The Color of Distance

by Amy Thomson

  “How can I bring this atwa into harmony, en? The task is too big. I can’t do it. Find someone who can.”

  Ukatonen rested a hand on her knee. “Who, kene? Who knows more than you do? One of the villagers here? Lalito, perhaps? Would you trust Eerin to her?”

  Anito thought about the villagers, and how they would treat Eerin. “No, en. No one here.”

  “Someone in your village, then? Who in your village knows more about the new creature?”

  Anito thought it over. There was Ninto. Ninto knew the new creature well, and she was wiser and more experienced than Anito. She would take good care of the creature, but Anito couldn’t bring herself to name her tareena. Ninto had an atwa of her own and a bami to teach. It would be wrong to ask her to take on this additional burden. The only other Tendu that Anito could think of was Ukatonen.

  “You, en. You could do it. You are wise enough for the task.”

  “But I already have an atwa, Anito. You are my atwa. This village is my atwa, every Tendu in the world is my atwa. That is what it means to be an enkar. As an enkar, I look after the interests of the Tendu. You must look after the interests of the new creatures. I will help you, but there will be times when the interests of your atwa are different from the interests of the Tendu. Then we will have to work together to find a compromise. I’m sorry, Anito, but there is no one else who can take over your atwa.”

  “I understand, en. I don’t like it, but I understand.” Anito stood and said, in high, formal patterns, “I accept this atwa, en.”

  Ukatonen rose and touched her shoulder. “Thank you, kene.”

  They stood a moment, wordless and awkward. Then Ukatonen said, “I think that this match can be turned to your atwa’s advantage, kene.”

  “How?”

  “Before you bring your atwa into harmony with the rest of the world, you must bring this village into harmony with the new creature. This way, when Eerin’s people return, they will be treated well. The villagers think the new creature is stupid and lazy. We know that isn’t true, but the villagers must learn to see Eerin with respect. If she wins this digging race, they will come to respect her strength.”

  “But what if she loses, en?”

  “Then she must not lose by much. If she makes their diggers work hard to win, the villagers will still respect her.”

  Chapter 11

  Juna had barely settled into a comfortable routine when Ukatonen and Anito informed her that she would take part in a digging race against two of the village’s strongest bami.

  Juna leaned back against the wall of their room. She had been working hard for the last eighteen days. Even though Anito and Ukatonen didn’t expect the same level of grinding toil from her that the villagers did, she still labored hard for them. She was tired.

  “No,” she said. “I won’t do it.”

  “You must do it,” Anito insisted. “Ukatonen and I have agreed with Lalito that this would happen.”

  Juna shook her head. They had entered her into this race as though she were a dumb animal. She couldn’t allow them to continue treating her like this.

  “This is your agreement. Not mine. I not do. I not—” She paused, searching for the right word. “I not tinka. I not yours. Understand?” She felt a red flush of anger flare on her skin.

  Ukatonen touched Juna’s shoulder. “The villagers treat you badly, don’t they?”

  Juna nodded, her skin deepened to brick red frustration.

  “If you win this race, they like you more. They not treat you so badly. Understand?”

  Juna thought it over. She needed to gain the respect of the villagers before the Survey returned. If they knew and respected one human, perhaps the rest would be easier to forgive. This race might help her earn some respect, but only if she could win it. Unfortunately, she wasn’t physically capable of finishing, much less winning, any kind of race in her current condition. Just getting through the day was hard enough.

  “I can’t do it. I work for eighteen days with no rest. I’m tired. I need rest.”

  Ukatonen ducked his chin, thinking.

  “You must work all this month. That is the agreement,” he reminded her.

  Anito touched Ukatonen’s shoulder. “We do different work. Not hard and not where villagers can see,” the alien suggested. Anito turned to Juna. “Understand?”

  Juna thought it over. A chance to rest. It sounded tempting.

  “Maybe can do race, if rest,” she told them.

  A lavender ripple of intense relief rolled over the two aliens. This was important to them as well, Juna realized. She had better win.

