by Nōnen Títi
Anni was impressed with Brita’s mealsroom, which was outfitted with extras. Besides the mealmax oven, Brita had a real oven installed and a large table with two benches at the centre. She had learned to cook from her grandmother. It was an expensive hobby, since she had to order special foods from a contact in Northland, but today was a special occasion and she promised Anni could help with the preparations later. It was an inviting room to sit and talk in as well.
“Any development in the decisions?” Brita asked when they were alone.
Daili admitted they’d not really talked about it since the issue of taking children was resolved. “But Anni has decided she doesn’t want to go, so I guess that’s it.”
Station Four had less than two moons left. Sometimes she felt hopeless and she knew her children felt a similar desperation. Anni couldn’t wait for the crew list to be finalized so she didn’t have to worry anymore. Laytji begged every day before going to Learners to please put their names on the list. She would “never ever want another birthday present ever again” if she could only go.
Brita had told Hani she couldn’t go because she wasn’t a crew member’s child. Those were the rules and there was nothing to be done about it. What worried her was that Hani hadn’t responded at all. She never said a word about it, but she was causing problems at Learners.
“I’ve had one of those messages already, saying that if her marks don’t improve they’ll have to assess her emotional and social circumstances. In other words, they’re threatening to take her away,” Brita said. She admitted she couldn’t totally blame them as it seemed Hani was trying to get herself in trouble.
“Why would she do that?”
“She’s heard they’re sending userchildren. It was on the news the other night.” All of a sudden Brita was in tears. “Why does my child want to leave me? What did I ever do to her?”
Daili had no answer for her. She put her arm around Brita’s small shoulders and let her cry. “Do you want me to talk to her? After all, she contacted me once. Maybe I can get out of her what she’s trying to do.”
Brita accepted the offer immediately and Daili was left wondering what she’d say to this child.
After having had lunch together, Brita asked if the girls wanted to come shopping with her, which was something Hani didn’t like doing. Daili caught on and urged them to go. Hani also got the message and said she’d rather come this time. When Brita told her she should stay and talk, the girl gave them all a demonstration of what Daili had only been told about so far: She yelled and cursed at her mother and kicked over a table before running to the bedroom.
Daili nodded at Brita to just go. Anni recovered first and took Ina by the hand to leave, but Laytji wanted to stay.
“Not now,” Brita said and urged her to the door. Laytji looked around to figure out what was going on, but she left with Brita.
Daili poured two cups of water and sat down with them next to Hani’s bed. The girl sat against the wall with her knees pulled up and didn’t acknowledge Daili. Her face was a mask: no expression, no words.
“Your mom is quite upset about you being so determined to leave her,” Daili began. She put the cups down to wipe her hands on her dress. “You called me on the wave to help you. That’s what I’m trying to do, but you’ll need to talk to me.”
Still no reaction. Now what? Daili looked the girl over for a while. She’d be pretty if she didn’t frown so much. Most people would pay a fortune for the curls Hani now used as a veil. She had her arms folded around her legs, which she held close to her body.
“Are you determined to make your mom miserable, Hani?”
A quick glance.
“I need you to answer me.”
When Hani still refused to open up, Daili settled herself on the bed, facing her, and took the girl’s wrists in her hands. “Look at me.”
“You’re hurting me!”
Hani tried to pull loose but Daili held on, thankful for the few words. “Then answer me.”
“You’re not allowed to touch me! I can get you in trouble for that!” Hani’s voice was shrill, threatening, trying to do with words what her body couldn’t. She was right too, of course, but Daili couldn’t give in now. It wouldn’t help any of them to keep this silence going.
On some occasions it was a benefit to have some extra weight. Hani tried to wriggle her way out, but her legs were wedged between her own body and her arms, which Daili was holding. “Look at me, Hani.”
The glare she did get wasn’t promising.
“We’ve played this game long enough. You called me for help and now you need to tell me exactly what you’re thinking.”
“I called you so you could let me go to Kun DJar, but now you take Mom’s side and neither of you care what I want!”
Daili relaxed her hands. “I’m not taking sides, Hani. I’m just worried that you may not have quite a good idea what a decision like this means. Your mom doesn’t want to leave DJar and she doesn’t want to leave you because she loves you. You’re hurting her by making her feel that you think she doesn’t care.”
“But what about me? Don’t I count?” the girl asked, almost whispering now. “I’m also hurt and if that kabin leaves without me I may as well be dead.”
Daili stared at her for a moment, unable to find a response. Was Hani trying to express what she couldn’t explain, as Laytji sometimes did it, or was she serious? “Do you really believe that your mom doesn’t care about you?”
When Hani turned away again, Daili let go and stood up. “If you really feel so strongly about all this that you want to make adult decisions, then I expect you to talk to me in an adult way. Pouting doesn’t help and time is short. So I’ll give you a choice.” Daili paused to make sure the girl was listening. “I’m going to sit in the mealsroom. If you’re ready to deal with this like a big person I expect you to come and talk to me. If you cannot do that, we will not discuss it again.”
