Stone Seeds (7 page)

Tomax. She briefly wonders where Tomax is now.

“Zorry, wake up.” Mamma Zeina hisses. “It's your turn again, Zorry.” Hands her a plate, stacked with fried beetles. Jewel hued green-backs, charred lightly and their wings lifting away from their bodies, as though ready for flight. Delicious with salt.

“Gaddys will decide if the Sinta slaves like you, Zorry and your family, and those few edge farmers deemed fit for now to hold possession of border passes, will get the drought resistant seeds or the stone seeds which won't sprout.” Mamma Zeina pulls her head covering a little further forwards, “Not if you turn them and tend them for a year, and so … “She pauses. Sighs. “And so in charge of the distribution of Bavarnica's seed sacks, Gaddys holds the power of life and death in her manicured hands. Here.”

Zorry looks down.

“Take this plate.”

Mamma Zeina watches Zorry walking slowly toward the feast table. The girl is learning. The old woman blinks and tries to swallow. She feels as though something is stuck in her throat.

When Zorry returns she hands her some napkins to fold.

“It was Gaddys' idea to visually differentiate the sacks by colour. She is brilliant, in her own disgusting way.” Zorry blinks and gently leans a little toward Mamma Zeina to hear better.

“Stand up straight Zorry.” Mamma Zeina admonishes.

“Sorry.”

Mamma Zeina goes on, “Gaddys has a gift for
showmanship. Left hand, yellow sack, right hand, orange. It underlines her power unless any of her ‘customers' should come to doubt it, Gaddys deals in life and death.” Mamma Zeina taps the curved end of her nose with one stubby finger. “Drag an orange sack home, Zorry, and with your edge farm friends and neighbours looking at you, pitying or else just plain evasive. Just like you're already dead.” Mamma Zeina eyes Zorry. “That's what we're up against. It all begins and ends with Gaddys.”

Mamma Zeina gathers up her skirts and slowly walks away from Zorry. Zorry notices her pull distractedly on the glove on her right hand. Zorry briefly wonders why Mamma Zeina wears it. It seems to Zorry that the old woman doesn't do much without a reason.

And now Gaddys closes her square right hand around her glass. It's crystal, delicately carved with ancient species of flowers and so fragile looking that you'd think, looking at her heavy hand, that she would crush the glass between those smooth, hard fingers. Zorry finds herself watching Gaddys' hands with a strange fascination. But they're just the regular perfumed hands of a lady of the Flowers Fund, Zorry shakes herself. A little more thick-knuckled than most, perhaps, and the nails made to mimic cat claws, extend and retract in the latest Bavarnican fashion. Zorry looks down. Her own long fingered hands are hard wearing, callused. Nails bitten down to the quick.

Exhaustion rolls over Zorry. Sound of her own heart thumping in her ears.

Her eyes close for a moment.

There's a silence in the room as Gaddys rises. The sense
of breath held. No need for Gaddys to cough or tap her glass, Zorry blinks and tries to concentrate. She notices the fabric of Gaddys' dress strain against her large muscular body. And now the table is silent. The quiet seems to emanate from Gaddys, seep upward from her skirts, Zorry thinks. Like that moment when the dust comes over the top of the killing forest, drifting westward whenever an edge farmhouse is bombed.

Gaddys' hair is shaven at the sides in the latest fashion, with a spiral starting from just over her ears and making the top of her head look like a coil pot or a nest of snakes, depending on your disposition so that even the OneFolk childur from this, Bavarnica's show village (and childur, in Bavarnica, is the loose and rather insulting name meaning young people) but they can recall her hairdo every time they look at the rusting spiral water dispenser in the school canteen. Her hair is called to mind by the caterpillar twists and turns of the yellow seams running down the outside of the general's energiser by the killing forest fences. Then there's the twisted rusting pump of the school's generator. Or the water canteen in the OneFolk childurs' playground, which the boldest of the OneFolk childur call Gaddys and throw small stones at. Gaddys' hairpiece is quite a show stopper, even by the standards of the OneFolks' show village. It's how she announces her presence. It's her brand, Zorry thinks.

