Stone Seeds

by Ely, Jo;

  The crows and rats who feed on the bomb sites on the edge farms have grown to monstrous sizes. Zorry saw them as soon as she got to the general’s house this morning. Apparently attracted here by the general’s moat. Some escapees from the general’s feast table make it that far, Zorry knows that much. But to a non-casual observer, the moat is teeming with life.

  “The rats and scavenging birds …” Mama Zeina pauses. “They’re about the only living things to’ve flourished on the edge farms, the last few years. Wingspans the size of a grown man laid sideways.” Her eyes widen. “Tails as thick as a child’s hand.” She looks sternly at Zorry.

  Zorry hears the monstrous flapping. Huge wings. The cloud of crows rises, turns once in the air. Sound of cawing and scrapping. They seem to only just clear the top of the killing forest.

  “They head for the edge farms when they hear the sirens?”

  “Aye.” Mamma Zeina says. “Crows learn fast. They’re the new clean up crew on the edge farms.”

  Something passes over Mamma Zeina’s face.

  Zorry turns away from her discreetly.

  The siren goes on.

  Shrill, urgent sounds. The clatter of the feast table rises.

  Zorry notices the general’s wife mops a tear. She’s weak and appears to need to rest before she speaks. Zorry despises her for one long moment. Collaborator. She thinks.

  The general’s wife was once a Sinta, at least that was always the rumour on the Sinta cabbage patch farms. Zorry watches that sparrow chest heave. And then finds herself thinking that the general’s wife looks lost, bewildered, just now. It will be harder for Zorry to hate her now she’s seen her up close.

  The general’s wife is staring at the feast table as though she sees it for the first time in her life. Wilting from the knees, drooping head. She seems to move unsteadily back towards her seat.

  Gaddys taps the side of her glass and the general’s wife rises again, with some difficulty. Twice during her speech she appears to forget where she is. Blinks and sits down right in the middle of a sentence.

  “The general’s wife looks shrunken since the first time I saw her,” Mamma Zeina says.

  “And when was that?”

  “When I was a younger woman. In the last era. Before the revolution. She used to stand on a plinth in the centre of the village. Doing a mime act.”

  “A what?”

  “Mime. Theatre. Such things were possible in those days.” Mamma Zeina sighs.

  “It was the act which first attracted the strange attentions of the general to her. He liked her human statue act best. Thought it would be fitting in a wife. He was a sorry little fellow in those days. No one thought he would amount to much. No one thought he would last through the changing times.” Breathes out heavily. Eyes Zorry.

  “We were blinded by our hopes. Hope itself changed. Hope shed its skin and became …”

  “Became what?”

  “Something else Child, don’t mither me for endless answers. I am only one hundred years old.” Grins softly at the girl. Zorry notes Mamma Zeina’s missing front teeth.

  The village shopkeeper Gaddys pats the general’s wife’s shoulder. Her boney arm looks like it could be crushed under Gaddys the shopkeeper’s great hand.

  Now Gaddys heaves to her feet. Medals clank against each other. Earrings jangle. Her long pendant necklace swings forward as she leans, then back and she tips it over her shoulder with a flourish. Pats the gold coils of her wig.

  The village shopkeeper, Gaddys, has amassed a great deal of personal power in the show village, indicating the high esteem the general holds her in, Mamma Zeina explains. Taps the side of her round nose. “Folks come to her shop for information as well as to exchange their ration cards for grain,” she checks the girls face for understanding.

  “Gaddys controls the information and the rations. That’s important, Zorry.”

  Zorry can’t seem to pull her eyes away from that pendant. Gaddys’ gem is the largest at the table, lapis lazuli coloured but also tinged with purple, speckled with silver coloured shards like shrapnel. She’s never seen a stone like that before. Thinks they must be digging deeper into the OneFolks’ mine. They must be nearing the bottom of it soon, that’s certainly the rumour amongst the Sinta. She thinks about the miners who work the gem mines in the show village, wonders what will happen to them when the work is done. After all, they’ve lived amongst the OneFolk, they’ve seen things. They could map the village, list names, give coordinates and all to the edge farm rebels, if they had a mind to. The general doesn’t generally let a thing like that pass. She imagines the young gem miners’ lives will be short and brutal.

