The Color of Distance

by Amy Thomson

  “Yes,” Ninto said, putting her palm against the slender trunk of Ilto’s tree.

  Anito placed her hand just below Ninto’s. They reached out with their free hands and linked, their shared sadness mingling and dissipating. Underneath Ninto’s sorrow there was an eagerness to find out what came next. Anito let that feeling flood into her, creating a seed of hope to carry inside her. She was glad that they were doing this together. It was good to have a tareena. Ninto echoed Anito’s gratitude as they slid from the link.

  Day was breaking. Long rays of dawn light were turning the mist at the top of the canopy to gold.

  Ninto touched Anito’s arm. “Let’s go join the others.”

  Anito shouldered her pack, rested her palm one last time on Ilto’s tree in a final gesture of farewell, and turned to follow her tareena.

  Chapter 24

  No, you made a mistake. Try again,” the instructor, a tall, gaunt enkar named Naratonen, told Anito.

  Juna watched as Anito repeated the last phrase of a quarbirri. Still dissatisfied, the instructor turned to Ninto, and asked her to try it. She also failed.

  “Like this,” Naratonen said, demonstrating a complex hand gesture. “Your color is off too, it should be lighter and more blue, and you’re fading it in too late.”

  Juna stretched and yawned. She had been sitting for several hours while Naratonen taught them this quarbirri about the creation of the na tree. She was glad to be allowed to sit in on Ninto and Anito’s enkar training, but just watching demanded great patience and stamina. They had been working through this particular piece for two hours now. Soon it would be noon, and time for her to leave for lunch and then her language lessons. She was looking forward to that.

  Anito and Ninto repeated the phrase of the quarbirri again.

  “Better. Try again, more slowly this time.”

  They did, and Naratonen flickered grudging approval. “It still needs some work, but you’re improving. That’s good enough for now. Go get some lunch and come back later.”

  Juna got up to follow them, but Naratonen put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  “Yes, en,” Juna said, afraid that he was going to complain about her watching the lessons.

  “Your speaking stone,” he said. “I understand that it makes pictures of things. Did it make pictures of this lesson?”

  “Yes, en.”

  “May I see them?”

  “Of course, en,” she said. Was the enkar going to forbid her to record his lessons?

  She replayed the last fifteen minutes of the lesson. He watched intently.

  “How far back does it remember?” he asked her.

  “Every lesson that I have been to, it remembers, en. I have taken some parts out of some of them, places where nothing happened, or where you repeated the same movement over and over again.”

  “Can I see the part of the lesson where I first showed them the movement?”

  “Of course, en,” she said, skipping back to the appropriate part of the lesson.

  Naratonen watched the replay of the lesson intently.

  “I see,” he commented when the replay was finished. “I needed to slow down. No wonder they didn’t understand. Thank you, Eerin. That is a very useful thing,” he said, gesturing at the computer. “May I come and look at it some more when you aren’t busy?”

  Juna hesitated, wondering if this was a good idea. She didn’t want the Tendu to begin coveting human technology. Still, she could hardly refuse an enkar.

  “Of course, en. Perhaps tonight, after dinner?”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Juna left to join Anito and Ninto for lunch. She would have to hurry. She barely had time to eat before her pupils gathered for class.

  It was a big class, by Tendu standards. There were ten pupils, seated in a semicircle, waiting for her to show up. They were impressive students, attentive, tightly focused, and retentive. She rarely had to repeat herself. They could repeat long lists of words perfectly from memory. The hard part was teaching them grammar and meaning. Time and again she had to explain that color had no emotional meaning in Standard. They kept adding color to their words to express emotional content. The idea that there were separate words for happiness, laughter, anger, and so forth was hard for them to accept.

  This was her third lesson in the rudiments of diplomatic protocol. It was slow going. She had to stop and explain everything. Today she was explaining the ranking of a ship’s crew.

  “First there’s the captain—she’s like the chief elder of a village. She gives orders and is in charge of solving problems if something goes wrong. Then there’s the first mate—he’s in charge when the captain is asleep or resting. If the captain is sick or dies, he takes over.”

