The Seventh Day (19 page)

There are no more pages. I check the first, the last. I check his numbers one by one. I look at the rear of all the pages, wanting more. But it is done, and Lord, how I feel the loss of it. I think to take up his pencil, to tell him he did not die of rice poisoning, and that his house did not blow away, for I know of old Aaron Morgan.

He was the grandfather of Granny's grandfather.

(Excerpt from the New World Bible)

In the first year of the great gathering of the feral groups, twenty-three females were brought into the city. And their death rate was acceptable.

 

And in the first breeding season the creche was filled, for many births were multiples of three and the ferals of a size to bear them.

 

And some infants were born and they were not of the city blood, but of feral males. And the infant males of these were housed separately to the sons of the Chosen, for they were robust and when of the crawling year, they were walking. And they were thick of limb and neither of high birth nor of low, thus they were placed with the Arms Masters to be taught the trade of armament.

 

But there were amongst the feral females those who carried disease unknown to the scientists and it was transmitted to the Chosen who lay with them.

 

And there were amongst the feral females those who had the desires of the male and they ravished those who lay with them, and also the labouring youths who came to clean their quarters and tend their garden.

 

And there were those amongst them who would eat of meat, though the eating of meat was long banned in the city. And it was found that these females were feasting on what meat they found.

 

And when their blood-greed could not be controlled, they were named abominations and sent to the labourers' recreation halls as sport.

Information is as the grey men's cordial; a little of it raises a desire for more – and I find more of it on Lenny's V cube.

For some time I have been looking to the needs of Pa. I tidy his room and straighten the tumble of his bedding, and each week clean it in the air-tub, and because I do these small things for him, it does me no harm to also see to Lenny's needs. This morning when I go to his room I find he has left a V cube on the floor.

There is not much to see on it, and I wonder why he smiles. I sit on his bed and try to smile at the sketched figures that prance and dance and sing the praises of Seelong.

The cubes are small enough for my hand to hold and have different prancers on five sides. They are colourful, as is the map on the sixth side. I do not understand it, but as I brush the tips of my fingers across the surface of it, one prancer disappears and from behind him, first comes black, then from within the black a living male appears. He speaks to me, speaks news of the city, then he leaves and the cube face shows a garden and many flowers. I watch it to its end, seeking the face of Nate amongst the many white overall clad workers who measure out water to the plants, certain I will know his face if I see it, though I have no mental image of him.

It is a wonderful garden, but how they waste water. It runs down plasti-walls, beads on plasti-ceiling. I can not find the one I seek; the workers' faces are too small for detail, and soon the speaker is done with his talking, the black comes down and the sketched prancer figure returns.

I try another face and laugh aloud as I activate a large-breasted female, divested of all clothing. Perhaps it is not a true female, only one of the modified bed-males. As I watch him, many come, then on couch and floor they play entwining games with each other and with other males who have the male parts. I believe I have discovered why Lenny does not want to share these cubes with me and Pa, and why it is that he sits long on the verandah smiling at these foolish things.

One cube face shows me a likeness of the three grey men. I am ready to dismiss them when the image alters and shows a scene of the cutting into of flesh and the so fine stitching of it together. I do not much like it, but the three small men take me on a wander through many white rooms to a larger room filled with naked males, strapped into strange tall chairs with wheels. Each male is attached by red ropes to an opaque ball that hangs from the tall side of the chair.

Curse this cube that is too small for detail. My eyes squint and strain to see that which is in the opaque balls but I can not distinguish anything other than a grey inner shape, and before I identify the shape, the face of Sidley fills the space. He speaks to me, telling proudly that each of these balls is a plasti-womb and inside each, an embryo is growing. And he says that these are attached to the old or physically impaired labourers who give their blood freely to feed the new life. Then there is a very close face of one of those held prisoner by the long tubes of blood, and he says in a voice of death: ‘I am proud to assist in the birth of a brave new world.'

He does not appear proud, or so happy at his work, for his eyes are like those of Granny on the day before she left life. His mouth may lie, but his eyes can not. There is only emptiness there, only a mute pleading for the swift release of death.

My hand moves to my womb. I also give my blood through an internal tube to feed the one in my belly, but I walk free while its small feet kick at the walls of my womb. This V cube face makes my hair crawl, and quickly I find another picture, a colourful one.

This speaker tells of old fruit made new again. I watch him cut into a green spine-covered ball, and I see that the flesh inside is green. It is named a pineapple. There are other vegetables and fruit. One hand to my mouth I watch, certain I will see Nate of the city garden, that I will see the apricot I have tasted. I know it came from his hand. I see a large round fruit which is black and the size and shape of a honeydew. Its flesh is pink and the speaker calls it the Godsent fruit.

Again I turn the face and find a swiftly changing flash of likenesses of the many who have been newly lost to life. And there is the grey Stanley face.
Fever
is written across it, while the speaker tells of his life and the date that he left the living.

It seems that many have died of
Fever
, but across one ancient face there is written
Natural causes
. Because of his great age, his history is long. I yawn, my fingers ready to erase him, until the speaker says that this man had been one of the searchers in the time of the great escape, that this man had been personally responsible for the capture and death of Monique Morgan!

This V cube speaks a lie! That ugly old man spoke a lie for, like him, Monique Morgan lived to a great age and died of . . . of natural causes! I do not like this lying thing.

There is the face of an old female, the face of the Seelong infant.
Post operative complications
is written across both.

