Juno of Taris (14 page)

‘Okay. But put your tunic over there to dry.’ I pointed at a rock.

She flicked water over me. ‘Don’t fuss. It’s not important.’

I imitated Silvern’s voice. ‘Did you see Vima? She walked back from Calico Bay and her tunic was dripping wet. And of course she was with Juno. Those two …’

Vima snarled again, but she ripped off her tunic, chucked it onto the rock and sat beside me in her dripping underclothes. She caught sight of the letters. ‘Smart, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, but very good tempered.’

That made her laugh. ‘Okay! I’m a nasty bitch when I get mad. And sister, am I mad!’

‘You could use that energy to learn to read,’ I pointed out in my most Fisa-ish voice.

She gave me a scorcher of a look but said, ‘All right. Let’s get started.’

I knew she was intelligent, but seeing her attack the business of learning to read was a revelation. Hera started yelling while I was trying to explain vowels. Vima picked her up and thrust her at me. ‘Give her a swim and keep on telling me these sounds.’

That’s how we learned that Hera adored the sea. She burbled happily and discovered how to kick and splash.

By the time we had to leave, Vima was reading simple sentences. We dried Hera, put our tunics on again and smoothed out the sand. Vima said, ‘Tell me this, Juno – when did your grandmother learn to read? Who taught her, and the others?’

I didn’t know, and I knew that if I asked Grif she wouldn’t tell me.

Vima laughed. ‘A fine, open society we live in, don’t you think?’

I didn’t want to think about that, about what it all meant. My mind refused to compute all the ideas it had been fed today. Instead, I blurted out, ‘Do you still love Jov?’

She hefted Hera onto her back and strode off. ‘Mind your own business, brat.’

The seven years between us loomed huge and unbridgeable. We walked in silence; her feet slapped the path. I plodded. Hera yelled. 

T
he next day, I thought Vima would still be angry with me and wouldn’t come, so I decided to take Hera to the bay myself. Surely I’d be safe from Hilto if I was carrying a baby – and a crying one at that. But Vima arrived as I was strapping her into the backpack. She took her from me with a grin and we left, Mother’s words of thanks sounding in our ears.

I tried to gauge Vima’s mood as we walked. I thought of remarking that Prin and Wellin seemed very much in love. But she’d snap my head off and accuse me of prying. Which I would be.

We arrived at the sanctuary of the bay and she brought out the transponder. I gave her another lesson.

We didn’t talk about other things that day, or on the following days when I gave her more lessons. But it was peaceful, and when Hera yelled, we took her swimming.

It wasn’t long before Vima stopped asking for lessons, but when I asked her what she was reading, she grunted and said, ‘It makes my brain hurt. Let’s not talk about it.’

The days passed. Hera grew heavier to carry, but she still yelled a lot. Nobody came near us.

‘She’s better than a guard dog,’ Vima commented one day as we settled her under the bushes. Vima threw herself down beside her, a hand covering her eyes. I leaned against a rock, listening to the splashes and laughter from the Bay of Clowns on the other side of the promontory.

‘Don’t ever fall in love with a man you can’t marry, Juno. It’s the worst idea.’

My head snapped round to look at her, but her eyes were shut, and she shaded her face with her arm.

‘You might grow out of it,’ I said at last. My parents always hoped I’d grow out of my more extreme ideas.

She rolled over and tickled Hera’s tummy. ‘He kissed me yesterday.’ She didn’t look in my direction.

‘Oh!’ It was all I could think to say. All of my misdemeanours shrank to nothingness beside that. Jov was married. He was from a different stratum from her.

She sat up – still not looking at me. ‘I know. I shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. But we did and it was glorious.’ She spread her arms wide and lifted her face to the sky.

That would serve me right for prying. Let that be a lesson, Juno – don’t ask questions if you don’t want to hear the answers. All I could say was, ‘We have our secrets, you and I.’

‘I’d breed Tarians to have no emotions,’ she mused. ‘We’d be cardboard people who ate, worked, slept and were deliriously happy when somebody told us some pathetic bit of gossip.’

I decided not to point out that happiness was an emotion.

