The Worthing Saga (19 page)

“Winter's when the real work happens,” Lared said. “Summer's harvest comes from winter's water.”

“I didn't know that,” Jason said. “Not that day, anyway. Not the time when I despaired, when they seemed to learn nothing, when I grew sick of their endlessly emptying bladders and bowels. Perhaps when I knew that it would succeed. Perhaps a day when I loved them. Find such a day, Justice, and give it to Lared in his dreams.”

That afternoon the snow began to fall. The wind was harder than ever; they went out only to make sure all the animals were closed in the barns and stables, to make sure everyone in the village knew, and no children were out in the storm. That took the afternoon, and Lared felt a strange exhilaration in the danger of it, for they had treated him like an adult, letting him go from house to house, trusting him with the lives of some of the families because no one followed after him to be sure he delivered his messages. They have almost decided that I'm a man, thought Lared. I am almost on my own.

By suppertime there was no going out at all, for any reason. The wind was whipping the snow through the inn yard, piling it up mountainously against the windward walls of house and barns and forge. Lared looked through the sliding shutter on the door even with so small an opening, the wind stung his eyes and made it hard to see. What he saw was the storm that the tinker had so long promised. There was never a calm in the wind, only an occasional slackening that would let the snow fall slightly downward, instead of seeming to fly straight across, level with the ground. It was impossible to tell how deep the snow was, after a while: he could see no buildings through the flying snow, had no reference point, Only when the snow drifted up against the door so high that it plugged the shutter hole, only then did he realize that there had never been such a storm in the village of Flat Harbor before. That night Lared went with his father into the cold attic, to see whether the roof beams could bear the weight. Afterward, he lay awake in bed a long time, listening to the wind whipping the house, prying at the shutters; listened to the snow press downward on the house, making the old timbers groan with the weight. He got up twice to put another log on the fire, to make sure the rising heat was stronger than the cold whistling down the chimney, or else the smoke would back into the room and kill them all.

At last he slept, and dreamed of a day in the life of Jason Worthing; he dreamed a good day, the day that Jason knew his colony would work.

Jason awoke to the lowing of the cows that needed milking. He had been up three times in the night with the new ones, just brought from the ship. Wien, Hux, and Vary, and they were trouble—with the first three on their own a little more, Jason had forgotten how much trouble they could be. Not that they needed nighttime feedings—their bodies were adult, after all, and not growing. They awoke because they did not know yet how to dream. Their minds were vast caverns, and, they easily got lost; they had no store of images to guide them through the night. So they awoke, and Jason comforted them, calmed them.

The cows need milking and I must get up. In a moment I will.

How long till these new ones learn? Jason tried to remember back through the last months, the long winter, the longer spring as he tended Kapock, Sara, and Batta, doing his best to keep them safe, keep them learning, even as he struggled to ready the land, to plant, to grow a crop. But in the late spring they began following after him, imitating him, learning the work; it had not been long. Eight months and they were walking and talking and helping bear the burden of the work.

Jason knew enough of children, though he'd never had any, to know that they were progressing far faster than any infant. It was as if something in their brains that did not depend on currents of electricity kept a pattern; they learned to walk easily, in a matter of a few months; bowel and bladder control came soon, mercifully; their tongues found the tones of speech well enough. Learning their body from the inside was not as hard this time as it had been when they were very small. But it was little comfort during the months before they
had
learned, for no mother had had to contend with a six-foot infant crawling to explore in the night; and with bodies fully developed, Jason had to enforce strict rules about who slept where, and how they must stay dressed, and what may or may not be touched: it was hard enough to deal with them without a pregnancy. Jason meant to build a stable society, and that meant that the customs of marriage had to be firmly embedded in the patterns of their lives.

With Batta, Kapock, and Sara, that was already in the past, and still to come with Wien and Hux and Vary.

