Our Dried Voices (4 page)

V

S
amuel did not see the First Hero again for some time. The woman simply seemed to disappear from the colony. About a week after her departure, the toilets broke down. At first this problem was scarcely noticeable, but within a few days waste began to accumulate in the toilets and the stench around the buildings became overwhelming. One morning the next week, the colonists approached the meal halls to find the doors locked. Few realized that the sun had just slipped over the horizon and the bells had sounded well in advance of mealtime. Sometime later, it stopped raining entirely, and the grass in the meadow turned brown and the trees began to wilt. Every one or two weeks a new incident arose: the doors of the toilets were locked, the beds in the sleeping halls disappeared, the meal and sleeping halls were not cleaned (although few of the colonists realized that they had ever been cleaned at all), and so on and so on.

But with every few crises, new heroes sprang up one by one from the uniform anonymity of Pearl’s population to meet the tests facing the colony. And one by one they all disappeared. Only those few, like Samuel, who were perceptive enough to realize they were different from the other colonists, ever appreciated them. They would be seen one day, striding coolly from the site of the most recent incident, their movements quick and precise, their faces aglow with some inner vitality, and the next day they would be conspicuously absent, with no hint as to their whereabouts.

Yet the fact that each of the many challenges was solved in relatively short order did little to subdue the fear that began to permeate the whole of the colony. The colonists continued to avoid one another, no longer engaging in idle play or lovemaking. They spent their days creeping across the meadow from hill to tree to hall, sometimes slipping to the stream for a drink, which they would take in several short sips, lifting their heads in between to gaze around them guardedly. They scurried over the open field, trying their best to keep a safe distance from anything that might possibly harm them. No one had any idea where the next crisis would originate, and so very often two colonists would find themselves averting some phantom terror, creeping backward into the protective shade of the same tree or hall, only to collide with one another in their blind fear and turn on the supposed intruder with the growl of a cornered feline.

At meal times, each colonist received his cake and slunk away to hide in a secluded corner or behind a shaded hill and eat with ravenous desperation, body hunched around his food, eyes wide and furtive. The people returned to the sleeping halls earlier and earlier each night. Some took their meal cakes to a bed against one of the walls where they could eat while keeping watch over the entire hall. They slept lightly, and many seemed to dream, waking at the least sound with a short, sharp cry and wild, staring eyes.

Yet Samuel never fell prey to the collective panic that embraced the rest of the colony. On the contrary, he remained calmly confident, buoyed both by some mysterious faith in the skill and ingenuity of the emerging heroes, and by some hopeful belief that the colonists as a whole were not so lost, not so helpless as they might seem. After his encounter in the rain with the First Hero, he took to following the other heroes around the colony. He enjoyed the sight of them at a distance as they slipped across the meadow or stood in quiet contemplation of the bleak façade of some inscrutable hall. And though their eventual departure always saddened him a bit, this feeling never lasted very long, because he was quite certain—though he knew not by what assurance—that no harm had befallen them, and was equally confident that the colony would never be at a lack for individuals such as these.

As a result, Samuel began to grow apart from the rest of the colony. Little by little, he became one of those figures whom the other colonists eyed warily as he passed, although Samuel ignored their stares. His thoughts were now devoted only to the heroes and to the peculiar female he had encountered while following the First Hero. Sometime later, he would come to call her Penny, but for now she remained a nameless woman who had captured his attention. He saw her occasionally as they shadowed the heroes, and their eyes would meet briefly across the empty expanse of kempt grass and silky sky, but they did not move nearer to each other, did not speak. Finally, weeks after their first meeting, Samuel found her by the river and approached her.

He came up behind her as she knelt to drink, and when she sensed his presence, she arose with a start and whirled to face him. Perhaps because she did not immediately recognize him, perhaps because some part of her was still bound by the fear that engulfed the other colonists, her black eyes at first widened with animal terror and a low sound began in her throat, part growl, part muffled shriek of fear and surprise. Samuel recoiled at the sight of this face, so unlike that of the woman he had first met some weeks ago and so much like the faces of all the other colonists.

