Moonstar

by David Gerrold

  She giggled. “What does it mean?” She looked around at all her watchers. “Nothing? Everything? Perhaps it symbolizes Choice. The new person can drift despairing in her life upon a sea of desolation. Or she can fly. It is not a happy omen, but neither is it dreadful. It speaks of doom and joy together. Someday our air will be thick enough and all of us may fly like birds.” Her voice cracked and sputtered, she wheezed and whispered into silence. Her breath came like a whistle. “This is the omen I have seen three days before I stood upon this shore. If it is meant for you, then I have delivered it and I am done.” She bowed her head into her lap and was still for so long that Suko wondered if perhaps she might have fallen asleep, or passed out, or perhaps died. It was not unknown for Watichi to die in extraordinary fashion.

  But she raised her head and said a prayer to Reethe and Dakka. She took the coins up from the mat and kissed them each and laid them down again. She stood and touched the children then, each in turn, and called them to the attention of the gods; she spoke kind words of the island, its dwellers and its crops—she forgave all unbelievers, for even in their unbelief they still were servants of the flows of Reethe and Dakka. And as she spoke that last, she grinned knowingly at Kuvig and Suko. Then she gathered up her woven mat, her silken tent, its poles, and the offering of Dida’s scarf, and sailed off into the east and north.

  Watching as her sail drifted toward the pink edge of the world, Suko snorted skeptically, “An expensive pantomime, a beggar-show, a masquerade to tell us what we already know. A baby is born to Choice. We do not need a Watichi to tell us that.”

  But Uncle Kossar touched her arm and spoke of tolerance. “Have care, Suko. I feel that this visit had a meaning all its own.”

  Perhaps it did. Did Uncle Kossar hear a different message from the specter on the shore? Three days later she took to her bed, and within a second triad after that she was returned to the sea to sleep with her mothers.

  “My earliest memory is of being tucked into my crib at night by one of my cousins. Dida it was, and although Dida had not made Choice by this time, I suspect that Dida’s mind had been made up long before first blush; she wanted to be a birth-mother, and her care for me and the other infants was part of its earliest expression. Dida made a fine mother, and in later times also proved her other strengths. During the famines that followed the shield disaster, she held her marriage together, when all about families were collapsing into anarchies, ours included.

  “The earliest memory that any of my family members have of me—that is, the first time that I displayed any kind of individuality that stuck in their minds—is the ‘wuppersticks’ incident. It is the story that I have heard the most and have come to loathe; but its popularity at family gatherings must mean something, and I suppose its significance is the fact that up until then I had been merely one more blob of pink flesh that had to have food stuffed in one end and shit cleaned off the other.

  “It was a family gathering of some sort, no one remembers—the family has argued for years about the reason for the occasion, although none of them have ever forgotten the story itself. I was in a high stool. It’s my theory that it was the Sea Harvest celebration of 288; that would have made me about two years old, just the right age for the story. It was probably the first time I had been allowed to eat with the family, so I must have had some experience to prove myself with solid food.

  “Members of the great-family were there from all over the Crescent, including many from difstaff side. At some point in the meal, I am told, I began asking for ‘wuppersticks’ and would not cease my crying and insistence. I just kept pointing and wailing, but no one could figure out what a ‘wuppersticks’ was. My older siblings (I was the youngest at table) could not figure out what I wanted, neither could Dida or Hojanna, nor any of my other mothers. Not even Grandmere Thoma, who was supposed to be the most child-experienced of all. My aunts—whom my parents had been trying so hard to impress—were annoyed that the family could neither control nor quiet its youngest. Those who were there always embellish the telling with vivid descriptions of how Aunt William became so distressed that she started yelling at my fathers. “For Dakka’s sake, give the little rodent a “wuppersticks!” (This is probably why there is confusion as to where and when the incident took place. Aunt William’s outburst was a subject of delighted discussion for months afterward, whenever the family got together, thus blurring the memory of the origin of the incident with the subsequent retellings of it.)

