Our Dried Voices (2 page)

II

S
imilar failures had occurred at three other meal halls in the colony, all during that same midday meal, and all with similar results. The food machine breakdowns in four halls left three functional meal halls in the colony; the colonists at those were scarcely aware anything had gone wrong. They either ignored or did not hear the cries of those who had gone without food, and they had no interest in the few garbled reports of the catastrophe after they finished their own meals.

But one young man in particular had experienced the food machine malfunction and remained unaffected by this incident. His name was Samuel—or rather that was the name given to him later on in his life, for the people of the colony no longer addressed one another by name. He was somewhere between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five (the close similarities in physical appearance made it difficult to guess the age of any person in the colony). Like the other colonists, Samuel was a brown-skinned, small, hairless person, certainly male, but otherwise mostly indistinguishable from the other adult males in the colony. Yet while the other colonists had identical brown-black eyes that appeared almost unseeing, Samuel’s eyes were deep and inviting, like a dark mountain lake on a hot summer night. And if another colonist were ever to gaze into Samuel’s eyes, way down deep beyond where those twin pools seemed to end, she would see a tiny spark of light, like the lamp of a lost diver searching for his way out of the depths.

Samuel was one of the fortunate few who had obtained his meal before the machine’s breakdown, and when the other colonists rushed from the hall in a mad panic, Samuel calmly walked outside and sat in the soft grass in the shade of the hall to finish eating. No one paid any attention to him, and like the others who had received their meals in the still-functional halls, Samuel took little note of the frenzy that engulfed more than half the colony that afternoon. He ate his meal cake alone and without haste, then stood up and went about his day.

Some hours later, as the sun kissed the tips of the distant mountains surrounding the colony, the hollow sound of bells called the people to the evening meal. A hush had settled over the meadow, leaving only traces of the gleeful laughter, the eager voices, the cries of pleasure that had rippled through the colony that morning. Again the colonists moved as one toward the meal halls. The last rays of the sun flickered over the soft white façades and the colonists averted their eyes. They drifted forward, each following the one in front of him. Most gave no thought as to which of the food halls they moved toward now. Many returned to the very halls they had been to for the previous meal, halls where they had witnessed the breakdown of the food machines. None of them had thought to ask about the machines at the other halls; in all likelihood, few of them could have even formulated this question or understood it had it been posed to them.

Samuel was one of the few colonists who did not return to the same hall where he had taken his midday meal. As the others trudged resignedly toward the seven halls, Samuel stood in the fading light of the meadow and waited. The low sun caught the tips of the colony’s few trees and dragged their shadows through the mossy grass. A solitary female sat atop a hill overlooking the rest of the meadow, her posture perfectly erect and relaxed as she surveyed the movements of the colonists below. Despite the distance, Samuel could tell immediately there was something about this woman that set her apart from everyone else in the colony, and he felt his gaze drawn to her by some gentle, inexplicable force.

Behind him, under the woman’s own watchful stare, lay two of the three halls whose food machines had not broken down at the midday meal. Soon the last of the colonists had entered one of these two buildings. A few minutes passed. The meadow lay calm. There was no wind and the long rays of the setting sun turned everything an unnatural golden color. Then a lone male staggered from the door to one of the halls. He hesitated in the darkening meadow, glanced about uncertainly as the remains of the day shriveled around him. He shuddered, once, though the air was warm as always. More colonists emerged from the hall empty-handed. The food machine had been broken. A stale breeze kicked up and the colonists shielded their eyes from this sudden assault. A few waited inside the meal hall. The rest milled about close to the entrance. When a considerable number of colonists had exited the building, the first man let out a single plaintive moan. The other colonists looked away and began to disperse.

