A Woman of the Iron People

by Eleanor Arnason

  In the end I found the camp. I walked into firelight. The oracle looked up. “Your hair is full of leaves. And there is dirt on your face.”

  “I’m not surprised.” I dropped the blankets. “There you are. Goddamn! I forgot something to hold water!”

  Nia made the gesture that meant “no matter.” The oracle took a blanket and rubbed it with one hand. “I like the texture, though it isn’t as soft as the wool that comes from a silverback.” He wrapped the blanket around himself.

  I got a blanket of my own and lay down in the cave. For a while I looked at the firelight, flickering on the stone wall and ceiling.

  I woke to sunlight. The oracle sat in the clearing by the fire, adding branches. His clothing—the blue shorts and the yellow cotton shirt—were already a little dirty.

  “Where is Nia?”

  “She went down to look at her fish traps.”

  I got up and pulled my knife out of my pocket. “She’ll need this. I’m going down to the village to eat.”

  “You have the luck! I wish I had a place to eat. I am getting tired of fish.”

  “Maybe I can work something out.”

  This time the trip was easy. The path down was clear. Who had made it? I wondered. Did people come here?

  I went to my dome and showered, putting on new clothes: burgundy-red coveralls, a white belt, white socks, and Japanese sandals. I fastened my hair at the nape of my neck and frowned at my reflection. I definitely needed a haircut. But what style? Maybe I should wait till I got to the ship. Meiling always knew what was in fashion. I went to the dining hall.

  Eddie and Derek sat together. They were in the shade today, and Eddie was not wearing glasses. I got coffee and a muffin and went over.

  “It’s a good thing you showed up,” Derek said. “Eddie has decided that we need to hold a meeting.”

  I sat down and poured out coffee. What an aroma! How had I lived without it?

  Eddie said, “I’ve been telling Derek, you ought to start work on your reports. You’re in a new environment now. You’re getting a different kind of information. It’s going to start interfering.”

  “Gresham’s Law of Memory,” Derek said.

  “What?”

  “New information drives out old. Bad information drives out good.”

  I buttered the muffin, which was banana walnut bran. “I don’t think that formulation is right.”

  “It is frivolous and unuseful,” Eddie said. “Which seems to be Derek’s mood this morning.” He glanced at the notebook in front of him. It was open, and there was print on the screen. “Will you start work on the report, Lixia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes.”

  Eddie pressed a button in the notebook. A line of print vanished. “The medical team says they want to watch you for another day.”

  “Not us personally,” Derek said. “They are watching our cultures. If nothing strange and terrible has appeared by tomorrow evening, we can go back to work.”

  Eddie looked impatient, but he let Derek finish talking. Then he leaned forward. “Ivanova and I want you to accompany us when we go upriver.”

  I made the gesture that meant “I know.”

  “Will you go?”

  “Yes.”

  He pressed the button again. Another line of print vanished. “Derek has suggested that we ask Nia and the oracle to come along.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. She’s from that village. They sent her into exile. They won’t harm her if she goes back, but they might not welcome her especially warmly.”

  “Ask her,” Derek said.

  “Why do you want her to go?”

  “She and the oracle know more about humans than anyone else on this planet. They might have something useful to say about the problem at hand. And I don’t want to leave the two of them alone in the middle of nowhere. We can’t give them food, and I don’t know how people are going to feel about giving them tools or weapons. God knows what will happen if these savages get fishing hooks or knives with stainless steel blades. And—” He grinned. “I’m afraid to leave them here unprotected. The med people want to examine them. So do the biologists and the psychologists and…”

  “What do you think?” Eddie asked.

  I finished the muffin, washing it down with coffee. “We might as well ask her. Derek is right. She is something of an expert on humanity. We can’t leave her alone on the plain. And I’d hate to come back and find that she’d left because of the medical people. She might. She isn’t entirely easy with us, and a medical examination can be pretty dehumanizing, even if you know what is going on.”

  Eddie nodded. More print disappeared out of the notebook. I glanced over. The screen was empty except for two characters. I squinted. The number four and a question mark. “Is that it?”

  He looked at me somberly, his eyes unprotected. He wore a blue shirt this morning: plain chambray, open at the neck to show a bone-and-shell necklace. His hair was clipped at the back of his neck. The clip was beaded: a geometric design. Dakota work, like the necklace. Most of his ancestors were Anishinabe, but a few had come from the Seven Council Fires. A few more were French or English.

  “There’s one more thing.” He paused.

  “I told her,” said Derek.

  “What do you think, Lixia?”

  “I think it’s a lousy idea.”

  Eddie sighed. Number four vanished. He turned the notebook off and closed it, folding the screen over the keyboard. The notebook was still too big to go into an ordinary pocket. The problem was human fingers. They had not been miniaturized. The keyboard had to be at least twenty centimeters wide in order for most people to use it.

  “I was afraid of that,” Eddie said. “I’ll talk to you later. Please start on the report.” He walked away from us, carrying the notebook in one hand.

  “That is going to be an unpleasant conversation,” I said.

  Derek made the gesture of agreement.

