Yomax scratched his beard and thought. “And you don’t remember nothin’?” he asked for the fifth or sixth time, and for at least that many times she answered, “No.”
“Mighty strange,” he said. Then, suddenly, he brightened. “Lift your right foreleg,” he instructed. She did, and he grasped the hoof firmly and turned it up.
“I think she’s been witched,” Dal maintained.
“Com’mere and lookit this,” Yomax said softly. The other two crowded in to see.
“She ain’t got no shoes!” Dal exclaimed.
“Not only that,” the old one pointed out, “there’s no sign that she ever had any.”
“Don’t prove nothin’,” Dal persisted. “I know lots’a folks what don’t wear shoes, particularly up-valley.”
“That’s true,” admitted Yomax, dropping the leg and straightening up, for which Julee was thankful. She felt circulation start to return. “But,” the old centaur continued, “that’s a virgin hoof. No deep stains, no imbedded stones, nothing. Hers are like a newborn’s.”
“Aw, that ain’t possible,” Jol said scornfully.
“I told ya she was witched,” Dal insisted.
“You two get along and do your chores or whatever,” Yomax told them, waving them away with his hands. “I think I know at least part of what this is about.”
They left reluctantly and then started to return. Yomax had to bellow at them several times.
“Now, then, young lady,” he began, satisfied of some privacy at last, “let me throw some names at you. Let’s see if any of ’em strike a bell.”
“Go ahead,” she urged him, intrigued.
“Nathun Brazzle,” he began, trying to make do with the strange names on a paper he had fished from a crowded drawer in his desk. “Vardya Dipla Twelve Sixty-one. Dayton Hain. Wo Jolie. Anythin’?”
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “I’ve never heard any of those names before,” she told him. “At least—I don’t think so.”
“Hmmm…” the old man mused. “I’m sure I’m right. Only possible explanation. Well, tell you what. Got one test when the boat comes in. Old Entry from the same neck of the woods as these folks—ten, fifteen years ago. He pilots the ferry now, since old Gletin refused to see how old he was and went overboard in a storm ’couple years back,” Yomax told her. “He’ll still remember the old language. I’ll git him to spout some of that alien gibberish at ya, and we’ll see if ya understand it.”
They passed the time talking until the ferry arrived, the old man telling about his land and people with pride and affection. During the course of his rambling but entertaining memoir/travelogue, which she was sure was almost half-true, a great many facts emerged. She learned about the Well World, and what the hexes were. She learned about Zone and gates, and the strange creatures that wandered around. She found that, although the Dillians lived to be well over a hundred Well World years on the average, the population was relatively small. Females went into heat only every other year, then only for a short period, and invariably bore but a single young—which had about an even chance of surviving its first year.
If you made it through puberty, about a twenty percent chance, then you would live a long life—because you would already be immune to most of what would kill you.
The various colors—Yomax said there were hundreds of combinations—of the people didn’t seem to meld with interbreeding, she was told, since all color genes were recessives.
“Rank comes with age,” Yomax told her. “When you get too old to plow, or build, or chop and haul wood, they put you in charge of things. Since nobody likes to admit they’re old when the job’s so little—you saw how much respect I got from the young ones—I wound up bein’ about everything the village needs.”
The mother was the ultimate authority in child-rearing, he explained, but the family group shared moral responsibility. Since customs like marriage and inheritances were unknown—everything was simplistically communal—people formed family groups with other people they liked, without much regard to sex. The groups were mostly traditional now, but occasionally new ones of three to six would be formed by the young after puberty.
The entire hex was a collection of small towns and villages, she learned, because of the low birthrate and also because of innate limits on technology here. Anything more ambitious than the most basic steam engine just wouldn’t work in Dillia.
That kept things extremely simple and pastoral, but also stable, peaceful, and uncluttered.
“In some hexes you can’t even tell what sort of place it once was,” Yomax told her. “All them machines and smelly stuff, everybody livin’ in air-conditioned bubbles. Then they want to come here to get back to nature! They do some tourist business in other parts of the country, but this place is so isolated nobody’s discovered it yet. And, when they do, they’ll find us damned hostile, I can tell you!”
With that impassioned statement, there came the long, deep sound of a steam whistle, its call echoing across the mountains.
Yomax grabbed a simple cloth sack tied with twine and invited her down to the lakefront about 150 meters from town. She saw a simple wooden wharf with several huge posts, nothing more. A few townspeople waited just off the dock, apparently having business downlake or awaiting passengers.
Coming up on the wharf was the strangest craft she had ever seen. A giant oval raft, it looked like, with another raft built on top of it and supported by solid log cross-bracing. In the middle was a single, huge, black boiler, with a stack going up through the second tier and several meters beyond, belching white smoke.
A single centaur, black and white striped all over, a crazy-looking broad-brimmed hat on his head, stood at a large wheel, which was flanked by two levers. The levers went down through to the boiler level and seemed to do nothing but signal a brown centaur-engineer to turn some control or other on the boiler. The boiler was attached by what looked more like thick rope than chain to a small, wooden paddle wheel in the back.
About twenty varicolored Dillians stood on the first deck, some between oaken trunks full of unguessable cargo. Under the cross-bracing there seemed to be a counter and some kegs and steins. A large bale of grain flanked it.
Wu Julee could guess that this was the snack bar. She had already had a brunch with Yomax and discovered that the centaurs were herbivores who occasionally cooked various dishes but mostly ate raw grains and grasses grown in their fields. Tasted good, too, she had found.
Ropes from wooden posts on the side of the primitive steamer were tossed to a couple of villagers on the dock who tied the boat off. Satisfied, the captain went to the back and came down an almost disguised grooved ramp to the first deck.
Yomax tossed the mail to a crewman who idly threw it toward the center of the boat. The captain picked up a similar sack and jumped off to the dock, clasping hands with Yomax and then handing the old official the sack.
Yomax introduced the steamer captain to Wu Julee.
“This here’s Klamath,” the old man told her. “Not a proper name for a good Dillian, but he was born with it.”
“Please to meet you, Lady um…?” The captain’s expression prompted a lead.
“She don’t know her name, Klammy,” Yomax explained. “Just kinda showed up all blanked out early this mornin’. I think she’s an Entry, and thought maybe you could help.” Quickly he explained his language idea to the captain.
“Harder than you think,” the captain replied thoughtfully. “It’s true that I think in the old tongue, but everything’s instantly and automatically translated in and out. It’d be easier if I could write something for her.”