Outward Borne

by R. J. Weinkam

  I looked at that simple white tunic and could not help but think how much better it would look with a sable collar.

  “This is a most equable place,” Mildryth continued in the same high spirits, “we all have fine white tunics that are too short and flimsy to be decent, soft white blankets that are not warm, and bright blue mats to eat, sleep and sit upon. Not much else, mind you, but we are all the same as one another for now.”

  I learned soon enough that it was all done for my benefit. In spite of her cheerful chatter, Mildryth was not as happy with this place as she acted, but she never failed to behave as well as one should. There was nothing to do but survive until we were returned home, she believed, and she was happy to have me, her best friend with her. The next morning she helped Mildryth take me to the great room. Like every place I had seen so far, it was white throughout, not white like glistening fresh snow but a dull flat white, and big. It was by far the tallest, widest, longest space that I, or anyone, had ever seen. There were dark corridors that connected the great room to many smaller spaces, like the recovery rooms, and other long deep passageways that had no clear purpose. No one was much inclined to explore the place. We all stayed together in the open well-lit area. I could see several people moving about, blue mats lined up near the wall, some people were crying, but I saw little else and concentrated on moving my near worthless legs.

  Word spread throughout the room that another survivor had been brought in. Slowly, the people who could stand walked past my mat. Those I knew or who knew my parents came near and nodded, few said any words, the others just moved past and went back to their mats. They all had had their haircut and appeared strange, partially as they were all so thin, their faces sunken, eyes deeply shadowed, and all wore the same small, short tunics. Thin, dressed alike, short hair, all looked similar but altered. We were no longer ourselves in this place.

  The red girls were striking. Both Hilde and Gunhild were there. They were still robust, but the girls looked positively transformed without the great cloud of unfettered red hair that had blown around their heads. The red girls still had only a few words, but were clearly delighted to see Alric’s almost sister. Hilde left off her hug and ran to get Alric. He too had been taken, but so far, no one had seen Bertram. None of Gwynyth’s family was there, they said, no one from Cyphus.

  I was heartened by meeting some friends, but whatever pleasure this gave was lost among the questions and confusion they all shared about our extraordinary situation and how long it might last. Only the red girls seemed to take pleasure in all the newness of our lives. There was a room with basins of water. If you took any water from it, it refilled itself. It never went empty and never overflowed. Food appeared in another room. It came through little doors that slid open. Some food had been cooked, other things you had to eat raw, and there were holes in little stalls where you could relieve yourself and it did not smell at all, in fact, nothing smelled. Mildryth’s biggest complaint was the light, it was bright all of the time, you could not tell day from night and she could not sleep. It was so different from home, especially from winter, when the dark lasted most of the day and you could do little but wrap yourselves in blankets against the cold. Good warm wool blankets in our tribal plaid.

  “I have news,” Mildryth whispered when I awoke the next day. “During the night two people were moved from the recovery rooms and set in the hall. Both of the corridors into the recovery area are now blocked. We think they are the last ones.”

  She had been crying. The summer in which I tended to my father, Mildryth had been sent to her Uncle’s stables in Nehdun, where she was very quick to meet and marry Heneric. He was young and handsome, according to Mildryth, and a man of some means. His father had given him a small horse-breeding farm in the forest. Heneric was not among the captives. Mildryth knew this, for he was far from the village when the bots came, but now it was final. Whatever she needed to do would need to be done without him, at least he was not dead. Mildryth firmly believed that. This ordeal will be over soon. She believed that too.

  “Do we know either of them?” I asked.

  “Only one, Cwen was a weaver in Feldland, your mother’s friend, the other woman was from Nehdun, but I do not know her, she is not well.”

  “Bring Alric over, perhaps he knows how many of us have been captured.”

  “Gwynyth, it is good to see you looking better.” Alric called as he leaned over and gave her a hug and kiss.

  “Careful what you are doing, Alric, Hilde might see you and I would hate to die over such a trifle.”

  “A kiss from me gives you great esteem, Gwynyth, you should be proud to trade your life for such honor. Besides, Hilde is busy getting some food and drink, and cannot see us. Good fortune for both of us, I venture.”

  “Alric, you heard about the two new people? How many do we have?” Mildryth asked.

  “Not very many, I am afraid. There are twelve men, two hardly more than boys, and twenty-one women including six young girls.”

  “So few men, Alric, I hoped there would be more. We are not so strong if it comes to fighting for our freedom.” Mildryth sighed. “There are no chiefs, the men so young, no weapons.”

  Alric said that he was thinking of calling everyone together to collect what people knew of our abduction and to figure where we might be. Others besides me had memories of the capture, he said. They also believed that we had been brought into the lander and that it had taken us away. Some feared that we were in its nest and would be fed to its chicks. All agreed that we had been traveling for a very long time to be as thin as we were and to have our hair start to grow back. Perhaps we can figure out where we are and how long we might be held.

  Hilde and Gunhild came over with arms filled with food. Alric jumped up to greet them. “Whatever is keeping us captive is feeding us well enough. Today we have lamb, onions and carrots.” Hilde offered.