She picked up the drinks and left the room. If this were Anni she would have stormed off and slammed the door behind her. Had it been Laytji there would have been waterfalls of tears. But this was Hani and Daili had no idea what to expect.
She waited in the living room, well within earshot, and scanned the shelf which had Brita’s partikels on it. One of them caught her eye: Practical Guide to Mental and Physical Hygiene. The same one Daili’s mother had given her for the birth of her son. Daili had read it and thought it good advice then, but ever since she’d felt guilty for picking up her babies when they were crying. She’d thrown it out in anger when her comate suggested she pay a bit more attention to it and to him, because she was spoiling the children. That had been the start of their problems and eventual decommitment.
She heard movment in the bedroom. A moment after Daili sat down in the mealsroom Hani came in and sat down opposite her, almost cool, hiding all emotions — making Daili feel like the child.
“Do you want to talk?”
Hani nodded and stared at her hands.
“But you have to talk about everything, even the hard parts.”
Another wordless nod.
“I know you realize you can’t force your mom to do this. I also know you desperately want to go, but what I don’t understand is why,” Daili said. She rested her arms on the table. Hani would need time.
“I don’t really believe that Mom doesn’t care, you know.”
Daili nodded; she understood that.
“But if a person loves her family but hates DJar so much that she can’t live there, then how can she explain?” Though the words were full of desperation, Hani’s voice was no more than a whisper.
“Do you think going to Kun DJar will make you feel better?” Daili asked.
“I’m not sure,” Hani pulled her shoulders a bit straighter. “I just know I’ll forever want to go now that I know people are going to live there and that knowing will make everything else always seem not good enough.”
Hani’s voice was soft now, not aggressive anymore.
The words followed each other with ease.
“Picture this,” Daili said and described a colony of a mas of people; a colony like DJar with DJar rules about pondering and so forth. There would be leaders, teachers, Learners. Everybody would know each other. They’d know if Hani was in trouble but she’d have no family, no mother willing to go to the teacher to ask for a bit more time or a second chance. What if they decided she wasn’t clever enough? She’d be a worker, without the chance to ever come back.
“I know, but the people who are going, they’re different. They don’t like DJar either, so it wouldn’t be all the same,” Hani replied.
“Maybe not, but you still have to remember that you would be without a family. Sure, somebody would take care of you while you’re still young, but nobody could ever love you as much as your mom does.”
Hani shifted a few times and looked away.
“It’s okay to cry,” Daili whispered. “It’s all right to feel so totally sad about all this, because it’s all so very hard to think about.”
She reached over to touch Hani’s hand and used her other one to take a drink. This wasn’t hard for the child only. She suggested that Hani tell her mom all her feelings as honestly as she’d just told Daili. Right now Brita thought she had done something to wrong to Hani and that wasn’t fair either.
“I know. I don’t want to get away from her. I just wish she would want to go like you do. Then it would be so much easier,” Hani said.
“Then maybe I would be sitting here with your sister, who would be all upset because she doesn’t want to lose her mom.”
Hani put her head down on the table. Daili couldn’t tell if she was crying. She switched seats to sit beside the girl and pulled her close.
“You know I do understand,” she whispered into the thick curls. “I really want to go too, but I cannot leave my children or force them to go. It wouldn’t be fair.”
Hani didn’t move and kept her face buried in Daili’s chest. Daili stroked the child’s hair as she would have Laytji’s. What a totally impossible situation they were all in.
When Daili explained later, Brita said, “She doesn’t want to leave me, just DJar? She really wants to go that much?”
“It looks like it.”
“Can an eleven-year-old really be that sure?”
“I don’t know, Brita, but if I ask myself that question, I also can’t be completely sure and I think she’s as sure as I am.”
It didn’t change anything, but it felt better to have talked.
Kalgar called her a day later. “Look Daili, the crew list is coming out. It has your name on it, but I need to know. You’ve done all this work. It’s time you made a decision for yourself.”
She knew that. She asked him to give her a little longer. She’d let him know soon. Unwilling to be confronted with more reminders, Daili called Marita and arranged to spend the last moon of Station Four on Telemer. The girls had no objection to an extra holiday.
If Brita’s home was pristine, Marita’s was a work in progress. She designed interiors and had made her own house into an experimental area. Between collections of different materials and colour schemes there were notes, photographs and countless models. But the house was spacious, much bigger than Marita needed for herself and her daughter, so it was no problem to accommodate the three of them. It wasn’t even a problem to find a place for five guests as Marita had invited a friend with her fifteen-year-old daughter to stay over as well.
“Tini has a similar problem to your friend Brita,” Marita said when she introduced the graceful woman, who was Daili’s age but with long hair, fair as her complexion, that made her appear younger. Her daughter looked like Hani, but physically more mature.
Anni was only a year younger than the other two girls and happy to go with them to the local youth centre. That left Laytji alone with the three adults for the evening.
“I don’t know whether I’m grateful to you for having forced the government to agree to let children have a say. Now I have more trouble than I had before,” Tini started.
