Me Ma Supial!
Page 2
Kynn noticed a slender female of maybe thirteen or fourteen, sitting away from the main group close to the light of an open window. What drew her eye most was the large open book in the Supial’s lap. Was it one of the ‘Oldbooks’? Kynn could hardly believe her luck. But she must not seem too curious. There was still a lot of trust to build.
After the formalities were over, and she had taken a cup of their bitingly fresh ‘jump-leaf’ tea (sweetened, thank goodness, with honey), Kynn opened her pack and took out the book she had made. The women peered curiously, murmuring and whispering, but they stayed back, letting Burrawang do the touching.
Kynn glanced around. The young female by the window had closed her own book, keeping her place with one finger between the pages, and was watching unashamedly. Soon her curiosity became too great and she came over, unbidden. Kynn noticed the notch in the left ear that indicated womanhood. A new notch, still healing. So this female was about her own age.
Burrawang silently passed Kynn’s book to the newcomer, who opened the plain cardboard cover with remarkable reverence. Kynn held her breath. She had spent days deciding what to copy from the computer files. Had she got the right sized printing for their eyes? Had she chosen the best stories? And most importantly, would it lead them to start reading the Wordolord itself?
The cover opened, revealing the title.
THE BIG PICTURE BOOK OF
CHILDREN’S WORDOLORD STORIES.
The Supials all smiled. They touched the typeface, and peered closely at that one word; WORDOLORD. Of course they would not know it. The Wordolord – the one book that mattered above all others! Kynn felt her breath squeezing in and out. If this worked then maybe, just maybe, her father might soften. Maybe, just maybe, he might change his mind about the aliens.
Then the young Supial woman began flicking through the pages. Kynn wondered why until Burrawang asked, “Where are the pictures?”
Kynn buried her face in her hands for a moment, unable to breathe. No! She should have changed the title, or printed the pictures after all, using even more of her father’s precious paper. Oh, the work she had done! All those nerve-racking hours!
Then she noticed that the Supial girl’s neglected book was being held open, one page at least turned towards Kynn’s hungry gaze.
Ay-eee!
The print was tiny! Hundreds, if not thousands of words per page! And it had pictures! Small, detailed, perfectly coloured pictures of animals. Kynn’s fears vanished in her astonishment.
Oh Lordie! What a beautiful book!
She leaned closer, trying to read the page heading from upside down. Finally the strange words became organised in her mind:
LIFE ON EARTH. THE AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS
What? Life where? What sort of animals? But as she twisted further, trying to read more from the upside-down pages in the young Supial’s lap, she became aware of the Supials looking at her, talking to her.
“Where are the pictures?” they were still asking.
“I ... ah, I had to... I - I shall bring them next time. They are not ready. Sorry!”
They were gazing at her, they so calm and she so flustered.
“It’s the tea,” she said hastily, fanning at her face, tears starting down her cheeks.
What do I look like to them? Some sort of mutant: bald-faced and tail-less? And now crying!
“I have to go,” she said hastily, “Thank you... for the tea.” She stood, forgetting all the ceremonies she had learnt, all the right words to say. “I... I have to go and see now if the pictures are... are... are coloured right.”
She hurried out, down the ladder into a sea of wide-eyed children. “Hello,” she said, “hello...” as she edged her way through. Her hands were shaking as she did the shoulder touch to all she could reach, but she did not stop her flight from the village. The children set off all around her, scuttling along, whispering, pausing to peer up into her tear-streaked face.
“Why is she crying?” she heard one little voice asking.
“Because she has lost her tail,” came the authoritative reply.
SHE THOUGHT ABOUT IT as she turned the skimmer back towards the coast. Why was she crying? Because she hadn’t got it right? Because she had failed? Because she had underestimated them?
No, it’s because of Father. I expected them to be angry like he would have been. And they weren’t. They weren’t at all!
STIRRINGS
“HEY! HEY, MICA! THERE it is! There’s the Human!”
