Mist glared at him. Then she walked downstairs to the family garden.
In the farthest corner near the wall, the implanted nieces and nephews huddled together speaking mouth-to-ear. Sitting near her aunts, Flowers-in-the-Sun looked on.
When her mother entered the garden, she said, “Mother Mine, my cousins cover their mouths to hide their thoughts from us.”
“They’re practicing to control their new voices,” Mist answered. “So they don’t offend the Earthers when they speak.”
“I know what is on your mind,” Flowers-in-the-Sun said. “You have been talking to Father Mine.”
Mist nodded.
“The Earthers don’t speak to us unless they are contracting business,” Flowers-in-the-Sun explained. “They think our life-knowledge is not equal to theirs.”
“They’re right. We don’t know how to kill cultures or cut throats. May we never learn.”
“I want to show them how smart we are,” Flowers-in-the-Sun signed. “I will be a great scientist when I grow up and I will show them how high our knowledge really is. I will—” She stopped short. Across the garden, some of her cousins were laughing at her. She pulled her mother inside the house. “They think it’s funny that everyone knows what I’m saying.”
“They won’t think it’s so funny when they get an infection from getting their throats cut,” Mist answered. “I hear people never really heal from that.” Mist had not really heard that, but she felt no qualms in saying that she had. “So,” she continued, “you want to work in the sciences like your grandmother’s family?”
Although children followed in the caste-careers of their mothers, Mist was untroubled by her daughter’s choice of her father’s caste. “You have the mind for it,” she answered. “And you were not raised in a trading household, but in the house of a science-caste grandmother.” She smiled. “I’ll have to make you a green cap. Perhaps I’ll wear green too, to help you fit in.”
Flowers-in-the-Sun smiled. “Thank you, Mother Mine.”
“Will you study the scientific assessment of standards as your father does? Or will you choose another science?”
Flowers-in-the-sun nodded. “Father has a perfect inter-caste job. It’s the right job for me. I will show the earth traders that we know how to measure the purity of foods, that we are more than receivers of their tainted money.”
Mist stroked her daughter’s hair and her heart overflowed with pride at having such a wise daughter. And as Second Night rolled into First Morning, she found green fabric from which she made a cap for her beloved daughter and a new marriage scarf for herself.
Her husband’s mother smiled approvingly when she saw Mist the next morning. “Will your trader friends accept a trader who wears green?” she asked.
“Those who know me will,” Mist answered, smiling. “The ones who don’t know me will think I’m new to the trading game. It will be interesting to see how this ‘change’ affects a trader’s purse.”
On the way to her shop, Mist saw the four off-worlders again. Again they had their instruments pointed at her beloved sky. As she studied them, she saw a light flashing from the corner of her eye. It came from Smoothed Stone’s fruit stand. He was signaling her.
“Sister,” he said, when she arrived in front of his stand. “How goes your study of the Federation Lingua?”
“Their English lingua has many words, brother,” she signed back, and wondered why he had called out to her. “But it isn’t particularly complex. Lip-reading, however, is hard. Not as hard-to-decipher as the guttural clucks of the Towans, for instance. But challenging nevertheless. Many unruly vowel sounds. Inconsistent.”
“Very hard to lip-read,” the old man agreed, and yet even as he agreed with her, it seemed as if he had something more urgent to say. “The people of our world have always loved challenges,” he said at last.
“True,” Mist answered. “Their ‘alphabet’ is something of a challenge.” And then as proof of her studies, she slowly finger-spelled in English, “Me not good Lingua talker yet. Go their English School maybe?”
“We Aqueduct people are smart. Whoever heard of going to school to learn languages? Hey, you want them to cut your throat?”
“Not me,” she said and added, “Many people are getting the implants. In many homes. All because the Earthers think it’s best to speak by mouth.”
Smoothed Stone sighed. “Some of them tattoo the implants, embroider them with floral patterns, as if to cover their guilt. Worse: the more brazen among us leave the cut marks untattooed, uncovered, for all to see; braggarts, as if the cutting were an improvement to the Creator’s work. In our youth, if such a thing were told, who would believe it?”
“Did not our Creator forbid flesh-cutting?” Mist signed rhetorically.
“Those who get the implants grow richer and stranger,” the old man continued. “Sad it is, but true: I have seen it said that the Earthers are helping our economy with these implants.”
Mist’s only answer was a facial gesture which meant, “I have so much to say but not here.”
He answered. “And I too. But whether from fear, fatigue, helplessness or grief, one must be quiet.”
Mist nodded. The flickering purple lights along the Wallaou tree indicated that the News Carrier had arrived: six quick flashes and one long one. Just in time she looked up to see her brothers’ wives walking ahead of her.
How richly dressed they were! How round and well-fed their bodies! Living in her husband’s family house, she rarely saw her mother’s family. But she had heard that her mother’s family, too, had chosen implantation and had prospered greatly in doing so. Mist studied her scrawny brown jewelry-less arms jutting out from under her full yellow sleeves. Her dress was made from Yona plant fiber, but her sisters-in-law wore Federation ‘silk’ embroidered with Federation ‘gold.’ Unsure if they had seen but purposely ignored her, she watched as they took seats near the podium. In the days before her marriage, she too would have sat in those places of honor. But now she hid in the back row among the women of the servant caste, dutifully dragging their mistress’ ling-carts from one vendor to another. She hoped no one from her mother’s house would see her.
The News Carrier who wore the wide tribal pants of the people of the land beyond the Two Hills took the high seat in the center square.
“My mothers, my fathers, my sisters, my brothers, my daughters, my sons,” the woman began. Her gestures indicated a Two Hills accent. “Life has changed in our village since the Earthers came with their cutting. I have heard your elders are contemplating mandating this matter. Please warn them not to. Already I have seen”—and here the woman from beyond the Two Hills stared impolitely at Mist’s sisters-in-law—“that already some of your own people are cutting themselves and their children.”
Mist watched to see what her brothers’ wives would do. She well-remembered how they had mocked her when she chose to marry out of the trader clan. Their cruel hands had sawed at her like daggers. Her brother’s wives were not the types to be challenged. But neither would they disagree with a stranger in the town center where everyone could read their business.
The News Carrier approached them and signed “Traitor!” in an angry sweeping gesture.
In response, they stood up. They walked away from the crowd, their gold-threaded blue silk marriage scarves trailing behind them. Mist hid her face when they passed by but she could easily imagine their faces, arrogant and expressionless as if the insult was nothing more than vapor in the air.
The woman from beyond the Two Hills continued, “Already the children of our village no longer dance to the light at our festivals.