West of January

by Dave Duncan

  “Does it explain their big shoulders?” asked Ham, who was well endowed thereabouts himself.

  Pleased by this posing of a new problem, Kettle pondered, then wobbled jowls in dissent. “I doubt it can be directly survival of the fittest, no. In a human culture, even a weaker man is rarely forced to starve. He can usually still reproduce. Sexual selection, perhaps—a woman may choose the mate best able to provide, and so pass on to her daughters a preference for husky men. But yet…a young man who found mining difficult would be more likely to leave the nest and seek other pursuits, wouldn’t he? Emigration of the unfit—if it was deliberate, I suppose that would be a uniquely human subcategory?”

  Awed into silence, Ham nodded.

  “Was that a yes or a no?” I asked.

  “Certainly!” Kettle quaffed long, then wiped foam from his lips and chuckled. “Who can say?” Unlike some saints, he was never reluctant to admit ignorance. He taught us that the best questions have no answers.

  “The third reason is the founder effect, as the texts call it. There were so few of the firstfolk to start with, and when they divided at the time of the Great Compact and then fragmented and later sub-fragmented into all the various tribes and peoples and races—some of those groups that seem so numerous now must be descended from a mere handful of men and women. And if even one of them had a conspicuous deformity—red hair, say—then it would not be unlikely…”

  And Ginger, copper-haired man of the deserts, calmly promised violence upon him and anyone seen smiling.

  Some raucous forestfolk right behind me were growing loud in one of their tribal rondeaux, accompanied by much complex drumming on the table. We had to raise our voices to compete.

  “Then consider wetlanders,” Kettle continued, unperturbed, “since Roo has already undertaken to slay me, and he can only do so once. The normal brown or black colors of human hair and skin are due to the presence of a pigment called melanin. Roos hair and eyes lack it, so he is a blond. His skin will produce it under the influence of sunlight, so bright sunlight would soon darken him from that pretty baby pink shade he is at the moment to about your color, Fox. Conversely if you were to put Roo in complete darkness…”

  He dried up. During all my long stay in Heaven, that was the only time I ever saw Kettle embarrassed. The others noticed and were puzzled. Our table fell silent, while the others clamored as loudly as before around us.

  I was about to reach for my tankard, but my hand had started to shake, so I quickly put both hands under the table. “That’s all right,” I assured him, although I knew that nightmares would haunt my next sleep. “Pray continue, holiness.”

  Much redder than usual—almost maroon in the dimness—Kettle drank beer while the others exchanged perplexed and wary glances. Then he launched forth again, slightly less loudly. “Now, in areas of low sun and cloudy weather, fair skin is an advantage. There is some evidence that blue eyes see better under misty conditions. We know from a reference in the ancient texts”—here he beamed smugly, to indicate that the reference was some extremely obscure passage that he had discovered himself—“that some of the firstfolk had those blond characteristics. Indeed, the firstfolk seem to have included all of the shades we have now, from Roo to Beef there!”

  Beef was almost invisible in dim light, but his teeth and eyes flashed now in a grin.

  “I thought,” the Fox said, “that the Venerable Ones all had skin of the same color, and Our Lady Sun punished—”

  He was drowned out in boos and groans. Religion was never discussed in Heaven.

  Kettle chuckled. “Not the firstfolk! But a few generations later the annals mention that almost everyone was by then becoming a sort of middle brown color, because of inbreeding—I don’t think we need take that too literally!” He peered around pugnaciously, but no one argued.

  “So the redivergence into different races came later still?” Ginger asked.

  “Exactly! Environments on Vernier were selected for the same adaptations as similar environments had on First World. Of course! Hook noses in dry climates, for example. Persistence of the lactase enzyme into adulthood among cattle-herding peoples. That sort of thing. But we have a question, class! Are the wetlanders descended from original blonds—by chance—or have they been selected for blondness by their environment, or did blond humans deliberately choose a climate that suited their blond coloring? Hmm?”

  After a long pause I said, “Tell us the answer then.”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” Kettle boomed triumphantly, “and I can think of no way to find out! That’s why people are so interesting.”

