Pauline had told him there might not be another ship. She had told him that ibn Haj planned to destroy the data because he wanted no record of this planet to exist if peace was ever negotiated with the slazans. The General preferred to let the world be rediscovered by humans after the war’s end.
Now they wouldn’t be back, and there was no more research to use or misuse. If Pauline had told him the truth, if ibn Haj had told her the truth, then it could be a decade before any human returned to this world. There was just Esoch, more solitary than a slazan‚ unless he could find Pauline.
Once he was calm, he returned to the acceleration couch and called for the next image of Slazan N!ai. It was ninety-seven minutes later. The slazan had returned by a different path and stopped abruptly, crouching near a tree. Esoch called up a composite view of the whole clearing. There, in front of the shuttle, was Esoch himself, shoveling up dirt, then leaning into the grave, all while N!ai quietly watched. Almost thirty minutes after Esoch had entered the shuttle—dizziness had probably overtaken him by then; he must have been asleep in the acceleration couch—N!ai walked down the hill, careful step after careful step, as if ready to flee. He came to the hole in the ground, he reached in, and he felt the skin of dead slazan. N!ai got up so quickly and awkwardly that he almost stumbled back to the ground, but then he was up and running, up the hill, out of sight, out of range.
Esoch was struck by the fear.
He had never thought a slazan could feel such fear.
It was later that Esoch looked at the times. N!ai had been gone for ninety-seven minutes. Was that enough time to catch up to Pauline? If he had found Pauline, what would he have done? Why had he come back?
Esoch felt the need to pace his frustration away, but three steps to the bed, three steps back to the acceleration couch, was enough to send him to the sanitary closet, where he promptly threw up.
That evening Esoch started searching through the imagery, between the hours when the Way of God appeared to have exploded in the sky and when Pauline left. He wanted to know why she had gone. Maybe then he would know why Slazan N!ai had followed.
During the day, Pauline’s sixth day on the planet, newcomers came to the hillside, spread across it. The readout at the bottom of the screen counted time and numbers; Pauline had not reintegrated the shuttle’s intelligence, so the old-timers were not identified and the newcomers were not given identifying names.
Pauline had once told him there would be a huge crowd of curious slazans come to see the strange thing in the clearing, so Esoch was now surprised by how few actually showed up.
Slazan N!ai was there, but without his large tin piano. He talked to some, then left. Before the explosion he had always been there when Pauline had come out.
A few more slazans arrived. Several walked off into the woods, then returned. There was plenty of space on the hillside, and there was plenty of distance maintained between slazans. But when one slazan‚ who wore a chi!kan‚ called to another, phrases that came out as short barks, Esoch began to feel like there were too many people, that for slazans this was indeed an unbearable crowd.
And what was Pauline doing now? Was she sitting in her acceleration couch, counting numbers, determining why two adults could sit on either side of the same fire while two other adults remained meters apart? Or was she curled up in bed, the medcomp recycling her blood, cleaning it of alien microbes, cleaning it of the hormones that carried grief throughout her body?
And then she stepped out, and the boy ran after her, and the giant slazan male grabbed the boy. The bodies on the hillside drew close, and he had to magnify the image a number of times to see what had happened: the blows upon the giant’s back, his turning on the smaller man, the smaller man falling away, the giant turning, and then the woman with the bow and arrow, and the arrow hitting someone else.
N!ai knelt beside the bleeding man, removed the breechclout‚ and tied it around the man’s leg far too late. Esoch magnified the image several times to the point where he felt perverse. Pauline had been right. Slazan N!ai was a woman.
The dead body, once everyone had gone, looked terribly alone. No one had cried out. No one had performed any ritual. Perhaps what he had been told in training was right. Slazans had no feeling for death. There was no grief, no sense of loss. They could sacrifice man after man in this war until the very end because the dead had no one to grieve for them, no one to demand that the war mean something important.
