The PASS base in Trinar was far from the edge of the city. Merleth was glad because the city, deprived of its beautiful gardens and fountains, looked forlorn and bare. She remembered a very different Trinar.
She had heard about the changes and even viewed recent vipix, but seeing it in person brought home to her how badly things had gone these past four years. Why hadn’t Jaraidans asked for help?
As a third-tier Alliance member, Jaraida could request humanitarian aid and protection. Given that Jaraidans claimed Kronval was an invader, why had there been no call for an Alliance investigation? PASS had come without a summons, which weakened their ability to intervene in Jaraida’s behalf. With the Kron insisting that the Jaraidan government had all perished when Thualat had been destroyed by a freak failure of the energy mill, the planet needed to prove that they had a proper government. The few Jaraidans who spoke to PASS representatives insisted that there was a Ciardei and a Council of Elders, but they provided no proof. If there was a government, why had they not come forward to prove Kronval wrong?
It was a question being asked by all her superiors, and the hope was that either her old friend Gin’va or someone else Merleth had known during her two visits to Jaraida in the past, might help answer it. Merleth hoped that Gin’va was alive and would turn up in Trinar, but the silence from her friend so far made it unlikely.
If Gin’va had been able, would she not have communicated with someone—at least when PASS had arrived in Trinar more than a year ago? She had seen Dav Arteyn’s report that there was some Jaraidan government prohibition of “unnecessary contact,” but she couldn’t believe that Gin’va—independent and assured as she’d always been—would accept such a prohibition—especially since she would surely understand that contact was necessary?
Merleth and Nadaly and their other friends had worried about Gin’va since communications had ended between Jaraida and the Alliance. She knew her friend came from one of the “ruling” families, the Tavi, as they were called. If, as some people speculated, what was happening on Jaraida was some sort of revolution against the Tavi, could it be that even more than those who had died in Thualat had been killed off?
*****
Participating in the food deliveries took Merleth to three different outdoor courtyards which she quickly came to recognize. One courtyard still had a functioning fountain which was encircled by staggered rows, like giant steps leading downward to the fountain, where people would sit while waiting for the PASS trekker to arrive with the food packs. The other two were more damaged.
“There was supposedly a riot here,” Ogandg, a fellow agent, told her the first time they visited the worst hit one. “The Kron supposedly dispersed it with sodium bombs.”
“This isn’t sodium bomb damage, is it?” Merleth asked, puzzled.
She had no practical experience with bombings, but she did know that sodium bombs were supposed to be relatively gentle. This courtyard floor was strewn with jagged rocks and dirt from the empty planters, and the walls on two sides had collapsed. The fountain gave no water, and there were streaks of chemical burn around it.
“I said, ‘supposedly,’” said Ogandg making a face. “The Kron claim the explosive weapons all came from the rioters.”
“What do the people say?” Merleth asked as they stopped the trekker and prepared to leave its atmospheric bubble.
“Very little,” said Ogandg, pulling her helmet and mask on. “You’ll see. Whether you address them in Arand or Alspik, their conversational repertoire is limited. However, if you don’t speak Arand around them, there is a chance they will say something among themselves that may interest us. So pretend that you don’t understand Arand.”
This was not what Merleth had expected to be doing, but she followed Ogandg’s lead and spoke only Alspik. Most of the adult Jaraidans knew enough to follow simple instructions. The children—there were a lot of children in ragged clothes and not always wearing helmets, much less other protective gear—did not seem to understand as well, and simply followed the example of their elders.
“Some of those children look like they are starving,” Merleth remarked to the others in her group. “Are we giving enough food?”
“We give a bit more than the recommended daily allowance for an adult. They are probably selling their food packs,” said Lexol, who had been in Trinar the longest and was accepted as a sort of expert by the others.
“Selling?” Merleth was not surprised to hear there was a black market for the food packs, but it surprised her that the children were not keeping some of the food for themselves. Who sold food packs when they were starving?
“Or the packs are taken from them by others who sell them,” Ogandg said. “And the children may get nothing in return.”
“They should have something to eat,” Merleth said. “Even if someone else takes their food packs.”
When a group of children came to her to pick up their food packs, she handed each of them an opened tube of a nutritious thick drink before she gave them the packs.
“Drink,” she said in Alspik, holding a tube to her mouth to mime drinking.