  I thought that the girls appeared strangely clean, which was noticeable because they were not wearing much clothing. It was as if they had emerged from a stream with a little towel, but the girl’s energy and spirits overwhelmed all my questions and they ate as much as they could.

  Mildryth waved to a young girl who passed nearby. Kunigunde was the cousin of Mildryth’s husband Heneric. She had met her before and admired her good and kind nature. “I think this is just wonderful,” Kunigunde was saying, “I always hated squatting out in the woods in the cold air. Now we can just sit in comfort and when we are done, water comes and washes everything away, even the stink.”

  “That is indeed a wonder, but so are the basins in the eating area. The water is as clean as melted snow.”

  Alric said that Hilde had found a room with little stalls in which you can stand and have warm water fall on you as if it were a spring rain. She went twice yesterday. She found some wonderful soap there that made her smell like flowers.

  Mildryth buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. She and did not look up until Alric and the red girls had left. “Why do you keep laughing?” I asked, “You must tell me, you know.”

  “It is not right to say, but I hear that since Bertram is not here, Alric has taken up with both girls. They are quite vigorous at night. Merwyn said that she was embarrassed and moved her mat to the other side of the room. More envious than annoyed is my guess, unless the commotion was causing her to miss too much sleep.”

  At that time, we had not explored much of the habitat. All of the spaces that we could see were made with white panels about the height of two men. The walls were as smooth as pond water on a clear day and almost as white as snow on an open field, but they were empty and completely clean, no mud, no bugs, not even dust. I sat looking at the row of straight lines and smooth walls thinking of my slanting room in Lindisport and the row of boxes along the wall with their rough split slat sides, dark stains and irregular shapes. This whole place had been kept brightly lit all the time, but happily that changed last night, at least we thought it must have been night. The
lights suddenly all dimmed. It was not completely dark, like a moonless night in the forest, but a dull glow, just enough to find your way around. Then hours later, they all came back on again. Several times a day food appeared out of the wall from behind a sliding door. The food was strangely fresh after so long a time. We ate what was there with our hands. There were no tables or stools, most people took their food to their mats and ate there.

  We came to know that our habitat occupied the whole of the third level of the Filim module. It was built from standard nearly identical bio-constructed modular panels; temperature controlled, artificially lighted, and with processed circulated air, water, and waste. It was sealed in all respects from the remainder of the ship and it was the only place we were ever allowed to be for all the years that I have lived.

  About those tunics, everyone, man, woman and child, were given identical tunics and blankets made from the same fine, soft material. They looked as smooth and neat as you could ever hope to see, unfortunately, the fabric was very thin and the tunics did not cover you up the way they ought. They were simple things, one strip of filmy cloth with a hole for your head that hung down from your shoulders front and back. For me, they came to my knees, but for anyone taller they were quite short. We had always used tunics as something worn over our clothes for protection, or for extra warmth, but never as a sole piece of clothing. Unless you tied them well around your waste, they did not hide what should remain hidden. Being thin and small, I was content with mine, except for the sheerness of the fabric and the sense that you could see through it, but for Hilde and Gunhild, it was not so.

  The red girls were as robust as ever they were and their tunics seemed to be hardly there. The girls had pulled and stretched trying to keep things in, they even laced up the sides rather than use a belt, but this just stretched the fabric tight causing a whole other set of curves, while still leaving large amounts of flesh exposed. I remembered that Gunhild once aided me with my sable collar and decided to help them. I had an extra blanket from the recovery room and thought to use it as a wrap around their middle; the tunic would hold it in place. So, we sent Alric away and set to work. It took a long time without our sewing tools, but in the end, we had made up two functional skirts.

  “We can give them to the girls in the morning,” Mildryth said, “if they are not too tired.”

  I was tired, still not with my normal strength, but it felt good to do something useful. I was about to lie down and rest when I heard it, that familiar bark. I would know it anywhere. Loboc and two other dogs came skidding around a corner into the great room. He had heard my voice and jumped on me, knocking me over as usual. He was wiggling like a puppy. I was laughing and crying. He was so skinny and awkward looking without his thick shaggy coat. Loboc was a piece of my life returned after having been stripped of everything, without even a hair on my head as my own. Now I had my lifelong friend in my arms. I held him until we both fell asleep.

  The next day there was a great deal of talk about the dogs. It was the first time many of the captives had taken an interest in their surroundings and it took concern about the dogs to do it. My great strong Loboc, who could carry an elk carcass half a day, was so weak that he would tire walking across the room and back. The journey to this place must have been very hard on them. They seemed to have weakened considerably and were slow to recover. The two dogs that arrived with Loboc were well known in our community. Broga was a greatly admired hunting dog and Ovimar was a small but fearless farm dog that once killed two foxes that were raiding the duck pond. Neither of the owners was among captives, but the dogs sought out people with whom they were familiar. They too were very weak and spent much time lying together in a corner.

