named after a Hindu god.
“Shiva!” Yutaka said, waving a straw bundle shaped like a bone in front of the eager pup. “Shiva, fetch!”
When Yutaka threw the bundle, the deviating force sent the toy in a strange direction and smacked Ainella, who peeked around the corner, in the face.
“Ouch!” she cried. “Some thanks I get for looking for you.”
“Sorry, it was an accident.”
“What are you doing over here? Why don’t you come and dance? No one’s going to get mad if you’re a bad dancer.”
“I don’t think so, Ainella. I’m an outsider here.”
“Well, everyone knows that.”
“No, what I mean is that I’ll eventually leave this place. I appreciate that everyone here’s made an effort to accept me, but I can’t. Maybe it’s a matter of national character, but the way you Kalifs try to welcome outsiders into your community feels foreign to me. I’m scared, Ainella. On Yamato, everything begins with setting ourselves up in opposition to others. We resist blending in with others and willfully expand outward. That’s just the way the Yamato people are. You shouldn’t be accepting me. You’re better off driving me away.”
Hearing this, Ainella bent down next to the young man and took his head in her arms. The woman’s sweet floral scent wafted into his nostrils, and Yutaka’s body tensed.
“You told me what was in your heart. I’m so glad. I didn’t know Yamato men could be that way,” Ainella said tenderly. “Tell me, do you want see your family back home?”
“I told you, the Yamato are pioneers. We’ve been prepared to leave our families behind since we enlisted.”
“Then why don’t you stay here? I have a feeling you’re not like the other Yamato people.”
Before he knew it, Yutaka was pressing his nose against her skin. Pulling away after several undeniably long seconds, he said, “I am Yamato, whether I like it or not.” He pushed Ainella away, fighting back the desire to embrace her. “This isn’t about the psyche. It’s a physical and biological issue. I still can’t stomach the suiton or that taro dish you make. I don’t have the digestive gene. For a meat-eating Yamato like myself, the rice culture of the Kalifs is too alien. I can’t live here.”
“Yutaka.” Brushing her fingers through his black hair, Ainella drew him close and kissed him. The sensation was so unimaginably sweet that it triggered a sharp pain in his chest at the same time. Yutaka pushed her away and broke into a run. The puppy barked noisily at his back.
“Yutaka, I’m sorry!”
But the pilot couldn’t understand what she was apologizing for. After all, no one was to blame here. The stars had just not aligned for them.
The same day the radio broadcast reported that the Yamato no Yasoshima Interstellar Expeditionary Fleet would resume its “expedition” of the sector, Lakeview held its annual harvest festival.
At this year’s thanksgiving ceremony to the cosmos, Kingston, the head of Lakeview, cut a shaft of rice with a dull knife made of condrite and offered it to the shrine at the far end of the main tunnel, along with tilapia and ham and all manner of vegetables and mushrooms.
“We made it,” said Dewey, giving away his relief. “When you crashed your fighter into our food cache, I didn’t know if we’d survive to see this day.”
“If your food supply had run out in the summer, what would you have done with me? Sliced me up like a ham?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?” When Yutaka shot him a dubious look, the Kalif smirked. “But the discussion did come up. Not about eating you, of course. About how we’d have one less mouth to feed if we just tossed you out on your ass.”
“So my life was spared?”
“That was Ainella. She was the one that found you, so she insisted she’d look after you out of her own food rations. You better have thanked her for every meal.”
“Yeah,” said Yutaka, wincing. “I thanked her all right. More than she cared to hear.”
“Good. She’d be upset if you left without saying a word.”
“Left? Me? I’ve just about given up about getting off this rock,” Yutaka said and sighed. When he looked up, Dewey had fixed a hard stare on him.
“The Yamato fleet is on its way here. You’re planning to jump on the next shuttle to get back to your squadron.”
“Come on, how the hell do you expect me to do that with all the commotion every time a shuttle arrives?”
“You’re going to wait in near-space and hitch a ride on the shuttle’s hull. You stashed away an EV suit on the night of the summer festival.”
Yutaka stared down at his feet. He was no good at lying.
Dewey let out a sigh. “You should stick around, Yutaka. We don’t want any trouble, but we’ve been ordered by the Kalifornian Federation to apprehend any suspicious characters.”
“Dewey, you’re not—”
“It’s not what you think,” said Dewey. “I’m not a spy or anything. I was born and raised in this village. I just had some training in that sort of thing. I’m only trying to protect this village.”
“So you thought I was a spy …?”
Yutaka felt a sudden weariness come over him, when Ainella in red hakama pants over a white kimono floated over in their direction and lit down in front of them.
“Were you two watching the ceremony? Oh—” she said, glanci
ng at Dewey. “So is he …?”
“Yeah,” Dewey said. “He’s leaving Lakeview.”
Ainella turned toward Yutaka. The pilot had to look away. Ever since he’d run away from her that night a month ago, Yutaka could hardly look at Ainella.
But it wasn’t out of guilt.
“I see …” the Kalif woman said coolly. “Are you sure? Is it really so unthinkable living in a foreign culture?”
“Yeah … I’m sure.”
“Then fine, go. I won’t stop you.”
Yutaka looked up. Ainella had turned her back. Though he wanted to say something, Yutaka lost the nerve to speak after glimpsing her wipe her cheek with the back of her hand.
“At least taste the shinsen before you go.”
“Shinsen?”
“It’s an old word that refers to an offering to God. But it’s also what we call the first meal from the year’s harvest. I want you to have a real taste of Kalif food, not the stuff we’ve had to survive on these last few months. Just once, I’d like to hear you—”
Ainella stopped mid-sentence, but Yutaka knew the rest. He was well aware of the words he’d never uttered.
Nodding, Yutaka said, “Sure.”
The new rice was cooked in an enormous cast iron pot and served on bamboo plates. Following the serious ceremony, the mood was cheerful as villagers laid straw mats around the harvested rice field and eagerly took turns ladling the steaming rice into their bowls. It was an entirely foreign sight to Yutaka. Neither the taste nor smell did anything to stimulate his appetite.
A silver tray was set in front of Yutaka.
“This is the shinsen,” Ainella said.
On the tray was a mountainous loaf of bread.
The fragrant smell wafting up from the golden crust told him immediately it was fresh-baked. The chief priest brought a slender knife down on the loaf and a slice fell away revealing the fluffy crumb inside.
Yutaka lacked the will to wonder how such a thing could be made in the first place. After six months of forcing down the disagreeable suiton and soy sauce-flavored meals, it was the first food that he recognized from home. No doubt Lakeview had a supply of flour that he didn’t know about. Perhaps he was being told about it now as a parting gift.