“What were you doing?”
Alanna switched back to Garkohn. “I was looking for a door.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Diut whiten slightly with amusement. She explained to Jules.
“The few doors that exist in the Tehkohn dwelling are concealed. This door was so well concealed that the room seemed to be just a rough-hewn bubble in solid stone. I could not even see where the fresh air was coming from. I tried to remember which way the Tehkohn had gone when they left, but the room was circular and empty except for us. The wall looked the same all the way around—rough stone. So I went around the room again and again, feeling the wall, looking at it. But by the time I found the door and got it open…”
“Wasn’t it fastened shut somehow?”
“No. Only hidden. By the time I got it open, I was too sick to do anything but fall through it.”
“What had you intended to do?”
“Get out of the dwelling if I could. Kill some Tehkohn before I died if I couldn’t.”
Jules threw a startled glance at Diut but Diut continued to show white amusement—and perhaps admiration. Alanna knew that she had first attracted his attention simply by surviving withdrawal. She went on.
“A couple of Tehkohn found me lying half in and half out of the doorway. They threw me back in and shut the door. I tried to memorize their faces so I could kill them later. In my mind, I was in the wilds again, Jules. Things were very simple. I would live so that I could kill those two Tehkohn—at least those two.”
“But, of course, you didn’t…?”
“No.” They had become her best friends, in fact. “But I lived.”
“Most of my people also live through the wanting,” said Diut. “Of those whom the Garkohn addict, many escape. If they can get back to the mountains, back to their families, back to where they have a reason to live, most live. The ones who die are usually those who have been tortured, or those who have been forced to do things they cannot live with.”
“I suspect that that may already have happened to most of my abducted people even without withdrawal,” said Jules.
“Do you mean that you think they’re dead?”
“Yes.”
Diut yellowed apologetically. “From what I have heard, Verrick, they are all alive. They have submitted.”
Jules glared at Diut, then shook his head. “You were saying…” He had to stop and start again. “You were saying that we could survive withdrawal if we were prepared for it. If we wanted…to live badly enough.”
“Most of you should survive.”
“Should.”
“Unless you want to stay within easy range of the Garkohn and have them come after you someday to kill you or bring you back, you have no choice. You must begin withdrawing your people. Let the strong try—the healthy adults—so that the weak can share what little meklah you find in the north.”
“No,” said Jules thoughtfully. “We have one other choice. Our doctor…” He stopped, realizing that he had used the English word, and groped for a Garkohn equivalent. “One who cures disease?”
“A healer,” supplied Diut in Garkohn.
“Yes. Perhaps he can find a way to make withdrawal easier, less dangerous.”
“There is no easier way. My healers have sought one for generations and failed to find it. You must begin withdrawing your people now.”
Jules looked hard at Diut. “Must begin?”
“The disturbance that will occupy the Garkohn and allow you to escape will come soon. You must be ready to leave.”
Jules was no more accustomed to being commanded than was Diut. Abruptly, he had had enough. “I won’t order my people to commit suicide, Tehkohn Hao. We don’t know enough about meklah withdrawal. Until we do, until our…healer has found a safe way for us to withdraw, we’ll remain as we are. And we’ll remain here. We won’t go north until I can see that we’ll have some chance of surviving there.”
Diut was silent for a moment. Then he spoke softly. “I thought we understood each other, Verrick.”
“So did I. But you don’t seem to realize what you’re asking me to do to my people. I’m willing to go north—eager to go as soon as it’s safe.”
“They are your people, Verrick.” Diut’s tone was deceptively gentle. Alanna spoke up urgently.
“Tehkohn Hao, his ways are different. He doesn’t realize…” She stopped at Diut’s yellow flash of annoyance. Diut went on speaking to Jules.
“You have the right to make decisions for them.”
Diut’s resignation and Alanna’s obvious alarm seemed to reach Jules. “And you think I have made a bad decision,” he said, “even though I made it to save my people’s lives.”
Diut leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “I have told you the only way to save their lives. I have spoken to you as I would speak to the leader of another Kohn tribe. But perhaps as your daughter says, your ways are different. You don’t understand. Listen then. I blame the Garkohn for the trouble between us. You have been lied to and used. But even so, I cannot afford to have your people remain here and be used again. And they would be used again, with your consent or without it. I admit that you and the Garkohn together are a formidable combination. But you must admit what a childishly vulnerable people your Missionaries are alone. Do you understand me now?”
Jules looked surprised. Clearly, he did understand. “I only wanted a little time,” he said.
“You will have some time. I cannot say how much. Do whatever you wish with it. Begin to withdraw your people at once, or wait and hope that if your healer does find his cure, there will still be Missionaries left alive to use it.”
Jules spoke low, as though to himself. “Am I to tell my people then that if, while they are writhing in agony, they can think in a positive enough manner, they might survive?” He shook his head. “We are doomed if you force this on us. Your people might save themselves the task of murdering us outright, Tehkohn Hao, but they will be killing us just the same.”
