Remnant Population

SEVEN

In the morning, the sea-storm had moved closer. The weather monitor projected its track; if it did not swerve away, it would romp right over the settlement in four or five days. It wasn’t as big as the storm two years before, but it would grow until it reached shore. She walked out over her mattress. She could drag it into the sewing room later; if she stopped to do that now, she might be distracted by her beadwork.

Outside, the weather was clear and bright, with the spurious calm that Ofelia had learned preceded the squalls. She looked at her list. The pumps first, and then the other machines. She would take a pad along to note which buildings needed repair. Dayvine had overgrown the pumphouse door, its brilliant red flowers and delicate seedpods draped elegantly from the roof across the opening. Ofelia yanked it loose, and pulled the door open with difficulty. Inside, the pumps throbbed, the same steady rhythm she was used to. All the gauges were normal. She wondered how high the river would go in the rains. If it rose too high, she should shut off the pumps, but she could do that from the center if she had to.

The door jammed on the vines again when she tried to shut it. Grumbling, Ofelia sawed at the tough vine stems and cleared them away from the door, then shoved the door shut and barred it. She hated to cut dayvine; the flowers would wilt within a few minutes, even if she got them to water. Still, for the few moments of beauty, she twined the severed stems around her neck and arms. She would throw them in the waste recycler when she reached it.

The cattle this morning were grazing steadily, as if anticipating the need to store up fuel before the storm. Ofelia remembered how some had been lost to the last flood. Should she try to drive them up into town, even shelter them in one of the buildings? Would the doors and garden gates hold, even if she could get them into one of the few walled courtyards? No. She would stick to her list.

All the machines were in working order, but she knew a number of light bulbs had burnt out. That was a resource she could not replace once the stores were gone. Her attempts to get the fabricator to make light bulbs—they were on its menu—had never worked, and she didn’t understand the machine well enough to know why not. Rather than replace bulbs now, she removed those that might be damaged by the approaching storm. That left no outside lights on the center or waste recycler, but she rarely used them anyway.

After a quick lunch, she took her tools and began to repair shutters and doors that seemed likely to break loose in a high wind, leaky roofs and sagging eaves. She found more than she had expected. She tried to remember when she had last worked on them, fighting off the guilty feeling that she should have checked every single house, door, and shutter every day. That would have been impossible, she knew. She would have had no time to garden, sew, or anything else. Still, in the oppressive weather before a major storm, her old voice harassed her, talking of duty and pointing out that she had not really needed to make all those pretty necklaces.

Yes, she had needed that. She had needed it all her life, without knowing that was what she needed. The joy of creation, of play, had been the empty place unfilled by family and social duties. She would have loved her children better, she thought now, if she had realized how much she herself needed to play, to follow her own childish desire to handle beautiful things and make more beauty.

In this argument, she passed the afternoon, mending a half-dozen loose shutters and refitting the latch to one door from which the catch had come loose. Not until that door did she stop to consider how many of the things she’d fixed looked more damaged than worn. This latch, for instance. The colonists had found the native trees to produce hard, tight, straight-grained wood. It held nails and screws both; it required sharp tools for working. In forty years, most of the original attachments had not loosened. In her own house, the hinges and latches still fit tightly. What usually went wrong was a broken louver, where something heavy hit it, or metal fatigue in the fittings themselves.

Here . . . here something had pried the latch loose. When she looked, she could see the little gouges in the hard wood, showing a fresh surface next to the weathering of the rest. A cold chill shook her body. She tried to talk herself out of that panic. Some animal had done this. Some animal from the forest, one of the clever climbers. She had seen how they could grasp and pull, how they poked into things with long-nailed fingers. They had been slow to come into the village after the colonists left, but they had come at last. That would explain all the little oddities of the past few days.

If it were the creatures who had killed the other colonists, they would already have killed her. So they were not here, and the treeclimbers were. She had not seen them because they were shy. They were not so shy in the forest, but that was their natural place. Of course they would be shy here, and they would have better hearing than she did, and maybe better eyesight. They could easily keep out of her way.

She tightened the screws that held the latch, and checked the fit. It caught snugly. Then she made herself go into the house. Empty, as she’d expected. The scuffed dust on the floor fit with her idea of forest animals; it could even have been scuffed the last time she came through. She went out, latched and barred the door, and told herself she would not give in to the temptation to come back later that evening and see if it had been disturbed. Time enough tomorrow, when she would have to mend the shutters at the next house. One slat had broken away completely; she could see that a limb of a fruit tree touched it even with no wind.

