So despite their inauspicious introduction to Supaari, they were glad to be dealing with someone who came to a decision on his own, even if that decision was to take somebody’s head off at the shoulders. They were happy to find someone on Rakhat who was quick on the uptake, who caught jokes and made them, who saw implications. He moved faster than a Runao, did more things in a given day without making such a damned production out of it. His energy levels came closer to their own. He could, in fact, exhaust them. But then he crashed at second sundown and slept like a gigantic carnivorous baby for fifteen hours.
That the relationship between the Jana’ata and the Runa was asymmetrical became unquestionable when the VaKashani Runa returned to their village, huge baskets filled with pik, a few days after Supaari’s arrival in the village. Great deference was shown to the Jana’ata. He was, for all the world, like a Mafia don or a medieval baron, receiving Runa families, laying hands on the children. But there was also affection. His rule, if that was the proper word, was benign. He listened carefully and patiently to all comers, settled disputes with solutions that struck everyone as fair, steering participants toward a conclusion that seemed logical. The VaKashani did not fear him.
There was no way for the foreigners to know how misleading all of this was, how unusual Supaari was. A self-made man, Supaari was not reticent about his early life and his present status, and since all the surviving members of the Jesuit party came from cultures on Earth that value such people and disdain hereditary privilege, they were prepared to see him in a somewhat heroic light, a plucky boy who’d made good.
Alan Pace might have been better equipped to handle the class aspects of Rakhati society, since Britain still retained some traits of a culture that takes good breeding seriously. Alan might have understood how truly marginal Supaari was, how little access he had to real sources of power and influence, and how much he might crave such access. But Alan was dead.
WHEN, TOWARD THE end of Partan, it was time to see the Jana’ata off after those first extraordinary weeks, the entire population of Kashan, alien and native, accompanied Supaari to the dock or hung from terraces to call farewells and toss flowers on the water and float long scented ribbons in the wind.
"Sipaj, Supaari!" Anne said quietly as he prepared to cast off, the chatter and press of Runa all around them. "May someone show you how our people say farewell to those we feel fond of?"
He was touched that she should wish this. "Without hesitation, Ha’an," he said in the low and slightly rumbling voice she was now familiar with. Anne motioned him to bring his head closer and he stooped low, not knowing what to expect. She rose on her toes and her arms went around his neck and he felt her tighten the pressure slightly before she let him go. When she drew back, he noticed that her blue eyes, almost normal in color, were glistening.
"Someone hopes you will come back here soon and safely, Supaari," she said.
"Someone’s heart will be glad to be with you again, Ha’an." He was, Supaari realized with surprise, reluctant to leave her. He climbed down into the powerboat cockpit and looked up at the others of her kind, each one different, each a separate and peculiar puzzle. Suddenly, because Ha’an wished it, Supaari was moved to please the others, and so at last made a decision he’d found troublesome. He looked around and found the Elder. "Someone will make arrangements for you to visit Gayjur," he told D.W. "There are many things to be considered, but someone will think on how this may be done."
"WELL, MY DARLING children," Anne announced gaily, shaking off the sadness of Supaari’s departure as his powerboat disappeared around the north bend of the river and the Runa began moving back up to their apartments, "it is time for you and me to have a little talk about sex."
"Memory fails," said Emilio, straight-faced, and Marc laughed.
"What if we had a review session?" Jimmy suggested helpfully. Sofia smiled and shook her head, and Jimmy’s heart rose but then went obediently back where it belonged.
"What’s this about sex?" George asked, shushing Askama and turning to look at Anne.
"Good grief, woman, is that all you ever think about?" D.W. demanded.
Anne grinned like the Cheshire cat as they started up the cliffside together. "Wait until you guys find out what Supaari told me yesterday!" The path narrowed at that point and they strung out into a line, Askama chattering to George about some long, elaborate story they’d been making up together until she saw Kinsa and Fayer, and the children took off to play.
