Khe

by Razevich, Alexes

  “What crop is she talking about?” I asked Jit, practically shouting to be heard over the clamor.

  “Kiiku, of course,” Thedra, not Jit answered. “Increased by twenty-four percent. Can you believe it?” She leaned over and stroked my neck. I froze in surprise. Thedra had never touched me before that I could remember, much less favored me with a neck stroke.

  “Twenty-four percent,” I whispered, amazed myself.

  Jit took my hand. “You’ve done so much for Lunge commune. Maybe now you can rest awhile.”

  Thedra snorted a laugh. “Maybe she can spend some time with us now, instead of sleeping away all her free time.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. I gave Thedra a small smile. “Believe me, I’d like to spend more evening time with you and Jit and Stoss. I’m so tired all the time, I don’t even go to see the hatchlings anymore.”

  Thedra shook her head. “How can I be mad at the doumana who’ll make ours the most famous, most honored commune on the planet?” Her mouth tightened. “You do sleep solidly, my sister. You’ve even started to snore. Maybe we can spend some of our extra credits from the kiiku on a new cot for you, something more comfortable.”

  I was so happy; it was easy to forgive Thedra. I didn’t fool myself, though. We were unitmates, sharing equally in the honors and extras my work had brought. She wanted to make sure that glory splashed on her as much as me.

  “I am very pleased,” Simanca said when the shouts and stamps had died down, “to honor a doumana who has worked hard this season for our community.” Her eyes focused on me. “Khe, come and take your reward.”

  My neck tickled. I knew my spots glowed bright green, showing the pride I felt as I walked to the riser. The moment was worth all the effort, worth the fatigue. The tickle on my neck intensified and grew warm as more spots lit up with the crimson of happiness.

  I stepped up onto the riser and faced my sisters.

  “It is I who am honored to have been able to give to my commune.”

  Simanca reached into the box near her feet and drew out the largest award of merit I had ever seen. On the loop inside, kiiku went from seedling to full vine, with huge black gourds. On the loop, too, was my name. Not the unit’s, only mine.

  Looking out over my community, the spots on my neck tingled, turning orange with a pleased embarrassment.

  “Next season,” I said, making a promise I hoped I could keep, “thirty percent over last weighing.”

  I saw Simanca’s mouth crinkle, her lips stretching out over her teeth.

  ***

  Simanca turned up the pressure.

  “You have a duty to the commune,” she said. Her voice was flat and insistent. Her neck showed the colors of annoyance and impatience.

  We stood up to our knees in kiiku. Pale-green stems, as thick as my wrist, twisted everywhere on the ground. Spiny red leaves and heavy black gourds hemmed our legs. Jit worked near-by, but not close enough to hear. Stoss and Thedra were far across the field, harvesting the last of the Cooling Season crop.

  “I have done my duty for twelve years since I first emerged as an adult,” I replied evenly. “In the six years since my ability came forward, I have done all that was asked of me, despite exhaustion.”

  “You have compensation. All eighth-day work has been lifted from you to allow you to rest.”

  As if that made a difference. Fatigue and frustration made me bold. And the knowledge that Simanca needed me to realize her great ambitions. Her need kept me safe from punishment.

  “I ask every season,” I said, “but you still haven’t kept your promise.”

  “Don’t start that again,” Simanca said. “I’ve told you why you can’t work with the hatchlings.”

  “Because I’m needed in the fields. Yes, I know.”

  “You barely keep up with the kiiku. If you added hatchlings to your obligations, you’d fall apart. I’m looking out for your welfare.”

  “Perhaps if you cultivated fewer fields, I wouldn’t be so worn out.”

  Her dark eyes narrowed to thin black slits. Spots flared on her neck. “Your job is to increase crop output, not to question my decisions. Are you unhappy that Lunge commune has prospered and grown? We have seven new fields ready for kiiku seeds. Old orchards are blooming again. Our population has doubled and twenty-two hatchlings emerged here this year. We are the most respected and honored of all communes. Do you find these to be bad things?”

