Passages

by Olan Thorensen

  “Not right away,” said Ulwyn, backtracking. “Only when he’s stronger.”

  “He can’t speak Frangelese yet,” said Gwanel, “so how is he going to work for Haral?”

  “I’ll work with him hard the next sixday and see if he can learn enough to be given simple directions.”

  Gwanel wasn’t convinced. “I’ll work with him, too, and I’ll go with you when you talk to Haral. I don’t want you to try and get rid of Mark. I’ll also tell Haral to look after him.”

  Four sixdays passed before Gwanel was satisfied Mark was strong enough and knew simple commands required for manual labor. It took both husband and wife to talk and pantomime that Mark would be taken to another place in the city, perform manual labor, and be paid coin at the end of each day.

  Haral Godwyner met his sister and brother-in-law at a site a twenty-minute walk from the Hoyer house. Brother and sister had the same eyes and forehead. Mark couldn’t tell much else because of Haral’s beard. Haral led the three of them to a staked outline of where a building was planned. It took ten minutes for Mark to understand that he was to dig a two-foot-wide, three-foot-deep trench running approximately forty yards.

  Ulwyn slapped Mark on the back and mimed that he’d return when the sun was at its zenith. Gwanel patted him on the hand and followed her husband back home.

  Haral said something, with Mark catching a quarter of the words, then motioned for his new laborer to begin and walked off. The sun was already well above the eastern horizon. It was a cloudless day, and Mark began sweating almost immediately. The ground had not been worked before and was hard-pack. The shovel he’d been given made minimal progress, so he switched to the second tool Haral had given him—a double-pointed pick. It took all of Mark’s strength to break through the outer layer of compacted dirt and clay. After that, the work went faster, and Mark kept an eye on other workers performing different tasks.

  Within what Mark estimated was twenty minutes, he felt like he couldn’t continue. His hands were blistering, he didn’t have a head covering, and the sun beating on him had raised a headache. His arms had started to tremble, and his breath became raspier by the minute.

  He didn’t know what the customs were for work, rest periods, and water. He kept after the trench, though his speed had markedly declined. About an hour later, his questions were answered. A horn sounded, and the workers quit working, moved into the shade, and sat. A ten- to twelve-year-boy appeared from nowhere and carried around a jug of water in a hand-wagon.

  Water had never tasted so good, with the possible exception of the drink Ulwyn had given Mark on the road to Tregallon. It seemed as if no more than one or two minutes had passed before the horn sounded again. The workers picked up whatever tools they had been using, and work recommenced.

  To his consternation, Mark found that his muscles had tightened during the short break, and he was unable to control the pick without endangering himself.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. Haral took the pick, said something, and pointed to the shade of a nearby building.

  I can’t let it get to me, he thought. I wasn’t in good physical shape before the accident, and I know I was weak when I woke on the beach. I just need to be patient. I don’t think it’s the higher gravity. Hal said the modifications should take care of that, and I have to believe him. After all, what choice do I have?

  He watched the other workers digging the section he had been working on and others finishing a wooden frame on another section. Two more breaks were indicated by the same horn before Ulwyn reappeared, talked briefly with Haral, and motioned for Mark to get up. They walked back to the Hovey house. Ulwyn showed him a single copper coin, then put it in his own pocket after saying something.

  Mark didn’t know the significance of the coin until the following day. Once again, Ulwyn led him to the construction site, and Mark started digging. This time he lasted almost until mid-day before giving out. He probably should have quit an hour earlier, but he was determined to show he could produce. As Ulwyn escorted him home, the trader showed Mark four copper coins this time, giving two to Mark and pocketing the other two.

  He’s splitting the earnings with me. I can hardly complain because I’d be in deep shit if it weren’t for Ulwyn, so his taking half the earnings is fair. But is all their money copper coins? What about silver and gold? Considering the type of work and the short hours, I doubt two copper coins buy much.

  When they got to the Hovey house, Mark went straight to his room and put the two copper coins under a loose floor plank. He would save what he earned there until he knew its value and found something worth purchasing.

  Each day he felt stronger and worked a little longer. A day came when Ulwyn didn’t take him to work but to a stone structure that Mark knew was a house of worship, even before seeing people streaming in that direction. Though of plain materials, the stonework was precisely laid together, and three towers rose from the front façade. Inside, there were long benches filled with people, and many stood in the rear. He estimated four hundred attendees. An elderly man walked to a dais and launched into what Mark assumed was a sermon, interrupted several times by synchronous responses from the congregation to something the man had said.

  Because he didn’t understand the words, Mark watched people as much as he could without appearing obvious or rude. There were more women than men, something he remembered from when his family attended church.

  Only a few of the attendees looked bored or asleep, mostly men.

  Probably here at a wife’s insistence, thought Mark.

  The day without work was part of his learning the calendar system in Tregallon: six-day weeks with five workdays and one day of worship and rest. The Hoveys conveyed that their religion was called Sholsterism. Mark observed that there were other worship sites in the town, though he didn’t know whether they were for different religions and sects. In addition, not all citizens actively attended any worship sites because Mark saw people performing other activities on Godsday, which he learned was the name of the day.

