A Woman of the Iron People

by Eleanor Arnason

Eddie made the gesture that meant “no.”

  I said, “I’ve always heard that he was best in German.”

  “That line never reminds me of Shakespeare,” Eddie said. “I know it from Aldous Huxley. His novel Brave New World.”

  “You’ve read it?” I asked.

  “I’ve taught it—in my survey course on the collapse of Western civilization.”

  Ah, yes. How could I have forgotten?

  We made sandwiches and ate them on the deck. Bugs danced above the surface of the river. The sky darkened.

  Tatiana went to bed. The rest of us stayed on deck. I opened another beer.

  “Be careful,” said Eddie. “That stuff can be dangerous.”

  “I’m of Chinese descent, and the Chinese are famous for not having a drinking problem.”

  Derek chose that moment to climb over the railing. “For example,” he said. “There is the famous Chinese poet Li Bo. The story is—he was out in a boat, drinking rice wine and enjoying the evening. He saw the reflection of the moon on the water and leaned over to embrace it. He fell in and drowned.”

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “Up at the village.”

  Eddie frowned. “We were told—”

  “I wasn’t in the village. I was outside it, taking a walk, looking at the night sky, listening to the music.”

  “Music?” I asked.

  He made the gesture of affirmation. “One instrument sounded like a flute. Another was like a xylophone, and there was a third that made a noise like a foghorn.

  “I wanted to go in. But the old men were prowling at the edges of the village. The music must have gotten to them. They didn’t go in, but they couldn’t seem to pull themselves away. They kept pacing, stopping, peering at the fire—there was a big one in the middle of the village—then pacing again. I couldn’t figure out a way to get past them. Damn! I hate to pass up any ceremony!”

  I finished my beer and went into the cabin. Tatiana was already asleep. I unfolded one of the couches, undressed, and lay down. The window above me was open. I heard the rustle of foliage and the river lapping gently against our boat.

  I woke early. The cabin was dark and cool. Someone was snoring. I got up and went to the bathroom, then out on the deck, carrying my clothes. Light shone out the windows of the other boat. A gust of wind brought me the scent of Chinese cooking and music: the piano version of “Pictures from an Exhibition.”

  I did my yoga, dressed, and climbed the river bluff.

  The sun was visible from the top. It hung just above the horizon: a reddish-orange disk, too bright to look at directly. I followed a trail through the pseudo-grass. Leaves brushed against me, wet with dew. In a minute or two my pants were soaked.

  A flower bloomed just off the trail: large and low to the ground. The petals were pale yellow, almost the same color as the plain. The center was dark. The entire plant was fleshy—like a succulent on Earth.

  I knelt and touched the edge of the flower.

  Damn! I waved my hand in the air. The flower curled into a ball. I looked at my finger. It felt as if a bee had gotten it.

  A shadow fell over me. I glanced up and saw Nia.

  “That is a stinging flower.”

  “I never would have known.”

  “Come into camp. There is a lotion that will make you feel better. My cousin is certain to have it.”

  I stood, my hand throbbing. We walked toward the village.

  Nia said, “They eat bugs and other animals. Very small lizards. Sometimes an aipit.”

  “A what?”

  “It is an animal with four feet, covered with fur. The body is as long as the first joint of my thumb. The poison in the plant will kill something that small. But the plant does no real harm to people. It can’t get through a good coat of fur, the kind we have. People get stung if they touch the plant the way you did—or if they are foolish enough to walk on the plain with bare feet.” She paused for a moment. “A bowhorn can walk through a cluster of the plants and feel nothing, unless it is a fawn and tries to nibble. They do that once.”

  We reached the village. Nia stopped in front of a big tent. A woman sat at the entrance, large and handsome, dressed in a navy tunic. Her necklace was silver and amber. Her bracelets were gold.

  “This person touched a stinging flower,” Nia said.

  The woman spoke in the language of the village. A child came out carrying a pot.

