Survivor

  Jules turned from the retreating Garkohn and faced his people. He spoke only loud enough for those closest to him, those involved in the incident, to hear. “If we panic, we can die as uselessly, as foolishly, as the Everett brothers died last night. Yes, we lost them. They mixed into fighting between the Tehkohn and the Garkohn. They acted without thinking.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over their exclamations of shock. “We are not cowards,” he told them. “If we have to fight, we will. Only remember that we may be all that’s left of the human race, and that every time one of us dies, we decrease the chances of human survival as well as our own chances to fulfill the Mission!”

  They were accustomed to obeying him, accepting his judgment. And he had invoked a powerful persuader in the Mission. They calmed and resigned themselves to staring their hostility at the Garkohn.

  Then someone noticed what the Garkohn were bringing out of the houses and the calm vanished.

  Several people called out, alerting the entire group to the fact that they were losing their weapons. Several more tried to break through the Garkohn circle. Abruptly, the colony was only seconds from the chaos Jules had envisioned. And Alanna thought it would take more than an inspirational speech to calm them this time. They would have to be shocked into submission.

  She looked around for Natahk, saw that he had come closer to the circle. He was talking to a huntress not far from the outer fringe of Garkohn. She hurried toward him. A hunter of the circle tried to stop her, struck at her in the careless way that Garkohn reserved for slow untrained Missionaries. He appeared startled when she managed to avoid him. He tried again, not underestimating her this time, but he was simply not fast enough. She reached Natahk several steps ahead of him and Natahk stopped him and ordered him back to the circle. The huntress had just turned away from Natahk. He looked at Alanna questioningly.

  He was holding what Alanna needed. She had seen it in his hand as she approached. Apparently, he had taken it from the huntress.

  “Give me the gun, Natahk.”

  He glanced down at the huge ancient .44 magnum revolver he held. Then he looked at her again, uncomprehending.

  “Give it to me before your people have to start killing.”

  He looked at the deteriorating situation on the common, saw two Missionaries beating down a hunter who, surprisingly enough, was trying not to kill them. But they were big men, strong in their own right. The hunter gave up and broke their necks.

  Natahk handed the heavy gun to Alanna, all the while watching her with an intensity that she barely noticed. She fumbled with the gun for a moment, seeing that it was loaded, remembering… It had been a long time since she had last fired a gun. She had never fired one this large. But its size was a good thing. It would make plenty of noise.

  Alanna went back inside the circle of Garkohn, Natahk ordering a path opened for her. She moved to the highest ground she could find, a slight rise from which all the Missionaries could see her, but where none could reach her without alerting the Garkohn. She held the gun with both hands, fired diagonally into the ground. The savage recoil sent a shock of pain through her hands, but it was worth it. She had been right about the noise. It was deafening. It got her the attention of every person on the common instantly. She used none of Jules’s diplomacy.

  “We’re outnumbered,” she yelled. “Some of us are already dead. Take a look around. Then if you want to commit suicide, start fighting again.”

  She stood where she was and watched them unfreeze. Watched them look numbly at each other, and at the surrounding Garkohn. Watched them become sheep again—discontented sheep, but sheep nevertheless. She closed her eyes and lowered her head so that her hair hid her face. They tried so hard to die while she was trying so hard to save them. If only they would be still until Diut opened a way of escape for them.

  She was aware of Natahk coming to stand beside her. He did not startle her when he spoke.

  “The weapon, Alanna.”

  She handed it to him without hesitation. “You were wrong to collect them.”

  “I was wrong not to collect them sooner. Do you understand what would have happened, had your father chosen to use one of them against me instead of the knife?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am not Hao, but I am my people’s leader. They would make the Missionaries pay many times over. It would be a matter of honor.”

  “I said I understood.” She shook her head. Ironically, he was right. In a way, he was saving the Missionaries from themselves—saving them from the retribution that would surely come as soon as any Missionary was goaded into killing any Garkohn, however much the Garkohn needed killing.

  Alanna watched a party of Garkohn leave the settlement. They were carrying some of the weapons and pulling others in one of the Missionaries’ handcarts. They left triumphantly, fighters who had won their battle, while most of their fellows stayed behind to guard the Missionaries. As soon as the gates were closed behind them, Natahk gestured Alanna away from him so that he stood alone on the rise. Then he demanded the Missionaries’ attention.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Alanna

  Diut made me known to the people who were important to him. Jeh and Cheah, who were his friends, now became true friends of mine rather than superiors. It was an easy transition. I was not surprised when Cheah told me how concerned she and Jeh had been when Jeh took me to Diut. They had seen the terror in me and they were afraid Diut would be offended, yet they could do nothing. Cheah grayed just slightly when she told me: “It is never easy to see one friend kill another.” She spoke as though from experience and I wondered what pain she was remembering.

  I met Diut’s First Judge, a woman as tall as Diut himself but, of course, without the heavy Hao musculature. Her coloring was excellent and her strength and fighting ability second only to Diut’s. She was Kehyo, the first Tehkohn woman to make me feel small—and not only with her larger size.

