Remnant Population

CHAPTER THREE

If they called, she did not hear them. If they searched, they did not come her way. She lay awake long after dark, waiting, and heard nothing of humans but the departing roar of the shuttle. Closer, she heard rustlings in the leaves, something falling through the limbs above her, hitting one after another until it smacked into the ground an unknown distance away. A soft whirr, like a muffled alarm. A resonant sound like a stone dropped on another, repeating at intervals. Her heart raced and slowed, as exhaustion burned her eyes and wore out her fear. When she fell asleep at last, she had no idea how long the night would last.

Before dawn, she woke cold and damp at the sound of another shuttle landing; she could not go back to sleep, even though she forced herself to close her eyes. When the first light came, she wasn’t sure if it was real; she half-believed her eyes were making it up, tired of the dark. Slowly the nearby trees took form, dim shapes lifting overhead, dark against colorless light. When the morning light was strong enough that she could see the rust-orange and pale green of the patchy growths on the tree nearest her, she heard the shuttle taking off, its roar vanishing into the sky above the trees.

It should be the last one. She could not be sure, though. If they had lied to the people; if they had wanted to take back more things from the buildings — equipment, machines, she couldn’t guess — then they would have to send more shuttles. She had no idea how long it would take them to set the spaceship itself in motion. She should hide at least another day.

She wished she had brought dry clothes; she had not thought how wet she might be, or how stiff. She did not feel free, from having slept on the ground in the open; she felt sticky and miserable, her joints aching sharply. When it finally occurred to her that she could take off the damp garments sticking to her skin, she laughed aloud, then stopped abruptly, a hand to her mouth. Barto had not liked it when she laughed for no reason. She waited, listening; when no voice scolded, she felt her body relax, her hand drop from her mouth. She was safe, at least from that. She peeled the clothes off, peering around to be sure no one watched.

In the dim light, her skin gleamed, paler than anything around it. If someone had stayed behind — if someone were looking — he would know at once she was naked. She did not look at herself; she looked at her clothes as she shook them out. Perhaps she could hang them somewhere. She flinched as a drop of water fell onto her bare shoulder, whirling around at the touch. Then it struck her as funny, and she giggled soundlessly at herself, unable to stop until her sides ached.

That had warmed her. She felt odd, more aware of the air touching her than anything else, but neither hot nor cold. When another drop of water struck her between the shoulders, and trickled down her spine, she shivered. It felt good. She hung her shirt and underclothes over a drooping length of vine, then folded her skirt into a pad to sit on. It was still unpleasantly damp, but it touched her only where she sat, and the heat of her body warmed it. She took out yesterdays flatbread, the chunk of sausage, and ate it hungrily. Today it tasted different, as if it were a strange food, something new. The water in her flask tasted different too, in a way she could not define.

After eating, she dug another little hole and used it. Perhaps she need not — if she was the only person in the world now, who could be offended by her waste? — but lifelong habit insisted that people did something with their output. When she was sure the others had gone — truly gone, forever — she would see if the recycler would work for her. For now she pushed the reddish dirt, the odd-colored leaves, back over the hole.

As the day warmed, Ofelia tired of sitting still; she missed the familiar routine of her days, the gardening and cooking, the chores she had performed so long. It would have been nice to have a fire, to be able to cook, but she had no way to make a fire, and would not risk detection from the smoke. Lacking that possibility, she began picking up sticks, arranging them, almost without thinking. A little platform of crossed sticks, to keep her pack off the damp forest floor. There, a larger fallen limb, its bark already rotted away… it would make a comfortable brace at the back of the next hole she dug. She tidied the little space in which she had settled, arranging it to suit her. It took on more and more the shape and feel of a room, a safe place.

At noon, when the few rays of direct sun fell straight onto her head, she paused to eat again, and look around. Her water flask nestled into the hollow between two roots; she had picked large flat leaves to shade it. Another flat leaf served as a platter for her meal. She had contrived a comfortable seat, after several tries, from limbs propped against each other and a tree trunk, padded with her folded skirt. Her nakedness still bothered her; she felt every movement of the air, even the movements she made. Finally she had pulled on her underclothes, grimacing, a little ashamed to need privacy from nothing but her own awareness, and her shirt over them. She left off the long skirt that now served as a pillow. But her bare feet felt right.

