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Authors: Keith Brooke

Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General

Genetopia (7 page)

BOOK: Genetopia
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The big man stood awkwardly. “She’s a cousin,” he said, finally.

“But Lost, of course,” said Mas’ Torbern. “Or you wouldn’t have taken our money for her.”

Mesteb nodded. “You can see the change in her eyes,” he said. “And in her nature.”

All the time as they spoke, Mas’ Torbern’s thumb worked in circles around the pretty one’s exposed nipple. Dinah felt sickened, angered, and–she recognised it, even as she felt she should repress it–triumphant. The pretty ones always get more attention. Sometimes it serves them right.

She still stood uncertainly with the mug of mulled wine. Now she raised it, as if to remind Mas’ Torbern that he had commanded her to fetch it, to remind him that she was here, waiting, unsure.

Distracted, he reached for it.

The pretty one, who had until now been standing stiff as a tree, lashed out with her left hand and knocked the mug from Dinah’s–from Mas’ Torbern’s–grip.

Hot wine splashed over the master and the mug rattled away into the darkness.

He cursed, rubbed at his face, and the pretty one took a pace backwards, away from him.

He stepped towards her and pushed and she tumbled back through the open gateway into the holding pen. “Later,” he growled. “I’ll teach you some manners.”

From this level it was quite a fall into the pen and there was a dull thud and a gasp of pain when she landed.

Mas’ Torbern turned on Dinah and somewhere in the shadows she heard dear Maddy chattering nervously, fearing for the safety of her friend.

He seized Dinah’s wrist and pulled her towards him, his face lowered so that the hot stench of his breath was damp on her wet cheeks. “You clumsy little shit!” he yelled at her, and then the back of his free hand smashed into the side of her head, sending her reeling, leaving her in a crumpled pile on the ground.

It sounded like bells clanging in her ears, only a more constant sound. She tasted blood and remembered catching a fly and eating it and tasting blood then, too.

He came for her again, and she knew he didn’t care that his guests were watching, knew that he enjoyed having an audience, was excited by them, roused by them.

He hit her again, and then she felt his hands pulling at her clothing and she heard Maddy chattering, the sound more distant now, more muffled. Heard Mas’ Torbern’s voice, barking and snuffling sounds that were more animal than human, laughter and triumph and anger.

She cried out now, and then, merely, cried. And all the time she loved him so much, her master, the man who could do to her what he chose and always she would be his devoted slave.

She loved him and she hurt and she knew that this day of flies and change had been too long already.

~

She woke in the cabin, smells of damp wood and bodily odours thick in the air. Shafts of light slotted the lean-to walls, low and bright. Early morning light.

She shifted, realised that her head was raised on a folded coat, her treasured sleeping blanket pulled up across her body. Maddy must have looked after her last night, brought her here and settled her to sleep.

Many mutts slept in this cabin, a mosaic of bodies arranged across the dirt and leaf-litter floor, occupying all available space and yet most not even touching. Dinah saw that Granny Di was awake, sitting on her haunches. The old matriarch rocked back and forth with little nervous motions, working her toothless jaws as if chewing. Granny’s eyes were unfocused, and did not see Dinah as she raised herself stiffly from the floor.

Maddy slept nearby, her compact body secure in the ladle of big Han’s. Dinah folded her blanket and stowed it with her coat on top of a low beam.

She left the cabin.

Of all the times of the day, this was the one Dinah treasured most. Dawn newly broken, there was something about the light that seemed fresh and untarnished. Peace spread across the massed ranks of holding pens, only occasional mutterings and groans breaking through.

She had tried explaining her feelings to Maddy once. “We done sing about love of the Big Mas’,” she told her friend, referring to the mutt songs they were all taught as pups. Songs about the Lord who had made them long ago in the shadow of man. “Done sing about Harmony.” A place of freedom, a place of release. “This time make Harmony here,” she concluded, pressing one hand to the side of her head and the other to her chest.

Maddy had grinned and muttered and maybe somewhere in her heart she had grasped the sense of Dinah’s words.

Dinah passed through the holding pens, taking a route that wound through the sector controlled by Mas’ Torbern. All sleeping, or quiet at least.

