“What was his work?” I always asked, each and every time.
“Finding out about Dinadh,” she always said, winking at me. Grown-ups wink like that when they hint something about the choice. Or the House. Or the other world we had, before we came here. Things we are not supposed to talk about.
“Did he find out?” I asked.
“Nobody knows,” she said, marching back through the cells to the back one, where she started with the broom and I followed with the brush, sweeping down the smooth mud walls, brushing off the sleeping shelves, making a little pile of dust and grit that got bigger the farther we pushed it from cell to cell, until at last we could push it right out the door onto the floor of the cave. Then I took the broom and pushed it across the cave floor, farther and farther forward, until it came to the edge and fell over, all that dust and grit and sheddings of the hive falling down like snow on the canyon bottom.
Sometimes, while Mama was sweeping, I’d sit and look at the machines, longing to push just one button, just to see what would happen. It was forbidden, of course. Such things were not Dinadhi things. We had to live without things like that. We had chosen to live without them. We had chosen to give them up in return for what we were promised instead.
After we cleaned Bernesohn Famber’s leasehold, sometimes we went down to the storerooms to pick something for supper. In summers, there are all kinds of things, fresh or dried melon, fresh or dried meat, different kinds of vegetables and fruit, pickled or fresh or dried. There is almost always grain, head grain or ear grain, eaten whole or cracked or ground for making bread. We have seeds for roasting, and honey too. We brought bees with us, from the other world.
In late winter and early spring, though, there’s mostly fungus from the cellars, pale and gray and tasting like wood. The only good thing about fungus is that it’s easy to fix. It can be eaten fresh or dried, raw or cooked. We usually put some salt and herbs on it to make it taste like something. Most all of our cookery is done in the mornings, when the sun is on the cave. We use solar reflectors for cooking. The whole front edge of the cave is lined with them, plus all the level spots to either side, and any time of the morning you can see women scrambling across the cliff wall to get at their own ovens and stewpots.
After food is cooked, it’s kept warm in padded boxes until eating time. None of our food is very hot, except in wintertime. Then we have fires in the hive, and we sometimes cook over them. It would take too many trees to have fires in summer. That was part of the promise and the choice as well. We have to protect the trees and certain plants because the beautiful people need them.
Even though girls had much to learn, sometimes Mama would tire of teaching me and say, “Go on, go play,” and then I’d have to try to find somebody else whose mama had said, “Go play,” to them too.
Shalumn and I played together mostly. We played babies and we played wedding and we played planting and harvest, smoothing little patches in the dust and grooving them like ditches, and putting tiny rocks down for the vegetables. We had dolls, of course, made out of reed bundles, covered with cloth, with faces painted on. We didn’t play with the boys, not once we were old enough to know who was a boy and who was a girl. Boys played sheepherder and songfather and watermaster, and they had games where somebody always won and somebody always lost. Shalumn and I played bed games together, and once Mama caught us at it and whipped us both on our bottoms. I still have a little line there, on one side, where the whip cut. After that we were careful.
I remember those as pleasant times, but I can’t make them sound like much. Nothing much happens with children on Dinadh. We don’t have adventures. If we tried to have an adventure, we’d probably die right away. Maybe better … better I think of some other story. Not my life or Lutha Tallstaff’s life, but someone else’s. Another person entirely, the third one of us. The one Lutha and I met together. Snark the shadow.
At the end of each workday the Procurator dismissed his shadows, allowing them to descend the coiled ramps that led from occupied areas to Shadowland beneath. There each shadow entered the lock as he was programmed to do.
“Strip off your shadow suit,” said the lock.
The shadow stripped off the stiff suit with all its sensors and connectors, hanging it in an alcove in one side of the booth.
“Place your hands in the receptacles.”
The shadow placed.
“Bend your head forward to make contact with the plate.”
The shadow bent.
Light, sounds, movement. Snark stood back from the plate, shaking her head, as she always did, bellowing with rage, as she always did.
“Leave the cubicle,” said the voice, opening the door behind her, opposite the one she’d come in by.
“Goddamn bastards,” screamed Snarkey, hammering at the cubicle wall. “Shitting motherfuckers.”
The floor grew hot. She leapt and screamed, resolved to obey no order they gave her. As always, the floor grew too hot for her, and she leapt through the door just in time to avoid being seared.
“It’s the mad howler,” said slobber-lipped Willit from a distant corner of the locker room. “Snarkey-shad herself, makin’ noises like a human.”
“Shut the fuck up,” growled Snark.
Willit laughed. Others also laughed. Snark panted, staring about herself, deciding who to kill.
“Slow learner,” commented Kane the Brain, shaking his head sadly.
Snarkey launched herself at Kane, screaming rage, only to find herself
