A Woman of the Iron People

by Eleanor Arnason

  “This is a man’s death,

  to die without presents.

  This is a man’s death,

  to die on the plain.”

  The sun finished rising. Derek came up from the lake. He was carrying a pair of saddlebags.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “On the island, the one you visited.” He set down the bags and opened one. “I’ll trade you. My shirt for this.” He pulled out a tunic. It was cream-white with blue and red embroidery.

  I undid the fasteners on Derek’s shirt. “Do you have something for Inahooli? I’d like to get Nia’s cloak back. It doesn’t seem right for it to be on her.”

  He glanced at the body. “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  He opened the other bag and pulled out a cloak. It was rust-brown with a yellow border. The oracle pulled Nia’s cloak off Inahooli. I had a brief glimpse of the body, naked except for the dark fur and the bandage made of denim. Then it was gone from sight.

  Derek said, “There was food on the island. Dried meat and fruit. I filled a bag.”

  “This has to be wrong, Derek. We’re stealing from the dead.”

  He went down on his knees and put his hands on his thighs. For a moment or two he remained in that position, his arms braced, his head a little bent, looking at the body under the rust-brown cloak. “Listen to me, Inahooli. We take these things because we need them. We are cold. We are hungry. Two of us have traveled farther than you can imagine, and we may never make it home. Believe me, we aren’t doing this out of malice or anger or any bad emotion, but out of need.” He paused. “I promise you we will use what we take with respect. We won’t be ungrateful, and we certainly won’t use this as an excuse to go on a journey of strength.

  “This happened the way it happened according to the turning of the wheel. Accept it, Inahooli. Don’t be angry with us.” He stood up and walked back to me.

  “Journey of strength?” I said.

  “Power trip,” he said in English. “I couldn’t think of a better way to translate it.” He went back to the language of gifts. “I’d like my shirt back.”

  I gave it to him. He handed me the tunic in return. I pulled it over my head. The fabric was soft and warm, like fine wool. It had a furry aroma, the smell of the aliens.

  “I’ll get the food,” Derek said. “After we eat, we can bury her.”

  We dug a grave in the sand by the lake, using the oars as shovels. Derek and the oracle got Inahooli and carried her to the grave. Hard work. They gasped and grunted and almost dropped her once. I carried the cloak, which was easy. They laid her in the grave. I laid the cloak over her.

  “Wait for me,” the oracle said. He walked into the grove.

  I rubbed my shoulder, then looked at Derek. He had washed his face, but he still looked pretty awful. His nose was red and swollen, and one eye was almost closed. There was a bruise on his forehead above the eye.

  “Why did you make that speech to Inahooli? To reassure the oracle?”

  He nodded. “And me. One must never take without explaining and never kill without making an apology.”

  “How civilized are you, anyway?”

  He grinned. “Not very.”

  The oracle came back. He carried food: a strip of dried meat and a handful of fresh berries. He laid these in the grave next to Inahooli. Then he unfastened his necklace of gold and turquoise and laid it next to the food. “Maybe she will be less angry if we give her presents. Though I doubt it. She is the kind that holds on to anger. What a bad way to be!”

  We piled sand over Inahooli, then found rocks and put them on top of the sand. When we were done the oracle said, “We ought to perform ceremonies of aversion and purification. But I am not a shamaness. I don’t know the ceremonies the holy women learn. I don’t even know the ceremonies that men learn to help them after they leave the village. All I know is what the waterfall has told me.” He sang:

  “O holy one!

  O being of power!

  Why don’t you help me?

  What should I do next?

  “O holy one!

  O being of power!

  Why don’t you help me?

  Tell me what to do!”

  He tilted his head and listened. The wind blew. Reeds rustled. Water lapped the shore. “All I can hear is, ‘Take a swim.’ Maybe we can wash off what has happened in the last few days.”

