Shaman

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

“This is the vent closest to the village. Do you notice anything ‘telling’ about it?” He made a gesture that took in the entire chamber.

  Rhys pivoted slowly, his eyes taking in the grandeur of the place. The steeply canted walls seemed to go on forever into the heart of the mountain, sparkling in the false light of the lamps. The ceiling was a distant wedge of shadow, and the floor was solid rock with a fine carpet of silt.

  Rhys took a deep breath of the cool cavern air. It smelled of damp earth and age. This cavern might have gone uncounted eons without the touch of man...

  “Oh,” said Yoshi.

  “Oh, what?” Rick, bringing up the rear with his holocam, stopped to look at her.

  Darrel said, “This cave is a half-hour walk from the village, and yet no native of that village has ever excavated here. These walls are unmarked. What signs of exploration we have found end right about where you’re standing, Rick. The Arkuit seem to have no interest in this cave or in any others.”

  “Perhaps it’s sacred to them,” Rhys suggested. “In which case your mining it...”

  Ivan cleared his throat. “They’ve shown no interest in our interest either, Professor. Llewellyn. I mean, maybe they’re just afraid to say anything or maybe what we’ve done hasn’t broken any taboos... yet.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to know that,” said Rhys, “and that’s to ask. Which I intend to do.”

  “Of course you do,” murmured Darrel. “Anything to keep Tanaka from getting these resources.”

  “That’s not what I’m about at all,” Rhys objected. “I merely don’t want to see a future in which if an Arkuit uses these resources he or she is considered a criminal.”

  “That would never happen!” Ivan exclaimed. “Tanaka has never unfairly —”

  “‘Never’ is a very dangerous word, Ivan,” Rhys observed. “And as Darrel has noted, Tanaka is changing.” He shook his head in surrender and glanced at Darrel. “Very well. What do you intend to offer them?”

  “We intend to set aside sixty percent of all crystals for their use. Although I’d write in a clause that allows that to be renegotiated if our need for the crystals increases.”

  “Need?” echoed Rick.

  “I’m sure,” said Ivan, “that we can also work for a deal that will take the natives’ projected needs into account. And...” He glanced at his associate. “...if this place is sacred, then... well, we’re obligated to be sensitive to that.”

  Darrel shook his head and led them further into the mountain.

  o0o

  “Have you ever gone up to mountain hall?” Yoshi asked Rasimet that evening as they enjoyed a ceremonial meal in the great stone hall at the head of the village.

  The place was lit with torches and lamps that burned for hours with the sap from a local conifer. Family groups sat about low tables of odd shapes and sizes chattering and eating.

  Rasimet glanced up from her plate, a piece of fish speared on the end of her eating stick. “Gorosh jab?” she repeated.

  Yoshi didn’t know the Arkuit word for “cave” and the LF was suddenly no help at all. It offered a variety of suggestions—words for cup, house, hole. She settled on the last of these and used her hands to say “Big, big hole in side of mountain.”

  “No. What is it?”

  “Place with much roesel and geifa. More than in stream.”

  “Oh, you mean where stranger-men work.”

  “Yes. Have you been?”

  “No. Though I think maybe Metalworker Oreth has.”

  Yoshi tried to read her expression for awe or concern. “Why is that? Is Sleeping Isvyerg sacred? Does it have special spirit?”

  Rasimet gave her the most extraordinary look and blinked once, slowly. “All places have special spirit,” she said solemnly. “Same where you come from?”

  “Yes. We care about this—if you don’t want us to dig in sacred places...”

  Rasimet glanced around and, espying her two colleagues, Prosim and Parsim, she stood. “Pardon, I must speak to my fellows.”

  The Arkuit woman vacated her place at the table and Yoshi found herself face to face with Rhys, who’d been seated on Rasimet’s opposite side.

  “Well, that got a response,” Rhys said quietly, his eyes going to where Rasimet conferred with her fellow council members.

  “Yes, but which part of it?”

  o0o

  Early the next day, with the aid of their LF units and Yoshi’s much-expanded lingua-base (and Yoshi herself), Tanaka’s A-Team leaders sat down and presented to the leaders of the Arkuit what it was they wanted.