Hearing this cry, Samuel turned to face the failed meal hall and watched the hungry colonists shuffle away into the dusky meadow, staring blankly at the grass a few meters in front of their feet. The wind died just as soon as it had begun, and now a faint chill did creep into the evening air. At the second meal hall nearby, all was still and quiet. Not a single colonist had exited the building. Samuel turned toward the hill behind him, but the woman was gone. He looked around and saw her gliding across the meadow toward the other hall. She seemed not to notice the now-considerable collection of people drifting out and away from first hall; she did not glance around at all, but kept her head fixed boldly on the second building ahead. Samuel stood and watched the woman for a moment, spellbound by her flowing gait, the tensile strength that coursed through her limbs and something more which he could not define, the thing that brought together these qualities of her body, that made them possible.

The woman entered the second meal hall and the spell was broken. Samuel came to his senses and scurried off in the direction of the second hall. By now, a few colonists were exiting the building, meal cakes in hand. Samuel entered to find more of them seated inside at the tables, jabbering gleefully to one another between mouthfuls of food. At the far end of the hall, the woman received her cake and turned in Samuel’s direction. Upon first glance she looked no different than any of the other adult females in the colony, distinguishable from the male colonists only by their slightly shorter stature and the soft curve of their breasts beneath their tunics. Yet there was something about this woman’s face, a certain tightness of her features that lent a fullness to their expression and distinguished her from the other people of Pearl.

She, on the other hand, paid no attention to Samuel, but just as they passed she happened to glance at him, and for the first time Samuel got a look at the woman’s eyes. They were hard and metallic, like copper, and when she turned toward Samuel they caught the fading sunlight and flashed fiercely. Samuel’s breath stuck in his throat and he felt a sudden hitch in his step, but the woman paid him no mind, looked away and continued on. Samuel turned to watch her go for a moment, striding through the doorway as though she were utterly alone in the world.

But then his stomach protested insistently and the moment was lost. He forgot the woman with the copper eyes, received his meal cake and ate it quickly at a table by himself.

* * *

At the morning meal the next day, the two remaining food machines broke down. By the afternoon of the third day, after the time for the midday meal had come and gone with no food received, the colony was approaching a sustained panic. It seemed hotter that day, the sun glaring down from high in the cloudless sky. The colonists skittered about to find shade or cool relief in the river. But there was no laughter, no squeals of pleasure or glee. One colonist would find solace under a rare tree; the others would dance nervously around his sanctuary. No one could say why the breakdown of the food machines should have had this effect. No one could say why colonists struggled to meet the eyes of those with whom they had so often shared a morning of carefree play. As the afternoon wore on, the surrounding mountains loomed large in the distance, great black rugged titans thrown up from the rich green meadow. The sun began to wane and the mountain shadows crept through the flowerless grass, bringing with them the impending hour of the evening meal.

Most colonists resorted to other means of finding food. Some ventured into the meal halls anyway. The rest roamed the meadows, tearing up and devouring handfuls of grass, biting into whole branches of shrubs or greedily gulping water from the river. The air around the people of the colony hung heavy and still, weighing on them as they bent their backs and stooped to the ground or crawled on all fours and grazed like maddened cattle. The quiet was broken only briefly by the moans of the hungry colonists, wild and wordless pleas that sprang unbidden from unfed lips and were lost again in the twilight.

Like the other colonists, Samuel survived. He pulled up some clumps of bitter grass and ate them a few blades at a time, drank from the faded blue water of the river and sat against the façade of a meal hall and waited. As darkness fell, he decided to retire early for the night. There seemed nothing better to do.

On normal evenings, the colonists finished their evening meals with a few hours of twilight and early darkness remaining for play, relaxation or casual lovemaking before they retired to the sleeping halls for the night. No bells called the colonists to bed, but for the most part they all began to enter the halls about two hours after sunset. There were five sleeping halls in the colony. From the outside they looked much the same as the meal halls: long, rectangular, off-white buildings fashioned from black mountain rock. A second, smaller building abutted the width of each sleeping hall; these contained twelve single-stall toilets, all designed to flush and clean themselves automatically. And like the meal halls, the sleeping hall interiors bore the same expansive ceilings, the same soothing blue walls, as though the watery skies of Pearl had been pasted directly onto these surfaces.

