by Nōnen Títi
“Which you shouldn’t have had in the first place, seeing the example you’re setting!”
Yako pushed Jema out of the way to prevent Kolyag from jumping at her. “Look, we didn’t come here to cause a fight. We just wanted to make sure the spraying stopped before half the population dies in the fog. You should understand that much, at least.”
Still shaking with anger, his nostrils flaring the way he had once come running into Wilam’s home, Kolyag backed down. “You’ve made your point. Now take her out of here,” he ordered Yako, pointing into the direction of town.
Wilam allowed the protesters to take the can out of his hands before turning to follow Kolyag. It was frightening, the silence was. Suppose they were right?
“You shouldn’t let them push you around like that,” Kolyag said.
Wilam nodded, but it wasn’t that easy. Tigor had come to his door this morning and said it was a government decision and all the farmers had to help out, so Wilam had accepted the spray can and gone to do his duty. “He said Roilan said to get rid of the pests now, before the very last seedlings are gone. I’d be jobless if that happened,” he told Kolyag.
“Tigor is just a stupid drunk. He doesn’t care about being jobless. He wants revenge on the planet because of his daughter.”
Wilam walked home with Kolyag in silence; he didn’t ask him what he thought of the fog.
Before the day was over, a government order came for the farmers to pull out all the plants that had been sprayed, both those of Kun DJar and DJar. They were now a risk to the people and had to be burned.
After making sure this was an official order, Wilam reluctantly obeyed it and spent the next day burning the very plants he had left his home on Menever for, all the while afraid that Tigor, who was furious about this, would come after him.
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” Styna said when he came home. She told him that Tigor had gathered a group of angry men last night. Armed with farm tools, they had threatened the scientists and stolen the last small plants that had been safe in the light boxes. They had also destroyed the scientific equipment, something Tigor had been planning when the disease broke out. The guards had been called, after which a fight had started. “Three people injured and Tigor is back in prison. He may as well move in there permanently; he’s becoming a second Thalo,” she joked, but it didn’t help cheer Wilam up.
Two days later, the batis started getting sick and dying; not all of them, but Kolyag’s and some others. Wilam avoided meeting Kolyag, who was more upset than ever. Now they both were farmers without anything to farm.
PROMISES
Startled by the sudden appearance of two men from over the stream, Nini shouted for Leyon. Only then was she able to think about it. These were strangers, yes, but they were Bijari, or rather, Kunjari people – colonists. They had come by kabin, sent to explore a sea route to their little settlement. “We’ve been ordered to take you all back if there are problems.”
There were no problems, only pride in showing off what they’d accomplished in the last five moons. The men brought letters, news, and paper for them to write back on. The news was good. There was enough to eat in town – though both the sea and the DJar crops didn’t provide any – and no more diseases. The expedition members had returned safely and in record time by the start of Station Seven, now a moon ago. There were serious plans for moving people over the hills and even all the way over here if the four of them were to confirm the expedition members’ optimism.
They did. Kunag asked after his mom and sister, but the men didn’t know any names; they were fishermen and had been at sea most of the time. Their kabin lay two days walk from here and would return to town right away. Nini invited them to spend the night and made a meal for six people. Before they left the next morning, all four had written letters, but none wanted to go back to town.
That visit made the need to prepare for the arrival of many people more pressing. Nini was as happy about the idea as she was not. There was plenty of space and food here, but many people would disturb the quiet and the animals they’d found. Noise, and possibly diseases, would come with people. It was selfish to think this – she longed to see the others again. She missed Benjamar, Jema, and Marya most. Hani missed Laytji, and Kunag missed his family, though he seldom spoke of it; he spent endless hours in the bush with his creatures. Only Leyon was unbound.
Nini had written a few short messages and two letters. One was for Maike, reporting their progress and their finds, including the animals, but also their needs for tools and clothing. The other to Irma, explaining the seawater idea and all she had learned so far.
It might be another station before the new settlers would arrive, but now that it was sure they would come, a new sort of excitement and hurry came over them. They needed more shelters, more cooking places, and definitely latrines, which would have to be ready before the settlers came. One way or the other, they would have to dig them. The location had to be right, away from where any homes might be put, and away from the water. Downhill, closer to the east of the clearing and as far south or north as possible seemed safest. No taking risks; this settlement would have to last.
Digging with the one metal container went slow. After the top layer of hard soil was removed, it became a little easier and Leyon found some flat scooping stones to help them.
“It has to be as deep as two adults on top of each other and as wide as one,” Nini remembered from her Freberer training.
For a moment that had them all standing still, staring at the small indentation they’d made after half a day of digging.
“We’ll never get that done,” Kunag said.
“We have no choice.”
“And how many did you say we need?” Hani asked.
“At least two for now.”
“Tell you what: Two latrines, one here, and one at the north side. Two teams. Every day we measure how much each team had progressed and the winners don’t have to make the food,” Leyon suggested.
