Survivor (14 page)

"You're in withdrawal."

He nodded. "I haven't eaten anything since early yesterday evening."

"Nathan hypnotized you?"

"Yes. Three times. He gave me about the same suggestions he gave you."

"But for you, they worked."

"So far. I'm weak, hungry—God, I'm hungry—but I've felt worse. And I probably feel better than you did eighteen or twenty hours in. I'm supposed to be in bed though."

"I can believe that! Why aren't you?"

He smiled thinly. "I wanted to talk to you while I could still make sense. Wanted you to know just how things stood between us and the Garkohn."

"Who else knows?"

He grunted. "Neila's been careful not to ask—which means she knows. Jacob knows. He even sat in on a couple of my sessions with Nathan. The Garkohn are getting bolder, ordering people around, spying more openly. Most people know something is wrong. I've had complaints." He had been gazing off into space. Now he looked at Alanna. "I wanted you to know because you can deal with the Tehkohn. You're the only one here who knows anything about them. I'm hoping you won't have to do anything before my withdrawal is over, but I want you to be able to if necessary."

"Does Jacob know you want that of me?"

"Yes. He doesn't think much of the idea, but while I'm alive, he'll obey."

She did not want to talk or think of his dying, did not want to remember how easily it could happen during the next few days. He seemed to misunderstand her sudden pensiveness. He spoke softly.

"I know it's a heavy responsibility, girl, and you're just out of withdrawal. I'm sorry to have to…"

She got up and went to him, laid a hand on his shoulder. She had just been able to stop herself in time from touching his throat in the Kohn gesture of affection. "It's a responsibility I had already accepted. You know it's not the responsibility I'm concerned about."

For a moment, there was silence. He covered her hand with his own in what first seemed to her an oddly Kohn response. But no. Some gestures were universal.

"Why don't you go to bed now?" she asked.

He nodded, got up. But as he started away, she thought of something else. "Jules, what happened to the Tehkohn prisoners?"

He turned back. "Nothing. Natahk didn't mention moving them even after Diut escaped."

"Has anyone fed them?"

"We tried. They've refused to eat. No one has forced them."

Alanna nodded. "Do you mind if I take them something?"

He looked at her strangely. "If you want to. If the Garkohn guards will let you." As sick as he was, he was curious. The dangerous kind of curiosity. But he would not ask his questions. She spoke quietly.

"I know some of them, Jules. Some of them helped to make things easier for me when I was their prisoner. After my withdrawal, none of them were any more cruel to me than they were to each other. It wouldn't be right for me to let them starve without trying to help." Half truths. She wondered why she didn't tell him her real reason for wanting to feed the prisoners—that if they were fuzzy-minded from hunger, even in their slightly weakened condition, they might do some unnecessary killing when they escaped. Missionary lives might be lost. But no. It was not yet time for him to know that they definitely would escape. She could not let him know that until Diut was ready. She would have to tell him something more though. His curiosity was clearly not satisfied. And now he was ready to ask questions.

"They treated you… well, Lanna, when they held you captive?"

"As well as could be expected, I guess. As long as I did as I was told." Again, she was not telling the whole truth. But then, very little that she told him about herself and the Tehkohn could be wholly true.

"They didn't…?" He struggled with the words and his struggle gave her warning of what was coming. She stood watching him coldly and feeling no inclination to help. "They didn't rape you?"

"No," she said. "They didn't." He would want to believe her and he would find a way to do so. He would not even have asked such a question if the Garkohn kidnappings had not forced him to consider the Kohn human enough to do such a thing.

"I haven't wanted to ask you these things, Lanna." He met her eyes sadly. "Perhaps because I was afraid of the answers you might give. It seemed so incredible that we found you alive. I just wanted to thank God that we had you back and let it go at that. But this damned Garkohn thing wouldn't let me. It started me wondering…"He broke off abruptly. "It doesn't matter."

Obviously it mattered. How had he been able to give her charge of the settlement's relations with the Tehkohn while he entertained such doubts? Or had he given her the responsibility in the hope that his apparent trust would touch her conscience and forestall any act of treachery? She finished his sentence for him. "Started you wondering whether or not you really did have me back."

