I was afraid of imprisonment. Just the sight of the dun walls filled her with dread. But in Walliz’s office I was more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life, and I don’t know why. But she could not find the words to tell Chalatta. Could she say that she put everything at risk because she was drugged out of her mind?
"Did he arrest you? Were you cuffed and all?"
"Close. He might have, if I had given him the chance."
"Was the man a Security?"
"No. He was an Other."
"Oh." Probably reason enough to the child, she settled until the next question came.
"Why did he want to lock you in?"
“He wanted my father’s books and papers, and he would have hurt you to make me give them to him." Maybe he really would have. High Commissioner A’nden might have made the edict against pulling children in to question parents, but he couldn’t control everyone.
"Why did he want to hurt me?" From her expression, the idea that she could be harmed had never occurred to the girl.
"Because he knew I loved you, that if he hurt you, I would tell him everything."
"You would give him the books?" She eyed her mother, appalled. Her eyes stole toward a blank wall, one very like the wall that hid the magnetic door to this apartment.
Noting the direction of her gaze, Karra wondered if her daughter suspected that was the location of the hidden books, and hoped not. Chalatta was not supposed to know yet. Nevians no longer brought children in for questioning, and with Walliz out of the way, Karra intended to give them no reason to begin again.
"Oh, baby, you are far more valuable to me than books."
Chalatta hugged her mother. For several minutes, she basked in the warmth of such tremendous love. Then she said, "How did he know about the books?"
"The authorities have always known about them, but never where they were. They just didn't know how to get to them."
Nobody knew how to get to them, not even Jem. After their parents’ arrests, the children had hidden in another apartment.
Before they left, though, Karra’s father had made her responsible for keeping his hidden storage closet sealed. When Security combed every inch of Jon Willo’s apartment, they had found nothing. But since Karra’s daddy had been her hero, she couldn’t bear thinking that they might someday find the books and papers. So after the Security gave up, she ignored her brother Carlon’s instructions to remain in hiding.
Each day she snuck out to remove a few items from the library until every book and scrap of paper was gone. Karra relocated them in a cave she had made in the basement of a collapsing building. Thinking back, she now realized that the building was in such a sad state of disrepair, her first hiding place had not been very safe for either her or the books.
One book remained missing. Jon Willo’s autobiography on Zarindan history, which he had nearly finished at the time of his arrest, no longer existed. Chances were, it had fallen into Nevian hands. She preferred, however, to believe her father had hidden it somewhere else. She only wished she knew where.
Her siblings knew she had hidden their father’s collection, but no one seemed interested enough to ask her where. Carlon, especially, considered it one piece of their frightening childhood that was best left forgotten. Chalatta, however, knew the family secret, and quite often asked her mother for a retelling of the story of the arrest and the children scattering to their prearranged assignments.
"You told him about the books?" she asked with the reverence one asked about sacred tomes.
"No. Of course not. He guessed. I used too much of what I knew in my tests and in my papers. It showed."
"But you told me never to let them know how much I could learn. You weren't so smart, Mama."
Karra smiled sadly. "No, I wasn't. I had been out of school so long so I guess I thought I needed to prove something." Then she gave a vicious grin. "But that's my line, little chit. I'm supposed to say I wasn't smart, and you're supposed to argue with me and tell me what a great person I am."
Chalatta giggled.
Both quieted and silence prevailed, a wall between them. Karra pondered how this one very stupid action would affect her relationship with her daughter.
"What're you gonna do?" the child asked at length.
"I don't know."
"Aunt Su says you're ‘on the run’ now and someday they'll catch you and ‘lock you in and throw away the key.’" She paused. "Does that mean forever? Is Aunt Su right?"
"Probably."
"Erren't you scared?"
"Yeah, baby. I'm scared." A dozen fears clashed in her head. Above the fear of Security finding her, she feared that Chalatta would stop loving her. At the same time, it terrified her that she wanted to be loved so badly. Loving leaves me vulnerable, doesn’t it? Loving someone presents me with such a risk I wonder if I’ll ever dare to love anyone besides my daughter.
"Yeah, I’m scared, too. 'Cause I need you and if you're in lockaway, I can't see you."
“I know.” Karra patted Chalatta who had started crying softly. But if she really loved Chalatta, she would have to let Suzin care for her, which also meant she might never be able to see her daughter again. Her chest ached.
“Suzin will be upset with you for running off like that," she said.
"Yeah." Chalatta pouted, thrusting out her chin. "But I don't care. I had to see you."
"I'm glad you did, baby. I'm glad you did. And I want you to stay with me for a little bit longer. We can spend some time in the playroom, all right?"
"Sure!” Chalatta leaped to her feet. “Let’s do it now, Mama.”
Karra let herself be pulled to her feet, laughing. Chalatta darted away, expecting her mother to give chase. Karra did so with delight, not passing her daughter, but so close it left the child squealing with giggles. They arranged the boxes, ramps, ropes and ladders into an elaborate gym. Karra then allowed her daughter to chase her through the maze of barriers. She helped her perform some easier tumbling maneuvers, then demonstrated the more difficult floor exercises. Finally, Chalatta collapsed into happy exhaustion.
