Chapter 35
“I’ve been thinking of a new recipe for the snozzberries,” Leday said as she was picking handfuls of a purple fruit at a fast pace.
“Why do you call it a recipe when there are three steps involved, and one of those steps is ‘Pick ripe fruit’?” Luna responded, her arms gingerly moving between the spiky branches of the bush next to Leday. “And why do you continue to call them snozzberries.”
“This one is a real recipe,” Leday said. “I’m thinking of mixing them with a jabberwocky egg and some cocona powder, heating it, and seeing if I can get a sweet paste or even a cake-like mixture from it. I just think our food is too basic.”
“As for the name,” she continued, “I refuse to call them Nova Grapes just because everyone else does. Following the crowd is a big part of what my problems were back on Earth. I resolved to be a new person on this new planet, and I’m going to be my own person that follows my own path. And I think that decision is paying off, don’t you? I mean, look at me!”
And with that, Leday twirled around, holding the purple berries high in the air and gleefully dropping them into the bark and wood basket. “Can you believe this is the same person you walked off the ship with a couple of months ago?”
Luna turned to her, smiled and said. “You do look great! I mean, it’s not that you didn’t look fine before, but you’ve definitely firmed up since we arrived.”
“Firmed up!” Leday practically shouted. “If I were shopping for clothes, I bet I’d have to look for outfits three sizes smaller than when I was on Earth. But I don’t really care! There are no scales here. No one giving me looks when I walk down the street, or go to a restaurant for a meal. I eat as much as I want, and work it all off and then some in a matter of hours. This is where I’m meant to be!”
“You’d better be careful once you start making those snozzberry cupcakes,” Luna said, returning to her food gathering chore. “They’ll go straight to your hips.”
A berry hit her in the back of the head.
“I won’t be sharing any of my culinary masterpieces with you if you make comments like that,” Leday said with a fake tone of hurt.
“You won’t have any fruit for your recipe if you waste food like that,” Luna replied.
Both women giggled.
“It is hard to believe how much has changed since we arrived,” Luna said thoughtfully. “I mean, on the one hand, we’ve got pretty much the same routine each day: find food, prepare food, eat food, and then try and make something to wear or live in or work with the rest of the day. But think about how far we’ve progressed as a colony since then.”
“You mean those of us left here,” Leday replied.
“Well, yes, but you didn’t think everyone would have just remained in one place?” Luna asked.
“No, but I thought more people would stay here,” Leday answered. “I mean how many people are we down to now?”
“A little over five-hundred,” Luna responded.
“Really? Even after the bunch from Topeka left two weeks ago?” Leday wondered.
“Yes, it was only twenty people,” Luna said. “It only seemed like a lot of people since we haven’t had that many leave all at once since that first week.”
“Wow, thought there were a lot less of us around here these days, but I you’re probably right,” Leday said, returning to the bush for more fruit. “But then you’re always right.”
“I wouldn’t agree with that,” Luna replied.
“What do you mean?” her friend asked. “People around her love you?”
“Remember that first day when you talked about us walking off the ship? And I walked straight into the river? And all those people came up to me when I stepped out of the water? I think there were a lot of other people that thought I was pretty strange,” Luna countered.
“There you go being crazy again,” Leday said. “You got a lot of respect that day for being who you are. People didn’t come here to be conformists, Luna. People came here because they wanted freedom! Freedom from expectations, freedom from limits on their options, freedom from poverty, from pollution, from lots of things! You showed as soon as you touched the ground of this new world that you embraced it and all the freedoms it implies.”
“You know how I know you’re wrong?” Leday asked.
“Because of how people asked for your input on things over those next few days,” she continued without waiting for Luna to respond. “All those people that came up to you with fruits, plants, even those things they pulled flopping around in the river. ‘Is this safe to eat?’ they’d ask you. And if you hesitated and said you didn’t know, they tossed it away.”