  That was also why, Ginger muttered darkly, the most ancient texts told of saints being martyred.

  But ants had been mentioned, and ants were always of interest to me, who still nursed secret dreams of vengeance. I had never mentioned these dreams to anyone, but everyone in Heaven must have known of my obsession with ants. Where did ants get their sadism? I asked. Which of the three causes produced that?

  Natural selection, Kettle thought. “Survival of the ruthless? A squeamish ant would leave, probably, or be driven out.”

  “Or founder effect?” I suggested. “Someone must have invented slave owning.”

  He agreed, rather grudgingly. The conversation began to drift elsewhere, but Kettle suddenly dragged it back with his remark about ants not understanding pain.

  I replied that they used pain so effectively that they must obviously understand it. Knowing how I had come by the disability that led them to call me Roo, the others fell silent, but Kettle argued. He eventually convinced me that the ants would be able to use their slaves more efficiently if they terrorized them less. Or he almost convinced me, for I knew that I would never have worked so hard for so long under a kinder rule.

  “But talk to Blue-red,” he added. “Get him to tell you about the ant with half a foot!”

  Blue-red was not then in Heaven, so of course we all demanded that Kettle himself tell us about the ant with half a foot, and after another long draft of beer, he did so.

  Blue-red-brown had once met an ant. The encounter had been quite amicable, for although the ant had been part of an army on the move, Blue-red had been unable to prove anything against that particular ant or his companions. This ant, Blue-red said, had been missing half of his right foot. When younger, he had gone to sleep before a roaring fire. A burning log had rolled and charred his toes before he awoke.

  “Are you saying that ants don’t feel pain?” I demanded, astonished and suddenly enraged. I could remember Hrarrh having his blisters licked. That had been a true ordeal for him, and the other ants have been impressed by his stoicism.

  “They may feel some,” Kettle said sympathetically, “but not as much as we…others—not like we others do. I’ve seen an ant stick a knife through his hand on a bet! It may be a founder effect. It may be an adaptation—a banged elbow in a mine is painful, but not an indication of great danger. I don’t know, cherub, but I am sure that ants do not feel pain as much as you do.”

  As I had…

  “Tell me, holiness,” inquired the Fox, who was a trader-slasher cross, a studious and smart little fellow, a born saint but never angel timber. “Can founder effects explain some of the sexual differentiation characteristics?”

  Kettle’s teacher eyes flickered over the blank expression on the faces of Beef and Ham. “You mean like herdmen being so much larger than herdwomen? Or like trader males being smarter than their females?”

  That raised a small chuckle. Before the Fox could work out a believable retaliation, I unthinkingly said, “I’m sure that’s not true, Kettle. I think trader women are a lot smarter than they like to make out. I knew one who certainly was.”

  Across the table from me, Beef smirked. “Hot stuff, was she, Old Man?”

  My tankard and its contents hit him in the face just as the room made one of its frequent lurches. That lurch distracted the others, and even a cripple can be effective at close quarters. I had overtu
rned the table and Beef also before they could block me, and then Beef and I were both on the floor, with me on top and my thumbs on his carotid arteries. Fortunately even that grip takes a moment to kill a man, and I had not thought to try anything more sudden, like crushing his larynx. Ginger and Dusty methodically broke my hold and lifted me off my victim. They pushed me back in my chair and held me there until my fit passed and I stopped screaming. The furniture was righted, the beer replaced, and the rest of Cloud Nine’s clientele persuaded to overlook the incident.

  Beef was a big kid, but he knew that he had just missed something nasty, and he did not know how to fight a cripple twice his age and half his size. He allowed himself to be restrained. He even apologized, still not understanding his offense. The others were looking to Kettle, wondering why I was not being immediately hurled from Heaven for such a display of violence. Of course, my status in Heaven was not orthodox, and Kettle certainly was aware of that. Even more certainly, he was not going to discuss it in Cloud Nine.

  With difficulty, I mumbled an apology, still quivering with the urge to maim Beef.