  “If you had told him no, I could have avoided it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “If you had told him no, he’d be angry with you. Now, he is going to be angry with me.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you plan this?”

  “I don’t plan nearly as much as you think I do.”

  “Huh.” I took my dishes to the recycling table, then went to the supply dome and got a notebook with a 256K memory.

  I spent the morning in my room. First I wrote down the stories that I’d heard the night before: the People Whose Gift Is Folly.

  After that I did an outline of my report.

  I stopped at noon and went and got a sandwich. I was missing a gorgeous day. Huge clouds blew across the sky. The lake glittered. There were people on the dock, unloading more boxes. I took the sandwich back to my room and ate it as I wrote.

  I noticed, finally, that my back hurt. No more sunlight came in my window, and the sky was more green than blue. A late afternoon color. I saved my work and shut off the notebook, then stood and stretched.

  It was too early for dinner. In any case I wasn’t hungry. I decided to take a walk.

  I went south along the lake. The beach was flat and comparatively wide. Easy to walk on. Here and there streams came down off the bluff. They were small and almost dry. I stepped over them.

  The beach narrowed. Vegetation loomed on my right, and I could smell the damp, close aroma of a forest. I looked back. The camp was out of sight.

  “Ha-runh,” said something.

  I looked ahead. A creature had emerged from the vegetation. It stood on the beach, about ten meters away, regarding me with a tiny dark eye. It didn’t seem worried. Why should it be? It was as big as a rhinoceros.

  I kept still, frightened but also interested.

  It was a quadruped. Nothing like a bowhorn. Its skin was brown and hairless. Its legs were thick. It had a long tail, which it held in a graceful curve. The tip waved slowly back and forth. What did that m
ean? Was it a sign of good humor?

  Odd flat horns stuck off the animal’s head. There were two pairs. They reminded me of the cantilevered roofs of certain modern buildings. Or of shelf fungus. They were covered with a fine short down or fur.

  Brown velvet fungus. Brown velvet cantilevered roofs.

  The animal watched me for another moment or two. Then it picked its way delicately to the lake, the huge feet making hardly any noise, and waded into the water. It had a flexible, almost-prehensile upper lip, which it lifted as it drank, exposing its teeth. They were long and flat and shovel-like.

  A herbivore, almost certainly. I suspected it was a browser.

  It lifted its head and looked at me again, then went back to drinking.

  Time to leave. I backed down the beach. The animal kept on drinking, though its tail began to twitch. A rapid, nervous motion. My hunch was it indicated irritation.

  I stopped moving.

  The animal waded back to shore.

  Where could I run to? Would I be safer in the water or the forest?

  The animal paused a moment and stared at me, then turned and trotted south along the beach. I watched it go, the wide backside swaying, the tail moving to and fro. From this angle the animal looked silly. I did not think it would have looked silly if it had been coming toward me.

  I walked back to camp, glancing over my shoulder from time to time to make sure nothing was coming up behind me. The beach remained empty.

  Marina was in her dome, feeding leaves to a biped. “It doesn’t like anything I give it. I’m going to have to let it go. Unless I decide to dissect it.”

  “I’ve got to tell you what I saw.”

  She glanced at me. Today she wore golden contacts. They matched her earrings, which were intricate and dangly and chimed every time she moved. “Do I need a recorder?”

  “Yes.”

  She found one and turned it on. “Okay.”

  I described the animal.

  “That big?”

  “I’m not especially good at judging sizes. But it had legs like an elephant. How big does that make it?”

  “Not small. Could it have been a domestic animal?”

  “I don’t know. But I haven’t seen anything like it in any village.”

  “If it isn’t.” She tugged her lower lip. “More problems. More questions. I wish I knew which god to thank.” She turned off the recorder. “I’ll go down there tomorrow and look at the prints. If I’m lucky, I’ll find some droppings. That will tell us what the critter eats.”

  “Nia might know what it is.”

  Marina nodded. “I really ought to spend some time with her. How about tomorrow? You introduce us. She can come with me and look for piles of shit.”

  “Sounds great.”

  I left her there, still trying to feed the biped, which was a lovely specimen. The feathers on the back were pale soft gray. The belly was cream-white. The forearms ended in pink claws, and the clawed feet were the same delicate color. The animal moved restlessly back and forth in its cage. The clawed hands picked up Marina’s food, then dropped it. The clawed feet kicked the leaves away.

  I went to the big dome. This time I followed a sign, which led me to the commons—a large room full of low tables and comfortable chairs. It was almost empty. I saw Brian, sitting with a pair of Chinese. He lifted a hand in greeting. I waved and went over to the bar.

  The bartender was a stocky man with Mayan features. Most of the time his eyes were ordinary dark brown. Now and then, when the light hit them at just the right angle, the irises turned green—a shimmering metallic color, stunning and disturbing.

  “Li Lixia.” He held out his hand. “Gustavo Isidis Planitia. I’m on the medical team.”

  We shook. He asked me to name my toxin. I said chablis.

  He filled a glass. “Are you still in quarantine?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Eddie put out the word to leave you alone. We are supposed to give you plenty of time to recover from whatever.”

