Survivor

by Octavia E. Butler

  “For a while, there was talk of everyone leaving at once in several ships, but one unanswered question prevented them from doing that: What would happen if even one of their ships was disabled or destroyed? What would the mass destruction of that ship’s occupants do to the people in nearby ships? The distant dying of the people on that first ship had been agonizing for the Earthbound observers. What would it be like to experience that agony at closer range? Could one ship drag the others down in a spiral of madness and death? They didn’t want to find out. And they didn’t want to risk the whole existence of their kind to only one huge ship, even though such a ship could have been built.

  “So they go on building ships for us. And sometimes, they send groups of their children with us. The mental abilities of the children don’t mature until sometime after puberty so the children tolerate space travel as easily as we do.”

  “And will they do that with us?” asked Alanna. “Send a group of their children?”

  “No!” said Neila with sudden vehemence. “Not with us. Thank God, the leaders of Forsyth have promised us that much. Those children, Lanna…” She groped for words. “Those children are like the eggs some wasps lay inside the bodies of living caterpillars. They’re not evil, any more than any other parasite, but when they grew up, when their mental abilities matured, they would quietly, slowly, enslave us. Our Mission would be over, even forgotten, perhaps. They would become our gods.”

  “They need not,” said Alanna. “They could be stopped.”

  “But, I tell you, their power…”

  “Need never mature. Missionaries are not helpless caterpillars. They can kill the children before the children mature.”

  Neila stared down at her sadly. “Children, Alanna…?”

  “Why not?” Alanna touched her side where the Missionary guard had shot her. “At least those children are really dangerous.”

  “Yes… And I’m sure any Missionaries who knew about them would kill them if they could. But it’s not that simple. You see, the people of Forsyth are not only able to read minds, but to change them, condition them. Host Missionaries are programmed to be the best possible parents before they even see the children. They’re programmed to defend those children with their own lives.”

  Alanna thought about that for a while, then said, “Now I see why our people here are afraid.”

  “No. They don’t know most of what I’ve told you. It’s best that they not know.”

  “Jules knows?”

  “Yes. Jules and I.”

  “How?”

  “Jules and I were born in Forsyth, Lanna. We’ve already served our time of slavery.” She paused, stared straight ahead at nothing. “Twenty-five years ago we were freed and allowed to organize a group of newly arrived refugees into a Mission colony. Now, finally, I think we’re being rewarded for our earlier years of service.”

  As it turned out, the reward was a second Earth. The Verrick Colony Mission Ship sought out a blue world of islands and island continents—a world that was not only habitable, but comfortable. A world so Earthlike that it made the Missionaries feel at first as though they had only moved to a different part of their homeworld. A clean new part.

  Their ship, whose technology they had never understood, died right on schedule as soon as they touched down. Died, as they soon learned, was exactly the right word.

  One of the first things they did upon landing was break into the sealed compartments that they had been warned not to touch while their ship was in space. Within, they found the engines, the Dana Drive, huge and incomprehensible, and they found a corpse.

  The corpse frightened most of the people because they did not know who it had been or why it was there, freshly dead, in their ship. Also, the corpse was deformed.

  It was the body of a young man, dressed in the bright-colored style of the city of Forsyth. His body was short and squat and his head large. His forehead bulged strangely on one side and seemed almost sunken on the other. His mouth was slack and half open, drooling. Jules looked down at him and wept the only tears Alanna had ever seen him shed. Then he ordered a pair of the younger men to dig a grave. He himself carried the corpse out to be buried, and when the people questioned him, he would tell them nothing. To Neila and Alanna, he said, “There are all kinds of slaves.” He looked at Neila. “You know, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “They used to just destroy the defectives that they couldn’t…repair. I didn’t realize they’d stopped.”

  “They’ve found a use for them. That one must have been one of their own kind gone wrong.”

  “But what was he for, locked in there by himself?”

  “Unless there’s equipment—a computer or something—aboard that we haven’t found, I’m going to assume that somehow, that man was our guidance system.”

  “But how could he…?”

  “He could be programmed to do whatever they wanted him to do. You know that. Programmed to control the drive, and propel the ship to wherever his ability and his implanted knowledge told him there might be a habitable world. Then, when his job was finished, programmed to die. He couldn’t have been a telepath or he would have died long ago, but he had useful abilities just the same.”

  “We should give him a funeral,” said Neila. “At least.”

  They gave him a funeral.

  Then, with nothing more than the tools and supplies and knowledge they had brought with them, they began learning to live on their new world.

  They named the world Canaan, and prayed that it would live up to its name. The long yellow-green valley in which they had landed was like an answer to their prayer. It was on the equator, but high above the level of the local seas—plateau land stretched between two ranges of mountains. It was well watered by rivers that flowed down from the mountains and the ship’s doctor pronounced the water safe. The weather was warm and mild, and the land apparently fertile. It was literally covered with yellow-green trees and their thick vinelike roots, but the Missionaries saw no aggressive animal life. In fact, they saw almost no animal life at all, though they realized later that this was only because they did not know how to look for it. In time, they cleared a place and corralled their larger animals outside the ship. It was then that they learned why the portion of the valley in which they had landed seemed so lush and peaceful. They had landed in the middle of the Garkohn gamelands.

