Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction (7 page)

“
Yes, but he knew. He
textured that he knew. Why not let him know he was
right?”

“
So he would believe it’s
important to me that he doesn’t know because I’m afraid of what he
could do to me. Qjem, like the other elderly men who held the same
position before him, is smart. But if I can convince him that I’m
worried about him knowing my position in this world, I get two
things.

“
First, he thinks that I’m
stupid for trying to fool him, so I represent no threat to him or
his intellect and of course to his pride. Second, he’ll believe
that he has power over me and over other women as well, if he can
threaten to take the throne from me or make other women feel lost
without their queen and in that way more manageable. He doesn’t
understand the implications of the position, and he also doesn’t
know that I am the first one who has lasted so long in
it.

“
Finally, my child,
everything comes down to the same thing. Pride. Or not holding the
knife by the blade. Which is precisely what we’re going to have to
do with Chaid Khasat. But we must carry it out for the good of all
women. Let’s wait a pair of bleeds before ordering him be made to
realize how he should behave. If we do it sooner, it might be too
suspicious and that could hurt us.”

Charni’s mouth gaped in
surprise and she shook her head to show her confusion.

“
But … but … I thought
that …” she began. “Well … you thanked Qjem. I got the impression
that you were satisfied and agreed with the way they solved the
problem with Chaid.”

“
Chaid became an invalid
too soon. At the time, he should have accepted that it’s better to
die in battle than to be too weak to fight or simply be a burden on
everyone else. But he was a coward. He preferred to keep living in
a sorry state than to face up to his responsibility to his people.
There are many ways to be an invalid, it’s true. But those who are
and arrive here before they get old, soon or later wind up
accepting their shame and try to make amends by being the least
bothersome as possible or trying to be useful to the other men who
form our last line of defense.

“
Yet Chaid has been here
for seven cycles and not only is he an authentic nuisance, he isn’t
even man enough to admit his own weakness. Instead, he spills his
own rage, frustration and shame on all women, physically and
brutally. His is an aberration. Obviously one of us women is
responsible for having brought such a weak warrior as him into the
world, but since we’ll never know who produced him, we can’t hold
all women responsible and make us all pay for it this
way.

“
But there’s more. We
ought to be especially careful with him because he’s not only
brutal, he’s shown that he can be as insidious as a woman. That is,
he knows how to use some of our weapons. So it’s logical to think
that the justice Qjem did won’t be enough to stop him. No. If I
were in his place, men’s justice wouldn’t stop me either. So just
like us, he’ll say he is guilty although he doesn’t believe it.
He’ll move slowly and carefully, and he’ll be patient, very
patient, and when he feels sure he’s fooled everyone, he’ll act
again, but cautiously, so no one can accuse him of anything again.
Oh … I’m sure of it.

“
Now, as good Ksatrya
women, we’ll be patient too. We’ll make him believe that his
punishment satisfied us, we’ll make him feel comfortable and safe,
we’ll keep it to ourselves when he does something barbaric, and
once we’re sure that the rest of the men don’t know we’re at his
side, he’ll wind up lowering his guard, and then and only then will
we make him face facts.”

And in fact, it all happened just as her
mother had predicted. Three bleeds of the queen later, Chaid Khasat
was made to face reason: a spectacular fall left him in bed and
unable to move for more than a half a cycle.

Of course, the women who cared for him with
complete devotion and fuss made sure that his recovery was not as
fast as it might have been.

No man accused any woman of having provoked
the accident. They simply assumed that Chaid Khasat had been too
clumsy, since women had previously fallen and hurt themselves in
the same place, although with more minor injuries.

They also did not think to ask the women who
cared for him why it took so long for his bones to knit and for him
to recover. They simply assumed that his bones were as weak as
Khasat himself.

And of course Kesha, who had asked Qjem a
couple of times to do something about that place before someone
else hurt themselves (as Chaid eventually did), enthusiastically
thanked him once the work was finished.

If Qjem had any doubts
about her, he did not show them. What’s more, he agreed to be the
assistant in Charni’s initiation ritual.

Just as the queen had planned.

Between classes and practice sessions, time
flew like a sigh. Charni never found the right moment to ask her
mother about the questions that tormented her about the unexpected
existence of other sisters. In fact, it took her a long time to
realize that there would never be the right moment.

She had found time to
investigate by herself, although it was not easy at first. No
matter how delicate she was with her questions, no adult felt
comfortable enough to give her answers. In the end, the response
was always the same: Dear, it’s best to ask your mother.

They were right. After all, what they could
tell her would be a partial perception of the issue, possibly
distorted by the passage of time. The person who was most involved,
who had experienced it first-hand, was her mother. Still, Charni
suspected that if she had never brought up the subject, it was more
than probable that it was as painful for her as it was
shameful.

At times Charni could not
keep from asking herself whether her mother’s insistence on her
becoming queen was nothing more than a desire to find redemption
via her daughter. Or, perhaps, to eliminate any doubt about the
information she had inside her.

Charni had no doubt that
there was no madness within her, although from what Deva had said,
it did not have to be something she could feel. The madness could
be asleep and some personal event might awaken it, the way it
seemed to have happened in the case of her two older sisters. Both
perfectly healthy, both totally in accord with Ksatrya women’s
feelings.

Yet something that she had
been told made her doubtful. No one had ever given a thought to the
possibility that part of the guilt might lie in the men with whom
both sisters had … failed. Why? Was it so improbable that in
addition to pride, Ksatrya women transmitted the information of
madness, for example? Why was it so logical to think it was always
women’s fault? Why make them responsible and distressed over every
failure?

