Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Just after sunrise, I bring down the talp. It is feeding on the tender green shoots along the creek, its soft boneless tail swishing mindlessly in the water when the stone from my sling strikes it cleanly along the side of its head. It flops over into the creek and water rises along its side and mats the green fur. Picking it up by the tail, I swing it a little to shake the water off and study it carefully, turning the head from side to side to see more clearly the place where the green of sea water shades into the green of cale leaf and then into wet moss.

  It is not the same one.

  This talp is paler, younger, with a shorter snout. From behind the tree, the sunlight filtered green by leaves hanging over the creek, I was sure it was the talp I have tracked every morning for . . . I was sure. I have watched it amble from its hole by the sea cliffs, eat the young shoots, slide aimlessly through the forest. I was sure. This was the same talp.

  Only it is not.

  Suddenly I swing the talp against the cale tree. The green head caves in over one eye, and bones shudder and crack. The foul smell the talp uses against predators is released and fills the air. Over and over again I smash the carcass, until the cale bark is soggy and bits of bloody green fur sticks to my arms and breasts. I smash the talp until it is not recognizable as a talp, and then I leave it and walk into the forest, breathing heavily, not looking back at the mistaken talp, not looking back at the lost morning, not looking back.

  Halfway across the clearing, I whistle softly, and the ralum-alloy door on the hut slides open. Inside, it is dim and cool. The mother lies on the floor near the gray bulk of the Colonizer. She is folded over on her self, knees to forehead, keening softly, and the brother crouches near her, naked and miserable. “Mother,” he whispers, over and over. “Mother, Mother, Mother . . .” I know that he has been there all night and all morning, and I look away from her. Although we are the same age, he is so thin, except for his face. His face is round, with curved cheeks and eyes so wide that suddenly I think of the talp I have smashed and then I cannot look at the brother either.

  “Mother, Mother, Mother . . .”

  “Who is she?” I whisper.

  “Mother, Mother . . .”

  He will not answer me until the mother’s bad time is over. I wait rigidly, gripping the two fish I caught after leaving the talp. A little water drips from the fish to the floor of the hut, and the floor disinfects and dries the puddle. I do not move; the mother’s keening holds me still. Slowly the keening lessens, but not all at once. She lies still for a moment, then suddenly jerks and looks around, her eyes unseeing. Then the keening again. Every time her body jerks, the brother puts out his hand, careful not to touch her but only to stroke the air above her head, murmuring, “Mother, Mother, Mother.” The mother glances at him, but it is impossible to tell what she sees. The times when she is no one are always the worst.

  “Mother, Mother, Mother . . .”

  The keening becomes softer; she is starting to sleep. Sometimes, however, sleep can take hours. My knees hurt from being locked in waiting, but I dare not shift position. The spaces between jerks become longer, and in one of them the brother impatiently waves at me to leave the hut. Released, I go gratefully, my legs weak. I head across the clearing to the creek, wash the fish, and blow on the embers in my fire circle.

  I cannot watch the mother’s bad times anymore. Once—but once there were not so many bad times. For whole days at a time, the mother was Hwang Ho or Uba or Gianelli or Karen or Colette. Even Colette was better. When she was Uba, she would sit with the brother and me in the sunshine, nuzzling us and cracking nuts for us the whole afternoon. When she was Hwang Ho, we would all plant shoots, scratching with long sticks where the creek lay flat and squishy over the warm ground. When she was Karen, she sat with us on the flat rock by the creek and told us how the creek flowed to the sea and the sea flowed to another creek and up that creek was the City, the only City in the world.

  She has not been Karen or Uba or Hwang Ho for a long time.

