A Woman of the Iron People Read online

  Yohai talked some more. I studied the smith. He or she wore a leather apron and sandals. Nothing more. I got a good look at him or her: broad shoulders, a deep chest, and powerful-looking arms. This was a formidable creature. The fur that covered him or her was reddish brown. An unusual color. Hadn’t there been someone like this at the party on the night I arrived?

  Yohai stopped talking.

  The smith made another gesture, then looked at me. “I am Nia. You will stay here.”

  I made the gesture of assent.

  Yohai said something to me. Was it good-bye? She turned and walked away, moving quickly. In a minute or two she was gone.

  “Sit down,” said Nia. “I—” He or she waved at the fire.

  “I understand.”

  I settled in a corner. Nia added charcoal to the fire, then began to pump the bellows: a large bag, made of leather, with a stick attached to it. Nia raised and lowered the stick. The bag filled and emptied. The fire brightened. After a while Nia picked up tongs and laid the metal in the fire.

  “What is that?” I asked and pointed.

  Nia told me the word for iron, then went back to work. He or she beat the piece of iron till it was flat, then heated it and folded it, then beat it flat again. This was done over and over. I got tired watching.

  Sometime in the afternoon Nia stopped working. He or she sighed and stretched. “Food.”

  “Yes.” I stood up.

  We went to the other building. Inside it was empty except for a pile of furs and a couple of jars. Nia took off the apron, then rummaged among the furs and found a tunic. She put it on.

  “Here.” She pulled bread out of one jar. The other jar was full of a liquid: the pungent narcotic I’d drunk at the party.

  We sat down in the doorway and ate and drank.

  “Where are you from?” asked Nia. Her mouth was full of food. I didn’t understand her, and she had to repeat the question.

  “Not around here,” I answered.

  “I am of the Iron People,” she said. “They are far away. There.” She pointed toward the sun. “You?”

  I waved in the opposite direction, eastward.

  “Ya.” She drank more of the liquid. “These people are hard to understand.” She got up and went to the smithy.

  I stayed where I was until I heard the sound of Nia’s hammer. Then I got out my radio and called Eddie.

  After he heard what had happened, he said, “I ought to pull you out.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t think I’m in any danger, and if I am … Eddie, we all knew how dangerous this might be. We could have sent down robots. We sent down people because we wanted whatever it is that people bring to a situation. The human perspective. We voted to take the risk. It got a clear majority.”

  Eddie was silent.

  “I want to stay. That’s my human perspective. This is the reason I left Earth—not to sit in a room in the goddamn ship. I’m finally able to carry on a conversation, and I’m starting to learn how the natives work iron. You know I’m interested in technology.”

  There was more silence, then a sigh. “I opposed using robots because I thought they’d be more disruptive than people. Okay. Stay. But I think you’re wrong.”

  “About what? The situation?”

  “No. Technology. It’s a typical Western bias. You think a tool is more important than a dream because a tool can be measured and a dream cannot.”

  I made a noncommittal noise.

  “The Greeks are to blame,” he said.

  “What?”

  “They were the ones who decided that reality was mathematical. A crazy idea! An ethical value isn’t like a triangle. A religious vision can’t be reduced to a formula. Yet both are real. Both are important.”

  “You have no fight with me. I don’t know enough about Western philosophy to defend it. And I have to get off the air.”

  “Give me a call tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  At twilight Nia came back. She divided her pile of furs in two. “You sleep there.” She pointed at one pile.

  I woke at sunrise. Nia was up and putting on her apron. “Yohai says you can learn. Come.”

  We went to the smithy. Nia got the fire going, then taught me how to work the bellows. That morning she made the blade for a hoe. The blade was pointed and had two barbs at the back—for weeding, I decided, though it looked as if it could be used as a weapon.

  I had not seen any real weapons. No swords. No pikes. No battleaxes or battle clubs. Nothing that was clearly designed to harm another person.

  That was interesting. Maybe the men—wherever they were—had the tools for killing.

