by Nōnen Títi
Aryan had sweated that apology. He’d believed that his place on SJilai was at risk. All those people had listened to him. Markag had been confused and said to just get on with it and all the while Kalgar had sat there with a straight face. “Who else did you tell – Frantag?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody but you knows I made a fool of myself that day?”
“Only those in DJar government, most of whom have reached Life by now, including Markag,” Kalgar assured him.
“And Maike. I told her. She reckoned I should go instead of returning to the base. I did it for her more than anything. We had a fall-out over it.”
Kalgar opened the door to leave. “Maybe you should swallow your pride once more for her sake.”
Aryan was beginning to wonder if Kalgar had come here on purpose to tell him this. What did everybody know about him and Maike anyway? Maike would come around. Didn’t it always go like that? They’d never had the need to say sorry to each other before… but it wasn’t natural for Maike to talk to others about him.
He ended up taking a long walk, all the way to the ocean. It glimmered; a stunning lightshow of moving shapes, but the sky was cloudy. Neither of the moons could reflect in the water, yet it was lit up; something in there must produce light. Okay, if there was no longer any need for Aryan to go to SJilai, he’d stay. Now he was sorry he’d not taken Erwin up on his offer; he could have done with forgetting about women for a bit. The tranquillity of the ocean was what he needed. Then he had to chuckle about the joke Kalgar had played on him: Nice one.
Battles with Rocks and Bacteria
They all looked like they were about to fall over, especially Irma, whose pasty white face had red blotches and large, black circles around her eyes when she started the meeting. Not only was she still upset from losing the little girl this morning, but she was utterly exhausted.
The nurses worked in shifts; four hours of work followed by six hours of rest, using the SJilai battery clocks to make sure they’d get to their shifts on time – as long as they reset them every day to cut out the eight hours Kun DJar didn’t have – but Irma was the only doctor. Nini had considered taking some of the on-call time, so Irma could have a day off occasionally, but she wasn’t sure if she’d know what to do if something serious came in.
“All we can do is give them plenty of fluids,” Irma said, referring to the new infections that had started occurring. “It looks like the microbes don’t kill directly but the patients dehydrate before the tissues have time to heal. Most adults won’t be in danger as long as they keep drinking, but the child’s mother wasn’t aware.”
There were more problems than solutions at the moment; these infections, heart and respiratory problems in people who shouldn’t have them, poisoning and stomach upsets… The easiest to deal with were the common accidents, like broken bones. Dental problems were turning up more and more, for which they had neither the training nor the technology; on DJar everybody had protective treatment, but no one had considered that for the journey, and consequently no dental technician had been recruited. A similar thing was happening with people’s eyesight; those who’d had treatment were okay, but young people with focus problems would be virtually blind.
Small complaints, like headaches, could be just that, but they could also be the first sign of something serious, so they couldn’t be dismissed. Then there were the self-inflicted conditions, like people getting high on Kun DJar wine, who would then start vomiting and come to the infirmary expecting a cure. In between all that were women who were still hoping to be able to avoid the normal symptoms of menopause. “The other day a woman asked me for a hysterectomy because she was bleeding more than normal. I nearly kicked it out of her,” Irma said.
They agreed about the need to stick with priorities. The supplies of bandages, needles, swaps, all medications, and fluid for drips were running low. They would have to start using the local water for rehydration, but that couldn’t go into drips. They would either have to dilute the food pouches, which had plenty of sugar and salt in them, or they’d have to use well water and add the vital ingredients. The first honey from the now-thriving bees could be used, but there was no source of salt. Remko suggested adding small amounts of seawater, but that brought the risk of consuming other dangers as well.
There was also some doubt about the safety of the well. It wasn’t so much the water itself that was the problem, but the way it was handled: from a bucket to a kettle for heating, and then to the containers. There was too much exposure and the containers weren’t always clean, never mind that nobody seemed to be washing their cups, being too accustomed to disposables. A few things were clear. They’d have to make people aware of the first signs of dehydration, poisoning and infections, but without causing a panic.
At the end of the meeting Irma asked Nini to try and talk to Jari. “The girl needs to talk to somebody other than her mother. She’s hiding away and getting depressed. Her mom has been here three times in the last two kor. There is nothing I can do to help; the scar will stay forever and I don’t have the time.”
Jari had left the clinic in good spirits, but they’d all known it wouldn’t last. On DJar the scar would have been cosmetically removed. Here, Jari would forever be marked with the outline of the cable. In a way she’d been lucky, since her eye wasn’t damaged.
Nini promised she’d give it a try, but she walked home first to ask Marya about boiling seawater: If you evaporated it you lost the salt, but did that also apply to boiling? Nobody in the meeting had been able to answer that.
Marya, one of her new roommates, wasn’t home when Nini came in, but the other girl they shared with was, and she had a male visitor. Nini was about to say sorry for the interruption when she noticed the toy nobi in his hands. She snatched it away.
“Hey, hey, take it easy. I was just looking at it,” he said.
“There’s a social building in town. Why don’t you meet there?”