  Derek made the gesture of agreement. The two of them undressed and waded in. They washed in the deep water by the reeds, then swam. I was worried about the cut on my arm. I didn’t want to get it wet. And I didn’t think my shoulder was up to swimming. I took off my boots and rolled up my jeans and waded in the shallows, looking for shells and polished stones. The stones were uninteresting: black stuff like pumice, worn round or oval. The shells were lovely: tiny spirals, pale lavender or pink. I gathered a dozen, then waded to the beach. I laid the shells on the grave. A ridiculous gesture. What use was the gift? I did not believe in an afterlife, so it wasn’t an attempt to buy off Inahooli’s anger. And it wasn’t enough to buy off my feeling of responsibility.

  “Killer,” I said out loud.

  That mood was dangerous. I refused to give in to it. Why should I? Guilt was not part of my heritage. The senior members of my family had disapproved of it. One must recognize mistakes and acknowledge them and work to break the patterns of behavior that led to them. But guilt was unproductive.

  “Life is a process,” Theresa had said. She was one of my co-mothers, a medical technician who specialized in psychology. Half the year she worked on a deep-sea mining ship, the Pacific Aurora, out of Pearl Harbor. The other half of the year, she helped to raise the junior members of the family. “We make and remake ourselves, responding to changes both external and internal. But guilt is static, as are related ideas and emotions: sin, for example, regret, and maybe shame. Though I am not certain about the effect of shame. But the others anchor you in the past. They hold you, so you can’t move freely in the present.

  “Imagine guilt as an iron band fastened around something that is growing: the trunk of a tree, the neck of a child. Sooner or later, one of two things must happen. If the band does not break, the growing thing will be deformed.

  “Commit yourself to change, Lixia, to living in the present, to making and remaking who you are. Do the best you can. Understand what you do. And do not feel guilty.”

  Good advice, I told the memory of Theresa. I picked up my boots and walked to our camp.

  Inzara

  The oracle went off to gather roots and berries. Derek went for wood, and I sorted through Inahooli’s belongings. Two tunics—three, if I counted the one I had on, a leather cloak, a pair of sandals, and a knife. All the tunics had embroidery: geometric patterns. The cloak had a fastener, similar to a fibula, made of bronze and covered with silver. The silver was wearing thin.

  “Lixia!” Derek shouted.

  I threw down the cloak and ran through the grove. He was at the eastern edge.

  “There!” He pointed.

  Out on the plain was a rider. He or she was astride a bowhorn. I could make out the animal’s long curving horns. A second animal—another bowhorn—followed the first.

  “Nia?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  The rider came closer. I recognized the wide shoulders and the way she rode: easily, comfortably, slouching a little in the saddle. “We have to call Eddie at once,” I said.

  Derek glanced at me. “Shall I do the talking? I’m a better politician than you are, and we have some explaining to do. The unfortunate death of a native religious leader.”

  “Okay.”

  She reached us and dismounted. “Well, I found it.” She waved at the bowhorn. “And the gear. I’m hungry. Is there any food?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’ll take care of the animals,” Derek said. He held out his hand. Nia gave him the reins.

  “Where did you get that tunic? And what happened to his face?�
� She pointed to Derek.

  “Inahooli came back.”

  “Aiya!”

  “She came after us at night. We had to kill her. I had to kill her.”

  “You?” Nia stared at me, her eyes wide open.

  “Yes.”

  Nia was silent for a while. At last she said, “Any unexpected death is bad. A death like this—that happens in a fight—is worse than other kinds. The ghost of the dead person is certain to be angry. There is likely to be bad luck. When we get to a place where there is a shamaness, we will ask for ceremonies to placate Inahooli or drive her away. We’d better do something about the man in the canyon as well.

  Though it doesn’t matter in the same way when a man dies suddenly.” She frowned. “Did you bury Inahooli?”

  “Yes.”

  “With gifts?”

  “Yes. The oracle gave his necklace.”

