Last Wild Boy, page 10
It was a strange sensation, watching this outsider as he slept — just intimate enough to make her feel equally uncomfortable and inquisitive, repelled and compelled. His large, rough, masculine features were alien to her, almost unpleasant, but somehow she felt herself drawn to him at the same time. She looked down at Adam, who was lying on the ground between them, and tried to imagine what he’d look like when he was grown. She wondered if he could grow as tall and as strong as Mabon. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t picture him as anything but the sweet, gentle child he was.
Nora sat up, and was surprised to see the dog dozing on the floor on the other side of Mabon, close to where he slept. She was happy to see it.
Nora cleared her throat quietly. This morning it felt less scratchy and sore, and she was thankful for Mabon’s medicine, as unpalatable as it had been. She picked Adam up and listened to his breathing. It was much steadier now. Adam whimpered and suddenly Mabon sat up, instantly alert. His eyes focused on Nora and the child and then the dog. He relaxed and his crooked smile returned.
“Sorry I slept so long. I wanted to be up ahead of you.”
“You were exhausted,” Nora said. She wondered if he could somehow sense that she’d been watching him, and blushed. “You needed the sleep.”
Mabon rose from his bedroll and reached for the black and tan dog. It growled and then let out a yip as the young man rubbed its ears. The dog got to its feet, its tail wagging happily.
“Lie down and let’s see your wound,” Mabon cooed softly to the dog. He inspected the pup’s underbelly and flanks. There were several small cuts, but none that were serious. “You’re not hurt too bad. You’re a tough guy. But you’re lucky to be alive.” He turned to Nora, “We should call him Lucky.”
Nora smiled and nodded.
Nora fed Adam while Mabon brought his belongings to the rear of the cave and washed his face with water he scooped from the pool.
“The medicine’s working,” she said. “I feel much better this morning, and Adam’s breathing is stronger.”
“I’ll make a fire and heat some more for both of you. We’ll go once you feel better.”
“Is that wise?” Nora asked. “Adam and I are both just starting to feel better. I’m not sure how long either of us will be able to travel.”
Mabon laid out a few small bits of wood across a fistful of dried grass and lit them. “We can’t stay here. If we stay too long, the rangers will find us.”
“Do you know how to get to this Manuhome place?” asked Nora.
“It’s been a long time. But I think I can find the way. I just hope Dr. Ueland is still around. If he is, he’ll do what he can to help us, I’m sure of that.”
“What if he isn’t there?”
“Then we’ll have to keep going, as far into the wild as we can. Away from Aahimsa, and out of the rangers’ reach.”
“The wild’s a terrible place. Everything’s trying to kill everything else.”
Mabon watched the grey smoke rise and disappear through a gap in the rocks overhead. “All my life, I dreamed of going to the wild and being free,” he said. “I dreamed I’d disappear into the wild like this smoke,” he pointed to the opening overhead.
“Why didn’t you ever try to get away?” Nora asked.
“I couldn’t. I was always watched.” Mabon instinctively placed his hand on the wound under his ear. “Until Minn fell from the wall, I was controlled by a device that had been implanted in my neck when I was a small child. It could read my thoughts and hear my voice. If the controllers didn’t like what they learned of me, they would make the device explode and terminate me.”
“Are all outsiders controlled by devices like that?” Nora asked.
“Only rangers,” said Mabon. “Unlike other outsider workers, the rangers need to be controlled in a way that doesn’t destroy all their masculine instincts and powers, even though, like most other outsiders, they’re still not able to make babies.” He blushed.
“Who was watching you?” Nora asked. She’d never known that the outsiders were watched so closely. She’d never really known much about the outsiders, actually, aside from the fact that they were violent and dangerous, but that their labour was necessary for the continued success of Aahimsa’s society. Or at least, that was what Blanchefleur had always said.
“The insiders,” Mabon said, shifting his eyes down to his pack. He pulled the medicine roll from his kit and silently made his preparations. “The wild is a good place,” he said after a while. “You’ll see. There are dangers, it’s true, but that’s nature. The real danger for outsiders like me always came from inside the wall.”
Nora didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what dangers exactly he was speaking of, and she didn’t really want to ask. She’d always known Aahimsa to be a safe and peaceful place, and the thought of danger coming from within the city walls seemed almost absurd to her. Hearing this outsider, who had just yesterday killed another creature, talk of the insiders as the dangerous ones was just ridiculous.
“You’re in danger, too, aren’t you?” Mabon finally asked.
Nora looked him square in the eye. “The baby is the one in danger,” she said icily. “I’m not scared for myself.”
“You should be,” he said. “What will the insiders do if you get caught?” he asked. “Will they kill you, like they will Adam?”
“No,” she said, her face reddening. “I might lose my job and my privileges. I might be sent to do a job I’d hate. Or I might be just told off. Who knows? But they’d never terminate an insider. It’s forbidden. Insiders are safe within the wall.” She turned away, set Adam on the ledge, and made a business of checking his diaper. Her head was spinning.
