Six Moon Dance (8 page)

“What boys?” his Papa had asked.

Mouche had described them.

“The Dutter boys,” Papa remarked, with distaste.

The Dutter boys. Well. So, that was what had made him remember. It was unlikely there would be more than two with that name, and Madame didn’t like the Dutter boys either.

C
ome chickies, chickies,” cried Mama One. “Come lapsit, storytime.”

Ellin heard the call, although she told herself she didn’t. She couldn’t hear it, she was too far in the woods, dancing, dancing. Her feet had taken her too far away, and she couldn’t hear Mama One or Benjamin or Tutsy or any of them. She whirled and whirled, high on her toes, hearing only the music, the drums, the strings, the harp….

“There you are, chickie!” And she was seized up, kicking silently, feet still pointed as they had been when she danced away.

“Where was she?” asked Papa One, in his furry big bear voice.

“Out in the atrium, by the tree,” Mama One answered in her kindly middle bear voice, tucking Ellin tighter against her cushiony self. “She’s always out by the tree, whirling around.”

“Dancing,” said Ellin, defiantly, hoping she would make Mama One listen. “Inna woods.”

“Dancing,” laughed Mama One, paying no attention at all. “Here, Ellin on the lap and Benjamin on this side and Tutsy on the other side, and big brother William in that chair, and here’s Papa with the book.”

Story time was always by the holo-fire, with big brother William in the chair nearest the fire, staring at Ellin and Benjamin and Tutsy with his nose pinched up. Breakfast was always by the kitchen window with the holo-view of sun shining in through green or red leaves, and William already gone away to school. Dinnertime was lamp glow, with everybody at the table, even Tutsy in her high chair, and bedtime was always open the window in Ellin’s room, with the holo-moon outside, sailing, sailing, and the leaves on the trees dancing, dancing.

“What story tonight?” asked Papa One. “What story, Benjamin?”

“Engine,” said Benjamin. “Little Engine.”

Ellin stuck her thumb in her mouth and shut her eyes. She was tired of the little engine, tired of being like the little engine, think I can, think I can, think I can. It wasn’t thinking anymore. It was knowing. Ellin knew she could, but Mama One didn’t care. Papa One didn’t care. She could be making mud pies for all they cared.

Instead of listening to Papa One’s furry voice, she went away inside, somewhere else, that place she’d seen on the holo-stage, the beautiful room where the little girl was, not a grown-up girl, a little girl like Ellin, dancing, dancing under the huge Christmas tree, not a tiny tree like the potted one in the atrium. Ellin’s toes pointed, her free hand turned on the wrist, like a flower opening. She could feel all the muscles in her legs tightening. There was the wicked mouse king, and she ran, like a little wind runs, so quick, so smooth and pretty.

“Ellin isn’t listening,” crowed Mama One. “Ellin’s a sleepy head.”

“Am, too, listening,” said Ellin. “My eyes are bored, so I shut them.”

“Poor baby,” whispered Mama One, gathering Ellin in. “Are you Mama One’s poor baby? Bored with the whole world? Well, a night’s sleep will make it all right. And tomorrow, well, Ellin’s having a surprise!”

Inside, something lurched, like it did when you stepped on one of Benjamin’s marbles and had to balance quickly or fall down. “Surprise?”

“Ellin’s six years old tomorrow. A birthday! And the people from History House are coming.”

Ellin told herself she hadn’t heard. She was so sleepy, she hadn’t heard it. William had, though. She saw the mean glitter in his eyes, saw his lips move. “Told you,” his lips said. “I told you.”

The little lurch inside became something worse, like a throwing up feeling. She couldn’t just let it lie there, making her sick.

“Mama One,” she said desperately, sitting up and opening her eyes wide. “William says you’re not my mama. William says Papa One isn’t my papa. William says me and Benjamin and Tutsy don’t belong here.”

“William,” said Papa One in a threatening voice. “Shame on you. What a thing to say to the child!”

“The brats aren’t yours,” crowed half-grown William in his nasty voice that cracked and jumped, like the broken piano at the kindergarten. “That’s the truth. Why shame on me for telling the truth?”

Mama One said something, but she choked. She had to swallow hard and try again. “Ellin and Benjamin and Tutsy do belong here. This is their infant home.
Unfortunately
, this is also William’s childhood home, and he is a selfish pig about it.”