  Kettle growled. “That’s not enough, Roo! You owe him an explanation. There were special circumstances. Tell them.”

  I muttered mutinously, but eventually I explained how I had journeyed with the traders and found love.

  ─♦─

  Of course the traders were incensed. Mol Jar, the one who had bought me, insisted that the goods had been damaged after purchase. By then he had discovered my lacerations as well as my smashed knees, but my lacerations had been done beforehand, so he had no hope of recourse for those. Hobbling meant shackling, he insisted.

  Hobbling meant breaking a leg, Minemaster Krarurh replied, and any time he had sold a wetlander to a trader, that was how he had delivered it. It was mere inexperience that had led Hrarrh to smash both my knees instead—a trifling excess of juvenile zeal. The esteemed trader had been offered free hobbling, not shackling, and he had accepted that offer. Had he wanted chains applied, then he should have said so and supplied them, because Krarurh did not include chains when he sold slaves.

  The traders demanded their bale of silk back, offering to return the cat food. They threatened to blacklist the mine.

  The ants leaned toward ripping the traders to shreds and feeding them to their panthers, while retaining the horses, wagons, and goods. Violence began to seem likely.

  Meanwhile I was dangling head-down and feet-down across the back of a horse nearby. Even when the darkness lifted briefly from my mind, the thunder of my pain drowned out the talk. I learned about it later, at third or fourth hand.

  Hrarrh eventually became fearful that I would not be accepted as valid merchandise, and he persuaded his father-in-law to settle the matter by throwing in another ten sacks of ore to compensate for the second knee. He also promised to work his gang overtime to replace it. Grumpily the traders departed with their loads, which included one crippled wetlander, who was unlikely ever to come out of his coma.

  The relative value of ten sacks of phosphate ore and one bale of silk is debatable. It is possible to argue that the traders were being paid to haul me away like trash. And there, I think, is the most despicable of all Hrarrh’s villainies—that he was willing to torment his wretched slaves even harder, solely to provide himself with the personal satisfaction of sending me off to the worst fate he could imagine.

  ─♦─

  I wish I could have heard the settlements made over me. Traders’ business affairs are much akin to a school of minnows in a whirlpool, and I never came to understand more than one flicker of them. The men have incredible memories for the details of their dealings, all of which are done verbally. Mol Jar owned one bale of silk and in return could offer ten sacks of phosphate ore and one dying man. The phosphate had value; I did not. He obviously had no use for me himself, because he was heading in the wrong direction, and Kal Gos, who had owned the silk, did not want me either.

  The argument between the traders and the ants would have been trivial compared to the bizarre and acrimonious hagglings that regularly took place between the traders themselves, both before they traded with outsiders and even more so afterward. The varied goods from a dozen wagons might be offered, but always one man would be deputized to do the dealing, with another sent along as witness. The respective values of everything sold and everything purchased must then be agreed upon and the profits fairly distributed. The system is contentious, inefficient, and utterly beyond an outsider’s comprehension. The traders love it.

  As far as I ever could understand, I was exchanged by Mol Jar for one more sack of phosphate, then traded to somebody else for a quantity of assorted fabrics. After a few more exchanges I ended up being owned nineteen twenty-sevenths by Jat Lon, five twenty-sevenths by Lon Kiv, and three twenty-sevenths by Misi Nada. Her share was a conditional payment for services, if she could keep me alive. Had I died, then she would have owned no part of me, but that would not have stopped Jat Lon and Lon Kiv from disputing their respective residual interests in a worthless corpse.

  ─♦─

  And so I began my life with the traders. Astonishingly Misi Nada did keep me alive. At first I was barely aware of her. Between pain, shock, and loss of blood, I was barely aware of anything. Later my wounds became fevered, and I screamed and babbled insanely while she cradled me in her great arms. She fed and bathed me, and treated me with herbals and potions collected from all over Vernier, sternly denying me the release I craved.

