Science Fiction Originals Vol 3 Part 2

The girl smiled and bit into the bright orange and lavender skin of a paradise plum. As she ate, she signed, "Where do paradise plums come from?"

"From the father planet, Earth, and from this world. Two plants got together and made paradise plums."

"They were married?"

Rihana grinned as she nodded.

There were footsteps on the path and Rihana turned her head to look. In an instant she grabbed the girl and forced her to her knees as she knelt next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder and signed by pressing her fingers into Silent Her's flesh. "Do as I do. Nothing more."

The girl watched and when she saw Rihana cover her face with her hands and bow her head, she did the same. The sounds of footsteps grew louder. Silent Her saw a man's legs. On his feet he wore golden slippers beautifully brocaded with metallic silvers and reds. There were more sounds and the girl started at the sight of a wriggling ma.s.s of snakes and worms covered with black hair.

Quickly she signed to Rihana, "Is that a fuzzywriggle?"

A hand came down and slapped her fingers, making them sting and turn red. Holding her hands together and sitting back upon her heels, she looked up through her tears and saw that the man in the beautiful slippers wore a beautiful robe of white and gold. From his neck hung a large golden starcross. He reached down, grabbed the girl's hands and slapped them again.

"Never do that," commanded the man in the beautiful robe. He looked at Rihana. "Woman, do not let this child learn the blasphemous finger-talking unless you wish to see her neck in a choke loop. I know there are families that tolerate such things, but I would remind you that even if the family tolerates it, Alilah does not.

Alilah sees, will not forget, and will not forgive. Neither will I."

"Father," began a strange voice, "perhaps we can continue looking at the gardens?"

The man glared at the girl for a moment longer, then he nodded and turned his back. "I apologize, Trader Ib, but you see how Reformist households simply flaunt the law."

"Not an easy law to enforce, father."

"And this is why, Trader Ib. This is why."

As the creature led the man away, it moved very smoothly down the path although it seemed to have nothing for legs. The creature's fur rippled with movement, and here and there a hairy worm or snake would peek out.

When they were out of sight, Rihana stood, brushed off her dress, and pulled Silent Her next to her on the bench. "Before you use the finger-talk before a man, you must first know how the man feels about it."

"Who was the man, and why did he hurt me?"

"He is a very important priest and your father's guest. He slapped you because he believes that women using the finger talk is evil."

"If he is an important priest, shouldn't he know?"

"There are other priests who disagree." Silent Her rubbed her fingers and sniffed. She turned to Rihana and signed, "Was that a fuzzywriggle?"

"Do not call them fuzzywriggles. It is very unkind. They are called Imahnti."

"Are they like Onan said?"

"What did Onan say?"

"He said they were made out of fur, worms, and snakes."

Rihana sighed as she shook her head and signed, "Those things Onan calls worms and snakes are appendages like your hands, feet, fingers, and toes."

The girl stood on the stone bench to try and catch another look at the creature. All she could see, however, was a black thatch moving along a hedge next to the priest's shoulder. One of the snakes seemed to wriggle from beneath the thatch and wave at her.

"It waved at me," signed the girl. "How could the thing wave at me when it wasn't looking at me?"

Rihana lifted the girl off the bench and placed her on the path. "It is not a thing, child. It is an Imahnti. We also call them traders. Why it could see you is because they have more than one set of eyes. They have many eyes."

Silent Her wrinkled up her face. "That's awful."

"Did you ever think how you must look to an Imahnti with your naked skin, those awkward stubs of arms and legs, and only two eyes?"

The girl laughed in silence as Rihana looked around and signed to her, "It's time for us to be getting back.

I'm certain your father wouldn't have let his guests into the garden if he knew women would be in the way."

They returned to the female wing, and that night Silent Her had two nightmares about snakes and worms with multiple eyes and long, yellow teeth.

It almost seemed as though Onan never remembered anything he had ever said before. The stories he would tell, the observations he would make, were all things he had said to Silent Her many times before.

Over the years he had grown so thin he looked gaunt and starved. His nose was thin and large, and he had big gray eyes that peered from beneath bushy black eyebrows like the stare of some predatory bird. Still he ruled the kitchen with a sharp cleaver, and no one challenged his authority there.

Before his bank of ranges, Onan issued his p.r.o.nouncements, moved pots, tasted this, flicked a pinch of magic spice into that, all of the time creating a cloud of delicious smells. At the oddest moments he would curse the Imahnti and d.a.m.n them for being infidels, pagans, aliens, and things without taste buds.

Once as he stirred a soup, Silent Her watched him from a corner. They were alone together.

"By the Jesus and Bab, smell this awful mess, girl. Do you smell it?"

