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22. THE TERROR WARS: May The System Work For You.
Talah = alright, okay.
Corribannh = A penal colony (The Hive).

With Eenunh working I'm left to figure out my day. She tells me to check in with the job referral lady every day, so I do. She's got nothing. Unemployment must be very high in the off-season. All those water-trucks, teams of two and three, families, with children, gathering greenies, meant lots of jobs out in the waters... they call it 'The Waters', a seasonal flooding... what is a desert now is a great lake in the wet season, lots of jobs here at home, gathering, processing the harvest.

I wonder about how quickly we 'got poor', started rationing greenies, orangies, meatballs. I'd like to check into it. We went out about three out of every nine or ten days, whenever the lightning stopped. We filled our bins most days. Days we didn't were rare enough to be unremarkable, so I don't vividly remember them.

It's hard work, bending, processing, just as fast as you can go. Because shortly after the rain starts, and it starts about the same time every day, the greenies, the brown things, quit coming. The lizards; we might be over-harvesting. That son-of-a-bitch I killed was huge, compared to anything else I ever saw on the docks all season. Only The Machinist's trophy skull is anywhere close. I'd like to check into that. Maybe we need a size limit. Maybe we need to not hunt them at all for a season. I think the one per day is a rule, a... wildlife regulation. But they seemed to grow more scarce as time went on, not just smaller. We skinned them out and took them home to eat on days when we only caught a small one instead of turning them in with the catch.

Now, the dry season returns, and autumnal weather coming on... I think some folks have lived like this so long they know how to budget, when to quit hunting, if that's an option in the regimentation of this society, and go find their autumn job early, how to make it through to the next season, and the next. Mom knew how many quarts of green beans, tomatoes, to 'put up' to get her family through until the next summer began supplying fresh ones.

My status as an interpreter is confused by my involvement with Patrick. Sodaensus suggested that I might qualify too, after Eenunh and the lady cop established her services for pay. Turns out the lady cop wasn't 'authorized' to make her a paid interpreter, but through a licensing process it worked out and she got paid from that day on. Nice little payday when it came through. She serves as an on-call prison guard in the women's prison too. Extra money, and she feels secure there. I worry.

I applied, trying to get a modest income, something to... cobble together a living with my music income. They're considering it. Am I just a court-ordered visitor? Does that make me an interpreter, an interrogator, an investigator? I'm just trying for interpreter. Surely there's something to my status in service to the society that is worth compensation. In our visits if I hear Eenunh struggling with interpretation I turn to her and clarify, in Emoilihn, if I know the word, and English. She seems pleased and so do the cops. The ususal two-commannh team are there and they too are learning some English.

After supper Tinunh goes to her friend's house to do schoolwork. She comes to my door. I know she's coming. I wait for her to knock. I open it, she gives me a hug, smiles up to me, grins, golden irises flicker. She says, "See ya; wouldn't wanna be ya!" in a human voice. I have to be careful what I say around them! I think that was her whole purpose for coming! They asked for an interpretation, we worked it out, and now they use it against me! I explained it only works because it rhymes. They say it in Emoilihn, and it doesn't rhyme. She laughs. I laugh. She goes up the corridor at a run, slowing to pass people, striking up conversations, running again. Tinunh talks. To everybody.

Eenunh is depressed. She wants to go for a walk. She has on her heavy coat, so I put mine on too. Hers is more stylish. Mine's an oil-stained, hooded parka that will zip right up my chin. When I saw it at the flea market I knew we were made for each other.

We go out through the pub, through the little door. It's been snowing. The desert is white. The autumnal weather changed to full-on winter quite suddenly.

"My..." she hesitates, "... husband," she goes on, "knew how to take care of us. He knew what to do and when to do it. His father taught him where they lived, in Costaramannh Garibe. He saw it growing up. His father was up in the morning, kissed his wife goodbye, went to work, came home, taught... what a boy needed to know. It was still a matter of seasons for lots of it. Growing things, agriculture, was the main job for most people. Everyone had gardens around their house. They lived in the middle. They grew food, grew plants and trees to try to restore what The Terror Wars had destroyed in the city, Costaramannh. It was just 'life' in those days. The Terror Wars didn't come... didn't... begin... in his time. They were here, happening when he was born. He, we, grew up with war."

