Foragers

by Charles Oberndorf

  I looked at who stood upon the blackened ground. Flatface stood there with her daughter and her waist-high son, but her almost-a-man son was gone. Nearby was her eldest daughter, Clear Eyes, whose infant daughter slept in her kaross. Wisdom was there as well as Crooked. And there stood Squawker, who had shared a mother with dead Hugger, and in one arm was her infant daughter sucking her teat, and beside her was her kneehigh son.

  First Squawker, then Clear Eyes, turned their attention from Nightskin to the Stranger, who was walking straight toward the boulder.

  Nightskin called out, “Throw the stones at them.”

  Clear Eyes looked to her mother. Crooked looked to Wisdom.

  Nightskin called out, “Don’t let him get to the boulder.”

  Squawker reached down for a stone, and the Stranger lifted the long object in his arms. Squawker didn’t even get the chance to pull the stone high enough to start a throw. Whatever the Stranger had, it did not throw fire. A visible but small hole shone in the area between Squawker’s teats; then the blood in her collapsed into the hole, and she fell to the ground atop her daughter, who cried out once and was silent.

  “No!” Esoch yelled, and he tried to jerk himself forward, tried to use the hillside to gain momentum. The warrior was too far away. The boy—the dead woman’s son?—rushed at the warrior. “No!” The same happened to him: the hole, the blood, the body upon the ground.

  Nightskin called, “Stop him!”

  And the Stranger turned, raised the long object, and everything stopped, because the boulder’s cry had started. It was a high-pitched, loud wail The sound circled around and around, and I’s ears hurt. One child after another put hands to ears.

  Broken Leg was halfway down the hill. He was following the Stranger. Atop the hill, Nightskin was pulling an arrow out of her quiver. The Stranger was by the closed opening. He turned and shouted some of the unknown words to Broken Leg, who, almost at the bottom of the hill, had stopped.

  Something had struck Esoch in the arm and had sent him spinning toward the ground, the good leg hitting first, then the broken leg, and then the sudden pain. He looked to his arm. He looked at the shaft of the arrow, at the feathers, at the trace of blood where the arrow was embedded in his skin, but it didn’t seem real, it didn’t cause any pain at all. He didn’t know how long he sat there listening to the siren, listening to the warrior call out to him.

  Esoch rose up, the pain in arm and leg immense, and he saw that, standing before him on the blackened ground, were the women. One or two had stones in their hands, but they looked around as if confused. They should be running. They should be scared. But the sudden death, the sudden noise, must have been too much. They stood rooted to the black ground. And when the shuttle lifted off, they would be burned to death. He didn’t know if he had time to make his way to the shuttle, to get inside and shut down the engines.

  “Hurry!” the warrior shouted. His voice was barely audible above the wailing of the siren.

  Esoch didn’t move. He too shouted. “Go away!” Could they hear him? Could they understand him. “Go away! There will be fire! The rock will burn the ground with fire!”

  “Hurry!” Esoch saw the warrior’s mouth form the word, but he didn’t hear. He knew what he must be saying. The siren’s sound was increasing in pitch.

  “It’s too late!” he shouted back. Then to the women: “Go away,”

  He heard a voice shout it behind him. It was the healer’s voice. But the women weren’t running. They were moving like a reluctant crowd.

  The warrior had fired his rifle at the shuttle. A blackened hole was where the eyeplate had been. He reached in with his hands. He was going to try to manipulate the electronics of it. He would rather die trying to get in the shuttle than live here.

  Esoch wanted to lunge forward, make it to the shuttle, open it for him. Instead he lunged on his crutches toward the women. He would swing a crutch at them. He would frighten them away. One woman lifted a stone. It missed. The second one, thrown by someone else, hit his wounded arm.

  I was running down the hill toward Broken Leg when the stone struck, when he fell a second time. “Go away!” she shouted. ‘There’ll be fire!” Each woman looked to Nightskin, as if she had the proper words, before they looked back to I. And it was following this gesture that I saw Nightskin remove another arrow.

  I stopped at the bottom of the hill. Her bow was tangled with the quiver, and she had to remove both from her shoulder. The quiver fell. I imagined she heard the rattle of the arrows over die sound of the rock’s loud cry. Nightskin’s second arrow struck the ground, missing Broken Leg. By now I had her bow and an arrow. Nightskin saw what was happening. I had her arm stretched back, the two fingers taut. Nightskin held on to her own bow, stepped back once, then twice, then three times, until she had disappeared into the woods.

  Esoch twisted his body to see that the shuttle door wasn’t sliding open, that the warrior remained there, his fingers fast at work, when the alarm stopped and the first jets fired. The initial heat struck Esoch to the ground. Soon all the jets would fire. Soon there would be nothing. And hands took hold of him. Fingers reached under his arms, then arms curled around. And he was half up, half dragged. He could hear feet hit the ground, the puffing of breath, and then all the jets fired. A force threw him down. Red shone behind his eyelids. A weight of a body leaned over him, covered him. And that was all he would later remember.