  The brother said once, not looking at me, that it might not be this creek after all that flowed to the sea that flowed to the City. It might be another creek, another City, another time. It might be anywhere. But he is wrong. I know he is wrong. It is this creek, this sea, this time. It must be, because although the brother says he remembers nothing, I remember the City. I remember—

  “The fish smells good,” the brother says timidly, coming up behind me. There are shadows around his eyes. He looks at me sideways, crouching a little; I know the look. He is sorry for his impatient wave in the hut, afraid that I am hurt at being sent away, ashamed that his choice to be the one endlessly crouching by the mother has shut me out. Sorry, afraid, ashamed—the brother is always sorry or afraid or ashamed, while he spends with the mother those long hours I cannot make myself do. I scowl at him savagely, and touch his hand.

  “The fish is ready. You have the middle part.”

  “Oh, no. I ate already—out of the Colonizer. You take the middle, sister.”

  “You,” I say, very slowly and clearly.

  The brother looks longingly at the fish, lying golden in the ralum-alloy pan. “I’ll take the middle to the mother. That’s what she always liked—before.”

  I look away, stony. The brother moves closer; I can feel him by my elbow, Sorry, afraid, ashamed.

  “Sister—”

  “I don’t care what you do with the fish.”

  “I just—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’ll eat the middle,” the brother says. He picks it off the pan, gingerly; it is very hot. As he eats it he smiles, first in pleading, but then with pleasure, and I feel my face unclench.

  “Is it good?”

  “It’s good.”

  “The mother can eat the middle of the other fish,” I say, and he smiles at me. It is like Big Moon coming up in the sky.

  “Sister, do you remember when we had that picnic with her, before? It was when Big Moon and Little Moon were close together—remember? She was being Gianelli and we were being Santo and Domenico, and we had some fruit saved up in the Colonizer, and you cooked that talp you—”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you remember! She told us about that time with the prince, and the city with all the bridges, and—”

  “It wasn’t the City,” I say.

  “She said there was a city and—”

  “It wasn’t the City!” I reach over and grab his arm. Red spots grow under my fingers. The brother looks frightened, holding a piece of fish uselessly between us. I drop his arm.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But that was a different city she was telling us about that time, don’t you remember? Roma. That wasn’t our City, the City we came here from. Don’t you remember that City at all? Can’t you remember . . . anything?”

  The brother shakes his head. There are still red spots on his arm where I grabbed him. “You tell me,” he whispers.

  But I cannot. I have never told it. There is so little to tell, and if I tell it, it will be even littler to anyone who has not remembered it and dreamed it and seen it as much as I. Just one room, one person. No, two persons, because the mother was there, too, although I can’t remember who the mother was being. But the mother wasn’t important. I was sitting on the floor, not a ralum-alloy floor like the hut, but a floor soft and green as talp fur, shading from sea water to cale leaf to wet moss.

  The room was filled with shaded light that was not sunlight. Someone who was not the mother or the brother picked me up and held me close. His face bristled with black, thick hair, and I squealed. He whispered, “Alea. My precious little daughter Alea,” and then tossed me into the air, over and over, and I laughed while the green floor far below jiggled and danced, rushing toward me and away, toward me and away, full of green light.

  “You tell me,” the brother whispers again, and I stare at him, dumb. If I tell him, he will either remember the room—or he will not. He will know that I am Alea—or he will not. But I am A
lea. With him, I am being the sister, but I am Alea, and if he does not remember the greenlit room—if I tell him and he does not remember—

  I cannot tell him.

  I look at the ground. In a moment, the brother says, “I will take the fish to the mother now.” His voice is sorry, and afraid, and ashamed. I bend my head and hug my knees in the hot sunshine, as if I were cold.

  “She’s gone! The mother is gone!” The brother runs from the hut, hot fish on a flat rock still in one hand.

  “Gone? She can’t be gone!” I say, but of course she can. Where? Who? The brother stands trembling; the fish slides off into the dirt.

  “Go search the cliffs!” Where? Who? Last time it was the cliffs, she was Maria Torres, she tried—

  “No, wait, I’ll do the cliffs. You go to the fruit grove, see if she’s Uba. Then try the beach—remember when she was the fisherman? If she’s not there . . . if she’s not there, come back here. Run!”

