Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction (4 page)

In fact, sometimes her
power of patience was tested. In the last few cycles, for example,
she had learned that not all girls appreciated knowing that other
girls were smarter than them. And if they found that out, instead
of being motivated to want to learn more and be as smart as anyone,
it provoked a violent response toward the smarter girls. So
although at first she always called out her name to answer the
teacher’s questions, she learned to wait and let the other girls
try, even if she was dying to answer and the silence seemed
eternal.

It was also wrong to say that you liked
something when most others did not. Or, more exactly, you could say
so but not make a show of it, above all when the others did not
simply dislike something but found it difficult. Like
mathematics.

Charni loved mathematics in the same way
that she was fascinated by learning new words and combining them
correctly to provide the most information with the fewest possible
words. And it was as if mathematics gave consistency and physical
properties to intangible or imaginary principles, such as music or
time.

Oh, time … so ethereal and useful at once.
And what most left Charni taken aback was that the passage of time
could be measured differently depending on whether one had the
sense of sight or not. And women had to know the names of their
equivalencies so that men and women could understand each other in
the event of an exchange of information.

Ksatrya women, for example, measured time by
biological cycles and the arrival of supplies. The former required
extensive physical training while the latter did not require much
attention.

The basic unit for the biological cycle was
hunger and sleep, accompanied by water and urine. Whereas the basic
unit of supplies was the alarm.

The alarm equaled a long period of time,
sleep a medium-long one, hunger a medium one, and water could range
from medium-long to short, depending on how much was drunk. A
perfectly trained body together with understanding of mathematics
allowed a woman not to have to wait for the second urination to
drink the second time so she did not have to be thirsty for too
long to complete a unit of time.

A term, on the other hand, equaled five
hungers and one sleep. Also, an alarm equaled approximately
thirty-six hungers and six sleeps during abundant periods and twice
that during scarce periods. A cycle could be understood as the
completion of two alarms.

Ksatrya men, however, measured time by what
they saw. They used the words day, night, year … and although they
experienced hunger, sleep and thirst, they did not need to train
their body to measure time because even if at some moment, for some
reason, they could not see, they had things called clocks that
allowed them to cut time into even smaller intervals such a hours,
minutes and seconds.

Oh, yes: time. So tied to the body and life
itself, so relative and so tangible when studied from the
perspective of mathematics …

At times, Charni wondered if it might be
possible to use mathematics for something other than to add,
subtract, multiply and divide. Perhaps it could give consistency to
the world the same way it gave consistency to time.

She talked with Deva about
it a few times. Her friend, with her wide vocabulary and
“conclusive” communication, above all with silly girls, quickly
brought Charni back to reality.

“
I’m sure it can, Charni,
but first you must learn to crawl and then to walk. That’s why they
teach us first to survive without help. There’ll be time to think
about the smell of the world.”

True. Charni was depending less and less on
her mother to do tasks efficiently, and still …

The classes for mathematics, language, male
language, writing shapes, music, cooking and athletics were
satisfying. But the classes for tidying up, cleaning, sewing, and
clothing were insufferable tedium. The worst were sewing and
clothing, special tortures.

She could understand the
reason for learning to patch clothing or ease or adjust it so that
it still fit while their bodies were developing cycle by cycle. She
even understood why sewing well was basic for coming classes where
they would be taught to embroider words and textures to make it
easier to recognize each other. Yes. Fine. But what she could not
figure out was if it was always the same temperature, why did she
have to learn to make enormous, heavy clothing with hard and padded
fabric that hurt her fingers and wrists. They weren’t even going to
be worn!

“
I know,” she sighed, at
the edge of defeat. “I know, Deva. As my mother said, I ought to be
patient. And from what I heard six alarms ago, soon we’ll have
classes about the world of men that sound more interesting. We’ll
learn about countryside, the language of tears, and servitue. But
cleaning sounded great when the teacher explained it the first day,
remember? Learning to tell clean textures from dirty ones, safe
ones from infected ones … but in the end it was boring. If it isn’t
smooth or similar or it makes you sneeze, you have to clean it.
Always the same thing, the same old thing. So big deal.”

“
You sense too much,
Charni. I repeat: first you crawl, then you walk. First you sense
and then you put it all together to know what it is. That’s always
how we’ve done it. That’s how we defeated Latha a cycle ago. We
managed to hurt her a lot of times before, but we gave her the
final blow when we learned where her weakness was.”

“
Yes, but it took us a lot
of cycles and practice to do it.”

“
Patience, Charni. What
did your mother tell you? Patience. A real woman doesn’t hurry.
Sense it, add everything together, and think. Then, when you know
and have memorized the limits, you can move safely. If you’re going
to be queen you …”

“
No, no, no. Deva, I won’t
be queen.”

One more her friend had
diverted the conversation to that issue —an issue that made her
feel as if her body was heavy, as if she was carrying a weight, and
she did not know where it came from or how to get rid of
it.

Always the same. She did not like it at
all.

Everyone assumed this was going to be her
destiny and she had come to the world for it. And after a long time
she learned that this assumption had caused the conflict with
Latha, who felt that since everyone thought Charni would be queen,
she would never even get the chance even to try for it. Why did
people decide for themselves that she wanted to be queen when she
had never ever said that?

“
To start with, Deva, I
can’t do what my mother does. Pronounce words that sound true even
though they’re false and make sure the language of her body doesn’t
lie during the conversation? I can’t do that.”

