by Amy Thomson
She looked at the council, hoping for some clue to Miato’s decision. Johito looked pleased. Her concern deepened. If Johito was happy with the decision, it probably wasn’t good for her. She glanced at Ninto, ears wide. A deep blue shadow of reassurance passed over her tareena’s body, like the shadow of a cloud on the ocean.
“We have discussed the problem of the new creature,” Miato said, once the preliminary courtesies were dispensed with.
“I have decided that Eerin and Moki must work with Johito to learn about her atwa for the rest of the month. If Johito believes that they have learned enough by the end of the month, then they may remain in Narmo-lom. If they remain in Narmolom, then Eerin and Moki must spend time learning each atwa. They may not hunt until Johito has approved them. Once they have completed their time with Johito, they may hunt, if Anito or some other elder is present.”
Anito looked down at the ground, trying to hide her disappointment. No wonder Johito looked pleased. Everything depended on her approval.
“Thank you for your decision, kene,” Anito said, her skin feeling tight and dry as she depicted the intricate patterns of the polite formula.
Perhaps it would be better to just go ahead and leave now, before Johito forced them out, Anito reflected as they left the council. It might be better to accept exile and dishonor, and begin her training as an enkar half a year early. Narmolom was only one village out of many. As an enkar, her ties with Narmolom would be severed anyway. Several generations might pass before she saw the village again. If she visited them, it would be as a stranger.
Still, she wanted very much to leave Narmolom with her self-respect intact. It was the only home she had ever known. If only Ukatonen were here to advise her. She was too close to the situation to see it clearly.
They returned to their own room. Moki served them honeycomb and gourds of fruit juice.
“Well,” Eerin said. “At least we get to stay for another month.”
Anito rippled agreement tinged with doubt and caution. “If we decide to stay.”
Eerin’s brow wrinkled and she turned pink in surprise. “Why would we want to leave now?”
“It might be better to leave now instead of being exiled in a month. If Johito doesn’t think you’ve learned her atwa well enough, we’ll be forced to leave.”
“Is it that hard to learn?” Eerin asked.
“It isn’t whether you can learn,” Anito explained. “It’s whether Johito approves of you. Even if you understand her atwa as well as she does, she can still say it isn’t good enough. If she doesn’t want you in the village, we’ll have to go.”
“Then I’ll have to get her to like me, as well as learn her atwa,” Eerin said.
“It won’t be easy,” Anito told her. “She’s afraid of you.”
A polite chirring at their door interrupted their conversation. It was Ninto.
“Please come in!” Anito said. “I was just explaining the situation to Eerin.”
“What I don’t understand is why we should leave now,” Eerin said to Anito. “You want to stay in Narmolom, and I want to try to convince Johito that I’m not a threat.”
“Leave?” Ninto said. “Why should you leave?”
“Johito has already decided that Eerin doesn’t belong here,” Anito explained. “I don’t think we can change her mind.”
“It’s no harder than what you did at Lyanan. In fact it’s easier. You only have to persuade one person, not an entire village.”
“I want to try,” Eerin said. “Even if I fail, I will have learned more about the Tendu than I know now. At least I will know what doesn’t work.”
“I don’t want to leave the village in dishonor,” Anito protested.
“If you leave now, you will be leaving in dishonor,” Ninto told her. “Stay and make the village’s harmony include Eerin.”
Eerin touched Anito’s arm. “You’ve done so much for me. Let me pay back some of that obligation. I want the chance to win the right for us to stay here as long as we can. Please, Anito,” she said, coloring pink with urgency. “Let me try.”
Anito looked from Eerin to Ninto. She doubted that they would win this battle, but they still wanted to fight it. It would gain her an extra month at least, and she could use that time to say goodbye to Narmolom.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll stay.”
Chapter 21
Juna peered at the flickering display on her computer. It was low on power. She was going to have to leave it out in the sun to recharge tomorrow. As soon as Anito agreed to stay, Juna had set to work, quizzing Anito and Ninto about atwas in general and Johito’s atwa in particular. They were asleep now, and she was reviewing what she knew.