  I dash toward the cliffs, looking back over my shoulder. The brother stands still, trembling. “Run!” I scream, and he starts to run.

  The cliffs are a long run from the hut, where the sea curves back around the land and the forest thins. The waves are much higher there, smashing against the rocks with a booming sound I cannot hear over my own heart. Can the mother run this far? But if she is being Maria Torres, she is running in terror, chased by those vicious animals she calls . . . What are they called? I cannot remember. It is almost the worst when she is Maria Torres, running blindly, chased by men shouting she is la bruja, and by those animals—los perros, yes—who want to tear her apart. Chased until it was better, the first time, to throw herself off the cliffs. If the mother is being Maria Torres again . . .

  I try to run faster, stumble on a root, and fall. Blood fills my mouth. I force myself up, already running. Pain tears at my left side. Sweat streams into my eyes, blinding me so that when I reach the mother, I nearly run past without seeing her.

  She is standing near the cliffs, placidly picking up stones, and I see at once that she is not being Maria Torres. Who? Leaning against a cale tree, heaving for breath, I try to think who might be picking up stones. Uba? It could be Uba. But no, the mother is walking fully erect, looking thoughtful; it could not be Uba. Uba walks bent over, dangling her arms, her mouth gaping. Not Uba.

  Who?

  “Carl, look at this,” the mother says. She sounds very happy. She comes over to me, holding out a rock. I bend with a sudden cramp and spit blood. “Just look at it. The ore content is phenomenal, and it’s right on the surface. Extraction wouldn’t even be a problem!”

  “Mother—”

  “Surface mining all the way,” the mother says happily. “Even in this gravity, it would be profitable—what they’d lose in shipping, they’d save in extraction. And with z-post less than three light-years for processing—!”

  “Come with me, Mother. It’s all right.” Slowly I circle, trying to get between her and the cliffs before she stops thinking I am “Carl” and starts thinking I am someone else, someone chasing her with los perros, someone trying to—The mother’s head snaps up and her eyes grow terrified. I throw myself forward and grab. But she is too quick; she sprints backward and I sprawl on the rocks, something twisting painfully in one ankle. The mother screams and backs away, her hair whipping back from her face. Behind her, the sea pounds. I cannot reach her in time, she will jump from the cliffs like Maria Torres the first time and lie mangled and smashed as the talp in the green light, she will—

  But at the very edge of the cliff, the mother stops and turns around. Silhouetted against the sea below, she is a dark shape, suddenly still and graceful, one knee bent forward and the opposite hip rounded. She raises her arms and laughs softly, low, in the back of her throat. Behind her, the sea crashes on the rocks, smelling of salt. Her laugh is the laugh of the picnic by the creek, of the dark man in the green-lit room.

  “Andre,” the mother says softly, licking her lips. “Cheri. Viens ici.”

  I move toward her, dragging one foot.

  “Viens a ta Colette.” She closes one eye and smiles, waggling her fingers.

  “Mother, come here.”

  “Ah, Andre!” she says, and then she is on me, wrapping her arms around my back and kissing my mouth. I roll with her away from the cliff and she laughs, a laugh from the back of her throat. Away from the edge, I try to break her grip, but her arms are locked behind my back and the laughing mouth is pressed to my hair, pulling at it with sharp white teeth.

  “Andre, Andre, je t’aime,” she laughs, and I break one arm free and hit her in the mouth.

  “Alea!” I scream. “I am Alea! Alea!”

  Blood trickles from her mouth. She goes on laughing, calling, “Andre, Andre.” I hit her again. I am sobbing, “Alea, Alea,” but I can hardly hear myself over the mother’s laughing and the screaming of the sea birds and the crashing of the sea, until the brother comes and pulls me off her and abruptly she stops laughing and starts being somebody else. Neither of us knows who.