He accepted the accusation. "Do we, Lanna?"

"I was like a servant among the Tehkohn," she lied softly. "Like a slave, really—the way you and Neila were on Earth in Forsyth. I had no blue in my coloring and thus no rank among them. They didn't know quite what to do with me so they accepted me as a kind of interesting freak. They gave me whatever jobs they thought I could do. Other than that, they left me alone. I was an alien, an outsider." She paused for a moment, watching him. "Please don't make me feel as though I'm still an outsider, even here at home."

He sighed, seemed to deflate, and she knew she had won at least temporarily. He came back to her and hugged her. "I'm sorry, girl. It's the withdrawal. I'm not thinking clearly or it would never occur to me to doubt you."

She said nothing, let him go off to bed thinking he had hurt her. Surprisingly, he had.

Natahk's hunters let her in to see the prisoners without trouble. By now, they were probably used to allowing Missionaries to go in and try to convince the Tehkohn to eat.

The captives did not bother to look up at her as she entered. Their prison was a single large room with walls and ceiling of rough wood and a floor of hard-packed earth. It had a few tiny windows near the ceiling—enough to let in a little light and air. None of the captives brightened the room further with their personal luminescence. None of them wasted energy in any way at all. They sat or lay on the floor, silent and unmoving. Alanna spoke to them bluntly in Tehkohn.

"If I bring you food and guarantee it safe, will you eat?"

There was a long silence. Finally a judge near her answered quietly. "We will not eat." No one contradicted him.

Alanna faced him. "Can you believe that I would poison you?"

"We don't know."-His coloring became dimly iridescent with indecision. "We don't know who you are, Alanna."

"So," she said softly. She could have taken offense. The judge had insulted her by questioning her loyalty. Another Tehkohn, even of a lower clan, could probably have made the judge apologize. Alanna might have been able to do it herself, but it would accomplish nothing. The captives would still refuse to eat, would still doubt her. They would simply keep their doubts to themselves.

Now all three groups had questioned her loyalty—Garkohn, Missionary, and Tehkon. No one knew who she was except Diut. What would she do, she wondered bleakly, if he began to doubt. She spoke again to the Tehkohn.

"Is there nothing that I can do for you… to ease your wait?"

"Nothing that you would be permitted to do."

There was nothing more to be said. She turned to go.

"Alanna!" The voice was quick and just a little louder than necessary. Loud enough to shift everyone's attention to the speaker, a small well-colored huntress. Cheah, her name was. She rose to her feet in one swift motion, and came to stand before Alanna. It was she who with her judge-husband Jeh had found Alanna sprawled in the doorway of the Tehkohn prison room. It was she whom Alanna had lived to kill. And yet they had become friends. Cheah was raucous and Alanna quiet, but somehow they enjoyed each other's company—and admired each other's savagery.

"We have heard what the Garkohn did to you," said the huntress.

Alanna lifted her head slightly, stifling a rush of humiliation. "It is undone. And the Garkohn will pay."

"Didn't I say it!" Cheah looked around at the other prisoners, her body suddenly shimmering triumphant in the room's half light.

"Many things may be said," muttered a hunter off to Cheah's left. Alanna looked at him and saw by his poor coloring that he had made a mistake. Perhaps his hunger had made him careless.

"So?" Cheah looked at him coldly. "Talk is not enough for you? Shall we discuss it another way?"

But the hunter had realized his mistake. His body was already fading to yellow in the slow way that signified submission to a more powerful person. Cheah was not only well-colored, but she had lived up to her coloring by earning an impressive reputation as a fighter, and when necessary, a killer. Her size did not deceive those who knew her.

"Alanna has suffered as we have," said Cheah to the group. "You understand what I mean. And now, she offers help and ignores your insults in order to prove what she should not have to prove." She lowered her voice abruptly and the others leaned forward to hear. But her words were not for them. "I know who you are, Alanna. And if you bring food, I will eat."

Alanna smiled, stepped to Cheah, and touched the back of her hand briefly to one side of the huntress's face in a gesture of friendship. Then Alanna turned and left the building, barely able to conceal her elation.

