Butler, Octavia - Survivor

Someone tore my filthy ragged clothing from my body and washed me. I felt as though I was again under the care of the Verricks and the Mission doctor—as though I was reliving my first hours with the Missionaries. I kept listening for Jules’s voice or the voice of Dr. Bartholomew. But the voices I heard were strange to me. They spoke in a language I could not quite understand. Then I remembered that I had been captured, that the speakers must be Tehkohn. I couldn’t see. My eyes were swollen shut. I was able to take a little more water though, and something that must have been a kind of soup. Finally, I fell asleep under the care of my captors.

When I had slept for a time—I had no idea how long—I was awakened by people talking near me. I tried to open my eyes, found that I could, a little. The swelling was going down. Through the blurred screen of my own eyelashes, I could see two Tehkohn. Cold dim light came from patches of luminescence scattered on the wall behind them and the Tehkohn themselves radiated some light—glowed softly. One was blue-green and about my size, and the other was blue. Deep blue all over and huge—larger than any native I had ever seen, and perhaps larger than any of the Missionaries. He had the powerful stocky build of a hunter, but no hunter could have been as tall. And there was something different about the way the native looked. I couldn’t see him clearly enough to know just what, but something besides his size was bothering me, frightening me. I moved a little, trying to see him better. My movement attracted his attention and he came over to me.

He knelt beside me and I tried to see his face clearly. But he had ceased to radiate light now and his deep blue was swallowed in the shadows of the room. He seemed only a shadow himself there beside me, and in spite of my fear, I reached out to touch him—to find out for certain whether or not I was dreaming.

The blue-green man in the background spoke to me sharply in Garkohn, but the blue one silenced him with a gesture. Then he held out a dark shadowy arm to me. I felt the thick soft fur and the hard hand with its thick clawlike nails. The huge Tehkohn was real. And he was clearly a person of authority. He was probably deciding now what was to be done with me.

And what might he decide? What else would I have to face now that I had survived meklah withdrawal? I lay still, feeling even more frightened and helpless than I had during my first hours among the Missionaries. But I was too weak to sustain even fear for long. I drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke again, I was stronger. I could see better though the room was only a little brighter than it had been. There were no windows. The irregular wall patches still gave off their dim light and now there was also light from a low fire in a large fireplace. The fireplace was rounded and deep, protruding farther into the room than it would have in a Missionary house. I lay on the floor near it, wrapped in furs. Not far from me lay a Tehkohn man and woman quietly making love.

I slept again, awoke, and finally got a good look at two of my captors. I recognized them. There was a huntress, unusually small, very quick, her coloring a deeper green than I had seen among the Garkohn. With her was her husband or temporary mate, the blue-green man. The man was the same one who had captured me at the Mission colony. I remembered that now—his coloring, his height. I would have killed him if I could have. As it was, I had nearly blinded him. But he had won. And later, during my withdrawal, he won again, he and the huntress. I had searched for hours—at least for hours—to find a way out of the prison room away from the sickness and the dying. Away from people who could think of nothing better to do than wait to die.

Finally, I found the hidden door and got out. Then this man and woman found me. I was not strong enough to fight them. They simply lifted me and threw me back into the room. I swore to myself then that I would kill them. Of all the Tehkohn I had seen, I could think of none who deserved death more.

And yet here I was alone with them in their apartment, weak as a child, and totally at their mercy. I lay watching them and wondering what they would do to me.

The huntress came over and knelt beside me. She spoke in Garkohn. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said. I was still hoarse, but my voice was returning.

“Ah. Good. Do you have pain?”

“When I move.”

“Pain in your muscles, yes. That goes away easily. I have ointment. No pain here?” She laid a hand on my stomach.

“No.”

“Good. You’re, healing.” She rubbed my body with a pungent-smelling ointment that felt cold at first, and then very warm. Almost at once, I began to feel better. And I became less apprehensive. Clearly, these people wanted me healthy. I wondered why.

I managed to sit up and the blue-green man brought me a wooden bowl filled with a kind of stew that I had never tasted—stew thick with tender chunks of meat. I ate slowly, savoring it.

“What are you called?” the man asked.

“Alanna.”

He repeated my name courteously, then added, “I am Jeh.”

“And I’m Cheah,” said the huntress.

I repeated both names.

“We are husband and wife,” said Jeh. “You will stay with us for a while. We will teach you Tehkohn ways.”

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath in relief. It would be only the Missionary experience again then. In exchange for food, shelter, and safety, I would learn to say the right words and observe the right customs—change my cultural “coloring” again and fade into Tehkohn society as much as I could. If I could. If I couldn’t, at least I would be able to bide my time until I was strong again. Strong enough to try to find my way back to the valley—or at least to take my revenge.

“I will learn,” I told Jeh quietly.

He whitened, pleased. Then he said something in Tehkohn to Cheah and turned and left the apartment.

“Is he a hunter?” I asked Cheah when he was gone.

She flashed white and I thought she was telling me yes, that Jeh was a hunter. But she was laughing. “He is a judge, Alanna. You should have said that when he was here.”

I was glad I hadn’t. There would be time enough for me to make insulting errors. “Judges are higher than hunters then?” I asked.

“Higher, yes. From the judges come the Hao.”

“Hao?”

“You saw Diut last night—one of our Tehkohn Hao.”

“The blue man?”

“So. We have one other, Tahneh, but she is old.”

“And these are your leaders, Diut and Tahneh?”

“More than leaders. Judges can lead, or hunters. But when they do, there is dissension, sometimes fighting. It happened that way with the Garkohn because their Hao died childless and no judges had produced a new Hao from the air.”

“From the…”

“The Hao come either from other Hao, or from nowhere into the families of judges. Never from hunters or nonfighters. The Garkohn have thrown away their only source of the blue. Now, without unity or honor or power, they will die slowly.”

The mention of dying sent my thoughts off in another direction. “Cheah?”

She looked at me in a way that seemed friendly.

“The Garkohn here, and the other Missionaries—are any of them still alive?”

“None,” she said quietly. “Only you.”

I lowered my head, realizing that this was the answer that I had expected. I could remember now crawling from corpse to corpse near the end of my withdrawal, groping blindly, hoping to find someone alive. But I had been alone even then. Now I looked up at Cheah’s furry face and knew that I was still alone. Flexible as I was, how could I hope to blend in among these people. At least among the Missionaries, there had been others who looked almost like me. But here…