Page 13 of Prima
That’s right, volunteering means something else in Dawan.
“No answers? Fine. I have no choice but to tow you in as spies.”
There is hardly any difference between the flint-beneath-velvet tone he uses with the men and the one he took with her two nights ago—if anything, he speaks more softly now than earlier. But this time she hears menace in his voice, a promise of disproportionate response all the more chilling for its casualness.
The men must hear the same.
“No, no, no!” cries their ringleader. “Please, young sir, we’re just not used to being questioned by officials. There are no spies among us. And yes, we are volunteers from 66.”
She notices with some satisfaction that her not-yet-lover is no longer “young brother”, but “young sir”. How long before he becomes a full-fledged “sir” with no qualifiers?
“Every single one of you a volunteer?” he continues in the same seemingly mellow voice.
“Yes, sir, yes.”
The girl grins. Unqualified “sir” achieved.
“But the boundaries of Work Camp 66 are four kilometers that way. Only volunteers with special dispensation are allowed outside a three-kilometer radius of any work camp. Where’s your dispensation?”
The girl chortles silently to herself. Any time a crew appears in an area where there seems to be only Plant Cover, chances are they are there to reclaim an island. In New Ryukyu, every able-bodied adult contributes eighteen months to the painstaking effort. Dawan, which only mandates service from males, makes up for its reduced labor pool by “volunteering” men who have already served their regular conscription for more of the same, especially those caught at various misdemeanors.
As she thought, these men broke rules to come after her—not rules meant for her protection, but rules against any dilly-dallying or attempt at escape.
“Ah… Well, sir, this is…well…”
“No special dispensation? Did you inform your supervisor ahead of time that you would venture beyond the permitted radius?”
The ringleader titters nervously. “We weren’t planning to be this far from shore, sir. You must have seen the raft, right? There’s a girl on the raft, and the guys got a little carried away.”
“A camp follower?” asks the boy, his three words conveying the disapproval of an entire ruling apparatus.
“No, no, sir!” the ringleader squeals. The girl imagines beads of sweat on his forehead. “We wouldn’t dare have camp followers. But six of us here are unmarried and a perfectly good girl passed by all by herself?—”
“You were conducting a private wife hunt?” The boy’s voice suddenly drips with ice.
In the middle of a tropical morning, in sun-drenched, aquamarine water, even the girl feels a chill down her back.
“May I remind you, penalties for private wife hunts are higher than those for leaving work camp without permission,” the boy continues, his words clipped, unsparing. “You are looking at another six months of volunteering, at the very least.”
“But we could have been chasing down an escapee…” The ringleader sounds as if he’s about to cry. “Surely that counts for something.”
The boy laughs softly. “Let me tell you something off-record. These days there is a great need for volunteers. Any females you see plying our waters, singly or in small groups, are set loose deliberately to lure men into pursuit. And these men end up donating nearly an extra year of their lives to reclamation efforts.”
Seagulls squawk overhead. Clear wavelets splash gently against the sides of the boats. A breeze whips the sail of the girl’s raft, sending it scudding northward.
And she can almost hear the men in the canoe trembling, the paddles twitching in their shaking hands.
As the silence grows from merely oppressive to downright suffocating, the boy asks gently, “Now, esteemed uncles, whatwereyou doing?”
If she could, the girl would applaud his ironic usage of honorifics.
The ringleader, after some more hemming and hawing, finally makes a false confession. “We were goofing, sir. We just wanted to swan about and do nothing for a bit.”
The boy sounds slightly mollified. “In that case, you’ll get off relatively easily—no more than a slap on the wrist. Row back to your work camp. I’ll follow you.”
The ringleader must have decided to try his luck. “Please, sir, can we just forget that this ever happened?”
Another silence unfurls. The girl enjoys the tickle of its tyranny. What is the boy doing? Staring at the men one by one, tapping his fingertips on the gunwale, or checking the state of his nails? She hopes it’s this last.