  “Anyway, I merely kept pointing and crying, I am told. There were meat-breads on spice skewers and savory yams, and pickled corn and onion sweets and baked ducklings in sour-sauce and lots of side plates of raw fish and dippings. The relatives offered me everything on the table to see what I wanted. It wasn’t until one of my uncles—and no one seems to remember which one exactly, so it must have been one of the transient ones—picked up her chopsticks with which to dip a piece of fish that I began to point again and holler, ‘Wuppersticks! Wuppersticks!’

  “Suppersticks!—only I couldn’t pronounce my S’s too well yet. Of course, I was nowhere near coordinated enough to use them properly, but I had made the connection in my mind between supper and sticks and I wanted them.

  “There is no real point to the story, no pearl of truth with which to point at the future events and say, ‘Here, here this is the reason.’ The story does not even demonstrate that I was precocious, only self-indulged, like any baby—but whenever groups of my relatives would gather, particularly ones who had not seen me in some time, I was always reintroduced as the ‘wuppersticks baby,’ or someone would say, ‘Look how big little wuppersticks has gotten.’

  “I personally have no memory of the incident, so I always felt like I was carrying around a piece of someone else’s very annoying baggage. I used to dread family greetings because of the inevitable retelling of the story, if not for those who hadn’t heard it, then always for my benefit because of my continual mistake of insisting that I remembered nothing of it at all. In some way, this set me apart (at least in my own head) from the other children. Fortunately, they found the story as stupid as I did, and none of them ever thought to tease me about ‘wuppersticks’—for which I am grateful. They teased me about a lot of other things instead.”

  By the Holy Calendar, Jobe was four when she first learned that adults were divided into different kinds. There were ones with sagging breasts and there were ones who had no breasts at all.

  She was at the Sea Festive with Hojanna, who was her birth-mother, and Dida, an older, non-blood sibling, and of course, her grandpere Kuvig, who disapproved of festives altogether and stalked through this one with a scowl on her yellow-leather face, lest someone catch her secretly enjoying it.

  The bright bamboo pavilions were entrancing; the colored silks that draped them floated lazy, sometimes flapping, in the wind. Blue and yellow, shades of green; the colors sang of sand and sunshine, wind and moss. The spinning kites and purple banners of the merchants made a panoply of myth and wonder in the sky. Today the west-clouds had come early. Swept by summer winds, they were streaked with red and ocher by the slowly rising sun and made a ragged silvery background to the mysteries of the day.

  And the smells—so enticing were the smells! Incense, flowers, candied ferns, buttered rice-cakes, jelly-balls, spiced and fried fish, fresh fish too and seaweed salt; pickles, brine, sweet-creams and ices, syrups, fruits, dark beer and wine, pink tongue; and perfumes! Dandies! Sweet-scents and sour, musks and bitters, herbs of all kinds; there were spices, roots, good spells and bad; to find a lover, make a baby, make a marriage or a death. And jars of promises, salves of joy, fetishes trapped in baskets of weave, paper-laced dreams (and a nightmare or two)—and over it all was an aura of strength, an aroma of equal parts sweat, lust and laughter; over it all, was the faint warm smell of us.

  Excitement, like insects, buzzed in the sense-laden air, hovering and darting as the crowds swelled and coursed. All around, in the heat of the day—artificially muggy
by fountains and falls, fanciful towers with devices that spun to make and spread mist—were adults discarding their shawls and their day-shirts, strolling bare-chested along the wide walks, pausing and looking, examining wares. There were avenues curving and winding like serpents, each lined with booths, all jostling for space, their work spread before them on aprons of canvas and matting and lace. There were carvers and crafters and weavers with looms, chandlers and cutters and gamesters as well, printers and painters, potters and mimes, booth elbowing booth to display skills of all kinds; boat-makers with hull-casts and seamasters with sails, flagstaffs and banners—fireworks exploded in the sky up above, whistling and banging like the climax of love. There were readers and jugglers and teachers and fools. There was glassware and silkware, silver and gold, iron and leather and candles and lamps, baskets and buckets, trunks, chests and cabinets, cheese plants and puppets, frillies and trinkets, dried flowers and fresh, ales and wines, liqueurs from far islands, herb-spells and tea-spice and sugars, and sharps, models and minis and movies and mazes. And animals! There were crawlers and creepers and climbers and shriekers—flyers and leapers and croakers and cryers. All colors of feather, scale and fur—on leashes, in cages, behind fences or glass—Jobe’s eyes were bedazzled by all that she saw. There were devices aplenty—even a Model Mark IV terminal, linked directly by wire to the banks maintained by Authority. There were smaller devices, thinkers and toys, flashing their patterns on screens of all sizes. They beckoned the eye and teased at the mind. Jobe wanted to stray, but—

