Текст книги "A Woman of the Iron People"

Автор книги: Eleanor Arnason

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Yohai roused herself and told me the name of the creatures in the pot.

That evening I learned how to kill and shell the creatures. I didn’t enjoy this. But I did it. Yohai boiled the remains. The result was delicious. I ate too much. Afterward I sat in the doorway. Children played in the street. They seemed to be playing tag. I watched and felt more or less contented, though I could have used an after-dinner drink. Something light and dry. A white wine maybe.

The next morning I paid another long visit to the privy. I called the ship and got Eddie again.

“I have news for you,” he said. “But first, transmit your information.”

I put the medallion into the radio and waited. There were half a dozen bugs in the privy. A couple buzzed around my head. I waved them away. The radio beeped. I pulled the medallion out.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. I’m staying with two people. Nahusai and Yohai. No one visits them. When Yohai and I work in the garden, no one talks to us. I think the problem is me.”

There was a pause. “Do you think the situation is dangerous? Do you want to get out?”

“No. Not yet.”

Another pause. “Your instincts are usually excellent. Okay. But I want you to call in more often.”

“I’ll try. It won’t be easy. There isn’t much privacy here.”

“Do what you can. Now, for your information—Harrison Yee got driven out of his village. They were polite, but firm. It happened after he took a bath. We think he violated a nudity taboo or a taboo against washing in running water or maybe just in that particular river. Try and find out how your people bathe before you take a bath.”

“I’ve already taken one, Eddie.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“In the nearest river.”

“Alone?”

“With Yohai. The daughter of my host. She looked a little surprised when she saw me naked. Apparently she hadn’t realized that I had no fur on me anywhere. Well, almost no fur. In any case, nothing happened.”

“That’s interesting. Of course, Harrison was nowhere close to you. However, the language you are learning is similar to the one he was learning, before he took his bath.”

“He’s on the other side of the continent.”

“Uh-huh. And your language is almost identical to the one Derek is learning. He’s down the coast from you.”

A bug landed on my face. I swatted and missed. The radio began to slide off my knees. “Damnation!” I grabbed it before it could go into the hole below me.

“Lixia?”

“Nothing. What does all of this mean?”

“We don’t know. But there are theories. You may be learning a trade language, something like pidgin English. Or maybe all the people contacted so far are closely related, part of a recent migration.”

“How likely is that?”

“Not very. The trade language is a distinct possibility—or so we think at the moment.”

I signed off and left the privy. Outside, a couple of meters away, a person waited. He or she wore a robe and a tall hat. The robe was covered with embroidery. The hat was decorated with shells. After a moment I recognized him or her. It was the person who had broken up Nahusai’s party.

“Yes?” I said in the native language.

He or she made a gesture—a vertical slash—then turned and walked away.

I went back to the house feeling a bit nervous. The person had radiated hostility. Who was he or she? I couldn’t ask. I didn’t know the right words.

For the next half-dozen days the sky remained clear. The weather was hot. Yohai and I worked in the garden. Mostly, we brought water from the river: pot after heavy pot. We poured the water out on the dry ground. Then we returned to the river. We refilled our pots. We went back to the garden.

My arms hurt. My shoulders hurt. There was a terrible ache in the small of my back. I tried to remember how I had gotten into this situation. It had something to do with the romance of interstellar travel. Or was it the quest for knowledge?

In the afternoon we went to the house and rested. In the evening Yohai went out—back to the garden or maybe somewhere else. I stayed with Nahusai. She taught me more of the language. I began to understand complete sentences.

I was never left alone, except when I was in the privy. I wasn’t sure why. Did Nahusai and Yohai fear me? Or were they afraid that someone might try to harm me?

I didn’t feel especially safe, even in the privy. People might be watching. The person in the hat certainly had been. People might notice if I spent a long time inside. They might decide to creep up on me and listen. They wouldn’t understand my conversation, but they would know that I was talking to someone who was not present.

I ended by calling from the house on a night when my companions went to sleep early.

“Where in hell have you been?” asked Eddie.

I turned the volume down and explained.

“Lixia, you have to keep in touch. We’ve been getting worried. Ivanova has been talking about coming after you. Can you imagine what that would be like? She’d go in like the Seventh Cavalry, and we’d have to figure out how to fix the mess that she made.”

“Okay,” I said and turned the volume down further. On the other side of the house Yohai and Nahusai snored. They sounded almost entirely human.

