The Color of Distance (33 page)

Juna leaned against a beached raft, watching the villagers join together. The noisy silence of the jungle deepened, heavy with the calls of insects and birds, the rush of wind through the trees, and the occasional rustle of some unseen animal moving through the trees. She was alone for the first time in weeks. She turned on her computer and watched a comedy. The show was one of her favorites, but the jokes and laughter flowed past without touching her. It all seemed so far away and improbable. Juna paid more attention to the hot food on the table than the words of the actors.

Frustrated, she shut the program off. A soft rain began to fall as the villagers sat like a ring of green stones, totally lost in their silent communion. Humanity seemed so remote, here among these alien creatures. Juna felt a terrible gulf separating her from both her own people and the Tendu.

Eventually the villagers unlinked and pushed off onto the river. Juna sat in the stern of the raft, struggling to match their tightly coordinated rhythm. Then they were in the rapids, pulling hard around large rocks and snags. They were nearly through when someone on the raft ahead of them got swept off into the river. Ninto pulled hard on the steering oar, and they drew near the swimming alien. As Anito grasped his arm, there was a sudden tug that nearly yanked her off the raft. Baha and Ukatonen grabbed Anito and helped her pull. The Tendu shot out of the water and into the raft. It was the elder Miato. Blood gushed from his leg. His left foot was gone. It had been severed just above the ankle.

The flow of blood from Miato’s stump slowed to a trickle as the river swept them into the slow water below the rapids. They beached their raft beside Miato’s. Miato’s bami and his crewmates lifted him from the raft and stretched him out on the smooth sand, their skins ochre with concern.

They linked with Miato, and the raw flesh at the end of his stump healed into new, tender skin. Juna recorded everything she saw, watching in amazement through the viewfinder of her computer. Even though she had seen healings like this before, they still seemed miraculous. The aliens unlinked and bandaged Miato’s stump with moss and fresh leaves.

Juna got out her fishing gear and began to fish from the end of the raft. She caught several medium-sized fish, all of them familiar species. Anito emerged from the jungle with a gathering sack full of oblong spiny fruit.

“For Miato, and the Tendu helping him,” Juna said, holding up her catch. Anito colored approvingly and squatted beside Juna to help prepare it.

“How terrible for Miato, to lose his foot like that!” Juna said.

Anito flickered agreement. “If only I had been a little faster. I could see the kulai coming for him, but I wasn’t able to reach him in time.” She sliced open the fish and neatly removed the guts, still in their translucent sac. “That almost happened to me, when I was a bami. My sitik pulled me out just before the kulai got me. It followed me onto the raft. The other elders had to club it back into the river.”

“How will Miato manage with only one foot?” Juna asked. In all her months among the Tendu, she had never seen a single maimed or crippled individual.

“It will grow back.”

“Grow back?” Juna asked incredulously. “His foot will grow back?”

“Of course,” Anito said. “He couldn’t get around very well with only one foot.”

“How does it grow back?”

Anito rippled a wavy multicolored pattern that seemed to be the Tendu equivalent of a shrug. “He tells it to. He’ll put mantu jelly on the stump. It will become part of his leg. His foot would grow back without the mantu jelly, but it would be a lot more work and take much longer.”

“Can other animals grow back missing limbs?” Juna asked.

“Some lizards can grow back their tails, but other than that, nothing with a backbone can grow back a limb. Sometimes we will heal an injured animal to maintain the balance of the forest. That’s why we healed that taira you hurt. We needed more taira to keep the puyu from killing too many young trees. We rarely heal any animal as badly injured as Miato. It’s too much trouble, and it’s too hard on the animal.”

“It’s different for my people,” Juna said. “We can’t grow back an arm or a foot if we lose one.”

Anito’s ears lifted in surprise. “What do you do instead?”

“We make them a replacement limb, if we can.”

“What kind of animal do you use to grow a replacement limb?” Anito asked, looking puzzled.