But beyond their anesthetizing appearances, the sleeping halls were little more than barracks. Rows of modest, wood-framed beds lined the single room, each bed freshly made up when the colonists entered for the night. The beds were bolted to the floor, and seams in the floor traced a rectangle around each bed. Ten metal poles extended outward from the wall opposite the door of the hall. A large rectangular seam on the wall surrounded each pole, on which hung several extra tunics like those worn by all the people of the colony. Though the fabric of this clothing rarely ever ripped or stained, the colonists did grow from infancy to adulthood, and as a person’s tunic became too small for him, he exchanged it for one of those hanging from these poles.

Almost all the colonists slept in the same sleeping hall night after night, just as they visited the same meal hall for each of their three meals, day after day. And though all the beds were exactly identical with nothing on or around them to designate an owner, most of the people slept in the exact same bed every night. A colonist who found another person asleep in her bed would stare at the intruder in frozen consternation until some sound or sudden movement woke her from her brief trance and she forgot all about the accidental incursion and wandered off to find another bed.

On the third day of the meal hall crisis, the first colonists began to trickle into the sleeping halls around the time the bells sounded for the nonexistent evening meal. At sunset several more had joined them. By the time night crept in, the sleeping halls were almost full, as though the colonists had suddenly developed a fear of the dark. Very few slept at first. Samuel found a bed in a corner of one hall but could not force his eyes shut. Other colonists wandered around the room or huddled against a wall. Every so often someone whimpered at the aching in his empty stomach. The hall had no lights, and soon only the scant glow of the rising moon staved off total invisibility. The colonists tiptoed to the beds, brushing against each other in the near darkness and recoiling at the touch of human contact.

When the sun rose the next morning, the colonists did not. They rolled over and pulled their blankets over their eyes to block out the offending glare. Most had lain hungry and restless throughout the night and there was little hope for sleep now as the morning stole upon them. But still they remained in bed, their eyes clenched shut. Perhaps they believed that by not opening their eyes they were still asleep and the day had not yet begun. And if they could keep the day from ever beginning, they would not have to face the prospect of another day without food.

But eventually they rose. Samuel shivered as he exited the sleeping hall. The sun was bright and there was no wind. He did not feel as hungry as he had the previous day, but did not think this strange. He ate some grass anyway and lay down at the base of a hill. The sun crawled higher in the sky and its rays prickled his skin and burnt his lips. He licked them—they felt dry and cracked but his mouth watered heavily. The grass beneath him was warm and soft and parted willingly under the weight of his heavy limbs.

The famine continued throughout the day. No one in the colony died of hunger—at the very least, the colonists had all retained their basic survival instincts, and those who were nearest to starvation managed to sustain themselves on grass and leaves and river water. Through half-lidded eyes Samuel saw the colony’s joyous players replaced by listless shells of human beings with pale faces and sunken eyes, the comfortable loungers by living corpses almost too weak to move. Across the meadow one colonist moaned. Half-chewed green blades spilled from his mouth. The others ignored him. They drifted over the sun-soaked meadow and waited for anything that would take away the feeling of life, a feeling which had become all too painful among the living.

* * *

On the morning of the fourth day the colony remained lifeless, the people staying in bed as long as possible. But had anyone been awake about an hour after sunrise, they would have seen a woman emerge from an opening in the wall of the low building attached to one of the meal halls. The woman rubbed her eyes as she stepped into the bright morning light and walked off in the direction of one of the sleeping halls. There she took a pillow from an empty bed, went back outside, and fell asleep in the building’s shadow. She met a few people as she entered the sleeping hall, those who could no longer bear the hard sun beating against their closed eyelids and had crept out into the meadow to wait for darkness. They did not recognize her. No one in the colony would have recognized this woman, for there was nothing particularly distinctive about her physical appearance. No one would have recognized her, save Samuel. For she was the woman with the bright copper eyes who had struck his attention a few days earlier.