The Poison Oracle

by Peter Dickinson

  “True. Now this Gaur has come to the marshes again. I wish to ask him this. I wish also to ask him what people passed the door where he stood guard. Will you send for Gaur?”

  “Ho! I must send for a warrior of the ninth clan when he has taken a new woman into the reeds! Who hunts the boar with a feather?”

  “He is under the Bond.”

  “The Bond is broken.”

  “That is not known. When Gaur has spoken it will be known.”

  “Morch, this is an old tale. The blood-guilt is on the man that throws the spear. Another man has poisoned it. The thrower does not know. But the blood-guilt is his—every child knows that. It is in many songs.”

  It was interesting that Qab knew that Gaur had brought Anne with him; it also accounted for Qab’s many hints that Morris was really a creature of the moon-world—the story of his witchcraft would have reached the marshes before him. But it was no help in the frustrating task of presenting a logical argument to a stupid and secretive old man in a language solely designed for making an elaborate and detailed picture of the surface appearance of things and actions.

  “These two dead men were brothers,” said Morris. Dyal had used the word in Arabic which means blood-brother.

  “Yes,” said Qab; it was the minor affirmative, a convenient grunt which agrees with a proposition only provisionally.

  “I have heard songs in which brother fought with brother. Always they used unpoisoned spears.”

  “Morch, you tell me lies. These are lies a child would know. A man who fights his brother does not use a practice-dart. He uses a new spear, never before tried. He does not put poison on it nor say spells over it. How should a man begin to kill his brother with a practice-dart?”

  Morris opened his mouth to answer, but the very shape of Qab’s question defeated him. It wasn’t simply that the ugly little savage had restated Morris’s case as though it were a clinching rebuttal of that case; also his modification of the relation-root of killing which made the action incomplete—“begin to” was a very blurry translation—this showed how impossible it was going to be to prove a case to the marshmen by any logical chain of argument. It was as close as Qab could think to the idea of purpose and motive, and at the same time impossibly far from them.

  A little to the left of where they sat, but almost down at the greasy edge of the water, two boys were practising with their throwing-sticks, those stunted clubs with which the marshmen stalked small game. The art, Kwan had said, was to throw them with the wrist only, not moving any other joint, so that the duck or water-lizard or whatever it might be was not scared by too much movement. The boys stood like little wizened statues, aiming at the horns of a buffalo-skull in the mud in front of them; Morris couldn’t see the flick of the black hands in front of the black bellies, but the throwing-sticks didn’t seem to miss at all. They struck the horns with a light clunk, sharply, in a steady flow, until the boys walked forward to pick them up. There seemed to be no connection between thrower and stick and target. Qab’s method of argument was like that—one sharp little isolated fact after another, related each to each only by his speaking them. Morris tried again.

  “I do not tell lies,” he said. “I tell you things that are difficult to say with your words. Let us talk of another matter. I will tell you what the Arabs say.”

  “You are an Arab, Morch.”

  “No.”

  “You are white, like them.”

  Morris had been, during his time in Q’Kut, so subconsciously aware of his status as a white man among brown men, that it was a shock to realise that to people as black as the marshmen they were all equally pale strangers.

  “I live with the Arabs, but I am not an Arab.”

  “You are certainly not of the people.”

  “True.”

  Qab nodded. Morris saw that in his mind only two types of man inhabited the sun-world. Anyone else came from the other place. He ploughed on.

  “The Arabs also say that the Bond is broken. They say that Dyal poisoned the darts. They say it is the manner of the marsh-men’s hunting, but then the descendant of Nillum took the dart from his body and threw it back, as in the Testament of Na!ar, poisoning Dyal also. They say the beginning of the fight was this: there are great riches in the marshes . . .”

  “The buffalo give good milk this year, it is true.”

  “They do not seek to take your buffalo. Again, it is hard to say in your words. But first they will take the water. There will be no more floods.”

  Qab frowned at Morris, then turned to stare at the grey, unruffled water that interlaced the brown reed-banks.

