Chapter 18:
WHERE IS VONN?
Vonn was missing. Akkri remembered how quiet she had been the previous evening, hardly responding to anything he said. He had woken up a bit later than usual and knocked on her door on his way to breakfast. As there was no reply he had gone on, expecting to find her with the others, but she was not there. No one seemed particularly concerned, but Akkri felt an unaccustomed anxiety as he ate.
Annilex could see he was feeling worried and came over to him. “I expect she’s somewhere on the ship,” she said. “Perhaps she had breakfast early and has gone for a swim in the indoor pool. We’re none of us quite ourselves at the moment. I’ve been having some very odd feelings that I can’t account for at all. I suspect they are connected with the way Earth people feel – much more disturbed and worried than we Vikans usually are.”
Akkri suddenly remembered fragments of a dream he had had just before waking – being pushed down a shiny chute by someone behind him and waking abruptly when he reached the bottom. Where had that come from? “Yes, I know what you mean. I don’t suppose I’d feel like this if we were back home on Vika. I think I’ll go and have a look around.”
Within half an hour he had been all round The Golden Palace, though he felt pretty sure he would not find her. She must have gone somewhere on her own. He felt disappointed. He had hoped to go off on an exciting journey to some distant corner of the new planet. He assumed something like that would always be in the company of Vonn, his friend of so many years. He knew various other trips were planned. Annilex was going to a library with Tamor and Korriott. He could join them and help them with their research, but he did not like the idea of doing so without knowing where Vonn was.
By lunchtime he was seriously worried, a state he had never experienced before. He did not feel like eating and instead went out onto one of the balconies, hoping to see a skimmer arrive. The Golden Palace was engulfed in damp grey cloud and it was chilly out there. After waiting for ten minutes he went back inside and sat in a chair in the main lounge. Eedo came in and saw him there. “Don’t worry. I really don’t think anything bad can have happened to her. You’re fond of Vonn, aren’t you.”
Yes, he was fond of Vonn. He had not realised before just how big a part of his life she was. He knew that on Vika nothing could happen that was not connected with the gentle development of life, but Earth was so new to them all. Could they be sure that some of the dreadful things they had learnt about Earth and Earth people could not happen to them, too? He did not want to dwell on that possibility but it kept creeping back into his mind.
Eedo gave him a reassuring smile and went out.
Akkri decided to make another full tour of The Golden Palace. There was always something new to discover and it would help to occupy his mind. He had just emerged onto the balcony of one of the turrets when he spotted a skimmer breaking through the clouds. It glided down to the balcony and Vonn stepped out, white in the face. Akkri could see that she had been crying.
“Oh, Akkri, I’m so sorry I went off without telling anybody. I thought I’d only be gone for a little while, but I had to stay. Akkri, it was so awful!” and she burst into tears. Akkri put his arms round her and held her until her sobbing had subsided. He had never held her like that before. A little awkwardly he released her and took her by the hand.
“Shall we go inside? It’s rather chilly here, isn’t it?”
Vonn gave a little laugh and sniffed back the last of the tears. “Yes, let’s go in.”
A door in the balcony led through to a small lounge with two chairs. A pale sun had just come out and was brightening up the room. The two friends sat down. “I’d like to tell you about it, Akkri, before I tell the others. I think I’ll find it easier that way. I’m sure you must have noticed that I’ve been caught up in my own thoughts quite a lot recently. I think it started back in Library Seven. Ever since that first meeting I’ve been thinking of my grandmother more than ever, really missing her. And then we saw that place in the desert with crowds of black people all huddled together in a sort of compound. And there was that woman with a baby and the other woman who gave her water. I wanted to know what had happened to them. They were sort of muddled together with my feelings about my grandmother.”
A skimmer had taken her across sea, land, sea again, snow-clad mountains and then a desert which seemed to stretch on for ever. It came to rest beside the remains of the compound and she got out. The gate was broken in and one of the towers was a wreck of fire-blackened wood. Where the people had been, there was a litter of torn rags, broken pottery and a few sad belongings. Of the people themselves there was no sign. Vonn felt her stomach tighten with dread. Outside the compound there was a double line of humps in the sand. They gave her a nasty feeling and she turned away from them.
She got back into the skimmer. She must find the woman with the baby. The skimmer took her further on into the desert. After a while scrubby thorn bushes began to appear. Once she saw a herd of animals rather like the pictures they had glimpsed on the front of one of the buildings near Andrew’s road, but these were covered in handsome black and white stripes. At any other time she would have been delighted with their strangeness and beauty, but now nothing else mattered but finding that woman.
The skimmer continued on its way. Suddenly she saw a woman striding purposefully along ahead of her. As the skimmer got nearer she saw she had a baby strapped to her back. A great hope welled up in her. The skimmer slowed as it came alongside her. As with the people in the London street she did not appear to be aware of its presence. Vonn looked eagerly into the woman’s face. No, this was not the one. The other woman’s face was etched in her mind. She would have recognised her anywhere. This woman, too, had an expression of suffering on her face. Her baby was asleep. It looked older than the other one, but it, too, was thin and gaunt.
The skimmer moved on. More people began to appear, all going in the same direction, most of them in ragged groups, though some were on their own. By a large thorn bush the skimmer came to rest. Vonn stepped out. The woman she had been seeking was leaning over a bundle tied up in cloth. She parted the cloth and kissed the forehead of her baby. Vonn knew that it was dead.