  Darrel Franks had asked to make the presentation himself and Rhys acquiesced until it became clear from the way he was posing the situation that he was angling for the Arkuit to simply give the humans the “rock of little value,” as was their way. At that point he stepped in and made it clear that they intended to barter for the substance called roesel.

  “Clearly it is of value to us,” Rhys said mildly, “or we wouldn’t want it.”

  The village elders agreed that this was so.

  Ivan, who had been warned about Rasimet’s reaction to the question of sacredness, sketched out the impact of the mining operation on the mountain and on the village below it. The humans were planning, he told them, to set up a base camp some distance to the north on the mountain itself so that they would have little direct effect on town life.

  Then Darrel asked questions about what the Arkuit might want in return for the rights to mine Sleeping Isvyerg.

  Rhys was secretly concerned that the Arkuit would ask for technology that Tanaka could not, for constitutional reasons, give away. A superior chef’s knife was one thing—a food replicator or a power generator was something else again.

  The Arkuit, however, made no such requests. Instead, with a glance at her peers, Rasimet said, “We may not barter until Sleeping Isvyerg is satisfied.”

  Rhys glanced at Darrel and found the other man glowering at him. “Satisfied in what way?” Rhys asked.

  “Isvyerg wishes to see how roesel will be taken from one’s body and how it will be used.”

  Ivan blinked. “Well, I can explain to you in more detail —”

  “No,” Rasimet said in Standard. “Isvyerg must see how this will be done and know if it will harm her. Can you show mountain what her future holds?”

  This was a new wrinkle. “How may we do this?” Rhys asked.

  Rasimet gave the Arkuit version of a shrug and returned to her native language. “Perhaps you can build machines you have shown us” —she gestured at the holo-display Ivan had used during his presentation to show the laser bore and refiner module Tanaka wished to install— “and show mountain spirit how they will work. This way, Isvyerg will know one will not be harmed.”

  “If you cannot do this,” said Prosim, “I fear we have no right to let you wake Sleeping Isvyerg.”

  o0o

  Now it was the humans’ turn to withdraw and consult. Rhys called for a half-hour break during which he, Darrel, and Ivan conferred in hushed but intense voices on the verandah at the rear of the meeting hall.

  Wanting no part of that debate, Yoshi took a walk down the main avenue, lost in thought. The words Rasimet had used to describe the mountain rang ominously in her head. The mountain was personified, anthropomorphized—more than that, she had chosen the human female pronoun to describe the mountain spirit. It wasn’t likely that “she” would approve of her “body” being penetrated by an alien laser. There was an inherent sexual imagery to that, and Yoshi was afraid the Arkuit might see as violation.

  Passing by the metallurgist’s shop, she was jarred out of her reverie by the sound of childish voices raised in discord. She skirted the building and peered into the clearing behind it. Amid the ruins of abandoned smelters, two Arkuit children were engaged in a spirited debate, while several of their cohorts picked through piles of tailings.

  Lingering in the shadow of the shop buildings, Yoshi began to catch isolated words. Puzzl
ing words. Reluctantly (it galled her to have to use it), she flipped on her LF unit and was hit with a full tilt disagreement.

  “No,” a young gray and black stippled girl was insisting. “It is mine. I found it there.” She pointed to the maw of a ruined smelter and raised her hand. In it was what appeared to be the metal effigy of an animal.

  It took Yoshi a moment to realize that while the little statuette was intact, one of the legs was misshapen.

  “But Wepuin, see,” argued the other child, a ginger-brindled boy, “Isvyerg has bad leg. You don’t want.”

  Isvyerg? Yoshi squinted at the figurine. It could be the image of one of the yaks, she supposed.

  “Yes, I do. It is mine.”

  The boy made an exasperated sound that was perfectly understandable in any language. “Not so, it is mine. Isn’t it, Heawmet?” He turned and appealed to a third youngster who crouched on the ground nearby, sifting through some slag.

  Heawmet blinked at the other two and shrugged. “I didn’t see who found it,” she said. “But Wepuin is closest to smelter and I hear one sing out.”

  “Get that, Gorafi?” asked Wepuin with obvious smugness. “My find. Finding is owning.”

