Khe (11 page)

I braced my elbows on my knees and asked, “Will you tell me your story now? How you came to be here?”

The babbler’s lips crinkled. “I thought you were hungry.”

I raised my shoulders in a small shrug.

“Sometimes, Khe, you act like a hatchling. Food and water always come first. Then shelter. Then fire. Stories can wait.”

Outside the cave, the air smelled clean and wholesome. The heat from the sun warmed my head, neck, and hands, the only parts of me exposed outside my cloak. I heard the
schloosh, schloosh
of the babbler’s steps through the slush. When she stopped, there was no sound at all. Was this what life was like inside the egg—white and silent?

The babbler disappeared around a small bend. I followed slowly, in thrall to the beauty of the land, the faint strains of a bird cheeping somewhere in the distance. Low-slung jipini bushes, their ripe yellow berries dusted with snow, grew near-by. In the leafless tree branches, drops of water hung from icicle tips as if holding their breaths, then fell. Water from the melting snow sheeted the canyon walls, darkening their natural pale-red color. The crystalline veins threading through the rocks acted as prisms, making tiny rainbows that slid across the stone.

The babbler’s wail tore the silence. I ran through the slush, the muddy snow sucking at my foot casings. I came around the bend and saw the babbler on her knees, her back humped, her face in the dirt. I wanted to call her name, to get her attention, but had no name to call her. I bent over her and folded my arms around her waist and tried to lift.

She shoved me away. “Can’t you see I’m eating?”

The babbler licked her mud-covered fingers, her eyes widening in concentration. Glancing around, she seemed to find what she was searching for and reached at something tucked between two stones. Grunting, she tugged and pulled, finally fell back, grinning, clutching feathery green stems.

“No,” I cried, diving for her hand, which was full of lenrels, a plant so toxic that one bite would kill her before the shadows had moved. I shoved her hand away just before she put the lenrels in her mouth.

“Mine. Mine,” she screamed and tried to pull her hand free, but I had a firm grip and wouldn’t let go.

“You’ve taken everything,” she said. “I don’t want to go. Please. Please.”

Still holding tight to her one hand, I slipped my free arm over her shoulders.

“You don’t have to go,” I said, keeping my voice as soothing as possible. “You can come back to the cave with me.”

The babbler stared at my face, but I could see she didn’t know who I was. “Is it time for the presentation?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s time. We have to go now or we’ll be late.”

“No,” she screamed, and beat against my chest with her fists. I threw my arms up to protect my face and neck, and stumbled back. She kept coming at me, pounding my crossed arms with the sides of her fists. She pushed me hard. My heel hit against a rock. I fell on the cold, hard ground, knocking the wind from my lungs.

The babbler turned and ran toward the cave.

I lay still, getting my breath back. My back hurt where I’d landed on it. When I could breathe again, I struggled to my feet to chase after her. I came through the entrance to the cave’s rear chamber and found the babbler sitting with my opened pack on her lap. When she looked up at me, her eyes were clear and bright.

“There you are,” she said cheerfully. “I was looking for the firestarter. We need warmth.”

“The wood is gone,” I said, keeping my voice conversational. “We used the end of it last night.”

Her cheerfulness faded. “You’ll have to go and find some.”

I stared at her a long moment. If she saw the brown-black anger spots on my neck, they didn’t concern her.

“You hit me,” I said.

“Did I?”

“You knocked me into the snow and mud.”

The babbler nodded. “Once, when I was newly insane, I pushed an orindle out a window. The fall broke both of her legs.” She shrugged as if all of this was of no consequence.

I sighed. There was no point in talking about what had happened. Crouching, I lifted the blanket holding my things off of her lap and set it on the ground. I fumbled through, found the firestarter, and handed it to her. “I’ll look for some wood.”

“Good,” she said. “And something for a meal. My last one was interrupted.”

“Do you—” I began and stopped. I wasn’t sure she could answer my question. “Do you remember what happens when a spell is on you?”

The babbler shook her head. “It’s like being awake one moment and awake the next. In between, things happen that I know nothing about.”

Another question nagged at me. “Do you remember your name?”