Eddie told me the news. Harrison Yee was back on the ship, as was Antonio Nybo. Tony had been in the archipelago. He’d found a number of ceremonial sites—rocks arranged in circles and cliffs with pictographs—but no people. His island was empty.

“Of archaeological interest only,” Eddie said. “We pulled him out.”

There were five other people from Earth still on the planet. Four of them were in villages more or less like mine. The fifth—Gregory—was staying with an extended family in the western mountains.

“They keep flocks and do fantastic weaving, or so Gregory tells me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There don’t seem to be any large population centers. We don’t know why as yet. We don’t even have any theories.”

“A desperate situation,” I said.

Eddie laughed.

Yohai groaned and rolled over.

I said, “I have to go.”

On the fourteenth day of my stay in the village I decided I had to call again. I waited till after dark, then went to the privy. The planet’s one big moon was rising. It hung over the rooftops, bright orange, three-quarters full. I left the door of the privy open. Moonlight shone in. I could see well enough to operate my radio.

This evening Eddie had a new and interesting piece of news.

“Yvonne says there are no mature males in her village. There are a few old men. They live at the edge of the village, she says, each one alone. And there are boys—male children. But in between, nothing.”

I thought for a moment. “I know the word for ‘boy,’ and I’ve seen boys play in the street. The younger children wear no clothing. Gender is obvious and an interesting example of parallel evolution. But I don’t know the word for ‘man.’ ” I chewed on my lip for a moment or two. “Let me check into this.”

“Okay,” said Eddie.

I signed off and slung the radio over my shoulder, then stepped out of the privy. The moon was directly above me. It was smaller than Luna, but closer to its primary, with a much higher albedo. It lit the area around me: the weed patch, the privy, and half a dozen houses.

I started toward the house of Nahusai. Something moved in the shadow along the wall.

“Yes?” I called. “What is it?”

Something else moved to the right of me, near one of the neighboring houses. I turned. A person stood in the moonlight. He or she wore a robe.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I am Hakht,” a voice said harshly. Or maybe the voice said “Akht.” I was not certain about the initial aspirate.

Other figures emerged from the shadows. There were half a dozen. Two had sticks. They formed a circle around me—at a good distance. Nonetheless, they blocked my way out of the yard.

“We heard you. You go there.” The figure in the robe pointed at the privy. “You talk. You do…” he or she said something I didn’t understand. It sounded like an accusation.

“I do nothing bad,” I said.

The person made a gesture that meant—I was pretty sure—“no” or “I disagree.” “You are a something-something. I tell you, go!”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“Go!” the person shouted.

I looked around. No one was coming close. What was I supposed to be? An evil spirit? I walked forward. The people in front of me moved to either side.

“Thank you,” I said in English.

Behind me the person in the robe shouted, “Something! Go!”

I walked around the house to the front and then inside. Nahusai had gone to bed. Yohai sat by the fire. She was weaving, using the little handloom. She looked up.

“A bad thing,” I said. “A person named Hakht or Akht.”

“Tsa!” Yohai scrambled upright. “What?”

“I was in the privy. I came out. Hakht was there. Hakht said, ‘Go.’ ”

“Hu!” Yohai ran to her mother and shook the old lady awake. They talked softly and rapidly. I bit my thumbnail.

“Nahusai!” a voice said behind me. It was Hakht, of course. He or she stood in the doorway. One hand held a staff. The other hand held a rattle. The rattle was painted white. Black feathers dangled from the handle.

“What is this?” asked Nahusai.

I glanced at the old lady. She was standing now. Yohai held a belt made of silver. The old lady smoothed her robe, then took the belt and put it on. After that she opened a box and pulled out half a dozen necklaces. They were silver, copper, bronze, and shell. She put them on. Yohai handed her a staff. She walked toward us slowly, with dignity, leaning on her staff.

“It is night, daughter of my sister,” she said to Hakht. She spoke slowly and clearly. I had an idea that she wanted me to understand. “Why are you here?”

Hakht waved the rattle at me. It made a buzzing sound. “This one will go.”

“No,” Nahusai answered.

“She is a something!” Hakht said.

“No. What did I teach you, daughter of my sister? How do we know a something?” Nahusai held up a finger. “They do not like to eat.” She held up a second finger. “They never sleep.” She held up a third finger. “They do not go in the water. Is this not so?”

Hakht frowned, then made the gesture that meant “yes.”

Nahusai waved at me. “This one sleeps. She eats—” My host made a wide gesture, indicating that I ate plenty. “She uses the privy. She has been in the water. Yohai saw this. She is not a something. You say a bad thing, daughter of my sister. It is not true.”