At that moment Daili knew that even here she couldn’t hide away from the journey. Tini’s daughter had made up her mind that she wanted to go after she’d heard her father was going. She’d made a big scene about the rule that children could not choose which parent they wanted to live with after decommitment. “Jari was two years old when we split up. She can’t seriously expect me to let her go with her father now.”
“Maybe Anni can go and live with her father so Mom and I can go on the kabin,” Laytji said when she heard that.
“A mother can never desert her child,” Daili answered.
Tini immediately supported that notion.
“But if you don’t go to Kun DJar you’re deserting me,” Laytji replied, to which Marita remarked that nobody had asked for her opinion.
Laytji pouted a little but didn’t make a fuss. She took the print she’d been reading into a corner although her ears would no doubt be on alert.
Tini was a designer like Marita, but she designed homes and public buildings. She explained that she had a good life on Telemer and no desire to exchange it for a planet on which they’d live in the plastic boxes that were being prepared to go on the kabin. Like Daili, she was stuck with the same dilemma about decision-making and it was causing her the same stress.
“I sometimes wonder if I should have had kids. I lost a son due to the same rule that let me keep Jari, but I’ll never be good enough for her if I don’t give in to her demands. Why is everything designed to make people feel guilty nowadays? It wasn’t like that when we were young,” she said.
“Yes it was, but you were on the other side. You were making the demands, so you didn’t notice,” Marita answered. “The problem with both of you is that you believe being a mother means giving up your own life for your children.”
But Marita had easy talking. She didn’t have to make this choice; her daughter hadn’t shown any more interest in this journey than Marita herself. Marita admitted that, but should she ever face such a choice, she’d let her daughter go. Everybody had the right to choose their own life. “I don’t own her. I only gave birth to her,” she said.
“But what if they’re too young to make that choice, too young to leave home?” Daili asked.
“Then they do what their parent decides is best.”
Sometimes Daili wished she could shake Marita’s logic out of her. She felt a connection with Tini, who was more in touch with her heart than her mind in this. “If everybody has the right to decide about their own life, then who gave the government the right to make rules on when people should live and die? Who gave judges that right, seeing they’re only people?” she asked.
“It’s either that or they make the same decision by starting a war to wipe out masses of people and reduce the population in one stroke,” Marita answered.
“So what you’re saying is that the only way for a population to survive is altruistic behaviour, even if it is forced. Yet you blame Tini and me for the natural instinct that leads a mother to sacrifice for her children or feel forever guilty?”
“I hope you’ll feel forever guilty if you don’t let me go to Kun DJar,” came Laytji’s voice from behind the couch.
“I’ll make you feel forever sorry if you don’t go to bed now,” Marita replied to her. She’d always been like that, quick to decide, while Daili was still considering how to respond without hurting Laytji’s feelings.
“You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my mother,” Laytji retorted.
“As long as you’re in my home, you do as I tell you.”
Before either Laytji or Marita could turn it into a row, the three older girls returned and the room was soon filled with their voices. Daili relaxed, thankful for their timing. The last thing she wanted was a power struggle between her sister and her daughter, which Marita would win. That would leave Daili spending the rest of her evening in the bedroom trying to calm Laytji down. As it was, the evening was
pleasant.
Daili overheard the girls talking about the journey at one point. Tini’s daughter was articulate and had a strong personality. There wouldn’t be any harm in Anni spending some time with her.
The next day it was almost a comedy to watch the three older girls getting ready for a day at the beach. They were trying to outshine each other and took so long that Marita threatened to make them stay home if they weren’t ready in four minutes. Laytji wondered out loud what the big deal about their hair was if the sea would get it all wet anyway.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Anni told her.
As if by mutual agreement, not a word was said about the journey, which made for a relaxing day. That relaxation lasted only until they returned to Ketemer.
A notice from the djarology department was waiting for Daili. They had a job for her. Reluctantly she cleared the pikotransfer code to create a partikel and read through the information. At any other time she would have accepted without a second thought. The job suited her: It was in Northland, not too far from where she’d grown up in Kolnuia. She scanned the information over and over to find anything at all she could use as an excuse to turn it down — there was nothing — but she couldn’t get herself to say yes. She asked them to give her until the end of the first moon to think it over. They weren’t happy, but agreed.
More pressure came when Kalgar insisted she finally make a decision. She asked him also to give her a bit longer. “Just one more moon, I promise.”
Brita called to say she had talked to Hani and explained that Daili wasn’t going either so they could be friends. Then Daili had to hand the pulse seat over to Laytji because Hani wanted to talk to her.
Marita advised Daili to accept reality and take the job.
Everybody told her what to do or urged her to do something and the more they did, the more irritable Daili became. She had trouble sleeping and went out in the daytime without her spinner. Her moods didn’t help the children, who argued more than ever. Laytji was having problems with the girls at Learners, which made her obnoxious and tearful. Anni had a recital coming up at the end of the first moon of Station Five, which kept her busy rehearsing each night. She never spoke about Jari or the journey but mentioned a few times that she would never leave her music. As this remark coincided with one of her headaches, Daili exclaimed they surely could live without something as trivial as that.