  Garkohn adolescents, young hunters still working toward their first substantial kill of native game, slaughtered the Missionary herd in a single night. And at that, the Missionaries were fortunate. The tragedy would have been far greater had the youngsters failed to recognize the furless, strangely colored invaders as people—had they seen them as merely another kind of helpless animal.

  The Missionaries did not learn exactly what had killed their livestock until several days later when Garkohn adults came openly into the Mission settlement bringing gifts of meat, meklah, and other things—apparently in payment for what their children had done. Of course, no payment would have been enough. The horses and cattle were irreplaceable. But they were gone. Nothing could bring them back, and trouble with the natives could well make their loss seem trivial.

  Jules managed to hold the Missionaries in check, prevent any act of rashness. Under his leadership, the Missionaries formed what they came to consider a friendship with the Garkohn. It seemed as though they had salvaged a fair beginning after all. They permitted themselves to be lulled.

  And now, three years later, they were still lulled. It was time for Alanna to awaken them.

  Alanna rose wearily from her bed and went out into the cabin’s main room. Jules came in through the front door at the same time, looking grayer and older than the Jules Alanna had just brought alive in her memory. He was fifty-three now. Not old, surely. He was tired but he would be able to handle the trouble that was coming. He went to his chair and collapsed into it.

  Alanna went to the heavy meklah-wood dining table and took two meklah fruits from the bowl there. She ate
one quickly, hating it with her mind as her body welcomed it. Her sick hunger began to dissipate. She ate the second fruit more slowly. When she turned to face Jules and Neila, both were staring at her. Neila spoke first.

  “Did they have meklah in the mountains where you were?”

  “No,” said Alanna softly.

  “You went without them for two years? You had none at all?”

  “None.” Alanna looked from her to Jules. At the time of Alanna’s abduction, no one in the colony had realized that the meklah was addictive. But now, “You know about it.”

  “That we’re slaves to it,” said Jules bitterly.

  “I tried to stop eating it once,” said Neila. “I thought I was dying.”

  “You might have,” said Alanna.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “The others did. All of them, Garkohn and Missionary.”

  “They locked you up,” accused Jules. “Then watched you suffer.”

  Alanna looked at him in surprise. “They closed us all in a room together, but they didn’t watch. Who told you…?”

  “Natahk. After you…and the others were taken, I asked him what would happen to you. He told me. That’s when we found out we were addicted. Deliberately addicted. The Garkohn knew what they were feeding us.”

  “Of course,” said Alanna.

  Jules frowned at her as she put the last of her second meklah fruit into her mouth. “Alanna, if you managed to survive without those things for two years, why did you go back to them. After what you went through, I’d think…”

  “That Natahk would let me stay free, like a Tehkohn?”

  “Natahk…?”

  “The meklah is almost a sacred thing to the Garkohn, Jules. Friends eat it. Enemies don’t.”

  Jules rose slowly, stood glaring at Alanna. He was one of the few men in the settlement who could glare at her without looking up. “You mean that’s what he wanted to see you about? To feed you that poison?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you said nothing to me about it?”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “Here we are on his world, in his valley, trapped. What could you have done, Jules?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then he shook off her hand and turned away. “It didn’t take you long to size up the situation here. I was afraid we’d have to explain it to you.”

  Confused, Alanna glanced at Neila. But Neila sank down into her own chair and sat staring into the fire in the fireplace.

  “We had better explain to each other,” said Alanna softly. “I can see that you don’t consider the Garkohn the friends they seemed to be two years ago.”

  “Clayark friends!” muttered Jules. Alanna had almost forgotten that bitter old epithet—the friend who caught the plague and managed to conceal it. The friend whose touch brought disease and possible death. The betrayer, the Judas.

  Alanna smiled to herself. In her absence, Natahk had done her work for her. He had become more heavy-handed, had prepared Jules to change his loyalties. “What was Natahk’s betrayal?” she asked.

  “Aside from addicting us all, and readdicting you to the meklah?”

  “Aside from that.” Alanna sat down on the floor, made herself comfortable.

  “A chair, Alanna,” murmured Neila from years-old habit.

  Alanna ignored her. “What has he done, Jules?”

  “Nothing overt, I guess.” Jules sat down again. “Most of our people don’t even realize there’s anything wrong. But in more and more ways, he treats us as though we were just another branch of his tribe—like that farming town of his in the south. He seems to think he’s as free to exercise authority over us as he is over them.”

  “His hunters spy on us,” said Neila. “They camouflage themselves here in the settlement and watch and listen to us. I’ve caught a couple of them at it the way you caught Gehl today.”

  “Gehl was here?” asked Jules.

  “She came to see me,” said Alanna. “But she came hidden, and she needn’t have.”

  “How did you happen to spot her?”

  “She was careless. Her camouflage was bad.”

  “I didn’t see her,” said Neila. “Not until you spoke.”

