The Seventh Day (5 page)

I have become as the loaf of bread.

My stomach, which previously had taken well to this meal, now rolls over. I think tonight the foetus will be discovered. The grey men and their city machines always know when I am breeding.

But they did not Implant me.

I look towards the back door and freedom. I think of my basket in the barn.

Then Granny whispers in my mind.
Be a rabbit, girl
.

‘And get rid of that frekin rig-out or they'll know we been letting you out of your room again.' Still I stand, looking at the door. ‘Did you hear me?' Lenny yells.

‘Your voice is loud enough to be heard by the rabbits in the hills,' I say, and his mouth opens. It is the longest speech I have made to him. It is the longest speech I have made in this house since the grey men came, or even since Granny died.

‘There's something frekin funny going on with her,' he says to Pa, but it is I who reply.

‘And is it not time for something frekin funny to go on with me?'

They sit back, stare. And I stare back at them. Until this moment I have had no concept of my own will's existence, but I find a will, and I find a deep pool of words and arguments which I give to Lenny and, like the pool in the spring cave, as I dip well into it, it remains full, growing more heated with each dip of my tongue.

‘Get that rig-out off and get yourself clean.'

‘Get that rig-out off and get yourself clean.' I mimic him too, and the words are his own and as angry as his own. Pa begins to laugh. I think I have not heard his laughter before, but Lenny does not laugh at my game. He is up; he takes my arm and walks me to the chem-tub. Still I torment him. ‘Rig-out. It is a good word,' I say. ‘Rig-out. Rig-out. Rig-out. Where did you find that good frekin rig-out word?'

He makes no more replies but loads the chem-tub, then pushes me into it, sets it to its blowing, and when it is done he leads me by my wrist to my room and turns the key. I sit on the bed and wait until I hear the flying machine, then I turn off my light, the better to see outside, and I see my old freedom tree. I can not reach it since my window has been sealed by the adhesive gun. The glass of this window is still strong, and since the black lumps of adhesive were placed there, it does not rattle in the winds.

Wrapped for the grey men, as a gift in grey paper towel, I crouch low, my fingernail picking at glue, grown hard as rock. No flakes gather beneath my thumbnail, but the rock-like substance breaks it. I suck it as I watch the city craft's searchlight circle the house, its thunder rocking my room until it settles close to the generator shed.

The light too bright for my eyes, I shade them with my hand as I wait long for the three grey men to climb down. Only two tonight. They walk with small half-running steps to where Lenny stands behind his dogs, then together they walk towards the house and out of view. Still I watch for the third of the trio. He is not with them nor is the male with the light-gun. Only the flier and his wheeled vehicle exit the belly of the craft, the large block of supplies held high. Merrily it runs towards the generator shed, and like a busy ant about its business, it backs out, turns a little, cleverly manoeuvring a load too great for it.

There will be cordial in that container. Six bottles or eight, or sometimes ten. I am not pleased to see the craft, but pleased it brings the cordial, for the bottle beside my bed is empty, and the last from the previous supplies is in my basket, in the barn.

Only two of the grey men enter my room. Only Sidley and Salter. So, where is the third of them tonight?

They are not so tall or so strong as I, but tonight I fear them, or fear the great knowledge of their tools, which will find the foetus. I back away, back until my knees press against my bed. ‘I have an illness,' I say, then I climb across the bed.

Sidley walks around, tries to take my arm. I push him hard with the heel of my hand and he near falls over.

‘Come,' the other calls. Lenny comes.

I climb onto my bed and stand there, swaying from side to side. They surround me. Certainly I might go to the left, push Salter from my path, but the door is now closed.

‘Control her,' Sidley says. ‘The program will not be delayed.' What strange voices these men have, high and trembling, as the young rooster when he thought for a week to be cock of the yard, but instead became Pa's broth.

