Survivor

by Octavia E. Butler

“I have had other mates who thought they carried my child, Alanna.”

  “So you have said.”

  “One was Kehyo during our second liaison.”

  “Yes.”

  “Five others come to my mind quickly.”

  She winced as though from a blow, and looked away from me.

  “Through them all, I have not permitted the gathering. I have never before permitted the gathering.”

  Now her eyes came back to me, filled with surprise. “Why not?”

  “The first time, Kehyo’s mother came to me and said, ‘Wait. Be certain before you let her announce. With another, the people would laugh if there was a mistake. Then they would forget. With you, they might not laugh, but also, they might not forget. You are Hao, but very young. Let them have as little reason as possible to doubt you.’ Kehyo’s mother. My own mother was long dead. For that one piece of advice, I kept friendship with Kehyo’s mother until she died. She was a wise woman. And, of course, Kehyo had no child until long after she had gone to Kahlahtkai.”

  “You kept her with you after her mother talked to you?”

  “For two more seasons. I wanted a child by her very badly. And when she left me, she stayed alone for a time to be certain.”

  “And now…if I prove to be wrong, you will be shamed before the people.”

  I said nothing.

  “We will wait until you are as certain as I am. Then we will have the gathering.”

  “I said I would be guided by you.”

  “So.” I could feel her dissatisfaction.

  “And instead, I have guided you.” I pulled her down beside me and felt her move close. “I will go on guiding you then. Choose the friends you want to gather with you and tell them to come tomorrow. Tell them why if you like, or wait and I’ll tell them myself when they are together.”

  She lifted herself on one elbow to look down at me. “Be careful what you say, Diut.”

  “So?”

  “I’ll do it. I’ll even leave you to say the words.”

  “Well.” I felt white come into my coloring. “At least you have learned to obey.”

  Natahk was gone. He had made a great show of gathering his fighters—all of them—and leaving the settlement. He had also made a show of shouting his anger at the Missionaries, blaming them for his weapons party’s demise. He had promised ominously that he would deal with them as soon as he had dealt with the invading Tehkohn. Alanna had watched him carefully and decided that he was lying.

  He would not be foolish enough to go running around the valley in search of enemies who might or might not still be there, and who might or might not find him first. No. Instead, he would wait, with his camouflaged army, for the Tehkohn to come to him—at the one place where both he and Alanna knew they would come sooner or later. The settlement. The Missionaries had suddenly become bait in a huge trap.

  Natahk was probably ready for an army of Tehkohn—enough fighters either to herd the Missionaries away to the mountains, or to exterminate them. As it happened though, after three days and nights of waiting, his trap caught only one Tehkohn. Diut.

  By then, the Missionaries had taken advantage of their privacy. For the first time since the founding of the settlement, they held a general meeting in the church with no Garkohn in attendance. At the meeting, they learned how Jules had managed to use the rivalry between the Tehkohn and the Garkohn to Missionary advantage. The Tehkohn, he told them, had agreed to divert the Garkohn with a battle while the Missionaries escaped. He lied to them in spite of his principles—gave them assurances that he did not feel himself, convinced them that in this one matter, at least, the Tehkohn could be trusted. He had to lie since he still did not dare to tell them that it was not the Tehkohn who had been stealing away Missionary captives, or that those captives were still alive. The captives had to be sacrificed if the colony was to survive, and Jules knew it. He had sworn Nathan James and Jacob Lorenz to silence, and had suppressed his private distress, his doubts. Alanna watched him with grim approval. He was chameleon enough when he had to be.

  He ordered the people to keep as many of their belongings as they could already packed, and especially, to keep as much meklah seed and flour as they could packed. He told them to wait, and to stay in their homes if they heard fighting inside the settlement—Alanna had warned him of her suspicions. And the people were eager to obey. Natahk had made them more than willing to give up their homes and move to another valley. They were escaping to freedom again to fulfill their Mission without Garkohn interference. By the time Diut arrived, they were ready.

