He ran until he couldn’t run, until breathing became impossible. He wrapped an arm around a tree to hold himself up. His heart beat against the inside of his chest. His body was bathed in sweat; his damp onesuit clung to his skin. Perspiration rolled into his eyes, and he blinked. He gulped in breaths of air, and he felt like he was drowning.
When he recovered, he found that he had lost the tracking disc.
The dark ground was moist, and it was easy to follow his own spoor: the sole and heel of his boots made clear indentations. Accustomed to reading tracks in the sand, he was surprised how readily he could interpret the impressions in dark, wet soil. The deep, heavy tracks of his running, the zigzag of his exhaustion. Each time he crouched, each time he tilted his head to read the ground, nausea swam through him. But one clearing was slick with mud, and it was hard to find himself in the splattered impressions he had left. The nausea became unbearable, and he found himself on hands and knees heaving up air, noticing the terrible, muddied pain in his hand only when he rose to his feet. He considered giving up, just following the river without the tracking disc, but how would he ever find the tiny stream that ran through Dikobe’s clearing?
He finally found the spot where he had started running. Here was the trail of back-steps he had taken away from the mother’s steady aim. Then he found where he had stood when the children had burst forth, where the woman had found them.
Nothing in the tiny clearing looked familiar. It was as if he’d never been here at all.
By now light was fading; it was early evening. He used the torch, scourged the whole area, but he couldn’t find the tracking disc. If he hadn’t dropped it here, where had he lost it? Did he have it with him when he heard the two children rushing through the brush? He remembered using it every time he stood up. But the time he had fallen asleep? Most definitely. He had used the disc to reorient himself.
The ground of the clearing was clouded with his prints now. He tried to re-see the whole moment: the boy, the girl, the woman. What exactly had he done? He heard himself step back, he heard the soft whisper of the disc hitting the ground, but he didn’t know if that was memory or a memory he’d just invented.
He left his own spoor for theirs. The tracks here were clear. By the size of the feet, by the depth of the impression, he made out the boy, the girl, the woman. He could follow this to wherever they would camp tonight. But would they have the tracking disc? And if they did, how would he get it back? They had no language in common, no sure gesture he could make to assure them of his peaceful intent. And if he had to shoot the woman to get the disc? Dikobe hadn’t wanted a single slazan life to be harmed because of her presence here.
He heard voices in the distance, feet running, an occasional shout. He assumed the two children were playing. He didn’t hear the waggle of leaves and the fall of rain, so he guessed they were playing in a clearing, staying away from the forest and its potential threats. He listened harder, heard a faint sizzling: fire and wet wood. Whatever role they had assigned to him, they hadn’t considered him a hunter, someone who had the skills to follow them.
He waited for night, crouched on his haunches, dull pain radiating from his hand, from his belly, every muscle aching. He should go in now, use the pistol, and get the disc. Pauline was depending on him. But he couldn’t move. His heart was pounding, but his eyelids kept drooping, shutting. He yearned for sleep, lots of sleep. It was as if his body were trying to turn itself off so he wouldn’t have to commit the crime he feared.
Bo, his whiskey-drinking partner at Chum!kwe‚ had been older than he, had a brother living at Mahopa whose name was ≠oma‚ so Bo called him tsin‚ younger sibling, and he called Bo, !ko‚ older brother, even though ≠oma had been the oldest of four children. So the two brothers by name shared their time at Chum!kwe eating mealie-meal‚ drinking, and avoiding the military recruiters.
