"Have you put bitalinin a play?" she asked Dapple.
"Not yet. What quality would they represent?"
"Reliability," said the merchant riding next to them. "Strength. Endurance. Obstinacy. Good milk."
"I will certainly consider the idea," Dapple replied.
At first the plain was green, the climate rainy. As they traveled south and west, the weather became dry, and the plain turned dun. This was not a brief journey. Haik had time to get used to riding, though the country never became ordinary to her. It was so wide! So empty!
The merchants in the caravan belonged to a single family. Both women and men were along on the journey. Of course the actors camped with the women, while the men–farther out–stood guard. In spite of this protection, Haik was uneasy. The stars overhead were no longer entirely familiar; the darkness around her seemed to go on forever; and caravan campfires seemed tiny. Far out on the plain, wild sulincried. They were more savage than the domestic breeds used for hunting and guarding, Dapple told her. "And uglier, with scales covering half their bodies. Our sulinin the north have only a few small scaly patches."
The sulinin Haik’s country were entirely furry, except in the spring. Then the males lost their chest fur, revealing an area of scaly skin, dark green and glittering. If allowed to, they’d attack one another, each trying to destroy the other’s chest adornment. "Biting the jewels," was the name of this behavior.
Sitting under the vast foreign sky, Haik thought about sulin. They were all varieties of a single animal. Everyone knew this, though it was hard to believe that Tulwar’s mild-tempered, furry creatures were the same as the wild animals Dapple described. Could change go farther? Could an animal with hands become a pesha?And what caused change? Not trickery, as in the play. Dapple, reaching over, distracted her. Instead of evolution, she thought about love.
They reached a town next to a wide sandy river. Low bushy trees grew along the banks. The merchants made camp next to the trees, circling their wagons. Men took the animals to graze, while the women–merchants and actors–went to town.
The streets were packed dirt, the houses adobe with wood doors and beams. (Haik could see these last protruding through the walls.) The people were the same physical type as in Hu, but with grey-brown fur. A few had faint markings–not spots like Dapple, but narrow broken stripes. They dressed as all people did, in tunics or shorts and vests.
Why, thought Haik suddenly, did people come in different hues? Most wild species were a single color, with occasional freaks, usually black or white. Domestic animals came in different colors. It was obvious why: people had bred them according to different ideas of usefulness and beauty. Had people bred themselves to be grey, grey-brown, red, dun and so on? This was possible, though it seemed to Haik that most people were attracted to difference. Witness Ettin Taiin. Witness the response of the Tulwar matrons to her father.
Now to the problems of time and change, she added the problem of difference. Maybe the problem of similarity as well. If animals tended to be the same, why did difference occur? If there was a tendency toward difference, why did it become evident only sometimes? She was as red as her father. Her daughters were dun. At this point, her head began to ache; and she understood the wisdom of her senior relatives. If one began to question anything–shells in rock, the hand in a pesha’s flipper–the questions would proliferate, till they stretched to the horizon in every direction and why, why, whyfilled the sky, like the calls of migrating birds.
"Are you all right?" asked Dapple.
"Thinking," said Haik.
At the center of the town was a square, made of packed dirt. The merchants set up a tent and laid out sample goods: dried fish from Hu, fabric made by northern weavers, boxes carved from rare kinds of wood, jewelry of silver and dark red shell. Last of all, they unfolded an especially fine piece of cloth, put it on the ground and poured out their most precious treasure: a high, white, glittering heap of salt.
Townsfolk gathered: bent matriarchs, robust matrons, slim girls and boys, even a few adult men. All were grey-brown, except the very old, who had turned white.
In general, people looked like their relatives; and everyone knew that family traits existed. Why else select breeding partners with so much care? There must be two tendencies within people, one toward similarity, the other toward difference. The same must also be true of animals. Domestic sulincame in different colors; by breeding, people had brought out variations that must have been in the wild animals, though never visible, except in freaks. She crouched in the shadows at the back of the merchants’ tent, barely noticing the commerce in front of her, thinking difficult thoughts.
Nowadays, geneticists tell us that the variation among people was caused by drift in isolated populations, combined with the tendency of all people to modify and improve anything they can get their hands on. We have bred ourselves like sulinto fit in different environments and to meet different ideas of beauty.
But how could Haik know this much about the history of life? How could she know that wild animals were more varied than she had observed? There are wild sulinin the far northern islands as thick furred and white as the local people. There is a rare, almost extinct kind of wild sulinon the third continent, which is black and entirely scaly, except for a ridge of rust-brown fur along its back. She, having traveled on only one continent, was hypothesizing in the absence of adequate data. In spite of this, she caught a glimpse of how inheritance works.
How likely is this? Could a person like Haik, living in a far-back era, come so near the idea of genes?
Our ancestors were not fools! They were farmers and hunters, who observed animals closely; and they achieved technological advances–the creation through breeding of the plants that feed us and the animals we still use, though no longer exclusively, for work and travel–which we have not yet equaled, except possibly by going into space.
In addition to the usual knowledge about inheritance, Haik had the ideas she’d gained from fossils. Other folk knew that certain plants and animals could be changed by breeding; and that families had traits that could be transmitted, either for good or bad. But most life seemed immutable. Wild animals were the same from generation to generation. So were the plants of forest and plain. The Goddess liked the world to stay put, as far as most people could see. Haik knew otherwise.
Dapple came after her, saying, "We need help in setting up our stage."
That evening, in the long summer twilight, the actors performed the peshacomedy. Dapple had to make a speech beforehand, explaining what a peshawas, since they were far inland now. But the town folk knew about sulin, tli,and penises; and the play went well, as had the trading of the merchants. The next day they continued west.
Haik traveled with Dapple all summer. She learned to make masks by soaking paper in glue, then applying it in layers to a wooden mask frame.