A couple of the children hesitated, but most took the tubes eagerly and pulled their masks up slightly so they could drink. They drank quickly, hungrily, and when they finished and put the empty tubes in the disposal bin, some of them bobbed their heads in a bow as they thanked her in in either Arand or Alspik.
The next group was adults. When she was handing them the food packs, one of them said in choppy Alspik, “Don’t open drink before you give. Some want drink later.”
“We are only giving the nutritional drink to the children,” Merleth said.
The Alspik speaker frowned and translated what Merleth had said to the others in the group.
“Tell her that you have children,” suggested a woman in the group.
Merleth waited for the translation to ask where the children were. The PASS policy was to give each person only enough for one. A parent with children would get food for each child that was present, but no more.
“Those are our children,” said another woman in Alspik pointing at the group of raggedy children standing behind them.
“I don’t think so,” Merleth said. She might be new at the job, but she was not a fool.
“We look after them. They are like our children,” the woman said, perhaps realizing that the children would not lie if questioned.
“We look after them, all orphans, if we can,” added the woman who had first spoken.
Yeah, right, thought Merleth. I bet you want to “look after” the food they get.
“Then you will be happy when I give each of them a tube of this nutritional drink,” Merleth said, going past the women, who had not moved on when they got they packs as they should have, to hand out the tubes to the children.
“But they will waste it,” one of the women protested. Merleth ignored her and went on opening handing the tubes to the six children.
They had looked at the discussion without fully understanding, but they understood that they could consume the drinks right there, that, in fact, the PASS food lady wanted them to have the drink before they left with the food packs. They drank hungrily.
The oldest seemed to be a boy with a mask that was getting too small for his face and no helmet. He was holding the hand of one of the youngest children, a little girl, to judge from the two braids sticking out beneath her helmet.
Merleth immediately gave the boy an adult-size mask which could be adjusted to his face, and handed him an extra, unopened, drink tube, “for the little girl.” She hoped that because he was older he might be better able to protect their food supply than some of the others who looked as though they could be bullied by everyone.
The boy gave a little bow before saying thank you in Alspik. From the way he touched the little girl’s shoulder, she guessed they were related. The other children thanked her in Arand, except for one who just looked lost and in pain.
“Is he all right?” she asked the oldest boy, concerned enough that she would switch to Arand if she needed to. However, he replied in Alspik.
“His father died yesterday,” the boy explained. “He was caught in one of the raids outside the Mesil stonework. Everyone else in his family was already dead.”
Merleth had been aware that there had been a few raids—drone attacks that no group took credit for—around the city since she had arrived, but that a raid the previous day killed the father of this child brought home to her how precarious the lives of Jaraidans were.
She wanted to do something for the child –for all of them. But the line behind them was long. There was no time to do more than to hand the bereaved boy a strip of sweet jellies, a treat for most the children.
“Tell him I am so sorry for his loss,” she told the older boy, who was now steering away both the little girl and the boy who looked lost.
She wished she could do more, but she was just there to give out food, and there were many hungry people in line.
*****
She went on to give more of the nutritional drink to every child, including teeners, that came for food, and in one case, when three very miserable- and discouraged-looking kids came for their packs, she made a point of repairing tears on their jackets with armor-tape while at the same time handing each child a small cake of high protein emergency food that they could hide and keep. They looked surprised for only a minute before they slipped the cakes quietly in their sleeves or pockets with pleased smiles.
“Ini seyai,” they murmured softly.
One of them said it in Alspik, “Thank you.”
*****
“What was that all about with the children getting extra drinks?” Ogandg asked when they were back in the trekker heading to the next distribution spot. “It slowed things down a bit.”
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Merleth explained her idea. If some of the children were getting their food taken away, at least they would get the nutritional drink, which would provide roughly 1/3 of the nutrition an ordinary child would need in one day. She added that she had also secretly given emergency cakes to the ones who looked especially badly off.
Since the emergency cakes were notoriously dull in in flavor, Ogandg made a face but agreed that when you were very hungry, anything nutritious was good. The people even loved that erthrop which was supposed to taste like nothing at all.
“I’ve heard,” Merleth said. “That erthrop makes a big difference in other cities where it grows more plentifully.
“Trinar may be at a disadvantage,” she went on. “One of my friends in the Kyeros base reports that erthrop pretty much covers every stonework every evening. It may be a reason they don’t have as much hunger as here.”