So one night it had been Bo and ≠oma—!ko and tsin‚ older brother and younger sibling—drinking and sharing stories. Nothing grew in Mahopa‚ the waterholes were dried out, Bo’s family had gone to live with cousins, with uncles, and Bo came here, out of the reserve, ≠oma told only part of the story: how he had fought with his wife’s father, how he had shouted at his wife’s mother, how he couldn’t bear to stay after the horrible things anger made him say. He told Bo how he had walked across the desert and hoped a lion would eat him and end his misery. But there was much that ≠oma didn’t tell Bo. He didn’t tell Bo about the thumb piano or the things his wife’s mother had said to him. He didn’t tell Bo that when he had walked across the desert toward Chum!kwe‚ he had often stopped and looked back in the direction of /gausha. He could imagine N!ai’s face. He longed to return to her. He considered facing the endless teasing, hearing again and again about the things he had done wrong, to cool his heart, to make him less stingy and more generous, and how even in Chum!kwe‚ among the gray shelters, he sometimes stared off into the distance, in the direction he had come, and considered heading back. Perhaps if he had said that, perhaps then Bo wouldn’t have made the jokes a brother can make. Bo said that N!ai must be alone and cold at night, that Bo could maybe keep her warm, and ≠oma resented those words and Bo’s laughter and how his laughter joined in because they called each other !ko and tsin. Bo said that N!ai must be hungry with no one to hunt for her, and ≠oma could have teased Bo about his lack of a wife in Mahopa‚ but he said nothing because what Bo said was true, which made the resentment harden into anger. Bo said how hungry he was and how maybe he would leave Chum!kwe to eat the food his tsin‚ his little brother, didn’t want.
A knife that had known only the blood of animals was in Bo’s gut before ≠oma understood what had happened, how quickly the anger had boiled, how quickly it had caused his hand to act.
It didn’t matter that there had been an infirmary and a medico; all that mattered was this: if it had been at /gausha‚ if his anger had burned his heart, he would have grabbed an arrow, and nothing would have cooled the poison on its tip, and Bo would have died within a day. Lying on the infirmary bed, eyes half-opened, Bo saw ≠oma approach, and Bo turned his head away.
Later that day ≠oma went to the gray recruiting station. He couldn’t think of a better place for a killer.
When he had been assigned a comrade-in-arms, he had wondered: how long before he turned on this friend, too?
The night was cold. Esoch shivered in his wet onesuit. He had to concentrate to keep his teeth from chattering. The caked mud on his palm was a compress of dull pain, and he was dizzy from hunger. For an hour all he had heard was the sputtering and crackling of the campfire. He dimmed the torchlight enough to make out the trail, and he made his way toward the camp, surprised that he could walk rather than stumble.
At the edge of the clearing he stopped. In the center was a shelter, and in front of that, one large fire. The woman was wrapped in her chi!kan and slept on one side of the fire. The two children slept on the other side. Each was wrapped in animal skins. The smaller body, the girl’s, was closest to the fire. Near the shelter stood one sapling. Various items hung from its branches, including the quiver of arrows and the bow. Whatever the woman had thought of his presence, it hadn’t made her anxious enough to place weapons close at hand. The woman was sleeping soundly.
Esoch wanted the comfort of the pistol in his hand. He left it on its waisthook. He crouched and stared until he was accustomed to the fire’s light and his own anxieties, and it was on his third or fourth visual scan of the camp that he noticed it, the firelight dancing red across its black surface: the tracking disc. It rested, face down, near the girl’s sleeping body. If they all slept soundly, it should be no trouble to walk across the smooth surface of the ground and retrieve it. All his worrying for nothing. He didn’t need the pistol. No one had to die.
One step, and the way his clothes slid against his body made more noise that he had expected. The second step was quieter; the night sounds of the forest were louder than any motion he was making. With the third step
he remembered that their hearing would be filtering out the common sounds of the night, their subconscious open to the unique sounds, the ones that could accompany a threat. But he took his fourth step: he was even with the woman’s body, and the three slazans hadn’t moved. He took a fifth step: was the slazan woman awake, holding her body still, calculating what action to take? Sixth step: would she make a run for her weapons if she awoke? Seventh step, and he was almost there. The warmth of the fire was inviting. He shook his head, as if that would make the dizziness go away. How long had he been standing there, staring at the fire? The next step, and he was standing over the girl. There was nothing sweet and soft about her alien face, but there was something tender in the way she held the animal skin around her, her body curled, the cold night damp against her back.