Why did she even bother to maintain the other buildings, she wondered as she went back to the center. She didn’t need them all; she had long since outworn the half-guilty pleasure of sleeping in other people’s houses, using other people’s bathrooms. She used four or five houses regularly, depending on the weather, but the others were just something else to look after. It was the old guilt, which insisted that she be responsible for everything, that things must be conserved in case of later need.

She would not waste the next day or so fixing houses she didn’t care about. She would make sure of her own and the few others that were especially cool in muggy weather, exceptionally snug in the rare cold spells, or handy for a shower if she had been working nearby. She would let the rest go.

Panic gripped her for a second. If she let the wind and rain begin to erode the buildings, she might end up old and feeble, helpless and exposed in the storm herself.

If she fell off a roof or ladder while trying to keep everything in repair, she could end up in pain, helpless, and exposed while the buildings stayed healthy. The new voice—it still seemed new after these years—which had urged her to wear what felt good on her body now urged her to conserve her strength and health with the same care she lavished on buildings. They existed for her. She owed them nothing except what made them serve her better.

She felt uncomfortable with this argument. If she extended it to living things, she did not like it at all. But tools and buildings? A little breeze tickled the backs of her legs; when she looked up, the cloud wisps warned of the storm coming. The breeze did not die, but continued a steady push. She imagined herself on a roof tomorrow, or even a ladder. . . . no. She would let it go. Her own roof, at dawn. The center’s roof, perhaps.

In the morning, despite a thick mugginess, a slow unrefreshing movement of air proved the storm’s location off to the southeast. Ofelia placed a ladder carefully and climbed up to check her own roof. The fabricator had produced rooftiles of some composite material, lighter than clay tiles but tough and long-lasting. The colonists had re-roofed only five years before they left, as much from prudence as need. As Ofelia expected, the rooftiles were sound, uncracked. A few had loosened; these she beat down into place with new spikes.

From her roof it was easy to see across the sheep meadow to the brush and forest beyond. The sheep were down at the far end, near the shuttle field, a dirty grayish mass. She could not see most of the meadow near the river; it was hidden by other buildings. But she could see part of the shuttle field, now mostly overgrown with terraforming grasses.

She climbed down, dragged the ladder to the center, and climbed up again. The center’s roof was more complex, since it covered a larger building and had been designed to gather rainwater as well. In the early days, the colonists had not known how easy it would be to purify the river water, and they had depended on rainwater stored in cisterns.

Ofelia hated climbing around on the center roof. Parts were steeper; the valleys where angles came together were slippery and difficult. The roof had not leaked in the other sea-storm; she could probably let it go this time. A stubborn sense of duty took her up to the first ridgeline. It felt harder than the last time she’d climbed up. She got a knee across the ridgeline and sank down to rest. Her heart thudded; her breath came short; she could not see as well as she wanted.

When she looked back across the roof of her house to the sheep meadow, she saw movement in the brush. She sat motionless; she could not have moved if someone had prodded her. Out of the brush came a trio of reddish animals smaller than the sheep. Tails high, they ran across the grass, disappearing behind her house.

Climbers. Her breath came back with a rush as she recognized them. Forest climbers, as she’d thought. One appeared on the roof of her house, long arms busy . . . was it prying up her roof tiles? A long slender paw to its mouth—it was eating something that nested there. Sweat broke out, relief. The climbers had never been a menace. She had nothing to worry about unless they pried rooftiles off, and even that was not a serious threat.

She waved her own arms, and the climber froze, tail stiffly raised. “Shoo!” she yelled. The climber jerked as if shot, then scampered over the roof and disappeared. Moments later, all three appeared again, racing across the grass to the brush. She caught little glimpses of red bodies moving between the scrub, then they were gone.

There was something to be said for climbing on roofs after all. She felt lighthearted, childish again, and had to remind herself firmly that she could not caper here. She looked around, and saw nothing else interesting. The center’s rooftiles all fit snugly; none were cracked. The only real danger would be a stoppage in the cistern overflow outlets. Slowly, carefully, she climbed back down the roof, and the ladder. She could check the cistern overflows from the ground.

The weather monitor displayed the storm’s track and projected course. The first squalls should hit the next day, and the main storm on the day following. Ofelia dragged her mattress the rest of the way into the sewing room, and put it under one of the tables. She felt restless; she could not settle to her beadwork or any other activity. She had gathered in the food—she would make a last couple of rounds through the gardens until the storm closed in, since the vegetables would continue to ripen. But otherwise—she watched the cap of clouds cross the sky, a great arc that hour by hour closed over her world like a lid, first white and then darker and darker gray.

