Chapter 10

"So your power isn't creating that light stone?" Galene nods, laughing.
"If I could do something as useful as infuse stones with light, do you really think I would still be in a Newbie clan?" She kicks the sand with a rueful playfulness, throwing a gout of the loose material ahead of her. Helio keeps to the wet sand, favoring his injured leg while staying as close to her as possible.
"I'm going to come back to something you just said in a moment, but first, I have to ask. What exactly are your powers big sister?"
She gushes with pride, "Object Melding. My body is a living storage house, and so I keep anything my clan needs me to or just whatever I find and like." Coming closer to Helio, she shows him her palm; the light stone is slightly inset in the surface of her skin. "Nike would never let me keep anything too important, but besides one of the light stones we traded for I've got," she pauses, thinking, "a couple of our emergency food pellets in my shoulder, some big rocks I keep down by my knees, string around my waist, a needle, thread and some charcoal in my arm, some candles and matches in my thigh, earplugs behind my ears, a shard from an old mirror in my stomach," pausing again to think, she smiles at Helio with a child's innocence, "and a bunch of pretty stones and shells from the beach!" She turns back away and speaks in a conspiratorial tone, "Actually there might be some stuff I forgot, but a girl's gotta have some secrets."
"That's pretty amazing," Helio says with what at least sounds like genuine interest, "your clan must really depend on you to carry their important belongings." She laughs happily, waving the compliment off but not too quickly. "So back to what you mentioned before, something about how you wouldn't be in your clan if you had a different power? Are there a lot of clans?"
"I don't know, maybe ten or so?" She turns and, seeing that Helio is having a hard time following her, waits for a moment as he walks closer. "There's maybe five or six Newbie clans spread around the island, those are the clans that are supposed to go find new brothers and sisters when they land, then help them Quicken and see if they're any good. Newbie clans are usually the weakest, so like I said, if I had some really cool power I wouldn't be where I am." She begins walking again, keeping to a slower pace so the limping Helio can keep up. "Then there's three or four Trader clans that go around visiting among the clans, you'll probably see one of them any day now. They're made up of people with really strong or useful powers, so the guy who made this light stone was most likely part of a Trader clan.  The useful brothers and sisters make stuff to sell, while the strong ones are there to protect the Trader clan if anyone decided to attack them for their stuff instead of trading for it. Then the stuff they make, or what they get from trading with other clans, goes to Newbie clans that need the stuff, and in return that Newbie clan promises to give them any strong or useful new brothers and sisters."
Helio interrupts, "If all the Trader clan are asking for strong or useful new brothers and sisters, and more than one Trader clan trades with a single Newbie clan, which Trader clan does the Newbie clan give strong or useful new brothers and sisters to?" Galene looks back to grin, as if the answer were obvious.
"The Trader clans guess what kind of person the Newbie clan will get by signing a contract when they trade goods. So if a particular Trader clan thought they really needed someone who could lift boulders, they would trade a contract for someone like that with all the Newbie clans and the first one to get someone like that has to fulfill the contract. Most of the time Newbie clans don't make two contracts for the same sort of person, but sometimes they do and so the person goes to whichever of the Trader clans visits them first. If the Trader clans don't guess correctly, and someone lands and has powers no one ever considered, the Trader clan can still trade for the person next time they visit that clan but the Newbie clan will probably ask more than what the contract would have been."
Her voice becomes quieter now, "After that, there's the Head clan, a few Loners and the Old Man. The Head clan is in charge of everyone else, they settle disputes between other clans and enforce those rulings. That old hologram guy below the Meek Hall, whatever his name was, he guessed right when he said there would be someone ruling through power. The Head clan has all the most powerful of us, guys who can kill you just by thinking about it and stuff like that. They're also the ones still in contact with the people in the sky, and besides getting food pills and clothing from them, they can also get useful stuff like my needle and thread. So they give the food pills and clothing to the Trader clans, and the Trader clans give some to each of us."
"Most dangerous are the Loners, people who have left their clan because they didn't fit in. Most of them don't care about other people at all, they'll kill you without even thinking about it. If a Loner has been apart from the clans for a while, they're probably really powerful because they can survive on their own even if some other clan tried to attack them. I've only heard about three Loners living on the island, apart from the Old Man. When I said Loners are the most dangerous, I didn't include the Old Man because he's the nicest old guy you'll ever meet. He's got this big stone house near the middle of the island that he says he built by hand, and everyone calls him the Old Man instead of grandfather because he says he's older than all our grandfathers. If any of the clans ever needs help with anything, we go to the Old Man because he knows about everything and is the toughest old man in the world. Even Loners are afraid of him, and the Head clan will go to him when they have a question or an argument they can't solve themselves."
