"Where do Bushmen come from?" she asked suddenly. When !Xabbu did not immediately answer she felt a pang of worry. "Oh, is that an utterly rude question?"
His slanted eyes were so narrow the brown irises were almost invisible until something made them open wide in surprise or amusement. She could not tell which of those her second question had produced. "No, no. It is not rude, Sam. I am just trying to think of the answer." He touched his chest. "In my case, a small country called Botswana, but people with my blood are scattered throughout the southern part of Africa. Or do you mean originally?"
"I guess so, yeah." She moved closer, matching her stride to his; she did not want to include Jongleur in the conversation.
"No one knows for certain. In my school days I was told we migrated down from the northern part of the continent long, long ago—a hundred thousand years ago, perhaps. But there are other theories."
"Is that why you can walk, like, forever? Because you're a Bushman?"
He smiled. "I suppose so. I was raised in two traditions, and both made for hard lives, but my father's people—the old, old tradition, the nomadic hunters—sometimes walked and ran for days on the track of game. I am not as strong as they were, I think, but I had to harden myself when I lived with them."
"Were? You mean they're not around anymore?"
Something moved across his brown face, a shadow in this place with no shadows. "I could not find them when I looked for them again a few years ago. There were few left, in any case, and the Kalahari is harsh. It could be that there are no more people who live the old life."
"Impacted! Then you're like . . . the last of the Bushmen." Even as she said it, she realized what a terrible thing that would be.
To his credit, !Xabbu did his best to smile again. "I do not think of myself that way, Sam. I was only a visitor to the original way of life, for one thing. I lived with them just a few years. But it could be that no one else will learn the old ways as I did, that is true enough." He seemed lost for a moment. In the silence, Sam could hear Jongleur's harsh, even breathing behind them. "It is not surprising. It is a life I value, but I do not think many others would agree. If you were one of that tribe, Sam, you would find it very hard."
There was something in the way he said it that poked at Sam's heart—he seemed needy, something she had never seen in him before. Perhaps it was Renie's disappearance. "Tell me about it," she said. "Would I have to hunt lions with a spear or something?"
He laughed. "No. In the delta, where my mother's people live, they sometimes fish with spears, but in the desert the killing of large animals is done with a bow and arrow. I do not know anyone who has ever killed a lion, few who have ever seen one—they are dying out, too. No, we shoot poison arrows, then track the animal until the poison has killed it."
She thought that was a bit unfair, but didn't want to say so. "Do girls do it?"
!Xabbu shook his head. "No, at least not among my father's people. And even men only go hunting big animals from time to time. Mostly they snare smaller game. The women have other duties. If you were one of my tribe, an unmarried girl like you, you would help with the children—watch them, play games with them. . . ."
"That doesn't sound so bad. What would I wear?" She looked down at her improvised bikini, a last sad reminder of Orlando. "Something like this?"
"No, no, Sam. The sun would burn you up in a day. You would wear a kaross—a kind of dress made from the hide of an antelope with the tail still on it. And besides watching the children, you would help the other women dig for melons and roots and grubs—things I think you would not much like to eat. But nothing goes to waste in the Kalahari. We use our bows to make music as well as shoot arrows. And our thumb pianos—" he mimed the playing of a small, two-handed instrument, "—we also use as workbenches for braiding rope. Everything is used as many ways as possible. Nothing goes to waste."
She considered this for a moment. "I think that part is good. But I don't know if I'd want to eat grubs."
"And eggs from ants," he said solemnly. "We eat those too."
"Yick! You're making that up!"
"I swear I am not," he said, but he was smiling again. "Sam, I fear for that life, and I would miss ant eggs were I never to eat them again, but I know most people would not want to live in that way."
"It sounds so hard."
"It is." He nodded suddenly a little distant, a little sad. "It is."
The endless march at last found a temporary ending. Jongleur was limping, although he refused to admit he was suffering. Sam, who was footsore and exhausted herself, had to surrender her pride and suggest that it was time to stop.
She was getting frighteningly good at falling asleep without pillow or blanket—the many back-country trips Pithlit had made with Thargor had already prepared her a bit—and the invisible ground was no harder than some other places she'd slept, but even exhaustion couldn't bring her peace. The dreams of darkness and solitude returned, not quite as vivid as before, but still enough for her to wake several times, discovering on the last that !Xabbu was kneeling beside her in the pearly false dawn, a concerned look on his face.
"You cried out," he said. "You said that the birds would not come to you. . . ?"
Sam couldn't remember anything about birds—the details of the dream were already beginning to recede—but she did remember the loneliness, and how desperate she had been for companionship, some contact that might warm the long, cold dark. When she told him, !Xabbu looked at her strangely.
"That is much like the dreams I have had," he said. He turned to look at Felix Jongleur, who was coming up from his own sleep with a host of small twitches and whimpers. !Xabbu went to him and shook him awake.
"What do you want?" Jongleur snarled, but Sam thought there was something weak and frightened beneath his words.
"My friend and I have had the same dream," !Xabbu told him. "Tell us how you dreamed."
Jongleur pulled away as though burned. "I will tell you nothing. Don't touch me."
!Xabbu stared at him intently. "This could be important to us. We are all trapped in this place together."
"What is inside my head is mine alone," Jongleur said loudly. "Not yours—not anyone's!" He struggled to his feet and stood, fists clenched and face pale. Sam was suddenly reminded how strange it was that they should all wear such lifelike forms, that everything should be so much like the real world while still being completely unreal.
"Keep them, then," !Xabbu said in disgust. "Keep your secrets."
"A man without secrets is no man at all," Jongleur spat back.
"Tchi seen," said Sam. "He's scannulated. Forget him. !Xabbu. Let's get going." But she was puzzled by the change from Jongleur's normally icy expression. For a moment he had looked like a man pursued by demons.
The idea of sharing a dream was still bothering her as they walked. "How could that be?" she asked him. "I mean, it's one thing for us to see the same things, because they're all pumped into our heads by the system. But you can't pump in thoughts and dreams and fenfen like that." She frowned. "Can you?"
!Xabbu shrugged. "Since we have been in this network, there have been nothing but questions." He turned to Jongleur. "Tell us, since you will not talk of dreams, how it is that we are kept on this network against our will? You call yourself a master, a god even, but now you, too, are trapped here. How can such a thing be? With all that expensive equipment of yours, you may be little more than a mind in the wires, perhaps—but me? I am not even wearing a neurocannula, if that is the word. The system has no direct contact to my brain."