“But I didn’t know exactly what was good and what was bad to eat!” Luna said with a disappointed look on her face. “I couldn’t remember all those pictures shown to us on the alien ship.”
“I know that, but they didn’t,” Leday said. “And then you went off to ask who remembered what from the training videos, you found out if people remembered those things were good or bad, and followed up when you saw a person again who threw away good food. Not only did people think you knew what you were talking about, but they then thought you were looking out for them.”
“I think they were just being polite,” Luna said, focusing on getting the last berries from the bush she was at, before moving over to the one next to it.
“Then what about the colony meeting on Day 4?” Leday asked.
“What about it?” Luna said.
“You were the star!” Leday replied.
“I’d hardly say that,” Luna commented. “In fact, I hardly said anything.”
“Right! But remember that one guy that didn’t want anyone to leave?” Leday asked.
“You mean Paul?” Luna asked in return.
“Yes,” her friend said. “I don’t like him. Anyway, that other guy that was tired of hearing Paul continue his squawking turned around to find you on the hill behind him. He asked what you thought, and you said your line about open and all-inclusive communication,”
“I don’t know where that came from,” Luna said, her cheeks reddening from the memory.
“Well, everyone else loved it,” Leday said. “And it shut Paul up, and everyone agreed to let each philosophy have its way.”
“And the great exodus began,” Luna said thoughtfully.
They picked in silence for a bit.
“I didn’t intend for that many people to leave,” she continued after a minute. “But I don’t like being told to shut up, or being told what to do. So I said what I thought was a good approach to the conversation at the time.”
“And that was a good thing to say, honey,” Leday said in a comforting tone. “You didn’t spend as much time with that crowd as I did, when we were waiting for them to pick who was going. There were a lot of kooks in that group, so it was best they left this area and didn’t stick around here to cause trouble. And then when all of the floppy fish disappeared a week later?”
“You mean the golden torch fish?” Luna corrected her.
“Whatever you want to call them,” Leday said. “When they all left, it was slim pickings for a while, so it was good we didn’t have as many mouths to feed.”
“I still think it was spawning season, the way the fish would almost glow when they started flopping around,” Luna said. “I know the few I’ve seen in the river are the same fish, just a pale yellow.”
“And there you go,” Leday said.
“What?” her companion asked.
“You’re always observing things and remaining calm,” Leday answered. “You didn’t freak out when we had to find new food. All those people that wanted to abandon this place got really scared. Then someone asked you what you were going to do, and you said you were going to stick around and see what would happen, since you thought the aliens wouldn’t just dump us in a bad place. And everyone calmed down and started talking about the sixty-day ‘immediate survival plan’.”
“I think this place has been pretty good so far, hasn’t it?” Luna said. “We’ve got plenty of food, we’ve got good shelter that we’ve built, and the weather has been good.”
“I think we’ve gotten lucky with the weather,” Leday commented. “You’ve seen those storms out over the ocean. They look pretty nasty. And that one that was headed towards us last week just fizzled out before it finished coming over the mountain.”
“Maybe that’s what happens here,” Luna said. “Maybe this is a location where, because of the mountains or because where we are along the coast, the bad weather doesn’t come here much.”
“Who knows,” Leday said. “What I’d like to think about instead is lunch. I think we’ve got enough snozzberries for now, so let’s head back to camp.”
The women picked up the multiple baskets they had filled and began the trek back to the main colony site.
“Don’t you wonder what it’s like in other parts of this world?” Luna asked as they walked.
“No, not really,” Leday answered. “I’m like you. I’m ok with this place.”
“It’s not that I don’t like where we are,” Luna said. “It’s that I am curious about what’s out there.”
By the time the two women made it back to the main colony location, afternoon meal preparations were underway.
“Do you know what else has helped me,” Leday said to Luna as they dropped off the baskets of berries with this week’s cooking crew. “Only eating two meals a day. I think that was a great decision we made that second week. I mean who needs to eat three meals a day?”