Lenny grasps my arms. I kick him, and hard, but he is stronger than I. He holds me while Sidley places his paralysing device on my neck. I feel the prick of pain, then vomit my cheese and cornbread, and it near covers the little man. He jumps away from me, like a cat from a hissing serpent, and the two grey men run from the room as my legs grow weak. Lenny doesn't run. He supports me, lifts me onto the bed and leaves me there, uncovered.

Time passes. I am aware of him and his cleaning tool that hums and sucks at the mess I have made on the floor. I am aware of the scent of chem-wash powder, and the air-cleaning spray. I am aware that he stares at me, too, for the paper towel that wrapped me is now on the floor and I am on the bed.

When he is done with his cleaning the grey men return. They are wearing plasti-coats and full-face plasti-masks over their half-face white masks. I hear only garbled words through the breathing filters. They do not approach me, nor does Lenny, who now stands in the passage before Granny's door, grunting replies to their questions.

Do they know of my great awareness? Do they care that my mind is open to their every word?

‘Ready her for transportation.' Such an odd rhythm their words have, as if each statement is a question.

‘She ate something bad, that's all,' Lenny says.

‘The basic immunisations are complete. We will take her where we can monitor her fever.'

Hollow are their voices, as the places behind their bird bones where their hearts should live are hollow. I wonder if they wait for a sowman's heart and curse their bad luck when the incubating sow gives them a son. I wonder if they once knew the screaming of childhood, or the joy of laughter, or were they born of a plasti-womb, old, empty and grey?

Lenny does not want them to take me. ‘No one's been here to bring your frekin fever to her – less you brung it to her. And if you brung it, then she's still frekin safer here than she is out there.'

If my features could smile, I believe they would, for I think perhaps Lenny is frekin safer too while I am here, and he is also well fed. He is as the disabled males, tied with ropes of blood to the city foetus, who care not for the one they feed, but for the food and care provided to the feeder.

‘The Implantation has now been twice delayed. Ready her.'

Then Pa's voice is there. ‘How many of your Plantings are gunna be delayed when she's dead like the rest of them, boy? Take her to your frekin city and you'll find out, I reckon.'

They do not converse with Pa, and he has no dealings with them, but tonight he has made his bad leg climb the stairs. I think he has a good heart deep inside him; he has a wildness too. It is about his yellow-brown eyes, and a part of him he did not pass to Lenny. The grey men stand a while more, then seemingly with no words passing between them, they reach agreement. This is their way, as if decisions are made behind their masks without need of spoken words.

They test my heat, stick my arm twice with their fine pins, then I hear their quick footsteps receding, hear the flying vehicle roar into life, hear the thunder of its heartbeat as it swoops overhead, and I wait, unable to move.

I have been in this place many times. The paralysis will pass in time; it is of no value to fight it from within. Better to sleep through it and when I wake it will have passed. But tonight I can not sleep through it, my mind is wide open, thinking, thinking of foetus and Jonjan, of city and cave.

No light is about when Lenny returns to my room. I hear his breath and his footsteps but do not see him. I hear the door close, and I think him gone. Until his battery light is on me, and on certain places of me.

He has done this before, and always after the grey men have stilled my limbs with their pricking machine. Have I not smelt the scent of his perspiration? When he came before I had not been in this place of such awareness.

So close is he, I can feel his fast breaths upon me – as a pumpkin flower may feel the air moved by a wasp's wing. The lightbeam wanders over me, then the tool is placed on my chest of drawers and he sits down, on my bed. I am aware of movement, but more aware of the closeness of his voice, which is a low murmur, as his dogs murmur low when I sit with them.

‘So now she lay there down to sleep I pay the law me strength to keep. And if I stray before she wake the bastards then me life will take.'

I hear a slide fastener open. What is this game he plays?

My limbs awaken, so quickly. My eyes open. I must not move nor alter my breathing. And I do not move, but Lord, how I think.

‘So now she lay there down to sleep I pay the law me strength to keep. And if I stray before she wake the bastards then me life will take.' He is still murmuring, but the words are slow, rhythmic, my bed moving to the rhythm of his words.

Certainly I am breeding. And certainly, too, the grey men will know of it and suck the foetus from me when next they come, though it is not of their Implanting and does not belong to them.