Jason sighed and forced himself to get up, to dress in the darkness. Only it wasn't as dark as it should be—light was coming in through the skylight. He had slept more than a moment, and the cows would be angry. Except that he didn't hear them lowing. They should be complaining loudly by now.

It was only when he opened the door and the light fell across the floor that he realized that the others weren't there. The new ones lay in their coffins—the sides kept them from falling out of bed—but the old ones were gone. Jason felt a thrill of fear as he thought of them down at the river. But no, they had been learning to swim, they could stay afloat, the current was weak this far into the summer—he should not be afraid. Should not be, but was: but they were not at the river, and as he walked around the plastic dome they called the House, he saw Kapock out in the vegetable field, hoeing along the rows of beans. He looked farther, and at the forest's edge there was Sara with Dog, letting the sheep out to graze beyond the edge of the fenced fields. He knew then where Batta would be, and walked into the barn.

She had already finished the milking, and was skimming the cream for butter-making. “You're just in time,” she said, imitating a phrase that Jason often used, imitating even his intonation. “You're just in time. Let's curdle it.” Oh, she was full of herself, but the work was well done, wasn't it? And Jason hadn't been there to help at all. So together they poured the buckets of skimmed milk into the wooden tub and set it in front of the heater to warm. Making curds in front of a solar-powered heater did not seem like such a contradiction to Jason. He knew that he would soon have to begin the use of open fire, but he dreaded it and figured to put it off at least another year. So it was radiant heat from a unit brought with the ship that kept the milk in the tub at the right temperature, and lactic acid saved from the belly of a slaughtered lamb that did the curdling, and bacteria carefully cultured from the ship's supply that began to grow in the milk to turn it, eventually, to cheese.

“We let you sleep,” Batta said. “You—were very very tired. The new ones were very bad in the night.”

“Yes,” Jason said. “Thank you. You've done very well.”

“I can do it all,” she said. “I know the way.” So he only helped her when the job needed more than two hands, and told her nothing; when he was sure she knew the way he set about the simpler task of butter-making. With the curdling well under way Batta came to him, strutting a little, and smiled as she laid her hands on the handle of the churn. “Butter for summer sweet and cheese for winter meat,” she said.

“You're a marvel,” Jason told her, and he went back to the House to tend the new ones. He fed and diapered them, carried out the manure to the privy that he and the old ones used, and dropped the urine-soaked diapers into the tub, where the piss leached out for soapmaking later in the fall. Use everything, thought Jason, teach them to use everything even if it makes your civilized stomach a little sick.
They
have no such fine sensibilities.
They
can learn what matters and what doesn't. How many of the citizens of Capitol had thought nothing of adultery but shuddered at the sight of their own stools? The loops that showed defecation were considered far more pornographic than the ones that depended on interesting variations of sex. Capitol didn't need you, Doon, to make it fall. You only made it so somec would die with it—it was caving in before you came.

Kapock showed himself no mercy in the vegetable garden. Like Batta, he was working to earn Jason's approval, and he gave it gladly. Kapock had killed no table plants, and the weeds were well taken. “You've put food on the table today,” said Jason. That was strong praise, for he had taught them what they had to know to survive: that every day's work had to put food on the table, that every hour of summer sweat was winter survival; and they believed him, though they remembered almost nothing of winter, and never doubted that there would be food enough to eat. Indeed there was—food enough on the ship to feed the four no, seven—of them for a generation. But the sooner they were self-supporting, the better.

Jason looked in Kapock's mind, as the tall child hoed eagerly. He had few enough words to think with yet, but he had a strong sense of the order of things. He was the one who had thought of the day's surprise, to let Jason sleep while they did the work, and of course Kapock had chosen for himself the job he hated most, the one with endless repetition bent over in the hot sun. That was the order of things, to him: to do all that Jason taught them to do, without having to be asked anymore. He had taught them that was what it meant to be grown, that you did what must be done even when you didn't want to, even when it hurt, even when no one would know if you didn't do it. That was Kapock's project for the day, to be grown up in Jason's eyes.

