Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“But only with weapons.”

I hesitated. “Yes.” All Kohn who hunted used weapons sooner or later, but only I used weapons all the time. For that reason more than any other, Diut was teaching me to fight in the Kohn way. Other fighters would see my weapon, he said, and they would think I was nothing without it. I would be challenged as soon as he pronounced me a fighter and a judge as he planned to do. I was lucky. The Kohn way of fighting was only slightly more restrictive than the no-holds-barred wildland fighting that I had known on Earth. I was forbidden from snatching up a stone, knife, or other object to use against a weaponless person, but all else was permitted. All the things the Missionaries said were wrong—and some things the Missionaries did not even seem to know about.

“You’re unfortunate,” said Kehyo. “Alone and weaponless, you would surely die. You must stay close to the dwelling so that others can protect you.”

I turned to glare at her. Her coloring was absolutely neutral, as though she had spoken out of true concern for me. But I could feel her malice. Her even blue-green was a lie.

“First Judge,” I said, “I was left alone and weaponless in a land far more savage than this when I was no older than your young daughter. As you can see, I survived very well.”

“It was not a place where the jehruk roamed, apparently. I have heard that you have difficulty even seeing the jehruk.”

Before I could answer that, Diut was there kneeling beside Kehyo, his hand resting seemingly casually on her shoulder. Kehyo’s body tensed. She knew the threat of that hand.

Diut said nothing, only looked at her. Her haughtiness fell away as she met his eyes and her coloring faded to submissive yellow.

“The child within you protects you,” said Diut. “It will not protect you again.”

She lowered her head.

Diut looked at me. “Let it end here.”

I nodded. But later that night when we were alone, I tried to find out just what the trouble was.

“She has an old quarrel with me,” said Diut. “Or with herself. It does not concern you. She came to insult you only because we are mated.”

“But what…”

“Not now, Alanna. She won’t bother you again. Sleep now. In the morning you have a mock duel with Jeh.”

I slept, and still managed to lose my mock duel. The antiweapon rule hurt me more than I liked. Kehyo’s words returned to sting me.

In the afternoon, I went to see another of my new acquaintances, the most powerful of them, Tahneh, the older Tehkohn Hao. She had the Hao stockiness and height and she held her body straight in spite of her age. The people obeyed her, respected her, but her blue was marred by splotches of yellow, some as large as her open hand, and some smaller. Age spots, they were called. They came to all Kohn who lived past middle age, and when they came, Kohn who had been fighters fought no longer. They retired to the inner apartments and helped to instruct the older children in the ways of their individual clans. Also, they helped keep the records that gave continuity to Tehkohn history. They worked as much as they wished and only if they wished. No one drove them.

Tahneh was working now on an interweaving of the history of her original people, the Rohkohn, and the Tehkohn, who had become her people. Years before when Diut was only a boy, he had crossed the mountains to the desert and the sea, and been captured by the Rohkohn. He was a valuable thing to them—a young Hao to succeed Tahneh, who was already in her middle years and childless. But Diut had had the good luck to stumble upon the Rohkohn while they were in the midst of a drought. What rivers there had been in their territory had dried up and the Rohkohn faced slow death. Conditions in the mountains had been dry also—thus the lesser runoff from the snows down to the Rohkohn—but the Tehkohn still had the rivers at their altitude. They had no real problem. In spite of Diut’s youth, he had talked Tahneh into joining him in the mountains—this instead of maiming him to keep him in the desert. The two Hao began a liaison—the first of several—and there were other Tehkohn-Rohkohn matings, some of which produced children. A tie was formed and the two tribes became one. Now, in the multicolored ancient Kohn script, Tahneh wrote of that blending. She was still childless but she had a more or less permanent liaison now with Ehreh, her old Rohkohn First Judge. She obviously cared for him, but there was still a great deal of love between her and Diut. I wondered whether it was their physical similarity—the fact that they were both Hao—that made them close. I already knew how lonely it was to be one of a kind among more homogeneous people—even people who were kind.

I found myself liking Tahneh at once even though I envied her closeness with Diut. I understood myself well enough to realize that I would have envied anyone who was close to Diut. Because Diut had slowly become my shield against the feelings of loneliness and isolation that I had to contend with now that I had less work to keep me busy. He no longer beat me and he repaid my co-operation and growing Tehkohn skills with gentleness and attention. He was remaking me more thoroughly than had the artisans before him. And I was letting him do it, and letting myself be tied to him far more tightly than I should have. Even Tahneh could see that.

“You must be careful,” she said to me as we sat together in her apartment on the fleecy skin of a huge leaf eater. There was a low wooden stand before her like the easel a Missionary woman I had known used to hold canvas when she painted. Near Tahneh were the several polished-stone jugs that held her paints. There was a tray of brushes. There was a jug of something—not water—that she used to clean the brushes. There was a stack of thick, heavy, very white Tehkohn paper made from a plant that grew near the river. And there was Tahneh, drawing thin, angular Kohn characters with one brush after another. We were alone in the apartment. “Be careful,” she repeated. “It is only a liaison you have with him.”

I turned to frown at her.

“Keep your anger,” she said. “I mean only that you would not be the first to be hurt simply because a liaison ended as it must end.” She read me almost as well as Diut did.

“I know… that it must.”

“It is always hard for a woman to leave him. It was hard for me.”

I looked at her curiously, wondering how it must have been for her, loving a man who could have been her son. But the Kohn seemed to have no prejudices against such things. “It will be hard,” I said. “But I know I cannot hold him—though you could have, surely.”

“Now?” she asked, gesturing toward her spotted body.

“Even now, perhaps. But before the spots came, surely.”

“No.”

I frowned, not believing her, but not wanting to say so.

“He is still young, Alanna. He may yet find the woman who can give him children. Not that his childlessness is the fault of the women he has known. But he still hopes.”

“You mean… you mean he can’t…?”

“He is Hao. The blue often brings sorrow as well as power. I tried for as long as there was any hope to find a man who could give me a child. So often, Hao come out of the air, born to judges—not even high judges. But my father and both Diut’s parents were Hao. Diut and I both grew up certain that we too would produce children. It is hard to see that dream die.”

I said nothing for several seconds. Then finally, “I wondered why he had no wife.”

Tahneh’s blue yellowed to green. ‘ It is a capricious thing. No Hao ever knows for sure until the time comes to take a mate, until several mates have been taken without result.’

“I see.”

“See too that he is near to giving up. And he cares deeply for you, Alanna. I think your strangeness pleases him more than he would say. Part from him without trouble when he asks it, and he will call you back after a little time.”