Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction (3 page)

“
Each time I have been
able to produce a man inside of me, I have felt happy … because I
have helped protect our world. And protect you, my daughter. You,
me, and all the women here.”

Although the sounds and
caresses that accompanied the explication did not completely fill
in the empty spots in Charni’s understanding, the idea that Mama
could produce men to ensure the survival of women like herself made
her pleased, surprised, fascinated and overwhelmed all at once. And
it was still a difficult concept to take in.

“
But … but …” she began to
say. “More information? How?”

“
I can’t explain something
to you that I don’t know myself, Charni. Some men have tried to
explain this fifth sense to me, although it was hard for me to
understand. They used words like ‘light’ or ‘colors,’ but they have
never known how to transmit the concept to me. I’m sorry. I’m not
being much help to you.”

Charni tried to put all
those concepts within the limits she understood and could
assimilate. To think of “unlimited” was not too difficult for her.
Something inside her being told her that there really was something
that existed beyond the contours that she knew at that moment. Yet,
if men had a fifth sense …

“
But Mama, why doesn’t
Chaid Khasat know how to move here. Doesn’t he see?”

“
No, Charni. He lost an
extremity. And although he kept the member that allows men to see,
now he can’t do it because he isn’t whole. And since they only use
that sense to fight and protect the entrances to this world and
they don’t need other senses to do that, when they lose it, it’s
difficult for them to live in our world.”

“
A body part to
see?”

“
Yes. Here.” She indicated
the area of her contour where the lower extremities united. “We
don’t have it, that’s why we don’t have that sense and can’t live
in that world.”

“
Oh … a woman
can’t?”

It was difficult for
Charni to imagine something like that, but at the same time it was
the only explanation for that fifth sense. If her being, except for
the upper contour, was a lot like men’s, an extra collector that
let them see was the logical answer, the same way that she used her
two upper collectors to feel.

“
Hmm … something like
that,” Mama replied. “When you’re more developed I’ll tell you how
they use their member in us so that their fifth sense continues to
work and serve us. Now I want you to get prepared. Tomorrow is your
first day in school, and I have my hopes placed in you. If you
follow my steps, you can become a queen, like me.”

Although Mama had explained with sounds and
textures what school was like, to experience it for herself was
something amazing.

Like the route to take to get there, for
example.

Mama had made it well textured that she must
perceive everything on the way and that she would accompany her
until she had memorized it or until Charni herself asked her to let
her go there alone. And it was fascinating to perceive all the
contours of textures that until then were unknown, the large number
of aromas that came to her, the sounds that seemed to come from all
sides, and the quantity of new beings who placed themselves in her
path and even stopped her a few times to exchange information.

Oh! To memorize the route would not be too
difficult, but to learn to move around despite so many unexpected
barriers would be the big challenge. A trial by fire that,
according to Mama, would make her a stronger, better woman.

Added to that were the quantity of beings
with common characteristics but all kinds of limits that had been
brought together in the school.

As she would discover later, all the beings
with almost-equal contours and limits were gathered together and
brought to certain spaces separated from the rest. And in each
space there was another being, a woman with the same
characteristics as Mama, who assigned each of the other beings,
girls like her, to specific places … and she began to explain the
world to them without interruptions and only by articulating
sounds!

There were so many new sounds that it was
difficult for Charni to take them all in. Class, desk, seat, cloths
…

They were also permitted rest times during
which the girls of her class played and talked with her.

To share sounds and tactile words with other
girl beings with limits and contours like her own was so
entertaining and fascinating. … The exchange of information was so
high that when Mama came to get her and take her to the space
called home, she was so exhausted that she did not wait long to go
to bed and sleep.

And each time that she went to school, she
learned something new. Many things, really.

The being called Teache was friendly and
very patient with the girls, but firm when she needed to be. She
punished disobedience or slow learning in such a way that a girl
had to have very little self-confidence to err again.

As time went on, the subjec of the languas
of sounds and textures, the conceps of mathematics became more
complex. As did the interactions with other girls in her class.

While at first they were all like one being
united by the need not to feel alone because they were out of touch
with their own mamas, they soon formed little groups. First it was
because their desks were together, but that changed with each rest
time. And unexpectedly, the fight began.

Charni’s group of friens
became smaller while Latha’s grew. That in itself should not have
bothered her, since everyone was free to go wherever she wished in
the company of whomever she wanted. Still, it left her confused. In
the end, her friens did not get along well with Latha. That had
been transmitted many times, and yet … why, of all the groups they
could have joined, did they join up with someone they could not
stand?

Charni had asked to other girls that and
they had told her, simply, that those were bad friens. That the
ideas that they had articulated with sounds were false and that
they had only spent time with them to get information and share it
with Latha.

Why? That was what Charni asked herself
next. What sense did that make?

And the more she wondered, the more absurd
everything became.

At one point, when her
friens did not notice her presence, she heard the words of the
conversation they were having. As far as she could gather using
only sound, they were not speaking well of Charni. They used the
word “cheater” to define her, and this put her on alert because,
although she did not understand its meaning, the way it had been
used was unpleasant.

Still, since she had not sensed the entire
interchange of information, she decided to ask them and clear up
her questions. In the end, if they did not like something about
Charni, why had they not told her it directly?

But the conversation did not satisfy her
totally. They only used sounds and not textures on their contours
to offer her an explanation, even though they had been the ones who
had told her that good friens used more textures than sounds
because sounds could transmit falsehoods, but touch could not. So
what did that mean?