  Kuvig and Hojanna had small care for the booths. No matter that Jobe pressed loudly to stop, they passed the street of illusions and the wonders therein. Nor did they tarry at the pavilion of faces—Kuvig disliked professional readers; they spliced themselves between people and their gods, or so she said—they did not linger in the markets, having come to the Sea Fest for more mundane reasons. Only Dida and Jobe were flushed with excitement, but Dida’s had nothing to do with the fair.

  Jobe’s wonder, or course, was that of a child—she’d been brought as a treat, but the treat was now losing all of its sweetness, because there wasn’t the time for the giggles all promised by banners; not for globes of dancing silk-fish; not for pantomimes nor acrobats, not for jugglers, nor for dumb-shows; not even for the painted-laughing beggars with their grotesque putty noses, big flat feet and silly poses. “We told you, Jobe, when you asked to come that this would not be all for fun. First we go for software at the mart; then Grandpere must arrange for schoolings; and after lunch, the Plaza to negotiate the contract so that Dida can be married. So many families have made offers that it will be quite hard to choose, but in affairs like marriage, one simply does not haste. You would not wish hasted if it were your marriage, Jobe. And if we have time after that, perhaps then, the toymongers’ booths.”

  “Can see toys at home,” said Jobe grumpily, but not too loudly, for if Hojanna was not firm, then Grandpere would be sterner.

  The excitement of the festive was much more in promise than in fact, and so Jobe felt betrayed and bored. She soon became resentful, and resolved not to enjoy it out of spite. Mid-meal was a chance to rest out of the heat, and sample all the new tastes—but to Jobe, it was just one more thing she could dislike. All the pickles, fruits and pastries from the Northern Islands were wasted on her. Their flavors seemed too bitter or too cloying, and Kuvig and Hojanna’s gentle praises—muffled oohs and ahhs—seemed only like a dumb show to convince her. Jobe was unimpressed. These red and orange tubers, for example, were just plain bad.

  Jobe would have rather had a simple meal of cold rice-cakes. She pushed her plate away and was sorry she had come. She could have had more fun at home than dragging like a rag doll at the end of Dida’s arm. If only they would let her go exploring by herself to see what she could see, that would be all right—but no, “You are still too young and precious, little mud-worm. If an Erdik were to see you, she would take you home to fry you for her children. We would miss you sorely.”

  “No such thing as Erdiks,” Jobe said, with some doubt; then added, “Dida isn’t needed here. She could take me.”

  “But,” said Kuvig in that patronizing tone that adults almost always used when explaining things to children, “later, we will need her, and if we cannot find her there will be no marriage. No, it is best that you both stay with us and stop whining, Jobe. You knew that we had business here. Perhaps it’s a mistake to take you anywhere.”

  So Jobe frowned and sighed and fidgeted—in fretful silence, which was the best she could—and tried to think of something she could do in a situation where there was nothing she could do but frown and sigh and fidget. Adults always thought that children should sit quietly and wait. Jobe felt this to be unreasonable and stern. Adults wanted just to sit and talk—that was unreasonable; especially when the sun was rising, the kites were begging for the wind, the west-smells reeked of birds and fish and the sea was singing songs. There were important things to do.

