Survivor (3 page)

Then she held my open hand flat between her own two and shook it once. "
Tahncheah
," she said. Then she repeated it more slowly. "
Tahn
." She grasped my fingers alone. "
Tahn
." And she made a tight fist of my hand. "
Cheah
." She let go of me for a moment and struck her open palm with a closed fist. Then she held up the fist. "
Cheah
." And then the open hand, "
Tahncheah
." She whitened slightly and extended one of her hands for me to examine.

I took it, smiling to myself. We were going to get along, Gehl and I. We would teach each other.

Every day we met at that tree root as the Mission settlement took shape around us. When we were communicating fairly well, I in Garkohn and she in English, she began bringing a hunter to her lessons. The two were almost identical. Later, I noticed that Gehl was darker, slightly more blue, but at first, I could tell them apart only when the hunter sat so that his genitals were visible. It was this man—Ihiateh, his name was—who taught me that Garkohn men were not as poorly endowed sexually as most Missionaries thought. Their genitals were simply more protected within their bodies than were those of Missionary men.

Ihiateh was Gehl's temporary husband and once as the two sat talking with me, the huntress said something to arouse him. She spoke to him in a quick aside that I did not quite hear. Whatever the words were though, they gave Ihiateh an erection that no Missionary man would have had reason to be ashamed of. I stared at him in surprise, then sat back waiting to see how they would handle the situation. I had already heard much from other Missionaries about Garkohn lasciviousness and immorality.

Gehl went white with what seemed to be amusement. Ihiateh spoke sharply to her, then caught her arm and dragged her off into the woods.

The next day, Gehl came to me alone and immediately began questioning me in her careful English.

"You have no man?"

I shook my head. She had learned to interpret the gesture. "Not yet. I must choose very carefully before I accept a man because by our custom, I would have to go through a ceremony with him and be as firmly tied to him as you would be to Ihiateh if you and he had a child."

Flecks of yellow mixed strangely with Gehl's deep green. She glowed slightly, making an iridescence. Doubt. Confusion. "You have a ceremony before there is a child?"

"Yes. Before the man and woman are even permitted to…" I frowned. I was speaking Garkohn and she English as usual. I had no word now though for what I wanted to say. "How do you say, to come together as with a man and woman, to…?"

"To mate?" she said in Garkohn. It was exactly the same word I had heard her use in referring to animals. I had known it, but had not realized that it should also be applied to people. The Missionaries made careful distinctions in English. Animals mated or bred. Humans obeyed the first commandment of God: "Be fruitful and multiply."

"Mate," I said. "Yes."

"But so often a union is childless… What do your people do? Must a man and woman stay together in sterile union?"

I thought about that and found myself wondering whether she was inadvertently telling me the reason for some of what the Missionaries called Garkohn immorality—the frequent coupling and uncoupling of Garkohn adults. Perhaps what the Missionaries had seen as a matter of morality was more a matter of necessity. Perhaps the Garkohn were just not as fertile as the Missionaries.

"They would not be held permanently in such a union," I said. "But they would have to stay together long enough to be certain that their union was sterile. They are joined by our law. They are not permitted to seek other partners until their union is dissolved by law."

Gehl flashed yellow disapproval. "I would not like to be trapped in such a union. Will you choose a man soon?"

I shuddered. I was young and could get away with my disinterest in Missionary men now. They were certainly not interested in me. They had been during my early days among them when I had known no better than to go with them to secret places where we could break Mission law together. I stopped that as soon as I understood that I was risking the comfort and security that I had found with the Verricks—as soon as I understood that the men and I were "behaving like animals" together instead of marrying and keeping true human tradition. Then the men and I had no more interest in each other. There was no one of them that I wanted a marriage with, and now they pretended to find me contemptible because I was not "pure." I had shared pleasure with some of them. I was guilty of sin, but somehow, they were all still innocent. Foolishness! It disgusted me to think I would have to spend my life with anyone so foolish.

"I'm in no hurry to choose a man," I told Gehl. "I don't want to be trapped either."