  “Why don’t they just wake the captain up if something goes wrong?”

  “Usually they do, but they need someone in charge when there isn’t an emergency, so that the captain can get some sleep.”

  “Why don’t they just stop for the night?”

  “Because they can’t,” Juna said firmly. “A ship is very complicated and they need people to watch over it constantly. It’s a bit like a raft on the river, only we’re too far from land to pull the boats ashore at night. Someone needs to steer the boat and watch out for trouble.

  “Now, the second mat’e takes over when the first mate and the captain can’t. That way, there’s always someone watching over the ship who is rested and ready to deal with trouble. He ranks below the captain and the first mate.”

  “Why? He does the same job.”

  The class wore on slowly, each word she explained spawning dozens of new questions. As always, her pupils left the class purple with puzzlement, arguing amongst themselves.

  Ukatonen swung down from an upper branch as the class broke up.

  “They’re learning well,” he said.

  “I suppose so,” Juna responded. “But I don’t think they understand what they’re learning.”

  “Neither do Moki, Anito, or myself, but what you are teaching us now will help us understand your people more quickly.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You’ve been working too hard. Let’s take the afternoon off and go fishing.”

  “But I have another class to teach!”

  “Tell them to come back tomorrow.”

  “But—” Juna began to protest.

  “You teach almost every day. None of the enkar do that. Even Anito and Ninto take more time off than you do, and they’re studying to become enkar.”

  “All right, let me tell Moki to pass along the word to my students.”

  “I was planning on taking him along as well. You’re working him too hard. He needs some time off too.”

  “But who will teach the newer classes?”

  “Eerin, stop worrying. We have years before your people come back for you. I’ll take over some of the new classes, and Garitonen and some of your other advanced students can take over the others. I’ve already told Garitonen to take over Moki’s class, and he’ll tell the rest to take the day off.”

  He tossed her a gathering sack full of fishing gear, and set off in search of Moki. Juna followed him. He was right. She had been working too hard. She didn’t have to teach Standard to every single Tendu on the planet. She already had the beginnings of a solid team of translators.

  Moki turned brilliant blue at the news that they were going fishing. Juna felt a pang of guilt. She really had been overworking him. He looked thin and a bit worn. They hadn’t linked fully in a couple of weeks.

  “This was a good idea,” Juna remarked as they unrolled their nets and assembled their fishing spears. They were fishing at a wide spot in one of the placid, slow-moving jungle rivers that flowed through the enkar’s territory. The surface of the water was covered with drifts of golden pollen, flower petals, and bits of fluff shed from the ika tree. Inside each bit of fluff was a small seed. Slanting beams of late afternoon sunlight illuminated streamers of lianas cascading down f
rom the branches of the trees.

  “I wish we could stay here for a while,” she said wistfully.

  “Why not?” Ukatonen said.

  “I promised Naratonen that I would show him what I’ve recorded of his classes in my talking stone,” Juna replied, pointing with her chin at the computer recharging in a pool of sunlight.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ukatonen told her. He waded over to a half-submerged log, and dripped a few drops of clear liquid on it. Several large wide-winged insects settled on the spot almost immediately. Ukatonen picked one up and set it on his spur for a couple of minutes, then waved it off his arm. It flew off in a straight line. He repeated that with several more insects before returning to Juna.

  “I’ve invited Naratonen to bring Ninto and Anito out here for a couple of days, and told him to let the others know that you wouldn’t be teaching for a while.”

  “Those insects carry messages?”

  “Yes, it’s called a meaki. I sent them back to the enkar gathering. When one of them gets there, it will start doing a special dance. Someone will catch it and read the message I have given the meaki. Then it will be passed on.”

  “How do you make the message?”

  “I make it in my spurs, and feed it to the insect. It spreads throughout its body and sends the message-bug where I tell it to go. When it arrives, an enkar will link with the insect and read the message in its cells. Then the enkar will turn off the message, feed the meaki well, and let it go. Naratonen will get my invitation before nightfall, though we probably won’t see him until tomorrow.”

