Foragers

by Charles Oberndorf

  If I asked Lightfoot Watcher to remain, what would she owe the pregnant woman later? Did she want to return and find the animal dead? “Yes. If you have no hunger to be elsewhere.”

  When I returned with the gzaet, its heaviness pressing against her belly, its strap digging into the back of her neck, Lightfoot Watcher rose from where she had been sitting. The daughter rushed up to I and impulsively grabbed at her hand. “The animal left while you were gone.”

  I looked to Lightfoot Watcher, who said, “She left not too long ago.”

  “Then she wasn’t that hurt.”

  “Tell the healer,” said the daughter, “about what the animal wore.”

  “She wore skins,” said Lightfoot Watcher, “that covered all of her but her face. The skins changed their colors. And she had something big and heavy she wore upon her back.”

  “Tell her what happened next!” said the daughter.

  “She was almost into the woods when she stopped in her tracks. She turned and looked at the rock. She lifted her hand into the air and moved it back and forth like a man smoothing out an animal skin. Then she turned again and walked off at a quick pace.”

  “No. When she was in the woods. Tell what happened then.”

  “The animal started up the trail. But before she had taken even a step, she was no more. She was gone.”

  “Gone?” I asked.

  “Gone,” said Lightfoot Watcher. “She was there. Then she was gone, as if you had blinked.”

  I said nothing. There was the gzaet resting in hands and against belly, there was the rock, its entrance open, its inside dark, and there was the empty path the animal had taken. “The animal couldn’t be there and be gone.”

  “I saw what I saw.”

  “It must have left tracks.”

  “I will sit by your instrument if you want to follow such tracks.”

  “There won’t be any,” said the daughter. “The animal was just gone. Gone animals don’t leave tracks.”

  “Quiet,” said the mother, obviously irritated by the tone of the daughter’s voice. “The healer will want to look for tracks. They might be there. We will watch the boulder and the gzaet.”

  Several different feelings took hold of I at the same time. She was amazed that Lightfoot Watcher could know what I wanted to do. She was relieved that there would be someone both to protect the gzaet and to watch the rock. And she was suspicious of Lightfoot Watcher’s intent. There were the twin lives, and Lightfoot Watcher’s desire that each one should live.

  Tracking the animal turned out to be easy. The shape of the spoor was different. The sandals she wore seemed to be divided into two parts that were divided by a line. The back part was larger and dug deeper into the ground. Lines like cut-up snakes pressed into each track. The animal must also have been carrying something heavy in the bag on her back; the spoor was deeper than when she had worn just a carry bag and had walked off to plant the sticks that changed colors. As before, the animal paused briefly where paths met, but she moved on, choosing another path directly. Her pace was sure and steady. There was no sign of stumbling, of uneven steps, of leaning against trees. It became clear soon enough that she was heading for the river.

  The river was at its highest level, its surface the color of the leaves above, the leaves above cut into two by a river of sky. I knelt to the moist ground to try to read what had happened. The heavy sandals came off. She could make out where the bare feet moved about, where once, maybe twice, she balanced on one bare foot. Had the animal removed her skins before crossing the river?

  I laid down the carry bag in which she kept the various dried herbs she had carefully wrapped, removed her pubic apron, took off her sandals. The riverbank was like clay, and it was easy to see where the animal’s feet and hands had slid down the bank. The animal had gone in with ease. The water was cold, and it took I a while before she slid her body all the way down the bank. The water came up to her chest, and she shivered. Her steps were slow. The river’s current moved around her. Her feet sank in the muck. Something brushed against her skin. The water rose to her neck, and she wasn’t yet halfway across. She didn’t want to lose the animal. The next step brought the river up to her mouth, and even though she could breathe through her nose, she could feel a part of herself begin to panic. Her heart was a pregnant woman’s heart; she wanted to turn back, be safe. She wanted to have a hunter’s heart, but her heart wouldn’t beat with such firmness. She forced the next step even though she knew, just as she leaned forward into the step, that it was the wrong step. Her body fell into the water, the water slid into her and over her. She struck at the water with her hands; she kicked at it with her feet. Her head tilted back and her face found the air. She fought with the water and felt herself falling back into it. Her feet scraped against muck, she struggled harder, and she found herself safely standing, her balance regained. She stood there, water up to her neck, and coughed out what she had sucked in.

