Unexpected Stories

by Octavia E. Butler

  She waited impatiently until the meal was over. Only then, after her people had gone home and his friends had been taken to their nearby guest apartment, did she permit her body to express the joy she felt in blinding luminescence. He was more hesitant. Perhaps he found her overwhelming—not that it mattered. She drew his hard flat young body to her and immediately gave the caress that directly preceded coupling. She lowered her head and gently bit the tender flesh of his throat.

  Her suddenness seemed both to startle and to excite him, as she had intended. As she pulled him down to the pallet of furs before her fireplace, the uncertain iridescence of his coloring resolved itself and became, like her own, a blinding blue-white.

  Later, it was as though they had been liaison mates for a full season. They lay content, close together, without the tension that had earlier separated them, and Tahneh asked the questions that had drawn her curiosity. Was Diut alone among his people, a Hao born of judge parents?

  “I’m alone now,” he told her quietly. “But my parents were both Hao. And I had a Hao uncle. My people have always produced an abundance of the blue.”

  “They must also lose it in abundance if only you are left.”

  “So,” he agreed. “We had a war. My father was captured and … given poison. He died writhing in the dust instead of honorably in combat. That was before I was even old enough to know him. My mother and uncle fought to avenge him but finally, they were killed too.”

  “Who were your enemies?”

  “Gahrkohn. People who live in one of the mountain valleys.”

  The name meant nothing to Tahneh. “You grew up with no Hao teacher then.”

  He moved slightly beside her. “I did, although it didn’t mean much to me until I was nearly ready to be acknowledged. Then I realized that on the day of my acknowledgement I would have a problem that my upbringing had not prepared me to handle.” He looked at her to make sure that she was listening. Seeing that she was, he went on.

  “In the war, my people hurt the Gahrkohn, but not decisively. Their Hao was injured, but not killed, and though they lost more fighters than we did, they had many more to begin with. Their losses didn’t begin to bring them even with us. My people were afraid to continue fighting with no Hao to lead them. They agreed to a humiliating peace with the Gahrkohn and ignored most of the raids that the Gahrkohn made in violation of that peace. They would have accepted a tie with the Gahrkohn and become Gahrkohn themselves if there had not been so much hatred on both sides.”

  He stopped, and Tahneh looked at him questioningly. “The Gahrkohn are still raiding?”

  “So.”

  “And now that you’re acknowledged, your people want you to renew the war against them.”

  His body flared yellow. “They want it, yes. They expect it.”

  “And you don’t want it.”

  He let his coloring darken back to a cold metallic blue. “I want to stop the raiding. I will stop it. But to begin the war again would be utter foolishness. Even if we could win it wouldn’t gain us anything. We don’t want the Gahrkohn valley or their people—not even their children!” He made a sound of disgust. “But that’s meaningless; we couldn’t win. I’m not even sure we could survive this time. The Gahrkohn still outnumber us vastly. And they seem to be making none of the mistakes that they so obligingly made for my family.” He paused for a moment. “But in spite of all that, cousin, do you know why my otherwise sensible people still believe we should fight?”

  “I can guess,” Tahneh said softly. “The Gahrkohn—they’ve lost their Hao?”

  Diut yellowed once more, spoke harshly. “That is our whole advantage. I am our whole advantage! The Gahrkohn Hao died while I was growing up. Perhaps the injuries my people gave him helped him along, I don’t know. Anyway, he left no successor. That alone is supposed to weaken the Gahrkohn enough for us to defeat them.”

  “Diut, that’s no small thing. It may very well weaken them enough.”

  “So?” said Diut bitterly. “For the lack of only one fighter, they become vulnerable to a tribe half their size—a tribe led by a Hao whose only knowledge of war has come from reading and listening to others? My chief judge is more fit to lead in such a war than I am.”

  “But he didn’t. He waited and gave the problem to you—because he’s only a judge, and you’re Hao.”