  The Verricks were about to have dinner when he came. Jules had been helping to build extra handcarts for the journey since these and the Missionaries’ own backs were the only means they would have of carrying their belongings. Jules came in at Neila’s call. Diut came in with him—came rather carelessly, Alanna thought. She saw him at once, and deliberately turned away. Let him announce himself when he was ready.

  He seemed to materialize out of the wall near the door. In shock, Neila dropped a bowl of peas and just managed to stifle a scream. Jules turned, gasped, then let his breath out slowly.

  “Welcome, Tehkohn Hao,” he said. And a moment later, “Will you eat with us?” He had remembered himself enough to speak Garkohn. Alanna smiled to herself and went to help Neila clean up the mess.

  “I will eat,” said Diut. “If there is time.”

  Jules frowned. “Time?”

  “I let myself be seen as I crossed the wall. I think the Garkohn will be here soon.”

  Neila looked up. “You want them here?”

  “Some of them.” He sat down at the table, looked directly at Neila, who looked away. He yellowed briefly. “I want Natahk here. He will come. I showed myself where he would see me.”

  Alanna understood suddenly and stood up smiling. “And what will be happening outside that Natahk is not to see?”

  He whitened. “Much. It has already begun to happen. By tomorrow, we will be victorious. Or dead.”

  Jules shuddered. “I had hoped that the fighting would take place far away from…” He stopped short, reddened. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  Diut sat and looked at him in silence.

  Neila began almost casually to do what she never normally did—serving each of them herself. She worked quickly, seemed to be glad to have something to do with her hands, which had been trembling. They were steady now. Much of the food contained no meklah. Alanna, for her own safety, knew exactly what did. She paid close attention to what her mother served Diut. And, apparently, so did Neila herself. She served Alanna and Diut exactly the same things. Alanna relaxed, feeling relieved. Jules and Neila probably did not realize it, but Diut, by accepting food from them was accepting them I fully as allies, as family.

  Alanna glanced at him, saw that instead of eating, he was watching her. She began to eat. She did not realize until he picked up his fork that he was watching her for more reason than to see whether or not the food was safe. He had never eaten with anything other than his fingers. But he was quick and unselfconscious. After a moment or two of awkwardness, he held the fork with familiar ease. He even seemed to enjoy the food. Then he returned to business.

  “There is nothing for you to do, Verrick. Just keep your people out of our way.”

  The straight thin line of Jules’s mouth showed his resentment. But I perhaps he felt he had earned the comment. He spoke quietly. “My people will not come out into fighting unless I call them.”

  “So? It is well that you have already told them. Natahk might not allow you time to do it now.”

  “Are you…are you going to just wait for him here?” asked Neila.

  Diut looked at her, and she managed to meet his gaze, look back for a moment. “For me,” he said, “it would be better not to wait. I could keep ahead of him outside, kill many of his people before I was caught. But…there are things he could do to make me come out. Some of my judges have spied on the Garkohn. They say Nata
hk believes that I plan to seize your people away from him—that I have found some value in them for the Tehkohn. What better way to make me reveal myself then, than to destroy, bit by bit, that which he thinks I value?”

  “But he really does value us,” said Jules. “He would be destroying people he wants for himself.”

  “He wants some of you, certainly. Those with special skills, perhaps. But doubtless, many of you are expendable.”

  Jules sighed. “Yes, doubtless. But if you wait here, Natahk will kill you.”

  “He might try, but I think not. I have shamed him, and he will want revenge—but not my life. I am Hao, and valuable myself.” He lowered his voice slightly. “Valuable and vulnerable. Alanna.”

  She looked at him.

  “Go outside to where wood is stacked against the house. Feel on the ground between the house and the wood.”

  Without questioning, Alanna went. She moved casually but quickly, folding her arms against the night’s chill, and watching with concealed alertness for any Garkohn who might already have entered. She saw none.