An atwa, to the best of her knowledge, was a clan affiliation responsible for the management of a portion of the ecosystem for the benefit of the village. Most atwas were based on location. There were clearly defined layers of the jungle: ground-based; mid-trunk level; lower, middle, and upper canopies, as well as rivers, streams, ponds, and marshlands. Other atwas were based on important food or shelter commodities: tree ferns, pollinators and pollen sources, game animals, the na tree and its dependents, and different kinds of fruit trees. Generally the species-specific atwas were coordinated by the location-based atwas. When there was a conflict between two atwas, the village elder resolved things, usually with the help of the village council.
Juna smiled. She had already been through such a conflict resolution. Her admiration for Miato, the current chief elder, had increased. It wasn’t an easy job. She hoped that most of the differences that arose were easier to resolve than hers was.
Johito was responsible for eight different varieties of fruit trees. This meant that she also monitored the animals that pollinated them, as well as the animals that fed and nested in them. Since these fruit trees fed a number of important game animals, those animals also fell under her atwa, though they overlapped into several others as well. After that, An-ito’s explanations had gotten too complicated to follow.
The ooloo, it transpired, were an important distributor of the seeds of several different kinds of fruit trees, and a pollinator of another. Their population had fallen off due to excessive predation. Until their numbers rose to an acceptable level, hunting them was prohibited. Juna had killed a young female, just about to begin her breeding cycle. This was worse than killing a male, but not as serious as killing a pregnant female, or a mother with young.
Juna rubbed her tired eyes. Her notes on the plant and animal species in Johito’s atwa were very sketchy. She could identify most of the fruit trees involved, but she knew absolutely nothing about the insects, birds, lizards, and other-plants that interacted with them. She scanned through her meager notes one last time, and shut the computer down. She rested her head against the wall, and closed her eyes. Here she was, humanity’s sole representative on the planet, in danger of being kicked out of the village for killing a lizard. If the implications of it weren’t so serious, it would be funny.
The tree creaked faintly as it swayed in the breeze, the only sound in the late-night silence. She should get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be difficult.
Anito woke her and Moki early. After a hurried breakfast, they met Johito at the top of the tree. Johito led them through the forest to a tree covered with ripe fruit, and alive with feeding birds and lizards. The feeding animals scattered at their approach. Johito pointed to a wide branch in the midst of the tree.
“This is a gauware tree. Sit there. Be still. Watch. I will return for you later,” she told them and left.
Juna stared after her, ears wide. Then she looked at Anito, her skin purple with puzzlement.
Anito flared red. “She’s not going to teach you anything!” Her patterns were jagged with anger.
Juna rippled a shrug. “It’s only the first day. Let’s do what she says. There’s a lot that can be learned just watching.”
“I’ll watch with you. Maybe I can help,” Anito said.
J
una hung her computer up in the sunshine at the top of the tree to recharge. Then they settled themselves in the gauware tree and waited. Soon the birds and lizards returned and began to feed. Juna watched with a trained biologist’s eye, noting which species were feeding, and how they interacted. Occasionally, when something startled the feeding animals, and they fled, she turned and asked Anito for the names and habits of the animals she didn’t know. By mid-morning, when the animals faded into the brush, Juna had identified twenty-five species. Some had only stopped to perch for a moment in the tree or to display and court in the top branches. Some had come to feed, and others to prey on them.
Juna fetched her computer from the treetop. She and Moki set to work cataloguing all they had observed. She had Moki depict the animals on his skin so that she had a visual record of what they looked like. The pictures were recognizable, though lacking in fine detail. Still, they would do for a beginning. She had a feeling that she would have lots of chances to get pictures of the actual animals over the next month. The cataloguing took until well past noon. Anito went and gathered lunch for them.