  The fire was gone as quickly as it had started. I, who had thrown herself atop Broken Leg, now rose. The rock was high in the sky, pointed upward, then shot off like an arrow. She couldn’t help but watch it. She heard voices behind her. She didn’t listen to what words were said.

  It was only after the rock could no longer be seen that she noticed that she stood well away from the blackened ground. It was only then she noticed how a pain had attached itself like a new skin to the back of her legs, to the length of her back. Broken Leg was stretched out on the ground, eyes closed. His broken leg was twisted against the splint. The skin on his leg, the color of muddy water, had turned the color of the setting sun. Underneath him the grass was now more white than the color of grass, as if it, too, had considered burning. The darkened ground was no longer cracked with lines of mud or scuffed with footprints. It was as flat and dark as the night. The Stranger, Squawker, Squawker’s daughter, Squawker’s son, were nowhere to be seen. Lying just outside the ring of black was Clear Eyes, one leg and one arm darkened, groans uttered from an unconscious body. What terrible pain it must be if she could feel it when she was not awake. The child in her kaross started to cry. After I touched Broken Leg’s back, felt the rise and fall of his breathing, she stepped over to Clear Eyes. Flatface was there, lifting the eldest daughter’s infant to her withering teats. The crying stopped while I looked over the burns on Clear Eyes’ body.

  While doing so, she looked up once. She expected something else to happen, to hear the sound of the rock again, to see something large appear in the sky and return. But the sky was the sky. The clouds were the clouds. The sun shone. She couldn’t believe the sky was so empty; it was like nothing had ever been there that could have dropped to the ground.

  Flatface knelt by Clear Eyes and looked to I to save her daughter’s struggling life.

  The rock was gone. Its leaving had made nothing better.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Days After

  All he felt was pain. All he heard was music. When there was music, there was less pain. He didn’t want to wake up. He didn’t want to find out he was alone, on this world, still alive.

  The morning after the boulder left, one woman and another and another entered Nightskm’s hut and hearth near the springs. Nightskin sat by the cooking fire and looked up. The daughter saw the women and ran into Nightskin’s arms. Each woman unslung her bow and pulled an arrow from her quiver. Nightskin did not avert her eyes, nor did she move.

  Afterward, no woman told another, not even a daughter, what she had done.

 
For days everything was the same. I healed the burns on one child and another, and there were gifts. There was music. There was Broken Leg’s fevered talk in strange words. There was Clear Eyes’ low moans and slow death. And there was talk. Wisdom talked. Crooked talked. Ratface talked and talked, for now she was a mother to her daughter’s child, who would eat food that Flatface chewed and passed to her, but who still reached for Flatface’s withering, empty teats.

  Flatface was the one who told I about Nightskin, about how she had abandoned her hut and hearth, taking her kaross, her bow and arrow, and Huggable’s daughter.

  I’s hut, the one she had lived in since her mother had left for the south, carried the stink of the Stranger and of Broken Leg, so I tore it down, fed the thatching into the hut’s own fire. Afterward she lay Broken Leg in the same place he had lain before, but this time the air carried away the smells.

  The night after the rock had left, she mated with Made Nothing, who had built his nest between where I and Flatface gathered, and the next morning he built for I a small hut, much like the one a woman would build for herself and her child when she went out during the summer to gather summer’s plentiful growth. The shelter was good for keeping her gzaet and her strings of memory beads dry when it rained.

  The night after that, she mated with Roofer, after Old Sour Plum turned her away, and the night after that she mated with Roofer, then Made Nothing, less out of desire and more to make them feel that her desire had lasted longer than it did. If the pregnancy took, she knew it would be a child opened from Nightskin’s pollen.

  Broken Leg had slept the rest of the day the rock had left, opening his eyes only once, and I feared he would die. It seemed wrong that after so much had happened, nothing of those days would remain, that everything would be lost. She played like she never had played. She mashed leaves mixed with water to make a salve and rubbed it over his skin and Clear Eyes’ skin as if each were an infant and touch came easily. The second day he opened his eyes twice, said nothing, and closed them again. The next day he opened his eyes, took water, ate mashed fruit, and said nothing.

  Another day he opened his eyes and sat up. This was the day he spoke. This was the day all the talk over the past three days had come to. Because I wanted him to live by the river. I shared words with Flatface and with Wisdom and Crooked. She told each woman that the ones like Broken Leg touched the way a mother touched an infant, that they flocked like birds, that they used their hands to embrace rather than to push away. Each woman wanted him to leave. Each woman said he should live somewhere else. Before, I’s words had been weak, and each woman had listened to Nightskin. Each had turned against her. If words had been shared, if each had given her a chance to speak, then Broken Leg would be gone, no woman would have gone to the clearing, no child would have been burnt in the rock’s fire, and Clear Eyes would still be alive.

  Now I’s words were strong. Each woman listened to her, but in all the talks no one mentioned Squawker, her daughter, or her son. It was as if the mother, who long ago had brought with her a daughter and a son, had never come to the river, had never lived here. Broken Leg had tried to save women with whom he had shared nothing. Perhaps if he had known Squawker, he would not have forgotten her so readily.