Mica woke up, having only just dropped off. He sat up with a grunt and looked around. The human was coming out of the Women’s House, wobbling on the ladder. Without a tail she looked hopelessly unbalanced.
He got up and ran silently after Pumice across the village, under the houses wherever necessary. They drew up in the shadows of the Banyan Clan House, as close as they were allowed to go to the Women’s House, and watched the strange creature leaving. She was so like a Supial in so many ways, but so different too. Ugly. Ungainly. Furless (except for her head, where she had far too much), and she wore way too much clothing.
But Mica could see - and it was so very very obvious - she was female.
“Eeyurgh,” murmured Pumice beside him, fascinated and revolted.
Mica did not reply. He was still looking, responding, and catching up on his breathing. He did not dare reveal to his brother what had flashed through his body.
He did not even want to admit it to himself.
The Human was leaving, walking in her tall stiff way amidst a surging crowd of children. The toddlers soon fell back, afraid to venture too far from the village, but the bigger ones went on.
“C’mon,” urged Pumice, the glint of a little yoodie in his young dude’s eyes. He wanted to follow too.
“No,” answered Mica, trying to cover his unease, “I, ah, I got some sleeping to get back to.”
“Okay dude,” said Pumice with a puzzled shrug, and hurried after the Human anyway.
BUT MICA COULD NOT sleep again. He lay in the shadows of the Yoodie House, surging quietly with feelings. Ayee! What was happening? Should he go talk to one of the elders about it? But then what would they know about this kind of love?
Pumice came back an hour later and told Mica all about it. “...Then she gets out this thing, like an upside down canoe, ‘cept too short, with like a big dent in it too, and she gets onto it, one leg each side, and then it goes woodle-oodle-oodle-oodle, smooth as a burrow-snake, straight as a scared parrot, flying just this far off the ground,” (Pumice showed with his hands) “shooosh away through the trees!”
“Whereabouts was this?’ asked Mica, curious for more details.
“You know the place where all the blanket-trees grow on the dry-top? You know, on the way to the coast?”
Mica said nothing, just nodded, letting Pumice babble on, “They say them Humans’ve built more houses down there now. Something called a ‘trading’, and some other big thing called a ‘temple’.”
“Who told you that?” asked Mica, glad to shift the subject away from the female for a while.
“Feldspar Banyan. He’s been down to Ocean Village a lot lately. Hey, get this, he says he’s taken a liking to their sea-fish. He wants to bring it back here, trade it. Dunno if I like sea-fish. Give me river-fish any time. But anyways what I reckon is he’s got a lovie down there. You can see it in his eyes. So I reckon one of these days he won’t be coming back. Then what do you reckon, eh?” (Pumice mimicked a baby’s cry, cupping his hands over his belly to make like a woman’s pouch ) “He-he! Ol’ Feldspar he’ll be running around! Picking pouch-moss every day! Looking as silly as a new dada, eh?”
Mica laughed, politely. His mind was elsewhere.
KYNN SLID THE SKIMMER quietly through the garden gate on the western side of the settlement, ready to answer any tricky questions. She knew how far she could have gone on the skimmer’s charge. She had the distances all worked out in her head. But fortunately there was no-one around. The day was at its hotte
st and everyone was indoors, probably for lunch.
All the same she sensed there were eyes behind some of the windows. She knew that questions would come later.
She parked it in the skimmer bay under the main solar panel array, plugged in a recharging cable and touched a control. As usual she glanced at the tech-screen, quickly scrolling through the data. Village power was at 88% and charging. Some-one was using the kitchen. All the fans were running, plus four computer terminals and the air conditioner in her father’s office. The communications dish was on stand-by, no transmissions in progress.
She sighed, wondering if the next pod drop would ever come, and more importantly, would her father let Doctor K finally join them. What does he have against her? Is she ever going to get here?
But the greatest worry on her mind was where her transmission had gone. Two nights ago she had seized the chance to get onto Judkins’ terminal and wrote:
Dear fellow Believers, I know I’m young, and that I do not have the great wisdom of my father, but in the Wordolord it says, ‘follow your heart to the Truth’. Well in my heart I feel sure now that the Supials are people like us, part of the Lord’s Wonderful Creation. I believe they have souls, and I believe they need to hear the Wonderful News as written in the Wordolord. Please open your hearts to them as well.
