Lee figured that for an invitation and took the safety off her pistol. She didn't press it down gently; she deliberately snapped it down as hard as her thumb could push. The metallic >SNICK< of it was down-right rude in the quiet woods. The young one's ears twitched hard, then the two Derf were so still for a heartbeat that the safety might as well have been the pause button on a video. Finally Gordon spoke.
"I would have invited you to camp and dinner, if you'd had some manners young one. But given your attitude, lay down the rifle and walk away, if you want to live. If you have to stumble around in the dark a ways before you bed down that's too bad. You can come back and retrieve your rifle tomorrow. I won't shame you by keeping it as a trophy and sending you home empty handed. If you can't live with that - well - give it a go and see if you can take me," he invited.
The fellow leaned over slowly and laid the expensive rifle carefully at his feet, suddenly humble. "I'll come back after the sun has peaked Elder. No need to hurry away in the morning."
"I wasn't going to," Gordon assured him. "No threats about how you'll get even, cub?"
"No. If I threatened empty handed I wouldn't blame you for cutting me down. I thank you for my life, Elder". He made a little gesture with his hand Lee had never seen. "I'll leave it for those grandchildren to squabble over the chain. I will not challenge it again."
"That sounds good to me. I won't mention our meeting if you don't. I was full of youth and all sorts of hormones and territorial aggression once myself."
"Good night to you then Elder," he said and padded off straight downhill into the dark without looking back.
Lee stepped out as Gordon turned to watch him go. Sticking out of his armpit, where his true hand was tucked under his arm, was the stubby blue barrel of a handgun. The hole in the end was pretty big. He hadn't needed her help at all.
"Well, I'd about given up on you," Gordon allowed, like what had happened wasn't worth mentioning. "I thought I was going to have to walk around the woods with a lantern trying to find you."
"I didn't get any wood. I followed that fellow all the way back to camp and had to leave the carrier down there in a clearing. I can find it in the morning though."
"We can find it in the morning. I think that young fellow learned his lesson, but I still don't want you wandering around alone in the morning after our little 'difference'. You mean to say he never spotted you following him?
"No, I walked quiet and moved slow hiding behind stuff. I kind of used the trees for cover, just making it up as I went along. I mean, most of how to do it is really obvious, if you think about it."
"Is it now?" He asked her dubiously. "Huh - that's interesting too. I'd like to hear more about that. Why don't you come in and we'll have some supper? I wish you could have seen his face when you snapped the safety off your pistol. Truth is, for just an awful instant I wasn't any surer than he was, that you weren't going to start blazing away right after we heard the safety come off."
"Oh no, it was just a message, unless he'd tried to turn. Did you know I was there?"
"Lee, I'm not a green cub like the kid there. I knew exactly where you were."
Chapter 14
The next morning Gordon seemed well rested and calm. Lee had slept fitfully; worried the young Derf was not as humbled as he'd acted. She could easily picture him slipping back in the dark, intent on cutting their throats as they slept.
After a light breakfast and taking the time to pack everything carefully, they retraced her steps to the windfall and found the wood carrier where she'd dropped it. The two of them had it filled quickly and Gordon slung it over his shoulder one handed. If he acted unconcerned about the young male returning, she still noticed he carried the fellow's weapon in hand instead of leaving it at the camp.
With the wood pile restored and their duty to the camp fulfilled Gordon leaned the carbine against the back of the shelter where it would be out of any weather blowing up. He also took the precaution of removing all the cartridges from the magazine and dumping them in his ruck. Then with everything they brought loaded, ready to leave, he retrieved a small dark cylinder from the roof of their shelter, slipping it in a pocket without comment as he started back into the woods.
Lee wasn't about to let him get away without explaining.
"What's that Gordon? What did you just put in a ruck pocket?"
"Hmm? What?" he tried to deflect the question with feigned innocence.
"You put something away last. Something you left up there until the very last. Don't play dumb with me. It's really irritating when you do that."
"Pocket? Oh, you mean my tin of treats? Rude of me not to offer," he said hand going in a different pocket and getting a shallow tin of hard candies.
"That's all bright colors and rattles. You stuck something away about the same size, all dull and it made no sound."
"Oh it can," he explained, giving up. He produced a flat cylinder with an active camo surface and handed it to her. "It's a sensor pack. I register both of us on it and then it watches and listens and will alert me if something else besides us comes around in the night. Call it an alarm if you like. Military grade and so expensive the Mothers would swoon to hear it."
"Why didn't you tell me you had this set? I'd have slept a whole lot easier."
"Maybe it isn't good to sleep too easy. Better you don't think somebody is always going to take care of you. This can be defeated. I can be fooled. Better to learn to sleep lightly and rely on your own senses," he counseled. She had no answer to that and gave the device back.
"How far out does it work?" was all she asked.
"Well for something big that is not trying to avoid detection about a kilometer. I saw the cub coming before he passed you at the windfall. Watching you follow him back was sweet. You're doing really well learning bush craft for someone not raised on a planet. I have hopes of being able to teach you a number of skills, that I've despaired of teaching others. You need some native talent to build upon or it gets pretty frustrating."