At the moment there were many hands worth of holding pens occupied by Mas’ Torbern’s stock–many more than Dinah could ever hope to count. He bought some of them from haulers who passed down the river, and along the Farsamy Way. Later he would trade them on to dealers in the big market auctions. Others he had not bought but instead held them on behalf of his regular clients, taking a portion of their sale price in return for housing and breaking them.

The holding pens of Stopover had filled steadily in recent days in readiness for the big auctions at Farsamy Carnival. Dinah had a good sense of time, an understanding of the shapes of events in the general flow from wet season to dry and back again. She remembered the build-up of tension and anticipation in the days before Carnival from early in the previous dry season.

She stopped by a pen occupied by eight pale, smooth-skinned males and she enjoyed the sex musk on the air. Two were awake, and she savoured their interest. One pushed a hand deep into his loin cloth and started to stroke himself, eyes slitting, rolling. They had water in their bucket, slops and bread in their trough. She moved on.

The mutties in the next pen were all sleeping, bundled up in a heap in one corner. They were small creatures that would barely reach her waist when standing upright. Their prehensile tails and dark fur made them look more like monkeys than mutts, but miniature, bald heads with human features gave away their true nature. Dinah had worked with mutties in the fruit groves at Arrabesh for one long dry season. All day long she had fetched and carried as the mutties worked high in the trees and she had rapidly become enchanted by their chattering version of Mutter-pidgin, and their fantastical tales of the wilds.

She came to the pen where they had put the five fallen women.

Four slept, one sat upright, back to the mud and stone wall, knees drawn up to her chest, hugging her legs. Pretty one’s yellowed eyes stared wide above her scabbed knees. They were focused somewhere else entirely, another world, and Dinah thought of old Granny Di in the cabin, rocking back and forth on her haunches and staring into another place.

Their bucket was empty. Maybe it hadn’t even been replenished after Maddy had spilt it the previous evening. Dinah reached down and hooked it out.

Returning with the bucket full, she squeezed the gate’s release, smart fibres relaxing at her touch. The gate flipped open and she climbed down into the pen.

She hung the bucket in place and looked around the pen. The three older females slept together, the child a little apart from them, her face twitching to some dream or other. Dinah squatted in front of the pretty one.

Pretty one’s tunic hung open at the front, where Mas’ Torbern had split it the previous evening.

Dinah swept mid-brown hair away from the pretty one’s eyes and saw bruising and swelling on the girl’s face.

Not so pretty today.

“Pretty one?” said Dinah softly, stroking the girl’s brow. “Pretty one done got name? Done call me Dinah.”

Now, pretty one looked at her, a puzzled expression on her face.

The gold in her eyes was a rich honeyed brown this morning. “Tan eyes,” said Dinah. “Done call pretty one Taneyes.”

Dinah dipped a corner of her pinafore in the water bucket, squeezed it, and then came back to the female she called Taneyes. Gently, she eased the girl’s head up, clear of her knees, and saw that she had a swollen, split lip, blood on her chin, bruising across all of one cheek. Gingerly, she dabbed at the blood.

It would make little difference, for now. Dinah was smart and sometimes she was able to understand things in new ways, understandings that startled her when they happened. Now she saw that it was different for this poor thing. For Dinah, love would overcome all, but it was not the same for Taneyes because Taneyes did not have the kind of deep-seated love for Mas’ Torbern that she did. Even when she came to love him it would only be through fear, not the gut-love that true mutts like Dinah were born with.

For those like Taneyes the pain must be so much
more
...

Just then, the pretty one flinched. Dinah must have accidentally found a tender point.

Taneyes reached up, took the damp corner of pinafore and put it in her mouth. Dinah went to the bucket and scooped a handful of water out. She brought it back and let the girl sip awkwardly.

When she had finished, Taneye looked up at her. “I hurt him,” she said, baring her teeth like an animal. “He... I bit...”

Dinah stroked the girl’s hair.
He will always hurt you more
, she thought, but said nothing.

~

She came to the stockade and climbed to the top, wincing at an old pain in her right hip.