Zorry sinks farther back into the space beside the window, afternoon is turning into evening. She feels the shadows slip around her. Curfew is coming for the Sinta farms beneath the great house. Everyone indoors when the general switches off his mechanised sun, and the old sun is allowed to cast its dim, last rays.

Zorry presses her back into the corner. She is clutching an empty platter. Holds it to her heart unconsciously, like a shield.

When she looks down she notices that her right hand is shaking.

Takes her a while to see that the Egg Boy Antek is back. Glances at her from underneath his helmet. Looks away again quickly.

And then she follows his eye. Notices the small escaping critter is still on the move, it pops out of the side of the powdered wig of one of the grander ladies at Gaddys' end of the table. It's looking jittery and flustered, antennae swivelling furiously, and now ducks and hops on and off the curling beard of the ancient looking man to the right of Gaddys, leaps again and finds a second home in the huge extended collar of the man on her second right.

Zorry notices Antek shut down a smile.

This confuses Zorry. Egg Boys aren't supposed to have emotions. Certainly they never show them. She looks again in the direction in which Antek looks. The small spider-like creature in his eyeline has a large wobbling head, like a hat about to topple. The man it sits on, with the strange flea collar and dressed like some over large unidentifiable feline, doesn't appear to have noticed. The top of one ear of his costume droops and the old man's own ragged ancient ear peeks out.

Now the flower arrangement softly extends its huge head towards the critter, which scurries, panicked, into the cat costume and down the back of the cat-man's ancient looking left ear, scoots into his costume, runs down his sinewy neck.

The old man's eyes roll strangely.

He gets up looking a little shaky, makes his way toward the
perfumed toilet in the corridor outside.

Zorry imagines for a moment that she saw Antek smile again. Just a shadow of movement, the right side of his mouth.

The left side of the flower arrangement gently lilts its head, watches Antek go check the window. And then head left to secure the inner door on the right.

There's a commotion then. A second OneFolk man knocks against the table, sliding his chair out and, with its heavy throne-like back, it falls and several Sinta struggle to be the first to catch it. Under cover of this unseemly jostling, the squid-like creature slides slowly off the table and onto the floor. Nows it's half hidden by the tablecloth near a OneFolk woman's right feathered shoe. The critter sniffs the shoe and leans against it. The owner of the shoe looks down. She lets out a small scream. Moves her foot. The creature slowly slides toward her.

Antek goes and secures a second door. Unreadable expression and then he bends his head toward the handle, as though checking the quality of the lock. His face is concealed. Zorry imagines she sees his shoulders vibrate softly.

She turns back slowly toward the dining table.

Zorry has not seen the like of the critter before but Mamma Zeina warned Zorry earlier not to show any alarm, no matter what happens at the feast of the flowers fund.

New foods are the very height of fashion. Most of them are made in the labs.

The squid-like creature slides around the feathered shoe once more and then makes its way across the floor toward the window. Zorry wonders if it can sense the water in the moat beneath it. She steps back, too suddenly, and then watches as
it reaches its tentacles up, fingering toward the window ledge beside her, and then, gripping on, eases itself up. It seems to Zorry that the creature glances her way. Eyes her solemnly and then winks its large gloomy eye, slides sinuously through the grille so quickly after that she imagines that she might've dreamt it. There's a struggle as it fails twice to pull its huge head through the crack, soft popping sound on the third attempt. Zorry hears the soft plosh of the creature hitting the moat below.

“The flower fund of Bavarnica is doing essential work,” says Gaddys, squaring her feet. Quieting the soft uproar of the feast with one of her looks. She pats her coiled hair. Gazes around the room. Now she smiles, showing all her half formed child-like teeth.

There's the tinkle of “Cheers,” glasses raised and clanking silverware.

REPORT 2: COMMUNICATION

“OPERATIVE JENGI?”

“Yes.”

“Communication. We want to know how the Sinta resistance are talking to each other. We assume it's in code. Please begin.”