He was relieved to watch Dikobe come out. He watched her sit by the body for the longest time. She was evidently still sick, the way she leaned forward, closed her eyes, then snapped them open as if forcing herself awake. He wasn’t sure if she sat there for so long because she was contemplating this man’s death or if she was too weak to do anything. He was disturbed to watch Dikobe examine the body. He told himself how few slazan bodies had been directly examined by human specialists. When she shifted his breechclout to look at the slazan’s penis, he felt divided by two emotions. Curiosity made him want to look; disgust made him turn away.
He had seen images of slazan penises before while in training. A trainer explained why they were shown. “The slazan penis has a slim bone in it. It doesn’t need an extra load of blood to make it erect like the human penis. Why do I mention this? The slazans are a tournament species. The men grow to twice the size of the women. If they are anything like the tournament species we have observed on three humansafe worlds, then we know that men compete with each other for the women. We also know that choice rests with the women because a smaller woman is capable of outmaneuvering a larger man. But in some species sex can be forced. Slazan men rape women who refuse them and who cannot get away. Remember this. If slazans win, they will want to show their power over us. A long history of rape will be our future.” There had been a few giggles and one outright burst of laughter, but these were greeted with stares so powerful that the audience took on a look of unified agreement.
On the screen Pauline was dragging the body down the hill, taking a few steps at a time, recovering her breath, then pulling again. It was painful to watch. He couldn’t understand what she was thinking. Why touch the body? Why interfere with their ways? What would they think of her for doing this? But if she didn’t bury the body, she would have to wake every day, step outside, and there, on the hillside, would be a rotting corpse, its body covered with insects and stink, its meat torn apart by whatever scavengers this planet had.
He didn’t want to see any more; he called up the next image of Slazan N!ai. She was standing on the hillside where the dead man had been. Standing behind her was a child, beside the child a grown person who was obviously a woman, with bloated belly and tiny breasts. N!ai cautiously walked down the hillside, as if sneaking; then she leaped into the shuttle and disappeared. Pauline returned and found her. She stepped out and Pauline said something in slazan‚ which seemed to shock Slazan N!ai. Neither woman saw a giant male—Esoch was sure this one was a little bigger, with darker skin and larger eyes than the one he had watched in the previous day’s images—amble toward them. Esoch had his eyes closed, so he had to rerun the image and watch the blow that drove Pauline to the ground, that bloodied her mouth and caused her to lose the mouth prosthetic that allowed her to shape her mouth to properly speak pan-slazan.
While he watched N!ai carry Pauline back to the ship, it made him wonder about everything he had heard about slazans during training: they can’t stand to be together, they don’t like to touch unless they’re mating, the women are subjugated, kept out of sight.
Slazan N!ai went to the pregnant slazan‚ who was holding two baskets, each full of food. She walked back and placed the baskets in the shuttle doorway, then walked very quickly back up the hill.
The enemy of Esoch’s training didn’t leave gifts. They killed you while you lay unconscious.
The next image of Pauline was in the camouflage suit, and he could start to imagine what had happened to her while in the shuttle. She had awoken on the shuttle floor—o
r had they laid her in the bed?—her face bloodied. She felt she had deserved the blow. If not for her, there wouldn’t have been slazans gathered on the hillside. If not for her, there wouldn’t have been the commotion, there wouldn’t be a man lying dead on the ground. She went through the lockers, shoved what she needed into the pack, emptied the basket of its food, perhaps muttering to herself while she did this, the way she had muttered loud enough for him to overhear her thoughts whenever she had got angry. She would be telling the air how she should have followed her plans in the first place, how she should have left the shuttle craft far away, hiked in on her own, as solitary as any slazan.
If he left tomorrow, he would be only a day and a half behind her. She was wearing a thick, cumbersome suit. Wherever she was going, she would have to travel the way he had, around rivers, along twisting paths, always pausing to consider her next direction. After another blood recycling he should be ready. He could catch up to her. But once he did, would she come back with him?
On one of the screens Pauline turned and waved farewell.
