The Seventh Day by Joy Dettman Page A

was much hunger. With hunger came disunity.
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    The Chosen despaired. Time would defeat the birth of a new world. Thus the Chosen looked again to the old world. And the engineers studied the flying machines of the last age, while the scientists made modifications to seed and to the embryo of a sow, and they Implanted it into carrier sows. Some infants were born of this method but did not survive.
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    In the next decade of the New Beginning came the modified sow which wore the eyes of man and the snout of the beast. And its ovum was Harvested, and from it and the cells of a volunteer came a litter of twelve.
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    And they were neither swine nor man, and they had no minds but to suckle at multiple nipples.
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    There was much interest and much debate on ethics. And there was much disunity between the scientists and priests, and those who held great power and position. In the interval of arguments and reports done, it was seen that the litter would grow strong.
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    And they grew fast. And they were docile. These creations were named Sowmen, and in time the sowmen freed man of all labour in the fields.
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    And there was time for progress.

JONJAN
    Jonjan is awake before the sun. He reaches out to me and takes my hand. I spring into wakefulness. Lord, I have raised him from the dead.
    It is later when we talk of his leg and the splint I have placed on it.
    â€˜So you have set the bone, mountain girl?’
    â€˜If the leg is better on than off we will soon know,’ I say, offering him a soup of mashed cornbeans and water. He wishes to talk more, but I wish him to finish what is in the can.
    How free I am in this place, how certain my decisions and actions. I brush the hair from his face, wipe the spilled cornbean soup from his chin.
    â€˜Was it yesterday?’
    â€˜Only yesterday, now drink this.’ I offer a weak cordial, but he turns his head away. ‘Are you not in pain, Jonjan?’
    â€˜I am in pain. And pleased to greet it, and to greet this day.’ He coughs, coughs hard, and I place my ear to his chest, afraid I will hear the bubbling of fluid in his lungs, as it had been with Granny in the final days of her illness. There is no bubbling. Not yet.
    â€˜Drink a little. I have made it quite weak. It will ease the pain, and your coughing.’ I sip first from the container of cordial, then hold it again to his lips. He will have none of it. Perhaps later, I think.
    His leg has swollen in the night, which gives me some fear; still, can I expect less after yesterday’s mutilation? My hand moves quickly to his brow, rests there a while. Perhaps he does not feel so hot today. Perhaps his brow now feels cold. Again I feel the jolt of fear. I feel my own brow. It is also cold. Lord, why does my heart beat so hard with fear for him? Surely his leg has swollen in order to protect the break in his bone. Nature is at work for him.
    I look at our small shelter and know the sun will soon come, and I think of the cave above us. There is little room to move here, perhaps the length of two men to the ravine. To the north, there is only the scrub and the climb up to the animal track; to the south, the shelf we are on grows narrow and soon disappears. Why had he not fallen to the flat area in front of the spring cave? Far better than this place, but an attempt to move him will undo the good work I have done. Weeks must pass before he might be safely moved.
    â€˜This place will be hot enough to roast us before noon,’ I say.
    â€˜It is a finer house than the halfway place in which you found me.’
    â€˜If I had thought to bring an old hide or more blankets I could have made –’
    â€˜Who are you? Where have you come from?’ he says.
    â€˜From . . . from where you found me.’
    â€˜You are from the laboratories.’
    â€˜I am . . . Granny said I am a freeborn.’
    â€˜There are no more freeborn.’ His words hold such certainty.
    I shrug,