by Joy Dettman
I think the grey men perform abortion.
They also perform the Implanting. When my heat is right, the grey men’s shiny tools place the foetus seeds inside of me, then, when the time is right, they return with more tools to drain from me that which they have planted into me. They do not throw the tiny things away as with abortion, but transfer them so carefully into small containers, which each hold one foetus.
What use they have for these unripe things I do not know. Granny’s book tells me that a foetus must grow for nine months in the nest of the womb, then be born as a fully formed infant that soils and sucks. The grey men Harvest minute things not near finished.
I have learned much from Granny’s book and also from the crumpled newsprint pages. I have learned that in the city, doctors use young sowmen for the replacement of defective parts in the aged. The immature foetus they take from me are not longer than half of my hand and their parts surely too small to be cut and stitched, which I do not much like the thought of. It makes in my belly such a flip-flopping that I must run to the chem-shed and empty out all I put in it.
I believe the grey men supply the yellow pills for this illness, for I have suffered no illness before with their Implantings, and in my last Harvesting I produced six foetus for them. Just little ones. They are always little ones.
‘Lord.’ When they come next they will find this foetus and they will suck it from me and put it in a container and take it to the city and . . . and . . . and I think I do not much like that thought of their coming, for they will know that my foetus is not of their Implanting.
Perhaps I will go to the hills and find a rabbit and follow him into his hole, and it will be as the book of Alice, and its hole shall lead me to Wonderland and Lenny will not find me. Or his dogs. When I have escaped before it is always the dogs who find me.
Lenny fears those grey men; Pa fears only the male who carries the light gun. Yet, collectively, they are smaller than we three – and our dogs, so why, collectively, do we fear their small collective power?
Since childhood I have been afraid of many things, of ghosts and Granny and of the men’s great dogs – or their fine tracking sense. Until I discovered the water tank, the dogs always found me. It is a good place to hide, though I can not remain in there long, so it is not such a good place to hide.
I must run further. And the dogs must not pursue me. I will make a plan, and make the dogs a part of my plan. That is, as Granny might have said, logical. Often, she would scream at me when I could not decipher her riddle. ‘Bring logic to it, girl.’ Perhaps it is not too late to begin.
Each day now I steal one item from the house and run with it to the loft where I have hidden the harmless stranger’s trading basket beneath a pile of hides. I place cans of food there, and a blanket. I place Lenny’s sharp knife there, which today he searches for. I hide a bottle of cordial, still wrapped well in newsprint and protected with a strong plasti-wrap.
The dogs, ever tied on short leads in the doorway, have seen me come and go with my additions. Now they watch for me, they snuffle and whine and thump thin snake-tails in the dust, for each night too I feed them. Half-starved brutes, their bones try to leap from their hides; I think if a sowman should feed them a scrap they would lick its hand.
‘Good dog,’ I say, offering food saved from the table and red meat stolen from Lenny’s large freezer. ‘Good dog,’ I lie to the mastiffs, which stand almost as tall as I at full stretch. How I lie to them, for I do not consider them good at all, but ugly, cruel things. Still, they do not care that I lie; the meat I bring to them speaks the truth. It promises full bellies.
They stare at me, red eyes squinting, blinking as I hand-feed them; and they eat from my hand, dainty as fine ladies at the old England Queen’s party. They lick the last flavours from my fingers then lay their heavy heads on my lap while I smooth the hard wire of their coats.
I believe it is near time for the grey men’s return; only one blue pill remains in the container. I pour it into my hand then plant the seed-like thing where the rest have been planted – not in my belly, but in the earth. I have found this pleases Lenny and also prevents his following of me with pill and water. I do not think the blue pills will grow, for though I cover them well, as Pa covers his pumpkin seeds, I do not waste water on them.
This is the season of too much heat. We perspire and use the chem-tub too much, and we use too much of the powder that cleanses us and our overalls and bedding. When Granny lived we washed, or did not wash, in water. Now we have water, run by plasti-pipe from the tank to the kitchen tap, with a plasti-bucket beneath it to catch the drips, but we do not wash in it. We drink too much of it, and the dogs and the cows and the pigs, and even the hens drink too much, and Lenny curses too much and spends too much time with his barrel, walking up and down the hill to the spring and back.
