Foragers

by Charles Oberndorf

  She could not bear to be this way. Before she knew it, she had wrapped her kaross around her as if she were going to gather, and left hut and hearth. She knew where she was going, but she did not think about it in words that her mind could hear.

  It was night. Tomorrow morning he had to find a way back to the shuttle.

  “I heard what you said to her.”

  Esoch did not know how to think of him. It made sense that he had been here long before the Way of God had arrived. But for what purpose? Was this a military outpost? Was he a kind of lookout or guardian? Or was he a scientist sent here to study these slazans‚ an enthnographer like Pauline, who had studied slazan foragers to better understand slazan nature. Whichever he was, he spoke too much for a slazan. No wonder his superiors had exiled him to a place as far away as they could send him.

  “She won’t get my pack. She’s afraid of more destruction.”

  Esoch thought of Pauline, who was out there heading south, most likely. He said, “I told you a woman came down in the shuttle. I did not come down with her. I came down in a decoy probe.”

  “I know,” the warrior, who might well be an ethnographer, said. “I saw the probe where it had washed up ashore.”

  “The woman who came down left for the south before I got the shuttle. You need to help me contact her.”

  “You want me to find her?”

  “I want you to talk to the locals. I want them to ask others. I can’t leave her alone on this planet.”

  “There was a girl here last night. Did you understand what she said to the healer?”

  “I barely remember the girl.”

  “And the woman who came today?”

  Was it worse to say they spoke too fast or that he didn’t try hard enough, that despair had made it all so difficult?

  “It is not good news.”

  “What do you mean?” Esoch already knew what the warrior would say. He didn’t know if it would be a lie.

  “The body of your companion was found. She is dead.”

  Esoch looked away. The warrior must be lying. He didn’t want to deal with two humans. Pauline had to be alive. If only he had left the beach sooner. If only he hadn’t lost the tracking disc. If only if only if only.

  His fist hit the ground. He clenched his teeth. He would not scream out, he would not cry, not in front of the warrior. Pauline had to be alive.

  “How did she die?” he asked later. The hut was dark. The sky above was dark blue easing into black.

  There was no response.

  “Did they say how she died?”

  “Yes.”

  He must have been waiting for Esoch to ask. He had left Esoch alone, had allowed him to lie there with his grief and his solitude. Was such respectful silence to be considered sympathy or calculation? “Tell me,” Esoch said.

  “Two of them hunted her down. An arrow hit her. She escaped the pursuit. She was found dead by the girl.”

  “They hunted her?”

  “Two of them did.” The slazan’s voice grew softer. “They were afraid of her.”

  “What had she done to frighten them?” he asked, even though he suspected the answer.

  There was no response.

  “Why would they hunt her down like an animal?”

  Again, nothing.

  Esoch turned as much as he could without causing his leg to hurt. He reached out and touched the slazan’s body. There was no response, no reflex against his touch.

  He listened carefully. The slazan was breathing. His breath was soft, but consistent. How long would the slazan live?

  Esoch lay back and tried to make himself comfortable. He knew of two slazans who had died since Pauline’s arrival. What did the other slazans think of Esoch? Were the two who had hunted Pauline equally scared of him?

  The healer’s absence now frightened him.

  As she made her way through the darkening woods, I told herself she wanted a daughter. In her mind’s eye she saw Huggable’s daughter, and in her mind’s ear she heard herself explain again how such a daughter had come about, reminded herself that everything wrong with the daughter had been in the milk she had suckled, not in the seed or the soil.

  The cooking fire in Nightskin’s hut and hearth had been well fed, and flames raised their arms higher than a person’s head. The hut, the poles where meat hung, the daughter’s curled-up and quiet body, were all well lit. The trees nearby were the color of soil, between them blackness filled up the hollowness like dark water.

  Nightskin rose to her feet the moment I stepped from the woods. She approached I in easy strides, and she made no greeting. Her hand reached out, and fingertips brushed I’s shoulder. Her touch was as light as a breeze. “Your skin is so soft.”