  But not for Jobe. She had to sit with Dida, Kuvig and Hojanna, in a tiny bamboo booth, set off from the wooden amble, which circled all around the island, bending back upon itself like curled ribbon, changing color and appearance in its coruscating way. The island was just one of many set upon a crystal sea; an ocean specked with crater reefs and verdant outcrops, remnants of an airless past. The Oracle described the islands as the body of the goddess Reethe, the Mother of the World, and this it was against the custom to build upon the higher slopes. Villages were perched on edges, seashores, cliffs, peninsulas—anywhere but on the slopes of highlands, which were holy, and used only for the crops and gardens. Those, of course, were holy motives, blessed not only by the Mother, but also by the impish Father, who spoke in thunderstorms and wind. Because of that, most of the booths built for the fair were only flimsies, built for shade and color, and little else; they would be dismantled when the fair had reached its end. All the booths were covered over with brightly tinted thatch.

  This booth was an open one—its rustling silks were pulled aside, providing those who sat within a panoramic view of the Little Concourse where it met the arching entrance to the Path of Oiled Wood. It was a busy intersection, with a steady stream of strollers, some idling under pastel parasols, others hurrying along, threading through the slower walkers or racing past on bicycles or whirling rickshaws.

  While Kuvig and Hojanna dawdled over their dessert of wine and fruit, debating clauses and denials, haggling like South Coast fishers, Jobe turned her attention outward. Idly she began to ponder all the people passing by; she was bored, to near-hostility in fact, but knowing that she must repress it, looked instead for something to express it on. At other times, she would have paid no mind to all these people; they were strangers, unimportant. She was uncurious, she was an introspective child, tending mostly to keep people at a distance—but from that distance, occasionally, she would study them intensely. Today was one of those occasions; there might be something—once, at harvest, she had seen (at least, she thought it was) an Enchanted; and another time, she spotted (on this one she was sure) an albino. Perhaps today, with all these crowds she might see something odder still.

  The day had ripened in the sunshine. Warm and lucent to begin with, now the sky was turning molten, almost searing, as the sun continued on its ascent, long and glary, through the haze above. The temperature was rising crisply, eclipse was still some time away, so almost all the strollers on the Concourse had taken off their knitted shawls, now carrying them upon their arms. Everywhere Jobe looked, she saw all kinds of study. They were many shapes and sizes, and subtle-varied colors too; most wore kilts of silk or linen, leather sandals, hats of weave, all decorated with gay colors. Some wore noticeably less.

  Jobe’s eyes were caught by something red, a teener’s jutting breasts; not even old as Dida, yet her nipples were bright spots of carmine, her bosom round and very full. Were other nipples that bright color? Jobe hadn’t noticed it before. She looked about at all the others, but saw non
e that gay—the teener was a liar, Jobe decided, and the color was just paint. By then she’d noticed something else—her curiosity was struck by the sheer variety of breasts. Not all were small or solid-looking as the teener’s. And not all the grown-ups had them; why was that, she wondered?

  For instance, take that brown-skin woman resting near the feather-trees. Her breasts were large like bags of pudding, pendulous, voluptuous; they moved and stretched as she did. She was a birth-mere, obviously, her belly ripe and proud, her nipples almost black against the chocolate of her skin. Nearby, was someone’s old grandpere—her breasts dry and leathery, like wizened figs with hardened stems. (Or was she -mere, Jobe pondered; with old ones it was hard to tell.)

  Jobe’s interest was quite clinical; detached, impassive, lacking sexual knowledge, it was curious and studied. Some breasts were pink, and others brown; large ones swelled and small ones pointed, soft ones jiggled and firm ones bounced; they looked like funny useless things—what were they for? Jobe wondered. Why the nipples’ tiny points? Why the soft surrounding disks? No two people were alike—an almost flaunted difference that intrigued her into further study. Why weren’t bosoms more the same? The biggest breasts were all on mothers; the older, the more swollen. Grandmeres had bags like jelly-wobbles, except sometimes they didn’t; sometimes they had shrunken remnants, like empty dried-up casings. And why was that?

  And what about the ones who had no breasts at all? There were not many, but enough to catch Jobe’s interest. That one—a farmer, by her looks—her chest was merely wide and flat, with barely any shape at all, just a nipple on each side, small and flat and colorless. With her was another farmer, face hidden under wide-brimmed hat; her breasts were fleshy, stretched and tanned—but why? Was that because she was a fleshy person? If she were thin, what would her breasts be like? Why were some breasts large? And why were some breasts small? And why did children like herself have little ones, or none at all?