  Alanna shrugged. “Maybe my eyes are sharper.”

  “At your age, they should be,” said Jules. “But still…you said Gehl was careless. What if she had really been making an effort not to be seen. Do you think you could have spotted her?”

  “A huntress? I think so. From now on, I’ll be watching.”

  “Exactly what I was going to suggest. I don’t like the idea that there might be people watching me, spying on me even in my own home. And I’ve been living with it too long.”

  “Most of the people still think of the Garkohn as not very bright,” said Neila. “They see that while only a few of us know the Garkohn language, all the Garkohn we deal with know English. They see that, but still, when they catch the Garkohn spying, they say, ‘Oh, well, they’re just curious—like monkeys, you know.’”

  Jules made a sound of disgust. “We didn’t underestimate the Clayarks that way,” he said. “If we had, they would have murdered us all. That fur covering seems to make it so easy for some of us to assume that the Garkohn are stupid. Nonsense! Dangerous nonsense!”

  “What will you do?” asked Alanna.

  “That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for some time. I could call a meeting and force the people ~o face the facts that they’ve been refusing to face. That we’re becoming prisoners in our own settlement. That would bring Natahk out into the open quickly enough.”

  “Anything you do that’s out of the ordinary will bring him into the open. I wonder what that would mean.”

  “Slavery,” said Jules. “Or something very like it. Natahk’s gone to too much trouble to watch quietly as we begin reasserting our independence.”

  “Perhaps slavery,” agreed Alanna. “But I don’t understand why the Garkohn would want or need slaves. They have no history of slavery.”

  “They do,” said Neila. “The nonfighters.”

  Alanna glanced at her. “No. Some fighters see nonfighters as lesser people—a little like the way Bea Stamp sees me. But they don’t make slaves of them.” She changed the subject suddenly. “Jules, did Natahk leave?”

  “Yes. He and most of his raiders. I thought they would stay the night.”

  “His raiders only? What about his prisoners?”

  “They’re quartered with ours in one of the storehouses for the time being. Although… Natahk acted as though they might be here for quite a while.”

  “So the Garkohn and I agree on something,” said Alanna. Then she realized that she had spoken in Tehkohn, her first such lapse since arriving home. Neither Jules nor Neila looked anything more than curious, so she explained in English. “I think Natahk is worried about your welfare. Whatever he plans to do with you, you won’t be of any use to him dead. By now, Tehkohn who are not captives know that important members of their tribe are held here. They won’t attack for fear of causing those members to be killed.”

  “You think they know already?”

  “Jules, we didn’t come down from those mountains alone.”

  Jules looked surprised and his surprise startled Alanna. Even if he had not seen the raiding party’s Tehkohn shadows, it would seem reasonable for him to suspect that they were there. But then, he did not know the true value of the prisoners Natahk had left with him.

  “You think the Tehkohn might have attacked us if Natahk hadn’t left his prisoners here?” he asked.

  “They would have. At night, probably, not like before. This time, I don’t think there would have been enough of us left to make a colony.”

  “In spite of our wall, our guns, you think they could have…”

  “I know they could have. Natahk knew it too. We’re naked here, Jules. The Tehkohn know about our guns now. Most people wouldn’t get a chance to fire a shot.”

  “You’re forgetting that we know quit
e a bit about the Tehkohn now too. We just helped win a substantial victory over them.”

  Alanna lowered her head for a moment, carefully not thinking about that victory. “Did you ever think there might be a way for us to use the Tehkohn? A way that didn’t involve fighting them.”

  Jules frowned. “What way?”

  “They could help you against Natahk.”

  Jules sat up straight. “And do you think I’d want their help? Do you think I’d trust them? My God, as bad as the Garkohn are, at least they’ve never murdered any of my people.”

  Alanna spoke softly. “I’m not sure the Tehkohn would have killed any of us either if Natahk’s hunters hadn’t been using our settlement as a base for their raids on the Tehkohn.”

  “And on the other hand, the settlement might have been totally destroyed if the Garkohn hadn’t been here during that first raid.” Jules’s voice was bitter. That first raid had taught him just how easily naked unarmed natives slaughtered armed Missionaries.

  “But…whatever might have happened, you’re even with the Tehkohn now. They’ve beaten you. You’ve beaten them. Now you can use them. Let them keep the Garkohn busy and away from you. They’ve been fighting Garkohn for generations anyway. Now you have a chance to urge them back to it. Then you’ll have the freedom to run or join in or do whatever you think is best.”

  “Manipulate them, you mean? Trick them into ignoring us while they fight each other?”

  “Not quite. But the effect would be the same.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not quite’?”

  “Working alone, I don’t think we can trick the Tehkohn or the Garkohn. We’re at war with the Tehkohn and that means most of the prisoners we hold won’t believe anything we say. There’s no lie we could tell them, no trick we could use that wouldn’t be either ignored or even used against us. We’re enemies and they would rather kill themselves than co-operate with us in any useful way. And as for the Garkohn, we dare not try to manipulate them into more hostility. They’d drag us in with them.”