The first squalls were actually a relief. Ofelia was in the center; she stood by the door to the lane and watched the wind drive the rain before it. She wished the center had a second floor, a place from which she could see farther, perhaps even to the forest. She wondered if the big trees bent and swayed like the small ones in the village. She wondered how the forest climbers survived such storms . . . did they stay in the trees, which must be swaying back and forth, or did they huddle on the ground?

All day the squalls continued, the breaks between them shorter and the wind never completely still. Ofelia laid out the project she intended to work on, and between squalls went back to her own house for things she had forgotten: seeds she had collected, ends of yarn from old projects, her favorite yarn needle, her best thimble.

She was going to make another of the network garments . . . this one more festive than the last. She put on the first, to remind herself where she wanted to make changes. She wanted something that made her feel like the storms: something that evoked wind and rain and lightning and thunder.

Beating the scraps of metal into bell-shapes had taken longest. She could have had the fabricator mold bell-shapes, but then she could not have listened to them, choosing the shape that fit the sound she wanted. Far back in her memory lay a field-trip to a costume museum; the guide—docent, her mind said, casting up the old word along with the memory of sound—had shaken the costumes made for carnival wear, and she had thought then how like rain some of them sounded. Now she had small thin cylinders to crimp onto fringe . . . it tinkled coolly. Yes. Bigger, rounder shapes of copper gave a mellower sound, water trickling into deep water.

The weather monitor beeped its main storm warning while she was still playing with the sounds, still making tinkling fringe and tonkling strings to hang from her shoulders. She went in and turned off the warning signal. The storm would strike full force the next morning. She should sleep while she could.

It was surprisingly hard to sleep. Although she’d napped in several houses, she had not spent the night in any but her own after the first few months alone. She had become used to the bigger bed, the wider mattress. The center had its own set of night noises, and outside the squalls rolled over, boisterous and loud. She finally slept in spite of herself, and woke late to a steady sustained roar. It was still dark outside; she checked the weather monitor and found that the storm had accelerated slightly, coming onshore several hours before the prediction.

Dawn came slowly under that blanket of cloud and flying water. Ofelia wasn’t really hungry for breakfast; she went back to her project, trying not to hear the noise outside. But the wind’s noise rose and rose; even the center shivered from time to time in the gusts. Was her house all right? It was tempting to open the door and look, but she knew better. She quit working with the metal dangles—she couldn’t hear their various tones—and went back to painting and stringing beads.

Her ears ached slightly as the pressure dropped and dropped. She felt tired, and finally lay down again in midmorning. Silence woke her. She went to open the door. There it was again—the eerie center of the storm, with bright sunlight shining from a deep blue sky. Later in the day than last time; it was afternoon. Ofelia walked over to her house. Windblown rain had pried its way around the front door seals, leaving a wet patch on her floor, but she found no other damage.

She went back outside. It was as beautiful as the other times she’d seen it. To the east, sunlight turned the entire cloudface to a snow-and-silver-and-azure sculpture, as decorative as a pile of meringue. Ofelia splashed along the lane, keeping a cautious eye on that eastern rampart. This storm had seemed slightly stronger than the other. That should mean she had a little more time to roam, but she intended to be safely under cover again before it hit.

Down the lane to the right, she saw a pile of debris, a tangle of mud-gray and brown, streaks of bleached white. What had that blown from? She picked her way to it, enjoying the squish of mud between her toes.

Eyes stared back at her, great golden brown eyes whose pupils widened enormously. The pile stirred; a noise like the cooing of an entire flock of pigeons came from it. Ofelia stared; she could hardly breathe. That sodden mass of—of what she could not say—it had eyes—it was big—it—

From a distance, a rhythmic drumming that could only be intentional. The pile produced a weaker drumming of its own. Communication. Ofelia knew what this had to be. The aliens, the monsters, who had killed all those people. They had found her at last; only the storm had saved her, and only if it killed them. This one, at least, she could outrun back to the center. She hoped. Maybe the storm would kill them all. She turned. At the far end of the lane shapes moved. Upright, taller than she was, they danced nearer, high-stepping as the cows through shallow water. They fit no pattern she had seen, or imagined. They were earth-colored, streaked in beiges, browns, pale and shifting grays. Ofelia could not tell if that was skin, or short fur. Their faces—if those were faces—stuck out like birds’ faces, but they had no feathers, and no wings. Like her, they had lower and upper limbs in pairs, but—but it was wrong. Ofelia backed against the wall. She could not outrun these. Elemental fear dragged at her bowels; her mouth tasted foul suddenly and her vision blurred.