Sometime in the afternoon, a rainstorm came up. In the colony, it had been possible to see storms coming. But under the forest canopy, Ofelia had no warning except the shadow and rush of wind that preceded a downpour. She had been out in rain before; she was not afraid of getting wet. When it was over, she would dry out again.

But she had not been in the forest in a storm before. At first, she heard only the wind, and assumed the water, as the canopy absorbed the first rain. Then the saturated canopy leaked. Just when she thought the rain might be over (light returned, the thunder rumbled in the distance only), this lower rain found her. Drop by drop, drizzling trickle by trickling stream, until she was soaked, as evening came on. Because she had hunched in her improvised seat, the skirt under her was no wetter than before, but also no drier. Her sack of food, covered with large leaves, still seemed damp; the flatcake tasted stale and soggy. She did not want to lie down on the wet forest floor to sleep; she did not want to sit there awake all night either. Finally she rested her head against the tree trunk, and slept fitfully, waking at every unfamiliar sound, By first light, she had decided that she could not stand another wet night in the forest. Not without supplies she had not brought. She wanted to complain to someone, insist that it wasn’t her fault. She had never run away before; she couldn’t be expected to get it all right the first time. Until then, the lack of voices had not bothered her. She had been told her hearing was going… or her mind; Barto couldn’t decide which. She had been able to hear what she wanted to hear, usually; she had often wished for silence. On the rare nights that Barto did not snore, and Rosara did not wake three or four times to stumble noisily to the toilet, she had lain awake reveling in the silence. And the silence of that first day had not bothered her, because she did not hear it as silence. Inside, she had the bickering voices, the public voice that said predictable things, and the new private voice that said unimaginable things. Outside had been the progression of shuttle flight noises, one after another. On the second day, the sound of her own actions — the noises she had made dragging limbs, picking up sticks, breathing and eating and drinking — comforted her without her noticing, mixed as they were with the voices inside.

Not until she wanted an answer did she notice the silence.

It was a wall It was a presence, not an absence… a pressure on her ears that made her swallow nervously, as if that could clear them. Silence wrapped its hands around her head, muffling and smothering. When the panic subsided, she was standing rigid, mouth open, gasping for air… she could not remember what question she had thought to ask, that needed another’s answer. Her ears reported that they had sound enough: rustling in the leaves, the drip of water, that stonelike resonant plonk. But those sounds carried no meaning, and the voices in her head, both the familiar and the new, held silence in her fear. Finally one of them — which, she did not notice — said Go home now. Said it firmly, with no doubts. Ofelia looked around her room, and picked up her folded skirt. She shook it out, and stepped into it without thinking. She picked up the sack of supplies. Time to go home, even before full daylight. Her feet knew the way, through the strands of fog that obscured her vision, over the knotted roots, around the trees and stones. Light grew around her as she came to the edge of the forest, where the lower brush grew, and by the time she came to the edge of the cleared ground, soaked once more with morning dew, she could just see the dark shapes of the town’s buildings through the fading mist. She paused at the edge of that open grassy stretch, calmer now and remembering why she should not simply walk home. Here it was much quieter than in the forest. A breath of air flowed past her, carrying the smell of sheep somewhere to her right. No human sound. No voices. No machines. Would they be waiting for her to return? Was someone in the houses, in the center, holding his breath, watching her through some special machine and waiting for her to come within range? She felt warmth on her right cheek and neck, the sun burning the mist away. Cool damp and warmth alternated, and then the sun won, and bright light shone on the town. Her house lay ahead — she had retraced her path so exactly that if her marks on the dew two mornings before had remained, she might have stepped into them as into familiar socks. But nothing marred the sweep of dull silver. She stepped into the wet grass. She wanted to get home, and out of her wet clothes. She changed from her wet clothes first, and used the bathroom for a hot shower. After that, she considered her clothes. What did she feel like wearing? Indoors… nothing. But she wanted to go into her garden, and she was not yet ready to stay outside naked. She pulled on a shirt. What she wanted to wear with it was short pants, like those she had worn as a child, those she had made for Barto. In his room — not his room, my room she told herself — she found a pair of long pants he had not taken. She found her scissors and cut the legs short, but did not stop to hem them. When she tried them on, they were too big in the waist, but she did not mind the feeling as they rode low on her hips. Better than her underclothes or her skirt. Leaf-nibblers had been at work on the garden in those two days, but all the tomato flowers had opened. Ofelia worked her way from plant to plant, capturing the caterpillars to feed later, breaking the three slimerods she found among the squash, squashing the aphids on the beans. She paid little attention to the time, until her stomach growled and she realized she was hungry.

