Butler, Octavia - Survivor

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.”