Khe by Alexes Razevich Read Free Book Online Page A

Gintok, were seated in front of the vision stage. Like Tav, their emotion spots showed their surprise at seeing me. Simanca’s neck showed nothing.
    I glanced nervously across the room. I didn't mind speaking in front of Tav, but I wished Min and Gintok, cold-necked doumanas both, weren’t there. My heart beat against my ribs. Turning my left arm palm up, I held it out for Simanca to see. My pulse was jumping, making my dots rise and fall.
    Simanca held my arm tightly and peered closely my wrist for what felt like a long time.
    "Insect bite," she said and dropped my arm. "Nothing to worry about. Not worth mentioning to anyone."
    "My unitmates know," I said. "And yours know, too. I have an extra age dot."
    Simanca drew herself up as tall as she could be.
    "This is an insect bite, Khe, not an age spot, and doubtless will disappear as suddenly as it came.” She inhaled a breath. A faint, forced smile crinkled her lips. "You did right by coming to me. Say no more about this. You may return to your dwelling."
    I trudged back across the commons. If the dot meant nothing, why was I ordered to silence?
    ***
    As a reward—or punishment—for doing so well with the kiiku, we were assigned awa trees next. Awa is not as highly valued as kiiku, and it’s misery to tend. Thedra acted like the assignment was my fault and made little screeching noises every time she had to climb up the long ladder to hand pollinate the awa flowers. But we did well with the stingy trees—so well that Simanca had called us on stage at the season-end weighing and given us a special award of merit.
    The following season, we were assigned preslets. Preslets could be bitingly bad-tempered, and usually were, or sweetness itself. No one liked tending them, but the birds were useful, providing meat for food, feathers for stuffing quilts and pillows, and lining the insides of the warmest Barren Season cloaks. Their usefulness alone was reason to treat them well, but I thought that the creator had its own good reasons for making preslets the way they were, that maybe preslets were a lesson of sorts—a way to see that good and bad were entwined, and that one had to learn to appreciate the whole.
    Sometimes, when a preslet felt like it, the bird would crawl into your lap, roll over on its back and make soft little yelping noises in sign that it wanted to be petted. Once I sat in the yard for most of a morning with a preslet on my lap, stroking the soft down on its belly, listening to it coo, lost in a world where thought had no place, where all was touch and sound and contentment. I heard footsteps and looked up to find Stoss staring at me. When our eyes met, she giggled. I looked at her, confused, and then realized that I’d been cooing just like the preslet. I didn’t mind Stoss’s laughter, but the bird took offense. It leaped down from my lap, scratching me with its sharp claws. It stalked around in a circle in front of us, fluffing its tiny, useless wings and screeching, ack, ack .
    “You need to apologize,” I told Stoss.
    “To a preslet?” she asked. “Have you lost your mind?”
    “Apologize,” I insisted.
    Stoss sighed and turned to the bird. “Sorry.”
    I couldn’t prove it, but I’d swear that preslet was bigger the next day.
    ***
    I set about tending my flock with the same determination I’d given the kiiku and the awa. I tried a little experiment as well.
    I don’t know why I did it. Probably because Thedra was always going on about how it was my touch that made the kiiku and awa do so well and I half wondered if it might be true.
    I went to an old awa tree that hadn’t produced fruit in years. I leaned my head against the smooth-barked trunk and thought how beautiful the tree would be in blossom, how happy everyone would be if the blooms turned to fruit. I felt a little silly, but wished the tree well and a long, productive life.
    At season’s end, not only were my preslets bigger and meatier than anyone else’s, the old tree bore