“When the general's lab technicians found the math of voices undercover, the algorithm, they thought they had removed the Sinta's last power play: they could no longer talk to each other in their workplaces, not even in code. At least not without being monitored, but in fact as the Sinta turned it on its head and used it, even that turned out to be a chink in the general's system.”

“How do you mean exactly?”

“Well, he's stopped listening. Thinking they've stopped talking. Stopped being able to reach out to each other in their work places and so forth. But … Observation. Communication. Friendship. The general forced the Sinta to get better at all these things. And talking is still the true key to the Sinta resistance, don't doubt it.”

“Alright Jengi. Though I am the doubting kind. Go on. How did these Sinta get round the listening system? And surely there's not much they can say, iffens they's bugged on all sides.”

“It's the opposite. Now Sinta can talk fairly freely, even under the general's bugs and listening devices, so long as they find the right notes. It takes practice, but in the end it's less risky than their old sign language.”

“They had a sign language?”

“Yes. They still do. But it has to change so often that misunderstandings are common, and not even the new language's own speakers can keep up. Does flicking a napkin to the right mean yes or no? Mopping the floor with an anticlockwise motion, Egg Boy's coming or else the coast is all clear, go ahead folks? For myself I never got my head around the ever-changing sign language. Not that it doesn't take practice to skip the algorithms too. Find the music. All Sinta secret talking takes skill. And not everyone has the knack of the new speaking yet. Sinta who're naturally musical seem to be doing the best.” He pauses. Strokes the faintly curved bridge of his nose. “Mostly the Sinta now ‘talk' in a kind of hybrid of both signing and musical speech. The OneFolks imagine that they do all this for the feast's entertainment.”

“And Mamma Zeina?”

Jengi is silent for a long moment. Scratches his head and then he appears to have decided something. “Mamma Zeina's voice sounds like she's discussing the colour of the pretty napkins she's folding, or the sheen on the cutlery, the curve of the glassware and this is important too. For a Sinta. Being calm, lighthearted. The general's listening devices will tune into the cadence of heightened emotion. A Sinta is not allowed to be angry, no matter what happens. But you can improve on your emotional reactions with practice. As it turned out some Sinta have the nature for that sort of work and some don't. In
the beginning it was the warriors in the resistance movement who were arrested first. They couldn't hide it.”

“It?”

“Sorry, Sir. What did you say?”

“It. You said they couldn't hide It. What is It?”

“It's the rage, Sir. They couldn't hide their outrage. It was a blow to lose the Sinta warriors, but in the end the resistance went on without them. But the outrage lived on. That was the main thing.”

“Right.” Small pause. “Er … Carry on, Jengi. So what are we left with?”

“It is a measure of the success of the resistance that the general now believes he has mostly cowed the Sinta folks who are left in the OneFolks' village. When the truth is …”

“Yes? What is the truth Jengi?”

“The truth is he's only sent the Sinta resistance deep underground.”

There's a long silence and then, “Jengi? Mamma Zeina is Z. Isn't she? Your revolution's third thought Seed?”

Jengi is calculating fast. “Yes.” Jengi says.

“I thought as much. Alright. Good work, Jengi.”

There's a crackle on the line. Hiss and the connection ends abruptly.

Jengi feels a cold, slithering sensation at the pit of his stomach. He's name-checked Mamma Zeina. It's a risk. That's bad. He likes to think she would understand … Would want to protect the true third Seed. Jengi has learned to make such deals with himself. He slopes back toward the lights of the OneFolks' village, the shop.

THE GENERAL'S WIFE

“AYE,” SAYS GADDYS APPROVINGLY, “That's the creed of the ladies of the flower fund of Bavarnica, we LOVE flowers!” She says, with a flourish of her jewelled hands and her heavy bracelets clank together. Cattish fingernails extend and retract. And then she says it again, raising her voice to drown out the thumps and rhythmic hollers of the edge farmers' rain dance, sounds rising up over the killing forest and past the fence. Seeping in through the air vents and the narrow slats in the windows of the general's great house, followed by the rising shriek of the Egg Men's sirens, the low sickening rumble of the general's drones mobilising. Scrapping and cawing of crows.

