Remnant Population

TWO

Barto and Rosara returned from the meeting in exactly the mood Ofelia expected: angry and depressed and ready to take it out on her. Luckily, the meeting had taken longer than she’d thought—they must have argued strongly—so she had the inventory well under way.

“We don’t need those things,” Barto said, of the first category. “I told you—all these things made here—they’re worthless.” He went into their bedroom, and from the sounds he made was throwing all the clothes on the floor.

“They say we have no right to choose where we go,” Rosara said. She moved around the kitchen restlessly, picking up and putting down one utensil after another. “They say we have to be ready to leave in twenty-nine days, and all we can take is twenty kilos per person. We’ll have to go in cryo, and we won’t know where we’re going until we arrive—”

“Barbarians!” Barto stood in the doorway, arms full of clothes. All, Ofelia noticed, were his clothes. “Everything we’ve done—all these years—” Ofelia did not remind him that he had been a baby at first; most of the time he had enjoyed the work of others.

“What will they do with the colony itself?” she asked.

“What do I care? Destroy it, leave it to rot, it doesn’t matter.” He retreated to the bedroom again; Ofelia heard the clothes hit the bed in a soft whumph. “Mama! Where’s the luggage?”

Ofelia bit back a laugh and tried to answer calmly. “There’s no luggage, Barto.” Why would he think they had luggage? They had never needed it.

“You and papa had to carry things here in something.”

“The Company gave us a box.” The box had gone into the structure of the recycler; everyone’s boxes had. Everything that came down had been put to use.

“They won’t give us anything, they said. They said we have to pack it ourselves, in something that will stack in the hold.” He glared at her as if that were her fault, as if she were supposed to solve this problem.

“We can sew something,” she said. “There’s all that cloth in the supply room. If we’re not going to need it for clothes for everyone, we can make something to hold the allotments.” She wasn’t going, she reminded herself, but it was an interesting problem. She had always liked solving problems. Already her mind ran over what she could remember about luggage seen all those years ago, before they emigrated. Other peoples’ luggage—she and Humberto had never traveled—some of it made of fabric shaped into boxes or tubes, some of it molded from plastics. In thirty days, it would be easier to sew it. She thought of the others who used the machines, the ones who were quickest, the ones who could make patterns.

“You take care of it,” Barto said. “And while you’re at it, mend all these things—” He gestured broadly at the piles of clothes on the bed and floor.

It would be easier to take the clothes and go to the center’s sewing rooms than argue that most of the clothes needed no mending. Or that they might not be appropriate to wherever they were being sent. Ofelia picked up an armload, and turned to leave.

“Wait! What about these others?”

“I can’t carry more than this, Barto,” Ofelia said. She didn’t meet his eyes. After a moment, he let his breath out in a huff, and she knew the worst of it was over. She carried the clothes to the center, where she found a small group of women chattering in the hall outside the sewing rooms. They fell silent when they saw her. Ariane finally spoke.

“Sera Ofelia . . . may I help you with that?”

Ofelia had always liked Ariane, who had been a friend of Adelia’s. The two little girls—for a moment memory overcame her, a vision of the two leaning head-to-head whispering, under the first orange tree. When Adelia died, Ariane had come every day to sit with her; she had asked Ofelia to be the name-mother for her own first baby. Now Ofelia smiled at the younger woman.

“It’s only Barto wanting to be sure all his clothes are mended—and I don’t expect to find much to do.” Should she tell Ariane about her idea, to sew luggage from the fabric in stores? Surely someone else would think of it.

“We haven’t any boxes, Sera Ofelia,” said Linda. Trust Linda to blurt out a problem. “I know our parents came with boxes from the Company, but something happened to them—and now they won’t give us boxes.”

“The boxes went into the walls of the recycler,” Ofelia said. The children had been taught that in school, at least when she was helping there. Linda should have known.

“But what will we do, Sera Ofelia?” Several of the other women looked as annoyed as Ofelia felt. They knew Ofelia wasn’t the right person to ask; they didn’t expect her to have any answers.

Mischief bubbled; impossible answers raced through her mind like noisy children, making her mind trip and struggle to regain its balance. It is not my problem, she imagined herself saying. I am not going. “It is simple enough,” she heard herself say aloud. “We will sew containers—luggage—from the fabric that will not be needed to make new clothes this year.”

“You know how to do this?” Linda asked. Her expression showed indecent surprise. Ofelia smiled at the other women, one face after another, forcing their attention.

