Woman on the Edge of Time

“Exactly. It’s changed our diet. So has the decision to feed everyone well. For each region we try to be ownfed and until the former colonies are equal in production, mammal meat is inefficient use of grains. Some regions raise cattle on grasses—”

“You never eat meat? It must be like living on welfare.”

“We do on holidays, and we have a lot of them. As a way of culling the herd. We say what we’re doing. They know it. In the same spirit, in November we hunt for a short period. That is, our village does. We’re Wamponaug Indians. We need some experience with free-living animals as prey and predator, to body the past of our tribe fully … . Though I confess I never hunt. Some of us would just as soon lapse that custom, but we lack the votes to do it.”

“You’re what? Blond Indians? Indians with red beards?”

“Barbarossa dyes per beard, in truth. Isn’t it pretty? It was brown before.”

“You! You look like me. My ancestors were Mayans, but they were hardly Wamponaugs! That’s no more alike than … Italians and Swedes!”

“We’re all a mixed bag of genes,” Luciente said. “Now I know where we’ll go.” She diddled with her kenner. “G’light, it’s me, Luciente. Can you meet us at the brooder? I’m with Connie, the person from the past. Get White Oak to fill for you. We’ll work running hard later.” She turned back to Connie. “I asked Bee to meet us at the brooder. That’s the yellow just-grew on the east. So much to glide over!” Luciente broke into a jog, saw that she was leaving Connie behind, and waited. “You set the pace.”

“Bee is your boyfriend just out of the army? Was he drafted?”

“Grafted? Everybody takes turns. We can all use arms, we’re all trained in fighting hand to hand, we can all manage facets of more complicated operations. I can shoot a jizer.”

“Women too? Did you have to go?”

“Fasure I’ve gone. Twice, Once at seventeen and once when we had a big mobe. I fought both times.”

“Fought? And you won’t go hunting?”

Luciente paused, her eyes clouding over. “A contradict. I’ve gone through a worming on it, yet it stays. Grasp, you never know whether you’re fighting people or machines—they use mostly robots or cybernauts. You never know … . Still I’d go again. At some point after naming, you decide you’re ready to go.”

“Ha! I bet lots of people decide never to go. Or does someone decide for you?”

“How could they? It’s like being a mother. Some never mother, some never go to defend.” Luciente frowned, tugging her hand through her thick black hair. “On defense your life can hang on somebody. If person didn’t want to be there, person might be careless and you might suffer. If person didn’t want to mother and you were a baby, you might not be loved enough to grow up loving and strong. Person must not do what person cannot do.”

“Ever hear of being lazy? Suppose I just don’t want to get up in the morning.”

“Then I must do your work on top of my own if I’m in your base. Or in your family, I must do your defense or your child-care. I’ll come to mind that. Who wants to be resented? Such people are asked to leave and they may wander from village to village sourer and more self-pitying as they go. We sadden at it.” Luciente shrugged. “Sometimes a healer like my old friend Diana can help. Diana the rose. A healer can go back with you and help you grow again. It’s going down and then climbing a hard path. But many heal well. Like you, Diana catches.”

The yellow building was odd, like a lemon mushroom pushing out of the ground. Decorated with sculpted tree shapes, it was windowless and faintly hummed. She realized that except for the creaking of windmills, this was the first sound of machinery she had heard here. Indeed, the door sensed them and opened, admitting them to an antechamber, then sliding shut to trap them between inner and outer doors in a blue light.

“What is all this?” She shifted nervously.

“Disinfecting. This is the brooder, where our genetic material is stored. Where the embryos grow.”

The inner doors zipped open, but into space that looked more like a big aquarium than a lab. The floor was carpeted in a blue print and music was playing, strange to her ears but not unpleasant. A big black man leaning comfortably on a tank painted over with eels and water lilies waved to them. “I’m Bee. Be guest! Be guest to what I comprend was a nightmare of your age.”

“Bottle babies!”

“No bottles involved. But fasure we’re all born from here.”

“And are you a Wamponaug Indian too?”