Hope of Earth (74 page)

“I guess that makes sense. But don’t you have animals here?”

“Oh, sure, lots of them. We believe in biodiversity. But not for meat.”

“Suppose an animal dies coincidentally? Would that be eaten?”

Faience made a face. “Would you want to eat your pet dog? We have pet llamas. But I guess they would be eaten, yes, if not diseased.”

They came to the bottom of the hill, where there was a stream.

“This is the hydraulic ram,” Faience said, indicating a round tank sitting on top of the pipe. The knocking sound was loud.

“Where’s the motor?”

“This is the motor. It’s like this: Water comes down this pipe in the stream. The valve in the end of it lets out some water, but that motion makes the valve slam shut. That’s why it knocks. Then the valve opens again, and lets a bit more water out, until it slams shut again.”

“But that’s not a motor!”

“Yes it is, in its fashion. See this connecting pipe? There’s a valve inside that. When the first valve knocks closed, the water moving inside comes to a sudden stop, and the pressure jumps. That forces some water up through the inside valve. The air tank is to ease the shock, so it doesn’t pound itself apart. That water keeps nudging into the pipe and on up the hill. It’s slow but sure, and it uses no external energy, and it pumps all the water we need.”

“With no fuel?” Bry asked, surprised. “Free pumping?”

“Free pumping,” she agreed. “That’s sort of our philosophy: renewable energy, environmentally friendly, durable, cheap. All our machines are like that, except maybe the computers. But they help too, really, because with things like E-mail and the Internet folks don’t have to waste so much energy commuting to work.”

Bry was impressed. “The water gets moving and knocks at the valve, like a hammer, and keeps driving a bit more water up the pipe. But doesn’t it lose as much water as it pumps?”

“More. But this is a river. Plenty of water here. But not enough up the hill where we are. We have all we need. The water really pumps itself up to us. The hydraulic ram should last indefinitely, with no maintenance, unless a valve should get jammed.”

“I never knew there was such a thing. I like it.”

“They say that thirty years ago there was a problem translating the term from a Russian paper. It came out ‘water sheep.’”

Bry laughed. “So maybe I was half-right. It is an animal.”

They made their way back up the hill, following the pipe. Then Faience paused. “I just realized: I have a date to go in tomorrow with Tourette.”

“Who?”

“I need to explain about her. She’s really nice. But there are two things. Can I tell you something in private?”

“You mean a secret?”

“Not exactly. It’s something you need to know, but not to bruit about, as it were.”

“To use discretion.”

“Yes. I don’t want to embarrass anyone.”

“Sure, yes. I’ll be discreet.”

“Tourette’s from the Bones community.”

“The what?”

“Our nickname for it. It’s a neighboring community we don’t like, settled by survivalists. Gun nuts. Militia men. Every one of them is armed and dangerous. We wish they would go away, because—”

“Because you’re pacifists. And vegetarians. What a combination!”

“Yes. They don’t much like us, and we don’t much like them. But neither group is moving; we both have too much invested in our land and development. We don’t speak to each other. If we see one of them on the road, wë go right on by in silence. They do the same.”

“You snub each other.”

“Yes. And Tourette’s one of them. So I don’t speak of our acquaintance.”

Bry considered that. “I don’t want to give offense, but is that honest? You said you like straight speaking.”

She looked pained. “I do. But this is difficult. She’s nice. And there aren’t a whole lot of girls my age around here. Actually she’s sixteen, two years older, but that’s close enough.”

Bry spoke carefully. “Sometimes there is a conflict between truth and decency. My sister Flo is really fat, but we don’t go up and call her fatso. So maybe if a person has a friend that others might not approve of, for no good reason, it’s better just to keep her mouth shut.”

“Yes!”

“So I guess I can keep my mouth shut. But how did you get together with her, if the two communities don’t associate?”

“I was out looking for berries, alone, and there she was. We sort of struck it up. She’s lonely too. Her folks are really overprotective. So we’re secret friends.”

“But if you go into town together—”

“Mom drives. She understands. So Mom shops for supplies, and we see a movie. It’s nice. I sort of watch out for Tourette.”

