Stone Seeds (6 page)

She had stroked her daughter's face sadly. “The general's people are going to read you like a book, Zorry.” Zorry recalls the exact tone of her mother's sigh then. The way she had shaken her head. There is no deal a Sinta mother can do to get her child out of a work rota at the general's house. Not once it's written down in red ink.

Zorry watches as the escaping dinner table critter vanishes in to the tall powdered wig of a OneFolk guest, conceals a small smile. Roots for it. She thinks she sees the flower arrangement in the centre of the feast table move slightly in the direction of the escapee. She stares. The centrepiece doesn't move again. Zorry shakes herself slightly. Mamma Zeina nudges her.

“The grotesque flower funds of Bavarnica flowers will, of course, die on their first day in the searing heat of the edge farms,” she says. Eyeing Zorry severely. “Their petals begin wilting the first moments.” She sniffs, scratches the back of her hand. “They take them there in refrigerated vans, so it's not like they don't …” Mamma Zeina scratches her nose. “It doesn't make sense.” Sighs. “Well, nothing is what it seems in Bavarnica, eh Zorry?”

“I've seen those vans.”

“Eh?”

“I've seen them. White bullet proofed vans. Reinforced steel.” She turns to Mamma Zeina. “You can recognise the flowers fund vans.”

“Recognise them how?”

“Solid gold headboards in the form of small crowns.”

“Aye.” Mamma Zeina rolls her eyes. “Gaddys is theatrical, give her that.”

Zorry turns toward the flower decoration on the table. Blinks and tries to look away from it, can't: the largest flower inclines its drooping head slightly toward her. Mamma Zeina elbows her hard.

“Bred in the general's cool moist outhouse, them things,” Mamma Zeina sweeps a little debris off the serving table, into her hand and then slips it into her apron pocket. Her shoulders drop. “Aye. Cool, moist outhouse,” she says. “They will start dying the moment the dry desert air of the edge farms hits them.”

Zorry thinks Mamma Zeina sounds strange. “Is that your tour voice?”

“I been giving this tour for a long time, Girly.” Blinks. “Your predecessor is in gaol.”

“I know, Mamma Zeina.”

“Do you? Then what don't you know? Let's start with that.”

Several flower centrepieces adorn the feast table, they seem to move in unison when they breathe. Snake-like sniffing, wavering heads, pulsing with strange life. Zorry finds herself instinctively moving closer to Mamma Zeina's side. Mamma Zeina notices, drily hands her a cloth. “Try to look busy.” Zorry mops up some crumbs ineffectually. Stares.

“When the flowers fund of Bavarnica's work is done, the edge farmers will have to stand there for an afternoon, for the privilege of watching these flowers die fairly quickly, or seem to,” Mamma Zeina blinks again and turning toward Zorry. “Die in their edge farm soil.” She gazes at Zorry blankly, as though she can't see her just now. Looks at something behind or just above her. “Wriggle back into the hard edge farm soil, like whelks on the shore. Leaving only cracks in the earth, a few sun dried petals.”

“How do you know they die? The flowers I mean.”

“Did I say die? No. No, I don't think they die.”

“Then what …?”

And now turning, and her gaze meets Zorry's, “I don't know. At least not yet.”

Zorry overhears the general's wife, “Your flowers are a breath of inspiration for the poor dears on the edge farms, dear Gaddys,” she intones in a wobbling voice, made more wobbling by her apparent addiction to the dried pollen from the flowers. She sniffs. Now the general's wife turns and looks at the flowers. Soft, helpless, almost loving gaze. You can't say what she sees, but the plant seems responsive to her. Soft rollback of its petals, peeling back of its proboscis, a deep puff of raspberry coloured smoking pollen into her face. The general's wife sinks a little more. Her eyes swim with tears.

Zorry turns toward the flowers, as though trying to see what the general's wife sees there. “Nasty looking things,” she confides in Mamma Zeina. “Give me the creeps.” She takes a discreet step backward, then tilting gently toward the view once more. Considering the flowers. They appear to consider her too.

