The Seventh Day (25 page)

My feet begin to carry me away from the stove where the kettle is singing. I need warmth, and I need the warmth of food within me. I stand, listen to the protest from upstairs. Since my flight from Pa's room the poor thing has been alone and no doubt sleeping in its wastes. Still, if I am to care for it and the dogs until Lenny returns, then I must see to my own needs.

I collect a bowl full of eggs from the black hen's nest and do not count them, not consciously. I find a little of the city oil spread with which to grease the pan, then I break two eggs into it. I make a chem-tea, stack the firebox and find the old board Lenny uses for a tray when he takes Pa's food to his room. As I place my tea and eggs upon it, I recognise it as Granny's calendar board, the paint near worn away and covered by spills. It has been here, in the kitchen, while I searched the house for it. Tonight it makes a fine tray for my dinner.

The odour is different in my room, and for this I am almost grateful. I give the wailer my breast, and before it is done with its drinking, I have cleaned my plate and emptied both mug and the crispbites packet.

Later, as we rest together on the bed, the infant stares at me. Perhaps it does not like my face. Such a funny frowning expression it wears, I am moved to smile, then I whisper the foolish sounds my mother spoke to me.

There is peace in those words and comfort to be had from the warmth of another, even one so crumpled and small as this one. I let the words play over and over while I think of Mother, and I sigh and think, I am mother. But the infant has closed its eyes. It sleeps, and I must fit my sleep to its pattern.

I yawn, roll onto my side.

(Excerpt from the New World Bible)

The searchers returned to the mountain settlement. And in the second raid three females and two infants were taken. They were housed in the laboratories and held there in sterile conditions for ninety days where they were given the immunisations and the cleansings.

 

The infants did not survive the cleansings, but in time the breeders were put to breed.

 

The raids continued. And the searchers took what they would, for they had become adept at their trade. As the hounds of hell they found their prey by day then returned by night to the hunt.

 

And five females and three infants were taken in this way.

 

Two infants survived the cleansings and became docile. Of the five breeding females, three took their own lives. Two were got with child.

 

But when the hunters again returned to the settlement, they saw no sign of life upon the land.

 

Three years passed before movement was again sighted. It was female. And it was seen that she was old and in the latter stages of breeding thus she was guarded well by four males.

 

The males counted were at seven, being both man and youth.

 

And one was there, a female not yet of breeding size. And her hair was of gold.

 

It was seen that she was not well guarded. It was seen that she ran free in the fields and could be taken.

 

Seduced by the acclaim of the city, and by the riches promised to those who succeeded in bringing female fodder for use in the Seelong laboratories, the searchers would not be denied that which was their due.

This morning, had I taken the infant in my hands and squeezed, it would have shed more water than the skies. Its bellow is huge, but it silences as I hold it. This incontinence of the newborn is tiring. I will have to find a better wrapping for it, or shortly there will be no paper towels left for me.

It drinks until it falls asleep at my breast. Silly thing, bellowing so hard for me, waking me from my dreams, but once its belly is full, it does not need my company, only soaks its wrapping again.

In Granny's doctoring book, it shows a triangular napkin, held together at the front with a large safety pin. Granny had such pins. The garments we wore before the coming of the grey men required these pins and I have seen them in her room, in the wooden box with the rings and pearls. I will go there, and also collect the woven garments Granny wore against her skin. They might make useful wrappings for the infant.

So much to do. It makes me weary before I begin, so I sit and eat. I will not think of Pa, though this morning every breath I draw makes me aware of what is behind his door.

The dogs have been set free. They are weak and slow, and I do not fear that they will eat the hens. The poor things lie on the rear verandah, before the kitchen door. I think they do not wish me to escape. All day I feed them eggs and boiled pumpkin, which they do not refuse. I must go down to the cellar, find them red meat to make them strong. I do not much like the thought of that meat which rots fast when the generator's heart does not beat, but even rotting meat will do them more good than pumpkin.

Lord, I am so weary. If I close my eyes I think I will sleep where I sit. But I must not sleep. I must look at the generator. Perhaps Lenny turned it off to save the batteries. Perhaps he did not turn it off and the batteries have been sucked dry.