  “I never saw the villagers do that,” Juna remarked.

  “Only the enkar use meaki. The chief elders use birds to let us laics when we’re needed. I was responding to such a message when I met yc. and Anito.” Ukatonen picked up a spear. “Now, enough talk. Let’s fish he said.

  He waded out to a submerged rock, and stood as still as a fishing bird, waiting for a fish to come within range of his spear. Moki headed downstream with the net. He was young and hungry, eager for a big catch Juna took her spear and knelt on the log where Ukatonen had summoned the message bug.

  Silence fell as they waited for the fish to forget about them. It was a silence filled with living things, resounding with the distant calls of birds and lizards, and the buzzing of the matas, strange insects with wings like leaves and bizarre, elongated heads that served as resonators. Occasionally another meaki would come and circle around, drawn by the fading scent of the attractor Ukatonen had dripped onto the log.

  She had been here among the enkar for three and a half months now. Teaching the enkar was demanding work. It was good to take a break. A shadow moved beneath the log. Juna waited, poised and still, until the fish edged within range of her spear. She threw it, striking the fish. Grasping the shaft of the spear, she impaled the struggling fish against the sandy bottom until its struggles ceased.

  She pulled in the spear and removed the fish. It was a pugginti, a sweet, succulent fish that fed mostly on fallen fruit. She held it up and Ukatonen flickered approval.

  Naratonen arrived with Ninto and Anito in tow the next day. He sent his two students off to practice, and sat with Juna while she showed him how to work the computer. Once he knew what he was doing, she left him to study while she and Moki went swimming with Ukatonen. They floated on their backs, watching the light flicker through the trees. The river pushed them past the bank where Ninto and Anito were practicing their quarbirri.

  Ukatonen rolled over and splashed over toward them.

  “No, no, no!” he told them. “Like this.” He grasped Ninto’s arm and moved it through the gesture she was trying to perfect. “Your hand needs to be bent further back, so we can see your spurs, and your elbow stays down.”

  Irritation flickered across Ninto’s back. Her patience was beginning to wear thin. Juna rippled amusement, rolled over and dove deep beneath the surface, then leapt up out of the water. Moki followed her, and the two of them played like otters until they were panting and out of breath.

  They pulled out onto a sun-heated rock to rest. Moki held out his arms and they linked, reaffirming and strengthening the bond between them. Juna’s skill at linking had increased during her time among the enkar. Sometimes in the link, she seemed to feel the presence of the forest around her, pulsing with the threads of many lives. It was impossible, of course. Linking was merely a deep awareness of another’s physiology, a form of incredibly direct biofeedback that seemed to involve a greatly heightened form of chemo-reception via the allu.

  Still, linking with Moki made her feel at home on this world, made her feel a part of the jungle around them. It was probably entirely subjective, but it made her happy. She lay back in the sun and closed her eyes.

  Ukatonen finished working with Ninto and Anito, and wandered over to see how Naratonen was doing with the computer. Ukatonen shook his head. The new creatures had such strange skin speech. Eerin had explained that they used sound to communicate most of the time, but the humans’ skin speech was easier for the Tendu to learn.

  He tried to imagine a room filled with people like Eerin, only brown and pink, their skins still, their mouths producing sounds like the ones she made occasionally. They must sound like a room full of mating yirri, he thought. It was hard to believe that sensible, intelligent people could communicate in this way. How could they possibly understand each other?

  Naratonen was hunched over the computer, studying the pictures of himself that Eerin had made. He looked up as Ukatonen squatted beside him.

  “This is fascinating. I can see how I move, it’s much clearer and sharper than skin-speech pictures. I’m learning a lot about how I teach.”

  Ukatonen looked over Naratonen’s shoulder as the computer played and replayed a phrase from the quarbirri he was teaching. Ukatonen had dismissed Eerin’s talking stones as a curiosity, but here was Naratonen, pink with excitement at seeing himself on the thing. Ukatonen looked away, uneasy at the sight.

