Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

And waited.

And waited.

Until the dunes whistled.

We mind our own business, the Chief says to Isiuwa. We stay alive because we do not seek beyond our means.

Nata finds Tasé just easy. The small boy, scrawny, elbows like the edge of a box, eyes so sunken they could hold seas: he would never be found with the courtyard troupe. He was always somewhere else (and even when he was, he wasn’t). He is the kind of son Isiuwa thinks the Chief shouldn’t have; a sickling, eyes always to the sky in thought. It is probably best for everyone that he always takes off, always goes missing.

Nata finds him by the old, dead dwellings, the dump site of shelters of those from Isiuwa who have been taken by the dune song. Somewhere in there lie Mam’s best tools, implements, all the things she salvaged from the world before, which she refused to be allowed to be confiscated for the Elders’ archive. All these, alongside their shelter itself, which was hacked down to ensure it was never rebuilt. It would’ve been burnt if Isiuwa could, but fire is too dangerous a thing in these times.

Tasé squats right in the middle of it, his feet ashy, perched on some hard debris with a slate, writing on the polished surface with a white rock. He is the Chief’s only child, and his role in becoming a novitiate was written before he was born; he is going to be given the chance to be the future of Isiuwa. He does spend a lot of time with the Elders, mostly learning to scribble the shapes that represent Isiuwa’s language and sounds, but he barely ever spends time with the sentry group or the courtyard troupe. He is mostly alone, practicing.

Nata approaches slowly. He looks up.

“Will you come with me?” Nata says.

The boy stops writing, his eyeballs dancing in their sockets. “Where?”

“I’m going to find Mam.”

He pauses, then writes something on the slate, slowly. “Your Mam?”

“Yes,” Nata says.

He thinks for another second. “And my Mam too?”

Nata is silent for a beat. Everyone knows the stories about Tasé’s mother, about the Chief’s first wife. Isiuwa says she too was errant, was a madwoman like Nata’s Mam, talking about getting away to someplace else. Isiuwa says the Chief was right to let Isiuwa offer her to the gods beneath the dunes, to the breath of their wrath.

“Maybe,” she says.

He scribbles some more, lays down his materials, rises, and dusts off his buttock.

“Okay,” he says.

Nata has always known it would be this easy when the time came. Tasé was never really here. He has always lived somewhere else, but Isiuwa just can’t see it. Once, she asked him why he was only learning to write, and he said he was going to need it when he got away from here. It was then she realized he was just like her Mam, like his Mam before him.

“You know where to meet me,” Nata says. “Come after dusk, when the sentries are drunk. And don’t tell anyone.”

“Dusk?” he says. “It’s moonday. There’ll be whistling today.”

“Yes,” Nata says. “Exactly.”

Anyone who leaves belongs to the gods, the Chief tells Isiuwa. They shall not be allowed to return.

The first time, Nata didn’t make it far. She found nothing but sand and sun in all directions, the shadows cast by the dunes falling over her when the day began to wane. She found a few skeletons of people and animals, dried out, and a few artifacts she had never seen before, which she salvaged. Her water ran out. She did not find Mam, not even her dead body. She did not find a whirlwind to take her where Mam had gone.

The sentries found her when she returned to the fence. They swooped in, their foreheads shiny beneath their cloaks, faces long and lined and expressionless. They rounded her up without a word, because who needs words when the agreement is unspoken?

They did what needed to be done and paraded Nata through the settlement, carrying her in the carved ceremonial stretcher, offering her as a sacrifice, a warning, a performance of her chosen path to death, into the mouth of the gods. Isiuwa emerged from their shelters and flocked behind the sentries, shaking their heads sadly, whispering, pointing. They reached out to touch Nata, maybe in pity, maybe in solidarity, maybe asking, “Why?” The sentries whipped their hands off. They always returned.

The Chief’s shelter sits in its own courtyard in the center of the settlement, the largest and only one with an anteroom, where they set Nata before him. Isiuwa crowded around. The Chief is just like every other man in the settlement, only slightly plumper and with a permanent frown on his forehead. He doesn’t dress any differently from the others either, cloaked in the exact same cloth, except for the large woven headpiece made of fragile beads that Nata knows is passed down from chief to chief.

The decision was swift and simple. As custom, she could not be allowed back, lest she anger the gods and the dunes advance on Isiuwa. She would be sent back out with nothing, not even a cloak, to ensure her transition into the mouth of the dune gods was easy and hassle-free. This would ensure the many moons of carefully created community order were not put in jeopardy due to her self-indulgence. The gods would understand. Plus, it was a favor. It was her desire to leave, after all.

But, Tasé. He changed everything. Right in the middle of proceedings, with no regard for the court, he scuttled over to her, kneeling there in the center of the anteroom with her found artifacts laid out on the floor before her. He was younger then, smaller. He touched her hair and smiled. He fondled her ear. He pulled a hand from behind himself and offered her a piece of bread. She took it and munched.

Isiuwa held their breath and waited. Tasé had never found purchase with anybody, no matter how much the Chief tried. Not even his nurses could get him to do anything. He was a person of his own, and the Chief had come to accept that he would exist in solitary and die. There was no hope for Tasé in the world that was to come forth from this, where the strength of community and order would be the sole decider for survival. People like Tasé would have no place in that world. But the Chief had not quite moved on to this acceptance, and Tasé still represented a glimmer of hope for him, a hope that had suddenly rekindled.

The Chief cleared his throat and asked for Nata to be held in lockup. She was there until the next day, and that was how she knew she wasn’t going to be ejected.

No deserter had ever been held. The punishment was always the same right after the courtyard declaration: the sentries would open the gate and prod, prod, prod until the person was several steps away from the bamboo fence. And even if they cried and cried, the gates would be shut against them. Then they would wander away, their cries for help sailing back to Isiuwa in the wind. When it came time for the dune gods to whistle, their wail would be cut mid-scream, and then there would be nothing but silence and safety for Isiuwa once again.

She was brought before Isiuwa the next morning. There was, after all, some use for this one, the Chief said. It would be a waste to discard this one so uselessly because she wasn’t in her right mind, following in the footsteps of the bad example set by her Mam. The troupe would pray to the gods on her behalf on the next trip, while she would atone by serving the community. That service would take the form of becoming a serving companion to Tasé, helping him assimilate into the community and become stronger and better to take up his role in the coming future.

Isiuwa hummed and nodded and praised the Chief for his wisdom, forethought, and benevolence. And this was how Nata knew Mam was right after all: that the gods that did exist were not beneath the dunes at all, but words planted in the mind. This was how she knew she was going to leave again.