"He's a merchant, not an engineer," Anne said in Supaari's defense. "Besides, the last human with a clear grasp of all the technology he used was probably Leonardo da Vinci." And she invited a disgruntled George to tell Supaari how aspirin works.
Supaari was, at least, able to explain why the Runa disliked music. "We Jana'ata use songs to organize activities," he told Anne and Emilio, as they sat outside in a hampiy equipped with cushions, unconcerned about the light drizzle falling. He seemed to have trouble finding the correct Ruanja phrasing for this. "It is something we do only among ourselves. The Runa find this frightening."
"The songs or the activities the songs organize?" Anne asked.
"Someone thinks: both. And we also have—there is nothing in Ruanja—ba'ardali basnu charpi. There are two groups, one here and one here." He motioned to indicate that these groups would stand opposite each other. "They sing, first one group and then the other. And a judgment is made, for a reward. The Runa don't like such things."
"Singing contests!" Anne exclaimed in English. "What do you think, Emilio? Does that make sense to you? It sounds like competitive singing. They used to have contests like that in Wales. Fabulous choirs."
"Yes. I should think the Runa would avoid competitions like that. Porai is built into the situation. All the contestants would want to win the prize." Emilio switched to Ruanja. "Someone thinks perhaps the hearts of the Runa become porai if one group is rewarded but not the other," he ventured and explained his logic to Supaari, to test the model.
"Yes, Ha'an," the Jana'ata said, thinking Emilio was merely translating. He leaned back onto an elbow comfortably and added with a tone that Anne found wry, "We Jana'ata do not have such hearts."
But Supaari brought no other Jana'ata with him and stalled when George and Jimmy repeated their request to see the city and meet others of his people. "Jana'ata speak only K'San," he told them when pressed for a reason. It was unusual, he let them understand, that he had learned Ruanja; ordinarily, it was the Runa who were required to learn Jana'ata languages. It was a lame enough excuse that they accepted it as a polite fiction, and D.W. reckoned ole Supaari was probably keeping their existence secret to preserve his monopoly on the trade. The Jesuit party was familiar with capitalism and didn't begrudge the merchant his corner on the coffee and spice market. So while Yarbrough was getting anxious to make contact with someone in authority, they tried to be patient. Cunctando regitur mundus, after all. In the meantime, Emilio stepped up his work on K'San.
At last there came a day, a Rakhati year and a half after their arrival in Kashan, when Supaari told them that he had worked out a way for them to visit Gayjur. It would take some time; there were many arrangements, and the visit would have to wait until after the next rainy season. He would not be able to come upriver to visit them during that time but he would return at the beginning of Partan and take them to the city. His plan hinged somehow on their ability to see in redlight, but he was indirect about why this should be so.
In any case, they were reasonably content with the situation as it stood. They were all productively employed. Supaari had been wonderfully helpful in many ways, and they did not want to impose on his good nature. "Step by step," Emilio would say, and Marc would add, "It is as it should be."
During this time, the health of the Jesuit party remained good, on the whole. They were free of viral illness since there was no disease reservoir here that could affect them. Jimmy broke a finger. Marc was badly bitten by something he'd found while poking around and lifting up rocks; it got away, so they were never sure what the culprit was, but Robichaux recovered. George confirmed Manuzhai's fears by falling off a walkway one night, but he wasn't seriously hurt. There was the usual run of cuts, bruises, blisters and muscle pulls. For a while Sofia had a lot of headaches, trying to cut back on coffee because the VaKashani now swayed with dismay whenever the foreigners actually drank the stuff instead of selling it. After a month of doling out analgesics, Anne suggested that Sofia should just do her drinking in private. Sofia adopted this solution with relief.
In general, it was a tidy little practice for Anne Edwards, M.D., flawed only by despair for one of her patients. His spirit and mind remained strong, but D. W. Yarbrough's body was failing him and there was, as far as she could determine, nothing in this world Anne could do about it.
