Shaman

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  He sat in the “conference room” of the A-team’s hab-module, his hands folded meekly in his lap. He’d been in conference with Darrel and head geologist, Ivan Terezov, for less than ten minutes, and he was already having to work hard not to worry his sporran.

  Darrel shrugged. “Maybe, but we’ve been here for three weeks and the most activity we’ve seen is on Market Day. Folks show up from other villages and cram into the town hall and the swapping gets underway. Then you see some real action.”

  “Anything telling about the trading customs?”

  “Telling?” repeated Darrel. “Telling how?” He exchanged glances with Ivan.

  The two men could not have been more different. Where Darrel was broad, muscular and solid, Ivan presented the impression that his long, angular body might blow over in a stiff breeze. Where Darrel’s hair was cropped close to his square head, Ivan’s sable mane fell into his eyes and curled around his collar. Darrel was all business; Ivan looked as if he were living simultaneously in another dimension. Darrel liked to make sure his operation was “ship shape”; Ivan liked rocks. Not surprising in a geologist.

  “How do they deal with each other? Does it seem amicable, confrontational, competitive?”

  “Everything’s pretty friendly. They point, they haggle, they smile a lot, they trade their stuff, and when it’s all over, they bow.” He demonstrated, pulling his fist to his heart and dipping his head.

  “They’re quite generous.” Ivan reached into the collar of his shirt and pulled out a chain with an amulet of the fool’s tungsten crystals dangling from it. “One of them gave me this just because I admired it.”

  “They are generous,” said Darrel, smiling, “which is why I have hopes that we’ll strike a stellar deal for the mining rights. They don’t use much of the metal, though they’ve a fondness for the crystals. And they don’t actually mine it. What they do use they’ve picked up from river run-off and rock fall.”

  “But they do use the metal,” Rhys objected mildly.

  “For cook pots,” said Darrel. “They make household utensils, statues, that sort of thing. Which wrecks their smelters in pretty short order. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “Statues?” Rhys seized on the word. “Religious icons?”

  Darrel’s expression was wary. “Maybe.”

  “The laws of the Collective are clear about that. If for example, roesel is the substance of which religious items are made —”

  “Yes, professor. I know—Sub-section 5A: the ‘Santa’ Clause—we’re legally bound to respect native religious beliefs and customs.”

  Darrel’s sarcastic reference to the Protection of Religious Traditions clause in the Collective charter made Rhys cringe. He was certain a glance in a mirror would show a marked increase in the redness of his hair.

  “We tried to outline the PRT clause for them,” said Ivan quickly. “To reassure them. But I don’t know how much they understood of it.”

  Rhys straightened his kilt and stood. “Enough not to accidentally give up things that are dear to them, I hope.”

  Darrel’s face clouded. “Don’t take sides, Professor.”

  “Take sides?”

  Darrel rose. “I did a little research into your history with Tanaka, Dr. Llewellyn. Your reputation isn’t what Ms. Price advertised it to be. You’re not a company man.”

  “No, I’m an independent consultant.”

  “I meant that even when you were on Tanaka’s payroll you didn’t always put the company’s interests first.”

  Just short of grinding his teeth, Rhys forced his jaw to relax. “I’ve done good work for Tanaka. And I’ve done it without sacrificing the cultures from which we’ve acquired resources. The company once valued that. I intend to do good work for Tanaka here on Fourier’s World—again, without sacrificing the native’s interests.”

  “The company is changing,” said Darrel, “Don’t —”

  Ivan Terezov came abruptly to his feet. “Don’t take Darrel too seriously, Professor. He enjoys challenges so much he’ll create one out of thin air. I doubt,” he continued, ignoring his associate’s glower, “that the native’s interests are really in conflict with ours.”

  Darrel subsided. “Of course not,” he said, and reseated himself.

  “The first thing we need to do,” Rhys said, “is establish better communications with the natives than afforded by sign language and pointing. I imagine Yoshi will be ready to help out with that. I’d best go see what she’s got for us.”

  “May I tag along, professor?” asked Ivan.