“What’s infant?” Ellin asked.

“It’s a baby,” William crowed defiantly. “It’s a baby. And tomorrow you won’t be a baby anymore.”

“That’s true,” said Papa One in the heavy voice he sometimes used when he was very angry. “And next week, William won’t be a child anymore. Next week, William, you will be fourteen. And when children reach fourteen, they are placed for education.”

“Hey,” said William uncertainly. “Hey, I didn’t mean …”

“I know what you meant,” said Papa One. “You meant to hurt Ellin, to make her feel insecure. Well, now deal with it yourself. By the end of the week, you too, William, will be adapting, just as Ellin will adapt, won’t you, sweetie?”

“What’s adapt?” cried Ellin.

“Shhh,” said Mama One, tears in her eyes. “Oh, shhh. You men. You’ve spoiled it all!”

She cuddled Ellin tight, picking her up and carrying her upstairs to her own bedroom, her own dollies and dollyhouse and her own shelf of books and her own holo-stage, her own things, all around.

“What’s adapt?” Ellin wiped at her nose with her sleeve.

“Shh,” said Mama One. “Tomorrow, the people from History House are coming. Tomorrow, you’ll meet them, and they’ll see what kind of sweet little girl you are. And then, then we’ll talk about adapting and all the rest.”

“What rest?”

“Your life, child. Just your life.”

Ellin thought she wouldn’t sleep at all, for she was scared and mad and hated William. When Mama One opened the window, though, the holo-moon began to peep and the music began to wander, and all the leaves danced. Ellin pointed her toes in her bed and danced with the leaves, and before she knew it, it was morning.

The baby-aide came to take Benjamin to kindergarten and Tutsy to the playground. William was at school. Ellin helped Mama One straighten up her room, then she got dressed in her best dress, the one with the full skirt, and her best shoes, the shiny ones, and waited.

Almost right away the bell rang, and the people came in. One man, two women. They wore funny clothes, but Ellin knew enough not to laugh or point or say anything because they were from another time and couldn’t help how they looked. She curtsied and said, “How do you do,” in a nice voice, and the three people said, “How do you do, Ellin,” back again.

“Nordic type, clearly,” said the man.

“Nordic quota clone,” said one of the women, looking at the thing she was carrying, a funny flat box thing with buttons. “This is number four of six. Silver hair, blue eyes, pale skin.”

“I’m more interested in the other,” said the second woman. “Mama One tells us you like to dance, Ellin. Will you dance for us?”

“I … I need music,” Ellin said.

“That’s all right,” the second woman said. “I brought music.”

She had a box with buttons, too, and she pushed some of them and the music came out, the same music Ellin remembered, about the girl and the nutcracker and the bad mouse king.

Ellin’s feet started moving. She didn’t even have to think about it. Her body did it, all by itself, the little runs and the jumps and then, then she did the other thing, the one the other dancers did, she went up on her toes, on the tips, right up, high, with her arms coming up, up, like she was flying….

“By Haraldson the Beneficent,” said the second woman. “Ellin, dear, thank you. No. That’s enough. You don’t have the right shoes to do that, dear, and you’ll hurt yourself. You can settle now.”

The man was smiling, not at Ellin, but at the woman. “Well?”

“Well, it’s remarkable. Quite remarkable. I want all six, if we can get them.”

“Including this one.”

“Of course, including this one!”

“Hush,” said Mama One, almost angrily. “You’re not talking about a set of dishes. This is Ellin.”

“Of course,” said the man. “I’m sorry, Madam. Certainly, she … we meant Ellin.”

“Would you like to come live with us, Ellin?” the woman asked. “You can dance all the time. You’ll have the very best teachers. You’ll learn to do the Nutcracker, the one you were copying. You’ll learn lots of other pre-gravitics dances, too. Giselle, and Swan Lake, and Dorothy in Oz.”

“Come?” Ellin said, breathlessly. “Come where?”

“History House, child. You’re intended for History House, Old Earth America: the Arts.”

“And I can dance?”

“All the time. Except when you’re in school, of course. All children must go to school.”

“She’s allowed transition time,” said Mama One, with a glare at Papa One, who just stood there. “You’ve seen her, now enter your letter of intent to rear, that’ll make it all official, and leave her to me for a few days. I’ll bring her from her own time when she’s ready.”

