A Woman of the Iron People

by Eleanor Arnason

  “Speak our language,” Nia said. “I am interested in this argument.”

  “Okay. I’m telling Derek not to go into the valley.”

  “You won’t change his mind,” the oracle said.

  Derek laughed. “He’s right. Give in, Lixia. There is no point in talking. I’m going to go.”

  I made the gesture that meant “so be it.” “Take your boots.”

  “Why? I move more quickly with bare feet.”

  “I told you. I think the ground is hot.” I bent to the side, raising one arm. With the other arm I reached down toward my ankle, then closed my eyes, concentrating on my breathing. In. Out. So. Hum. O jewel of the lotus.

  I straightened up and opened my eyes. Derek was on his way: a small dark figure scrambling through the pseudo-grass, a good distance off already. Beyond him and below him was the valley.

  Nia unsaddled the bowhorns. We built a fire under the overhang. Dinner was the last of the pseudo-dinosaur.

  “Why did he go?” Nia asked.

  “I have no idea. He does these things. Not often.” I paused. I wanted to say, most of the time he plays by the rules. But I didn’t know the native word for “play.” I said, “Most of the time, he does what is expected.”

  Nia finished a piece of meat. She tossed the bone into the fire. “All men are crazy in one way or another.”

  The oracle made the gesture of agreement.

  I stared out at the evening sky. The Great Moon was up. It was more than half-full now, and it looked to be—what?—three quarters the size of Luna when Luna was seen from the Skyline Drive in Duluth on a midsummer night.

  Why didn’t I know the word for “play”? I looked at Nia. “What is the word for what children do when they throw a ball?”

  “It is called ‘fooling around.’ ”

  Well, yes. That made sense. That was one meaning of “play.” But it had other meanings, too. I thought of Hamlet and the triple play, though I wasn’t entirely sure what the triple play was. And swordplay. Hamlet and Laertes, for example. And musicians playing their instruments. What I needed was the O.E.D. Eddie had access to the language computers. I reached for the radio, turning it on.

  I got a computer again. The same program as before. I recognized the accent and the tone of distant courtesy. There was more static than usual. The cool voice came through a constant faint crackling, like fire.

  I asked for a definition of “play.”

  “Just a moment,” the computer said.

  I heard the usual noises that computers made when working: a beep, followed by a series of chirps, and then by a bell-like tone. A new voice—another program—told me what “play” meant in English.

  This voice was male and had a Chinese accent.

  When it finished I thanked it and turned the radio off.

  “What is that thing?” asked the oracle.

  Nia leaned forward. “Li-sa told me about it. It is a way to talk to people who are beyond the horizon.”

  “Oh. I thought it might be a musical instrument. It makes a lot of different kinds of noise, and some of them are pleasant.”

  “What do you do with a musical instrument?” I asked.

  The oracle frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “What is the word for using it. For making it make a noise.”

  “Oh. Nakhtu.”

  “That is in his language,” said Nia. “In the language of gifts, it is nahu.”

  “Is that like fooling around?” I asked.

  “No. Of course not. Children fool around. Grown-up people are sensible. Or—if they are not sensible—they are crazy, which is different from being a fool.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the fire, then at the moon. The aliens had musical instruments. They had ceremonies. They danced. I knew they were capable of competition. Think of Hakht and Nahusai. But did they play as we did? Ritual aggression and competition were absolutely central to the Western cultures. The East Asians had opera and kabuki and all the martial arts. Everyone had soccer. Did these people need to play as much as we did? There was so much tension in human society, so much frustrated aggression. Even now, when the old society—the society of greed and deprivation—was gone.

  Wait a minute. Not every human society was full of tension. I remembered the California aborigines. They were mellow, consciously and deliberately. Mellowness was central to their religion. It was a sign of enlightenment. The ideal aborigine was mellow and in touch. He or she kept a low profile, close to Mother Earth.