The babbler’s sides shook with contained laughter. “I have no name. I never had a name. I hatched as a babbler.”

I tsked my tongue on the roof of my mouth. “You said you were a weather-prophet. Was that a babbler’s lie?”

“Of course I was a prophet. I was First in Chimbalay.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Weather-prophets have names. I’ve seen them on the vision stage, and none was ever called Babbler.”

The brown-black of anger flared on a few spots on her neck. She pulled herself to her feet. “I was a weather-prophet. I still am. Didn’t I tell you about the snow and the rain and the warm day that would follow?”

I shrugged. “Luck.”

“Skill!”

“Weather-prophets have names. Everybody has a name. Mine is Khe. What’s yours?”

“Marnka.” She spat the word at me, and fell silent. The spots on her neck glowed bright yellow with amazement.

“Marnka,” I said. “It’s a good name.”

“It is,” she said.

“I think your story must be good, too. I’d like to hear it.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s quite the tale. Fetch us food and firewood and I will tell you what they did to me.”

Chapter Thirteen

To uphold your responsibility to the new generations, choose your mate for strength and beauty, and with great care
.

--The Rules of a Good Life

The fire was crackling, the smoke drawn up and out of fissures in the cave’s ceiling. Marnka had made a mélange of the jipini berries, tano, and denish that I’d found. It was scant, but delicious, the way any food is to the truly hungry.

“I have been trying to remember all day,” Marnka said, licking a last bit of mélange off her fingers. “All day trying and mostly failing. Some memories are there. I can recall my kler and how it looked—the walls and structures. Huge black buildings, rising into the sky.” A shiver trembled across her shoulders. Her voice fell to a whisper. “There were needles and drugs. There was a dark room and a voice saying the same thing over and over. There was agony. I remember screaming.”

A shiver ran through me as well. I remembered waking in Morvat Research Center, the overwhelming brightness of the colors, the unbearable noise. But I received something I wanted for my pain. I didn’t think it was the same for her.

Marnka drew up her knees to her chest and laid her forehead on them. Her back rose and fell with labored breathing. Finally, she looked up.

“There were seven weather-prophets in Chimbalay,” she said. “We shared a dwelling. From the window, I could see all the way to the central commons. I would sit there and watch how the seasons changed the kler, the light glancing off the glass walls of the buildings in First Warmth, the rivulets of soft rain in Bounty Season, the way my breath would sometimes cloud the windows during Cooling, the quilt of snow over the streets in Barren Season.”

She blinked rapidly, and then rubbed her neck. “I remember this. I’m not making it up from madness.” She pulled her spine straight and glared at me.

At Lunge, Simanca had warned us never to talk to babblers because they lied and didn’t know it. Their disease made them do it, just as their disease took away their names and the will to live.

But Marnka was still alive. And she remembered her name. Or she’d made one up. Did it matter whether you called yourself the name you were given or one you chose yourself? A name was nothing but a sound others used to get your attention, or to mean you in their mind. Marnka served well for either purpose for us.

“I believe you,” I said.

The rigid stiffness in her back relaxed.

“How much do you know about Chimbalay kler?” she asked.

“Chimbalay is the Region Seat, where the best orindles and the Powers, those who set the quotas for all the country commune’s, the lawmakers, and the price-setters live.”

One spot on Marnka’s neck lit ochre with impatience. “You think you know about Chimbalay, but you don’t. Klers are walled for a reason. Walls keep the secrets inside. Do you know why all the weather-prophets live in klers?”

“To make sure they’re qualified,” I answered, glad that Tav had drilled us on this when we were hatchlings. “It used to be that each commune had its own prophet. When a commune’s prophet returned to the creator, the available hatchlings were tested and the one showing the most ability selected as the new foreteller. Some were good. Some weren’t. A bad prophet could mean doom.”

“At least you know a little something,” Marnka said.

I cleared my throat. “After a disastrous year when several prophets hadn’t seen a coming series of hail storms that wiped out most of the crops in the Harvest Belt, the Powers decreed that all prophets had to come to the closest kler for testing and certification. The good ones stayed in the klers where they could use the vision stage to reach all the communes in that section. The less able were assigned different work to do.”

