“It’s such a clutter here. I’ve just moved and I have less space.”
“You have quite an insect collection.”
“My father’s.”
Teenae examined the fine dissection kit and microscope that had been used to draw and classify the insects. It sat beside a rock collection.
“Is this glass?” Teenae was so startled by one of the stones that she forgot the manuscript in her hands.
“It’s too hard for glass! And it is the wrong crystalline shape for a diamond. I don’t think a diamond ever grows that large.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I collected stones as a child. That one I found while swimming. It was just there in the sea overgrown with weed and I took it.”
“The sea?”
“My father taught me to swim. It’s not dangerous.”
“Joesai says such crystals contain the Frozen Voice of God.”
“If we put it on the fire will God come out by the hearth and tell us stories?” chided Oelita.
“He talks about genes,” said Teenae defensively.
“Like a priest when he’s drunk on whisky?”
“I’ve never seen it happen.”
Oelita laughed. “But you’ve heard about it. Do you think that rock in the sky ever spoke to anyone?”
I’m sure of it. “I don’t know,” said Teenae to avoid controversy. She did not know what to do with the manuscript that Oelita had suddenly forgotten.
“We’re such a superstitious people!” the Gentle Heretic raved. “There is a rational explanation for everything. We could chant that God brought the insects — but you can trace how they changed to meet challenge until they fill every niche where life can exist. My father found life in the driest desert! He found, embedded in stones, the shells of insects that don’t even exist today. Do you know how long it would take for that kind of stone to form from clay soft enough to trap an insect? Eons! And the Chants say that the Race just appeared here in a puff of smoke at noon practically yesterday!”
“There are no human fossils.”
“We make soup out of bones!” exclaimed Oelita, setting a meal before her guest, beside her newest manuscript.
“My family collects bones.”
“We’ll find human fossils. You’ll see. No one has ever looked! And they haven’t looked because they haven’t dared! And we have found bone tools.”
“Recent ones.”
“Teenae! We’ve only been a tool-making insect recently. There weren’t many of us before. It’s been a rapid evolution.”
“Because we ate the less intelligent ones.” Teenae had wanted to bring up this contradiction in Oelita’s philosophy. Oelita condemned cannibalism while claiming that the vitality of the Race derived from cannibalism.
“Yes,” came the defiant answer, “because we ate the less intelligent ones! People always get me wrong. They say I don’t believe we should follow the path of kalothi. I believe in kalothi! It created us out of insects and it is our destiny. We haven’t stopped evolving and I don’t want us to stop evolving. But we don’t have to eat each other to evolve! There are other ways. I can think of other ways.”
A long pause ensued while a thoughtful Teenae nourished herself. “What ways would you suggest?”
“If we women got together and only had our children by men of great kalothi, that would be one way. Those of us, like me, who have defective genes can decide not to breed. That’s another way.”
They argued while they ate, but Teenae never tried to win. Oelita’s ignorance in too many fields was too appalling to make it worthwhile to argue logically. There was a God. That fact was so obvious with the proper background. Without the proper background one could only have faith. Oelita had neither knowledge nor faith. She was an ignorant, unsophisticated, self-educated country girl. Teenae liked her but was rather horrified at the thought of being married to her. Aesoe was a mad dreamer. When she had Oelita in Kaiel-hontokae she would convince Aesoe that there was a better way than marriage.
Oh Kathein, I love you so!
The sun was long gone before the two women were talked out. They cleaned up from the meal. Teenae read part of the new manuscript. She accepted a small gift from Oelita and gave one in return, exacting with it the promise that they would meet again for supper.
“Soon!”
“Soon,” smiled Oelita.
Crashing waves raised by the wind brought salt spray all across the village. The blackness was full, for Scowlmoon was dark at sunset. Only the starlight illuminated her pathway home. She was going to relish her triumph over Joesai. She had begun the first steps in a real negotiation and she felt elated!
Fingers took her from behind over the mouth, muffling her protests while two other men clamped vise-like grips upon her fiercely struggling body.
15
In his lifetime a man will pace over all the stones in the river, the large ones and the small ones, the flat ones and the slimy ones. The stone he misperceives will kill him. The merciless man does not see mercy and so when he needs mercy his feet cannot find it. The man too proud to show his mistakes makes a fool of himself missing his jump. The man who lives in dangerous waters and leaps nimbly from suspicion to suspicion will be unable to cross the river because he will not trust the solid stones.
JOESAI WAS WORRIED, yet not ready to worry seriously. He had Teenae’s note and he was angry at her for slipping out of his protection in the town where two Kaiel families had been murdered; but she hadn’t promised to be back before dawn, and Getasun was only one diameter above the horizon. Noe, bless her, would not have gone without consulting everybody, but Teenae was Teenae. She liked secrets. Five of his men watched for her quietly.
Damn! I’ll spank her bare wheatcakes when I catch her. Restless, he left the inn and paced up the long quay. If they’ve hurt her I’ll hang their screaming skinless bodies for the bees to hive on.
He turned and saw Eiemeni approaching along the granite with Oelita and four of her fierce men. The way of their walk was foreboding. They were in a hurry. Her robes flapped in the sea breeze.
It was going to be the news about his wife. In a flash he suspected that Oelita had met his deception with a deadly counter-deception. I’ll kill her if Teenae is in danger! When Oelita was close enough so that he could see her face he knew his conjecture was right. “Teenae!” he hissed as he quenched his anger and poised himself with a tempered soul, ready for anything, emotionless.
“The Mnankrei have your wife! It’s my fault!” Her voice was stricken.
Of course he did not believe her. She had taken his headstrong child bride and was now paying off Joesai in the coin of some grisly joke. “Explain yourself.”
“Your wife left my place and four thugs took her. Two of my guards, who had been following her for protection, tried to interfere. The thugs left one unconscious. The other followed to spy.” A tall, deeply scarred man bowed. Oelita went on breathlessly, “I don’t know why they took her. Perhaps they thought she was me.”
“The ones who challenged you with a Death Rite?” he asked without letting his face show a flicker of disbelief.
“The Mnankrei? Yes. I don’t understand them,” she said.
Now there was a bluff for a temple’s game table! “Where is she now?” What is your price?