“Only five days?” said Jules.
“I don’t think it took me even that long to get through it. But five days is the traditional Tehkohn cleansing period.”
“But so little time…”
“You dry up,” said Alanna. “You lose water in every way you can and drinking doesn’t do any good because you can’t keep anything down until it’s over—or until you get more meklah. What you feel first though, before the thirst, is hunger, craving.” She let herself remember for a moment. “I know what it’s like to starve. Back on Earth, before I came to the colony, I got hungry enough to eat some things you’d probably think were pretty disgusting. But I think coming off the meklah is about the worst kind of hunger I’ve known.” She shuddered more with apprehension than from remembering. “But it’s the water loss that kills. The Tehkohn said they had seen some Garkohn die of it in only one day. Sometimes it hits them harder than it does us—hits them all at once.” She looked at Nathan. “The Tehkohn have made the same experiments you have—except for the intravenous feeding. They made them on volunteers from among their own people who had been addicted by the Garkohn. I would have told you about their results if you hadn’t already found out for yourself.”
Nathan’s calm vanished. “You saw Tehkohn animals making experiments?” he demanded. “You saw them using drugs to sedate each other?”
“No,” said Alanna. “I heard some of them talking about it and I went to a healer to see whether or not it was true. It turned out to have happened generations ago. The healer read it to me from her grandfather’s records.”
“Image of God! Now you’re saying they read and write as well as practice medicine.”
“Yes,” said Alanna quietly.
“It’s impossible. They couldn’t…”
“You have reason to hate them, Nathan. I don’t blame you. But can you afford to underestimate them? Can any of us?”
He looked at her strangely and she met his gaze. She spoke softly. “The Tehkohn have a civilization that is hundreds of years old at least. They were once part of an empire that covered more than half of this continent. They work metal and stone and wood. They read and write. They make medicines from herbs and from the body parts of certain animals. And most important, Nathan, they only rarely die in meklah withdrawal.”
“Because they have such a strong will to live,” said Nathan with heavy sarcasm.
“Are you saying that the will to live isn’t important?”
“Of course not. But it isn’t the cure-all that your Tehkohn friends think we’ll be stupid enough to believe it is. If we followed Diut’s advice and depended on nothing more than will power to keep us alive, we’d be committing mass suicide.” He looked at Jules. “Sounds convenient, doesn’t it? We kill ourselves off, then the Tehkohn only have the Garkohn to deal with.”
Nathan’s voice had been rising as he spoke. Jules answered him quietly. “If that’s so, Nathan, we’ll need your help more than ever. We need any answer you can come up with.”
Nathan closed his eyes for a moment and seemed to calm himself. Then he looked down at his plate of thin brown meklah pancakes, stared at them grimly. He reached for his cup and took a swallow of hot meklah tea. Finally he spoke, his voice low. “Jules, of the rabbits I withdrew cold, over half died. Now that’s better than the figure for Alanna’s prison room, but it’s still nothing that either of us would like to see happen to the settlement.”
“Are you saying there’s no way to break free?” asked Jules.
Nathan continued staring at his plate. “No quick way, certainly.”
“Shall we wait then?” said Alanna. “Shall we see whether the Garkohn can absorb us faster than the Tehkohn can kill us?”
Nathan raised his head to glare at her but it was Jules who spoke.
“What are you holding back, Lanna?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“I’ve seen you desperate,” he said. “And you aren’t now, though you’d have reason to be if things were as bad as they seemed.”
She moved uncomfortably in her chair. She didn’t like being read so easily. But at least it was only Jules doing the reading. “What I was holding back—in the hope that someone else would come up with it first—was an idea that may not help, but at least it will give us something else to try.” She drew a deep breath. Now was her only chance to present what she knew as her own idea rather than as Tehkohn custom. But there was hope for the Missionaries in the success the Tehkohn had had with their custom. A history of success. If only Nathan could be made to see its value and accept it. She had to take the chance.
“It’s something Diut didn’t tell you about because we’re not a Kohn people. He probably didn’t think it could be applied to us. It’s the returning ceremony that the Tehkohn give one of their own who escapes from the Garkohn. They have it just before the tehjai…the…” She stumbled searching for the right English word. “The returnee. They have it just before the returnee is left alone for withdrawal. It’s a religious ceremony really.”
“A heathen ceremony, you mean,” muttered Nathan.
Alanna turned to face him, looked at him silently as though waiting.
Nathan took another swallow of tea, then spoke angrily. “All right, get on with it. What do they worship? The sun? A stone idol? The Tehkohn Hao himself, perhaps?”
Only Alanna’s memory of Nathan’s loss and of his importance to the colony kept her from exploding at him. “The returnee is not accepted at once,” she continued. “He’s unclean. No one speaks aloud to him. No one touches him. The only communication with him is through a code of brightening and darkening coloring. Light signals, they call it, because some of the time they’re using their natural luminescence.