  I thought about Derek. He could be mellow, but it was an act. Under the surface he was like a bull walrus. He knew what he wanted, and he would fight to get it. Had he known what he was like as a kid? Was that why he’d left his people? He would have been a failure, frustrated and angry, among people who could sit for hours watching a condor in the sky and be happy.

  “That’s where it’s at,” one of them told me, a witch wearing a loincloth and a lot of tattoos. “Mother Earth and Father Sky, the things that live—the plants and animals. All the old mysteries that the prophets spoke about. Black Elk and the Buddha. Jesus and Mother Charity. They all tell us the same thing. No matter how much you struggle and strive, you’ll never get out of this world alive. So why struggle? And why strive? Do what you have to. Take what you need. Be thankful and be mellow.”

  Okay, I told that old memory. I closed my eyes and saw her: lined face and long flat breasts. There was—there had been—a crescent moon on her forehead. Between her breasts was a pendant, a double axe carved out of shell. A wise old lady. Had Derek known her? Not likely. Her tribe was different. They were mountain people, the Bernadinos.

  I ate another piece of meat, then went to sleep, waking in the middle of the night. The moon was gone. The sky was full of stars. I sat up. The fire was a heap of coals that still glowed a little. I looked around. Nia was next to me, snoring. Farther off I saw another body. That must be the oracle.

  On the far side of the fire was a third person standing upright, tall and pale. “Derek?”

  “I just got back.” His voice was low. “You were right. The ground is hot. I could feel it through the boots.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “No. Except, a funny thing. When I was coming back, the moon was setting. Just as it went out of sight, I saw a flare. I think the moon is erupting.”

  I thought for a moment. “That’s possible, isn’t it? The planetologists said there was evidence that it had been active recently.”

  “The eruption has to be huge,” Derek said. “Really huge, if I can see it.”

  “You’re right.” I thought for a moment. Could that be why I hadn’t reached Eddie? No one in their right mind would want to miss seeing a major eruption. “More trouble for the planetologists.”

  “Uh-huh.” He laughed. “The poor fools. It serves ’em right. They worked out all their theories on the basis of one system.”

  “They used what they had, Derek.”

  He said, “I want to go to sleep. I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” I lay back down. The wind had shifted. It blew out of the valley, bringing the smell of sulfur. I thought about the moon, which had an atmosphere. There was a lot of sulfur in it, as I remembered. It must really stink up there now.

  The planetologists had not been happy when they saw the first long-distance holograms. The moon was too big, they told us. All the best theories said that Earth was an anomaly. Small planets didn’t have moons. Or if they did, the moons were tiny: pieces of captured space junk.

  The ship got closer in. The planetologists discovered the surface of the moon was comparatively smooth.

  The system was full of junk. The planet had twelve other moons, all of them clearly captured planetoids. The big moon should have been covered with impact craters. Instead there were wide plains of volcanic origin and some fairly impressive mountains, also of volcanic origin.

  The moon was active, and the best theories said that small planets did not have active moon
s.

  Which meant the planetologists had to start working on new theories. I’d heard a couple. One involved tidal pull. The other assumed a really odd composition for the body in question. They were too far outside my area of expertise for me to have an opinion. I simply enjoyed the strangeness of the moon.

  I woke at dawn, got up, and went to find a place to pee. Then I did my exercises, ending with the solar salute. I timed it perfectly. When I finished the sun was fully up, round and crimson, right above the eastern wall of the valley.

  Nia woke, and the oracle. Derek was the last person up. He stretched and groaned, then climbed to his feet. We ate. Nia went to saddle the bowhorns. The oracle followed after her.

  Derek yawned. “Coffee. That’s what I need.”

  “What did you find?”

  “The lake is mud. Hot mud. Boiling. It’s an interesting sight. Bubbles appear on the surface. They get bigger and bigger, then—pssht. They’re gone. Exploded.” He yawned again. “The smell of sulfur is really offensive. And there are poles along the edge.”