  Diut turned away from her abruptly, as though in disgust. “That’s not enough!”

  Tahneh said nothing, only placed a hand on his shoulder until he turned back.

  “It’s not enough,” he repeated. “I have the coloring, yes, but judges raised me, trained me. Cousin, I’m nothing more now than a judge colored blue. And perhaps not even such a good judge, since my coloring made my guardians indulge me more than they should have.”

  “So,” Tahneh said quietly. “I wondered if you knew that about yourself.”

  He grayed bleakly.

  She sat up and looked down at him. “You’re not ready to fight,” she said. “Therefore letting your people push you into war would be foolish, as you say. You’re acknowledged now. You can make an unpopular decision. You can say, ‘No, we won’t fight yet. I’ll look at the situation and when I’ve examined it thoroughly, I’ll decide whether or not we’ll fight at all.’”

  He watched her very closely. “Even though they’ve planned their vengeance for so long, depended on it, lived for it …?”

  “Even so! You are their Hao. Give them new goals. Teach them that they are a new people now that they have acknowledged your authority.” Tahneh held up one hand before her, fingers stiffly together. “There is only one thing that the Hao does not control, and that is the succession. You should expect your people to accept your judgment on any other matter.”

  “It’s a decision that I would have to take before my council of judges. They’ve been like parents to me since my mother and uncle were killed.”

  “Perhaps. But once you’re acknowledged, you’re the parent.” She had been wondering about the way he was watching her and now, finally, she understood it. She whitened slightly. “I’m only saying things to you that you’ve already said to yourself.”

  He hesitated, then let his own coloring whiten. “So.”

  “Do you feel better, now that I’ve said them too?”

  “I do, yes.” He touched her throat. “When I said them to myself, I felt like a child playing at being a ruler. I was even afraid at first that my council would treat me like a child and ignore me.” He flashed yellow. “Sometimes I’m still afraid.”

  “You’ll lose the fear.”

  He seemed to accept this, said, “I’ve never spoken this way to another person. Especially, I’ve never admitted to anyone else that I had doubts about the high value placed on the blue.”

  She stroked his shoulder. “Your Hao relatives gave you something, then. These are things that should never be said to any but another Hao.”

  He caught her arm and pulled her down beside him. “And you, cousin? Are there things you need to say?”

  “Only …” She closed her eyes for a moment and put her forehead against his shoulder. “Only that I wish there were more of us.”

  He could not know the desolation behind her words. He could not know that for a moment, her deliberately established dichotomy had slipped and she had been unable to continue to face him.

  He gave her no words of comfort but he held her, stroking her, caressing her almost in the way of a parent comforting a child. At first she tried to pull away, ashamed.

  “Be still,” he told her softly.

  She paused, looking into his dimly glowing blue coloring. Then she lay still and let his hands first relax, then arouse her. Finally, she reached over, clasped his throat between thumb and fingers, and felt the steady even pulse of life there. He caught her hand and held it where it was as he leaned over and bit her gently near the base of her throat.

  As they coupled, she found herself thinking for a moment of the ancient meaning of the bite and the han
d-to-throat gestures. “I hold your life and do not take it.” They had begun as gestures of trust rather than of affection, but their meaning had grown. Now, depending on the circumstances, a simple lifting of the head—as she had lifted hers to receive his bite—could mean trust, affection, challenge, or contempt. It was, Tahneh thought bitterly, the perfect gesture for a betrayal.

  Diut awoke slowly—a luxury he had not permitted himself since leaving home—and knew at once that Tahneh was not beside him. That was why he had awakened. The sound of her breathing which had become part of the room for him had ceased just a moment before as she had left the apartment. He was not alarmed. It was his own custom to rise early, go out, and bathe in the river that ran below the cliff homes of his people. Tahneh’s river, a narrow muddy stream, would not offer much in the way of bathing, but she might be attending to some other morning ritual. Or she might have some tribal business to take care of.

