So a ring of sentries was established in each stellar system in humanspace‚ and decoy bases and cities were built on uninhabitable planets, decoy colonies, full of explosives, orbited gas giants, all to draw slazan warships away from human habitations and into well-coordinated ambushes. We knew of two slazan homeworlds‚ and we knew they had built their own decoys and defenses in planet-bearing systems where no slazan lived. The rest was warships: heading out, probing defenses, trying to penetrate into systems, searching out enemy probes and warships, a perpetual hunt, the occasional flare of light followed by debris and empty space and the radiation of lost lives.
Of course, space exploration and redefined Cosmides-Tooby algorithms were forgotten. Raman probes remained on the drawing board, and a trip to the desert reserve was canceled. The Hindu-Muslim Investment Developers funded research into probes that sought out the enemy and charted his defenses, while the Amichai-Darwish Research Center remained committed to a science that tried to better understand God’s designs—rather than one that tried to better fight humanity’s wars—and in turn saw its numbers and its budget dwindle.
The Institute for Cultural Studies, on the other hand, prospered. A year into the war, it started its own department of slazan studies, which was held in high esteem by the government and by journalists, while at the same time it was held in contempt by other scientists. It takes hours and hours of observations to begin a proper study of a non-sapient animal. The history of ethology is filled with monographs about peaceful animals who, years later, were observed murdering their own kind, about monogamous animals who later turned out to be expert philanderers. Add sapience—add cultural diversity, add different histories and different symbols and different rules of etiquette—and you compound the problem. Send one anthropologist to live among a people, and you have a study. Send someone else two years later, and you have an argument. Send six simultaneously, and you have a vision. Send several more some other year, and you have endless controversy.
Prewar contact between human and slazan had been diplomatic and commercial. Humans weren’t invited to live in slazan towns or cities. Slazan libraries weren’t open to human readers. There were no hours of consistent observation to even start a decent debate. You got tales instead of research, you got wonderful stories told over dinner or coffee, the kind of thing that made Frazier’s Golden Bough so fascinating for a century of literary scholars. Then you got the second kind of tale: the scientists explained the meaning of the first tales, each notion exquisitely argued, each conclusion supported by nothing more than an anecdote, an observation, a rumor. Hence the Institute, with its department of slazan studies, was dubbed the Kipling Institute, the department of Just-So Stories.
Worse, the Institute was tainted by its involvement with the war effort. Long ago, when anthropology struggled to be a meaningful science, governments gave friendly grants to anthropologists, feigning curiosity and craving facts. Dissidents, given pseudonyms in field reports, were rounded up. Rebel villages were targeted. Traditions that created a sense of community were disrupted, outlawed, done away with. As a result, anthropologists no longer commence studies that can be used against the people they study.
So the division of Just-So Stories was divisive. But what anthropologist did not want to understand slazans‚ did not have a heart that swam toward the lure of images and texts previously owned by private companies or classified by the government? What anthropologist could not be holier-than-thou when another fell to some prying temptation that had not yet teased him open? Those who could afford to be holy left the Institute for Cultural Studies before finding other employment. Others left when they found employment. Others couldn’t leave, but they stayed away from the Kiplingers.
I stayed in the Institute and stayed away from the Kiplingers until the fourth Raman probe returned.
When it re-entered the solar system, the sentry did not recognize it, even though the Raman probe sent out clearly stated messages in Arabic and Nostratic. Afterward a number of organizations argued—on the nets and before government inquiries—about who was responsible for the lapse in the sentry’s programming, but at that point the sentry’s stringent wartime protocol gave it no choice but to conclude that the Raman probe’s message was a ruse, that the Raman probe must be a slazan scout or warship. The guardian sent its first message to the nearest military outpost, calling for a squadron of human-piloted warships. The second message was directed to the military base on E-donya’s moon, where a general had to issue the appropriate orders, since no military action within the stellar system was allowed without a human command initiating it.