The woman had scraped a hole in the sand. Vonn stood and watched in horror. She tenderly folded the cloth back over the baby’s face and placed the bundle in the hole. Then, kneeling on one side of the hole, she pulled the pile of sand she had excavated over the bundle and patted it down. The little hump of sand reminded Vonn of the lines of mounds outside the compound. Tears were streaming down the woman’s face as she traced a sign on top of the mound. It was the same shape as the crosses Toln and Bavilan had seen on the white tablets.
Vonn knew the woman would be able to see her. Without thinking, she held out her hand, palm downwards. The woman reached forward and touched fingertips, as if this was something she always did. “Is there anything I can do? Anywhere I can take you?” Vonn asked. She felt foolish as she said it. There was nothing she or anyone else could do to take away the woman’s pain and loss.
“Not yet. Could you please wait with me a little while?”
“Of course,” said Vonn. She felt a little easier now these first words had been spoken. The skimmer remained where it was. Some of the other travellers came past. They hardly glanced at the woman squatting by the mound of sand.
After a while the woman started to sing in a slow deep voice, full of sadness and longing. It was so beautiful that Vonn could hardly bear to listen. It seemed to express her own longing for her grandmother. She began to cry. The woman shuffled over to where Vonn was sitting, putting her arms round her, and the two of them cried together until just quietness and emptiness were left. The woman dried Vonn’s eyes and then her own with the corner of her cloak. “What is your name?” she asked.
“I’m Vonn.”
“Are you one of the aid workers?”
“No. I’m just visiting. And what is your name? And can you tell me what happened back there?”
“My name is Harambi,” said the woman. “The other ones came and told the guards to break up the camp so we could not come back to it. They told us to move on south, even further from our own people. Some of our men said we were too weak to move. The guards shot them. We had to dig graves for them in the hottest part of the day and then they started hitting us with their rifles to make us go. We had no water and no food. We have kept going for days. From time to time a helicopter flies over and fires at us to keep us moving south. They are trying to move us out of the country. Many of us have died. And yesterday my little Mimo died.” She stopped, racked with sobs.
When they had again subsided, Vonn asked: “Is there anywhere I can take you?”
“We have heard a rumour that there is Food Aid near the border. Perhaps, if you would be so kind?”
Food Aid? Border? Country? Although Vonn heard these words they had no meaning for her. There was nothing in her experience they seemed related to. “Yes, of course I’ll take you there. And there was someone else I saw. We’ll see if she wants to come, too.”
Harambi stood for a moment, staring down at the little pile of sand. She bent down and patted it gently with the palm of her hand, then turned and followed Vonn to the skimmer. She stepped into it with no surprise, and sat in silence, absorbed in her own thoughts, as the skimmer set off across the desert.
Soon the other woman came into view. The skimmer stopped beside her. “Do you want to go to Food Aid?” Vonn asked.
The woman climbed in without speaking, unhitched her baby from her back and rested him on her lap. There were sores on his face and his stomach was swollen. Vonn could see he was very ill. If only this one could be saved!
The skimmer breasted a clump of low hills and glided down across another sandy plain almost devoid of life. In the distance was a chain of mountains. In a few minutes they were among the foothills, and in a shallow valley the skimmer came to rest beside a vehicle with four enormous black wheels.
Three men with faces the same colour as Andrew’s were unloading sacks from the back of the vehicle and a crowd of men, women and children were eagerly carrying them over to a collection of makeshift huts. “There’s my brother!” Harambi exclaimed.
Vonn knew her time in this desert land had come to an end. “I hope you will both be safe here. I wish I could have helped you save your Mimo,” she said.
Harambi took her hand and held it in hers. “We are sisters,” she said.
“Yes, we are sisters,” said Vonn.
“I want you to have this,” said Harambi, and she reached inside her cloak and handed Vonn a little wooden rattle.
Vonn knew that the rattle would have been Mimo’s and that the woman was giving her a priceless gift. For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should take it, then, “I shall treasure this all my life,” she said, “and I shall never forget you or your little Mimo.”
As the skimmer set off back to The Golden Palace she began to think of Akkri and the others. They must have been puzzled by her absence, she thought.
In the evening the mood was sombre as she told her story to the other members of the expedition. Her experience had become their experience, too.
“Why did she put the baby in the ground?” Toln asked. “Why didn’t she wait for it to become nothing. That’s what we do, isn’t it?” He looked round at the others for confirmation.
“I was thinking about that nearly all the way back,” said Vonn. “Then I thought about the ruined compound. It was still standing there even though there was no use for it. It hadn’t gone. I think it is different here. Things stay, even when their time is over.”
There was a long silence. “The tablets we saw,” said Bavilan. “They had the same cross on them that Harambi made in the sand. Do you think …”
“You wanted to go to that place of smoke and mud,” said Korriott, “but you found those thousands of white tablets instead. I think the fighting we saw was long ago but it is a picture that has remained in people’s minds ever since, just as it will remain in our minds, too. If Vonn is right, that things here on Earth stay in existence like that ruined camp, then I believe the dead bodies of the people killed – thousands and thousands of them – are buried beneath those tablets.”
There was another long silence, then, one by one, everyone quietly went off to their rooms. As Vonn got up from her chair, Akkri gave her hand a little reassuring squeeze.
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