Ki'ti's Story, 75,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  “I cannot let this go on ignored. Ghanya’s view of the People is like a fruit rotten to the core. Place it with other fruit and it destroys the lot.”

  Arkan-na was concerned about his son for two reasons: the first was that he didn’t know his son had such biased feelings and felt so superior, and second he feared for Ghanya in the little cave community. What would become of him? Basically, he’d been called a rotten fruit. It was true.

  “Who was with him when he said these things?” Arkan-na asked.

  “Sum,” Wamumur responded. “Sum disagreed with him, but he did say that his wife agrees with Ghanya.”

  “That’s interesting,” Guy-na said, “It was Gurkma, Sum’s father, who was the greatest bigot of our old people. He used to urge us to eradicate the People. Nobody much listened to him. It looks like the tables got turned on him. Sum must have seen through it.”

  Arkan-na said, “If he didn’t figure out Gurkma’s nonsense for himself, the war should have made it clear. At any rate it is Ghanya who is the problem and possibly, if I get this right, Wamumur, Keptu is another.”

  “Yes, Sum indicated his wife held the beliefs that Ghanya has.”

  “Let Guy-na and me take Sum and Ghanya to the lake and confront them,” Arkan-na said. “I expect them to be honest about what they said. Let us have People hidden in the vegetation so they hear the whole thing. Then we will discuss what to do about this problem.”

  “I agree,” Wamumur said. “Give me to high sun to get two of my men hidden by the log near the shore. You have the young men sit on the log and you stand with your backs to the water. We will hide in the bushes. Unless they are expert hunters they will not know we are there. You question them and then you will show them that we have heard all. Then we will discuss what to do.”

  It was arranged. Wamumur first went to the women to make sure they would watch the route to the lake and keep people away. Then he got Nanichak-na and Grypchon-na, Minagle’s father, to go with him and hide in the bushes to listen to what the young men would say.

  Wamumur wondered all morning what should be done if the arrogance was severe. He knew that could not last as part of the People. The young man was a danger and Wamumur was deeply concerned. He would have Emaea discover what Minagle thought of him as a husband before the meeting.

  Minagle thought it odd that Emaea asked her about Ghanya. Her husband was a good husband, she thought, but they didn’t have what Ki’ti and Untuk had—but then who did? And maybe what they had was just newly joined love. The conversation was light and Minagle didn’t think overlong about it.

  Nanichak-na, Grypchon-na, and Wamumur went down the hill to the lake while no one was out in the open field. They skirted around the usual approach to the lake and took the steep way down where there was only an animal trail that had been made and used for years. That would not give away their presence on the main path. In fact, when Arkan-na and Guy-na took the two young men to the lake, they wondered whether the older People were actually there. They scanned the woods after telling the young men to sit on the log. They saw nothing. They detected no man scent. They just assumed, knowing the People, that they were in place. Their disguise amazed Arkan-na. His visual search almost made Wamumur laugh. The Others could not see the People in hiding.

  Arkan-na began. “You both were talking this morning.” Arkan-na’s words were not a question.

  The two young men nodded.

  “Ghanya, it seems you think the Minguat are superior to the People who took us in when we were starving, saved our lives, and who have given you a peaceful place to live for the years since Baambas.”

  Ghanya fidgeted but he admitted that they had been told for years that they were superior. He mentioned how Gurkma constantly talked about how the People should be exterminated and it would be a better world.

  “And you didn’t learn anything from our cold season confinement with the People?”

  “What was I supposed to learn?” Ghanya asked sarcastically. “They took us in and kept us alive. Knowing what we believed, they should have made war on us then. We could not have defended ourselves. They’d have been free of us.”

  “Let me understand, Ghanya. You actually think that if these People were smart, you’d be dead?”

  “Ummmm. I guess that’s what I mean.”

  “My son,” Arkan-na said, “I never taught you such rubbish.”

  “You didn’t have to. It was all around us. Look at the Chief. He and his wife joked about the People all the time. He made fun of their heads and their stocky build. He called them stupid inferiors. Well, not at first. But toward the end when we knew we’d leave for the east, he joked about them all the time. He said they ran like sloths. Alak also made fun of them even while we were confined during the cold season. He thought they were stupid not to have killed us when they could. They said so in the cave in our language. The -na hunters and the ones who weren’t -na hunters joked about the title. It meant nothing unless you were hungry.”

  “Are you trying to imply that what you said is legitimized by the fact that others in the cave did the same thing? Did it ever occur to you that some of us learned a lot from the People? We learned that our way was not good! Did that ever occur to you?”

  “Why should it? We are superior.”

  “Then, Ghanya, if you really think that, why are you here?” Guy-na asked his brother.

  “I don’t know why any of us is here. If we’d gone east, isn’t it possible that we’d have won the war?”

  “Oh, my Son, your thinking is badly twisted. If we’d gone east, we’d be dead.”

  “Well,” Ghanya boasted, “I can fight. I’m strong.”

  Sum had had about all he could take. “Ghanya, they had better weapons. You would be dead. It was the warriors who were boastful they picked off first.”

  “How can that be?” Ghanya was shocked at the news.