  “They say that Dyal killed the descendant of Nillum,” said Morris, “He did not wish that the Arabs should come among the marshes. They say the Bond is now broken, and they will take vengeance. They will make war, saying it is for vengeance, but in their hearts they desire your land.”

  “The Bond is broken. We may go among the Arabs and slay and steal.”

  “I say the Bond is not broken. I say the new descendant of Nillum sent me here. I say he asks your help. He must show the Arabs that the blood-feud is foolish. Gaur must tell the true story of the killing. I seek for Gaur, coming to you under that hand.”

  Morris had spoken with emphatic oratory and now gestured, without looking round, to where the box swung on the pole. The possibility of war had made Qab listen with real interest, and his eyes followed the gesture. At once his face changed. His hand was clapped in horror to his forehead and his mouth breathed soundless syllables. Morris swung round.

  Dinah had been very quiet, presumably already listless with heat. Not so—she had been, for who knows how long, squatting on the roof-tree solving the problem of how to reach the box. At the moment of Morris’s gesture she must have worked it out, twisting the pole in its rings until the curve of it brought the box above her head. Morris leaped to his feet and grabbed the pole in the same moment that she grabbed the box. He hoicked up, she down; something gave and he was overbalancing with the pole waving while she was scampering to the other end of the roof to examine her trophy.

  He opened his fruit-box and took out a banana, then hurried to the other end of the hut and clicked his fingers at her. She looked up. He showed her the banana. She put the box to her ear and shook it. Silently Morris cursed her intelligence—she would prefer to win a reward by solving a problem than win one by being good. He hadn’t much time, for she was experienced in closed-box problems and would soon spot that there was no lid or catch to this one, but that it was woven all in one piece, and then her strong, dark hands would tear it apart in seconds. The moment she was absorbed in her problem he swung the pole along the roof and knocked her off the end.

  She fell, twisting like a gymnast, landing fully-balanced on her feet, still grasping the box. He grabbed at it. She wrenched from the other side. The ancient wickerwork collapsed and out of its ruins tumbled a pale shape. Morris had just time to see that it was the bones of a hand, wired together with copper, before she had pounced and was scampering away to the next hut, leaping for the roof and settling down to examine her trophy. As he raced across with the banana in one hand and the pole in the other she wrenched a finger from the hand and put it in her mouth.

  One chew and she was in a tantrum, the hysteric indignation of those who have been cheated by themselves. No banana—only dry bones. She spat the finger out, rose to her feet and tore the hand apart, throwing the bones to and fro round the hut, screeching with disappointment. Morris scuttered about picking the bones up and stuffing them into his shirt pocket. The wrist-bone landed in the corner of a buffalo-pen, six inches deep in slime, and by the time he had probed it clear Dinah was back on top of the original hut, smugly eating the banana he had dropped.

  He knelt on his mat and took the bones out of his pocket, arranging them loosely in their proper pattern;
but being no anatomist he found himself with three unlikely oddments left over, which he was only able to place by the position of the broken wires. When at last he looked up he saw that another man had joined them, younger than Qab, small and sturdy. This man held a spear in the stabbing position with its serrated flint tip two feet from Morris’s neck and glistening with black unguent.

  “I will mend the hand,” whispered Morris. “See, I have all the bones.”

  “The Bond is broken. So the hand is broken,” said Qab. “This is sure. A witch comes to Alaurgan-Alaurgad, where Na!ar swore his oath. He brings a creature who breaks the hand. He dances before this creature, clicking his fingers like a child training a buffalo calf.”

  The third person was not chosen because Qab wished to state his case dispassionately, but because there is a class of beings to whom no wise man will speak direct.

  “I am not a witch,” said Morris. “Dinah is not a creature of the moon-world. I do not command her. Would I come here thus, by day, when there are warriors in Alaurgan-Alaurgad, with spears to kill me?”

  “Ho,” said Qab. “The witch came in the dark, but the good mimulus-weed, which sinks by night, deceived him with the appearance of clear water. A witch lives in the moon-world, as one may see from the colour of this witch’s skin. To send a witch back to the moon-world he must be killed in the sun-world. A child knows this. Witches are very stupid, being dazzled by light, in the sun-world. Strike, Fau.”

