Deucalion (18 page)

24

SONG OF RETURNING

(Extracts from the works of AJL Tolhurst transcribed to Archive Disk with permission of his estate: 2/7/2325 Earth standard)

From:
The Elokoi: A Sociological Study (
Chapter Eleven
)

. . . Demographic studies of the Elokoi undertaken during the years following the establishment of the exclusive Reserves revealed that, while the rate of persecution fell dramatically, an unforeseen consequence threatened, in the long run, to wipe out the entire native population. The first five years saw a decline in the Elokoi birthrate of about six per cent, and the rate of decline continued for the next four decades before levelling out. The end result was that by the turn of the First Century
as
, the birthrate had slipped significantly below the death rate, and the population of all Reserves was in alarming decline.

Many reasons were proposed for this decline, but in the final analysis no one could really explain the phenomenon. Perhaps the most convincing argument was that for a race which had spent its entire history roaming in a semi-nomadic way, within wide but well-defined territories, the confined nature of the Reserve was an unnatural and ultimately destructive environment.

Reports were commissioned, studies were undertaken and committees were formed to look into the problem, but as no viable solution to the ‘Elokoi problem' – other than the establishment of the Reserves – had been suggested, the expensive exercise added nothing of value to the discussion. (The Reserves were originally called ‘Homelands', a name which was discarded early because of negative historical connotations relating to a well-documented colonial state on Old Earth.) The individual's life expectancy in the Reserves was not declining; in fact, it may have risen fractionally with the removal of the threat of violent death at the hands of human settlers. It was the low birth-rate that was the problem, and, predictably, the fate of unborn Elokoi assumed a low priority in the scheme of things.

In the end, the solution to the problem came from an entirely unexpected source . . .

Elokoi Reserve, Wieta Clan

Edison Sector (East Central)

17/12/101 Standard

SAEBI

The Ring of Elders was silent. The young Teller sat, head bowed, in the centre of the Ring, as she had for the past few minutes. But there was no impatience. The Telling would come in its own time. They would wait. It was the way.

The two young ones had returned from the southern highlands that morning, and even the slowest of cubs had recognised that a Change was at hand. First news of the happening had spread out from the centre, like a pebble dropped in a still pool.

Saebi had said nothing, Cael very little, but the air of expectancy had been growing for hours. Word was sent to the Capyjou plantation, where Rael was overseeing the harvest, and to the river, where some of the Elders were meeting in commune. A hut was made ready, and the two journeyers were led inside to rest and await the return of the Elders. And the fall of dark.

Now, with the waxing moons facing each other across a small expanse of violet sky, the Elders sat in the flickering flamelight and waited patiently.

Finally, Saebi raised her head and stared into the fire. For a moment longer the flames danced in her eyes. Then she opened her mind to the gathered Elders, and they shared her Truedream; the Thoughtsong that had visited her in sleep while the desert wind howled and moaned around the shelter. They Shared, and they knew; the Change was upon them.

For in the Song they saw the wide expanse of dune and rock and sky stretched out before them like a picture on the Sacred Wall, like a verse from the Thoughtsong of the Great Trek. And yet, so different. For in this Song, they felt themselves. They were moving, their backs to the rising sun, sand stinging their eyes, minds focused on the future. In this Song they glimpsed the hope, the end of exile. After four hundred generations, Saebi had Dreamed the Song of Returning. And they were bound to follow.

Of the original Forty Clans, less than thirty remained, but still it would take time for the Word to be passed. No matter; it would spread, and as it did, more Elders would come to share the Dream and listen to the colours of the Song that would lead them.

But for now, it was ended. Saebi let the feeling linger in the air between them as she finished. For a long time no one moved. Then Cael rose slowly and without a word made his way to the hut which had been set aside for them.

A few moments later, Saebi followed. She said nothing more. There was nothing to say. The Song was not her song. It was not for her to Teach its meaning. It spoke to all, as it had spoken first to her. And all would follow it. But while the news of it spread out among her people, there was much more to be done. And the thought of what lay before her sat like a weight across her shoulders.