“You have friends at the Kyeros base?” Ogandg asked.
“A few—from the Academy and the College mostly. Don’t you?”
“Not that I am still in touch with,” Ogandg said.
“Dav Arteyn was a special friend of one of my best friends from the Academy,” Merleth explained. “And since we had an interest in Jaraida in common, we stayed in touch.”
“Dav Arteyn, is that the tall, handsome guy with the eyebrows that won’t quit?”
“No,” Merleth replied laughing. “You’re thinking of Cim Serleyen, I think. Dav has ordinary eyebrows—though he is tall and good-looking. He has a square face, brown curly hair, dark, deep-set eyes and a great smile.”
Ogandg blinked quickly to access Dav’s profile on the infi.
“Yum,” she said. “Definitely handsome. Is he still the ‘special friend’ of your friend? Or do you have a closer interest?”
“We are just friends,” Merleth said, pushing down the discomfort she always felt when teased about possible partners.
“He and my friend, Nadaly Rionan, are not close any more, but we have worked together—the three of us and some other people—on Nadaly’s language project. Nadaly is one of the chief creators of the Arand learning module,” she added, proud of her friend.
“Really?” Ogandg was impressed. “Is that why you know Arand so well? She coached you?”
“We learned it together, from Gin’va Adeni, the Jaraidan we knew at the Academy. When Nadaly was working on her Arand module, she picked my brains clean of everything I knew about Arand—and some things I didn’t know I knew.”
“Are you two going to keep on chattering?” Lexol asked as they approached their next stop. “We have work to do.”
“We are discussing Merleth’s ideas for getting some extra food to the children who may be bullied by the bigger kids or even the adults to give up their food packs.”
“That’s not what I was hearing,” said Lexol. “But yeah, it’s a good idea to get some extra food to them if we can. What do you suggest, Merleth?”
She explained the trick about opening the drinks right there, so the kids could drink it, and about the emergency food that could be slipped into pockets or kids’ sleeves. Lexol thought it was excellent.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
The extra drinks were well-received by the children and teeners, though some adults who had no children with them complained it was unfair, and a couple again claimed they had children at home for whom they wished to take the drink. Merleth and the others replied it was only for children who came in person.
Though somewhat understandable, the greed of some people and the way many adults preyed on the children made Merleth angry. In one place, where she was handing out drinks and food packs to a group of especially small and vulnerable-looking youngsters, Merleth slipped not only a couple of emergency cakes but extra protein bars to each of them.
Their shields were not good and she could pick up their fear that even these secret gifts would be taken from them by bigger kids and unscrupulous adults who preyed on them. It troubled Merleth greatly. Why was there no protection for these children? Where were their families?
At the end of the local evening, when she and the others returned to the base, Merleth wrote a report about her suspicions that many orphan children were being victimized and suggested the Mission explore options to protect them. Would it be appropriate, she asked, to create a shelter for orphan children?
*****
Senior Ncatl, her immediate superior, liked the idea. It would not be complicated at all, he said. It could be an extension of the medicenter, and might even be welcomed by the people. Having bands of orphans was not good, and providing them with a place where they would be fed and sheltered could only help the community. He asked her to flesh out her idea into a proposal, and he would pass it on to the other mission leaders.
His positive response was echoed by Chief Medic Pumenkzi, who stopped her the next day, as she went into the medicenter, to tell her that the orphan’s shelter idea was excellent, and asked if she had a sense of how many orphans they would attract. She said she would try to find out.
During her next few food rounds, she began speaking Arand to the locals, and asking questions. Most had little to say, but the children seem to appreciate that she was giving them extra food and trusted her enough to tell some things about themselves and the conditions of their lives.
She found out that the homeless were allowed to sleep inside some corridors in the stoneworks, and that in the morning they got some food—but never enough—from the stoneworks in which they spent the night. However, during the day, they couldn’t stay in one place unless they had work. Most of the children did not want to talk about the bullying and stealing, but a few disclosed that they felt sorry for the little ones who didn’t have adult kin or older kids to protect them. Most had no idea how many homeless kids there were, but their best guess was 50 to 100.
An older woman whose EF mask did not cover her gray-brown eyes overheard one day when Merleth was questioning a couple of older children and volunteered that the number of homeless children or youths was easily more than 400.
The children looked at the woman respectfully and agreed that it might be that many.