  I’s body was trembling, but she did not feel cold at all. Her belly was empty. Her thighs were moist. She shouldn’t do this. But Huggable had done this. A young woman far away had done this. The daughter was lying so still that I watched her until she was sure the daughter was breathing. Nightskin had not moved, but I could hear her breath. Nightskin’s words were quiet ones, ones that disappeared with the rustle of leaves. “Do you have words to share?”

  “No.” I turned and walked away from the clearing, into the woods. In the distance, away from the light of the fire, everything was the color of ash, and night had not yet drowned the land. Firelight cast its light on one side of the trees, and there were the dark clouds of their shadows flickering against the nearby trees.

  I removed her kaross and bunched it up, placed it against the tree, and leaned her shoulder into it. She stretched out her fingers behind her, undid the pubic apron, and heard it land upon the ground. She lowered her back, raised up her bottom, and closed her eyes. She had no interest in looking back to watch Nightskin drop her pubic apron, nor did she wish to watch Nightskin’s penis rise from between her labia, even though she now saw it all very well behind her closed eyelids.

  Nightskin’s hand was against her bottom; she could feel the knuckles, the pressing in, as the woman’s hand led her penis to where I had opened herself. I felt her own breath suck in, the recognition of pleasure, the feeling of skin within her, and she pressed out, her desire wanting to take as much in, another part of her, the part that formed words in her head, wanting something very different.

  It was not long before Nightskin stopped thrusting, then pulled out of her. A new moistness against her thigh explained the reason. I had what she wanted, but her desire left her bent there, her bottom moving about. Nightskin touched her back. I felt herself straighten up, and she moved away to another tree. “Healer?”

  “Stay away. Just for a while.”

  “You have so little solitude.”

  I felt herself nod.

  “I understand. You are never alone now. And here I am, much closer than you want someone to be.”

  I liked the way Nightskin understood what she felt. I looked to the other woman’s naked body, but the fire was behind her, and she could see nothing.

  “I can make myself a fire at the edge of hut and hearth. You can sleep by my cooking tire or in my hut. You can have all the room you want to be alone.”

  I walked to the shadow that spoke. Her hand took the soft penis, and she ran her fingers around it, letting go when she felt the rest of her, then touching again, the skin soft, no sign of the thin bone on the underside, the amazement when it remained thin, but seemed to rise, expand, harden.

  I leaned against the tree, the kaross between her shoulder and bark again. She planted her feet firmly and again sucked in her breath when she felt the other’s penis become part of her. She pressed out, wanting as much of it as possible to be in her, she pressed hard against the other’s thrusts, and she tried to think only of the other’s penis, of nothing else, because the pleasure was good; it was good to be away from hut and hearth, it was good to be away from the two who lay there, it was good to feel such rare sensations run through her. Nightskin’s fingertips ran along her back, hands caressed her face, her f
orehead, hands placed themselves firmly at the base of her neck, fingertips resting on collarbone, gripping so Nightskin could pull hard, thrust into her, the pleasure coming out as sighs.

  “So good,” I heard herself say. “So good to be here and away from everything.”

  “You want your solitude back,” said Nightskin.

  “Yes.” Saying it carried its own kind of pleasure, its own desire.

  “You want the Stranger gone,” said Nightskin.

  “Yes.”

  “You want the not-a-person gone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to make them gone?”

  “Yes.”

  It was with these words she felt the sensations that had been building in her flow through her, and she reached down, pressed hard. She said yes, yes, yes, and felt with each blow where penis joined vulva, and a great release shook her body. Her face slapped against bark. The kaross fell to the ground. And everything felt wonderful for that moment where there was pleasure and nothing else.

  Then everything was fragile. The bark was rough on her skin. Every shift in breeze caressed. Nightskin stood behind her breathing hard. I could still feel Nightskin’s hands upon her shoulders, the fingertips upon her collarbone, and she was shivering, her belly empty, but there was no expectation. Nightskin was all shadow, and I hated herself, hated her desire, hated everything that had brought her here.