Hakht frowned. She opened her mouth to answer.

Nahusai pointed at the door. “I will not talk in the night. Go!”

After a moment Hakht turned. She left slowly, with obvious reluctance. Her back looked rigid. The hand that held the rattle moved slightly. I heard a soft erratic buzz.

When she was gone, Yohai began to moan.

“Tsa!” the old lady said.

I discovered I was shaking. I sat down, almost falling as I folded myself up. Nahusai and Yohai began talking. Their voices were full of strain. I couldn’t understand a word of the conversation.

What had happened, anyway? Hakht had accused me of being some kind of supernatural creature. A monster, an evil spirit, a ghost. Nahusai had said I didn’t have the distinguishing characteristics of whatever it was. She had sounded like a doctor, discussing the symptoms of a disease. She must be a magician or a priestess, and Hakht must be one, too. A rival specialist. In any case Hakht had withdrawn, foiled for the moment. But I was pretty sure that this quarrel wasn’t over. Should I ask Eddie to pull me out? I bit a fingernail. Not yet.

My host spoke, her voice calm and definite. Whatever she said sounded final. Yohai made a gesture I didn’t entirely understand. But I thought it meant “so be it.”

Nahusai sighed. She leaned her staff against the wall, then took off her jewelry. She looked exhausted.

“Li-sha.” It was Yohai.

“Yes?”

“Sleep.” Yohai pointed at my pile of furs.

I went there, but I didn’t get to sleep for hours.

Yohai shook me at dawn. “Wake you. Eat.”

I sat up. The fire was burning brightly. A pot hung over it, and my host sat nearby.

“Come,” said Yohai. “Now.”

I went to the privy first. It was cold outside. There was dew on the ground, and the sky was an indeterminate early morning color. Why was I up at this hour? More trouble, I decided. I used the privy and went back to the house. There was water in a big basin next to the door. I washed and went inside.

Breakfast was mush. It seemed to be their favorite food. When we were done eating, my host looked at me. Her expression was grave. “Li-sha.” She paused and frowned. “Hakht says bad things. People listen. They say, ‘Yes. Li-sha is a something. She is bad.’ ” She paused again and stared at the fire, then looked back at me. “I am old. They know I go—” She patted the floor. Underground, that gesture meant. “I talk. They do not listen. Go with Yohai.”

“Where?”

“A good place. Go.”

I packed, then slung my pack over my shoulders. Yohai put on a plain brown tunic and a leather belt. A sheath hung from the belt, and there was a knife in the sheath. It had a handle made of brass and horn.

“Come,” Yohai said.

I stopped in front of Nahusai. I didn’t know the word for “thank you,” but there was a gesture. I touched my chest, then turned my hand so the palm was toward Nahusai.

She returned the gesture.

I held out a gift: a box. It was made of wood from one of the Empty Islands, inset with pieces of shell. They were iridescent pink and green, lovelier than abalone or mother-of-pearl.

Nahusai took the box.

“Good-bye,” I said in English. I followed Yohai out the door.

The sun was just appearing. Looking to the east I saw it: a line of orange light above a rooftop. The sky was clear. The street was empty, except for a yellow ki—a domestic bird, something like a crane. It was hunting for bugs in the weeds along a house wall. We startled it. It stalked away, and we hurried off in the opposite direction.

By the time the sun was fully up we were in the forest. Trunks rose up on every side of us like pillars in an old-time cathedral. Way above us were the branches. Their dark leaves hid the sun. Now and then we came to a clearing, full of sunlight and flying bugs. There must have been a hatch. Or was I seeing a migration? In any case, the bugs were all the same. Their bodies were electric blue. Their wings were transparent and colorless, except for two large red spots.

There was one clearing where the bugs were especially numerous. They floated around us. One landed on my arm. I stopped, enchanted. It fanned its wings. I counted eight legs and two antennae.

“Come,” said Yohai.

I hurried on. The bug flew away.

At noon we came to a building standing in a larger-than-usual clearing. Weeds grew around it, and a stream ran in the back. I heard the rushing water.

“This is the place,” my companion told me.

The building was small and old. A log propped up one wall. The roof was leather. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t the original roof, but rather a makeshift repair, done by someone who was no carpenter. Off to one side was a second structure. A lean-to. Smoke came out of it. What was it? I got my answer a moment later: the sound of a hammer. A smithy.

