A breeze made the sheets and diapers flap. Stella wiped sweat from her forehead, got up, and started taking down and folding the dry pieces. She stacked them in a plastic tub and scented the tub by touching the ball of her thumb behind her ear and rubbing the handle.
Randolph—the only Randolph in Oldstock, so she did not know his human last name—came up and sparked a greeting. Randolph was four years younger than Stella, what some called an off-born, not part of the Waves. Those born during the three big Waves were called boomers, she did not know why. They talked with just their faces for a while as they plucked and folded pillowcases and dungarees and diapers. They exchanged pleasantries and imitated the scents of others, a kind of joking gossip that passed the time.
Randolph was being brought into the Blackbird Deme, not Stella's but an offshoot of her group. They could talk openly about deme business, but not about personal affairs within the demes. That required triples, to prevent misunderstanding between the demes: three figures from each deme, engaging in full fever-scenting and sparking and facing. Triples looked like a weird dance to outsiders, but they solved a lot of problems and kept friction way down.
Oldstock had two children from the most recent Wave, foundlings aged two years and twenty-six months respectively. Stella cared for them sometimes in preparation, in training, and enjoyed their wild toddler scenting. Shevite infants raised among their own kind got enthusiastic sometimes and could emit a rank odor like dead skunks, and not from their dirty diapers.
Shevite babies knew how to swear with scent long before they could talk.
Everyone was learning. Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Sakartvelo were far from tyrants. They had been sterilized by the Communists in Tbilisi in the 1960s and could not have children of their own. In a strange way, that made them perfect to be everyone's Shevite godparents, their guides in small, cloistered Oldstock.
Randolph finished folding a good share of the laundry and palmed Stella's cheek in a brotherly fashion, with just a hint of the Question that the young males often asked, even of someone in her condition. Even of someone who still had a partner.
Stella responded with a little warning grumble under her throat and a polite chirrup. They smiled and parted, having spoken not a single word. Stella could go for days without speaking, and though sometimes she shouted out loud in her sleep, she could never recall why on waking.
Supper was being served in the refectory for those who had been cutting wood and planing boards starting early that morning. Males and females came out of the fresheners, stalls where they rubbed down with wet towels to take off the sweat—otherwise, most showered less than once a week. Cutting or hiding scent was considered rude. Smelling like heavy labor, however, could also hide scent.
Mr. Sakartvelo had told them, “We're all French, at heart.” Stella did not know precisely what he meant. In France, Shevites were employed in perfume factories, they had heard. Maybe that was his meaning.
She felt so ignorant. She was hungry much of the time now, so she stood in line with the workers, hands on her stomach, trying to feel the shape beneath, but there was hardly even a bulge yet. Feeling her stomach made her a little sad. A cup of coffee would help. Caffeine made the day easier. Shevites reacted so strongly to caffeine that coffee and tea and even chocolate were only allowed between the hours of ten and five.
Stella's mind raced all the time even without coffee. Half the time she wanted to cry, the other half just to suck it back and get on with the hours of each day and what they could bring. So much work to do. Months and years could go by and still she could not fit herself in completely. All those years away from her kind . . . Had they handicapped her, made her more human than Shevite?
But there were sweet moments, classes with the younger boomers and especially the babies.
She took her tray from the food line and walked into the refectory, large and quiet, twelve workers off duty, none speaking, gesturing and facing and flashing, pleasant odors of cocoa and yogurt and even jasmine—somebody was being verypleasant—mingled together and out of context at this distance, like words pulled out of a conversation and tossed together randomly, the discourse going on at the old wooden tables and benches.
Stella sat by herself, which she did often enough to elicit comments, kindly meant but a little critical. She ate her bowl of canned kidney beans and sprinkled or dribbled in the extra spices and flavorings that Shevites enjoyed, Indian black salt, extracts of broccoli raab and sour anchovy sauce.
Luce Ramone sat down beside her with a bowl of chips. Luce was more talkative than others, and Stella greeted her with a smile that showed some need.
“What, you want a chatty person?” Luce asked. She was a year younger than Stella, from the tail end of the first boomers, small for a Shevite and pale of skin, with thick black hair that tended to bristle. She smelled wonderful, however, and attracted much attention from males hoping to be peripheral to her deme. Stella's deme and Luce's were currently in merger, coalescing but still keeping their bounds. Nobody knew where that might lead, or what it might mean to the domestic anglers, hopeful males and females in either deme.
“I'd love a chatty person,” Stella said.
“Hair of the human/ I'm your girl. You're down/ looking stretched.”
“I'm thoughtful.”
Both were cheek-flashing, but speech over and under was dominant for the time being.
“Joe Siprio, you know him?”
“Will's friend,” Stella said.
“He's angling for me. Should I?”
“No way/ too young,” Stella said.
“You were angled at my age/ hypocrite.”
“Look what happened to me.” Not emphasized, but standing alone, no under.
“He's a total cheer-fly,” Luce said with a musing glance. “Our bodies like each other.”
“What's that got to do with a cat's fart?” Stella asked, irritated. “You're moth. You need to rise to bee.” Moth and bee were names for two levels of menarche in the Shevites. Women passed through three stages: the first, moth, receptive to sexual overtures but not to actual intercourse; the second, bee, sexually active but infertile—and this was still a guess, even to the Sakartvelos—to allow more subtle hormonal and pheromonal samplings and communications; and the third, wasp, total fertility, leading to sexual activity with prospects of pregnancy. Shevite females could actually fall back into bee stage if a deme broke up or an angling failed.
Males started puberty at bee and from there went straight to wasp, sometimes within hours.
“Lemon and Lime are old notion about that,” Stella added. Lemon and Lime were the fundamentals of the Sakartvelos. “They think you should wait.”
“You didn't,” Luce said.
“It was different,” Stella said, and freckled a warning that she did not like thinking about this, much less talking.
“Lemon and Lime support you,” Luce said testily.
“They didn't have much choice, did they?”
A ten-year-old male named Burke walked to the end of the table and stood there shyly, hands folded in front of him, rocking on his heels.
“What?” Stella snapped, facing him with cheeks flashing full gold.
Burke backed off. “Lemon and Lime are down at the gate with some others. There's humans down there.”
“So?”
“They say they're your parents. Another brought them, the numb-nose delivery guy.”
Stella slapped her hands on the table, then drummed them, shaking her head, making the plates rattle. Heads turned in the cafeteria, and two stood in case intervention was the consensus.
Luce pushed back, never having seen her friend this disturbed.
“It's not them,” Stella said, and swung her legs around on the bench, then got to her feet. “Not now.” She approached Burke, face and pupils ablaze in full accusative query, as if she wanted to punish him.
“The woman smells like you!” Burke wailed, and then others surrounded them and prodded Stella aside with gentle elbow nudges. Touching with angry hands was considered very bad. Burke ran off, crying.