Nini ended up having to cook every day no matter who she was teamed up with, but she didn’t mind that. The work got done and it kept them focused. When the pits were deep enough, Leyon and Hani plaited huge mats of reed and bundled them into a circle to reinforce the sides. The dug-out soil sloped down so the latrines would be slightly raised, the way Nini had remembered Mektar telling her they should. Now they had two bumps of soil, each with a deep reinforced hole in the middle. Then they had a problem. The latrines needed a floor, something to span the pit both ways to leave the small gap they needed; small enough to prevent kids falling in. “About the length of a forearm and the width of a spread hand.”
They had no material whatsoever to work with that was long and sturdy enough to bridge the gap. They had no wood. The Kun DJar plamals – even if they would have wanted to cut them, which they didn’t – had only flexible fibre stems; nothing solid to make planks from. Reed bundles could be made long enough but the matting in between would sag. Dried mud was too brittle; it would fall through and fill the pit. They tried everything they could think of – Leyon even cut a hole in one of the old camping mats. “What we need is a piece of prefab from town.” But the letters had already been sent and there was no other means of communication.
“Don’t tell me we did all this work for nothing,” Hani said.
It looked like that, though. Their holes in the ground sat where they’d left them, useless. Now would be a good time for Kun DJar to read their minds.
Like most days after the physical labour, they spent the evening in silence.
“Nini?”
She looked up from her thoughts. Kunag sat down on the ledge next to her inside the cooking shelter, which they had dubbed “The Hearth”.
“Can I talk to you?” He started by saying sorry for never having said sorry for staying behind after he’d promised not to.
Though this introduction alerted her, Nini waited. It was better not to talk once someone had started… only Kuna
g didn’t go on. He stared ahead of himself and played with his shirt.
“It doesn’t sound like you to have worried about that all this time,” she said.
“I wish my mom and Jari would come along with those new people, but I think they won’t.”
Nini couldn’t say anything to that.
“I was thinking I could go back there and help them come over.”
“No!”
Kunag could be impulsive. This idea may have just sprouted; he could be gone tomorrow. She would have to be clear now. She told him to wait, that there was no guarantee they’d come by the same route. It was most likely that the new settlers would move by sea, as they’d have all their things to carry. If he went alone he could get lost or hurt. His mother would worry. “Wait until the first people arrive. Then, if Tini doesn’t come, you can go back by kabin.”
He didn’t argue, but that was no indication he wouldn’t go anyway.
“Don’t leave now, Kunag, not alone. You escaped town because of the disease. Now you know that everybody’s okay you want to go back, but have you thought about it, really?” She told him the memories would still be there and besides, he would miss his creatures. She used everything she could think of and he just sat there and nodded. “You can’t run away again,” Nini finally said.
He stood up. “Okay, I’ll wait then.”
“Kunag!” She couldn’t see his face as he stood still in the entrance. “I can’t ask you to promise you won’t go anyway, so I am telling you not to leave.”
He stood where he’d stopped without turning around.
“Don’t make others suffer for you, Kunag. You can’t walk away from everything. Not from us now. We need you here.”
“It doesn’t work here anyway. We can’t even build a stupid excretorial. The creatures will get scared and captured. What do I know, anyway? Leyon and Hani have all the ideas. I wanted to go home with the fishermen. I worry about Mom.”
He had turned to her during this outburst and kicked the rocks that lined the fireplace.
“Maybe you should have said that when you had the chance,” Nini whispered. She felt sorry for his insecurity, his frustration, his sadness, and the hurt she’d just now caused him. “Don’t make the rest of us have to guard you like a user, Kunag. It won’t be long before the others arrive. Help us get the place ready for them.”
He sat back down suddenly and scuttled close to her.
“I know I promised last time, but I mean it, Nini. I promise I won’t go.” This time they were his words. He took her hand. “I love you, Nini, more than any other girl.”
It took her by surprise. His boyish uncertainty was warming. She let him, for now. This was not the right time to turn him down.
KNOW-IT-ALL
The return of the expedition brought new optimism to town, though Benjamar felt a little disappointed that Nini wasn’t with them and he accepted Erwin’s offer to take his kabin around to the other coast to check up on those left behind. Erwin planned to let the southern current take him there and come back via the north route, on the wind.
Maike and Yako made the new place sound like a paradise. Full of enthusiasm, Wolt started writing a series of articles for the bulletin, so enthusiastic that he proclaimed Daili’s challenge mastered, and the location ideal for a third settlement.
Yako was determined to go back as soon as possible. Kolyag also mentioned that he would leave; his son had convinced him. Maike herself said she’d rather return than stay in town. That would once again leave Frantag, Roilan, Frimon, and Benjamar himself to run the government.
The eagerness increased a moon later when the kabin returned with news from those the expedition had left behind: They had shelters and plenty of food.