"I will break with Ihiateh soon," she said. "Natahk has asked me to come to him."

"Gehl, will you help me learn to hunt?"

Her narrow eyes widened, and for the first time, her furry face seemed to show expression. Surprise. "To hunt?" she said. "But you have food. There is meklah over all the valley, and we bring you meat. And in time, you can kill some of your own animals and plant your own crops."

"It will be awhile before we can slaughter many of our animals," I said. "And though it is good of your people to help us, bring us meat, we should learn to help ourselves. We should learn what we can of your ways of hunting just as we learn to speak with you."

"Most of your people are not learning to speak. We learn your English."

"Then we should change."

"You need not. We are content and your people are content. Why should there be change?"

"Will you help me learn to hunt?"

She gazed downward, answered softly. "No. Natahk has forbidden it."

"Forbidden…"I frowned. "Why?"

"He has not said."

She was lying. There was no new yellow in her coloring but there was suddenly an odd tension in the way she held her body. She was suppressing emotion, holding her coloring normal as Missionaries might hold their faces placid in spite of fear or anger. But I knew her well enough now to see through the deception.

"I speak your language well enough now," she said. "I think we need not meet again."

I stared at her. In spite of whatever had suddenly fallen between us, I had come to think of her as a friend. I had felt more comfortable with her in the short time that we had been meeting than I had felt with many of the Missionaries after three years. She was more like me somehow. Freer, less concerned with appearances.

"You know English," I said, "and I know Garkohn. In the exchange, haven't we become friends?"

Now she yellowed, just slightly. "I think you are a fighter."

"When I have to, I fight. You know that we don't divide ourselves into clans as you do."

"I know." She sighed, then suddenly flared yellow. "Sometimes it is foolish to make individual friendships among foreign fighters. But we will try a little foolishness." Her coloring settled back to normal. "Perhaps soon you will have a friend highly placed."

"So?"

"I… you will say nothing of this to anyone?"

"I'll say nothing."

"I'm going to challenge the Third Hunter. I can beat him. I know I can."

I was impressed. I had seen the Third Hunter and he was impressive. If Gehl really thought she could beat him…

"Natahk knows," said Gehl. "He says my ambition will kill me. He knows that if I beat the Third Hunter, I will take on the Second."

"But you will not challenge Natahk himself, after that?"

She gave me a look of yellow disgust. "I do want to live, Alanna. I only challenge where there is a chance for me to win. No Garkohn would challenge Natahk until he is old and weak."

I grinned. I had not seen anyone among the Missionaries who would have dared to challenge the massive Garkohn leader either. Not without a gun in his hand, at least.

"Come tonight and eat with my parents and me," I told her. "Soon you may be too busy for such things."

She looked thoughtful. "I can bring Ihiateh?"

I tried to hold back, but suddenly I found myself laughing aloud. "Bring him, Gehl, but…"

"I know." She whitened. "He already knew some Missionary ways and he told me. I think he would have beaten me yesterday if he could have. I won't provoke him here among your people again."

Alanna passed through the high gates of the stockade with the raiding party and saw before her a town far more finished than it had been when she was abducted. There were more houses now. The settlement was much like the walled town the Missionaries had lived in back on Earth. As on Earth, the houses and storage buildings were grouped comfortably around a wide expanse of open land held in common by all the people. The common was landscaped as it had been on Earth with one difference. For some reason, there was no grass—no neatly cut lawn for.the people to sit or lie on. There were a few flowers—Earth flowers—nourishing in the alien soil. There was bare hard-packed ground, and there were tall meklah trees connected to each other by thick benchlike roots. Clumps of trees formed natural gathering places. Or the people could gather in the open as they were doing now around the raiding party. The Missionaries who had stayed behind and the several Garkohn who happened to be at the Mission settlement gathered around the raiding party just in front of the largest fragment of the ship that was left intact—the great, nearly hollow shell that served as the Mission Church.