  I tasted the wine. It was young and harsh. There had been no practical way to keep the winery going on the long trip out and no good reason to. The people were sleeping. The computers did not drink. All our wine had been made in the last year or so. It all tasted like this or worse.

  “Eddie is probably right,” I said. “We are having some trouble readjusting.”

  “I think it’s a plot,” Gustavo said. “We know Eddie’s position. I think he is trying to control information—from you to us and from us to you.”

  I looked at him. His eyes were green at the moment, shining like the plumage of some kind of tropical bird.

  “That sounds like paranoia,” I said.

  “That’s a technical term, and it’s out of date. What you mean is—you think I’m harboring an unfounded suspicion. What you said is—you think I am crazy.”

  “Okay. I withdraw paranoia. But I think you are wrong. Thank you for the wine.”

  “My pleasure. And I’m glad to have met you.”

  I sat down by myself. There was a bowl of bar mix on the table: nuts and dried fruit and other things I could not identify. Pretty tasty. I ate a handful and sipped at my wine.

  It might be true. Eddie might be trying to isolate us. On the other hand I wasn’t in the mood for political game-playing. Maybe he knew that and was simply protecting me.

  Brian stopped on the way out and introduced me to his companions. They were young and earnest-looking, from the planetology team. They bowed and shook hands and said it was a pleasure.

  “We’re going to have to talk,” said Brian.

  “Okay.”

  “We look forward,” said one of the Chinese.

  “Eagerly,” said the other.

  They left. I drank more wine and looked at the window above me. It was hexagonal, set in the curving ceiling. Above it was a cloud, moving in the wind and darkening as the last sunlight faded off it.

  “Can I join you?” asked Eddie.

  I made the gesture of assent.

  He lowered himself into a chair. “Derek has talked to Nia and the oracle. He is willing to go. She says she has to think.”

  I made the gesture of acknowledgment.

  He took a long swallow from the bottle he carried—it was mineral water—and set the bottle on the table, then took a big handful of the bar mix. He glanced at me. “Is there coconut in this?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t like coconut.” He ate the mix, washing it down with more mineral water. “You really think my idea is lousy.”

  “It won’t work. We’ll get in trouble. And it’s immoral. The people here have the right to make their own decision, using good information.”

  He frowned. “I think Ivanova has an advantage. I’m trying to do something about it.”

  “How so?” I ate some more of the bar mix.

  “These people know about strangers and trade. When Ivanova talks about cultural exchange, they are going to understand her. But they know nothing about modern technology. And they have no idea what happens when an industrial society meets a society that is barely agricultural.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘barely.’ It seems to me they have a pretty highly developed agriculture. And animal husbandry. What they don’t have is a state apparatus—which can be a sign of a primitive society or of a very highly developed one.”

  “You are playing games, Lixia. These people are tribal, pre-urban, and pre-industrial. They don’t have the kind of society that the anarchists imagine. They have what my people had till the end of the nineteenth century.” He paused for a moment and looked at me, his expression thoughtful. “You aren’t going to help me, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Will you report me?”

  “To the all-ship committee? No. I’m not sure what the charge would be. Corrupting a translator? Conduct unbefitting a scholar?”

  “God, what a mess.” He stood and walked out of the room.

  I couldn’t tell from th
e tone of his voice whether he was angry or merely depressed. Angry, most likely. At the moment I did not care. I would in the morning when I was sober. But now … I finished drinking my wine and ate another handful of the bar mix, then I stood. My coordination was off. I swayed slightly.

  “Are you all right?” asked Gustavo.

  “Yes.” I decided to skip dinner. I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t like to be the only drunk in a room. Curious, that one glass of wine should hit so hard. I went to my room and to bed.

  Waking, I looked up and saw nothing outside my window. A dim grayness. There were fine beads of water on the glass. I could feel moisture in the air, even inside.

  I got up and showered, putting on coveralls, a jacket, heavy socks and shoes.

  Outside it was cool, maybe even cold. The bluff was invisible. I could barely see the trees at the edge of camp. The domes around me had lost most of their color and most of their solidity. They seemed to float in the fog: shadows or bubbles.

  I walked to the lake. I could see the first few meters of water. It barely moved, making no noise as it touched the pebble beach. Why was fog so appealing? Was it the mystery? The sense of possibility? There was an old story that argued for the existence of many alternate worlds in close proximity. Sometimes the worlds touched and—for a time—blurred together. That made fog. It was the blending of different realities. Sometimes, when the worlds separated and the fog cleared, people found themselves in unexpected places. They had crossed over. They were in an alternate reality.

  I decided I wasn’t interested in an alternate reality. Not at the moment. Though I liked the idea that life was blurred and shadowed by possibility. Nothing was fixed. Nothing was certain. There were no sharp edges, no immutable courses.

  I walked up to the big dome and had breakfast with Marina and a trio of biologists. They asked me questions about the natives. I answered as best I could.

  “Chia met a native,” Marina said and pointed at a tiny brown woman.

  “You did?”

  “Yes. North of the camp. I was looking for—” She hesitated. “We haven’t got a name for them. They look like centipedes. They are twenty centimeters long, and they live under rocks in the water.” She paused. “Most of them are blue.”