The following is taken from the notebook Pauline Dikobe kept while traveling to Tienah on The Way of God.
Day 98
Our destination, the planet without name or number, has more and more become a part of daily speech. The crew calls it No Name. The corridor walls have started to project scenes recorded from No Name’s northern forests. Gravity and air mix have been changing incrementally to match my future working conditions. Corridor daylighting and nightlighting have also been extended to match the expected cycle on No Name, whose day is almost an hour longer than the day on E-donya. As the minutes in a day increase to match our cycle to No Name’s cycle, so do the lengths of the shifts. There is always someone complaining about No Name hours.
Day 100
The air smells stale. If we had been on patrol in the war zone, we would have docked with an outpost by now, taken a bit of shore leave, had systems checked, air revitalized.
“Is the circulation system out,” I have heard, “or is this the way it’ll smell on No Name?”
I had always assumed that grown women had left adolescence behind. Of course, I don’t say that.
Day 102
We’ve been too long together. No one can march off to a café to drink tea among a different group of people; no one can pack up her bags and visit a different set of friends; no one can change the routine habits that have come to annoy everyone else.
Tempers are short. Comrades-in-arms announce each other’s shortcomings over the dinner table. Nothing is too petty to mention. This is why, I say to no one, slazans evolved a need for solitude.
Day 103
Last night Fatima and Rebecca, comrades-in-arms, third-shifters, went at it over dinner while I ate at a nearby table. The argument ended with the meal, and they rose from the table in heavy silence. As they passed by, Rebecca looked my way and smiled.
I looked away.
Rebecca’s been eyeing me for a number of days, though she has yet to say something to me that is more than a polite greeting. The romance of the outsider. When on shore leave Rebecca has been known to share mats with anything that walks on two legs. Fatima’s married and claims to find spiritual pleasure in her chastity. It would be a bad pairing if the two women did not work so well together.
This morning Rebecca invites me to join them at their table. “No one should eat alone,” she says.
Fatima explodes, calls her a hypocrite, calls her a dirty Jew, calls her an uncircumcised promiscuous illiterate, and stomps out of the dining hail. Rebecca and I eat in silence at separate tables.
Day 105
Before the morning call to prayer, Hamida‚ currently a first-shift member of the bridge crew, and one of the ship’s two medics, slammed Jihad against a bulkhead during a heated moment while playing free-ball. Free-ball is a no-contact sport. Jihad’s arm was broken. First-shifters are answering the call to prayer while I sit with Jihad in the dispensary. Hamida sets the bone, fastens the monitor splint in place. She does not apologize; Jihad does not thank her.
During breakfast Jihad cringes and mutters, “Fucking Hamida.” The splint has just injected another dose of healing agent.
At dinner no one speaks to Hamida‚ not even her comrade-in-arms. Hamida stares down at her plate and touches fork to food. She eats nothing but her pride.
Day 106
At breakfast people start talking to Hamida again. Last night she went to Jihad’s cabin and apologized profusely within hearing of Jihad’s gossipy comrade-in-arms. So now she’s forgiven, part of the crew again. She’s lucky, I think, that these people believe an apology is appropriate redemption; among the Ju/wasi she’d be teased about this for years.
Day 109
The air-circulation system is as cranky as everyone else. The air now carries the faint smell of the washroom. The whole engineering-and-maintenance crew is working across shifts to locate the problem.
I try to concentrate through a persistent headache, a constant tightness behind the eyes.
I try to pay attention to Jihad. She’s working with the programming, trying to figure out a systematic way to evaluate the causes of slazan violence. I try to explain how intra-species violence grows out of rights to food and rights to a mate.
“No, no,” Jihad says. “It has to do with territory. If it wasn’t territory, there would be no war.”
I disagree, but I’m too tired to explain how humans, and perhaps slazans‚ aren’t like dogs who piss out their territory. But at dinner I see the way everyone is seated apart, in twos and threes, the way eyes harden if you try to approach a group, as if one more person at the table will cause one more argument.