It was predictable, when they thought about it later, that the Runa would begin to garden. Once the Runa understood what all the ludicrous labor had produced, once they had seen how beautiful a garden could be, once they knew that food could be grown close to home, they seized upon gardening with typical enthusiasm and creativity. From Kashan, the practice moved along river courses to other villages and along the coast toward Gayjur. Anne, questioning Runa visitors and using satellite data, tracked the spread, said it was a textbook case of diffusion and wrote it up.
Marc and George accompanied the first Runa gardeners on expeditions to pik and k'jip fields and helped them bring back transplants. Seeds were collected, slips taken and rooted. Some crops failed but others flourished. New plants were added. The foreigners were glad to provide potatoes, which the Runa loved, and to share beets and even popcorn, which was an enormous hit, both as entertainment and as food. When Sofia wondered if this sharing of seeds and transplants from Earth might trigger some sort of ecological disaster, Marc said, "All the varieties I brought have very low volunteer-germination rates. If they or we stop taking care of the gardens, these plants will die off in a year."
Freed from the endless marching from home to naturally growing food sources, their diet supplemented by garden produce, the VaKashani and their neighbors grew visibly opulent. Fat levels rose. Hormone production kicked in at concentrations that brought on estrus, and life got a good deal more interesting in Kashan and the surrounding villages. Even if Supaari had not tipped Anne off to the general outlines of Runa sexuality, she'd have worked it out by observation alone that year: there was no real privacy in Runa life.
And the Runa, she discovered, were in fact quite curious about where little foreigners came from, so to speak. «Earth» was not the answer they were interested in. So, with sex and pregnancies and new households suddenly of universal interest, Anne explained certain aspects of human behavior, physiology and anatomy. This soon led to a new accuracy in the way Ruanja personal pronouns were applied to the foreigners.
And though single-irised eyes were affectionately averted and human commentary was thoughtfully circumspect in the sexually charged atmosphere of Kashan, there was no way for the courtship of Jimmy Quinn and Sofia Mendes to go unnoticed. The VaKashani were delighted by the couple. They showed this by being rowdy and lewd, making bawdy remarks that frequently went beyond the suggestive into the realm of the expository. Jimmy and Sofia took it all in the good-natured spirit with which it was given. Shyness was not a luxury they were vouchsafed. And to be honest, as friendship deepened and a love was at long last permitted to flourish, there was only one person around whom they felt shy. Nothing was ever spoken among the three of them; to speak would solidify truths that had been kept, at some cost to them all, insubstantial. Emilio did not join in the ribaldry or joke with them the way he might have with another couple. But now and then, when they returned together from a walk or looked up and saw him across the room, they would know that his eyes had been on them and they found in the still face and quiet gaze a benediction.
When at last it came, fully two months after Sofia was ready for it, Jimmy's proposal was typically comic and her response typically decisive. "Sofia," he said, "I am painfully aware of the fact that I am, for all practical purposes, the last man on Earth—"
"Yes," she said.
And so on the fifth of Stan'ja, approximately November 26, 2041, in the village of Kashan, Southern Province of Inbrokar, on the lavender and blue and green planet of Rakhat, James Connor Quinn and Sofia Rachel Mendes were married under a chuppah, the traditional open-sided canopy of Jewish weddings, decorated at its corners with streame
rs of yellow and amethyst, of green and aquamarine, of carnelian and lilac, scented with something like gardenia and something like lily.
