Mama usually called him “sir Khasat” or, when he was not around, “damned invalid, good for nothing.”
In spite of the implications of that second designation, Charni truly felt a certain fascination toward him, first because although the beings she knew had different limits, their contours were similar to each other. And yet those of Chaid Khasat were not.
She had begun to suspect the sounds he used and his behavior were so different from other beings because of his contour.
Chaid was clumsy. Very clumsy. He moved in the world as if he did not sense its smells, his touch was atrophied, the sounds of things did not reach him, he did not recognize the world, or he were sensing or perceiving it for the first time.
He also did not like it when Charni enveloped him with her contour to strike up a conversation and seemed nervous or agitated when she sketched words on his.
“Go away, girl. I’m not your stuffed toy,” were sounds he made often.
On one hand, Charni had noticed that each time Chaid Khasat ran into an inert entity, he swore quietly and got into a bad mood. He suffered for his clumsiness and pretended it did not matter, yet sometimes he was infuriated the restrained laughter of the beings who had sweet scents, soft and warm textures and melodious sounds.
“Women”: she remembered the word that Mama had told her to use, above all in front of the beings that shared the predominant characteristic of strong odors and low sounds.
“Men”: she scolded herself for not having used the sound that defined them in the first place, at least in her head.
Yes. As much as she preferred the tactile words Mama had shown her that transmitted wider concepts, she had to force herself to use those sounds, above all in the presence of … men.
Mama especially insisted on that. Men were not suitable for using the textures of words. They had something called “pride” that not only blocked them from that kind of learning, it made them react with violence or rejection when a woman tried to remind them of that.
“Hmm …” Mama emitted the vibration of doubt before confronting the explanation. “Let’s texture the sound ‘to see,’ all right?”
She enveloped Charni even more with her contour to allow her to use sounds and tactile words in her explanation.
“As far as we women know, men are born with an additional sense to the ones we have, a sense that lets them obtain more information about what surrounds us and give it even more consistency. And this same sense lets them explore and move in the world that exists beyond our own. Without it, survival wouldn’t be possible.”
“A world beyond?” The idea overwhelmed Charni. More worlds? Was that possible?
“Yes, Charni. You’re still not developed enough to know the true limits of ours, which is much more defined than what you’ve perceived so far. And that’s because, besides this world, there’s another world that can be reached from certain spaces in ours, and it is so big, so enormous, that without this fifth sense we would be lost in infinity and never find the way to get back to our home.
“This unlimited space is filled with so much information that without the sense of sight, we couldn’t understand it. In fact, even our own beings would reject it. We couldn’t stand it. Imagine something like that, Charni. We have to give thanks that men have this sense because only they can protect us from those who inhabit this strange world.
“Each time I have been able to produce a man inside of me, I have felt happy … because I have helped protect our world. And protect you, my daughter. You, me, and all the women here.”
Although the sounds and caresses that accompanied the explication did not completely fill in the empty spots in Charni’s understanding, the idea that Mama could produce men to ensure the survival of women like herself made her pleased, surprised, fascinated and overwhelmed all at once. And it was still a difficult concept to take in.
“But … but …” she began to say. “More information? How?”
“I can’t explain something to you that I don’t know myself, Charni. Some men have tried to explain this fifth sense to me, although it was hard for me to understand. They used words like ‘light’ or ‘colors,’ but they have never known how to transmit the concept to me. I’m sorry. I’m not being much help to you.”
Charni tried to put all those concepts within the limits she understood and could assimilate. To think of “unlimited” was not too difficult for her. Something inside her being told her that there really was something that existed beyond the contours that she knew at that moment. Yet, if men had a fifth sense …
“But Mama, why doesn’t Chaid Khasat know how to move here. Doesn’t he see?”
“No, Charni. He lost an extremity. And although he kept the member that allows men to see, now he can’t do it because he isn’t whole. And since they only use that sense to fight and protect the entrances to this world and they don’t need other senses to do that, when they lose it, it’s difficult for them to live in our world.”
“A body part to see?”
“Yes. Here.” She indicated the area of her contour where the lower extremities united. “We don’t have it, that’s why we don’t have that sense and can’t live in that world.”
“Oh … a woman can’t?”
It was difficult for Charni to imagine something like that, but at the same time it was the only explanation for that fifth sense. If her being, except for the upper contour, was a lot like men’s, an extra collector that let them see was the logical answer, the same way that she used her two upper collectors to feel.
“Hmm … something like that,” Mama replied. “When you’re more developed I’ll tell you how they use their member in us so that their fifth sense continues to work and serve us. Now I want you to get prepared. Tomorrow is your first day in school, and I have my hopes placed in you. If you follow my steps, you can become a queen, like me.”
