He made a little noise, a groan, and turned his arm slightly. Then he cut into it below the elbow. He drew the blade down toward his wrist. The motion was slow and careful. I imagined a surgeon would move like that. I knew a good tech did when putting an IV in. He reached the wrist and lifted the blade. There was blood along the edge.
“Aiya!” He wiped the blade on the fur of his leg and gave the knife back to Derek.
Derek put the knife away. I looked back at the oracle. He was still in the same position. His arm rested on his knee. He watched the cut. Blood welled up through his fur. It trickled into the palm of his hand and dripped on the floor.
“Have you done this often?” asked Derek.
The oracle glanced up. “No. My spirit likes beer and metalwork. It has no interest in blood. I do not think I would like to speak for spirits like these.”
Derek made the gesture of agreement. The oracle pressed his arm, forcing blood out. I thought of the ancient ceremonies of North America: sun dancers on the middle-western plain and the priests of Mexico who drew thorns through their tongues. It was not the way of my ancestors. I did not understand it.
By this time there was a little pool of blood on the floor of the cave. It shone in the torchlight.
“Enough,” said the oracle. “They may still be hungry, but I have only so much blood. They will understand, I think.” He stood up.
Derek put down his torch. He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around the oracle’s arm, tying it in place. “Okay,” he said and picked up the torch. “Let’s get out of here.”
The oracle stumbled a couple of times, crossing the cave.
“Will you be able to make it on your own?” asked Derek.
“Out through the opening? Yes.”
We left our torches in the cave and crawled out: Derek first, then the oracle. I was last. I felt my way over the wet stone. Ahead of me in the darkness the oracle sighed and groaned. The cut must have been deeper than I had realized.
The tunnel ended. I stood up and saw the campfire, burning brightly in front of the curtain of rain. Nia stood and glanced toward us.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Derek said, “The Voice of the Waterfall is injured.”
“Aiya! That crazy man!”
The oracle groaned and swayed.
Derek grabbed him. “Lixia, get your medical kit.” He lowered the furry man to the cave floor near the fire.
“Aiya!” said the oracle. “I do not feel entirely well.”
Derek untied the shirt. The fabric—blue cotton—was spotted with blood, which looked black in the firelight.
“It’s going to be hard to get these stains out.” Derek put the shirt down. He looked at the wound. “It isn’t bad. A good bleeder. Not deep.”
“You say that,” the oracle told him. “I do not like blood. I never did.”
Derek opened the kit. He cleaned the wound, then adjusted the nozzle on the bandage can. “I ought to shave the arm,” he said in English. “But I can’t figure out how to do it without getting hair in the wound. I’m making the bandage as narrow as possible.” He sprayed.
The oracle made a soft moaning sound.
“Will he be all right?” asked Nia.
“Yes,” said Derek. “I don’t know how to say it. There are people who feel pain more than other people.”
“I know that,” said Nia.
“I think he is one.”
“It is my pain,” said the oracle. “How can you know what it is like?”
“That’s true,” said Derek. He rocked back on his heels. “I’m done.”
The oracle moved his arm. “Is your medicine good? Will it keep my arm from rotting?”
“Yes.”
The oracle made the gesture that meant approval or satisfaction.
Derek closed the medical kit.
“I can’t remain sitting,” the oracle said and lay down.
Nia got her cloak and spread it over the oracle.
“Good, good,” he said.
She put more wood on the fire. A gust of wind blew in, bringing drops of rain. They splattered over me. The fire leaped. I shivered.
“What was back there?” Nia asked.
I said, “A cave. There were animals in colors on the walls.”
Nia frowned. “In colors?”
“Like the animals that people embroider on pieces of fabric.”
“Not people,” said Nia. “Men. They are the ones who do embroidery.”
“Ah. The animals are”—I tried to think of the right word. How did one say “paint” in the language of gifts?—“are done in colors like the ones used for dying. The colors are put on stone, not fabric.”
