Authors: Lena Hillbrand
He didn’t know Cali’s bunk number, or even her barracks number. He could have asked, but it might look bad if he inquired after the sap he’d brought in. So he took a tour through the Confinement. He had finished his shift at Estrella’s, and he had a few hours before he’d need sleep. He welcomed the cool breeze, enjoyed his first visit to the outskirts of the city since he’d brought Cali in.
He spotted an attendant and asked where he might find the newer arrivals. He walked through the last three buildings, barracks with bunks stacked five high. So many scents, so many flavors to choose from. The hallway between the bunks allowed just enough space for two people to walk side by side with shoulder’s touching. A few Superiors drew from sapiens along the hallway. Here, saps had much less frequent use than at the restaurants. He liked that he’d played a role in Cali’s arrival at the Confinement, although he knew she would have ended up here anyway—if she hadn’t died before the raid on Sap Heaven.
He made his way along the hallway, passing another Superior or two on his way. He didn’t smell Cali in the first set of barracks so he entered the next building after scanning his papers at the door. Each long building had only two attendants, one at each end. So although a sap would be used less often than in a restaurant, their visits wouldn’t receive the close monitoring of bouncers. No two tables per bouncer rule here—the Confinement operated on more of an honor system.
Draven found Cali in the last building, about halfway down. She had rolled herself into a ball in her bunk and pressed against the cinderblock wall with her back to the aisle. She lay as far from the hands and eyes of browsing Superiors as she could get. He smiled a bit, wondering if she used the technique to avoid being chosen. If he hadn’t known her scent so well, he would have ignored her and taken an arm or leg that spilled over the side of a bunk or lay near the edge. When he’d eaten there before, he’d let the saps sleep if they could while he ate.
He had to bend down and stretch his arm half the length of the bunk to reach Cali. Her feet were drawn up, and he caught them both in one hand and pulled them to him. Cali pushed her foot at him and stretched her leg out so he could draw from it. He saw the scattered pebbles under the skin behind her knee and shook his head.
“Cali. It is I.”
She didn’t speak, just pointed her toes and pushed them into his palm. He looked at her small foot in his hands and then at her shoulders, still hunched and hiding her face. He watched her for a moment and then grasped both feet and pulled. She slid down the bed, her shift riding up all the way until it caught under her arms. Her eyes flew open.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, his nostrils flaring at the unexpected flood of smell coming from her.
She struggled to free her legs from him and sit up. She tugged her shift down, and when she’d righted her clothing, she closed her knees and tucked her hands under her legs. She had to bend to sit up on the bed, and her feet splayed out to the sides at an odd angle. “I’m not bleeding,” she said.
“You’re having your cycle, then. You’re ready for mating.”
Blood had risen in her cheeks and the heat coming off her increased. “Have I embarrassed you?” he asked, just to make sure.
“No,” she said, lifting her eyes to look straight into his. “Why should I be embarrassed? Everyone has a cycle.”
“Indeed. I’m glad I have not made you uncomfortable then.”
“You haven’t.”
“Very well. I thought it was odd of a human to have that look about her. Do you know what embarrassment is?”
“Of course I know.”
“You do?”
“I’m not stupid.” Just quite bold tonight. Which amounted to the same thing, really, when talking to a Superior.
“Of course you’re not,” he said. “I would like to draw from your arm.”
“Are you asking my permission?”
“No. Did you expect me to?” he asked with a little smirk.
“No,” Cali said. “But I want you to.”
“You want me to ask your permission to draw from you?”
“Yeah.”
He balked at the strange thought, but something about it pleased him. “Alright. May I draw from your arm?”
“Yes.” She thrust her arm at him, and when he looked at her she smiled. He wanted to be angry at her impudence, but he found himself smiling back instead. She was hardly more than a child. It didn’t hurt him to indulge her, and if it made it more tolerable for her, he didn’t mind. And for reasons he couldn’t understand, it excited him a bit.
He began rubbing her upper arm and kept his eyes on hers. When he could feel the sap pressing hard against his thumb, he bent over her arm and took what he needed. He finished, closed her neatly and stood up. Then, just to emphasize the absurdity of their exchange, he smiled again and said, “
Merci
. Thank you.”
Surprise crossed her face, and then she looked down at her bare legs. “Thank you for asking me.”
“I will let you sleep again now, my
jaani
.” He smiled and patted her knee.
“No, it’s okay. It’s morning now and I won’t be able to fall asleep again.”
“I see.”
She pulled at the hem of her shift and glanced up at him, a darting, shy kind of look. “Do you want to see something?”
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” Cali slipped from the bed, her bare feet hitting the floor almost silently. Draven followed, not sure if he should. He felt quite strange. Things didn’t feel right but he couldn’t say exactly how.
Cali stopped at the end of the hallway and ducked into the human facilities, emerging a few minutes later in the daytime attire provided by the Confinement. It was much the same as the shift she wore at night, only a bit whiter and not as tattered.
“I will walk outside with this homo-sapien?” Draven asked the attendant.
The attendant shrugged. “I won’t be here much longer. Got to get home to bed. Have you eaten already?”
“Yes.”
“You sign?”
“Yes. How do you know when I bring her back?”