Diut rose, walked around the table to Jules. Jules, his expression uncertain, also stood up. They faced each other and Jules, who had never seemed small or slight to Alanna, seemed so now. Diut seemed to tower over him, dwarf him not only in size, but in sheer awesome presence. Alanna’s mind flickered back to an earlier time when she had fled from Diut, when she herself had called him animal and monster. Diut spoke softly.
“At this distance, Verrick, I could kill you very easily, so be still.”
Taken by surprise, Jules froze, stood staring at the tall native with fear and anger.
“You could not move quickly enough, or attack strongly enough to prevent me. I am certain death. Withdrawal from the meklah is possible life. Which would you choose?”
Jules relaxed, leaned against the table. In English, he said, “All right, you bastard, you’ve made your point.”
Diut did not react.
Jules switched languages. “Again, I understand you, Tehkohn Hao.” The sarcasm in his voice was too heavy to be missed.
“There is one more thing that must be said.” Diut spoke quietly, apparently neither taking, nor trying to give offense.
“You will find the words.”
“Natahk will ask you what was said between us. He may not ask gently. The choice of what you tell him is entirely your own. Nothing you say to him could stop my people from dealing with him. I was willing to leave the Garkohn to themselves to murder each other before this last raid, but I can no longer afford to do that. The only people you can hurt in speaking to Natahk are your own.”
Jules shrugged, deliberately turned his back, and sat down. “I understand.”
Diut did not speak for several seconds. Alanna could not tell whether he was angry or perversely admiring. His coloring remained a steady blue. He turned and spoke to her. “Your readdiction may serve some purpose now. Be the first to withdraw from the meklah. Show your people that it is possible.”
“That’s what I had planned to do.”
He looke
d at her for a moment longer, then turned and walked out of the door to his Garkohn and Missionary guards.
The next morning a shaken Missionary guard brought Jules word that Diut had escaped.
CHAPTER FIVE
Diut
I decided to push Alanna into a liaison with one of my judges. She had stayed with the artisans for a full season—long enough. It was time for her to be treated as the adult she was. I thought a judge would be best for her because the proportions of her body were much like those of a judge. She was tall and slender. Her bones were large, but because of her height, they did not seem so. She presented a false image of fragility. I would choose a judge for her. So.
But I chose no one. Other matters held my attention and I left Alanna with the artisans until she got into trouble. A hunter—a low hunter, but not as low as he should have been—chose to make her the victim of his frustration. Her season with the artisans probably helped him to believe that she was of no importance. Else why had she been left in subjection to others for so long? And her coloring gave her no protection. The hunter could not see her as blue enough to be dangerous to him or yellow enough to be a nonfighter whom he must not harm.
Thus, there was the foolish confrontation.
Alanna had been ordered to help the farmers down in our hidden valley. They were digging up the year’s first harvest, and at the same time, sowing the seeds of the second. Alanna was carrying a large basket of ohkahs when her trouble began. She was taking them to the storerooms. The hunter, also drafted temporarily into helping with the harvest, was in a foul mood and eager to humiliate another person since he felt himself humiliated by such “low” work. As Alanna walked past him, he thrust his digging prongs between her feet.
She tripped and fell onto the rocks, scattering spilled ohkahs over a wide area. I was standing not far away talking to a pair of judges. I saw Alanna look up at the hunter and see the white in his coloring. Her hand closed on what I first thought was a small ohkah, and she hurled it hard into his face.
The hunter shouted, fell, and did not get up. As I walked toward them, I saw blood on his face. I realized that the woman had thrown a stone not an ohkah. The hunter moaned, tried to get up, and fell back.
Another hunter was advancing on Alanna as I reached her. I spoke to him quietly.
“What do you want with her?”
Anger had driven yellow into his coloring. “Didn’t you see, Tehkohn Hao? She struck Haileh with a stone, a weapon, as though he was an animal.”
“I saw. And what weapon did Haileh use to provoke her?”
The hunter sputtered. “She is a foreigner! She has no right…”
“To defend herself? The lowest animal has that right. You will not interfere with her in any way.”
There was a silence that I did not like and I let my coloring flare.
“I will obey, Tehkohn Hao,” the man said quickly.
I turned to face Alanna and saw that though she had shown no fear of either hunter, she was afraid now. Of me. That was not surprising. I am much larger than any hunter—much larger than Alanna herself. And I am blue. Jeh had said that the blue was not important to her—that she had had to be taught to respect it. But I had other differences—Hao differences. I could not remember a time since my adolescence when there had not been people who stood before me in fear. I spoke to her in the same tone I had used on the hunter.
“Find Gehnahteh or Choh and tell them that your time with them is ended. Then go back to Jeh and Cheah.”
She looked at me for a moment—seemed to force herself to look at me. Then she murmured, “Yes, Tehkohn Hao,” and went away quickly.
I did not like the way she had looked at me. There had been more than fear in her eyes. There was something of the horror that I had seen in the eyes of a friend when he saw for the first time a loathsome poisonous desert animal. My differences repelled her. Her differences interested me. She was ugly almost beyond description, and yet her appearance was as natural to her as mine was to me. She wore it with assurance that was unmistakable, clearly secure in her private belief that we were the ones malformed and ugly. I in particular did not meet her standards.
