Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction Read Free Page A

difficult for her.
Something inside her being told her that there really was something
that existed beyond the contours that she knew at that moment. Yet,
if men had a fifth sense …
    “ But Mama, why doesn’t
Chaid Khasat know how to move here. Doesn’t he see?”
    “ No, Charni. He lost an
extremity. And although he kept the member that allows men to see,
now he can’t do it because he isn’t whole. And since they only use
that sense to fight and protect the entrances to this world and
they don’t need other senses to do that, when they lose it, it’s
difficult for them to live in our world.”
    “ A body part to
see?”
    “ Yes. Here.” She indicated
the area of her contour where the lower extremities united. “We
don’t have it, that’s why we don’t have that sense and can’t live
in that world.”
    “ Oh … a woman
can’t?”
    It was difficult for
Charni to imagine something like that, but at the same time it was
the only explanation for that fifth sense. If her being, except for
the upper contour, was a lot like men’s, an extra collector that
let them see was the logical answer, the same way that she used her
two upper collectors to feel.
    “ Hmm … something like
that,” Mama replied. “When you’re more developed I’ll tell you how
they use their member in us so that their fifth sense continues to
work and serve us. Now I want you to get prepared. Tomorrow is your
first day in school, and I have my hopes placed in you. If you
follow my steps, you can become a queen, like me.”
     
     
    Although Mama had explained with sounds and
textures what school was like, to experience it for herself was
something amazing.
    Like the route to take to get there, for
example.
    Mama had made it well textured that she must
perceive everything on the way and that she would accompany her
until she had memorized it or until Charni herself asked her to let
her go there alone. And it was fascinating to perceive all the
contours of textures that until then were unknown, the large number
of aromas that came to her, the sounds that seemed to come from all
sides, and the quantity of new beings who placed themselves in her
path and even stopped her a few times to exchange information.
    Oh! To memorize the route would not be too
difficult, but to learn to move around despite so many unexpected
barriers would be the big challenge. A trial by fire that,
according to Mama, would make her a stronger, better woman.
    Added to that were the quantity of beings
with common characteristics but all kinds of limits that had been
brought together in the school.
    As she would discover later, all the beings
with almost-equal contours and limits were gathered together and
brought to certain spaces separated from the rest. And in each
space there was another being, a woman with the same
characteristics as Mama, who assigned each of the other beings,
girls like her, to specific places … and she began to explain the
world to them without interruptions and only by articulating
sounds!
    There were so many new sounds that it was
difficult for Charni to take them all in. Class, desk, seat, cloths
…
    They were also permitted rest times during
which the girls of her class played and talked with her.
    To share sounds and tactile words with other
girl beings with limits and contours like her own was so
entertaining and fascinating. … The exchange of information was so
high that when Mama came to get her and take her to the space
called home, she was so exhausted that she did not wait long to go
to bed and sleep.
    And each time that she went to school, she
learned something new. Many things, really.
    The being called Teache was friendly and
very patient with the girls, but firm when she needed to be. She
punished disobedience or slow learning in such a way that a girl
had to have very little self-confidence to err again.
    As time went on, the subjec of the languas
of sounds and textures, the conceps of mathematics became more
complex. As