Cheah had given her a victory. Alanna would bring enough food for all the prisoners, and Cheah would eat, would taste everything. Then she would fast. She knew what to do. When the others saw that she suffered no ill effects, they would eat too.

Cheah's confidence in Alanna had restored Alanna's wavering confidence in herself—in her ability to play two separate roles. As long as she had Cheah's support among the Tehkohn prisoners and Jules's support among the Missionaries, she had a chance.

And when Natahk returned, things would become even more complicated. She would have to play three roles. But she could do it. She
would
do it.

She hurried back to the Verrick cabin to get food for the captives.

Alanna

I had managed to avoid the Tehkohn Hao for most of my first season with the Tehkohn. It had not been hard since he lived in a different section of the dwelling and since people who wanted to see him usually had to go to him. I had not wanted to see him—although I was probably lucky I did, when I did. I had just hit one hunter with a stone—he had earned the blow—and I was about to face his friend. I would have had to fight, and though I was careful not to show it, I was afraid. Hunters were trained to kill with their hands and they possessed great strength. Also, even if I fought this hunter and won, how many of his friends would I have to fight? How many others would leap to his defense as he was coming to the defense of his fallen friend?

Then Diut stepped in and the confrontation was over. I was grateful to him but my gratitude did not make it any easier for me to look at him or be near him. He was a monster—as much a mutant as the Clayarks back on Earth—though among the Kohn people, his was a desirable mutation. He was huge and physically powerful, and hideous. No Missionary could have called him a caricature of the "true" human shape. He was more an intensification of everything nonhuman in the Kohn. And somehow, that made him seem alien even among them. With all that, though, I considered the fear and revulsion I felt for him to be foolish and dangerous. For one thing, he had done nothing to me, had shown no interest in me since that first night in Jeh and Cheah's apartment. Clearly he meant me no harm. For another thing, the respect he received from the Tehkohn was far beyond anything even Jules could expect from the Missionaries. What would he and his people do to me if they realized how I felt about him? It would be as though the Missionaries had realized that T thought their God was so much air. Yet it was hard for me to control my feelings against Diut—especially now when he was so close to me.

"Find Gehnahteh or Choh," he told me. "Tell them that your time with them is ended. Then go back to Jeh and Cheah."

I left him quickly. I didn't know why he was making the change, and I was worried. But I was so glad to get away from him that I didn't stop to ask questions. I went straight to the apartment of Gehnahteh and Choh. Only Choh was at home when I went in. He was shaping a heavy stick into a handle for some farmer's digging prongs. He looked up at me in surprise.

"What has frightened you?"

I told him about the hunter I had hit.

"You fought a hunter?" he asked incredulously. "You fought and won?"

I shook my head. "It wasn't a fight. And I may have lost more than I won. Perhaps the Tehkohn Hao has some punishment in mind for me."

Choh put his knife and wood on the floor and came to stand before me. "He's not one to delay punishment, Alanna. If he had been angry with you, you would know." Choh paused. "Alanna, you are a friend."

He was saying good-bye to me. I touched the back of my hand to his face in the friendship gesture. I had seen others use the gesture but this was the first time I had used it myself—the first time I had wanted to use it. He covered my hand for a moment with a furry paw, then spoke once more.

"I will tell you a thing that perhaps I should not tell you because I'm not certain."

"What is it?"

"The Tehkohn Hao has decided that you are a fighter. We told him you were, but he said, 'Wait. Let her prove it.' I think now you have proven it."

"You told him?"

"You had already proven it to us."

We looked at each other for a long moment, then I smiled. He had asked me once, "Do all your people bare their teeth to show pleasure?" I went to get the spare clothing I had accumulated and my few toilet articles.

"You have worked as one of us," said Choh. "We will miss you."

And I would miss them, I thought as I left him and walked out into the dim corridors. But as long as I was not to be punished, I did not mind returning to Jeh and Cheah—except for one thing. Jeh and Cheah did live in the fighter section of the dwelling. They lived near the outside where raiders would come first if they got past the guards, and they lived near the Tehkohn Hao. I would be seeing more of Diut and I would have to make a greater effort to get used to him.

Cheah welcomed me to her apartment, her small body blazing white.