  Diut rose, deciding to go outside where he could wander freely and watch the town come to life. He stood still for a moment, remembering the night and savoring the memory. He had had many liaisons already among his people, but Tahneh had been a different experience. Her aggressiveness had not only surprised him, but had angered him until he realized that she had the right. Who led in a liaison, in almost any activity, was determined by whose coloring had more blue. Fighter castes in particular could spot minute differences. But both Diut and Tahneh were completely blue. Hao blue. Among the Hao there were no degrees of coloration. This did not mean that all Hao were equal, but simply that two Hao who wished to know which one was superior would have to fight to find out. As long as Diut and Tahneh had not fought, Tahneh had as much right to lead as Diut did. But there would be no fighting. Diut felt certain of that. He had accepted the woman too completely, accepted her without reservations as he had never done with another person. He had spoken his heresies openly for her judgment. All this because Tahneh was blue.

  Perhaps there was something to the mysticism surrounding the blue. If it could move him so strongly, how much more must it sway others who were not blue themselves.

  Diut glanced at one wall, knowing the location of the door from memory rather than from any obvious crack or other sign of its presence. The interior camouflage of the Rohkohn dwelling was the best that he had ever seen. It was as subtle as the exterior was obvious and it challenged him. He wondered if he could have found Tahneh’s door in the dim general passageway—or whether he could even have found his way out of the apartment had he not memorized the position of the door.

  From the floor plan that he remembered, he knew there was another exit—two more in fact. But one was an emergency exit, probably carefully set with traps for pursuers who did not know how to avoid them. This was an exit to be used in war when all else had already failed. Diut did not even try to find it. In fact, since he knew its general vicinity, he kept away from that part of the apartment. He went instead to the area of the other, safer exit. This was a room filled with Tahneh’s maps and records. The maps in particular attracted him but he ignored them for the moment, studying the walls for some sign of the door he sought.

  When he had been around the room once looking and failing to see, he stopped. He stood in the center of the room and asked himself where he would put a door if he was an artisan building the best possible concealed exit for his Hao. He found it then, partially covered with shelving and dropped slightly so that the first step out of it was a step down. That step was followed by a long steep stairway up since this exit, unlike the main one, was available only to Tahneh. There was no passageway and the steps led directly to the surface.

  Diut came up near the river. He had just enough time to notice that fact, to look down at the thin stream flowing sluggishly around large stones. Then, as his captors dropped their camouflage, Diut realized that he was, for a second time, surrounded by Rohkohn fighters.

  The day before, when he had to be considered potentially hostile, the heavy guard that the Rohkohn had kept on him had been reasonable. Today, however, after he had spent a night in the arms of the Rohkohn Hao, such obvious heavy-handed methods were not only offensive, they were threatening. He knew that he had given Tahneh no reason to suspect him of being anything other than he actually was—therefore, Tahneh must have her own reasons for causing her people to threaten him.

  But the fighters who encircled him this time formed only a small single ring, and they were mostly hunters. They were not nearly enough to hold him.

  The instant the Rohkohn appeared, Diut spotted their yellowest hunter—the one he would have the least difficulty going past, or over. He had whirled to face that hunter when someone called out from the hill above.

  “Stop, Tehkohn Hao. We have your friends.”

  Shouting alone would not nave diverted Diut’s attention, but the content of this particular shout made him look up—just as it was intended to.

  Atop the slight rise that was the roof of Tahneh’s apartment stood Ehreh, the Rohkohn chief judge. Beside Ehreh, tied to upright stakes, were Jeh and Cheah. Diut saw all this and understood it in the instant before a tiny sound alerted him to the closing of the circle.

  His coloring flared luminescent, a blue brilliant enough to hurt the eyes, and for an instant, even the hardened prepared fighters could not help responding, hesitating. To attack the blue …

  Only the two judges of the circle managed to recover themselves quickly enough to try to stop Diut as he fled back to the door of Tahneh’s apartment. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen what appeared to be every fighter the Rohkohn town could muster fanning out thickly, closing toward him from the direction of the main entrances where they had either been waiting for him or been about to go in and get him.