A path led along the foot of the stockade, separated from the Little Elver by a tangle of low vegetation. It was hard to tell where dry land ended and river began, as the thick growths extended across the shallows, slender, fleshy tree trunks bursting from the greenery to form a sparse copse across the water. Up in the canopy, hummingbirds dipped pollen-dusted heads deep into buzzing and whistling bell flowers.

Dinah hummed a song of her own, her head filled with half-formed words which she knew did not even come close to the wonder she felt at times like this.

Soon, the stockade curved sharply to her left and the transit camp was behind her. Forest enfolded her in its lush embrace. Here, she tasted tree marten and fruit bat on the cool air; over-ripe meat-melons cloyingly sweetened the breeze; and the peaky, salty tang of fish, of course.

She quickened her stride, wondering if Nico had tasted her as she had already tasted his briny scent.

At its northernmost end, the island of Stopover curled partway across the mouth of the Little Elver like a fish hook. Nico had told Dinah once that it was because of the hard rocks here: they formed great crags and cliffs that were three or four times her height and they stood strong against the scouring actions of the Elver’s waters. Nico explained things well, but still Dinah had difficulty in seeing how water could wash away rock... She believed him, though. Sometimes being smart meant knowing when to accept the truths of others without fully understanding why.

In the small bay tucked behind the northern hook of the island, the fisherfolk had made their home.

It was a precarious existence: a colony of mutts living in virtual freedom on an island that was at the heart of the mutt trade. Nico told Dinah that there were several such colonies, scattered along the banks of the Elver and Farsam, home to his race of semi-aquatic mutts. The niche they occupied was so specialised and their adaptations so particular, that they were easier tolerated than enslaved.

She came to the gravel beach and pulled at the ties of her pinafore. Naked, she plunged into the still waters, gasping at the chill.

Dinah shared some of the privileges of the fisherfolk, for she was trusted as one of the go-betweens, passing messages and supplies between them and the masters of the transit camp.

Sudden turbulence, silky, flowing touch of body against body, and Nico burst through the surface at her side.

Laughing, she pushed him away, and stroked backwards towards the rocks. She pulled herself out and waited for him to join her in her element.

He popped out of the water and landed in a squat, feet and a hand giving him tripod balance.

He was beautiful.

Dense fur grew in swirls across his shoulders and down his body, giving him a warmth and bouyancy in the water she could never match. Wide shoulders and chest gave his body a wedge-like profile, tapering to narrow hips and legs, then fanning out in wide, paddle-like feet. Adjusting to the air, his tiny nostrils flared, breathing slits sealing over.

“Dinah,” he said, his voice as always reminding her of a child’s. “Blessings upon us.”

She asked of his mother, who had gone down with a high fever a few days earlier.

Nico looked down at the water. “Big Mas’ done take her,” he said. He tried to say more, but faltered.

Dinah studied his tight features, pained to see her friend struck by such clumsy inarticulacy. Words should be easier to find, but the masters always hated a mutt with education. Give a mutt words and you give it the tools to craft ideas, Old Ellis had once told her.

“Tell me what done happen in camp,” said Nico quickly.

She always told him about events at the camp. “Many haul-boats in docks,” she told him. Nico would pass word and fisherfolk would go to defoul the propulsion bladders and screws, a regular job for them at this time of year.

“Higgs done tell me ask for more shellfish and diggies,” she went on. Supplies for the visitors: the best fish for the masters’ guests, everything else ground up into the mutts’ swill.

Nico nodded, absorbing the information. He reached across and touched Dinah’s brow. “What be hurt in here?” he asked.

“Mas’ Torbern done come back,” she said, the words and distress scents enough for Nico. She knew he was jealous of her love for the master, but she was helpless to change anything. Her love for Nico was a head thing, not a gut thing. It was her own choice, but it could never be greater than her love for Mas’ Torbern.

“Mas’ done bring some Lost,” she went on. “One pretty one. Me done call her Taneyes. Mas’ done teaching her to obey. Taneyes fight too much. Mas’ for give big teachings to break Taneyes.”

Nico would know what
big teachings
meant: the changing vats. Those who wouldn’t be broken sometimes had to be wiped clean in the changing brew. Most years there were some like Taneyes.

BOOK: Genetopia
3.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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