  At noon we stopped and ate. I asked Nia the names of several things: the hoe blade, the hammer, and so on. She frowned and told me. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be a very good teacher. She seemed laconic by nature.

  We went back to work. My arms started to ache, then my back, and finally my legs. The smoke was bothering my eyes, and I wasn’t too crazy about the clouds of steam produced when Nia dropped the glowing blade into a bucket of water. She did this twice. Finally she took the blade outside. She examined it in the sunlight, then made the gesture that meant “yes.”

  “Is it good?” I asked.

  “Yes. I will make another one.”

  Damn her. She did. By the time she was finished, I was exhausted. I went outside and lay on the ground, while she banked the fire and put her tools away. She was meticulously neat in her work. Her house was a shambles, though. The day—I noticed for the first time—was bright and cool. A lovely day, now almost over. I decided not to call Eddie. It was too much effort. Instead I went to bed.

  The next day Nia made wire. I worked the bellows and learned a new phrase. “Pump evenly, you idiot.”

  In the evening we sat in Nia’s house and drank the pungent liquid. We both got a little drunk. Nia began chanting to herself, slapping one hand against her thigh to keep time. Her eyes were half-shut. She looked dreamy.

  I leaned against the wall and watched smoke rise from the fire. This was a change for the better, I decided. Nia was taciturn and short-tempered, but she wasn’t melancholy. Nahusai had spent a lot of time sitting and brooding, and Yohai had almost always been busy. I found that unrestful.

  Nia stopped chanting. I looked at her. She was lying down. A minute later she began to snore. A very restful companion, I told myself.

  Nothing much happened in the next ten days. I helped Nia in the smithy. At night I talked to Eddie.

  “There’s no question about your language,” he said one evening. “It’s pidgin, which explains why it’s so easy to learn.

  “The big continent has a trade language, too—a different one, in no way related to yours. Yvonne and Santha are learning it. Meiling is learning something else. A local language, horrifying in its complexity.”

  “And Gregory?” I asked.

  “Another local language, but less difficult. Oh, an interesting thing happened to Gregory…”

  I waited expectantly. Eddie, I had learned, tended to save the really important information till the end of a conversation.

  “His people found out he was male. They told him to leave. He asked why? The question was a stunner, apparently. They couldn’t believe he was asking it. But in the end they told him. In their society the men live alone, up in the high mountains. They take care of the flocks, and they never come to the houses where the women live. The idea is shameful. Gregory says, he couldn’t think of a polite way to ask about procreation.”

  “Did they throw him out?”

  “No. He told them he didn’t know how to stay alive alone in the mountains. They had a long argument, then decided to let him stay in one of the outbuildings—a barn of some kind. And there he remains.J’y suis, j’y reste, he says.”

  “The men live entirely alone?”

  “According to Gregory, yes. The women say the men are bad-tempered. They don’t lik
e company.”

  “Oh, yeah? It explains what happened to Harrison.”

  “Uh-huh. I warned Derek and Santha. Yvonne is going to talk to her hostess. She’s the ideal informant: a tribal historian who never stops talking.”

  I made the gesture of agreement, then grinned and said, “Yes.”

  “You talk to Nia. Ask her about the men in her society.”

  I said I would, but I didn’t. Nia was never easy to talk with. Often she would stop in the middle of a sentence and stare off into space or else change the subject. I got the impression she had lived alone for a long time. She had forgotten how to carry on a conversation. I concentrated on prying information about grammar out of her. Questions about folkways could wait until later.

  One morning Nia reached into the rafters of her house. She pulled down two axes.

  “Come,” she told me. “We are going to get wood.”

  We spent all morning in the forest. Nia felled a tree, maybe ten meters tall. The trunk was straight. The branches were bare, except for a few shriveled leaves. The tree was obviously dead and had been for some time.

  When it was down, Nia said, “Make it into pieces.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I started chopping. Nia went off. When I paused to rub my hands, I heard her axe a short distance away. She was felling another tree.

  At noon we rested.