After lunch, they climbed down to the forest floor and observed what came by to feed on the fallen fruit. This time of day it was mostly insects. Now that her computer was recharged, Juna could catalogue directly as she watched, with the computer in helmet configuration, subvocalizing into a throat mike. She recorded almost forty species of insects, everything from fruit flies to a large, many-legged arthropod with claws that clearly filled much the same ecological niche as a land crab. There were half a dozen different butterflies feeding on rotting fruit.
Several amphibians came by, including a tiny jewel-like frog that sat in a shaft of sunlight, bobbing up and down, flickering through a range of brilliant colors. Juna watched, intrigued, as a larger, red frog responded to the other frog’s courtship ritual. The tiny frog clasped the larger female and they scuttled off into the leaves to mate. Juna smiled. If she hadn’t seen them pairing off, she would have catalogued the two as completely different species.
As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, the larger animals came out into the treetops to feed. Juna and her two assistants climbed back up to watch them.
It was almost sunset when Johito returned. She led them back to her room, where her bami had laid out a good-sized meal.
“What did you learn today?” Johito asked Juna when they were seated.
As she ate, Juna reeled off a list of the animals that had visited the gauware tree and what they had done there. She speculated on how their visits affected the tree, identifying possible seed dispersers, and noting animals that she knew were desirable game. She worked from memory as much as possible, consulting Moki or Anito only when she was uncertain about something. She wanted Johito to know that she had a good memory for the kinds of details that might be useful for learning an atwa. If Johito was impressed by how much she could learn on her own, she might be more willing to teach her. Juna knew that there was no way that she could master such a complex ecosystem by herself in less than a month. Unless she understood how the Tendu used the atwas to guide their interactions with the forest, all of the natural history in the world wouldn’t help. For that she needed Johito’s cooperation.
Johito watched her recital of the day’s events impassively. Her skin remained neutral, with no hint of emotion. At last Juna ran out of things to say. There was a long moment of stillness. Johito sat as though she were carved from a huge block of pale green jade, her chin tucked in thought.
“I want you to go back to the same tree and watch again tomorrow,” Johito said, breaking her stillness at last. She looked away. They were clearly dismissed.
Juna’s shoulders slumped. She followed Anito and Moki out the door, feeling defeated.
Anito touched her on the shoulder when they reached their room. “You did well today. Don’t let Johito bother you. You were up late last night. Get some sleep.”
Juna nodded.
Moki touched her arm. “We learned a lot today. We’ll leam more tomorrow. Good night, siti.”
“Sleep well, bai,” Juna said, giving her bami a quick hug. They hadn’t linked today. She missed the closeness they shared through linking.
She held out her arms, suppressing a jaw-cracking yawn. Just a quick link, to quiet her conscience, then off to bed.
Moki linked with her, and they shared the familiar closeness and peace. It felt so good, like a warm bath or a hug from her mother. Drowsily she broke the link and burrowed into her warm, moist, leafy bed. She felt rosy and peaceful and connected with Moki, and through Moki, with all of the Tendu. She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand to keep the leaves out. She wondered now at her previous fear of allu-a. She would surely have gone mad from sheer loneliness without it. Sleep claimed her, as deep and profound as the dark, eternal forest around them.
The next few days were much like the first. She watched the tree, noting everything that interacted with it—animal, insect, or plant. Every night Johito listened to her describe what happened in the gauware tree, and then sent her back to watch some more. By the end of the seventh day she felt that she had learned everything there was to know about the tree. When Johito sent her back for an eighth day of tree-watching, she began to protest. Anito touched her arm. A small, private glyph of negation flickered on the back of her hand. Juna stilled her skin speech with an effort.
“Yes, kene, I will go back to the tree tomorrow,” she said after Anito apologized for her. “Only please tell me what I am supposed to be looking for that I have not yet noticed.”
Johito said nothing for a long time. Juna sat perfectly still, determined not to move until Johito said something helpful.
“You have more to learn. Look more carefully,” Johito said at last. Then she got up and crawled into bed, as though they had already left the room.
Juna turned bright red with anger. Anito plucked nervously at her arm.