The women piloting the ships were eager for the encounter. A month before, six slazan warships had engaged the defenses around the system that contained Nueva España. One lone ship, piloted by one lone warrior, had made it through. There was a military outpost within the slazan’s range, but instead it destroyed an orbital colony, ending the lives of five hundred worshipers of an arcane, isolationist religion. History would not be allowed to repeat itself: four human warships closed in on the intruder, ready for the kill.
But the captain of the flagship was uncomfortable with routine destruction, and the probe’s ID broadcast was too esoteric to be a believable slazan ruse. She waited until they got a close look at what it was, and then her ship escorted it back to E-donya‚ where there was a well-publicized effort to find the probe’s appropriate owner. Soon, within certain circles, there was nothing but talk about the scientific probe that had frightened the military.
It made for some good jokes.
It made for another kind of explanation as to why the war had dragged on for seven long years.
* * * * *
Before the war, when she had been assistant director of the Institute, Fawiza invited, with a fair degree of regularity, various researchers to her home for tea and informal chatter. After she created the Kipling division, she held the teas less often; fewer researchers would accept her invitations. Years later, the war still raging on in the distance, she is now director of the Institute, but few have forgiven Fawiza her breach of ethics. The teas are still small and infrequent.
I go when invited. I like most of the Kiplingers‚ and not one of their theories has caused a single slazan death. So I show up at her flat one late-summer afternoon, kiss the air next to Fawiza’s cheeks, hang up my veil, and head to the living room to see who else has been invited. I don’t recognize either of the men, and I feel myself blush. I want to turn and get my veil, but Fawiza has taken me by the elbow. “You are among friends,” she says.
The two men, already unveiled, rise from the couch where they have been sitting. They say all the proper and polite things when we are introduced. There is nothing informal about their manner. I am not among friends.
Fawiza insists we have tea and get comfortable with each other. I listen to the three of them exchange niceties, and I watch the two men. General Muhammad ibn Haj‚ adjunct commander of local forces, is not in uniform, which is a wise move in the University district, but he does look awkward in civilian clothes. Or perhaps it’s his height, his inability to do something graceful with his too-long legs. He has a certain charisma, a directed sense of energy, and I keep wanting to look to his face, to look to his eyes and see who he is. I also don’t want to look to his eyes, so I keep averting my gaze to the man next to him. Dovid Ascherman—pudgy, unshaven, dark circles under his eyes, a yarmulke on his head—is the director of the Amichai-Darwish Research Center. He is well-known for several, perhaps unrelated, attributes. Although he lives in the Jewish district, he is married to a Muslim woman. His grown son died over a year ago during a search-and-destroy mission. And he has refused to take on projects that would support the war effort, preferring pure research and its requisite low funding, which makes it odd to see him here, sitting by the general’s side.
We are drinking our second cup of tea when ibn Haj suggests that Ascherman begin.
“You know about the Raman probe?” Ascher
man asks me.
I nod.
“It charted three stellar systems. The third one has a G-type star. The second planet from the sun looks to be a humansafe world.”
I try to take this in. I look to Fawiza. Why hasn’t this been made public?
“It also,” he says, “supports sapient life.”
I try to take this in, too. I try to understand why they are telling this to me alone, this information that should already be on the nets, that should be part of every new conversation. Ascherman has placed a case on his lap and opened it, and he is now handing a flatscreen to each of us. The first image is a bird’s-eye view of a winter landscape: bare trees and patches of something analogous to pines. The second image is of the same landscape at night. Fires glow. I glance at the scale at the bottom of the screen, then at the fires. They are kilometers apart. The third image is a close-up of one fire. The imaging makes clear that the one fire is actually three fires. The magnification isn’t clear enough to make out the sapients sitting nearby. I can make out four individuals. They do not sit close together. In the reflection of firelight and snow, on either side of the fires, are two huts. A very tiny settlement for individuals dealing with winter’s pervasive cold.
