Maya Bohnhoff: The Secret Life of Gods

Behind him, Yoshi stammered, seeking innocuous words. “Uncle Kenji… Uncle Kenji was a man with strong feelings about his place in the world. I’m surprised he ever left Japan.” That much, she comforted herself, was true.

“And Dr. Burton is also a xenophobe, is that what you’re saying?”

Well, there it was. Yoshi set her chin. “I deplore the way he treated Tzia this morning. As if she were a rank novice. As if she didn’t have Nyami’s respect and a Stanford degree in archaeology. As if she were—”

“As if she were an alien?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tsk-tsk. Remember the spell, Yoshi.” Rhys tapped his spirit bag. “I have to admit, I didn’t want to read the incident that way, but…” He shook his head. “I suppose I could say he’s an old man. One who’s only recently been exposed to other races of men.”

“That would be excusing him. He doesn’t deserve your defense.”

Rhys turned to look at her, eyes narrowed. “This goes pretty deep, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not just Tzia. It’s his whole attitude toward this planet, its people. The living cultures of Etsatat are repugnant to him. He’s only comfortable with the dead ones.”

“Mercy. And I’d’ve thought that impossible for an archaeologist.” He came back to the table and laid his hand, palm down, on the calendar. “It’s the love of my life, Yoshi. Looking at these little bits and pieces of the past and trying to see how they relate to the present—to the future. Looking at a dead culture in the hope of snatching a glimpse of its living shade. We’re ghost hunters, Yoshi. Mediums.” He smiled. “Shamans. Holding vast, expensive seances in the hope that maybe, just maybe, the dear departed will put in an appearance and solve her own mysteries. I thought we were all like that.”

“You mean you thought he was like that.”

“Ah, yes. Because when I sat in his lectures, read his works, studied his field journals, I thought, “Here’s a kindred spirit. A mentor. An icon.’ ”

Yoshi gazed up at him with honest pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Rhys.”

He directed a wry grimace at his own naivete. “I’m too old for heroes and role models, I suppose. But a kindred spirit would have been nice.” He glanced at Yoshi’s suddenly still face and experienced a twisted epiphany. “Aye well, maybe one kindred soul is enough, after all.” He lifted her hand from where it lay beside her field journal and raised it to his lips. “I’ll clean up here. You go settle in and get some sleep.”

Face rose-gold in the camp light, Yoshi stared at him, her hand suspended between them. He retrieved it and tugged her to her feet, jerking his head toward the tube to their cabin. “Go on. You’ve got smudges under your eyes. In the morning, you’ll be dead on your feet and blaming me.”

She got up and moved to the access tube, her every move tentative, as if she’d only just learned to walk. At the door, she turned back to look at him, but he was already packing away the finds, intent on his work. Fingers curled into a fist against her chest, Yoshi ducked into the tube.

In the morning there was still no access to the tower. Scott Buchanan suggested they break out the last cutter and go in through the side, but Burton and Nyami argued him down. It was as good a day as any, Burton said, to visit the village.

It was at least a town, Rhys decided. The word “village” seemed too primitive to describe the ruin that lay at the verge of the forest, its toppled buildings blending with toppled trees. The site was in nowhere near as good condition as Sper-ets; its walls looked as if they’d been chewed on by some massive grazer, its stone streets could almost have been mistaken for the random strew of an incontinent glacier. But among the trees were mouldering buildings which, if built to a less grand scale than Ets-eket’s temples, were yet impressive and willing to yield fruit.

Of particular interest were the stelae that appeared to have dotted the single main avenue and its various cross streets. Many of the ruins had one or two nearby, seeming to establish a relationship between building and statuary. Even here, the image of Ets-eket appeared, apparently in connection with a building on one of the side streets.

Burton’s smile increased with every utterance of amazement and delight his ex-student made. “A year from now, these stelae will be touring the museums and universities of Earth and the colonies,” he enthused, lovingly caressing the shoulder of a female Etsatat frozen eternally in the act of pouring water from ewer into a pool. “No doubt the Leguini will thank me for removing them. Come, look at this one.” He led them to a stele half fallen against a low wall. It showed another Etsatat woman sitting or squatting (it was hard to know what to call it with the odd jointing of the Etsatat legs) before some sort of rack. “A merchant’s pack, wouldn’t you say?” asked Burton.

A loom, thought Rhys, but was reluctant to commit himself to an interpretation in front of the older archaeologist. Still, in the cause of acknowledging Burton as a man rather than an icon… “It could be a loom. See, the shuttle in her hand, this line of scoring from her hand to the structure, a bit of thread or yam. Notice, too, the pattern between these uprights could represent the pattern being woven into the fabric.” Rhys only just kept his voice from rising questioningly.

Burton shot him a sideways glance, then bent to peer at the stele’s chipped and worn surface. “Well, hard to tell with this much erosion, of course, but I suppose you might be correct. She might be representative of the domestic arts—-a goddess of hearth and home. Personally, I think she’s a merchant deity. You know it’s a very odd thing, Llewellyn, but nowhere in any of this wealth have we found anything resembling a fertility goddess. I can only suppose that Etsatat were more clever than most primitives and understood the role of the male in reproduction. In fact, I believe that the Ets-eket cult may be, at its root, a fecundity cult.”

Rhys frowned. “What makes you say that, in particular? The connection with the moon?”

“That, and the rather obvious phallic appearance of the tower. I’ve studied the modern Leguini enough to know that’s relevant. There are other details too, of course. If you’d like, I’ll make my field notes available to you. I think you’ll find them of interest.”

“I’d like that.”

“Hey, look at this one!” Rick beckoned from where he crouched next to a low vine-draped wall, holding a bundle of trailing greenery out away from the stones. What he had found was a carved panel, chipped and timeworn, that seemed to be part and parcel of the wall. It depicted four figures, seated in an uneven row, their legs bent double in that amazing and uniquely Etsatat way. They appeared to be eating and talking; hands gestured and ferried food to open mouths.

“Four guys selling pizza,” announced Rick irreverently.

“Looks like a tea party,” suggested Yoshi.

“Very good, Ms. Umeki,” Burton praised her. “Though I think ‘party’ isn’t quite the right word. Perhaps a tea ceremony? The ritual partaking of food is quite common in cultures dominated by theological concerns. Take the Christian communion, for example.”

“Do the modem Etsatat have any sort of rituals you could use for comparison?” Yoshi asked.

“Not that I know of. But I doubt that would tell us much about the culture we’re looking at here. The modem Leguini—that name suits them better, they bear so little resemblance to their ancestors—have no giant temple complexes, nor do they have a priesthood or icons.”

Shame, none of the fun stuff, Rhys thought ironically, then cringed at his own cynicism. Aloud, he commented, “But then the religion of the Etsatat has become so ingrained in their daily existence, it hardly seems to matter. They may not feel the need to build and maintain centers of worship over many centuries. Perhaps they’ve evolved beyond the symbols and can face the reality head on.”