“
That’s not true. You can
do that, it’s just that you don’t like to lie. That’s why so many
girls have joined up with us now. Because they sense the truth.
That’s why you’ll be queen.”

“
But it’s not enough. My
mother has produced a lot of men and that’s why she got the title
of queen. Because she’s increased our safety in this world more
than other mothers. I’ve lived for eleven cycles now and I still
haven’t produced one.”

“
Neither has Latha or me
or the other girls. You still haven’t lost.”

Charni puffed. Why didn’t
Deva listen to her? Why was she so confident? Why did she say she
hadn’t lost when they weren’t competing?

“
Okay, Charni. I sense
that you’re angry. I won’t say anything more. But you need to know
that when what has to happen finally comes to pass, I’ll be at your
side. Helping you with the soft stick when I have to,
okay?”

Charni caressed Deva’s
palm with her finger to tell her that what she said had satisfied
her. And, suddenly, she felt a pinch and then a slight but constant
pain below her navel. She clenched her teeth and swore
silently.

How could it be? Three hungers had gone by.
For more than three cycles she had trained her body to empty solids
before the second hunger, never in the third or later. How?

“
What’s happening?” Deva
asked when she perceived Charni’s tension.

“
Nothing, don’t worry. I’m
going home.”

“
Okay. Should we touch
hands?”

“
Yes. When?”

“
I don’t know. Within one
urination?”

“
Mmm … better after one
water.”

“
Fine. But I have to be
home before the fourth hunger.”

“
Right. Me too. We’ll
touch hands.”

“
Touch!”

When Charni got home, she found her mother
attending to her duties as queen. At thirty-six cycles old, her
contour no longer served to help men see, so she had more time to
organize, help, and advise other women.

Charni decided to wait until the meeting was
over to greet her as she ought. Meanwhile she looked for her little
sister, four cycles old: the last thing her mother had produced
before men made her sense that the contour of her breasts and the
stretch marks around her belly and thighs made it hard for their
seeing organ to be satisfied.

“
Speak with textures,” she
heard her mother order the women who were whispering. “What exactly
are you asking me to do?”

“
We’d like you to talk
some sense into Chaid Khasat. He keeps wanting us to help him see
when it is more than textured that he never will.”

“
That’s nothing new,” her
mother replied with a snort. “Men are like girls who need to share
information with their mother all the time to adapt to this world.
Chaid Khasat is incomplete besides, and he and every man like him
is furious and afraid because he’ll never sense again the way he
did before. It’s our duty to ease his fear from time to time
although we know that our bodies, no matter how hard we try, will
never give him back his sight. So I don’t sense any urgency to talk
sense into him as your tone seems to suggest.”

“
But seven cycles have
gone by and he doesn’t seem willing to admit that we can’t help him
see the way we did before he was an invalid. Other men didn’t take
so long. And he still wants our attention just as often. Kesha, we
can’t keep letting him spill information into us this way. If a man
becomes an invalid that quickly, it means that he’s weak, and so he
can’t help us make strong guardians. Old men can, but he
can’t.”

“
Well, that’s what the
peacemakers are for. To calm them down without the fear that their
information will develop inside them and make weak men.”

“
Kesha …” a second woman
interrupted with a cough to make her presence known, “that’s not
the only problem.”

“
Then texture it so I
understand you and can help you as I ought.” Her mother was
beginning to lose her patience.

“
You can touch me, Kesha.
As always, we try to have as many peacemakers in the invalids’
house as we can so that it will be hard for them to make a woman
produce a weak man. But Chaid Khasat isn’t calmed down by the women
we send there to ensure that the invalids don’t die of hunger or
get sick from lack of cleanliness. He’s begun to enter nearby homes
and force them to help him see with more and more
violence.”

Complete silence filled the house. Not a
breath could be heard. Charni grabbed her sister and held her even
tighter against her chest to sense her better and not to feel alone
in a world that could seem unlimited and terrifying to a little
girl.

“
Violent? How?” my mother
asked in an almost icy tone. “Some men are very impetuous when it
comes to satisfying their member. We’ve all experienced a painful
spilling of information. So texture it. Violent in what
sense?”

“
Sometimes he hits them,
sometimes he crushes them against a wall and twists their arm. One
even showed me the mark of his teeth on her shoulder.”

The silence that followed those words felt
heavy, smothering. Charni thought she felt her heart catch in her
chest. What she had just heard not only seemed inconceivable, it
was aberrant.

A man never hit or hurt a woman. Never. They
were there to protect them, and in exchange for this protection,
women helped them see so they could more effectively guard the
openings that gave access to the other world. It had always been
like that.

“
All right.” Her mother
interrupted the thick silence. “Before trying to talk sense into
him, I’ll talk to Qjem and tell him what you’ve described. I don’t
think he can sit back when he finds out what one of the men under
his charge is doing. Meanwhile, relocate the women. Put the
peacemakers in the houses that this useless invalid entered, and
make sure that none of the women who help him talk about it. Men
are worse than girls two cycles old. They can’t tell one woman from
another if they don’t see or hear her often.”

“
We shall do so, Kesha,”
they all replied in unison.

My mother clapped quickly three times to
show that the meeting had ended and they could go. Then she waited
patiently for the women to answer by clapping three times to show
that they had found the exit and were leaving the house.

Once she was alone, she called Charni to
give her the greeting she had not been able to do when she had
arrived.

“
How was school?” she
asked, caressing Charni’s shoulder to complete the hug and
recognition of scents.

“
Fine. As
always.”