IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
II: Tests of Fire and Blood
Chapter 7 Mother Memories Thursday, April 23, 2708 Sunset. Time for a break. The sky changes colors overhead, but I can’t
see its full splendor, hemmed in by the trees.
I stand by the fresh-turned dirt in the little cemetery, reading the
name that Alysha carved into the fresh-cut wood, aware that in a few years the
humidity will rot the letters away and nobody but God will know where we buried
Mischa. We can’t save them all. I move on, arms crossed,
eyes down to make sure that I don’t step on any graves. I only know that I’ve left the graveyard when
the trees cast shadows all around me. I
almost thought I could save Mischa.
I thought that when her fever broke we stood a chance with her. But by mid-afternoon the next day a new fever
took over where the last one left off. Wearily I sit down, nestled
into the fragrant shelter of some curving roots. Haven’t I felt that way before? Thought I’d actually saved someone, only
to...no. It doesn’t always work
out. (No. Not that memory. Never again, that memory. I am an old man, now, and it happened a long
time ago, a long ways away from the iron safety of this school.) I lean my head back against the trunk, close
my eyes, let the twilight and the past wash over me... "This is
splendid!" I couldn't help but say
as I walked about the clean little room.
The floorboards could use some polish; they felt uneven underfoot, but
they also felt so solid, with nary a chink between them. The genuine window had genuine glass in it,
and the sunlight just poured right in.
The whitewashed walls even had some decorative tiles here and there,
blue and red-violet flowers, set in diamond-style. The landlord, a burly, balding man with a
bushy, black moustache to match his bushy, black eyebrows over burning eyes,
threw open the window, and the air didn’t smell too bad. "You're gonna need
help getting that fancy bed up these stairs," the landlord growled. "I can find you some boys sober enough
for the work, but they'll cost you." "That's okay. I've got the cash." "Til credits, I
suppose." "I can get it
exchanged for whatever form you prefer." He just grunted and gazed
out the window, arms crossed. "Naw,
Til credit's fine with me. I'm just
wondering what your kind's doing in these parts." I went over and stood
beside him. "My mother won't stay
anywhere else." Outside lay a
street, a genuine, paved street of locally gathered cobblestones, kept in some
repair, and surprisingly little litter blew through it, while people with
self-respect walked by. Granted, the
dampness had done its damage to the paint and wood and plaster, yet even so,
thriving shops and tiny gardens lined the way, with apartments like this over
the shops. "I do have to
admit," I remember saying, "that I can hardly believe we're still in
Rhallunn." He grunted again,
irritably, and turned away. "You'll
have to put the hospital bed over against that wall, so it won't interfere with
the closet or the bathroom door."
He looked over his shoulder at me.
"It's not spacious like you get in Til Institute, you know." "The pharmacy next
door..." "It's a real
pharmacy. Dispenses Til-approved
medicines and toiletries. Your Mom'll
get what she needs; I'll carry it up myself." Hands on his hips, he turned to me. "And the ice-cream parlor downstairs is
safe--milk comes in inspected from Alonzo Valley. I haven't killed a customer yet." "I have a lot to learn
about Rhallunn," I said humbly. He softened a bit, looking
out the window again. "Most people don't know about this corner of
Rhallunn," he said, "And we like it that way. Artists hang out here, get ideas from each
other, you know, folks just starting out.
And sometimes folks born and bred in Rhallunn find a step up, here. If they make it, either sort, they move on up
to the big cities and bask in their reputations. If they don't..." he shrugged. "They drift westward
towards the rest of the neighborhood," I finished. The real slum. "And sometimes they
come back from the cities with their arses whupped and drift there anyway. We’re in border country, here, really; you
could go either way." He looked at
me with more intelligence than any professor I'd ever studied under; I noticed
the different colors of paint under his nails and in the cuticles. "But they’ve got to come here, every
generation of artists sooner or later, or someplace like it. 'Cause you just can't do it without a little
bit of both worlds mixed together.