  “Oh, my son. Your mind web is as torn as if a bat tried to fly through it. Boastful people are not smart and they fail often because they neglect thinking. They say they are so strong, but no strength backs them up. They call themselves winners, but no wins are credited to them. All their superiority is in their imaginations, not in fact. They are puffed up like birds when it’s really cold. They look big but the substance is totally lacking.” Arkan-na was appalled at this person he thought he knew.

  “Look behind you,” Arkan-na told the young men.

  They did.

  Sum asked, “What are we looking for?”

  “Just look,” Arkan-na insisted. He still tried to see the People in the forest. Knowing they were there and not being able to see them impressed Arkan-na even more.

  “Father, there is nothing there,” Ghanya said with irritation.

  Arkan-na and Guy-na waved to the unseen audience. Wamumur and Nanichak-na and Grypchon-na stood and came out of the bushes. The two young men were startled speechless. Any one of the three men could easily have killed Ghanya and Sum and probably the others.

  “Were you superior enough to detect three men behind you?” Arkan-na asked Ghanya.

  “No,” he admitted.

  The men had smeared mud on their bodies in deceptive camouflage. Mud removed their odor and made them exceptionally difficult to see in a natural setting.

  “They concealed themselves so well that even though we looked, knowing they were there, we could not see them,” Guy-na said with admiration.

  “What do you of the Minguat do with members who think they are superior?” Wamumur asked, wasting no time getting to the point.

  “When I lived among the Minguat,” Guy-na said, “There was much boastful posturing. It was worthless arrogance. I think it was done to make some feel good about our kind. We actually ignored it.”

  “Did it work to make you feel better about yourselves?” Wamumur asked.

  “Of course not, or we wouldn’t have had to keep doing it.”

  “So you did nothing when your members talked of exterminating us?”


  “Truthfully, nobody paid real attention to it, except, apparently, my son.”

  “Well, we see this behavior as rotten fruit. A piece of rotten fruit can ruin a whole basket if permitted to lie with other good fruit. We remove rotten fruit and throw it as far away as possible.” Wamumur had his hands on his hips. “Loose talk like this can disrupt function of the mind web and cause aberrant behavior that is harmful to the person who has the problem—and to the others around him. Ghanya, you need to realize that any group of people rises to the level of competence required by the environment in which they live, or they die. Just because people differ from you does not mean they are intellectually inferior.”

  Ghanya was becoming very uncomfortable, while Sum was fascinated. He could not get over their art of concealment, and the idea that people rose to the level of competence that was environmentally required fascinated him.

  “Ghanya, what you think is not something we can control. What I will tell you is if you ever speak of these things again, it will cease to be thought. You will then have acted on your own rotten ideas by speaking them so that others can hear the evil thoughts. We will not tolerate rotten ideas shared here and will remove you from the People. You may think we are soft. You may discover at your peril how soft we are not. Choosing to live peacefully is just that—choice. We can rely on each other because we don’t try to be better than each other. When we lived near the sea and one of the People became arrogant and worthless, we simply traded him to seafarers as a slave. Here, we are too far from the sea. In Cave Kwa just before you arrived, a member became violent and threatening to Minagle. That person—how shall I put it?—met with an accident. You have seen our Wise One of the future. When she disobeyed, she was punished severely. Do not mistake our hospitality. We do not make a a large issue of it. We do not prolong agony. We act and we act decisively for the health and well being of the People. Sum, you need to correct Keptu. We do not make a difference between males and females in discipline, as you have heard. We will have no rotten fruit among our People!” He punctuated his words with a firm palm strike which was followed by palm strikes of the People, Arkan-na, and Guy-na.

  Wamumur paused, signaling with his hands that he wasn’t through.

  “I have decided that our People have made a mistake that I will correct tonight. We have been a mix of three peoples: the People, the Others, the Mol. Tonight, we all become the People. Anyone choosing to refrain can pack his or her things and leave. You, Ghanya, have until tonight to think and get your mind web straight. If you choose to leave, you cannot take Minagle and the children with you. That is all I have to say.”

  “Son,” Arkan-na said, “I am disappointed in you. If Wamumur had ordered me to spear you, I would have done it without question. He is right. Your ideas are like rotten fruit.”

  “I have something to ask,” Grypchon-na said. “Minagle is my daughter. Do you love her?”

  Ghanya thought a moment and said, “I do love her. I started to love her by pretending she was one of us. But I love her for who she is. I really do love her. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  Ghanya was frightened. His father’s words were the harshest words he’d ever heard in his life. He needed to think and decide what he would do that evening. Could he even consider leaving? If he stayed and made one mention of the Minguat and being superior, he might meet with an accident. Ghanya didn’t miss the meaning. It meant they’d kill him. Did that mean they killed the person who had scared Minagle so badly? They killed him for what he did? Bad fruit. Yes, what the guy did was like bad fruit. But his own thoughts were that he was superior. Wasn’t he? Obviously his father didn’t think so. Sum didn’t think so. Had he, as he was accused of doing, believed a lie? Was he inferior to these People? They were really good at camouflage. He was so confused.