Day 110
The air still smells of piss and sweat.
Tamr and Maryam sit down at breakfast. Both faces are pale. Dark skin puffs up under their eyes.
The captain looks up from her meal. “If this ship smells like a toilet one more day, I’ll make Dikobe here the chief engineer.”
Day 112
The problem is solved. The air smells stale, but the other odors are fading.
If the captain apologized, it wasn’t in public. Crew members joke about toilet air.
Tamr takes it out on me. She has started calling me Chief Engineer. When I ignore that, she starts listing every slazan evil she can think of.
“You know,” I say, “this behavior of yours gives humanity a bad name. Why don’t you learn something from the slazans and try a little solitude?”
“Fine,” she says. “Solitude it is.”
Day 115
Today is the day I start the reality workshop to learn pan-slazan. I expect to find a sullen Tamr by the reality chair, there to monitor vital signs while I live out a slazan childhood. But Maryam is there instead.
At the end of two four-hour sessions, Maryam looks at me with concern. “Are you okay? Your color isn’t right.”
I feel terribly alone. Maryam offers comfort; she pats me on the shoulder.
I have noticed once again how empty my cabin is. I sleep on one mat. The other is rolled up, in a corner. I wish there were men on this ship.
Day 117
I have considered writing down some of the lurid dreams I have had, but just thinking about them makes me anxious. I had gone several years without taking a man to my bed. I should never have opened my arms to ibn Haj or pressed my backside against the Ju/wa lieutenant. This is a hunger you can survive, I tell myself.
Day 120
A new roster is posted.
Rebecca is first-shift bridge crew. Her comrade-in-arms, Fatima, is on second shift. Rebecca joins me for breakfast and smiles a lot.
I work with Jihad during the first half of the shift. She is amused. “You’ve an empty mat in your cabin,” she says. “Rebecca would like to try it out. Fatima is on duty just when you two go off.”
I try to change the subject, but Jihad wants to talk about mating, about sexual dimorphism, about estrus cycles. She wonders if slazans
have breeding seasons; it makes sense for a solitary species who prefer non-contact. “It’s biologically insecure. Every egg isn’t fertilized, and every fertilized egg doesn’t mature to birth, and every infant doesn’t survive to adulthood. If you wait to the next breeding season to gamble on a litter comprising one child, you are taking a tremendous evolutionary risk. A regular estrus cycle would make more sense.”
She nods, considers it, then maps out ways to verify, using imaging pins planted through the forest to try to create a behavioral census. I am impressed how quickly she dispels naïve assumptions, how quickly she creates a research plan.
After lunch Maryam once again monitors my reality-workshop session. I come out feeling terribly alone. I say nothing for a while, wanting to bathe myself in someone else’s words. Maryam shares my silence like a desire.
Day 121
After living once more as a slazan to learn their language, I am again greeted by Maryam’s polite face. Afterward I have dinner with Rebecca, and I barely listen to her. I look at her face. It is attractive. She is lively. That night I look at the extra mat in my cabin, rolled up, out of the way.
I remember the first time my husband lowered his face to my thighs, how I tried to push him away. “That’s got to be”—I couldn’t find the right word—“distasteful.”
He shook his head, smiled, and after a few moments I couldn’t resist the gentle touch of it. In my mind I transformed his head into Rebecca’s, and the pleasure remained pleasure. I then lowered my head, and I couldn’t imagine anymore. I so badly want someone in my arms. Why this failure of the imagination?
Day 123
Jihad doesn’t ask me outright if I plan to share mats with Rebecca, but she asks about all the dinners. We don’t look at any of the programming; we end up talking about mate choice, about how the dynamic of male choice and female choice shapes, over evolutionary time, the look of a species, but we are really talking about why she’s in love with her gossipy comrade-in-arms, why Rebecca sits down to dinner with me, and why I listen to her talk for hours about nothing.
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