"Are we? Is it a very big lie?" Zdorab seemed not so much hurt as ... thoughtful. Pondering. "Hushidh mentioned to me the other day that you and I are among the very closest bondings in this caravan. We talk about everything. We have immense respect for each other. We love each other—that's what she saw, and I believe her. It is true, isn't it?"
"Yes," whispered Shedemei.
"So what is the lie? The lie is that I'm your partner in reproduction. That's all. And if that lie became the truth, and there were a child in your belly, you would be whole, wouldn't you? The lie would no longer tear at your heart, because you would be what now you only seem—a wife—and you could become a part of that net of life."
She studied his face, trying to find mockery in it, but there was none. "Can you?"
"I don't know. I was never interested enough to try, and even if I had been, I would have had no willing partner. But—if I can find some small satisfactions from my own imagining, by myself, then why couldn't I—give a gift of love to my dearest friend? Not because I desire it, but because she desires it so much?"
"Out of pity," she said.
"Out of love," he said. "More love than these other men who jump their wives every night out of a desire no deeper than the scratching of an itch, or the voiding of a bladder."
What he was offering—to father a child on her—was something she had never considered as a possibility. Wasn't his condition his destiny?
"Doesn't love show its face," he went on, "when it satisfies the need of the loved one, for that loved one's sake alone? Which of these husbands can claim that?"
"But isn't a woman's body—repulsive to you?"
"To some, perhaps. Most of us, though, are simply… indifferent. The way ordinary men are toward other men. But I can tell you things to do that can awaken desire; I can perhaps imagine other partners out of my past, if you will forgive me for such… disloyalty… in the cause of giving you a child."
"But Zdorab. I don't want you to give me a child," she said. She was uncertain how to say this, since the idea had only just come to her, but the words came out clearly enough. "I want us to have a child."
"Yes," he said. "That's what I mean, too. I'll be a father to our child—I won't have to pretend to do that. My condition is not, strictly speaking, hereditary. If we have a son, he'll not necessarily be ... like me."
"Ah, Zodya," she said, "don't you know that in so many ways I want our sons to be just like you?"
"Sons?" he said. "Don't try to net your fish before you reach the sea, my dear Shedya. We don't know if we can do this even once, let alone often enough to conceive a single child. It may be so awful for both of us that we never try again."
"But you will try the once?"
"I will try until we succeed, or until you tell me to stop trying." He leaned toward her and kissed her cheek. "The hardest thing for me may well be this: That in my heart, I think of you as my dearest sister. Coupling with you might feel like incest."
"Oh, do try not to feel that way," she said. "The only problems we'll have with that are when a child of Luet's falls in love with a child of Hushidh's—double first cousins! You and I are genetically remote."
"And yet so close to each other," he said. "Help me do this for you. If we can do it, it will bring us so much joy. And running away, stealing from our friends, parting from each other, defying the Oversoul—what joy could that ever bring? This is the best way, Shedya. Stay with me."
Nafai found the wood easily enough—the Oversoul did have a fair idea of what kinds of vegetation grew where in this area, and of course knew perfectly well which woods were chosen by the bowmakers of different cities and cultures. What the Oversoul could not do was give Nafai any skill with his hands. Not that Nafai was unusually clumsy. It was just that he had never worked with wood, or with knives, really, except for gutting and flaying game. He spoiled two potential bows, and now it was coming on evening and he hadn't even begun to make arrows, the bow was causing him such grief.
You can't acquire in an hour a skill that others take a lifetime to develop.
Was it the Oversoul speaking in his mind, when this thought came? Or it was the voice of despair?
Nafai sat on a flat rock, despondent. He had his third piece of bow-wood across his knees, his knife in hand, freshly whetted and sharp. But he knew little more now about working with wood than he did at the start—all he had was a catalog of ways that knives could slip and ruin wood, or that wood could split in the wrong places or at the wrong angle. He had not been more frustrated since the time when the Oversoul put Father's dream into his mind and it nearly drove him mad.
Thinking back to that time made him shudder. But then, thinking about it, he realized that it might also be a way to ...
"Oversoul," he whispered. "There are master bowmakers in this world. Right now, this very moment, there is a bowmaker whittling a piece of wood to shape it properly."
(None with tools as primitive as yours,) said the Oversoul in his mind.
"Then find one and fill him with the idea of whittling one with a simple knife. Then put his thoughts, his movements into my mind. Let me have the feeling of it."
(It will drive you mad.)
"Find a bowmaker in your memory, one who always worked this way—there must have been one, in forty million years, one who loved the feel of the knife, who could whittle a bow without thinking."
(Ah… without thinking… pure habit, pure reflex…)
"Father was concentrating so hard on everything in his dream—that's why I couldn't bear to have his memories in my mind. But a bowmaker whose hands work without thought. Put those skills in me. Let me know how it feels, so that I also have those reflexes."
(I've never done such a thing. It wasn't what I was designed to do. It might still make you mad.)
"It might also make a bow," said Nafai. "And if I fail at this, the expedition is over."
(I'll try. Give me time. It takes time to find one man, in all the years of human life on Harmony, who worked so mindlessly …)
So Nafai waited. A minute, two minutes. And then a strange feeling came over him. A tingling, not in his arms, really, but in the idea of his arms that constantly dwelt inside his mind. A need to move the muscles, to work. It's happening, thought Nafai, the muscle memory, the nerve memory, and I must learn how to receive it, how to let this body of mine be guided by someone else's hands and fingers, wrists and arms.
He shifted the knife in his hand until it felt comfortable. And then he began to wipe the knife across the surface of the wood, not even letting the blade bite, just feeling the face of the sapling. And then, at last, he knew—or rather felt—when the wood invited the blade to dip into its surface, to peel away the thin bark. He pulled the knife through the wood like a fish moving through the sea, feeling the resistance of the wood and learning from it, finding the hard places, the weak places, and working around them, easing up where too much pressure would split the wood, biting hard where the wood cried out for discipline from the blade.
The sun was down, the moon just rising when he finished. But the bow was smooth and beautiful.
Green wood, so it won't hold its spring long.
How did I know that? thought Nafai, and then laughed at himself. How had he known any of this?