Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "racial-relations"

It’s been a while since I gave y’all a free sample from a Beta book. So here’s a passage from The Blood of Balnakin I’m rather proud of.

That’s because this section not only introduces you to a major character in the series, but, in that character’s own words, introduces you to some of the major themes of the book. In particular, the role of race in the country of Balnakin.

For a little set-up: “Sojoa-sheets” are essentially solar panels. “Stadsems” are colleges. In the country of Balnakin, the dominant race is brown-skins. Blues are their slaves. “Tribal sewings” are markings worn on tunics to indicate strong tribal alliances.

In the final third of The Blind Alien, the book that preceded Blood, a terrible catastrophe occurred when an explosion destroyed much of the city of Bergarten. Many Balnakins mistakenly believed the blind alien, Dr. Malcolm Renbourn, could have averted the disaster if he’d have sacrificed himself in the laboratory that had brought him over from Alpha earth. As a result, the Renbourns and all light-skins are blamed for the deaths of thousands. So Kalma is about to discuss various reactions to the event from her family’s various points of view.

Kalma: I am daughter of the great city of Bergarten, a city I have known with pride, shame, and aching womb all my days. In the twenty-five years of my growing near the three rivers, I thrived in the knowledge my home city was a center of the world. All around me were the wide, clean walkways leading past gleaming buildings unlike any in any other city on Olos earth. I knew these flowing streets well, I knew I was one fleshly part of the best of humanity. My Bergarten was where the future shaped, where discipline and energy superseded the ways of others tangled in their tired pasts.
But I also was shaped by a family deeply troubled by the slavery of fellow Balnakins sharing not our deep, earth-soil colors. I knew well our Sojoa sheets shone because of the polishings of blues dangled from rooftops or belted to mechanical ladders. Riding in our trans from one site to another, my Mother often circled her breasts with single finger loops, signaling gratitude to be blessed each time she glanced at a sullen blue woman tuning tools, unloading tracs, crawling down into pipes below ground. Many such women would know spears, children, family not.
Futures not. We whispered our regret. But only whispers, silences, prayers. After all, without the blues, our greatness possibled not.
Then, my soul ached and more as I was in Bergarten the day the soundless explosion robbed my city of its heart. I was one of those shoved onto an evacuation bus at stadsem that cursed day, cramped with students and sweating teachers on the road north when the catastrophe took away the rooms we sat in but minutes before. I can name names of many who exist no more. My belly tightens still to think of them.
Had not my Tribe fast boats on the Gell River, two of my Sisters and their children would also exist no more.
To say more, for years, my family has been a deep part of what I loved most about Bergarten. For one matter, unlike many, my father, Lius Salk, built his empire of
connections relying not on what he considered a dishonest means of business. That is, as he rose in the ranks of the shipping company of Mhelapras, he chose not his wives based on tunic sewings. Instead, each of his five bondings were daughters from the New Dome Church of No-Stratas founded by the eminent Devlin Joco Llyam. Llyam's congregation agreed on various principles including the possibility, but rarity of, true prophecy. We believed Olos was indeed the Mother of All, and that all included all skins. This meant Olos abhorred slavery. No member of the New Domes associated with Devlin Llyam could own or deal with the selling of humans. This meant we had few prosperous, powerful tribes to share worship with. My father looked for wives with these beliefs knowing they would come from families with these values. He wanted wives focused on their children. So, each of us grew in a home devoted to our betterment while my father grew his company in countries stained not by human bondage. He worked with makers of goods with sellers all over the globe interested in unique wares from cultures across land and sea. As Father rose to the top of Mhelapras, we rose with him.
True said, in each family, seeds bear different fruits. My brother Mool became as interested as my father in the ways of connecting makers with distributors. So, he established his own healthy branch to the family's growth into the countries south of the Psam Peninsula, mostly on the continent of Verashush. But my brother Kinn could find his way not. He became an angry student at the Lipran Stadsem, graduating just before the news came out that an alien was in the Halls of the great Bergarten Institute of the Species. Kinn stood in the audience the day Doctor Malcolm Renbourn reached out to two globes. Later, Kinn raged in father's house the day the alien snuck across the border into Rhasvi. My father dismayed when Kinn denounced loud the Lipran authorities for having allowed this escape to happen. Why had any fool put a Shaprim robe on a blue, why was a creature so obviously defective contained not here in Bergarten where all the world should come and beg access to our knowledge? "Olos put her stamp on every Brown," Kin preached, "when she marked us with her own color, the color of her most fertile land! What is blue but an empty shade between day and night? Unnatural. Name one other creature sharing this strange pigment!" He laughed. "And these are creatures to envy, pity not! How relaxing to have no decisions to make, no will to exercise! We shelter, feed, guide these off-colors!" My father had known not my brother had changed at the Stadsem. Into this nest of anti-slavery philosophies, a racist had emerged.
And Kinn became more than that when one-fourth of our city became a dome in
the earth, a gaping hole where once friends and companions lived. One horrible day, my father's office view overlooked a wound that now defined a culture. Devlin Llyam's home was but two-lanes away. During the first years after that damnable rip in Olos appeared, such men and their women grieved in silent wonder. During the same years, men and women like my brother Kinn spoke often and loud. "I stood there, right there at the very center of that wound in the Mother! By miracle alone three of my Sisters survived! But a minute, a moment, our Tribe, too, would have had souls with bodies not for holy burning!" All Balnakin homes knew the debates. Yes, drain and bleed Rhasvin coffers for compensation. But compensate who? How can lost knowledge be re-claimed? Who owned the lost land? They were gone, too. Rebuild? Build a memorial? Answers were slow. But those like Kin looked for answers not.
Vengeance. Slashing, burning, crushing of all creatures whose skin was brown not. Consuming, unyielding rage. So, father sent my brother to Alma in the hopes the distance might calm his angry spear. To live among blues who were slaves not, Balnakin, Rhasvi not. For a time, we knew not of success in father's dreams. We more concerned with our world turned upside down.
For the record, I have seven sisters, as well, but my purpose here is not to fully flesh out my blood-tree. To say simple, my tribe, like most, was a story of contrasts. I, well, I was my father's favorite star. From early years, I was the quickest of my brood to show promise in my studies, especially seeing the patterns of numbers. As I grew in
health, comfort, dignity, and belief in the values of our New Dome association, it was obvious to all I should have the brightest possibilities of my generation. Young men
eyed my tall frame and wide birth-hips with considerable interest. Even when I was young, boys loved to stare into my yellow-iris eyes, a trait passed down from my
Mother. Along with my well-recognized tunic-colors I designed myself, I was praised
for my song-voice which I shaped in praise for Olos. But I was ready for bonding not.
Unlike my mother, I planned to establish myself as a woman with a scope far larger
than our mansion near River Lod. In my womb, I imagined myself wife to a Tribal-Centel if not one myself. Where I to bond with such a man, he'd have to be one
expecting considerable guidance from his first wife. For I would settle not for less.

Learn what happens next, and what happened before, in:

The Blood of Balnakin—The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book Two
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Balnakin...