  Rhys had no objection to that, though he rather suspected the gangly scientist was intended as a nanny... or a spy.

  o0o

  The Arkuit, as they called themselves, spoke a language that had no articles and no explicit tenses—those were implied. It also had several possessive cases. A noun could be modified by whether it belonged to “me” to “you” or to “us.”

  There were no explicit gender pronouns either—the word for “man” (zhenshin) was the same as the word for “woman”, the difference was in inflection. The emphasis was subtly on the first syllable the subject was a woman, and on the second if it was a man. You literally said, “Man does this” or “Woman does that.” The only pronoun was a neuter term—zhin—that corresponded to the human word one.

  The Lingua Franca translator digested this easily, as did Yoshi. By the end of her village tour, she was conversing with Rasimet without half-listening to the murmur of the LF in her ear.

  Rasimet was impressed, but showed puzzlement at the changes to Yoshi’s voice whenever the LF kicked in and pronounced words for her. The computerized voice was meant to mimic the user’s as perfectly as possible, but it had a mechanical quality that several times sent Rasimet into the Arkuit equivalent of a fit of giggles.

  Yoshi asked Rasimet about the products of the smelter and was shown cook pots, spoons, household utensils, fittings for carts and the metal bits and buckles the Arkuit used in the harnesses of their draft animals. None of the items were particularly artistic, but they were serviceable. Artistry, Yoshi found, was reserved for statues, ornaments and jewelry. These were beautifully rendered in softer metals and the stunning geifa crystals.

  In a shop two doors down from the smelter, Rasimet showed Yoshi a selection of lovely jewels, pointing out the different colors of crystal and communicating the relative value of the various shades.

  “Dark ones are best,” Rasimet said in Arkuit. “Pale ones are lesser. I like golden ones.”

  To illustrate, she pulled back the sleeve of her tunic and revealed several bangles with different shades of geifa crystals. The stones in her bracelets ranged from saffron to palest yellow, but it was the bangle composed entirely of buttery golden stones with fiery orange hearts that captured Yoshi’s gaze. She gave an involuntary exclamation of awe and touched a finger to the stones.

  “Oh, they’re lovely!” she said in Standard, then repeated in Arkuit. “Sympa—beautiful! That one, most of all.”

  “You like?” asked Rasimet, her eyes widening.

  “Yes. Much.”

  Rasimet glanced down at the bracelets, then slid the one Yoshi had touched from her wrist and held it out to her. “I am satisfied.”

  Yoshi shook her head and held out her hand to halt the other woman. “I couldn’t... it is dear to you.”

  “It is our way,” said Rasimet. “Our ‘culture’.” She said the word “culture” in Standard with obvious pride.

  Yoshi smiled, thanked her and accepted the gift, slipping it onto her own wrist.

  “Rasimet,” she said tentatively as the two made their way to a bake shop so fragrant it made Yoshi’s mouth water. “Do you, um, understand what stranger-people (the word was hom, but with an upward inflection) want from Arkuit?”

  Rasimet reflected on the question so long Yoshi was afraid she hadn’t made her meaning clear. Finally the Arkuit woman said, “Yes. You want roesel and geifa. From Sleeping Isvyerg. We do not unders
tand how.”

  The LF hiccupped. “Sleeping Isvyerg?” repeated Yoshi.

  Rasimet stopped in the middle of the street and pointed up at the mountains that dominated the eastern skyline. “Sleeping Isvyerg,” she said again. “Gorosh.”

  The word for mountain. “Mountain named Isvyerg?”

  Rasimet tilted her head down to the right in the affirmative.

  “What means ‘Isvyerg?’” Yoshi asked.

  “Emmm...”

  Rasimet considered that, ultimately coming up with another Arkuit word that the LF tripped over. She pointed across the street to where a large, shaggy draft animal was tethered, harnessed to one of the ubiquitous native carts. It reminded Yoshi of a yak. “Isvyerg.”

  Seeing Yoshi’s confusion, Rasimet laughed. “Bigger,” she said, spreading her arms wide. “Big-bigger.”

  Sleeping Big Yak? Yoshi looked back to the peaks with their caps of blue-white snow. They did look rather like a sleeping yak, she supposed.

