Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“But what if they…?”

“They won’t. At least not without a lot of co-operation from those bull women. And if a Garkohn woman does co-operate, what’s she got to complain about? I might let the community loose on the first boy who gets caught at it though. It’s something to put a stop to early.”

“You could warn them. Get them together and warn them all.”

“And put the idea into the heads of those who haven’t thought of it yet? No. Unless Garkohn men begin looking at our women, I’m going to keep quiet.”

“Garkohn men… Image of God!” muttered Neila with unmistakable revulsion. “Thank God there’s no possibility of mixed children, no matter what happens.”

She was so wrong, my foster mother. But I hadn’t known how right I had considered her to be until I realized I was carrying Diut’s child. I felt betrayed.

And no doubt, I communicated my feelings to Diut without saying a word. He began to look at me with doubt and concern. But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what was wrong. Not until I resolved my own conflicts. I was too solitary a person to ask for help. So by the time I spoke to him, I had already accepted the idea that I was to be the mother of his child whether either of us liked it or not—and that he might not like it very much.

He surprised me though. He got over his shock and disbelief much more quickly than I had expected. And he seemed to feel no resentment when he realized that he was to be tied to an alien or that his child would probably lack some of the physical advantages his people prized. He was content, even proud, merely to have fathered a child. At last.

I began to relax. On the day of the gathering, I went around to each of the three couples and asked them to come that night and share our evening meal. I said no more than that. By that night, we were, all except Ehreh, eating together, sitting on huge jehruk skins before the fire. Tahneh said Ehreh’s leg hurt him in a place where he had broken it years before. “He is at home waiting for me to come and pity him,” she finished callously. “Are there more ohkah cakes, Alanna?”

Diut whitened and spoke to her as I got the cakes. “He will die waiting for your pity.”

“He will die no matter what I do,” said Tahneh. She would be half destroyed if the old judge died.

Diut flickered iridescent. “I listen to you, Tahneh, and I wonder if it is such a good thing to be bound to only one woman. What will I do if Alanna becomes like you when she and I are old?”

The room went utterly silent. The other two couples had been talking quietly among themselves, but they had heard Diut’s too-casual question just as he had intended them to hear. Suddenly, they were realizing that this whole gathering might be less casual than they had assumed.

Jeh turned to face Diut. “What are you saying?” he demanded. “What is this you’re telling us?”

“Alanna is going to have a child.”

They mobbed him. As though he were plain green, they congratulated him and jostled him and shouted at him for the manner of his announcement and joked with him and ignored me entirely. The child was growing inside my body, and yet it was as though I did not exist.

Then Tahneh detached herself from the group around Diut and came over to me.

“So you are one of us now.” She spoke very quietly, but the others fell silent and turned to look at me.

“For certain now,” I said.

“And what do you feel?”

I started to answer and found myself unable to speak for a moment—as though the idea of what was happening was still new to me. Tahneh hugged me in arms startlingly strong in spite of her age and I hugged her back, sharing my joy with her.

The others came one by one to congratulate me, Cheah also reaching up to lay a hand of friendship alongside my face. “We are sisters now,” she said, “both breaking tradition and making marriages where we should not.”

And Kehyo, dazed, subdued. “Now I know why I am here,” she said. “I had wondered why you asked me. It was to tell me that you had won in spite of… That you had won.”

“It was to tell you that you and I are kinswomen,” I said.

“Kinswomen…? So.”

“And the past is the past.”

She stared down at me from her greater height. “I hear, Alanna.” She gave a brief dim show of white. “I wish you well—you and your child.”

Truce. Which was all I had hoped for really.

Diut drew me over to sit with him and we finished eating. When the food was gone and our guests were gone, we still sat together, not talking, enjoying the closeness that had grown between us. The fire burned down slowly.

When the Garkohn had gone, Missionaries began coming out of their houses, proving that they had not slept through everything, though they had followed orders and kept out of it. Jules called them to him.

“Our escape will be sometime tonight or tomorrow,” he told them when they gathered around. “Ready yourselves. Remember to pack as much meklah as possible in seed arid flour form. Meklah first, then clothing, food, tools, whatever. And remember that you’re going to be traveling for days through mountainous terrain carrying or pulling whatever you pack. So think. Essentials only. Now not everyone is awake. Check your neighbors. Make sure the word is passed. Go.”

They turned and headed back to their houses, some hesitantly, some hurrying. Jules singled out Nathan James, Jacob Lorenz, and John Williamson, and called them to him as the others left. He spoke quietly to them.

“Are you three packed?”

They nodded.

“Good. I don’t want to take the chance of anyone being missed. I Go through the settlement and…” He broke off, seeing that their I attention had shifted to something behind him. Diut had come out of the shadows and seemed to materialize beside Alanna.

She looked at him anxiously. He appeared battered and singed. j Also, she had noticed that he had a slight limp.

“I am well,” he told her in quiet Tehkohn. “And you did well. I saw your kill.” Then he spoke in English to Jules. “Some Garkohn may be driven back here before the fighting is ended. If that happens, my people will follow. It is still important for your people to stay inside until I or one of my judges says it is safe.”

Jules nodded, spoke to his three men. “You heard him. Tell the people that too as you spread the word. Make sure everyone is alerted.”

Nathan James hung back as the others left. Alanna had seen him looking from her to Diut and frowning at Diut’s use of English. She knew what was coming. “Jules, what’s going on? What’s between Alanna and that… the Tehkohn Hao?” Only Nathan and Jacob knew that it was possible for there to be anything between them. | Only they knew about the Garkohn crossbreeding. And only Nathan would concern himself with such a thing in the middle of a war.

Jules’s expression became stony. “For once, Nathan, do as you’re told without asking questions.”

“But…”

“Move!”

Startled, Nathan moved.

Diut left Alanna’s side and limped over to the fallen Garkohn. Alanna knew what was about to happen, but Jules and Neila did not. She glanced at them uncertainly.

“What’s he doing?” Neila asked Jules.

Jules said nothing.

The Garkohn forced his coloring to its normal dark green, over-I coming both fear and pain. He looked at the leg that Diut was favor-j ing and even managed to whiten a little. “We did hurt you then, Tehkohn Hao.”

“So,” Diut admitted.

“For hunters fighting against a Hao, even that is no small thing.” The man wrenched himself around to face Diut directly. “Let me die as a fighter.”

In a swift flow of movement, Diut dropped to one knee, seized the hunter by the fur of his head, jerked the head down, and broke the man’s neck with a single blow. The Garkohn’s hands were just reaching Diut’s arm as the blow landed. He had died as he wished to die-as a fighter was supposed to die. It was Kohn custom that a fighter who had fought well and lost had his neck broken—even if he had actually been killed in some other way. Other Kohn read contempt or respect in the way an enemy’s body was left.