  “You are Alanna,” she said when I met her. The occasion was a traditional gathering held to announce her third pregnancy. It was not the formal welcoming ceremony that would be held after the child’s birth, but only a gathering of friends that a couple held to share their joy and receive the good wishes of the bluest people they knew. I had not been invited, but Diut had. He took me along. Now Kehyo had come to sit near me.

  “I have heard about you,” she said. “You are Diut’s furless one.”

  I smiled a little. “Yes.”

  “I hear that you hunt very well.”

  “I’m learning.”

  “But only with weapons.”

  I hesitated. “Yes.” All Kohn who hunted used weapons sooner or later, but only I used weapons all the time. For that reason more than any other, Diut was teaching me to fight in the Kohn way. Other fighters would see my weapon, he said, and they would think I was nothing without it. I would be challenged as soon as he pronounced me a fighter and a judge as he planned to do. I was lucky. The Kohn way of fighting was only slightly more restrictive than the no-holds-barred wildland fighting that I had known on Earth. I was forbidden from snatching up a stone, knife, or other object to use against a weaponless person, but all else was permitted. All the things the Missionaries said were wrong—and some things the Missionaries did not even seem to know about.

  “You’re unfortunate,” said Kehyo. “Alone and weaponless, you would surely die. You must stay close to the dwelling so that others can protect you.”

  I turned to glare at her. Her coloring was absolutely neutral, as though she had spoken out of true concern for me. But I could feel her malice. Her even blue-green was a lie.

  “First Judge,” I said, “I was left alone and weaponless in a land far more savage than this when I was no older than your young daughter. As you can see, I survived very well.”

  “It was not a place where the jehruk roamed, apparently. I have heard that you have difficulty even seeing the jehruk.”

  Before I could answer that, Diut was there kneeling beside K
ehyo, his hand resting seemingly casually on her shoulder. Kehyo’s body tensed. She knew the threat of that hand.

  Diut said nothing, only looked at her. Her haughtiness fell away as she met his eyes and her coloring faded to submissive yellow.

  “The child within you protects you,” said Diut. “It will not protect you again.”

  She lowered her head.

  Diut looked at me. “Let it end here.”

  I nodded. But later that night when we were alone, I tried to find out just what the trouble was.

  “She has an old quarrel with me,” said Diut. “Or with herself. It does not concern you. She came to insult you only because we are mated.”

  “But what…”

  “Not now, Alanna. She won’t bother you again. Sleep now. In the morning you have a mock duel with Jeh.”

  I slept, and still managed to lose my mock duel. The antiweapon rule hurt me more than I liked. Kehyo’s words returned to sting me.

  In the afternoon, I went to see another of my new acquaintances, the most powerful of them, Tahneh, the older Tehkohn Hao. She had the Hao stockiness and height and she held her body straight in spite of her age. The people obeyed her, respected her, but her blue was marred by splotches of yellow, some as large as her open hand, and some smaller. Age spots, they were called. They came to all Kohn who lived past middle age, and when they came, Kohn who had been fighters fought no longer. They retired to the inner apartments and helped to instruct the older children in the ways of their individual clans. Also, they helped keep the records that gave continuity to Tehkohn history. They worked as much as they wished and only if they wished. No one drove them.

  Tahneh was working now on an interweaving of the history of her original people, the Rohkohn, and the Tehkohn, who had become her people. Years before when Diut was only a boy, he had crossed the mountains to the desert and the sea, and been captured by the Rohkohn. He was a valuable thing to them—a young Hao to succeed Tahneh, who was already in her middle years and childless. But Diut had had the good luck to stumble upon the Rohkohn while they were in the midst of a drought. What rivers there had been in their territory had dried up and the Rohkohn faced slow death. Conditions in the mountains had been dry also—thus the lesser runoff from the snows down to the Rohkohn—but the Tehkohn still had the rivers at their altitude. They had no real problem. In spite of Diut’s youth, he had talked Tahneh into joining him in the mountains—this instead of maiming him to keep him in the desert. The two Hao began a liaison—the first of several—and there were other Tehkohn-Rohkohn matings, some of which produced children. A tie was formed and the two tribes became one. Now, in the multicolored ancient Kohn script, Tahneh wrote of that blending. She was still childless but she had a more or less permanent liaison now with Ehreh, her old Rohkohn First Judge. She obviously cared for him, but there was still a great deal of love between her and Diut. I wondered whether it was their physical similarity—the fact that they were both Hao—that made them close. I already knew how lonely it was to be one of a kind among more homogeneous people—even people who were kind.

  I found myself liking Tahneh at once even though I envied her closeness with Diut. I understood myself well enough to realize that I would have envied anyone who was close to Diut. Because Diut had slowly become my shield against the feelings of loneliness and isolation that I had to contend with now that I had less work to keep me busy. He no longer beat me and he repaid my co-operation and growing Tehkohn skills with gentleness and attention. He was remaking me more thoroughly than had the artisans before him. And I was letting him do it, and letting myself be tied to him far more tightly than I should have. Even Tahneh could see that.