She nodded, much the way Tav used to when I’d gotten a lesson right. “When did this happen?”

I searched my memory. The hailstorms were before Simanca emerged. I made a guess. “Thirty years ago.”

“Thirty-three,” Marnka said.

Her tone made me feel that the number was supposed to mean something.

“Thirty-three years, Khe. We live for thirty-five. All the certified weather-prophets that haven’t already Returned to the creator are marching rapidly toward the end.”

I still didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

“Where are they going to get new prophets?” Marnka asked.

“Don’t they still test the doumanas as they emerge, train the best prospects?”

“They do, but they have to test every newly emerged doumana to find just a few who show promise. It’s very expensive and slow. No, the Powers have another plan. They want to breed what they need.”

Shock made my spots flare gray-red. “That’s impossible. You can’t breed prophets.”

Or maybe not so impossible. I’d wondered if my offspring might have gotten the growing abilities from me, the way the offspring of preslets with the best feathers usually had good feathers too. If the Powers tracked the weather-prophets during Resonance and gathered their eggs, they’d have a good starting point for finding new foretellers. I told Marnka my idea, and she laughed.

“The Powers aren’t leaving it that much to chance. They can’t. The Powers realized long ago that they needed a reliable way of producing accurate foretellers. They set their best minds to the problem. Those thinkers declared that controlled breeding between certified prophets was the only solution.”

My head swam. “Even if they controlled the doumanas, how could they get the males to agree? The Powers don’t have authority over the males, do they?”

Marnka chuckled. “The males were happy enough to do it. They thought it was a good idea. At first, we all thought it was a good idea.”

“What happened that changed your mind?” I asked.

“Don’t rush the teller through her tale, Khe.”

Her voice turned bitter. “Guardians came to collect me and three of my prophet-sisters the day before Resonance was to begin. At the research center, the orindles said we were fortunate, we’d been blessed with special abilities, and now we could concentrate our talents in the new generation by selective breeding. They said they’d done it before and there were no bad effects.” Marnka looked away from me. “It wasn’t true.”

I held my breath.

Marnka said, “The orindles made me what I am.”

One of my spots lit blue-red with anxiety. Simanca had said that the creator made babblers insane, as punishment for their sins.

“You don’t believe me,” Marnka said. “You think no doumana would do this to another. You think that even if one might, it is not possible. But it can be done. Hush, I have remembered all day and I’ve got it right. I’d forgotten, they made sure of that, but they couldn’t keep my memories dark forever.”

I touched her neck gently. “I’m listening.”

Marnka brushed my hand away. “I don’t need encouragement. I’ve remembered now. I’d shout my tale to the rocks if you weren’t here.” She stopped and hung her head, a too-heavy flower on the thin stem of her neck. When she looked up, her spots showed the lavender of embarrassment.

“It was my name, you see. I’d found bits and pieces of my history over the years, but when I discovered I had name—when you gave me back my name—when I
remembered
, that was everything. Now I see backwards in time. Oh. It’s not all pretty to know.”

I sat quietly until she was ready to go on.

“A vehicle waited for us,” Marnka said, “even though the center wasn’t far and we could have walked. When we arrived, the orindle Seldid—she was First there—was standing outside on the white stone steps. Those stones gleamed so brightly. The air smelled like spice. Seldid didn’t say much to us, just greetings, and then brought us inside.

“My prophet-sisters and I followed her to a community room. When we’d all settled into our seats, Seldid explained about the breeding project. She told us that one hundred weather-prophets, both doumana and male, had been gathered at the center. When Resonance began, we’d stay at the center instead of going to our nesting sites. Each prophet could choose her own mate, as usual. Orindles and their helphands would note the pairings, watch the mating and tag each egg to track which pairs bred the most skilled foretellers. Those pairs would mate again in future Resonances. She thanked us all for volunteering.”

Marnka’s tale nearly stopped my breath. This program went against nature, against all that was right. We were free to pick any mate we wanted, limited only to the choices available at the mating site. It was the one true choice we had in our lives.