'The Terror Wars'? I want to question her about that, more than I have just to get a translation. But, she goes... on,

"He was killed." She stops. Stops walking. Stops talking. She looks out across the desert. There's nothing to see. The snow blows out there, up above, white-out conditions. Even the red sandstone cliff is across the patio is dimmed by the blowing snow. The cold wind tosses her hair. She crosses her arms over her chest, tucks her hands under her biceps. It twists her coat open at the collar. I reach and tuck the right lapel under the left. I want to make her close it up. It has little wooden 'barrel-shaped' devices that push through loops. She could be warmer.

"He was killed," she repeats. "One day... we... were sitting at the breakfast table. He was going to work. Tinunh was still asleep. She and I would spend the morning doing whatever we needed to do, grocery shopping... we called it grocery hunting... there wasn't much on the shelves and tables in the stores. We lived simply, hoping the leaders would make better decisions. My husband..."

She stops again, talking, keeps walking. Just saying the words seems to choke her up. I get the impression I'm hearing a story she has not told often. Who do you tell your stories to? They're not just for anyone's ears. Other people are not interested in listening to your tale of woe when they live one of their own. Children born and growing up with constant terror, constant war, means everyone has their story. Other people will interrupt to try to... 'fix' you, advise you how to get over it and move on. Those are usually the ones who, maybe, somehow, don't have a story. They can't handle your distress. Or maybe they just want to help. I don't know. She goes on, picking up her sentence,

"...and I... were... sitting at the breakfast table. I heard Tinunh call out, just waking up. She... might have had a bad dream. She wasn't just... fussing. She was screaming! I got up and went to get her. Just as I got to her door the explosion... threw me all the way up to the other end of the hall, into our bed-room! We had rooms, in buildings, there... in the city. Not... caves, like here. I grew up here, in caves."

My windowless efficiency apartment is a cave!

"He... came here looking for work. I was working serving food in a restaurant. It's not there any more. He drew a picture of me on the white tablecloth. It was good! I liked seeing myself! I sneaked it out of the wash bin and the boss saw me. I lost my job! I ran into him... in the corridor, in the corridor outside the restaurant. It was where the bakery is now. I told him what had happened. I was smiling, telling it. He asked me why. I didnt know if he was asking why I was smiling or why I stole the tablecloth. I told him I liked it. No one ever showed me what I looked like before. He told me there he was going to marry me and take me back to the city where he grew up. I laughed at him. He laughed too, but he found out where I lived. I told my Mother and Father. They came to me a couple days later, told me they thought it could be a better life, in the city. It wasn't. We left here, trekked across the desert to The White Road. People on the road would give us rides to wherever they were turning off on side roads into the pine forests, the hills. The desert ends if you go far enough south, or north I'm told. I've never been up there.

We got to the city, went to his parents' house. We got married there. By the spring I was pregnant, with Tinunh. We lived there... we were very happy there... until... The Terror Wars shifted again and came there. He worked in the government, a... voice for stopping war. He said, "It's time for poor people to stop killing each other's children for rich people." and soon everyone was quoting it. He said you can build up a... force for war, soldiers, weapons, and then you can go away, retire, get killed, simply die, and someone else comes and commands your soldiers and their weapons and machines. And they can do good or bad for the people. They came, the new leaders, and commanded some of us to wage war on others. City against city; poor people against poor people. Weapons at your back, weapons in front of you. Weapons in your own hands. All you can do is try to stay alive. You can't... reason with people with weqpons in the field, get them to agree to stop the fighting, resist their orders, make peace Everyone saw the truth of it, quoted him, promoted his ideas. He.. made speeches, got... promoted as a diplomat, a soldier. War slowed down, and stopped! People wouldn't tolerate anyone advocating war, wouldn't follow, wouldn't obey an order to go wage war. Soldiers would tell invaders to stop or they would be overwhelmed and no mercy shown. It was demonstrated. We learned how to talk and get them to stop, to go home, to leave us in peace.

