Khe (6 page)

Simanca held my arm tightly and peered closely my wrist for what felt like a long time.

"Insect bite," she said and dropped my arm. "Nothing to worry about. Not worth mentioning to anyone."

"My unitmates know," I said. "And yours know, too. I have an extra age dot."

Simanca drew herself up as tall as she could be.

"This is an insect bite, Khe, not an age spot, and doubtless will disappear as suddenly as it came.” She inhaled a breath. A faint, forced smile crinkled her lips. "You did right by coming to me. Say no more about this. You may return to your dwelling."

I trudged back across the commons. If the dot meant nothing, why was I ordered to silence?

***

As a reward—or punishment—for doing so well with the kiiku, we were assigned awa trees next. Awa is not as highly valued as kiiku, and it’s misery to tend. Thedra acted like the assignment was my fault and made little screeching noises every time she had to climb up the long ladder to hand pollinate the awa flowers. But we did well with the stingy trees—so well that Simanca had called us on stage at the season-end weighing and given us a special award of merit.

The following season, we were assigned preslets. Preslets could be bitingly bad-tempered, and usually were, or sweetness itself. No one liked tending them, but the birds were useful, providing meat for food, feathers for stuffing quilts and pillows, and lining the insides of the warmest Barren Season cloaks. Their usefulness alone was reason to treat them well, but I thought that the creator had its own good reasons for making preslets the way they were, that maybe preslets were a lesson of sorts—a way to see that good and bad were entwined, and that one had to learn to appreciate the whole.

Sometimes, when a preslet felt like it, the bird would crawl into your lap, roll over on its back and make soft little yelping noises in sign that it wanted to be petted. Once I sat in the yard for most of a morning with a preslet on my lap, stroking the soft down on its belly, listening to it coo, lost in a world where thought had no place, where all was touch and sound and contentment. I heard footsteps and looked up to find Stoss staring at me. When our eyes met, she giggled. I looked at her, confused, and then realized that I’d been cooing just like the preslet. I didn’t mind Stoss’s laughter, but the bird took offense. It leaped down from my lap, scratching me with its sharp claws. It stalked around in a circle in front of us, fluffing its tiny, useless wings and screeching,
ack, ack
.

“You need to apologize,” I told Stoss.

“To a preslet?” she asked. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Apologize,” I insisted.

Stoss sighed and turned to the bird. “Sorry.”

I couldn’t prove it, but I’d swear that preslet was bigger the next day.

***

I set about tending my flock with the same determination I’d given the kiiku and the awa. I tried a little experiment as well.

I don’t know why I did it. Probably because Thedra was always going on about how it was my touch that made the kiiku and awa do so well and I half wondered if it might be true.

I went to an old awa tree that hadn’t produced fruit in years. I leaned my head against the smooth-barked trunk and thought how beautiful the tree would be in blossom, how happy everyone would be if the blooms turned to fruit. I felt a little silly, but wished the tree well and a long, productive life.

At season’s end, not only were my preslets bigger and meatier than anyone else’s, the old tree bore fruit.

No one knew what I had done. The doumanas assigned awa were happy enough to count in fruit from the old tree with their poundage. No one seemed to think it strange that a tree that had hardly even leafed for as long as most of us could remember suddenly fruited.

It scared me, thinking that maybe I had truly had some hand in it.

***

When I awoke the next day, two new dots had appeared on my wrists—small as the iris of my eye and as dark-blue as the speckles on a preslet egg. Now there were ten, scattered like stars on my skin. It wasn’t Commemoration Day. This shouldn’t be possible.

I slipped out before my unitmates awoke, went to Simanca’s dwelling, and showed her. She didn’t take my arm and examine the dots like she had last time. She turned her back and strode away, taking Min and Gintok with her. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, to make Simanca shun me like that.

Tav stayed behind. She stroked my neck and said, “Don’t blame Simanca for her anger, Khe. She already told you the marks are unimportant. You were wrong to come again over the same matter.”

I hung my head. “No one else has marks like mine.”

“You know that you’re not like your sisters,” Tav said softly. “Comparing yourself to them will only make you unhappy.”