She set it as an email to every user and queued it onto the next transmission, then snuck away. But nothing had happened. No-one had commented.
Did I do it wrong, she wondered, is there some setting I don’t know about?
“Kynn!” called a sharp voice behind her. She spun around.
It was her mother, standing in the sunlight. Beneath her hat and sunglasses her face seemed thinner and more lined than ever before. Her voice was thin too, but hard and sharp as well, like a power drill. “Where’ve you been!?”
Kynn began on her prepared story, but her mother cut her off.
“Never mind that! Your father is furious with you! I think you better go explain yourself, before he gets any worse!”
“But I haven’t done anything...”
“Just go! Or we will all have to suffer.”
There was no point in arguing. “Yes, Mam,” Kynn murmured.
Suddenly her empty pack and skimpy clothing seemed like a shouted confession. She slipped off the pack as unselfconsciously as she could and left it on the skimmer, then hurried to her bare little room to change.
PASTOR DIRK GARRETT Wheeler was sitting, reading softly aloud from his big leather-bound copy of the Wordolord when his daughter knocked hesitantly at his door. His voice banged out like the thud of a pneumatic punch.
“Come in!”
Kynn came in, unnaturally straight and nervously resolute. She was wearing her second-best temple gown, in an effort to mollify him. “I hear you were calling for me?” She kept her voice calm and neutral, in ‘safe mode’ as she liked to think of it.
But he wasn’t running in safe mode. “Have you been consorting with those animals again?” he growled dangerously.
“No,” she promptly lied, “I just took a skimmer down the south beach, just to pray to the Lord and...”
“Don’t lie to me!” he roared, “I know where you’ve been!”
How? she wondered, as the shock of his words hit her, Of course, a tracer beacon! How dare he!
“What was it this time?” he hissed, “Giving them food? Giving them clothing? Ooo, you make me sick! They are animals, girl! ANIMALS!! And I don’t want you encouraging them to think they are anything else!”
“Doctor Nam says...”
“Doctor Nam!” he snorted dismissively, “What does she know about it? She is not down here, breathing in their stench every day, listening to their babble and their disgusting mating calls!”
“It is singing, Father. You know they...”
“I do not want to know! There is nothing to know! I am in charge of this landing,” he banged the book on his desk for emphasis, “and you, you have become fly-blown! Your corrupted thinking is undermining this whole colony!”
He paused as the shock of his words hit her; ‘fly-blown’, meaning she had been infected by the maggots of the Dark Lord just like everyone had been back on the doomed Evil Orb. Kynn stood open-mouthed, as if he had actually hit her.
Pastor Wheeler then softened his voice subtly.
“Do you have any idea of the sacrifices that we made to get you here? The cost of buying that spaceship up there? No, of course you don’t. You are just a stupid little child. We are the Chosen, girl, the only ones left! We are not just going to say, ‘Oh dear we can’t live here, there’s already a bunch of savages’. No! The Lord Has Spoken! We need this planet. We are the ones He has chosen to create a new world free from the prejudice and evil of the last one, and We Will Prevail!” His voice had developed its usual thumping beat, how he always spoke in the Temple.
Suddenly he lurched forwards in his chair, “Then you go and make that stupid, irresponsible transmission! The sort of thing that could have destroyed the Lord’s plan!” His hand hit the Book for the second time. She flinched as if he had hit her.
Slowly he eased back into his chair, sure of everything, and added softly, “And I thank the Lord that I found it in time, and destroyed every copy you made.”
She had nothing to say. All her hopes had suddenly crashed.
He surged towards her again. “Supials with souls?” he shouted into her face, so close that she felt the spray of his spit, “How absurd, girl! How utterly absurd!”
He was standing, taller than her, angry beyond words. She knew the signs. There would be a punishment coming, some cruel, stupid punishment.