  Morris looked bleakly round. About fifty men and women had come from somewhere and stood in a half-circle to watch him die. Dinah tossed her banana-skin down from the roof. It fell with a flap on the mat. Fau lowered his spear.

  “The men of my age-set say ‘Let us take him to Gal-Gal’,” he said.

  “Strike,” said Qab.

  “His words are perhaps true.”

  “He tells many lies. A child would know them. He is so stupid with sunlight.”

  “I slay him here, now. Then the other clans say ‘Was this a witch? Who is Qab to declare the Bond to be broken? When did the water-snake become wise?’ There will be many buffaloes to pay, Qab.”

  “Strike, Fau.”

  “Let us take him to Gal-Gal. Then the duck clan will not say ‘When did the water-snake learn the smell of a witch?’ They cannot then demand buffaloes. You are an old fool, Qab, and soon you will die. Your sons have taken all your buffaloes. You are like spear-poison which is seven and seven days old. Yes, soon you will die. But my age-set is full of strength, and we say ‘Let us take one calf to the duck clan now. Let us not pay seven sevens calves next flood.’”

  Qab relaxed and scratched his crotch.

  “Can the witch make my leg clean?” he asked the steaming air.

  “I am not a witch,” said Morris shakily. “I do not heal wounds nor drive out blackwater spirits. I only carry a message from the descendant of Nillum. But let us go to Gal-Gal. Let Gaur be sent for also.”

  “Ho!” said Qab. “Will Fau carry such a message to the ninth clan? Ho!”

  “I will give Fan a sign to take to Gaur’s new woman,” said Morris. “He will come.”

  Qab looked suddenly impressed. He shouted to his wives, who came shrinkingly over, eased his leg on to a sort of sledge and prepared to drag him into the hut. He stopped them with a snarl.

  “Dniy,” he shouted, “thou has a daughter who will die soon. The witches have touched her, so this witch can harm her no more. Give her to him for a wife, and my sister’s son will pay thee a third of the next calf of his lame mottled cow.”

  A fat little man with a twisted leg strutted grinning from the ring. Hell, thought Morris, but he was in no position to give any more offence to the people of Alaurgan-Alaurgad, so he drew a sliver of reed from the mat, made it into a loop and tied the ends together. Dniy lowered his spear and Morris put the loop over the sheathed point.

  “Good,” said Qab. “The witch’s hut is that where Tek died.”

  His wives dragged him into the hut. The ring of watchers melted away, except for a man who squatted down a few yards off to make dung. Morris’s second wife (counting Dinah as the first) was a little black girl with a festering sore on her left shoulder. She came alone, very timidly, up to the mat in front of Qab’s hut and grovelled in the dirt before him. She wore a blue-bead amulet round her neck, and a blue-bead belt, and the loop of reed round her right wrist.

  “How many years have you?” asked Morris.

  “Seven, Lord,” she whispered into the dirt.

  The marshmen could count, but usually didn’t bother. Seven meant any lowish number.

  “What is thine outer name?”

  “My lord has not yet told me.”

  Morris thought, for the first time for years, of his own mother, longing for a friendly girl instead of her cold, clever, stodgy son. She used to make long, Barrie-ish fantasies about this other child she would never see. When Morris had sorted through the house after her death he had found a shelf of picture books with the same name written in each of them.

  “Thine outer name is Margaret Lucy Morris,” he said. “For speaking it is Peggy.”

  “I am Peggy,” she said, pronouncing the word exactly as he had done. “I am Margaret Lucy Morris.” She got that right too. She looked up. Her eyes were glazed with fright.

  “Little Pegling,” he said, lacing his speech with all the friendly diminutives he could think of. “You are welcome. See, this is Dinah. She sleeps when the sun is hot. Her home is a big tree. She is a little naughtikins. She likes to be touched, very gently, thus.”