Helio laughs, "I'm beginning to think people have more in common with their powers than chance would seem to say."
"What?" She smiles slowly, looking a bit confused and wondering if she was just insulted.
"As well as holding many physical objects big sister, you are quite helpful for your wealth of information. My clan has explained a few matters of basic ground etiquette to me so far, but none of them have taken the time to explain how the island works like you have!" She smiles happily, blushing a little with pride. "Now our two clans, we seem to be tied together by an alliance and as far as I've seen my clan is all men. So I can assume your clan is all women? Do most clans make ties with other clans like that?"
Galene nods, "I guess, but I don't think most neighboring clans work exactly like our two. Back when brother Thras and big sister Euanth were forming their clans they decided to stay close together to help each other. Brother Thras didn't want women in his clan, and convinced big sister Euanth that she should take any women he found and give him any men she found. So if we had been the ones to find you," she points back at Helio, "you still would have ended up with brother Thras until your Quickening, at which point you might be traded somewhere if you end up with some good power. We also have a general agreement to get along and help each other, and we have mock war games occasionally to see which clan is strongest. Whichever clan wins gets to keep a member from the other clan in their prison for a day, and after that the prisoner can leave the prison when they do a favor for someone in that clan." She looks back at Helio, "I guess I'm not mad any more about you tricking me to leave, by the way. It's nice meeting someone who's newer to the island than me, I just know so much more than you!"
"For my part, I'm sorry that I tricked you." Helio grins at the woman, and she grins back before turning forward again. "I didn't really believe you actually wanted to stay in there, so I was just thinking I would be helping you out by freeing you." She laughs at him again, and he joins in with a small light laugh before continuing. "So then there isn't a political hostage from my clan in your prison after all?" She shakes her head.
"Nope, no one from your clan," and she grins to herself. "Just us girls here, you – hey, wait a minute!" She turns on Helio angrily, "That's why you wanted to come back with me, isn't it! You figured out our clan was all female and you wanted to scope us out! Or you heard about Aspasia and wanted to see her for yourself, admit it!" Shaking his head, Helio protests the accusation.
"Sister Galene, no! I am here for exactly the reasons I gave you earlier, to meet your leader. I am really not the type to be licentious, I'm more interested in," but he chokes on the words, then looks away. Galene laughs triumphantly.
"Ha, I knew it! I remember you from the sky, don't forget that brother Helio! I saw the way you always had your eyes on that sweet Korinna girl, or the way you were always so chummy with all the perverts, slime balls and deviants in the class. Admit it, you're just a dirty pervert!" Helio scowls at Galene with a cross glare that silences her accusing rant, then looks away again.
"There's only one thing I was interested in, and big brother Thras of course has the matter perfectly sussed out. I suppose there's no harm in telling you, not when we're both here on the lawless ground. I want power, sister Galene." His eyes look to her and past, staring at the depths of the island. "I wanted power and in the sky I had it. My sister Korinna was my best friend's girl, and also the sole producer of a drug you may have heard of, Bacchanalia. I was the marketer and the pusher, which is why all the worst of the class would talk to me. I was trading Bacchanalia pills for their loyalty. Which is a lot like power, if you know how to spend it." He looks directly at Galene again, his cold, blank stare etching away at her disbelief.
"It's simple, sister Galene. I oversaw the invention and marketing of the world's most potent wine in an edible pill form, dulling people's Moderation and turning them in to what they really are on the inside, perverts and deviants. That was power. There are two ways to gather power sister Galene, grow it from the masses or co-opt it from those who already have it. I was the boy who made friends with all the cooks in the dorms, I was the one who got special treats and double portions!" She looks puzzled at this, and he waves dismissively. "The vision those three story tellers in my clan showed me was flawed, it created the scenarios from my own memories and imagination when they didn't provide the details. But I had power in the sky! I had all the power I could achieve, and then all that power was taken away from me."
Looking down at the sand and at his bandaged leg, "So now I have to start over. Which is interesting I'll admit, and perhaps a blessing in disguise. I was getting overconfident, I knew the Auxiliaries were checking up on me but I never would have dreamed a Guardian would be personally handling my case. Everything was crumbling around me without my knowledge, all my dreams of becoming a Guardian myself and finally having the sort of power I had always wanted. And finally my dreams were squashed completely, by a woman with a disgustingly base measure of power over me and one simple test." Looking to Galene again, his eyes are no longer hard and cold, "Which is a very long winded way of saying I am not interested in coming to ogle your clan at all. In my experience, and recent events have only clarified this view, satisfying the base desires can wait until after I have achieved a measure of power I am happy with. Trying to do so now would only put me under the power of someone else, the opposite of what I want."
