A Woman of the Iron People Read online

  This sounded bad. Would Anasu be willing to talk with her? She didn’t know.

  The time for mating ended. Nia gave Enshi her gifts. He looked uncomfortable. “The winter was hard. I lost most of my parting gifts. First a killer of the forest found my cache and tore it apart. Then I lost most of the rest this spring while crossing a river.

  “But I make poems. Can I give them to you?”

  “Yes.”

  He recited nine or ten. Afterward she remembered only one. It was about a tree he had seen a few days before.

  “All the branches were bare, and the bark was peeling off. Nonetheless, there were shoots all around the tree, growing from the base of it. They were as long as my arm. They bore leaves and flowers. I thought this must be significant. And I made a poem. It goes:

  “If you don’t give up,

  old tree—

  “Then I won’t

  either.”

  “That one I like,” Nia said.

  He recited it again. “Is that enough? Have we made a fair exchange?”

  “Where is Anasu?”

  “Oh, yes. Follow the trail until it forks. Then go south. You will come to a big stone with markings on it. The stone is magical, and no one ever claims that it is in his territory. People go there to exchange gifts. Wait by the stone. If Anasu is anywhere around, he will come.”

  “Thank you. We’ve made a fair exchange.”

  They said good-bye. Nia saddled her bowhorn, then mounted and rode away. The day was sunny. A light wind blew. Birds whistled. She felt content.

  At twilight she came to the stone. It was tall and narrow with lines cut into it. She could barely make them out; and she didn’t know what they meant. Had people done this? No one she knew cut lines in stone.

  She tethered her bowhorn and made a fire. The night was cloudless. She lay on her back. Above her the Great Moon rose. It was three-quarters full. She watched it for a while, then went to sleep.

  In the morning she looked at the stone. The lines represented animals: bowhorns, mostly. But there was another animal that she didn’t recognize. It had a thick body and short horns. What was it? Nia scratched her head. There were hunters on the stone: men with bows. They made a circle around the animals. Off to one side was a man by himself. He was bigger than the others, and he had horns. They were short, like the horns on the unfamiliar animal. Who was he? A spirit of some kind, apparently. But no spirit she knew. The Master of the Herds had long curved horns. The Sky Spirit was hornless. She scratched her head again. Then she made breakfast.

  At noon Anasu appeared. He rode down the trail into the clearing where the stone was. He reined his bowhorn.

  Nia stood up. “Brother!”

  He was bigger than she remembered and very broad through the chest. His fur was coarse and dark. He wore a red kilt, a wide belt, high boots, a knife with a silver pommel. “Nia?” he said after a moment. He stared at her. “You are past the lust.” His voice sounded harsh and disappointed. “Someone else got to you.”

  “What kind of thing is that to say? Can men think of nothing except sex?”

  He laughed. It was not entirely a friendly sound. “This time of year I think of little else. I think—if I were brave, I’d go north. Then I think, I’m not old enough to confront those men. What are you doing here?”

  She made the gesture of uncertainty.

  “You have never known your own mind.” He dismounted. “Do you want salt? I have it.”

  “No. I want to talk. How are you?” She took a step toward him.

  He held up a hand. “Stay where you are. I’m not used to people.”

  She stopped.

  After a moment Anasu said, “I am fine. Is there nothing you want to give me in exchange for salt?”

  She took off her belt. “Do you want this? I made the buckle. It’s gold mixed with silver.”

  He hesitated. “All right.” He turned toward his saddlebag.

  “I don’t want salt. I want a conversation.”

  He turned back and stared at her. “Why?”

  “Brother, when I think of you, I feel lonely.”

  Anasu scratched the back of his neck. Then he made the gesture that meant “so be it” or “these things happen.”

  “Is there no way we can talk?”

  For a long while he was silent. She waited. At last he said, “I do not think that what you want is words. I could give you words, though it would not be easy. I’m no longer used to talking much or saying what is on my mind. But I think you want something else. I think you are like the woman in the old story, whose children turned into birds. She left her tent and wandered on the plain, trying to find them. But she never did; and in the end she died and became a spirit—a bad one, a hungry one.” He paused and frowned.

  Nia opened her mouth.

  He held up his hand. “No. Wait. I want to follow the track of my own thought.” She waited. At last he said, “I think you want something that is gone.”

  “No.”

  “I know you, sister. I think I am right. In any case, I don’t want to talk anymore.” He mounted his bowhorn. “Whatever you are trying to do, I don’t want to be a part of it.” He made the gesture of farewell, then turned his animal and rode away.

  Nia doubled one hand into a fist and hit the magic stone. Aiya! How that hurt! She groaned, opened her hand, and felt it. As far as she could tell, no bones were broken. But the skin was scraped along the side of her hand where there was no fur. She licked the scrape, then sat down and rocked and groaned. It did no good. Her hand kept hurting and grief stayed in her, as solid as a stone.

  Toward evening she got up and built a fire. All night she sat watching the flames and thinking about her childhood.

  In the morning she put out the fire and saddled her bowhorn. There was no point in staying. Anasu wouldn’t come back. He had always been stubborn. She rode north. The sky was cloudy. A cold wind blew. Flower petals drifted down onto the trail. They were yellow or greenish white.

