“A man. Yes. Who else would live out here alone? I have met him before. He is friendlier than most men.”
“You call that friendly?”
“Yes. The men around here have no manners. Their mothers raise them badly, and the old men who ought to teach them to behave when they leave the village—the old men are surly and mean. They lack self-respect. This is my opinion, anyway.”
“Why do the men leave the village?”
Nia stared at me. “What kind of question is that?”
“Do all men leave the village?”
“Yes. Of course.” Nia frowned. “What kind of person are you? Why do you ask something like that?”
I thought for a moment. “I come from a long distance away. My people are different from yours. How different, I don’t know. Maybe the differences are small—things on the surface, like the fur that you have and I don’t. Maybe the differences are big. In any case, among my people men and women live together.”
Nia frowned again. “How can that be? After the change no man can bear to be with other people—except at the time of mating, of course, and except for Enshi.”
“Enshi?” I asked.
Nia stared at the sky. “The sun is almost gone. We can go back.”
We returned to the shack. Firelight shone through gaps between the skins. I didn’t see anyone, either inside or out. The knife was gone. In its place was a basket, full of smoked fish.
“This is good!” Nia said. “Now we won’t starve.”
The basket had a top. She put it on and fastened it, then put the whole thing in her bag. “Come on. We’ll go back toward the river and find a place to camp. This fellow won’t like it if we stay here.”
“That is true,” the deep voice said. “It is a good knife, Nia.”
Nia glanced at the shack. “The fish smells good. Thank you.”
We walked off. The sky darkened and stars appeared along with a moon: a point of light that moved rapidly up from the eastern horizon. We stopped in a hollow. Nia made a fire, and we ate a couple of pieces of fish. It was bony and oily with a strong smoky taste. I did not especially like it.
“Who is Enshi?” I asked.
Nia stared at the fire. There was a brooding expression on her face. At length she glanced up. “I made up a poem about Enshi after I had been in this place a year. It goes like this:
“He is dead?”
Nia made the gesture of affirmation. “I will not talk about him. Do your men really live with the women?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very strange. Is it right?”
The word she used had several meanings: “usual,” “well made,” “moral.”
“We think so. We’ve always lived this way.”
Nia made a barking noise. “If Hakht knew this, she would be certain that you are a demon. Of course, her people do many things that are not right.”
“What?” I asked.
Nia frowned, then scratched her nose. “They do not like men, not even their sons. ‘A son is a mouth,’ they say. They mean a son is something that eats food and makes noise and does nothing useful.”
“Hu!” I said.
Nia made the gesture of agreement. “It is very badly done. There is something else…” She paused. “They do not like to mate with men. Often in the spring they go out, two women together. They stay in the forest. They do things with their hands.” Nia shivered. “Do your people do anything like this?”
“Some of us do. I don’t.”
“Do you think it’s right?”
I thought for a moment. “It is common. I don’t think that it is wrong.” I used a word that meant “unusual,” “immoral,” “badly made,” or “done in a seriously inept fashion.”
Nia shivered again. “I did it once. Yohai kept asking me. One spring I went with her. I do not know why. I didn’t like it. I felt ashamed. Aiya!” She paused for a moment. “I wish we had something to drink.”
The next day we went back to the river. We continued west along it. The land was flat and covered with forest. The sky was cloudless, and the river shone. Birdlike creatures glided from tree to tree, and other things—invisible to me—moved through the underbrush. I saw one as it crossed our path: a bronze shell about half a meter long with many quick-moving little feet beneath it. Two huge faceted eyes stuck out on top.
“What?” I asked as the animal vanished.
“It’s called a wahakh,” Nia said. “It can live in water and out of it. The people here say that it carries messages from the spirits, and sometimes it acts as a guide for women who go on spirit-journeys. They never eat it, though it is delicious when roasted.” She paused. “We’ll leave it alone.”
Toward evening we came to a lake. The water was clear and dark green. Rushes grew at the edges.
Nia looked around. “I have been here before—when I came east, after I left my people. I remember this place reminded me of a lake in my country. The Great Rush Lake. This is smaller, of course. Aiya! How the years go by!”
We made camp. Nia spent the evening staring into the fire. I went off and called Eddie and told him what had happened in the last few days.
“You take chances, don’t you?” he said.
“A few. Not many.”
“That crazy shamaness might have decided to kill you.”
“I don’t think that’s likely. I get the impression these people aren’t violent.”
“Uh-huh. Tell that to Derek.”
“What happened?”
“He decided he had to tell the people in his village that he was a man—to see what would happen. He is, as you remember, extremely curious. They tried to stone him. He grabbed his radio and ran.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes. But what would’ve happened to someone else, someone who couldn’t run the way he can?”
I thought about that for a while. Derek was a tall blond from southern California, an aborigine who’d spent his childhood traveling on foot in the desert. When he was fifteen, there had been a drought. He walked up to a trading station on the coast and said, “I’m tired of living like this. Teach me something else.”
They sent him to school, and he took up running as a sport. Over short distances he was good. Over long distances he was unbeatable.
“Where is he? On the ship?”
“No. He’s traveling west. The country is pleasant, he says. Rolling hills, forest, and some prairie. There’s a lot of game, much more than in California. He is going to make a bow.”
A bug flitted past me. I batted at it and missed. “How is Gregory?”
“Fine. But he says his people are treating him differently. They talk to him slowly and firmly, and they give a lot of orders. Very simple orders. He thinks they’ve decided he is not very bright. What other explanation is there? He doesn’t know the right behavior, and he can’t take care of himself.”
I grinned.
“One other thing,” Eddie said.
Aha, I thought. The zinger for today. “What is it?”
“Gregory says there must be gold in the mountains. His people wear a lot of jewelry, and most of it is gold.”
“What’s so interesting about that?”
“The planetologists think it may be significant. The planet is denser than Earth, and there’s plenty of evidence of volcanic activity. There’s a good chance, they say, of finding metal close to the surface. Not just gold—silver, copper, platinum, tin, iridium, chromium, you name it.” His voice sounded peculiar: flat and careful.
“What’s going on?”
“People up here are getting interested. Members of the crew, mostly. I don’t think they have enough to do. They are talking about possibilities. If the metal is here, and if it’s high quality, and if it’s close to the surface, maybe even on the surface, then it could be mined.”