I put the medallion into the radio and waited. There were half a dozen bugs in the privy. A couple buzzed around my head. I waved them away. The radio beeped. I pulled the medallion out.
“Anything else?”
“Yes. I’m staying with two people. Nahusai and Yohai. No one visits them. When Yohai and I work in the garden, no one talks to us. I think the problem is me.”
There was a pause. “Do you think the situation is dangerous? Do you want to get out?”
“No. Not yet.”
Another pause. “Your instincts are usually excellent. Okay. But I want you to call in more often.”
“I’ll try. It won’t be easy. There isn’t much privacy here.”
“Do what you can. Now, for your information—Harrison Yee got driven out of his village. They were polite, but firm. It happened after he took a bath. We think he violated a nudity taboo or a taboo against washing in running water or maybe just in that particular river. Try and find out how your people bathe before you take a bath.”
“I’ve already taken one, Eddie.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“In the nearest river.”
“Alone?”
“With Yohai. The daughter of my host. She looked a little surprised when she saw me naked. Apparently she hadn’t realized that I had no fur on me anywhere. Well, almost no fur. In any case, nothing happened.”
“That’s interesting. Of course, Harrison was nowhere close to you. However, the language you are learning is similar to the one he was learning, before he took his bath.”
“He’s on the other side of the continent.”
“Uh-huh. And your language is almost identical to the one Derek is learning. He’s down the coast from you.”
A bug landed on my face. I swatted and missed. The radio began to slide off my knees. “Damnation!” I grabbed it before it could go into the hole below me.
“Lixia?”
“Nothing. What does all of this mean?”
“We don’t know. But there are theories. You may be learning a trade language, something like pidgin English. Or maybe all the people contacted so far are closely related, part of a recent migration.”
“How likely is that?”
“Not very. The trade language is a distinct possibility—or so we think at the moment.”
I signed off and left the privy. Outside, a couple of meters away, a person waited. He or she wore a robe and a tall hat. The robe was covered with embroidery. The hat was decorated with shells. After a moment I recognized him or her. It was the person who had broken up Nahusai’s party.
“Yes?” I said in the native language.
He or she made a gesture—a vertical slash—then turned and walked away.
I went back to the house feeling a bit nervous. The person had radiated hostility. Who was he or she? I couldn’t ask. I didn’t know the right words.
For the next half-dozen days the sky remained clear. The weather was hot. Yohai and I worked in the garden. Mostly, we brought water from the river: pot after heavy pot. We poured the water out on the dry ground. Then we returned to the river. We refilled our pots. We went back to the garden.
My arms hurt. My shoulders hurt. There was a terrible ache in the small of my back. I tried to remember how I had gotten into this situation. It had something to do with the romance of interstellar travel. Or was it the quest for knowledge?
In the afternoon we went to the house and rested. In the evening Yohai went out—back to the garden or maybe somewhere else. I stayed with Nahusai. She taught me more of the language. I began to understand complete sentences.
I was never left alone, except when I was in the privy. I wasn’t sure why. Did Nahusai and Yohai fear me? Or were they afraid that someone might try to harm me?
I didn’t feel especially safe, even in the privy. People might be watching. The person in the hat certainly had been. People might notice if I spent a long time inside. They might decide to creep up on me and listen. They wouldn’t understand my conversation, but they would know that I was talking to someone who was not present.
I ended by calling from the house on a night when my companions went to sleep early.
“Where in hell have you been?” asked Eddie.
I turned the volume down and explained.
“Lixia, you have to keep in touch. We’ve been getting worried. Ivanova has been talking about coming after you. Can you imagine what that would be like? She’d go in like the Seventh Cavalry, and we’d have to figure out how to fix the mess that she made.”
“Okay,” I said and turned the volume down further. On the other side of the house Yohai and Nahusai snored. They sounded almost entirely human.
Eddie told me the news. Harrison Yee was back on the ship, as was Antonio Nybo. Tony had been in the archipelago. He’d found a number of ceremonial sites—rocks arranged in circles and cliffs with pictographs—but no people. His island was empty.
“Of archaeological interest only,” Eddie said. “We pulled him out.”
There were five other people from Earth still on the planet. Four of them were in villages more or less like mine. The fifth—Gregory—was staying with an extended family in the western mountains.
“They keep flocks and do fantastic weaving, or so Gregory tells me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“There don’t seem to be any large population centers. We don’t know why as yet. We don’t even have any theories.”
“A desperate situation,” I said.
Eddie laughed.
Yohai groaned and rolled over.
I said, “I have to go.”
On the fourteenth day of my stay in the village I decided I had to call again. I waited till after dark, then went to the privy. The planet’s one big moon was rising. It hung over the rooftops, bright orange, three-quarters full. I left the door of the privy open. Moonlight shone in. I could see well enough to operate my radio.
This evening Eddie had a new and interesting piece of news.
“Yvonne says there are no mature males in her village. There are a few old men. They live at the edge of the village, she says, each one alone. And there are boys—male children. But in between, nothing.”
I thought for a moment. “I know the word for ‘boy,’ and I’ve seen boys play in the street. The younger children wear no clothing. Gender is obvious and an interesting example of parallel evolution. But I don’t know the word for ‘man.’ ” I chewed on my lip for a moment or two. “Let me check into this.”
“Okay,” said Eddie.
I signed off and slung the radio over my shoulder, then stepped out of the privy. The moon was directly above me. It was smaller than Luna, but closer to its primary, with a much higher albedo. It lit the area around me: the weed patch, the privy, and half a dozen houses.
I started toward the house of Nahusai. Something moved in the shadow along the wall.
“Yes?” I called. “What is it?”
Something else moved to the right of me, near one of the neighboring houses. I turned. A person stood in the moonlight. He or she wore a robe.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I am Hakht,” a voice said harshly. Or maybe the voice said “Akht.” I was not certain about the initial aspirate.
Other figures emerged from the shadows. There were half a dozen. Two had sticks. They formed a circle around me—at a good distance. Nonetheless, they blocked my way out of the yard.
“We heard you. You go there.” The figure in the robe pointed at the privy. “You talk. You do…” he or she said something I didn’t understand. It sounded like an accusation.
“I do nothing bad,” I said.
The person made a gesture that meant—I was pretty sure—“no” or “I disagree.” “You are a something-something. I tell you, go!”
“I do not understand,” I said.