The clamour of the feast table rises.

Small puffs of raspberry coloured smoke is regularly emitted from the flower table decorations, colouring the OneFolks' faces a deeper and deeper pink, one cheek at a time.

The general's wife, a little drunk and over-pollinated, seated closest of all to the grotesque table flowers, sways uneasily to her feet and gets a little off-message, “The edge farms …” She begins. “The edge farmers have become paralysed by fear since their rains were taken.” She slurs the last three words, so that they run into one and seem to lilt up at the end like the rain dance drumbeat. Long pause as if she's listening then to the low rumble of drones and the silent feasters listen with her. Now she raises her huge violet eyes toward the chandelier
above the feast table. It gently shudders.

Now the general's wife teeters a little on her stilt heels. Dips suddenly to one side. She falls off one stilt and it clatters on to the tiles and slides out from underneath the feast table. The man beside the general's wife catches her, only just, supporting her by her left elbow. Now he gently entreats her to sit down, which she does, a little bemused and rubbing at her left ankle. Someone fetches her fallen left stilt.

Gaddys sniffs. She pats her coiled hair.

“The general's wife was once the most famous beauty in Bavarnica,” Mamma Zeina tells Zorry now. She seems to Zorry to be describing someone other than the feeble looking woman in front of them. “She was strong.” Mamma Zeina says, inclining her head slightly toward Zorry, “And you must understand that I am only talking about physical strength now, Zorry. Which must not be mistaken for real strength, for resilience Zorry. She had athleticism. Swagger.” Mamma Zeina sniffs dismissively. “It's a surface element, not the real thing … The Sinta who remain finally know better what true strength is. What real resistance is.” Turning gently toward Zorry. “Strength is endurance. We bend first and break last. Above all, we go on Zorry.” Searching gaze. “We talk. We share what we know. What we've learned. Do you understand me?”

Zorry turns away. “Tell me more about her.” Flicks her eyes discreetly toward the general's wife.

“Some Sinta claim to have witnessed the general's wife hurdle a five bar gate, fall to the other side of it, laughing and flushed. But she barely broke a sweat doing it. That was in the last era of course. Before the Diggers' revolution and the general's Reckoning which came after it. There were high
hopes in the early days of Bavarnica. Hope was the spirit of the times then, and joyful. Not the thing it has become for us now. It was a time when all manner of things seemed possible.” She stops talking for a moment. “The wind of that early hope has changed direction. Leaves gather, rise gently before the storm, Zorry. And we are the coming storm.” Zorry feels a shiver.

Gentle rain is spitting through the vents in the windows. Warm air. Mamma Zeina turns toward Zorry, “The general's wife … She had these wide, amazing dark violet eyes. Don't you see? It's a mixture of all Bavarnica's colours, Zorry.”

She opens her own eyes wide as though to demonstrate. “A luminous complexion. Which looked like she could be any tribe, all or none, and changed depending on who was looking at her and on the quality of the light. A great … Public speaker. Although of course all in mime.” Mamma Zeina thinks for a moment. Eyes swivel left and up, she seems to be seeing the past open up in her mind's eye.

“She had long hair which she kept curled and dark rust coloured, hennaed like a Sinta some weeks.” She sighs. “Most Sinta no longer believe she was ever one of us,” Mamma Zeina blinks and stares wide eyed at Zorry. As if she's looking for an answer in the girl's face. Her voice becomes hard. “A true Sinta woman never caves, the way the general's wife has. A true Sinta woman would never give up, the way she has … Take the pollen.” She sighs.

“At other times she wore bright knotted head scarves like the edge farm women and once even a helmet-like hat, which the Sinta called her Egg Boy hat. We thought, by these small changes in costume, she was still doing her mime act. Doing
it from the heart of government. In our naïveté we believed …” Sighs again, heavily.

“You believed the general's wife was for you all. All the tribes.” Zorry peers at Mamma Zeina. Takes and folds a napkin neatly. Adds it to the pile. Mamma Zeina is gazing softly at her, “Zorry …”

She can't finish. In a moment Zorry seems to see this. “What happened?”