  She reached the other side of the river, and there was no sign that the animal had hauled herself up here. Once she was out, her body dripping, she could only find the old fading spoor of a nightskin, of several lightfoot, of other, smaller creatures, the lightness of their pace barely pressed into the ground.

  The animal had not gotten out of the water here. Then where? She did not want to cross the river where it was so deep, not again, not so soon, so she followed the current, clambering over fallen branches, walking around thorny brush, avoiding a patch of itchleaf‚ never seeing any sign of where the animal might have emerged from the water. Finally she came to a spot near where Talk Too Much had once made hut and hearth. A number of trees had been felled long ago, and the sun shone down. But it was late in the afternoon, and the sun gave more light than heat. The river was shallow here; I could see both stone and fish. She stepped across, and followed a number of paths, calling out as she walked near where Talk Too Much’s eldest daughter lived, and later passed a stone’s throw away from Flatface’s hut and hearth.

  The sun was atop the trees when she returned to the clearing. And she stopped when she could see the rock. The opening was still there. And outside the rock was an animal. I stepped back and hid behind a tree. The animal wore skins that were the color of leaves in the autumn. The skins themselves looked as thick as leaves. And they covered all her body but for her hands and head. The sandals were dark and covered the foot and went up past the ankles. In the animal’s hands was something long. It looked to be made of the same material as the rock. It sliced into the ground like a knife, and came up with dirt. This animal was digging a giant hole with ease. And it wasn’t the same animal. She was smaller than the other one, with lighter skin, and hair that barely covered the top of her head. Her chest was flat; she had no teats and no child.

  The animal stopped digging and looked at the hillside. She must not have seen I, because she returned to dig and dig. Finally she stopped and leaned on the digging stick with the large knife on the end. She laid the digging stick down, then lay down herself. She reached into the hole with her hand. She soon stood up and her body wavered as if she had lost all energy. She almost tripped on her way back into the rock. Did this animal suffer from the same sickness as the animal with teats?

  The opening disappeared, and, not moving a muscle, I watched the rock. What was in the hole? What had the new animal felt? It took a while to work up the courage. The voice inside kept telling her that the last animal when it had been this sick hardly came out at all. In fact, it had stayed inside for more than a day. I walked cautiously down into the clearing and toward the rock. She kept her eye on the rock and was ready to run if the opening should reappear.

  She reached the hole and stepped around the scattered dirt. She saw what the animal had seen. It was a person’s foot. She wanted to run, but she knelt down, found she had to lie down, and then she reached out to touch the foot. Her hand shot away. She touched it with a fingertip, brushed away at dirt, felt an ankle. She brushed more dirt, felt a dead, cold calf. T
he feel of dead skin was overwhelming. She stood up, turned, and stumbled, then managed to run as fast as she could up the hill, and she kept running until she was in the woods and the animal in the rock couldn’t see her. It wasn’t until she regained her breath that she understood that Clever Fingers—his entire body—had been buried there.

  Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter had been in hiding, and they quickly followed her. Each was quiet during the walk back to hut and hearth, and I wondered why the first animal had wanted to trap Clever Fingers and his true body in the ground. She couldn’t find a reason. She then wondered where the second animal had come from.

  What was she going to do?

  The following is taken from the notebook Pauline Dikobe kept while traveling to Tienah on The Way of God.

  Day 135

  Only ten more days.

  The days blur. We have been decelerating at one g for several days now, but I would have to look in my notebook to tell you exactly how many days it has been.

  The days alternate. Fights or apathy. The preparations for approaching the planet have begun to energize the crew. Jihad’s comrade-in-arms has started to talk about how this whole thing is a trap, how we’ll find a fleet of slazan warships waiting for us, ready to take us and our technology captive.

  What’s scary is that no one laughs.

  What’s scary is that I don’t argue with her.

  I let her have her way, and she treats me kindly.

  Day 142

  Three days until we enter orbit.