  “Sit down,” the woman said. “My name is Ti-antai. Nia said your people are like children, always touching and turning things over. You see what happens? Hold out your hand.”

  I followed orders. She looked at my finger, which was swollen by this time and bright red. “Aiya! How peculiar!”

  “What?” I asked, feeling a little nervous.

  “The color of your skin.” She dug into the pot, bringing out a glob of something yellow, grabbed my hand firmly, and smeared the stuff on my finger. The pain diminished at once.

  “What is the flower?” I asked. “A plant or an animal?”

  “That’s hard to say. When it is full-grown, it has roots like a plant. But it hunts like an animal and it has a mouth—the dark hole in the center. Did you see it?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t realize what it was.”

  “You weren’t looking carefully,” the woman said. “You must always look carefully before you touch.”

  I made the gesture of courteous acknowledgment for good advice.

  Nia said, “The flowers have young that move around.”

  I thought for a moment. “How do the flowers reproduce?”

  Ti-antai looked at Nia. “You are right about these people. They poke into things they know nothing about and they ask a lot of questions.” She looked at me. “The flowers shrivel up at the time of the first frost. There is nothing left except a black pod. That stays the way it is all winter. In the spring it breaks open and the young come out. They are green and like worms with feet. They crawl away into the vegetation. I don’t know what they do under the leaves. But in time they root themselves. They grow. They become flowers. That’s all I know—except this. The lotion that cures the sting comes from the bodies of the young. I gather them in the spring and tie them onto a drying rack. They move for a day or two or three. Then they dry up. When they are entirely dry, I grind them up.

  “Other things go into the lotion, but it is the bodies of the young that are important.”

  Weird, I thought. And I was the wrong person to be listening. Marina in Sight of Olympus ought to be here.

  “Now, go away,” the woman said. “You make me uneasy. Nia has always been friends with the strangest kinds of people.”

  I stood and made the gesture of gratitude.

  Nia said, “I will go to the boats with you. I have a message from Angai.”

  We left the village, following the trail down the river bluff.

  Nia said, “Angai has come to a decision.”

  “What is it?”

  “She will tell us this afternoon. Come up to the village just before sunset. All of you. The women and the men.” She moved her shoulders and rubbed the back of her neck. “Aiya! It was hard! All day we talked and argued. Angai and I and the oracle. The old women. The rest of the village. I got a headache.

  “At night there was a feast. Angai sent the oracle away. He had to stay in a tent that had been abandoned by one of the old men. A man who went suddenly crazy and rode off onto the plain. I was allowed to stay.

  “We always hold a feast after a big argument. It reminds us that we are one people. But the arguing didn’t end. Anhar told a story.”

  “Who?”

  “She is the best storyteller in the village. Most people like her. I don’t. She was one of the people who spoke against me the last time I was here. She had many reasons why I could not stay among the Iron People.”

  We were halfway down the cliff, moving through shadowy forest. My finger had stopped hurting.

  “The story isn’t one of ours.
It came from the Amber People. It tells about the Trickster.”

  “Do you remember it?” I asked.

  Nia made the gesture that meant “yes.” “He came to a village, disguised as an old woman. The villagers thought he was the Dark One. He played many malicious tricks. Do you want to hear about them? I think I can remember most.”

  “Not now. Later, when I have one of the little boxes that can remember what is said to it.”

  “Aiya!” said Nia.

  I asked, “What happened next?”

  “In the story? The villagers realized he could not be the Dark One. He was too nasty. Even she sets a limit on her behavior.

  “They tricked him into climbing into a pot of water. They put on the lid and boiled him until he was dead. The story ends with a song. It goes like this.” Nia sang:

  “Hu! My flesh

  was fed to lizards!

  “Hu! My bones

  were made into flutes!

  “Hu! My music

  is loud and nasty!

  “Hu! My music

  sounds like this!”

  “The Trickster died?” I asked.

  “Only for a while. He always comes back. Angai was furious.”