Frantically she tried to recall something from the Wordolord; ‘Honour your Father above all others, in This Space, as well as In Heaven.’ Yet her heart beat faster, and her fear grew so strong she thought she might be sick.
I must not hate him. He is my father. I must not hate him!
“Oh Lordie!” he began again suddenly, looking imploringly at the ceiling, “What should I do with this wicked wicked child?” And to answer his own question he did what he always did, he pushed his fingers between the plasto-parchment pages of his Wordolord, flipped it open at random, and began to read,
“ -‘and He spoke unto them, saying Right will Right, and Wrong will Wrong. So they departed the Temple and cast her into the Place of Cleansing, and the Fires of Purification did burn out her Evil, and she emerged in white, and did Marry unto the Lord, for that had been His Desire, and she did surrender to him in her worship and in all her actions, great or small, from that day forth’...”
He finished the reading as he would in the Temple, softly, “...So Let It Be.”
Silence. He looked up at her slowly.
She fled.
JOURNEY
EARLY NEXT MORNING three of the elders came to Mica where he squatted under the Yoodie House, still gently rubbing his lizard skin to keep it from going stiff.
“Yo, Mica!” hailed old Wallaroo, big, round, and grey all over, “How’re you doing, you big yoodie?”
“Yo, Wallaroo,” answered Mica politely, “How’s a-living been?”
“Is good, is good,” answered Wallaroo, easing himself down in the shade opposite Mica. Mica stopped work, wondering why they were all here together.
“Yo Magpie,” he said, greeting the next elder.
“Yo, Mica,” said the next man, “How ya doing, son?”
Mica grinned across at him fondly, “Everything’s cool, dad, totally cool.”
Magpie settled onto his haunches to Mica’s left, and Catfish sat opposite with an audible creaking noise from his knees. Catfish was one of his uncles.
“Mica, you know your Man-time’s coming up?”
Mica smiled shyly, “Yeah.”
“Well it’s well time for it!” said Catfish, “look at you now!”
“Yep,” added Wallaroo, “you’ve really been shooting up lately. And we’ve seen you looking at that Lorikeet, which is under
standable really. She’s one honey of a dudettie.”
Mica smiled shyly, keeping his eyes down on his lizard skin.
Wallaroo went on, “So maybe instead of messing about with that skin and dreaming about Lorikeet, hows about you start on your preparations? You know you ain’t got much time now.”
Mica felt his guts stirring around, excitement rolled together with fear. He folded his skin carefully and asked, “Okay, so what should I do?”
Wallaroo just chuckled. Catfish answered the question instead, “Go talk to your big brother.”
The old dudes got up. “You keep your eye on the sky, now. We want you ready come High Moon.”
MICA WENT TO PUMICE, who was in the Young Dudes House, and asked him about it. Pumice just grinned and said, “Oh you just get prepared, is all.”
“But what do I have to do?”
“Just get ready.”
Mica sighed and gave up, then he noticed that Pumice was packing to travel.
“Where’re you going?”
“Down to the coast. Going to visit Feldspar.”
“What! I thought you hated the coast.”
Pumice chuckled, “Nah. Anyway, I just gotta go see this lovie of Feldspar’s for myself, eh! And I hear she’s got a pretty cool sister.”
Mica chuckled too, then sighed mournfully, thinking of Lorikeet.
“Why don’t you come too?” asked Pumice, “There’ll be plenty of time to get back before your Man-time. It’ll do you good.”
Mica sighed again, thinking suddenly of the Human female who lived down at the coast too. Urgh, he thought, so ugly! Yet so... so interesting. Yes, it would be good to look at her again. And he was sure curious to see the funny Human-houses he’d heard so much about, and see the ocean and taste fresh sea-fish...
“Yeah!” he said suddenly, “I’ll come!”
“Cool. And you ought to bring along that skin of yours, too.”
“Why?”
“Feldspar says the Humans like that sort of stuff. They trade for it. One of them’s always interested in strange animals and plants.”