And there is another important face, and it is the face of my dear Jonjan, with
Misadventure
written across his features. He is greatly missed, the speaker says, and here is one city man who speaks the truth.

I listen to this speaker who says that Jonjan was the son of Jacob, of the High Chosen, that Jonjan was born of embryo stored in the time prior to the great escape. He was also one of the first successful births from the Seelong plasti-wombs, and was of only eighteen years.

I am weeping for the beauty of his face, and because I was not strong enough to do what should have been done that first night, and weeping because when I strived to undo the harm I had done him, I failed, left him helpless on the hill at the mercy of animals that had come for him, on four legs or on two.

My eyes are not seeing well when his dear face is wiped away and a group of three takes its place. And I see . . . I see, but unclearly, for my eyes are brimming, swimming.

I wipe them with my half-dress, and better, far better that I had left the tears alone, for once having seen what none would wish to see, I close my eyes against that devil cube and I rock there, remembering Jonjan and his obsession with finding Moni's land.

And I know why.

He had been searching for the land of the one who had given him life, for the speaker now tells that the ovum from which my Jonjan came was that of Monique Morgan.

Jonjan was the son of Granny. He was half-brother to Lenny.

Lord!

There is more talk of him, but his face is gone, and I think to throw the cube from me for it shows a likeness of a tormented wraith and two smiling males who hold her arms, hold her hair back from her tortured face – hair that falls long, hair the gold of my Jonjan.

It is a portrait of her hell.

It is a portrait of the young Granny.

I close my eyes against it, and see her as I first saw her, see the house as it was then, the old rocking chair, the ribbons of a canvas blind swinging between the verandah posts, the rattle of loose iron flapping on the roof, and the light.

She had swung the kitchen door wide and approached me across the rear verandah. Tall she was, her cloak a blanket, her hair, drawn back from her face that night, accentuated the round lashless eyes, sunk like sparkling gems into shadowy pits of yellow clay. Her face was a patchwork of scars, a cruel hole where her nose had once been, a lipless opening they had made for her mouth. Shiny, gathered and ridged, her skin was a nightmare of yellow-whites, of purple-reds, paper thin, and stretched to fit, thus making a feature of her jutting cheekbones, and dragging her twisted chin down, down, down, to become lost beneath the blanket.

But her legs, her small neat feet had been untouched by the fire. They were all it had spared of the child Moni Morgan.

I shrank from her blue bird-claw hands that first night, yet they were gentle, tentative things as they drew me inside; more afraid than frightening were Granny's hands. They bathed my scratches and soothed a salve on them, gave me water to drink and broth, which she had fed to me from a spoon.

I do not recall when I slept, or where I slept, only that I awoke to her frightening face, shrank from her frightening hands, feared the mornings and wanted the dark nights to return. For how long, I do not know. For how long I cried, I do not know.

I remember the garment she gave me was rough, and the food she offered unfamiliar. I learned to eat it, and learned not to look at her.

But I did not laugh at her poor face. I did not laugh. Those city bastards who hold her arms for the one who trapped this likeness laugh at her.

She told me once that the city men had named her the roasted rat. I think it was these men, and I think if I had a sword, I would cut their heads from their necks and kick their bloody heads into hell.

How I hate the cruelty of that city. How I hate its great talent that can make such things as machines that fly and beasts who are neither man nor swine. And how I hate this cube that can trap a tortured face and hold it prisoner for countless years. I want to take up a hammer and smash it, set poor little Moni free, and I think to do it, but it is the cube that holds the face of Jonjan. I can not smash it.

Lenny's cough comes from close by; I toss the cube to the floor, then I walk from the room with his bedding, my heart as heavy as my swollen belly.

I had allowed memory of Granny's face to fade into grey. I was younger then, true, and certainly, in time, I had grown accustomed to her features, though I admit that when we walked the property on those stormy afternoons, I walked behind her, choosing to look at her boots. Never her face. And never had I touched her, not then.

I recall the day we climbed Morgan Hill. She had reached out a hand for me to hold. I chose not to take it. She was old. Had she wished to borrow the strength of my youth? I did not lend it. Not until the last months, when her weakness forced me to lend my hands, had I touched her, bathed her – fed her from a spoon in those final days, but never with the hand of compassion, only duty.

I am a thing of the city, born of a plasti-womb, and the male who lent me his blood to grow had within it no warmth to offer the rock-hard frozen embryo of me, no compassion to offer. I think this is so.

But I am learning from the one which I carry. Today, for the first time, I am understanding Granny's anger, her loneliness, her fear of a child's rejection – even her intolerant stick when my hands could not quickly learn new tasks. She was old, had known she had little time left in this world to teach me all I needed to know.

It is a pity we do not learn until it is too late. Still, so distant now are those childhood days; they passed so swiftly.

Then she was gone, and the grey men came. They swept my childhood away.

(Excerpt from the New World Bible)

As each generation of labourer was driven fast to his Godsent grave, a new generation from the laboratories was hurried to maturity. And there was much change and improvement made to the labouring class, for only the cells of the strong and the docile were used by the laboratories.

 

Thus it came to pass that there were many, both youth and adult, who wore the same features. These infants wore no name, though the number and mark of their trade was burned onto the shaven scalp when the infant passed his third year. And by this mark he was known and by this number he was counted amongst the population.

 

So too came the new searchers from the cells of the old. And they were born with their own mark of trade, for they were of diminutive stature.

 

Conditioned early by the Master Searchers, the searcher had become a race apart who did not walk well upon the earth but knew only the freedom of the skies and the small confines of their craft.