  “Why?” We had reached the riverbank. My boat was in front of us. It smelled of coffee and bacon.

  Nia said, “Anhar was saying that you are troublemakers like the Trickster, imposing on the village. But the argument was over. The decision was made. It was time to be pleasant to one another. Anhar could not stop. There are people like that. They pick at the edges of a quarrel like a child picking at the edges of a healing wound.

  “I don’t know what Angai has decided, but I know she does not want to make Anhar happy.” Nia waved at the boat. “That’s all I have to tell you. Come up to the village at sunset.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She left. I went onboard the boat. The folding table was up. Agopian, Eddie, and Ivanova sat around it.

  “Elizaveta has been talking to the camp,” Eddie said.

  “Oh, yeah?” I sat down and poured myself a cup of coffee.

  She nodded. “They have seen lizards in the lake. Big ones. Half a dozen so far—keeping to the shallow water close to shore.”

  I paused, my hand halfway to the milk. “Oh-oh.”

  “They are putting up new spotlights and making sure that everything that smells like food is burned.”

  “I thought they were doing that before.”

  “Only with material from the ship. Organic matter from the planet was being buried.”

  The remains of Marina’s specimens.

  Agopian ate a piece of bacon. “No one is going swimming.”

  “Here?”

  “No. At the camp.”

  “What happened to your finger?” asked Eddie.

  I told them about the flower.

  Eddie shook his head. “We keep thinking this planet is like Earth. I think—if we stay—we’re going to be surprised over and over, not always pleasantly.”

  “Maybe. I ran into Nia up on the bluff. She said we’re supposed to go into the village late this afternoon. Angai has made a decision. Don’t ask me what it is. Nia didn’t even want to guess.”

  I ate breakfast, then went for a swim. Afterward I put on jeans and a red silk shirt.

  We had silkworms on the ship, of course, and a garden full of mulberry trees. But the shirt had been made on Earth. There was a union label in the back of the collar. “Shanghai Textile Workers,” it said. Next to the writing was a person—I couldn’t tell the sex—riding on the back of a flying crane. Robes flew out behind the person, and he or she held a spindle. Behind the crane was a five-pointed star.

  The person on the crane was almost certainly a Daoist immortal, and the five-pointed star was an emblem of the revolution. The shirt felt wonderful against my skin.

  It was a bad day: still and hot. Everyone was restless. Eddie and Derek and I worked on reports. Tatiana and Agopian ran checks on equipment. Ivanova paced from boat to boat. Only Mr. Fang seemed calm. I went over to his boat after lunch. He sat on the deck. There was a chessboard in front of him. Next to the board was a pot of tea.

  “If you are looking for Yunqi, she has gone for a swim, leaving herself in a really terrible position. I can see no way out for her.” He waved at the pieces on the board.

  “They’re driving me crazy over there. I’m driving me crazy.”

  “Master Lao tells us that heaviness is the foundation of lightness, and stillness is the lord of action.”

  “What?”

  “Lenin tells us that a revolutionary needs two things: patience and a sense of irony.” He looked up and smiled. “Get yourself a cup, Lixia. I will set up the board again. We will drink tea and play chess and not worry about problems which are outside our control.”

  “Are you being wise?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Good. I’m in no mood for wisdom.”

  I went and got a cup. We played chess. He beat me.

  Yunqi came back, wearing a swimsuit. It was single-piece and solid blue. Her short black hair was dripping wet. Her eyes had the out-of-focus look of severe myopia.

  “Why don’t you wear contacts?” I asked.

  “I like the way I look in glasses.” She put them on: two plain clear lenses in plain round metal frames.

  “Yunqi is like Comrade Agopian,” said Mr. Fang. “A romantic. She likes glasses with the look of the early twentieth century. That was the age of heroes. Luxemburg. Lenin. Trotsky. Mao and Zhou.”

  “I thought you didn’t like politics,” I said.

  She blushed. “I don’t like endless talking—especially when people get angry. But I have always enjoyed stories of the Long March and Comrade Trotsky on the armored train.”