She ate a cold snack from the cooler. In only two days, nothing had spoiled even though the light didn’t come on. She flicked the kitchen light switch: again nothing. But the water had been hot… she puzzled over that until she remembered that the water tanks used the same insulation as the coolers. If the cooler could stay cold, the hot water could stay hot. Then she set out to find what had happened in the rest of the colony.

It felt strange — almost indecent — to be looking into windows and opening doors when the people who lived in those houses were not home to say Welcome, Sera Ofelia or Our house is your house, Sera Ofelia. No one had locked a door — the doors had no locks, anyway, only latches to keep small children in or out — and the first two or three times she pushed one open, she felt shy. Later it became a game; she felt deliciously wicked, the way she’d felt when she first took off her clothes and considered not wearing them. Now she could look under the Senyagins’ bed. Now she could open Linda’s closets and see if her housekeeping was as muddled as her mind. (It was — she found items that Linda would be sorry not to have when she woke up in another world, shoved in behind dirty laundry.) In the bright day, she hurried from house to house, flinging open doors that were shut, letting the light in, letting herself in. All the gardens looked the same as they had two days before. Dayvine’s scarlet trumpets open… tomatoes and beans and squash and peas and chard… all the plants she could want, more than she could ever eat, producing more seed than she would ever need. She made note of certain ones: the special blue bean that the Senyagins had brought on their own, not part of colony seedstock, and traded at a high price. She would have that in her own garden at last. Melons here… the giant gourd there; she had never grown either giant gourds or melons, but she had traded for them. Lemongrass… herbs… she had always grown some cilantro and peppers for herself, but not tarragon and basil and parsley and dill. She would have to keep a close eye on the herb garden; the colony had had only one.

The center too stood open. The long sewing tables were littered with scraps and lengths of fabric. All the machines had been turned off, and did not come on when she pushed the buttons. She went to the door of the powerplant control room. It was closed but not locked; she pushed it open. A skylight let in ample light; she went to the big switches, all set at off, and pushed them on. More light sprang out around her. The control panel was alight now, and all the markers were in green segments. She knew what that meant; they all did. Every adult had learned to run the powerplant; it was too important to leave to a few specialists.

Now the centers machines would work, and the cooler and lights at home. While she was there, Ofelia checked the levels in the waste recycler. She might need to replenish the tanks sometime; one person might not make enough waste to keep the powerplant running. But so far the levels had not dropped enough to measure.

From the center, Ofelia went cautiously toward the shuttle field. If the Company still waited to trap her, this might be where they waited. She kept to the edge of the lane as far as the last buildings. From here she could see down to the shuttle field, its surface scuffed and bruised by the heavy traffic of the past week, but otherwise empty. No vehicles moved; she saw and heard no one. The breeze blew across it toward her; she smelled nothing fresh in the faint scent of oils and fuels. A nearer stench of decay drew her. She followed it to a firepit where she supposed the Company reps had feasted on the colony’s sheep, or some of them. Eight or nine badly butchered corpses lay rotting, the fleeces in a separate pile, stiff and bloody. Ofelia scowled. It was a waste of good wool and leather, leaving them like that. Still, it gave her a load for the waste recycler, and it would be no easier if she waited. The smell kept her appetite at bay, though it was noon. First she went back to the waste recycler for the long protective gloves she had been taught to use when handling animal waste. Slowly, laboriously, she dragged the sheep carcasses and refuse into one pile. Then she looked again at the few vehicles, the old logging trucks and utility wagons near the shuttle field. Would they work? She had not driven any machine for years, but she knew how.

They might still be in orbit. They might notice if she started an engine; they might have noticed when she started the powerplant again. Would they come back? She could always hide in the forest again, this time taking her rain cape and dry clothes — but why would they?