Mamma Zeina seems to need to steel herself just to answer the girl's question. Holds on to the serving counter with both hands. Zorry notices her knuckles softly darken. “And then the Sinta mountain excavations on The Reach were ended, all the Sinta's … Improving projects. Our dreams. The Sinta were rounded up.” She coughs, takes a moment to clear her throat. “The Diggers rose up when they realised what was happening, being an ancient warrior tribe, but the Diggers led with courage not planning, and then … The tanks came, Zorry. It happened fast.” Mamma Zeina stops talking for a long time. “They were the best of us. In the aftermath, while we licked our wounds and tried to gather, Zorry, the killing forests were replanted, changed.”

“So the revolution failed and the tribes were divided then.”

“That's when
she
changed.” They both look back at the general's wife, head drooping over her empty plate. Flower girls fill up her plate but she won't eat. “She sickened with the times.”

And then Mamma Zeina turning sadly toward Zorry, “We had high hopes of her, like I said Zorry.” Breathes out heavily. “But that was a long time ago. Another time. We were all of us different then.” Mamma Zeina examines a small nail in the wall.

“You think she tricked you?”

“Maybe.” She appears to think about this. “No, I don't think so. One thing is certain … she was used, Zorry. The general …” She sighs. “Oh, I just stopped knowing at a certain point, Child. Your questions are undoing me.”

Zorry appears to ignore this. “So if she's not a Sinta and not a OneFolk then what tribe is she?”

“No one knows, Zorry. There were rumours among us at one time that the general's wife wasn't from Bavarnica at all, but dropped like a bomb or a food parcel from clean out of the sky. That was thirty years ago. More.”

“You think she's a foreign agent? You think she was a foreign weapon of some kind?”

“Maybe.”

Mamma Zeina looks over toward the general's wife, notes her curled head drooping over her plate. Her bleak opaque gaze. “Maybe she was something like that once,” she says. “Who knows what she is now. What or who.” Turns sharply toward Zorry. “It don't do to underestimate the general. Any living thing can be turned, like I said. Any. Living. Thing.” She looks up. Stares into the space just over Zorry's head. “But that's a thing that can work both ways, Zorry.” Mamma Zeina eases herself up with a grim expression. Once on her feet she mops her forehead. And then leaves Zorry to her own thoughts.

Beauty has not quite done with the general's wife yet, but she seems to Zorry to have done with it. There's a carelessness about her dress, dark circles from un-sleep in rings under her eyes. Her teeth have been browned by flower pollen. As if she senses she's being examined the general's
wife looks up, one brief shrewd gaze at Zorry, causing Zorry to catch her breath and hold it. Ghost of a smile and then the general's wife lets her head fall over her empty plate again. Zorry breathes out.

“We must send out our flowers,” Gaddys repeats. In a warning tone. And then a cool steady eye on the general's wife, who flinches lightly, trembles. Wilts a little more under her gaze. The room of feasters raise their glasses, tinkle, clink, to cover the sound of the sirens outside. The general's wife rises, wobbling, to her feet. A small gasp at this clear breach of feast protocol. It isn't the general's wife's turn to speak.

And then it happens …

The general's wife's glass tumbles out of her left hand, rolls and hits the wall. Splits neatly in two large parts, like a new hatched egg.

There is a long, strange moment. Silence.

Gaddys and the general's wife are locked gaze to slow, knowing gaze.

Neither stands down.

Later in the kitchen, Mamma Zeina and Zorry stand at the serving hatch, preparing the second course.

“I don't get it,” Zorry says. “Why won't Gaddys let the OneFolks' talk to each other?”

“Fear.” Mamma Zeina says, and a feeling in her stomach like intestines tighten and then unravel. She can't speak for one long moment on account of the pain. And then rubbing at her upper stomach. “She won't put the general's wife's old allies together.”

“What?” Zorry is confused.