She nodded gravely. Onan was displeased with the soup. There were modern kitchen ranges that completely eliminated smells of any kind, but when approached by a seller, Onan pa.s.sed it off with a disgusted wave of his hand. "I am a chef, not a s.p.a.ce pilot." With another stir, he smacked the wooden spoon on the lip of the silver pot, and placed it in a drip boat. He leaned back against one of his cold ranges and folded his arms.

"I suppose you like the smell."

She nodded, and it was the truth. She loved Onan's soldier melon and brush pod soup.

The cook shook his head, held his hands up toward G.o.d, and said in explanation, "She has never tasted anything other than these hideous things and spices brought to us by the fuzzywriggles." The cook turned and went to where Silent Her was standing against the wall. He grabbed her shoulder.

"Come with me, girl."

He turned her and steered her down the servant's corridor beneath the female wing until they came to his room. He opened the door and pushed her inside. He closed the door and locked it. Picking her up, he placed her on his bed.

"Now, little Si, do you know what I'm going to show you?"

She shook her head as a sour taste came into the back of her throat.

She knew that it was wrong for her to be there. Shahar, one of the kitchen scrub woman, had warned her never to be alone with a man. When Silent Her had asked why, Shahar had signed that when she was little a man had gotten her alone and had done terrible things to her. Silent Her had thought that the scrub woman was only trying to frighten her, but as she sat upon the cook's bed, the fear made her heart beat rapidly.

"First I'm going to show you a very special book. Close your eyes."

She reached beneath her veil and placed her hands over her eyes. When she heard the cook open a closet, she peeked through her fingers. Onan returned carrying a book in his hands. It was a very old book.

The cook sat on the bed next to her.

"You can look now."

As she lowered her hands to her lap, Onan pointed at the book. "You can't read, but there are many beautiful pictures in here. Look." He opened the book and leafed through the pages until he found a colored picture of a spindly plant with spa.r.s.e leaves and clumps of pink blossoms. "You can make a spice from this plant called marjoram." He flipped past a hundred or more pages. "Look at all of the dishes I cannot prepare because the world has no marjoram."

He turned back to the inside front cover and pointed at an inked scribble. "There is the fool woman's name: Bethany Yiskah. She brought this cookbook to Haram. That was what they called Angerona when the Enlightener's followers settled here over four hundred years ago. She brought this cookbook and every recipe in here calls for certain specific spices."

He again held his outstretched hands up to the face of G.o.d that He might witness the absurdity of the female. "Did she think to bring seeds to grow these spices?" He lowered his hands and shook his head. "No, she did not."

He flipped through the pages, his eyes aching after the mult.i.tude of recipes he could not execute.

"I do not even have an idea how these things are supposed to taste." His eyes became sly as he remembered something. "I do have a bit of an idea about one spice." Onan faced her suddenly. "How old are you?"

She held up six fingers.

"Do you want to smell some magic?"

She nodded eagerly. Onan reached across her to a tiny shelf built into the wall next to his bed. He picked up a clear bottle that was stoppered with blue gla.s.s. He held it in his hand and pointed at the brownish fragments inside the bottle.

"Girl, this is a bay leaf. If I had but one or two to throw into that soup in the kitchen, it would fill the estate with glory. Listen to me now. When I open the bottle, sniff quickly and you will smell a glorious taste from Father Earth that the soup could have had if Bethany Yiskah had been smart enough to bring seeds for her spices."

He held the bottle before her and she stuck out her nose. He pulled out the stopper, and as soon as she sniffed, he replaced the stopper. "Well?"

Her nose wrinkled up as the acrid odor reminded her of something. The leaf in the bottle had smelled like Toi after the gardener had spent the morning working under a hot sun. It smelled like man sweat. It smelled like dirty laundry and Toi's armpits. Her face had a sour look as she looked up at the cook and frowned.

Onan pushed her off the bed, unlocked his door and opened it. "Stupid girl! Get out of here, stupid girl!"

On the top floor of the female wing, at the end of the narrow hallway, there was a locked door. Each time Silent Her went there she tried the latch. Each time she found it locked. After trying the latch she would put her ear to the door and listen for sounds of her mother.

Behind the door there was mostly silence. Once she heard footsteps and once she heard an eating utensil as it fell to the floor. The sound she heard the most often was a constant scratching that sounded like an insect or pest in the wall.

One morning she tried the latch and the door was not locked. Suddenly she was very confused. Up until that moment she had known what her goal was. Her goal had been to find the door unlocked. On the other side of the door had been something that belonged to her: her name.

With the achievement of her goal, old fears stole into her heart. The person who held her name was mad.