  In the afternoon it began to rain. She stopped and made camp under an overhang. She went to sleep early. Sometime in the night she woke.

  Her fire was still burning. On the other side of it was Enshi. He was plucking a bird.

  She lifted her head. He made the gesture of greeting, then held up the bird. It was large and fat.

  “I found it on a nest. I have the eggs, if they haven’t broken. How was Anasu?”

  “He wouldn’t talk to me. What are you doing here?”

  “You’re in my territory; and I thought you might be hungry. Also, I thought I would like to talk some more.”

  “Why are you so different from other men?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked embarrassed for a moment. Then he went back to plucking the bird.

  Nia went to sleep.

  In the morning they cooked the bird with its own eggs stuffed inside it. They ate, then Nia got ready to go.

  “Can I go with you?” Enshi asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to visit my mother. I thought you could show me the way to the village.”

  “But the old women will curse you.”

  “Not if you tell me where my mother’s tent is, and I sneak in at night. The old women will never know.”

  “This is wrong.”

  “Maybe. But I have lost all my parting gifts. I won’t last through another winter with what I have. I intend to live, if I possibly can. And I don’t care if I do a few things that are shameful. Who knows what the spirits of the dead feel? I’d sooner be alive and a little embarrassed.”

  Nia looked at him a moment. He was certainly thin, and his tunic was very ragged. She rubbed her hand, which still hurt. Then she sighed. “All right. I’ll help you. I expect I’m going to regret this, though.”

  Enshi saddled his bowhorn. They rode north together.

  Lixia

  Eight of us were set down, each one alone: three on the big continent, which sprawled around the south pole of the
planet, many-fissured and many-lobed. The center of the continent was ice. The coasts were green, blue-green, and yellow: prairie and forest and desert, according to the people who analyzed the holograms.

  Another four went to the small continent, which lay north of the equator. It had no ice worth mentioning and almost no desert, but plenty of vegetation. There were mountains: a range in the west along the coast and other lesser ranges in the east and south. Nothing impressive, nothing like the Rockies or the Himalayas. But two of the ranges were volcanic, according to the planetologists. One was active. The other might be.

  The final person was set down on one of the many islands in the archipelago that stretched in a curve from the big continent past the equator, almost reaching the little continent.

  Other islands dotted the rest of the planet-ocean. They were tiny and widely spaced. Interesting to the biologists, of course. There is nothing like an island for studying evolution. But not, we decided, the place for us to begin.

  I went to the northeast coast of the northern continent. I was equipped with a denim jacket and a light cotton shirt. My boots were plastic, tough and flexible. In my right forearm, under the skin, was a row of capsules that provided me with vitamins not available on this planet. In my gut were five new kinds of bacteria, designed to break down the local proteins, turning them into amino acids that I could digest.

  I had a pack that contained a radio, a medical kit, a poncho, another shirt—exactly like the first one—and a change of underwear. One big compartment was full of trinkets. The trinkets were made from native materials. We didn’t want to introduce anything alien except ourselves.

  Finally, I had a medallion on a gray metal chain. The medallion was metal, flat and dark, inset with pieces of glass. It was an AV recorder and almost indestructible, I was told. No matter what happened to me, it would survive.

  I landed on a beach, next to a row of dunes. They were high and bare, orange-pink in color.

  The boat that had brought me turned and started back toward the plane. I went inland, scrambling up a dune. When I reached the top, I heard a roar and glanced around. The plane was moving across the water. Spray flew up, then smoke. It was in the air. Wings shone in the sunlight. The plane kept rising. After a minute or two it was gone.

  I looked at the empty sky and felt suddenly very lonely. Then I started down the far side of the dune.

  At the bottom I found a trail. It wasn’t much to look at. Narrow and sandy, it wound away from the dunes toward a stand of trees.

  Had it been made by people? By some kind of intelligent life? We knew the planet was inhabited. Satellite pictures had shown villages and herds whose migrations—the zoologists had told us—were too orderly to be entirely natural.

  In any case, I was faced with a trail. I decided to follow it. It led me through the trees and into hills. Often the tops of the hills were bare except for patches of a plant that looked something like tall yellow grass. The leaves or blades were stiff and had saw-tooth edges. It wasn’t a pleasant-looking organism. Was this planet friendly?

  In the hollows between the hills there were more trees. They were small and twisted with little dark leaves. Thorns stuck out of the trunks. The thorns were long and narrow, needlelike. Another unpleasant-looking organism. I began to remember horrifying science fiction stories. Why had I read that stuff? The senior members of my family had warned me: no good would come of science fiction.

  There was no point in getting nervous, nor in thinking about the past. I was in a new place, and I had no good idea of what it was like. My job—for the time being—was observation. Later, when I had some information, I could think and remember and compare.

