Remnant Population Page 3

  “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 vo
ice.

  “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.

  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 yesterday’s 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.