by Anissa Gray
“How not-overwhelmed were you?”
“I wasn’t overwhelmed,” she said. “But it’s not like I wasn’t whelmed at all, either. In fact, I’d say that on my wedding night I was well and thoroughly whelmed, and I rather look forward to our next whelming, to see how much better it can get.”
“How about first thing in the morning?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But don’t be surprised if you wake up and find yourself being taken advantage of in the middle of the night.”
“Are you just pretending, or do you really mean all this?” said Issib.
“Are you just pretending?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “This is the most wonderful night of my life. Mostly because ...”
She waited.
“Because I never thought it would happen.”
“It did though,” she said.
“I answered,” he said. “Now you.”
“I thought I might have to pretend, and I would have pretended if I’d had to, because I know our marriage can work in the long run—I know it because I saw it in my dream from the Keeper of Earth. So if it meant I had to pretend to make it work well at the start, then I would have done it.”
“Oh.”
“But I didn’t have to pretend. I showed you what I really felt. It wasn’t as good as it’s going to be, but it was good. You were good to me. Very gentle. Very kind. Very . . .”
“Loving?”
“Was that what you meant to be?”
“Yes,” he said. “I meant that part most of all.”
“Ah,” she said.
But then in a moment he realized that she hadn’t said ah at all, but rather had let a sound escape her mouth without meaning to, and he saw in the dim light that she was crying, and it occurred to him that he had said exactly the right things to her, as she had said exactly the right things to him.
And as he drifted toward sleep, her body close to his, his arm resting lightly on her side, he thought: I have tasted of the fruit in Father’s dream. Not when we coupled, not when my body first gave its seed into a woman’s body, but rather when I let her see my fear, and my gratitude, and my love, and she let me also see hers. Then we both reached up and tasted just the first bite of that fruit, and now I know the secret from Father’s dream, the thing that even he didn’t understand—that you can never taste the fruit by reaching for it yourself. Rather you only taste it when you pick it from the tree for someone else, as Shuya gave the fruit to me, and I, though I never thought it possible, plucked and gave a taste of it to her.
FIVE
THE FACE OF THE KEEPER
Luet sat watching the baboons. The female that she thought of as Rubyet, because of a livid scar on her back, was in estrus, and it was interesting to watch the males compete for her. The most blustering male, Yobar, the one who spent so much time in camp with the humans, was the least effective at getting Rubyet’s attention. In fact, the more aggressive he got, the less progress he made. He would display his rage, stamping and snarling, even snapping his teeth and taking swipes with his hands, to try to intimidate one of the males who was courting Rubyet. Every time, the one he was intimidating would give up very quickly and run away from him—but while Yobar was chasing his victim, other males would approach Rubyet. So when Yobar returned to Rubyet from his “victory,” he would find other males there before him, and the whole play was enacted again.
Finally, Yobar got really angry and began to attack one of the males in earnest, biting and tearing at him. It was a male that Volemak had pointed out once with the name Salo, because he had once smeared grease all over his face while stealing food from the cookfire. Salo immediately became submissive, showing his backside to Yobar, but Yobar was too angry to accept the submission. The other males looked on, perhaps amused, as Yobar continued to pummel and nip at his victim.
Salo at last managed to break free, howling and whining as he ran away from Yobar, who, still raging, followed after him at a furious pace, knocking him this way and that whenever he got within reach.
Then Salo did the most extraordinary thing. He ran straight for a young mother called Ploxy, who had a nursing infant that Salo often played with, and tore the infant from Ploxy’s arms. Ploxy hooted once in annoyance, but the baby immediately started to act happy and excited—until Yobar, still furious, came charging up and started pummeling Salo again.