At the doorway Cael waited for her. He would help her carry the weight, as he had since they began to follow the call of the
haaj
.
Gaita had not been so lucky when the Dream had come to her. Still, Gaita had not had to deal with the offworlders. Before the Gathering, before the first steps were taken along the path the Dream had laid out before them, their
haaj
would lead them far from the lands of their people, to the tower-city beside the deepwater to the north.

Newgeneava
they called it in their harsh offworlder tongue, and no Elokoi had ventured near the place since the offworlders had arrived and the killing had started. But that was where the offworlders' council of Elders sat, and that was where Gaaston lived, who spoke for them. So that was where they must journey.

Rael sat quietly where he had sat for most of the evening, and watched the door close behind Saebi and Cael. They were too young for the responsibility that had been given them, but it had been given, and there was nothing they could do but accept.

He stood and made his way back towards his hut. Leani had left the circle when the Song had ended; he knew she would be waiting for him. The homespace was quiet without the human members of her family. He knew she was missing them. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that the separation would not be for long – and that, somehow, it was tied inextricably to the Dream.

Leani looked up as he stepped inside . . .

25

HUNTER'S SKY

Carmody Island

Inland Sea (Eastern Region)

30/12/101 Standard

DARYL

When Denny left for the mainland, Jane went into a flat spin.

I'd got pretty close to Denny while he was a ‘guest' on the island. After all, we had a lot in common. We were both in Security, even though we both wanted to be something else, and we'd both ended up there as outsiders.

Jane wanted to go back with him. I overheard them arguing, the night before he left. She said she could lie low at the Reserve again. I'd heard all about Leani and Rael and the time she'd spent with them, hiding out from Gaston's hit squad, and I could understand why she wouldn't have minded doing it again. But Denny was stubborn. The island was safer, and he'd be a lot freer to do what he could against Gaston if he wasn't worried about leaving a clue that might lead them to her – or to Leani and her family.

That was the clincher. Jane could put herself in danger and not think twice, if it meant being closer to Denny, but she couldn't bring herself to endanger her ‘family' any more than she already had.

Besides, being on the island meant that she could explore the potential of her ‘abilities' and work out why they didn't seem to fire as well as those of the others. Hendriks said that mindspeech was a bit like learning to walk or talk or anything else. If you never had the opportunity, you never learned to do it. Most of the kids had shown only rudimentary ability until he had brought them all back together and they'd been able to focus on it as a group, developing it through trial and error.

Of all of them, Elena, at eight years old, was the most adept, but she had been born with a distinct advantage. The first thing you noticed, when you had them all in a group, was that Elena was the odd one out. Not that she was left alone in a corner, or anything like that. It was just that she didn't fit neatly into either of the age groups.

Almost all the kids were around eighteen or nineteen Standard. Which stood to reason, when you think that they were all produced in the same experiment, at the same time. They'd all made the freeze-trip at about the age of three, Old Earth standard, and arrived here the same age. Some of them had started having kids of their own over the last couple of years, so there was a group of tiny babies and toddlers around the place. But Elena was eight years old Standard, and it didn't seem to fit. I mean, her mother would have to have been pregnant by the time she was ten or eleven years old. It just didn't make any sense.

I remember that Hendriks laughed when I brought it up with him. Deanna, Elena's mother, was one of the Icarus kids, he explained, and she was the same age as the others when the C-ship took off. But by the time it docked and they were shuttled down to the surface of Deucalion, she was eight years ‘older' than any of the others.

I waited. There had to be more. There was, but he let me wait a few moments before he gave me the explanation. ‘Deanna was one of the “reassignments”,' he said. ‘Her original mother didn't want to leave Earth, and we convinced her that for the child's sake, and her own, it would be better if she gave her up and let her go with the other kids. We sweetened the pot with a few thousand extra creds, and set about looking for a new set of parents for the child. It was close to launch time, and we thought we were going to have to keep her hidden until the next C-ship left, but then we found them. The husband was a crewman on the ship, and he and his wife had lost a child just a couple of months before. We managed to doctor the file and “bring her back to life”, and Deanna made the trip. As you know, crewing on the C-ship is a family affair. There are six crews who run the ship for about eight years each during the fifty-year trip. At any time, there are five crews in stasis and one living in the crew-quarters, watching the dials and making sure that nothing fries the circuits while everyone's asleep.'