My companion walked toward the sound. I followed. We stopped at the entrance to the lean-to and looked in. A fire burned in a stone forge. A person bent over an anvil made of iron. There was metal on the anvil, glowing bright yellow. The person lifted a hammer, then brought it down, lifted it and brought it down again.

Yohai raised one hand in warning. “Wait” that gesture meant. I waited.

After a while the person put down the hammer. He or she straightened up, stretched, groaned, then turned and saw us. “Hu!”

Yohai said something I didn’t understand.

The smith made a gesture.

Yohai talked some more. I studied the smith. He or she wore a leather apron and sandals. Nothing more. I got a good look at him or her: broad shoulders, a deep chest, and powerful-looking arms. This was a formidable creature. The fur that covered him or her was reddish brown. An unusual color. Hadn’t there been someone like this at the party on the night I arrived?

Yohai stopped talking.

The smith made another gesture, then looked at me. “I am Nia. You will stay here.”

I made the gesture of assent.

Yohai said something to me. Was it good-bye? She turned and walked away, moving quickly. In a minute or two she was gone.

“Sit down,” said Nia. “I—” He or she waved at the fire.

“I understand.”

I settled in a corner. Nia added charcoal to the fire, then began to pump the bellows: a large bag, made of leather, with a stick attached to it. Nia raised and lowered the stick. The bag filled and emptied. The fire brightened. After a while Nia picked up tongs and laid the metal in the fire.

“What is that?” I asked and pointed.

Nia told me the word for iron, then went back to work. He or she beat the piece of iron till it was flat, then heated it and folded it, then beat it flat again. This was done over and over. I got tired watching.

Sometime in the afternoon Nia stopped working. He or she sighed and stretched. “Food.”

“Yes.” I stood up.

We went to the other building. Inside it was empty except for a pile of furs and a couple of jars. Nia took off the apron, then rummaged among the furs and found a tunic. She put it on.

“Here.” She pulled bread out of one jar. The other jar was full of a liquid: the pungent narcotic I’d drunk at the party.

We sat down in the doorway and ate and drank.

“Where are you from?” asked Nia. Her mouth was full of food. I didn’t understand her, and she had to repeat the question.

“Not around here,” I answered.

“I am of the Iron People,” she said. “They are far away. There.” She pointed toward the sun. “You?”

I waved in the opposite direction, eastward.

“Ya.” She drank more of the liquid. “These people are hard to understand.” She got up and went to the smithy.

I stayed where I was until I heard the sound of Nia’s hammer. Then I got out my radio and called Eddie.

After he heard what had happened, he said, “I ought to pull you out.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I’m in any danger, and if I am … Eddie, we all knew how dangerous this might be. We could have sent down robots. We sent down people because we wanted whatever it is that people bring to a situation. The human perspective. We voted to take the risk. It got a clear majority.”

Eddie was silent.

“I want to stay. That’s myhuman perspective. This is the reason I left Earth—not to sit in a room in the goddamn ship. I’m finally able to carry on a conversation, and I’m starting to learn how the natives work iron. You know I’m interested in technology.”

There was more silence, then a sigh. “I opposed using robots because I thought they’d be more disruptive than people. Okay. Stay. But I think you’re wrong.”

“About what? The situation?”

“No. Technology. It’s a typical Western bias. You think a tool is more important than a dream because a tool can be measured and a dream cannot.”

I made a noncommittal noise.

“The Greeks are to blame,” he said.

“What?”

“They were the ones who decided that reality was mathematical. A crazy idea! An ethical value isn’t like a triangle. A religious vision can’t be reduced to a formula. Yet both are real. Both are important.”

“You have no fight with me. I don’t know enough about Western philosophy to defend it. And I have to get off the air.”

“Give me a call tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

At twilight Nia came back. She divided her pile of furs in two. “You sleep there.” She pointed at one pile.

I woke at sunrise. Nia was up and putting on her apron. “Yohai says you can learn. Come.”

We went to the smithy. Nia got the fire going, then taught me how to work the bellows. That morning she made the blade for a hoe. The blade was pointed and had two barbs at the back—for weeding, I decided, though it looked as if it could be used as a weapon.

I had not seen any real weapons. No swords. No pikes. No battleaxes or battle clubs. Nothing that was clearly designed to harm another person.

That was interesting. Maybe the men—wherever they were—had the tools for killing.

At noon we stopped and ate. I asked Nia the names of several things: the hoe blade, the hammer, and so on. She frowned and told me. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be a very good teacher. She seemed laconic by nature.

