It was a male, not a female, that Luet was looking for, and as soon as she moved away from the curious females, there he was—Yobar, the one who had been an outcast less than a year ago, and who now was best friends with the oldest daughter of the matriarch of the tribe; he had as much prestige as a male could get in this city of women. Luet brought the melon to where Yobar could see what she had. Then, turning slightly away so he wouldn't be too frightened, she cast it down on a rock and the melon burst open.
As she expected, Yobar jumped back, startled. When he saw that Luet was not afraid, however, he soon came closer to investigate. Now she could show him what she wanted him to see—the secret that they had so carefully kept from all the baboons during their year in this place. She reached down, picked up a fragment of rind with plenty of the meat of the fruit still clinging to it, and ate noisily.
The sound of her eating drew the others, but it was Yobar—as she had expected—who followed her example and began to eat. He made no distinction between fruit and rind, of course, and seemed to enjoy both equally. When he was full, he jumped around, hooting and frolicking, until others—especially young males—began to venture forward to try the fruit.
Luet slowly stepped back, then turned and walked away.
She heard footsteps padding behind her. She glanced back; Yobar was following her. She had not expected this, but then Yobar had always surprised her. He was intelligent and curious indeed, among animals whose intelligence was only a little short of the human mind, and whose curiosity and eagerness to learn were sometimes greater.
"Come if you will, then," said Luet. She led him upstream to the garden, where the baboons had long been forbidden to go. The last of the third crop of melons was still on the vine, some ripe, some not yet. He hesitated at the edge of the garden, for the baboons had long since learned to respect that invisible boundary. She beckoned to him, though, and he carefully crossed the edge into the garden. She took him to a ripe melon. "Eat them when they look like this," she said. "When they smell like this." She held the melon out to him, still attached to the vine. He sniffed it, shook it, then thumped it on the ground. With enough thumping, he broke it. Then he took a bite and hooted happily at her.
"I'm not done yet," said Luet. "You have to pay attention through the whole lesson." She held out another melon, this one not ripe, and though she let Yobar sniff it, she wouldn't let him hold it. "No," she said. "Don't eat these. The seeds aren't mature, and if you eat them when they look like this, you won't have a crop next year." She set the unripe melon down behind her, and pointed to the broken ripe melon in pieces around Yobar's feet. "Eat the ripe ones. Shedemei says the seeds will pass right through your digestive system unharmed, and they'll sprout right in your turds and grow quite nicely. You can have melons forever, if you teach the others to eat only the ripe ones. If you teach them to wait."
Yobar looked at her steadily.
"You don't understand any of the words I'm saying," she said. "But that doesn't mean you don't understand the lesson, does it? You're a smart one. You'll figure it out. You'll teach the others before you move on to another troop, won't you? It's the only gift we can leave for you, our rent for using your valley this past year. Please take this from us, and use it well."
He hooted once.
She got up and walked away from him. The riding camels were ready for mounting now; they had been waiting for her. "I was just showing the garden to Yobar," she said. Of course Kokor rolled her eyes at that, but Luet hardly noticed—it was Nafai's smile, and Hushidh's nod, and Volemak's "Well done" that mattered.
On command, the camels lurched to their feet, burdened with tents and supplies, dryboxes and coldboxes full of seeds and embryos, and—above all—with not sixteen but twenty-three human beings now. As Elemak said only last night, the Oversoul had better lead them to their destination before the children get too big to ride with their mothers, or else it had better find them more camels along the way.
The first two days' travel took them northeast, along the same route they had taken from Basilica. It had been a year since they came that way, however, and almost nothing looked familiar—or at least nothing looked more familiar than anything else, since all gray-brown rocks and yellow-gray sand begin to look familiar after the first hour.
Mebbekew rode beside Elemak for a short way, late in the second afternoon. "We passed the place where you sentenced him to death, didn't we?"
Elemak was silent for a moment. Then: "No, we won't pass it at all."
"I thought I saw it."
"You didn't."
They rode in silence for a while more.
"Elemak," said Mebbekew.
"Yes?" He didn't sound as if he was enjoying the conversation.
"Who could stop us if we simply took our share of the tents, and three days' supplies, and headed north to Basilica?"
Sometimes it seemed to Elemak that Mebbekew's shortsightedness bordered on stupidity. "Apparently you've forgotten that we have no money. I can assure you that being poor in Basilica is even worse than being poor out here, because in Basilica the Oversoul won't give a lizard's tit for your survival."
"Oh, and we've been so well taken care of here!" said Meb scornfully.
"We were at a well-watered location for more than a year and not once did any travelers or bandits or eloping couples or families on holiday ever come near us."
"I know, we might as well have been on another planet. An uninhabited one! I can tell you, when Dolya was too pregnant to move, the baboon females were starting to look good to me."
Never had Mebbekew seemed more useless than now. "I'm not surprised," said Elemak.
Meb glared at him. "I was joking, pizdook."
"I wasn't," said Elemak.
"So you've sold your soul, is that it? You're Daddy's little boy now. Nafai senior."
Mebbekew's resentment of Nafai was only natural—since Nafai had shown him up so many times. But Elemak had long since decided to endure Nafai, at least as long as he stayed in his place, as long as he was useful. That's all Elemak really cared about now—whether a person contributed to the survival of the group. Of Elemak's wife and child. And it wouldn't hurt for Mebbekew to recall exactly how much more useful Nafai was than Meb himself. "We've lived a year together," said Elemak. "You've eaten meat that Nafai killed during every week of that year, and you still think he's nothing more than Father's favorite?"
"Oh, I know he's more than just that," said Mebbekew. "Everyone knows it. In fact, most of us realize that he's worth more than you."
Mebbekew must have seen something in Elemak's face, then, for he dropped back and stayed in line directly behind Elemak for some time.
Elemak knew that Meb's little insult was meant to enrage him—but Elemak was not going to play along. He understood what Mebbekew wanted: out of his marriage, away from the crying of his baby, and back to the city, with its baths and commodes, its cuisine and its art, and, above all, its endless supply of flatterable and uncomplicated women. And the truth was that if he went back, Mebbekew would probably do as well as ever in Basilica, with or without money; and Dol, too, would certainly find a good living there, being an almost-legendary child actress. For the two of them, Basilica would be a lot better than anything that lay ahead of them in the foreseeable future.