Крис Бекетт - The Turing Test

Howls of incredulity and disgust all round.

“What?! These pathetic specimens! I’ve seen more life in a limp lettuce leaf!”

That sort of thing. Look at the faces though. It’s all part of the game. The Wanderers are never good enough. The grandees are always nuts to let them in.

Anyway, the grandee in purple holds up her hands again for silence.

“We will open the gate, but it will be for a gauntlet run only! We are giving these boys an opportunity, but they must prove themselves worthy of our Mothers.”

A gauntlet run! Wow! The crowd erupts ! You’ve never seen anything like it. They were absolutely cock-a-hoop. And pretty soon the wall starts to empty as all the excited huthi and their foster-children run back down into the town to start getting ready.

Ah, here are some more of those bowava balloons. I don’t quite know how they got in here.

The toilet? Yes of course. It’s upstairs and straight across the landing.

And now this is the build-up for the run.

You see all the huthi are jostling for space on the street outside their houses, trying to get a good position for themselves and their foster-children. These are Bunnoo and Thrompin’s neighbours and their kids. We loved that little girl, didn’t we Lydia? Five years old. Look at that grin ! That’s a basket of tomatoes she’s got there. Her big sister has got a bucket of mud.

Here is Bunnoo, look, with her big stick, limbering up gleefully for the sport.

“Boy are there going to be some sore arses when I’m done!” she chortles.

(Yet you couldn’t imagine a milder, gentler person than Bunnoo.)

Ah, and here are Karl and Kara, look, together as usual, with a big sack of vegetable scraps. Thrompin there has some rotten eggs. Everyone seems to save up rubbish especially for these occasions.

Here’s a view of the whole street. It’s all a big party for them, a gauntlet run, it’s like a carnival.

Here is Karl again. Oh no sorry, it’s Kara. The two of them are so alike!

Down below meanwhile, the soldiers have done a bit of scouting around to make sure there aren’t more Wanderers hiding out there somewhere, ready to make a surprise attack when the gate is opened. (That’s always the worry. The Wanderers will take over a town, murder the huthi and set up with the Mothers. After all, no other human society has such a thing as huthi! Remote as Apirania is, they are dimly aware of that.)

Once the soldiers were satisfied there wasn’t going to be an attack, the town grandees gave the order, and they let those twenty Wanderers in. We were halfway up the hill, but we knew at once when it had happened because of the shouting that went up.

Pretty soon afterwards the first of them appeared. Here he is look. Poor kid, he was already covered in eggs and tomatoes and so on, not to mention bleeding from his head. And here is kind gentle Bunnoo if you please, running out to hit him with a stick and grinning all over her jolly face. Then more eggs and tomatoes and a whole bucketful of mud. And everyone shouting out that he’s not a proper man at all and you’d need a magnifying glass to see his… Well, you get the picture.

(He gave up pretty soon after, actually. He stopped and walked back down to the gate. No-one harasses them when they’ve given up. Someone by the gate sorts them out with food and a jug of beer and a pat on the head before shoving them back outside.)

But here’s the next one. A bit more determined looking, isn’t he? And the one right behind him was pretty determined too. He was the oldest of them and their spokesman the previous night.

Ah, this is another one who gave up.

“Well done, lad,” goes Thrompin, who five minutes earlier was telling him he was the most pathetic excuse for a man she had ever seen.

“Better luck next time,” says Bunnoo.

Poor kid, he was crying.

Only about ten of them got as far as where we were. The rest had already given up. As soon as the Wanderers had passed them all the kids would run up the narrow little steps between the houses that are a shortcut between the loops of the road so as to get ahead of them again. They wanted to chuck a few more eggs at any Wanderers who got to the top, and to see them go in at the door of the Motherhouse, if any of them got that far.

Only two actually did. The spokesman and one other. Here you are, look. (I ran up after the kids, you see, and managed to catch the moment when the door opened for the second one. Lydia wasn’t quick enough, to her great chagrin. Not quite as young as we were, eh, Lyds?)

It’s an imposing building the Motherhouse isn’t it? Like the keep of some medieval castle. They hung out those green and red flags in honour of the occasion. Green for fertility, red for blood I believe. Right up at the top there you can see some of the older Mothers looking down over the battlements. The younger ones are confined inside.

Here’s a closer shot. You can see that the gauntlet continued right up to the door. Got worse in fact. Those are huthi soldiers there, poking this boy with the butts of their spears.

I know. He’s really bleeding quite badly.

But as soon as the door opened the jeers turned to cheers. A couple of young Mothers were in there to greet him and lead him off to wash him and tend to his wounds. You can just see him there. It’s a bit dark I know, but there he is, looking forward to a week of banquets and pampering and sex with every Mother he wants, before he has to go back out again onto the plain.

No, it’s not a very good shot I’m afraid. Everyone was pushing to get a view and I was being jostled. You can’t really get much sense of what it might be like inside.

Ah yes. Now these are the Wanderers who didn’t make it, back at their camp outside. At least they’ve all got something to eat now, and some new clothes and blankets. And the kids are up on the walls until all hours calling down questions to them.

“What town did you come from then?”

“How come you gave up so quickly?”

“How did you get that bandaged arm?”

Look at their moothai tucking into that pile of cabbages!

And here is Karl on the wall, look. He’s asking them questions about what it’s like on the plain. Now that the excitement of the run is over it’s all become a bit more real for him. He really wants some answers.

The Wanderers are telling him it’s absolutely brilliant, and how they have been into dozens of Motherhouses and been with scores of Mothers – and how they just didn’t really feel like it this time or they would have completed the run with ease. Formara’s nothing, apparently, compared to some of the towns they’ve been to. Formara is an absolute breeze.

But look at Karl’s face. What’s going on behind those narrowed eyes?

Does anyone need another drink? Lydia, could you do the honours?

Yes, now this is a few months later. A couple more groups of Wanderers have been and gone including one group that was judged too large to safely let inside the walls. And now it’s the ceremony which they call the Tukanza . The Division.

You can see this is the Motherhouse again, but the flags are black and white this time. And here are the pubescent boys and girls going in wearing their black and white Tukanza robes. We weren’t allowed inside, sadly, and people were rather vague about what went on. Actually I think the huthi honestly don’t know much about it. They don’t even seem to care. As far as they are concerned, the Tukanza is just a little quirk of the merthi and the manahi. Ordinary People have better things to do with their time!

Here are Karl and Kara going in. Don’t they look tense? And small too, under that great towering wall of the Motherhouse.