Still — she walked back to the third house on this side of the village and found the Arramandys’ garden cart in their shed. Moving the sheep carcasses to the waste recycler took her the rest of the afternoon. The cart would hold two at a time, and she found buckets for the slimy, bloated guts and organs. With all her care, some of the stinking mess got onto her clothes. When she had finished, she washed the gloves, dipped them in disinfectant, and then stripped off her clothes, not touching the wet places. She would have to disinfect them, too.

She could do better than that. Grinning, she picked up the clothes with a stick, and shoved them, too, into the intake hopper. Then she showered in the convenient shower, and dried herself on the big gray towels that hung there for anyone who needed them. She considered wrapping one around herself for the walk home… or she could duck into someone’s house and find real clothes. Or. Or she could walk naked down the street where she had lived, where no one lived now to tell the tale. She padded to the open door and looked out. Twilight: the sun had sunk behind the distant forest. No one in the street, no one in the houses. Her belly tightened with excitement, with daring. Could she? She would someday, she knew that, had known it since that new voice first spoke inside her. And if she could do it someday, why not now, tonight, when it would still be a thrill?

She dropped the towel in a heap, and took one step. No. She turned, picked up the towel, and went back inside to hang it up. If she was going to walk down the street with no clothes on, she would start here, at the shower. In the building, already dim with evening, she felt safe enough. At the door she paused again. No? Yes? She did not have to hurry. She could stand there a long time, until it was dark if she wanted.

Until no one could see, even if everyone had been there.

But she would know. And she wanted to know. One step, out from under the doorframe. Another step, out from under the shadow of the eaves. Another and another, away from that building, and into the lane, along the lane… and no eyes peered from the dark windows, no voices rose to shame her. The cool twilight air touched her everywhere, on her back and sides and breasts and belly, all along her arms and legs, between her legs. It felt — when she calmed enough to notice — very pleasant. Then she saw the lights of the center warm against the blue dusk. Fear chilled her; she could scarcely breathe. Idiot! How could she have been so stupid? If anyone was up there in orbit, if they were watching, they would surely see it. They would know; they might come back.

She hurried now, no longer aware of her bare skin, rushing in to find the light switches and turn them off. Then home, where she put out her hand and had the switch in her fingers before she remembered. She stood there a moment, her muscles cramping with the effort of stopping a familiar movement, before she could take her hand away without moving the switch. Her heart pounded; she could feel the pulse of her fear throughout her body. As her heart slowed, as she calmed, she scolded herself. Foolish, foolish. She could not afford to forget things; there was no one to remind her any more. She ate a cold supper in the darkness inside the house. At least she was inside now, and if it rained she would not get wet. She closed the shutters, making the inside even darker, and felt her way to her bed. Her room felt tiny, airless. Tomorrow she would move to Barto and Rosara’s room, the room she had shared with her husband until he died. But tonight — tonight she would not blunder around in the dark. She pulled down the covers by feel, and was almost asleep when she remembered. She had not been alone like this… in her whole life. She wondered for a long moment that she was not frightened, alone in the dark, the only person on the whole planet. Not frightened at all… she felt safe, safer than she could remember being. She fell asleep as her body found the familiar hollows of her bed. In the morning, as she woke in her own bed in her own house, the familiar smells around her, she did not remember what had happened. She rose as usual, fumbled her way to the light switch in her room, and only when it came on realized that she was naked, and why. The past few days felt dreamlike, unreal. She caught up the robe hanging on its hook, and slipped into it before opening the door, half-expecting to hear snores from Barto and Rosara’s room.

Silence greeted her, the absolute silence of a house in which no one dwells. She looked anyway. Already their bedroom looked different, a room in which no one had lived for some time. Barto had not wanted to waste their packing allotment on linens, so the bed still had the cream bedspread with the broad red stripe, and the pillows in red cases. The open closet gaped, a blind mouth with a rumpled sock for a tongue;

Ofelia grinned, thinking how Barto would complain when he unpacked and found a sock missing. She picked it up, shut the closet door, and latched it. It never had stayed shut on its own. The room still looked strange, and she could not say why. A film of dew slicked the windowsill; as she looked, a slidebug dropped from the ceiling, trailing its tether.