  “What?”

  “Wooden poles. Maybe ten centimeters thick. About three meters high. They’re decorated with feathers and pieces of cloth. Some of them have horns on top made of copper. Really badly corroded. The gases from the lake must do that.

  “I assume the lake has some kind of religious meaning. Wouldn’t you think? I found this on the edge in the mud.” He rolled up one sleeve. There was a bracelet on his arm. He pulled it off and handed it to me. It was gold, wide and heavy. I turned it and saw a design, repeated four times: a bowhorn with another animal attacking it, digging in with its claws and biting. What was it? The body was sleek like the body of a panther. The head was long and narrow with huge ears, and the tail ended in a tuft. “Nia?”

  She came over.

  “What is this?”

  She took the bracelet. “Hu! This is good! One of my people made it. No one else can do work of this quality.”

  “What is the animal? The one on top?”

  “A killer of the plain.” She tilted the bracelet so the design was more visible. “A killer of the mountains is smaller and has scales as well as fur. I wonder how this got here? Where did you find it?”

  “Derek found it in the valley, by the lake.”

  “Then it is an offering. A gift to the demons of fire. You should not have taken it.” She handed the bracelet to Derek.

  “Oh, no?” He put the bracelet on.

  “I see you are going to keep the thing.” Nia made the gesture that meant “so be it.” “I think you are making a mistake.” She turned and walked away.

  Derek grinned, then rolled his sleeve down and fastened it.

  “There are times when I think you are crazy,” I said.

  “No. Only badly alienated. Anyway, I don’t believe in demons of fire.” He glanced at the valley. “It’s a good thing I don’t. My own protection is too far away. The Gray Whale can’t help me here.”

  The trail turned south, leaving the rim of the valley. Once again we traveled among hills. The day was overcast, and the sun was a bright white disk. In the diffuse light there were no shadows. I was pretty certain that we were traveling west, but I would not have bet on it. I thought—as well—that we were climbing, but I would not have bet on that, either. The trail wound up and down.

  Gradually the slopes of the hills grew gentler. The valleys grew wider and more shallow. The bushes and trees—those few there had been—were gone.

  “Nuh,” said Nia, sounding satisfied. “We are coming to the plain.”

  We entered a new valley. A stream ran through the middle of it, and a flock of animals fed along the bank. They were bipeds, a new species, larger and heavier than any I had seen before. Only two were standing on their hind legs. Lookouts maybe. The rest had their front legs on the ground and their heads down, feeding.

  Derek said, “They must be more efficient than our dinosaurs. They have competition from mammalian browsers. Or do I mean mammaloid? I don’t understand how they manage to survive.”

  “There are—or were—a lot of odd birds on Earth. Ostriches. Emus. Cassowaries. How about the moa and the great auk? They survived into the age of mammals. In fact, I think they evolved in the age of mammals.”

  He shook his head. “They evolved from ordinary birds to fill specific ecological niches—on islands, in at least two cases. The moa lived in New Zealand. The great auk nested in Iceland. These creatures are all over. They are obviously competing successfully. And I don’t think their ancestors were birds. They look reptilian, if that word has any meaning here.”

  “They have feathers, and I’m willing to bet they’re warm-blooded.”

  “So were the dinosaurs. Warm-blooded, I mean.”

  One of the upright animals let out a bellow. The others reared onto their hind legs and moved away up the valley along the stream. They had a funny gait, a lumbering run. As awkward as it seemed, they covered a lot of ground. By the time we reached the bottom of the valley, they were gone.

  Midway through the afternoon I looked around and realized the hills had ended. We were on a rolling plain, covered with pseudo-grass. It rippled in the wind, changing color as the leaves turned over: green, blue-green, tan, and gray.

  Something rose above the horizon in the north. I shaded my eyes and stared. The thing was almost the same color as the sky and so distant that it was barely visible. A cone, wide at the base. The top of the cone—the point—was missing. Instead there was a horizontal line. The rim of a crater.