"Ah-la-naaah!" she cried exuberantly. "I heard you fought Haileh—that you beat him to the ground!"

I stared at her in surprise. "You're glad?"

"Glad! That one was an animal! He tried to humiliate you because he thought you were weak. He tried it with me once because I'm small. I almost broke his neck!"

I laughed because I could picture her doing exactly that. She was not the kind of person who would let her smallness make her a target for other people's frustrations.

"You are back where you belong," she said. "Jeh told Diut that you were a fighting woman." She led me across the room. "Put your things here. We will make a pallet for you. Come!"

I spent five days with them. Easy days compared to what I had been used to. I had the work of the apartment to do—cooking and cleaning—because without any blue at all, I was the lowest-ranking person in the apartment. As I had relieved Choh, now I relieved Cheah. I didn't like it particularly, but it kept me busy. And Cheah chattered and Jeh and I listened, amused. Jeh said once, "I take her with me to trade with the lake people, Mahkahkohn. She talks and talks and they are all white and at ease and she trades them out of their fur." I believed it.

Then came the day when Jeh brought home gifts for me. There was a long robelike garment of fur dyed blue-green. It was made from the skin of a single large animal. The fur was coarser than Kohn fur but it was thick and the garment looked warm and comfortable. And there were new shoes of the same ankle-high boot type that I had been wearing, but these were fur-lined, and colored blue-green to match the robe.

"Put them on," said Jeh. "They are yours."

"You give them to me?"

"Diut gives them to you."

I froze. "Diut?" In spite of my fears, I had hardly seen the Tehkohn Hao since moving back with Jeh and Cheah. And I did not want to see him.

"He made me go with him to get that thing," said Jeh, gesturing toward the robe. "He said you and I were the same size. I had to put the thing on so that he could see whether it was as long as he wanted it to be on you."

I stood listening to him, hearing what he was telling me, and what he was not telling me. I strove not to believe it. "Jeh, why is he giving me these things?"

"To please you, Alanna. He gives gifts sometimes, though yours are stranger than any I have seen. Get your other things. Gather them all. He's waiting for you."

"I… must go?" I managed to keep my voice almost normal.

"You are afraid?"

"Yes!"

"He said you would be. But you must go. Your fear will pass."

Slowly, I gathered my belongings. But my hands were shaking so that I kept dropping things. Cheah came over, oddly silent, and helped me. Jeh led me out of the apartment and through the corridor for some distance to what appeared to be a solid wall. A hidden door.

Jeh felt for the handhold, found it, and pulled the door open. He spoke quietly.

"Go in, Alanna."

I didn't move. It was all I could do to keep myself from running away down the corridor. I had come this far by telling myself that I could talk to Diut—talk him out of this… experiment, or whatever it was. And I did not want to disgrace myself before Jeh and Cheah. Now though…

"Alanna!"

I jumped, looked at him.

"Go in."

I went through the door and he shut it behind me.

There was no one in the room. It was a large room made of the same gray stone as the rest of the dwelling. There were two long chests of polished wood, one on either side of the room. I dropped my things atop one of these chests. There was a doorway on the opposite side of the room and I could hear someone moving around in the room beyond. So the Tehkohn Hao had at least a two-room apartment. Luxury. I could have lived my life happily without such luxury. There was a large animal-skin rug on the floor before the fireplace. I sat down on it and stared into the low fire trying to think. Everything had happened too quickly, too unexpectedly. It made no sense. Diut had hardly looked at me during my stay with the Tehkohn. And surely I could not have seemed sexually attractive to him.

He came into the room, his feet making almost no sound against the stone floor. I looked at him once, then looked away quickly, closed my eyes in desperation. I would keep still. I would not behave stupidly. We would talk, Diut and I, and end this nonsense.

"Tehkohn Hao," I greeted. My voice was steady.

"Alanna."

"Am I to have a liaison with you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why do men and women usually have liaisons?"

He was standing over me off to one side, towering, huge. I felt powerless and afraid and angry at myself for being afraid. I
had
to keep calm.

"Are forced matings the way among the Tehkohn?" I asked quietly.

"Have I used force?"

"Have I accused you?"

