“Yes, but they’re still there. I would love to be able to find out what sort of life they were living down there.”
“You could—but you’d be stuck living it for the rest of yours.”
She sighed. “I know. Well, let’s face it, Mis… Gene. The way things are going, that may be the only place we’ll have to settle down and have families after a while. That and on gypsy ships wandering around space and trying to avoid the shiny new masters.”
It was not a thought he liked to dwell on much.
The evening didn’t end up in any kind of romantic tryst, nor had he expected it to, but he did take her out for a bit of play in a sim arcade—where she proved pretty good at the rather basic scenarios the game companies created—and even a bit of dancing. When it was very late, he took her back to the spaceport personally and called for the shuttle.
“Thank you,” she sighed. “I had a wonderful time, and I really, really needed it.” She paused. The smile and glow faded. “I guess this is goodbye, though, huh? Unless we’re stuck here for another eternity, this is it. I’ll go one way, you’ll eventually go another, and even if we meet we might be fifty years apart in age. I might look like Anna Marie and you might look like my old professor!”
He sighed. “Could be. But, hey, you just never know in a shrinking universe, do you?”
Not when I want to go wherever you’re going—not for your charms and company, nice as they are, but because I’ve got to know. He wondered, for the tenth time that night, whether, at the moment, she knew any more about where they were headed than he did.
SEVEN
The Stealers of Souls
Littlefeet was feeling both proud and sad after his confirmation into adulthood. The tattoos that now colorfully adorned his thighs were the marks of equality with all the grown men of the tribe, and he delighted most of all in showing off to those of his age who still hadn’t gone the final steps as well as to those close to him who were in every way his extended family. Still, the mystique of the act, often talked about, regularly bragged about, and that held a kind of aura even when secretly observed, was now gone, as was the sense of the girls—women—as some kind of very different creatures. He had pleasant memories, even good feelings, when he thought of Spotty, and he wanted to see her again. That was certainly possible, but the Sisters did everything they could to break up or interrupt any real friendships between the sexes. Loyalty had to be first and foremost to the tribe as a whole, and every woman was wife and sister, every child one of your own. It was general policy, when possible, to pair off the young men with different young women each time, for no more than a year or so, so that such personal attachments didn’t have a chance to flower.
Too, the women were virtually never left alone, even when gathering plants nearby or getting water well within the security perimeter. It was common for them to move only in groups of five or more, usually with one old and experienced woman, frequently one of the Sisters, so that the rules were observed. Of course, the rules were not always obeyed, as almost everybody except Mother Paulista seemed to know, but it took some patience and planning to get around them. If a boy and a girl wanted to be together, they would arrange to go off in groups at the same time, so that, even if officially paired with the wrong girl or the wrong boy, well, swaps were made to make it right.
For much of the next year, Littlefeet was able to meet and even lie with Spotty more times than not, and Big Ears was able to do the same with his own girl, Greenie, a tall and very muscular young woman whose most unusual attribute were her nearly perfect green eyes. Few eyes in the Family were anything other than shades of brown, just as the hair was almost uniformly black until it turned gray or white.
So it was one day that Littlefeet and Spotty were lazing in the grass by the side of a small stream, oblivious to the small flies that darted about.
“You are getting a big tummy,” he noted.
She laughed. “Silly! That is where the baby is growing!”
He was kind of bowled over by that. Pregnant women were the norm in this society, since there was so much infant death and even old age was not very old, but the idea that Spotty would be a mother was, well, weird. Mothers were old, like his had been. Spotty was his age.
He was suddenly overcome with some very strange feelings he couldn’t understand or cope with. “Was it—is it growing from my seeds?” Biology wasn’t a fine point of education, but planting seeds into fertile soil was an easy concept to grasp.
She was uncomfortable with the question. “I—urn, have you planted your seeds in other women and not just me?”
He grew suddenly sheepish. “Yeah, two. I mean, it don’t always work but you got to go. It’s duty!”
She nodded. “Well, me too. So I don’t know whose seed it is, but it’s most probably yours.”
He felt a real rush of anger. How dare she lie with other guys? He knew it was a stupid thought, that she had no more control over that sort of thing than he did, but it bothered the hell out of him anyway. To keep some self-control, something a warrior always had to do, he tried to refocus the conversation.
“So when’s it gonna be born? Do you know?”
“In a month, maybe two. The Sisters keep track, but I’m guessing based on what I see in the other girls. You know most everybody my age is growing a baby? Maybe first time’s the thing, huh?”
“What’s it—feel like?”
She sighed. “Well, it’s kinda hard to say. I mean, you start off being sick and throwing up every morning for a while, but the blood time stops and so do the cramps so it kinda evens out. Then you feel okay but you start eating like two people. Things start to taste funny and smell funny and you feel kinda fat and clumsy. But you also feel—good about it, about yourself. It’s our main job. At least one of my babies, maybe more, will be new warriors and mommies and keep the Family going. That’s kinda neat.”
Now, for the first time, the real meaning of manhood hit him. Not fatherhood, but continuity and duty. It was her job and duty to bear as many babies as she could so that the Family would go on. It was his job, and those of the other young men, to protect the women who had this burden—even with their lives. He suddenly felt a sense of responsibility that had eluded him up to now, and at that moment, not before, he truly became an adult.
He didn’t like it. All that wishing about growing up he now saw as foolish. Now he was there, and he wanted to be a kid again, but that part of his life was over forever.
Only a few weeks later, when the Family moved in the traditional patterns it still thought random, camping at the outermost part of their lands, up against the tall and always snow-clad mountains to the south, it was brought home double.
Only at these boundaries was there an overlap with other Families. There was always some contact, and a mixing of families and seeds kept things from becoming too stagnant, the genes too inbred. The number of humans was still relatively small, but large areas were still required to furnish a totally gatherer-based society with sufficient food and essentials such as gourds, sticks, stones that could be sharpened, all that. That was why the overlaps were only at the perimeters.
They had expected to meet the Kuros Family at or near the traditional spot in the small valley that ran into the tall mountains, but the advance scouts saw no sign of them. That wasn’t always a true sign—after all, part of survival was keeping yourself unseen—but the scouts were looking for specific signs and patterns from experience. Littlefeet was one of the point men for the scouts, since he was so small and wiry he could cover great distances while making himself next to invisible. He traveled armed only with a crude knife he’d made himself, a hollow reed, and a small number of thorns dipped in one of the natural poisons the women could distill from certain grasses found near the Titan groves. It was an effective blowgun, although only at very short range. Speed and stealth were the weapons of a point man. If he had to fight, his usefulness was already compromised.