There's something unnerving in the way the flowers turn their huge bulbous heads towards you, Zorry thinks. In a bit she notices something else. The flower breathes out pollen dust in small puffs at discreet intervals, there's a rhythm to it, and the Sinta waiting tables seem to have adapted to that too, hold their breaths when they pass, swerve and avoid, blink, blink, and Zorry realises that the scene is a dance, but only the Sinta serving seem to hear the music. The guests at the feast chatter, swallow, gulp, choke on the fumes, splutter, cough and then the OneFolks' table is getting louder. And then quieter. The OneFolk slide slowly, inexorably, underneath the table.

Gaddys the village shopkeeper seems immune to the flower pollen herself, Zorry observes. She sits stiff and straight backed at the head of the table.

Mamma Zeina heaves her large frame over toward Zorry. “She'll sit like that,” Mamma Zeina says, indicating Gaddys with some bitterness, “Straight backed, alert, until the Sinta clean up crew come to shovel all these OneFolk guests on to their stretchers, pour them into their waiting cars.”

“What's it all for? The feast? Food ain't never just food for the general, is it?”

Mamma Zeina considers the girl admiringly. “No it ain't. Just watch.” Mamma Zeina says. “You'll see.” She steps away. In a little while Gaddys disappears into a side room beside the feast table.

“That's to give her ‘notes' to the general via his telecom.” Mamma Zeina says in a low voice. Glances at Zorry. “Gaddys is giving him useful names.” She explains. “She's telling him about soft allegiances and friendships amongst the OneFolks.”

“The general's watching his own tribe?”

“Of course, Zorry.” Chuckles. “He must control them most of all. Any eyes which met over the dinner table or hands which found each others under it. Gaddys misses very little, in truth. Here, take this plate.”

Mamma Zeina uncovers the dish before she releases it to Zorry. They both examine its contents, stare bleakly at each other. “The general likes to understand who's connected to whom.” Mamma Zeina looks up at Zorry and then down again at the contents of the plate. “Not so much to suppress a revolution, Zorry, as to stub out the thought before it starts.” She sighs. “Go take your plate to him. Over there.” Gestures toward an ancient looking man in a cat costume, flea collar and all. Zorry gently raises her eyes toward the ceiling.

Mamma Zeina makes her way back to check on the serving table. She appears to be having some difficulty with her right knee, just now, and she is dragging her left foot a little. Stops several times to hold the wall. When she reaches the serving table, Mamma Zeina covers the blue crabs, which are scrapping and waving their claws. She turns sideways to see how Zorry's doing. Watches the girl walking back to collect a second plate.

“Walk slower.” She instructs her when she returns.

“Walk slower?”

“Yes. And don't hold your head so high. Try to … Try to glide. Try to pass unnoticed. They like their Sinta serving girls depressed. Submissive.”

Zorry seems to be considering these words.

Mamma Zeina goes on, “Of course …”

“Of course what?”

“She doesn't catch it all.” Soft knowing look.

“Who doesn't …”

“Gaddys.” Ghost of a wink. “That's where you come in, Zorry. Try to see the things that the shopkeeper Gaddys missed. Observation. That's the work here, Zorry. Go stand by the window again. I'll bring you the next plate in a minute.”

Zorry hears the sound of the edge farm rain dances, washing up through the crack in the window behind her. Rain beats against the window. Rain which will not pass the border, Zorry thinks, but she can hear the edge farmers' rain dance: music rising up over the killing trees and the answering bird sound, caw of crows and jackdaws, rhythm of drums. And then the soft hollers, musical shrieks. Zorry just makes out their words: ‘Give back our rain.'

The edge farmers rain dances will last all night, the Egg Men will begin the crackdown on the edge farms soon, Zorry knows that much.

Zorry can hear the sound of the Egg Mens' sirens. Starts as a low complaining whine, rises to an ear splitting mechanical shriek which can be heard even in the ‘anti-noise pollution' OneFolks' houses. The chatter in the feast room rises to conceal it.

There is now the sound of small, contained explosions, she sees the trees shake a little, at the periphery of her vision. The bomb dust from the edge farm side fans out over the killing forest, drifts towards the OneFolks' village. She twitches and looks away. Now she hears the caw of crows as they rise and gather. A flock, looking like a dark cloud as it passes over. “They're starting early today.” Mamma Zeina says, winces. Turns away.