“She's separated the old friends of the general's wife.” She
rubs her nose and continues, “Friendship is deemed radical in the OneFolks' village. Power blocks can appear amongst the OneFolk overnight, the general and Gaddys know better than to allow that.” Wincing again.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing, Child.”

“The two at the end on the right …” Zorry says. Opening her eyes wide.

“What about them?”

“They're protecting each other. It's subtle but … Watch them Mamma Zeina.”

“I will, Zorry. Well observed Child. And Gaddys hasn't seen it?”

Zorry shakes her head. “Not as far as I can tell.”

“Good. What else have we got?”

“Purple wig and the one with the silver studded collar, they hold their breaths when the flowers puffed pollen just now. Old man with the green embroidered corset only pretended to pass out with the pollen fumes. But he's been turning his head away from it and his cheeks ain't pinked much. Seems like trouble amongst the OneFolk, Mamma Zeina. And it'd explain why Gaddys has been acting paranoid lately. Why she's been getting … worse.” Zorry looks thoughtful. “This could help us?” Rolls and puts away a napkin.

“Yes it could, Zorry. Good work.”

“And the other thing …”

“There's another thing?” Mamma Zeina says, rubbing at her stomach, eyeing Zorry.

“Gaddys' Beloved Flowers. I mean to say … The women. The flower girls.”

“Aye, Zorry. Continue.”

“Employing pretty young OneFolk women as assistants to the feast?”

Mamma Zeina raises her eyebrows. “Yes?”

Zorry speaks slowly, thoughtfully, “Can't be much fun. I mean … for them. Might they …?”

“The flowers won't help us, Zorry. That's been tried. They are in Gaddys' employ, Child. They won't give up their treats. At least … Not yet.”

Through the serving hatch Zorry eyes one of Gaddys' most Beloved Flowers sway gracefully over, plop herself down in a OneFolk farmer's lap, the petals around her face unfurling. Soft roll back of the leaves arranged in her hair. Gaddys smiles approvingly and then the younger woman turns her sweet head gently toward the old farmer … Breaks into a smile of such deliciousness that the farmer is unnerved for a moment. And then quite in her palm.

Gaddys turns away, smirking.

Only Zorry catches the beloved flower girl's grimace at a second beloved flower over the old man's shoulder. The second girl's petals droop discreetly by way of response.

“Holy baobab.” Zorry grins and ducks under the side serving table. “Sign language? Poor Gaddys is in more trouble than she knows.”

“I'm telling you … Gaddys' flower girls won't help us Zorry. They will be on the side that wins, when it's over. When we are counting our dead and spitting out teeth. Then they'll sashay over and tell us they were on our side all along.”

“Maybe …”

“Forget them. The last Sinta to hold your position found
out Gaddys' true weakness, Child.”

“And what is that?”

“It's hard for the OneFolk tribe to be her enemy but in truth Gaddys has lately made it just as dangerous to be her friend.”

“And that's a weakness?”

Zeina turns to her with surprise, “Of course it is Zorry! It means that Gaddys, unlike us, has no real alliances. No one who would die to get her out of a hole or for whom she herself would jump into one.” Turning to Zorry then to check her understanding. “That's the Sinta advantage Zorry. We won't desert folks. We don't sacrifice each other. Its the only leg up that we have, Zorry. Friendship. We must never lose that.” She looks softly at Zorry. “Trust, Zorry. The Sinta can count on each other. We gather.”

Zorry eyes her.

“We gather.” She repeats. And then turning warmly toward her favourite. “Gaddys and the general can play every card there is but that one, Zorry. Remember it.” Zorry looks away.

Mamma is now clutching on to her stomach with both hands, panting a little. If Zorry turned toward Mamma Zeina now she'd see that the side of her neck ripples strangely. That she sweats.

Zorry blinks. She's been awake more than forty-eight hours now. Most of it in a cold copse, under damp leaves, her body is starting to really protest. Her eyelids feel brittle and prized open only by a supreme effort of will. Zorry's vision gently swims. She leans her head on the cold wall, feels herself tuning out, the room blurs. Mamma Zeina's elbow, sharp, in her ribs. Blink and blink.