He wasn't telling me anything I didn't know. Crewing the C-ship was not difficult, but it would have taken a lifetime if it had been left to one crew. Even eight years was a long time – and they decided it would be far less boring and soul destroying if the crew was made up of families, living basically normal lives for the duration of their duty. Less boring meant less potentially fatal mistakes too.

‘So for eight years, while the rest of the kids were in stasis, Deanna was running around the C-ship, growing up with the children of the other crew-members.

‘It meant that she was that much “older” when she landed, so it's not really surprising that Elena was born sooner than the other second-generation kids.'

I said I guessed it wasn't. I walked away thinking just how complicated the whole stasis thing was. So Elena had come to the island at an age where she was much more likely to pick up the techniques than the kids who'd arrived at eighteen or nineteen. And she'd had the opportunity to meet the Elders of the Wieta, if only for a short time, on her way to Edison.

I think I said it once before: there's nothing quite like expert tutoring.

But it hadn't worked that way with Jane, and she'd stayed with the Elokoi for a lot longer. Perhaps it was because she was so much older, perhaps because Elena had been in shock and let out her silent cry of terror from a level more basic than the conscious, with the result that the Elokoi were on the lookout for her . . . emanations. The fact was that for all those months in their company, the Elokoi had never picked up that Jane was just like the human child they'd been so excited about.

In the lab, Hendriks was running some tests to see if there was actually something genetically different where Jane was concerned, or whether the Nixon's was the operative factor. But that was only on the side. His real task was the one he'd been working on non-stop since the time he'd established the island. A way to slow down the ageing process in the kids.

Something about the gene-complex that the Icarus Researchers had introduced into the equation halved the life expectancy of the kids. Made them age so much quicker. He was desperately searching for a way to reverse the tendency.

That was the other main reason Jane had decided to stay. She was a first-rate Researcher, and with the two of them working around the clock, there was a far greater chance of making a breakthrough than Hendriks could hope for on his own.

But it didn't stop her missing Denny. I came across her one night sitting out by the forest, just staring up at the moons. They were full, and the whole scene was almost as bright as day.

‘The Elokoi have a name for this kind of sky,' she said. Not ‘Hello', or ‘How are you?' or ‘Get lost, Daryl, I want to be alone'. I realised she was just thinking out loud, using me as a convenient ear.
‘Rayama-raeba Atiina
.
It means “hunter's sky”. There's so much light, it makes hunting easy.' She turned and looked up at me. ‘We could learn so much from them, you know. If only we took the time. There's so much more to . . . knowing than just learning how to turn on the switch on a computer . . . or working out how the genes go together. Where do you think we lost it, Daryl?'

She was asking
me
?
I
looked up at the ‘hunter's sky', and tried to think of an answer that would make some kind of sense.

‘I guess we got too competitive. Well, maybe we didn't
get
too competitive, maybe we always were. They say the Elokoi don't have a word for war or murder. Well, if you think about it, that has to be where it all starts. With us, everything is a competition.'

She looked back at the sky. ‘Maybe.'

‘There's no “maybe” about it. “Do it first”, “make it bigger”, “get there faster”. When did you ever hear anyone boasting about
not
getting the job, or
not
winning? When we were walking out of the Ranges, for the first couple of days I busted my gut to try and keep up with Cael . . . he was one of the Elokoi who guided us out. He—'

‘You were guided out? The news reports said—'

‘Cael and Saebi wanted it that way. That's my point, you see? If they hadn't helped us, we would have died out there. But they had the power to save us. So they did what they had to do. And when it was done, it was finished. There was no ego involved. How many people can you remember who go and do the right thing – save a baby, run into a burning house, something like that – then don't stick around for the news conference? We all want the chance to show the other guy that we're as good as him – or better. That we
exist
.
The Elokoi don't care. They have this saying: “It is the way”. It means what has to be done, has to be done, so you do it, and get on with your life. No one in the Clan is ever going to praise you for doing what you should do. But they will pressure you if you don't. There's no competition. They share everything. How are you ever going to have a war, if you think like that? And everybody knows there's never been any progress without war!'

