by Eugen Bacon
Vida plucked his mind from Eros and into Cosmos Medicine to aid the birth of his child in the wilderness of 180C, through portals of time outside the Earth’s orbit. He pulled out the head, cleaned the airway, clipped the umbilical cord. His eyes shimmered as he cradled the baby’s head in his hand. In the distance, a red bird soared, circled Myra, Vida and the child, as the world rolled by in an expanse of sky. The umbilical clip did it. No wonder, then, the storm in the child’s eyes when she was born, her loud indignation at everything she had been forced to endure, the memory of her time in the placenta wiped. That was the only time Vida knew the bub Tempest to cry.
Despite the cry, the birthing was nothing like he had imagined. Everything was too efficient for the rawness he had believed of an actual birth. The pangs, the crowning inside the brightness of a white-as-white hospital room that did jack all to dim the brutal sounds of childbirth . . . How a doctor might reach forward and grasp the baby’s mucus- and blood-coated head, pull the baby dangling by the neck to place it skin-to-skin on Myra’s clammy chest.
He marveled under the intense gaze of the horizon, surrounded by unbroken landscape. Light from the sky dimmed and the red bird vanished into remote blackness.
• 33 •
Silhouette . . .
Myra came along nicely, full circle, from the day she stood naked as a pole on a river’s coast and saw him, a skinny, spindle-legged boy. The sight of him filled her with something that made her show off her swimming. He had watched her immaculate dive but even then, as he watched, face alight, she didn’t know. Only later, much later, when she sat next to him on the crag, and found he couldn’t hurl stones for the very life of him, couldn’t whiz or bounce pebbles on the water’s face, only then did the knowing come. It was remote and found its way through her like a spell. She looked at his bandy legs, unwieldy hands and the uncertainty on his face. The way he tugged her heart, she knew that she would follow him to the end of the earth and marry him. Vida.
They were unlike other couples, never egged each other. He had a way of driving, of moving the steering with one hand, his whole palm flat on the surface. And while he drove, he had this way of putting his free hand over the back of her hand rested on her lap in the passenger seat, the solid comfort of his weight a rock to Myra. He was her bulwark. She didn’t mind that he nodded like a sage, agreed by saying, “That’s right,” even though he didn’t get a word of what she said. That he took magazines to the bathroom throne, left sprinkles of his morning stubble in the ivory sink, as puddles of his shaving foam blossomed around the en suite shower room in his wake. He didn’t notice that she talked with dinner in her mouth when she got excited about her work in the Migrant Council. That at times her eyes became inaccessible and she nodded but didn’t hear a word he said and, when he took her to bed, she snuggled between sheets and popped little farts with a sigh in her sleep.
• • •
Tempest. T, T, T, my throat does not move. Not always a soft or a light sound, depends on how you say it. This child was different, grandchild of Salem, same S as in Sayneth. Salem who was no snake, whose green eyes were mostly frightened, spaced wide on that small but shapely face . . . The Salem that wound up with Tonk—a plosive sound “kuh,” it stops air into the lips—was a removed self, not the original Salem that T-Mo met. The new Salem rolled her hair, countless curls like a poodle’s, way different from hair that lay flat when T-Mo pulled her scarf and saw it. Poor thing. She never recovered from T-Mo, long after his absence seared into heart memory.
Tempest, T, T, T, child of Myra.
I stood over her as she lay in a tight bundle in that crib, newborn, her fingers closed. Red, protective Red . . . even the plant that sang the child lullabies as if predicting a future was silenced by my presence. When I touched the child’s forehead she startled, but returned to sleep. A single touch . . . that all it took for my gift to her. A gift of the stepping.
TEMPEST
• 34 •
The child’s yellow eyes switched from one face to the other. The loud gaze held more curiosity than baby softness, an expression more questioning than accepting.
Myra spoke fondly, brushed with a finger unruly hair the color of ruby.
“. . . your pappy would sit right here on this spot, ogle me as I swam—”
Vida listened, nodded, his bare toes outstretched to spits from the excitable river. “Ogle?” he said.
“And I would pretend not to have seen him, as I’ll pretend to not hear him now.”
“Danke.”
“Whatever that means,” said Myra.
“It’s a made-up word that means extreme astonishment,” said Vida. “Because the key word in what you just said to young’un here is pretend. True or false?”
“That it’s the key word or that I’m pretending? If the latter: false.”
“Any other answer?”
They laughed.
He sat long with Myra and the child coiled in her arms at their crag by the river, under a white moon and a blink of stars.
• • •
Nana Salem was enamored—distracted with age but enamored. Even arrogant Tonk thawed to the tiger-eyed tot with flaming hair, a child who was seldom ill-tempered or unhappy, who stood upright in her crib at three months to watch the world in silence.
One day Tempest was asleep in her room, on her knees and bum up, cheek on the cool of her sheet. Vida leaned on a chiffonier in the bedroom he shared with Myra and took the occasion to raise a topic.
“Happy we can spend a moment.”
“We always do,” said Myra.