“We don’t keep count,” one of them said a bit cheekily.
The woman laughed and the youngsters ran off with the food packs Merleth had given them earlier.
Delighted that a local was starting a conversation with her instead of the other way around, Merleth turned to the woman and asked, “Why do you estimate so many?”
“My younger sister, who is on the telepath relays, hears that sort of thing, and has mentioned it,” she said.
They were sitting on some stone benches around the fountain of the least damaged courtyard. Merleth had asked to be left there while the team delivered food to the other courtyards because she had wanted to ask questions of the children, some of whom were beginning to trust her. The woman was an unexpected bonus.
“Is your sister a powerful telepath?” she asked. She had not thought of the relays since Gin’va had described them long ago. They had been a mere note in her reports on Jaraidan—but now she wondered how the telepath relays were working since the collapse of the locnet.
“She is good enough for the relays,” said the woman.
“It must be extra work to be on the relays these days,” Merleth said. Without access to the locnet, she thought, Jaraidans must be especially dependent on transferring information telepathically.
“Everything is harder these days,” the woman replied with a sigh.
Merleth nodded agreement and asked the question she asked any adult she could get to talk to her.
“I had a good Jaraidan friend at the PanWorld Academy who was a powerful telepath. I wonder if you or your sister know her—Gin’va Adeni?”
“I knew her as a child,” the woman said after a pause. “I was part of the household of her foster-mother, Eretma-na,” she added.
“I think I met her when I visited,” Merleth said, thinking to herself that this woman--who was actually talking to her--might be her first useful contact.
“Did you?” The woman’s eyes brightened with pleasure. “She was a lovely lady,” she said.
“She was, from what Gin’va told me,” Merleth agreed.
“You mean Gin’va-na,” the woman corrected.
Merleth apologized, explaining that she and Gin’va had been school mates, and that at the Academy they had not used honorifics.
“I shall remember to speak of her as Gin’va-na from now on,” she promised. “I just want to say that I am sure Eratma-na is much mourned. I was sorry to hear of her death in Thualat.”
“Many who died that day are mourned, but I mourn her most of all because she was my friend as well as my mistress,” the woman said.
“Almost everyone who was in the Thusal compound died that day,” she went on sadly. “I was spared because I was visiting my sister here in Trinar. Gin’va-na survived because she was in the mountains that day. A blessing among many sorrows.”
“All blessings come from the Power,” Merleth said, remembering from somewhere that this was the correct, ritual response.
The woman sighed but seemed pleased that Merleth had known what to say.
“May I have your name?” Merleth asked after a pause. “I am Merleth Bachelard Caruth. I roomed with Gin’va at the Academy, and was here for her wedding.”
Whether it was that Merleth had said the right thing or that she had known Gin’va, the woman didn’t hesitate, as many other Jaraidans, even the children, often did.
“I am Da’téa Persil,” she said.
Merleth gave the slight bow accepted universally as acknowledgment or respectful acceptance of an introduction. Da’téa returned it.
The Persil, Merleth knew, were Atanavi, the second rank of clans, who often intermarried with the Tavi. And she had known Gin’va!
“I was happy to hear that Ginva-na survived that day, but I haven’t heard from her since, and I wonder if she is still alive,” Merleth said.
“She is alive,” said the woman. “Thanks be to the Power.”
“You’re sure?” Merleth asked eagerly.
“I would have heard if she had died,” the woman said.
“Do you know how she is doing? Could you get a message to her from me?”
Da’téa shook her head.
“I know only that she is alive. I am sorry, I have no way to send a message for you.”
“What about your sister? Didn’t you say she was part of the telepath relays?”
“The relays are for Jaraidans,” D’tea said, doubtfully.
“Gin’va-na is a Jaraidan,” Merleth pointed out.
“Gin’va-na isn’t trying to contact you,” D’tea said firmly, but her eyes smiled.
“I will ask my sister if she can send a message, but I cannot promise anything,” she added.
“Thank you!” Merleth said sincerely. “I have been worried about her, wondered if she was all right, if I could help..."
Pushing her luck a little, she asked, “Can you tell me anything about the Ciardei? I know Eshongar-ne died in Thualat, but wasn’t Eshtiret-ne proclaimed Ciardei after him?”
“Eshtiret-ne was not in Thualat that day,” D’tea said. “He took over the leadership from his brother.”