“But if she’s older than you, and armed—”

“That’s the other thing. Tourette’s not her real name. It’s just what I call her. She—when we met, she was shy, almost afraid of me. I couldn’t think why. I mean, she carried a gun and a dagger, and I was unarmed, so it couldn’t have been any thought that I could hurt her. Then she started twitching, sort of, and I was scared. I asked whether anything was wrong, and she said Tourette. I thought it was her name, so that’s what I called her. Later I learned it wasn’t, and I was really embarrassed, but she said it was okay, she knew I didn’t mean anything by it. So that’s her name, to me.

“I don’t understand. Why did she give you a wrong name? And why did she twitch?”

“It’s a disease, or at least an affliction. Tourette’s syndrome, named after the doctor who described it. Mostly boys get it; only about 20 percent are girls. They vary. Some just twitch, and they can suppress it for a while, if they try, but eventually it will happen. Others are worse, and they grunt or even say things, like cusswords or obscenities, and they can’t help it. Tourette—I mean my friend—is sort of in between. It comes and goes, and she can hold it down some, but sometimes it really gets away from her and she’ll grunt and hiss something awful. It passes in a moment, and she’s okay, as if nothing happened. But she doesn’t like to do it in public.”

“I can appreciate why. Maybe it’s like epilepsy.”

“Maybe. I don’t think anybody really knows. What matters is that it’s not her fault, and it’s not contagious, and it has nothing to do with how else she looks and acts. So if she twitches, just ignore it. Give her a break.”

“You’re afraid I don’t understand?”

“Yeah,” she agreed, embarrassed.

“I do understand. But I’m not free to tell you why. That’s another confidence I keep. But maybe you’ll find out. Then you’ll know how well I understand.”

“Okay,” she said, looking relieved. “So if you come over to my house tomorrow morning, early, we’ll go in. We use the community van; there’s room in there for any number of teens, sitting on the floor. Only, if your sister and her friend—”

“They are discreet. May I tell them?”

“You’d better. But I’d really rather it didn’t go farther.”

“It won’t. We’ll be there, and we won’t embarrass her.”

“She’s really a very nice person, and smart as anything. She’s read just about every book there is, and knows so much. I’m sure you’ll like her. Apart from that one thing.”

He saw that she feared he and Lin would treat her friend with that polite disdain reserved for those one could not blame but really did not want to have close by. So it was time to change the subject.

Bry looked around, noticing something he had missed when running through this field before. There were strange plants growing taller than his head. “What is growing here?”

“That’s hemp.”

“Hemp? But isn’t that illegal?”

“The stupid law is changing. Anyway, it’s not for drugs. Quakers don’t use things like that; in fact they don’t much like alcohol or cigarettes either. A true Quaker is almost without vices.” She grimaced. “It must get dull. Hemp’s great for fibers; you can make rope or cloth or paper from it, and it grows just about anywhere. It produces three to eight tons of fibrous dry stalk per acre per year, depending on climate and variety, compared to two or three tons of fiber for southern pine, and it’s easier to process. So it represents a way to save all the trees that get pulped for books and newspapers. Sure, some species are used for narcotics, but that’s not what we’re after.” She paused. “But maybe it’s best not to talk about it elsewhere. We grow a lot of stuff that some folk wouldn’t understand about. Rare medicinal herbs, exotic food plants, biomass for alternate fuel, and so on.”

“Agreed.”

“We’re experimenting with kenaf, too. That may be even better than hemp, because it’s not illegal, if we can find a frost-resistant strain.”

“What’s that again?”

“Kenaf.” She accented the second syllable. “It’s a variety of the hibiscus, a cousin of cotton and okra, and it has a similar flower. It grows over twelve feet tall and yields five to ten tons of fiber per acre per year that’s relatively easy to process for paper. This could revolutionize the pulp industry. Think of it: great fields of pretty flowers that provide all the paper the world needs, more cheaply than wood. Beauty and economy together. So that trees will be for the birds again.”

She was really animated, and it was contagious. Bry liked the new directions this community was exploring. It wasn’t retreating from the world so much as trying to help save the world from its own folly. This was exactly the kind of thing he would like to be a part of.

They reached the shop. “I’d better get back to work on the baskets,” Faience said. “But at least I’ve shown you something, and I don’t mean my jeans. You’ll get to know all the parts of Dreams soon enough, I’m sure.”

