“Ohhh,” said Twelve. “It’s been so long since I’ve been in here.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she said, but she pressed close to him and drew herself up tight in the dimness.
His hand darted to the walL “Oh.!”
“It turns on that little sun, see?”
“I never knew that.”
“Just wave that little thing there. I’ve discovered lots of things in here I never knew before.”
“Why didn’t we know about this when we lived inside Mother, Four?”
“We were too little, and didn’t know as much then. Have you noticed how you remember?”
She was puzzled.
“I mean, do you remember, say, yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“And some things that happened many yesterdays ago?”
“Some.”
“Well, that’s remembering. A lot of remembering is knowing.”
Though the inside of Mother was familiar to Twelve, the smells there were strange and frightening. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said.
“No, don’t leave. Please. I want to show you the place where Mother talks.” The wall at the end of the room was high and studded with things and things and things.
Four did this and that to some of the high things on the wall. Twelve knew juSt by watching him that he had done these things many times before.
“I believe you,” she said, wanting to get out.
“Listen . . .” With no more force than it takes to push away a reed, his touch brought her close to him. Together they sat down on the hard, cool floor and listened to the air.
“But-”
“Shhh ... it will not talk when you do.” He made that up, but she was quieted by his mild threat.
From the console came a sound: Adddddddeeeeeeeeee, aaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
“That hurts my ears,” Twelve said.
“Be quiet!”
“Aaaaadddeeeeeeeeeeee.”
“That’s not a word,” Twelve said, cringing, her hands over her ears.
“1 know. It does that when you first turn it on.”
“Is it crying?”
“No. Just a sound.”
“Aaaaaaddddeeeeeeee...”
“It might be a signal,” he speculated. “Or something inside Mother deep. I havn’t figured it out yet.”
temperature, humidity and ventilation control—” a smooth voice was saying.
“Temperature!” Twelve exclaimed, recognizing the word from Five’s song.
“Shhh!”
“—this is the fifth month since the babies—”
“Babies? What does that mean?”
“Shhh!” Four slapped her knee. “Now be quiet!” “—'were put into the cradles. They are so beautiful, all perfect. They move often now, trying to be born. 1 can almost feel mine kicking when he moves. He is in the fourth cradle—”
“Four!” Twelve was quirming with questions. “That is your name!”
“Listen, there’s more.”
“My son, Mike. I’m looking at him now. Mike, you would be proud to see him—” There seemed to be a muffled sob from the wall, then the voice continued.” “I keep forgetting—”
Twelve started to question: Four said, coaching, “Forgetting is ‘not remembering.’ ” As he whispered, the voice continued.
“Today, I felt better. Though my face is unrecognizable. If there were only someone left to be with. I'm sure the babies are unaffected. I’m not afraid to die: but I’m just so lonely. The babies are perfect, but I’m alone. They are sealed from me. All I can do is watch the controls, make the necessary adjustments against the day they'll be on their own. There are seventeen cradles, all pink with healthy life. Eight are girls, nine are boys...”
“Eight! Four, it said Eight’s name!”
“Oh, God.” The voice was louder, strained, and the little room vibrated beneath Four and Twelve’s legs and buttox with the sound.
“We forgot to name them. They haven’t names, and the numbers will be their names. Mike, our son won't be a number. He will be Michael, too. Oh, Mike, why must I hang on like this? Why don’t I just die like the rest of you?
“Four, I’m afraid.” Twelve was already on her feet.
“Don’t be afraid. Nothing will hurt you. This is Mother, remember, and nothing inside Mother can hurt you.”
“But I’m scared. It is crying, like it is hurt. It doesn’t sound like Mother at all.” Twelve looked as though she might cry, but Four caught her gently by her wrists.
“Four, I’m here. Nothing will hurt you, I’m promising you.”
“I’m so lonely!" the things wailed.
Twelve squeezed a short, wet sound from her throat, and wiggled free.
“Come back here!” Four called after her, but she was outside Mother, running into the low trees.
“My son, my little son. You at least will have a name. Four is no name to have. I can see your strong little hand clinch at the confines of the cradle. You want to be free, don't you? Little Mike, like your father . . . little Mike, little Mike—”
Four turned away from the door to the bright outside. He listened to the voice. It always did this, repeating over and over at this point, always the same words.
“—Like Mike, like Mike, Like Mike—”
“Stop it!” Four screamed at the voice, holding handfuls of fingers tightly, until his nails dug into his skin.
“—Like Mike, like Mike, like Mike—”
Each time, when Four hit the little finger, he could always make it stop.
“Intelligence quotient, irrelevant,
If I only knew what it meant.
Fahrenheit, DNA, surface tension.
Father, pregnant, colonial extension.
Incombustable, hydro-dynamic thrust,
Laser, light year, rose, rust.
Overpopulation, re-entry velocity,
Hippopotamus, curiosity.
Sex, calculus, balloon.