But then she recognized him, her face softened, and she cast her eyes downward as her cheeks turned the faintest shade of pink.

“Hello,” she murmured. “How are you?”

Samuel exhaled with relief. “I am fine, thank you. How are you?” He had been carefully formulating these few words ever since their first meeting.

“Goodthankshow—” she began to answer but stopped. Her thin, pale lips widened and parted to reveal two rows of small, brilliant white teeth. She continued gingerly. “I’ve been… very well, thank you.”

For the first time in his life, Samuel truly laughed. He threw back his head and his body shook with the sheer joy of this connection with another human being. Penny waited, quite obviously pleased with herself. Her next words were more stilted, and her brow creased as she ground them out.

“I’m glad to… see you… again.”

“I’m glad… to see you again too,” he responded.

She brushed at the feathery grass with a bare foot and wrung the edge of her tunic in her hands. Samuel imagined himself crouched by the stream, trying to drink from his cupped palms before the water slipped between his fingers.

“I’m glad to talk to you too.” He forced the words out urgently.

She looked back up at him and bobbed her head. Behind her, the sun grew larger as it descended in the sky, and its last desperate rays outlined her body in fire.

“You follow them too,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” she replied. “Like… you.” Her face creased with the strain required to make even this simple statement, but it lit up again once she had done so.

They stared at each other in silence. The wind picked up and swirled through the meadow, throwing up little wavelets in the stream and bringing a welcome chill to the air. There were so many things Samuel wanted to ask. Instead he merely asked, “Why?”

But she shrugged her shoulders gaily, and the lines which had furrowed her face and brow melted away. The tightness inside Samuel ceased all at once, as though a blow to his chest had robbed his lungs of air. He knew the moment was gone. He made the slightest motion to turn and go. She stepped forward, fell in step beside him and they walked together along the river bank. He followed her lead, though the pleasantness of her company now seemed just the tiniest bit hollow. For her part, she smiled carelessly as the river murmured softly beside them and the sun bloomed pink and orange and then wilted and died, and the sound of bells rang out across the colony.

* * *

They entered the nearest meal hall in the fading light and ate their evening meal together. Then she left him and scrambled away across the meadow, turning back once to wave goodbye. Samuel walked in the near darkness for some time, alone with his thoughts. When he made his way to the nearest sleeping hall, he found the hall door closed. A group of colonists milled about the entrance in little circles and murmured to themselves. Others sat cross-legged on the grass, their chins in their hands. Samuel wove through the small crowd and went to the door. He pulled hard, but it did not budge. A soft moan of defeat escaped the lips of one or two of the colonists. The rest of them lay down in the grass with an air of resignation and tried to fall asleep.

VI

T
he doors of the sleeping halls remained locked for several days. Samuel spent each night outside of one of the halls, hardly sleeping as he awaited the arrival of a new hero. During the days, he roamed across the colony, visiting each of the five sleeping halls in turn, then starting all over again at the first, hoping to spot this new champion. For he never doubted that someone, somewhere in the colony would step forward and resolve this latest problem.

On the fourth day of this routine, Samuel stretched himself out comfortably on the sunny grass outside one of the halls to continue his vigil. A few colonists still lingered outside the building, either too weary, discouraged or wretchedly bound to the faint hope that the doors would somehow open of their own accord in the very near future to do anything else. As he lay there in the soft grass, Samuel began to grow restless. He stood up and strolled around the hall, unsure of why he was doing it other than that it seemed more appealing than lying in the sun and waiting and watching.

He made a few slow trips around the building, gazing up at the walls as he went, then stopped in front of the door. Samuel tugged on the handle but it did not open. He pulled harder, shaking the locked door against its frame. The low rattling was enough to disturb the few people around the hall, and they looked up at Samuel and murmured to themselves and shied away. Samuel ignored them, gave up his struggle with the door and stepped back. A strange feeling arose in him, something he had not quite experienced before. It reminded him of when, as a child at play, another child had accidentally knocked him to the ground and he had felt a heat rising from his neck and shoulders, tightening the muscles there and warming his face. Yet his emotion now was not directed at another person, but at the door of this very hall. The feeling tempered quickly to a controlled simmer; his face cooled, his muscles relaxed, and the wild chaos of his mind from that initial rush of emotion condensed into a single, purposeful thought.