This time, however, the infant Salo was holding started screeching in terror, and now, instead of watching complacently, the other males immediately became agitated. Ploxy began screaming, too, calling for help, and within a few moments the entire troop of baboons had assembled around Yobar and were beating him and screaming at him. Confused, frightened, Yobar tried to grab the infant out of Salo’s hands, perhaps thinking that if he held the infant, everybody would be on his side, but Luet realized that it wouldn’t work. Sure enough, the moment he grabbed for the baby, the others became downright brutal in their beating of him, finally ejecting him from the group and chasing him away. Several of the males chased him quite a distance and then stayed nearby to watch and make sure he didn’t come near. Luet wondered if that would be the end of Yobar’s attempt to be part of the troop.
Then she looked for Salo, trying to spot him somewhere near Ploxy and the baby—but he wasn’t there, though most of the other baboons were still there, chattering and bobbing up and down and otherwise showing how agitated they were.
Salo, however, was off in the brush upstream of the main group. He had got Rubyet away from the rest and now was mounting her. She had the most comically resigned look on her face, which now and then gave way to a look of eyes-rolled-back pleasure—or exasperation. Luet wondered if human faces gave that same weirdly mixed signal under similar circumstances … a sort of distracted intensity that might mean pleasure or might mean perplexity.
In any event, Yobar, the aggressive one, had been completely defeated—might even have lost his place in the tribe. And Salo, who wasn’t particularly large, had lost the skirmish but won the battle and the war.
All because Salo had grabbed a baby away from its mother.
“Lucky Salo,” said Nafai. “I wondered who would win sweet Rubyet’s heart.”
“He did it with flowers,” said Luet. “I didn’t mean to be off here so long.”
“I wasn’t looking for you to do anything,” said Nafai. “I was looking for you because I wanted to be with you. There isn’t anything for me to do now anyway, till supper. I got my prey early this morning and brought the bloody thing home to lay at my mate’s feet. Only she was busy throwing up and didn’t give me my customary reward.”
“Wouldn’t you know that I’d be the one who’d get sick all the time,” said Luet. “Hushidh burped once and that was it for her. And Kokor tries to throw up but she just can’t bring it off, so she ends up not getting the sympathy she wants and I end up having it when I don’t want it.”
“Who would have thought that it would be a race between you and Hushidh and Kokor for the first baby in the colony?”
“A good thing for you,” said Luet. “It’ll give you an infant to grab, in case there’s trouble.”
He hadn’t seen Salo’s strategem, so he didn’t understand.
“Salo—he grabbed Ploxy’s baby.”
“Oh, yes, they do that,” said Nafai. “Shedemei told me. The males who are fully accepted in the tribe make friends with an infant or two, so the infant likes them. Then, in combat, they grab the infant, who doesn’t scream when his friend takes him. The other male isn’t his friend, so when he keeps attacking, the baby gets scared and screams, which brings the whole tribe down on the poor pizdook’s head.”
“Oh,” said Luet. “So it was routine.”
“I’ve never seen it. I’m jealous that you did and I didn’t.”
“There’s the prize,” said Luet, pointing to Salo, who still hadn’t finished with Rubyet.
“And where’s the loser? I’ll bet it’s Yobar.” Luet was already
pointing, and sure enough, there was Yobar, looking forlorn off in the distance, watching the troop but not daring to come closer because of the two males who were browsing halfway between him and the rest of the troop.
“You’d better make friends with my baby, then,” said Luet. “Or you won’t ever get your way in this tribe we’re forming.”
Nafai put his hand on Luet’s stomach. “No bigger yet.”
“That’s fine with me,” said Luet. “Now, what did you really come out here for.”
He looked at her in consternation.
“You didn’t know I was down here because nobody knew I was down here,” said Luet, “so you didn’t come looking for me, you came here to be alone.”
He shrugged. “I’d rather be with you.”
“You’re so impatient,” said Luet. “The Oversoul already said there’s no hurry—she won’t even be ready for us at Vusadka for years yet.”
“This place can’t sustain us—it’s already getting harder to find game,” said Nafai. “And we’re too close to that settled valley over the mountains to the east.”