  Zorry thinks of last night, Mamma Zeina and the killing forest. What was the name of the boy whom Mamma Zeina fixed up? The name is on the tip of her tongue then it comes to mind.

  Tomax. She briefly wonders where Tomax is now.

  “Zorry, wake up.” Mamma Zeina hisses. “It’s your turn again, Zorry.” Hands her a plate, stacked with fried beetles. Jewel hued green-backs, charred lightly and their wings lifting away from their bodies, as though ready for flight. Delicious with salt.

  “Gaddys will decide if the Sinta slaves like you, Zorry and your family, and those few edge farmers deemed fit for now to hold possession of border passes, will get the drought resistant seeds or the stone seeds which won’t sprout.” Mamma Zeina pulls her head covering a little further forwards, “Not if you turn them and tend them for a year, and so … “She pauses. Sighs. “And so in charge of the distribution of Bavarnica’s seed sacks, Gaddys holds the power of life and death in her manicured hands. Here.”

  Zorry looks down.

  “Take this plate.”

  Mamma Zeina watches Zorry walking slowly toward the feast table. The girl is learning. The old woman blinks and tries to swallow. She feels as though something is stuck in her throat.

  When Zorry returns she hands her some napkins to fold.

  “It was Gaddys’ idea to visually differentiate the sacks by colour. She is brilliant, in her own disgusting way.” Zorry blinks and gently leans a little toward Mamma Zeina to hear better.

  “Stand up straight Zorry.” Mamma Zeina admonishes.

  “Sorry.”

  Mamma Zeina goes on, “Gaddys has a gift for showmanship. Left hand, yellow sack, right hand, orange. It underlines her power unless any of her ‘customers’ should come to doubt it, Gaddys deals in life and death.” Mamma Zeina taps the curved end of her nose with one stubby finger. “Drag an orange sack home, Zorry, and with your edge farm friends and neighbours looking at you, pitying or else just plain evasive. Just like you’re already dead.” Mamma Zeina eyes Zorry. “That’s what we’re up against. It all begins and ends with Gaddys.”

  Mamma Zeina gathers up her skirts and slowly walks away from Zorry. Zorry notices her pull distractedly on the glove on her right hand. Zorry briefly wonders why Mamma Zeina wears it. It seems to Zorry that the old woman doesn’t do much without a reason.

  And now Gaddys closes her square right hand around her glass. It’s crystal, delicately carved with ancient species of flowers and so fragile looking that you’d think, looking at her heavy hand, that she would crush the glass between those smooth, hard fingers. Zorry finds herself watching Gaddys’ hands with a strange fascination. But they’re just the regular perfumed hands of a lady of the Flowers Fund, Zorry shakes herself. A little more thick-knuckled than most, perhaps, and the nails made to mimic cat claws, extend and retract in the latest Bavarnican fashion. Zorry looks down. Her own long fingered hands are hard wearing, callused. Nails bitten down to the quick.

  Exhaustion rolls over Zorry. Sound of her own heart thumping in her ears.

  Her eyes close for a moment.

  There’s a silence in the room as Gaddys rises. The sense of breath held. No need for Gaddys to cough or tap her glass, Zorry blinks and tries to concentrate. She notices the fabric of Gaddys’ dress strain against her large muscular body. And now the table is silent. The
quiet seems to emanate from Gaddys, seep upward from her skirts, Zorry thinks. Like that moment when the dust comes over the top of the killing forest, drifting westward whenever an edge farmhouse is bombed.

  Gaddys’ hair is shaven at the sides in the latest fashion, with a spiral starting from just over her ears and making the top of her head look like a coil pot or a nest of snakes, depending on your disposition so that even the OneFolk childur from this, Bavarnica’s show village (and childur, in Bavarnica, is the loose and rather insulting name meaning young people) but they can recall her hairdo every time they look at the rusting spiral water dispenser in the school canteen. Her hair is called to mind by the caterpillar twists and turns of the yellow seams running down the outside of the general’s energiser by the killing forest fences. Then there’s the twisted rusting pump of the school’s generator. Or the water canteen in the OneFolk childurs’ playground, which the boldest of the OneFolk childur call Gaddys and throw small stones at. Gaddys’ hairpiece is quite a show stopper, even by the standards of the OneFolks’ show village. It’s how she announces her presence. It’s her brand, Zorry thinks.