“I want to be with you for all the time!" Chalatta said as she sprawled onto a mat.
The moment had come. She now needed to break the unpleasant news. Her chest felt heavy. Her throat constricted. She swallowed before she was able to speak.
"I know. I want that, too, but we can't have that. After today I want you to do me a really big favor."
"What?"
"Don't come in here, not even into the front of the basement, unless you see my sign. I'll leave a piece of blue rag on the window frame when I'm here. If there is no rag, just walk on by as though nothing is going on. Can you do that?"
"Yeah, but what if you can’t…?"
"Will you do that?" Karra's lips pressed into a no-nonsense line.
Chalatta gave a reluctant nod.
There were tears in Chalatta's eyes as she left that evening. But there were none in Karra's.
There were never tears in Karra's eyes.
Chapter 6
When the tall, muscular man stepped out of the airway, those who knew him stood aside. As any of his enemies could testify, Carlon was not one to be taken lightly. Even the Nevian business longsuit could not hide his broad back or the way he moved through the crowd. Perhaps it was the ease with which he pressed forward, an athlete's grace. A person might suspect his pocket held a gun or a knife. Few dared to find out.
But Carlon knew the truth. In his youth he had proved to enough of the street vermin that he could hold his own, so no one dared to bother him now. But the older he got, the less safe he felt, not that he was old just that his only exercise anymore was the two-larga walk each way to and from the airway tube. It kept him trim, but not fit. Karra could take him on.
Carlon frowned. Uneasy memories wriggled every time he thought about her; something had been wrong with her for a long time now, and nothing he had tried worked.
It all began the day they went into hiding. Their father
had stocked a one-room apartment in the next building with food, furnal oil, a heating-cooking unit, blankets and clothes for the day the Security would arrive to arrest him and his wife. Each child knew what to do. They had practiced their escape until it took scant minutes.
The day finally arrived. Security burst into the apartment. The children screamed and scattered to their assigned rooms, locking the doors behind them while the parents offered no resistance, but tried to delay the Security for as long as possible. Every time he remembered the night that changed their lives, he heard his father’s whisper.
“Go, Carlon. Keep them safe. Keep them out of the Nevians’ hands.”
No matter the incredible obstacles, he had obeyed his father’s last words to him.
Karra’s job had been to seal the secret closet filled with their father’s illegal collection. The older children fastened the little ones into a cradle arrangement that slid each one of them from one building to the one across the few prems of space that separated them. Karra sealed the closet, making her the last one to leave. From across the way, Carlon willed her to hurry. The other cradles had just been disconnected. Their ropes trailed down from the windows of the apartment they had just vacated, leaving the impression that the children had lowered themselves to the ground. He wanted to shut the window so the Security would never think to check the next building. In practice it had taken her half as long.
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” he whispered, as if the force of his thoughts could make it happen.
Finally, he saw her sit in the cradle. He tugged with all his might, moving the line so quickly she nearly lost her balance.
“What took you so long?” he hissed at her.
“This wasn’t for practice,” she explained. “This was for real. I had to make sure nothing showed. What if they find it, Carlon? What if they find the magnetic lock, or measure the rooms? Daddy said nothing’s foolproof. He said it could be found if they looked hard enough. What if they find it?”
“You brat!” he hissed at her. “What if they find us? How will Daddy know where we are if Nevians relocate us to work centers or a children’s home? What will I tell Mama if they adopt out the babies?”
“Don’t you care?” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “Don’t you care if they find his work? It’s important, isn’t it? Why would he spend so much time on it if it wasn’t important?”
“You never answered my question. What took you so long?”
“I couldn’t find the book.”
“What book?”
“Daddy’s last book. You know, the Zarindan history. Daddy’s story. I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. Then I heard one of them trying to get in the room and I had to leave. What if they find it, Carlon?” She burst into anguished tears.
Carlon hadn’t cared. Their father’s politics had kept them in poverty, and had haunted them their whole lives. As far as he was concerned, Dad could rot in prison. But one look at his little sister told him he’d better never say so aloud.
Carlon was the only one permitted to leave their apartment. At his parents’ request, he had been working under an assumed name for the last two years. Although he had wanted to attend the Public Academy then attend one of the professional academies, financial necessity had cut his education, and his plans, short. The apartment, in his name according to the lease, stated he was the only resident and that he was actually two years older. If the children, by being noisy, let any of their neighbors know that they lived there, he could lose his apartment, and he would face his worst fears—homelessness as well as a family to feed.
Too old to be placed in a children’s home, but not really involved in his father’s work, he doubted they would send him to the prison camp where they had placed Dad. But there were work camps for young men past their sixteenth birthday. Both he and Jem would probably be sent to one of them until they somehow convinced the authorities they had never been involved in Dad’s subversive nonsense. Suzin, being only twelve, and not yet considered an adult until she turned sixteen, might be sent to work as a servant.
But the little ones would definitely be sent to a children’s home. They would adopt out the two youngest, Kata and Benej, not even caring if their mother still lived. Carlon had asked Dad why Nevians would adopt Homelander children, especially since biologically the two species did not combine.
