Changer’s Moon

30

Julia wedged herself into an embrasure and frowned at the ugly trampled plain below. The grass will be thick and tall next year. So much fertilizer. She moved a shoulder out from the stone, slipped the rifle loose. She’d like to throw it in the muck with the bodies, but likes didn’t seem to count much these days. She felt drained, old, yet oddly open. Open to the life ahead, the challenge of this new world, this newer, fresher community. It seethed with possibilities and hope. Much experience had taught her the fallacy of new beginnings made by the same old people; whatever the starting point, sooner or later the ancient problems showed up. Still, there was always the chance that this time would be different. She set the rifle beside her and looked at her hands. The one thing she wanted most was to get back to her writing, to put the words and ideas churning in her head into physical form where she could play with them, shape them into pleasing rhythms, be surprised by them, by what she didn’t know she knew. She was tired of this immersion in activity, itchy at the lack of privacy, beginning to resent the meetings, the endless talk, the painful and complex melding of two disparate cultures and traditions, the acrimonious clashing of the adherents of the several ideologies the exiles had brought with them. Thank god for daddy Sam, she thought. If anything works, it’s because he makes it work. Here’s almost as good; his tongue’s got two ends and he knows his people inside out. She shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, the way he maneuvered us. His heart isn’t in it. She glanced at the two trees atop the ruined cliff, sighed. They were an impossibility. They made her uncomfortable, yet there was no way she could escape their presence here in the valley. Even inside the buildings when she couldn’t see them, she knew they were there. Magic. It permeated this place and she wanted out. She wanted paper and ink and quiet and, oh god, a place of her own where she could shut out the world and work.

She eased out of the embrasure and looked along the wall; there were a few more solitaries like her up here, getting away from the hordes crowded into inadequate living space in the Biserica. Mostly Stenda. They were a touchy bunch, willing enough to pay their fair share for roads and guards to keep them free of robbers, and that part of the tithing they thought of as a bribe to keep the mijlockers busy with their own affairs and out of the Stenda holds. Willing as long as no one messed with them. They’d been an autonomous enclave under the Heslins and saw no reason to change that. She looked at the rifle again, set her mouth in a grim line and slipped it back on her shoulder. A day or two more and the draft constitution would be finished, printed and passed out to everyone, ready to be voted on. Dort had the press set up, working on battery power. Half the Biserica had crowded round during the trial run, fascinated, full of questions, speculating on the changes such a machine would make in the life they knew. She smiled as she thought of the exiles. They’d come largely from the artisan and artist classes. They’d been accustomed to working hard, not because they had to, but because they liked what they did. They were happily at work now, adapting Biserica knowledge and skills to their own requirements. Every day brought something new, converting the trucks to run on alcohol, a solar-powered pump and hand-made pipes-we will have those hot baths and flush toilets soon enough, though Liz… Julia shuddered, remembering the blackened thing landing beside her. God knows what else they’d come up with by the end of winter. Michael and several other youngsters were arguing about how to make microchips in a society that didn’t even have electricity; they spent hours at it, inventing an amalgam of their own language and mijlocker that seemed to work well enough, bringing into their circle a number of girls with a mechanical bent and an insatiable curiosity, and several of the tie-boys who’d developed a passion for the motorcycles and the other devices the exiles had brought with them. She looked out over the newly peaceful valley and worried a little about what her people were going to do to it. We almost wrecked one world. God… no, Maiden grant we’ve learned enough to cherish this one. Some of the older women watched the ferment with interest and more than a little sadness because they saw the culture they valued changing in unpredictable ways. Julia gazed out across the valley, then shook her head. Going to be interesting, these next few years. She started down the ramp. Interesting times. A curse back home, may it be a blessing here. Hmmm. Wonder if they’ve got some paper to spare. I’ve definitely got to get to work.