We went back to work. My arms started to ache, then my back, and finally my legs. The smoke was bothering my eyes, and I wasn’t too crazy about the clouds of steam produced when Nia dropped the glowing blade into a bucket of water. She did this twice. Finally she took the blade outside. She examined it in the sunlight, then made the gesture that meant “yes.”

“Is it good?” I asked.

“Yes. I will make another one.”

Damn her. She did. By the time she was finished, I was exhausted. I went outside and lay on the ground, while she banked the fire and put her tools away. She was meticulously neat in her work. Her house was a shambles, though. The day—I noticed for the first time—was bright and cool. A lovely day, now almost over. I decided not to call Eddie. It was too much effort. Instead I went to bed.

The next day Nia made wire. I worked the bellows and learned a new phrase. “Pump evenly, you idiot.”

In the evening we sat in Nia’s house and drank the pungent liquid. We both got a little drunk. Nia began chanting to herself, slapping one hand against her thigh to keep time. Her eyes were half-shut. She looked dreamy.

I leaned against the wall and watched smoke rise from the fire. This was a change for the better, I decided. Nia was taciturn and short-tempered, but she wasn’t melancholy. Nahusai had spent a lot of time sitting and brooding, and Yohai had almost always been busy. I found that unrestful.

Nia stopped chanting. I looked at her. She was lying down. A minute later she began to snore. A very restful companion, I told myself.

Nothing much happened in the next ten days. I helped Nia in the smithy. At night I talked to Eddie.

“There’s no question about your language,” he said one evening. “It’s pidgin, which explains why it’s so easy to learn.

“The big continent has a trade language, too—a different one, in no way related to yours. Yvonne and Santha are learning it. Meiling is learning something else. A local language, horrifying in its complexity.”

“And Gregory?” I asked.

“Another local language, but less difficult. Oh, an interesting thing happened to Gregory…”

I waited expectantly. Eddie, I had learned, tended to save the really important information till the end of a conversation.

“His people found out he was male. They told him to leave. He asked why? The question was a stunner, apparently. They couldn’t believe he was asking it. But in the end they told him. In their society the men live alone, up in the high mountains. They take care of the flocks, and they never come to the houses where the women live. The idea is shameful. Gregory says, he couldn’t think of a polite way to ask about procreation.”

“Did they throw him out?”

“No. He told them he didn’t know how to stay alive alone in the mountains. They had a long argument, then decided to let him stay in one of the outbuildings—a barn of some kind. And there he remains. J’y suis, j’y reste,he says.”

“The men live entirely alone?”

“According to Gregory, yes. The women say the men are bad-tempered. They don’t like company.”

“Oh, yeah? It explains what happened to Harrison.”

“Uh-huh. I warned Derek and Santha. Yvonne is going to talk to her hostess. She’s the ideal informant: a tribal historian who never stops talking.”

I made the gesture of agreement, then grinned and said, “Yes.”

“You talk to Nia. Ask her about the men in her society.”

I said I would, but I didn’t. Nia was never easy to talk with. Often she would stop in the middle of a sentence and stare off into space or else change the subject. I got the impression she had lived alone for a long time. She had forgotten how to carry on a conversation. I concentrated on prying information about grammar out of her. Questions about folkways could wait until later.

One morning Nia reached into the rafters of her house. She pulled down two axes.

“Come,” she told me. “We are going to get wood.”

We spent all morning in the forest. Nia felled a tree, maybe ten meters tall. The trunk was straight. The branches were bare, except for a few shriveled leaves. The tree was obviously dead and had been for some time.

When it was down, Nia said, “Make it into pieces.”

“I’ll do my best.”

I started chopping. Nia went off. When I paused to rub my hands, I heard her axe a short distance away. She was felling another tree.

At noon we rested.

“What is this for?” I asked.

“Charcoal.” She chewed on a piece of bread. “This wood is dry already. Tomorrow we put it underground. It will burn for nine days, ten days, slowly, underground. Then it will be charcoal.” She got up, stretched, and rubbed her palms along her thighs. “Time to work.”

I groaned and got my axe.

A few minutes later the blister on my right hand broke. I put down my axe and looked at the blister. There was blood. I was going to have to spray it. I walked back to Nia’s house and opened my pack.