  Gwanel filled in the other details. Evidently, Ulwyn had found him during the third sixday (as they descriptively called the “week”) of the month of Rucklor, the last of nine months in a year. Each month had six sixdays. If Mark understood correctly, there was a tenth period of five days separate from the months. Those five days were special, and Mark suspected they were a year’s end and/or beginning festival time. The town was Tregallon, the country Frangel, and the world was Anyar, though Ulwyn said other people gave it different names.

  CHAPTER 4

  ADJUSTING

  Days moved into sixdays, sixdays into another month, then a third full month since Mark’s arrival. The weather cooled, with an occasional snow slurry. Once, work stopped for two days until a four-inch snowfall melted. His physical condition improved daily. The inability to work a full day passed, and he felt in better health than he could remember; he could labor an entire day with no more than the usual tiredness from full exertion.

  Hal had said that whatever they gave him would provide more energy efficiency. Mark assumed it simply meant it would compensate for the stronger gravity. Now, though he didn’t have a mirror, he could feel the energy as he worked, and what views he had of his own body were revelatory. He was lean—more so than he could ever remember. He didn’t need a mirror to see taut muscles under the skin of his abdomen, legs, and arms.

  The last time he had gotten on a scale, the digital display had rudely displayed 283—with far too many pounds concentrated front to back, waist to ass. In addition, in his younger years he carried more of his weight in muscle and less in his midsection. The extra weight he’d carried seemed appropriate for his athletics in high school, where he’d participated in almost every sport offered. He gained special attention for football and wrestling. Never especially quick on his feet, he was strong and tenacious. In addition, his desire to leave ranch life had induced him to apply himself to academics, and his father’s casual connection
to a Colorado senator had yielded an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. There, he became a third-string defensive lineman and the second-best heavyweight wrestler.

  His time in the navy kept his excess weight under control, but he lost that restraint with his move to industry and with age. Compounding the problem, muscle loss hid his increased fat until it became too significant for him to fool himself.

  When he arrived on Anyar, he was missing the excess fat he’d accumulated during previous years. As he recovered, the full days of manual labor had contributed to how he felt, but it was more than that. Besides missing extra pounds around his midriff, he knew he was stronger than he had ever been, even when using weight rooms while training for sports. If it was something Hal or the AI’s creators had done to him, it was one more salve to assuage his losing Earth forever.

  Life with the Hoveys moved into a comfortable stage. Too comfortable, he began to think. Gwanel cooked generous portions of healthy food, though he considered it plain. She also washed his clothes and cleaned the room they’d transformed into a bedroom, complete with a more comfortable mattress.

  Yet he needed to grab this new life with both hands. He did everything he could to communicate. Though he wasn’t fluent during complex exchanges, his total immersion and his own commitment led to a surprising rate of improvement. His vocabulary expanded daily; he seldom forgot a word once he focused on remembering—usually by repeating it several times in English and Frangelese. The grammar wasn’t exactly like English but not that different. He appreciated the few irregularities in the language. He’d never learned to read Basque, but from the few phrases he remembered and from testimonials by his grandparents of that language’s daunting complexity, he was glad he hadn’t had to learn more.

  His steady improvement in Frangelese also led inevitably to the question for which he’d rehearsed a simple, unverifiable answer.

  “So, Mark, exactly how did you end up on the beach in Derwun Bay, and where do you come from?” asked Ulwyn on a night when they sat alone in a pub with steins of ale.

  “I come from a place called Amerika. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you where it is. I guess my people don’t interact much with the rest of the world. All I know is that it must be a long way from here, judging by how long the voyage lasted. All I remember is several men grabbing me. They must have hit me over the head because the next thing I knew, I found myself in a small compartment on a moving ship. I never learned who the people were that abducted me or why they did it. They never spoke to me. My treatment wasn’t bad. They fed me, allowed me time each day on the deck to get air and move around. How I got onto the beach near here is another mystery. Maybe they drugged me or hit me again because after many months of travel, I woke up on the beach. I suppose I’ll never get an answer to who they are or why they grabbed me. Neither will I know why they put me ashore in a strange place.”

  Mark figured claiming ignorance as much as possible precluded his accidentally introducing inconsistencies in his story.

  Ulwyn rhythmically tapped the knuckles of his right hand on the table. “I don’t know. It all sounds strange to me why someone would do this. There’s another thing I wonder about. You were clean-shaven. That’s not the custom in Frangel and nearby realms. Is that how it is with your people, and what about the men who took you?”

  It was a question Mark hadn’t anticipated. “Well . . . uh . . . some of them had beards and some didn’t, so there didn’t seem to be a common custom. Even those with beards had different styles, including only a mustache, only chin whiskers, and . . . oh, I guess all possible variations. That’s similar to my people, but whoever took me spoke a different language. Anyway . . . they allowed me to use implements to shave a couple of times a sixday. I must have shaved just before they cast me ashore.”

  Mark was to repeat the basic story many times, always concentrating on keeping it simple, with an emphasis on his ignorance of more details.