Liquid oxygen, chair, vacuum.
Baby, atomic pile, proximity.
God, reflection, virus, apogee.
APOGEE, APOGEE, APOGEE!”
When Four found the group, Five was singing her endless song. He walked toward them, over the white, glistening sandbar which curved around the river.
He saw Twelve, sitting among the singers. She would not look at him. There was still a fleck of leaves in her hair, which had caught in her passage through the underbrush.
Everyone sang the last words, Apogee, apogee, apogee; together, rolling backwards in the sand, laughing.
“How do you keep all those words in your thinking?” Four asked Five as he came closer. Everyone stopped their laughter and became curiously quiet when he entered their circle. Four’s shadow cast a long stripe across the lean sun-browned bodies.
Five only looked at him.
“I asked you, how do you remember the words?”
Before she could answer, Seven, a sturdy, wide-faced boy said, “We know where you go, alone. You go back to Mother.” He sneered, shading his eyes from a strong afternoon sun.
Four didn’t acknowledge Seven’s smug, round face.
“Why do you go back into Mother, Four?” The boy asked.
“Because Mother tells me things,” Four answered.
“Why aren’t you like the rest of us?” Five chirped in. Her dark hair clutched at her little mounded breasts, the color of the sand. She had none of the sarcasm which Seven’s voice communicated.
“I have questions,” Four answered her.
“Go back into Mother, you scairdy!” Seven laughed. He stood, looked down at Four, and laughed.
“You have secrets too,” retorted Four, hoping the quiver in his throat was not audible.
“How do you know, if you’re so smart?”
“I’ve seen you and Five go into the bushes.”
Five looked up, anxiously threading her long fingers through her hair. She slid a palm over her navel, along the hi
gh mound of her abdomen.
“You put something in Five,” Four said, growing more brave. “You put something in Five to make her swell up like that!”
“You’re a river bug!” Seven pulled Four’s hair, twisting it around to the front of his neck until the clasping vine broke.
The sand was hard beneath Four’s back, and he kicked and bit at his assailant. The noise of his own blood drowned out the cries of the others as they cheered; they always delighted in seeing Four beaten. With desperation, Four found some inner muscle inside himself. He saw a way to hit Seven so that the larger boy screamed.
Falling backwards between the legs of the onlookers, Seven wailed and licked the tears off his dirty cheeks.
Four stood, now a victor for the first rime. He looked at all of them.
“Four?” Twelve said softly, reaching for his hand.
“And another thing,” Four said. “Don’t ever call me that again. Four is no name at all. My name is Mike!” He hit his chest and stood straighter.
They looked wide-eyed, open-mouthed at him.
They were still looking when he walked away. He knew their eyes were still on him, because he had shocked them by saying something they had never heard before.
"Do you really think Mother is talking about you, Four? Twelve asked, following him. They were in the thicket now, where night birds nested, and where geezzls burrowed.
“I told you not to ever call me that again. My name is Mike and if you don’t call me Mike I won’t let you come with me, understand?” He did not look at her, but he heard her mumble the new name. They walked together the rest of the way to Mother, without speaking.
Inside the cool, dim room, where Mother had spoken to them, Twelve asked, “Where do the words come from, Four—eh, Mike?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about looking inside, taking it apart, to see where the words come from. It always stops in the same place. Maybe it is broken.”
She was silent, beside him now. He could feel the warmth of her skin close to him.
“I’m sorry the others laugh at you.”
“I don’t think they will laugh as much now. I’ve learned things, and they will be afraid of me.” He sighed.
“They could learn too, if they would come back in and see.”
“Is Mother a ... a person, Mike?” She had to force the strange name from her lips.
“No. I don’t think so. But somehow a person’s voice has been captured inside Mother. It is hard like stone, but it is smooth, Mother is. I think it is made.”
“Ten makes little floats on the river out of sticks.” “Yes, like the floats. Maybe this is some kind of big float. I don’t think it grew.”
“Do you ever go back to where the cradles are, Mike?” “I did, once. But it smells bad in there. There is something strange there. “He held up his hands so that ten fingers were straight. “If one finger stood for each one of us there would be this many. But, there are more cradles than there are this many fingers. To say how many cradles there are you would have to hold up all your fingers, and this many toes.” She watched him bend three toes under. “This many cradles are back there.” “Why?”
“There must have been more of us at one time,” Mike said.
“I guess so.”
“Where are the missing ones?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe they ran away?”
“Maybe,” he said, thinking about some of the cradles, clear and empty, and others dark and full.
They thought their silent, independent thoughts for a time.
“There are two kinds of us, you know,” said Mike, finally. “There are some like you—there’s One, Three, Five, Nine and you, Twelve. Then there’s me, and Six, Seven, Ten and Thirteen. But we are different”
“Yes.”
