White Time Page 14

  ‘We haven’t done much,’ I say. ‘Not when you look at how much there’s left.’

  Quaid chews and swallows. ‘It’s seventy rows we don’t have to do again.’

  The breeze is in among the flowers; they sway and flow but never move on. The sunlight’s so bright on them they hardly look purple at all now, just bright white crowding spots dancing on your eyes. At least from a distance they look like flowers; close up, you can see that they’re not quite right. Each fat petal sticks out separately from the hairy, sappy stalk; they haven’t quite come together into a proper flower.

  ‘What are they called, these flowers?’

  He says some fancy name, Lapidarium something. ‘Most people call them a winsome blue, or a welcome blue.’

  ‘Blue? They’re not blue! That up there’s blue! These are white, little bit purple.’

  ‘Ah, yeah. But blue’s in the eye of the beholder, you’ll find. Like a lotta things.’

  ‘Like beauty, you mean?’ It sounds funny for me to say a word like ‘beauty’ – even funnier to say it out here, with this guy. Like Mrs Allan saying ‘gorgeous’.

  ‘Yairs, that too.’

  ‘Don’t you like them?’

  He looks at me, at the field of blues, back to me. ‘Liking doesn’t come into it, exactly, liking or not liking.’

  And he pours himself more milky tea from the thermos. I listen to him sip, to his old throat swallowing. The silence seems to be thicker now, the insect noises getting higher and farther away. I dip and turn my head, because it seems to me that there’s a different noise happening, almost too low to hear, a kind of throbbing, very faint. Maybe I’m hearing my own blood out here, my own heart-beat, in the quiet.

  A sharp-edged shadow moves across the sun and stops on the field of winsome blues. My mouth drops open and I look to Quaid.

  He gets up with a long grunt, takes his tea mug out into the open and looks up. ‘Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.’

  I run out to him. There’s something in the air that’s like the bottom of a big black iron. It’s as long as a bus, wide as two buses here at the back end. It hovers over the field, kind of nosing around. When it moves, it makes the throbbing noise, when it stops the throbbing fades. Bit by bit it comes lower and lower and turns right around so that it’s pointed towards the shed.

  ‘What is it?’ I whisper.

  Quaid drains his tea mug. ‘It must be their nonsense downtown.’

  ‘What, these are the gods?’

  ‘Well, the …’ He squints up at the giant floating iron. ‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we?’

  I take a deep breath. OK. I’ll start freaking when he starts.

  The iron thing locks into position and comes down real careful. The tip of its beak is about a metre from Quaid’s boot toe. He shakes the tea dregs onto the ground behind him. The iron thing nuzzles the dry grass, and settles there.

  Two trickles come out of the tip of the beak, like steam that doesn’t float away. They grow to the size of children, waist-high to Quaid. And they kind of boil. They look like these caterpillars I saw once on a nature programme that were being all eaten up inside by these wormy parasite things, so that they were really just sacks of writhing maggots.

  One of the things speaks, in a chittering voice that makes the maggots writhe faster. ‘Thanking you for welcome. Most appropriately beautiful.’ They bow towards the crop.

  Quaid eyes the flowers too, then gives the creatures a nod. ‘A pleasure. Can I offer you a cuppa tea, maybe?’

  The two things chitter doubtfully at each other, swaying on their stalks.

  ‘Or something to eat? Bit of sausage? Bit of pickle?’

  They come to a decision. ‘Thanking, thanking. Already are eaten.’

  ‘Come a long way, have you?’ says Quaid.

  They put what seem to be their head ends together to giggle. Then they bend their joined heads towards us, still giggling, and – well, they blow my mind. It isn’t so much where they come from, which is about what you’d expect of caterpillar-land – lots of juicy food and wriggling and cocoon-weaving – so much as the hugeness between that place and this one, the fact of Earth being so tiny and so almost-lost among all the other places they’ve been, and the empty distance – empty even of blackness, empty even of a lonely whistling wind – between us and everything else. My brain feels like a giant emptied eggshell, with just the few slimy strands that are me, that are Earth-stuff, twanging stupidly in all that space.

  ‘Ah,’ says Quaid. He rocks onto his heels and pushes his free hand into his work-pants pocket. ‘You planning on staying long?’

