says that if you insist on doing things your ways, Flowers-in-the-Sun won’t even fit in with her own family, much less with the rest of our world. Already, the other children leave her out of their mouth-to-ear practice. And yes, she wears no gems, no jewels. We should not harm her any more than we already have.”
Mist threw her arms in the air. “So it’s all about fitting in, is it? These children, mouthing and mouthing and no one can hear them.”
“It’s a new language. Like a new toy. Let them experiment.”
“It makes my heart boil to hear you talk like the others in this house. Don’t you see how strange it is for us, the people on our planet, to laugh-talk-sing through the mouth? In our world, mouths were made for eating only.”
“And for kissing too, I hope,” Ion signed, giving her a coy look. “Or are we going to bed angry?”
“Be serious. For millennia, we have known that other humans in the universe understood ‘sounds.’ But we accepted it. It was what made us unique to the creator. We never thought there was anything wrong with us until Earthers came along. Why should we change to please these upstarts? Why must, from this day to that forever day, our children, our grandchildren be cut-throats? And simply for money and for fitting in?” She began heading towards the door. “I will speak to the council about this.”
“Mother Mine will not like it if you speak to the elders. She speaks for our family, not you. Know your place, Wife Mine.”
Mist stopped in her tracks. Ion was right. It would not look good at all for her to go over her mother-in-law’s head and talk to the elders. It would only make her seem even stranger than she already seemed, a woman without gem anklets, in a mixed-caste marriage without servants to carry her ling-carts, who allowed her daughter to go capless.
“Don’t you trust your mothering skills?” Ion asked. “Do you not believe our daughter loves us? Mouth-to-ear in front of her parents is not something Flowers-In-the-Sun would do.”
“Who knows what people will do?” Mist signed back. “Look at you: disobeying our Creator’s laws against flesh cutting.”
Ion smiled. “You’re using the more literal interpretation.”
“Since when did you consider that interpretation ‘literal’? ‘No cutting into flesh!’ Period. The ideograph is clear enough. And don’t give me any talk about it meaning no meat and no murder. It says what it says.”
“The Creator understands expedience,” Ion responded.
Mist glared at him. Then she walked downstairs to the family garden.
In the farthest corner near the wall, the implanted nieces and nephews huddled together speaking mouth-to-ear. Sitting near her aunts, Flowers-in-the-Sun looked on.
When her mother entered the garden, she said, “Mother Mine, my cousins cover their mouths to hide their thoughts from us.”
“They’re practicing to control their new voices,” Mist answered. “So they don’t offend the Earthers when they speak.”
“I know what is on your mind,” Flowers-in-the-Sun said. “You have been talking to Father Mine.”
Mist nodded.
“The Earthers don’t speak to us unless they are contracting business,” Flowers-in-the-Sun explained. “They think our life-knowledge is not equal to theirs.”
“They’re right. We don’t know how to kill cultures or cut throats. May we never learn.”
“I want to show them how smart we are,” Flowers-in-the-Sun signed. “I will be a great scientist when I grow up and I will show them how high our knowledge really is. I will—” She stopped short. Across the garden, some of her cousins were laughing at her. She pulled her mother inside the house. “They think it’s funny that everyone knows what I’m saying.”
“They won’t think it’s so funny when they get an infection from getting their throats cut,” Mist answered. “I hear people never really heal from that.” Mist had not really heard that, but she felt no qualms in saying that she had. “So,” she continued, “you want to work in the sciences like your grandmother’s family?”
Although children followed in the caste-careers of their mothers, Mist was untroubled by her daughter’s choice of her father’s caste. “You have the mind for it,” she answered. “And you were not raised in a trading household, but in the house of a science-caste grandmother.” She smiled. “I’ll have to make you a green cap. Perhaps I’ll wear green too, to help you fit in.”
Flowers-in-the-Sun smiled. “Thank you, Mother Mine.”
“Will you study the scientific assessment of standards as your father does? Or will you choose another science?”
Flowers-in-the-sun nodded. “Father has a perfect inter-caste job. It’s the right job for me. I will show the earth traders that we know how to measure the purity of foods, that we are more than receivers of their tainted money.”
Mist stroked her daughter’s hair and her heart overflowed with pride at having such a wise daughter. And as Second Night rolled into First Morning, she found green fabric from which she made a cap for her beloved daughter and a new marriage scarf for herself.
Her husband’s mother smiled approvingly when she saw Mist the next morning. “Will your trader friends accept a trader who wears green?” she asked.
“Those who know me will,” Mist answered, smiling. “The ones who don’t know me will think I’m new to the trading game. It will be interesting to see how this ‘change’ affects a trader’s purse.”
On the way to her shop, Mist saw the four off-worlders again. Again they had their instruments pointed at her beloved sky. As she studied them, she saw a light flashing from the corner of her eye. It came from Smoothed Stone’s fruit stand. He was signaling her.
“Sister,” he said, when she arrived in front of his stand. “How goes your study of the Federation Lingua?”
“Their English lingua has many words, brother,” she signed back, and wondered why he had called out to her. “But it isn’t particularly complex. Lip-reading, however, is hard. Not as hard-to-decipher as the guttural clucks of the Towans, for instance. But challenging nevertheless. Many unruly vowel sounds. Inconsistent.”
“Very hard to lip-read,” the old man agreed, and yet even as he agreed with her, it seemed as if he had something more urgent to say. “The people of our world have always loved challenges,” he said at last.
“True,” Mist answered. “Their ‘alphabet’ is something of a challenge.” And then as proof of her studies, she slowly finger-spelled in English, “Me not good Lingua talker yet. Go their English School maybe?”
“We Aqueduct people are smart. Whoever heard of going to school to learn languages? Hey, you want them to cut your throat?”
“Not me,” she said and added, “Many people are getting the implants. In many homes. All because the Earthers think it’s best to speak by mouth.”
Smoothed Stone sighed. “Some of them tattoo the implants, embroider them with floral patterns, as if to cover