  Rasimet led her into the bakery where the shopkeeper haggled with a customer over some goods laid out on the counter—three round, golden loaves of bread and a knife. It was not a native knife, but an old chef’s knife of human manufacture with a blade that had seen much honing.

  The Arkuit men looked up as the two women entered the shop. Once their gazes fell on Yoshi, the barter objects were forgotten.

  As she moved by the counter toward the shelves of baked goods flanking it, Yoshi gave the knife a closer look. On the blade just below the handle was embossed a symbol that she recognized.

  She started to ask Rasimet where it might have come from, but the other woman was already introducing her to the baker.

  “Woman is Yoshi,” she told the man, whose glossy coat was a shade of gold not unlike his bread. To Yoshi she said, “This man is Baker Burgat. And,” she added, turning her smile on the other fellow, “this man is Metalworker Oreth.”

  Yoshi greeted both men in their language, gratified by their pleased surprise.

  Rasimet turned her attention to baked goods then and had a series of words with Burgat that both Yoshi and the LF had trouble tracking. At the end of the dialogue, Burgat held up his hands in a “wait-wait” gesture, then disappeared into the back room. He reappeared with two lovely fat buns with shiny crusts. These he held out to Rasimet and Yoshi.

  “For you,” he said. “I am satisfied. Tell other stranger-people of Baker Burgat’s shop.”

  Accepting the fragrant and still warm bun, Yoshi promised to spread the word among the members of the advance team.

  As the two women stepped out into the street, Rasimet chuckled softly. “My thanks.”

  “Why?”

  “If you are not with me, Baker Burgat does not give bread. I swap for it.” She raised her head then, her eyes fixed on something up the way. “Ah! Your man-friend,” she said brightly.

  Yoshi looked up to see Rhys striding down the avenue toward them, his hair bright in the afternoon sun, his legs tanned and sturdy below the hem of his tartan. The lanky geologist—what was his name: Igor or Ivan?—was with him, but Yoshi barely noticed.

  Only when Rasimet laughed softly and nudged her did Yoshi realize she was blushing.

  o0o

  “You’ve outdone yourself, Yoshi,” Rhys told his assistant, once Rasimet had returned to the rhok jab. Tablet in hand, he paged through the raw list of terms she’d collected in the LF database. “Considering that you’ve been on the job for mere hours, you’ve expanded the lingua-base immensely.”

  “The professor is right, Ms. Umeki,” said Ivan, affording her a brilliant smile. “I’m in awe.” He glanced to one side and cleared his throat. “May I call you ‘Yoshi’?”

  She blinked at him. “Certainly, Professor.”

  “Ivan.”

  Yoshi smiled. “Ivan.”

  Rhys watched the brief exchange with a peculiar combination of amusement and unease. Yoshi was inarguably an attractive young woman—something Rhys had grown increasingly aware of over the years—but she had been even-handed in her polite rejection of the advances of the various men who had attempted to court her. Rhys found himself wondering what he would do if she were to respond to Ivan’s obvious interest.

  He shook himself and asked, “What do we know?”

  Yoshi launched. “They call themselves Arkuit. The village is low-tech, the economy is barter-based—as the advance team indicated,” she added with a nod at the still-smiling Ivan. “All the time I was in town I didn’t see anything that looked like money, but trade was going on everywhere. In fact, someone brought an obviously ancient knife into the bakery.” She turned her gaze up to Ivan. “I’d swear it was a Wüsthof.”

  Ivan grinned. “That belonged to our camp chef, Gunter. It was a gift, I guess you could say, to the metallurgist. Gunter has a collection of antique cutlery he likes to show off.”

  “Speaking of gifts—look.” Yoshi raised her wrist, making her new bangle sparkle.

  Rhys studied the bracelet. “Lovely. Where’d you get it?”

  “Rasimet. I admired it and she just gave it to me.”

  Ivan nodded. “That’s part of their culture, apparently. If someone admires something you possess, you offer it as a gift. Rather a lovely idea. We’ve had to learn to be careful not to react too strongly to things they show us and to take note when one of them expresses a desire for something of ours.”