It is near noon when I go to the shed and find the new supplies. Lenny had not remained here long after the grey men, for the supplies have not been unpacked. But they are here. Lord, they are here and there will be paper towels and batteries. There will be batteries.

Fast now, I cut the strong cord that binds the stores. I find sweetened milk, and cornbeans, sugar-sweet and chem-tea, and the chem-wash, for which I am truly thankful. Surely they have brought batteries. Surely. Tonight I will have power and light and I may use the air-tub. The infant is not clean in habit.

I find many packs of crispbites and cornbread, two large sacks of corn, V-cola, and Pa's pills, and Lord, I do not want to see them. I shiver, delve deeper, tossing sealed packs of fruitjell to the side. And I find paper towels and new overalls. I toss them aside, and think I am as the Aaron child, squatting before the last Christmas tree of his old world, but I search not for game or book, but for batteries.

And there they are. Eight of them. Quickly I rip away the wrapping and withdraw two of the slim cylinders. They are no longer than my hand, but heavy. I hug them to my breast. Tonight I will have light.

It is with much difficulty that I remove the used batteries and replace them with the new. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Twice I choose wrong, but when the things fit into their places a light winks at me, and the machine begins to hum. I lean on the lever that sends power to the house. And it lives. A light shows on the verandah.

I count the remaining batteries. Six. This figure haunts me. I do not like six – but if I include the batteries I removed from the generator, then there are eight. I like the twin circles of eight, and if the sun will only shine, the new batteries will last long for they gain power from a panel on the roof of this city shed.

There is a way to make old batteries new again. Lenny tried it many times in the last weeks. It is a fiddling of the old batteries into a connection at the rear of the generator, and this must be done while the thing goes. I do not understand it, nor did Lenny, for he could not make sense of the writing that is there. Perhaps I may. I will read it, but tomorrow. From the supplies I gather the items I have immediate use for and carry them to the kitchen.

‘Such a pile there is. Certainly we will not starve,' I tell my ugly brutes who sniff at Pa's doors that once opened onto the rear verandah, though they have not been opened for many years. It is as if the dogs understand that he is in there. I know he is in there too, but I do not wish to know it, for when the brain wearies itself with the unsolvable, it does not think well on other problems. I will continue with my unthinking labour of transferring the supplies, and when that is done –

I hunger, perhaps because of this great store of food. I rip open a packet of crispbites, eat one, and feed one each to the dogs. I thought them thin before, now their great rib bones near wear holes in their hides. We share the remaining crispbites and when I return to the shed, they follow behind me, wanting more. We empty another packet; we each eat a can of beans, as backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards we go, their legs trembling, as do mine, but I can not stop to rest, so they do not stop their following of me.

It is on my fifth trip to the kitchen that I remember the wheel-sled. How dull is my mind. Lenny used the sled to carry the grey scrub and greenery down from the hills. It is light and its wheels run easily. I am moving it from the corner when I see Jonjan's vehicle. I can not stop my hand from touching the seat, and the box behind it, and the strange silver wings, and I can not stop my heart from aching with memory of the one who flew this beetle machine, or of his golden hair. My weary eyes begin their foolish weeping and the dogs sit close to my feet and on my feet, and they moan, too, for their ill treatment of him. Funny things. Their foolish sad faces dry my tears, and I turn my back on the vehicle.

The wheel-sled works well for me. When the final load has been transferred to the floor of the kitchen, when a huge pile of wood drips on the crumbling masonry of the rear verandah, I close my kitchen door and delight in warmth.

Tonight I will bathe, but before I do, I will spread a little of the chem-wash powder around Pa's room, and on his bed. Perhaps it will reduce the odour, and tomorrow – perhaps tomorrow – my wheel-sled may be used to move Pa down to the graveyard.

Lord, how I fear opening the big freezer, but it has been humming now for most of the afternoon and when I lift the lid, the parcels of meat are soft but cool. Lenny must have found the young bullock and slaughtered him; the meat freezer is packed to the lid, which barely closes over it. I am glad tonight of the generator's light and its company, though I doubt that what is freezing will be fit to eat, other than for the dogs. I choose two parcels of steak for them.

