Juno of Taris (3 page)

Instead, he put his arm around my shoulders. I was comforted. My parents loved me, no matter what I was.

I
was hungry, and the smells of roasting rabbit made my stomach rumble. Mother chuckled and told me to make a salad. I used greens we’d brought back from the gardens and wild strawberries.

Mother made no comment as she fished the berries out. I strove for calmness – and failed. ‘Why can’t we experiment with recipes?’ I shouted. ‘What’s wrong with mixing fruit with vegetables? Who’s going to die if we do things differently for a change?’

Dad heard me as he came inside carrying the rest of the vegetables. ‘Recite the reason before we eat please, Juno.’ The hard edge of discipline rang in his voice. I didn’t bother looking at Mother because I knew her expression would be one of disappointment mixed with determination.

I recited the reason. ‘We must focus our energies on survival. We must not waste time or energy working on new music, dance, paintings, stories, recipes or other inessentials.’ I thumped a fist on the bench. ‘And I don’t believe it!’

They didn’t answer me. Mother simply said, ‘Come to the table. We must eat now or there won’t be time.’

They talked of gentle things as we ate. The youngest learning stratum were delighted that their beans had sprouted. ‘They measure them every day,’ Dad said, smiling at me.

‘Have you heard that the apprentices are to be chosen tonight?’ Mother asked.

Of course I’d heard. On Taris, nothing was secret. But I smiled. ‘Yes, and I hear that Creen desperately wants to be Trebe’s apprentice, that Aspa will choose Vima. Majool will probably choose Oban – poor guy, who’d want to work with Majool?’

My parents sighed, but didn’t comment.

Why bother to have the boring meetings? Everybody knew what was going to happen so why did we need to have a meeting about it?

I ate my food and held my thoughts in my head.

We cleared the table and cleaned the dishes. ‘Change your tunic,’ Mother said, ‘and then we’ll leave.’

I ran to my bedroom, ripped off my grubby tunic, flung a clean one over my head and tied the belt neatly in the approved manner. My parents smiled at me. ‘We love you, dear girl,’ said Mother.

‘It’s not easy to be a child of Taris,’ Dad said.

We walked out onto the path that would take us to the meeting arena and joined the throng of people going in the same direction. Somebody in every family group we encountered smiled at me and commented about my determination to beat Marba in the swimming races. Hell and damn-bloody-nation, I’d got myself into a situation this time, and the only way out would be to swim so fast that I wouldn’t disgrace myself. Then I cheered up, for if everybody knew of my challenge then nobody would question why I went swimming by myself every recreation hour. One whole hour of solitude – bliss.

But the repetition of Marba’s name reminded me of the experiment he wanted us to do.

I parted from my parents when we arrived at the arena. They climbed the two rows to where their stratum sat, while I joined mine and sat cross-legged on the floor of the arena. In front of us were the three younger groups of children, and behind us the older ones, including those who were about to graduate from school and become apprentices. The babies and toddlers sat with their parents.

Paz pushed his way through to sit between Silvern and Fortun. ‘Any guesses as to what the big excitement is for this evening?’

Silvern raised the perfect eyebrows that burnt me with envy and said, ‘I’m guessing an in-depth discussion of which documentary they’ll show us next time.’

‘We’ll have to wait till after the Pledge to find out,’ said Marba.

‘Thanks for reminding us,’ said Fortun. ‘I nearly forgot about the Pledge.’ He widened his eyes and stared at Marba.

Marba just grinned back.

Paz, his face suddenly pale, pointed to the path beside the stage. Silence fell over the whole five hundred of us and we rose to our feet as three people of the oldest generation carried in a wreath of white lilies and laid them on the stage. We stirred uneasily and next to me I caught Yin’s murmur, ‘Death flowers. I hate them.’

The fourteen of us drew closer together and, around us, the other strata did the same. ‘Who?’ The word floated and whispered on the air.

We remained standing as the five Governance Companions filed on to the stage. Yin touched my hand. I passed the touch to Brex, who in turn passed it down the line. I knew where it had started: Marba, reminding us of his experiment. But how could we concentrate on Hilto when there were death flowers on the stage?

Fisa, our leader, stepped forward. Her voice reached us all. ‘We will say the Pledge.’

Okay. I would do it. I would concentrate on Hilto because if I didn’t then Marba would just make us do it at the next meeting. I formed a picture of Hilto in my mind. I formed the question: Why do you hate me? And automatically, my mouth recited the words of the Pledge:

‘We who are left pledge that the service of our lives shall be used for the good of the community and that we will never act selfishly, wantonly or thoughtlessly.’

And as we sat down, words seared into my mind:
That girl is dangerous. I’ll have to …

The words were borne on a feeling so vicious that I jerked out of my concentration. Brex glanced at me. I screwed up my face and shook my head. I would not tell of the words. Already I was thought strange and wayward – I would not add this to the charges against me and anyway, I wasn’t certain that the words had come from Hilto.

Fisa spoke. ‘Sit, my people of Taris.’

As was the custom, we would have to sit through the normal business of the meeting before we discovered which of the elders the death flowers were for. The vicious words had unsettled me. Could the death flowers be for one of my grandparents? Surely not – not when they were almost ten whole years younger than Fisa’s generation. But what if … I broke an unspoken custom and turned around to look up to where the four of them sat with the elders. Leebar, Dad’s mother, smiled at me. I turned back, slightly comforted. The death flowers were not for them.

The words beat in my head:
That girl is dangerous.
I’ll have to …

Have to – what? I tried to focus again on Hilto, but the death flowers got in the way. I gave up and concentrated instead on the business of the meeting.

