Chapter 1

Chapter 1

It was early dusk when it happened, the skies were in that eternal swirl of grey and orange, and the call of the sandman bellowed over and over all the ka’ampu. The long, low sound tremored through the air, a heavy, soulful, vibrating undertone to the murmur of dusk life.

Yaan’s ka’ampu was small, a minimal disturbance in the endless shifts of sand and time. It wasn’t much more than six or seven shoddy tents – beaten greemel skins stained by dirt and torn by rock, wrinkled and weathered by wind- a small but strong herd of the greemel themselves, their elongated, gaiting bodies rippling beneath the sleek brush of sandy fur, and a groupe of fifteen people, unmistakably her people, with their torn and brightly died robes of spun cacti and bright eyes in dark skin.

Yann slept in the largest tent with her grandmother, the elder, her mother ; the eldest’s kin, and her baby brother, the future caravan king, she knew this and accepted this as easily as anyone could. Her brother, one cycle on this planet, and he was already destined to be great. But he was not treated any differently from any other child. The caravan king must be humble, wise and strong. Her little brother was a serious baby. She already knew that he would fulfil his role, as each child before him had.

Yann was on watch duty today, as she was the best. The very best at watching. It had nothing to do with her being able to see, and everything to do with her not being able to see at all. She just needed her ears, and her heart. When she had been born blind, her grandmother had told her mother not to mourn. Nature gave one other gifts when she took some guarantees away. And she’d been right. Yann could sense things no other desert child could sense.

So, naturally it was Yann who heard it first…

It was a roar, panish and pollutive to the noise of crick and tale that had only moments before illusioned a silence and calm.

She didn’t warn them yet, she couldn’t. Instead, she reached, further, seeking, feeling, to determine what the presence was. And then she got the impression of wild red hair, slashing blond brows and a fierce, cold-blooded face. And her heart sank. No danger. Just the grubby panish traders from eastland, messing with their ka’ampu. They found them once or twice a month, fierce, young, brutal men that made their living trading back and forth between the dome dwellers and the groupes. She knew these men, felt their lazy unconcerned interest in her, in her mother, their mocking attitudes, primal yet patronizing, as if they were all slow or dim-witted.

She reached out again, grudgingly, to see if she could feel anything else.

No… It was just eastland traders. Or was it?

And then she felt it, pulsing waves of pain, distress, horror, disbelief.

She whirled around, her skirts whirling with her, and ran down the dune, and although her fall was clumsy, an awkward mess of sliding and sand spray, she continued onwards. She knew she looked like a fool, and bristled mentally at the thought of the traders seeing her as anything but reserved, graceful, and calm. But she didn’t care. Her only voice was of warning.

« Amantandu ! Amantandu ! » She cried, her voice carrying heavily I the sand.

« Yann ! » Her grandmother was nearby.

Yann swung towards the sound of the voice, more instinctively than anything else, and ran towards it, kicking up sand spray, until thick brown arms wrapped themselves around her. Soothing, protecting.

« Kimu and his motorfleet are coming, and there’s something wrong. I don’t know what. »

« It is the dome-people. » her grandmother said. « There’s smoke on the horizon. Near Orgone… »

Orgone was their shanty-town. Hidden beneath the sand, no dome-dweller had ever stumbled upon it in the last twenty years. Beyond family, friends, and belongings, it held something almost as valuable in worth. Something Yann knew her grandmother loved more than anything else in the world, even her.

The roar of motorcycles sounded closer, and screams and crying filled the camp.

« Kimu ! » her grandmother cried. She ran to the man and enveloped his face in her thin hands. Yann’s grandmother considered everyone her child. She held no contempt for the traders, though she understood and was wary of their ways. « Are you hurt ? What happened ? »

« I’m not hurt, mother. But many are. » Kimu’s voice, already heavy and coarse from the garis he smoked, was haggard and laboured.

Everyone called her grandmother mother, because she had been there longer than anyone else, and also because she had knowledge, which was treasured above all other things in Yann’s tribe. Her grandmother had some of the greatest books written in history in her library, in all different languages, different sizes, colours. She’d preserved them, and they’d been passed to her from her mother, who had received them from their own. But Yann’s mother had no true interest in literature, so that their responsibility had been passed to Yann herself. Yann’s grandmother wanted the words of all of the books to be put into digital form so that they could be preserved more easily. So from the age of seven, since she’d been able to read at all, everyday she would labour through several chapters of a book while recording it. She had every author committed to memory, and could speak panis, german, panish, panish, panishse and panish fluently. She had a skill with languages that was unmatched anywhere else in the outsider clan. But she still had three books to go through.

The Art of War, The Tibetan book of Death and Life, and, Time. Which had never become a literary masterpiece, as it was written during the Gammas, and only one hundred copies were made.

People had stopped caring about books long before then.