Although Mama had explained with sounds and textures what school was like, to experience it for herself was something amazing.
Like the route to take to get there, for example.
Mama had made it well textured that she must perceive everything on the way and that she would accompany her until she had memorized it or until Charni herself asked her to let her go there alone. And it was fascinating to perceive all the contours of textures that until then were unknown, the large number of aromas that came to her, the sounds that seemed to come from all sides, and the quantity of new beings who placed themselves in her path and even stopped her a few times to exchange information.
Oh! To memorize the route would not be too difficult, but to learn to move around despite so many unexpected barriers would be the big challenge. A trial by fire that, according to Mama, would make her a stronger, better woman.
Added to that were the quantity of beings with common characteristics but all kinds of limits that had been brought together in the school.
As she would discover later, all the beings with almost-equal contours and limits were gathered together and brought to certain spaces separated from the rest. And in each space there was another being, a woman with the same characteristics as Mama, who assigned each of the other beings, girls like her, to specific places … and she began to explain the world to them without interruptions and only by articulating sounds!
There were so many new sounds that it was difficult for Charni to take them all in. Class, desk, seat, cloths …
They were also permitted rest times during which the girls of her class played and talked with her.
To share sounds and tactile words with other girl beings with limits and contours like her own was so entertaining and fascinating. … The exchange of information was so high that when Mama came to get her and take her to the space called home, she was so exhausted that she did not wait long to go to bed and sleep.
And each time that she went to school, she learned something new. Many things, really.
The being called Teache was friendly and very patient with the girls, but firm when she
needed to be. She punished disobedience or slow learning in such a way that a girl had to have very little self-confidence to err again.
As time went on, the subjec of the languas of sounds and textures, the conceps of mathematics became more complex. As did the interactions with other girls in her class.
While at first they were all like one being united by the need not to feel alone because they were out of touch with their own mamas, they soon formed little groups. First it was because their desks were together, but that changed with each rest time. And unexpectedly, the fight began.
Charni’s group of friens became smaller while Latha’s grew. That in itself should not have bothered her, since everyone was free to go wherever she wished in the company of whomever she wanted. Still, it left her confused. In the end, her friens did not get along well with Latha. That had been transmitted many times, and yet … why, of all the groups they could have joined, did they join up with someone they could not stand?
Charni had asked to other girls that and they had told her, simply, that those were bad friens. That the ideas that they had articulated with sounds were false and that they had only spent time with them to get information and share it with Latha.
Why? That was what Charni asked herself next. What sense did that make?
And the more she wondered, the more absurd everything became.
At one point, when her friens did not notice her presence, she heard the words of the conversation they were having. As far as she could gather using only sound, they were not speaking well of Charni. They used the word “cheater” to define her, and this put her on alert because, although she did not understand its meaning, the way it had been used was unpleasant.
Still, since she had not sensed the entire interchange of information, she decided to ask them and clear up her questions. In the end, if they did not like something about Charni, why had they not told her it directly?
But the conversation did not satisfy her totally. They only used sounds and not textures on their contours to offer her an explanation, even though they had been the ones who had told her that good friens used more textures than sounds because sounds could transmit falsehoods, but touch could not. So what did that mean?
And so as time went by, rest time after rest time, her group became smaller and she felt more and more confused, sad, and finally alone.
What had she done wrong? Why had her classmaes become so cruel and refused to share their contours? Why had they preferred to join Latha? Why did beings tell lies?
Suddenly, during one rest time, while she delighted in the discovery of a new contour with a flavor and texture she had never perceived before, she felt a number of girls surround her, and by their scents, she recognized two of her former friens among them.
She had passed many rest times alone, discovering the world on her own and memorizing information for herself without the intention of sharing it with anyone, and perhaps for that reason her contour tensed up and her senses heightened, waiting for unexpected events. Something was not good.
“What do you want?” she asked calmly in spite of how upset she felt inside.
The answer was not loud but tactile, painful. Pinches, punches, slaps, scratches. So they had finally decided to be sincere and use non-sound language, without lies, making plain their rejection of her, right? Well, then, Charni also had something to tell them.
In spite of how her contour hurt and stung her at that moment, she began to return their ideas of rejection and added the hate and fury that she felt. Some responded with cries of pain, others began to use bad words to insert more information into their punches. Charni, however, only used the language of textures. Sounds could be false, and she did not wish them to have any doubt about what she was telling them.
“Don’t be foolish, Charni,” one of her ex-friens yelled. “Don’t answer. You’re outnumbered.”
A sharp pain in her nose left her half-stunned. She wanted to respond, but her being, her contour, would not obey.