The bride wore a simple dress Anne made from a silken Runa fabric that Supaari provided. Manuzhai made the circlet of ribbons and flowers Sofia wore around her head, with streamers of many colors woven into the crown, falling to the ground all around her. D.W., not much heavier now than Sofia and very frail, gave the bride away. George was the best man. Anne was supposed to be the matron of honor, but decided to cry instead. Askama was the flower girl, of course, and the VaKashani loved this element of the ritual, so close to their own aesthetic. Marc Robichaux officiated at the ecumenical ceremony, working some rather lovely Ruanja poetry into the Nuptial Mass. Anne knew that the husband would stomp on a glass at the end of a Jewish ceremony, but the closest she could come to that tradition was to suggest that Jimmy break a Runa perfume flask. Then D.W. said that in view of Sofia's dedication to the stuff, a coffee mug would be appropriately symbolic, so they used a pottery cup instead. And Marc ended the service with the Shehecheyanu, the Hebrew prayer for first fruits and new beginnings. Sofia stared, wide-eyed, when she recognized the French-accented words and then saw Marc concentrating on the lips of his language coach. When she turned to Emilio Sandoz, standing a little distance away, he smiled, and thus she received his wedding present.
There was a feast, with plenty of twigs and popcorn. And there were games and races, which had winners and losers but did not make anyone porai because there were no prizes. It was a good-hearted amalgam of Runa and human customs and cuisine. Afterward, Anne, who had done as much work on these arrangements as any Earthside mother of the bride, made it clear that Jimmy and Sofia were to be left strictly alone on their first night. Entering into the spirit of the thing, the VaKashani constructed a doorway for the apartment given to the new couple: a trellised screen of woven vines, decorated with flowers and ribbons. Escorted home, Jimmy and Sofia thanked everyone, laughing, for their very helpful instructions, and found themselves alone at last, the sounds of communal merriment receding and merging into somewhat more private celebrations as the third sun set.
Truths had been told, long before this night. In the delicious days of waiting that they gave themselves, as wedding plans went on around them, they spent hours in the shadowy filtered light of a hampiy shelter paved with cushions. There were many things to share: family legends, funny stories, simple biographical details. One afternoon Jimmy had lain next to Sofia, marveling at her small perfection and his good fortune. He had never assumed that she was coming to him an innocent and so, tracing the pure line of her profile with his finger, he looked down at her, his deep-set smiling eyes filled with erotic speculation, and asked in low tones of intimacy that left no doubt about his meaning, "What pleases you, Sofia?"
She burst into tears and said, "I don't know," for it had never occurred to her that anyone might ask such a thing. Startled, Jimmy kissed away salty tears, saying, "Then we'll just have to find that out together." But, puzzled by the strength of the reaction, he knew there was something behind this and looked at her, searching for it.
She had meant to keep this one region of her past behind its old defensive walls, but the last barrier between them came down. When he heard it all, Jimmy thought his heart would break for her but he only sat and held her, long arms and endless legs enfolding her like a nestling, and waited for her to quiet. Then he smiled into her eyes and asked, in the dry academic tones of an astronomer discussing a theoretical point with a colleague, "How long do you suppose I can go on loving you more every day?" And he devised for her a calculus of love, which approached infinity as a limit, and made her smile again.
So there were no more walls to be scaled, no more fortresses to defend by the fifth of Stan'ja, a month that marks the start of summer on Rakhat, when the nights are very short and full of stars and racing clouds and moons. But that first night was long enough for him to lead her in a private wedding dance, seeking the rhythm of her heart. And the moonlight, filtered through flowers and vines and streamers of color and fragrance, was very good for finding the way together to moments worthy of a Rakhati poet's song.
Later that summer, as rain fell, such a moment shimmered and paused on the brink, and then began the ancient dance of numbers: two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and a new life took root and began to grow. And thus the generations past were joined to the unknowable future.
30
VILLAGE OF KASHAN AND CITY OF GAYJUR:
YEAR THREE
"So, what do you think? Rain's probably done for the day. Feel lively enough for a walk?" Anne asked D.W.
"Well, now, I cain't say as I'm inclined to rush into a decision like that." D.W. took a sip of the meat broth Anne had brought him and then laid his head back against the hammock chair. His gaze traveling down the long meandering ridge of his nasal bones, he fixed her with a look of judicious consideration. "I thought maybe I'd save my strength up so's I can watch some mud dry later on."
