The Color of Distance (66 page)

The quarbirri closed with a tightly interwoven knot of bodies. Pulses of color passed from one body to the next in perfect synchrony. It symbolized humans and Tendu linking together, achieving harmony. It was a very difficult technical feat. The Tendu in the audience rippled wildly in approval, and the humans joined in with enthusiastic applause. Juna watched through eyes blurry with tears, deeply honored to be the subject of a quarbirri.

When the applause died, she rose. “Thank you,” she said, aloud and on her graphics tablet. “I am honored by this quarbirri. I hope that we can negotiate the opportunity to show it to my people. They would learn much from it.”

Anitonen stood. “On behalf of everyone who helped create this quarbirri, I give it to your people as a gift that we both can share.”

Juna spent the night in the heart of the giant na tree with Moki and the others. She lay awake a long time listening to the familiar night sounds of the village: the rustling as one of the Tendu stirred in his sleep, the faint humming of the tilan bees in the walls, and the occasional creaking sounds of the giant tree shifting in the wind. It would be a long time, if ever, before Juna would hear them again. She was glad that she was going home, but she would miss this world, with its complex, cathedral-like forests and beautiful people.

She thought about Moki and Ukatonen. How would they manage? What would they think of Earth and its colonies? How would her family feel about them? The futtire was full of questions, but tonight was for thinking about the past. She banished her worries and let the sounds of the great tree lull her to sleep.

The next morning a crowd of Tendu followed them to the beach to see them off. As the launch headed toward them, its wake an arc of white foam, Juna turned to Anitonen.

“Are you sorry you rescued me?” she asked. “You lost so much. Your village, your whole future.”

Anitonen touched Juna on the shoulder. “I lost one future, but I gained another one. I think it balances.”

“I’ll miss you. I’ll miss the Tendu.”

“You’ll come back. We’ll see each other again,” Anitonen assured her. “Our people need you too much for you to stay away.”

Juna nodded. The boat was nearly at the beach. She stepped forward to help land the boat, then said her formal goodbyes to Lalito, the village council, Ninto, and the enkar. Then she was back to Anitonen. She found she had no words. She held out her arms instead.

They linked, a link that tasted of the sadness of farewells and hopes for the future, reaching a sad, nostalgic harmony. When it was over, she touched Anitonen on the shoulder in a wordless farewell, and then climbed into the waiting boat. Ukatonen and Moki followed her. As they pulled away they flickered goodbyes to the Tendu watching on the shore. Juna kept looking back until the Tendu on the shore had faded into the distance, and all she could see was a pale strip of sand and the endless forest stretching to the horizon.

Allu-a
—The communion between two or more Tendu involving a deep sharing of physiological state.

Allu
—Fleshy red spurs located on the inside of the forearm, and their associated organs, used by the Tendu for allu-a.

Bai
—A shortened form of bami, used as an endearment by sitiks when talking to their bami.

Bami
—The apprenticed foster child of a Tendu elder, usually chosen by that elder from a pool of immature Tendu known as tinka. A bami is the second, adolescent phase of the Tendu life cycle.

Enkar
—A class of Tendu that travels from village to village, rendering judgments.

Ika
—A large emergent canopy tree with large blossoms that resemble human hair. It is one of the few trees in the forest that is wind-pollinated.

Jeetho
—A large multinucleated mass of cytoplasm derived from any one of several animals. Jeetho is used as a biological substrate for many forms of physiological manipulation requiring the addition of large amounts of tissue, e.g., the regeneration of amputated limbs.

Kenja
—A ritual often used to decide precedence among village elders. Many ethnographers note the similarity between this ritual and the “rock-scissors-paper” game used on Earth in several cultures. Many elaborate cultural convergence theories have been put forward to explain this similarity.

Li
—A unit of measurement equivalent to three yai. Roughly equivalent to nineteen meters.

Lyali-Tendu
—sea Tendu. Those Tendu who live year-round in coastal waters.

Mantu
—A large land-dwelling mollusk with an external shell. They average 0.75 meters in length.

Na tree
—The giant hollow trees that are the preferred living quarters for land-dwelling Tendu.

Pingar
—Any meat that has been pickled, then dried, salted, and chopped fine to keep for travel or emergencies.

Pooo-eet
—A fishing bird that lives near the river. During their mating season (also known as the month or “pida” of Pooo-eet) the canopy echoes with their “pooo-eet” calls, prompting many Tendu to go hunting for a little peace and quiet.

Quarbirri
—Traditional Tendu dance/narrative art form.

Ruwe-Tendu
—The land-dwelling form of the Tendu.

Sitik
—An elder Tendu who is the mentor/parent of a sub-adult bami.

Siti
—Informal form of sitik, usually used by a bami to his or her sitik.

Tareena
—The relationship between two bami who have had the same sitik. It usually occurs after an elder has died without a bami. When this happens, another elder’s bami is promoted to fill the spot, and the elder whose bami has been promoted takes another bami. It is a rare relationship. Often hundreds of years can pass without a village having any tareena, and only if there has been a terrible disaster will there be more than one pair in any village.

Tengarra
—The Tendu term for a formal judgment rendered by an enkar. The price for such a judgment can be very high, including the requirement that a certain number of elders volunteer to become enkar.

Tilan
—A species of bee that lives symbiotically with the na tree, protecting it from leaf-eating insects and some species of vines and other parasitic plants.

Tinka
—Juvenile form of Tendu, imprinted on a village. Usually six years and older. A tinka can live as long as fifty years before beginning to age and die.

Trangin
—A spiny orange or red-orange fruit slightly larger than a Terran honeydew melon. It smells utterly vile when opened up, but its soft, juicy pink flesh tastes wonderful.

Werrun
—The ritual physical transformation by which a Tendu bami becomes an elder.

Yai
—A unit of measurement based on the approximate width of a mature canopy tree. It is approximately 6.5 meters in length, though it can vary from region to region (see Tanguay’s monograph entitled
Regional Variability in Tendu Units oj Measurement
for more information).

Yarram
—A species of seaweed that is dried and eaten by the Tendu, it is prized as a source of nutrients scarce in the rain forest, and it is a valued article of trade. It is also a delicacy and is essential for the development of both bami and young elders who have just emerged from werrun.

Yerowe
—Any one of several species of highly specialized insects that colonize Tendu villages. They eat vermin and decaying leaf matter found in the Tendu bedding, and lay down chemicals that encourage composting. In short, they keep the Tendu’s beds fresh and pleasant.

Earth’s rain forests are infinitely more complex, mysterious, and wonderful than anything in this book, and they really exist. Here are some of my favorite books on tropical rain forests and the people who live in them:

Tropical Nature,
Adrian Forsyth and Ken Miyata. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984.

Life Above the Jungle Floor,
Donald Perry. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986.

The Tropical Rain Forest,
Marius Jacobs. New York: Springer Verlag, 1988.

Tales oja Shaman’s Apprentice,
Mark J. Plotkin. New York: Viking Penguin, 1993.

Into the Heart,
Kenneth Good with David Chanoff. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

Wonderful as they are, Earth’s rain forests are disappearing with amazing and tragic speed. For more information on how to help save the rain forests and the people who live in them, contact these organizations:

Rainforest Action Network

450 Sansome Street, Suite 700

San Francisco, CA 94111

Internet: [email protected]

Worldwide Web page: URL-HTTP://WWWRAN.ORG/RAN/

World Wildlife Fund

1250 Twenty-fourth Street, NW

Washington, DC 20037

Cultural Survival 46 Brattle Street Cambridge, MA 02138

An Ace Book/published by arrangement with the author

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Ace edition/November 1995

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