The villagers all turned out to welcome the visitors, a jumble of dirty sunburnt smiling faces, racing children, shy babies laced into leather cocoons and hung up on stakes like little trophies, blatting minule with their white, silent, newborn young. Life, life abounding in the high, empty places.
Overhead, as always, were a couple of geyma spiraling lazily on slender dark wings in the dark dazzling blue.
Odiedin and the young maz couple, Siez and Tobadan, were already busy blessing huts and babies and livestock, salving sores and smoke-damaged eyes, and telling. The blessing, if that was the right word for it — the word they used meant something like including or bringing in — consisted of ritual chanting to the tabatt-batt-batt of the little drum, and handing out slips of red or blue paper on which the maz wrote the recipient’s name and age and whatever autobiographical facts they asked to have written,such as—
"Married with Temazi this winter."
"Built my house in the village."
"Bore a son this winter past. He lived one day and night. His name was Enu."
"Twenty-two minulibi born this season to my flock."
"I am Ibien. I was six years old this spring."
As far as she could tell, the villagers could read only a few characters or none at all. They handled the written slips of paper with awe and deep satisfaction. They examined them for a long time from every direction, folded them carefully, slipped them into special pouches or finely decorated boxes in their house or tent. The maz had done a blessing or ingathering like this in every village they passed through that did not have a maz of its own. Some of the telling boxes in village houses, magnificently carved and decorated, had hundreds of these little red and blue record slips in them, tellings of lives present, lives past.
Odiedin was writing these for a family, Tobadan was dispensing herbs and salve to another family, and Siez, having finished the chant, had sat down with the rest of the population to tell. A narrow-eyed, taciturn young man, Siez in the villages became a fountain of words.
Tired and a little buzzy-headed — they must have come up another kilometer today-and liking the warmth of the afternoon sun, Sutty joined the half circle of intently gazing men and women and children, cross-legged on the stony dust, and listened with them.
"The telling!" Siez said, loudly, impressively, and paused.
His audience made a soft sound, ah, ah, and murmured to one another.
"The telling of a story!"
Ah, ah, murmur, murmur.
"The story is of Dear Takieki!"
Yes, yes. The dear Takieki, yes.
"Now the story begins! Now, the story begins when dear Takieki was still living with his old mother, being a grown man, but foolish. His mother died. She was poor. All she had to leave him was a sack of bean meal that she had been saving for them to eat in the winter. The landlord came and drove Takieki out of the house."
Ah, ah, the listeners murmured, nodding sadly.
"So there went Takieki walking down the road with the sack of bean meal slung over his shoulder. He walked and he walked, and on the next hill, walking toward him, he saw a ragged man. They met in the road. The man said, ’That’s a heavy sack you carry, young man. Will you show me what is in it?’ So Takieki did that. ’Bean meal!’ says the ragged man."
Bean meal, whispered a child.
’"And what fine bean meal it is! But it’ll never last you through the winter. I’ll make a bargain with you, young man. I’ll give you a real brass button for that bean meal!’
"’Oh, ho,’ says Takieki, ’you think you’re going to cheat me, but I’m not so foolish as that!’"
Ah, ah.
"So Takieki hoisted his sack and went on. And he walked and he walked, and on the next hill, coming toward him, he saw a ragged girl. They met in the road, and the girl said, ’A heavy sack you’re carrying, young man. How strong you must be! May I see what’s in it?’ So Takieki showed her the bean meal, and she said, ’Fine bean meal! If you’ll share it with me, young man, I’ll go along with you, and I’ll make love with you whenever you like, as long as the bean meal lasts.’"
A woman nudged the woman sitting by her, grinning.
"’Oh, ho,’ says Takieki, ’you think you’re going to cheat me, but I’m not so foolish as that!’
"And he slung his sack over his shoulder and went on. And he walked and he walked, and on the next hill, coming toward him, he saw a man and woman."
Ah, ah, very softly.
"The man was dark as dusk and the woman bright as dawn, and they wore clothing all of bright colors and jewels of bright colors, red, blue. They met in the road, and he/she/they said, ‘What a heavy sack you carry, young man. Will you show us what’s in it?’ So Takieki did that. Then the maz said, ‘What fine bean meal! But it will never last you through the winter.’ Takieki did not know what to say. The maz said, ‘Dear Takieki, if you give us the sack of bean meal your mother gave you, you may have the farm that lies over that hill, with five barns full of grain, and five storehouses full of meal, and five stables full of eberdin. Five great rooms are in the farmhouse, and its roof is of coins of gold. And the mistress of the house is in the house, waiting to be your wife.’
‘Oh, ho,’ said Takieki. ‘You think you’re going to cheat me, but I’m not so foolish as that!’
"And he walked on and he walked on, over the hill, past the farm with five barns and five storehouses and five stables and a roof of gold, and so he went walking on, the dear Takieki."
Ah, ah, ah! said all the listeners, with deep contentment. And they relaxed from their intensity of listening, and chatted a little, and brought Siez a cup and a pot of hot tea so that he could refresh himself, and waited respectfully for whatever he would tell next.
Why was Takieki ’dear’? Sutty wondered. Because he was foolish? (Bare feet standing on air.) Because he was wise? But would a wise man have distrusted the maz? Surely he was foolish to turn down the farm and five barns and a wife. Did the story mean that to a holy man a farm and barns and a wife aren’t worth a bag of bean meal? Or did it mean that a holy man, an ascetic, is a fool? The people she had lived with this year honored self-restraint but did not admire self-deprivation. They had no strenuous notions of fasting, and saw no virtue whatever in discomfort, hunger, poverty.
If it had been a Terran parable, most likely Takieki ought to have given the ragged man the bean meal for the brass button, or just given it for nothing, and then when he died he’d get his reward in heaven. But on Aka, reward, whether spiritual or fiscal, was immediate. By his performance of a maz’s duties, Siez was not building up a bank account of virtue or sanctity; in return for his story-telling he would receive praise, shelter, dinner, supplies for their journey, and the knowledge that he had done his job. Exercises were performed not to attain an ideal of health or longevity but to achieve immediate well-being and for the pleasure of doing them. Meditation aimed toward a present and impermanent transcendance, not an ultimate nirvana. Aka was a cash, not a credit, economy.
Therefore their hatred of usury. A fair bargain and payment on the spot.
But then, what about the girl who offered to share what she had if he’d share what he had. Wasn’t that a fair bargain?
Sutty puzzled over it all through the next tale, a famous bit of The Valley War that she had heard Siez tell several times in villages in the foothills — "I can tell that one when I’m sound asleep," he said. She decided that a good deal depended on how aware Takieki was of his own simplicity. Did he know the girl might trick him? Did he know he wasn’t capable of managing a big farm? Maybe he did the right thing, hanging on to what his mother gave him. Maybe not.