And who will they blame for the making of this foetus? There is only one answer. They will blame Lenny. And certainly they will take his life – and take me to the city.

Ah. How well I bring logic to this riddle tonight.

The bed rocks faster, and his words grow faster. I did not know he had enough air in him to make so many words.

So . . . so I will go to the hills. I will take my basket and go to the hills, as Granny always bade me go to the hills if the city men came.

And what will I eat when my basket is empty? I have stolen the sharp knife, but I think I could not slit the throat of a rabbit or a rat. And how might I cook it?

Lenny can spill a rabbit's blood, and a pig's. And though I think I do not like him much, I do not want him dead.

An idea comes to me, the mere thought of which causes me to flinch.

Lenny senses my awareness and he is off my bed, his back turned. I see by the slim beam of the battery light that his hands are clumsy as they seek to fasten away that which does not wish to be fastened away.

‘I stopped them taking you, girl.' His voice is strange, strained.

It was old Pa who stopped them taking me. I know this, but do not speak of what I know. I do not speak at all, but Lord, what is this thing I am thinking? Still, I am thinking it.

The dogs' trust I have bought with my feeding of them, with my soft words and petting. Old Pa? He liked my cooking well and cleaned his plate tonight, but Pa's trust does not need to be bought; he is a freeborn, and he hates the city men as Granny hated them. If he were young and strong he would fight them – if not for me, then for the joy of fighting. Lenny cares little how his food is cooked, only that there is enough. Lenny likes the grey men's supplies, so when they return and call ‘come', he will come and hold my arms.

But he likes to look at me with his battery light, and he likes to speak his strange rhyme and . . . and shake the bed. Perhaps he would also like to hear soft-spoken words and have some petting.

What is this twisting path my mind follows tonight? Is it my mind, or Granny's? In her final days her body had little movement, but how well her mind had moved.

How can I think of this thing that I am thinking? How can I reach out my hand to Lenny, pet him?

I find I can. I pat his shoulder and he does not move away from my touch, so I take first his arm, then his hand, and I place it on my breast and I hold it there.

He is afraid. He gasps air. ‘Cover your frekin self,' he says, but his hand remains where I have placed it.

‘Now you say cover yourself, but you do not cover me when my limbs die the grey men's fake death. You shine your light on these parts of me.' He swallows, does not deny it, and I lie to him, as I lie to his dogs. ‘Your soft-spoken words gave me comfort. You may speak them again to me – if you wish to.'

And he says the words; they are not so soft, but desperate as he tries a little to remove his hand. I will not release it and his breath is coming short.

I open his fastener as I opened Jonjan's, and now it is Lenny who is made of wood, but this thing begun must be done. It takes much time before he lies with me, and it is I who must move close to the heat of him for his panting breaths have become a moaning, a sobbing.

‘Is this closeness good?' I say. ‘It comforts me. Does this closeness to another not also give you comfort?' I brush his chest and, in truth, I do not feel so good about this petting as I did with his dog. He has much hair there, rusty hair, and it is like the sharp wire of the fence and near forces my hand away, but I will not allow it to force my hand away.

And at last I have done enough and his hands are upon me and they are all over me and he is near choking for air and he is not saying his words.

I have done this entwining thing before and I think it is a good plan to do it again. If Lenny believes my foetus is of his own Implanting, he will be afraid to hold my arms for them when they say ‘come'.

I shut my eyes once he begins the closer thing and behind my eyelids, see what I wish to see, and I wish to see Jonjan. He is not Jonjan – not so youthful, so beautiful – or so strong, for though his mating tool thrusts, it is but once, twice, then he sobs and spills his seed. I know not if it is seed of labouring clone or son of a sow, only that it is thankfully done, and fast. Now I wish him to go.

He does not go, nor does he release me. He can not; his arms shake and his legs shake. I think they would not hold him should he rise from my bed, and I think of Jonjan's weakness after the mating.

‘Oh, girl,' he says, and I believe he cries.