20: Secret Meeting

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Babysitting duty was the absolute worst.

I had to look after any of the younger kids in the family whenever any of the adults wanted me to. The only things more important than babysitting were going to my jaunt, sleeping, and any important meetings or celebrations that my parents had pre-approved. And there weren’t any celebrations like that coming up, so whenever I wasn’t at my jaunt or it wasn’t sleeping time I could be called up at any moment and would have to stop hanging out with my friends or doing my own stuff to come home and look after my siblings.

For two whole months. I usually only got babysitting duty for a week or two. I got it for a month once when I was really bad. Two months was awful.

But at least I learned my lesson. If I ever had to do anything like sneaking into the treegrave again, I’d be much more careful not to get caught.

And by the end of babysitting duty, I still couldn’t find Grandma in the treegrave. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from it now, so I could at least ask directly.

“She’s having some difficulty integrating,” it told me. “It happens sometimes. It’s nothing to worry about; she’s perfectly fine and moving at her own pace.”

“Why were we told three months if it takes this long?” I grumbled.

“It usually does take between three and six months. An integration this long is rare. It’s nothing to worry about, though. Particularly strong-willed people just take a while to acclimate.”

“I want to see her again.”

“If you can convince one of your parents to apply for a visitation, I’m sure it’ll be approved quickly. But loved ones visiting does make integration take longer.”

That was no good. She couldn’t talk to me or anything if I visited; there was no point in making it take even longer before she could talk to me as the treegrave. But I had questions about a lot of stuff, and I wanted to talk to someone.

“That man in the grey jumpsuit who visited us a couple of months ago,” I said. “Do you know who I’m talking about?”

A pause. I supposed that the treegrave was looking it up. “Yamin.”

“Yeah. Him. Does he still want to talk to me, do you think?”

“I have no doubt.”

“Well, tell him to come and talk to me, then.”

“I can pass along that message, but he will refuse. Your parents made it clear that they don’t want him apprenticing you at your current age. If he seeks you out, he’d be going against the spirit of their will. That could cause trouble.”

Aww, junk.

“But,” the treegrave added, “there’s not really any way that he could be blamed for you approaching him when he hasn’t invited or encouraged it. Would you like to know where he is?”

“Yes! Tell me!”

So one hour later I was getting off the trolley and heading down the ramp to a cafeteria I’d never been to before.

Yamin looked different in casual clothes. I wouldn’t have recognised him if I wasn’t looking for him. His outfit was pretty plain compared to most men, but not as plain as his jumpsuit, which would have stood out. A pale yellow bandana with green stitching held his hair back, and he wore the thick, soft kind of wrap that older people tended to like because it was gentle on their skin, though he wasn’t old enough to have thin skin yet. He sat alone at a table near the front of the cafeteria and chewed a large steamed bun full of vat 113 paste, that I could recognise right away because my brother Klei loved it. He was staring off into empty space.

He didn’t even notice me until I sat down next to him, making him almost drop his bun in surprise.

“Hello,” I said.

“Taya! What are you doing here?”

“Talking to you.”

“Do your parents know you’re here?”

“They never told me I couldn’t talk to you.”

“An evasion that answers the question.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“I should tell you to leave. I would certainly anger your family if I invited you to stay.”

“An evasion that answers the question.” I stayed where I was. “Why did you come to my house to see me?”

“To offer you an apprenticeship in Administration. But your parents were right; you are far too young. I acted rashly.”

“You said you’d come back when I was eleven. That’s also too young for Administration.”

“It is very young, but it isn’t unheard of. People who choose to come and work for us have to be older to do so, although some admin jaunts such as Records happen younger. But as for people we find… eleven is young, but acceptable.”

“What do you do in Administration?” Honestly, I wasn’t all that interested. An apprenticeship wouldn’t help me with Rubbish & Recycling. But I’d learned a long time ago that adults would tell you a lot more if you pretended to care about the stuff that they cared about.

“Oh, this and that.”

“Vague.”

“And accurate. Most Administration jobs are very specialised; we have people who handle major engineering and construction work, people who handle supply manufacture and trade, record-keepers and culturalists. But any system needs flexibility and communication. My job is to move between departments as needed, correcting miscommunications, advising on multi-area decisions and and helping to spot problems that aren’t obvious from the narrow focus of one department alone. There aren’t very many of us and it’s a job that requires a lot of training, a lot of different kinds of work.”