"And smaller stuff?"
"Oh, really little critters, like a nut eater, it will tell you when they are line of sight out to a hundred meters or so. Something like a bug it doesn't try to see at all. But it also detects electronic emissions and such, so a person trying to be stealthy has to quiet all his equipment as well as himself. That's surprisingly difficult to do."
"Why aren't you teaching me to use that kind of stuff too?" she asked, a bit put out.
"Oh I will," he agreed, "all in good time. After you learn how to walk quietly and move like a shadow and use cover, all the important stuff that is much harder to learn and doesn't stop working when the battery runs down."
"OK," she quietly agreed, feeling reproved by his answer.
* * *
The memorial was only another three hours from the camp, climbing most of the way. "We could have left earlier, pushed a little and made it here last night," Lee observed
"But Derf don't sleep here," Gordon explained. She could tell he was put off by the idea. "If we camped here it wouldn't be special. It would lose its solitude. It, well, it just isn't done. I guess it isn't a law. I've never heard a Mother proclaim it, but for sure it's firm custom."
"I understand," she said after they walked a bit further, "it's the same thing as when I wanted where mom and dad died to be set aside," she concluded.
Lee wasn't sure what she'd expected. Something a little more structured for sure. The clearing was much the same as when the shuttle had landed, but it had been a natural clearing even then. There were three small circles of rock, to preserve where the landing jacks had left marks on the pasture. Where the massacre had happened the main marker was a pillar of dry set stone, a good ten meters high. What she didn't expect were the bronze plaques for each Earthman, with an accurately detailed head and shoulders base relief. They were set a bit over eye level for Lee, which was just right for Derf, viewing from a stone bench that surrounded the pillar. The ground was not quite covered with sma
ll pebbles between the bench and the stonework.
"When it was being built, each pilgrim who came brought a piece of stone to build the column. Now that it is done we just bring a token," he explained and tossed the pebble he'd carried from the creek with the others on the ground.
Lee pulled her pebble out, but seemed reluctant to drop it. Instead she found a gap between the dry fit stones of the column which had a flat bottom. She pulled the shot glass from her pocket and turned it over the pebble, sliding it in the gap deep enough to be safe from a casual bump or wind. She stepped back and considered the aesthetics of it and nodded in satisfaction. Gordon was sitting on the stone bench and observing her with a poker face. If he disapproved he gave no sign. She climbed up and leaned back against his chest and let the wind and sun play on her face. She didn't say anything for a long time.
"Gordon?"
"Hmm?"
"You aren't telling me something."
"It would astonish you all the things I have yet to tell you. We haven't had time to start to teach you all you need to know," he said nuzzling her with his chin.
"No, I mean you're avoiding telling me the story of who in your family was here and killed the humans. Are you afraid I'll be upset with them, or say something really stupid? Or are they all dead now too? I know whoever drew on the Derf was really an idiot. I thought it was nice none of the plaques here put any blame on him."
"The First Mum who just stepped down?" Gordon reminded her.
"Yeah, I know which one you mean."
"She was the one who told the Earth lady 'no' when she put her hand to her weapon."
Lee thought about that awhile.
"She wasn't First Mum back then though was she?"
"Not hardly, she was low ranked and would have never sat at the first table, much less became one of the Mothers."
"Then what happened?"
"The First Mum back then was an idiot. No, that's not fair. If she'd just had to govern a keep and deal with other clans of Derf like so many others before her, she'd have been just fine. But she lacked imagination to deal with an alien invasion. When the runner came and said there were aliens on our land, she just couldn't grasp the idea of really different people. She was simply uninterested in whether they came from the sky, or the sea, or climbed out of a hole in the ground. Fur, or skin, or purple tentacles didn't matter. All that mattered was they were strangers, uninvited on Red Tree land.
The hunting party asked for one of the under Mums to come and bring trade goods. Instead she sent the runner back with instructions that the hunting party was to hunt and not presume to challenge her authority by elevating themselves to traders and the strangers were to get off Red Tree land. If they wanted trade they could go to one of the trading towns, like civilized people were supposed to do."
"So she didn't have the flexibility to adjust to a new situation?"
"Flexibility is not what the Mums are about. I thought you'd see that by now."
"Well yeah, but sometimes things are so different the same old don't work and you have to try a new tack. Like when dinos suddenly get hot blooded and run in packs, or you come back and your bank is waiting to dump you," she threw out for examples.
"But all she could see was her people not doing what they were told. You're going to find a lot of people, both Derf and Human, are like her, so self-centered that everything is about them. They just don't have the capacity to examine any event from a wide perspective, or another person's point of view. I explained what a sweet deal we got compared to other races dealing with Humans. Yet all she wanted to do was disavow the treaty and have the hunters who forged the agreement outlawed - cast out of the clan to have to live in trade cities or off in some wilderness no clan wanted. What the female hunter in particular was doing in making a treaty was formulating law. Something all Mums hold dearly for themselves, so that really upset her."