“I know how well the best of our sewers can plan new things and make them,” she said. “I myself could not do it alone—” The ritual disclaimer; it was not polite to claim expertise, especially exclusive knowledge.

“Like a carry-sack,” Kata said. Her voice sounded happier.

“More like a box, but of cloth,” Ariane said.

“Is there enough cloth?” Linda asked.

“Go and see,” Ariane said. “Come back and tell us how many rolls.”

“If we have to ask the machines for more, we should do that today,” said Kata. “And it must be allotted fairly.”

Ofelia said nothing more, but entered the first sewing room. She laid Barto’s clothes on one of the long tables and began looking over them. One by one, the other women came in after her, now talking about how they would make fabric boxes to hold their belongings. Ofelia found a frayed collar on one shirt and a small triangular tear in the leg of one pair of pants. She turned on one of the bright work-lamps, shifted the magnifier around, and set to work mending the rip. She hardly needed to see it; her fingers could feel the edges of torn cloth as easily as her eyes could see. But she liked the way the magnifier made the threads look like fat yarn.

When she returned home, the clothes neatly folded in her arms, Rosara was standing amid piles of their belongings in the living room. Her eyes were red; she looked as if she were about to be sick. Ofelia nodded at her, and went to put away the clothes she carried. The bedroom was tidy again; Rosara must have put away the clothes Barto had thrown around. A pile of mending lay on the bed. Ofelia picked it up and headed back to the center, hoping to avoid any conversations with Rosara.

Now the center was full of busy women. She could hear the fabricator humming and clicking; someone must have decided they needed more fabric. In both sewing rooms, the long tables were covered with strips of cloth. Two women—Dorotea and Ariane—huddled over patterns cut from the thinnest cloth, pinning together the first fabric box. A few children wandered in and out, looking worried.

“This is too thin,” someone said, yanking a length of green from the table. “We must have the strongest material.”

“But not too heavy,” said someone else. Ariane looked up from her pattern-pinning and saw Ofelia.

“Ofelia—here—look at this. Will this work?” Ofelia made her way past chattering women to that end of the table. “We want it to be easy to make,” Dorotea said. “As little sewing as possible, because we must be very quick. Yet strong. Safely fastened. Some way to mark it for each family—”

Ofelia looked at the limp pink fabric glinting with pins, and set down her pile of mending. “Will this go inside?” she asked. The two younger women arranged their bits of flimsy pink fabric around the bundle. Now it looked more like the shapes Ofelia remembered—flat boxlike shapes—but the limp fabric drooped against the contents.

“That will work,” Ariane said. “But we need a way to fasten it.”

“Stickystrips,” Dorotea said. “The machine can make them fast; we can sew them on the long piece that wraps around—make it wider, so it overlaps.”

Ofelia wandered away, into the other sewing room. Here Josepha and Aurelia headed the design team; their solution had the basic boxlike shape, but closed with a clever fold that required only one short length of stickystrip. It did use more fabric, and it required precision sewing of the folding angles.

Ariane came after her, with the stack of mending. “I did it for you,” she said. “You don’t need to be straining your eyes with little things like that, Sera Ofelia. Your idea of making fabric boxes—”

“It was nothing,” Ofelia said automatically. “Thank you for the mending, Ariane.”

“It is my pleasure, Sera Ofelia. And if you need help with anything—”

“No, thank you. Rosara and I can do it.” Ariane, after all, had children and grandchildren. Besides, to admit she needed help would be to admit that she and Rosara did not cooperate—something everyone knew, but no one acknowledged. “I would like to help with the boxes,” Ofelia said. “Although I am not as fast as I used to be, we have so little to pack—”

“If you have time, of course we would be glad of your help,” Ariane said.

“Barto suggested it,” Ofelia said. Ariane’s mouth thinned; she understood exactly what that meant.

“Perhaps you could do the first one,” Ariane said. “We need a model for others to follow.”

Ofelia eased the fabric through the machine, careful to keep the tension even. She had once been very good at sewing, but lately had trouble keeping her mind on the task once she had the fabric lined up. Barto had complained about the uneven topstitching in the last shirt she’d made him. She had made so many shirts, over the years; she was tired of straight seams. But this box was something new, something she’d never made. She had to think how to turn such sharp corners—she stopped and called to Ariane.

“Do the corners need to be so square? If we rounded them, then we could put that cord here, and make it stronger.” Ariane carried away the sample, to talk to Dorotea.

Ofelia sat where she was and closed her eyes. She felt divided inside. One little voice kept saying I’m not going, I’m not going. But the voice she was used to hearing continued to talk about the problem of the fabric boxes. She knew how to plan work with others; she knew how to listen to the voice that spoke for her when she did. That other voice felt strange.