  At work, Haral moved Mark from digging trenches alone to working within a team of five men clearing land, digging basements, and doing foundation work. The tasks weren’t complicated, and Mark quickly learned all the requirements necessary for the job. The weather passed through the colder season, and wildflowers began blooming. Two months later, Mark became supervisor of the team when the previous leader moved away from Tregallon. By then, his Frangelese let him converse in everyday speech and give directions to the other workers.

  Besides work, another social activity began when Ulwyn took Mark to a pub several times. Mark started frequenting the same establishment once or twice a sixday for no more than two beers. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but sitting alone, sipping, and half-closing his eyes let him momentarily pretend he was still on Earth and in situations he missed, though never those related to his marriage or job.

  The pub also provided a venue for him to handle an incipient problem at work. He understood enough Frangelese to sense resentment that a newcomer had been placed in charge of four workers, two of whom were older than Mark. At the end of the third day of his new job, he offered to take them to “his” pub—named, as far as he could tell, after an animal that looked like a frenzied rodent. Two of the men didn’t seem inclined to accept the offer, but, after an animated discussion Mark couldn’t follow, all four joined Mark at the Crazy Squirrel, as he had come to think of the establishment.

  Mark ignored his two-beer limit, and by the fourth round he stated his conclusion about his attempt to assuage hard feelings.

  “Well, I think this counts as a roaring success.”

  Blank looks resulted from his English utterance.

  He burped. “Okay, so none of you sterling examples of humanity can understand English, but I want you to know I appreciate the intellectual discourse we’ve been having.”

  He thought he caught the drift of most of the men’s conversation at their table, with the help of associated hand gestures. Work. Women. Opinions of Haral, their boss. Women. Opinions of Mark—which he thought got more congenial with each successive round of beer. Women—those the men were married to, those they compared notes on, and those they wanted to do things to, identified by graphic gestures.

  During one of the latter pantomimes, Mark formally met Ronalyn. The barmaid passed their table and swatted hard at the head of a Haral worker who was using both hands to simulate an act Mark had heard of but never experienced.

  She laughed, as did the chastised worker. Mark waited until the other three workers joined in before he laughed, too. The next time she passed, he gave her a closer look. Blowsy was the best word he came up with. Age indeterminate, but he guessed thirty. On the heavier side but solid. Hair going in all directions, and occasionally he got glimpses of armpit and leg hair—which had been a jolt the first time Mark noticed those facts about Frangelese women. However, it made sense. He didn’t know when the custom of women shaving body hair had become common in the United States, but he suspected it was in the last century or more recently.

  He’d had enough beer, and Ronalyn started looking better the more he drank. He wasn’t sure whether she had been eyeing him more as the evening wore on, although one of his drinking companions observed the eyeing interplay and stopped the woman as she passed. He introduced her to Mark. She laughed at something and sat on Mark’s lap. The proximity of an ample bosom and a bare arm around his shoulder elicited a reflex that made her laugh and that only subsided when she left for other customers.

  It wasn’t that Mark had not noticed women since his arrival. At first, recovery occupied him. Later, his lack of social connections and ignorance of customs and mores restricted his interest to observations. Within a month of arriving on the beach, he had noticed more women than men. At first, it had been a suspicion, but he spent one Godsday afternoon walking around Tregallon for exercise and had counted genders. He ended with 396 men and 421 women. However, it wasn’t determinative because he didn’t account for differences in gender activities outside the home. With his growing but still limited
Frangelese, he questioned Ulwyn and found out it was common knowledge that more girl babies were born than boys by a slim margin. The elderly trader explained it was generally thought the difference was due to females being frailer than males—a distinction evidently not backed up with data or anecdotes. Mark was skeptical of the rationale.

  If his count was indicative, it meant about a 5 percent imbalance favoring women. He thought he remembered that on Earth, the ratio was the reverse. He remembered reading that males died sooner than females by disease, accidents, and wars, and the ratio might be nature’s way of balancing the sexes. What did it mean for that theory if the ratio on Anyar was different? Mark hadn’t seen evidence of major diseases, nor did he think accidents were more common, or that women, instead of men, would go to war. Was the disparity in ratios between planets simply a matter of random chance?

  The evenings at the Crazy Squirrel had two outcomes. Mark became more accepted by the four men he supervised and by most of Haral’s other workers. Then, three sixdays later, he launched into his first experience in Frangelese sexual mores.

  “Ulwyn, I need to ask you something. It’s . . . what’s the Frangelese word? Something you might rather not talk about? Ah . . . embarrassing. Yes, something embarrassing.”

  The trader raised a left eyebrow, as they sat at a table in the Hovey house. Gwanel was at a neighbor’s helping with an ill child.

  “Well, best just get it out. Won’t get better the longer you wait to say whatever it is.”

  “At work, I understand more of the workers’ talk. As expected with men, much is about women. I don’t understand all of your people’s beliefs and customs, but I think I hear a different . . . . uh, concern, worry, thinking . . . I don’t know the exact word . . . on how they think of women. I think I understand a difference between married and unmarried women. They say what for my people would be disrespectful things about unmarried women but not married ones. Am I hearing correctly?”