Electric Velocipede 27

by John Klima

  Once she is gone, Bora picks up her cane and walks toward the nearest spiralling stairway that leads up to the surface. Mary follows her. Though it is near noon, only a dull grey light shines from the sunbeam. The gardens stretch out in every direction from the grotto; they climb up the walls of the world in a patchwork collection of brown fields and dry groves, trying to drink in the light from the sunbeam that runs along the axis of the world. Nama Singers move among the fields, trying to force their crops to grow and their domesticated pika and insects to multiply.

  The Col Sera hangs from the roof of the world three kilometres to Fore. Bora stares at the home of the greatship’s other tribe. The tents of the True People are but small black scuffs on the endless ice.

  “How does Crawthis suggest we resolve this shortage?” the Eldest says.

  “A conference,” Mary says. “Both peoples together must decide who will perish and who will survive.”

  Bora laughs then, a sound like twigs snapping.

  “Talk? That’s his solution?”

  “There is no other alternative,” Mary says. Though she knows the alternatives. She saw what happened to the Earth in its last days. “He wishes to meet tomorrow. He’s offered to lead the heads of all the True People families to the grotto to meet with you and the other elders.”

  “No,” Bora says as she surveys her gardens. “No. We’ll go there.”

  The Eldest walks over to a row of withered trees. Small brown apples hang beneath mottled leaves.

  “We are close to harvest,” she says. She picks one of the fruits. “In a normal year, we would soon be ascending the Col to share our bounty. If I send a few boys with you, can you mark the safest route to the Col for us?”

  Bora places the whole thumb-sized apple in her mouth and sucks on its frozen flesh.

  “Have the boys meet me in an hour,” Mary says. “And we will prepare the way.”

  #

  She is light and shadow, sound and silence, but she is also memory and absence.

  On the Col Sera, Lennock and several of his hunters shout as they climb the icy peak. They carry something between them on the stretched hides of their ancestors. Mary, who has marked the trail to the Col with the two Nama Singer boys, now discusses the upcoming conference with Crawthis. When the chief hears his son’s voice, he goes to meet him.

  Lennock and his hunters lay out their hides. They peel back what they found. A long, cylindrical body. Two ragged holes that used to hold eyes. Markings along the flank that might have once been fins.

  “What is it, Old Mother?” Lennock says.

  “A fish,” she says. “They used to swim in the ice, when the ice was water.”

  As the True People gather to look at the strange creature, she can see Lennock’s ancestors on hide and wood boats, sailing the warm sea that fills the interior of the Pacifica. They pull up tendon nets filled with writhing, silver fish. One this size would have been cause for a festival.

  “Can we eat it?” Crawthis says.

  She speaks inwardly with the Pacifica: “How long since the main reactor died?”

  “Twelve centuries,” the ship says.

  “When did the waters freeze?”

  “Nine hundred and twenty years ago.”

  She floats over to the creature, frozen mid-decomposition. Enough kilojoules to feed all the True People for a week. But who knew what toxins would thaw out of the frozen flesh.

  “No, Lennock,” she says. “You can’t eat it. Maybe the Nama Singers can compost it for their gardens.”

  Lennock spits at the mention of their name.

  “After tomorrow’s conference,” Crawthis says. “We will give it to them.”

  The hunters take the fish carcass away to pack it in ice.

  She is light and shadow, but above all, she is memory.

  #

  Peatro winces as he scrapes at the mixture of ice and mulch at the base of a gnarled walnut tree. Once the soil is roughened, he opens the sack his mate gave him and dribbles out a bit of the nama.

  “You don’t need to go with them,” Mary says.

  He rakes the nama into the icy soil and spreads it around the base of the tree.

  “I’m a True Person as much as I’m a Nama Singer,” he says. “That will help.”

  “They don’t see you that way.”

  “I’m going.”