In the kitchen, the cooler hummed blandly. Ofelia ignored it and went out into the garden. Here all felt the same, the plants responding to light and warmth with another day’s growth. She worked her way down the rows, enjoying the silence. Somewhere a sheep bleated, and others answered. Far off, on the far side of the settlement, one of the cattle mooed. These sounds had never bothered her; they did not shatter her peace. She did think she ought to find the cattle and the sheep, and see if any of them needed anything. But in the meantime, there was the warm sun on her head, and the smell of bean blossoms, tomato plants, and the dayvine flowers. When she felt too hot, she let the robe fall open, and finally discarded it, hanging it on a hook in the toolshed. The sun felt like a great warm hand cradling her body; old aches seemed to vanish. When she went back inside, she felt a little feverish. Sunburn, she warned herself, as she opened the cooler. She would have to be careful, at least at first.

After breakfast, she cleaned out the cooler, throwing the stale food into the compost trench. She should check the other coolers. Most of them could be unplugged, kept as spares should she need them. It would be convenient to have a cooler in the center, and perhaps on the far side of the town, for when she went to tend to the cattle.

Most of the coolers had some kind of food in them. Ofelia cleaned them methodically, collecting anything stale or spoiled for compost. She carried the good food — the hard sausages, the smoked meats, the cheeses and pickled vegetables — back to her own house. She was already thinking which gardens to maintain, which to abandon, which to replant for grain for the sheep and cattle. She spent the entire day at this, uncomfortably aware of food spoiling somewhere… something she might not find in time. Not until late afternoon did she realize that even if she found no more, she would still have plenty. It would be a nuisance to clean out smelly coolers later, but she did not have to push herself. At that thought, she quit work at once, and left the Falares’ cooler standing open, half-cleaned. She had already unplugged it. She went into the bathroom she still thought of as “theirs” and took a shower. It still felt daring, defiant, to use the facilities in someone else’s home, even though the Falareses would never know. Still in that defiant mood, she left wet footprints across their tile floor and strolled back down the lane, making herself go slowly.

In the east, a storm was building, a tower of cloud snowy white at its peak, and dark blue-gray below. It would rain this evening; such storms moved inland from the coast every day or so in early summer. In the west, the highlands rose, step by step to distant mountains, but she could not see beyond the forest wall. She had heard about it — the map on the center wall showed the photomosaic made by the survey satellites before the colony was planted.

When she came into her house, the first puffs of wind before the storm tickled the back of her legs. She glanced back outside. Clouds obscured more than half the sky. Surely the ship, if it was still there, couldn’t see her lights. She didn’t want to spend another evening in the dark; she wanted to cook herself a good supper. She turned the lights on with the same feeling of defiance that had driven her to use the Falares’ shower.

The storm rumbled, drifting nearer. Ofelia closed the shutters in the bedroom, leaving those in the kitchen open. She cooked with one eye on the outside, waiting for the wind and rain. When it came, her sausages were sizzling with onions and peppers and sliced potatoes; she scooped the hot mix into a fresh round of flatbread, and sat near the kitchen door, listening to the rain in the garden. Soon the darkening evening filled with the sounds of water: the rush of the rain itself, the drumming on the roof, the melodious drip from eaves onto the doors tones, the gurgle of water moving in the house ditches to the drain beyond. Much better than in the forest. Ofelia finished the last of her supper, and rested her back against the doorpost. A fine spray of water brushed her face and arms as the water rebounded from the ground outside. She licked it off her lips: more refreshing than any shower. The rain continued until after dark. Ofelia finally got up, grunting at her stiff back and legs, and moved her pillow into the other bedroom. The slidebug had spent the day making a web in the corner; she smacked it with her shoe — the only good use of a shoe, she told herself happily — and tore down the web. Slidebugs were not venomous, but their clawed legs prickled, and she had no desire to be wakened by it in the dark.

When she lay down, the bed felt odd. She had slept in this bed when Humberto was alive, but had given it up to Barto and Stefan a year or two later. By the time Stefan died, Barto had considered the room his, and he had invited his first wife Elise to live there. Ofelia had not complained; she had liked Elise, who had died in the second big flood. But then, Barto had married Rosara… so it had been twenty years or more since she’d slept in the big bed. Her body had become used to the narrow one. It took some time tossing and turning and stretching to find her balance in the larger space. Waking to the light filtering through shutters… she stretched luxuriously. Her skin itched slightly, and when she looked it had a faint flush. She would have to wear a shirt again today. But when she looked at her shirts, none of them pleased her. She thought of the houses she’d been in, the things left behind. At Linda’s, there’d been a fringed shawl. Somewhere near there — her mind refused to come up with the name — someone had left a soft blue shirt behind. Or she could make herself a shirt with the leftover fabric in the center.

