“The patient is becoming seriously disturbed,” said Prilicla urgently. “The feelings of friendship towards you are being negated by an upsurge of the background fear-anger-despair emotions that troubled it earlier. But it is fighting very hard to subdue those adverse feelings towards you. Can you say something that will help? Its distress is increasing.”
Gurronsevas sub-vocalized a word that he had been forbidden to speak as a child and had only rarely used as an adult. The patient’s reaction to what should have been good news was all wrong, and suddenly he felt both unsure of himself and angry that he was causing anguish to a friend without knowing how or why. In all other respects Creethar’s thought processes and conversation were normal, but in this one respect the Wem was totally alien. Or was it the medical team, or even Gurronsevas himself who in this single respect were alien, and if so how?
He was missing something, Gurronsevas felt sure, some essential difference that was both simple and vitally important. An idea was beginning to stir in the depths of his mind, but trying to coax it out into the light seemed only to drive it deeper. He wanted to ask Prilicla for advice, but he knew that if he bypassed the translator to do so, Creethar would think that he was keeping secrets from it, and that would not be the right thing to do just now.
He did not know what to say, so he said what he felt.
“Creethar,” he went on, “I feel confused, and guilty, and very, very sorry for the mental pain I am causing you. Somehow I have failed to understand you. But please believe me, it is not now and has never been my intention or that of the others on the ship to hurt you. Nevertheless we, and especially I through ignorance and insensitivity, have caused you past and present mental anguish. Is there any apology I can make, or anything else that I can say or do that will ease it?”
Creethar’s body grew tense but it was not fighting the restraints. It said, “For such a fearsome creature you can be sensitive at times and grossly insensitive at others. There is something that you might do for me, Gurronsevas, but I am ashamed to speak the words. It is not the kind of favor that one ever asks of a relative or a close friend, or even a new, off-worlder friend like yourself, because it would be distressing for them.”
“Ask it, friend Creethar,” said Gurronsevas firmly, “and I shall do it, whatever it is.”
“When, when my time comes,” said Creethar in a voice that was barely audible, “will you go on talking to me about the wonders you have seen on other worlds, and stay close to me until the end?”
The brief silence that followed was broken by Prilicla, who said, “Gurronsevas, why are you feeling so happy?”
“Give me a few minutes to talk to it,” he replied, “and Creethar and the rest of you will feel happy, too.”
CHAPTER 32
The litter bearing Creethar had its sun canopy fully deployed so that the patient was hidden from sight. When Prilicla had said that it was only fitting that Gurronsevas and no one else should accompany it to the mine entrance, the only objection had come from Naydrad who was worried by the thought of an inexperienced driver being in charge of an anti-gravity vehicle.
Tawsar, the returned hunters, and all of the teachers with the exception of Remrath had been joined by the young working parties, so that the slope outside the mine entrance was covered by tightly-packed Wem bodies, except for a small area at the front of the crowd that contained three small handcarts. Slowly and silently Gurronsevas guided the litter to within a few yards of the carts, then reduced power to the anti-gravity grids. While the litter was settling to the ground he opened the canopy to reveal Creethar.
The assembled Wem were hushed and respectful as befitted the occasion, their feelings towards the off-worlders remaining hidden. Even the youngest of the children were silent as the crowd stared at the still figure of their former First Hunter whose body was clean and undamaged except for its right hind-limb, which was encased in a transparent cast. But when Creethar raised its head suddenly and stepped onto the ground the reaction, the sudden outburst of shouting and screaming, and the milling about of Wem bodies, was beyond anything in Gurronsevas’ experience. He wondered how this storm of emotional radiation was affecting Prilicla on Rhabwar.
But the empath had been gently insistent that, following their lengthy pre-discharge conversation with Creethar, there would be no risk. The expected emotional storm, it felt, would be comprised of shock, surprise and uncertainty, with minimum hostility. After all, it had been Creethar’s own idea to hide the facts from its own people until the last possible moment so that its homecoming would have the maximum effect.
Limping only slightly, Creethar moved close to the hand-carts and stopped to look down at them. The noise from the crowd made it difficult to think, but rather than inarticulate screaming and shouting, the sound was changing to that of many conversations that were being shouted only because everyone else was shouting. And the movements within the crowd had almost ceased, but one eye showed him a young adult who looked like Druuth disappearing into the mine entrance, hopefully on the way to fetch Remrath. The others brought him the picture of Creethar looking up from the carts and raising its arms for silence.
“My family, friends and fellow hunters,” it said slowly and clearly when silence finally came, “you have made a serious mistake regarding the intentions and the abilities of the off-worlders on the ship. It is the same mistake that I was making until a few hours ago. But now you can see for yourselves that I am not a dismembered collection of dead meat ready to be loaded onto these carts and taken to the kitchen. I am alive, and strong, and healthy. This is because our off-world friends are not and have never been preservers of meat.
“They are preservers of life.”
Creethar paused. From the crowd there came a sighing sound, like a wind blowing gently over grass, as they all seemed to inhale as one in surprise and wonder. But silence returned as it resumed talking, describing all the things that had been said and done to it by the off-worlders. Only once did it stop, when its parent and its mate appeared suddenly in the mine entrance and began pushing their way to the front of the crowd. But Remrath gestured for Creethar to go on speaking and walked past it to stand beside Gurronsevas.
In a voice that carried only to him, it said, “We grievously misjudged your friends on the ship and, after all that you have done for us, you most of all. I was thinking too much like an ignorant and backward Wem, and I am sorry. You, and your preserver friends, are again welcome in our home.”
“Thank you,” said Gurronsevas in matching voice. “I, too, am deeply sorry, for being so stupid and insensitive, and for not listening with more care to the words you were saying to me. It was a misunderstanding.”
A misunderstanding …
Gurronsevas cringed inwardly with shame and embarrassment at the memory of some of the things he had said to Remrath. At the time he had thought it strange and rather charming, but not important, that the arts of cooking and healing were practiced by the same person, and that among the Wem these individuals were also known as preservers. If he had been thinking properly he would have realized that in a society that had come to regard the eating of their increasingly scarce food animals as their only long-term hope of survival, meat from any source would not have been wasted. The clues had been plain for him to see. And when he had used the word “preservers” while referring to the medical team, believing that “healer” and “preserver” were synonymous so far as the Wem language was concerned, he had not been thinking at all.