"The... explosion," I prompt her. She goes on,

"He was killed. I was deafened! My back hurt! The backs of my arms hurt! The blast... I was stinging all over.
I scrambled on my hands and knees to Tinunh. She was screaming, terrified! I could see her mouth! I could barely hear her voice! I picked her up, turned to go back across the room, down to the room where... I'd left... my husband sitting, smiling, at our table. There was no room, no table, no walls. I was looking out at the sky! Down at the street! The whole side of the building was gone. There were two floors above us, two below, before... and now, sky, and billowing smoke.

I barely heard the guns fire again! But I heard them! I turned and ran out in the hall. People were saying things, screaming in agony I thought, running one way, running back, running up ramps, down ramps. I went back in our... our house, and started packing clothes and anything we had, his... his tools, Tinunh's toys, my clothes. It was..."

She explains the word for winter, that it was time for cold weather. You would need... she called it 'energy clothing' to survive in a cold city.

"I rolled our two blankets, found string on the floor... I don't even know where it came from. It was like... I see why people believe in a supernatural... caring... entity, that would provide in such a situation. I tied the blankets, in a roll, like we did to go gather berries, put on the pack-bag. It was too heavy. I took things out, my dresses. I had many dresses... seven, I remember. I thought I was a rich woman! One had cost a whole weeks wages! It was elegant, for... parties, events; not for... winter. I took most of them out, kept just my durable work clothes, my canvas pants and shirts, underwear.

Rocks... bits of wood from the building... were falling out of my sleeves! I pulled my dress off. It was full of holes in the back where the blast hit me. There were things embedded through the dress... splinters... rocks... in the back of my arms, my back, my butt, the backs of my legs."

I had noticed small scars, just a few, in her back, her legs.

"It stung! Tinunh was calm now. She saw what was going on, got behind me. One little scream of her own and she started picking splinters and rocks out of my skin. She was thorough. It took a long time. I felt better the colder I got. She searched in the bathroom for ointment, found it, applied it. She took care of me. She was so tiny. She was five solar cycles old. Children... babies... should not have to grow up with war!

I kept one knit dress. I was... stupefied... I... remember... trying to decide, 'Red one? Blue one? Red? Blue?' I felt... crazy... debating it like 'fashion' had any... relevance any more. I had the blue one, I remember, later, and wore it under my work dress, to keep warm. I made a dress for Tinunh out of it when it wore out for me. I could carry her in a sling, under my coat. She was so cold... for.. for a couple lunar cycles. But she... She adapted to our new reality better than I did. I... I took strength from her. If she could think there was... nothing normal or abnormal... just another day and doing what you had to do to survive... I could..."

She stops, again. Looks across the desert. The cold wind makes my eyes water. Hers too. I turn her to walk with the wind at our backs, north up the patio. We pass our pub, her balcony. I position myself to take the brunt of the wind, gusts sometimes pushing me to make a little hop instead of a step.

"We lived in bombed out buildings for many days," she goes on. "We found food. People gave us food. Everyone was desperate. But the Emoilihn took care of each other as best we could. We boiled water to drink. It... it was dangerous to have a fire. There were soldiers fighting in the streets. Battles broke out at all hours of the day and night! I think they shot at us just for entertainment. You didn't know it until the first projectile hit something... someone"

"One evening I was looking for a place to spend the night. We were near the river, out on the last loop around Costaramannh. I saw a line of people, and big white trucks, like the water-trucks, but longer. I saw the trucks fill up, people in the windows, putting packages up over their heads, finding seats. The truck would pull out, and go past the broken buildings, cross the bridge over the river, north, up The White Road, disappear over the hills among the pine trees. Another truck, another load, up The White Road. It was late when we got on one. Tinunh was excited, looking out the window, standing on the seat, looking over the peoples' heads, looking around, looking, looking, listening, listening, talking. She talked to everybody. They talked to her, smiled. She made jokes and laughed. They laughed. I hadn't laughed or heard laughter for many days. I could hear again, and laughter was... was like medicine.

