Foragers

by Charles Oberndorf

  They are a failed agricultural colony.

  They know how to hunt and gather because there are pan-species psychological mechanisms that recognize the behaviors necessary for this way of life, just as the children of those who speak a pidgin end up speaking a language.

  Why did I so badly want them to be like the Ju/wasi?

  There is no special purity to being a forager. I forage through the images of their lives—the data I collect—with the same care a medieval army foraged a conquered town, taking in hand gold, food, and women.

  Day 186

  I remember now what the General said over dinner. He wanted me to prove the obvious, that this was a failed colony. It was the justification to open this planet to human habitation.

  Day 190

  I have resumed my walks. I don’t see my suitor, my surrogate son’s kidnapper and murderer. I dream about an adult male who follows me, who takes interest, who wraps his arms around me. I awake, frightened and aroused.

  I imagine returning to The Way of God‚ and the thought of the tiny corridors and the press of people leaves me feeling a similar ambivalence.

  Day 192

  I see my suitor today from a distance. He is using one hand and an elaborate stick to dig into the ground. The other hand hangs at his side. He grunts. He stops. The arm he isn’t using hangs at an odd angle.

  He turns, sees me, and walks off quickly, as if my presence poses some threat.

  I examine the images that evening. His arm is broken, perhaps in two places. A digit is missing from his small finger. His face has several cuts. Who did this to him? Why? Was it done with the same calculation with which he took hold of my plastic child, or was it the result of a fight, the striking out in anger, the escalation of some conflict over territory?

  I have watched—several times—images of !U telling Clear Eyes she has little to share. !U places three strips of meat before Clear Eyes in a show of generosity. In !U’s shelter, covered by a blanket, is meat she hid this morning.

  Why the deception? By giving away little and claiming it is much, does she hope to increase Clear Eyes’ generosity when !U should visit her? And does Clear Eyes detect the cheat? Does she too feign generosity and save her food for closer relations?

  In each human transaction an individual has to decide to do what is in her own best interest: to invest in the relationship, to invest in the group, or to invest in the self’s own needs. Conscience becomes our tool to preserve reciprocal arrangements, guilt to keep us within society’s norms, and anguish to remind us of our own persistent desires.

  But as we deceive, so our conspecifics search out signs of our defection: the look in our eyes, the stance of our body, the sound of our voices. Thus we develop our abilities at self-deception—for how can we give away our own deception if we are not conscious of it? In times of illness we overdo our injuries and gain extra attention. We feel desire and denounce philanderers. We attack others for our own flaws. But we also repress memories of being wronged so we can continue a relationship. We see another’s generosity and not the calculation behind the altruism. We enjoy the romance of courtship and ignore our simultaneous calculations when securing a mate. We question what other individuals do, but we adopt the common cause.

  The common cause is the war.

  We live in a culture of war.

  And culture is as strong as our own individual desires—why else would young men and women, who have no children, willingly go off and die? It’s the greatest of evolutionary mistakes, the sure sign of culture’s ultimate strength over the gene.

  The state, to its advantage, can combine our ability for self-deception and our willingness to die for our genes; it expands the genetic family into the human family; it plays marches to synchronize our moods before it sends us off, hand in hand, our consciences pricked, then spurred forward: to feel hate and call it devotion, to feel murderous and call it bravery, to feel love for your comrades-in-arms, for your shipmates, for your battalion, for your cause, and call it love for all humanity. And only when you struggle forward, risking your own life to save the life of someone you barely know from enemy fire, only then is there any truth to it all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Sixteenth Day

  It was late afternoon, just before the sun hid behind the distant trees. Broken Leg was sleeping, or at least pretending to sleep. The Stranger had soiled himself again. She cleaned him, all the while noticing how hard and swollen the bumps on his legs had become. With each touch he twisted his head back and forth, and she wasn’t sure if his body was rejecting her touch or if her touch brought pain.

  She left the shelter for the river, where she bathed. To be alone, to feel the rush of the water, to listen to the sounds surrounding her, all of this made it feel like solitude was something she had lost. Here, on her own, the slow way desire crawled through her again was a pleasure in itself. She felt alive because she was alone.

  He lay there and listened, surprised at how comfortable it was to listen. The pain in his leg radiated from the break and no longer felt like a pain that had infected his entire body. His body was clothed in a thin layer of sweat, his abdomen and thighs dirtied by the residue of waste, but he no longer felt like the dirt was layered through his soul. He sat up, and he did not need to lie back down again.

  He could not believe what he so urgently wanted to believe: that the simple playing of music could have done this for him.

  Even if music could heal, even if the playing of notes could act upon emotions so that the brain released the proper hormones, activated the proper synapses, how could this creature alien to everything he had known have played the notes a human brain would understand?

  Evening was approaching, and so he had tonight and tomorrow morning to convince Slazan N!ai to show him the way to the shuttle. By midday tomorrow it would be too late.

