Survivor (17 page)

Then its yellow luminescence flared even brighter. It gave a scream of agony, twisted its body, screamed again, and sprawled limp across me. Over it stood Alanna, pulling her bloody knife out of its back. This time she had been able to distinguish the animal.

She wiped her knife on the fur of the jehruk, then stepped away from it and from me. She looked to see that I was able to get up, but her glance was quick and guarded. She did not seem to need the words I had to say to her. But I was angry enough and in enough pain to say them anyway.

"You are as blind as a corpse," I raged as I came to stand over her. "You endanger yourself, you endanger me. How much time have I wasted trying to teach you to see?"

She made no excuse, only stood with her head bowed. There was no excuse. She had already shown me how well she could see.

My back in particular hurt me now and I reached around to feel what damage the jehruk had done. My hand came away bloody and half covered with bits of fur torn loose. I turned and walked away from Alanna, went to the stream. I waded in and let the cold water soothe my wounds and carry away the loose fur.

When I came out of the water, I found Alanna cutting vines of the necessary lengths and thicknesses to help us drag home what we could of our kill. I had taught her how to do this. She seemed subdued. She worked silently, and did not look at me. Clearly, she was ashamed. I felt no sympathy for her. My camouflage ability would be marred for some time until my wounds healed and my fur grew again. It was always dangerous to be without full camouflage ability.

"I have ointment," she said finally. "It might help your back."

And I thought:
Save it for your own back
.

"Diut?" She laid a hand on my arm exactly where the jehruk's claws had raked. My fur hid most of that wound and no doubt she did not see it. But I felt it. That was enough.

I turned, striking her across the face as I moved. She stumbled back, almost falling, then moved quickly to escape. I caught her arm and held her while I beat her. At first she struggled to break away. Then suddenly, she stepped in close to me and before I knew what she meant to do, she dug her fingers into a wound on my shoulder.

My body flared in yellow agony. I would surely have killed her then had she not managed to break away.

She ran to get her bow from where she had left it leaning against a tree. But even hurt, I was too fast to let her fit an arrow into it.

She leaped back from me as I snatched away her bow. Then suddenly she was crouching, her knife in her hand. I stared at her.

"Do you think I will let you kill me with that?"

"Do you think you can stop me? I'm quick, and you're hurt."

"And I have your bow and your arrows."

She looked at me for a long time, her face already bruised and swollen, her eyes narrowed, the knife steady in her hand. "Then use them to kill me," she said. "I will not be beaten again."

Angrily, I threw the bow aside. A weapon. Did she truly believe I needed a weapon to finish her? Even with her knife and my wounds, she must have known she was no match for me. She might hurt me, but I could certainly kill her. And I would have to kill her if I went after her now. Kill her or give in to her.

But slowly, as my initial rage subsided, I realized that I no longer wanted to kill her. I valued her. Valued even her unheard of disregard for the blue because it made our relationship different from any that I could have with a Tehkohn woman. A relationship of the kind Jeh and Cheah had where differences existed, but were ignored. Once I had had such a relationship with Tahneh when she was younger. Our differences had been hi age and experience. She could have been
my
mother, and yet there had been no barriers. We had loved well. But now Tahneh was old and I was alone again. My people stood in awe of me and obeyed me and looked to me when there was trouble. That was as it should have been, but still, it left me as much alone as Alanna's strangeness left her. We could give comfort to each other, she and I.

Yet there she stood with her stubbornness and her long knife.

"Put the knife down, Alanna. Shall we kill each other like animals? This is foolishness."

"I will not be beaten again," she repeated.

I said nothing.

"Why do you beat me?" she demanded. "What good does it do? Do you think I'll learn faster out of fear of your beatings? I won't. I can't. Send me away from you if I displease you so."

"Alanna, the knife."

"No! Not until you decide. We're not children squabbling in the inner corridors. You need not prove your strength or your coloring to me. We can talk to each other. Or we can go away from each other!"