It... seemed like just an adventure! People were happy to be going somewhere, vacation, a trip, hopefully an escape from The Terror Wars. I was scared because last time we were on The White Road it was The Terror Wars perpetrated from up north. He brought us south, came south trying to get away from the ones from the north that were closing in here. He... brought us... took us from Entemannh Garibe, here, to Costaramannh Garibe. This time they came from the south. It could happen either way. He... my husband told people,
"If you're not at war, your leaders build up armies and make war on someone else. Then those people seek revenge, build up armies, make war back, but the people who made war on them are gone, dead or off somewhere else. More innocent people get hurt, want revenge. Children grow up, wanting revenge. It's madness. The Emoilihn family is at war with itself! The children of the poor against the children of the poor!" Entamannh said. "They listened."

Again, it became a... a point of view spoken everywhere. The Emoilihn spoke of him as the leader they wanted to wield government authority, to stop the terrorism, the Terror Wars.

It got dark. Tinunh finally settled down, arranged my pack against the cold truck wall, made me lie against it. Once she had supervised me, covered me with a blanket, she snuggled under against me, and went to sleep. I woke up. My blanket was gone. I looked on the floor, didn't see it. I had to raise up to look on the floor in the aisle. It wasn't there, but I saw it. I made that blanket. I knew the design, the colors, off-white natural, my orange-dyed and red-dyed yarns. Tinunh woke up, shivering. She asked where the blanket was. I told her,

"Someone else needed it for their family."

She said, "You gave it away?"

I said, "No. They... just needed it... and took it. We have to be careful," I told her, "just like in the city. People are desperate. The rules don't apply sometimes. They have to think of themselves, their families. She got in the pack-bag, fished out her small blanket, covered me with it. "Who took it?" she asked me. I pointed to the people ahead on the right, my blanket over the shoulder of an old woman.

Tinunh said, "We need it for our family," very simple, very factual. Five year old Tinunh. She walked down the aisle, me calling her name, telling her to come back. I was exhausted, physically, emotionally, drained. I... could... no longer... function. People were watching. She went to the seat where our blanket was. There was a man there, but he wasn't under the blanket. An old woman and two tiny children were. Tinunh talked to the man. He hung his head, sobbed. She touched his shoulder, talked to him, for a long time. The truck bounced, swerved, and she staggered, held on to seat backs and armrests. She put her hand back on his shoulder, talked. She came back and told me who had our blanket. I knew who had it, I mean, where it was, but she knew his name, knew his wife's name, knew the children's names, their two grandchildren, knew where they had lived in the city, knew the names of the children's parents, that he had gone to war, never came back, and she went looking for him, and never came back.

"They need it," she said. "Their family."

"She climbed onto the seat, told me all, and fell asleep. It was okay. She told me it was 'talah' that they stole our blanket. She told me 'It's okay (She uses the Emoilihn word, 'ta-lah', accent on the second syllable, like 'alright' or 'okay'). Because they needed it. 'We needed it,' tiny Tinunh said, 'but the old grandmother and the tiny children needed it. The old grandfather needed it for his family.' "We have each other," Tinunh told me. "We have each other. They need our blanket. Her... wisdom... selflessness... she was her father's child."

"The Sunstar came up. There was snow falling, snow across the desert landscape, like today, but not as deep; new snow. No pine trees on the right, only on the left. Desert on the right. Hills on the left. They were putting us out on The White Road. I knew where we were. I knew my home; Corribannh. I knew my Mother and Father were there, across the desert. I thought I was almost home! I could see where the trucks had let people out, turned, and gone back to Costaramannh. I thought we could do it too. We could go to Entemannh Garibe. It wasn't... called that then. It was Corribannh, a penal colony where they sent criminals. They built it, the criminals, cut it out of the stone. But they said it was a city now, and we could live there, away from the Terror War to the south.

People were bundling up. Picking up their sacks, sorting through sacks, offering things to other people, leaving things on the road, and setting off, across the snowy desert. There were tracks where other trucks had left earlier transports. Everyone just followed the foot tracks of other people. The snow was covering them up, but there were so many people.

The wind came into us, into our faces, blew into my clothes, from the northeast, blowing southwest. The wind never stopped. Never stopped. See how it blows today, but from the southwest, but constant, unrelenting, cold and hard.