I think that was about the most words I'd ever put together at one time in my whole life, up to that stage.

For a moment Jane was silent. Then she nodded, as if she understood. ‘What happened on the Ranges? I interrupted you and you didn't get to finish.'

I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering the cold wind on the mountain tracks, the aching in my legs. ‘I kept pushing, and Cael kept up with me. So I pushed even harder, until I was feeling totally exhausted, but I wasn't going to let him beat me. Anyway, he came up to me one evening, and he said, ‘Daaryl, you are hurry? Saebi say keep slow for you, but if you are hurry, we go fast, she stay with Aelna. Come later.'

‘At first I thought he was needling me, trying to make me feel inferior, but something about the way he said it made me understand. I was competing with him, but he didn't even realise it. He just thought I was in a hurry, so he was keeping pace. It wouldn't have mattered if I had run all day, he would have kept up, without raising a sweat.

‘You see, the thing is, if it was something I could do that he couldn't, he would just have shrugged and said, “It is the way.” The Elokoi don't compete. Not even with themselves.'

She brushed her hair away from her face, and looked at me for a long time. ‘But what happens if they suddenly find themselves sharing their planet with a race like us? A race that treats everything as a competition. Even love, for God's sake! I've lived with them, Daryl. I've seen the way they are. Everyone in the Clan is important. The cubs don't have just one or two parents, they have three or four or five, and they all share in the loving. But what do we do with them? We want the land, we want the minerals, we're uncomfortable having them around; so we shove them onto Reserves, kill off their history and wait for them to die out. And how do they fight back?'

She stood up and turned to face me. The twin moons shone from behind her head, lending her a shining halo, as she continued, ‘The answer is, they don't. They take what is handed out to them because they never
learned
to fight back. And even if by some miracle they did learn, they don't have the weapons. They have a million years of catching up to do.'

‘So what's the answer?' It was one of those questions you just ask. I don't know what I expected her to say, but her reaction was a surprise.

‘Who do I look like? Nostradamus?' There was a bitterness in her that I hadn't noticed before. But it wasn't for herself. After a moment the anger passed, and she sat down again. When she spoke, her voice seemed far away.

‘Do you know why they named this planet Deucalion?'

I didn't.

‘After a character in Greek mythology. When the world of humans got too sick for even the gods to handle, Zeus decided to wipe the whole lot and start again. He was going to use thunderbolts, but he was afraid he'd set fire to heaven, so he decided to flood the place instead. He called up the winds and the clouds, the rivers and the seas, and covered all the land with water. In the end, when everything was destroyed, he noticed Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, alive on the top of Mount Parnassus, and because they were good and loyal, he allowed them to start everything going again, using the stones and seaweed and anything else they could find to build a new race.

‘I guess whoever named this place had that in mind. A new start, a new race. A second chance. But it didn't turn out that way. Because we didn't start again, we just brought the old world with us. And not even the old world. Sometimes I think we must have left all the best parts behind. Only I don't know, because I can't remember.'

For some reason, the image that sprang to mind was one from my childhood. My people. My ancestral people. A short anonymous segment on a half-forgotten encyclodisk about a race, a culture, that no longer existed. ‘I think . . .' I began, then hesitated. It was something I had carried around with me for almost two years, and I don't believe I'd really even faced it myself. ‘I think that we live in a world that can't remember. We stepped into our stasis-cocoons and slept away half a century, then woke up halfway across the galaxy, wanting desperately to remember what it was like back home, and trying to recreate it. We weren't as lucky as you, Jane. Because you forgot it all; you wiped the slate clean, and had the chance to start again. We're like the Elokoi. We remember imperfectly. They lost their Tellers, and we stole their art and their history, but they still remember enough to know just how much has been lost.

‘What did we bring with us? Mining tools, research labs and the tube. Oh, everybody eats enough, and there isn't any real poverty, so I guess it's an improvement. But we're cut off from our past, and we haven't the nerve to make our own future. So we let them make it for us.'

‘Them?' She asked the question quietly, and suddenly I realised that I knew the answer.