“I do,” Luna commented.
“Then you can grab some fruit and dried meat on your way to morning work,” Leday responded, exhibiting her suggestion by grabbing a handful of the berries as they left the baskets next to the crew cleaning the fresh food.
“I do!,”Luna emphasized. “I know it’s asking a lot to have people prepare all that food, and we need to have people spend more time building, but I get hungry!”
“Don’t you get enough to eat?” Leday questioned.
“Yes,” Luna replied grudgingly. “But I miss my scrambled eggs.”
“Then you need to get close enough to one of those animals that produces something like milk to mix into the eggs we find,” Leday said. “I thought you were a country girl?”
“I grew up in a small town,” Luna said. “But that doesn’t make me a wild animal farmer.”
Leday grinned. “Well can’t you use some of that natural…”
“Don’t go there!” Luna interrupted. “You know that you’re pushing a button if you bring up that Native American comment again. And anyway, that makes no sense here. None of us can claim even one generation on this land before us. So leave it alone. It lost it’s humor a long time ago.”
Leday’s grin disappeared. “I’m sorry, Luna. I’m just trying to…”
“Luna!” another woman called from one of the cooking fires, interrupting Leday again. She motioned for them to come over to her.
“What is it, April?” Luna asked.
“Are you going to the colony group meeting tonight?” April asked.
“What meeting?” Leday responded.
The cook looked at Leday with a confused expression.
“We’ve been out all day gathering fruit,” Luna noted. “Did a meeting get organized today?”
“I don’t know if the meeting was organized today or not,” April said, “but one of the colony council reps came by this morning and said our sixty days are up, and it’s time to make plans for the next phase. So will you be there, Luna?”
“When will it start?” she asked.
“After people are done eating,” the cook replied. “It’s supposed to be a long discussion.”
“Yes, I’ll be there,” Luna said. “Thanks for letting us know.”
“Good!,” April said. “I’ll look for you there.”
“I’ll be there too,” Leday chimed in, but got no response from April, who had already turned back to work on the meat cooking over the fire.
“See what I mean?” Leday said to Luna as they went to find their lodge for a midday nap.
“You’re right,” Luna said.
Leday gave a smug smile.
Luna continued “They were serious about the sixty-day plan. So now we get to talk about what’s next.”
Leday’s smug look was replaced by a not-so-real angry look, and she threw a berry at her friend.
Luna, expecting a response, reached up to grab the fruit, and popped it in her mouth. “Thanks, that’ll help give my stomach something to work on while I’m napping.” And having said that, she laughed and ran ahead to their lodge.
After dinner, nearly every person remaining at the colony site joined together on a hillside near their original landing site. The hill had been cleared of some brush and the relatively few trees that had grown on it to give a natural gathering place where people could gather, see the speakers, and participate in the weekly colony meeting or other events where a large group could meet. Besides the weekly colony meetings, the only other gathering so far had been a wedding ten days prior when a couple that met on the alien ship the evening prior to leaving Earth announced they wanted to be the first couple to be married on Nova. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor on Earth was the closest thing to a practicing minister, and she agreed to put together a ceremony based on what she could remember her father presiding over.
This evening, the mood was much different. Not that people weren’t happy, but there was a lot of anxious excitement in the air as people wondered what was to come of the conversation.
Luna, Leday, and a dozen other people from their lodge that had eaten the late afternoon meal with them all walked into the small clearing, and walked about halfway up the hill. Long before any of the colonists had arrived, a large stone had come to rest at the bottom of the hill. With the trees and brush cleared, its position near the middle of the cleared space where the hill flattened made it a natural dais where someone addressing the entire colony typically stood.
A man walked up to the Speaker’s Stone and began speaking and motioning for people to sit down.
“Poor Dante,” Leday said. “This crowd is too energized to hear him this evening.”
Almost as a trigger, a woman stood up at the bottom of the hill, turned around, put two fingers in her mouth, and whistled loudly to get the attention of the crowd.