She gave me a sudden, hard hug. ‘Bless you, kid. I’d go crazy if I couldn’t tell somebody.’ She sat back and gave me a considering sort of look. ‘Though why I choose to tell a twelve-year-old is a bit hard to fathom.’ She touched my cheek. ‘It’s mean, too. I shouldn’t burden you with my hormones.’

‘I’m glad,’ I said fiercely. ‘It’s always been me who was different. And now there are two of us. I’m sorry for your pain, Vima, but it’s nice not to be alone any more.’

Vima tickled Hera’s feet. ‘Actually, I think there’re three of us. Her majesty here doesn’t exactly fit the model of the ideal Taris baby.’

‘Oh!’ I gasped. ‘Vima … I’ll tell you another secret.’ And I told her of the day of Hera’s conception, of how I’d thought the embryo I’d keyed in using the genetic material from Derrick and Margaretta had been the non-viable one. ‘But I think it was the other one. I think Hera is the daughter of Derrick and Margaretta.’

Vima laughed till she cried.

Our days slipped by. Vima was soon reading better than I could, but she told me little of what she read. Sometimes she talked of Jov, but not often. It felt as though we were in a time of waiting, although I didn’t know what we might be waiting for. Maybe it was for the change my grandparents had spoken of.

Hera grew as babies should, but she didn’t let up on the yelling. She was four months old when my thirteenth birthday came along. I decided to have a picnic with Vima and my family. We went to the waterfall we’d gone to for my twelfth birthday, but Hera didn’t approve of fresh water and let us know all about it with her shrieking. I watched my parents’ worried faces and decided to talk to Vima about it the next day.

‘I think I should tell them,’ I said, once we’d reached Calico Bay. ‘They’re worrying they chose the wrong traits for her.’

‘No,’ she said, thumping a fist on the ground. ‘No. Don’t tell them. Not now, not ever.’ She picked up Hera and waded into the water with her. ‘It might make you feel better, but it’ll be just one more grief they’ll have to deal with.’

I didn’t agree. ‘They could find out anyway.’

Vima sat on the sandy bottom, holding Hera so that she floated on the surface with her hair in a dark halo around her head. ‘So what? Trebe will just go through the program and sort it out. She’ll probably decide that the random function overrode the selection function.’

‘I think you’re wrong. I think I should tell.’ In fact, I’d nearly told them last night.

She towed Hera in deeper, and I scurried after her. ‘You’re just thinking about yourself,’ she said. ‘Think about them. They’d have to carry the burden of two wayward children.’ She stopped and looked at me. ‘We on Taris can handle danger, we live with it every day of our lives. We know we’re a heartbeat away from dying. We know when something goes wrong that we’re on our own – fix it or die. But part of how we cope is to keep to the accepted ways.’

I sank into the water and thought about it. She was right about the fragility of our island – we coped by developing our science and technology. ‘And by suppressing our emotions.’

I didn’t realise I’d said the words aloud, but Vima said, ‘Yeah. Messy emotions have no place on Taris.’ She swirled Hera around and around, making her shriek with delight. ‘Believe me, Juno, messy emotions are no fun at all.’

‘Jov?’ I asked. She hadn’t mentioned him for weeks. I’d been hoping it had all died between them.

‘Jov,’ she said.

My gut felt hollow.

She flicked water at me. ‘Sorry, poppet. It’s all too much for a twelve – whoops, sorry – a thirteen-year-old.’ She bent her gimlet look on me. ‘I wonder sometimes about your genetic history. There must be something to account for it.’

‘For me never fitting in?’ I knew quite enough about my genetic history.

‘That. And your wisdom.’

I gasped, got a mouthful of water, went under, and came up spluttering and giggling. ‘You’re the only one on the whole island who thinks I have wisdom.’

‘Is that so? What about your grandparents? And you’re in tune with the Big Yell here.’ She washed water over Hera’s tummy. She gurgled and splashed her arms. ‘And you knew how I felt about Jov. Remember? The night Hera was born? Creen believed me when I said it was nothing – but I’m darned sure you didn’t.’

No. I hadn’t. But I didn’t know how deep it had gone with her. ‘You’re going to – you know – do it, aren’t you?’ Oh, why did I ask such questions?

But she just laughed and pulled a face. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. Kissing is risky enough. How do we get to do anything else? You try being private on this island.’