« What happened ? » Yann asked, walking to her grandmother and placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. « What did they do ? »

« They came so fast we didn’t even see it coming. » Kimu swept back his hair, and Yann could hear it whipping on the wind. She knew it was the colour of sand, and she knew that he had dark, tanned skin, big hands and a lovely voice. But she didn’t like him. He was too dishonest. All traders were. « They were riding space-mecha. They don’t wheel on the ground like ours… they fly. We barely got away in time. They raped the women and shot the children dead in their sleep. The men they took… Some they tortured, otherwise they were imprisoned for labour-work. The Orgone elder sent us to warn you before it was too late. We have to leave. »

The beads in Yann’s grandmother’s hair clinked against one another as she nodded her wise head. « Alright, we’ll head to the nearest shanty-town… if we can get to it before morrow’s dusk, we can send out a warning in all directions from there. »

« But… Grandmother ! The books- »

« Shh ! Don’t be silly, child, what books could you possibly be speaking of ? » Her grandmother admonished her quickly, and tightened a hand around her forearm to warn her : she did not want Kimu to know. Any wise trader would know that books were rare in these parts. Rarer still in the domes, where knowledge was not preserved, but changed and reanalysed.

Yann bristled at the word child, but wisely kept her mouth shut. She was nearly nineteen. Past the marrying age and far past the age of independence. Any child over fourteen could do as they wished. Yann had stayed out of obligation to her mother. As Kimu moved away, his heavy boots crunching away over the sand, she leaned down to place her cheeks against her grandmother, comforted by the brush of old, weathered , wrinkled skin.

« When we settle the Ka’ampu tonight, I will go back to Orgone and get the books- »

« No ! » Yann tore away. « You’ll never make it ! The dome-dwellers will catch you ! You have a faulty hip ! »

« I must ! » her grandmother heaved vehemently, « That is all that is left of my mother ! And her mother before that ! That is all that is left of your ancestors ! From before the Gammas ! » there was a note of desperation in her tone, a note of fear. The books were all that was left of her.

« Then I will go ! I am young, and my ears will aid me better than your eyes and ears combined ! »

« You’ll do no such thing ! » her grandmother snapped, pinching her ear between her blackened nails. « You are the last of us ! You cannot be risked ! »

« Nor can you ! » she cried, then her voice softened, « Please, Grandmother. Please. I’m not a child anymore. »

Those old, brown weathered hands embraced her cheeks, took her face. « Oh, child. »

Yann closed her eyes, concentrated on the warm, dry calluses brushing her skin, the knotted and gnarled knuckles. « Mother. »

Suddenly the warmth was gone, and her grandmother was brisk again.« If you are to go, you will need some clothing. And somebody should finish your clan mark, tonight. »

« I am not yet ready -»

« You are ready. »

The night was silent, and yet, all of the clans of the ka’ampu and all of the traders were awake, they were trying to anticipate the presence of the dome-dwellers. So that they could run at a moment’s notice.

Yann’s ears were trained heavily on the tread of her own feet. Also on the feet of the greemel who trailed along behind her. Every once in a while, it grunted softly in it’s throat, and she had to place her hand on the side of it’s throat to reassure it. This alone was difficult with the heavy pounding of her heart in her ears. Her palms were sweating around the rough of the rope and into the grooves her nails were perpetually creating.

As she walked, she tried to think of good things. But there were few good things to think of. The sun was dying, the greemel were fading, the outsiders fading, ceasing to be. Only seven tribes left. And who knew how many may have been the tribes who had stopped camp in Orgone? There had been good times, she knew, when the sky had been blue instead of yellow, when the world had been suffused and full of beauty. But that time was gone. The children of this generation knew only one single and inevitable reality.

They were always running from the dome-dwellers.

Never a moment’s rest, never any sort of time for peace. Just running. She wanted, every once in a while, to be able to stop, to be able to listen and worry about things that were trivial, that were not a matter of life or death. They were all that was left of the unassimilated humans. The rest, those who’d been sucked into the whirlwind gore of the domes were obsessed with the trivialities of technological advancement. After the Gammas, some had escaped; those with money, prestige, or fame. They rested in the simulated sterility of the lunar colony, or returned after dome-establishment.The rest had been left to perish, and those that were willing to abandon what remained of their world left the others to pursue a nomadic life, living off what was left of the land and hunting for provisions. They wanted for nothing, desired nothing, needed nothing except knowledge. Some people, some of humanity had not been so wise, and those that had remained had been enslaved by the rich to make the domes, where they were given homes, or suggestions thereof, in the filth that the rich had created.

She broke out of her wistful revery, turning to see the thin spot of orange that was her ka’ampu, glittering like a fallen star in the blue dark. A thin wisp of white curled from it’s fire.

Nobody but she herself could hear her now.

Gritting her teeth, she turned and sprung onto the greemel’s lithe body, nimbly flipping the rope over as she did, and uttering the harsh command to force him forward.

With an indignant snort, it began trotting, working up speed.

She could feel the long muscles beneath her thighs and hands as the beast began to run, contracting, loosening, contracting loosening. Her hair, short and purple-red with henna, whipped around her face. She could feel the sting of the mark on her back, pulsing. She knew it to be fluid, full of curves and unexpected sharp ends, contradicting itself, a strange blend of animalia and emotion.

Sand sprayed behind her as she rode, gathering in a long cloud that would take much longer to dissipate than it did to formulate.

She couldn’t be certain when she’d get there, several hours, at the most. It’d be mid-day before she reached it. Mid-day before she had to unearth the precious three. The last books. And hide the rest. She didn’t know what she’d find there.

She didn’t know what had survived.