  I turned and waited for Nia, who was riding some distance behind me. The oracle was behind her, also riding. “What is that?” I asked. I pointed.

  She glanced, then reined her animal.

  “I have not seen it before. But I have heard. That is Hani Akhar. The Great Mountain. The home of the Mistress of the Forge.”

  The oracle came up beside us. He looked north. “Yes. That is the one. I can feel it even at this distance. It is a very holy place. Also dangerous. She is not always friendly, that spirit.”

  “This is definitely the wrong trail,” Nia said. “We are way north of where I want to be.”

  “We will end up in the right place,” the oracle said. “The route we take doesn’t matter.”

  Nia scratched her nose. “There is no way to argue with a holy person. They are always certain they know more than we do. And if we say, ‘No,’ they say, ‘The spirits have spoken.’ ”

  I moved on ahead. I didn’t like to be on the ground near the bowhorns. They were too big, and Nia’s mount was sometimes restless and even nasty. I certainly did not want to follow the animals. It was a hassle to have to keep watching for dung.

  That evening we camped by a little marshy lake. Derek and Nia went hunting. They came back at nightfall, empty-handed. We ate stale bread and drank water from the lake. It had a funny flavor.

  “Swamp water,” said Derek. “I’ve drunk worse in California.”

  “In the desert?” I asked.

  “Mostly. But also in Berkeley. A couple of the people in my department had really lousy taste in wine. And they were important people. I had to go to their parties.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Nia.

  “A drink like bara,” I said.

  “Is it nasty-tasting?”

  “Sometimes,” Derek said.

  He wandered off, taking his radio. I stayed with the two natives by the fire.

  The big moon was up and more than half-full. I looked at it, trying to see evidence of a volcanic eruption, but the clouds veiled it and blurred its edges.

  I looked at the natives. “Does anything unusual ever happen to the big moon?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Nia.

  I thought for a moment, trying to figure out how to describe something I had not seen. “Do bright spots ever appear on it? Do things ever appear on the rim, like a wisp of steam rising or like a tongue of flame licking out?”

  Nia made the gesture of affirmat
ion. “But that isn’t unusual.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing that I know of.” She frowned, thinking. “There are people in the west who have found a way to look at the sun without harming their eyes. According to them, the sun is not flawless and untarnished the way we think it is. They say it is spotted. The spots are black. They crawl around like bugs. When the spots appear—a lot of them—it means the weather is going to get bad.”

  “I’ve never heard that story,” said the oracle. “But I know what it means when a spot appears on the moon.”

  I made the gesture of inquiry.

  “It means the Mother of Mothers has not been watching her pot.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The old women say the big moon is a cooking pot. It belongs to the Mother of Mothers. Sometimes she forgets to watch it, and it boils over. Then we see what you have described. The old women say it means the winter will be hungry.” He paused. “My mother says the old women are wrong. She has kept a moon string for many years. Every time something happens up there, she ties a knot. And she has other strings that she uses to keep track of the weather. Rain. Snow. A big wind. Drought. She has a string for every kind of weather. There is no connection between what happens on the moon and what happens on the plain. That is her opinion. I think she is right.”

  “Huh,” said Nia. “I have never heard the story about the moon. If it isn’t true, I won’t repeat it.”

  “The part about the cooking pot is most likely true,” the oracle said. “My mother said nothing about that. Not everything that happens in the world of the spirits has an effect on our world here.”

  Nia made the gesture of agreement.

  Derek came back. I glanced at him. “Did you get through to Eddie?”

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “There was static last night, and I’ve been talking to computers the past couple of days.”

  “Eddie didn’t mention anything about static.” He sat down, folding himself neatly. “Or about computers. But he has been spending time in one of the big holovision rooms. The moon is erupting. And the eruption is big. We are missing one heck of a sight.”