Artists need border-country, like corn needs a sunny field lashed by the
rain now and then." Is that where I’ve found
myself? Border country? Some border between despair and hope, where
rebellious young artists try to paint a new kind of future in fire and blood? Will we succeed, I wonder? I open my eyes. It’s all night, now. Time to get back to the clinic and finish my
work. (It’s night, but my labor doesn’t end. Stacks of papers clutter up my desk. Teacher’s lesson-plans for summer, awaiting
my approval—as if they didn’t submit the same plans every year. And applications for the next round of
students in the fall. And catalogues of
stationary supplies, veterinary supplies, bulk goods and large-scale appliances
for the kitchen or laundry or sanitary facilities of any institution you could
name. And it’s good—good to have work, early in the morning until I
finally drop into bed. It does a man profit,
this plenitude of work. It staves off
mischief, morbidity and…remembering.) Friday, April 24, 2708 "No, no, Lufti! When I grab you, don't keep trying to pull
away--I'm bigger than you." I dash
the sweat from my eyes. "Make a
feint--pretend to pull away, just enough to make me confident about yanking you
towards me. Then, as I do, add my
strength to your own and punch me in the stomach." The padding on me already stinks of my
efforts to train the recruits on how the small and weak may win a fight. "We steal guns and other weapons from
the government, right? Well, think of
strength as one more weapon we can steal." "I'm strong, Deirdre,
very strong." He makes a muscle and
tries to look fierce and all he looks like is a little boy caught up in
make-believe. "Ooh, that's nice,
Lufti." I feel his muscle
obligingly, playing along. Children
absolutely have to play a role before they can gain the confidence to work the
role--if they ever get a chance to grow up for it. I remind myself that children—even
toddlers!—fought in The Tribe’s war, on my rookie mission. An agent must come to grips with such things,
in cultural immersion. “Must?” Deirdre murmured,
her trance starting to fracture all around her.
But before she could open her eyes the chiming notes of Archives dragged
her back, by turning into the commissary bell… As he strikes a fighting
stance for the next round (looking more like a play-soldier than ever) I say,
"No more for now, Lufti--listen; there's the bell for lunch. Let's go enjoy it, while we still have
lunches." The succulent aroma of
stewing goat already beckons us as I strip off my gear and sigh to let my skin
breathe once again--and I thought the collar gathered sweat! Now Lufti crooks both arms at once in a
muscle-man pose before his reflection in a window. "I'm gonna make the Purple Mantles fear
me," he says. "Yep, you just keep
right on studying and we'll make a fearsome warrior out of you." I don't dare say anything realistic
when morale might be his only hope for survival someday soon. He trots alongside me as I
walk towards the main ramada. "And
books?" he asks. "You gonna
give me more reading lessons?" "Yeah. Tonight.
Why not?" I take his
hand. "Tell you what, Lufti. You pick the book, this time. I think you've learned enough to figure out
any title in the library." "But what if it turns
out to be full of big words?" "Then we'll sound them
out together, you and I. The trick is to
pick out what you like. If it interests
you enough, you won't care how hard it is to learn. You'll hardly even notice." Marduk cooks lunch today;
we know that even before we get there by the savor in the air. (I remember, oh how I remember, the fat
landowner with his private goons always hovering nearby, the way his bulk swung
around him as he waddled through the rows to inspect our work, to leer at our
mother, to dip into whatever we might have fixed ourselves for lunch even after
he’d had his own.) We follow Malcolm
to the line, fascinated, I admit, to watch how all that weight jiggles and
shifts from side to side as he moves. He
joins the line and we get in behind him.
(Oh, how I remember the feasts he threw for visiting soldiers, when
he'd send his little private army out to loot our larders for him.) When
Marduk cooks it means meat in the stew, freshly butchered or hunted. (I remember the beating he gave me
personally, for poaching a squirrel from his garden. His jowls quivered and he dripped sweat on
the welts that he cut into my backside with his switch.) Then he lovingly seasons it like each
bayleaf came from his personal laurel crown.