“Like doing a whole jaunt all over again but with different types of Administration jobs.”

“A lot of that, yes. So starting young is generally a good idea.”

“And why did you want me?”

“I still do want you. You’re clever, strategic, and suspicious. I think you’d do very well in the job. Also, you have an exceptional ability to read and manipulate people.”

I wrinkled my nose. “That’s not true. My friend Arai is a lot smarter than me, and my strategy was bad; I got lost and caught right away. And I don’t see how being suspicious helps in Administration, important people hate it when you’re suspicious. Also, I was super confused at a lot of the reactions of the guards up there so I wasn’t reading or manipulating them at all.”

“And would your smarter friend Arai have done what you did?”

“No. she’d be smart enough not to.”

Yamin laughed. “Yes, this particular venture turned out to be unnecessary, but there was no way for you to get that information in a trustworthy way in advance. Very often, nobody’s lying to you and the truth is what it seems… but very occasionally, it isn’t. And most people won’t notice when it isn’t. You need those people, those trusting rule-followers who will accept plausible explanations and move on; you need most people to be like that, because that is crucial for stability. The ship would fail if everyone was suspicious all the time. But you also need some suspicious people, because while a lot of what they worry over will be nothing, amidst that they’ll also spot the deceptions and dangers that the majority miss, and warn them. We are about to enter a tense and dangerous time, creating a new orbital colony around the Dragonseye. And you’ll be a working adult when that happens. Your suspicious eyes will do a much better service to the ship in my line of work than causing petty drama in some service or factory job.

“As for your competence with people, I reviewed the footage of the whole incident, starting long before you actually snuck in. The people you were familiar with or able to predict, you manipulated very well. You were even incredibly good at getting what you needed from the treegrave, or under its gaze, without causing alarm. And any difficulty you had with the guards was because you’re seven years old. You lacked information and context, not skill. And you still managed to get what you wanted.”

“More through luck than anything. I still don’t understand why Saro helped me. He didn’t like me.”

“He was trying to really upset you.”

“How? He didn’t try to hurt me. He didn’t even say anything that was really all that mean.”

Yamin watched me carefully. “Were you upset when you saw your grandmother?”

“Yeah. I didn’t like the fake aspen tree. There was… it’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I heard your conversation about it with Saro. But that was all?”

“I also didn’t like the shape of the corridors and the inertial pull up there. I felt really lost all the time. I’ve never felt really lost before.”

“And your grandmother?”

Oh! Of course, he didn’t know what order I did my jaunt in. I was young enough that most kids my age hadn’t done Farming yet. Of course he was worried.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve done Farming. I get it.”

“… Get it?”

I patted his arm reassuringly. “I’ve seen the sheep. I saw a whole lot of them. I understand.”

If anything, he looked even more confused. “You’re a very strange little girl.”

“And you’re a very weird old man.”

“Hey, I’m not old!”

“If you’re not old then I’m not little!”

He laughed. “That’s fair enough. Anyway, your reaction after the incident impressed me more than your strategy.”

“That’s why you didn’t come to see my parents right away. You wanted to see what I would do.”

“Yes.”

“What did you expect me to do?”

“Run crying to your family and friends, resulting in a panic among the pre-adolescent demographic in your area where everyone shared escalating nightmare stories about how horrible integrating into the treegrave was until we calmed everyone down by shifting the jaunt schedule and sending everyone up to see some integrated people and learn from a jaunt leader how and why they are modified.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“It would have been pretty inconvenient, yes. But it’s happened before and it’ll happen again. It was worth the risk, to obtain the data.”

“The data on what I’d do.”

“Yes.”

That was probably enough showing interest in what he wanted to talk about. “Why isn’t my grandma in the treegrave yet? It’s been ages.”

“Are you sure she isn’t? The treegrave is made up of a lot of minds. It’s not always possible to recognise any specific one.”

“I would know. She would talk to me.”

“You may very well be right. New minds frequently do, at first. But I’m sure there’s nothing wrong; your family would have been notified if there was. Some people just take a very long time to integrate.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“There’s not necessarily anything wrong with her. Different minds can just be… well, let me try to explain.” He finished his bun and gave me a serious look. “Taya, have you heard of a condition called ‘epilepsy’?”

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