It was when Esoch crouched down that her eyes snapped open. She screamed. Both the boy and his mother were up, the mother tangled in the animal hide. Esoch bent over, the nausea back, the dizziness worse, but he had the tracking disc in his grasp, except that it slipped out, bounced once, then twice along the dirt. The boy was just standing there. The daughter was scampering away. And the mother wasn’t heading for her arrows, she was coming straight for him.
He stepped after the tracking disc. His hand closed on the smooth black surface; he had it and he was rising, ready to run, when the mother’s body collided with his. He heard his own body hit the ground. He wanted to get up—he knew what would happen next—but his body gave out on him. He lay there, unable to move, waiting for the inevitable jab of pain. He waited until he forgot what he was waiting for. He heard distant voices, felt the ground scrape his body and the warmth of the fire. When he opened his eyes, he expected to see his father crouching by his side and Ghazwan kneeling opposite him. And would Hanan be there, too, among the //gangwasi‚ perhaps standing there with Dikobe at her side?
He saw no reason to stay awake.
The Eighth Day
He was lying flat on his belly, the ground rough against his cheek, and he wasn’t sure where he was. Had he drunk too much last night and decided to sleep in the street? It was a wonder he wasn’t dead.
But the ground was too soft, and he heard the crackle and felt the faint heat of dying coals. The sun was warm upon his face, but it didn’t seem to touch the rest of his body. He was tired, lying there, wondering why the sun was up and the women were too lazy to start up the fires, and where was N!ai‚ who should be pressing her toes against his side, followed by her voice, kept low so her father wouldn’t hear, the tone playful, asking him how he could lie there all night and all morning, what kind of husband was so lazy that he could lie there hungry and not think about getting up and hunting?—and then she would giggle, because she was young and amused by the idea that she could talk to him the same way she had heard her mother talk to her father.
He rolled onto his back, and the sun was warm against his eyelids, a soft brightness upon his eyes. He remembered lying like this when he was a child, as high as his mother’s waist, and he had opened his eyes to look up her, and she, sitting beside him, had looked down and smiled. His older sister, Kwoba‚ was sitting by their mother on the female side of the fire, and she was clapping her hands, softly singing a song the women had sung last night during the dance.
“Can I marry Kwoba instead of N!ai?” he asked.
His mother laughed. “You can’t marry your sister.”
“I mean the Kwoba who lives at /xai/xai.”
“No. She has the same name as your sister. I won’t have my child become my daughter-in-law.”
“Can I marry N≠isa?”
“No. Her father is my brother.”
“Can I marry /wa?”
“No. She has the same name as your father’s sister.”
He asked again and again, and always there was a reason why he couldn’t marry any of the girls he named. But he didn’t want to marry N!ai. They had just visited /gausha‚ where N!ai’s parents and his parents gave to each other gifts they had made: ostrich-eggshell beads, a knife, a musical bow, and a blanket. Little N!ai—she was as high as his chest—either ran around her parents or clung to her mother’s arm while the gifts were given. He liked her father’s voice and the easy, joking way he had with his own father, and though he did not look at her mother’s face—his own mother had told him to be very respectful with the mother—he did like the sound of her laughter. But he didn’t like N!ai‚ the way she kept running, her face always dirty, or the way she kept sticking her tongue out at him.
He didn’t want these memories, he didn’t want to remember what it was like living at /gausha‚ the things N!ai’s mother had said about him the day he’d finally left. But he didn’t want to open his eyes. His body preferred to lie here in the dirt, listening to the fizzling of dying embers, waiting for the downpour of sun to flood the rest of his body with warmth. He’d just stay here like this and listen to the sound of something moving toward him.
So he had to open his eyes. There was a creature as big as a porcupine, bloated big with dull-colored feathers rather than quills. It had crawled right up in front of him, and its jaw held a loosely wrapped bundle of leather. Before he knew he had the energy to do it, Esoch had rolled away from the creature and jumped to his feet. The creature, frightened by the larger creature’s sudden size, scurried backward, but it let go of its bundle, which began to unravel, chunks of food spilling onto the ground and rolling a bit before settling. The creature returned to the woods trailing a banner of animal hide.