  The screen on my cabin wall is on. I keep a watch on my destination. Now there is the far-off sun and much closer is the full ball of the planet, neither of which have a name or a number, except those assigned to it by the Raman probe, facts buried deep in the probe’s memory, laid away under layers of top-secret classifications and passwords. The Way of God’s intelligence has erased the image of all other stars to insure that no one on board can calculate our current position in the galaxy. So in the darkness there is just this distant ball of light and heat, and much closer this ball of blue, ink-blotted by green and brown, swirled over with white, like the three humansafe worlds, like the world humans and slazans once attempted to share. The unity of evolutionary forces. There is no god but God. I wish I believed.

  Day 145

  We are in orbit

  Tamr congratulates me. She tells me my research will win the war. She tells me that we’ll make the galaxy safe for human expansion. I despise these words. I despise the way I let myself listen to them. I despise my earlier promise to let this all pass. I tell her what I’ve been thinking for so long. I tell her she’s full of shit. I tell her that this world belongs to these slazans. “I would pick up everything I own and walk away from the mission if I knew for sure that these slazans would be harmed by my research. They aren’t the enemy. They haven’t killed a single human. And if God bothered to make them at all and to give them intelligence and to give them children to love, then he didn’t do it just to test a batch of humans in a third-rate warship.”

  I am surprised that Tamr does not strike me. I am surprised that she does not storm off. I see another torment as she nods, as she reconsiders everything she’s said, and how I must have felt about half of it.

  And I am weary of all that thought. I am weary of making the social calculation for everything I say. I am weary of realizing how little they have changed since they met me five months ago.

  I am eager to go down there.

  If I am to feel so alone, it is better to be alone down there, where solitude is expected, than to be alone among thirty other people, where to feel alone is a failure of our tiny society or a failure of my individual soul.

  I am to go down in one hour. I just wanted it recorded somewhere, to remind myself later, that I am terribly scared. There was a surprise farewell party last night. The tables in the dining hall had been unbolted and moved to the bulkheads. There was music, dancing.

  I danced with the captain, I danced with the executive officer. Jihad opened wine for those who drank alcohol, and she toasted me. Tamr embraced me and said arguments were just words. God measured deeds and desires. “May God go with you, for all our sakes‚” she said.

  We don’t act like we love each other; for that moment we do love each other. Those protohominids who could not feel such love, who could not be part of the group when the group came together—when each member forgot who had wronged whom—those protohominids most likely reduced their chances of becoming our ancestors.

  Now, no longer feeling alone, I no longer want to be alone down there.

  The following is taken from the notebook Pauline Dikobe kept during her 200 day study of the slazan foraging population on Tienah.

  Day 1

  I landed at midday. I sat in the shuttle. The shuttle sits in an open space that once may have been cleared by natives who had lived here, and it faces north where the clearing overlooks a series of slopes; in the distance, the blue hint of a lake can be seen. The rest of the clearing is surrounded by a concave slope, easing up into dense forest. Through the clearing, practically alongside the shuttle, is a thin stream, hardly more than a brook. The leaves facing the clearing have become transfigured, the oranges, reds, and yellows bright and supple with life. Such beauty, and no botanist to examine those leaves and explain nature’s artistry.

  The clearing is growing gray with evening.

  End of day one.

  Nothing has happened.

  The locals are up there, hidden behind trees, keeping a safe distance from this giant intrusion into their lives.

  I want to transmit one giant “I told you so” back to E-donya, to Wadi al-Uyoun‚ to ibn Haj, Ascherman, and Muneef. I should have landed far away; I should have hiked in. But there is another truth, which is this. As much as it is a mistake, I was comforted then and am even more comfortable now surrounded by the controlled environment of my anthropological hut. I can check the various screens and monitors, check the outside temperature, now a cool fifteen degrees, or the barometric pressure, or the number of natives beyond the edge of the hill, hidden by the trees, nothing more than gray figures in the twilight. There are only four now. There are never more than two or three close together, and judging by their sizes, I would guess each of those groupings comprise a mother and her young. Outside that, no one gets closer than five meters to another, except for brief moments to exchange some words, their voices so low that not even our intelligence can reconstruct what is said into anything resembling words.