Juna took a deep breath. Anger would do nothing to help her. Johito was trying to see how far-she could be pushed. If she lost her temper, she would lose everything.
“I’m all right,” she told Anito. “Let’s go.”
Juna lay awake, shifting uncomfortably in her bed. Was she missing something, or was Johito being difficult? Tomorrow she would go over every inch of the tree. If she didn’t turn up something new, then she would tell Anito that she was giving up.
The next morning Juna arose early. She woke Moki and they slipped out of the tree while the forest was still dim and thick with mist. The first shafts of light were gilding the treetops when they reached the gauware tree. Juna stationed herself on the branch of a nearby tree, and considered her next move.
Everything depended on whether Johito was playing fair with her. After seven days spent cataloguing everything that happened on that damned tree, Juna was sure that Johito wanted her to fail.
So, how would Johito try to keep her from succeeding? Johito had to play fair according to Tendu custom. To do otherwise would make her lose face if it was discovered. Johito was testing her. If she passed the test, then she was worthy to take on as a student. There was still some hidden fact about this tree that Juna needed to discover, something that was the key to the gauware tree’s survival.
Whatever it was that Juna needed to find out, it was not something that Moki, Anito, or Ninto knew about the tree. They had given her what information they had. The rest she had to figure out for herself.
She turned to her bami. “Moki, go ask Anito and Ninto if they know of any other gauware trees nearby.”
Moki nodded and swung off through the trees. Juna climbed down to the ground, and began examining the tree minutely, starting at the wide buttress roots. She knocked on the roots. They resonated like a drum. Were they hollow? She climbed, pausing from time to time to knock on the trunk. It too resonated. It was hollow. About mid-morning Juna pushed aside a bromeliad and found what she was looking for, a hole in the crotch of the tree, twice the size of her fist.
&
nbsp; So, the tree was hollow. What lived inside? She could format her computer as a camera and drop it through the hole on a rope, but she didn’t want to risk losing it. Better to wait and see what Moki could find out.
She swung through the trees to a nearby stream, and washed off the accumulated grime of her morning exertions. It was amazing how dirty she got, just climbing a tree. She plunged into the stream, whooping at the feel of the cold water on her skin. She emerged shining and clean to find Anito and Moki waiting for her.
“There are several gauware trees nearby,” Anito informed her. “Let’s eat and then go look at them.”
The second tree they looked at had a large gaping hole in its trunk, big enough for Juna to climb into. She sent Moki for a long coil of rope and a large fresh chunk of glow-fungus.
“You’re going to climb down inside that gauware tree?” Anito asked, ochre flickers of concern highlighting her words.
Juna nodded.
“Be careful. You don’t know what lives inside that hole. It might be dangerous.”
“Yes, but I have to know what’s down there.”
Anito flickered resigned agreement. “You’re probably right. Johito won’t be satisfied until you tell her about the inside of the tree, but if you die in the process, she won’t mourn. For all we know, there could be something dangerous in there. Be very careful.”
It was early afternoon when Moki returned with the necessary climbing equipment. They lowered the glow-fungus down, but aside from a flock of sleepy, wide-mouthed araus, birds that looked like a cross between an archaeopteryx and a whippoorwill, they saw nothing except vague, shiny, writhing shapes in the dimness. Those shapes could have been anything from a giant snake to a colony of harmless beetles.
Moki looped one end of the rope around a branch and tied it securely. Anito tied a series of loops in the other end. “For footholds,” she explained, and then braced the rope behind her back. Moki paid out a body length of rope into the hole. Juna checked her gear, and swung herself into the hole. She stuck her feet through the bottom loops in the rope and then nodded to Anito, who began lowering her into the dark cavern of the hollow tree. As soon as Juna was far enough down, she hooked the glow-fungus onto a loop above her head. It cast a pallid blue light on the rough interior of the tree. A warm current of air blew past her, carrying the stench of death and decay. She swallowed against her gag reflex and wished she was enclosed in an environment suit.