"It seems, my darlings, that we have been caught in a web of sexism, but so have our hosts," Anne told them when they arrived at the apartment. It was filled with Runa, but endless cross talk was normal to them now and she hardly noticed the other conversations. "Jimmy: the Runa think you are a lady, and the mother of us all. Sofia, you are taken to be an immature male. Emilio: an immature female. They don’t know quite what to make of D.W. and Marc and me, but they’re pretty sure George is a male. Isn’t that nice, dear?"
"I’m not sure," George said suspiciously, sinking onto a cushion. "How do they decide who’s what?"
"Well, there is a certain logic to it all. Emilio, you seemed to have guessed correctly that Askama is a little girl. Fifty-fifty chance, and you won the toss. The trick is that Chaypas is Askama’s mother, not Manuzhai. Yes, indeed, darlings!" Anne said when they stared at her in shock. "I’ll come back to that in a minute. Anyway, Supaari says that the Runa females are the ones who do all the business for the village. Listen to this, Sofia, this is really cool. Their pregnancies are fairly short and they aren’t much inconvenienced by them. When the baby is born, mom hands the little dear over to daddy and goes back about her business without missing a beat."
"No wonder I couldn’t make sense of the gender references!" Emilio said. "So Askama is in training to be a trader, and that’s why they think I am also female. Because I’m the formal interpreter for our group, yes?"
"Bingo," said Anne. "And Jimmy, they think, is our mom because he’s the only one big enough to seem like a full-grown female. That’s why they always ask him to make decisions for us, maybe. They only think he’s asking D.W.’s opinion to be polite, I guess." Yarbrough snorted, and Anne grinned. "Okay, now here’s the neat part. Manuzhai is Chaypas’s husband, right? But he is not Askama’s genetic father. Runa ladies marry gentlemen they believe will be good social fathers, as Manuzhai is. But Supaari says their mates are chosen using"—she cleared her throat—"an entirely separate set of criteria."
"They pick out a good stud," D.W. said.
"Don’t be crude, dear," Anne said. Chaypas and her guests decided to go to Aycha’s to eat and suddenly the apartment emptied out. When they were alone, Anne leaned forward and continued conspiratorially. "But yes, that was certainly the implication. I must say, the custom has a certain rude appeal. Theoretically, of course," she added when George pouted.
"So why are they only ‘pretty sure’ I’m a male?" George asked petulantly, his manhood under oblique attack from two quarters.
"Well, aside from your virile good looks, my love, they have also noted how wonderful you are with the children," Anne said. "On the other hand, you don’t show much interest in collecting blossoms, so they’re a little confused by you, actually. Same for Marc and D.W. and me. They think I might be a male because I do most of the cooking. Maybe I’m sort of the daddy? Oh, Jimmy, maybe they think you and I are married! Obviously, they don’t have a clue about relative ages."
Emilio had become increasingly thoughtful and D.W., watching him, began to chuckle. Emilio didn’t laugh at first, but he came around.
"What?" Anne asked. "What’s so funny?"
"I’m not sure funny is the word," D.W. said, right eye on Emilio, one brow up speculatively.
Emilio shrugged. "Nothing. Only: this notion of separating the roles of genetic father and social father would have been useful in my family."
"Might have saved some wear and tear on your sorry young ass," D.W. agreed.
Emilio laughed ruefully an
d ran his hands through his hair. Everyone was looking at him now, curiosity plain on their faces. He hesitated, probing old wounds, and found them scabbed over. "My mother was a woman of great warmth and a lively nature," he told them, choosing his words carefully. "Her husband was a handsome man, tall, strong. Brunette but very light-skinned, yes? My mother was also very fair." He paused to let them absorb this; it didn’t take a geneticist to work out the implications. "My mother’s husband was out of town for a few years—"
"Doing time for possession and sale," D.W. supplied.
"—and when he returned, he found he had a second son, almost a year old. And very dark." Emilio sat still then, and the room was quiet. "They did not divorce. He must have loved my mother very much." This had never occurred to him before and he had no idea how he should feel about it. "She was charming, yes? Easy to love, Anne might say."