  ‘Already we late, having to return. But our greeting. Purse of welcome? Bring when you come, him.’ One of the little maggots bursts out of the caterpillar-skin and falls to the grass, wagging. ‘Must thanking and go. Again, very fine flag you grown. Most joyous and delightful.’

  ‘Lovely flag,’ agrees the other. ‘Be going and goodbye, planetaries.’

  ‘’Bye, then,’ says Quaid.

  The two creatures shrivel back into the tip of the iron. It throbs, and goes straight up in a quick, nifty spiral into the blue, leaving no smoke or noise, not even flattened grass.

  The insects start up shrilling all around us. The breeze gently knocks at us, and the flower stalks squeak and rustle.

  ‘So you knew they’d come here, all the time?’ I say wonderingly.

  ‘Hadn’t a clue.’ Quaid pokes at the maggot with his toe.

  I kneel on the grass and have a look at it. It’s not moving any more, and it’s gone all brown and dead-looking, like a dried-up seed-pod. I pick it up – it’s heavy, and it rattles. And it is a pod – a row of slots has opened along one side of it, and inside each slot a pale, fat disc is loosely trapped, streaked with the same pinky-mauve as the very edge of a winsome-blue petal. I touch one of the discs; it’s smooth and waxy, like a fresh-peeled bean.

  ‘A purse of welcome,’ says Quaid. ‘Some kind of space money.’ He looks up at the empty sky, then goes under the shelter and starts lining flower boxes.

  I carry the maggot-purse in after him. ‘Shouldn’t we tell someone?’

  He bends to put boxes on the lower shelf of the trolley. ‘Hm? Like who, d’you reckon?’

  ‘The police? The newspapers? At least those people down the valley.’

  Quaid’s eyebrows shoot up.

  ‘Don’t you want to tell ‘em they missed out?’ I say.

  ‘Reckon they’d be pretty browned orf, most of ‘em.’ He starts lining flower boxes with tissue.

  ‘Yeah, wouldn’t they!’

  ‘And the ones that weren’t … well, it’d be the Prophet Quaid this and the Holy Relic Space Money that—’

  ‘Yeah! Great, hey? I wouldn’t mind being the Prophet Eleanor. Can I have this, if you’re not going to use it?’ I say, turning the purse over in my hands.

  He doesn’t answer. He’s looking at me, chuckling quietly through his nose, his mouth twitching with things he could say.

  Finally, ‘By all means,’ he says, ‘you keep the purse, Eleanor.’ And he pulls his flower trolley out towards the crop.

  I hold the purse and turn one of the waxy discs in its slot. It’s mine. I could walk up to the road right this minute, hitch a ride to the showground, worm my way through the crowd to a microphone. Whatever I said, they’d do it; they’re gathered together all ready to be told, to get their instructions from the gods. They’d want me to come – remember Mrs Allan’s crumpling face? It’s people’s most heartfelt beliefs!

  I look up from the purse. Quaid’s already nearly halfway down his row, seeming to move slowly but cutting faster than I ever will. The sunlight’s blinding on his bent back, on the crowding spots of the flowers.

  Sigh. I put the purse down in the shade, with a milk crate over it so it won’t get stepped on. I go to my trolley and line all the boxes, and unhook my knife from the wall. And I trundle out into the sunlight, and get on with my work.

  WEALTH<
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  ‘Absolutely not.’ I turned on my heel.

  Lar grabbed my arm. I took pleasure in snatching it out of his grasp; it’s not often an Ord can show open contempt for a Leet. I stalked away through the crowd of students.

  He came hurrying after me, steadying the great braided pile of his hair. In the Leet tongue, the word for hair is the same as the word for wealth, and Lar was wealthy – but not as wealthy as he wanted to be, not as wealthy as he wanted me to make him.

  ‘I can pay you,’ he said.

  ‘That should make a difference?’

  ‘I can pay you a lot.’

  ‘Too bad, Lar. Some of us aren’t for sale.’

  ‘But you’re the best!’

  His despair made me smile. It was the first time a nubile Leet had tried to bribe me to augment him – I couldn’t help but feel proud. My own head, shorn like most Ords’, was high and my step was light as I swept out the college gate. My work must be getting good circulation; I must be becoming a name worth dropping. I would share this with Purl as soon as I got to the workshop.