There is no sound now, except for the midnight waves hitting the beach. The moon seems to almost have a sound as well, a droning silence in every ray that is joined by the ominous quiet from the floating sky islands far, far overhead. A light wind plays with the treetops and hushes through them, singing of distant places. Galene speaks first.
"I guess I've known I was going to fail the Meek test for a few years. A friend of mine took the test well before me, an older sister who passed and told me all about what happened. Neither of us were any good at making friends our own age, I guess. She told me everything that the Meek moderator told her, about how the brain has parts for wisdom, courage and moderation, and that people with weak moderation would be excommunicated. I never told her how, from the moment she told me that, I knew I was going to fail. She's in the Auxiliary core now, spending her growing years watching them fight other nations, and at least she won't know I failed until she returns."
She looks strangely at Helio, "Now you, you I would have sworn would pass the test. You seemed like such a good, normal meek boy, with your crush on that pretty girl, being friendly with everyone and doing well in every class. You were a golden boy in the truest sense of the word, born to be a Guardian and everyone knew it."
Helio smiles sadly, "Some of us are better at hiding our true selves, sister Galene. I thought I could be the good boy in public and immoderate in private, gain power both through following the Guardian's rules and through breaking them when I saw fit. And I did, for a while."
"Did you ever … cheat?" Helio looks to Galene with a confused expression. "You know, like call in a favor to have someone smarter than you do your homework for you?" Helio shakes his head.
"If I didn't always do my own homework sister, how would I know if I understood the subjects? There's no one to cheat but yourself, and I knew that if I was going to become a Guardian I would need to know the subjects. I wasn't a natural genius at anything like my sister Korinna, or as interested in any one subject as my brother Lykos is with technology, but if I could become as good as I could get with all the subjects placed before me, well that's how one becomes a Guardian after all. Like I said, follow their rules and break their rules, doing both is possible."
"It's unfair, that's what it is." Galene sighs, "Was it really so easy for you? Were you really such a perfect student?"
"Obviously I was never perfect sister, but I was driven to succeed and had the natural ability to do so. In the end it's like that old fairy tale the storytellers sang, of humanity's birth and ascendancy to the sky." Helio closes his eyes momentarily to remember, then opens them and begins to recite. "In the earth there was a great amount of ores, gold and silver, copper and iron. When humanity arose from the earth, each was born with various and unknown amounts of each which they passed to their children, and to their children's children, so that still today all people have those unknown amounts from a lineage of fathers and mothers who fell in love despite what metal the other was born most from. Indeed, because the amounts could vary so much and any of the four could rise to the surface, two gold parents could create a copper child and two copper could create a gold. Thus all children must be tested and raised as one family, each calling the others brother and sister so that no divisions would form. Every man and woman of childbearing age would be their mothers and fathers, and every man and woman beyond the age of childbearing their grandfathers and grandmothers."
"Naturally the gold children would rise to the top and become Guardians, the silver children would rise almost as high to become Auxiliaries, and the copper and iron children would become craftsmen and workers." Helio glances up at Galene, trudging through the sand ahead of him. "Even if you were not born gold or silver, there is no shame in one's birthright. A copper child would not be happy as a soldier in the same way that a silver child would not be happy as a craftsman. That is why our education brought us to our natural best, and showed us our naturally fitting place in society. Perhaps there was some craft you liked performing best, some profession besides soldier or statesman you thought you might be best at?"
"I suppose." Galene glances quickly back at Helio, then resolutely forward again. "You won't look down on me if I tell you? Please promise you won't!" Her voice is insistent and she won't look at Helio. He nods, then after a moment to realize she can't see him, speaks.
"Of course I won't look down on you sister. A society needs crafts-men and -women even more than it needs soldiers and leaders, they are more essential than the other two by far. Without craftspeople the ruler has no goods to trade with other nations, and soldiers have nothing and no one to guard except themselves. Society was made for and from craftspeople, men and women who came together so that each could specialize in their own craft and produce enough for the others, people sharing equally of their profits and their misfortunes. They only needed soldiers to keep them safe from those who would steal from their hard work, and later rulers to be fair arbiters, settling their disagreements and leading the soldiers. And before all of that they were toilers, working their own fields without the time remaining to ever become actual craftspeople in their vocations. So it was with toilers that men and women could become craftspeople, knowledgeable in their one craft and able to direct others in – ."
