In Arvanneth, on the night after equinox, Jossereck Derrian greets Donya, Lady of Owlhaunt in Hervar.
My dear,
By the time this reaches you, two or three months hence, I shall be gone from Andalin. You will not meet me again. That day we said farewell, I thought yet I might return, after I’d brought my shipmates back and finished whatever was left for me to do here. But I’ve come to see how right you were, and how kind, when you bade me leave you for good.
Your tongue has no word I know of for what I would like to tell you. You remember how I tried, and you tried to understand me, but we both failed. Maybe it is not a thing you can feel, any more than I can feel— Well, I’ll come to such questions later.
You care for me, you said. Let that be enough.
Donya put the letter down and sat with eyes turned horizonward. At length she resumed.
... are eager to know what’s happened, and what to expect.
Your speech, like mine, has its limitations. I’ll borrow Arvannethan terms and hope they carry something across to you. Briefly, though, from your viewpoint the news is fine.
The annihilation of an entire Imperial army was a shattering blow, as you can surely imagine. [Admiral] Ronnach, on my advice, pretended not to know just what had occurred. No doubt some rumor will reach Nafs that “observers” were present; but this will be late, vague, and impossible to investigate further. The present implication is that you Northfolk may well be able to do the same, whatever it was, to any future aggressors.
Certainly the Empire cannot spare strength for a second attempt, at least for years. My guess is that it never will. Among deterrents will be the presence of Seafolk in the Dolphin Gulf, with [vested interests] to protect.
You see, by help of farspeakers, a Killimaraichan [diplomatic mission] in Rahfd was able to exert considerable pressure. The Throne had slim choice but to bite the sour apple and sign a [treaty] which, by and large, is pretty much what they desired in Eaching.
Arvanneth is recognized as a [free state], its [independence] guaranteed by both major [powers]. Neither one will furnish it any [armed forces], and both will have trade access. Time will show whether he Empire, developing its [conquests] along the northwestern Gulf littoral, or the Seafolk, developing their commerce and [colonies] in the Hurricane Sea, become the eventual [dominators] of the city. Myself, I suspect neither. Arvanneth has a stable [government] again. In effect, the old order has been restored. It is an order which has outlived many others.
Whatever happens, as far as you Northfolk are concerned, trade will revive immediately. And you will be left in [peace],
Donya reread this passage twice, pondering in between, before she continued.
Soon a ship will bear me home across the Glimmer-water. From there I’ll go to—what? In a way, you will come along. It will hurt that you do not in your darling self. Right now it hurts like a new-made wound. But it’s not as bad as it was, and should get better.
Do you remember how, at the last, we stood hand in hand on the bank of the Jugular, and through a slow snowfall watched how the ice was healing around the Horn of Nezh? I feel thus tonight. Afterward, I dare hope, will come a thaw, and the waters flow free. A whole world of marvels and adventures is writing, which I fear you cannot ever know, even in dreams.
She frowned, shook her head, started to read the sentences over, then shrugged and went on forward.
For I think I know what you are; and this whispers to me a little of what I am.
Do you also remember the day you returned to Thunder Kettle from hunting, and we walked out on the prairie together? You said there had never been and could never be a whole life shared by Rogaviki and outlander. Suddenly I saw how this might be—not superstition, not tradition, not manmade barriers—the very truth.
Since, I’ve lived in the idea, explored it, tried to deny it is real, then opened my eyes and seen it everywhere around me, finally gathered my nerve and set out to chart it as far as it reaches. I’m not quite the first in the territory—could scarcely be, after untold centuries—and I’ve learned a deal from books and from talk with knowledgeable men. (I didn’t speak your name!) However, maybe I am by chance the first who came to it knowing something about evolution and used to looking at life that way.
You were so interested when we talked about this— about how whales and dolphins, for instance, are cousins in one household of animals which returned to the sea, while seals and walruses belong to another, and [penguins] are birds which did likewise although the reptile ancestor of birds and mammals must have died eons ago—you were so interested that I’m sure it stayed in your head, whatever else you may have forgotten of what I’ve been writing about.
Donya nodded to herself. She sent her glance around among the minnows, insects, a frog, a lizard, a robin, her horse; she ran a hand cross her own body.
Man is an animal too. We can see how he and the [monkeys] have a common forebear. And we can see how he has kept on evolving, in his separate homes around the world. Else why would he wear so many hues and faces?
But these things do not go deep in our flesh, no deeper than for different breds of the dog tribe. Like wolf, coyote, and hound, folk of the several races can beget fertile offspring. They can be brought up to any human way of life and thought.
Human way. The races share certain absolutes, which therefore are probably as ancient as the brain or the thumb.
Except for you Rogaviki.
What happened on the plains of Andalin, after the Ice came, I cannot tell for certain. I suppose a fresh strain appeared by chance, and survived better than the rest, by luck or hardihood, till at last there was an entire new species of mankind.
You haven’t recognized your uniqueness, because like us you took yourselves for granted. Yet I believe, now, your stories are right, that Rogaviki and outlander seldom have children together, and when they do, the children are sterile mules. I imagined this was an excuse for getting rid of unwanted babies—and it is that, of course; you cloak your motives the same as we do—but I think it’s true as well.
For consider.
Everywhere else, man is a creature of the pack, the herd, whatever you want to call it. Societies like mine, which give the individual a broad freedom, are rare; and both this freedom and the individual himself are defined by the society.
Inevitably, I’m misusing language. To you, “society” means simply “class of foreigners.” You know how they vary in, say, Rahfd, Arvanneth, the Wilderwoods, or west of the Mooncastle Mountains; but you make the unspoken assumption that individuals choose individually to live in those styles. “Freedom” is what you might give excess fish caught in a weir, or something like that; if I told you it is a [right] which men have fought and died for, you would stare at me blankly. By “individual” I do not mean “specific person”—But I’m not conveying much, am I?