More put out than sorry, the couple left. Nini brushed off the toy and placed it back on her mat before leaving.
She had little success with Jari. The visit lasted no more than eight minutes; the moment the girl figured out why she was there, Nini was told to get lost, after which Jari refused to respond no matter how much Tini begged her.
There were several things wrong with a central kitchen that was not located at the centre of town because it had to be close to the well. One was that the water was always cold by the time Nini carried it back to her home on South-East Street. Since she’d seen Kunag working in the central kitchen this morning, she decided to have a warm drink there. She asked him about his sister.
“She’s impossible,” he answered brusquely.
“Maybe she’s just scared. You could help her.”
“She doesn’t want help. She’s changed.”
“Only on the outside. That shouldn’t count,” Nini said.
“You don’t understand; it isn’t just the outside. Jari wants to be alone. I guess she’s sorry she came and I don’t blame her. This planet is ugly.” The gentle, shy boy from SJilai was no longer there. Kunag was gruff and angry.
“This is only the beginning, Kunag. I know there are more animals and plants here. We just haven’t found them yet.”
Was she sure of that? It was only a feeling. She had no evidence, so she asked Kunag about the water. Did it ever boil?
“No, it just gets warmed.”
Nini explained to him the need to boil the water. When Kunag replied that his shift was nearly over and tomorrow somebody else would be here, Nini realized she was talking to the wrong person; she’d need Frantag for this. Though she agreed it wasn’t fair to have the same people do the same dirty jobs every day, this wasn’t working either; nobody would take responsibility.
“So what do I do with this water if it’s dangerous?” Kunag asked.
And how easy to cause a panic? “For now, just do what you’ve done so far. I will have to find somebody to solve the problem.
Don’t tell people it’s dangerous.”
“Ask Wolt. He knows just about everybody.”
Did Kunag think Wolt would be able to do an article for the bulletin to inform the people without scaring them into not drinking at all?
“I guess so. Wolt is the writer.” He promised to tell Wolt to come to the infirmary tomorrow.
Kunag and Jari were not the only ones who had come to the conclusion that life on Kun DJar wasn’t as good as they’d imagined it. It wasn’t the simplicity or the fear of accidents and illnesses, but the lack of being able to see improvement. Even Marya started to lose hope.
About the same age and with the same cheerful optimism and flamboyant manners, Marya reminded Nini of Gina, but without any interest in gossip. Nini missed Gina a little; after spending four years together, Gina had looked forward to the new planet, but never made it down. Had Nini not been one of the nurses, she’d have been on the same lander.
“Maybe they were the lucky ones,” Marya had said when Nini first moved in with her. “It’s one thing to be a user among users, but in this colony all the other women are going to create the new generation and we get to sit by and look on.”
That was one of the few times Nini had heard Marya speak her gloom. Today, while they were out for a walk, she did it again. “There’s plenty of work but it doesn’t seem to do any good. Maybe we were all hoping for some fantasy or fairytale. I keep trying to be realistic about it, to put it in perspective, but it’s hard.”
“We’ve only just started,” Nini said, as she had to Kunag.
“On DJar half a year would have passed since we got here, Nini. Remember how many things were outdated within half a year of being brand new? Things were improved on all the time. Nothing we do here is making life better.”
“But we’re not on DJar,” Nini said, putting her arm around Marya’s back. “Improvement in technology builds on what already exists. The changes come faster when there is more to build on. Here we must start over, like the early Bijari; one step at a time.”
Besides, they’d not been here half a DJar year yet; it had been three stations, at best, since the first people left SJilai. Apart from that, things were getting better. They had managed fires to warm by and there was food that could be eaten.
Marya admitted she might be impatient. “I guess we were spoiled on DJar; we always expected everything to work right away. If something broke down you’d get on the speaker to complain to someone. Maybe DJar was the fairytale. It was like magic. Everything we wished for at the wave of a wand or the push of a button.”
“So what would you want to do here?” Nini asked.
Marya had no idea. It was just that cleaning with all this mud seemed so useless. It had been a nice idea to look back at ancient trades while on SJilai, but bricks were not needed when they lived in prefabs, ropes could not be made without plants to take fibres from, and woodworking was hopeless without wood. The list went on. Kun DJar was not a simpler DJar; it was totally different. “And emptying excretorials is a never-ending stupid job,” Marya said.
Nini agreed that wasn’t the kind of work to help raise their spirits. “What did you do on DJar before becoming a user?”
“Not much, to be honest. My mother was a high-ranking administrator on Telemer; all the luxuries. Anything I wanted I was given. Learners was a laugh so I never had to work for anything. Once I finished I got an apprenticeship designing piko-programs – hardly useful here. Anyway, that was also easy, so I started playing around. I found some friends who were bored like me and we started changing programs to raise allowances and points charts. At first it was just fun to see how far we could go. Once I understood how dangerous the game was, I was already too deeply involved. I only really worked when I was a user. Same as here, you know: Dumb jobs.”
