Glorying in his strength, in his wholeness, glancing in awe at his left arm, complete once again, Duwan had to exert all his strength to push the animal off the female. She was alive, breathing, but she was unconscious. Still a bit dazed, Duwan looked around, remembered the stream at the foot of the slope, lifted the female. She was quite light, all skin and bones. He took only an instant to wonder why she was starving in a land of plenty.
Her clothing had been further damaged by the attack of the animal, and clung to her by shreds. To determine the extent of her injuries, Duwan removed the garment. She lay on moss at the brink of the stream. He cleansed her wounds. They would be painful, but not fatal. The worst claw gashes were on her shoulder. Her skin was pale, not as rich and smooth as his own, or as that of Alning. She was thin. Her bud point was enlarged, and, although he had never seen such—drinker females who had grafted were modest—he knew that she had performed, with someone, that act of which he had dreamed often of performing with Alning.
He had finished cleansing the shallower wounds on her legs when he noticed her left foot. It was discolored, festering, inflamed, quite nasty looking, an old wound. He examined it, saw that it needed lancing, used the point of his knife and narrowly escaped having the accumulated putrescence jet into his face. He squeezed out the rest of the bad juices and saw the black tip of the splinter, cut away dying flesh, exposed the soggy wood, drew it forth and it was followed by bright, fresh, healthy blood. He closed the wound with a pulped mixture of two tissues from fixed brothers growing along the stream, applied the same healing mixture to her other wounds, and sat down to wait. Her swollen, exposed bud point held a certain fascination for him, so he covered it with her torn garment.
She awakened with a start, jerked her head upward, moaned and fell back to be comatose for a few minutes longer. The next time she opened her eyes Duwan said, "Be at rest."
Her eyes, he saw, were purple, like an evening sky before a storm. They examined him, wide, searching.
"Master?" she whispered.
"You are not hurt badly," he said. "I have treated your wounds." She raised herself on one elbow, groaned as her injured shoulder pulled, tossed aside her garment casually and examined herself.
"The farl?" she asked.
"Farl? The animal that attacked you? It is dead."
"Good," she said. "Now we will have real food." Shocked, Duwan was speechless.
"The haunches are best," she said, trying to sit up. "There will be so much of it that we won't be able to eat it all before it spoils, but, ah—"
"You would eat flesh?" Duwan asked.
She looked at him. "Who are you?"
"I am Duwan the Drinker."
"An odd name."
"And you? You are Drinker."
She looked puzzled. "I am Jai."
"You are Drinker," he said, for as he had worked on her injured foot he had seen the small pores from which would grow the tendrils, should she have need to return to the earth.
"I don't know what you mean," she said. "Until I ran away I was pong in the city of Arutan."
Duwan shook his head. She spoke as a Drinker, but her words were, occasionally, misshaped, slightly askew, and he did not know the words pong, and Arutan.
"I have been starving," she said. "Please, please, cut a great slice of meat from the haunch of the farl. As hungry as I am I can almost eat it raw."
Duwan reached for a life organ on a particularly succulent fixed brother, breaking it away carefully. "If you are hungry, here is food," he said.
Her eyes went wide. "It is forbidden."
He took a nibble of the leaf, thrust the rest toward her mouth.
"Must I, Master?" she asked.
"Eat," he said. "You will need your strength to heal your wounds." She closed her eyes, swallowed, took the leaf and began to chew it. Her eyes opened. "Good," she said, reaching for the fixed brother, which was quite near her, tearing away several leaves.
"No, no," Duwan said. "Gently, and carefully." She would have stripped the fixed brother had he not restrained her, gathering more for her from other fixed brothers, taking only a small portion of their life, thanking each as he did.
"At least I will die with a full stomach," Jai said, as she munched.
"I think," Duwan said, "that we have much to learn from each other. When you are rested, we will talk."
Chapter Six
It soon became apparent to Duwan that the female, Jai, was not the most articulate of Drinkers, that, indeed, her ignorance was astounding. Nor was he the most experienced of interrogators. His curiosity was great, but satisfying it was complicated by Jai's tendency to throw in words with which he was not familiar, words that did not have the sound of the only language Duwan had ever heard.
"Slowly, slowly," he said. "You speak of pong. What is or are pong?"
"I am pong."
"You are not Drinker, female?"
"I know not this word, Drinker."
"I am Drinker. All are Drinker."
"You have the basic form of pong, but more beautiful," she said. "Yet you could pass for Devourer."
"Again," he said, "I know not that word." Unless, he thought, it also meant Enemy. "Are the Devourers the Enemy?"
"Enemy?" She mused. "Does that mean one who is against you?"
"One who kills, who takes."
"They kill," she said, "so I suppose they are enemy." Duwan sighed and looked up at the sky. "Long, long ago this Land of Many Brothers was the home of the Drinkers. The Enemy came from the south. You cannot be of the Enemy, for you are Drinker." She looked puzzled. Irritated, he lifted her good foot and pointed to an area of many small pores. "This shows that you are Drinker," he almost shouted. "Do these Devourers have such pores on the bottoms of their feet?"
"I have never had occasion to examine feet," she said. Duwan reached for a tasty life organ from a nearby brother. Jai's eyes followed the movement of his hand. He sighed, plucked another life organ, handed it to her.
"You act as if the weeds are alive," she said.
"Alive? Of course they are alive."
"But not as we are alive, surely."
"All life is a oneness."
She looked away, moved uneasily.
"That troubles you?"
"Master," she said, "I cannot think in such lofty terms. I see myself, and then I see a weed."
"But this small, fixed brother," he touched a life organ gently, "feels, drinks the sun, and it can die."
She shrugged. "I am trying to understand."
"Both you and I and this small brother are of the earth and for the earth."
"At any rate," she said, "I am your pong."
"Just what does a pong do?" he asked.
"We work for the Devourers."
"Not for yourself, not for the group?"
"We are allowed to grow enough food to keep us alive, that is all we do for ourselves."
"To the north I saw ones who looked Drinker beating others who also looked Drinker with a lash," he said. "What way is that?"
"The way of Devourer and pong."