It is hard labour, the water-carrying; the hill is steep and each bucket must be dipped from the pool and carried down to where the bullock and barrel wait. Three times Lenny walks to the hill today. The third time I think to follow him, for the spring cave is well beyond the singing fence, thus it is not singing, and will not sing until Lenny has completed his labour. But the sky is white and no breeze stirs; searchers may be about. They like best these days, for they need the sun to warm their wings.
Too fast Pa has grown old this season. Though he tries he can not help Lenny with the hard labour, nor even much with the cooking, and he uses too much water for his pumpkins and for the new plant he is cultivating. Each day he grows more careless with water – and with me. When Lenny is off to fill his water barrel, I wander at will.
And I think . . . and I think to . . . to tame the men as I have tamed their dogs.
I will give them food.
Granny never cooked for the men, and certainly I have not. It is Lenny who selects the meat from the freezer, and if Pa does not cook it and the carrots and potatoes the grey men bring, then Lenny curses long and cooks the food. He does not do it well, nor care much if it is cooked or not.
Granny once told me that in the city nothing is as God created it, neither plant nor man. She told me when I was very small that the city tomato was as large as my head. I recall laughing at her, for the plant we had nurtured within the house produced fruit smaller than my ear. Red, they were, and sweet. Granny told me too of corn crops, unlike any she had seen before, and vegetables that were abominations. She said the black carrot had been bred with the spider to have many legs, the grey striped potato bred with the fish. Perhaps she had mocked my innocence. I do not know fish, or even if fish cry, but I have surely seen the twin eyes of the potato weep when Lenny cuts them out with his knife. Do they see the one who cuts them?
I do not look at their eyes, but close my own and drop the potato whole into a pot of boiling water. This is Pa’s way. ‘Boil them alive. Same with cooking the yabs that used to live in the creek when I was a boy. They squeaked too,’ he said one day when I watched him pop the lid on fast so he might not see them jump and hear the squeaks. I pop the lid on quickly. So be it. Were not the thick lumps of meat I fry in the grey oil spread also from a living thing?
The kitchen is both dark and hot. I am busy at the plates when Lenny enters. He stands, stares at me, and at the red and white half-dress I wear today with my red overall.
‘Where is she getting those frekin rig-outs?’
‘Dug ’em outta someplace,’ Pa replies.
‘You’re supposed to watch where she goes.’
‘Watches herself, don’t you, girl?’
‘She frekin wanders, Pa, and I seen a searcher out there today.’
‘She sees ’em before they see her. Not as dumb as she looks, are you, girl?’ Pa says. I do not look at him. ‘You reckon they don’t know she’s here, boy? They know. They just keeping an eye on her – and on you, boy.’
My eyes do not leave my work. It is as if I do not hear him, and because I do not hear him, it is as if I am not here – and one day I will not be here; t
he grey men wait only until the immunisations are complete. I know this. I have heard this.
‘Did she take her pill?’ Lenny asks.
‘They’re gone,’ Pa says, and he looks at me.
My eyes low, I move slowly to the stove where I load their bowls with meat and potato. I eat only the cornbread, spread with a little of Pa’s cheese, which is soft when fresh. It settles well in my belly.
When Granny was alive we sat at the table and did not share it with the men. Now they sit and I do not. Our chairs number two, and they are only half-chairs, repaired often with wire and wood and glue. In these last years I have taken the bowl served to me to the verandah, to Granny’s rocking chair, or to my room. Tonight I remain in the kitchen, standing, watching the men eat.
Pa’s hair is so grey it is turning to white. Deep erosion of storm and sun have marked him well. Lenny’s hair is thick and rusty, but his lines, deepening each year, will soon match Pa’s. I think he did not have a mother.