  “She likes war,” said Mr. Fang. “As an idea. Do you want to play another game of chess?”

  I said, “Okay.”

  I lost again. Mr. Fang said, “It’s time to go.”

  The people from the other boat met us on the trail: Derek, Eddie, Ivanova, Agopian. We climbed the bluff together.

  It was hot and windy on the plain. In the village awnings flapped.

  Standards jingled. Campfires danced. A tiny quadruped bounded down the street in front of us. It was the size of a dik-dik, with little curved horns. Its fur was dark green. It wore a collar made of leather and brass.

  “What is it?” asked Eddie.

  I made the gesture of ignorance.

  Derek said, “We don’t know.”

  We reached the town square. Once again it was full of people—at least the edges. The center of the square was a heap of ashes.

  Angai waited for us in front of her tent. She wore a robe of dark blue fabric with no embroidery. Her belt was made of links of gold, interwoven like chain mail. The buckle was huge: a gold biped, folded back on itself. The neck was twisted. The head touched the rump. The long tail curled around the entire body. The animal’s eye was a dark red stone.

  Nia and the oracle stood with her.

  The crowd murmured around us. Angai held up a hand. There was silence, except for the chiming of metal and the rush of the wind.

  “I’ve talked to various people,” Angai said loudly. “The old women who have learned much in their lives. The old men who have traveled far and are certainly not foolish. I have talked with Nia and the Voice of the Waterfall, who know these hairless people. I have gone in my tent alone and consulted with the spirits, inhaling the smoke of dreams.

  “After listening to everything and thinking, I have come to a decision.

  “I bring it to you, o people of the village. You are the ones who must approve or disapprove.

  “But remember, if you disapprove, you are going against me and the spirits and the elders of the village.”

  She paused and gestured toward us. Derek translated.

  Ivanova said, “A smart woman. It won’t be easy to vote her down.”

  Angai went on. “If you want to know w
hat the old people said, ask them. I will tell you what the spirits told me. But I want Nia and the oracle to speak for themselves.”

  “Why?” asked a voice.

  Angai made the gesture that demanded silence. “I asked Nia her opinion, because she traveled a long distance with two of the hairless people. She has seen the town that they have built next to the Long Lake. She has ridden on one of their boats.”

  “So has Anasu!” a child cried.

  “Be quiet,” said a woman.

  Angai went on. “Only a fool—only a worthless woman—refuses to ask for information from those who know.

  “As for the oracle, he also has traveled with these people, and he is holy. A spirit has given him advice.”

  She paused. Derek translated. Nia spoke.

  “Angai asked me if these people are reliable. I said yes. So far as I know. But there are many of them, and they have differences of opinion. I have heard them argue.

  “I think we can trust them. I think we can believe what they say. But I do not know for certain.

  “She asked if they will do harm to the Iron People. They are not crazy. They will not harm us intentionally. But they are very different. If we make them welcome, they will change the way we see the world. They have done that to me.

  “That is disturbing. Maybe it is harmful. I do not know.”

  Nia paused. Derek translated. She went on. “I don’t think they will vanish. They are not a mirage. They are here and solid. If we send them off, they will go to other villages. Someone on the plain will make them welcome. I do not think there is a way to drive them out of the world. Maybe if everyone got together, it could be done. But that will not happen, and I don’t know if it ought to happen. Change is not always bad. There was a time when nothing existed. Spirits appeared out of the nothing. They made the world and everything in it. Most of us think this was a change for the good.

  “My advice to Angai is—make them welcome. But do it carefully. O my people! Think about what you are doing!”

  The oracle stepped forward. “I don’t have much to say. My spirit is old and powerful. It has given good advice to the people of my village for many generations. It told me to go with these hairless people and learn from them. What they know is important, my spirit said.

  “I have done this, traveling a long distance with Lixia and Deraku. We have met many people and also several spirits. Some bad things have happened, but not because of those two.”