  “Good. Maybe there will be no bad luck.” Nia did not sound confident. “The woman was crazy and dangerous. She brought this on herself. The spirits will not blame us, and ghosts do not usually travel any great distance. Once we are gone from here, we ought to be safe.” Nia made the gesture that meant “I wish, I hope.”

  We returned to camp. I got out food: dried meat and dried fruit. Nia ate. “Hu! I have been starving on the plain.” She leaned back and sighed. “The food is from the woman?”

  I made the gesture of agreement. “Derek explained to her.”

  She looked at the piece of fruit in her hand. After a moment she popped it in her mouth. “I thought about it while I looked for the bowhorn. I thought—at first—that I was responsible for what was happening. But that can’t be.” She finished chewing and swallowed, then she scratched her nose. “Most of the time, bad luck comes from something that is unexpected or peculiar. Well, I have done strange things and had my share of bad luck. But in this case it was Inahooli who was behaving oddly. We came to her land. We were strangers. But she did not welcome us. Instead she tried to kill us. Now, everyone knows that women do not quarrel with strangers. That is male behavior.”

  “Women never quarrel with strangers?” I asked.

  “Once in a while. Hakht did. She is a bad person.” Nia said this firmly with conviction. “And Inahooli did. She was crazy. And I killed the old man who killed Enshi. But ordinary women, women with self-respect, never quarrel except with people they know. Kinfolk and close neighbors. That is the right way to have an argument.” Nia ate more fruit. “There is no way to be certain who a stranger is or what will happen if you give her trouble.”

  It made sense. The people on this planet did not have war—nor, as far as I could tell, any kind of organized theft. When they saw a stranger—a strange woman, at least—they did not have to wonder: Is this person a thief? A killer? Someone who will do us harm? They could instead anticipate with pleasure the gifts and the stories the stranger would bring.

  Aggression and exchange were, or seemed to be, entirely separate. How different from Earth. The old Earth, anyway, where it had been legitimate to say, “Property is theft.”

  Derek walked into camp, carrying our two packs.

  “What happened?” Nia asked. “How did Inahooli die?”

  He set the packs down and told her. It was a fine report, brief and vivid with a lot of gesturing. “My luck was bad yesterday,” he said at the end. “But hers was a lot worse. If things had gone a little more slowly, if she’d had a bit more time, Inahooli would have killed all three of us. Maybe the Trickster had decided that I had suffered enough.”

  “Who is the Trickster?” Nia asked. “And why does he want to make Derek suffer?”

  “Remember the bracelet he found?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “It belonged to a spirit called the Trickster. Inahooli told Derek the Trickster was certain to be angry and give him a lot of grief.”

  “Ah!” said Nia.

  “I know that spirit,” said Derek. “Among my people he is called Coyote.”

  ’I’m not entirely sure of that, Derek. Coyote is a sneak, but he isn’t a bad person. I got the impression from Inahooli that the Trickster is bad. Selfish and malevolent. He’s like Loki.”

  “Once again, I don’t know what you are talking about,” Nia said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Lixia has a habit of wandering away from whatever people are talking about. She thinks too much, and her thinking goes off in every possible direction.”

  I gave him the finger.

  “Is that a gesture your people use?” asked Nia.

  “Yes. It is a gesture of disrespect.”

  “Ah! Let me see it again.”

  I repeated the gesture. Nia imitated me. “I thought you people had no gestures. It is good to know you are not utterly strange.” She looked at Derek. “Is your story over?”

  He made the gesture of affirmation.

  “Hu! I wish this had not happened. It has.” She made the gesture that meant “so be it.” “We’ll go on tomorrow. I want to get away from here, before her ghost manages to pull free of her body.”

  “All right,” said Derek.

  The oracle came back with berries. We ate dinner. Derek called the ship.

  “What happened?” asked Eddie. “Where in hell have you been?”

  “We encountered some of the local fauna. Four meters tall with claws. Our animals bolted, and we lost them. Our radios were on the animals.” Derek looked up. I was watching him. So were Nia and the oracle. “Have you managed to learn the native language, Eddie?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I have two natives here, and I think they’re wondering what I’m saying.”