So they went, shaking Mama One’s hand and Papa One’s hand, turning to wave at Ellin as they went out the front door and into the street where a hole into tomorrow opened and let them through.

“Mama One,” said Ellin, her eyes suddenly full of tears. “Mama One, are they going to take me away?”

“Shh,” said Mama One. “Lunch time. We’ll worry about taking away or not taking away later, after we’re all calmed down.”

After lunch, Mama One and Ellin went into the atrium, to the seat by the tree, where Ellin sat in Mama One’s lap while Mama One explained it all. She wasn’t Ellin’s cell Mama. Papa One wasn’t Ellin’s cell Papa. Another, very special person who had died a long time ago had such very good cells that she left some behind to make children, and the twentieth-century experts at History House had asked for some of those children, and Ellin was one of them. Mama One and Papa One lived in a village that had been kept just like the twentieth century, and they were her infant parents so Ellin would grow up acting and talking like a real twentieth-century person. And Mama One and Papa One had taken care of Ellin because they loved her, and when Ellin grew up, she would dance for History House, just like her cell mother had.

“I’m not grown up!” Ellin said. “I’m not old enough.”

“No, but you’re old enough to go to school, and they want you to go to the History House ballet school, where you’ll learn to dance and all about the time in history that you’ll be working in. Papa One and Mama One have a license to raise children as they were raised in the twentieth century, but there’s lots more to learn about it than we can teach you.”

“Do all your children go away when they’re as old as me?”

“Not always. Sometimes the children stay with us until they’re thirteen or fourteen or even grown up. William stayed with us until now because he’s only going to do set construction, and History House won’t need to teach him much that he can’t learn right here. But Ellin is a dancer, and she needs to learn a lot about dancing.”

“Why? They knew I could dance. How did they know?”

“Because we made out such good reports on you, four times every year, and we told them what a fine dancer you were. And because your cell mama was a wonderful dancer, like both her parents. And they were nordic types, just like you.”

“What’s a quota clone? William said I was a quota clone!”

Mama One took a deep breath, her lips pressed tight together. “William needs his mouth zippered up! All it means is that when they make an extra special person, sometimes they make more than one. That’s all. Only extra special people are cloned, so when anyone says that, it’s like saying you’re special.”

“William isn’t a clone?”

“Gracious, what an idea! Does anybody need more than one William?” Mama One laughed, the tears spilling. “Do we?”

Ellin settled into the cushiony lap, glad there was only one William. “Do I have to go to History House?”

“If you want to dance, sweet one, you should go as soon as you’re ready. That’s what you’re meant to do, sure enough, and if you want to do it badly enough, you should go.” And then Mama One cried for real, putting her head right down on her knees, and not stopping even when Ellin kissed her and hugged her and told her she’d never, ever go away.

She didn’t want to go away. It gave her a stomach ache to think about it. And yet … yet, everyone seemed to suppose she would go away. It was as though … as though they had stopped looking at her. As though they didn’t really see her anymore. And now there was new music and trips to see new dances and a chance to attend a class with real dancers, and …

So, a few days later, after thinking about dancing all that time, after Mama One promised to visit, and bring Benjamin and Tutsy, Ellin went to live at History House with Mama Two and to dream, at night, that she was walking along a high road with Mama One and Papa One and they came to a great cliff and Mama and Papa One told her to fly, and she did fly, but even while she was flying she felt … she felt as though they had thrown her out into the air with nothing there, all the way down.

O
na mudworld named Swamp-six, Questioner II sat in a reed hut near the shuttleport, so called though it was only a badly mown clearing amid endless stretches of deadly guillotine grass, its razor leaves snicking together with every breeze. The place was clamorous with frog-birds, soggy from the usual afternoon downpour—the livid skies still drooling, though the suns had gone down some time since—and totally lacking in amenities, a condition which Questioner refused to notice.

She could feel comfort, she could perceive beauty, she could appreciate music, she had pleasure receptors for tastes, smells, and touches, but when duty took her to worlds where comfort, beauty, and pleasure were absent, she turned her receptors off. Questioner’s review of Swamp-six had consisted of an instantaneous recognition of ugly realities requiring no prolonged verification.