  After a kilometer or so I came to an artifact. It was in a hollow at the center of a clearing. The slopes around it were covered with trees. I stopped. The thing was three meters high and made of long narrow pieces of wood. It reminded me of a jungle gym or else of the ritual structures made by the aborigines of southern California. I’d spent time with them. Between my breasts and on my upper arms were the scars of their initiation ceremony. I had never been able to figure out why I had gone through with it. But I kept the scars. I had earned them, and they reminded me—every time I took a shower—not to get too involved with other people’s value systems.

  I looked the structure over. Now I saw the remains of a fire underneath it. Three gray things hung from one of the lower bars. I knelt and examined them. Fish or something a lot like fish. I rocked back on my heels and felt satisfied. A fish-smoking rack. Someone intelligent had made it. I was the first Earth person to see an alien artifact close up—on this planet, anyway, and as far as I knew.

  I stayed where I was for several minutes, contemplating the pieces of wood. They were knobby and twisted. Was there no better wood in the area? I glanced around. All the trees in sight had twisted branches. The structure was tied together with strips of fiber. I broke off a piece and rolled it between my fingers. It felt like some kind of vegetable product. Maybe bark.

  Something made a noise in back of me. I got up slowly and turned, holding my hands out, the palms forward. The gesture meant “You see? I carry no weapons.”

  Something stood at the edge of the clearing, maybe twenty meters away. A biped. It was about my height, stocky and covered with fur. The fur was dark brown, almost black. The creature had two arms, a head, and a face. I was too far away to make out the features. It or he or she wore a kilt and carried—in one hand—a knife.

  “I am extremely peaceful.” I kept my hands out and my voice low and even. “I mean no harm.”

  The creature said something, which I, of course, could not understand. But I didn’t like the tone. It was loud and had a rasping quality.

  “I mean no harm.”

  The creature raised the knife and took a step forward. I stepped back.

  “Can’t we discuss this?” I concentrated on keeping my tone soft and placating. I didn’t meet the creature’s eyes. In many species, including my own, a direct stare was a challenge.

  The creature took another step toward me. I decided to leave.

  “Okay. You win. Good-bye.”

  I backed across the clearing. The creature followed me halfway, then stopped beside the rack. When I reached the edge of the clearing, I stopped.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  The creature raised the knife higher and shouted something. I turned and walked quickly away. The skin on my back was prickling. I kept imagining a knife blade going in.

  When I reached the top of the next hill, I looked back. The trail was empty. Nothing was following me.

  Okay. What next?

  Maybe the creature I met was a hermit. Surely there ought to be other members of the species who were friendly or curious.

  I walked on, still going inland. I began to notice noises: a low buzz that came, I imagined, from pseudo-insects hidden in the trees. Things like birds flew from branch to branch. When they were at rest, they moaned or whistled. I realized, for the first time, that the day was bright and mild. A light wind blew. Alto-cumuli moved across the sky, which was deep blue-green. The air smelled of salt water.

  I thought about my childhood in the Free State of Hawaii, on the island of Kauai. I had lived in a big house, five minutes from the ocean. Nine parents had cared for me, and there had been a dozen siblings to play with. It should have been a happy time. I remembered sunlight, flowers, kind faces, a white beach, blue water, and no undertow. But I had been a sullen kid, always anxious to get away.

  By afternoon I was walking through a boggy forest. Here the trees were tall and straight. Their dark foliage shut out sunlight. The air was still and cool and had a new aroma: the scent of the forest. It was strong and distinctive and like nothing I had ever smelled before.

  I thought I’d recognize it if I ever smelled it again, though I was not entirely positive of this. It was a lot easier to remember something if it had a name and a description. For the time being, I would call the aroma “dif
ferent” and “pleasant.”

  Late in the afternoon I came to a village. First I smelled wood smoke, then saw houses ahead of me among the trees. I couldn’t see them clearly. The forest was too full of shadows. Here and there firelight shone through a doorway or a window.

  I stopped and considered what to do. There was no point in sneaking around. If they caught me spying, I’d be in real trouble. The best thing—the thing I had done in southern California and New Jersey—was to walk right in.

  The technique hadn’t worked in New Jersey, of course. The people there had tried to sacrifice me to their god, the Destroyer of Cities. I decided not to think about that incident. I spent another minute or two gathering courage. Then I entered the village.

  At the edge were small huts, built of wood. They were widely scattered, as if the people who lived in them were none too friendly. Farther in, the buildings were large and long, set close together. Children, naked except for their fur, ran in the streets. A trio saw me, stopped and stared, their mouths open. They were close enough so I could see their faces: round and flat and covered with fur. Each one had a mouth, a nose, and a pair of yellow eyes.

  “Hello,” I said gently.

  The children screamed and ran.

  I went on, between the houses. Several times I passed large people. Adults. They stared at me, but said nothing. They made no threatening gestures.

  This was hopeful. I came to an empty place that seemed to be more or less at the center of the village. A square. I hunkered down and waited. By this time the sun was gone. The sky was darkening. People gathered, talking softly, at the edges of the square. I was sweating. If I’d made a mistake, if they were unfriendly, I was going to die here.

  Someone walked toward me: a tall, thin person. He or she wore a robe and many necklaces. Someone important. A shaman or a chief.

  I was, of course, using labels from Earth.

  I stood up slowly, then held out my hands. “I come in peace.”