“Not when you’re immersed in work. You have to be bleeding out of the eyeballs to take a day off.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Myra.
“A stolen moment. I worry.”
“About what?” said Myra.
Vida watched as she applied primer on a face that didn’t need any, gently dot concealer with a cosmetic sponge all around skin that held no blemish. She used the point of a brush on her nose.
“About who.” Vida indicated the door with a chin.
“Rubbish,” said Myra. She ran a film of lipstick, kissed her lips together, kissed them again to certify the lasting gloss would stay, and smacked Vida fully on the lips. “Love you and leave you.”
“You are a practical wife and mother—”
“And there’s a but somewhere in the heart of that sentence?”
“You have this outrageous lack of attentiveness around the house when you’re embroiled in intergalactic affairs—”
“Yep, stuck into it.”
“Did you notice Tempest doesn’t perk up any more when you fly in with that windy roary thing of yours?”
“Good. I am glad she is bonding with you and Red. Exceptionally.”
“Tell me the last time you read her a nursery rhyme.”
“Why, I wouldn’t begrudge Red who sings the song of everything in that mesmeric baritone—”
“Your presidency of the Arbitration Assembly is a noble thing, given the complexity of the migrant question, and Shiva battling for its prisoners. So don’t get me wrong—”
“Then what, Vida? What?”
“The child never cries.”
“Should she?”
“Normal babies—they cry.”
“The child is normal,” said Myra. “I’m normal—don’t raise your brow, Vida, it’s not time to be chucklesome.”
“What brow?”
“I’m normal, but if you asked Salem, she’d tell you I never cried.”
“Children jump. They blink at noise. They coo, squeal and gurgle. They make soft eh ah noises when you talk to them.”
“So she knows what we mean. She doesn’t say hooroo, doesn’t shriek at a stupid face or a boo—”
“My point exactly.”
“And that’s supposed to mean .
. . what? Vida, the child is not a nitwit. Margo told me you weren’t either but I’m beginning to wonder now.”
“And that’s you exasperated.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to come at you—”
“Horrid like that?”
“Yes.” She pressed her head on his chest. “Now, my good man, I really must go.”
• • •
Two days later Myra flitted home, a stop-over on the way to a repatriation meeting.
Vida gripped her arm. “Tempest spoke.”
Myra sank into the nearest settee. “She did? Not hooroo, I gather. Shattered I missed it, but you’re clearly stressing about something.”
“She spoke.”
“Okay . . . And?”
“At three months?”
“Talk me through it.”
“Rr-right. I sit her on a rubber mat. I give her butcher paper and a crucible of paint. She dips into the paint, draws with a finger instead of smudging with a palm, as normal babies might.” His face was a statement. “Then she cuts out a shape, an immaculate shape. This my spaceship, she says. I drawed it and snip it for my migsy.”
“Migsy?”
“You’re her Migsy.”
“I honestly prefer Mum. Migsy?” She is pensive. “Think she’ll talk again?”
“You’re welcome to try.”
“Fool not to.” She headed toward Tempest’s room, shook her head as she walked. “Migsy . . . Really!”
Tempest refused to say a word and Vida, standing arms crossed by the door, was no big help.
“Oh, you’re just going to watch?” said Myra.
Vida smiled. “Glad I could help.”
“It’s not funny,” said Myra.
“You need to listen, not talk at her,” he said.
“What?”
She left for work the next morning and Vida was changing Tempest’s nappy when the half-drowsy child said, “My migsy tooked my spaceship?”
“Yes, darling. Migs . . . Your mother took the awesome spaceship you made.”
• • •
The creature spat like a cat, pulled claws almost bigger than its miniature self the size of a thumb. Yet Myra fetched it from 180C. Absent half the time, she expressed love for Tempest in bits: a ruffle of curls, a snap lift into the air, an exotic pet ferocious enough to confine to a cage.
“This . . . thing?” said Vida.
“You bet,” said Myra.
“Present for a child?”
“You bet. And it’s not a thing. His name is LynK.”
The creature’s eyes moved in opposite directions, never focused together. It rocked back and forth in chameleon walk toward Tempest, curled deep in sleep around her thumb.
When he awoke LynK gnarled at Myra, but allowed an intimate feed of worm powder and crushed pine from Tempest. In that rare moment, Myra and Vida earned the pleasure of Tempest’s tinkling laughter.
Singing plant Red took much exception to LynK. First it wilted and gave everyone the silent treatment. When its leaves fleshed from droop, they arrived with new funnels rich with pigment, speckles and spines. What was newer was Red’s wagging, its swelling up and clacking. The launching of spikes was just as new a display and, even in its sleep, LynK turned a vivid green when a spike narrowly missed.
Red also discovered a soaring chorus for the household arrival:
Silly little thing, yeah
Paradox or ghost?
Since when do koalas boast
Padded snowshoe paws?
Tipped ears and cheek ruffs?
As Red belted its freshly arranged song for LynK, its voice registered a new timbre:
Neither one nor the other
I’ll have my way with you.
The layer of vocals was breathy, solid, pulsed. It changed in pitch to finish with vibrato.