People stopped to rest. Others passed them by. I looked back. I could see my blanket, the old man, old woman, each of them with a child tucked inside their coats. We stopped to rest. Tinunh got up and was ready to go on. I said we would wait for her friends. She said, "What friends?" They were there by now, the old woman clutching the blanket around her, a curious little face peeping out at her collar. "We'll walk with you," I told them. Tinunh and I walked in front of them, blocked the wind a little I thought.

The Sunstar was going down, shining somewhere above the snow clouds. Tinunh said, to the old man, "We should find a place to stop for the night." She was five solar circuits (years) old. She became an adult. She had to do it so she did. Her vocabulary grew. She talked to everybody, listened attentively, made them laugh. I'd hear laughter, look and there would be my daughter, little... ambassador, cheerleader, comedian. She would come back, all business, do what we had to do, tell me stories, make me laugh, give courage, hope.

"It was the desert, there," Eenunh said, stopping, pointing across the desert, "where we went to get the berries. That's where we were, in the snow and cold. We put on all the clothes we had, looked like round people, big round arms and legs and bodies. Tinunh made jokes about it. I laughed, but cried when I laughed, so she stopped making jokes for me. I couldn't... manage two emotions.

We slept in the desert. We got behind a little hill, an outcrop of rock and woody bushes, where the wind was not as hard but just as constant, just as cold! We kicked out the snowdrift, trampled it down. The old people and their children laid down with us, wrapped in our blanket. Other people stopped and 'camped' too.

When... we woke up, just a little light in the east, Sunstarrise, some people were getting up, picking up, going on. The sky was red to the east. People began to walk by. The ground was frozen. Their feet crunched in the icy snow. People had to pull their blankets and clothes loose from the frozen ground! We had chosen... Tinunh had chosen... a spot behind a little hill, a sand dune with a woody bush on top, a low rock ridge, a little out of the wind. Tinunh had bade the old man, old woman, with the children, to lay down there with us. She helped them lay out the blanket on the ground, pulled it up over them, tucked them in. Five year old Tinunh.

Tinunh went to wake them. They could not wake. The blanket was not over them. It was under them and where they had folded it over it had fallen down beside them. Tinunh... I saw... I saw her, reach inside the old peoples' coats, pushing, pulling, where the children were, first the old woman, then around and the old man. She came back.

"They won't be walking today" she said. "They won't be walking today." She looked back toward them... was... thinking. She didn't want to say it; then said it. "They won't need our blanket any more."

I got up. We worked to roll them off of it, then to carefully pull the blanket loose from the ground. Tinunh tucked their clothes around them, like that mattered to them any more. It mattered to her. The old man had a corn-knife. She took it, strapped it across her chest. She looked across the desert, started walking. I looked at the bodies there on the ground, and followed. That was... the grave... the pile of stones we passed when we..." she looks around, says quietly, "when we went to pick the berries. We were one more night in the desert. Our blanket... was better than nothing. The next day we were... here. Soldiers had been here. The dead were piled on the patio, stacked like... like greenies in a bin.

My parents were not in their house. We had to register to live here. Everyone everywhere was standing in lines. Lines to register for housing. Lines for food. Lines for work. Lines. We got my parents' apartment. They owned it. There were records. So I got to own it.

"She was five years old." Eenunh speaks the words like a drunk woman. I'm... afraid.

Someone's calling my name! I turn back, scan the windswept patio through the driving snow. I see movement in a balcony up on the second floor

"That's the balcony by your house," I tell Eenunh.

"Thimiannh!" she says. We both break into a rapid walk, slipping in the snow, going as fast as we can. Eenunh veers to the face of the cliff. The wind is less there, sort of a vacuum, it seems. I look up. He's gone from the balcony. We're at the pub, in, and he's coming down the ramp, points us back out.

"Briggs! Your Briggs," he says, wants to bring the crew down here to wait the rest of the three months. They're bored up there. Men are fighting. The three Koobahbahnnh panel are going up, to see the ship, to make a decision! Sodaensus is out there. She insisted it was part of her investigation into what happened down here with Patrick, and... that she needs... has to have... the two interpreters. The Koobahbahnnh agreed. They want interpreters too! They're out there!" he says, pointing off the patio into the desert. "Right now! Ready to go! Come on!"

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