Whatever they were, they looked at her, directly at her, in the way of people, not animals. Big eyes, fringed with stiff lashes. Three of them stopped to stare at her; four others moved to the fallen one and, with much noisy birdlike chatter, helped it up. It seemed weak; it leaned on them. It had what might be fingers, she saw now, though they made a very odd looking hand.

She glanced back at the ones staring at her. They looked nothing like the forest creatures she had seen. Taller, leggier, long toes tipped with hard blue-black nails. On their bodies, beaded straps held sacks and gourds in the arrangement Ofelia associated with pictures of soldiers. A short fringed leather skirt hung about what must be their hips. But aside from long sheathed knives, they carried nothing she recognized as weapons.

She shifted her weight; one of those watching her uttered a raucous noise that caught the attention of the rest. All of them stared at her; she felt she might melt in the regard of all those eyes.

The light failed suddenly, as the approaching cloud wall cut off the sunlight. Ofelia glanced upward. It was close—she should get back to the center now. The creatures also looked up at the rumble of thunder. She took a step sideways. Instantly their heads snapped back to stare at her, and several of them made that raucous noise. She wondered if they understood about the storm, that it was coming back, that it would hit with full force when it did. If only she could get into cover, and leave them outside, the storm might still blow them all away.

The injured one coughed, a sound so close to human that Ofelia had to look. Its supporters patted its back, for all the world like humans. It hawked and spat, a gritty spittle. Ofelia glanced sideways. She had barely time to get to the center, if she went now—but only a few meters away was the door to one of the other houses. If she could make it that far . . . she took another cautious step. Again the quick response, but the creatures did not move. It was as if they merely commented to themselves on what she did.

Emboldened, she took another step, and another. Thunder grumbled louder; one of the things drummed again. Two more drummed, and then the entire group. Their pupils contracted when they drummed. Ofelia moved crabwise, watching them; they seemed to ignore her now. A fine mist of windshredded rain cooled her skin—the storm would be on them in a few seconds. She was at the door—she struggled to lift the bar, to open it, to drag the bar with her inside. She took a last look at the little group in the lane. They were all looking at the sky, as if worried. Stupids. They would be blown down the lane to crash into something if they stood there.

Killers. Aliens. Troublemakers. She hadn’t wanted them, any more than she’d wanted the other colony. But she would feel guilty if they died because she barred them out—and if they survived, they would be angry.

“Hey!” All the heads turned her way. “It’s coming back.” She knew they wouldn’t understand her words, any more than she would have understood their noises. She pointed at the sky. “Whoooo. Bang.” She made a whirling motion with her arm. The creatures looked at each other and back to her. “Come on,” she said. She swept her arm inside. The two supporting the injured one moved toward her; others made throaty sounds. “Hurry,” she said, as the light darkened, as she heard the howl of wind on the other end of the village.

In a rush, they dashed to the house. She had just time to duck out of the way as they came through the door, all eight of them, the injured one limping. Wind and rain roared down the street outside; the door tore itself out of her hands and banged wildly. Wet wind swirled inside. Ofelia grabbed the door again and pushed; she felt warmth beside her as a creature joined her. And when the door finally shut the storm outside, another of them picked up the bar and set it across the brackets.

Then she was alone with them in the dimness, in the loud fury of the storm outside. Ofelia reached for the light switch, and touched strangeness instead; the surface felt slightly warm, and bristly, like the stem of a tomato plant. Beside her the creature grunted and caught her hand in hard-nailed fingers. Ofelia yanked back; she felt her skin stretch but the thing did not let go.

Panic would not help. She reached carefully around with her other hand, and found the switch. In that sudden light, she saw all their eyes change, the wide pupils narrowing sharply. The one who held her moved its face closer to hers, then released her hand. Ofelia shook it, and looked; the grip had reddened, but not broken, her skin.

She could smell them, in here. It was the smell she had noticed before, the one she had lacked a name for. Up close, in the bright indoor light, they looked larger and more dangerous. Their narrowed eyes and beaky faces looked ill-tempered; their long limbs with the hard-nailed digits suggested both speed and cruelty.

She needed to use the toilet. She was not going to disgrace herself here, in front of them. She took a step toward the middle of the room, and the one who had grabbed her hand before now grabbed her shoulder. Again a soft grunt.

“Let go,” Ofelia said, without heat. “I’m just going to the other room.” A deeper grunt from one of the others, one wearing a string of some bright blue stones, and the one holding her shoulder let go. Slowly, trying to look harmless, Ofelia made her way around them—they did not move aside—to the bathroom door. She could hide in there, she thought suddenly, until after the storm. And if this house had a bathroom window, she could even escape.