(I still have the scars.
Because I ate one squirrel.) When Malcolm comes up to
the cauldron, Marduk steps around him to dump a ladle of broth and potatoes
into my bowl. "Excuse me," I
say, "But I believe Malcolm was ahead of me." "He doesn't need
any," he says, and fills up Lufti's bowl.
(He said his daughter loved the squirrel.) Malcolm turns red and says,
"It's all right, Deirdre." "It is not all
right!" Marduk stops in his tracks
after ladling soup to the girl behind us.
"There are all kinds of vitamins that fat can't store--you need to
eat with the rest of us or you'll die." Marduk turns slowly to
me. "You got a problem with
that?" He holds the ladle like a
casual weapon, but his other hand rests on his gun. "Yeah, I got a problem
with that," I say as I lay aside my stew.
"He became an Egalitarian on the same night I did." He doesn’t have bullets for the gun, as I
recall. “Oh really? I don't remember that. Maybe I wasn't there. And maybe you made it up." "Oh, you were there,
all right--you left your mark all over Alysha's face." Which sends the ladle lashing towards my own
face. I catch it easily and twist it out
of his grip. He hurls towards me, but I
dodge and trip him into the big table where he smashes into any number of bowls
of soup. He doesn't know, of course,
about my little neural anomaly.
"You don't look so worried about wasting food now," I tell
him. He stares as if dumbfounded
at the soup dripping into the dirt, fixed upon a bit of carrot in the mud. Then his face turns a deep purple as he jumps
on me, a shard of pottery in each hand.
Now I must defend myself in earnest, the heightened reflexes I gained so
illegally years ago barely a match for his berzerkergang. We tumble over the steaming mud and as fast
as I can twist he still cuts my arms in three places before I manage to knee
him in the groin. I get up and try to knock
the mud off myself while he curls and moans.
Ohhh no--now I'll have to face him every day in the infirmary--smart
going, Deirdre! Late for lunch as usual,
with so much else to do, Cyran shows up, barking, "What's going on
here?" I point to Marduk, saying,
"He refused to feed Malcolm, and when I objected, he attacked
me." Only now do I see the blood
that drips from my arm as I point. Unfazed, Cyran smiles
cruelly down at Marduk's pain. "I
see that Deirdre has already punished you as much as I could devise. Good.
You deserve it." "And what does he
deserve?" Marduk whispers weakly but with so much hissing spite that he
might have shouted. "At whose
expense do you think he got so sowbelly fat?" Cyran turns to the others
gathered for the meal. "You all
know the rule: whatever we did before becoming an Egalitarian burns up in the
Test of Fire." To Malcolm e says,
"I don't think you've gained a single pound since joining us,
Malcolm." "I believe I may have
lost a couple," he replies. "I
don't feel so hungry, anymore." Cyran picks up a piece of
bowl. "Well, Deirdre, since your
lack of diplomacy in explaining things to Marduk helped cause the trouble,
you'll have to clean up the table and finish serving the soup--after Malcolm
binds your war-wounds, of course. As for
you," Cyran toes Marduk contemptuously, "since you can't stand up,
you'll have to pick up the debris you left on the ground." And grudgingly, painfully, utterly humiliated
on top of his agony, Marduk drags himself through the mud to do it. (Oh, I remember that fat
landowner all right, who believed he owned us body and soul with the land. I remember him, the night that the Purple
Mantles busted down our door. He came
along for the show. Nothing ever went on
in his farm without him getting his fill of the profits--he saw to that. He wouldn't let anyone rape my mother without
him taking his rightful turn, shoving his belly up out of the way with one big
hand, his fat ass jiggling in the air, right in my face, so big I could hardly
see my mother under him, just a bit of shoulder and a clawing arm. He took his turn with everyone the guards
grabbed up, boy or girl didn't matter to him, only the power mattered--the
power to crush us all under his weight.) |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||
![]() |