  Eerin came over and squatted on Naratonen’s other side. “Well, en, what do you think of it?”

  “It’s wonderful!”

  “I have a few full quarbirri performances in here somewhere,” she said, reaching down and fiddling with the controls. The picture changed, and she pointed at something; then the picture changed once more and she pointed again, until the screen showed her what she wanted. Ukato-nen had seen her do this before, but never really paid much attention.

  “Here, watch this,” she said.

  The screen darkened. There was the sound of a shell horn being played. A tall enkar was blowing on it. Then a lyali-Tendu responded with a run of notes on her flute. Ukatonen recognized her. It was Narito, leader of the band of lyali-Tendu that Narmolom had traded with last year. Uka-tonen’s stinging stripes tightened as he realized that he was watching himself performing the quarbirri of the origin of the lyali-Tendu. Frightened and intrigued, he observed himself moving through the performance, his skin alive with words. He-glanced up, and saw that Naratonen was watching with a critical eye. Ukatonen was glad that he had performed well. The truth of the talking stone wouldn’t shame him.

  As the quarbirri proceeded, he was drawn into watching himself, evaluating his technique, for the most part pleased, but noticing certain things he wished he had done differently. When the recording drew to a close, he wanted to watch it again, as Naratonen was doing. He began to understand the fascination that the talking stone held for Naratonen. It bothered him. He scooped up his hunting gear, and swung off into the forest to think it over.

  Ukatonen perched in the top of a tall ika tree, looking out over the canopy. Eerin had said that her people would bring change. He hadn’t wanted to believe her, but here it was. The talking stone had fascinated both him and Naratonen. It wasn’t decent, it wasn’t healthy to be fascinated by a dead thing like that. This obsession with dead things could spread among the Tendu. What should be done about it? He could destroy the talking stones, or hide them, but that woul
d anger Eerin and her people. He could ask her to hide her talking stone, but sooner or later something else would come along that would hold the same fascination.

  He needed to talk this over with other enkar, with Naratonen, with Anito, and with Eerin. What should be done?

  An unwary quanji landed in a nearby branch. Ukatonen lifted his blowpipe and shot it as the bird spread its wings to fly. He caught the bird neatly as it fell. He butchered it and went swinging back through the trees to rejoin the others.

  “Well, what should we do?” Ukatonen finished. Anito sat back, rich ochre with concern. “I don’t know,” she said. “Change and adapt, I suppose. You’re right, we can’t hide from it.”

  “Yes you can,” Eerin said. “You can ask us to leave you alone.”

  “Why?” Naratonen asked. “It would be wrong. There’s so much we can learn from you. The Tendu have never turned away from knowledge. Why should we start now? We’re enkar, not some head-in-the-mud villagers. It is our job to learn and study. It is our atwa to bring our knowledge to the other Tendu and share it with them.”

  “But,” Ukatonen responded, “it is also our atwa to protect and guide them, to steer our people away from things that can hurt them. It is our atwa to judge for them. Our lives, our honor, rest on those judgments. Remember, we do this so that those ‘head-in-the-mud’ villagers can continue to live like that.”

  “And is it right?” Naratonen asked, getting up and pacing around, his colors bright wilh urgency. “Is it right that their heads remain in the mud? Is it right that the villagers stay so much to themselves? Is it right that the villagers would rather die than face exile when it is time to give their place in the village over to their bami? Is it right that we have to trap the villagers into becoming enkar through obligation? There are fewer enkar all the time, and this is not good for the Tendu.”

  “We’ve had problems like this before,” Ukatonen reminded him. “We’ve always managed to solve them ourselves.”

  Anito listened to the enkar debating, and thought of her sitik, how much she wished that he had chosen to live. She thought of her time among the enkar, of all the things she had learned. She was sure that Ilto would have loved being an enkar. It would have given him the room to satisfy his curiosity. She and Ninto had been too busy learning new things to miss Narmolom.