Everyone said so. She was violent, and the only person Duman's second wife had ever been violent with was her daughter.

Very slowly she pushed open the door, no more than a thickness of a dust hair at a time. There was a table before a window, and there was a black-shrouded figure hunched over the table. The dark figure was her mother, and her mother was writing.

Silent Her had done no more writing since the important priest had slapped her hands and had spoken sharply to Rihana in the garden. Her father had been very angry and he had instructed the family priest doctor, Father Yadin, to instruct all of the females in "The Shaytan."

The knuckles of Silent Her's left hand accidentally rapped against the door. Without looking toward her, the woman at the table suddenly fell to the floor behind the table.

It seemed like such an insane thing to do, the girl became frightened and pulled shut the door with a bang.

The door was still not locked and she held her breath as she heard footsteps running across the floor. The latch moved and she grabbed it and held onto it as she tried to keep the madwoman inside.

The door handle was pulled from her grasp as the door swung open throwing her to her knees inside the room. She looked up at the figure and her eyes filled with the image of Hard Mouth from her nightmares.

Hard Mouth reached down, but the girl scurried to her feet and ran from the room, through the corridor to the back staircase, down the stairs to the kitchen, and into her safe place behind the ranges.

As she huddled in her safe place, she heard Nabil and Onan screaming at each other from the floor above.

The madwoman was loose in the female wing, and each one was blaming the other. The voice of the guard sergeant, Jamil, drowned out the others and soon it was quiet once more. As she hid in the dark she felt her eyes burn with tears. She knew she would never have a quiet name. She would never have anything but herpet name, and she hated nothing more than being called Silent Her.

Men never wore black. The gardener, Toi, once said to Abi the chauffeur a joke about men who wore black.

From the joke, and from Abi's response, Silent Her understood that there was something wrong with men who wore black. Somehow they were not really men, but were something different; something less. G.o.d hated them, too, although not as much as women. She also understood that there were many such men, and that some other men used them as both friends and wives.

Her father, of course, never wore black. Often he would wear pale gray with a maroon sash, or pale green with golden sash. On special occasions he would wear a white satin suit with a maroon sash set with blue gems.

Rahman, her brother, seemed to wear whatever he wanted. Each of the rare times she had seen him he had been wearing something different. His clothes were of bright reds, oranges, and yellows. She wanted so much to wear a jacket the same color of yellow as Rahman's.

One evening in the garden she signed to Rihana, "I want a yellow coat."

Rihana frowned as her fingers answered, "I do not understand you."

"I want a yellow coat like Rahman's."

"You know females wear only black. You know females own nothing."

"I know I hate black. I know I want a yellow coat."

"Don't be foolish, child. Own your yellow coat in the back of your mind, but never let your fingers speak of such a thing again."

There was no way to argue, no one with whom to plead. It was written in "The Shaytan." Females may own nothing. Silent Her did not even own the starcross Rihana had given her, for it had not been Rihana's to give. It had belonged to Duman Amin, and it had come into Rihana's possession by the grace of her husband's favor. Possessions were forbidden to her.

She looked from the windows of the female wing at all of the places that were forbidden to her. She was forbidden to enter the rest of the house. Only Rihana could go there, and only when Duman invited her.

The mansion was surrounded by a wall, and beyond the wall were many beautiful gardens. Beyond the gardens were more walls and the vastness of Duman Amin's estates. Beyond the limits of the estates was a land about which she could only imagine. Above it all was a sky crossed with wealth-laden ships headed for the same stars Si could see at night.

Once when she had disobeyed the guards and had slipped out of the female wing, she had climbed to the top of the north wing and had seen her brother in a large room at the end of the corridor. Her eyes were dazzled. The room was filled with toys, stuffed animals, and games. Built into the wall was a screen with moving pictures of small fuzzy animals with long ears and tiny pink noses. Songs came from the screen.

Rahman was sitting with his back toward her, his attention absorbed by the television. She stared at him and at his wonderful room, ignoring the sound of footsteps behind her.

"Now I've got you!"

Strong hands grabbed her, trapped her arms, and picked her up. "This time, girl, I will certainly teach you to remain where you are supposed to remain," growled Sergeant Jamil.

Rahman turned to see the cause of all of the noise. "What are you doing?" demanded her brother.

"My apologies, little master," said the guard sergeant, "I must bring this one back to the female wing."

"You wouldn't have this trouble if you guarded her properly. See that you don't disturb me again."

Jamil tucked Silent Her beneath his left arm and bowed very deeply. "As you wish, little master."

"Who is she? One of the scrub girls?"

Sergeant Jamil stood and said, "By the Jesus, you do not know?"