“You’re sure?” Mabon asked, his voice rising. “You’re outside the wall now, you know,” he said, stepping closer to her. “The rules could be different out here. You may know what the insiders’ laws are now, but do you not know the past? Insiders killed all kinds of their own back then. Many women were murdered for siding with outsiders. They were told to choose. Those who refused or chose wrong were killed along with their husbands. Is it so hard to believe they could do it again?” He crossed his arms.
The tone of Mabon’s voice scared Nora, but she was too angry to back down. Her eyes flashed with gold as she turned to face him.
“That was long ago,” Mabon continued, “but nothing changes. You’re an outlaw who stole an outsider child. You know what that means. You broke a mortal law, and there is danger for you and the child, whether you believe it or not.” By now, his voice was shaking with anger and resentment.
Nora took a step backward and held Adam close to her chest. The gold anger had faded from her eyes, and been replaced with deep green fear.
Nora’s frightened eyes reminded Mabon of Minn’s, and he instantly felt sorry for being so blunt. He’d never meant to scare her. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and conciliatory. “Minn told me about Adam before she died. She was terrified, for herself and her baby. She made me pick her up and she made me promise to help her and Adam. What would frighten her so much that she’d leave her baby and jump from the wall?”
“She knew that her baby would die and she couldn’t stand knowing it or seeing it happen, I guess,” said Nora, relaxing just a tiny bit.
“Do you know how she managed to have him in the first place? I don’t know much about how things work on the inside, but I’m assuming insiders aren’t allowed to bear outsider children without being closely monitored.”
“She had illegal relations with a temple donor,” Nora explained, sitting down on the cave floor and bouncing Adam on her knee. “When she found out she was pregnant, she disappeared from her job at the Palace of the Temple Donors. She hid out underground in an abandoned church until after she’d had Adam, and then she tried to find a way to smuggle him out of Aahimsa. She died trying.” She looked up at him. “But you would know more about that than I would.”
Mabon nodded, and a faraway look came over him. He sat beside the fire, stirring the medicine, for a long time before he spoke again. “What are temple donors?” he asked.
Nora felt awkward talking to anyone, especially an outsider, about temple donors. It felt somehow unsuitable. She took a deep breath, and turned her green eyes to Mabon. “The temple donors provide the fluids used in the temple ceremony to start pregnancy and birth.” She paused, then stared at the baby. He gurgled happily.
“But how do they get the fluids?” he blushed. “I’ve heard something about that, but I don’t know if it’s true.”
Nora sighed and looked at him. “What did you hear?”
Mabon felt trapped in her eyes. His cheeks turned an even deeper crimson. “One of the rangers said they came from young outsiders who hadn’t been…changed.”
“That sounds right,” Nora said. “The fluids come from young donors and they’re stored in the freezing chambers at the temple. This is how babies are begun in the City of Aahimsa. In all other cities, it’s different now. Outsiders don’t exist anywhere in the whole world except for the lands of the city of Aahimsa. The other cities use cloning.”
“What’s cloning?” asked Mabon.
“I don’t know how it’s done, but it doesn’t require fluids. It makes a baby out of a woman’s body without a man.”
Mabon tipped the medicine from the pot into Adam’s nutrifier tube and Nora’s bottle. “Your medicine’s almost ready. It just has to cool. I’ll put the fire out in case someone smells the smoke.” He paused. “No one in Aahimsa uses cloning?” he asked.
“A few insiders from Aahimsa go to other cities to make children by cloning. But only the rich have money for that. Blanchefleur says they’re biting the hand that feeds them. She hates cloning and discourages it. She says it hasn’t been properly tested and she thinks we’ll lose what she calls ‘half of human evolution’ forever. She’d rather wait and see how things evolve. She swears that there will be no cloning in Aahimsa. She’s a practical woman, and she knows that Aahimsa’s manufacturing, and its wealth, need the cheap labour of outsider workers. And the replacements for depleted workers come from those temple fluids.”
“Who conceives these workers?” asked Mabon.
“The poor do this as service for the community. They are paid well for it.”
“I think the medicine is cool enough,” Mabon said, carrying it over and sitting down next to Nora.
Nora again noticed his sharp animal smell. She felt an odd sort of comfort as they sat together. He handed her the warm cup. She tasted it, then drank it down. Mabon took the empty cup from her and handed her the nutrifier tube. She began to feed Adam his medicine, a happy tune she couldn’t name playing in her head.
“Where did you learn the history of the insider?” she asked.
“At the ranger headquarters, when I was a boy and at the Manuhome with Dr. Ueland. The old workers told stories about the world before the walled city was built. We all know that outsiders ruled the earth, and that the insiders took our power away.”
“That’s true,” Nora said, taking the empty nutrifier tube from where it had fallen on Adam’s blanket. “Outsiders were always fighting about something or other and the world was always at war. Women, children, and the elderly suffered terribly and saw no hope for change. After a few wars too many, the planet was ruined.”
