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on somebody's boot.
Apart from these lapses, the huts would easily pass the most stringent
inspection. Clean, tidy, almost impersonal. On each desk sat a small holo
globe showing a posed family scene the number of parents varying from one to
six, but the number of children always exactly the same: one son, one
daughter, their ages two years apart and every such globe was precisely the
same size and placed in precisely the same position on the desk, as if the
Unity had strict regulations for the proper display of one's family unit.
Maybe they did. The Unity reputedly liked to regiment people's home lives as
much as it regimented everything else.
But one area in each hut wasnot regulated: the mask shrine. The shrines hung
on the wall immediately opposite the door, suspended at eye level beside the
closet. Each shrine had a shelf, a backdrop, and a pedestal for the mask
itself... but there the similarities ended. In the first hut I entered, the
shelf, backdrop, and pedestal were all matte steel, and the mask a metallic
thing of wire, gears, LEDs, and chrome; its eyeholes were covered with mirror
glass, and its soul-gem, in the middle of the forehead, was a yellow
industrial diamond. By contrast, the next hut's shrine was constructed
entirely of organic things a mahogany shelf upholstered with bird feathers, a
backdrop of growing vines, and a pedestal made of bone, all supporting a mask
of deerhide with a pearl soul-gem above its eyes. Next door had an outer-space
motif, with a photographic starscape as background and star-shaped sequins
everywhere else. The soul-gem had the pockmarked look of a stony meteorite. In
the final hut I entered, the entire shrine was shrouded in lush black velvet,
but the mask itself was pure white silk. The gem was a black opal: black on
white on black.
I wasn't a stranger to extravagant shrines every home on Anicca had at least
one Buddha surrounded by small offerings and written vows to pursue
enlightenment. But in the otherwise immaculate Camp Esteem huts, the mask
shrines appeared too garish... as if the Unity members used the masks and the
shrines as a way of venting all the emotion/anarchy/creative impulses they
normally suppressed.
Of course, my reaction to the shrines was colored by what I knew. The
straitlaced Unity, so restrained and socially delicate, had created a religion
of total excess: primal, barbaric, orgiastic. Every night they donned masks...
drugged or danced themselves into altered states of consciousness... then
ended with ritual fights and copulation. If I'd been born in the Unity, I
would have lost my virginity at my first sacred dance, around the age of
twelve but I would scarcely remember the experience or any other coupling
thereafter, because all such sexual encounters took place in a trance-like
delirium where normal mental processes were suppressed.
Copulation without conscience. Riot without responsibility. It was easy to
see the attraction... and just like the Unity to cold-bloodedly design their
religious practice as a psychological release valve rather than genuine
spirituality.
Still... when I thought about the masks in the huts, I wondered what totem I
might have chosen if I'd been a Unity child. What mask would I hide behind
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when I wanted to lose myself? Unbidden, a mental picture arose: a smooth
woman's face sculpted in copper-brown leather, but with the left cheek gashed
open by a knife.
Trying to force the image from my mind, I hurried to join the others.
We went to the mess hall next. It was just as the probe had shown abandoned
partway through breakfast, food on the table undisturbed by insects. I hadn't
seen or heard any insects in the entire camp; the only living creature I'd
spotted was that lizard who scuttled away when Tut yelled. I wondered if local
fauna could have been "eaten" by the EMP cloud... but that didn't make sense.
If nothing else, the cloud was mobile: it had, for example, enveloped us on
the floodplain. But there'd been plenty of insects down on the flats. So even
if the cloud was an insectivore, why would it devour all the bugs around camp
but leave the floodplain swarms untouched?
Festina stuck her head out of the kitchen. "I found the source of the probe's
IR reading. There's a gas stove still burning. Anybody want scrambled eggs
that have gone all black and crispy?"
Tut immediately said, "I'll try some."
"Before you do," I said (knowing the only way to keep Tut from consuming
burned eggs was to distract him till they vanished from his mind), "have you
noticed there are no insects on the food? Don't you find that odd?"
"Nah," Tut said. "The Unity are great at insect repellants. It's one of the
first things they do on a new planet figure out what disgusts local insects,
then gene-jiggle themselves to pump out the appropriate chemicals. Usually in
their sweat. Remember, Mom, Unity folks have no sense of smell. They don't
care if they stink to high heaven. Makes for some pretty exotic reeks in Unity
cities, let me tell you."
Though I'd been breathing cookhouse air for at least a minute, I couldn't
help sniffing in search of "exotic reeks." It didn't smell like much of
anything just a slight burned odor from the kitchen. The eggs had incinerated
themselves more than thirty-six hours ago, so the worst of the char stench was
gone. Tut also gave a sniff, then shrugged. "Mutan insects don't have
Earthling noses. Maybe this place stinks of something we can't smell."
"Or maybe," I said, "the campdid stink while the Unity people were
here enough that insects cleared out and built their nests elsewhere. Now that
Team Esteem is gone, the smell has faded too... but it's only been a day and a
half, so the insects haven't found their way back yet."
"Hmph." That was Festina, returning from the kitchen. She went to the dining
table and studied it. Tut and I did the same. Just like the recon
photos cutlery set down haphazardly, chairs pushed back... as if everybody had
suddenly decided to rush outside and never returned.
But wait. Now that I looked, I saw not every place had been abandoned
hurriedly. One chair on the far side of the table was tucked away tidily. The
plate was clean except for a few crumbs, and the juice glass was empty. The
cutlery had been neatly set aside. "See that?" I said. "One person had
finished eating and left the table."
"Looks like it," Tut agreed. "But even in the Unity, there's always one
person who eats faster than anyone else."
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"Maybe," said Festina, "that person had reason to eat faster yesterday
morning. Pressing work to be done. He or she ate quickly, then left the mess
hall. Probably to get started on work."
"Then everyone else ran outside," I said. "Like maybe the person who left
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