"So you took the blame for her," Anne said astutely, hating the woman for letting it happen and silently berating God for giving this son to the wrong mother.
"Of course. Very poor taste, being born like that." Emilio looked briefly at Anne, but his eyes slid away. A mistake, he realized, to speak of this. He had tried so hard to understand, but how could a child have known? He shrugged again and steered the talk away from Elena Sandoz. "My mother’s husband and I used to play a game called Beat the Crap out of the Bastard. I was about eleven when I worked out the name, yes?" He sat up and threw the hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head. "I changed the rules for this game when I was fourteen," he told them, savoring it, even after all the years.
D.W., who knew what was coming, grinned in spite of himself. He’d deplored the random violence of La Perla and worked hard to find ways for kids like Emilio to settle things without knifing somebody. It was an uphill battle in a place where fathers told sons, "Anybody give you shit, cut his face." And this was advice given to eight-year-olds on the first day of third grade.
"Our esteemed Father Superior," he heard Emilio tell the others with vast enjoyment, "was in those days a parish priest in La Perla. Of course, he did not condone unpleasantries among family members, however tenuously related. Nevertheless, Father Yarbrough did impart a certain wisdom to young acolytes. This included the precept that when there is a substantial difference in size between adversaries, the larger man is fighting dirty simply by intending to take on a much smaller opponent—"
"So nail the sumbitch ’fore he lays a hand on you," D.W. finished, in tones that suggested the sagacity of this was self-evident. He had, in fact, taught the kid a few little things in the gym. Emilio being small, surprise was necessarily a prerequisite to some maneuvers. The subtlety came in making the boy understand it was okay to fight in self-defense when Miguel came home mean-drunk, but it was not necessary to take on a whole neighborhood of taunting kids.
"—and while there is a certain primitive satisfaction in decking an asshole," Emilio was telling them with serene respect for his mentor, "this should not be indulged in without temperance and forbearance."
"I sort of wondered where you learned to do what you did with Supaari," Jimmy said. "That was pretty amazing."
The conversation drifted off into stories of a priest Jimmy had known in South Boston who’d boxed in the Olympics and then D.W. started in on a few sergeants he’d known in the Marines. Anne and Sofia started lunch and listened, heads shaking, to tales of certain illegal but remarkably effective hockey moves available to alert goalies in the Quebec league. But the talk came back to the Jana’ata Handshake, as Supaari’s attack on Sandoz was known among them, and when it veered toward Emilio’s childhood once more, he stood.
"You never know when an old skill will come in handy," he said with a certain edgy finality, moving toward the terrace. But then he stopped and laughed and added piously, "The Lord works in mysterious ways."
And it was impossible to tell whether he was serious or joking.
THE CRUISE DOWNRIVER from Kashan seemed to Supaari to go more quickly than the trip out from Gayjur. The first day, he simply let his mind go blank, his attention absorbed by the eddies and driftwood, the sandbars and rocks. But the second day on the river was a thoughtful one, full of wonder.
He had been deluged by new facts, new ideas, new possibilities, but he had always been quick to grasp opportunities and willing to take friendships where he found them. The foreigners, like the Runa, were sometimes startlingly different from his people and often incomprehensible, but he liked Ha’an very much—found her mind lively and full of challenge. The rest of them were less clear to him, only adjuncts to the sessions with Ha’an, translating, illustrating, providing food and drink at bizarre and irritating intervals. And to be honest, they nearly all smelled alike.
He would buy the rented powerboat outright when he got back, Supaari decided, watching a good-sized river kivnest breach and roll nearby. The purchase price had been rendered trivial; he had examined the foreign goods, knew now the dimensions of the trade he could broker. Wealth beyond counting was guaranteed. This trip alone had yielded a fortune in exotica. He had explained his business to the foreigners and they were happy to provide him with many small packets of aromatics, their names as marvelous as their scents. Clove, vanilla, yeast, sage, thyme, cumin, incense. Sticks of brown cinnamon, white cylinders called beeswax candles which could be set afire to give off a fragrant light that Supaari found enchanting. And they’d given him several "landscapes" that one foreigner made on paper. Beautiful things; remarkable, truly. Supaari almost hoped the Reshtar would turn them down; Supaari rather liked these landscapes himself.