I drew a deep breath and let my body relax. "Put away the knife, Alanna." I spoke quietly, gave her no promise. Not in words. That would have been too much. But she rose from her crouch and after a slight hesitation, sheathed her knife.

I went to the pack she always carried when she hunted, and searched through it until I found the ointment in its small metal container. I gestured to her and she came to kneel beside me. We spread ointment on each other's wounds and said little to each other. For days we would say little to each other—until the thing we had done to our liaison began to heal.

I did not beat her again. Not once. And most of the time, she obeyed. When she did not, we talked—sometimes very loudly. But in spite of our disagreements, our nights together became good again. I lay with her contentedly and her knife remained in its sheath.

To Alanna's relief, Jules Verrick came out of his withdrawal two days after Diut's visit. His physical condition was good—better than Alanna's had been. He had not hurt himself as she had, had not gone through the violent convulsions that had wracked her. He was weak, hungry, thirsty, and tired, but that was all. Only five hours after his pain had ended, he was up and sitting in the cabin's main room reading a book that Nathan had brought him—a book with a section on drug addiction. He looked up and smiled when Alanna came in. Her words erased his smile at once.

"We're about to lose our prisoners, Jules." She had already given the room a quick check to be certain that it, like the rest of the house, was free of Garkohn listeners. Now she sat down.

Jules closed his book. "You mean they're plotting an escape? How did you find…?"

"No. I mean their people are coming for them."

"Same question, Lanna. How did you find out?"

"Diut told me. He came back secretly two days ago. He wanted us to know about the escape so that we wouldn't interfere."

Jules grunted. "I must have made a pretty poor impression on him if he thinks I'll stand for that!"

Alanna said nothing. His words were meaningless. More "ritual lying." She had no more time for it than Diut had had. She had some harsh truths for Jules—about the Tehkohn, about herself.

He studied her, interpreted her silence his way. "You told him we'd go along with it, didn't you!" he accused.

"I did," she said quietly. "We had a choice. We could give up the prisoners peacefully, as he commands, or we could fight to keep them and lose the help he would have given us. But he won't help us while we hold his people captive."

"Not captive, Alanna,
hostage
! Image of God, the whole point of holding them here was to…"

"Was to keep the Tehkohn from attacking. But your talk with Diut has already accomplished that. He won't attack us, and he'll help us break free. But those prisoners are the price we pay for his help."

"Unless he decides not to bother helping us once he has them."

"He's given us his word."

"For what it's worth."

She shrugged, wondering why he continued to argue. There was nothing for him to win. "Diut's word is no small thing with him," she said. "He's testing us. If we can obey him, control the people in this matter, then he'll be willing to trust us in other more important matters."

"We're the ones who must prove ourselves."

"We're in the inferior position. We need him. He doesn't need us."

"That's exactly what's bothering me."

Alanna let her expression go flat and bland. "Could we stop him from taking the prisoners if he came here with a force of Tehkohn?"

"Just possibly, now that we've been warned." He sighed, leaned back wearily. "But of course, we won't. Thanks to our 'inferior position,' we don't dare. I know it." He sat still for a moment, eyes closed. "All right, Alanna. Tell me about the Tehkohn escape. Just what is it we won't be interfering with?"

She watched him very carefully as he spoke, hoping that he was as convinced as he seemed to be. A foolish move now could destroy everything.

"Tomorrow night," she began, "Tehkohn hunters will replace the incoming Garkohn relief guards. They will have to do it near here to prevent Natahk from getting word of it too soon. There's a slight chance that our gate guards might see something—a few luminescent flashes perhaps. If they do, they're to ignore it, and they're to let the Tehkohn hi as though they believe they're admitting Garkohn. Diut has promised that the Tehkohn who take part in this will be disguised—camouflaged—well enough for us defective Missionaries to make an honest mistake. In fact, they'll be disguised well enough for the Garkohn to make the same mistake until the Tehkohn are too close for it to matter.