Ariane came back, with Dorotea. “We’ll round the corners, add the cord—anything else?”

“No . . . I was just thinking.” Ofelia went back to work, stitching around the curves, her fingers automatically shifting the material through the machine. She had the box almost complete when she realized how hard it was going to be to sew stickystrips on the rim now that it had been sewn to the sides.

“We’ll tell the others to sew the stickystrips on first,” Ariane said. “You should rest now—it’s past lunchtime.”

She had not noticed. She had always enjoyed figuring out ways to do things, though usually someone just gave her directions. She had followed the directions; now she followed Ariane, slowly, aware of the kink in her shoulders from hunching over the machine.

“Will you eat with us?” Ariane asked. Ofelia shook her head.

“I should go home; Barto will want me. But I’ll come back later.” Ariane gave her a little hug; for the first time Ofelia could feel the bones through Ariane’s flesh. She looked at her daughter’s friend. Ariane was aging; she had hardly noticed before, but there were gray streaks in Ariane’s hair. In Ofelia’s mind, she had stayed the same age as Adelia—who had never aged past twenty, when she died.

At home, Barto and Rosara were out somewhere; the house felt peaceful and cool without them. Ofelia laid the stack of completed mending on their bed, and went into her own room. Someone had dumped all her clothes onto her bed, pushing them into messy piles. Underwear, shirts, skirts, the one dress. She hated seeing her clothes like that. Underwear always looked vaguely indecent, even if it was plain and old, like hers. Limp unattractive shapes of beige and white, designed only to cover twice what her baggy clothes would have covered anyway.

She was not going. She would not have to wear underwear once there was no one to be scandalized because she did not. She felt her heart pounding, and a delicious sense of wickedness rose from between her toes to the top of her scalp, bathing her in heat. She went back to the living room and looked down the lane. Nothing. They would be eating in the center, more than likely.

Ofelia went back to her room and shut the door. She had no window in her room. Stealthily, she took off her clothes. In broad daylight, her public voice scolded. For no reason. Her new voice, the one that said she wasn’t going, said nothing. For an instant, breathing hard, she stood naked in her room, and then she slipped her outer clothes back on, leaving a pile of underclothes on the floor. Indecent! shrieked her public voice. Shameless! Disgusting!

She could feel the skin on her belly, on her hips, on her thighs, touching the cloth of her skirt. She took a tentative step, then another. A little draft between her legs, coolness where she was used to heat.

No! her public voice told her. You can’t do that.

The private new voice said nothing. It didn’t have to say anything. She could not do it now, not while other people were there to condemn. But later . . . later she would wear only what felt good on her body. Whatever that was.

Quickly, without paying attention to herself or her feelings of distaste, she undressed and dressed again, properly. The underclothes, all of them. The outer clothes, all of them. For now. For twenty-nine more days.

She had just dressed, and refolded her clothes into neater stacks, when Barto and Rosara came back. They had a new grievance.

“They say you are too old,” Barto said, glowering at her as if she had chosen that age on that day.

“Retired,” Rosara said. “Too old to work.”

Ridiculous. She had always worked; she would work until she died; that’s what people did. “Seventy,” Barto said. “You’re no longer on contract, and they say it will cost them to send you somewhere else, and you won’t be of use to the colony anyway.”

It did not surprise her, but it angered her. Useless? Did they think she was of no use now, because she had no formal job, and only kept the garden and the house, and did most of the cooking?

“They are going to charge our account,” Rosara said. “We will have to pay back the cost of shipping you.”

“There was a retirement guarantee in the contract,” Barto said, “but when you didn’t remarry, didn’t have more children, you lost a portion of it.”

They had not told her that. They had said she would lose her productivity bonus, even though she kept working full time. They had said nothing about retirement. But of course, they made the rules. And with this rule, perhaps they had made it easy for her to stay behind.

“I could just stay here,” Ofelia said. “Then they wouldn’t charge you—”

“Of course you can’t stay here!” Barto slammed his fist on the table, and the dishes rattled. “An old woman, alone—you would die.”

“I will die anyway,” Ofelia said. “That’s what they mean. And if I stayed, it wouldn’t cost you anything.”

“But, Mama! You can’t think I’d leave you here to die alone. You know I love you.” Barto looked as if he might cry, his great red face crumpling with the effort to project filial devotion.

“I might die alone anyway, in the cryo. Isn’t it supposed to be more dangerous for old people?” She could see by the look on his face that he knew that already, had probably just been told that.