  I sighed and changed my tactics. “I’m just so tired. I feel used up. Please, I need a change of assignment. I need rest.”

  “Yes, well, hard work exhausts us all,” Simanca said. “Your duty is to serve the commune. Not as you wish, but in the way that best benefits your community.” She took a stop toward me. “I am surprised, Khe, that your neck is not awash in the colors of shame. Your sisters have worked hard harvesting and preparing the food you eat, sewing the garments you wear, keeping your dwelling in good repair for your comfort. The creator has given you a great gift—the ability to make things grow. Are you too tired to be of service to those who have labored for you without complaint.”

  I lowered my eyes and said nothing.

  Simanca leaned back, rocking slightly on her back toe. “We’re nearing the end of the tenth-year competition. You know how important this harvest is for us. With your help, our production has increased again, but Grenwil commune is larger than we are, and pushing hard to win. To beat them, we must not only excel this season, but the next as well.”

  She stopped rocking and leaned toward me, her face barely a breathing space from mine. Simanca dropped her voice to a near whisper. “Do you want to see your community humiliated, filled with failure? If we lose the tenth-year competition, we will drop in hatchling assignments as well. Do you wish Lunge commune to lose this honor?”

  I hunched my shoulders. “No.”

  “Then you must return to the fields tomorrow and continue your work without further complaints.”

  “But—”

  “But what?” Simanca’s voice was as hard as kiiku rind. “Khe, will you serve your commune or won’t you?”

  The voice of a lifetime of training whispered in my ear. Contribution to the community gives joy to our lives. To serve is to find happiness. Words I had believed and lived by.

  Simanca heaved her shoulders, making her look bigger than she was. “You must answer, Khe. Will you help your community or not?”

  I spit out the words like rotten food. “Yes. Yes of course.”

  Simanca lowered her shoulders back to their normal position. “None of what we’ve accomplished would have been possible without you. The entire commune gives you their thanks.” She leaned forward and touched my neck. “Go now. Rest. Come to the fields tomorrow with a cheerful heart, ready to work.”

  I trudged back to my dwelling. In my sleeping quarters, I sat on the narrow cot. Resting my hands in my lap, I looked at the insides of my wrist. Again. As I had so many times since I’d first noticed.

  The inside of my left wrist now showed thirty-four small blue dots. Thirty-four reminders of the years I’d lived as an adult. Except that I was only twelve. No. Thedra, Jit, and Stoss, who emerged when I did, were twelve. Simanca could pretend that the dots meant nothing, but I knew I aged one year for each crop I accelerated, growing older faster than my sisters. Pushing the crops was killing me.

  Simanca knew it, too. My neck itched and burned, my spots lit with too many colors. Simanca knew. I was not Khe, a living doumana, to her, but a sort of wonderful machine. A machine that she had pushed to its limits, even while knowing that overwork would destroy it. I had gladly given prosperity to my community, but I would not give my life. How were we different from the preslets or food beasts if we existed for nothing more than sacrifice?

  And what of my sisters? Whether we spoke of it or not, they couldn’t have missed the number of dots on my wrist. Had they, too, decided that kiiku had more value than my life? Or did they worry and fret about me in silence, obeying some edict fro
m our leader?

  An anger as sharp as teeth roared through me. My neck burned. My life was worth more than what a few extra loads of kiiku could buy. What did I want that was so unthinkable? Nothing more than my due, the natural span of my life. Wanted it for myself, not for what I could give my community.

  Contemptible—the thing I decided to do.

  I clutched anger to my heart and made my plans. I couldn’t take a transportation vehicle. I had no experience as a pilot. I’d have to travel by foot. I would need clothing for Barren Season, tools, some food, but only the strictly necessary, to keep light the weight I carried.

  The moon had turned its face from the world, leaving only the stars to light my way. In the fields, shadow-washed plants rustled in the breeze. Tenth-year competition was on and the fields had been mostly stripped, but here and there I found food still on the bough, vine, or bush. I took what I could carry—stuffing it into the small harvesting bag I’d stolen. I set my mouth in a hard line and did not look back when I crossed the border of Lunge commune.