  “What is this for?” I asked.

  “Charcoal.” She chewed on a piece of bread. “This wood is dry already. Tomorrow we put it underground. It will burn for nine days, ten days, slowly, underground. Then it will be charcoal.” She got up, stretched, and rubbed her palms along her thighs. “Time to work.”

  I groaned and got my axe.

  A few minutes later the blister on my right hand broke. I put down my axe and looked at the blister. There was blood. I was going to have to spray it. I walked back to Nia’s house and opened my pack.

  Should I wash the wound? I decided not to. It looked clean, and I didn’t know what kind of microbe lived in the streams, especially the streams close to a village. In theory, nothing on this planet could live off me. Our genetic material was too different. No local virusoid could use my DNA for replication. No local bacteroid could use my cells for food. Still and all—

  I got out the bandage can and sprayed on a small thin bandage. It stung. That would be the disinfectant. I sat down and waited for the bandage to dry. It was shiny and dark brown: flesh-colored, according to the label on the can, and made in the South African Confederation.

  “Nia!” a voice cried.

  I looked up. Yohai came out of the forest, walking quickly.

  “Where is Nia?”

  “There.” I pointed. “You can hear the sound of her axe.”

  “Bad news! I must tell her.” Yohai ran off.

  I thought about following her, but decided no, put the can of bandages away and did a little housework. The mess was beginning to drive me crazy. I hung up Nia’s clothes and arranged the furs we slept on in two neat piles. When I was done, I went outside. I couldn’t hear the sound of chopping or anything except the rustle of leaves. The sun blazed overhead, almost as bright as Sol. The air was hot. I sat down in the shadow of a wall and waited. After half an hour Nia and Yohai came.

  “It is time to tell you what is going on,” Nia said.

  “I would like that.”

  They squatted down. Nia laid her two axes on the ground, then scratched her nose. “Nahusai lies in bed. She cannot get up. She cannot eat. Hakht says, you have done this. Hakht says, you must be driven away. If not, Nahusai will die and then other people. You will make songs. The songs will do harm. They will steal breath out of the mouth. They will make the blood in the belly get hard like a stone.” Nia glanced at Yohai. “This is what you said.”

  Yohai made the gesture of agreement. “I think Hakht made the songs. She is the one doing harm. My mother is old. She cannot defend herself. I have no power. The people who are no longer here do not talk to me. I cannot defend my mother.”

  Well, this was pretty clear. Nahusai was ill. Hakht was accusing me of putting a spell on the old lady. I was a witch—according to Hakht, anyway.

  “Why is Hakht doing this?”

  Nia answered me. “She cannot wait. She wants to be the most important woman in the village. She will be, when Nahusai goes…” Nia paused, then patted the ground. “Nahusai taught her. Nahusai said, this is the one who will come after me. But she cannot wait.” Nia frowned. After a moment she said, “There are people like this.”

  I made the gesture of agreement.

  “She tries to put herself in the middle of everything. If Nahusai says ‘yes’ to anything, this woman says ‘no.’ Nahusai made you welcome. Because of this, Hakht says you are a demon.”

  “This is true,” Yohai said.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “I can think of only one thing,” Nia said. “We must wait. If Nahusai gets better, she will make Hakht be quiet. If she does not—” Nia made a gesture I did not recognize.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Who can say?”

  I was going to repeat my question, then I realized Nia had answered it. The gesture—the hand held out, then tilted from side to side—meant “who can say?”

  Nia stood. “Yohai, you go home. Li-sa and I will be careful. Thank you for the warning.”

  Yohai made the gesture of acknowledgment. She left. I waited till she was out of sight, then looked at Nia. “Do you think she is right?”

  “In what way?”

  “Did Hakht make this happen? Did she harm Nahusai?”

  Nia frowned. “I do not know if songs do anything. Or if the people who are no longer here listen to anyone. But a woman like Hakht knows things to put in food. This is a bad situation.” She clenched one hand and hit the wall above me. “I hate this place! I am tired of the dark trees. I am tired of the people. They are always telling stories about one another. They are always making plans to do one another harm.” She bent and grabbed an axe, then walked away. A bit later I heard the sound of the axe. Nia was chopping down another tree.