Juna shook her head, startled by the question. “The replacement limb isn’t alive. It’s made out of dead things, like wood or stone. It doesn’t work as well as the real limb, but it’s the best that we can do.” She couldn’t explain further; the Tendu had no word for plastic or metal in their language, and she had no idea how to explain mechanical objects to them. They thought her computer was some strange kind of half-alive stone animal.

Yet the Tendu were capable of prodigies of biotechnology. Her transformation and the amazing feats of healing she had seen proved that. She shook her head. It was hard to square their primitive lifestyle with their incredible abilities. She wondered how much of their biological skill was instinctive, and how much of it was learned.

“How much training-do you need in order to heal someone?” she asked Anito. “Could Moki heal someone now, or would he have to be trained?”

“He is helping to heal himself. All bami know how to do that.”

“What will Moki have to learn in order to become a sitik?”

Anito shook her head and spread her hands and ears wide. “Many things. He must learn something of the balance of the atwas, he must learn the history and customs of the village, and he must learn to heal himself and others well enough to be worthy of a place among the elders. Even then he will not be ready. He must be able to make the difficult decisions required of elders. He must be responsible. When he becomes an elder, he will share in deciding what the fate of the villagers will be.”

“How many years does that take?”

“It varies. I was with my sitik for many years.”

“How many years?”

Anito shook her head. “I don’t know. It was a long time. Long enough for a sapling like that one”—she pointed with her chin at a seedling that was little more than a slender twig with a handful of pale, shiny leaves— “to become a tree like that.” She pointed at a mature canopy tree.

Juna looked at the tree and turned bright pink in amazement. It was at least fifty or sixty Standard years old. If her ears had been mobile like a Tendu’s, they would have been spread wide. Anito was older than she was and she was barely an adult.

“How long do your people live?” Juna asked. “How old was Ilto when he died?”

Anito laid a hand on Juna’s arm. “It is not polite to call the dead by their names,” she informed her. “My sitik was the oldest Tendu in the village. He grew up in the tree our village lived in before this one. Ninto was his bami. When an elder died without a bami, Ninto was chosen to fill her place. Because of this, my sitik lived longer than most Tendu. He did not have to die or be exiled when Ninto became an elder.”

“I don’t understand,” Juna said. “Are you saying that an elder must leave the village or die before their bami can become an elder?”

“Of course, except when an elder dies without a bami, or if the bami dies before it can become an elder.”

“Why?” Juna asked. The implications of this were beginning to sink in.

“There are only so many elders in a village. It depends on the size of the tree, and the fertility of their jungle.”

“How big are most villages?” Juna asked.

Anito shook her head. “Ask Ukatonen. He knows more about what things are like in other villages.” She picked up a leaf full of neatly sliced fish. “We should take this over to Miato and the others. They will be hungry.”

The conversation was over, but Juna was full of questions. If her estimates were right, the Tendu lived at least 120 years, despite their primitive technology. Was this due to some intrinsic genetic characteristic, or was it due to their healing abilities? How would she be able to tell the difference?

Juna set a generous portion of the sliced fish and a basket of fruit beside the villagers who were working on healing Miato. They accepted it with a flicker of acknowledgment and thanks. She took a smaller portion of fish and some fruit over to Moki. He picked it up awkwardly with his uninjured arm, and fed himself. She peeled back the spiny rind of the fruit, exposing the translucent white inner pulp, and handed that to him.

A bami could not become an adult until its elder died or became an exile. What did this mean for her and Moki, and for Ukatonen? Could Moki become an elder after she left? Would Ukatonen have to die to make way for Moki? Where would Moki become an elder? She didn’t belong to any village. She had no place for Moki to fill. Juna sighed, and offered Moki another peeled fruit. Had she made a mistake?

“What’s the matter?” Moki asked, in shades of concern. “You seem sad. Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m just worried about what’s to become of you, with a strange sitik like me. What village will accept you?”

Moki rippled reassuringly. “Ukatonen would not have let you adopt me if he didn’t think it could work.”

Juna sucked out the gelatinous pulp of a fruit. “Perhaps you’re right, Moki. I’ll talk to him,” she said with a confidence that she didn’t feel.