But there was more. A sense of the future, too. And Kapock found a way to put it into words. “Will the new ones help tomorrow?” he asked. He had understood: as the new ones were, lying helpless in their coffins, he and Batta and Sara once had been; as he and Batta and Sara now were, the new ones would become.

“Not tomorrow, but in a few more weeks.”

To Kapock that still meant an unmanageably long time, as far off as the mythical winter, but it was confirmation that he was right about the way things would go in the world. And so he dared another question. “Will I teach them everything?”

The question really meant, Will I become like you, Jason? And Jason, understanding that, answered, “Not these new ones, but other ones, later ones, little ones, you'll teach them everything.”

Ai, thought Kapock wordlessly. I will become you, which is all I want.

They took their noon meal together, without Sara because she was tending the sheep, and they wouldn't come in till late in the afternoon. Jason had never seen Kapock and Batta so happy, falling over their own words as they tried to tell each other all that they did, all the praise that Jason had given them, while Jason quietly moved among the coffins, feeding the new ones some of the cream saved out from the churn. Batta's new butter spoke for itself on the bread from last year's wheat. Last year's wheat, which Jason had planted and harvested himself, testing seven different seeds in this alien soil to find the ones that thrived best. No such loneliness again as when I plowed on the little tractor, and flew in the skiff to place the game animals in the forest, to stock the lakes with fish that my people could eat; I was far more free then to come and go as I liked, and I did not have to work half so hard as now, but I like this better, much better, the sound of their voices in my ears, the pleasure of seeing their joy, in learning.

Together they strained the day's curds and wrapped it and put it under a stone to press it into cheese. Thirty other cheeses already growing strong and rank promised plenty to eat in the winter; Jason had been right to bring all but a few of the cows out from the ship, despite the trouble that they had caused him in building fences strong enough to hold them in.

I have done all this, thought Jason. I have come to a meadow by a river and turned it into a farm, with people and animals and food enough to keep all alive. And they are learning, they will someday know enough to survive without me.

It was the promise of future freedom, that they needed him less today than yesterday. It was also the warning of death.

Batta and Jason left Kapock to watch the new ones and went out to the edges of the unfenced fields to split last winter's logs for fence rails. It was hot, exhausting work, but before darkness forced them in from the field they had fenced another hundred strides—before summer was out they could let the pigs out into the forest to range and root, with a fence to keep them from the crops. Then the forest would feed them, and it would be one less drain on the resources of the little farm; the pigs would harvest the forest for them, and bring it back as bacon for the winter's eating.

Waste nothing. Harvest everything. The geese would glean after harvest, so the split grains would become roast meat late in the autumn. The sheep would eat the stubble and turn it into wool and ewe's milk and young lambs for next year's flock. The ashes from the waste wood burning would be used with urine and turned to soap; the guts of the slaughtered pigs and lambs would become strong threads for binding, or casings for sausages. Once it had been the daily life of every man and woman in the world, to turn everything into food or fuel or clothing or shelter; to Jason it was the dawn of creation, and everything he did was new.

Sara and Kapock had the supper ready. It was tasteless but good enough because Jason hadn't had to watch the cooking. They were serious about this today—twice as much had been accomplished as in any day since Jason took them from the ship. Batta even tried to feed the new ones. Hux spat it on her, and Wien bit the spoon, and she got angry and yelled at them. Kapock told her to be quiet, what did she expect from new ones? Sara shouted at Kapock to be nice to Batta, she was only trying to help. Jason watched it all and laughed aloud in delight. It was complete. They were a family.

“There,” said Lared. “Is it what you wanted?”

“Yes,” said Jason.

“I even tried to write it so cheese-making would sound wonderful. Anybody with half a brain can make cheese, you know. And sheep can jump over the kind of fence you were making.”

“I know. I learned it before that summer was out, and we raised the fence.”