I look up. Fawiza studies the image on her own flatscreen, as if she has never seen it before. Ascherman won’t look at me. The general, ibn Haj, he offers me a smile. He is letting me in on a secret. The tiny settlements are kilometers apart. A general is here. Fawiza, the first Kiplinger‚ the Rudyard of the group, has invited me here. I don’t want to be part of this secret.
“The Raman probe,” Ascherman continues, “sent down a series of investigatory drones to take samples and collect images. Here’s one image of interest.”
Even though I vaguely know what I’ll see, the drama of it has another effect. The image has this primal quality, as if we were stepping back to a species’ evolutionary heritage. And the good Muslim girl in me can’t help but think, yes, indeed, there is one God, and he works his compassionate evolutionary magic the same way on each living world.
There are the two feet: to stand upright, to walk, to run, to kick; the legs bent at the knees, the pelvis that holds up the rest of the body, and like the human pelvis, it is not the kind of structure that readily allows the passage of an infant head. Here must be the root of all courage—the strong, spread legs and the stoically accepted pain so another can make the difficult passage into life. The shape of the hips, the joining of legs to torso is obscured: a leather apron is wrapped around it. Alongside the apron, resting on the hips, are the two hands: to touch, to hold, to carry, to slap and to punch and to gather fruits and nuts, to dig for roots, to fashion a stick for digging, then, generations later, to shape a snare, to sharpen the point of an arrow or spear.
The slazan could have looked human, but for the proportions, but for the red leather skin, the dark thatch of fine hair atop the head, the wide mouth, the notched ears angled higher up on the head than human ears, and the nose. The nose is a slight protuberance with nostrils, the evolutionary movement away from smell, and the two very round eyes are flat up front for binocular vision, good but imperfect judges for scanning the distance, for gazing along a line of tracks, for singling out fruit from branches and leaves, for sensing the distances so hands can reach out and take hold.
The next image shows the same slazan returning. He approaches the small probe directly, so you can’t make out what he wears on his back, but it seems that strapped over his shoulder, hanging behind him, is a quiver of arrows. I notice this time a small dark patch on either side of his throat. He is male. Those patches will fill out in the next year or so and look like heavy jowls extending from his chin. In his hand is a thick, heavy stick, a limb of some tree, which he now uses to bash the small drone deaf and blind.
Ibn Haj watches for my reaction to this act of aggression. I find I want to defend it, this attack against something odd and alien.
But Ascherman‚ hearing silence, continues. “We’ve done a census of the fires, we’ve made estimates about the land’s carrying capacity. We think there are roughly a thousand of them. The population density is highest near the lake. About one slazan per every two square kilometers. About eighty klicks south of the lake, it has dropped to about one per every fifteen square kilometers. There is no visual evidence of farming. There are grassy clearings, but there are no fields. They must gather their food. We don’t know if they scavenge or hunt for their meat. But the leather breechclout and the quiver full of arrows suggests a hunting population.
“And this we don’t understand at all.” The image shows a village of thatched huts, roughly thirty. The pathways look clear. A night image of the same landscape shows no fires. Other night images, taken other nights. No sign of fire, no sign of life. What kind of village is this? The huts are too close for slazans‚ who prefer solitude to sociability.
Ascherman sits back, and nothing is said for a moment. So this is why I’m here. They’ve found an isolated population of foragers. I’ve studied foragers. I know everyone else who’s studied foragers. They’re going to send a Kiplinger to study these slazan foragers, and they want to know who would be best suited. Jibril once accompanied me on my follow-up visit to the Ju/wasi‚ but all he ever saw of the rich life there was dry land and poverty. Bujra writes extensively on foraging lifestyles, but her knowledge comes from secondary sources.