The crows and rats who feed on the bomb sites on the edge
farms have grown to monstrous sizes. Zorry saw them as soon as she got to the general's house this morning. Apparently attracted here by the general's moat. Some escapees from the general's feast table make it that far, Zorry knows that much. But to a non-casual observer, the moat is teeming with life.

“The rats and scavenging birds …” Mama Zeina pauses. “They're about the only living things to've flourished on the edge farms, the last few years. Wingspans the size of a grown man laid sideways.” Her eyes widen. “Tails as thick as a child's hand.” She looks sternly at Zorry.

Zorry hears the monstrous flapping. Huge wings. The cloud of crows rises, turns once in the air. Sound of cawing and scrapping. They seem to only just clear the top of the killing forest.

“They head for the edge farms when they hear the sirens?”

“Aye.” Mamma Zeina says. “Crows learn fast. They're the new clean up crew on the edge farms.”

Something passes over Mamma Zeina's face.

Zorry turns away from her discreetly.

The siren goes on.

Shrill, urgent sounds. The clatter of the feast table rises.

Zorry notices the general's wife mops a tear. She's weak and appears to need to rest before she speaks. Zorry despises her for one long moment.
Collaborator
. She thinks.

The general's wife was once a Sinta, at least that was always the rumour on the Sinta cabbage patch farms. Zorry watches that sparrow chest heave. And then finds herself thinking that the general's wife looks lost, bewildered, just now. It will be harder for Zorry to hate her now she's seen her up close.

The general's wife is staring at the feast table as though she sees it for the first time in her life. Wilting from the knees, drooping head. She seems to move unsteadily back towards her seat.

Gaddys taps the side of her glass and the general's wife rises again, with some difficulty. Twice during her speech she appears to forget where she is. Blinks and sits down right in the middle of a sentence.

“The general's wife looks shrunken since the first time I saw her,” Mamma Zeina says.

“And when was that?”

“When I was a younger woman. In the last era. Before the revolution. She used to stand on a plinth in the centre of the village. Doing a mime act.”

“A what?”

“Mime. Theatre. Such things were possible in those days.” Mamma Zeina sighs.

“It was the act which first attracted the strange attentions of the general to her. He liked her human statue act best. Thought it would be fitting in a wife. He was a sorry little fellow in those days. No one thought he would amount to much. No one thought he would last through the changing times.” Breathes out heavily. Eyes Zorry.

“We were blinded by our hopes. Hope itself changed. Hope shed its skin and became …”

“Became what?”

“Something else Child, don't mither me for endless answers. I am only one hundred years old.” Grins softly at the girl. Zorry notes Mamma Zeina's missing front teeth.

The village shopkeeper Gaddys pats the general's wife's
shoulder. Her boney arm looks like it could be crushed under Gaddys the shopkeeper's great hand.

Now Gaddys heaves to her feet. Medals clank against each other. Earrings jangle. Her long pendant necklace swings forward as she leans, then back and she tips it over her shoulder with a flourish. Pats the gold coils of her wig.

The village shopkeeper, Gaddys, has amassed a great deal of personal power in the show village, indicating the high esteem the general holds her in, Mamma Zeina explains. Taps the side of her round nose. “Folks come to her shop for information as well as to exchange their ration cards for grain,” she checks the girls face for understanding.

“Gaddys controls the information and the rations. That's important, Zorry.”

Zorry can't seem to pull her eyes away from that pendant. Gaddys' gem is the largest at the table, lapis lazuli coloured but also tinged with purple, speckled with silver coloured shards like shrapnel. She's never seen a stone like that before. Thinks they must be digging deeper into the OneFolks' mine. They must be nearing the bottom of it soon, that's certainly the rumour amongst the Sinta. She thinks about the miners who work the gem mines in the show village, wonders what will happen to them when the work is done. After all, they've lived amongst the OneFolk, they've seen things. They could map the village, list names, give coordinates and all to the edge farm rebels, if they had a mind to. The general doesn't generally let a thing like that pass. She imagines the young gem miners' lives will be short and brutal.

Zorry thinks of last night, Mamma Zeina and the killing forest. What was the name of the boy whom Mamma Zeina
fixed up? The name is on the tip of her tongue then it comes to mind.