Not today. Today she would scavenge again, because she wanted to clear out more of the coolers and find what else useful had been left. She went out into the morning coolness and the fog left behind the rain, no longer worried that someone might see and criticize.

The damp eased her sunburn; even when she found the blue shirt she remembered, embroidered with little pink flowers, she hesitated to put it on. Inside, she didn’t need it. She wore it like a cape that day, throwing it over her shoulders when she went from house to house and leaving it off inside. In the afternoon, she remembered again that she needed to look for the cattle on the other side of the settlement, near the river. She could check the pump intakes at the same time. She picked up a hat someone had discarded, and slung the shirt over her shoulders.

The cattle had been pastured between the settlement and the river, where terraforming grasses grew rank in the damp soil. She had had nothing to do with them for years, and had not realized that a stout calf-pen had been built to confine the calves. No one had thought to release them, but two cows had jumped the gate. A third grazed nearby. Inside the pen were two healthy calves, and one that looked thin and ribby. As she watched, it tried to sneak a feed from one of the cows, who butted it away. Ofelia looked at the cow outside the pen. She was not a herder but she thought its udder already looked tighter than those of the cows inside. Farther off, by the river, she saw the brown backs of the other cattle grazing. Perhaps it would be all right. Ofelia didn’t want to worry about it. She opened the gate, standing behind it as the hungry cows surged forward, leading their calves out to grass. The other cow went to her calf, licked it all over. The calf grabbed a teat and started sucking, but Ofelia saw none of the milky foam on its muzzle that would mean it was getting milk.

Her conscience scolded her. It’s your fault, Ofelia. If only you had bothered to look, even yesterday. It’s

because you’re selfish. Willful. Vain. She walked over to check the water trough in the pen, even though she didn’t intend to close any animals in it again. She noticed that the voice of her conscience sounded less like her own and more like… whose? Barto’s? Humbertos? No, because it was older and not completely male. It had shadings of feminine ire, too. She was too tired to worry about it; she only noticed that it had been gone for several days, and now it was back. That evening, in the cool twilight, she sat at the kitchen door sniffing the healthy smells from her garden. The new voice murmured, happily, much in the tone of the water that had run in the house-ditch. The old voice lay silent as a sleeping cat.

The new voice talked to itself: free, free, free… quiet… lovely, free, free.

She dreamed. She had a yellow dress, with ruffles on the shoulders, and yellow socks that matched. She had two yellow bows in her hair. She had a plaid bookbag… it was her first day of school. Her mother had stayed up late finishing the dress and the bows. She felt excited, eager. Last year Paulo had started school, and now it was her turn.

The room smelled of children and steam; it was in the basement of the crowded school, and by noon the ruffles on her yellow dress hung limply. She didn’t care. They had computers here, real ones, and the children were allowed to touch them. Paulo had told her that, but she hadn’t believed him. Now she stood in front of the computer, her fingers splayed on the touchpad, laughing at the colors on the screen. The teacher wanted them to touch the color squares in order, but Ofelia had discovered that you could make the colors drift and merge, and the screen before her was a riot of color. Of course, it had been naughty. The teacher had said what to do, and she had done something else. That was wrong. She understood that now. But in her dream, the swirling colors escaped the screen and colored the room, making her memories more vivid than the reality had been. On the other screens, a square of color followed a square of color, pure and predictable, red, green, yellow, blue. On hers… a mess, the teacher had said, but she had already heard the other children exclaim over what she could see for herself. Magnificence, glory, all the things they weren’t supposed to have.

She woke up with tears still wet on her cheeks, and blinked them out of her eyes. Something vividly red swung in and out of view at the window. Dayvine trumpets, in the breeze — the vine on that side of the house must have grown a foot overnight. Barto had insisted on keeping the house free of vines; she lay there and felt a deep happiness work out from her bones at the sight of those flowers dancing in the sunlight.