THE WOMEN KNEW AHEAD OF TIME

1563 4D

The van carrying Andrew, Ezzar, Grendel and Janny labored up the inclined spiral way. Andrew checked its power supply, checked it again, cursed his nerves, and rubbed at his neck where the scars lay thick and chafing. Sitting beside him, Ezzar stared out at the passing entryways and side corridors off the broad understreet they climbed. The spiral bore gently to the left. The heavy cargo sucked electricity quickly from the van‘s cells.

Grendel poked his head forward through the cab’s rear hatch. “We gonna make it up to 640?” Janny‘s face appeared under Grendel‘s, her forearm swiping across her nose. A throbbing rose in the air around the van.

“I think so,” Andrew said. They had passed Level 641 — less than one to go. “Too bad the freight lift only stopped at 644. Van? Power estimate?”

“One half hour left before emergency switchover, then one half hour more.” Why did the van‘s voice sound so interested when it tried to entertain them, and so neutral when the information really mattered?

“That should be plenty,” Ezzar said. “But, look.” She pointed ahead up the slope. Around the long bend came a dancing horde of musicians and celebrants. The sounds of bells and tins and tangs on steel, whistles and horns and syntrells, belting and beating a hooksong, grabbed Andrew in his stomach and made him want to bounce to his feet and move his body. He ground his teeth.

“Oh, no, which one is this?” he said. Women swung babies in their arms. “Damn. It’s Corsang Run, the Mothers’ Festival. We may never get up there now. This lasts for days, and they look like they’ve just started.” As the crowd washed around them, the van had already come to a stop.

“Can’t we push through?” Ezzar asked.

“You want to run over babies? They’re all over the place.”

“No, but…" Ezzar bit her lip. A little arm and leg reached in front of Andrew. Janny climbed into his lap and stared, fascinated, out the front of the van. He studied her face. Her eyes opened as wide as he had ever seen them, and her mouth fell into an oh. Her eyebrows pushed together, and stayed in a frown as pregnant women and mothers and girls and little children wound their dancing way, swimming in rhythm in coils past the van, adorned in biosilk fringes and crests and flags of all colors draped and dangling and flying from arms and legs and heads.

Janny‘s look dissolved into a softness filled with hunger and loss that wrung Andrew‘s heart; she hiccuped and leaned back against him and turned her face into his chest, and her tears warmed his skin through his coverall. He cradled her in his hands and wrapped her in a hug.

His eyes roamed the dancers, seeking Leil. Colors of sleeve and leg fringes and headflags shook and exploded with the rhythms. He and Leil had danced this path every year, before Engel came (what a year that was, Leil and Andrew both barefooted and dancing drunk on ‘thellin and wine), and Maiji and Janny…

He lowered his head and rocked Janny in time with the monstrous beat that shook the drumhead sides of the van and pounded into the emptiness expanding inside him. Ezzar‘s hands slid around him and his little girl, and for a few minutes held them both; Grendel‘s large hand, warm and gentle, cupped the side of his head.

The crowd, undulating past them toward side corridors that branched into dwelling areas, thinned out at last enough for the van to start picking its way onward. Another knot of celebrants approached, the men’s drums and cymbals and panpans raising a cross-beat with the ones already gone by. The van slowed but did not stop.

“Talk to me about Corsang Run,” Grendel said to Andrew, “I’ve seen a lot of countryside stuff out south but never anything like this.”

Grateful for the distraction, Andrew raised his head, wiped his eyes, and cleared his throat, groping for the stories his father and the collechi elder had told him. “Only a few hundred people survived the Voyage when we came to this world. The Colonists' councils had to get more people to do the work and build communities. Back then they had just two things: drugs and rituals. Social engineering.” The lump in Andrew‘s chest started to shrink. The van moved a little faster now.

“They used the coll rituals to give out drinks loaded with hormonal triggers. This jacked up the sex drives to help the population grow. The councils arranged the clans and colls and rituals to make a sense of family among all families.”

“Doesn’t work so well now,” Grendel said.

“Well, it didn’t back then, either. But what did work is that they got a lot of new people in a hurry.”

Ezzar added, “Still true.”

“Yeah, especially after the Gene Laws,” Andrew said. He remembered his large family, and his dead brothers. “Down where I lived in Sobi, the death rate made it necessary. People keep trying. Corsang Run is always one of the biggest celebrations.”

The van at last neared the crossing where the streets of Sobi Zone’s Level 640 spread out. “We’re there,” Ezzar said, pointing out an unlighted side passage just before the crossing. The van turned and entered the passage. As it edged forward into the shadows, six women and two men fell into step in a box formation around the van, the bright festival colors of their clothes dulled in the shadows.

Andrew went on. “The women take the children, born and unborn and unconceived, through every street in a town or district. The men act as guards, and make the music for the women’s dances. At the end, the partners all rejoin and consummate.”

“Unconceived?” Grendel asked.

“In the early times, after the Migrations and where people had lost their archives, they started believing the women knew ahead of time that they would conceive, as much as a year ahead.”

“Except for the unconceived part, it’s the same out in the Waste,” Ezzar said. “I’m from Harridium Clan, Arcus Coll. We call it the Encircle.” She took a very deep breath, shuddered, and tilted her head against the van window.