Mabon turned toward her, his side against the wall, his long arms around his knees, and listened as Nora continued telling him the history of the world as she knew it. He heard her words, and the sound of her voice relaxed him.
“Women knew something had to change. A few met and planned secretly, and eventually, after a great struggle, they convinced other women to join them. The leaders were patient, and they waited and planned and educated themselves until they had the political and economic power to change things. And then they did — quickly and effectively.”
Mabon rose to see to the fire, which had rekindled itself and begun to smoke again. He broke up some of the longer bits of tree branches and worked on building a kind of a frame to go above the fire.
“Do you still want to hear this?” Nora asked, lying a now-sleeping Adam back in his basket.
“Yes,” said Mabon. “Go on.”
“Slowly but surely, your fathers lost their rights and powers. There was no turning back. Women took control of the courts and legislatures, and then the military. There were revolts, of course, but with the help of the military, these were put down quickly and brutally. When it was all over, the women in power divided the world into insiders and outsiders and rebuilt the ruined cities to ensure their safety and security. For the first time in centuries, the world knew peace.”
Mabon turned from the fire. “Yes, a lot was taken away. The women must have been very angry. But the insiders haven’t fixed the problems. Insiders and outsiders are not different animals. They are different parts of the same one, and they are meant to live together.” He broke a few of the smaller bits of wood and added them to the fire, then continued, his voice low. “We were moved outside the walls. We were taught only what we needed to do our jobs. But we learned from our fathers before their time was up, and their knowledge has been passed down through the generations. At the Manuhome, I learned to read enough to do my job and to do numbers in bookkeeping. But most outsiders can’t read. We know that listening and remembering is important and we have found ways to pass learning along.”
He paused and looked into Nora’s soft green eyes. He was still nervous around her. The old rules about not touching and staying away were difficult to forget. Yet her closeness warmed him in ways he couldn’t explain. The present feeling was a sort of comfort and pleasure, like what he felt in a forest glade on a warm spring day, or what he’d felt when he had helped Minn.
Mabon removed the parcel of raccoon meat from his pack.
“What’s that?” Nora asked, her slender nose crinkling in disgust.
“Lucky killed a raccoon that tried to get into our supplies. The raccoon ate that big fish I stole from the bear, and then wounded Lucky as they fought, but I think the little guy will be all right. His wounds are already healing well. This meat is a gift from the raccoon to replace the fish he stole. I’ll feed some to Lucky, and we can cook the rest for ourselves.”
Nora looked at the hunks of red flesh with disgust as Mabon began cutting them in strips and suspending them over the frame he’d built to go above the small smoky fire. When he was done, he scooped some water into the small pot, added a fistful of oatmeal from his bag and a few small chunks of the meat, and placed it over the fire.
“We should get going as soon as the food is cooked and eaten,” Mabon said, stirring the contents of the pot. “If the smell of the meat doesn’t attract the rangers, the smoke definitely will.”
“What exactly do these rangers do, anyways?” Nora asked. “What are their jobs?”
“They’re caretakers of the lands outside Aahimsa — sort of like a police force or an army — and they also work for the controllers. The controllers can hear their every word, every thought. They always know where the rangers are and what they’re doing. If they lose control or contact with a ranger for some reason, they’ll terminate him. If they don’t like the ranger’s behaviour, they’ll terminate him. If a ranger disobeys them or breaks one of their rules, they’ll terminate him.”
Nora was speechless. All she could think about was how horrible Mabon’s life must have been, his every thought and move controlled by someone else. Nora had loved Alice, but she’d also felt smothered and powerless as her companion. But that was nothing compared to what Mabon had dealt with every day of his life.
Mabon emptied the contents of the pot into two bowls. He gave one to Nora and kept one for himself.
Nora smelled her stew and took a tentative taste. “It’s really hot,” she said. “But it’s actually pretty good. Where did you learn to cook?”
“I had to cook to feed myself,” Mabon said between mouthfuls. “I was given basic food rations as a cleaner, and I learned to cook by doing it. There was no other way.”
There was a long pause in the conversation as Nora and Mabon devoured their stew.
“So, who actually controls the controllers?” Nora asked when she was finished her stew.
“Blanchefleur, I guess,” said Mabon.
“That can’t be true,” said Nora, the gold specks returning to her eyes. “I lived in Blanchefleur’s home and was companion to her daughter, and I never saw any sign of that. From what you’ve told me, the controllers are capable of doing some pretty terrible things, violent things. Blanchefleur isn’t like that.”
Mabon shrugged. “Somebody has to control the controllers. And if not the mayor, then who? I saw myself how the insider controllers mistreated the rangers who disobeyed them. ‘Obey or die.’ Most of us would never have done what we did if there were any other way. It’s not the rangers who are the violent ones; it’s the controllers. And the insiders who control the controllers.”
Mabon’s smile was gone and his blue eyes looked hard and angry. He took Nora’s empty bowl from her hands and carried it to the ledge at the back of the cave, where he rinsed it with water from the pool. He then did the same thing with the pot. When he was finished, he stuffed both into his bag.