"They're going to keep the fighting as brief and as quiet as possible, and as long as the Missionary guards stay out of the way, they won't be hurt. That's the most important part. Personally, I think the best thing for our people to do is look scared and confused and run for cover. It's going to be pretty hard for them to tell Tehkohn from Garkohn in the dark, and that can be our excuse. We'll need all the excuses we can invent, too, because there are bound to be Garkohn around that we don't know about and they're going to take everything they see back to Natahk." She paused, thinking. "That's all. All we have to do is avoid mixing in."

Jules shook his head. "And all we" have to do after that is hope Natahk lets us survive long enough for Diut to keep his word. Natahk is going to
know
we aren't completely innocent this time."

"Yes."

"I don't suppose Diut had any suggestions as to how to handle that?"

"No."

"He wouldn't."

She turned her head a little, stared past him. "You know what to do."

"Oh yes." He drew a deep breath. "I know. It's become a habit. Fight, for the sake of appearance, then give in. Over and over and over, to Diut, to Natahk…"

"For the people," said Alanna. "For the Mission."

He said nothing. His face was set in lines of bitterness.

"You give in," said Alanna softly. She was talking more to herself than to Jules. "You give in until your position seems strong. Then you use your strength and others give in." She paused, glanced at Jules. "The people need time to grow numerous and strong."

Jules made a wordless sound of disgust. "Do you think you have to tell me that? I know it, and it still galls me. And the people aren't going to like it any better than I do when they understand it. I only hope I can get it across to them in a way they'll accept before the Garkohn goad them into doing something desperate."

Alanna nodded. "You'll have to teach them. I remember… it was a thing people learned quickly enough in the wilds back on Earth—when to fight and when to give way. The ones who survived learned."

"And this is the wilds all over again, isn't it? With you better fitted than any of us to survive."

She shook her head. "You'll buy my survival, Jules—mine and everyone else's—by submitting, by playing all three of your roles. Leader, slave, ally… I don't blame you for hating it, but I don't doubt for a moment that you'll do it."

"You can add a fourth role to that if anything goes wrong," he said. "Traitor. Because if I fail, the people will surely be destroyed one way or another."

Alanna drew her arms tight across her stomach. "I know." How well she knew. "But deception is the only real weapon we have. We face physical chameleons. To survive, we must be mental chameleons."

There was a long silence, and when Alanna looked at Jules she saw that he had read more than one meaning into her words. She had hoped he would. She had never spoken this openly with him before, but it was time for him to begin to understand.

"Wild human philosophy, Lanna?"

"Survival philosophy."

"Yes. In a way, you used it on us, didn't you?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"And on the Tehkohn?"

"Yes."

"All without losing yourself? What if I asked you again what happened while you were with the Tehkohn."

"This time, I wouldn't tell you."

"You may have told me too much already."

She shook her head. "Natahk will be here soon. He could force me. into a role that seems traitorous to everyone else. I don't want it to seem so to you."

"The penalty for playing too many roles."

"When I came back to the settlement, I decided that I would play as many as necessary to get the people out of this valley, away from the meklah, the Garkohn, and the Tehkohn." She spoke quietly, but with all the intensity that she actually felt.

He raised an eyebrow. "You seem to mean that. What if I asked you why you mean it—other than to save yourself, of course. Why… chameleon?"

"Because of you and Neila," she said. "I keep telling you that. It's true. It's taken me two years without the sight of a Missionary face to make me realize how great a debt I owe." She stopped, gave him a long look. "Natahk can't stop me now. Even if he killed me, a way of escape would still be opened for you. Only you and the rest of the Missionaries can stop me—by letting him turn you away from me."

"Why don't you tell me why you think he can."

"Maybe he can't. But the fact that he found out about my withdrawal and didn't readdict me means he has something planned for me."

He drew his mouth into a straight line, remembering. "Yes, I see your point. One of them at least. You want me to settle for that one?"

"Yes."

"You can't give the trust you're asking for?"