  Nightskin touched her shoulder again, and I tried hard not to flinch. Nightskin said, “By tomorrow night you will have your solitude back. If your desire is strong again, we can share the heat by your fire.”

  I let herself nod. She knew what Nightskin was saying. She knew what she had asked Nightskin to do.

  Nightskin accepted that I had to return to her hut and hearth. “As long as each is there, you do have to be there,” said Nightskin as she looked through the wood she had stacked for something that would act as a firebrand.

  I headed back to her hut and hearth, the forest dark, I relying on the number of times she had walked these paths to find her way there. She listened to the night’s many sounds and half wished a nightskin, the kind with four paws, would leap out, take hold of her in its jaws, and put an end to it all.

  She kept feeling Nightskin’s hands around her neck, and she kept seeing Ugly Kaross, her body floating in the cold spring water. She kept seeing the empty sheath, which might once have held a knife. She kept seeing the neck, the bruises there. She had tried so hard not to think about those because she had been sure it had been Flatface, who’d had so many words to hide, who had been so vehement that Ugly Kaross was a threat to everyone. But it hadn’t been Flatface. It had been the fingers around her own neck that had done it. If Ugly Kaross had not stepped out of her rock at the wrong time, Clever Fingers would still be alive. If it hadn’t been for Huggable’s terrible aim, Clever Fingers would still be alive. Huggable must have told Nightskin about tracking Ugly Kaross to the swamp, how she had been struck with an arrow. Nightskin must have stalked the swamp, waiting for the wounded woman to emerge. Now could Nightskin have kept her anger burning for so long? And after Ugly Kaross was dead, what then? Had Nightskin gone to Huggable? Had she desired Huggable’s embrace? Had Huggable refused her? Or had Huggable taken her in, making it so easy for Nightskin to wrap her arms around Huggable’s chest.

  But why did she want to believe this? Why did she want to think this of Nightskin, the one who had accepted that I sliced knife through dead skin to look at the shape of muscles and the arrangement of heart and stomach? Why did she imagine this of the one who had just given her so much pleasure? Of the one who had promised to return her solitude?

  Because Nightskin had asked the questions that had allowed I to ask for two more deaths.

  Now, she was scared, walking through the night, a glow of fire perched at her side, because she knew that Nightskin had discovered a taste for death, a desire to set things right. She knew Nightskin would do what was asked of her. She could warn the Stranger. She could warn Broken Leg. But that would betray her words. Because she and Nightskin had been mating close when she had asked. This is what she had wanted.

  And one other image stayed in her mind. When Nightskin spoke to her. When Nightskin said they could share I’s fire tomorrow night, I had looked over the other’s shoulder, had seen how the fire had dimmed, had seen the daughter sitting up, head facing in their direction. The daughter had been watching.

  I did not try to sleep when she returned to hut and hearth. She touched the cool surface of the gzaet. She checked the sleeping figures of the Stranger and Broken Leg, their bodies just shadows in the faint light cast by the coals between them. She picked up the memory beads, fingered their shapes, took them out by the cooking fire and looked at their colors, and let them remind her how best to make a set of crutches. She was a healer. If this pregnancy took, she would have a daughter who was a healer.

  I fed the cooking fire, she set the pieces of the crutches in front of it, and she began to work. If Broken Leg could use them, if he could stand without too much pain, then he could leave before Nightskin ever showed up. I still had to think of a way to save the Stranger, whose ragged breath sounded in the quiet. As long as he breathed, she had to worry for him as if he might breathe forever.

  He was awake when the healer returned. He saw her look in on them, watched her take out strings of beads. He heard her footsteps, he heard wood strike wood, the crackle of sparks, and he saw the shadow of flames rise high against the hut’s wall. He strained to hear what she was doing but could not make out the whisper of sounds.