  The next day, Ukatonen took them deep into the forest to gather seeds. They did that for about an hour, then made themselves a nest in the branches of a tree. Anito went off to hunt, while Ukatonen plied Juna with honey and fruit. He made her eat until her stomach felt as if it were about to burst. Then she fell asleep, and did not wake until late afternoon. Anito and Ukatonen fed her another meal, of honey, meat, and fruit. Then they walked home, arriving shortly after dark, and fed her another big meal. She became sleepy soon afterwards, with a suddenness that made her wonder if they were spiking her food, but she was too tired to ask. She was asleep before she had finished covering herself over with leaves.

  She slept late the next day, well into mid-morning, and awoke to find another huge meal awaiting her. She ate as much of it as she could. As she was finishing, Anito came in with an armful of thick bamboolike reeds.

  Juna stretched, taking inventory of her physical condition. She felt better. Her muscles were still sore, but they lacked the deep bone-ache of true fatigue. She felt more energetic today than she had in weeks, despite the big meal she had just consumed.

  “How you feel?” Anito asked, as Juna leaned against a wall, stretching her Achilles tendons.

  “Better. Not so tired.”

  “Can do race?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Want link? Link make you feel better.”

  Juna thought about it. It was tempting. If she accepted the link, then she would begin the race in good condition, but she had to win through her own power and skill. Only that would count toward the greater goal of winning respect from the villagers.

  “No,” she said. “I not link. It not good. I win by myself. Understand?”

  “I understand,” Anito said.

  Ukatonen came in carrying several skeins of rope and strong twine, and began sorting through the reeds, lifting them up and eyeing them carefully for straightness. Anito squatted down nearby, beckoning to Juna to join them.

  “We make cultivator for race,” Anito told her.

  Juna picked up the cultivator that she had been using to churn up the burnt-over fields. It was w^ll made, but the design was extremely primitive, little more than a forked stick. She remembered the U-bar cultivator she had used in her father’s garden. It could turn up three times as much soil as one of these, with half the effort.

  “Does my cultivator have to be the same as this?” Juna asked, an idea beginning to form. “Can I use a different kind of cultivator?”

  It was a dangerous idea, risky because it might backfire, and because it broke Contact regulations. If it worked, she could gain the respect of the people the Survey had harmed. If it failed, well, they didn’t like her anyway. Besides, she broke Contact regulations every day. By the time the Survey returned to pick her up, this infringement would be only one of many that she would have committed in order to survive.

  “No one has said you couldn’t,” Ukatonen told her, after thinking it over.

  “If we made it wider and added another handle, and put some bracing here and here, and changed the— What do you call this?” she asked, pointing to the tines of the existing cultivator.

  “###” Anito supplied the word in skin speech. Juna’s computer, sitting close by, recorded the new word and began generating a phonetic equivalent for it.

  “—changed the tines like so,” Juna said, using the skin-speech wor
d that Anito had given her. “The cultivator would work better.” She depicted, on her stomach, a crude picture of what she planned to build.

  “It would be too tall, and the handles would be too close together,” Ukatonen argued.

  “Not for me,” Juna replied, drawing herself up to her full height and stretching out her arms, reminding the aliens that she was taller than they were and had shorter arms.

  “All right. We will build it the way you say,” Ukatonen agreed.

  The rest of the day was spent fashioning the cultivator, with frequent breaks to stop and eat. The aliens were continuing to ply her with food. Juna was amazed at how much she had eaten lately. Still, she needed all the help she could get to win tomorrow’s race.

  They finished the cultivator a couple of hours before sunset, took it to the bank of a nearby river, and tried it out in the soft mud by the water’s edge. Anito and Ukatonen were impressed by how much dirt it could turn up, and how easy it was to use. Juna began to feel confident. They rinsed the cultivator off and carried it back to the village. She ate another big meal, mostly honey, seaweed, and a starchy mush made from the tubers of a wide-leafed plant that grew in the river. Juna finished her meal, spent a little time fussing with her computer, then burrowed into the compost-generated warmth of her wet, leafy bed.