He whitened slightly and sat down beside me. "We have no tradition of forced matings, Alanna."

"Will you let me go then?"

"But I have chosen you."

"I have not chosen you."

"What man have you chosen?"

"I… none. I didn't know I would be permitted to mate here."

"Has any man approached you?"

"No."

"No man would unless I ordered it. None but me."

I said nothing.

"Your differences keep others away," he said. "You come to me as a stranger, an alien in spite of all that you have learned. But when you leave me, you will be Tehkohn. When others see that I have accepted you, they will accept you."

I began to tremble, and to believe, really believe, that there was no way out of this. I was afraid I would lose control of myself if he touched me. When he touched me.

He reached over, took my hand, and examined it much as the Garkohn huntress Gehl once had.

"The fingers are too long," he said. "And too slender. The nails are too thin, too weak. You are right to keep them short. The hairlessness is ugly at first—wrong, a distortion of what should be. But the coloring is the greatest distortion. Brown. No blue at all. The lowest artisan has some blue, but you have none."

I snatched my hand away from him, now more angry than frightened.

"There are* no customs here that apply to you," he said. "You have no rights, no freedoms that I do not allow. Without the blue, you are like an animal among us."

I glared at him. "How could you want a woman who is like an animal?"

And his blue grew suddenly lighter with a great deal of white. "To see for myself that she is truly a woman."

My fear was drowned in anger and humiliation. It was an experiment then. The creature wanted to see for itself what it was like to make love with an ugly distorted woman. I was here to satisfy its curiosity. "I wish I had the words to tell you how deformed and ugly you are to me, Tehkohn Hao. No animal could be as terrible." He would hit me. I didn't care.

He did not hit me. He stood up and hauled me to my feet. "We have traded insults. Now we will go and prove to each other how little our differences matter."

He led me into the other room where there was another fireplace-more luxury—more wooden chests and a wide wooden platform strewn with furs. It took me a moment to realize that the platform was actually the first bed that I had seen in the Tehkohn dwelling. I stood staring at it mindlessly until Diut opened my robe. Then I looked at him.

In that instant, he must have sensed just how much I suddenly hated him. He drew back warily.

"Be careful, Alanna."

There had been a wild human on Earth—a man fast enough to run me down to get what he wanted. He got it. Then I smashed his head with a rock. As I faced Diut now, I hardly saw his ugliness. It was as though he was wearing the face of that wild human. It was as though he had brought me the pain that man brought me. He put his hands on me again and I lunged for his eyes.

He jerked his head back and in the moment that he was off balance, I came to my senses. I turned and ran for the corridor door. But he was fast—blindingly fast. I was fast myself and he caught me before I'd gone five steps.

He grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me backward against him. I kicked back hard into his knee.

He flared yellow with pain and relaxed his hold on me for an instant. I broke free and ran again.

He was not so quick this time as he came limping after me, but I could not find the outside door. I could have found it if I had not been so frantic. I didn't have much trouble with hidden doors any more because, normally, I memorized their location in relation to other objects. This one I had been too frightened to memorize.

Diut came up behind me, caught me by the neck, and threw me to the floor. "Will you make me kill you, Alanna?"

I had no doubt at all that he would do it. I lay there looking up at him.

"Get up."

I rose slowly, faced him. He knocked me down again with a single openhanded blow. My head rang with the strength of it. And again:

"Get up."

I stayed where I was, waiting for my head to clear. I wondered why he didn't just grab me and rape me the way the wild human had. It would be simple enough. It would even be simple for me. I would not dare to kill him. I knew that now. Not unless I was also ready to kill myself—before his people caught me. My moment of unthinking rage had passed. Now why didn't he just take what he wanted and get it over with.

He kicked me. "You will get up."

Bruised and furious, I stood up, half expecting to be knocked down again. Instead, as though nothing had interrupted his earlier attempt, he opened my robe again, slipped it off me, and stripped off my other clothing.

He walked around me, inspecting me much as Gehnahteh and Choh had on my first day with them. I stood glaring at him. At least I could glare at him now, without turning away. He was becoming for me nothing more than an extremely ugly man. His size and strength were more impressive now than his appearance.