Standing still to stroke one of the batis that had come to the fence, Marya admitted it had been a shock to do manual labour. “Of course, I was no good at that either. I was considered lazy and troublesome; that’s why they sent me on SJilai. During the journey I fantasized about this new place, but I find myself doing stupid work all over again and I’m starting to wonder if there was any use in me ever being born.”
“Oh Marya, I don’t think anybody can be useless. You just have to find you own special skill yet.”
“It’s a bit late for that, Nini. I’ll be four kor before the first Kun Djar year is over; middle-aged. I’ll never have any kids and, let’s face it, even if things get better here, there will always be jobs nobody else wants to do. I’ll end up working in one of those mines without being able to say no. I will help ruin this planet so we can create another DJar!”
“What mines?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Marya told Nini about the plans to drill in the mountains to find sources of fuel for heat and lamps. If the signs were good they’d go mining. Debates were on everywhere; senseless talk, according to Marya. Instead of survival, it was politics that was on everybody’s mind, and it had the settlement divided.
Nini had not followed any debates; she didn’t care about politics. All she would like, right now, was to have a way to stop children getting ill. She told Marya so.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to build a bigger furnace so they can boil all the water before distribution. I can get people to do that, no problem. We won’t wait for official approval; I’ll just organize it. That’s by far the best way to get anything done around here.”
That was so great about Marya; presented with a problem, she’d go searching for a solution and put the idea into action right away. The more complicated the problem, the more enthusiastic she got and the more she forgot about her bleak future. Within a kor she not only had people building a brick furnace, but she had made a tiny one herself behind their home. She ventured to test well water, seawater, and river water by boiling it. She also borrowed some from the fishpond. “Just for fun,” she said.
Having no equipment and no support from the scientists, she tasted each to see if it was salty. When she was unable to be sure without drinking too much of it, she abandoned the experiment. In the process she had discovered a similarity between the ocean and the fish water: Both had a film of something alive covering it, which disintegrated when boiled. When left to evaporate, the film turned into a slimy substance and when completely dry, into a mas of scattering life forms which seemed to grow. The ponds, however, had been filled up from groundwater, like the well.
Marya scooped the whole lot up and brought it to Remag to figure out what it was. Two days later she was told she may have discovered the first evidence of symbiosis. “The scatterers, for lack of a better word, if left to grow, turn into those orange looking things in the field – those from the sea, that is; the others become something else,” Marya told Nini.
From then on the project was out of her hands, but she’d enjoyed it anyway. In the meantime she kept Nini informed about the political debates. The original quarrels between Frantag and Kalgar had caused them to call for a return to a SJilai-like government, but Roilan was under threat from Thalo, even if he didn’t want to admit it, and backed Kalgar, Wilam had Tigor breathing down his neck and was forced to side with Frantag, Maike had her hands full keeping the peace, and the rest had refused to join, with as a result that the two parties were now bigger and even less willing to compromise. That was aside from the demands from the Sacred Praise Society for a voice in government, and similar requests from the planners and scientists.
Nini got the news via other channels as well, like it or not. It was midnight, and Remko had just arrived for his night duty. The first half of Nini’s late shift, which she had worked with Wana, had been quiet. A copy of SJilai’s infirmary, the clinic had the eight mats, the desk, and all the equipment, but in a square room with windows in each of its four walls. These provided plenty of light in the daytime, but now the nights were darkening they had to work by the vague light of three oil lamps.
The sick child was sleeping on a mat at the back. Only seven
years old, he had left DJar as little more than a toddler. He was not getting over his infection and had not yet started drinking. The last of the fluid bags was dripping to keep him alive, and it would run out by morning; he would have to drink or die. The pathologist had not been able to find the guilty parasite; this was all new to him too. The few times he had found microbes they’d not responded to the known treatment. The only medication they still had plenty off, the antibiotics, turned out to be totally useless against them. “They’re either not alive or they’re resistant,” he said, “and that last option is impossible.”
When Nini told Remko about the child’s progress – or rather, regress – he expressed his own doubts. “It seems so redundant to have all the knowledge if it fails. It makes you realize how incapable we really are. It would be better not knowing at all.”
There was noise outside the door and then four people, all talking at once, came in. One was Maike; another, of course, Thalo. He’d been here twice before, and this time his head was bleeding. All three men had mud on their shoes.
Remko put Thalo on a mat to check his head. “He was hit by a rock,” Maike said. The other two also had ‘rock’ injuries. One was limping, and the other had his arm ripped open from elbow to wrist; it looked ugly.
Nini had only just started cleaning the cut when the man commented that he wouldn’t mind doing this more often if it meant being treated by a pretty girl. She pulled back the swap, stood up and kicked his shin as hard as she could. “Get out. I’m not wasting more supplies on the likes of you,” she said, and pointed to the door.
Everyone in the room went quiet. She could feel them looking at her, but she was too angry to care. “Go, and you can come back in the morning to clean up the mess you’ve made.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Maike asked.
“What is wrong is that you ask us to deal with those idiots while the children are dying,” Nini answered, unable to keep from raising her voice at Maike. What was wrong was that they were losing the battle against the microbes while these men battled each other with rocks.