  He showed her how to groom Dinah’s coat, and in doing so found a disgusting great tick, fat with blood. Peggy laughed when he squashed it and soon came to help. Then he gave her a banana, which she ate with grave doubt. She became afraid again when he insisted on dressing her sore with antibiotic ointment, but endured his touch. After all, if he had taken her down to the water and drowned her like a kitten, she would have thought that perfectly proper, and wouldn’t have resisted. About noon she showed him to their hut, sideways and down from Qab’s, but well above the flood-line. There was an old mat there which she unrolled for him, before going back to make the first of many journeys down with his belongings. She was shocked to find that he had no weapons, but wouldn’t let him carry anything else, except Dinah.

  While she was staggering to and fro Fau came to his hut with the armature of a modern electric motor, presumably looted from the hijacked plane.

  “To-morrow I seek Gaur,” he said. “The stranger will give me a safe sign for the new woman.”

  “Come this evening,” said Morris. “When do we go to Gal-Gal?”

  “On the third day. Let not the stranger fear that Qab will poison him. My age-set will not permit it. There is good sport on Gal-Gal.”

  Worrying though it was to be still in the third person, it was also a relief to feel that one could eat and drink with nothing more to fear than the swarming ailments of the marsh. Morris thanked Fau and settled down to unpick the wire from the armature.

  It was early evening before he had the hand assembled. Peggy was fanning a stinking little fire of dried dung right in the entrance of the hut. He would have liked to tell her to make it elsewhere, but this was her first day’s housekeeping, and he could see that every other hut on Alaurgan-Alaurgad was being similarly treated.

  “Peggy,” he said. “I will need a basket for this, before I go to Gal-Gal.”

  “I will ask my mother’s sister. She makes our baskets.”

  “Good.”

  Morris laid the completed hand on the mat. Struck by its size he spread out his own beside it, and found that his fingers did not reach as far as the last knuckles. That was curious. He had always envisaged Na!ar, despite the emphasis in the Testament on the hero’s size and strength, as another little wizened marsh man; but h
e must have been almost a giant. Like Dyal, like Kwan, like Gaur.

  “Dost thou know any of the ninth clan?” he asked.

  “My lord need not fear. I am not beautiful enough for a ninth-clan warrior to steal me.”

  Morris laughed, waking Dinah at last.

  “Who are their fathers?” he said.

  “Their father is Na!ar,” she said. “He was big. They are big.”

  “Where does Na!ar live?”

  “Does my lord not know? Why, he lives in the body of the descendant of Nillum. He takes eight wives, one from each clan, and he begets on them warriors. Thus does Na!ar still fight for the people.”

  Dinah stretched, scratched and looked around her. Morris offered her an orange, and while she was eating it she noticed Peggy, shrinking a little away from the edge of the mat, on which she would not have dreamed of setting foot. Dinah looked at Morris with puzzled limpid eyes. He clicked with his fingers encouragingly.

  “Be still,” he said, as she moved carefully over to inspect Peggy at two-inch range. She noticed the weeping sore on the black shoulder and immediately made a funny cooing noise and prodded her fingers together.

  “Dinah is sad thou art hurt,” said Morris.

  “My lord must not see the place,” said Peggy, with a curious huffiness, like a teenage girl whose boy-friend has drawn attention to a pimple on her chin; then she was distracted by Dinah’s vacuum-like kiss. In a minute they were sharing a second orange, putting it pig by pig into each other’s mouths. In ten they were starting down to the shore, where the slow cattle were plunging home through the soupy lake while their warrior-masters danced, clicked and sang on the shore.

  “Keep fast hold of her hand,” called Morris. “She has fewer years than thou.”

  With something that was almost a lightening of heart he watched them move towards the melee; Peggy ought to have been carrying a toy bucket and spade, and beyond them should have stretched the sandy levels of low tide and beyond that still the lightly curling wavelets of a holiday sea. He thought with detached interest about what Peggy had told him, and knitted it in with what Dyal had once said about the problem of finding women when first he came out of the marshes. It explained, far better than any amount of buffalo-milk, the persisting size of the warriors of the ninth clan. It explained Dyal’s unservile relationship with the Sultan, and Gaur’s last words to Prince Hadiq. It also explained why it was almost impossible that either Gaur or Dyal had deliberately killed the Sultan.