The bathroom door had only the simplest latch, and it opened inward. The storm battered the shutters of the window; it shook in its frame. Ofelia sat down on the toilet, her brief calm over. If the creatures wanted in here, they could get in easily enough, and it would be hours before she could get out the window. If she could; it was a high window, and she didn’t relish the thought of clambering up on the toilet to get out of it.

When she was through, she sat on the toilet lid until she heard something bumping at the door. Fear cramped her again. But better to go out than to have them drag her out; it had always been so with Humberto. She opened the door. One of the creatures stood there with its head cocked. Could it want the toilet? Of course not—they could not know what it was. Ofelia opened the lid . . . but what if it thought that was drinking water? Perhaps it would not hurt them, perhaps it would kill them. She would try to make it clear there was another source.

She edged past the creature and went to the kitchen end of the main room. She turned on the water in the sink. All their heads came up; she felt pinned in place by the intensity of their gaze. The one who had been peering into the bathroom now came to her side. She demonstrated: the twist of the controls to turn the water on and off.

The creature reached out to the controls; its hard nails slipped on the metal control. Ofelia put her hand out to help, and the creature slapped her aside, hard enough to sting, but not a damaging blow. Ofelia glared, but years of marriage to Humberto suggested that the best thing to do was stand there looking subdued. Anger throbbed in her. She had not wanted to be in this situation again, where someone could bat her aside.

The creature continued to struggle with the control; one of the others made a sound, just loud enough to hear over the storm. The one struggling stopped, shook itself, and fished a short length of what looked like suede from one of its pouches. Wrapping that about the control to give itself purchase, it turned the control easily. Water spurted out; water ceased. Raucous sound now, from several of the things. The first one fumbled at a strap, unfastening a gourd, then held it under the stream of water. When the gourd overflowed, it handed it to one of the others, who sniffed and tasted cautiously.

All this time it left the water running. Ofelia risked another slap to reach out and turn the water off. Again they all looked at her. Then one of them looked at the light bulb overhead and jerked its snout at it—an unmistakable gesture. Ofelia walked to the light switch, and demonstrated that. More loud noises . . . discussion, she was sure. Another, not the one at the sink, came to test the switch for itself. This was easier for a hard fingernail to work. Lights on lights off lights on. More noise.

Suddenly something hit the house from outside, a blow that shook the walls and shattered the shutters in one of the bedrooms. Wind howled through, wet wind that smacked her face like a damp towel. The creatures scattered to the main room’s corners, out of the direct blast of the wind. Ofelia huddled near the front door and wondered what had hit them. When she ventured to peek into the bedroom, she saw the floor already slick with water, and the window full of tree branches.

It would only get worse. Ofelia could see a bedstead, a soggy mattress, a crib. She splashed across the floor, worked her way to the outside wall. Water streamed off the tree limbs and down the wall, but the wall itself held. Lightning flashed outside; she heard a startled yelp from the doorway. When she looked over, two of the creatures were watching her. One of them lifted its foot from the puddle near the door with an expression she was sure meant dislike of wet feet.

Typical. They would let her do the work. She didn’t want to. She made her way back across the floor, pulled the bedroom door shut, and latched it. With the wind behind it blowing it shut, the weak indoor latch should be enough. A wicked draft came under the door; it would blow water under it soon. She looked around for something to stop the draft. The creatures watched her still. She finally found some dish towels in a drawer, and rolled them up to stuff under the door.

It was getting dark now. She was tired and hungry. If she had been in the center, she would have had plenty of food. It was their fault, she told herself. If not for the stupid creature that got itself blown around in the storm, she might have been safe in the center, and they might all have been storm-blown . . . or at least sheltering somewhere else.

She could have had a last day or night of peace—as much peace as the storm allowed—before her death. She could at least have had food and a familiar bed, and something pleasant to do. Instead, she was stuck here with—she counted—eight aliens, murderers, and no food, and no comfortable bed. There was the other bedroom, but . . . it occurred to her then to look for the damaged one, the one whose plight had gotten her into this mess.

She could not be sure which it was. Three of them lounged together on the worn bench, but none looked as bedraggled as the sodden heap she’d seen in the street. When had they found the towels that now lay in dirty piles on the floor? She was too tired to think how long it had been, or exactly what they had done. Even as panic told her that they would kill her in her sleep, that she must not sleep, exhaustion dragged her down. Either she would die, or she wouldn’t, and either way she would sleep.