Alanna found herself struggling to comprehend the words of welcome and congratulation that came both in English and in Garkohn. Both languages spoken quickly and carelessly sounded oddly foreign to her. More than once, she found herself mentally translating them into Tehkohn as though Tehkohn was her native language.

During the first moments, she was jostled but otherwise ignored by people eager to greet relatives or get a look at the prisoners. Missionaries in particular came to stare with a mixture of hostility and curiosity at the silent Tehkohn.

Finally, people began to notice Alanna. Her clothing attracted them. She was clearly a woman and yet she was dressed in pants and a short belted tunic—clothing forbidden by the Missionary interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:5, which they chose to enforce strictly. "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God." Thus Neila Verrick had quoted when Alanna, fresh from the wilds where she had gone almost naked, complained about the bothersome long dresses all Missionary girls and women wore. Alanna had never taken the prohibition seriously. As soon as the Tehkohn asked her what she needed to keep her furless body warm, she had described her present clothing to them. An artisan had managed to turn out exactly what she wanted and she had worn it in warmth and comfort ever since.

Now the Missionaries came to stare at her and at her strange clothing. She looked at their furless faces with interest. Many of the men had beards but that was not the same as the all-over fur covering of the Kohn. Through much of her time with the Tehkohn, she had longed to see another Earth-human face. Sometimes she had felt alone and more lonely than she ever had in the wilds of Earth—a different kind of loneliness. Now, finally, she was surrounded by the faces she had longed to see, and she felt herself to be among strangers. She felt confused, vaguely frightened. People spoke to her and she did not answer them.

"Alanna!"

"You're Alanna Verrick, aren't you?"

"Don't you remember me, Alanna?"

"Were you with those animals all this time?"

"Hey, Alanna…"

They clustered around her, greeting her, welcoming her home, while she longed desperately to be at home. To be at the home she had left in the mountains. To be away from this crowding shouting gesturing mob. What was wrong with these people? The raiding party had not behaved this way.

Since she would not speak, the people began to talk about her rather than to her.

"It is the Verrick wild human, isn't it?"

"It's her all right—though dressed like that…"

"Why doesn't she say something?"

"You know, she never was too bright." This from an older woman who had never quite been able to forgive Alanna's wild-land origins. "Maybe she's forgotten how to speak English."

"Why not," said someone else. "The Tehkohn had her almost as long as we did."

Then Neila Verrick was there, hurrying through the crowd, her face wet with tears. "Alanna! Oh, it is you. Alanna, girl…"

In Neila's arms, Alanna found her first moments of peace within the stockade. Her fear and her feelings of isolation began to ebb and she could smile at the woman who had become her mother. She could start to feel at home.

Now she grew more aware of her body's discomfort. Now she had relaxed enough to concern herself with mere discomfort. She was hungry and weary and in need of meklah. The meklah need was only strong enough to emphasize her hunger, so far, causing her to feel as though she had been without food for many hours longer than she actually had. It was only nightfall—a half day since Natahk had forced her into readdiction. But she had eaten nothing since then, nothing for most of the day except that single yellow fruit.

It did not matter. For the moment, nothing mattered as she greeted her foster mother. She could hear people near her asking questions again. How had she survived? What had the Tehkohn done to her? Where were the other captives? Only this last question made any impression on her. There were people around her whom she recognized now as relatives of those who had died in the Tehkohn prison room. She did not want to tell them that their relatives were dead. She was still too close herself to the pain of losing a loved one and she did not want to watch as that pain replaced the hope in these people's faces. Now was the time to concentrate on keeping the living alive, not on mourning the dead.

Still without speaking, she let Neila lead her into the Verrick cabin.

The main room of the cabin was as cluttered as she remembered it, full of the tools, furniture, and utensils of Missionary life. The room was used for cooking, for eating, for almost any work that could be done indoors, and simply for gathering together and taking pleasure in each other's company. The room, like Neila's presence, helped Alanna to bridge the two-year gap and rejoin herself to her Missionary past. She needed that past now to help her know how best to reach the Missionaries through their xenophobic shield. With a little rest now, and food, she would be ready to begin on Jules and Neila.