Ibn Haj leans forward. I turn to him, drawn by his clear and easy confidence. “Dr. Dikobe,” he says. “The location of this world is far away, but if you were to bisect this section of the galaxy into humanspace and slazan space, the planet is located on our side. It’s isolated. As far as we can tell, the enemy doesn’t know it’s there. We would like to send an ethnographer to study them for half a year.”
“Explain to her why,” Fawiza says. It’s a prompt. She wants something important said.
“Yes,” said ibn Haj. “It was during our evolution in the Pleistocene, when humans gathered, scavenged, and hunted, that the basic institutions of all human societies were selected for. Language, kinship, marriage, and exchange… well, you know the textbook examples better than I do. The point is, if we could watch a group of foraging slazans‚ we would gain insight into the basic institutions of slazan nature.”
“No,” I said. “This is a contemporary culture. You’re not watching the slazan equivalent of Homo habilis or Homo erectus at work.”
“Dr. Dikobe, I know we could entertain thirty or forty good scholarly caveats before we discuss any kind of project, but I have done my research. Before anthropologists carefully studied foraging cultures, the common opinion was that agriculture had been the salvation of human life. It was assumed that life before agriculture had been nasty, brutish, and short. The study of foragers changed all that. If a man and a woman each worked twenty hours a week in the Kalahari Desert, in southern Africa, they could usually gather and hunt enough food to provide an adequate diet They spent most of their working hours maintaining the social system. By understanding these foragers, we found new ways to look at human behavior. We need new ways to look at slazan behavior.”
To destroy more slazans‚ is what I want to say. Instead, “I’m not in slazan studies.”
“You have studied human foragers. You have the expertise. What we know for sure about slazans you can learn in a day. We would like to give you two hundred days. We think you’re the ethnographer who’s best qualified for this mission. Would you be interested?”
I want to say yes. “I don’t know if I can.”
Ibn Haj sits back, obviously frustrated. I now want to apologize, even though I have done nothing wrong.
“Muhammad,” Fawiza says to him, “Pauline is obviously concerned with the ethics of this mission.”
Ibn Haj looks as if he’s just remembered something he foolishly forgot. He leans forward, as if to tell me a vital secret. I find myself leaning toward him. “Whatever you find out—it won’t be responsible for a single slazan death. The strategy
of this war for both sides is simple. It’s search and destroy. Nothing you could learn about a group of foragers will change the way we fight the war. Which is why we need a capable ethnographer on this mission. Right now we are guarding eleven stellar systems. The slazans are guarding ten. Our resources are stretched thin. They’ve already made it through Nueva España’s defenses. How long will it be until they can attack Nueva España itself? How long until they find Earth? Until they find E-donya? What happens when they find E-donya or Earth? What if they find both planets before we can locate and penetrate one of their home systems?
“I want you to think about this. You may be able to help us end this war.”
Chapter Two
The First Day
The healer—who called herself I—was well respected among the ones who lived near the river, which she called Winding River, and which one or two called Lightfoot River. When she was young and her mother was the healer, I was like the other ones and was called more than one name. One woman or another called her Healer’s Fingers because she had her mother’s long, thin fingers that were considered good for playing the gzaet. One child or two had called her Boy Quiet because she didn’t talk as much as other daughters did. The one woman and another who shared words with her mother always called her Healer’s Daughter. After her mother had left, I was called Healer to her face, but when she wasn’t within hearing, one or two called her Mating Close Who Doesn’t Mate.
The healer, who had no children, was as tall as any woman. Her body was thin, except in the fall, when she ate as much as she could because there was little food during the cold months of late winter. Her cheeks were flat rather than puffy, giving her face a severe look. She once overheard a woman say that the healer’s face matched her lack of kindness. Another disagreed. She said the healer was kind in deed, not in word, and as soon as the healer had a daughter, things would change for the better. The healer’s hair was the bright color of the setting sun; like her mother, she ground up swamp tubers to make a paste that gave her hair this color of hot coals so that one who came from far away would know she was the healer.
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