“That isn’t what you’re anxious about, either,” said Luet. “It’s driving you crazy that the Keeper of Earth hasn’t sent you a dream.”
“That doesn’t bother me at all,” said Nafai. “What bothers me is the way you keep throwing it up to me. That you and Shuya and Father and Moozh and Thirsty all saw these angels and rats, and I didn’t. What, does that mean that some computer orbiting a planet a hundred or so lightyears away somehow judged me a century before I was born and decided that I wasn’t worthy to receive his neat little menagerie dreams?”
“You really art angry,” said Luet.
“I want to do something, and if I can’t then at least I want to know something!” cried Nafai. “I’m sick of waiting and waiting and nothing happens. It’s no good for me to work with the Index because Zdorab and Issib are constantly using it and they’re more familiar with how it works than I am—”
“But it still speaks more clearly to you than anybody.”
“So while it tells me nothing it does it with greater clarity, how excellent.”
“And you’re a good hunter. Elemak even says so.”
“Yes, that’s about all anybody’s found for me to do—kill things.”
Luet could see the shadow of the memory of Gaballufix’s death pass over Nafai’s face. “Aren’t you ever going to forgive yourself for that?”
“Yes. When Gaballufix comes down out of the baboons’ sleeping caves and tells me he was just pretending to be dead.”
“You just don’t like waiting, that’s all,” said Luet. “But it’s like my being pregnant. I’d like to have it over with. I’d like to have the baby. But it takes time, so I wait.”
“You wait, but you can feel the change in you.”
“As I vomit everything I eat.”
“Not everything,” said Nafai, “and you know what I mean. I don’t feel any changes, I’m not needed for anything ...”
“Except the food we eat.”
“All right, you win. I’m vital, I’m necessary, I’m busy all the time, so I must be happy.” He started to walk away from her.
She thought of calling after him, but she knew that it would do no good. He wanted to be miserable, and so all she would do by trying to cheer him up was thwart him in his mood of the day. Aunt Rasa had told her a few days ago that it wouldn’t hurt for her to remember that Nafai was still just a boy, and that she shouldn’t expect him to be a mature tower of strength for her. “You were both too young to marry,” said Rasa then, “but events got away from us. You’ve come up to the challenge—in time, Nyef will too.”
But Luet wasn’t sure at all that she had come up to any challenge. She was terrified at the thought of giving birth out here in the wilderness, far from the physicians of the city. She had no idea whether they’d even have food in a few months—everything depended on their garden and the hunters, and it was really only Elemak and Nafai who were any good at that, though Obring and Vas sometimes went out with pulses, too. The food supply could fail at any time, and soon she’d have a baby and what if they suddenly decided they had to travel? Bad as her sickness was right now, what if she had to ride atop a swaying camel? She’d rather eat camel cheese.
Of course, the thought of camel cheese made the nausea come back in a wave, and she knew that this time it might well come out, so down she went on her knees again, sick of the pain of the acidy stuff that came up from her gut into her mouth. Her throat hurt, her head hurt, and she was tired of it all.
She felt hands touch her, gathering her hair away from her face, twisting it and holding it out of the way, so none of the flecks of vomitus would get in it. She wanted to say thank you, knowing it was Nafai; she also wanted him to go away, it was so humiliating and awful and painful to be like this and have somebody watching. But he was her husband. He was part of this, and she couldn’t send him away. Didn’t even want to send him away.
At last she was through puking.
“Not too effective,” said Nafai, “if we judge these things by quantity.”
“Please shut up,” said Luet. “I don’t want to be cheered up, I want my baby to be a ten-year-old child already so that I remember all of this as an amusing event from my childhood long ago.”
“Your wish is granted,” said Nafai. “The baby is here and aged ten. Of course, she’s incredibly obnoxious and bratty, the way you were at ten.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were the waterseer already, and we all knew you bossed and sassed grownups all the time.”