  Wamumur looked at Ghanya. “Get out of my sight until tonight.”

  Ghanya got up and sprinted up the hill. He didn’t look back. He raced to the field where they made the animals fall over the cliff, running all the way to the dropoff and stepping down to the ledge. He crawled into the tiny little cave and sat there looking out on the land below. He watched some monkeys in the trees as they fought among themselves over a piece of fruit. Ghanya shivered. Was he thinking he was so smart that he might get himself killed? He no longer considered the People soft. He wasn’t sure how he thought of them comparatively, but he didn’t think they were soft anymore! If they would kill one of their own for misconduct with a girl, what might they do to him for making fun of them? He wondered how they killed the man.

  Sum went to find Keptu. How was he supposed to deal with his wife? He found her and asked her to walk with him. She joined him, wondering what he had to discuss. He told her of the morning’s conversation. He told her about the meeting at the lake with Arkan-na and Guy-na. He told her about Wamumur, Grypchon-na, and Nanichak-na who had been hidden in the bushes and had left no sign on the trail and how they were completely invisible until they were called out. He told of the idea of rotten fruit and what the people did with rotten fruit. He told her they did not discriminate where males and females were concerned when it came to discipline. When he finished, she was shaking.

  “They are not soft, are they?”

  “No, my wife, and if you hold onto your ideas of them as inferior, bad things will happen and I won’t be able to stop them, and furthermore, I won’t want to.”

  “You are turning from me?”

  “I am no longer willing to live with someone who hates someone else for no reason. They are right. It is like rotten fruit.”

  “But that’s what we were taught.”

  “We were taught wrong. These are very intelligent people. To keep thinking wrong thoughts confuses your mind web. You can correct your errors. When you know what you were taught is wrong, why would you hang onto it?”

  “I am frightened,” she said and wept.

  “Do you really think it is right to move to a place where People offer you great hospitality and then you make fun of them?”

  “I’m sorry, my husband. I didn’t see it that way. I saw it the way I was taught. We are not taught to think for ourselves!” she said defensively.

  “Tonight you will have to choose to stay here or leave. This is not a decision that is lightly taken. You can be killed for making fun of them if you stay and do it later.”

  “You are staying aren’t you?”

  “Of course. I like the People. I recognize that they saved our lives—twice. They have much to teach me.”

  “I cannot leave you. I love you.”

  “Then you had better find out how to get rid of your feelings of superiority and never again consider these People inferior. In fact, if you remain you have to consider yourself one of the People.”

  She lowered her head and wept. She had never been told what and how to think except by the Minguat. She wondered how well she would do or whether she’d be killed if she stayed. She was certain that if she left she would die.

  The evening meal in the cave was perfectly normal. Most people had no idea what had occurred that morning. When the meal was finished and the clean up had taken place, Wamumur stood and cleared his throat. “I wish to speak to all,” he said.

  Everyone gathered in the central area. They sat and prepared to listen carefully. Wamumur loomed large. The shadows he cast on the wall were huge and ominous.

  “I have watched this group grow. We have the People, the Others, and the Mol living here. Tonight that all changes. It is clear that we tend to see ourselves as three peoples, not one. That is not good. Tonight we make decisions. Anyone living here at the end of the meeting lives here as one of the People. No longer will there be Others or Mol. Just People. We are all the same. We may have different colored hair, or eyes, or skin, or different shaped heads or eyes, or height, or feet,” he added, thinking of the little one with six toes. The last comment made people laugh. “All of that is irrelevant. We are all of us the People. We work to the good
of the People. We are kind, not puffed up and self serving; filled with humility, not arrogance; known for hospitality; peaceful, not warlike. And because of that we are strong, not weak. Being the People does not mean we share physical characteristics but rather we live a certain way with Wisdom as our Guide. Some of you may not want to be People. That is fine. You are free to leave. Anyone who remains is People. If anyone is joined with People and chooses to leave, he or she cannot take his People husband or wife. But, if the husband or wife who is People chooses to leave, that person can never return to live among the People, for they know the People already and have rejected what is good for them. Once Wisdom fades this night’s darkness, all inhabitants will be People. That is all I have to say. Are there questions?”

  There was dead silence. As with some of the situations in the cave, only a few knew why this was happening. Most felt this had already happened. Most of those who arrived at the cave felt part of the People. Now they would all truly be equal. They did not sense that there was a problem with bigotry that motivated the meeting. Some thought it a nice gesture.

  Ki’ti put her arm around Untuk. She looked up into his eyes, “Are you pleased to call yourself People?” she asked. Ahriku was curled up next to her sleeping.

  Untuk grinned from ear to ear. “I thought I already became People when we joined.”

  “I guess it wasn’t made clear in the past.”

  “I’m Other and you are Mol. Now we are People?” Aryna asked Tongip.

  “It is good,” he smiled. He held her hand and looked into her eyes. She echoed his words.

  Wamumur watched the People. He wondered whether he’d ever be as wise as he felt he should be. Apparently, there had been more significance with respect to origin than he had thought. It was good for it to come out. He’d never guessed rotten fruit was in their midst.