  But Purl was waiting for me. She came hurrying up the laneway to meet me, her face tight with controlled emotions. She caught me by the shoulders. ‘They have taken Chirrup again.’

  I swallowed a curse. ‘What for?’

  ‘For throwing flour on glory-day At the procession. A nothing charge, a mere nuisance—’

  ‘He is under the Wall?’

  She nodded, fiercely blinking back tears. ‘In a Protocol cell.’

  ‘I will go there. Directly.’ I thrust my book-satchel into her arms.

  She could not disguise her relief. ‘Good girl! You know I would go myself, if I were allowed there—’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Give him my love!’ she cried after me.

  Yes, well …

  My annoyance sped me through the busy market square. My grandmother’s love had always been divided unequally between my brother and me. For all my hard work, for all the skill I put to use in Purl’s augmentation shop, for all my steady fulfilment of my obligations to her, I could never strike the spark in her eye that Chirrup could, greeting her nonchalantly as he left the house, snatching his breakfast off my plate on the way. Purl complained about the bronze-coin I cost her with each season’s college-fee, but Chirrup could wander, free of occupation, all day, bringing in no coin yet availing himself of bed and board in her house, and not a sour word would she utter. And the lengths she’d gone to, to scrape together the twenty gilden his last trip to the Wall had cost her! And did he do anything to repay her, besides come home and lift her off her feet, and let her cover his face with kisses? And yet she had seemed entirely content with that.

  They brought Chirrup up to the visiting cell. He grunted when he saw me. I guess he expected a co-conspirator, to be gleeful with, or maybe that quadroon-girl I’d seen him with, the one in the leathers.

  ‘Purl sends her love,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Mph. She send any money?’

  ‘They’ve set a price on you, then?’

  ‘Hmm.’ He sniffed. I could read this boy like a book; he was a little frightened of the amount, yet impressed with himself, itching to tell.

  ‘Twenty, same as last time?’ I tried to sound as if I didn’t care one way or another. ‘Throwing flour isn’t as bad as sloganing a wall, but for a second misdeed—’

  ‘Sixty,’ he said.

  I gaped.

  ‘Because of last time.’ A sort of glum pride shaped his face.

  ‘But Purl can never pay—’

  ‘I know that—’

  ‘I know you know,’ I snapped back. ‘It’s the surprise talking.’

  He snorted. ‘You would make a crap rebel.’

  ‘Who’d want to be a rebel?’ I rang one of the bars between us with a knuckle. ‘Petty-vandals and jail-worms, the lot of you. Daubing walls, setting fart-bombs – it’s all so much playing. Being a rebel used to mean something, but who could take you seriously these days?’

  He gave an irritatingly patient sigh. ‘You don’t know anything.’

  ‘I know there’s a grandmother somewhere eating her heart out over your carry-on; I know that much.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘And if it weren’t for Leets I’d have a mother and father, too. Get Purl to tell you that story, dolling girl, fawner on our oppressors.’

  ‘I don’t fawn!’

  ‘Prettying up pet tamsins all day – you call that taking a stand for the Ord Nation, do you?’ he said with a smirk.

  ‘I call it earning my keep. Someone has to repay Purl for the food we eat and the roof over our heads. This looks like a Leet roof to me.’ I waved at the arched brick ceiling of the cell.

  ‘Wrong!’ he crowed. ‘This is Ord work, built before colony times. Pick up a history book some time.’

  I gripped the bars between us as if I were the prisoner. ‘I know my history,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I share all my working hours with our grandmother, remember? She should be a Wise One, honoured, with an easy life. Instead, she has to pickle her hands in live-water every day, slaving for noble toy-people. Ord history is written in the bend of Purl’s back, in the lines on her face, if you’d only look. And you, you do nothing more than worsen that woman’s pain. You can spout all the rebel preachery you like, but I can smell your breath, the fancy onioned Leet food on it. At least I have never stunk like you. And many more of their meals you’ll be eating, while Purl breaks law and friendship buying you out of here. I hope you’re pleased.’