Nia frowned. “I think you are trying to say there are atmi back there?”
“Atmi?”
“Like this.” She drew a figure in the dirt. It was a stick figure: a quadruped with two long curving horns. A bowhorn. Atmi meant drawing.
I made the gesture of agreement.
“I have seen these things before. In the hills to the south of here. I do not know who the people were who did such things. We do not draw on stone. We don’t cut into stone either—only wood and metal. But those folks did. I have seen a cliff covered with engraving.”
Derek leaned forward. “What kind of animals did those people draw? Did you recognize them?”
Nia made the gesture that meant “no.” “Some I knew. Others were strange. Maybe they were spirit animals. Or maybe those folks came from another place. Like the place you are from, where all the people are hairless. Surely there must be strange animals in your country. Are they hairless like you?”
“No,” I said. “Most of them have hair or scales or feathers.”
“Aiya,” said Nia. “I think I will go to sleep.” She lay down close to the fire.
Derek and I stayed up. Nia’s breathing changed, becoming slow and even. The oracle groaned, then snorted. Nia made a purring noise. A snore.
“Interesting,” said Derek. He spoke in English. “The fauna must have changed, and in a dramatic way, and she has no idea a change of that magnitude is possible. She understands distance, but not time.” He paused for a moment. “I can’t think of a contemporary human society without a sense of history. My people know what California was like before the Big Quake. They think that they have escaped from history and gotten back to the eternal verities. But they know history used to happen in southern California and that it still happens in most of the rest of the world. I’m not sure I’m being clear. I’m getting tired and I’ve never been good at thinking about abstractions.”
“I thought you were good at everything, Derek.”
He looked surprised, then pleased. He laughed. “No. I have my limitations, though I don’t like to think about them. We’d better get to sleep.”
I woke to sunlight glowing on the cave wall and rolled over. There it was: the planet’s primary, just above the bluff on the far side of the river. There was no cloud near it, and it was so bright that I had to look away.
A day like this demanded a solar salute!
The oracle said, “They have gone fishing.”
I looked around. He sat by the ashes of the fire.
“Derek and Nia?”
He made the gesture of agreement.
“How are you?”
“My arm hurts. I slept badly.”
“Oh.” I stood up and did a side bend. It felt good. I did another, bending toward the other side. Then I touched my toes.
“Spirits came to me.”
I straightened up.
“They looked like the animals on the wall of the cave.”
“Oh.”
“They spoke to me. Their voices were like the voices of people, but I did not understand the language they spoke.” He paused for a moment. “They were loud. I think they were angry. But I don’t know if they were threatening me or trying to warn me about something. They might have been angry, because I did not understand. It was a bad dre
am.”
Most likely he was right. “I have to go outside.”
“Okay,” said the oracle.
Derek and Nia were nowhere in sight. Instead I saw birds. They fluttered in the reeds and bushes. They flew from tree to tree. A tall, thin bird stalked along the far shore, looking for something to eat in the shallows.
I did my yoga. By the time I finished, the sun was high enough to light most of the valley. I walked back to the cave. Derek and the oracle sat by the fire. The oracle was eating. Derek licked his fingers, looking satisfied.
“Where’s Nia?”
“Saddling the animals. Want something to eat?”
I made the gesture of agreement. He pulled something from the fire.
Leaves, burnt black. He unwrapped them with a couple of quick motions. “Ouch!” Inside was a piece of fish, steaming and fragrant. “No bones that I can find,” he said in the language of gifts. “Dig it up.”
It was delicious and there were no bones. “Did the oracle tell you about his dream?”
“Yes. It might mean nothing. He’s been through a lot and he’s in pain. I wish I could give him aspirin. Sometimes a dream means nothing important. Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar. However…” He paused. “He is an oracle and this is a holy place.”
“Derek, you are a superstitious savage.”