  There was a small space at the bottom of the woodpile between the woodpile and the cabin. She was barely able to get her hand into it, but once she had, she felt a soft skin wrapping and the smoothly polished wood it covered. Her bow!

  It was her most powerful Tehkohn-made bow. With it, she had made several large kills—mostly the shaggy ugly quadrupeds called leaf eaters. She fished out the quiver hastily, and carried it, the bow, and a few concealing sticks of wood back into the house. There, she was just in time to hear Jules ask Diut for the return of the Missionaries’ guns.

  “Consider them part of the price of your freedom,” said Diut. “I will not give them back.”

  The flat refusal seemed to take Jules by surprise. “But…why?”

  “Because your people and mine might meet again someday—without a common enemy to unite us.”

  “And you think our weapons will give you an advantage over us?” demanded Jules. “We’ll make new weapons!”

  “We already have an advantage over you.”

  Jules frowned at him. “Then why…?”

  “Because I expect you to catch up, compensate for the shortcomings of your bodies. If you live, you will learn. We too must learn. By the time your new land allows you the leisure you need to make weapons such as those you have lost, we too will know how to make such weapons.” He looked over at Alanna just as she braced her bow against her foot and strung it. Jules and Neila turned to look at her first with curiosity, then with surprise. They had seen her come in with the wood, but apparently, they had not paid enough attention to her to see what else she carried.

  Wordless, Alanna looked around for a place to hide the bow and quiver. She wanted it near the door where she could reach it quickly, but there was no piece of furniture near the door that was large enough to conceal it. She had to settle for the cabinet that contained Neila’s few dishes. It was across the room from the door and the window, but it hid the bow and quiver completely.

  “That is not a good place,” observed Diut.

  She shrugged. “I know.”

  He leaned back, pushed his plate away. “I put the bow in the wood days ago when I thought there would be fighting here. I hope you will not need it. But if you do, you must use it.”

  She looked at him steadily, not caring what Jules and Neila might read in the look. “I will not need it.”

  “I think you are right. I am not here to sacrifice myself. But this obligation is my own. If I fail to fulfill it, the others must be free to act in spite of my failure.”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Jules.

  “I am to kill him,” said Alanna softly, “if he is clearly defeated and…used as a hostage to gain his people’s surrender.”

  “Oh my God,” whispered Neila.

  “It is a precaution,” said Alanna. “Only a precaution.” She turned to Diut quickly, fending off thoughts she did not want to think. “Exactly what is happening outside now?”

  “The Garkohn trappers are being caught in a trap,” said Diut. “Jeh is coming from the west with one group of fighters. Kehyo has circled wide around and is coming from the east. To the north, there are nonfighters secreted in trees, waiting to drop stones and paint.”

  “Nonfighters!”

  “So that we seem more numerous than we are. But all will be quiet for some time now. Jeh’s fighters and Kehyo’s will kill silently tor as long as they can—making our numbers more even. The noise and light will not start until the Garkohn start it. And the Garkohn are bus> wondering what the Tehkohn Hao is doing inside the Mission settlement.”

  Alanna managed a smile. “With Natahk in here, perhaps they will panic when they find themselves surrounded.”

  “Some of them will surely panic. And they will panic others. We must keep Natahk here until that happens. When we hear shouting, the victory will be near for us. The more shouting, the better.”

  Alanna knew he was right. Kohn fighting, even in war, was normally silent. That was part of the reason why the guns of the Missionaries had been so effective in alarming the Tehkohn and herding them into a trap earlier. Now, the Garkohn would be the ones making the noise, and the ones panicked by it, as they tried to warn each other that they were infiltrated and under attack.

  “Tehkohn Hao.” Jules sat watching Diut with strange intensity.

  Diut looked at him.

  “I have a question that I don’t want to ask. But I must ask it. Too much is wrong. What connection is there between you and my daughter?”

  Diut glanced at Alanna.