"Do you ever shut up? You sound like you're reading straight from a textbook." Galene still won't look at him, but her anger does cut through his rambling and her next words silence and stun him completely. "I wanted to be a whore. A prostitute. A companion in the night." Staring ahead with grim determination in her eyes, she stands stock still. Helio seems paralyzed as well, his features frozen. "I like sex, I really, really like it. I've been doing it since I was fourteen, at first with this older brother then with anyone who wanted to do it with me. Brothers would do my homework, help me study for tests or steal the answers, give me pretty things and tell me I was beautiful, and all I had to do was do this one thing I loved to do anyway." Spinning, she yells, "SO WHO CARES WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT BEING A – !" But seeing Helio's face, hers crumples, "But you do, I guess. Just like everyone else does, you judge me. Whatever." She starts walking down the beach again.
"So what if I judge?" Helio stares at her receding back then continues following her, trying his best to sound kind. "I promised I wouldn't look down on you, and I can still keep that promise. But I will judge you, or more precisely the profession you wanted to join. In a society where men could keep their base natures in control we wouldn't need prostitutes. But since that society doesn't exist, men being what most of us are, we need prostitution just as much as we need the other crafts." He nearly stumbles for a moment, then corrects himself. "Well, almost as much. I mean, it's no tailor or farmer, but you'd at least be on par with wine makers and video game designers in terms of importance. And prostitution has to be more glamorous than sewer work. Did you know there are people on farms whose only job is – ?"
"Do you ever shut up?"
Helio smiles, "Sister, my brain is a font of knowledge much like yours, didn't we agree that was a good thing?"
"Well now is the time for silence. We're at my clan's camp."
"Oh?" Helio looks around, "Where, inside the pea soup mist?" Ahead of them a cloud of thick mist sticks to the ground, no higher then a fully grown man, extending down to the beach and in to the forest all around.
"Exactly." She bends down to pick up a small rounded mossy stone as they enter the mist's perimeter, and Helio is forced to keep close to Galene as she navigates the cloud by memory. "I'll give you the one warning, after that your safety is up to you." They continue walking, as the loose sand gives way to shrubs and a few thin trees. Finally, Helio can't wait any longer.
"Well, what is the warning?" The mist dampens his voice, quieting them both so that their voices are mere whispers.
"It's more a visual warning, so watch and be quiet." They finally reach a large stone structure, with a wide flat roof above that extends slightly past and wider than the walls supporting it. The door is a simple mat of thin flat leaves woven together, a curtain that Galene pushes aside to show Helio the interior. The main feature of the room is a large, flat stone bed, upon which a woman sleeps. She is completely nude, with no bedding or blanket to keep her warm, but she probably doesn't need them as the room is stiflingly hot. A large spider web thin crack in the ceiling drips water upon her at a rate too slow to watch for very long with impatience, and as each drop lands on her it evaporates instantly, becoming the thick steam that drifts slowly out the door. "Watch carefully."
Galene tosses the mossy stone underhand at the woman and it lands on her stomach, sinking in slowly as flames lick at the edges. "If you touch her, that happens to you. If she touches you, that happens to you. She's made of lava brother, touching her is a very slow and painful way to die." Galene points to the corner of the room, where a small pile of bedding is crumpled on the floor. "This is our prison brother, over there is where you stay. I wouldn't go to sleep if I were you, she tends to sleepwalk and she might step on you. But the water generally keeps her in bed at night, or at least that's what big sister Thais told me. So you should be fine brother, as long as the pool of rainwater on the roof lasts the night. You'll be nearly as safe as any of us are in this camp, and warmer too. Good luck." She pats him on the back reassuringly and saunters off into the mist.
He does at least try to sleep peacefully. The blankets are unnecessary to cover him, the room is as hot as a sauna, but they do make a good means of softening the hard ground. Curled up on them, Helio almost seems like he might be able to drift off … but then the slightest sound of the woman turning in her sleep has him fully awake again. He is nearly asleep again, when she snorts from a drop of water falling on to the lip of her open mouth. He has nearly passed out from exhaustion, then sits bolt upright as she moans in her sleep. After nearly an hour of this torment he sits up and, huddled in the blankets, stares across at the large stone bed with heavy eyes. Able to watch her now and leaning against the stone wall corner, he finally manages to get some sleep, totally dead to the world.