That he could well believe. Humans, even in a united cause, were individuals. Salah waited.
“Some in the camp said yes to patience,” Ree^ka-mak said. “Some did not reply. Do you understand what that means, Salah-mak?”
“Yes,” he said, because he did. He’d been here before, in far different cultures, but with the same situation.
When the Mother of Mothers spoke again, the tense was clear to him: future absolute. “Some will attack to get the vaccine.”
As soon as Isabelle had translated, Branch pushed forward. Salah had not heard him come from the leelee lab. The young man blurted out in English, “Won’t the others in the camp try to stop anybody trying to steal vaccine? There must be cops there! Are there cops there?”
Isabelle said, “Yes.”
“Won’t the cops stop the others from rushing us?”
“Translate, please,” Ree^ka-mak said sharply.
Isabelle did. The Mother of Mothers, an old and dying woman, leaned back against her pillows and closed her eyes. It was Isabelle who answered Branch.
“Nobody knows, Branch. Nobody knows.”
CHAPTER 10
Salah took every opportunity to talk to Isabelle. There weren’t many, but he watched for them. He noticed that Leo Brodie was doing the same thing, exchanging a few words with her as he went on and came off duty. Once Salah found them in the tiny clinic kitchen at one of the few times it was not occupied by Kindred cooks making huge pots of vegetable stew. Brodie and Isabelle laughed as they brewed coffee, or what passed for coffee here. Salah could not drink it; evidently Brodie could. He was trying to speak Kindese and she was correcting his pronunciation, which was terrible. Still, Salah was surprised at how much Kindese Leo had picked up.
But he could discuss things with Isabelle as far beyond the scope of someone like Brodie as a planet beyond an empty moon. He outwaited Brodie. When he finally left the kitchen, Salah said to Isabelle, “I know you’re on radio duty now, but another quick question about World culture? I want to know as much as I can.”
“That’s good. Leo does, too, and I think he’s the only one of the squad who’s really considered that they may be here for the rest of their lives.”
Salah didn’t want to talk about what Brodie did or did not consider. He said, “Two questions. First—did the Kindred ever really expect us to come here? Or did they leave us the ship plans fully expecting that since we didn’t have the ready-made parts they did, we would never be able to build any ships?”
Isabelle hesitated. Finally she said, “I’ve asked myself that. I don’t know the answer, and I couldn’t get any answer from anyone here.”
“The Council of Mothers must have known that trade with Terra, free emigration from Terra, could disrupt Kindred’s entire delicate culture.”
“I don’t know. I’m only a junior member of the Council, you know.”
“But it—”
“Salah, I don’t know.”
Or else she didn’t want to know. He dropped back to an easier question. “I never see any religious practices on Kindred. What is religion like here?”
“Lukewarm.” Isabelle smiled. “Well, not uniformly. There are different groups here and there, and a few are still fervent about ancestor worship and a mother goddess, but mostly it’s just leftover songs and customs.”
“Probably goddess worship was what led to your matrilineal culture.”
“Probably.” She didn’t seem much interested in this idea. “But bu^ka^tel is what matters. Salah—why do you dislike Lieutenant Lamont’s Rangers so much?”
The question caught him off guard. “I’m a doctor. I dislike organizations devoted to death and maiming.”
“Not fair.”
He didn’t care if it was fair or not. Jealousy kindled in him, a small destructive flame. “Why do you like the soldiers so much?”
She spoke slowly, considering. “They’re not pampered. They’ve all seen action, risked death, killed people if they had to. I think all that makes you come to terms with what the world is. They don’t blow small stuff into major catastrophes because they know what big stuff actually looks like. They don’t whine. They just carry on.”
Salah recognized in this description the antithesis of Isabelle’s sister. He did not say this. “I think you may be romanticizing the army.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Back to religion, if I may. What is one of these leftover customs?”
“Well, illathil, but you probably already know about that.”
“I don’t.”
She seemed surprised, and then amused. “Really? Nobody told you? Well, you’ll see for yourself. It’s only two days off.”
Marianne sat on a big pillow embroidered with flowers and watched the alien celebration unfolding in the open central area of the Big Lab. She had wanted to use this time to try the newest iteration of the synthetic vaccination on the leelees, but Isabelle had gently explained that was impossible until illathil was over. “It’s supposed to go on for two days, but because of the circumstances, we’ll compress it to a few hours. But no one will do anything else until then.”
“But what is it?” Marianne had asked. All the Kindred scientists had disappeared into their bunk rooms and reappeared wearing red wraps, as startling a change from their usual vegetable-dyed duns and pastels as if a zebra had suddenly sported turquoise stripes.
Isabelle smiled, half-upturned lips on her weary face. All of their faces looked weary: with work, with worry, with uncertainty. “Salah asked the same thing. And Leo Brodie. It’s not easy to explain. It’s part religious ceremony, part party, part dance. Once illathil was more religious and probably very solemn, but now it’s about family, mostly. Like Christmas on Terra for people who don’t even believe in God. It’s about family bonds and—really important—the redistribution of wealth to keep things more equal. It doesn’t matter where you are on World, you go to your lahk for illathil.” She paused. “Only not this group, this year.”
“Like Christmas? They give gifts?”
“Oh, much more than that. We—the music is starting! I have to go. I’ll explain more later. Now I’ll just say that after the dancing, everybody gives away one-fifth of everything they earned or made since the last illathil. It’s called a ‘thumb.’ Bank accounts, stock holdings, real estate—whatever.”
“One-fifth?” Marianne said, incredulous, but Isabelle was already gone. She had rushed into a corner, stepped into a bucket, and joined one of the circles forming to the weird, atonal music. Her feet were covered with red dye of some sort.
Each circle held ten people. They weaved in and out, making precise figures on the floor with the red dye on their soles. To Marianne’s surprise, the Mother of Mothers was part of one circle, sitting propped up on pillows while the other nine Kindred danced around her. She thrust out one red-dyed foot, left a mark on Ka^graa’s ankle, and laughed. Austin and Graa^lok were there, too, Austin looking as bored as Marianne’s sons had looked at family parties when they were thirteen. Bored, but there. “We teach our children very intensively to follow our ways,” Noah had told her.
Noah danced in a different circle from Llaa^moh¡. Well, Marianne supposed, it wouldn’t do to give away one-fifth of your holdings to your own wife. One-fifth! Even Mormons tithed only a tenth. No wonder no one was poor and homeless on World.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Salah said. He dropped to the floor beside her. Across the room, Claire stood clapping to the music. They were the only three not dancing. We haven’t got anything to give away, Marianne thought. Except, of course, a possible vaccine to save the lives of the dancers. Maybe. With luck.