He moved to the door once more. Nobody was there to observe him—the colonists nearby had turned away from the fearful sight and paid him little heed now that the noise had stopped—but had anyone been watching him, they would have noticed that his few steps to the door were strong and smooth, that his whole body seemed at once rigid and relaxed, that the muscles in his legs scarcely tensed to move his body forward, but in this minimal tension there was no wasted energy, that his body was truly alive for one brief moment. They would have also noticed that his face bore no signs of his momentary anger, that he did not frown or scowl or furrow his brow, but pressed his lips together gamely as the faint light in his deep, dark eyes now rose to the surface.

Samuel crouched in front of the door, ran his hand over the cool metal surface, then along the narrow space between the door and the frame, standing up to reach the top. He stepped back and studied the entryway again, then leaned in to examine the space between the door and the frame, scanning with his eye the narrow gap his hand had traced seconds before. In the darkened crevice he could just make out the shadow of the bolt. Samuel grasped the handle and pulled it hard, all the while studying the frame, hinges and bolt. He saw that the door was meant to open and close by turning on its hinges but that the bolt now restricted this motion. But how to remove this part? Samuel stood back. He was calm now; the sudden anger that had filled him some moments ago was gone. He walked around the hall, studying it as he went, the problem of the door and the gap and the bolt always on his mind. After passing twice around the building, he sat and stared at the placid stone façade, lost in thought, until the sound of bells signaled the evening meal.

He walked to the nearest meal hall with the door still on his mind. It was not until he reached the hall and saw the other colonists with their meal cakes that he realized he was actually quite hungry. He stood in line, eagerly awaiting his share of food, but once he received it he was overcome by a desire to eat as fast as he could and return to the sleeping hall. Samuel was so deep in thought as he returned from his meal that he did not notice Penny had followed him. She sat against the side of the sleeping hall and watched him as the daylight faded and he circled the building time and again, stopping every so often to approach the hall and study a crack in the masonry or white-painted door, then backing away again, some new detail either filed away in his thoughts or dismissed as unimportant. She waited for him each time he appeared around the corner of the hall, walked toward her and passed on by, but she did not call out to him. Samuel wished she would join him in his work, though he feared to ask. And Penny’s doting gaze never wavered as she watched him stride pensively around the hall. Finally, when the last rays of the sun withered away and the blackness and starlight closed in, he came and sat next to her.

She turned to look up at him, her throat long and pale under the rising moon. “You are like them,” she said in her careful and deliberate way, and this simple statement of admiration at once thrilled and frightened him. He looked away, out into the darkened meadow.

“No,” he said. “There will be another.” Yet, for the first time, he did not truly believe it.

The silver-blue moon settled above the mountains, and they lay down in the grass outside the hall. Penny fell asleep within a few minutes, but Samuel lay awake for a long time, his body drained but his mind restless.

VII

W
hen Samuel awoke in the morning, Penny was gone. The sun had risen some hours ago but had not yet climbed above the height of the sleeping hall, leaving him still in the shade. He was alone. Whatever colonists had spent the night outside the hall had already wandered off. The bells sounded for the morning meal, but he was not hungry. Instead, he resumed his pacing around the hall, stopping only when he heard the midday bells and the pangs in his stomach overcame him, and every now and again to sit at the base of the hall and think. Penny came and went twice, but they did not speak.

As the afternoon wore on, Samuel’s patience waned. His breaks from circling the building came more frequently, and when he stopped to sit against the hall, his mind strayed more readily from the problem at hand. His imagination was exhausted, and he was still no closer to finding any semblance of a way into the locked building. He thought about leaving the hall, just for an hour or so, to walk in the meadow and clear his mind, and as the late afternoon sun beat down upon him he longed to immerse himself in the cool currents of the river. But he forced himself to stay, resolved not to abandon his efforts, even for a few moments, and to keep circling the hall, keep thinking, in the belief that there must be some little detail he had overlooked.