  “You let them know about the radios?”

  “Yes.”

  “We were going to try to keep the natives ignorant of our technology,” Eddie said. He spoke slowly and clearly, his voice even. “It was part of our policy of noninterference.”

  “Eddie, it wasn’t possible. We couldn’t keep creeping off into the darkness. ‘Pardon me, I’m going to take this box and go off and pee. I’ll be back in half an hour. Oh, by the way, I talk to myself while urinating, so if you hear voices in the night, don’t worry.’ ”

  Eddie said, “This is getting to be more and more of a mess.” He paused. “Do you have anything to report?”

  “Yes,” said Derek. “A native attacked us. She’s dead.”

  “What?”

  Derek told the story. After he finished Eddie said, “I want to see what your recorders got. Transmit information.”

  Derek pulled off his medallion and put it into the radio. He looked at me. “I keep forgetting about the medallions.”

  “Don’t worry, Derek. You can talk your way out of almost anything.” I took off my medallion and tossed it to him. “Send that up, too.”

  A couple of minutes later Eddie came back on. “We’ll get back to you after we’ve looked at your information. I warn you, I’m not happy about this. I am going to ask Lysenko if there is any place near you where he can land.”

  Lysenko was the senior rocket plane pilot: a man with an unfortunate name. Biologists laughed at him.

  “Are you going to pull us out?” asked Derek.

  “I want that option. Ask Nia and the oracle if they know of any place. A dry lakebed is best. A lake with water might be possible, if it’s deep enough.”

  “Okay.”

  “And try to stay out of trouble for a while.”

  Derek turned the radio off. He got up and stretched. I could see the tension in his body. “One trouble with Eddie—he was born to sit at a desk. He can organize, supervise, analyze, and criticize, but he doesn’t know what it’s like in the field.”

  “What did your box say?” Nia asked. “Why is Derek angry?”

  I stood up. “You explain, Derek. I’m tired of talking about Inahooli.” I walked to the edge of the plain. Before me was the plain, dark and featureless. Above me the sky was full of stars. I listened to night noises: rustles in the branches and a low buzzing in the pse
udo-grass. I thought about my career. There was a chance it was ruined. Who would trust me in the field after this? Especially if Eddie and the others on the soc. sci. committee decided I had been really out of line. They could attach a reprimand to my record or insist that I undergo group criticism.

  Now that was an unpleasant idea. I had seen a group in action once. I’d made friends with a man on the long trip out of the solar system, before we went to sleep. A master chef from China. He had the moody personality that one associates with artists, and an extraordinary face: pale and smooth, like a mask carved out of white jade. His hair was black, long and thick and lustrous. When he cooked, it was tucked up in a cap. But when he sat and talked with friends, it fell around his face and touched his shoulders. I was maybe a little in love with him. I was certainly in love with his Mu Shu Iguana.

  He woke at the edge of this system and realized—finally—what he had done. Left his family, his home, his society, his planet. When he returned, everything would be changed.

  He got depressed—which was hardly surprising. Most of us got depressed at one point or another. But De was a real expert at depression. He brooded the same way as he cooked: with skill and passion.

  He started drinking, which led to trouble on the job.

  Most of his colleagues were Chinese, and they insisted on group criticism. I went to lend moral support—to De, not to his critics. We met in a small room with celadon walls. De sat in front, facing twenty people. Most were kitchen workers, a few were people he knew outside work, and a few were comparative strangers. The meeting was open to everyone, and everyone could speak. The voice of the masses had to be heard.

  One by one the kitchen workers spoke. De had missed a lot of work, forcing others to cover for him. He had refused advice and constructive criticism. His attitude was negative. He had argued with decisions made democratically by the kitchen workers. He had lied about his drinking.

  Someone from his dormitory got up. De had come in at all hours and made a lot of noise, waking other people. Once he had thrown up in the hall, right outside the speaker’s cabin.