  Zorry sinks farther back into the space beside the window, afternoon is turning into evening. She feels the shadows slip around her. Curfew is coming for the Sinta farms beneath the great house. Everyone indoors when the general switches off his mechanised sun, and the old sun is allowed to cast its dim, last rays.

  Zorry presses her back into the corner. She is clutching an empty platter. Holds it to her heart unconsciously, like a shield.

  When she looks down she notices that her right hand is shaking.

  Takes her a while to see that the Egg Boy Antek is back. Glances at her from underneath his helmet. Looks away again quickly.

  And then she follows his eye. Notices the small escaping critter is still on the move, it pops out of the side of the powdered wig of one of the grander ladies at Gaddys’ end of the table. It’s looking jittery and flustered, antennae swivelling furiously, and now ducks and hops on and off the curling beard of the ancient looking man to the right of Gaddys, leaps again and finds a second home in the huge extended collar of the man on her second right.

  Zorry notices Antek shut down a smile.

  This confuses Zorry. Egg Boys aren’t supposed to have emotions. Certainly they never show them. She looks again in the direction in which Antek looks. The small spider-like creature in his eyeline has a large wobbling head, like a hat about to topple. The man it sits on, with the strange flea collar and dressed like some over large unidentifiable feline, doesn’t appear to have noticed. The top of one ear of his costume droops and the old man’s own ragged ancient ear peeks out.

  Now the flower arrangement softly extends its huge head towards the critter, which scurries, panicked, into the cat costume and down the back of the cat-man’s ancient looking left ear, scoots into his costume, runs down his sinewy neck.

  The old man’s eyes roll strangely.

  He gets up looking a little shaky, makes his way toward the perfumed toilet in the corridor outside.

  Zorry imagines for a moment that she saw Antek smile again. Just a shadow of movement, the right side of his mouth.

  The left side of the flower arrangement gently lilts its head, watches Antek go check the window. And then head left to secure the inner door on the right.

  There’s a commotion then. A second OneFolk man knocks against the table, sliding his chair out and, with its heavy throne-like back, it falls and several Sinta struggle to be the first to catch it. Under cover of this unseemly jostling, the squid-like creature slides slowly off the table and onto the floor. Nows it’s half hidden by the tablecloth near a OneFolk woman’s right feathered shoe. The critter sniffs the shoe and leans against it. The owner of the shoe looks down. She lets out a small scream. Moves her foot. The creature slowly slides toward her.

  Antek goes and secures a second door. Unreadable expression and then he bends his head toward the handle, as though checking the quality of the lock. His face is concealed. Zorry imagines she sees his shoulders vibrate softly.

  She turns back slowly toward the dining table.

  Zorry has not seen the like of the critter before but Mamma Zeina warned Zorry earlier not to show any alarm, no matter what happens at the feast of the flowers fund.

  New foods are the very height of fashion. Most of them are made in the labs.

  The squid-like creature slides around the feathered shoe once more and then makes its way across the floor toward the window. Zorry wonders if it can sense the water in the moat beneath it. She steps back, too suddenly, and then watches as it reaches its tentacles up, fingering toward the window ledge beside her, and then, gripping on, eases itself up. It seems to Zorry that the creature glances her way. Eyes her solemnly and then winks its large gloomy eye, slides sinuously through the grille so quickly after that she imagines that she might’ve dreamt it. There’s a struggle as it fails twice to pull its huge head through the crack, soft popping sound on the third attempt. Zorry hears the soft plosh of the creature hitting the moat below.

  “The flower fund of Bavarnica is doing essential work,” says Gaddys, squaring her feet. Quieting the soft uproar of the feast with one of her looks. She pats her coiled hair. Gazes around the room. Now she smiles, showing all her half formed child-like teeth.

  There’s the tinkle of “Cheers,” glasses raised and clanking silverware.

  REPORT 2: COMMUNICATION

  “OPERATIVE JENGI?”

  “Yes.”

  “Communication. We want to know how the Sinta resistance are talking to each other. We assume it’s in code. Please begin.”