Ukatonen came up as they finished eating. He helped himself to a bite of fish.

“How is Miato?” Juna asked.

“He’ll heal nicely,” Ukatonen said in skin speech as he chewed.

“How long before his foot grows back?”

“That depends. If everything goes well, he should have enough of a foot to swim with when we reach the sea. It should be completely healed by the time we return.” He brushed her shoulder affectionately. “Thank you for catching those fish. It was very helpful.”

“Thank you, en. I was glad to help. The village has done so much for me.”

“We should link with Moki while we’re stopped here,” Ukatonen said.

Juna nodded, and held out her arms. Linking still bothered her, but it was necessary in order to be a good sitik to Moki. Besides, linking with Moki wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as linking with Anito or Ukatonen. The enkar let her set the pace of the link, and the level of intensity.

Moki and Ukatonen gripped her arms; she felt the pricking of their spurs, and then the link enfolded her.

She followed Ukatonen as he examined Moki’s broken arm. Juna could feel the ends knitting together, though the joins were still fragile. His internal organs showed no signs of their bruising, and his injured allu appeared to be healing. Ukatonen radiated pleasure at Moki’s progress.

When he was done checking on Moki, Ukatonen took Juna on a tour of her digestive system. She tasted the processes of digestion, felt her food get broken down in her stomach, and then further broken down and absorbed in her large and small intestine, until the remaining wastes were excreted. It was an amazingly intricate transformation—food into energy, raw materials, and waste.

They emerged from the link to find that the rain clouds had given way to brilliant sunlight. Juna lifted her face to the sun. The sky had been blanketed with thick, rain-swollen clouds for most of the trip. These rare sun breaks were something to treasure. She laid her computers out to top up their batteries. The villagers began unloading cargo, spreading it out on the beach to dry in the sun, checking the waxed gourds for signs of rot and water damage. Juna helped Ninto and Anito spread out their things. Two gourds of honey had small soft black spots of rot on them. Anito left them out in the sun. When the honey inside was warm and fluid, she poured it into empty gourds. Then they split open the old gourds and licked up the remaining honey from the insides.

“How old are you?” Juna asked Ukatonen as they sucked the last bits of sweetness from their gourds.

Ukatonen ducked his chin and thought for a while. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve lived a long time.” He turned a faint, nostalgic blue-grey “It’s been a good life.”

“Are you older than Anito’s sitik was?” she asked.

Ukatonen flickered yes. “Much older.”

“How much older?” Juna asked. The Tendu vagueness about time was extremely frustrating.

“When I became an enkar, Anito’s sitik’s sitik would not have been bom yet. Before I was an enkar, I was chief elder of my village. I have seen trees like that one”—he pointed at a gnarled and ancient forest giant, heavily bearded with moss—“sprout and grow and die at least six times over.”

Juna turned bright pink with surprise. That would make Ukatonen well over 700 years old.

“You must be one of the oldest of your people.”

Negation flickered, across Ukatonen’s chest. “There are many enkar much older than I am. There are some who have lived ten times as long as I have, and even they are not the oldest of my people.”

“Don’t you”—Juna paused, searching for the word for aging—“grow weaker as you get older?”

Ukatonen’s ears spread wide and his head went back in surprise. “Why should we?” he asked.

“My people only live for about one hundred of your years. When we get to be about eighty years old, our bodies start to fail. We get sick easily, our bones become brittle. We sometimes get forgetful. Eventually we get old and die.”

“You can’t control your bodies well enough to stop this? How do you manage to raise the next generation if you live such short lives?”

“We have children early in our lives. Most people have children in their twenties or thirties. And children become adults much faster among our people. We are considered adults when we are about twenty years old.”

Ukatonen’s amazement deepened. “How can you be ready to raise children at so young an age?”

“It’s the way we have always done things. A thousand years ago most people were lucky to live past forty. People started having children when they were only fourteen or fifteen. Half their children died while they were still babies, so they had six or eight children.”