  Slowly the fogs began to clear, and I would catch glimpses of bloated features that seemed like one more figment of delirium—a face baggy and shapeless, with an obvious mustache, with brown skin as coarse as a wood rasp, rimmed by ragged lank brown hair. Always she wore a drab sacklike garment, long-sleeved and all-enveloping. I had heard in the mine that trader women were big, but I had not realized how huge they could be. I had seen few herdmasters, even, who would have outweighed Misi Nada.

  Slowly I came to understand that I was not to be allowed to die. I saw her then as an enemy, imprisoning me in a life that held only worse terrors in store. Hrarrh himself had once warned me to stay away from traders.

  “Why?” I whispered, staring up at that globular face hanging high above me, a brown moon against a sky of well-crafted wooden planks. “Why?”

  For a long time I was too incoherent to frame my question properly, and Misi was apparently too stupid to understand. Trader women were not only huge but also moronic, or so I had been told. Eventually she seemed to grasp what I was trying to ask: Why did traders, who sold slaves to the ants, buy wetlanders from them?

  Then Misi paused in her endless chewing of paka leaves. Her amusement reminded me of the leather sack in which Pebble had brought home live eels. Squirming and pulsing, Misi’s face rearranged itself in surges of apparently unrelated motions until it wore a parody of a smile.

  “Lucky!” she boomed. “Wetlanders bring good luck.”

  “No! No!” I wanted to weep. “You cant expect me to believe that!”

  She nodded, all her chins flexing. A finger like a sausage stroked along my beard, which she had already trimmed short in trader fashion. “Hair gold, like Our Lady Sun. Eyes like sky. Dawn child!”

  Then she chuckled, which in Misi was a huge subterranean woofing sound. She bent over. Breasts like meal sacks crushed briefly down on me as she placed a big wet kiss on my forehead. I caught a whiff of the turpentine odor of paka. “Dawn child!” she repeated.

  I had heard of Dawn, of course, a land of surging glaciers and sudden catastrophic floods. It is a place where few travelers venture, in whose misty twilight landscape of snow and storms, blond, blue-eyed men like me skim their canoes through icy waters. Of all the peoples of Vernier, only the seafolk and the wetlanders live beyond the reach of trader wagons.

  “Sun child!” Misi said, straightening up. “Blessed!”

  Traders worshipped the sun, and with that explanation I had to be content. There was no way to argue with Mis
i Nada. Later, when I felt stronger, I tried the same question on Jat Lon.

  Trader wagons are long and narrow, balanced high on many pairs of wheels. Most of their length is taken up with the storage area, a blank box entered from the side doors. At the front is an open cab for the owners and their families. Among the traders, women usually own the equipment, and men, the livestock. The men do the trading mostly, although the goods may belong to either.

  Misi’s cab was of standard design, being square with three sides taken up by big windows. Those could be closed off with shutters when the weather was bad, and their low sills allowed them to also serve as doors. This box was Misi’s home and my sickroom. It was furnished with a collection of cubical chests, and these she shifted around to suit her needs of the moment. Put together they made a bed large enough even for her; spread around they formed benches. With my legs immobilized in splints, I sat or lay on these and watched the world go by.

  The wagon was driven by either Misi or Pula Misi, who was obviously her daughter. As my wits began to return, I came to realize that Pula was barely more than a child, although she was already taller than I was. Had she wanted, Pula could have been striking, even beautiful, for she had an unconscious grace and the inner glow of youth; but Pula invariably wore shapeless muumuus of sickly green, her hair was a greasy tangle, and her face stayed as blank as a cloud.

  Trader wagons move very slowly, but hippos, like woollies, never sleep, and their inexorable crawl will eat up any distance eventually. Usually wagons are linked in pairs, a combination that the traders call a “train.” Rich owners may hook up three or even four wagons in that fashion, but any combination will allow the women to spell each other off at driving. Pula also owned a wagon, and hers was towed by Misi’s, its living quarters facing the rear.

  Other trains came and went, although always we had three or four in our company. Trader men came calling quite often, the women very seldom. The locals I met not at all, and by far my most frequent companions were Misi and her family. The oldest was gray-haired Lon Kiv, but I soon decided that the true leader of the group was his son, Jat Lon.