Silvern was wrong about the in-depth discussion of the next documentary to be shown. Fisa simply announced it. ‘Because the swimming races are coming up, we have decided to show a documentary of an Olympic swimmer and the preparation he went through.’ She smiled at us. Sometimes I liked her, sometimes I didn’t – but I always respected her. All the years of my life, she’d stood on the stage every Wednesday evening and conducted the meetings that ordered the business of our lives and kept Taris functioning – not an easy task when the world outside had fallen into chaos and abandoned us generations before she was born. I knew that whoever the vicious words had come from, they had not come from her.

Fisa called now for the reports. Trebe, our physician, ran to the stage and leapt up the steps. She paused at the death flowers and bowed her head, then she walked to the lectern. ‘You will be pleased to know we’ve made a breakthrough in the selection process for character traits.’ She paused as if weighing whether to speak the next words. ‘The parents of the next child to be conceived will be able to choose the character of their child much more precisely.’

The murmur that rustled through the tiers of adults had an odd quality – there was interest, and excitement that quickly dampened. It was because of the death flowers. When somebody died, they made room for a child to be born but the person who was about to die was still alive in our midst.

Fisa stepped forward and spoke to Trebe, her voice ringing out so that all could hear. ‘Who is your chosen apprentice, Trebe? We ask you to choose wisely, for the health and survival of our people depend upon you, your knowledge and your skill.’

Trebe looked out at us. ‘I have chosen wisely, my people. I choose an apprentice who has a love of medicine in her heart that is equal to the love she has for Taris. I choose Creen.’ She looked to where Creen sat on the ground behind me. ‘Will you join me as a physician, Creen?’

Creen stood up and ran to the stage. She climbed the steps, bowed her head as she passed the death flowers and bowed again when she reached Trebe. Trebe stood aside for her to speak into the microphone. ‘My people of Taris,’ she said, her voice shaking slightly, ‘I pledge to you the service of my life. I accept the apprenticeship Trebe has offered. I accept it with joy and with thanks for it has been my dearest wish to become Trebe’s apprentice.’

Lenna, who was Hilto’s wife and a Governance Companion just as he was, walked forward with a wreath of brilliant red hibiscus which she put around Creen’s neck. They looked beautiful against the warm tones of her skin. I wondered what colour her hair would be if she were allowed to grow it – black or a rich brown like her eyebrows most likely.

Trebe took Creen’s hand and led her to her new seat on the top row of the arena.

The ritual was repeated by Aspa. As expected, he chose Vima. ‘My people, I choose Vima as my apprentice. I choose her because of the expertise she already has in working with the computer systems.’ He paused then spoke slowly as if he too had hard words to say. ‘You must know, my people, that our systems are old. They are in need of components we cannot manufacture from the resources we have on Taris. It is, therefore, a heavy burden I lay upon my apprentice. Do you accept, Vima?’

She ran up the steps and onto the stage, paused at the death flowers, raised her hands above them as if in a blessing, then stepped around them and took her place at the lectern. ‘I accept the apprenticeship Aspa offers. You have my promise that I will serve you, my people, with integrity and with all the power of my heart and mind.’

The flowers for Vima were orange hibiscus. I would have chosen cream to contrast with the darkness of her skin, but I was glad the choice hadn’t been left to me for the colour would have been too close to the white death flowers glowing softly at her feet.

Aspa escorted her to her new seat in the top tier.

And so all that learning stratum were apprenticed. There were no surprises. Oban accepted Majool’s apprenticeship and we watched as Majool limped up the steps to escort Oban to his new seat. I hoped he’d have time to teach Oban all there was to know about the atmospherics systems before he could no longer climb up the mountain to where they were housed, hidden in the mist.

Kalta was the last to be chosen. Ingold chose him to work with her in the chemistry lab.

We rose to our feet and sang with them the
Song
of Taris.
 

‘Does anyone have a matter to discuss?’ Fisa asked, speaking into a silence suddenly taut with anxiety. Who? Who had elected to die? There were no more matters for discussion. We waited, not speaking, not moving.

An old man’s voice broke the silence in the fading daylight. ‘My people, I crave your indulgence.’

Irian. It was Irian. Why him? Guilty disappointment clamoured in my mind: I had hoped it would be Hilto. Or Majool. Two old men who pretended to have the goodness of us all at heart, but whose inner selves were hard and bitter.

We, the people of Taris, stood in utter silence as Irian made his way to the stage. He walked to the speaker’s position, adjusted the microphone and motioned for us to sit. I didn’t want to listen. None of us did. But we sat still, our attention on him.

Daylight had faded now and Irian stood in the flood of the spotlight, softened to make it easy on his eyes as he looked out at us.

We waited for perhaps a minute until he was ready to speak. ‘My people – my beloved people – my time has come.’ His voice wrapped around us, clear but creaking with weariness. ‘I no longer care whether the walls of Taris fail, or whether they survive for another two hundred years. My passion is gone. My garden grows weeds. My lute is untuned. I choose to go forward into the next stage of my journey. I choose death.’

Tears welled in my eyes, and beside me, Brex sniffed. The three people who had carried in the flowers climbed the steps to the stage. They were Irian’s brother, his sister-in-law and his dearest friend. His brother carried a lei of white frangipani, hibiscus and roses. He put it around Irian’s neck, hugged him and, his voice breaking, spoke his name, ‘Irian.’

Heskith, the friend, spoke the words we always used. ‘Irian, you have chosen freely and with thought. It grieves us to lose you, but we send you on your way with our love.’

His sister-in-law embraced him. She did not speak, and we saw the shine of her tears.

Around me, people sniffed and an old woman sobbed quietly.

Fisa brought a chair for him, and he sat alone in the light to hear our words.

Trebe spoke first. ‘I thank you, Irian, for your knowledge and wisdom.’ Her voice rang through the arena. ‘I will never forget your steadiness and courage during the measles epidemic.’