  She shrugged. “I tried once to tell him, but the time seemed wrong, the risk too great. Now…he must know.”

  Diut flashed white agreement and spoke to Jules. “Your daughter is the reason why you are still alive, Verrick. And she is the reason why your people will have their chance to escape this valley soon. She is my wife.”

  For a moment, Jules sat staring at Diut as though he had not heard. Finally he closed his eyes, shook his head slowly. “Like the Garkohn,” he muttered. “No better than the Garkohn.”

  “No!” said Alanna sharply.

  Jules looked at her.

  “I’m not his prisoner, Jules, I’m his wife. I’m glad to be his…”

  “My God, Lanna!” The words seemed to explode from Jules like a cry of pain. Alanna stopped uncertainly, looked at Neila. Abruptly, Neila got up and ran into her bedroom.

  “Oh hell,” muttered Alanna in English. “I’d hoped that now that they were committed, it wouldn’t matter so much.”

  Diut switched to his own clear but strangely accented English. “In one way, it will not matter. Everything is arranged. If they want to live, they will follow the arrangement.”

  The sudden switch to English caught Jules’s attention. He spoke to Alanna. “You taught him English?”

  “Yes. He wanted to learn.”

  “What else did you teach him?” The question was heavy with accusation.

  “That we were rational people, Jules. That we could think and learn. That we were not animals!” She thought the irony of that might reach him even now, and it seemed to. He stared at Diut for a moment, then faced Alanna again.

  “You have a child?” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

  She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I had a child. My daughter was killed in the raid.”

  Jules frowned, managed to look both confused and distressed. He seemed to find nothing to say. Neila crept back into the room, red-eyed, looking ill. She sat down, exchanged glances with Jules, then stared down at her half-eaten dinner.

  Diut shattered the discomfort of the moment by announcing, “The Garkohn are over the wall. Several of them.” He kept his voice low and appeared to be listening, though Alanna heard nothing.

  Controlling her sudden fear, Alanna got up and went to Diut. Of the four of them, he seemed the one least likely to live through the night. What would she do if he died? Wh
at would the Missionaries do? And, if the need arose, how could she possibly…? But again, she pushed the thought away. She would do it if she had to. She would not fail him. He had not failed her. But she would not think about it until she had to.

  He sat still, looking up at her. She laid her hand alongside his face, let it move downward to his throat so that as the caress ended, she clasped the throat in the “v” of her thumb and fingers. “You must live,” she whispered in Tehkohn. “They are only slow hunters. Surely you can evade them.”

  He stood and held her for a moment. “I will live,” he said quietly. “Preserve yourself. Remember all that I have taught you. I think Natahk will make you use it before the night is over.”

  He let her go, moved back toward the wall, seeming to dematerialize before he reached it. He was doing his best now, and he was invisible. He spoke once more, his voice seeming to come from nowhere.

  “Deny that I am here. Use time.”

  Alanna took his dishes hurriedly and shut them in the cabinet with Neila’s clean dishes. As she was sitting down again, they heard Natahk’s voice.

  “You will open the door, Verrick, or we will burn the house.”

  Jules got up quickly and opened the door.

  Natahk stood just outside with a burning torch in his hand. He was surrounded by a tight half circle of other Garkohn. Too many Garkohn—twenty, perhaps twenty-five. “You will send out the Tehkohn Hao,” Natahk said.

  Jules stepped back as though in surprise, managed to seem bewildered. He stared at the torch. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  It was a good act, Alanna thought. But Natahk was unimpressed. He gestured with his torch, then stepped back, well away from the door. Another Garkohn stepped up and threw a bucket full of something through the open doorway. Jules was drenched with it, and much of the room was spattered. The faint but distinctive odor of it told them all what it was. Lamp oil. It was pressed from a kind of nut that the Garkohn raised—that they had taught the Missionaries to raise. In the lamps, it burned with a bright steady yellow flame. It would give the dry wood of the cabin a fast start toward total destruction. Natahk spoke again.