While Granny lived we worked by day, rarely lighting her pig-lard light, which made much smoke and smell. Firelight, moonlight, offered her poor features more sympathy. While Granny lived, we had no freezers. We drank fresh milk from the cows and ate cheese and the hens' eggs, and sometimes the broth and meat from the hens. And we ate pumpkin and in season the red tomatoes.

Poor cows, they have had no pumpkin, nor the pigs. And the sow must be released. Tomorrow. I will clean myself now, then start the air-tub and clean my bedding and my garments, and the infant's wrappings, though not, I think, in the same wash. And the paper towels. They are thick and strong and do not fall apart when soaked by the infant's wastes. Perhaps they might be rinsed in water, but first the infant must be rinsed.

I make it a bath in the waste bucket, adding water from the kettle, and a pinch of chem-wash. I strip the silly thing with its kicking legs and tiny waving arms. How it fears the water at first dip, then it settles, and stares at me with slate grey eyes while I trickle water onto its belly. Like a slippery little piglet it is, but as I am washing it, the black cord on its belly washes away. It appears more finished without that shrivelled cord; I think too that its face is daily becoming less bruised and misshapen. I am moved to smile at it as I lift it free of the bath and dry its fluffy head before binding its lower half with paper towel and plasti-wrap.

Having filled its belly, it settles into the carton bed I have made for it on the table. I remove my soiled overall and stare down a while at my new slimness. My round pumpkin-belly, a part of me so long, now sleeps soundly and tonight I hope it will sleep long.

I use the chem-tub, thoroughly cleansing my hair, then think to rinse it beneath the running tap. Wrapped in a blanket, I sit before the stove, brushing my hair dry. Like me, it appears to have found a will of its own. It falls beyond my breasts, and as it dries, it flies. It has never been like this before, but then, since Granny's death, I have never used water to rinse it, nor cared much for it, and never have I brushed it dry before an open oven door.

A strand taken between my fingers, I study it by firelight. Its colour is strong, and tonight it feels soft to the touch. I brush it over my shoulder, gather it into three, then plait it, as Granny had on the day of the dandelion, on the day she had woven the dandelion into my hair. I had loved that day, but how suddenly she could change, and the gentle hand that touched my hair could rise and hit. How quickly her face could move from frozen stillness to that of hostile, screaming virago. I had no time to make my own adjustments to her moods, thus I learned to keep between us a good distance.

Such was life with her. Such was my life.

(Excerpt from the New World Bible)

The searchers came by night. And fire was set to the Morgan settlement. Four males, both infant and adult, were murdered in their beds.

 

And the searchers found the nursing female with a male infant at her breast. She was old and wily. And she fought the searchers with voice and knife and club. When it was seen she would not be taken alive, she was left dead.

 

For the searchers had seen the youthful female at play in the fields. Reward for her would be great, for she wore the golden hair which was much prized in the city.

 

But the golden one evaded the searchers, choosing the flames and death to capture.

 

And when it was seen that she too would burn, the searchers made effort to retard the flames so they might stun her. Thus she was carried to the laboratories. And she was neither golden nor youthful. And no reward was given.

 

Much time now passed. And the Moni child was not with the living if not yet with the dead. Thus, her ovum was quickly matured and Harvested else it die with her.

 

But she would not die.

 

The surgeons then came. And much time was spent in healing the parts of her important to the laboratories' work. For in the city, in the year 102 of the New Beginning, a law had been passed against the needless waste of female life. In the year 104 Moni left her bed but did not yet leave the laboratory, for the master of the breeding station would not tolerate in his presence the one they named the roasted rat.

 

In that year, of the forty-three females housed in the breeding station, eleven were freeborn, twenty-two were from the cloning laboratories and ten were incubating mutations, of a size which could produce litters of six and eight.

 

And these groups were separated, for only the freeborn could create the sons of the Chosen.

 

In the year 107 of the New Beginning, to the freeborn group, Moni's number was added. And then there were twelve.

 

No freeborn infant came forth from her womb, for she was awful to behold, though her ovum was Harvested and much of it stored.