“Maybe it’s time for me to learn basket making,” Bry said. “Will you teach me?”

“Sure!”

So they settled down, and he learned how to make a basket from hemp fiber and reeds. It was both more challenging and more fun than he would have thought.

That evening he got Lin aside and explained. “I thought maybe, if something happens, you could, you know, if you want to,” he concluded a bit lamely. “So she knows it’s okay.”

Lin nodded. “Maybe. I’ll tell Jack.”

In the morning the three of them went to Faience’s house. They met her mother Fay, and piled into the back of the van with Faience.

“But where is Tourette?” Bry asked.

“We’ll pick her up along the way,” Faience explained. “I guess her folks know what’s she doing, but she keeps it pretty quiet. I think maybe they’d tell her no, if she asked, so she doesn’t ask and her mom doesn’t say anything.”

The van got moving. Before long it stopped, and Faience threw open the side door and jumped down. Bry saw a rather pretty young woman in blue jeans and heavy shirt standing beside the road. “We have three friends along this time,” she said. “It’s okay; they’re visitors. They want to see the movie too.”

Hesitantly, the girl stepped into the van and sat down beside Faience. She wore a sheath at her hip, with a solid knife. “This is Tourette,” Faience said. “And this is Bry, and his sister Lin, and her friend Jack.”

The van moved out. “Hi,” Bry said.

The girl looked at him somewhat in the manner of a frightened deer. She was clearly not at all at ease. Her hair was parted in the center, passing down to frame her face before falling across her shoulders. It gave her an elfin look. Then she began to twitch, and then to grunt.

They looked away, trying to defuse the awkwardness. In a moment the girl settled down. But she looked as if she wanted to scramble out of there.

“It’s okay,” Faience said. But clearly it wasn’t

Lin glanced at Jack, then at Bry. Then she spoke. “Tourette, I want to show you something.” She lifted her left hand, which was clutching her purse. She set the purse down. She opened her hand, so that all six fingers showed clearly.

Tourette stared. Then she reached out. “May I?”

“Yes.”

Tourette took Lin’s hand and touched every finger, verifying that all were real. Then she nodded. “I have read of it, but never expected to see it. Most such cases get corrected surgically at birth. I’m glad that wasn’t the case with you. It’s a good hand.”

“Good enough for me,” Lin agreed. “I just don’t like a hassle, so I mostly hide it.”

“You said you understood,” Faience breathed, looking at Bry. “Now so do I.”

“And Jack has a club foot,” Lin said. “We don’t make fun of anybody, in our family. We know how it is.”

Tourette smiled, visibly relaxing. “Yes. Thank you.”

After that they talked of other things, feeling increasingly at ease with each other. Bry discovered he rather liked Tourette; she had a very quick mind, and she smiled often, now that she was at ease. She soon elicited descriptions from Bry and Lin of their travels.

“It must be wonderful to be in such far places,” she said.

“It really wasn’t all that much,” Bry demurred. But her ready interest flattered him. At the same time, he saw how well read she was, because she knew details about the places he had been that he would have thought only a traveler would have picked up on.

When they reached town, the five of them walked together to the theater, and found grouped seats. Lin and Jack sat beside each other, of course, then Faience, Tourette, and Bry.

After a time, in the darkness, Bry touched Tourette’s right hand. “May I?” he whispered.

She turned her hand over, and he took it, interleaving their, fingers. After that, when something interesting or meaningful happened in the movie, he squeezed her hand, gently, and she squeezed back. It had become a date.

When they returned to the van, Bry sat beside Tourette. “Why don’t you hold her hand again?” Faience asked mischievously.

Tourette blushed, and Bry felt his own face heating. They had thought that business had been unobserved. But he lifted his hand, and Tourette lifted hers, and they clasped hands. Thus it was official: they had dated.

“I’m sorry,” Faience said. “I thought I was joking. It wasn’t funny.”

“These things happen,” Lin said, snuggling closer to Jack. “Your turn will come.”

Again, they talked about many things, compatibly. Tourette suffered a minor series of twitches, but Bry held firmly on to her hand, and they passed. He continued to bask in the glow of her interest in all the things he had done. It was as if he were far more important than usual. He had always regarded himself as somewhat of a nonentity, and it was a real pleasure to be regarded as otherwise by this smart and pretty girl.