Perhaps I can’t tell you either how absolutely extraordinary the fact is that you Rogaviki have developed a high-level, sophisticated culture as hunters, who have never been farmers and have never known [kings]
Let me try anyhow to describe you from my outsider’s viewpoint. The Rogaviki, male or female, is by nature—by birth—emotionally self-sufficient. Apart from capturing an occasional invader (whom he usually kills out of hand for lack of knowing what else he might do) he feels no need to compel others to anything, whether by force or by subtler means such as he uses on his tame animals; nor has he the slightest wish, conscious or unconscious, to be led. Aside from his beasts,
I doubt if he is capable of giving or obeying a direct command.
The Rogaviki cannot be domesticated.
Throughout the rest of the world, humans can be, and are. Likeliest man evolved already self-domesticated, a creature not only taught for survival’s sake to work within the group and heed its [chief], but bred to this. Those who failed were punished till they learned, while the untrainable perished, by the will of the group.
You Rogaviki cooperate well, as long a
s you are in small, close-knit bands. But if someone grossly fails to do his share, or badly offends or endangers you, what is your response? You turn your back. You, an individual, will have nothing further to do with him, an individual (Or, oftener, her. The aggressiveness of your women as compared to your men is another curious thing about you, bold though the men are.) When the wrongdoer has been cut off by enough people, we get an Outrunner, or more probably a miserable death.
You have no [laws], just common sense and a limited amount of custom. The strongest bond on you, I’m sure, is the wish to please those persons you care about. You have no [trials] or [judgments], merely arbitrations by mutual consent. You have a high measure of [self-dicipline], and I believe a high average of intelligence, but these come simply from natural selection. They who lack them do not live to bring forth young.
And you have a need for open space which is more powerful than your wish for life itself. From this, maybe, everything else springs; your marriages, your arts, your feelings about the land, your whole social structure—your souls. (And yet again I use a Rogavi- kian word without being sure what it means.)
I don’t know whence that need arises. “Instinct” begs the question, doesn’t it? Many animals exhibit territoriality. My kind of human seems to have a weak form of it. In you it appears overwhelming. That mighty an inborn urge marks you off from me more sharply than could any difference in face or form.
I think your drive to guard your borders originated as nature’s response to the necessity of keeping space around you. But where does it come from?
[Pheromones]? A Killimaraichan word this time. It refers to vapors given off by an animal, to influence the behavior of fellow creatures. Musk in breeding season is a rather crude example. I’ve read how naturalists in my homeland think nowadays that ants and bees work together because of [pheromones]—laying trails to food, for instance. Among humans, who knows?
Maybe you Rogaviki breathe out a substance that, beyond a certain concentration, makes you uneasy. You can’t smell the stuff, understand; but maybe, beyond a point, you begin disliking the actual scent of man; and if crowdedness gets worse, your whole world seems wrong.
Donya nodded thoughtfully.
How and why this should be, remains guesswork till we know more. Here’s a notion of mine. When Ice came down, at first there was terrible want, until nature adapted to the changed conditions and grew abundant. Meanwhile, a species of human that had no wish to exist in vast, close-huddled numbers could survive better on the plains than the old sort.
I wonder if my hypothetical subtle fluid is the creation of a body chemistry which has effects more strange than this. I don’t suppose you ever thought about it, Donya, darling, but you—almost every woman of your people is the youthful sexual dream of every male out- lander, made real. Who else could give joy to so many men, and enjoy each of them, and yet have no morbid [compulsion] about it, but rather keep active in all the fields of life? Very few outlander females, or none, I can tell you.
But that alone cannot account for how you draw and hold our men. It’s nothing you want, I’m sure. In spite of everything, the [arrogance], the frequent [callousness], the [wantonness], in spite of everything, how [innocent] you Rogaviki women are! You actually warn us. Could it be that that substance which makes you what you are enters us likewise, but we are bom without a balancing element? You are no danger to men of your own kind, are you?
Could it even be that this is why you never come to [love] us as we do you—and you, maybe, do them, in your inmost households? There, I’ve used my mother’s tongue.
Donya rested under the sun, beside the stream. The breeze had quickened till it stirred her hair. Out past the shallows, a pike glided by, river wolf.
Well, dearest one, I’m at the finish. “At last,” you’re likely thinking. But you see, beyond this insight and these questions of mine, which someday may somehow help you, I have no gift to leave. And first I must explain my reasoning, before I could tell you what it’s led me to, simple though it is. I may be right, I may be wrong, but here is what I believe.
Everywhere on earth, humans are domestic animals.
Alone in the world and time, Rogaviki are wild animals.
I don’t say good, I don’t say bad. The future could be yours, or you could be doomed, or both our species could go on for the next million years. We will not live to imagine the end.
Morning is nearly on me, I’m bone-tired, I want to put this in the hands of a man unseasonably bound north today, I have nothing else worth your heed. I only have the hard knowledge that you and I, Donya, can no more be mates in any real way than hawk and sea lion. You told me so on the prairie, and afterward on the snows beside the river. Now I’ve tried to tell you why.
Fare always well, my lovely hawk.
Your
Josserek
The sun had reached noon when she smiled, more gently than ever he saw. Rising in a single flow, she stood above the stream, tore his letter in shreds, and watched them borne away.
“I will bring my folk your thought,” she said half aloud; “but your words want their freedom.”
She clad herself, mounted her horse, and rode back home to Owlhaunt.
Anderson, Poul - Novel 18 Page 21