“The returnee goes to the home of the First Member of his clan and his First Clansman escorts him to one of the prison rooms. Then, no matter what time of the day or night it is, the First Clansman summons the returnee’s family, his friends, and Diut. With this group, he returns to the prison room and the group forms a circle around the returnee. They’re all seated on the floor. One by one, each person in the circle goes before the returnee to give him some personal message of encouragement in the code. That his wife or mate awaits him, that he has proven his fighting strength by breaking free of the Garkohn, that as he has survived some other difficult struggle, he can survive withdrawal, whatever. The successes of his life are recounted; the failures aren’t mentioned. When each message has been delivered, when the returnee has been reassured that his people want him back in spite of the humiliation he has undergone, the whole group begins a kind of prayer—a plea to the returnee’s strength, to his power as represented by the blue in his coloring to free him from the poison and restore him to his people. If the plea was verbal, it would be a chant. It’s repeated over and over, always ending with the assurance that the returnee is Tehkohn, and therefore, he will prevail.
“It goes on and on until the returnee is caught up in it. Until he is flashing it himself, apparently without realizing what he’s doing. Finally, he collapses. When that happens, the ceremony is over and the others leave quietly. I’ve heard that it’s usually several hours before the returnee even moves.”
“And then,” said Nathan, “because he’s had his returning ceremony, he survives. Right?”
Alanna ignored him, spoke to Jules. “It’s not only the message that the circle gives, but the light signals themselves—the steady rhythmic flickering. And the circle sways as though to music. I talked my way into one of the ceremonies so that I could watch. Then I sat there bored, watching, feeling superior.” She glanced at Nathan. “But after a while it started to get to me. I hadn’t learned to read the light signals yet—I did later—but after a while, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I might have collapsed right along with the prisoner if I hadn’t started to look away.”
“Hypnosis,” said Jules softly.
Alanna nodded once. “Exactly.” She went on quickly before Nathan could say wh
atever he had his mouth open to say. “Remember how Dr. Bartholomew used it? Women had babies under it. People had dental work done, even had surgery with no anesthetic but hypnosis.”
Jules looked at Nathan and Nathan was at once on the defensive. “Jules, hypnosis is no more a cure-all than having a strong will to live. It can’t…”
“You do know how to use hypnosis, don’t you, Nathan?” asked Jules bluntly.
“Listen to me,” said Nathan. “Yes, hypnosis can ease pain sometimes. But no matter whether a person feels uncomfortable or not while he’s dying, he’s still dying!”
“You heard how the Tehkohn use it,” said Alanna. “It’s not just a pain killer. They use it to instill confidence, to give the returnee a goal and positive assurance that he can achieve it.”
Jules was frowning. “Nathan, back on Earth, I read quite a bit of pre-Clayark era literature. I know that our ancestors had powerful addictive drugs, and that sometimes people became enslaved by them. What I don’t know is whether hypnosis was ever used to ease their withdrawal. Was it?”
Nathan rested his elbow on the table and his head on his hand. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I haven’t read anything of its being used. And I’ve already tried everything I have read about.”
“I see.” Jules spoke more gently. “Do you know anything about hypnosis, Nathan?”
“Yes. The basics are so simple…it was one of the first things Bart taught me. Then he spent the rest of the short time that was left to him teaching me not to use it as though it was magic. I kept wanting to suppress symptoms without knowing anything about what was really wrong.”
“Do you think you could hypnotize our people here?”
“Well, nearly everyone is hypnotizable to some degree, but…”
“Do you think you could hypnotize me?”
Nathan stared at him. “God, Jules, will you slow down? Are you really thinking about risking your own life?”
“This isn’t something you can test on animals.”
“It’s not something I ought to test on the most important man in the settlement either.” He appealed to the silent Neila. “Talk to him! Talk him out of this for his own sake.”
Neila looked at Jules. He met her eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “You know I have to do it,” he said softly. “And you know why.”
“Well I don’t,” said Nathan. “It makes no sense! Call for volunteers. You could get almost anyone else to do it just by asking.”
Jules shook his head. “It has to be me. I’m the one who’s going to order the people to walk away from everything they’ve accomplished on this world, walk away from the drug they’ve become addicted to, go to an unknown land on the advice of people who’ve been our enemies until now and who may still be enemies… As long as I’m their leader, that’s what I’m going to order them to do because I believe that’s their only salvation as a people. Am I still valuable, Nathan?”
Nathan stared at him helplessly.
“But I won’t even begin asking them to take those risks until I’ve taken the first risk myself.”
“But if you die…”
“Then I die. You and Jacob [his second-in-command] can decide what to do then. You can go on with the way I’ve chosen, or you can try another way.”
“You sound like a man trying to commit suicide,” said Nathan. “And you’re not going to get me to help you.”
Jules shook his head. “No, I’m not trying to kill myself. But I have to withdraw. I have to do that much before I ask the people to do so much that may be suicidal.”
“No!”
“Then you’ll sit back and watch me withdraw without whatever help you could give.”
Nathan sighed, frowned. “You don’t know what you’re doing. And I wish to heaven that was the worst of it.” He looked directly at Jules. “You’re wrong in this. You’re a brave man, but you’re wrong.”
“Will you give me what help you can with hypnosis?”
“You know damned well I will. What else can I do? Just give me a couple of days to clear up some other things—and to check through my books. There might be something in them on pre-Clayark era drug addiction that I missed.”