She felt fury, a lot of fury. Things could not end that way. She still had things to transit to them, such as while they could all be whatever they wanted, that did not give them the right to impose anything on her or humiliate her or make her be quiet. She had nothing to hide. They had been false, not her.
Then, to her surprise, they stopped hitting her and began to screech hysterically.
She perceived that they were being separated from her brusquely. As if something or … someone was pushing them. She heard strange sounds made by their beings.
Soon they left running, frightened and crying.
Charni, although she still felt disoriented, separated her lower extremities and stretched the upper ones, preparing for a new encounter.
“Don’t worry,” said a girl’s voice that she did not recognize. “I’m going to introduce myself, okay?”
Although she did not feel very safe, Charni let the girl come close and little by little she wrapped her contour around her. Then she breathed in her aroma, used her hans to perceive her contour, and let her do the same.
“I’m Deva,” she said to finalize the introduction.
“I’m Charni.”
“I know.”
“Why …?”
“Next time,” she interrupted, “carry something like this at rest times.” She guided Charni with one of her hans to feel what she held in the other. “Sometimes it helps with communication. I call it ‘soft stick.’ A big girl called it ‘pipe.’ But I like how my word sounds. It has more texture, more meanin.”
“Why did you get involved in the communication?”
“Because I don’t like those girls. They do what Latha says and believe what Latha wants. They are liars and cowards. They don’t have a personaliy.”
“Personaliy? What’s that?”
“Well … when you’re obedien without fear.”
Charni was quiet, weighing the implications of the definition.
“I’m obedien,” she replied. “Mama says I must be obedien. She also says I must not have fear. Hmm … then I have a personaliy, right?”
“I think so. You’re obedien to big peope because that’s good. But you aren’t obedien to Latha because you aren’t afraid. The others are. My mama says not to obey without thinking, only obey peope who care about you, even if it hurts sometimes. Latha is jealous of you, that’s why she hurts you. But she won’t actually do it, she tells other girls to do it. And Mama says that’s what cowards do.”
“She can’t be jealous of me. What is jealousy?”
“Jealousy is … when a girl’s afraid of another girl with personaliy.”
Charni spent a while without moving, without caressing Deva to make words and complete the ideas with sounds. What Deva had said did not seem to make sense. Although Mama had told her she should not be afraid and being afraid was bad, Charni had always thought that Mama meant traveling too carefully to avoid physical pain, or staying in an infinite space without being able to smell, hear, taste or feel anything, for example. But … being afraid of a being? How?
Suddenly, Deva squeezed her contour with her own. She asked Charni what she was thinking about.
What? Well, that she liked this new classmae who knew a lot of words that she did not and … who used touch more than sounds. And whose words did not sound false.
“Friens?” Charni said.
“Friends,” Deva told her with her contour.
Cycles passed peacefully and without hurry. Charni’s head came to be as high as her mother’s shoulder and even her contours began to resemble hers.
The world that surrounded her grew more limited, more defined, and there were lots of words and concepts in her head to describe them.
Of course she knew she was still too young to know all the words, both the ones said out loud and the ones written on skin, and while at times everything was hurried (to know more, to grow faster, to learn more spaces and sites …), she calmly listened to her mother’s advice. Such as when she told her that
… she should not be in a hurry to grow and that patience was a great virtue among Ksatrya women.
She did not understand that last part very well, but she understood that it was something important by the lecturing tone of the words, especially the tactile ones. So when she got impatient in school because one of her classmates fell behind and slowed down the lessons, or because the teacher avoided one of her questions (when she did not avoid them directly by saying they would be studied in a coming class), she made an effort to contain herself by remembering her mother’s advice: patience.
In fact, sometimes her power of patience was tested. In the last few cycles, for example, she had learned that not all girls appreciated knowing that other girls were smarter than them. And if they found that out, instead of being motivated to want to learn more and be as smart as anyone, it provoked a violent response toward the smarter girls. So although at first she always called out her name to answer the teacher’s questions, she learned to wait and let the other girls try, even if she was dying to answer and the silence seemed eternal.
It was also wrong to say that you liked something when most others did not. Or, more exactly, you could say so but not make a show of it, above all when the others did not simply dislike something but found it difficult. Like mathematics.
Charni loved mathematics in the same way that she was fascinated by learning new words and combining them correctly to provide the most information with the fewest possible words. And it was as if mathematics gave consistency and physical properties to intangible or imaginary principles, such as music or time.
Oh, time … so ethereal and useful at once. And what most left Charni taken aback was that the passage of time could be measured differently depending on whether one had the sense of sight or not. And women had to know the names of their equivalencies so that men and women could understand each other in the event of an exchange of information.
Ksatrya women, for example, measured time by biological cycles and the arrival of supplies. The former required extensive physical training while the latter did not require much attention.
Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction Page 2