The ovum of the females is not for all, the newsprint says. Those who are low-born are from the old ones’ cells and are grown in the belly of a sow mutation. At times the mother thing interferes with this form of breeding. Some of the infants produced in this way are not human, but sowmen. These beasts are used for field work or for spare parts. And conversely, some, which are bred of the aging Chosen, specifically for the matching of spare parts, are born human. How this failure annoys the breeding laboratories. One of the High Chosen died for lack of a sowman heart when the infant emerged as a son.
The newsprint uses a large word which explains why this thing is not always a success. I do not understand it, nor can I find the meaning of it in Granny’s dictionary. I also do not understand how Lenny came into being, for he is certainly of old Pa’s cells, yet not a city thing. Both he and Pa are of this land and have never been off it.
It is strange, but until today, I have not much thought to question Lenny’s coming. Granny did not speak to him, or of him; I learned early the men were not to be spoken to, but surely there is much that they might tell me if I asked.
‘How’s the pool level?’ Pa says.
‘Same. Don’t make no difference what I dip from it. Took three barrels. The more I took, the hotter she got.’
I stand listening to them, watching them as they talk of water, watching them eat. Pa’s fork works slow. Lenny’s is the busy shovel, filling the grave of the harmless stranger. I bite my cornbread, fill my mouth so it might kill my questions. Often I want to ask these two of my coming here. I have books to tell me of the past, and the city men’s crumpled sheets of newsprint to tell me of the city, but of me – of me and of my mother – these two men may know the answers.
The newsprint gave me the answer as to why each of the three grey men wear an identical face. It is because of the city law against waste; the ovum of freeborn females is only used to create the Chosen, and it is rarely wasted now on a single birth, but split in two or three after the fertilising of it. Previously it was Implanted into an incubating mutation. Now the sons of the Chosen are nurtured in plasti-wombs, which are fed by the blood of aged and disabled labourers. This is work these males may do, and they do it gladly, for they are well fed and cared for. It is also written in the newsprint that these males feel a great sense of worth for they are assisting in the birth of a brave new world.
Pa is old and his right leg is certainly disabled; he likes to eat, though his fork works slow; he likes his pills, too, that stop the ache in his bones, but I think, in order to eat and have no aches, he would not enjoy being tied to a plasti-womb where his blood must feed the birth of a brave new world.
He watches me as I remove his plate, but I think it is my half-dress that he watches, for in his eyes, there are old man tears. Perhaps he craves the lost world of the old books, as I do.
Lenny glances at him, then at me. I take his plate, which will require little water for washing.
‘What’s she playing at?’ Lenny says.
‘Better than the slops you serve up, boy.’
They converse little, as if their words are like water to be meted out grudgingly.
Pa looks at me, points to the cheese. I pass it to him. The grey men bring an oil spread, but the flavour is strong, its salt content high. I like Pa’s cheese better on my bread, as does he.
Lenny wishes to play this game. He grunts, his hand flung in the direction of the loaf. I look up, meet his eyes which, like Pa’s, will not leave me. I pass the loaf, and the spread, then I watch as he blindly hacks off a thick slab of bread, the loaf held crushed against his chest, the sawtooth knife biting deep.
‘You take your pill, girl?’
‘They’re gone.’ I make the reply exactly as Pa had made it, my voice coming from my belly, my mouth barely moving. It is a fine mimic of Pa’s, so fine that Lenny looks first to him, but Pa is looking at me. I laugh at their confused faces.
‘Get in the chem-tub then get to your room. The little bastards are coming tonight.’
For once I do not go to the chem-tub when told.
‘Get.’ Again he saws a slab of bread from the loaf, but I have turned my back, no longer wishing to laugh. I know how that loaf of bread feels. Trapped. Invaded. Violated. Unable to escape, it becomes crushed and finally moulds itself to its conqueror’s shape, to the dent of his arm, to the curve of his breast; its crust clings to his overall while the bread within loses its own qualities. It is his, to cut, to spread thick with the city grease, then to devour – as I am being devoured by the grey men.
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 a
s 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.