• • •
Then the riots began. They distracted Vida from concerns at the child’s alarming growth. They tossed Myra into yet another line of duty away from motherhood.
Bureaucracy between government, Shiva and Xhaust on matters about the prisoners couldn’t be more polished. Xhaust maintained neutrality by refusing to take them, fund them, acknowledge them or reprieve them, but would not sign a Deed of Release for Shiva to get them. Government was unwilling to hand over the exiles without essential paperwork, given the punitive conditions that women and children, let alone men, would be subjected to in Shiva. Because Shiva’s economy thrived on free labor and harsh conditions at the penal settlement, a carload of muscle-power lost with the shuttle crash was debilitating, especially when the severity of Xhaust law and familial punishments appeared to discourage potential crime and would-be labor.
When a migrant one day disappeared from Camp Zero, Shiva was a natural suspect. The migrant’s spouse gave witness statement that stated she heard rumbling in her sleep, woke up drowsy, then alert, as the tail of a mini shuttle sped out of the doorless log house. Vida and Myra recalled the suspicious jets they had espied as they hid behind an Oort cloud, and wondered if and how they were related to the disappearance.
Camp Zero erupted.
Everybody knew where the migrant had vanished to: Shiva. Why? Shiva was kidnapping her promised prisoners. But why take one, only one prisoner, when there were loads of them? But there was no reasoning with the migrants. Middle Creek law was helpless to control the exiles whose government had not cloaked them with refugee status.
Gun-slinging hooligans with silly boy punks, pitchforks and bazookas demanded not only government protection from Shiva abductors, but citizenship. The hooligans were mostly of mid-grown generation; exiles whose primal instincts bordered on the same bestial behavior that had in the first place guaranteed them or their parents a free ticket to the mines of Shiva, had they not crashed into Middle Creek.
Vida watched over the baby as Myra volunteered in a search party composed of Middle Creek law rangers mostly. And Myra’s joining was for good reason. No sooner was she out on a hunt than her hybrid eyes and tracker instinct spotted the missing exile in a ditch not far from Shopping District.
“Drunk as a skunk on half-penny booze,” she later said to Vida.
“What of the spouse’s statement?” he said.
“A rumbling in her sleep, the waking up drowsy, then alert, as some mini shuttle speared out the hut?”
“Yes, that.”
“Bollocks. I’d like to sort the woman myself. We can’t have exiles being mendacious and the start of riots.” She slapped papers on the table.
“And this?”
“Tact. Government orders. I was going to ask her a few questions . . .”
“Ask?”
“Wasn’t going to fist her, if that’s what you’re suggesting. But government wouldn’t allow more questioning.”
“That’s tragic.”
“Pathetic. Diplomacy! Government needs a better grip on these exiles who are nothing but little shits! A logistical nightmare.”
“Everyone is confounded about how to help the exiles regain their lives,” said Vida.
“Yeah. Just smack me on the head.”
“Someone needs to vent.” He eyed Myra. “We must approach these matters with sensitivity—”
“I won’t be muzzled. I need all the help I can get, Vida. You on my side or what?”
“Hooroo.”
“Will you stop that word?”
“I like it. I am on your side.” He clasped her hand. “Our way is this, remember?”
She sighed. “Long day. Over at last! Someone put a handbrake on it at nine-thirty this morning.”
Despite such resolution, the finding of the missing one, Government conceded to the exiles a percentile dole handout to each family every fortnight.
Taxing its own citizenry to feed aliens, people protested.
<
br /> Another rebellion brewed rapidly, this time from Middle Creek’s own folk. Not only had aliens turned Middle Creek into a dog wash, people said, government was rewarding them for it.
The army quietly but effectively dealt with Middle Creek insurgents.
And though all was quiet for a while, everybody knew it was not the end of the exile question.
Nor of Shiva, said Myra.
Two months after the riots, Tempest was tall as a four-year-old. The family prepared for their first holiday together, a reunion of sorts to deepen affection. Nana Margo agreed to watch over domesticated LynK, who surprisingly did not spit at her but climbed her thumb, and the plant Red, that continued belting its goading song:
Feline or marsupial?
A bit rude, yeah
Both get a bum hole
So I wonder, and I really, really wonder
Hunter or hunted?
A matter of time, yeah.
Neither one nor the other
So I wonder, and I really, really wonder
I’ll have my way with you (repeat)
Whatever rue Tempest might have felt at her parting with big, solemn eyes from LynK and Red, her mother’s enfolding arms and leap into space fixed it. The generally unemotive child trembled in ecstasy as she soared high in a whoosh 297,000 nautical miles to 180C, the land of her birth.
• 35 •
A bird hops onto a rock.
Myra smiles. She unloads a basketful of Salem’s affection: herb and cheese crackers, heritage apples, almond and apricot puffs, cold quail’s eggs with flavored salt, black bee honey sweetened beetroot and popping buttercakes. Dear Salem, who reaches up a rung in the pantry and pulls out fragilities packed with flavor, things that melt on your tongue . . .
“Your appetite can handle this?” says Myra.