  The pain in his leg was held in tight by the splint, and it flowed through him like ink spreading through water. Tomorrow morning he would have to convince her of many things: to get the ethnographer’s medicine, to lead them back to the shuttle.

  And then what? Fly away to the moon? Board the slazan’s starship? What would General ibn Haj think if Esoch came back early, having dropped the enemy off at a nearby star?

  Would he be better off staying here? A lone alien among a population of loners. What kind of survival was that? And what more destruction would happen if he remained? But if he went with the enthnographer‚ if the ethnographer kept his promise, then Esoch could go back home. To survive all this and still stand at the edge of the reserve, to still fear the taunts and jeers, to still imagine N!ai’s bold angry eyes. There had been nothing for him anywhere.

  He wasn’t like Pauline, who had left home for the University. He wasn’t like Hanan, who had left her marriage for the stars. They had moved with purpose, and their destruction had been like the arrow that had hit the slazan man, something their decisions didn’t account for, but he had left the reserve full of anger and empty of intent. The thumb piano was destroyed. He made no music. Since he had left the reserve, all he had manufactured was death.

  But if he made it to the shuttle, if he left with the ethnographer, if the ethnographer took him home, if he made his way to the reserve, what about Pauline?

  What if the ethnographer had lied about Pauline’s death to keep things safe, to deal with only one human?

  He couldn’t leave Pauline alone on this planet.

  The following is taken from the notebook Pauline Dikobe kept while The Way of God returned from Tienah to E-donya E-talta.

  Day 3

  I walk and pace and speak; I watch the lines scroll out on the screen; and I wonder how long they will let me keep these words.

  I say this because I want it to be part of the record, if I get to keep this record. The shuttle returned to the loading dock. I got out The shuttle door slid shut. It won’t reopen. The intelligence has shut down. All the data has been closed off, confiscated. A pretimed message appeared on the captain’s log. I am officially relieved of my post. Ail my work and data belongs to the military now. The General has his research. He has aggressive male slazans. He has a slazan who commits infanticide. He has a slazan who cheats a companion. And he has his failed colony.

  And ibn Haj
, who gifted me with a slazan knife, who moved so well in my embrace: he smiled well, and he lied even better. Captain al-Shaykh told me he had thumbprinted the order.

  Day 5

  I expected Jihad or Tamr to justify ibn Haj’s action. I expected them to argue that I was soft on the slazans‚ that I couldn’t be trusted to bring back the material untouched. I expected them to be more loyal to their beliefs‚ more loyal to the humanity they served, than to whatever sense of friendship they felt toward me.

  But Jihad has made numerous attempts to use the ship’s intelligence to get at the data in the shuttle. She claims the captain is—off the record—aware of her attempts and has done nothing to stop her.

  Tamr has twice tried to get the shuttle door to unlock.

  All for nothing.

  Day 7

  I had longed to witness the Garden of Eden.

  I had hoped my foraging slazans would be primal Utopians.

  I had hoped to find this place where every contradiction of life was well managed.

  I find that I yearn for some way of life that would create a human who would accept her own self-contradictions, and in doing so she could step out of our evolutionary past like some fragile, winged creature emerging from her chrysalis, the broken shell lying there to be consumed for her own nourishment.

  So I look back to my foraging Eden, so that today’s problems are like original sin, our reason to struggle, to make us worthy of God’s better judgment. When one male confronts another, testosterone and adrenaline escalate, angers flare. When males hunt, testosterone remains even, the mind remains cool. We take the anger in our hearts and stalk our enemy like hunters. I coldly consider ways that I can dig up truth they have buried, how I can make sure these slazans are not one more victim of the war.

  Aggression makes individual survival possible. Morality makes survival in groups possible. And somehow that makes for necessary evils, and those evils make for necessary goods. I tire of this balancing act between evil and good, between self and community, between my interests and your interests and our interests; the wars continue, we breed one failed society after another, and we long for Eden, struggling to create what we truly never had.