  I will not sleep in the hut. The brother does not try to change my mind. It was he who brought the mother back to the hut, staggering under her weight while she keened and stumbled in one of the nameless bad times. It was he who pulled the Bubble out from the Colonizer and wrapped it around her so that it could spray the mist that would heal her cuts and scratches and the place on her mouth where I hit her. I watched from the door. The brother looked up at me, once, but I do not think he saw me.

  I will never sleep in the hut again.

  I lie near the creek, wrapped in my blanket, planning how the brother can take the blanket every morning and put it in the Colonizer to be cleaned and disinfected. If it rains, I will go into the forest, under the cale trees. I will make a sort of hut of leaves and branches, away from the mother’s hut, where she does not go. I stare up at the Big Moon rising from the sea, and the brother comes and sits down next to me.

  “Who was she?” the brother asks. I see that he needs to know; he will keep the name like a colored stone, turning it over and over, running his fingers through the pile of colored, useless names.

  “Colette.”

  “Only Colette?”

  “No. Colette when I hit her. Before that, Maria Torres. With los perros. Before that, someone else, I’m not sure who, maybe Karen. She sounded like Karen. Only I didn’t understand all her words, only some of them.”

  “Who were you?”

  “Andre. Before that, one of the men chasing her with los perros. And before that, someone called ‘Carl.’ ”

  The brother sits up straight. “ ‘Carl.’ Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “She says the name ‘Carl’ sometimes, in bad times. Who is Carl?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Who is she being when you have to be Carl?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But when you—”

  “I said I don’t know!” I shout, and the brother turns his head away. In the light from Big Moon, his cheek is round and pale. Sorry, afraid, ashamed. But he does not care who Carl is, who I have to be when I am Carl. But I am not Carl. I am Alea, and now I see why I do not tell the brother about Alea and the green-lit room. He would only ask who the mother was being when I was being Alea.

  I roll over on my face. After a while, I hear the brother get up and walk back toward the hut. Big Moon shines in the waters of the creek, wavery and silent, changing as the water flows so that now it is this shape, now that. The trees and sweet grasses murmur around me. I whisper to them, “Alea. My precious little daughter Alea,” but they only rustle in the wind, wordless, remembering nothing.

  The day I find the red globe, the mother is Hwang Ho. She is better; she has been Hwang Ho for days now, planting green shoots and cleaning fish and talking Hwang Ho’s words to the brother, who answers back with the words he knows and helps with the hoeing. He is being Hwang Lung and is very happy. I hunt talp, searching far inland where the fore
st climbs the sides of steep hills, coming back to the hut after sunset to store the meat in the Colonizer and let the Bubble mist my cuts and scratches. The brother and I talk very little.

  The red globe lies on the ground near the small waterfall, high in the mountains. When I first see it, I think it is a flower or a stone, but it is too bright for either. Splashing across the falls, I pick it up. Smooth and seamless as the ralum-alloy hut, it fills my palm, glowing redly. Despite the glow, the globe is not hot; it feels cool and heavy as I wait for it to do something. It does nothing.

  Still, it must be from the City. Where else could it come from? “There is only the City and the forest, the City and the forest,” the mother said once. “In the whole empty world, only the City and the forest.” Who was she when she said that? I cannot remember. But it must be this world she meant, because here is this heavy red globe, lying in my palm. Looking at it, I feel my chest begin to pound, slow and heavy.

  All the way down the mountain, I clutch the cool red glow from the City.

  “What is it?” the brother asks. He keeps his hands behind his back, not touching the globe.

  “I don’t know. But look, it doesn’t come from here. It must be from the City.”

  “How could it be from the City?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know how long it’s been up there. But I’m going to show it to the mother. Maybe she knows what it is.”

  “No!”

  I stare at him. He backs away from the glowing red ball, his round face fierce. “You don’t show it to the mother! She doesn’t need to see it!”

  “She might know what it is!”

  “It will only hurt her!” the brother shouts, but he cannot keep the shouts strong. They trail off into whispers, and the brother’s fierceness collapses. “Don’t show it to her,” he whispers. “Please don’t show it to her.”