  That had the sound of an aphorism.

  “If you won’t give it to me,” said Gorafi archly. “I will go home and not seek treasure with you anymore.” He turned to make good on his word.

  Her surprise carried Yoshi backward a step. She trod on a piece of loose matrix and let out a tiny yip. The three children looked up at her, startled.

  Wepuin swiftly shoved the half-molten icon into her shoulder bag. “Greetings, stranger-woman,” she said and smiled. “Can we be helpful?”

  “No, I... I was just, um, wondering how these broken smelters and kilns might be fixed.”

  Three heads swiveled toward the nearest such object.

  “Plains Arkuit will make new ones,” observed Gorafi.

  Yoshi smiled. “You’re right. New is better, yes?”

  The three nodded, eyeing her in a way that eloquently stated their opinion of this so-called “alien intelligence.”

  She waved goodbye to them and retreated swiftly toward the meeting hall. She checked her chron—she was late. She moved faster.

  o0o

  “You’re late,” Rhys said.

  At the expression of utter surprise on his face, a giggle rose in Yoshi’s throat. She glanced to where Darrel Franks was gesturing at them from the door of the meeting hall. Ivan stood next to him. He flashed Yoshi a smile. The giggle died.

  “Sir,” she said to Rhys, “can we talk before we go back in?”

  Darrel came out onto the verandah. “What’s to talk about? We need to move on to the next step.”

  “The next step?” Yoshi asked.

  Ivan and Darrel exchanged glances, then Ivan said. “I recommended we set up a sort of proto-operation—proof of concept for the deity, I guess—a single bore with a recovery system and refinery module...”

  Yoshi turned to Rhys. “Sir, I’d advise caution. I had a strange experience in the village just now.”

  “‘Rhys,’” prompted Rhys. “Go on.”

  She went into a swift recitation of her encounter with the children behind the metallurgist’s. When she had finished, Darrel shrugged and Ivan spread his hands bemusedly.

  “I don’t get it. So, some kids fight over a toy. What does that have to do with our negotiations?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Yoshi said, “but doesn’t it seem contradictory to you, Dr. Terezov?”

  “‘Ivan,’” prompted Ivan. “How so?”

  “The native children squabbling over a ‘treasure?’” said Rhys thoughtfully. “It suggests that sharing isn’t an ingrained behavior or at least not a universal one.”

  “You’re not suggesting it should affect the negotiations, are you?” Darrel asked.

  “Not at all, just... don’t be hasty.”

  “We’ve been cultivating this relationship for weeks, Dr. Llewellyn. I don’t think we’re being ‘hasty’ in trying to move forward to the next step, which apparently is reassuring their mountain goddess that we’re not going to harm her. Fine—we need to set up a prototypical operation for our own purposes anyway.”

  “Perhaps while you’re negotiating, we can be investigating the Arkuit culture more thoroughly,” Rhys suggested. “We’ve spent most of our time dealing with the language barrier. I think maybe we need to move beyond that.”

  Darrel shook his head. “Zarber warned me about you, Doctor. He said if we pressed forward too quickly you’d start looking for reasons to delay. He was right. Makes me wonder if he isn’t the better man for the job, now that we’ve dealt with the language barrier.”

  Yoshi felt her face going hot. Someone had apparently briefed Darrel Franks on Rhys’s contentious relationship with the other negotiator.

  Rhys’s cheeks blushed deep red before he said, “I’m only suggesting a few days to investigate the implications of Yoshi’s observations.”

  “You can investigate all you like, Professor. I intend to take steps to appease Sleeping Isvyerg.”

  o0o

  Rhys had no choice but to aid Darrel Franks in the pursuit of appeasement. In the face of Arkuit reservations, the humans expressed concern about what the mountain spirit thought; Darrel even went so far as to lead the ewis homs to the cave so as to explain to the deity in their presence how the bore would be laser-drilled and the cutting machinery set up.

  The Arkuit leaders grew even more skeptical. They were concerned that invading their mountain’s body for the sake of something as nearly worthless as roesel (literally, “pot metal”) would anger Sleeping Isvyerg and trigger a fiery response from her inactive volcano.