Then, when people were waiting in line to read the bulletins, the writing changed. Benjamar noticed a subtle threat about a storm hitting the other coast: they’d never know; better to stop dreaming of other places and focus on the progress they were making here. Wolt cautioned that having shelter over there should not be taken too literally, as they had no tools there, no material, and only four people, three of whom had been kids on SJilai. Theirs would be no more than grass huts. He praised the advances made in town – the new windmill-generator and the septic tank, which, he stressed, had nothing wrong with it.
That last point was a reaction to a remark from Frimon about the placing of the new septic tank in relation to the water well. Of course, Frimon hadn’t been consulted about the new tank – nor had anybody else.
“It would have been too complicated to have a referendum about a location,” Roilan explained when asked. Thus he’d gone ahead without consulting anybody, not so much because it was complicated, but out of envy because Frimon’s water well had been finished long before Roilan’s generator.
Under a façade of politeness, the animosities between the two of them still played and lately they had surfaced more often. It had started with the activities of a large number of young men and women on the beach. One activity involved proving bravery by showing how much of a belting they could take and each bet was made with the local wine, which seemed to be the ruling currency. The name given to this so-called sport was “Thalo’s penance”.
Both Frantag and Frimon had come to Benjamar to complain about it, asking him to intervene because he was the judge. Roilan correctly disputed that and had insisted it be voted on by referendum to make it a proper population decision. So they had, and most people didn’t approve, after which Benjamar had ruled it illegal. It went on nonetheless.
Despite the outcome of the referendum being totally fair, Roilan was angry about Frimon reporting the games in the first place. So, at the next possible occasion he’d openly accused Frimon of having set the protesters up against the farmers – as if Jema and Yako needed encouragement to protest against things. This had resulted in the ruling Benjamar had made, without majority vote, that all sprayed plants be destroyed. That ruling had caused a series of complaints, first from the angry crop farmers saying Benjamar had no right to make that decision alone, which was also correct, but he had anyway, to prevent people dying – referendums took time.
Naturally, Tigor had taken the not-existing law in his own hands and caused even more destruction, which had landed him – also unlawfully ruled by Benjamar, since there was no law – in prison. Frimon, in turn, accused Roilan of having permitted the poisoning, which should have also been voted on first, and called it a deliberate destruction of nature. The cattle farmers, and most other people, were angry at the crop farmers for the dead batis because without batis there was no milk and, thus, no cheese. Thank Bue the immobilizers were gone or they’d have a civil war by now.
All this, in combination with the dropping temperatures, caused new fears about food shortages and diseases, which Wolt, in turn, used to spice up his articles. Benjamar read them, but didn’t step in. It wasn’t his place nor his ambition to get involved again. That was, until Irma stopped at his home.
“It isn’t true, Ben. I did say we still see infections, but I never said the well was contaminated.”
Irma was one person Benjamar appreciated a lot, but he seldom found time to talk to her. She had grown older; her now brown hair had bits of grey in it.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“Because you are still the judge. This article will spread fear like microbes and cause a major panic for no reason.”
Benjamar read the latest article Wolt had written and which Irma had pulled off the social building wall before coming over. Wolt warned for the danger of infections. He wrote that diseases came from poor hygiene and no progress. Divine intervention would not protect the well. The doctor said there are still infections reported regularly, which proves that the recent threats should not be ignored.
“Do you believe those infections you still see come from the well?” Benjamar asked Irma.
“Ben, if the well was contaminated everybody would be sick again. We’re doing daily tests. I
t’s been clear.”
“What about Frimon’s remark about the tank?”
“He’s right, it sits in the wrong place. If it’s well constructed there should be no immediate danger, but if it leaks…”
“It took them a moon to build that tank. Why didn’t anybody stop them, Irma?”
“You mean I should have?” She wiped the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. “I know I should. I’ve paid way too little attention to what goes on in town. I never even considered asking what they were digging until it was already there. I kept busy in the clinic trying to solve existing problems rather than look at prevention.”
She wasn’t being totally fair to herself there; they were keeping an eye on the drinking water. “How about that seawater idea?”
“So far I have no reason to think it will cause problems, Ben, but we can’t tell for the long-term. If we switch the whole population to that, we could all die from something else in the next year.”
Benjamar promised her he’d look into the problem and talk to Wolt. “I agree we don’t want a panic, but if there’s a real danger from the tank, we’ll have to relocate it.”
Benjamar didn’t have to go looking for Wolt; Wolt came to him. “Somebody stole the bulletin off the wall. I bet I know who did it too,” he said, sitting down.
“So why do you come to me?” Benjamar asked. He asked everybody why they came to him when something was wrong, since that seemed to be the case.
“Because it’s theft and if I confront Frimon, I’ll get accuse–” He stopped when Benjamar pulled the bulletin out of his pocket and handed it him. “I don’t understand.”
“If you want your paper to remain on the wall, you’ll have to consider writing true facts instead of assumptions, Wolt. Have you got proof that Frimon threatened to contaminate the well?”
“I never wrote he did that!”
“No, you just implied it through a clever arrangement of words and sentences.”