  Animals are already habituated to the shuttle’s presence and are coming to drink from the stream’s water. The slazans remain distant. In fact, they are starting to leave. I yearn for one who will stay, who will build a fire and watch over me, as if I were worthy of watching.

  Day 2

  End of day two. I watched animals. Slazans came to the edge of the hill to watch, only to walk away later. They are too far away, their movement behind trees making it impossible to ID them accurately in order to evaluate who is returning, who is new to the scene. None of them dare come close. Jihad talks to me incessantly, drawing conclusions at a rate inversely proportional to the amount of evidence we are accumulating. She’s talking territory, threats, violence, distrust—the same old evil slazans. It’s as if nothing I taught her on The Way of God mattered. How can someone so bright end up sounding more naïve than many of my weakest students?

  The animals look at once so familiar—quadrupeds, snout, ears, tail—and yet so alien in shape and color, that I wish once again we’d brought an ethologist to describe them, to watch their behavior, and perhaps now I would be able to listen to her voice offering me polite instruction of how to watch, what to watch for.

  Day 3

  I step out into the early-morning mist, my legs and breasts bare. I wear a pubic apron and chi!kan‚ courtesy of Esoch al-Schouki‚ my love for one night. I am glad there are no men on The Way of God.

  Nothing happens. I have breathed the air, and by nighttime I fe
el nauseous.

  Day 4

  I walk around. I feel dizzy. Nothing happens. The slazans watch from the hillside, that’s all.

  Day 5

  I walk to the stream, and the good Muslim girl in me finds it difficult to unknot the chi!kan‚ to drop it to the ground, to untie the pubic apron. I bathe. The morning air raises goose bumps. The water feels like ice. If the slazans care, they don’t express it in their conversation. I run inside to throw up.

  That afternoon I walk up the slope, straight toward them. I want something to happen. I stand in the woods, alone. They have all very quietly, with the barest whisper of sound, disappeared.

  Day 6

  It’s morning of the sixth day. I’m about to go out, to wander about my little clearing. No frightful moves today. Last night I dreamed it was daylight out and one of them came toward the shuttle while I was still inside. He carried a musical instrument I had seen in a catalog of slazan artifacts. He plays for the shuttle and walks away. Why would he come so close to the shuttle? I wonder.

  I know, in reality, why none of them have.

  Day 10

  The adaptation sickness is almost past.

  I have taken to writing down some of the more vivid images in my dreams. The slazan with the music box. Esoch coming to rescue me. If these slazans keep hiding from me, I’ll need something to do.

  Chapter Nine

  The Tenth Day

  A lifetime is what makes a successful hunt possible: an older cousin gave the young boy a bow, made from a branch and strung with twine twisted from animal sinew, and he shot grass stems at tree trunks, then, later, at dung beetles, finally at waxbills‚ which were plucked and cooked and eaten; he learned animal tracks when gathering with his mother, when setting snares with his father or grandfather, when playing hunter with other boys, bringing pretend meat home for girls who were pretend wives; his father fashioned small arrows for a small, sound boy, and he shot geese and hares, and sometimes joined his father or his grandfather or his uncles when they hunted for the large meat animals; he listened to stories of past hunts—step by step what the animal did, what the hunter did—growing bored and going off to play, and later coming back to listen again; all until he was given a bow shaped like his father’s and arrows whose tips had been dipped in a poison made from !hwah beetle larvae, and he went out, shot, and killed a female kudu; so his father made cuts into his skin on the left side of his body and rubbed in charred herbs and animal fat and soot; and days and days later he went out, shot, and killed a male duiker, so his father made cuts into his skin on the right side of his body, and rubbed in charred herbs and animal fat and soot; now, while living in the boys’ hut, where they joke about erections and tease each other for sneaking off into the bush alone and without a wife, he can feel the blued lines upon his skin that mark him ready to marry. The marks in his chest to lift up his heart make him want to seek meat; in his arms, to make his aim steady and good; in his back, to make sure the game won’t run away; upon his brow, to make him see things quickly: the lines there so that when sitting by the fire, he would look and see those blue marks and ask himself why he was being lazy, didn’t he have a family to feed, shouldn’t he be hunting?