“Two days then,” said Jules.
“I’m already in withdrawal,” said Alanna quietly. She noticed that only Nathan appeared startled. Evidently Jules and Neila had guessed why she was not eating. And, of course, Jules had heard her promise to Diut the night before. “You can try hypnosis with me if you want to,” she told Nathan. “I’m not asking you to, but you can try.”
“But I’d want you to undergo some conditioning first,” he said. He seemed almost eager. Anything to avoid making the first experiment on Jules. “You should have a few sessions with me before you withdraw so that I can give you the necessary post-hypnotic…”
“If you can’t do it now, Nathan, you can’t do it at all. I’m going off.”
“For God’s sake, will somebody in this family please be reasonable!” He looked at Jules, at Neila, at Alanna again. “What’s your hurry? What are you trying to do?”
“Escape, Nathan. I don’t like being a prisoner. I’ve developed a real dislike for anything that holds me against my will.” And there was another reason. She had to be free when she saw Diut again. He had clearly demanded that much of her. He would want to move fairly quickly to free the Tehkohn captives and she was certain that he would want to see her before he freed them. But since she could not tell Nathan that, he would just have to think that she was being stubborn. “Do you want to try hypnotizing me?” she asked.
He swallowed the last of his tea and glared at her. Finally he shrugged. “I might as well. And we’d better try now before you’re too far gone.”
He tried—tried hard—and Alanna tried. Perhaps Alanna tried too hard. Perhaps she was simply afraid to let him have what appeared to be open access to her thoughts. She had too much to hide. He explained carefully that she would not be giving over control of herself, that she could not be influenced to do or say anything against her will. She tried to accept this, but some part of her did not believe him. She could not relax. She could not accept his suggestions.
“You will feel confident of your ability to live without the meklah,” he told her over and over after going through the motions of putting her under. “You will feel no need of the drug.”
And she thought, Yes I will.
“You will be relaxed and without pain.”
No I won’t.
And so on. The failure was hers rather than Nathan’s. But by the time the session was finished, she was too uncomfortable to care. She got up without a word and went to her room. Already she felt tired and hounded by the meklah products she could see and smell around her. She was not much more than normally hungry, but her memory and imagination made it seem worse. Nathan’s suggestions had caused her to remember just how bad her first withdrawal had been. She considered the irony bitterly. She was probably the only person in the colony whose combination of perversity and past experience made the technique she had suggested more a hindrance than a help.
Time crawled by. She found herself thinking of Diut, feeling glad that he could not see her as she was now, as she would be shortly. When he saw her again, the ordeal would be over and he would be able to speak more than his few illegal words to her. She would be clean. Not that her situation was directly comparable to that of a Tehkohn captured by the Garkohn, and not that Diut was subject to every rule that bound other Tehkohn. He could hardly have spoken more with her before Jules anyway. But still, addiction was a shameful stigma in his culture. An addict who did not withdraw as quickly as possible could not expect to remain in favor with him. She was surprised to realize how important that had become to her—that she keep his favor. She had expected him to suffer in comparison with Missionary men—men of more human appearance. He had not. She could no longer see him as the monster he had once appeared to be.
He would return for her as well as for the Tehko
hn captives. She was certain of that. And he would kill Natahk both because Natahk was too dangerous to be left alive, and for another more personal reason. As she withdrew, she would think of Natahk dying as Tien had died. Natahk, who was the reason for her past suffering and for the suffering she faced now. She would think of it while she could think.
After a while her awareness of time grew distorted. She seemed to move too quickly, or in slow motion. She lay down on her bed and before she realized it, she had fallen into a meklah dream. A bad dream this time. The nightmare of her first withdrawal.
She could feel the cold sand beneath her and hear the convulsive gagging of those Missionaries who had tried to eat the meklah-free mountain food that the Tehkohn had left them.
There were Garkohn huddled silently around the mound of their yellowed dead, waiting for their own deaths. They maintained what dignity they could until their senses left them. Then they groveled unknowingly with the Missionaries in the filth on the floor.
Alanna remembered searching for the door, finding it too late. Remembered the two Tehkohn who lifted her like a sack of grain and threw her back into the cleansing room. Remembered hatred. Remembered landing on someone who groaned and tried feebly to crawl away. Remembered the pain of awakening once and finding her head pillowed on a yellowed Garkohn corpse. Remembered crawling away sickened, dragging herself to a Missionary man and finding him equally dead. Remembered terror and fury that she should be abandoned in such a place—she who was not dead.
The entire experience was there, replayed in seconds, or in hours. Alanna did not know which, but it held her, gripped her. It threatened to replay again and Alanna strained away from it. The present flickered before her, stable for a moment. Her bed, her room, shadowy figures nearby.
Then heavy gluey sleep sucked her away from them. Sleep held her tarlike, though she tried to waken. She could not open her eyes. She struggled, not knowing whether her struggle was physical or mental. She fought and seemed to hear animal sounds around her. Her own voice gibbering.
She awoke sweating and vomiting and choking. Her body heaved convulsively again and again and again and there were moments when she was aware of being covered with her own filth.