  Chapter Eight

  OUTSIDE

  With the exception of occasional, mild fatigue, Khe’s health remains excellent. She shows no ill effects from the Resonance sac surgery or her newfound abilities.

  --Ninth communiqué from Simanca to the orindle, Pradat

  I lay on my belly on a weedy hilltop. I could smell the weeds’ green scent where my body had crushed the seed heads. In the field below, twenty or so doumanas worked at harvest. The failing sun threw long shadows across the land. The air was growing chill.

  For five days I’d walked south, moving away from the land that had nurtured me, and from the commune-sisters I loved. For five days the thrill of independence had fueled me, keeping legs unused to travel moving forward, a mind unused to solitude from falling into fear and loneliness.

  Yesterday I’d run out of supplies. I’d thought I’d find food on the way, but each commune I’d crossed had been stripped of everything edible. It was the tenth-year competition, of course. Not a leaf, seed, stem, or root would be left that could be harvested and put on the scale to be weighed. My stomach twisted and groaned. My thoughts crawled slowly and always turned to food no matter how hard I tried to concentrate. I had to find something to eat.

  On the flat fields below the hillside, four doumanas piloted large harvesting machines, great silvery gray crafts with high smooth sides and a whirling metal string on the bottom. Doumanas on foot followed the machine—their backs bent in what I knew quickly became a painful position—gleaning the usable crops the harvesting machine missed.

  Based on the size of the three neat, rectangular fields spreading out below the rise, I figured that this commune was larger than Lunge. As far as I knew, all communes were built on the same model. I couldn’t see any dwellings from my perch—only a few machinery sheds and outbuildings. If, like Lunge, the main structures lay at the heart of the commune, this was probably a community of three hundred or more.

  With a communiteria full of hot food and soothing drinks. And sleeping quarters with fine cots and warm blankets.

  Several doumanas stood on the beds of each vehicle, metal tridents in hand, pushing straw mulch onto the harvested ground. The faint strains of their work song rode on the cool breeze.

  We’d sung the same song at Lunge. The doumanas in every commune probably sang it. Tav had said that even the males sang the same songs, spoke the same language, and worshiped the same creator we did. Thedra said that was because our species didn’t have enough imagination to make up anything different. When I was young, I sometimes feared the creator would strike Thedra down for the blasphemous things she said, and sometimes I wished it would, but nothing ever happened. And what did that mean?

  I sighed and watched the workers. I couldn’t let them see me. No sane doumana traveled alone except during Resonance, and even then none traveled on foot. If they caught me, they’d want to know my community. They’d send me back. What would Simanca do then? Order me shunned, and to the fields. Kill me in a season instead of a year.

  My neck burned. My spots lit blue-red. What did I, who’d lived all my life as part of an entwined community, know of survival alone? I rubbed my neck for comfort. I didn’t need self-pity. I needed to learn how to survive.

  A second group of workers arrived, hauling tents and torches in a large, open-back vehicle, and made their way to the field nearest me. I swore under my breath. This crew would harvest into the night.

  I didn’t have a choice. I was going to have to cross those fields. If I could get past the doumanas, I could grab some of the crops off the vine to eat. I drummed my fingers against the ground. The light would be completely gone soon. I had to go now.

  I gathered my small bundle of belongings and started down the hill, hunched into myself, hoping to be inconspicuous, but one of the doumanas spotted me. She nudged her companions and pointed my way, then leaned over and called to the vehicle’s pilot. The vehicle came to a stop. My neck burned. If they got close, they’d see the colors of my fear. Five or six doumanas jumped down from the machine and ran toward me, waving their tridents and shouting.

  I stood as still as a rock, my mind spinning with fear. Had word been sent out to look for me?

  The other two vehicles stopped. The doumanas on them jumped down and followed their sisters in the race.

  If word had been sent out, it was Khe the Grower they would be looking for, not some wandering babbler.