  Peatro lifts the sack and limps to the next tree. She can see the bruises beneath the fur of his ribs, and the shudder he tries to hide with each breath. He scrapes at the frozen soil with an ancestor’s shoulder blade lashed to the end of a bamboo pole.

  “Anolea needs you here,” she says. “The conference could last days. You need to work the fields, hunt, whatever it takes for your children.”

  “I know what I must do for my children,” he says. “I’m going with them tomorrow morning.”

  Mary sighs. She floats away from the young man, toward the grotto. A handful of Nama Singers are out in the fields, pruning and weeding and attending to the pathetic crops. She glides over to the nearest entrance into the grotto and descends toward the drum room.

  Every ice bench is full of men and women singing to pouches of nama; with so many people singing in such close proximity, they stick their heads into the pouches and draw the edges closed around them, so that the nama won’t be distracted by others’ songs.

  Anolea has her face in one of the sacks. Mary waits for her to finish. The air is filled with muffled nama song, so many being sung at the same time that Mary can’t identity any individual song.

  After several minutes, Anolea finishes and takes her head out of the sack. She seems surprised to see Mary there.

  “I thought you were with Peatro,” she says.

  “I was,” Mary says. “But that man is stubborn. Is there anything you can say to keep him here?”

  A young boy walks over to Anloea, takes her sack, ties it shut, and walks down an ice corridor with it.

  “Once Peatro’s made up his mind,” the girl says. “It sets firm as the oldest ice.”

  Another boy walks over to Anolea and hands her a new bag of unsung-to nama.

  “Quite the operation going on down here,” Mary says.

  “Your news has catalyzed us,” Bora says. She shuffles up beside Anolea and places a hand on the young woman’s shoulders. “Before the elders leave tomorrow, I wanted to ensure our workers had everything they need to convince the gardens to grow while we are conversing. Come, let me show you our efforts on the surface.”

  “I’ve been to the surface,” Mary says. “I wanted to talk to your Singers. I have an idea that may help. A new song.”

  As she speaks, she concentrates on the song Anolea has started to sing to the fresh sack of nama. After a few bars, Mary recognizes it.

  “Why does she sing the Song of Gasping Breath?”

  Bora points her good ear at the young woman.

  “Is that what she’s working on?” Bora says. “I have them singing so many songs. The Gasping Breath is to chase our pika from their holes. Our domestic herds hide beneath the ice. Some of our wranglers are going after them now if you’d care to watch.”

  “You must be careful with it,” Mary says. “In the wrong hands, the Gasping Breath can kill.”

  “Naturally, Old Mother,” Bora says. “We have to be very careful in these dark days. Now come, I don’t want to distract my singers. If you don’t want to go to the surface, my knees won’t complain.”

  The Eldest leads her down a corridor where people no longer live. Hoar frost coats abandoned sleeping cubbies and debris accumulates under foot. Once the sound of the drum room is lost in the windings of the tunnel, Bora slumps onto a bench carved into the ice.

  “Now tell me your idea, Old Mother.”

  “The pika sleep for weeks during the coldest days of the winter,” Mary says. “With a few changes, the Song of Gentle Repose could help the people sleep away the harshest time of the year. Metabolic rates would drop; it would save food. More peo
ple would survive.”

  Bora whistles the first few bars of the Song of Gentle Repose.

  “That could work,” she says. “Where would you make the changes?”

  #

  The True People line the stairway carved into the ice of the Col Sera. Bora and Peatro and the elders of the Nama Singers walk between the True People, a collection of wheezes and creaking bones and runny eyes. The elders all carry small sacks of nama. Gifts, Bora says, to be opened at the conclusion of this conference.

  At the peak, Mary waits beside Crawthis, who stands tall and proud in his best furs. Lennock stands beside his father and sneers at Peatro.

  When she arrives, Bora bows to the Chief. He returns the bow and then clasps her hands in the fashion of the Nama Singers.

  “It’s good to see you, Craw,” the Eldest says. “But I can’t say you’re looking well.”

  “You’ve had better days yourself,” he says.