  Freibald, a tall young man from near Nehdun, was convinced that more dogs had been taken. He was determined to go look for them. Some of the corridors were now lighted for most of our day. It would be possible to go into them and explore. Freibald already knew that there were other levels, but he did not know how extensive the maze of corridors was. Six young people were gathered to search the complex. They were sent off in two groups with a flurry of warnings and advice about taking chances and getting lost. They were gone for hours, long enough to get us all worried, only to return shortly before the lights dimmed. No dogs had been found, but they had stories of long empty hallways, strings of plain rooms, others that were larger and must have been built with some purpose in mind. There were two other levels, and some spaces had been sealed off. There was a large area, they said, that appeared to be unfinished. There were no white walls there, but it was a large high space with cables strung from the top and piles of pipes and posts. They never saw the sky or any living thing. They did not think that they reached the edge of the complex, but they had. The end looked like just another wall, but one without doors.

  There were other dogs. Apparently they had been revived and recovered enough to move off, however weak. They crawled away to the deepest, darkest holes they could find, to lay there and heal their wounds or die, as is their nature. Two more joined us during the night. One was a great dog. The next day, Freibald took Broga and two young men to try again to find them. Broga was still weak, but was determined to press on. He had great courage and was known to stand his ground against wolves or bears if needs be. He led them to a small opening in the wall, a small place where the panels did not fit together well. The dogs had been able to crawl into an area between the walls and huddle together. Somehow, they had been given food and water while they were there. Two dogs had died, including a farm dog from our neighbor. Overall, we had saved sixteen dogs. They were a great comfort to all, and it greatly helped our spirits to be able to care for them and see them become strong again.

  Looking back, we never questioned why the ObLaDas took the dogs, perhaps because we would have taken them ourselves if given a chance. I believe they felt that the dogs and we were dependent on one another. When they learned that this was not exactly true, they stopped caring for the dogs. Their rearing and reproduction was left to us, much to the pleasure of the many breeders and trainers. In the end, I believe that the ObLaDas’ notion had been correct, as the presence of our dogs helped us survive in this extraordinary environment.

  Finding the dogs was wonderful, but finding that there was so little to our place was frightening. We seemed to be amidst boxes inside of larger boxes, with most rooms small and empty, although a few had useful features. While we were shocked to be in such a foreign environment, the dogs wandered around as if lost. No dirt, no smells to investigate, nothing to chase, all their life’s habits gone.

  We had been on the Outward for twenty days, perhaps a few more, when we held our first assembly. There was a room that seemed to have been especially built for such things, having tiered rows of benches curving around a central raised area. It was not dissimilar to a council fire, without the fire of course. We had not yet seen any of our captors, but their robots were a constant presence. These were small machines that worked around the habitat to keep it in order and well supplied. We could tell that we were being watched and maneuvered by the ObLaDas, though we knew nothing about them at that time, it was just one more question we had. Many were worried about those who were left behind, but we encouraged ourselves that they were not dead. It was we who have gone missing, and we convinced ourselves to have hope. We knew that a great deal of food had been stolen by the lander in the last days, most of the grain harvest and whole herds of cattle, but even that great amount would not last for long, even though they seemed to have some way of keeping meat from rotting, perhaps they had an ice room somewhere. There were many captives, thirty-three all together, and sixteen dogs. It was doubtful that the food would last beyond the winter. We would be home by spring, in good time for planting, we all agreed, for the villages would not survive the year if crops were not planted soon after the ground thawed. We were very wrong, of course, but it was a good feeling for a while and gave us strength.

  Our new lives took a few turns f
or the better over the next days. A small spider bot came into the hall and made sounds like a tinkling market bell. It was one of the first that we had seen. They probably chose it because it looked harmless, though some hated the machines no matter what shape they took. It stood before a section of wall that we recognized as a sliding door, and when most of our people had gathered around to see what was happening, the doors opened. It was a new room with shelves and large tables stocked with bolts of cloth. It was the same fine white stuff the tunics were made from. There were some very fine sewing supplies and excellent scissors. This was very pleasing to the women, as it gave them much to do, and allowed them to replace those tunics as quickly as they could.

  The next day a similar show took place. It revealed another room that was even easier to appreciate. It was a kitchen, fully supplied, though it did not have a fireplace like we were accustomed to using. The spider bot climbed onto a box, and with a flourish of its thin shiny arms, turned a small knob, waited a while, then spritzed water onto a flat area next to the knob. The water immediately boiled away. The spot could get very hot even without a fire. It demonstrated baking ovens and another box that was as cold as ice, this we could understand even though we could not see the ice itself. With metal pots, griddles, scoops and good knives, we were set up to cook our own food and would no longer need to cope with the odd menu selections of our captors.

  Even as these improvements came to us, the men began to grumble even louder. They had little to do in this place, without hunting, farms, forests, or fishing. It must have been annoying to see the women chattering around happy to have these new and really nice things. Some days later, however, events began to address their complaints. A small blacksmithing space was opened. It had a wide stock of different metals, far better than we had ever imagined, and like the kitchen, there was a small furnace that seemed to work without fire. The men were eventually supplied with wood and tools that could be used to make furniture and other things. Of course, it was not real wood, but some kind of substitute the ObLaDas had made. It was not very good, the men said, and it took many years for the Das to make a fake wood that satisfied the carvers and furniture makers.