She smiled, and it was gratifying that he could still make people smile.
He kept the mug in his hands for a while, to warm them, but then began to worry that it would slip out of his fingers, so he set it aside on the little table that Sofia and Emilio had once used as a desk out in this hampiy. The shelter was his now, had become pretty close to a permanent residence for him, barring really bad weather. He liked to be out where he could see the southern mountains or look northeast to find the line where the plains merged into sky. Manuzhai or Jimmy carried him down to the apartment if the weather looked to get ugly and then carried him back up to the hampiy when things settled down; he couldn't climb the cliff anymore on his own. Emilio stayed with him nights, so he wouldn't be alone. D.W. had worried about being a pain in the ass for everyone but felt better about it when Sofia told him, "It is your duty to let us help. Even your Jesus knew that: taking care of the sick is a commandment. It's a mitzvah for us."
"Finish that soup," said Anne, breaking into his reverie. "Doctor's orders."
" 'Finish that soup! You're pretty damn brisk," he informed her indignantly, but he picked up the cup with both thin hands and forced himself to continue working on it until he'd drunk it all. He made a face, which was a little redundant given how he looked when he wasn't making a face. "Everything tastes like metal," he told her.
"I know, but the protein does you good." Anne reached out and put a hand on his wrist for a brief squeeze.
She had tried everything she could think of. Half-killed him with parasiticides. Put him on an all-Earth diet from the lander stores. Boiled the rainwater he drank after passing it through all the filters and chemical treatments. Stopped the chemical treatments, thinking maybe they made it worse. Two or three times she thought they'd gotten the damned thing on the run, whatever the hell it was. He'd start to put on some weight, get some color and energy back, and then he'd slip again.
He was the only one affected. So, of course, they both wondered if he'd brought something with him, was carrying something from home. But all the crew members had been put through a fine-meshed medical sieve before they left, and D. W. Yarbrough had once been abundantly healthy, strong as a lean old racehorse. Maybe something had gone subtly wrong with his physiology: he was sequestering something that was usually excreted or some enzymatic process had gone to hell.
"It's not that bad, Annie," he'd told her once. "Most of the time, it's just bein' tired."
"If you really loved me, you'd get well, dammit. I hate patients who refuse to make their doctors appear omnipotent. It's very rude."
He knew bluster when he heard it. "People are mortal," he'd told her. "You and I both know there's lots worse ways to go."
Anne had turned away, blinking rapidly, but snuffled in a breath vigorously and got ahold of herself. When she spoke again, her voice was firm and irate. "It's not the fact or the method, it's the timing that pisses me off."
D.W. came back to the present with a start, wondering if he
'd dozed off. "C'mon," he said, working his way forward in the hammock chair and then resting on its edge before standing. "Let's walk. I'll blow off the mud today."
"Right." Anne slapped her hands on her knees and pushed herself up, shaking off the worry. "Go for broke, I say. Live for the moment."
They moved slowly, not saying much, walking along the gorge edge toward the southern mountains, D.W. setting the pace. Anne kept a careful eye on him, knowing that they shouldn't go very far because D.W. would have to walk back. Ordinarily, she could count on having someone to carry him home if he wore himself out, but they were alone in Kashan for the first time since the lander disaster. The Runa were out harvesting a flower called anukar. George, Marc and Jimmy had gone off with Supaari to see the city of Gayjur, at last. So there was no one around to help but Sofia, pregnant and nauseated, and Emilio, who was asleep. He'd been up most of the night with D.W., who'd had another bad time of it.
To Anne's surprise, and to his own, D.W. did all right. They got as far as their old place on the ledge, which had a comfortable flat spot and a good view of the ravine and the western sky. "If I set down, you reckon you can haul my raggedy old ass up again?" D.W. asked her.
"Leverage, my darling. If you can dig your heels in, I can get you on your feet." She let him take hold of her arm and leaned back to steady his descent before sitting down next to him. They were quiet a while, as he got his breath back.
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