"So what happened? Did the other Mums force her out like we just saw?"
"Remember how William said the males could change the Mums if they were shamed?"
"Yeah?" Lee agreed twisting her head around to see Gordon tell this part.
"That's what happened. They assassinated the First Mum and installed the huntress. The other Mums, the under Mums, were happy to support her, given the other choice was the axe."
Lee thought about that awhile. Something William had said to the First Mum in anger suddenly made sense, but Gordon apparently would stop right there if she didn't demand more of the story. She didn't like having to pry it out of him, piece by piece.
"So, William is pretty old. Was he the one who axed the first Mum and installed the other?"
"No, William has a different part in this story. He was the one threw the first axe, when the Earthie drew a weapon on the hunters. That's hung over him all his life, because he was thrilled to meet a different intelligent people and then it went bad so fast. A lot of people were worried he'd take his own life the first few years after that. He's stayed away from the ports and trading towns, afraid he'd be hated. It was an older male of the keep, who didn't even meet the Earthies who culled the Mum. He's dead now of age, not of any problem with the Mothers."
"So why was the First Mum so hostile to me? Seems like she was the one opened the door for humans, for the whole planet. I'd think she would be more comfortable than most at dealing with humans."
"Comfortable? She was good at dealing with humans, but never comfortable. She never liked humans like William. Remember, I grew up in Red Tree and yet we never had a human in the keep all that time. We'd get together with other clans for festivals and trading and they'd tell stories of humans visiting them. We children always felt cheated that other clans had such exotic visitors and we never had any. The First Mum has to give permission for outsiders to visit and she never would give humans an OK, neither scientists nor traders and she never would explain why."
"Some said she did it to shelter William, but she kept them away even when he was off hunting for months in the fall. So the clan that made Derf law on aliens and had first contact, has benefited the least. That's especially rough because it has cost the clan a lot to defend challenges to the law from other clans. We should at least have gotten some sort of favored trading status or something for our efforts."
"Do you have some kind of a Supreme Mum, who rules on the laws the Mothers make?
Gordon looked at her with a very peculiar expression. Maybe he thought she was being flip. "The Mums of each clan are equal. If three of them challenge a law a Mother has laid down, they gather as many Mums as they can get to come and argue the matter. If they still can't agree they choose a male to settle the matter for them, by the axe. William was our champion and had to face three challenges to the treaty from two clans. That's really wrong. They aren't supposed to keep bringing a matter up, but they insisted there was a different reason for each challenge. That was quite the scandal right there."
"The second champion William faced was a Derf twenty years his junior, who was expected to win easily. Then after he killed him he counter-challenged the man's clan for breaking tradition and law right there on the field, with the body still before him and the bloody axe in his hand. He took the fellow's ear he'd killed, since he said they liked barbarous old customs and invited them if they wanted multiple challenges, to send them forward and he'd give them their fill. He said it was necessary to defend Propriety."
"That was a clan called Deep Waters, from across the mountains. Taking the ear upset them so much they had another champion respond to William, so they lost two males in one afternoon as well as the one from another clan. I don't think anybody will ever challenge William again. Not even if he needed a walker to make the field. They'd think it a trick. For sure he settled the idea of multiple challenges."
"He got so angry at their stubbornness that he refused to cut the last one down and instead beat him to death with the flat of his axe. That's pretty tough to do when the other fellow is using the edge to try to kill you, not to mentio
ned tired from back to back duels. In fact it is a humiliating way to die. It was kind of ugly, because everybody was afraid to try to stop him, even his own people. He just kept smashing their champion's head with the flat, long after he was dead. It was – messy. When he finally grew tired of it and the blood rage abated, he just looked up, fur all matted with gore and said, "Next?" There were no takers. They still mock Deep Waters with that single word."
"And that's the same William who volunteered to be my champion, when he'd known me all of five minutes?" she asked stunned.
"Well, he undoubtedly was giving you credit for being my daughter. We've always gotten along well. Also I write to him now and then, so he was well acquainted with both you and your parents from my letters. He has reason to feel he knows you much better than just your brief meeting at the gate. He's followed your growing up in some detail."
"Gordon, why did you take me home if you knew human visitors were not welcome? Didn't you know there would be a scene, just like there was?"
"You're my daughter. That overrides everything. I thought the First Mum was so conservative that family and custom would trump race. Maybe it would have if you hadn't been armed, maybe not. Maybe she would have just found something else to object to, who knows? In any case it was time for her to go anyway. She has been holding the clan back from any hint of progress for a generation. If I had stayed away because of you, then I'd be losing without even trying. Why assume the worst? It worked out better for everybody this way."
"Not for her."
"Yes, for her too," he insisted. "Clan head was a burden she never wanted and couldn't make herself lay down. She did what was good for the clan and our people when she met the Earthies and it's been downhill from then on. Being right once is fine, but it only carries you so far. If I had explained all that before taking you home you'd have been a nervous wreck. Dealing with it spontaneously, just being yourself, you did me proud. My trust in your nature was justified."
Family Law Page 12
