It took a long time for her to decide to go to the camp, for she knew from the beginning what she would find. A vacancy. Everyone gone. Kane the Brain and slob-lipped Willit and even Susso. No blood. No mess. Not even the feathery ash a disposal booth would have left behind. Nothing at all.
Crumpled blankets on the beds, fallen into body shapes. Here a light left on, where someone had been up, maybe on the way to or from the toilets. And yes, there a pair of slippers, a stride apart, where the feet had been lifted from them all at once, the nightsuit fallen into a heap between them. Living things, human things gone, but their belongings untouched.
Except for the test gardens. There were barren plots. Not all of them. Not all the tests. Just some. This one and that one, apparently at random.
But, of course, it would not be at random. This clean-edged selective destruction could not be by chance. The plots destroyed had been selected; they would have to have something in common!
Snark dug into her pocket for her notebook and dictated into it, listing the plots destroyed, grains type 178 and 54 and 209. Root crops 89 and 102 and 5 and 27. Virtually all the leaf crops, leaving only half a dozen standing. Destroyed because of what? Dangerous? Or merely not nutritious? Or perhaps not smelling nice to whatever the monstrous shadow had been. Or not tasting nice. Or not something nice, some other sense that Snark could not even imagine. Perhaps the destroyed crops made the monstrous shadows itch? Or made their eyes water. Assuming they had eyes. Which one would be wrong to do. The missing crops made their enormous membranous vorticals twinge, that was it.
She found herself thrashing on the ground, laughing hysterically. The sounds she was making frightened her, and she stopped all at once, horrified at herself. She choked the sound with her own hands, terrified at her own panic. She had been conditioned! She shouldn’t be able to feel anything of the kind!
Conditioned to be among others, she told herself. Conditioned to be one of a group. Not to be alone. Not like this. She clicked on her notebook once more, setting down her thoughts, her impressions. “The sound was damped, like big curtains hung in open space might do,” she said. “Absorbing sound waves.” After a moment’s thought, she described what she had unconsciously resolved about their shape. “Winged,” she said. “I think they must have wings, or some membrane of some kind that covers a wide area. But … I got the feeling of shagginess. Of fur …”
The laboratories were undisturbed. Her grain furze grew glossily green and spiky in its hydroponic tank. The lights above it were still on. The generator hadn’t been touched.
If she were to make changes, would the darknesses notice? If she moved something here, now, would they return and realize someone had escaped their raid?
Who could tell? Better change nothing. Better move nothing. Or, better yet, move some tiny inconspicuous thing and see if they noticed.
She had left a bundle of furze-grain seedling stored in the back of a coldframe. They were in an unlabeled container. Probably the darknesses had not even seen it. In case they had, she divided some other seedlings and put the container back, now holding something else. She would plant the seedlings near her cave, where in time they might stand between herself and hunger.
There were food stores, too, that she could shift, leaving everything looking much as before. When she returned to the cave, she did so heavily laden. Everything had to be swung into the cave at the end of a rope and then tucked away in crannies before she, herself, had room to stretch out. It was late afternoon before she was finished. Too late, that day, to plant the seedlings. Tomorrow she would get them in. Not in rows or patches, but one by one, among the native plants they much resembled. And tomorrow, if the darknesses did not return, she would take more food, carefully, just as she’d learned as a child. Leaving no trail. Making everything look just as it had before.
From my room in the hive, I heard Lutha and Leelson and Trompe talking. It was early morning. They thought I was still asleep, I suppose, for they were talking about me.
“The emotion was shame,” said Trompe in an argumentative tone.
“Also anger,” Leelson insisted. “She was ashamed, but also angry.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” demanded Lutha. “My God, gentlemen. Wouldn’t you be? The anger part I can certainly understand.”
“So can we,” said Leelson in a tone even I thought to be patronizing. “It’s the shame part we’re finding intriguing.”
“What they did to her was a rape,” said Lutha furiously. “Our persons are in our faces. When we show ourselves to the public, we show our faces. That’s what we recognize about one another, those of us who see, at any rate. Our faces portray our personas. Her persona was violated, just as in rape. Rape evokes emotions of shame and anger because of the violation.”
“Why was it done?” Trompe asked.
She replied, “We won’t understand it until we find out a lot more about this society.” She paused, breathing furiously, enraged on my behalf. Even from where I lay on my bed, I could hear her fuming.
“And I will find out,” she said firmly.
I thought she might indeed, for she seemed a very determined woman. I would have told her what she wanted to know if I could. But could I say, yes, it was my own fault, for sometimes I have doubts, and my sisters in sorrow tell me they, too, have doubts. But, so my sisters say, we are