And so as time went by, rest time after rest
time, her group became smaller and she felt more and more confused,
sad, and finally alone.

What had she done wrong? Why had her
classmaes become so cruel and refused to share their contours? Why
had they preferred to join Latha? Why did beings tell lies?

Suddenly, during one rest time, while she
delighted in the discovery of a new contour with a flavor and
texture she had never perceived before, she felt a number of girls
surround her, and by their scents, she recognized two of her former
friens among them.

She had passed many rest times alone,
discovering the world on her own and memorizing information for
herself without the intention of sharing it with anyone, and
perhaps for that reason her contour tensed up and her senses
heightened, waiting for unexpected events. Something was not
good.

“
What do you want?” she
asked calmly in spite of how upset she felt inside.

The answer was not loud but tactile,
painful. Pinches, punches, slaps, scratches. So they had finally
decided to be sincere and use non-sound language, without lies,
making plain their rejection of her, right? Well, then, Charni also
had something to tell them.

In spite of how her contour hurt and stung
her at that moment, she began to return their ideas of rejection
and added the hate and fury that she felt. Some responded with
cries of pain, others began to use bad words to insert more
information into their punches. Charni, however, only used the
language of textures. Sounds could be false, and she did not wish
them to have any doubt about what she was telling them.

“
Don’t be foolish,
Charni,” one of her ex-friens yelled. “Don’t answer. You’re
outnumbered.”

A sharp pain in her nose left her
half-stunned. She wanted to respond, but her being, her contour,
would not obey.

She felt fury, a lot of fury. Things could
not end that way. She still had things to transit to them, such as
while they could all be whatever they wanted, that did not give
them the right to impose anything on her or humiliate her or make
her be quiet. She had nothing to hide. They had been false, not
her.

Then, to her surprise, they stopped hitting
her and began to screech hysterically.

She perceived that they were being separated
from her brusquely. As if something or … someone was pushing them.
She heard strange sounds made by their beings.

Soon they left running, frightened and
crying.

Charni, although she still felt disoriented,
separated her lower extremities and stretched the upper ones,
preparing for a new encounter.

“
Don’t worry,” said a
girl’s voice that she did not recognize. “I’m going to introduce
myself, okay?”

Although she did not feel very safe, Charni
let the girl come close and little by little she wrapped her
contour around her. Then she breathed in her aroma, used her hans
to perceive her contour, and let her do the same.

“
I’m Deva,” she said to
finalize the introduction.

“
I’m Charni.”

“
I know.”

“
Why …?”

“
Next time,” she
interrupted, “carry something like this at rest times.” She guided
Charni with one of her hans to feel what she held in the other.
“Sometimes it helps with communication. I call it ‘soft stick.’ A
big girl called it ‘pipe.’ But I like how my word sounds. It has
more texture, more meanin.”

“
Why did you get involved
in the communication?”

“
Because I don’t like
those girls. They do what Latha says and believe what Latha wants.
They are liars and cowards. They don’t have a
personaliy.”

“
Personaliy? What’s
that?”

“
Well … when you’re
obedien without fear.”

Charni was quiet, weighing the implications
of the definition.

“
I’m obedien,” she
replied. “Mama says I must be obedien. She also says I must not
have fear. Hmm … then I have a personaliy, right?”

“
I think so. You’re
obedien to big peope because that’s good. But you aren’t obedien to
Latha because you aren’t afraid. The others are. My mama says not
to obey without thinking, only obey peope who care about you, even
if it hurts sometimes. Latha is jealous of you, that’s why she
hurts you. But she won’t actually do it, she tells other girls to
do it. And Mama says that’s what cowards do.”

“
She can’t be jealous of
me. What is jealousy?”

“
Jealousy is … when a
girl’s afraid of another girl with personaliy.”

Charni spent a while without moving, without
caressing Deva to make words and complete the ideas with sounds.
What Deva had said did not seem to make sense. Although Mama had
told her she should not be afraid and being afraid was bad, Charni
had always thought that Mama meant traveling too carefully to avoid
physical pain, or staying in an infinite space without being able
to smell, hear, taste or feel anything, for example. But … being
afraid of a being? How?

Suddenly, Deva squeezed her contour with her
own. She asked Charni what she was thinking about.

What? Well, that she liked this new classmae
who knew a lot of words that she did not and … who used touch more
than sounds. And whose words did not sound false.

“
Friens?” Charni
said.

“
Friends,” Deva told her
with her contour.

Cycles passed peacefully
and without hurry. Charni’s head came to be as high as her mother’s
shoulder and even her contours began to resemble hers.

The world that surrounded her grew more
limited, more defined, and there were lots of words and concepts in
her head to describe them.

Of course she knew she was
still too young to know all the words, both the ones said out loud
and the ones written on skin, and while at times everything was
hurried (to know more, to grow faster, to learn more spaces and
sites …), she calmly listened to her mother’s advice. Such as when
she told her that … she should not be in a hurry to grow and that
patience was a great virtue among Ksatrya women.

She did not understand
that last part very well, but she understood that it was something
important by the lecturing tone of the words, especially the
tactile ones. So when she got impatient in school because one of
her classmates fell behind and slowed down the lessons, or because
the teacher avoided one of her questions (when she did not avoid
them directly by saying they would be studied in a coming class),
she made an effort to contain herself by remembering her mother’s
advice: patience.