Safiya and the Water
MOTE prompt.
Safiya and Feng have a house in Helioshad. It is new and stands on block twenty-seven, but everyone calls it Green Strato because of the hard outcrop of mildly copper-bearing rocks across the way from there, which makes block twenty-eight useless except for climbing on and looking around. They take Ĉaŭŝo to the co-op every morning before they head to the fields, because Ĉaŭŝo is three and too big to be carried to the fields every day and watched while Safiya weeds and Feng lays irrigation tubing.
Feng hopes that there will be plumbing in their house someday. There was supposed to be, but the plex lines meant to carry water to the house had to be diverted to the irrigation. The Landing factory couldn’t produce enough machine parts to build the plex line extruder in Helioshad because Second Town needed the metal for parts in the desalination plant. So it goes round and round.
So Safiya comes back from the fields, and there is no water in any of the houses in Green Strato. She gets a bucket and goes to the block pump, where all the other women are gathered from their jobs at the parts plants or the joint fields or the school or the Biosphere installation, and they fill their water and talk to each other. Mara is pregnant and happy about it. Clyta wants to be pregnant, but her husband is with Biosphere Corps on the Malaglata Hills, trying to jumpstart an ecosystem.
“Is it true that Biosphere is talking about human clones?” Clyta asks.
Safiya chuckles. “I can think of cheaper ways to make babies.”
“When are you and Feng gonna have another?”
“We’re trying.”
“They should make human clones,” Mara said. “Save me the backache, and we’d have more people faster. Just go down to Biosphere and say, I want a boy, or I want a girl, and they take your genes and stick them together. Two kids, three kids. Boum, boum.”
Fente is listening as she closes the faucet and lifts her bucket. “I’d be happy if they made a bunch of people and distributed them so every family could have help.”
This doesn’t sound like a bad idea; she, Mara, and Clyta agree, but Safiya isn’t sure. She remembers her father’s stories about the war on and around Earth. It sounds familiar.
But she shrugs. Biosphere can’t divert resources like that—not anytime soon. They are pumping out bacteria, soil algae, nematodes, and bugs. The world is dirt, blowing dirt, and the fields need to be kept alive and more dirt made, or everything will be regolith again in a year or two. And everyone will starve.
There is a counter in the kitchen, and Safiya pours water into the pan, wedges the plug in the sink, pours water in the sink, and puts the slop bucket underneath to catch the drainage. She runs her hands over the tin edge, making sure the child-high sharp edge is still taped (And now the sink is giving us trouble!), and lights the biomass flame on the hob. Feng will be home with Ĉaŭŝo soon. There is yellow squash, a bit of pork, and rice from Second Town, and that will be dinner. She couldn’t feed anyone else on their rations anyway, child or adult.
It is evening in Helioshad, at Green Strato, and the little feeble lights on every house are coming up, like the lights around a stage, waiting for the play.
ME: Oh, squash! Mm, pork, and rice.
THEE: Oh, it’s nothing, I just threw it together.
ME: But you always make it taste so good.
Afterward, there is washing and draining, and someone goes out the back door to carefully pour the water out on a tiny patch of vegetables as night falls on Helioshad.
This week’s prompt challenge was from Leigh Kimmel: “And now the sink is giving us trouble!” My prompt went to Padre. See all the challenges and responses over at More Odds Than Ends!