  While thinking these thoughts he became aware that there was no music being played. Nor was she moving about the encampment doing whatever chores she did when she did not play music. Slazan N!ai must be gone. And when she returned, he couldn’t call her Slazan N!ai. It was a scientist’s label, the ethologist naming the observed animal so it can have some humanity, some quality that earned it a degree of empathy while the observer cataloged what it did to whom. This woman was called Healer. Esoch looked at the slazan warrior, who was still lying there, his skin darkened and blotched, his eyes half-open, and Esoch wondered what the warrior was called.

  The warrior, it turned out, was awake. His eyes opened all the way, and Esoch politely averted his gaze. He heard the warrior’s voice. “You can sit up now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you stand up?”

  “No. I need”—he did not know the Nostratic word for crutches—“support.”

  “The healer had my pack. In it is medication I need. Without it I will die before I reach the ship.”

  “The healer is gone.”

  “I am the enemy. You want me to die.”

  Esoch expected the warrior to go on, to remind him that the warrior’s starship offered his only hope of salvation. But the warrior said nothing more. It was only then that it occurred to Esoch what the warrior might be thinking: that the human’s hatred was so intense that Esoch would rather remain alone on this planet than see the slazan live. “What are you called?” Esoch asked.

  “You could not pronounce it.”

  Esoch held up his prosthetic. “I could try.”

  “I would not want to hear you try.”

  “What do I call you?”

  “Call me according to your thinking. Call me Enemy.”

  “Should I call you Warrior?”

  He made a sound. Like hearing a word in a language you are beginning to learn, then translating it, Esoch recognized the sound as laughter. “Is each slazan a warrior?”

  Esoch’s thoughts were confounded until he became aware of what the slazan meant. “Then why are you here, if not because of us?”

  “Because of y
ou? How could I be here because of you?”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “This is a slazan colony. Why should I not be here? Why are you here? Why is there a shuttle craft on this planet?”

  “The shuttle came with a woman who was to study the slazans here.”

  “And she studied them for science or for war?”

  Esoch did not know what to say. Pauline herself hadn’t known.

  “I, too, am a scientist. There is one here at all times to study the ones who live here. My rotation had just started. My replacement will not arrive for a number of years. When your ship came into our orbit, I grew scared that you would discover my own ship. I decided to meet you in orbit and make contact.”

  Esoch repeated the words. He could feel the death in his own voice. “Make contact.”

  “Yes. Your warship fired. I had no choice but to fire back.”

  “What kind of scientist are you?”

  “What kind of scientist was the first one you dropped down here? She came in a warship. It is a war. My ship was armed.”

  “How do I know?”

  “How do you know your ship fired first?”

  Esoch nodded, realized that a nod was a gesture, not a word, and said, “Yes.”

  “It shouldn’t matter. I approached them. I was the threat. They fired. But you want to trust me. You want to know that I didn’t lie to you. I have no proof. You think I fired first? How does that put me in the wrong? This is a slazan world. A human warship enters orbit without permission. Would it be wrong for me to fire? Wouldn’t it be foolish not to fire?”

  “Why do you argue when there’s nothing to argue?”

  “Because you are quiet. Which means all the arguments go on inside you. You have words to share, but you share them only with yourself. You say nothing, so how do I know I can trust you? In six months you could learn how to fly an alien starship. You could take it from me. You could kill me. You could return home to humanspace with a slazan ship. How do I know you won’t do that?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Then we each have distrust to share. I can die and you can stay here forever. I can live, and you can live. My life means much to me. I cannot betray the person who saves it.”

  “Why not? Why not get my help first and later remove the risk of betrayal?”

  “If I betray you, then you have reason to betray me. If you blow up a satellite, then I should blow up a satellite, and it should be over. If you take something of mine, I should take something of yours, and it will be over.”

  “It sounds good, but it is just words.”

  “You think I will kill you because I can. But I am not human, and I do not think that way. Have you studied animals?”

  “Some.”

  “You know that an animal may threaten another of its kind. If I know you’re stronger than me and if I back off, nothing happens. If you know this is the land I use, you back off. There are fights only when each doesn’t know exactly where the other stands, when each doesn’t know who is right in that situation. So if I have a weapon, it’s only to show you that I have my claws, that I have my fangs, that I have my display of power so that you and I can leave each other alone.”

  “Slazans have done more than display weapons.”

  “Of course. Because once a human has something, he has to use it. If he has an erection, he has to mate. If he forges a sword, blood is drawn. If he builds a bomb, a city is exploded. You are the ones who cannot be trusted. You are the ones who fire first, who call the destruction self-defense, and who are astounded when the other side returns fire. You want the first word and the last word, and you leave no words to be shared.”

  “You have made each human evil. You give me an argument for which there is no response. You have the last word, it seems.”

  “No. The healer won’t give me my medicine. I will die. All the final words will be yours.”