  Real fear touched him at last. He could be certain now of what the Rohkohn had in mind. He was to be stood before the tall lean Ehreh, and asked a question—this after he was captured and helpless. And on his answer would depend his own future and the lives of Jeh and Cheah. Either the judge and huntress would be set free to return to the Tehkohn to say that Diut had renounced them, his own people; or Jeh and Cheah must be killed to prevent them from returning to the Tehkohn with word that the Rohkohn had stolen and crippled the Tehkohn Hao.

  Diut knew all this in a single instant of realization. He had no time to think. He could only react and retreat. The two judges came at him from opposite directions. The one on his right reached him first and struck out savagely, as though expecting to knock him unconscious at once.

  Diut blocked the blows and in a continuing motion, jabbed hard into the man’s larynx. The judge fell, his coloring the involuntary sun-yellow of pain and death.

  Diut whirled instantly, raising his left arm to block another blow that he had sensed more than seen from the other judge. But the other had been too close. Diut was not quite fast enough. His arm took the full impact of a blow meant for his neck. The arm went numb and, for vital instants, hung useless at his side. Without pausing, he drove his right fist hard into the solar plexus of his new opponent, striking upward toward the heart. As the judge fell, Diut leaped back, taking the last step toward Tahneh’s door.

  A hunter leaped high at Diut, his body a green sun of luminescence. At the last instant, he seemed to twist in midair so that he landed just out of Diut’s reach. Diut ignored him, pressing back hard against the door, flattening himself into it just in time to avoid the rear attack of a huntress with more serious intentions and less obvious ways. The whole circle was shrinking, closing on him.

  Diut moved his hand quickly over the door behind him until he found the hand grip. Abruptly, he threw the door open into the face of yet another attacking hunter and dove through.

  He ran down the stairs to Tahneh’s apartment, knowing that he might be running into worse trouble.

  He had done a single unexpected thing—come through an exit that the Rohkohn had not expected him to know about, and that they had given only cursory coverage. That was why he was still alive. For h
e would surely force them to kill him rather than submit to the agony of crippling, the humiliation of captivity.

  The apartment was still empty. He fled through it into what he hoped was an equally empty passageway. The passageway contained only three nonfighters hurrying toward the exit, probably to watch the capture. When they found themselves facing the Tehkohn Hao, uncaptured, desperate, they leaped terrified out of his path and faded instantly into the rough walls.

  Diut ignored them, ran on silently down the passageway. It occurred to him a moment later that one of the things he could do to make the Rohkohn angry enough to kill him rather than capture him would be to kill a few nonfighters. The thought repelled him, however, and he knew he would not do such a thing if he had any other choice. Like all Kohn, he had spent his early years mostly in the care of nonfighters. He felt a strong emotional bond with the gentle defenseless people. Besides that, he was no longer thinking of dying. His memory of the floor plan of this ancient dwelling might very well give him life.

  Apart from the three nonfighters, the passageway ahead seemed deserted. Faint sounds behind him told him he was pursued by a large number of people, and he realized from his own knowledge that other Rohkohn must be moving above ground either to block the exits or to come through them and cut him off. His only hope seemed to lie in running, dodging, hiding, fighting until he could find the unused portions of the dwelling where there were passageways and exits that the Rohkohn might not be able to cover.

  Diut followed the main passageway for several minutes, knowing that it was the most dangerous way for him, but fearful of leaving it because it was also the most certain way. In his mind, he carried the full floor plan of the city as it had been at the height of the empire. But his own people lived in imperial ruins, and he knew that they had made changes that would have made an imperial floor plan of their dwelling dangerously inaccurate in spots. From what he had seen of the Rohkohn, the tribe was smaller than his own, but still large enough to make changes in the part of the desert dwelling that they occupied.