  “You must be careful,” she said to me as we sat together in her apartment on the fleecy skin of a huge leaf eater. There was a low wooden stand before her like the easel a Missionary woman I had known used to hold canvas when she painted. Near Tahneh were the several polished-stone jugs that held her paints. There was a tray of brushes. There was a jug of something—not water—that she used to clean the brushes. There was a stack of thick, heavy, very white Tehkohn paper made from a plant that grew near the river. And there was Tahneh, drawing thin, angular Kohn characters with one brush after another. We were alone in the apartment. “Be careful,” she repeated. “It is only a liaison you have with him.”

  I turned to frown at her.

  “Keep your anger,” she said. “I mean only that you would not be the first to be hurt simply because a liaison ended as it must end.” She read me almost as well as Diut did.

  “I know…that it must.”

  “It is always hard for a woman to leave him. It was hard for me.”

  I looked at her curiously, wondering how it must have been for her, loving a man who could have been her son. But the Kohn seemed to have no prejudices against such things. “It will be hard,” I said. “But I know I cannot hold him—though you could have, surely.”

  “Now?” she asked, gesturing toward her spotted body.

  “Even now, perhaps. But before the spots came, surely.”

  “No.”

  I frowned, not believing her, but not wanting to say so.

  “He is still young, Alanna. He may yet find the woman who can give him children. Not that his childlessness is the fault of the women he has known. But he still hopes.”

  “You mean…you mean he can’t…?”

  “He is Hao. The blue often brings sorrow as well as power. I tried for as long as there was any hope to find a man who could give me a child. So often, Hao come out of the air, born to judges—not even high judges. But my father and both Diut’s parents were Hao. Diut and I both grew up certain that we too would produce children. It is hard to see that dream die.”

  I said nothing for several seconds. Then finally, “I wondered why he had no wife.”

  Tahneh’s blue yellowed to green. “It is a capricious thing. No Hao ever knows for sure until the time comes to take a mate, until several mates have been taken without result.”

  “I see.”

  “See too that he is near to giving up. And he cares deeply for you, Alanna. I think your strangeness pleases him more than he would say. Part from him without trouble when he asks it, and he will call you back after a little time.”

  “As with you?”

  “With me it was different. You know that.”

  “…yes.” I faced her squarely. “Did he tell you to advise me?”

  “I’m not subject to his orders, Alanna. He does not tell me what to say.” Her blue glowed softly as she spoke. “I advise you because you need advice—and because I can see that he cares for you, and you for him. Sometimes I can see your anger when he looks at me. You can never take my place with him, but if you follow my advice, you can build a place for yourself. And also…” She stopped.

  “What?”

  “You can save yourself from Kehyo’s mistake.”

  I sat still, watching her, knowing that I was close to finding out what Diut had refused to tell me. “What mistake?”

  “He has told you nothing of her, even after last night?”

  I glanced down, did not answer. Tahneh had not been present at the gathering the night before. But the Tehkohn dwelling was similar in at least one way to the Mission colony. There were no secrets.

  Tahneh nickered iridescent for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “She was his first mate, Alanna. She is the daughter of his mother’s brother. His mother came out of the air and she had a brother who was a judge.”

  “Cousins!” I said startled. “He said nothing even of that.”

  “They grew up together,” said Tahneh. “It is often done that way when there are cousins of similar age. They are placed with the same nonfighter second-parents so that when their time comes, they know each other well. There is no fear of rejection or ridicule. But Kehyo tied herself too tightly to him that first time. They came together once more later, but after that, Kehyo had a child by one of her judge mates, now her
husband, Kahlahtkai. Sometimes I wonder if she has ever forgiven Kahlahtkai for that.

  “Most often, she is reasonable and deserving of her high position. Diut has gambled much on her in war. But she is not content with her husband. She cannot seem to rid herself of the idea that she might have had a child by Diut if she had had one more liaison with him. Sometimes she seeks to frighten or humiliate Diut’s mates. She has been quiet recently, belatedly taking pleasure in her two older children, and perhaps maturing a little. Also, Diut has beaten her twice over this. Until last night, I thought she had given it up, but perhaps your differences incite her.”

  “Will she challenge?”

  “Not while you are with Diut. He has warned her. He cares deeply for her but if she tries that again, he will surely kill her.”

  She had tried it before then. “What about when I…when our liaison has ended—and when she has had her child?”

  “When you leave Diut, that should end her reason for resenting you.”

  “Should.”

  “She is a fool about this one thing. Who can say what she will do. Don’t worry about her though, Alanna. I don’t think Diut will let her interfere with you.”

  But I did worry. When I left Tahneh, it was to look for Diut and find out what I could do to speed my training. I had a new reason now for wanting to become the best fighter that I could as soon as I could.

  Natahk stood before the Missionaries gathered on the common and commanded them exactly as he would have commanded Garkohn.

  “You will return to your homes and gather as many of your possessions as you can carry,” he said. “At least one of my hunters will watch in each house with you. When you have finished, you will return here and wait until the rest of your people are ready. Then, together, you will be moved south where you will make a new settlement, away from raiding Tehkohn.”