  I desired no one but the one she thought of as Made Nothing. I desired his strength. I desired the pleasure she had felt the night before. But I also desired a daughter, and there was no woman to ask if Made Nothing’s pollen made daughters or sons. Old Sour Plum had sired Squawker’s daughter, and each of Flatface’s daughters, as well as Talk Too Much’s eldest daughter. I knew this only because a woman would tell another woman such things while they shared words during a hunt or while they shared food. The words would be uttered in a low hunter’s voice, a sound that barely carried, so no man would know which child came from his pollen.

  Talk Too Much had told every young woman how she had once mated with only one man. She refused another man who had given her many gifts. When the infant was born, a fine daughter, the other man dashed the infant’s brains out against a tree. It is best, Talk Too Much always said, to mate many; then each man is happy, and a woman’s pleasure can be as varied as the food she eats at the end of the summer.

  I found Old Sour Plum building a new nest. He was working by the river, where the paths were clear of debris and dotted with animal spoor. She had made hardly a sound and had stopped a polite distance away, so she could stand by a tree and watch him work. The reeds and branches were soaking in the water, held to shore by netting made from dried sinew that one woman and another had given him. His body was rigid with concentration, and his hands moved with a slow tenderness and care as fingers twisted reeds through an intricate design. She was both amazed and amused that this lumbering old man held so much skill in his fingers. In her heart she felt like a mother watching a daughter tracking a lightfoot or a son shaping clay with his hands. The rest of her body was warm and impulsive, and she wanted to be drawn in by Old Sour Plum’s strength, by the shape of his muscles, by the sureness of his stance. But when she thought of this strength, all she saw was his arm lashing out and Ugly Kaross hurled to the ground, her face bloodied.

  She walked away and approached again, this time reaching out to snap one branch, then another. Sour Plum called out, and she responded, so he would know the sound was not made by another man. This time he stood with his back to the half-finished nest. He held several reeds in one hand. They looped over his palm, and he looked at them like something he had just discovered there.

  I looked to him, then averted her gaze. Beyond her own desire, she felt nothing. She said again, “I am here,” and stepped forward.

  Old Sour Plum stepped back.

  She hadn’t expected that reaction. She had thought his old age wouldn’t matter when she approached, the sheen of her skin soft, her intent obvious. She took several more steps.

  And he stepped back again.

  The evening air was warm, but she felt cold. She could not move. She did not know what,to do. She wanted her feelings to be stronger.

  “Go away,” he said. His voice was low, with no trace of kindness.

  She walked up to him with the intent to reach out, to convince with her fingers.

  He turned on her, his lips stretched back, his teeth bared. His eyes were wide and hard. Then the look was gone and he backed away from her and turned his face away. “Go away,” he said.

  She did not leave. She did not want to stay.

  “You tell a woman to aim her arrows. You heal an animal who kills. Go away. Go. Away.”

  The sky, when it could be seen, had lost its color. In the clearing, where it had all started, the color of sunset splashed along one side of the woods. Across the darkened ground was a number of bones and the buzzing of insects.

  Roofer’s call sounded nearby, so it was easy to find him, but he did not hold still for her. He saw her, and walked away. She called out to him. He kept walking.

  She almost headed to where Made Nothing had built his nest yesterday, but she worried about the son that could result from such a mating. She worried about how Roofer and Sour Plum might react if Made Nothing decided to stay near the river and make gifts for the elder daughters who would soon mate again.

  She returned to her hut and hearth. She removed the blanket from the gzaet. She wanted to p
lay it. She wanted the notes to sound and to distance her from everything in the world. But there was the Stranger with his ragged breath. There was the not-a-person with his broken leg. She began work on the crutches. She shaped the wood with her stone knife and stopped often to use stone against stone to sharpen the knife. It was getting thin and brittle, and she would need a new knife soon. She worked and she worked; all she could think about was the two of them; all she could feel was her desire.

  A voice called out from the shelter. It was Broken Leg.

  “Healer,” said the voice a second time, and she had to listen again to the sounds in her mind to understand what he had said.

  “I am here,” she said.

  “The other one…”

  “What about the other one?”

  What he said was a jumble.

  She should stand up from her work. She should go to the opening. She should kneel by him and listen to what he said. She couldn’t bear to be that close. Her knife slid along wood; another shaving fell to the ground. “Say it again.”

  He spoke more slowly, but only several words were clear: Healing. Dying. Needs.

  How much destruction waited in the Stranger’s bag? “You don’t understand what you ask.”

  The jumble of words again, the three words that were clear: Healing. Dying. Needs.

  I’s anger surged through her like a kind of pleasure. “If I hear you, I know you’re there.”

  “Healer.”

  I could not believe her own anger, nor did she fight it. “I don’t want to know you’re there. I don’t want to hear you.”

  “Healer.”

  “I don’t want to hear you. I want to be alone. I don’t want to know you’re there. Take your voice away. Take your voice away.”

  Broken Leg said nothing more. I worked and seethed. She despised their presence. She despised herself for feeling this way. She despised the desire that perched inside her and reached up to her belly and clutched her heart and made it hard to think about anything else but about how these two were here, how she had to worry about them, how they had made the rest of her life impossible.