  He did not remember most of his dreams. He knew he dreamed of N!ai‚ and he knew he dreamed of Hanan, and in each they seemed farther and farther away. He dreamed he made love with Pauline, he thrust, never finished, and lay there along the curve of empty desire.

  When he was half-awake, he half thought. He thought of the warrior who could well have been an ethnographer. He kept thinking that he could have made it to the hatch, that he could have opened it, that he could have canceled the code, and no one would have had to feel the full hot blow of the launch rockets. He feared waking because he feared knowing who had died.

  But he did open his eyes, he did eat, and out of sheer boredom, one day he sat up. The healer was playing music, and perhaps that’s what made sitting up possible. He looked to her, then respectfully averted his gaze. He heard the rustle of her pubic apron as she rose, and heard her footsteps approach. He couldn’t help but look, and he watched her sit next to him, the tin piano in her hands.

  She said something, none of which he understood. He shook his head, a human gesture that she wouldn’t understand. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  I almost didn’t repeat her words. She reconsidered. She said, “You are one who touches. No one here touches. No one here could live where one had to touch. You cannot live well when you cannot touch.” She lifted the gzaet, aware of the solid weight of it, and placed it before him. “With music you can touch.”

  Esoch wasn’t sure he understood the words she had spoken, but the battered tin piano in front of him said everything. The metal, the keys, the internal workings, had been handed from person to person since the first colonists had arrived, as the healing dance had passed from generation to generation, leapfrogging from one generation of actual Ju/wa to a generation of re-created Ju/wa. There was something terrible about all those generations, about the things they demanded. And this feeling—the articulated thoughts wouldn’t develop for days—made it difficult for Esoch to want this. He would rather touch with nothing. He would rather be away. He would rather walk off like Pauline had and find whatever might exist elsewhere in this land. But he had nothing else to share, and sharing was survival. He groped for words and found ones that did not satisfy, but they were the only words he had: “I will play.”

  I heard the words, mispronounced, but spoken in the proper order. She watched his fingers lightly touch the keys, and she respected the wisdom of the hands that did not yet press down.

  The following is taken from the notebook Pauline Dikobe kept while studying the slazan foraging population on Tienah. This entry was made a week before her departure, on the night she had finished a five-page sketch, which later became the rough outline of the novel she wrote on the return trip to E-donya E-talta.

  Somewhere, if he is still alive, there is a young man named ≠oma‚ who was once called Owner of Music. He most likely has married, and if his wife has given birth to several children, he would be living among the people of his father’s n!ore‚ if his father is still alive or if the ties with his father’s family are still strong. The little thumb piano given to him by the medico when he was still a child has probably exchanged hands a number of times, an especially valued gift, so good for giving, and if he misses it, he misses it with the same pang we all miss something valuable that we lost during our childhood.

  Somewhere else there is a young soldier who calls himself Esoch al-Schouki‚ who was Ju/wa once, who fashioned me a chi!kan‚ and who one night shared my loneliness and called me wife. Maybe he has told someone why he left the reserve; maybe there was some guilt that he still harbors, or maybe a dry spell about his waterhole made Chum!kwe seem like a worthwhile risk. While in that outpost between a world where meat was shared and another where meat was sold, he may well have drunk too much, and he may well have seen more fights within the space of days than he had seen over the course of years, and he may well have witnessed the flash of a knife. Perhaps he had joined the mili because he had almost killed someone in a fit of rage, or, more likely, he had grown discontented with the wealth of dust and the rations of mealie-meal. By now he has been reassigned a comrade-in-arms, and they would be working together, preparing for the day when they invade a slazan homeworld.

  Somewhere on this world there may well be a healer, but whatever technology came with the original colony is gone. Somewhere else, light-decades away from here, there are slazans with a technology equal to ours, and they are fighting a war with us, a war that makes less and less sense as I have watched their distant cousins at work. The violence I imagined for them hasn’t happened; why did it happen seven years ago when human and slazan shared a world?

  Here I write in a shuttle full of data, data that will be examined by intelligences and anthropologists and military spec
ialists, to be used to do the effective violence that will end the war or to find the proper words to share that will bring some kind of peace. I know that I won’t be the last human whom Clear Eyes or !U or !U’s son and daughter will see, and I wonder what will happen to them as more and more humans come to colonize and to study.

  The Way of God orbits this world, and they are preparing for my return. I am still alive, and they still exist. Perhaps it would be better if they had been destroyed, if I had died, and this anthropological hut had flown apart into nothingness. There would be no return mission, this world would be buried deep enough in the wealth of classified data and these slazans could live for a while longer without knowledge of our distant war, the idea of which may disturb them now, even though, in the end, they would take to battle as readily as any other slazan who has gone to war. Whatever is wrong about the way they live, they deserve better than what we will give them.

  Still, in a week I will return to the warship, the warship will return to humanspace‚ and what will happen will happen. What’s right and proper is anyone’s guess; what’s right is just words.

  Acknowledgments

  Ethnomusicologist Daniel M. Neuman, Alice Harlow, Katie Baker, Damian Kilby, and David Hartlage offered important commentary on a much shorter, much earlier version of I’s story. Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm convinced me to scrap the entire story and start anew.