“That would be better than dying here, the only person on the whole planet,” Barto said.

“I would be with your father,” Ofelia said. It was an argument that might work with Barto, who remembered his father as a godlike person who could do no wrong. But she hated herself for the lie, even as she said it.

“Mama, don’t be sentimental! Papa’s dead. He’s been dead for—” Barto had to stop and work it out; Ofelia knew. Thirty-six years.

“I don’t want to leave his grave,” Ofelia said. Having begun, she could not stop. “And the others—” The other two boys, the girl who had died in infancy, Adelia. Over those graves she had cried real tears, and she could cry over them now.

“Mama!” Barto stepped toward her, but Rosara came between them.

“Barto. Let her alone. Of course it matters to her, her own children, your father—” At least Rosara had it in the right order. “And besides—” But trust Rosara to ruin the effect; she was going to explain that it would, after all, be a solution, even though they could not allow it. “If she did stay,” Rosara said, fulfilling Ofelia’s expectation, “then we would not have to pay—”

“No!” Barto slapped Rosara; Ofelia had prudently backed away, and Rosara’s backward stagger didn’t hurt her. “She is my mother; I’m not leaving her here.”

Ofelia said, “I’m going to the center to sew the fabric boxes.” Barto would not follow her into the open; he never did. He might think her remark was capitulation, too.

That evening, neither Barto nor Rosara mentioned the incident. Ofelia said she had completed a fabric box, and would do more tomorrow. “If the machines produce enough fabric, we can make a box for each person in the colony. It will be difficult, in the short time, but—”

“Rosara will help tomorrow,” Barto said.

Rosara sewed slowly and clumsily. “The machines are all busy,” Ofelia said. “I can make the other boxes for our family.”

“And I am supposed to report for vocational testing tomorrow,” Rosara said.

“It is ridiculous to test you before me,” Barto said. That began a tirade against the Company. Ofelia didn’t listen. After eating, she scraped the dishes and carried out the scraps to the garden. She had not been in the garden since dawn; she drew a deep breath of the evening scents. There was just enough light to see the slidebug’s web between the rows, and avoid it. When she came back to the kitchen door, she peeked. Empty. The door to Rosara and Barto’s room was shut. That suited her. She cleaned the dishes and set them to dry.

In the morning, her first thought was Twenty-eight days. Her second thought was I’m not going. I will be free in twenty-eight days.

She had wakened early, as always, and when she came into the garden the dawn mists still blurred her view down the lane. Plant by plant she examined the garden: the beans, with their tiny fragrant flowers, the tomatoes, the young spears of corn, the exuberant vines of gourds. Some of the tomato flowers had opened, curling back their petals like tiny lilies.

She heard brisk steps coming down the lane, and crouched. A Company rep went by, hardly glancing over the garden fence. After that, she hurried her garden work, plucking off the leaf-eaters and stem-suckers. She knew Barto would scold if he found her working in the garden now, when the work was useless. He might even be angry, and destroy the plants. When Barto and Rosara came out of their bedroom, she had breakfast on the table. She smiled at them.

“I’m just leaving for the center. I’ll be there all day, I expect, sewing.”

All day, sewing with the other women, in the rooms full of machines and women and children, shaping the bright cloth into fabric boxes. When her shoulders tired, someone always noticed and came to knead them and take a turn at the machine. Ofelia sat for awhile in a padded rocker in the passage, telling stories to small children. They were not her grandchildren, but she had been telling stories to small children for so long it didn’t matter. Here, with everyone talking as they worked, speculating on where they might be sent, and what it would be like, she could hardly remember she wasn’t going. The women all called her Sera Ofelia, and asked her advice. She began to think she would be with them always, always have these toddlers crawling into her lap, always have some younger woman confiding a problem with her husband or a quarrel with a neighbor.

Only that night, in her bed, her skin remembered the feel of clothes without underclothes. Her hands swept across her belly, her sides. She was old . . . her public voice said that, the voice that knew what to say in the center to the other women. She was old and wrinkled and beyond any of the feelings that she had felt in her youth, when she had been in love with Caitano and then Humberto. That was what the public voice said. But the private voice, the new voice, said I’m not going. They’ll be gone, and I’ll be here. Alone. Free.

The next morning she woke remembering that it was now twenty-seven days. And that day, and the next, and the next, fit the same pattern. She spent the days at the center, helping everyone else make the fabric boxes, helping them decide what to take and what to leave, holding the little children when they were frightened, telling stories to the older children. In the days she was one of them, one of the group being torn away from everything they had built in forty years, helpless and hopeless but still enduring. In the nights, she was herself, a strange person she did not know, a person she might just remember, from childhood.