  The Chief leads them to his tent, which is made from the hides of his fathers. The Nama Singer elders sit in a semi-circle, the True People family heads sit opposite them. Peatro sits at one intersection of the two people. His heritage is more evident here: he has the thick fur of Nama Singers, but it is striped like many of the True People; his nose is as large as Crawthis’, his eyes hooded like the elders. The brother of Peatro’s long-dead father is one of the family chiefs. He nods to Peatro, who doesn’t return the gesture.

  Mary sits beside Peatro, across from Crawthis and Bora.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Mary says. “Both peoples face one of the hardest decisions they will ever collectively make. The fact that you’ve all come here to find a peaceful resolution fills me with hope.”

  “Together, we will find a way,” Crawthis says. “Let us begin the ceremony with an offering.”

  He opens a gutsack and pulls out a squirming pika. With a quick motion, he cuts the little animal’s neck and drains its blood into a skullbowl at his feet.

  “We thank the god-world for its bounty,” he says, his eyes closed. “Even in these dark times when the god-world tests us, he is still merciful.”

  He passes the skull-bowl to Bora, who takes a sip before passing it back to Crawthis.

  “Tasty that,” she says. “Though I hope the meat is going to people who’ll have more use for it.”

  “Are things that bad among the Nama Singers?” Crawthis said.

  “I saw more ribs than bellies among your people.”

  “We aren’t here to compare who’s starving more,” Mary says. “Soon everyone will starve. If we plan properly, we can minimize the losses.”

  Lennock laughs.

  “Their elders are starving,” he says. “Their farmers are runts. Our elders feast on pika. We already know who will survive to the next season.”

  “We agreed to meet with the Nama Singers,” Crawthis says. “We did not bring them from their homes to taunt them.” He stares at his son until Lennock looks away, then he turns to Bora. “Mary has explained the threat we face, Eldest. I understand it, if my son does not. Our god-world will only provide enough food and warmth for one hundred and fifty of us to survive. The rest shall perish. We recognize that some True People will be among the dead. We enter these negotiations as partners in peril. Now let us consider how best to face this grave challenge.”

  Soon they are weighing lives. One of the True People suggests drawing lots as a means to choose who will survive. A Nama Singer elder recommends choosing those who’ve already proven they can produce many children. There are suggestions to preserve the best hunters, the best farmers, the best singers, and the best cooks. Lennock says the strongest should survive, as it has always been.

  Several hours into the discussion, Crawthis gestures to Peatro.

  “You have the blood of both people in your veins,” he says. “What insight does that grant you?”

  Peatro hesitates. He looks at Bora, then at Mary.

  “Old Mother,” he says. “You’ve lived thousands of years, you’ve seen many other peoples. How did our cousins in the other world-ships handle situations like ours? How did the old people deal with scarcity?”

  Mary thinks before she answers. The people of the Savanne never had to the chance to decide what to do about scarcity; an asteroid ripped a hole in the side of the greatship and made atmosphere a vanishing resource. The lost Borealis might have faced a similar situation, but she hadn’t spoken to them in seven thousand years. The Himalayan made it to its destination without ever having to face such a dilemma. Disease offered no choices to the people of the Arcticus. Mechanical failure of the Saharran’s heating system left no options either. And the Amazonian, still crawling across the void, functioned well, its children fat and happy.

  That left the old world.

  “On Earth, the old people didn’t do well in the face of scarcity. Those who had resources hoarded them, while those without grew increasingly desperate. People starved while others grew fat. Wars resulted. Even at the end, when there was so little left, they chose to fight, to destroy each other, rather than sit down and make difficult decisions.”

  Mary smiles.

  “You are already well ahead of the old people.”

  “So very far ahead,” Peatro says.

  And the conference resumes. Sometime during the long discussions, Mary discusses her idea: the Song of the Long Sleep. It isn’t perfect, she knows, but it will skew those dreadful fractions in her children’s favour. Three in ten will change to four or even five in ten surviving.