  Ivan spoke to the mountain. He reassured Isvyerg that if she didn’t like the mining setup, it would be dismantled and removed. This seemed to impress the village elders; they withdrew for a hasty conference, then allowed the demo to proceed.

  Darrel was oddly philosophical. “I guess it’s good news/bad news,” he said the day the proto-bore was complete. “Their mountain spirit might screw the deal, but they really don’t get how valuable this stuff could be. If Isvyerg smiles on us, the Arkuit won’t care what we do with the ore as long as they get some of the gems.”

  That attitude decided Rhys. He refused to negotiate a contract that allotted all or most of the ore to Tanaka and only sixty percent of the gems to the Arkuit.

  Vladimir Zarber arrived within a day to take over the talks. Rhys and his companions were “excused” from the negotiations, which meant that Rhys’s only insight into the ongoing talks was through Ivan Terezov, who found it difficult to withhold information from Yoshi.

  As a salve to her guilty conscience, Rhys involved Yoshi in furthering their understanding of Arkuit culture. To that end, he took her and Rick into the village the day the proto-mine went into operation—as much to keep her mind off of that as to collect some evidence that the Arkuit needed fool’s tungsten.

  “I’m hoping,” Rhys told Danetta during a hurried strategy call, “we can at least prove a broad enough usage of the roesel to be able to thwart any idea of cutting the Arkuit out of their share. That’s hard when they don’t seem to care much about it themselves. I’m not sure how hopeful I am. It’s hard to see how we can argue that the ore might play a key role in their economy when it’s so bloody hard for them to work. In fact, it seems their greatest export is their fine cloth. I’ve come to understand it’s highly prized by their neighbors.”

  “Do what you can,” she’d said.

  They split up—Yoshi going to the cloth-maker’s while Rhys and Rick visited the jeweler’s shop. Rick took a holographic record while Rhys followed the processes of the craftsmen.

  Apprentices brought baskets of raw rock up from the river, then sorted through it all, dividing the crystals into piles according to size and color. The smaller colored gems were given directly to the jeweler, while the larger, paler ones were scooped into baskets and
stacked to one side.

  Rhys turned his attention to the artisan’s attempts to remove individual crystals from the matrix. He did it using a metal implement with a chisel-shaped end.

  “Is that made of roesel?” Rhys asked.

  The Arkuit man nodded. “Oreth fashioned it,” he said, “in belly of Isvyerg where flames slumber.”

  Rhys recalled Rasimet’s assertion that the metallurgist had gone into the mountain caves. “Oreth forged it inside the mountain?”

  “Yes. Very dangerous. Very difficult. I am satisfied to have it. There are few like it and it cost many fine gems.”

  “Would it be good,” Rhys asked, “to have more tools made of roesel?”

  “For me, yes,” said the jeweler smiling. “For Oreth, perhaps not. If there are more, they will not be so dear.”

  Rhys’s pulse leapt. Turning to make sure Rick had recorded the interaction—which he had—Rhys’s attention was arrested by activity around the baskets of the palest crystals. A couple of young Arkuit had just arrived to claim them. On the off hope that these might be put to some use he could catalogue, Rhys and Rick followed them to the shop of Metalworker Oreth.

  Within the metallurgist’s high-ceilinged workshop, Rhys and Rick watched Oreth’s apprentices feed first the over-sized crystals then raw fool’s tungsten into one of five tumbling devices arranged around a large central table. Each was kept moving by an apprentice working a set of wooden foot pedals.

  “Now, what’s that in aid of?” Rhys wondered, raising his voice over the grinding of machinery.

  “Over there.” Rick nodded toward a tumbler at the far side of the table. It had been stopped and was now being tipped on end. Holocam in hand, he moved toward the spot, drawing Rhys after him.

  They reached the tumbler as a couple of muscular young Arkuit emptied the contents of the primitive machine onto the table. Those contents consisted of the large geifa crystals and fine pebbles of fool’s tungsten.

  Rhys stared at them. The gems had cut the ore into neat little chunks much better for—he glanced at the smelters sitting out in the yard behind the shop—the next step.

  “Cut stone,” murmured Rick from right beside him. “That’s what Yosh said geifa means. It’s not what they are; it’s what they do.”