I felt my coloring flow to white as these thoughts came to me, and I knew—perhaps I had known all along—that I would not choose a judge for her. Not until I had tried her assurance and her strangeness myself.
The morning after Diut escaped, Alanna came to breakfast not to eat but to talk to Jules’s guest, the Mission doctor. She wanted to tell him of a possible solution to the problem of how to bring the Missionaries safely through withdrawal. She had gotten her idea from the Tehkohn, but Dr. Bartholomew wouldn’t care about that. If it made sense to him, he would try it. If it didn’t make sense, he would be able to tell her exactly why. She had always liked that about him, and liked him. He was practical and bluntly honest. He had made no secret of the fact that he disapproved of her at first, but she had won him over. He was one of the few Missionaries whose respect she had worked to win. But he did not arrive.
In his place came his assistant, Nathan James, a man Alanna hardly knew. Nathan was young and thin and balding. Dr. Bartholomew had thought one of the younger people should begin learning to replace him. Just before Alanna had been captured, Nathan had volunteered. But still…
“Nathan,” she said, “isn’t Dr. Bartholomew coming?”
Nathan stared at her, then looked at Jules, who was eating a piece of meklah bread. Alanna looked at Jules and saw that he too was startled.
“Two years,” he muttered. “Of course, how could you know. And it’s such old news to us that I didn’t even think to tell you. The Tehkohn killed Bart, Alanna. They killed him when they took you.”
“But…” Alanna frowned, disbelieving. “Last night, you told Diut…you said the doctor…”
“I meant Nathan. He’s served as our doctor for the past two years. He had some teaching from Bart and he’s been studying Bart’s books.”
“I’ve done the best I could,” said Nathan. “I’ve had time enough. The Tehkohn killed my wife in that same raid.”
Alanna sat down at the table and stared at Jules bleakly. Couldn’t Jules hear the utter loathing in Nathan’s voice when Nathan mentioned the Tehkohn? Nathan had reason to hate, of course. An irreplaceable teacher lost, a wife lost… Nathan and Ruth James had been married for less than a year. What would Nathan’s reaction be to a Tehkohn idea, to an alliance with the Tehkohn, to information given by the Tehkohn Hao?
Full of misgivings, Alanna listened as Jules told Nathan of his meeting the night before with Diut. Nathan sat frowning as though he could not quite believe what he was hearing. Finally, Jules questioned him.
“Have you done any research at all on the meklah—found out anything that will help us?”
“Wait,” said Nathan. “First, are you assuming that everything that murdering Tehkohn said was true? Our people crossbreeding with…with…” His face was a twisted mask of revulsion. Alanna watched him with growing concern. Jules must have had some reason for trusting him. If that trust was misplaced, Nathan already had enough information to destroy the colony. All he had to do was give it away, deliberately or accidentally, to one of the more hotheaded Missionaries, or to any Garkohn.
“I was going to ask you for your opinion on the interbreeding too,” said Jules. “I wondered whether you thought it was possible…”
“I don’t!”
“But that’s secondary. We have to get out of this valley, away from the Garkohn and the Tehkohn if we’re to survive as a people. And to do that, at least some of us must break free of the meklah.”
“According to the Tehkohn Hao.”
“According to Diut,” Jules agreed. “And frankly, I believe him.”
“He must have been convincing.” Nathan did not bother to keep his sarcasm out of his voice.
Jules looked annoyed. “You haven’t answered my question, Nathan. The meklah.”
Nathan’s smugness faded. “I’ve done
some experiments with my rabbits. I don’t know what they prove. Maybe nothing. Rabbits aren’t people.”
“Did you withdraw the rabbits?”
“I tried.”
“Well?”
Nathan shrugged. “It would have been simpler to slaughter them outright.”
“You lost them? None survived?”
“Of the ones I tried to help, none survived.” Nathan massaged his forehead. “I tried tapering them off the meklah slowly. They died. I tried sedating them with drugs that had already proved harmless to them while they were getting enough meklah. They died faster. By then, I knew what they were dying of and I immobilized some of them and began intravenous infusion. These died too.”
“Are you sure you knew what you were doing with that last?” asked Jules.
“Frankly, no. I think I did it right. I had books and diagrams to guide me but…” He shrugged again. Jules did not press him.
“You said you knew what the rabbits were dying of,” said Neila. “What was it?”
“Thirst,” murmured Alanna. “Dehydration.” The others looked at her.
“Yes,” said Nathan. “You would know something about it, wouldn’t you.”
“A little,” admitted Alanna.
“You should know quite a bit. You watched several Missionaries go through it.”
“I watched one Missionary go through it, Nathan. Me. And most of the time I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
He was silent for a moment, then he nodded. “Does it bother you to talk about it, Alanna? It’s awfully soon for you and I don’t want to…”
“It doesn’t bother me to do anything I have to do to help the people get free of that poison.”
He smiled briefly, then looked apologetic. “The others…do you know how long it took them…to die?”
“No. But the Tehkohn left us shut up together for what they told me was five days. By the end of that time, everyone else was dead.”