The bells tolled for the evening meal, but Samuel ignored them and kept on with his work. The sun set, bringing relief from the heat of the day, and soon the moon rose, its turquoise light shimmering on the creamy façade of the hall, like the surface of the stone that was the planet’s namesake. In this soft reflection Samuel was struck by the vital detail which had eluded him all day long: a set of narrow, horizontal grooves cut into the stone of one side of the hall. He happened to pass them just as the moon reached a certain height where its reflected light caught the w
all and filled the grooves with a faint blue glow.

Samuel leapt to the wall and ran his hand over its smooth surface. His fingers slipped neatly into the grooves, which were about as wide as his body and just high enough from top to bottom to give his fingers purchase. They were spaced unevenly up the height of the wall and stopped just below a cracked open window. Perhaps, had he been less excited by this discovery, Samuel might have noticed these notches were not part of the building’s original design. They were roughly made, and their edges were sharp, not rounded and smoothed with age and wear, and in some places the paint had been scraped away to reveal the dark gray rock underneath.

But Samuel noticed none of these details. Instead, he saw at once that his fingers fit the grooves, that the grooves led up to the window, that the window was open, and that the combination of these elements represented a way into the otherwise impenetrable hall. He pressed his fingers into the wall and tried to climb. But he was exhausted. He had spent the entire day sweltering in the hot sun, walking countless circles around the sleeping hall, racking his brain for some clue that would grant him access to the locked building. He had eaten only one meal, and his body was completely worn out. So despite his fervent desire to get inside the sleeping hall, Samuel decided to rest for the night.

He lay down next to the wall under the grooves, afraid he might lose them in the daylight without the moon’s reflection to guide him. It seemed as though he scarcely slept, but in the morning he felt refreshed, and when he slid his fingers into the notches he found his arms had regained some of their strength. He took one last deep breath, flexed his legs, dug his fingers in as far as he could and began to climb.

The ascent was arduous. The notches were just large enough to admit the height of his fingers, but only deep enough to allow them to penetrate to the second joint. There were no footholds. He found he could just rest the edges of his toes on the bottoms of the grooves, and that this tiniest of holds gave his fingertips some aid in supporting the weight of his body. Up he went, slowly, inexorably, bent at the waist with his rear end protruding. His fingers burned as they gripped the narrow notches while his feet scrabbled for whatever hold they could find. At one point his toes slipped and he dangled by his fingertips from the wall, the tiny muscles in his hands and forearms on fire, the rough stone scraping his fingers raw. He kicked frantically to regain a hold on the wall, refusing to drop back down to the ground, and after a long few seconds his toes found holds once more and he resumed his climb.

Nearly five agonizing minutes passed before he managed to reach his right hand into the slightly opened window. He clung to the sill and pulled the window all the way open with his left. With the last of his strength, he used both arms to hoist himself up and through the window frame, then dropped safely onto one of the beds below.

The first rays of sunlight crept through the high windows, providing scant illumination to the inside of the hall, but Samuel managed to find his way among the rows of beds to the door in the gray half-darkness. He ran his eyes and hands over the door until he found the lock. He fumbled with it for a few moments, pushing, pulling, turning it back and forth, until he noticed the metallic clicking sound that emanated from the area of the bolt each time he turned the latch. In the hall’s scarce light Samuel could not see the bolt in the gap between the door and frame, but he guessed correctly that each turn of the lock must move the bolt in and out of this space. He turned the latch to the left and pushed hard on the door. Almost to his surprise, it opened quite easily.

The wind rushed in and swelled around him as the door swung open to reveal the freshly sunlit meadow. Samuel stood still for a moment and reveled in the cool morning breeze that danced past him into the hall, in the grass rustling softly beneath his feet and the twinkling rays of the newly risen sun. He breathed the clean morning air with a new appreciation, even though he had spent but a few minutes in the previously enclosed and rather stale-smelling room. Then a great fatigue overcame him. He found the nearest bed, flopped into it and fell into a deep sleep, a wide grin still pasted across his face.