Damon Knight - Orbit 21

Kiloma rolled over like a sack of hard-get grain. “What are you doing, child?”

“I’m—“

A buzz-whine swooped and smacked into the leather door flap.

“Night-bite!” I screamed. We both hit the candle at the same time. It fell to the ground and winked out. We hugged each other as the night-bite scrabbled against the door-jamb. It scratched down to the ground, where it snuffled and dug against the joint of packed dirt and doorsill. I began to shake. Auntie pulled my head down into her bosom and covered my ears. But I could still hear the creature probe and scratch at every seam in the door. At last it grew discouraged and flapped away. I sobbed and panted and hiccupped.

Auntie stroked my hair. There was a terrible smell on her swollen hands. “Child, I wish you weren’t always so afraid,” she sighed. “Now what does it say in the Bible?”

I choked out, “Jesus is always with me, even to the end of the world.”

“Calm down. It also says, ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’ You say it.”

“ ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’ “

“I want you to lie down and say it to yourself fifty times.”

I did, and must have gone to sleep, for the cold dawn found Aunt Kiloma nudging me. I flashed awake.

“Oh! Let’s see if we still have the grunt!”

“Don’t worry, child. I know it’s there. Come and see what I have.”

I rolled out of my mat and followed Auntie to her corner. She lifted her pillow. I stared at what lay under it. It was a chunk of rottenwood with a hole carved in it. A crude carving of a night-grunt was jammed into the hole. When I pulled it out, one of the crumbly rottenwood legs fell off. The rotten-egg odor of it hit my nostrils.

“I’m sorry I ruined your sculpture.”

“It’s not sculpture, honey. It’s prayer.” She pulled her hair back from her puffy cheeks and temples as she sat back to smile at me.

“Huh?”

“It’s true. We covered that pit over a week ago and haven’t caught a blessed thing. Yesterday I decided to do something about it. So I carved what I wanted, put it under my pillow, and prayed about it all night. And it worked!” She hugged her knees and laughed.

“But that’s idolatry.”

Her face changed. “No, it isn’t, honey. It’s to help me concentrate on what I want.”

“But—”

“Look, honey, I know you can’t help it, not knowing the deeper things of the spirit. If it works, then it’s right, isn’t it?”

Now I was mad. I could hear the other people shouting excitedly as they raced toward the game pit. I didn’t want to join them until I had calmed down. After washing, I climbed a many-trunk tree and remembered the dusk when my mother had looked at me and burst into tears. She wouldn’t tell me why she was crying, and after going to bed I crept back in the dark to listen to her sobbing to my father.

“Jim, I don’t think I can stand it anymore.”

“All things work together for the good of—”

“I know it! But some days I can’t handle knowing Hope could have been a genius if it weren’t for her iodine deficiency. If she has children, they’ll be cretins!”

“Shh, shh, shh. “

“I’m tired of being dirty. I’m tired of being sick. I’m tired of being hungry. We live like savages!”

“Shh, darling.”

“But what do we have to look forward to? We’ll never be rescued after this long. We’ll have idiots for grandchildren!”

“We know the Lord’s hand is upon us. I can’t stand to see you cry.”

“I know it, but there’s nothing left to do.”

My mother cried for a long time. I didn’t know what cretins were, but I knew what idiots were; and suddenly I understood why I was shorter and uglier than the pictures of my cousins on Earth, and why I sometimes couldn’t understand the lessons my parents gave me in the dark night hours. I had hair the color of mud instead of shining red like my parents. My blue eyes were dull and weak. We were all dull and weak from lack of iodine, lack of medicine, lack of food on this planet we called Sulphur as a synonym of Hell.

The next morning we had family devotions as usual. My parents never mentioned their conversation. I never did either. I thought about it, though, every time my aunt said I couldn’t help it if I didn’t understand. But there was something wrong with her rottenwood carving. If I thought about it long enough I would figure it out; but I was calm now and wanted to watch the excitement too.

When I arrived at the pit, Gregory was arranging the archers. Suzannie rushed up to me and grabbed my arm and danced.

“Think of it, Hope! Steaks and cutlets and fat!” She whirled away to gape at the grunt pawing at the splintered logs. Aunt Kiloma hobbled up and joined her.

“Look at that!” shouted Gregory, and pointed. “That log there didn’t break. The grunt could have climbed that and gotten out if its leg weren’t broken. Next time, we’ll build the pit better.” Most of the people looked and nodded.

My aunt smiled at me and mouthed the words, “Its leg is broken.” I thought of the rottenwood carving and felt sick.

After the grunt was killed, Gregory strode over to me and slapped me on the back. “Listmaker! What day is it?”

“Forty-five years, one hundred forty days since the crash.”

He slapped me again. “Good girl! Mark our success on your calendar tree.”

“Okay.”

He watched the people hack at the carcass for a moment. A buzzfly settled on his cheek but he waved it off. “Why did it take us so long to build a good game pit?”

I don’t know why he asked the question. Our parents had been able to salvage so little from the crash: a family Bible, a few clothes, grain seeds that died of fungus the first year, shards of plastiglass, jagged bits of metal we used for knives and spear-tips. It’s hard to dig a deep pit out of clay and rock when you’re sick, when all the daylight hours must be spent in foraging, when you have improvised shovels that are constantly breaking.

When the butchers were finished, we all hoisted leaf-wrapped bundles of meat onto our heads and marched single-file back to our huts. We skirted the patch of grand-daddy ground-joint. The banshee trees quivered as small creatures popped in and out of the slotted bark. Suzannie swung the grunt’s ten tusks on a loop as we sang and joked. Yellow dust clotted on the blood-soaked leaves, but what did we care? We were going to eat!

It was my turn to forage while the others prepared the food. When I went into the hut to get my basket, I saw Kiloma showing her carving to Suzannie and Francis.

A week later it was time to wash the bedding. When I gathered up my aunt’s pillow, another carving dropped out. My parents had drawn pictures for me in the dirt, so I recognized the shape.

It was a rocket. I hesitated a moment, and then shoved it under a pile of stinking baskets.

I carried the blankets to the river that wound down from the crash-site plateau and jumbled hills. (“Actually, it’s only a trickle,” my father had said. “Now calculate the minuscule volume of water passing this point in twenty-four standard Earth hours.”) I slopped them into the pond. A shadow fell over me. I looked up at Aunt Kiloma.

“All right, honey. Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“My prayer ship.”

I looked down, ashamed for myself and Auntie. “Under the baskets.”

“What’s wrong, honey? Why did you hide it?”

“I don’t understand why you’re worshiping idols.”

“It’s obvious you don’t understand. It’s only to help me pray. You saw how I got us that night-grunt. Now I’m going to get us home.”

“It’s God who has to do all that.”