  I thought of calling Eddie, then decided no. Ten to one, he’d want to pull me back up to the ship. I didn’t think the situation was dangerous, and I wanted to see what would happen next.

  I went to the bank of the stream and did my yoga exercises. Then I meditated, watching the rushing water. At twilight bugs appeared—little ones, like gnats. They didn’t sting, but they got in my nose and eyes. I got up and went back to the house, feeling relaxed. My mind, usually busy and a bit anxious, seemed as empty and clear as the sky above me. I stopped outside the door and looked up. There was a moon above the forest: a narrow sickle, less than a quarter full. It was pale yellow, bright with the light of vanished sun. All at once I was full of an intense joy. At any moment things were going to make sense. I would see the pattern in—or beyond—observable phenomena. I would understand the mystery of life, the secret of the universe.

  Then the feeling was gone. The moon was only a moon. I shrugged. Once again I hadn’t gotten through. To what, anyway? I wasn’t really sure these moments of almost revelation meant anything.

  I went inside and found Nia making dinner: a thin gruel with berries mixed in. Her movements were abrupt, and her body looked tense. She was still angry. I decided to keep quiet. We ate and went to sleep.

  I woke, hearing a noise: a soft tum-ta-tum. It came from outside. A drum.

  “Nia?” I called.

  She scrambled out of bed. A moment later she was at the door, pulling it open. Gray light shone in. Nia stood in the doorway. She was naked, and she held an axe.

  I got up and moved in back of her.

  It was a little before sunrise. There was light in the east. In the clearing in front of the house five torches burned. They looked impressive, streaming in the wind, but they didn’t do much in the way of illumination. I saw dark shapes and knew they had to be people. But I didn’t kno
w who they were or even how many stood there. Twenty-five? Thirty? Maybe more.

  Nia muttered something and stepped through the door. I followed. A person came toward us. She held a rattle, and she kept it moving continuously. It made a noise like a rattlesnake gone nuts.

  “Stop that noise,” Nia said. She sounded angry.

  “Very well.” The noise stopped. “We have come for the demon.” I recognized the voice. Loud, harsh, and arrogant, it belonged to Hakht.

  Nia glanced around. “What does this mean? Is Nahusai dead?”

  “She died last night. I was in my house, making a song to drive away bad luck. I heard Yohai shout. I knew the old woman was gone.”

  “And Yohai?” Nia asked. “Is Yohai here?”

  The sky was getting brighter. I saw the gesture that the sorceress made. It meant “no.”

  “There are ceremonies that must be performed. She has begun them.” Hakht raised her voice. She sounded triumphant. “She will not help you. I told her, she has caused bad luck. She has caused anger among the people who are no longer here. I have said, this must stop. She listened, o woman of the Iron People. She will do what I say. Now—” Hakht raised a hand and pointed. “The demon. Give her to me.”

  “No.”

  Hakht took a step forward. Nia lifted up the axe. “Listen to me, sorceress. I have no respect for you. I do not fear your power.” Nia paused. Usually her shoulders were rounded. But now she drew herself upright. “All of you, listen! I have done something that few women ever do. I have killed a person.”

  The villagers shifted around a little. No one spoke.

  “West of here, on the plain, are the bones of a person who made me angry. I did not even bury him.” She glanced around. “I am willing to do this again.”

  Hakht opened her mouth.

  “Be quiet! Let me finish!”

  Hakht closed her mouth. She was frowning.

  Nia went on. “I do not want to stay here. I am tired of the darkness under the trees. I want to see the sky again. I will go and take the demon with me. There will be no one left to stand up to you, Hakht. You can be happy then.” The contempt in her voice was obvious. “Give me one day, o sorceress. Go away and come back tomorrow morning. I will be gone with the demon, and no one will be hurt.”