Most of the crowd quieted and turned to look where the noise came from.
The woman whistled again, aiming the sound towards the few people at the top of the hill still talking. They also stopped.
“Thank you, Rosa,” the man at the stone said, projecting his voice as loudly as he could. “And thank you, everyone, for joining together this evening.”
“It’s been sixty days since our arrival on Nova, and I for one think we’ve made a tremendous start for our new life here. I think we all deserve a round of applause for what we’ve accomplished,” Dante said, clapping his hands enthusiastically.
A few people joined, but the near-applause died quickly when the crowd didn’t pick it up.
The speaker’s hands hesitated, then went back to his side. “Yes, well, you’re probably more excited about what’s coming next. And, frankly, so am I.”
“What’s your proposal, Dante?” someone shouted.
“It’s not about me, Rosa, or anyone of the current Peer Representatives presenting a proposal tonight,” Dante said. “We’ve fallen into that trap too much recently. We need to return to our collaborative beginning like we had that first week. We’re at a point where we can subsist on the food we gather, we’ve got shelter that keeps us dry, we have figured out how to live safely in this biosphere, so that tells me we’ve reached a level of stability we wanted as our first goal. So now, we need to decide, as a community, what next. We need your input.”
The speaker paused, and looked at the crowd expectantly.
No one said anything.
After an awkward silence, Dante spoke, “This is where you all need to start providing ideas. Leonora, what should our priority be?”
A woman sitting close to the front straightened up when she realized her name was being called.
“What do you want me to do?” Leonora asked.
“Tell us what you think the colony should do?,” Dante said.
“Um, I don’t know,” the woman said hesitantly. “What’s wrong with how things are going now? Why can’t we just keep doing what we’re doing?”
“What did she say?” a voice from the back called.
“She suggested we could remain as we are, since things seem to be going well,” Dante said loudly.
“Well, that’s not exactly…,” Leonora started to say.
Another voice from a different area of the hillside shouted out, “We can’t stay like this forever! If we don’t advance, we’ll perish. Who’s to say this is the best place for us to be? Maybe we should try and find a better place to move to?”
A man on the right side broke in, “We don’t need to find a better place. We need to find more people. Where are all of the other colonies? We should be increasing our numbers by joining with another site.”
“That’s ridiculous,” a woman a few feet up the hill from him retorted. “We go join in someplace else and lose what we’ve got here. Who says they’ve got it any better than we do? Let them come find us.”
Dante smiled and leaned back on the Speaking Stone, listening to the people.
Voices from the crowd were shouting to be heard.
“We need to focus on sustainable agriculture…”
“Why aren’t we trying to domesticate animals….”
“Everyone should have their own separate shelter. We need to go on a building binge…”
And right before it got out of control, Dante nodded to Rosa, who turned to the hill and whistled the group to silence again.”
“I am sincere when I say this,” Dante started, “that I really appreciate that activity and what everyone was saying. You do have ideas and you do have interests. Now we just need to figure out how to merge these ideas into a cohesive plan. So perhaps for this next discussion section, we can talk about how to progress the work of the colony in multiple different areas, which don’t have to be exclusive or singularly focused. Who wants to start?”
A woman raised her hand.
“Yes, Debbie, go ahead,” Dante said to her.
“I’d like to hear what Luna thinks is the priority,” Debbie said. “She’s always got good ideas.”
Other voices chimed in.
“Yes!”
“Whaddy’a say, Luna?”
“Agreed, let’s hear from Luna.”
Leday looked at her friend with a tilted head and a ‘told you so’ smirk.
Luna took a deep breath and then stood up.
“I think everyone one is right,” Luna started. “Well, almost everyone.”
