MATUKO
Saba’s Akellarat.
The White Season
She woke up surrounded by Styth children. She lifted her head, and they burst into giggles and disappeared out the door. A small lamp burned on the table beside the bed, giving off a gentle warmth. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and slid off. The drop to the floor jarred her. She looked around at a huge room. The bed was eight feet long and so high off the floor she doubted she could climb back up without help.
The room was dim and except for the little lamp’s heat it was cold. She took the lamp and went off to explore. A sliding door covered a rack in the wall full of her clothes, all neatly hung on arms and hooks attached to the wall at arm’s length above her head. Her shoes were on a shelf completely out of reach. Her flute was on the floor next to her valise and the big suitcase. She had slept a long time, while all this was going on around her. She could remember being in
Outside this room was a short hall. She crossed it to another room, bare of furniture. When she went in, a brown furry animal raced to the window, jumped to the sill, and dove out. She put the lamp up on the sill of the window and tried to pull herself up to see out but even when she stood on tiptoe she could see no more than the wall of a building across the way. She went back to the room where she had wakened and dragged a chair across the hall to stand on.
Kneeling on the seat of the big chair, she looked out the window to a wide, open yard, ringed around with white one-story houses. A few feet away from her stood a strange kind of post, silvery gray, with several short stumps like branches coming out of the top. At its foot the small brown animal crouched. Its long tail twitched and one ear swiveled to listen to her. The window swung open wide at her touch. She leaned out, looking up, and saw Matuko.
The city closed over her head three or more miles away, veined with crooked streets. It was dark, like an Earthish middle twilight, almost colorless, brown and dark brown and gray. Above her, nearly hidden behind the roof, she could see part of the black ribbon of a lake. Streaks of white lay here and there. In the dull brown it looked like frost on a wintery field.
Children giggled again. She looked about in time to see half a dozen round heads sticking out past the corner of the house. They shrieked and hid. The brown animal raced away. It paused halfway along the wall of the house to turn a pop-eyed monstrous face to her and ran on.
Somewhere inside the house a door slammed. “Paula?”
“I’m in here.” She turned around. Saba came in from the hall.
“What are you doing, running around like this?” He picked her up and put her on her feet on the floor. “You should stay in bed until you get used to the gravity.” He patted her belly. She had to look up at him again. He fit this vast room, the huge furniture. She turned back to the window, uneasy.
“What’s that white stuff?”
He looked out where she was pointing. “That’s grass.”
“White grass? What’s that?” She pointed to the post.
“That’s a bilyobio tree.”
“It’s not really a tree.”
“No. It’s not organic. Nobody knows what they are, they grow all over Styth, everywhere there are Styths. Except the moons. They’re good luck. They say if you live near a bilyobio tree, you’ll live to die of old age.”
“What’s little and brown and has a long tail and pop-eyes?”
“Why don’t you stop asking questions and come over and meet my wives? As long as you’re up. I—” He raised his head. Someone was walking down the hall. “Hup!”
“It’s me, Pop.”
A tall young man appeared in the doorway. Older than Ketac, he was in Saba’s image, slenderly built. Red jewels glittered in the furls of his ears. He said, “I have to talk to you. I didn’t want to do it in front of Mother. There’s been a lot of trouble about this treaty.”
They looked at her, and she turned away from them and went to the window and pretended to be watching out. She guessed this was his prima son, whose name she had forgotten. The young man said, “There’s been a lot of dirty talk, and some fighting and a bomb went off in the Lake market—”
“How did the news get around?” Saba asked.
“I don’t know. We had to close the Peak Farm, there was a threat to bomb it, too.”
Saba let out a string of swearwords. “Who’s behind it?”
“I can’t find out. Nobody, I think—it’s just streetwork, you know—spontaneous.”
“Dakkar,” his father said, “nothing like this is ever spontaneous. Somebody is back of it.”
An edge crept into Dakkar’s voice. “I think I’m looking at him. Sir.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Everybody is saying you sold us out. This treaty—”
“Sir.”
“I’m serious about—”
“Sir.”
Paula frowned at the wall. If the treaty failed, she was finished.
“Yes, sir,” Dakkar said, behind her.
“That’s right,” his father said. “And you don’t close my crystal farm.”
Raising her eyes, she looked around the barren room. The gravity dragged at her, drawing the burden of her pregnancy down, so that she had to stand with her hips thrown forward to support it. She put her hands on the small of her back.
“Yes, sir,” Dakkar was saying stiffly.
“Go find out who’s trying to knock us. You can leave.”
His son left. Saba said, “Paula, let’s go.”
She went after him up the hall. They passed through a formal room, massed with huge furniture. A swing couch hung from the ceiling by chains. She felt too small to be noticed, a mouse in a rat world.
They crossed the yard toward the next house, cat-corner on the wall on the compound. On the eave of its roof, the brown animal sat washing its face with its forepaws.
“What’s that?”
“A kusin.” He still sounded angry. “They’re harmless, except to the dog-mice and snakes.”
“It was in my house.”
“It won’t come back, now that somebody is living there. They don’t like people.” His hand dropped to her shoulder and aimed her at the door into the house ahead of them. “Go in there. I have something to do. Boltiko knows who you are. I’ll see you later.” He walked off across the yard toward the biggest building in the compound, against the wall opposite her little house. She stopped and looked back the way she had come, to see what the house looked like. A white box. She thought of going back there. But she had to face his wives sometime. She went on toward Boltiko’s house.
His prima wife was years older than he was. Her body was lost in rolls of fat. Necklace creases indented the column of her throat. Paula sat uncomfortably in a chair in Boltiko’s kitchen while children dashed in and out screeching and the wife cut bread and cooked meal.
“Were you married in the Earth?” Boltiko asked.
“We aren’t married.”
“Oh.” Boltiko turned and swatted a passing child on the backside. “Didn’t I tell you not to run in the house?” She smacked him again. The little boy scurried out the door, his spread hands protecting his rump. Paula knew he was a boy because his head was shaven; the girls all wore their hair in braids. Boltiko looked Paula over covertly while she stirred the meal.
“Will you be married here?”