She looked away from him, toward Mother’s portal, at the bright daylight outside. “Why do you wonder like this, Four? I mean Mike.” She looked at him. “There is so much to do outside. There are so many geezzls to chase. Let’s go hunting. I’m hungry!” She tugged at his arm, playfully.
“I was going to try and get inside it, Twelve. To see if there are any more words.”
Dropping back beside him, Twelve sighed heavily. His attention was caught by her movement. “Why do you have that on? You just started wearing that thing, didn’t you, Twelve?”
She smoothed out the long leaves that covered her lap and looked away. “You said you didn’t think Mother grew here. We grow, though. I’m growing. That’s why I wear the leaves. Do you like them?”
“I guess so. We are different,” he said simply, realizing that she had come to the same conclusion that he had, only in a different way.” Gently, a whisper of a touch, his finger rested on the tight skin on her breast, then pulled away.
“How do you know that Seven put something into Five?” She asked.
“Well, something is making her stomach get bigger*” “Maybe it is something she ate.”
“I don’t think so. I saw them together . .
“Oh.”
‘Sometimes words come to me in the night.”
“Words?”
“Pictures. I think Seven sees the pictures, too.” “How will you get inside the thing that makes the voices?”
“I’ll break it, if I have to.”
“You’ll ruin it.”
“Let’s try, right now.”
Later, after breaking the things and things and things with a rock, then prising at the panel with a stick, Mike stood before the gutted machinery. The entrails of the beast lay on the floor at his feet. In his hand a very thin, flat vine dangled.
“You broke it, Mike.”
“It was already broken. That’s why it would not say any more.” The end of the vine slid into a small hole and he touched the little finger again. The crying sound didn’t come this time, but instantly the voice began, making Twelve sit straight.
“—we forgot to program so many things into the computer. We forgot to teach them about sex, and love. We forgot to teach them how to build a fire and what clothes are—"
“It sounds hurt,” said Twelve.
“Yes.”
“—there is no time left—no time! I'm so weak. How will they know? I just can’t alter the programs now, I’m too weak—”
The voice stopped suddenly. A whirring sound continued, but there was no more sound.
“Remember,” said Mike, “how we could not get out of Mother until we got old enough, and big enough to figure out the secret?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“We had to be tall enough to work the opening, and smart enough to figure it out. We would crawl back into the cradles and sleep even after we could get outside Mother. Remember the whistle that called us from outside? Then the door would close. I remember most of it. Seven was the one who finally got Mother open. We played outside, but we still couldn’t get too far away. Something was keeping us in. Then we got bigger and smarter, and finally found out how to make Mother open up completely.”
“I remember sleeping where it was warm, and gentle songs,” said Twelve dreamily.
“Yes, and the funny eating place. I wonder if it is still there?”
“Let’s go see,” Twelve suggested in a burst of curiosity.
“I thought you were afraid."
“Not now,” she said.
Behind the whispering voices-room was the room, wide 199
and long, where the cradles were. It was dark, and evilsmelling.
“I remember when this room would light up, like the other room,” said Mike.
“Did you try to make it light?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t work.”
“There!” She pointed.
He put his mouth to the spout.
“It works,” she said.
“Ehh, it’s awful!” He spit out the whitish liquid, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What about the other food place?”
&nb
sp; Beside the spout was a small niche in the wall.
“There’s one in the place now.” Mike took the bright red pellet from the niche.
“I can remember eating those,” she said, but she didn’t make a move to eat it now.
“It is hard. I don’t think I’ll eat it,” he said.
“It came from up inside...”
Mike dipped his fingers once more into the pellet dish. “Another one! I never noticed them falling down into the flat part before, did you?”
“I don’t think we have enough remembering,” she said.
Behind them, in the whispering-voices room, the voice came on again. They left the cradle room so they could hear what the voice was saying.
“I can’t hear, Mike.”
“Shh.”
“—I'm going to die—”
“Die must be a place,” said Mike, authoratively. “Like going to the hill, or across the river to the other sandbank.”
“—the controls work perfectly. Pm sure the design of the cradles will protect them. The entire capsule should continue to work for years ... if it doesn't . . . but I've tested the teaching mechanism, the environmental controls, the relays and the timing devices. Nothing should go wrong—'
“It is getting scary again,” Twelve said.
“—I can see the capsule now, pulling away. I have switched off the air supply in this section. There's no use for me to live. The pain is much worse, and I'm a coward. I don't want to die like Mike and the others. I don't know how long we can maintain orbit ... it is as perfect as l can make it. This is coincidentally recording in the capsule control, as a record in case our orbit decays. We'll be a falling star, every day—” The voice trailed off, leaving the familiar whirring sound.
“Is it broken again?” Twelve asked.
“No. I think it is all through. I don’t think there are any more words in it. “He touched the turning off finger.
“What does it all mean?”
“I think it is about us. Where we came from. I’ll think about it some more, and I’ll understand better.” He took her by the hand and they left Mother.
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