“We do need to expand the capabilities of the colony, the stability of our community, and the people we have here. So we need a reliable food source, where agriculture and raising animals comes into play, since who knows how long we’ll be able to collect food like we do or if the animals or fish will migrate away, like the torch fish did shortly after we arrived. We need improved housing, both in terms of the number of buildings, and the soundness of those buildings, because who knows what sort of seasons and what sort of weather comes with them.”
“All of that points to a need to better understand this world that we’re on now. Some of that will happen here in our colony where we observe the seasons, the animals and the plants, but some of that also means we need to do some discovery. My ancestors on Earth did quite well where they were at for centuries. Then others who were born and lived far away from them came along and turned things upside down. So while we enjoy life here for now, I’m not going to pretend we’re all alone and wait for the day when a colony – or two or three that combined together – find us and decide to turn our world upside down.”
“So what is your proposal, Luna?” Dante asked.
Luna looked at the people assembled on the hill, and all of them were looking back at her.
“I’m not going to tell anyone what to do,” she said, her fists clenching with the stress of the attention. “I’m realizing that my calling is to explore. I looked up in the sky when I was a kid back on Earth and wanted to go to the stars to see what was there. And now that I’m here, close to one of those stars I saw in the sky, I want to see what is on this world. And as a result, I hope to meet some of the others who travelled here after us. Establish friendships, understand how we can help each other, and develop a cooperative network instead of a bunch of small groups focused on conquering, owning, taking over and pushing out. And if I can do that, and bring some of those people here to meet this colony, and take some of our people to meet them, then I’ll be doing my part to make New Seneca a stable place to live for generations.”
Some of the colonists assembled on the hill looked skeptical, but most nodded their heads.
“What do you need to make that happen?” Debbie asked.
“Boats,” Luna said emphatically. “I guess canoes. I mean, really something that could be a canoe with an outrigger attachment. From here, most of the places we can get to we have to go by water. We’re close to the mouth of the river, so I’m thinking we use canoes to go along the coastline. And I know I’ve seen an island over the open water when I go down to the end of the river on a clear day. The outrigger would keep the canoe stable enough through the rougher waves rowing across shorter distances of open water.”
Rosa used her voice instead of her whistle, “So you would do this exploring all by yourself? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It is,” Luna agreed, “which is why I’d prefer that it’s more than just me going on these exploratory trips. But I don’t want anyone to go who isn’t equally excited about seeing what’s out there. I mean, all of us decided to stay here when so many others left in the first few weeks. So I’m guessing exploring isn’t high on the checklist for a lot of people here.”
The man who spoke after Leonora, questioning the decision to keep the colony rooted at the site where they had landed, raised his hand.
“Yes, Rueben?” Dante said.
“I’d like to go with you,” Rueben said. “I think you’re absolutely right that we need to find out what – and who – is out there. So count me in.”
Another dozen hands raised in the air, with a woman calling out “I’ll go too!”
Luna’s hands relaxed and a small, shy smile appeared on her face.
“OK, then, we’ve got our exploration committee,” Dante said. “I hope you’ve got some blueprints in mind for those canoes, Luna, because I have no clue how to make one. Now what about all those other things people talked about.”
Luna sat down while Dante continued talking to the assembled crowd, catching herself by her hands so she didn’t fall backwards. She could feel her arm, leg and core muscles starting to shake as the tension was leaving them.
Leday looked at Luna, could see her shaking, and put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Like I said, people around here love you,” she said to Luna. “And, by the way, I’m coming along with you. Someone has to watch out for you since everyone else is going to make you lead the way.”
“I wasn’t sure you were interested, since you didn’t say anything when I was talking just now,” Luna said with a tone of disappointment in her voice.
“I’m not one for the dramatic flair,” Leday said. “I’ll leave that to the experts, like Dante – – – and you.”
Luna gave Leday a friendly slap on the arm, then put her arm around Leday’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’re coming along.”
“I do have one question for you, though,” Leday said. “You do know how to make a canoe, don’t you?”
Luna smiled. “You’ll have to make me a snozzberry cake to find out.”