Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“From the Garkohn…”

“Wait. You should know that Natahk has probably already taken as many of your people as he needs for the tie. The union of tribes can be mostly ceremonial. They need not live together nor continue to intermarry. In your case, the Garkohn would probably not want much intermarriage. Your physical differences would be more a hindrance than a help to their way of life. Natahk will continue to let you live as you wish as long as you obey the few commands he gives.”

“Could you ask your people to live under such conditions, Tehkohn Hao?”

Diut flashed negative yellow. “But I have both personal and tribal reasons for hating the Garkohn,” he said. “We are old enemies. You are their ally. You would benefit as much from their protection as they would from your knowledge.”

“You said my daughter had told you of our beliefs,” said Jules. “If you understood her, you must realize that there is no way that I could ask my people to consider themselves subjects of Natahk.”

“Have not your own beliefs changed as we have talked?”

“Not enough to make me willing to become Garkohn.” He looked hard at Diut. “You may not understand me, Tehkohn Hao, but my people gave up their homework! for their beliefs. If now they had to give up those beliefs as well, they would have nothing left. They would be destroyed.”

Diut flashed white approval. “That is what I thought you might say. But I had to hear it. I had to see that you were not already too much absorbed into the Garkohn to have the will to save yourselves.” He leaned back in his chair and relaxed. His coloring returned to its normal blue without concealing shadows. Jules stared into the blue as though seeing Diut for the first time. Diut’s shadows lulled people as they were intended to. Even his quick conversational color changes did not disturb the relaxed mood the shadows encouraged. He wove a spell of normalcy, and then shattered that spell simply by relaxing and permitting his body to emphasize his lack of normalcy. Diut spoke quietly.

“I don’t envy you your work, Verrick. I hope you know your people. I hope their beliefs are as strong as you say they are. Because there is a price on the freedom you want.”

“What price?”

“The only way for your people to escape Natahk is to do what he would not risk doing for any long period. They must leave the valley.”

Jules nodded. “That’s exactly what I want them to do. We would already have done it if we had thought we had any chance of escaping Natahk.”

“Natahk will let you go as soon as he is busy enough with other matters. He is not your problem. Your problem is the meklah.”

“But… surely there are other places where the meklah grows.”

“So. It grows beyond the eastern mountains in the jungle. With it there are savage animals, diseases, and people far more deadly than the Garkohn. You would be better here. You would be better dead.”

“Nowhere else?”

Diut laid his hands flat on the table. “Not enough. To the south, beyond the Garkohn farming town and beyond the mountains, there is water. A lake as wide and twice as long as this valley. To the west, beyond our mountains, there is a desert and the sea. I have been to that country myself and seen that even the people who live there have difficulty surviving. The only direction open to you is north. Once you cross the mountains, the land is as flat as this valley, but it is higher. Meklah trees grow only sparsely there. They keep low to the ground and bear little fruit.”

“But we can use the leaves,” said Jules, “and the new roots.”

“You can. But to put yourselves beyond the reach of the Garkohn, you must go as far north as you can before you settle. The farther north you go, the less meklah there is. The country is good. There is game and other safer edible plants, and perhaps your own crops will grow. Only the meklah is missing.”

“And without it, we’ll die. I don’t think we can afford to go as far north as you believe we should, Tehkohn Hao.”

“Your daughter lived for two years without the meklah.”

“While how many others of my people died?”

“All those that the Garkohn could influence.”

“What?”

Diut turned toward Alanna. “Tell him.”

Alanna had deliberately said almost nothing. Knowing, as she did, that Diut would not hurt Jules, she had kept safely silent. She had depended on Jules’s reasonableness to win him over when he understood the threat. But now Diut wanted her co-operation and she had to give it—however carefully. She spoke to Jules in her unpracticed Garkohn so that Jules would expect Diut to understand her.

“The Garkohn prepared us all to die,” she said bitterly. “When we arrived at the Tehkohn dwelling two years ago, we were all, Garkohn and Missionary, shut in one large room together without meklah. We were given food and water, and we were left alone. At once, the least blue of the Garkohn asked to die. We Missionaries were told that it was their right to demand a quick, relatively painless death at the hands of those bluer than themselves.

“We watched while they were killed, their necks broken. Then the surviving Garkohn told us how we were to die—what being deprived of the meklah would do to us. After watching so many Garkohn die voluntarily, we believed them. At least, we believed that was how they were going to die. We hoped we were different enough physically to survive. As it happened, though, two of us were the first to go into convulsions. Those two got worse and more of us sickened. In a matter of hours, everybody but me was certain that the Garkohn were right. They all sat around waiting to die. Eventually, they died.”

“And you lived,” said Jules. “Why?”

“I think… because I wanted to.” She had known it would sound foolish. Abruptly, she switched to English. “The others were ready to die, Jules. They were convinced that they were in the hands of animals who would murder them. They were completely cut off from the settlement, and they knew they wouldn’t be able to find their way back to it without Garkohn help. And the Garkohn were lying around waiting to die.”

“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.”