“I don’t. Cameras are on. Nobody’s leaving here with a sap. What you want to do outside anyway?”
“Look at the grounds.”
The attendant shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say, man. You go on, now. She’ll be accounted for.”
Draven nodded and the attendant opened the heavy doors to the outside and stood aside as they passed.
“What is this, Cali? What have you to show me?” Draven asked when they’d gone out into the blue morning.
“Where are you from?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where are you from? You don’t talk like anyone here.”
“I am from…a place on the border between Belarus and Orient. I have lived several places since.”
“Is it really true that you’re all hundreds of years old? That you guys never die? I mean, that you
can’t
die?”
“Ah…Indeed, that is true.”
“So you’ll live forever.”
Draven paused. He knew there were cameras, and he knew he shouldn’t answer her question truthfully even if she couldn’t understand. And he was beginning to doubt her stupidity.
“Yes. We are immortal. Only humankind dies.”
“And animals.”
“Yes, they die as well.”
“Plants die, too.”
“Yes.”
“So…you’re more like a rock than a human?”
He laughed at her unexpected connection. “No, and yes. It is true that I will never die of old age, or perish from some small infection as your kind will. But do I not look more like a living being than a stone? Do stones walk about and draw life and energy from their food, and hold conversations?”
“I guess not.” Cali opened a wire gate. They entered a garden that stretched out far in front of them.
“So I look and feel as a human, but I am forever, like a stone.”
“And you’re cold, like a stone. Most things are warm.”
“Snakes are cold.”
“I hate snakes.”
“I do as well. Have you seen one?” he asked, glancing around.
“Yeah, in the garden when I was a kid. It bit someone, and he died,” she said.
“Yes. Humans die from all manner of things.”
They stood looking over the rows of plants in the cerulean light that rose from the east. Cali’s white shift almost glowed against the shadowy backdrop. Draven could see the lights atop the perimeter fences in the distance, but here in the faintly lit garden, Cali stood out as if she emitted her own luminosity.
“This is our garden.”
“I see that.”
“I can help in the garden now. I get to be outside all day. There’s so much work to do, but I’d take it in a second over going back to the restaurant.” Cali shuddered and looked at Draven. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“For taking me away from there before I died. For…not killing me when you could have. And for bringing me here instead of keeping me.”
“Then you’re happy here?”
“Yeah.” She looked down and bent to pick at a weed, and then found more while she squatted in the dry dirt.
“There is a man, an Enforcer, who helped close down your restaurant,” Draven said. “You should thank him. If he hadn’t done that, I would have had to take you back.”
“Well, maybe you can thank him for me.”
“I will tell him your gratitude.” He squatted on the other side of the garden bed and watched her weeding. “Do you know which plants to leave?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Why should you?” Cali asked, pushing a plant back and forth to check the base. She picked a bug off and stepped on it with her bare heel. “You can’t eat this stuff, right?”
“That’s correct.” He had once, but thinking about it now only made him think about that time, the time when he had been one of them. A sap.
“What would happen if you did? Would you get sick?”
“Yes.”
“Really? I didn’t know you could get sick.”
“Our bodies don’t absorb enough energy from anything except human sap. If I ate your food, or animal sap, I could live for a while, but I’d get weak and it would taste awful. Like if you ate only grass.”
“I don’t eat grass. I’m not a cow.”
“And I don’t eat vegetables. I’m not a sap. But I could, just as you could eat grass. But you’d need other nutrients to survive, and so do we.”
“Oh. I guess it makes sense. Anyway, I just wanted to let you see the garden. This is where I spend my time now. I’m helping everyone eat. It’s…I love it.”
“You were helping people eat before.”
“Yeah, but only Superiors. Now I can help my people too. I’m…productive. I’m doing something good.”
“I see.” He stood and pushed his hands into his pockets. He had almost helped her weed. What had come over him? “I am told you were to see a doctor when you came, someone who examined you?”
Cali kept her face down to her work, but her hands stopped moving. “Yeah.”
“This is unpleasant for you?”
“He…examined me. Thoroughly.”
Draven watched the hair rise on her arms. He didn’t know what had come over her either, why she grew suddenly afraid. Saps visited doctors often to receive remedies and for routine exams to monitor their health. It shouldn’t have bothered her after so many years.
“And why does this distress you? Did he hurt you in some way?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, it did hurt. I didn’t like it. He did a bad thing to me.”
“Oh?” When she didn’t answer he asked, “What thing?”
“He…touched me.”
“Inappropriately? He’s a doctor.”
“To examine me, I guess. That’s what my sister said they do after you have a baby. But I didn’t have a baby, so he shouldn’t examine my…down-there.”
“And what did he say after? Did he say that I didn’t do anything untoward?”
“He didn’t say anything. He wrote on his pad thing, and talked to the other Superior, but not in my language.”
“I see.”
She began pulling weeds again. “Do you know other languages?”
“Of course. I know them all.”
“All of them?”
“There are dialects I don’t know, but yes. There are only six official languages, and I know them all, and my first language, but that’s dead now.”
“How can a language die?”
He shrugged. “No one speaks it. Only official languages are recognized, so no one speaks the others.”
“Which one do you know best?”
“The official language of Belarus. It is called European.”