Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“So,” Diut repeated, this time in agreement with the dead Garkohn’s request.

Alanna looked at her parents, saw that they were watching grim-faced. “There’ll be a lot more of that if the fighting spills into the settlement,” she warned softly. “The Tehkohn don’t carry off injured enemies and they won’t leave them here alive to heal and fight again.”

Neila shook her head in weary disgust. “Savages,” she muttered.

Alanna shrugged.

“Are you really one of them, Lanna? Can you really accept them as your people even now that you’ve gotten used to the way he… the way they look?”

“Yes,” said Alanna.

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head again. “After all we tried to teach you. And you’re bright. You learned so much. You accepted God and the Mission…”

“I accepted you and Jules. You used to know that.”

“But…”

“You saved my life. I was grateful, and in time, I came to love you. But you know I was never a true Missionary.”

“What else can you be? You’re here on an alien world among creatures of another species…”

“I’m a wild human,” said Alanna quietly. “That’s what I’ve always been.” She glanced at Jules. “I haven’t lost myself. Not to anyone.” And again to Neila. “In time, I’ll also be a Tehkohn judge. I want to be. And I’m Diut’s wife and your daughter. If… you can still accept me as your daughter.”

Neila gazed downward, her arms folded tightly across her chest. “Wild human,” she murmured. “I think that in spite of all your time with us, we never really knew what that meant.”

Alanna did not know whether Neila was rejecting her or accepting her in spite of her differences—her sins. She stepped closer, her expression questioning. Then, somehow, she had gone as far as she could in asking the woman’s acceptance. She stood still waiting.

-Neila looked up at her, held her gaze for a long moment, then abruptly caught her in a hard silent hug that reminded Alanna oddly of Tahneh, the female Tehkohn Hao. “You are what you are,” Neila said softly. “I don’t understand, but…” She shrugged, looked at Alanna sadly for a moment, then turned to go into the house.

And Jules?

Alanna looked at him. He looked at her, then at Diut, who stood a few feet away waiting. Finally, Jules turned his back on them both and followed Neila into the house. Without saying a word, he had managed to reject both of them, or at least, to reject their union. He probably understood what Alanna had said and what she had done better than Neila did, but understanding did not equal acceptance. Alanna had broken what was to him a very basic, very old taboo. A taboo that was part of the foundation of his life.

Diut came to her, spoke quietly. “I am going outside.”

Her concern with her parents shifted instantly to him. Already, the Garkohn had cornered him, come near killing him. Now he was going to give them another chance. But she made no protest. She knew that he was going out after Natahk. She touched his throat lightly and he turned and loped off into the shadows between the houses. She noticed that his leg seemed to bother him less now. That was good since he would have to camouflage himself and go over the wall. Opening the gate and walking out would make him the target of any number of possibly vengeful Garkohn.

She went back to the house to sit and wait. The helplessness she felt was galling. It was made worse by the almost tangible weight of resentment that Jules seemed to spread over the house. Finally, he went out to help check on the people’s preparations. It pained Alanna that she felt relief at his going.

She had always felt closer to him than to Neila—felt more able to talk with him, more able to be honest with him. She wondered what would have happened had she told him sooner, before the Tehkohn escape. She shook her head thinking about it.

“Was there… a ceremony of some kind?” Neila asked timidly.

Alanna jumped, startled out of her thoughts, then realized what Neila had asked.

“You mean a marriage ceremony?”

Neila nodded.

“No. But there was a ceremony for Tien when she was born. It amounts to the same thing.”

“How did she look? I mean… was she…”

“She was much like him. He thought she might even be Hao. You can’t tell until their bodies mature a little and their coloring darkens.”

“What would you have done… what would he have done if the baby had been like you?”

Alanna smiled a little remembering. “We talked about that. He said if the child was like me, he would help me teach it to hunt with a bow.”

Neila looked surprised. “He must be more tolerant than he seems. Did you want a liaison with him?”

“No.” Her memory went back even farther, and suddenly she wanted to tell the story, the truth, to this woman who had become her mother. She had never told it before, even to other Tehkohn. Doubtless, they knew parts of it, but only the public parts. The fact of the liaison, the marriage. Telling the rest now would pass the dragging time. She spoke easily, feeling amusement where once she had felt terror. Neila was horrified.

“Does he still beat you?” she asked.

“No more. Now we talk.”

“But still… Lanna, what he did to you is at least as bad as what the Garkohn do to their captives. You stayed with him while you were in the mountains because you had to, but surely now…”

“Now he’s my husband.”

“Not by any law we recognize.”

“I recognize it.”

“But why? I still can’t understand… Is it so that he’ll help us against the Garkohn?”

“It could be,” said Alanna. “That would be a good reason. But no, it’s because of what I said a few minutes ago. I’m not a Missionary. I don’t think I ever could be. But I can be Tehkohn—in spite of the physical differences. It’s almost easy.” She thought for a moment of the Garkohn, of the abducted Missionaries. “I’m not like Tate. Not like the others who were taken with her. Natahk may have made Garkohn of them, but not very good Garkohn. Because first, he would have had to destroy them as Missionaries.”

“Why did Diut beat you if not to destroy you as a Missionary-break you down?”

“We fought for a lot of reasons. Most often because he wasn’t used to hearing people say ‘no’ to him.” Alanna shrugged. “Neither was I. And the first time, because when I got a good look at him and realized that he wanted me, I panicked.”

Neila shuddered. “I would have panicked myself. I think he would have had to kill me.”

“I didn’t want to die.”

Neila looked at her strangely.

“I didn’t have any Missionary inhibitions about pairing with a Kohn man,” she said. “After I got used to the way Diut looked, I was glad the match had been made.” She laughed suddenly. “We were at least equally strange-looking to each other.”

“Not strange enough. How can you laugh about it?”

“It’s past. He said I looked deformed, wrong. That’s why he was curious about me. It didn’t seem possible to him that I was really a woman.”

Neila made a sound of disgust. “And what happens when the sick novelty of having a deformed woman wears off? Will he start to beat you again? Will he throw you out? Or will he just kill you to be certain he’s rid of you? Since he kills so easily.”

“That novelty wore off as quickly for him as it did for me. I think you know that.” Alanna paused. “You saw him put his life in my hands tonight.”

“…yes.”

“And he put himself in danger for all three of us. It really would have been easier for him to lead the Garkohn on a chase around the settlement—if he hadn’t been afraid of what they’d do to us before they got the chase started. Us, not some anonymous unskilled Missionaries.”