“That’s preposterous!” said Galbro Hess.
The Curator of Ethnology was nearly as wide as he was tall, dressed in an overstretched cable-knit sweater, his gray hair standing up in spikes. Normally, he was an agreeable, jolly person, but Rue’s story had struck a nerve.
“I get them all the time, charlatans and kooks pretending to be Atoka, or to have some sort of spiritual connection to them. There are even re-enactors who pretend to hold Atoka ceremonies. It’s a pile of… well, you know. I’m afraid you were taken in, Rue.”
She had found him in the ethnographic artifact storage area, where he was sorting a collection of broken ceramics spread out on a large, padded table. Around them, shelves rose to the high ceilings, packed with carved masks, handlooms, model boats, drums, and similar things, mostly brown. That was Rue’s main objection to ethnographic materiaclass="underline" it was so monochromatic.
“I can spot a charlatan,” Rue said. “He didn’t read that way. For one thing, he’s not from here, he’s from Eleuthera. I don’t think they have Atoka re-enactors there.”
“They don’t have Atoka either,” Galbro said grumpily, sorting a glazed brown ceramic from even browner unglazed ones.
“He told a long story of how some refugees escaped to Radovani.”
Galbrolooked up, but then waved a hand in dismissal. “All that shows is that he did his homework. It’s true, there was a remnant population that went to Radovani. But they were persecuted there, and subjected to forced assimilation. In the end they lost their culture, intermarried, and dwindled to nothing.”
“He says they persisted long enough to be exiled again to Eleuthera.”
“A convenient story.”
“Regardless, I’d like to know more about how we got our Atoka collection.”
“Whose side are you on?” Galbro objected.
“I just want to be prepared. If this ends in a repatriation claim…”
“No one’s going to repatriate Aldry.”
“I know that, but to prepare our response I want to be sure we came by her legally.”
Galbro stopped his pretense of working and rested his fists on the table. “Sorry, can’t give you much joy there. The problem isn’t with the museum; we did everything right. But the original collector… well, you know how they were in those days. Regular looters and bandits. It may have been legal at the time, but by current standards, no.”
“What happened?” Rue said.
“Have you ever heard of the Immolation ceremonies?”
“No. That is, I’ve heard the word, but not what it means.”
“It was the heart and soul of Atoka culture. Once every three generations they would take all their earthly belongings, pile them up in the center of the village, and light a bonfire. Then they would burn all their homes to the ground, so that the next generation would have to start over with nothing. All their wealth, their art, their subsistence would go up in flames. It was the reason the Atoka never built a great civilization—because they voluntarily reduced themselves to poverty and dependence whenever they started to get ahead.
“When our ancestors came to Sarona, they tried to convince the Atoka of how pointless and self-destructive the custom was. From their point of view, the Immolations reduced the Atoka to begging from their more provident neighbors, whose surpluses would be drained to subsidize Atoka beliefs. If they refused to help, well, starving people will get desperate and take what they have to. As tensions grew, our ancestors began to forcibly suppress the Immolations. In one famous instance, an Atoka village was all assembled and ready to light the bonfire when soldiers marched in and drove them out—then, naturally, looted the pile of goods ready for the torch. The Atoka were so enraged they attacked, and that was the beginning of the wars that led to their destruction at the Battle of the River Bend.
“Well, our Atoka collection came from the descendants of a man who was an officer in that troop of soldiers. A man of his rank got first pick of the loot—and the Aldry portrait was the best Atoka culture had to offer.”
Rue was silent, shocked. “That is a horrifying story,” she said at last. “We can’t tell that to the public. They would be outraged.”
“Well, they think of the Atoka as idealized children of nature, not as flesh and blood who could be just as wrongheaded as we are. Sure, what the soldiers did was heavy-handed; but if they hadn’t saved the portrait, it would have been burned, not preserved so that we can revere it today.”
Rue returned to her office feeling troubled. She had taken the problem to Galbro in hopes that he would see it as an interesting topic for investigation. But he was too anchored to his conviction about the extinction of the Atoka. The made-up portion of his mind had crowded out the curiosity.
Her spirits sank further when her wristband alerted her that Traversed Bridge had returned. It would be up to her to explain to him.
This morning he was wearing a heavier coat, much more appropriate to the weather. “The lady at the hotel gave it to me,” he said when Rue remarked on it. She couldn’t help but notice that he brought out generous impulses in people.
“Have you thought it over?” she asked when they reached her office.
“Yes,” he said. “I need to do as Even Glancing told me, and bring her back.”
Rue pulled up a chair and sat facing him. “All right. Now, I can’t guide you through a repatriation, Traversed, because my first loyalty is to the museum, and they will contest this claim. It’s a complex, expensive process, and you may not win. The first thing I would advise you to do is hire an attorney to make the formal claim. You will also have to hire an expert to help you prove that your people are truly the Atoka.”
“But we know who we are,” he said earnestly.
“That’s not good enough for the court. You need a documented trail of evidence. The museum will have experts to testify that you can’t be who you say you are. We also need to know that you are truly authorized by your people to make this claim. Can you get that?”
Gravely, he nodded. “I will have to send a message to my Kin Mother.”
“Is she the one who sent you?”
“Yes.” The shadows of complex thoughts moved behind his eyes. “I had no sisters, and I was firstborn, so it was my duty to go out into the world. They chose me to go to university.”
It surprised Rue a little to hear that he was university educated; he gave such an impression of unworldliness. “Did you get a degree?”
He nodded. “Hydrological engineering. I wanted to design a dam for the mountains above my village, to stop the river floods and bring us reliable water. I am here instead.”
His obvious disappointment made Rue say, “Well, you have plenty of time. You can still do that when you return.”
He shrugged. “I am earning my right to be a person.”
She wanted to ask more, but it was a risk to know too much about him; it might cloud her loyalties. Instead, she continued, “You will also have to prove that the object was taken from your people illegally, and that it has an ongoing cultural importance to them. The museum isn’t likely to contest the first point, but what about the second? What traditions do you have about Even Glancing?”
“None that I know,” he said.
“Then how did you know her name?”
“It is written on the portrait.”
There was no label or inscription. “Really?” Rue said skeptically.
“Yes, in the design on her jacket.”