“Call me names, my love, and I will remind you that I have tenure and you do not.”
“Screw you,” I said.
He made the gesture of doubtful agreement.
I laughed.
“Nia is coming,” he said. “Let’s get the fire out.”
We traveled south and west along the river. The sky remained clear. The day grew gradually hot. The oracle rode ahead of me. I watched him shift in the saddle and move his arm, trying to find a comfortable position.
We stopped in the middle of morning. Derek made a sling out of his bloodstained shirt. The oracle put it on and sighed. “Aiya! That is better.”
The valley grew wider. The river spread out into marshes. At times I was unable to see the water, only the reeds, tall and purple, moving slightly in the very slight wind.
The birds grew quiet, as they did on Earth in the afternoon, and I drifted into a series of reveries: Earth, Hawaii, my family. They were all gone except for Charlie, a half sibling who’d gotten himself frozen. He was curious about the future, he told me in his last message. He’d be there to welcome me home.
The oracle sagged. I urged my bowhorn forward and grabbed him as he started to fall. “Derek!”
The oracle straightened. “I am only tired.”
Derek reached us. He and I got the oracle onto the ground.
“We have gone far enough,” said Nia. She glanced around. “This is not a good place to stop. But it isn’t bad either.”
We were in an open area. A meadow. Most of the vegetation was low and late-summer yellow. There was one really conspicuous exception: a plant that grew as tall as two meters. It dotted the meadow. I saw at least a dozen specimens. The lower half of the plant was a cluster of large, ragged, dusty-looking leaves. A stalk grew up from the leaves, ending in a cluster of flowers. The flowers were orange, an extraordinarily vivid color. It seemed to glow.
A weird-looking plant. Not really attractive.
“Are you dreaming?” asked Derek. “Get down here.”
I dismounted.
The oracle sat on the ground. His shoulders sagged, and his head was down.
“Nia, you take care of the animals. Lixia, get wood. I’ll take care of the oracle.”
I didn’t much care for the way he ordered everyone around. On the other hand, I didn’t have a better plan. I walked across the meadow. Bugs whirred and hummed around me. The sun was hot on my head and shoulders. The air had a sweet aroma: the orange flowers.
Bugs with orange wings fluttered around them, landed, and took off. I couldn’t always tell what was a bug and what was a blossom. That was eerie, to see a flower fold up and suddenly take off, sailing on the still air to another plant.
I reached the far side of the meadow. Trees grew there. I gathered branches, moving slowly, made sleepy by the heat.
When I returned, the oracle was lying down in the shade of a flower. Derek sat next to him, cross-legged, holding the radio.
“Damn it, Eddie,” he said. “I have a sick person on my hands. I need to talk to someone of the med team.”
“We have agreed,” the radio said. “No further intervention of any kind until we have discussed our policy.”
I dropped my branches, then dropped to my knees. “This is ridiculous, Eddie.”
There was silence except for static. “I have to admit, I think we have handled this badly. Though I am not sure how one works out a policy for something that has never happened before. We thought we had one. I thought we had one. But what I mean by nonintervention is not what you mean by it. And everyone seems to have a different idea of when—if ever—it is legitimate to bend the rules.
“For the time being, though, we are going to have no intervention at all.
“Do you have any idea when you’re going to reach the lake?”
“That depends on how sick the oracle is,” said Derek.
The radio made crackling noise. Finally Eddie said, “Call me when you have a better idea of his condition. I really don’t think we can help. But it isn’t my decision. I’ll tell the committee for day-to-day administration what is going on.”
“Thanks,” said Derek. He turned the radio off.
“Do you really think we’re going to need advice? We’ve dealt with injuries to two natives already.”
“In the case of Inahooli, not very successfully,” Derek said.
I made the gesture of unhappy agreement.