I looked up, straight into her eyes. “I’m not unhappy. I’m
frightened
.”

I needed to say the words even though the mass of muddy brown spots on my neck already showed my fear.

“Oh, Khe,” Tav said. “You’re worried over nothing. The marks are just something…unique to you. What does
The Rules of a Good
Life tell us?”

Didn’t she hear me? Didn’t it matter to her at all that I was so scared I could hardly stand there before her without shrieking? Did she not see the colors on my neck? I sighed and gave her the answer she wanted. “Only the obedient heart knows peace.”

Tav smiled. “Exactly. Go now. Your unitmates will be up and there’s work to be done.”

***

“I saw you,” Thedra whispered, standing next to me in the morning meal line in the communiteria.

“Saw me what?” I asked in a normal tone.

Thedra still whispered. “What you did to the old tree. I know you made it bloom and fruit.”

My throat went dry. I dropped my voice. “Lots of trees that don’t set fruit one year make up for it in the next.”

“Not that tree,” she said. “First the kiiku, then the awa, now the preslets and that dried up tree. Khe, it’s not natural.”

Behind me, Simanca’s unitmate, Gintok, grumbled and said to get a move on, we were holding up the line and she was hungry. I moved forward.

“We’ll talk later,” I told Thedra.

“Too late for talk,” Thedra said. “I have to tell Simanca. I can’t hold this a secret. You know that.”

I knew. The commune had no tolerance for private knowledge. For the good of the group, all things must be public.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I whispered furiously. I felt my spots light brownish green with shame at the lie. I knew Thedra saw it.

Gintok gave me a small shove. I bit back my irritation and stepped forward again.

Chapter Six

Beware the secret heart that holds the hidden lie
.

--The Rules of a Good Life

I was mending a torn hip wrap when a knock at the door was followed by Tav walking into our receiving room. She glanced around the room.

“Are you here alone?” she asked.

I nodded. “Stoss wanted a walk. Jit and Thedra went with her.”

“Just as well,” Tav said. There was a strained coolness to her voice. “You are to come to us, but first, Simanca wants you to wrap a bandage around your left wrist. If anyone asks, you are to say that you cut yourself slightly.”

“Why?” I asked, meaning both why was I summoned and why was I binding a non-existent wound?

Tav shrugged. “Because that is what Simanca wants.”

Which answered both questions at once.

***

The orindle, Pradat, wearing the green hip wrap that marked her official medical researcher status, was sitting with Simanca and Tav when I arrived at Simanca’s dwelling. Her almost-too-large dark brown eyes that I remembered from Morvat Research Center widened when she saw me.

“Hello,” I said, surprised to see her at Lunge commune, and even more surprised that Min and Gintok were absent from this meeting. But I understood why Simanca had me cover my wrist; she didn’t want the orindle to see the additional dots. But if my “blemishes” meant nothing, why did she want them hidden?

“Hello, Khe.”

Pradat didn’t fumble for my name. I hoped she actually remembered me, though almost a year had passed since I’d left Morvat Research Center.

She looked at the cloth wrapped around my wrist. “You’ve injured yourself. Shall I take a look?”

Simanca’s plan seemed to have backfired on her. Of course an orindle would look at a wound. What had Simanca been thinking?

I quickly turned to Simanca, to deflect the orindle’s question and get straight to my own. “Is this about … ” My voice cracked and failed. “About what Thedra told you?”

Simanca nodded. “We contacted the orindle after Thedra spoke out. Pradat suspects that your ability is a result of opening your Resonance sac. A few of her other patients have also manifested changes.”

“They can make things grow?” I asked.

“That’s a first,” Pradat said in a voice as bland as water. “I have three patients who see what they describe as new colors. Another swears she hears the future in the wind.”

My heart thudded against my ribs. New colors and predicting the future? Did the surgery make patients go mad? Was I doomed to become a babbler?

“What we suspect,” Pradat said, “is that nature sealed your Resonance sac for a reason. We surmise that in some cases the Resonance sac also housed a mutated sense or talent. By opening the sac, we released the ability.”