Then it was five days. Only, the Company had lied again, and already the shuttle was on its way back to orbit with the first passengers: thirty days to clear the planet, not until the first ones left. Each colonist had a number, in order of evacuation. Mothers and children first, because children were troublesome until out of the way. Single adults last. Ofelia gave a last hug to the children who thought of her as grandmother, and waved as they were led into the shuttle.

Another shuttle landed within the hour. The Company reps had explained how it would be, how perfect the schedule. By the time each new shuttle-load arrived at the ship, the previous load would have had its possessions marked and stored, and be already in the cryo tanks. Ten shuttle loads a day for five days, and the last shuttle would lift in time to make the legal deadline.

Ofelia had not thought how quickly the colony would seem empty. By the end of the first day, it reminded her of the terror after the first great flood, when so many had died. By the end of the second, she and the others looked at each other wide-eyed. The Company reps moved among them, keeping them busy, preventing panic. Ofelia still had meals to cook and clean up after—she would go up with the last shuttle, the reps reminded her. Rosara and Barto, protesting this separation, were scheduled for the first shuttle on the last day. She heard them try to explain that she could not be trusted, that she was old, that she forgot things. The Company reps glanced her way, and she looked down, as if she had not heard. She knew they would not care.

On that last day, the alarm woke them all much earlier than usual. It was still dark; the morning fog lay cool and damp against her skin as she walked with Barto and Rosara to the landing field. They joined the end of the line. A shuttle landed, its lights blurry glows in the darkness. The line stirred into motion. The moment came. Rosara hugged her, fiercely. Barto said, “Mama . . .” in an uncertain voice, a boy’s voice.

“I love you,” Ofelia said, and pushed them away. “Don’t be late. They will be angry if you’re late.”

“Don’t you be late,” Barto said. He stared at her as if trying to see inside her head, hear the new little voice which sang of freedom.

“It’s all right, Barto,” she said. By the time he found out it wasn’t, it would be too late. When that shuttle took off, she had the whole day until her own . . . the one she would not take. She walked back, past the line forming for the next shuttle, and went into the house. Her house, now. The new voice was louder, more insistent. She would have to find a place to hide—the Company reps would make at least a token search for her. They would not leave her behind easily; if they found her, they would force her onto the shuttle.

Behind the house, beyond the garden, lay a strip of pasture. Beyond that, the lanky plants that ventured out from the native scrub to dare a bout with terraforming soil bacteria. Behind, the wall of native plants . . . first head-high scrub, then the high ramparts of the forest. If she could get across the pasture unseen, she would be invisible. They would not search long. They would curse and call . . . and then they would leave.

In the first gray light of dawn, in the morning fog, Ofelia set off with several days’ supply of food in a pillowcase, and a small sack of seeds. If they destroyed her garden, she could replant . . . she did not think further than that.

The pasture felt springy beneath her feet, the wet grass brushed her legs, wetting her skirt. She realized she might leave a trail, dark against the dew-silvered grass, if anyone looked too early this morning. Perhaps they would think it was an animal. In the distance, she heard one of the sheep bleat, and wondered if they would leave the sheep alive. She hoped so. She liked knitting and crocheting. The tall weedy growths beyond the pasture swiped at her with rough wet leaves, soaking her skirt to the hip. Behind her, she heard voices calling—not her, but a warning to those who should catch the next shuttle. Then darkness loomed out of the fog, and she passed between the first tall shrubs.

She sat down to rest once she was well into the trees; it was too dark here to walk anyway, and she had already stumbled over enough roots and knobs. Light filtered through the canopy, revealing more shapes and colors as the sun rose higher. Something very high up moved along the branches, rattling and squeaking. Ofelia stirred, but did not move.

Soon the sun began to burn away the fog. When she could see well enough, she got up and walked on, slowly, picking her way to save her feet any more bruises. She had been to the forest before, after Humberto died; she had discovered then that she could always find her way back. No one else had believed her; they had worried and nagged so that she finally quit making those trips. But she had no fear now that she would get lost.

When she felt hungry, she sat down and ate from her sack of food. She dug a little hole to use, and piled leaves back over it when she was done. As the light waned, in the afternoon, she piled sticks and leaves to make herself a nest for the night. Her shuttle had been supposed to leave just after sundown. She expected another shuttle would come for the Company reps. She would not go home for two days.