“I have heard that Eshtiret-ne is dead,” Merleth said bluntly. “That there is no Ciardei.”
Da’téa’s kind eyes suddenly showed anger.
That is Kron lies, that is we have no Ciardei!”
“Why doesn’t he contact the Alliance, make himself known?” Merleth asked.
“I’m not in the confidence of the government,” Da’téa replied crisply.
Merleth gave it a couple more tries, framing the questions more gently, but the woman was not going to answer any more questions about the missing Ciardei, so Merleth changed the subject back to the homeless, and especially the children.
“The orphans are a sad case,” Da’téa said sadly. “The adults will move on as soon as they can, but children who do not have kin in Trinar have no one to help them.”
“What do you mean?”
Da’téa frowned as if she didn’t understand the question. After some discussion, it turned out that if children had family in Trinar, they were not homeless. Their extended families took them, fostered them. The same was true for adults or family groups. Kindred took in kindred.
Adults who had no kinship ties in Trinar were homeless also, the woman explained, but they were transient. They would leave for another community where they had kin as soon as it was possible to get there. Children who were part of a family group would move with them. The orphans, who had found no kin in Trinar and were not sure of kinship ties elsewhere, did not have the option of moving on.
“You mean no one will take in the orphans who have no family?”
Da’téa nodded sadly.
“There is no one to speak for them, to contact family elsewhere. The telepath relays try to help. Every day, there are messages from a child or group of children looking for family members and hoping for help getting to those relatives. My sister says that there aren’t enough answers.”
“Is that because they have no more family or because family elsewhere is stretched too thin already and can’t take in the orphans?” Merleth wanted to know.
“My sister is not sure,” the woman said sadly.
“I want to provide a shelter for the orphans at the PASS base,” Merleth said. “That is why I want to get an estimate of the number of children. Do you really think more than 400?”
Da’téa nodded.
“That includes the older children,” she said. “The ones over 15 sunarounds.”
15 sunarounds, Merleth knew was about 12 standard years. Still a child, but she had noticed that those she would think of as teeners, when not the bullies the younger ones feared, were the leaders and protectors of others. Not an unusual situation at all, when adult supervision was limited or some of the adults were also preying on the youngsters.
She would have to work out the details of how to protect the younger ones from the older if the shelter plan were approved.
Do you think the children will come to us?” she asked.
Da’téa wasn’t sure.
“Do you plan to allow the children to come and go freely?” she asked.
“We have no authority over them,” Merleth replied quickly, understanding the question. “They would have to agree to respect each other and follow safety rules within the shelter, but we won’t restrict their leaving.”
The woman nodded slowly.
“It might be a good thing for the children, especially the very young ones. Like the food you offer, it would meet a need. But the children would have to trust you—trust your group of outworlders.”
“Can you suggest how we might earn the children’s trust?” Merleth asked, knowing that this was the important part. You cannot help people who fear you.
“Just keep doing what you are doing now,” Da’téa said. “Feed them, help them in small ways. I see that you bring good masks, and mending tape to fix jackets and boots, not just food. That helps. They see you care. It may take time though.”
“It will take time for us to get the shelter for the orphans approved,” Merleth said. “When we get it set up, would you be interested in helping?”
They would need Jaraidans to help with the children, Merleth thought. Da’téa--concerned about the children, well-informed, and not hostile to PASS--seemed perfect. In fact, Merleth hoped to be able to consult with Da’téa as the plans took form.
“Me?” Da’téa seemed surprised.
“You have been helpful, and you seem a sensible, motherly women. The children need people like you around them. What did you do in Eratma-na’s household?”
“I was governess to the younger children,” said Da’téa with a chuckle. “Not Gin’va-na. She was at Enachar when I joined the household. I worked with the little ones, preparing to go to school.”
“It sounds like you would be perfect,” Merleth said, delighted to hear this. She had a vague idea that Enachar, besides being a city in North Daásin was—or had been—the site of a school Gin’va had attended, but that was not relevant now. That Da’téa had experience working with children was good news.
“You would be paid, of course, and you would be a huge help.”
“I do not speak your language,” said Da’téa.
“You speak the children’s language,” Merleth pointed out.
Da’téa frowned slightly. For the first time, her silence suggested she might be telepathing. Asking her sister perhaps?
“I would help,” she said after a pause. “If the shelter was truly for the good of the children."