  “Oh.” Yoshi turned her dark gaze to Ivan, who seemed to quiver. “I hope I didn’t insult Rasimet by trying to refuse her gift—or by not noticing that she wanted something from me.”

  “Oh, you can’t miss it when one of them wants something. It starts with pointing and smiling and nodding and if that doesn’t do the trick, they’ll touch it or ask to hold it.”

  Yoshi glanced at Rhys, gripping her Lingua Franca protectively. “Some of them have seemed very excited by the LF, Rhys. If they... well, do I have to give it to them?”

  That was a good question. The LF was too vital a piece of equipment to fall victim to the “Santa” Clause. And it would serve little useful purpose among the Arkuit.

  Those concerns barely registered. Rhys Llewellyn was entirely focused on the fact that Yoshi had called him “Rhys” without having to be prompted.

  o0o

  For safety’s sake, they downloaded Yoshi’s lingua-base and field notes to a second LF unit and backed it up on the Ceilidh’s computer for good measure. Yoshi explained to Rasimet what the LF was and how it served their mission.

  “It would be difficult,” she said tentatively, “to work without it. If someone liked it...”

  Rasimet blinked her extraordinary eyes slowly, then said, “You may declare Right of Substitution.”

  Yoshi could hear the capital letters in that phrase. “Right of Substitution?”

  “Sometimes person desires what you cannot give. It is not yours or it is something necessary to you. You offer object of same value.” She shrugged. “It is our way. We are generous people.”

  o0o

  Rhys peered up the steep slope past Darrel Franks’s broad back to the spot the Tanaka A-team was tentatively planning to drill their first bore. Nature had provided an entrée through a cavern that already burrowed deep into the mountain’s western flank. As geography would have it, the cave opened out onto a wide, flat ledge.

  “Even at an 80-20 split on the ore we’ll extract,” Darrel said, continuing the argument they’d been having since they left camp, “the Arkuit will get many times more than they’re using now.”

  “They might use more if their smelting technology was more robust,” observed Rhys, “and you could help them with that.”

  “Isn’t the Collective likely to take a dim view of us trading high-tech with these guys?” Darrel had reached the broad ledge at the cave mouth and turned back to face Rhys, who scrambled up after him.

  “High-tech? You consider a more durable smelting material high-tech?”

  “The point is it’s higher than their tech,�
�� said Darrel. “And as you note, if their smelters are improved, their use of the metal would increase. That’s hardly to our advantage.”

  “But it might be to theirs. You’re talking about intentionally keeping these people in the industrial dark ages so you can reap a profit.”

  “I’m talking about putting Tanaka’s interests first, Professor. We’re not harming the Arkuit, we’re just not accelerating their progress.”

  Darrel ended the discussion by turning to lead the way into a high, gaping slash in the mountainside. Members of their geological team passed in and out of the opening pursuing their duties. Several videographers recorded their efforts.

  Grinding his teeth in earnest now, Rhys swung around to help Yoshi up onto the little plateau, using the maneuver to drag his temper under control before he turned his attention back to Darrel Franks. “And what if the Arkuit improve their technology on their own, through trade and imitation? Then what? You have to plan ahead, Mr. Franks, and make allowances for what they might need ten years from now.”

  “No, I don’t. That’s not my job, Prof.”

  “No, it’s mine,” growled Rhys, “and don’t call me ‘prof.’”

  “Sorry, Professor,” Darrel said, but his lips twitched. “Can you honestly tell me you see a growing need for the ore? That this is not just wishful thinking on your part? These people have probably been living here for millennia. They’ve barely brushed the surface of what’s here.”

  “Actually,” interjected Yoshi, “they haven’t been here that long. They couldn’t have been or they would have made a bigger impact on the environment. Judging from Rasimet’s accounts and the village records, I’d say they moved here some time in the last century.”

  “There, you see,” said Rhys. “So maybe they’ve not had a chance to delve all that far into the caves.”

  Darrel paused in what was essentially a huge ante-room. Under the lights set up by the geology team, the veins of ore gleamed dully, eclipsed by the glitter of the crystals.

  “Tell me, Professor Llewellyn, did you find the climb up here difficult?”

  “What?...No.”