“I told them what I saw, that’s all!” Then she realized that he was laughing. “Don’t tease me, Nafai. I know I’d be sorry later, but I still may lose control and kill you now.”
He gathered her into his arms and she had to twist away to keep him from kissing her. “Don’t!” she said. “I’ve got the most awful taste in my mouth, it would probably kill you!”
So he held her and after a while she felt better.
“I think about Keeper of Earth all the time,” said Nafai.
I would, too, if I weren’t thinking about the baby, Luet said silently.
“I keep thinking that maybe it isn’t just another computer,” said Nafai. “That maybe it isn’t calling us through hundred-year-old dreams, that maybe it knows us, and that it’s just waiting for . . . for something before it speaks to me.”
“It’s waiting for the message that only you can receive.”
“I don’t care,” said Nafai. “About it being only me. I’d take Father’s dream, if only I could experience what it feels like inside my head. How the Keeper is different from what the Oversoul does inside me. I want to know”
I know you do. You keep coming back to it, day after day.
“I’ve been trying to talk to the Keeper of Earth. That’s how crazy I’m getting, Luet. Show me what you showed Father! I say it over and over.”
“And she ignores you.”
“It’s a hundred lightyears away!” said Nafai. “It doesn’t know I exist!”
“Well if all you want is the same dream as Volemak, why not get the Oversoul to give it to you?”
“It isn’t from the Oversoul.”
“But she must have recorded the whole experience inside your father’s mind, right? And she can retrieve it, and show it to you. And the way you get everything so much more clearly through the Index—”
“Just like experiencing it myself,” said Nafai. “I can’t believe I never thought of that. I can’t believe the Oversoul never thought of that.”
“She’s not very creative, you know that.”
“She’s creatively inert,” said Nafai. “But you’re not.” He kissed her on the cheek, gave her one last hug, and bounded to his feet. “I have to go talk to the Oversoul.”
“Give her my love,” said Luet mildly.
“I—oh, I see. I can wait—let’s walk back together.”
“No, really�
��I wasn’t hinting. I want to stay here a while longer. Maybe just to see if they let Yobar back.”
“Don’t miss supper,” said Nafai. “You’re eating for—”
“Two,” said Luet.
“Maybe three!” said Nafai. “Who knows?”
She groaned theatrically, knowing that was what he wanted to hear. Then he ran off, back up the valley toward the camp.
He really is just a boy, as Aunt Rasa said. But what am I? His mother now? Not really—She’s his mother. I shouldn’t expect more of him—he works hard and well, and more than half the meat we eat is from his hunting. And he’s kind and gentle with me—I don’t know how Issib could be any sweeter and more tender than Nafai, no matter what Shuya says. And I’m his friend—he comes to me to talk about things that he says to no one else, and when I want to talk he listens and answers, unlike some of the other husbands, or so their wives say. By any standard I ever heard of, he’s a fine husband, and mature beyond his years—but it isn’t what I thought it was going to be. When I took him through the Lake of Women, I thought it meant that he and I were going to do great and majestic things together. I thought we would be like a king and a queen, or at least like a great priestess and her priest, doing powerful and majestic things to change the universe. Instead I throw up a lot and he bounds around like a fifteen-year-old who is really hurt because some computer from another planet won’t send dreams to him ...
Oh, I’m too tired to think. Too sick to care. Maybe someday my image of our marriage will come true. Or maybe that’ll be his second wife, after I puke to death and get buried in the sand.
Shedemei had spent her whole life knowing that people looked at her oddly. At first it was because she was so intelligent as a child, because she cared about things that children weren’t supposed to care about. Adults would look at her strangely. So would other children, but sometimes the adults smiled and nodded their approval, while the children never did. Shedemei had thought this meant that when she was an adult, she would be fully accepted by everyone, but instead the opposite was true. When she became an adult it only meant that all the other adults were the same age now and treated her as the children had. Of course, now she was able to recognize what she was seeing. It was fear. It was resentment. It was envy