  I twisted my back into the bent posture I’d seen in the babbler we’d once driven from Lunge and let my face go slack, the way hers had been. Moving slowly, I pulled my cloak around my throat to hide the colors there.

  “Pretty day,” I said when the fastest doumana came close enough to hear. I hoped my voice didn’t betray the fear pounding inside me.

  The doumana’s face screwed up with confusion. Her emotion spots flared brownish green.

  I made my voice high, like a hatchling’s. “I’m very hungry. “ I held out my hand. There was always a chance that they’d give me something to eat.

  The doumana jabbed her trident toward my stomach. “Be gone,” she said. The sharpened tips stopped no more than a finger’s width away from my skin. “Go on. Get out.”

  I hobbled slowly, hoping she’d let me go and none of her sisters would come to help her.

  But her sisters kept running toward us until a crowd nearly surrounded me. They shook their tridents and their fists, yelling.

  “Get out, babbler.”

  “She stinks like a dung pile.”

  One of them picked up a stone and hurled it. Pain exploded through my thigh. I grunted, and forced my face to go slack again. Babblers, it was said, didn’t feel pain.

  “Move,” a doumana said, her lips pulled back over her teeth. “Filthy babbler.”

  Another doumana picked up a rock and held it high, squinting her eyes as she took aim and threw.

  I ducked and ran.

  I could hear them running after me. My heart pounded. A rock zinged past my head.

  “Come this way again and it’ll be more than rocks we aim at you,” a doumana yelled.

  These fields were well tended. There wouldn’t be too many rocks for them to find. What if they threw their tridents at me?

  “She’s heading for the wilderness,” a running doumana called.

  “Over the hills and into death,” another said.

  “Let her go,” a third said. “Let the wilderness have her. She’ll make a good meal for some wild beast, tomorrow or the next day.”

  Several of them laughed, but they stopped giving chase.

  I kept running. My chest tightened.

  The last commune.

  The end of the world.

  Chapter Nine

  THE WILDERNESS

  The wilderness is a wasteland, useless for commune or kler. The fearsome beasts there live by preying one upon the other.

  --Narration from a vision stage presentation

  Hills grew up bey
ond the last commune, sloping gently at first, and then turning mean. Fear had kept my legs moving, my hands scrabbling when I fell to push myself back up. If the doumanas came after me in vehicles . . . I couldn’t outrun that.

  The land was rocky at the top of the hill. Rough-edged stones, some as large as my fist, littered the ground. Scrubby gray bushes sprouted here and there, keeping their distance from each other. In the valley beyond, large, red rocks, twisted into strange shapes, jutted from the ground. Panting, exhausted, I looked back across where I’d come. The commune’s fields stretched out, looking as brown and flat as a blanket in the failing light. I heard the soft whir of harvesters in the far distance, but nothing else. No one was chasing me. Beyond the fields, lost in the gloom, lay the low, rolling hills that sheltered Lunge.

  My sisters were there, snug in their dwellings, their bellies full. Their world was so small. My belly was empty, but already my world was larger than any they would know.

  Pradat knew a larger world. She’d come to Lunge. Maybe she went to communes and klers all over. The doumanas with me in Morvat Research Center were from klers and communes I’d never heard of. They’d never heard of Lunge.

  How had Pradat known where Lunge was and how to get there? If she didn’t know, if her vehicle had been preprogrammed, who set its course?

  Simanca had said that she’d contacted Morvat Research Center about me. How had she contacted them? The vision stage only received, it couldn’t send. Maybe Simanca had given a message to a corenta and the doumanas there had taken it to Morvat. How did a corenta know where to go?

  How had Simanca arranged to buy land and fields adjoining Lunge when I knew she’d not stepped foot off the commune during the negotiations, and no strangers had come to us?

  Somewhere, in the klers maybe, someone knew the answers to these questions, and kept the information secret. Why weren’t we told? The point of the vision stage was to keep us informed and educated. Everything one needs to know was the motto that spread across the stage between presentations. I’d been comforted by those words, felt smug and intelligent, knowing that eventually I’d learn everything, if I paid attention long and well enough.