“No. I don’t think it’s necessary to have the med team in on this. It’s a pretty minor injury. But this is a way to check up on what is going on upstairs. I get uneasy when I’m in the field too long. I once came back from a trip to the moon and found the worst asshole in the department had gotten an office I wanted. It was on a corner. Four big windows and one heck of a view. If I’d been in Berkeley, I would’ve stopped him. No question about that! But I was out of touch. There were things I should have known and didn’t.”
He sounded still angry, though he had lost the office over one hundred years ago.
“What do you think will happen?” I asked.
“I think we’ll get to talk to the med team. Remember the people who are currently on the committee for day-to-day administration. Two biologists and three members of the crew.”
“That isn’t a majority,” I said.
“The Chinese usually vote as a block, and I think they’ll be in favor of intervention—in general and in this situation. Remember the theory of Jiang, the plumber. It’s our revolutionary duty to rescue these unfortunate people from stagnation.”
I considered for a moment, then made the gesture of uncertainty.
“I ought to take the oracle’s temperature,” Derek said. He glanced at my pile of branches. “And you ought to get more wood.”
I got back a second time and found the oracle asleep.
“No sign of infection,” Derek said. “His temperature is almost the same as Nia’s. Most likely the heat got to him—and traveling—and maybe some kind of reaction to last night. Dealing with spirits takes a lot of energy. Shamans and witches often feel sick for several days afterward.”
“So we don’t need any help from the ship.”
“No. But I’m not going to tell them that. If you’re looking for Nia, she has borrowed my bow and gone hunting along the river.”
The sun went down behind the valley wall, and Nia came back with a lizard. A big one, a meter and a half long. She gutted the animal and skinned it. We roasted it. The flesh was dark and tasted—more than anything else—like fish.
The next morning was clear. I did my yoga, ending with the solar salute. The oracle watched me. “What kind of ceremony is that?” he aske
d.
“I am welcoming the sun and giving it praise.”
“Ah. I have not been able to decide what you believe in.”
It was too early in the morning to discuss religion. “How are you doing?”
“I slept well. I had no dreams. My arm feels better. I think it is good that we left the cave. I think I might have gotten sicker, if we had stayed. The spirits there are very hungry, and I am not certain that my gift was big enough for them. But they are not the kind of spirits who travel. They have not followed me.”
We ate some more of the lizard, cold this time, saddled the bowhorns, and went on.
The valley kept widening. A little after noon I glanced around and saw the bluffs were gone. I twisted in the saddle and looked back. There they were: a yellow wall, lit by the sun, extending north and south as far as I could see. We had come out the valley of our little tributary. We were in the valley of the Great River, traveling through a level forest. A number of the trees had fallen, and a lot more leaned at perilous angles. There were patches of color on the trunks: pale blue, pale green, and yellow. The patches were organisms, I decided. Most likely they fed on dead tissue. This was the bottomland. The flood plain. A lot of trees must die in the years when the river rose.
Late in the afternoon we came to a large pond or an inlet of the river. I couldn’t tell which. Scum floated on it, a bright azure blue, and there were orange flowers that reminded me of lotuses. Our trail went close to the water. At the most we were ten meters away, traveling between the forest and the shore.
Ahead of us an animal waded in the shallows. It was a biped, a kind I had not seen before, very tall and very slender. Its color was tan or pale gray. It had the usual long neck and tiny head. It bent and pulled up flowers, stuffing the orange petals and blue stalks into its mouth.
The scene had an eerie beauty: the dark water, the gaudy flowers, the biped moving carefully and delicately—like a dancer, its long tail high so it didn’t touch the surface of the water.
“There,” said Derek and pointed. The water farther out was moving slightly. Flowers rose and fell. I saw ripples, then a head. It was a lizard, but much bigger than any lizard I had ever seen before.
“Aiya,” said the oracle.
The head went under. I got a glimpse of a long back with a row of spines along it, then a tail, then nothing except a ripple that moved toward shore. Was the biped blind? I wanted to shout.
A Woman of the Iron People Page 27