  She was beginning to get used to this, she realized as she composed her mind for sleep. According to her computer, it rarely fell below seventy, but it was cool enough to make her glad of the warmth of her bed. Dry, clean sheets and blankets were a distant dream, as was a good hot meal. She longed for cooked food. She drifted off to sleep, dreaming of hot couscous topped with succulent chunks of lamb, the way her mother used to make it.

  Anito woke her a little after dawn. A steady, light rain was falling; they could begin the race early. They walked out to the burnt-over area. The villagers, already assembling, looked on curiously as Juna unwrapped and assembled the new implement. Then the crowd of villagers parted as Lalito led out the two bami that she was going to compete against. Juna stared at them in dismay. Muscles bulged and rippled on their shoulders. They looked like no bami she had ever seen before. A deep ochre cloud of worry passed over Anito. Ukatonen touched Anito’s shoulder and the two aliens conferred. Anito came over to Juna.

  “They’ve enhanced the muscles on those bami. Do you still want to go on with this?”

  Juna eyed the two powerful-looking young bami, surrounded by the other villagers. One of the villagers glanced at her. A ripple of open derision flared on its body. Then it turned back to encourage and congratulate the bami she was to race against. A sudden surge of anger crowded out any doubts. Juna gripped the handles of her cultivator. She was tired of the aliens’ scorn. She would win today. She had to. Muscles or no, the bami could accept no help from their elders until after the race. So, it was her strength and endurance against theirs. Their muscles may have been enhanced, but she had her cultivator. It was a matter of strength versus invention. Juna flickered assent.

  “Good,” Anito said. “Let’s go.”

  Juna picked up her cultivator and headed over to where the villagers were gathered in a knot around their champions. They stopped before the village chief, Lalito. Ukatonen stepped forward and addressed Lalito in formal patterns. From what little Juna could understand, plus the gestures he made toward her cultivator, Juna knew he was talking about the new tool. Lalito listened, and asked a couple of questions. Then she flickered assent.

  Juna looked to Anito for a translation.

  “Lalito has said that you may use your cultivator.”

  The speech was much longer than that. Juna wondered what they had said to each other. Although her vocabulary was still poor, she had a very good grasp of the shades ef meaning conveyed by the aliens’ use of color. She was sure she detected some fairly pointed sarcasm on both their parts.

  “Thank you, kene,” she told Lalito. “How is the race to be run?”

  “You will start here, where the unbroken ground begins, and you will dig until either the sky clears or the sun sets. Your opponents will go one at a time. When one gets tired, the other will take over. Do you understand?” Lalito asked.

  Juna replied with the most formal assent she knew. Lalito’s ears lifted in surprise. Juna picked up her implement with a small, secret smile, and strode over to the starting place.

  “Do well,” Anito said. Her skin patterns were a gentle, encouraging blue.

  “I will try.”

  Anito handed her a gourd full of sweet honey-water. Juna drank from it, then slung it over her shoulder. She stood waiting, her cultivator at the ready.

  The two bami were receiving last-minute instructions from their elders. At last one of them picked up a cultivator and stood beside her.

  Lalito and Ukatonen stood on either side of the contestants. They raised their arms. “Begin,” they said in unison.

  Juna plunged the tines into the loose dirt at the starting line, placed her foot on the crossbar, and pulled back on the two handles. The tines lifted and broke the seared crust of dirt from below. A quick shake broke down the larger clods. She lifted the cultivator and plunged it in again.

  A ripple of concern washed over the villagers like an ochre dust cloud as they saw how fast Juna could turn over the dirt. The bami glanced over its shoulder and darkened with worry as it saw how much dirt she turned. It began to dig faster. Juna smiled and kept on digging.