Of course, she never asked other women those
questions. Not even Deva or her mother. Oh, no, above all not her
mother. As Charni understood it, questions were the forerunner to
madness, and she did not wish to frighten or worry her mother. In
the end, they were only questions, right? At no time did it pass
through her mind to take her own life or betray the Ksatrya women.
So they did not seem to be anything like the symptoms of her older
sisters.

Qalja, after her first aberration, had
quickly produced a girl who lived for four cycles, developing at a
normal rate like any other girl … before a strange condition made
it hard for her to breathe and killed her. That upset Qalja so much
and made her feel so guilty, certain that there was something wrong
with herself, that she decided to take her own life to save herself
the suffering of a possible third aberration.

But why did Qalja think
that it was all her fault, even her daughter’s death? She herself
had suffered from that same condition and recovered, so why did she
think her daughter was weak instead of thinking she was not
sufficiently developed to get well? Had she not also produced a
strong and healthy man? Was she the only one who had produced
aberrations? Well? What had brought her to such a drastic
decision?

Charni had a suspicion
that she also did not dare to share with anyone. The person closest
to her sister at that time was Lain, Latha’s mother. Was it crazy
to think that Lain had begun hating Charni’s mother even before she
had learned about this, and that words with a hidden message had
spilled death into Qalja and eliminated one more obstacle to
reaching her objective?

Yes. Maybe that was it. Maybe Charni had
begun to think the same twisted way that she had perceived in her
mother during the last twelve cycles. And yet …

Then there was the case of her older sister,
who was called Kesha like her mother, devoted to the cause, the
best Ksatrya woman of all. Smart and the most sought-after by men
to help them see, she had produced two men when she was only
fourteen cycles old.… It seemed she was going to follow in the
footsteps of her mother, the newly proclaimed queen. And yet, when
she was sixteen cycles old, she was accused of betrayal and exiled
to the other world to suffer the torments there forever.

And that was the part that Charni did not
understand well.

From time to time men asked for women to
take with them to the other world to help them see while they had
to fight battles in some remote place. They went so far, far away
that if they were not accompanied by Ksatrya women, they could lose
their sight because they could not get back home in time to satisfy
their member.

It was the job of the queen to decide who
ought to suffer the punishment of accompanying them and living far
from the protection of other women. But what woman deserved to have
her skin burn or never discover her place in a world where there
were no limits, a world where she could not go to the queen to make
men accept reason in case one of them was weak and broke the code?
How many betrayals would it take to have to atone for them in such
a savage way? Charni doubted it was like that.

Then … what had her sister done to deserve
it? Had it been some kind of ruse by her mother to show that she
would not be weak when it came to doing justice with her
daughters?

Someone had said that her older sister had
betrayed them by falling in love with a man and making him fall in
love with her, too. Charni did not understand the concept, but was
it so horrible that deserved a sentence like that?

“
What are you thinking
about, my child?” she felt from her mother as she was passing
by.

Charni was silent for a moment. Had the
moment finally arrived? No. It would never be the right time, but
enough time had passed to try it. After the next sleep, her
initiation ritual would take place. With a little luck, she would
produce her first life and she would finally become an adult. She
was earning the right to be treated like one.

“
Why haven’t you ever
talked to me about my other sisters?” she dared to ask.

“
Well,” her mother
answered calmly, “you’ve taken longer than I expected to ask me
that. I thought I had textured well to you that you shouldn’t fear
anyone or anything.”

“
You knew? For how
long?”

“
From the moment when you
went to school, it was only a question of time before some girl
told you about it to try hurt you. But the biggest hint was to feel
how you were involved in helping your younger sister learn,
insisting that she recognize you and remember you.”

“
But … why didn’t you say
anything?”

“
Because that was part of
what you needed to learn.”

“
What I needed to learn?
What?”

“
I perceive that you’re
angry. Understandable, but you need to make a bigger effort not to
show it so much.”

“
Mama, please, could you
stop acting like a queen and be my mother for once?”

“
Charni, don’t be a little
girl. Everything I do and say is as your mother because I only want
what’s best for my daughter. Because of who you are, whether you
wind up being a queen or not, you’re going to be the object of envy
and trickery. I only want you to be strong and learn for yourself
how to use the means to survive in this world because, young woman,
this has only just begun. After your ritual of initiation,
everything is going to be different from what you’ve lived until
now. The competition will be brutal. Being an adult isn’t easy,
Charni, not at all.”

“
I know that.”

“
No, you don’t. Believe
me.”

“
Fine, you’re right. As
you’ve taught me, talking about what you don’t know or haven’t
perceived first-hand leads to self-deception or lies. But what does
this have to do with not telling me about my sisters?”

“
More than you think. To
begin with, what isn’t spoken of tells us more than what is spoken
of. In the same way, if you want to learn about something, it’s
good to investigate it, but in the end you have to stop beating
around the bush, no matter how uncomfortable it may turn out. And
finally, the connections you create with other women will be key to
your development as a person. It’s important to chose wisely. Qalja
got bad advice. As for Kesha … it was a terrible
deceit.”

“
Then I was right. … Lain
caused Qalja’s death, right?”

“
I can’t prove it, but I’m
sure of it. Ever since she was a child, Qalja was very sensitive
and too easily influenced, and she could never fit in. Lain was
your sister’s bedmate, the same way Nanji was for you in practicing
body exploration. Qalja confused this complicity with friendship.
But the links between body and mind are different. Although you
trust Nanji, something tells me that when Deva officially becomes a
young woman, you’ll make her your mentor, am I wrong?”