“They don’t want to breed with us,” Dad had said. “They want Nevian humans. Those Others want people who are like them in culture, but are more capable of reproduction than they are.”
Dad had said much more during that and several other long discussions, but Carlon had blocked out most of it. He never again wanted to be hounded or poverty-stricken because of politics. As his father explained Nevian culture, he found it far more desirable than fighting for his own.
He found it attractive that most Nevian couples were lucky to produce one child. A significant number produced no children at all. A few birthed as many as three children, which was almost scandalous. They treasured children, but hated “unrestrained” reproduction. In their opinion, which became law when they took control, any woman bearing a child outside of marriage must resign herself to forced sterilization. Not long ago they took the child as well, although that had changed recently.
“It’s their way of controlling us. They would rather destroy us completely than have us overpower them in sheer numbers. Sann’s Health Center isn’t about health at all. It’s about extermination, not as us as a species, but as our diverse cultures. Through Sann’s, the promiscuous are bred out. I wish those Others would return to Nevia and leave us alone. We did much better without them.”
It was Dad’s favorite argument. Carlon had heard versions of his father’s position most of his life. But what he knew was that eight children consumed more food than Dad was able to bring home. The small Nevian families, consisting of couples and possibly a single child, sounded very attractive to Carlon, and as the handspans stretched into mooncycles, no children sounded even better.
Of all his siblings, Karra alone refused to remain in hiding. Once Security stopped patrolling the neighborhood, she left the apartment daily. He tried reasoning with her, explaining the situation and the incredible need for her to stay put. Instead she insisted she needed to find a safe place for Dad’s small library. When reasoning with her failed, he tried physical coercion, hoping the beatings he gave would stop her daily excursions. They didn’t. She chose to slip out when he slept or worked. No matter what he did, from that time on he had no control over his little sister. Could she have been only eight at the time?
That year, all of them closeted into that tiny apartment, turned Karra from an obedient child into someone else entirely. Something hard lurked behind her eyes. While Jem argued with Carlon to his face, Karra chose more devious ways to rebel. Outwardly compliant to Su’s requests for help with the four younger children, she often slipped away leaving tasks undone. Instead, when she returned home, she brought gifts, a packet of soy, a jar of milk, a fistful of red dits, always beggars’ fare. Carlon still felt shame when he remembered how she turned her tiny offerings over to the family rather than using them for herself, even though by that time the food had run out. Any surplus money needed to be spent on furnal fuel. Carlon’s income could not meet the needs of all eight of them.
He was never sure when he became convinced that Karra no longer begged for food or coins. Working as many plus hours as his employer allowed kept him away from paying attention to her meanderings. Not until their mother returned the following year, sick and dying, did he realize that what Karra brought home was much more than a beggar’s fare.
A few days before Mama returned home, Jem, who had already moved out and was busy establishing himself in the Homelander Front, arrived just as the family was sitting on the floor to eat a meal. Suzin placed cups of milk in front of the two youngest. The others looked at the milk longingly, but all knew that everyone else drank water. The meal was beans and flatbread. It would be the only
meal either he or Suzin would eat that day so that the younger children, who were too young to eat very much at any one time, could at least have another meal in the morning. Karra would probably go out foraging for something more, he had no doubt. He knew by now he could not keep her inside. But Karra looked pale, and did not touch her food.
“She came home with her dress all bloody,” Suzin whispered to him. “I had her change clothes and wash up, but she wouldn’t let me see where she was hurt. I’m worried about her, Carlon.”
“Then she can just stay home where it’s safer.” He had no energy to spend on his one rebellious sibling. At least Jem had moved out.
The lock in the door clicked. All heads turned. Being in hiding had made all of them hyper-alert.
“Hello, all,” Jem said. He wore a grim expression and carried a pot. “Look, I brought us some hot, right off the stove, soyham—I’ll need the pot back after supper, Su—and a bag of apples. It’s a regular feast.” His eyes stole toward Karra and he hesitated. “Has she told you yet?”
“Told us what?” Carlon asked.
“She was there. I think the crowd trampled her in their panic. She had blood on her dress.” No one hurried him. They were all more interested in the soyham and apples, and looked at Suzin expectantly.
“Sit down, Jem, and join us,” she invited.
“Sure.” He took the bowl Suzin offered and found a place on the floor.
He spent a moment watching Suzin dish out the soyham along with the beans. She would cut the apples into slices later, and each one would get a few slices, not a whole piece of fruit.
“I went to the prison camp to see Dad. They were taking prisoners to the new facility, and Dad’s group was next to be loaded in the transport. But he never made it. Suddenly, guards started firing rifles, and they took out the whole line of prisoners, including Dad.” His voice broke. “Dad’s dead, guys.”
Suzin rushed over to where Karra still sat, unmoving, not touching her food. She made comforting sounds, but Karra seemed not to hear. Neither did she accept Suzin’s attempt at comfort.
Her Darkest Beauty: An Alien Invasion Series - The Second Generation Page 5