I hunched into myself. All I wanted was to be like everyone else.

Pradat reached into a large beige bag lying at her feet and drew out three small, clear, shallow bowls covered by clear domes. Each bowl had some sort of colored liquid in it. The orindle got up and walked over to a small table and a chair that had been set up in the receiving room. She motioned that I should sit there.

“Of all my patients manifesting what seem to be new abilities,” she said, “only yours is verifiable. The one who hears the future hears nothing that will come to be within our lifetimes. We have no instruments capable of detecting the colors the other patients describe but only they see. Organism growth, however, can be easily predicted and measured.”

Sweat prickled my skin. My neck itched. I licked my lips twice, trying to work up the nerve to speak. “What do you want me to do?”

Pradat handed me a bowl filled with a thin green liquid. “There are organisms in here that grow at a set rate. We want to see if you can accelerate it.”

I took the bowl and turned it in my hands. The others watched me—Tav with concern on her face, Simanca with expectation. Pradat seemed merely curious.

Curiosity filled me as well. As I stared at the small bowl, a fascination grew in me that I might truly posses an ability that no one else had. I’d longed to be the same as my sisters, as good as they were. Now I wondered if
different
might also mean
better
.

I held the bowl and thought of the little animals or plants or whatever it was that were in the liquid. Did they have consciousness? Were they quarrelsome like preslets or serene in their floating lives? Whatever they were, I wished them success in their goals.

The liquid turned cloudy, but I couldn’t know if that was normal or not. I handed the dish to Pradat. She set it on the table without a word. She took a thin, clear tube from her bag, extracted the liquid from the dish and squirted it onto a small board marked with tiny squares. Then she took out a device with a palm-size circle of black glass and straps that fitted over her hand. She slowly waved the black glass over the wet squares and turned her hand over to look at the glass.

“Seven percent over expectation,” she said in her maddeningly neutral voice. “Enough to warrant further study.”

I stared at her neck, looking for color to tell me her feelings. Her heart must have been as dull as her voice sounded. Nothing showed on her spots.

We repeated the experiment twice more. Each time the clear liquid turned cloudy. Pradat calculated and noted the results without showing any sign of what the results meant.

Simanca’s mouth crinkled. “You’ve done well, Khe. Go back to your dwelling.”

“I’d like her again in the morning,” Pradat said, still staring into her device. “I want to run the trials at least twice more, with an examination of Khe before and after, to determine if the phenomenon has an effect on her as well.”

Simanca said, “Khe will report here immediately after morning meal.”

No one asked me if I wanted to come back. Simanca led the commune and all decisions regarding anyone at Lunge were hers to make. Still, they could have asked me.

***

Gossamer filaments radiated from almost every inch of my body. Circles of colored light dotted my skin. My skin itched beneath the bandage Simanca had once again told me to wear around my wrist. She stood nearby, her thin arms folded calmly across her gaunt, flat chest. Tav bit her bottom lip. She looked ready to leap to my defense, if need be.

“Nervous?” Pradat asked.

I nodded. Who wouldn’t be nervous, hooked to fourteen machines designed to test, calibrate, and analyze the very essence of her being? Expected to perform what Thedra had begun calling, ‘the Lunge commune miracle’? Plenty nervous is how I felt.

“Afraid you won’t be able to do as well as you did yesterday?” Pradat asked as she twirled a lever on one of her machines. The machine answered her touch with a string of blips and snarls that made my skin crawl.

“No,” I said, staring down at my fingers that rubbed against each other as though they had lives of their own. I wasn’t afraid that I wouldn’t do as well. My fear came from knowing I could duplicate yesterday’s results. And do better. The proof of the kiiku, the preslets, and the awa trees convinced me. Knowledge of my power surged through my blood, tissue, muscle, and bone.

I felt two of my emotion spots flare bright green with pride, and another glow muddy gray with fear. I looked up, worried that the others would see my feelings, but no one paid attention to me. Not even Tav, whose eyes were stuck on the motions of Pradat’s hands on the machines. My emotions quieted enough for the spots to vanish, but dread still crept through me like ice spreading in my belly.