  The steady lift-and-pull motion loosened her muscles. She fell into a work trance, as she did back home, working in her father’s garden. She glanced up after a while and realized that she was several meters ahead of her rival. A short time later, the second bami took over from the first. The gap between them narrowed until the bami was digging beside her. After a while it pulled ahead, a meter, then another. Juna continued the steady pace of her digging. She had once cleared half a hectare of ground in a single afternoon, on a bet with her brother, Toivo. Experience had taught her that a steady, unvarying pace always won.

  Sure enough, she pulled even with the second bami, and then ahead. A while later, it dropped out. Juna stopped for a couple of minutes to drink a gourd of honey-water, and to gulp down a couple of handfuls of sweet, sticky mush. Then she rinsed off her hands and started digging again.

  The afternoon wore on. It began to rain, a heavy downpour that slowed to a steady, unrelenting drizzle. Where the ground had been worked, the mud was knee-deep. Juna found herself pushing just to keep ahead of the mud. Her arms ached. Her back was a solid sheet of pain, and the skin on her hands was chafed and blistered. She concentrated on maintaining a steady rhythm of dig, pull, lift. She was slowly pulling ahead; now she was consistently more than a meter ahead. The sun, only a bright spot of glare behind the thick grey clouds, was sinking toward the horizon. She might win after all. She looked back at the trees where the villagers were sheltering. There was no sign of them, save an occasional rustling of the branches. No wonder the Survey had missed these people.

  Then the second bami came out of the forest. Instead of relieving its partner, the two began to dig together. Juna groaned inwardly as she saw her hard-earned lead shrinking. Holding her hand up between the tree line and the sun, she estimated the amount of daylight left. Less than an hour. If she could hold her lead that long, the race would be over. She bent to her digging, feeling the drag of the handles against her hands as she dug, pulled, and lifted. A blister burst with a warm trickle of fluid. It greased the handles of the cultivator. Dig, pull, lift. The bami were even with her. She continued, ignoring pain, ignoring exhaustion, refusing even to spare a glance at her rivals. She must win. She would win. Dig, pull, lift. The shadows grew long and the villagers came out of the forest, their skins a whirl of bright colors as they encouraged their bami. There was a chirring noise and Lalito lifted her arm, signaling the end of the race. Juna fell to her hands and knees, then collapsed into the churned red mud, gasping for breath. She was having trouble breathing, her throat was sore. Hands turned h
er over. She felt a pinprick on her arm, a brief presence inside her. Then a wave of darkness rolled over her.

  * * *

  Anito craned her neck anxiously, straining to see what kind of progress Eerin was making. Once the sun touched the trees, the race would be over. Eerin glanced up and increased the pace of her digging. When the sun finally touched the treetops, Eerin and the bami appeared to be just about even.

  Lalito chirred loudly, signaling the end of the race. Eerin fell to her knees. The two bami leaned against each other, exhausted. The village streamed out onto the path between the two expanses of dirt that each side had cultivated, eager to see who had won. Anito pushed through the crowd to the front. Ukatonen crouched beside Eerin. She was sprawled on the ground, chest heaving as she struggled to breathe. Her palms were bleeding.

  “How is she?” Anito asked.

  “Completely exhausted,” Ukatonen replied. “She won by three and a half hand-spans.”

  Anito examined Eerin’s palms. The protective layer of skin was worn completely through in spots, oozing blood. Glancing up at the handles of Eerin’s cultivator, Anito saw that they were slick with blood, almost black in the last, dying rays of the sun.

  She linked with Eerin long enough to stabilize her. When she emerged from the link, a cluster of tinka looked on anxiously. They helped carry Eerin back to the tree and placed her on the bed.

  “I’ll need to do some deep work, en,” Anito told Ukatonen. “Will you monitor me?”

  “Of course, kene.”

  They linked and entered the new creature’s body. The depth of Eerin’s exhaustion amazed Anito. Her blood was sour with fatigue. She had used up her body’s reserves of energy, and had begun to consume her own muscles. Anito was surprised at this. No Tendu would work that hard except over a life or death matter. Why had Eerin done it? It was only a race. She didn’t even need to win it in order to gain the respect of the village.