  As she describes her plan to have people hibernate through the worst of the winters, the hide flaps at the entrance of the tent part and a young man, one of Peatro’s friends named Erol, steps through, panting.

  “Sorry to intrude,” he says. “But the midwife told me to run. Peatro, it’s Anolea. She’s gone into labour.”

  “It’s too soon,” Bora says.

  “You must go to her, Peatro,” Mary says.

  “I have to go, too,” Bora says. “No one’s brought more babies into the world than me. I’m sorry, Crawthis. We’ll have to continue this tomorrow.”

  Bora grabs her cane and starts to rise.

  “No,” Mary says. They are handling these discussion better than she could have hoped. Peatro and young Anolea are another matter. “Stay, Eldest. I’ll go with Peatro. Once the children and their mother are safe, I’ll return.”

  “We need you here, Old Mother,” Bora says.

  “No you don’t,” Mary says. “That’s clear to me now. This is your decision to make; you don’t need my help. Come, Peatro.”

  Mary floats with the two young men, lighting their way along the path she marked out the day before. The distance from the grotto to the Col Sera is long, a five kilometre spiralling path along the interior of the Pacifica, and by the time they get to the fields of the Nama Singers, both young men are panting.

  The fields are crowded. It seems all the farmers on this side of the world are out tending their crops. Those nama sacks Anolea and the other singers were filling the night before are everywhere in the gardens. Mary hasn’t seen this many people working the fields since she arrived. Bora had said that they would convince their gardens to grow.

  When they descend into the grotto, Mary hears Anolea’s low moan of pain. She floats ahead of the men, toward the agonized cries.

  She is light and sound and memory. And those memories can do more than just give weight to her inconsequential mass; they can help babies into the world.

  “Get her something to drink,” Mary says to Peatro and Erol. “And thick hides. Something sweet to put in the water.”

  The two men run at her bidding. She floats beside Anolea and the midwife.

  “Don’t worry, child,” she says. “Everything will be all right.”

  #

  The shuttle takes her children closer to the gargantuan cylinder in orbit about the moon. Blue-green light from Earth reflects along the Pacifica’s length.

  The children aren’t pa
ying attention to her lesson. Who could, when their old world and the new both loom in front of them? Still, she must teach them. They must perfect their skills if their offspring are to survive the millennia.

  “Four notes, four base pairs,” she says. “When the algae hears those four frequencies, its modified ribosomes transcribes it to either adenine, guanine, cytosine, or thymine. With those four notes, you can build any gene you want.”

  One of the children, a young boy who will remind her of Peatro, practices the notes. He sings well; he has perfect pitch and he can sing quickly.

  “Good,” she says. “The rest of you could learn something.”

  The boy stops singing.

  “Any gene?” he says.

  “Any.”

  “Could someone sing a person, then?”

  “It would be a long song,” Mary says. “So long that you would need many lifetimes to sing it.”

  “But conceivably, someone could sing a person.”

  “I suppose,” Mary says. “But no one could memorize that many notes.”

  “We couldn’t,” the boy says. “But you could. One day, when I’m long gone, can you sing me, Mary?”

  She floats beside the boy, wordless.

  The other children in the shuttle are finally paying attention.

  #

  Three hours later, Anolea bleeds onto her great-grandmother’s ragged hide. Other hides that once belonged to grandparents, aunts, and uncles prop her up so that she can push. The midwife kneels between her legs, confirms what Mary already knows; her contractions are minutes apart and Anolea has only dilated four centimetres. Peatro stands at his wife’s side and tries to get her to drink from a gutsack filled with sweetened water.

  “Tell me again what you’ve given her?” Mary asks the midwife.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Just the water.”

  “You know the Song of the Soft Breeze?”

  “Certainly.”

  Anolea lets out a terrible sound.

  “It’s time to sing,” Mary says. “She can’t take much more of this. Peatro, sharpen your knife.”