I nodded. The only reason we got left in peace here at the bay every day was because of Hera. ‘I wonder how many others have secrets.’

‘Jov, for one,’ Vima said, and her face was dreamy – softer than I’d ever seen it. ‘I do love him so. It’s like a connection from way back in time.’

My heart ached for her. ‘Like a memory, you mean?’

‘Hmm. We’re so comfortable together.’ She glanced at me. ‘Can you imagine comfortable with sparks? With energy and excitement and boiling lust?’ She laughed at herself. ‘Of course you can’t. You’re thirteen and the deadly hormones haven’t struck. Yet.’ She bobbed Hera up and down in the water, making her chuckle. ‘Your sister, bubs, will probably fall in love with Kalta, then Creen will kill her and there’ll be a huge scandal. Yes, little miss, the hugest scandal ever and the GCs will tie Creen to a surfboard. They’ll climb the mountain, open the hatch and launch her onto the Southern Ocean.’

Hera and I both laughed, but I knew I’d never fall in love with somebody as solidly sensible as Kalta.

About three weeks after my birthday, Vima hit me with two things that made my head reel and blew sameness and boredom into fragments.

We ran as usual to Calico Bay, freed Hera from the backpack and put her down in the shade. She rolled over. ‘I’ll watch her,’ Vima said. ‘You have a look at this.’ She tossed something to me.

I caught it and turned it over and over, examining it. It looked like the transponder that had given us the encyclopedia, but it was smaller. Suddenly, it vibrated in my hands. I dropped it and yelped. ‘What …!’

Vima restrained Hera from eating sand and grinned. ‘A most satisfactory reaction. Have another look at it.’

The damn thing would probably kill me. I grumbled, but picked it up. There was writing on the screen that hadn’t been there before. I stared at Vima. She laughed and pulled a second piece of equipment from her pocket. ‘I think they’re phones. I’ve got the text function working and set it to silent vibrate. There’s one for you and one for me. Have a play and see if you can work out how to send texts while I keep Miss Impatient entertained.’

It didn’t take me long, mainly because I could ask Vima for instructions. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You can use it. Take it with you everywhere and leave it switched on. The batteries last for a couple of weeks, then we can swap them for others while they recharge – there’s a whole pile of these things.’

I hid it away in my tunic pocket. Why? These weren’t just for fun. She wouldn’t put us both in danger – which we would be if the phones were discovered. I took off my tunic and joined the two of them in the water. ‘Why?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Because it’s there. Because it was a challenge to get them working. Because I wanted to see if the cell phone network still worked.’ She stopped.

‘And?’ There was more, I knew there was.

‘Because I think we might need it. I’m going to push a few boundaries. This is a kind of safety net.’ She let Hera lie flat on her back in the water. Her hair floated out from her head like spindles on a seed. I ran my hand through it. Such pretty hair, and she’d lose it all in about seven months. Some first birthday present that would be.

Vima watched me, a half smile on her face.

‘What boundaries are you going to push?’ Was it Vima who would bring changes – with me to help her?

‘I’m going to grow my hair.’

That little announcement knocked me breathless. I could only stare at her, my mouth gaping.

She swished Hera backwards and forwards. ‘I’ve thought about it so much. The GCs don’t give a real reason for the shaving rule.’

I was suddenly cold, right down to my bones. I grabbed Hera up and hugged her. I spoke over her yells. ‘You’ve been reading more about dictators, haven’t you?’

‘Yep. And I don’t like what I’ve discovered. Suppress the history, suppress the truth … control the people.’ She stared at the soaring walls of our world. ‘What I want to know is, why do we need controlling?’

I didn’t want her to do it. Somebody else could do it – somebody I didn’t love. ‘Start with something little.’

‘Like?’ she asked. ‘Kissing Jov in public?’

I choked. ‘No, like walking back home with your tunic dripping. Going to work at a different time. Wearing a lei instead of your belt. Something little.’

Hera banged her fists on my chest. I lay her back in the water. I knew suddenly why Vima was choosing the hair. One of the reasons, anyway. ‘It’s for me and Hera, isn’t it?’ I knew, with my instinctive wisdom, that Hera would never be compliant while her head was shaved.