Esoch stood there, recovering his breath, in the center of an empty camp. Except for the tumbled food, the ground was empty. No, not quite: the tracking disc was lying on the ground, right near where the wrapped bundle of food had been. But that was it. No weapons hung from the trees. The shelter was empty. Except for three sets of slazan footprints, there was no sign that anyone currently lived here.
Why had they left him alive? Why had they left him the tracking disc and the package of food? He collected up what turned out to be three pieces of fruit, something that looked like a tuber, and five pieces of cooked meat. Was this a gift of some sort? Could they be watching him from the forest to see what he would do?
There was some kind of meaning to the food. And the meaning depended on how the slazan woman had defined his role. Anyone who was invited to live with the Ju/wasi was given a Ju/wa name; Pauline had been named Hwan//a‚ after a Hwan//a whose husband’s name was ≠oma. When she’d come to Dobe‚ she, being older, had called him little husband, and he had finally called her old wife. He had been a child; it had been a joke.
How had the slazan mother identified Esoch? Or had the gift been a kind of experiment: had she left the food in hopes that the gesture would be interpreted positively?
He took the piece of meat and hesitated. The food could make him sicker. But Jihad had yet to talk to him. He hadn’t made it to Dikobe’s ship. He had no food of his own. The meat tasted like meat, but like no meat he had ever had before. There was a sweet, crisp edge to the flavor. He ate it slowly. It had been so long since he had eaten meat. The bright-red fruit and the tuber had tasted so bitter than he discreetly spit the pulp into his hand and wiped them on the ground. He was sure the hunted meat carried more prestige than the gathered fruit, but he placed the remainder of the fruit and tuber into his pack to present the illusion of saving them. The two other pieces of fruit had a cloying sweetness to them, but he finished them both. He found where they threw their garbage, and left the pits there; he found where they defecated and did so nearby. He stood, breathed, and found himself weak, but no longer on the edge of delirium.
The slazan mother had given him a place to rest and food to eat. This was the enemy, he told himself. And he was still alive. And the tracking disc still worked. The white line measured 5.8 kilometers on the readout screen. If he hadn’t lost the disc, he could have made it there last night.
There were several paths leading away from the camp. He chose the one that curved in the direction of
the river, and he followed it, thinking again and again, I’m almost there, I’m almost there, everything should be fine. But still the paths wove in and out of the white line, distance accumulating, the uphill gradient all too soon bringing back the exhaustion and tedium.
More and more he could see the continuities of the land, the way green leaves lifted, twirled, and grew toward the sun, the flashes of red and orange and yellow where the sun shone into open clearing, the way certain animals bore the dull colors of their surroundings and the way others flashed brightly to attract the proper kind of attention.
The more familiar the landscape, the more Esoch’s mind turned to other things. He found himself thinking back on Dikobe’s talks, on his chats over tea with Hanan, on his parents, and on that tiny thumb piano he had loved too much. He remembered what they had called him. Everyone had nicknames, in part because a number of people had the same names; Dikobe had told him there had been over twenty-five ≠omas and over fifteen N!ai’s when she had done her own research. There was N!ai Short Face, and there was his N!ai‚ N!ai Water, for the way she loved to bathe. There was ≠oma Word, for the way he spoke, and ≠oma Wildebeest, for when he had hunted and killed six wildebeest the day after his marriage, and ≠oma Big Feet, his grandfather, his old name. And they had called him ≠oma Owner of Music for the way he was always playing his thumb piano, early in the morning while children ran between the huts, under a tree when it was too hot to do anything, late at night when he couldn’t sleep. They called him Owner of Music, and they told him his testicles would grow into the sand if he kept playing all the time. They told him his wife would never have enough meat. They told him the thumb piano would be a nice gift. He didn’t want to think about that, no, not at all.
Esoch would soon be at Dikobe’s clearing, he would soon have access to her medicine and her computers, and he would soon know why the Way of God had left orbit and why it hadn’t returned.
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