It was obvious that the foreigners had no understanding of the value of their goods, but Supaari VaGayjur was an honorable man and offered the interpreter a fair price, which was one in twelve of what he’d get from Kitheri and, at that, a substantial amount. A great deal of embarrassing confusion ensued. Ha’an had tried to insist the goods were gifts: a disastrous notion that would have prevented resale. The small, dark interpreter and his sister with the mane sorted that out but then— what was his name? Suhn? Suhndos? He’d tried to hand the packets directly to Supaari! What kind of parents did these people have? If Askama hadn’t guided her counterpart’s hands to Chaypas’s for the transfer, the VaKashani would have been cut out of the deal entirely. Shocking manners, although the interpreter had abased himself prettily enough when he recognized the mistake.
Because the VaKashani were hosts to the foreign delegation and thus entitled to a percentage of Supaari’s profit, the village would move nearly a year ahead of schedule closer to breeding rights. Supaari was pleased for them, and slightly envious. If life were as simple and straightforward for a Jana’ata third as for a Runa corporation, his own problem would have been solved. He could simply buy breeding rights and get on with it, having proven his fiscal responsibility and obedience to the government. But Jana’ata life was never simple and rarely straightforward. Deep in the Jana’ata soul there was an almost unshakable conviction that things must be controlled, thought out, done correctly, that there was very little margin for error in life. Tradition was safety; change was danger. Even Supaari felt this, although he defied the instinct often and to his profit.
The storytellers claimed that the first five Jana’ata hunters and the first five Runa herds were created by Ingwy on an island, where balance could be easily lost and annihilation was the price of poor stewardship. Five times the hunters and their mates erred: leaving things to chance, killing without thought, letting their own numbers grow uncontrolled, and all was lost. On the sixth attempt, Tikat Father of Us All learned to breed the Runa and Sa’arhi Our Mother was made his consort and they were brought to the mainland and given dominion. There were other stories about Pa’au and Tiha’ai and the first brothers, and on and on. Who knew? Maybe there was some truth in it all, but Supaari was a skeptic. The Ingwy Cycle was too pat an explanation for duogeniture, too convenient for the firsts and seconds justifying their grip on the world.
It didn’t matter. Whethe
r the legends grew from ancient seeds of truth or sprang fully formed from the self-interest of the rulers, Supaari thought, things are as they are. He was a third; how, then, to convince the Reshtar of Galatna that Supaari VaGayjur was worthy of being created Founder? It was a delicate business and required subtlety and cunning, for reshtari were rarely generous in granting to others the very prerogative denied themselves. Somehow, Hlavin Kitheri must come to believe it was in his interest to bestow this privilege. A pretty puzzle for Supaari VaGayjur.
He let the problem go, for pursuit can drive the quarry away. Better to stroll along, alert for opportunity, wasting no effort on mad dashes and undignified chases. If one is patient, he knew, something always comes within reach.
AFTER SUPAARI’S FIRST visit, the Jesuit party settled into a routine that made their second full year on Rakhat as productive and satisfying as they could have hoped for.
They were given their own apartments, two of them, thanks to Supaari, who had arranged it when Anne admitted that they found it wearying to be with the Runa all the time. She also told him, privately, that D.W. was not well and sometimes found the distance to the river difficult. Supaari had no guess as to the cause or cure for the Elder’s illness but thoughtfully specified living space further down the cliffside than Manuzhai’s home.
Sofia lived with Anne and George. The apartment next door became a dormitory for the unmarried men and an office for everyone. Anne’s side was home. This orderly division of use was, they found, a great improvement over the endless ad hoc arrangements made day by day when they were living with Manuzhai and Chaypas.
The Sparrow Page 40