  ‘It’s her choice,’ he said smugly. And he stood there smiling and shrugging at me, handsome and stupid as ever. He was lucky the bars were there, I tell you, or I would have clawed his pretty green eyes out with my bare hands.

  I walked slowly back across the square. Most of the stallholders were packing and leaving, and the cries of the last fresh-goods vendors had an evening echo, bell-like and tragic, quite different from their businesslike daytime clamour. Sixty gilden. Sixty! I remembered Purl counting out the twenty last spring. I have never seen this much money in my life, I had thought then, and I may never again. Sixty was mad. Sixty was impossible; the law knew that. Sixty meant they wanted him off the streets. Which was ridiculous. So he was a rebel – what did rebels ever do? They set off smoke-bombs, they scribbled slogans on walls, they fomented crazy rumours about seizing power and scouring Leets from the land. They were a shadow of their former force, of which our parents had been part. Didn’t the law know that? Hadn’t Leet law itself taken all our power away, right by right, rebel by rebel?

  ‘He’s fine,’ I told Purl, back at the workshop. ‘Well fed. They haven’t set a price on him yet.’ It was easier to lie than to see her face fall, hear her weep and wail. I wanted a rest from having Chirrup on my brain, from pretending to care whether he lived or died. And there was no other way for her to find out – Purl and all her friends were smudged and smeared with old rebel connections themselves, and could not go near the Wall.

  I put on an apron and settled to my work. Chirrup might sneer at it, might rightly condemn it as yet another bowing to Leets’ will, but I loved it, for its delicacy and beauty, and for the repetitiveness that emptied my head of thoughts of family, of politics, of anything at all. The tamsin’s pelt rose and fell under my fingers as I brightened and thickened its coat, adding wealth strand by silky new strand. I was good at this; even Purl couldn’t have told the new hairs from the old.

  This was a fine, fine beast I was working on, from deep within the Keys, so highly strung that they’d had to drug it and bring it in on its tasselled cushion. Its claws were beaten metal, its eye-rims tattooed black just like a Leet’s. They were so stupidly competitive, Leets. The money they poured into these lap-beasts!

  But I can pay you! Lar’s voice cried out in my memory, so sudden that I almost set a hair awry.

  ‘You’re all right, Rill?’ said Purl sharply behind me. She knew what wealth lay under my hands.

  ‘I’m fine.’ I to
ok a breath and tried not to concentrate too hard, or I’d start setting the hairs in rows, instead of properly randomly.

  I can pay you a lot!

  I held steady this time, but all my skin was prickling. What was ‘a lot’ of money, for a Leet? To be sure, it would make sixty gilden look like loose change. But it would be some embarrassing amount, a problem to hide. And all the equipment I’d have to ‘borrow’ from the workshop to grow the hair, without anyone noticing – crazy! And then, how could I move such a weight of wealth? Human wealth was long – it was no use unless it brushed the floor – and it would die without live-water. I would have to smuggle Lar in – But why was I even thinking this way?—

  ‘Your mind is elsewhere, girl.’ Purl wished she could control that part of me, too.

  ‘Yes, grandmother.’ I paused to ease the tension in my shoulders. ‘I’m thinking about Chirrup.’

  ‘Ah.’ As I bent over the work again she placed a hand on my back, and for a few moments I basked in the true sympathy my false virtue had bought me, before the sadness of it seeped through to me.

  I lifted another comb of tamsin wealth from the cask beside me. Taking bribes, breaking law to help some Leet advance her child – I shook my head. As if I would ever waste my skills like that. As if I would so compromise myself.

  But in the middle of that night, a voice woke me – my own this time, not Lar’s. I opened my eyes on the darkness, and the voice said, A boy-head is not so different from a tamsin-head … is it?

  Leets are supposed to learn alongside us up to marrying age, so that they develop the touch for dealing with commoners. But of course, except for the real goody-goodies, they never come near us, not to converse, not to pass time. So it was in the morning rush, when Ord and Leet mingled on the college paths and in the corridors, that I veered through the crowd to Lar’s elbow and said calmly, ‘I have been giving it some thought, what you proposed.’

  He drew back from me, blinking a flash of delight from his eyes. Then he leaned forward with unnervingly obvious eagerness. ‘My house, tonight.’