Should I wash the wound? I decided not to. It looked clean, and I didn’t know what kind of microbe lived in the streams, especially the streams close to a village. In theory, nothing on this planet could live off me. Our genetic material was too different. No local virusoid could use my DNA for replication. No local bacteroid could use my cells for food. Still and all—

I got out the bandage can and sprayed on a small thin bandage. It stung. That would be the disinfectant. I sat down and waited for the bandage to dry. It was shiny and dark brown: flesh-colored, according to the label on the can, and made in the South African Confederation.

“Nia!” a voice cried.

I looked up. Yohai came out of the forest, walking quickly.

“Where is Nia?”

“There.” I pointed. “You can hear the sound of her axe.”

“Bad news! I must tell her.” Yohai ran off.

I thought about following her, but decided no, put the can of bandages away and did a little housework. The mess was beginning to drive me crazy. I hung up Nia’s clothes and arranged the furs we slept on in two neat piles. When I was done, I went outside. I couldn’t hear the sound of chopping or anything except the rustle of leaves. The sun blazed overhead, almost as bright as Sol. The air was hot. I sat down in the shadow of a wall and waited. After half an hour Nia and Yohai came.

“It is time to tell you what is going on,” Nia said.

“I would like that.”

They squatted down. Nia laid her two axes on the ground, then scratched her nose. “Nahusai lies in bed. She cannot get up. She cannot eat. Hakht says, you have done this. Hakht says, you must be driven away. If not, Nahusai will die and then other people. You will make songs. The songs will do harm. They will steal breath out of the mouth. They will make the blood in the belly get hard like a stone.” Nia glanced at Yohai. “This is what you said.”

Yohai made the gesture of agreement. “I think Hakht made the songs. She is the one doing harm. My mother is old. She cannot defend herself. I have no power. The people who are no longer here do not talk to me. I cannot defend my mother.”

Well, this was pretty clear. Nahusai was ill. Hakht was accusing me of putting a spell on the old lady. I was a witch—according to Hakht, anyway.

“Why is Hakht doing this?”

Nia answered me. “She cannot wait. She wants to be the most important woman in the village. She will be, when Nahusai goes…” Nia paused, then patted the ground. “Nahusai taught her. Nahusai said, this is the one who will come after me. But she cannot wait.” Nia frowned. After a moment she said, “There are people like this.”

I made the gesture of agreement.

“She tries to put herself in the middle of everything. If Nahusai says ‘yes’ to anything, this woman says ‘no.’ Nahusai made you welcome. Because of this, Hakht says you are a demon.”

“This is true,” Yohai said.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“I can think of only one thing,” Nia said. “We must wait. If Nahusai gets better, she will make Hakht be quiet. If she does not—” Nia made a gesture I did not recognize.

“What does that mean?”

“Who can say?”

I was going to repeat my question, then I realized Nia had answered it. The gesture—the hand held out, then tilted from side to side—meant “who can say?”

Nia stood. “Yohai, you go home. Li-sa and I will be careful. Thank you for the warning.”

Yohai made the gesture of acknowledgment. She left. I waited till she was out of sight, then looked at Nia. “Do you think she is right?”

“In what way?”

“Did Hakht make this happen? Did she harm Nahusai?”

Nia frowned. “I do not know if songs do anything. Or if the people who are no longer here listen to anyone. But a woman like Hakht knows things to put in food. This is a bad situation.” She clenched one hand and hit the wall above me. “I hate this place! I am tired of the dark trees. I am tired of the people. They are always telling stories about one another. They are always making plans to do one another harm.” She bent and grabbed an axe, then walked away. A bit later I heard the sound of the axe. Nia was chopping down another tree.

I thought of calling Eddie, then decided no. Ten to one, he’d want to pull me back up to the ship. I didn’t think the situation was dangerous, and I wanted to see what would happen next.

I went to the bank of the stream and did my yoga exercises. Then I meditated, watching the rushing water. At twilight bugs appeared—little ones, like gnats. They didn’t sting, but they got in my nose and eyes. I got up and went back to the house, feeling relaxed. My mind, usually busy and a bit anxious, seemed as empty and clear as the sky above me. I stopped outside the door and looked up. There was a moon above the forest: a narrow sickle, less than a quarter full. It was pale yellow, bright with the light of vanished sun. All at once I was full of an intense joy. At any moment things were going to make sense. I would see the pattern in—or beyond—observable phenomena. I would understand the mystery of life, the secret of the universe.

Then the feeling was gone. The moon was only a moon. I shrugged. Once again I hadn’t gotten through. To what, anyway? I wasn’t really sure these moments of almost revelation meant anything.