  “When the general’s lab technicians found the math of voices undercover, the algorithm, they thought they had removed the Sinta’s last power play: they could no longer talk to each other in their workplaces, not even in code. At least not without being monitored, but in fact as the Sinta turned it on its head and used it, even that turned out to be a chink in the general’s system.”

  “How do you mean exactly?”

  “Well, he’s stopped listening. Thinking they’ve stopped talking. Stopped being able to reach out to each other in their work places and so forth. But … Observation. Communication. Friendship. The general forced the Sinta to get better at all these things. And talking is still the true key to the Sinta resistance, don’t doubt it.”

  “Alright Jengi. Though I am the doubting kind. Go on. How did these Sinta get round the listening system? And surely there’s not much they can say, iffens they’s bugged on all sides.”

  “It’s the opposite. Now Sinta can talk fairly freely, even under the general’s bugs and listening devices, so long as they find the right notes. It takes practice, but in the end it’s less risky than their old sign language.”

  “They had a sign language?”

  “Yes. They still do. But it has to change so often that misunderstandings are common, and not even the new language’s own speakers can keep up. Does flicking a napkin to the right mean yes or no? Mopping the floor with an anticlockwise motion, Egg Boy’s coming or else the coast is all clear, go ahead folks? For myself I never got my head around the ever-changing sign language. Not that it doesn’t take practice to skip the algorithms too. Find the music. All Sinta secret talking takes skill. And not everyone has the knack of the new speaking yet. Sinta who’re naturally musical seem to be doing the best.” He pauses. Strokes the faintly curved bridge of his nose. “Mostly the Sinta now ‘talk’ in a kind of hybrid of both signing and musical speech. The OneFolks imagine that they do all this for the feast’s entertainment.”

  “And Mamma Zeina?”

  Jengi is silent for a long moment. Scratches his head and then he appears to have decided something. “Mamma Zeina’s voice sounds like she’s discussing the colour of the pretty napkins she’s folding, or the sheen on the cutlery, the curve of the glassware and this is important too. For a Sinta. Being calm, lighthearted. The general’s listening devices will tune
into the cadence of heightened emotion. A Sinta is not allowed to be angry, no matter what happens. But you can improve on your emotional reactions with practice. As it turned out some Sinta have the nature for that sort of work and some don’t. In the beginning it was the warriors in the resistance movement who were arrested first. They couldn’t hide it.”

  “It?”

  “Sorry, Sir. What did you say?”

  “It. You said they couldn’t hide It. What is It?”

  “It’s the rage, Sir. They couldn’t hide their outrage. It was a blow to lose the Sinta warriors, but in the end the resistance went on without them. But the outrage lived on. That was the main thing.”

  “Right.” Small pause. “Er … Carry on, Jengi. So what are we left with?”

  “It is a measure of the success of the resistance that the general now believes he has mostly cowed the Sinta folks who are left in the OneFolks’ village. When the truth is …”

  “Yes? What is the truth Jengi?”

  “The truth is he’s only sent the Sinta resistance deep underground.”

  There’s a long silence and then, “Jengi? Mamma Zeina is Z. Isn’t she? Your revolution’s third thought Seed?”

  Jengi is calculating fast. “Yes.” Jengi says.

  “I thought as much. Alright. Good work, Jengi.”

  There’s a crackle on the line. Hiss and the connection ends abruptly.

  Jengi feels a cold, slithering sensation at the pit of his stomach. He’s name-checked Mamma Zeina. It’s a risk. That’s bad. He likes to think she would understand … Would want to protect the true third Seed. Jengi has learned to make such deals with himself. He slopes back toward the lights of the OneFolks’ village, the shop.

  THE GENERAL’S WIFE

  “AYE,” SAYS GADDYS APPROVINGLY, “That’s the creed of the ladies of the flower fund of Bavarnica, we LOVE flowers!” She says, with a flourish of her jewelled hands and her heavy bracelets clank together. Cattish fingernails extend and retract. And then she says it again, raising her voice to drown out the thumps and rhythmic hollers of the edge farmers’ rain dance, sounds rising up over the killing forest and past the fence. Seeping in through the air vents and the narrow slats in the windows of the general’s great house, followed by the rising shriek of the Egg Men’s sirens, the low sickening rumble of the general’s drones mobilising. Scrapping and cawing of crows.