Children of God

10 Pon River, Central Province, Inbrokar 2046, Earth-Relative

THE HEAT BROKE ON THE THIRD DAY SOUTH WITH A STORM THAT drenched the passengers on the river barge and sent sheetfloods a handsbreadth deep across the flats. Accustomed to the ways of the village Runa, Supaari VaGayjur stripped off his sodden city robes and, for the balance of the trip, went nearly as naked as his practical companions did. With his clothes, he stripped away the stink of Inbrokar, and felt real again.

It’s over, Supaari thought, and there was no regret in him.

He had been close enough to his life’s ambition to see what he was buying and to reckon the cost of living it out, snared in the twisted skein of aristocratic alliances, hatreds and resentments. With a merchant’s certainty, he cut his losses, slicing through the tangle with a single word: "leave." So Supaari VaGayjur had walked away from the Kitheri compound without bothering to tell anyone he was going. He took only what was of value to him and to no one else—the child, who was at that moment being dangled over the edge of the barge, piss flying into the wake.

Paquarin had agreed to make the trip south with him as far as Kirabai, and she laughed now, swooping the baby through the water to clean her. She’ll sleep now, he thought, smiling as the look of outraged startlement on the howling infant’s face was replaced with drowsy contentment in Paquarin’s lap, the Runao’s fine hands stroking and soothing her.

Leaning against a transport basket of sweetleaf, drowsy himself, he watched the riverbanks slide by and wondered idly why the Jana’ata insisted on clothing bodies protected by dense coats of hair. Anne Edwards had asked him that once and he hadn’t had a good answer for her, except to observe that the Jana’ata generally preferred elaborate to plain. Almost dozing as he dried in the breeze, it came to him that the purpose of clothing was neither protection nor decoration but distinction—to mark off military first from bureaucratic second and both of those from academic or commercial third, to keep everyone in his proper position so that greetings were correctly measured and deference appropriately apportioned.

And to put distance between the rulers and the ruled, he realized, so that no Jana’ata would be mistaken for a Runa domestic! Eyes closed, he smiled to himself, pleased to answer Ha’an at last.

Until the extraordinarily polymorphic foreigners pointed it out to him, Supaari himself had never wondered about the uncanny similarity between Jana’ata and Runa. Hadn’t even noticed it, really—one might as well ask why rain is the same color as water—but it intrigued the foreigners. Once, while in residence with Supaari in Gayjur, Sandoz had suggested that in ancient times, the resemblance between the two species had been less, but the Runa had somehow caused the Jana’ata to become more like themselves. Predator mimicry, Sandoz called it. Supaari had been greatly offended by the notion that the most successful Jana’ata hunters preying on Runa herds might have been those who looked and smelled most like Runa — who could approach the herds without alarming them.

"Such hunters would be healthier and more likely to find a mate," Sandoz said. "Their children would be better fed and have more children. Over time, the resemblance to Runa would be more noticeable, more frequent among Jana’ata."

"Sandoz, that is foolishness," Supaari had told him. "We breed them, they don’t breed us! More likely our ancestors ate the ugly ones, which left only the beautiful Runa—who looked like Jana’ata!"

Now Supaari admitted to himself that there might be some truth in what Sandoz had suggested. "We tamed the Jana’ata," his Runa secretary Awijan had told him once. At the time, Supaari had dismissed the remark as irony, but Jana’ata babies were raised by Runa nurses, and it was a sort of taming…

He slept then and, in his dream, stood at the entrance to a cave. In the way of dreams, he knew somehow that the passage before him led to caverns. He took a single step forward but lost his way immediately, and became more and more lost—and woke to the nuptial bellows of white-necked cranil lumbering in the shallows. Disturbed and anxious, he scrambled to his feet, and tried to shake off the unease by walking around the pilothouse to watch the animals roll together in titanic earnest, and to wish them good fortune, whatever that might be for cranil. When he looked back toward his daughter, sleeping curled next to Paquarin, he thought, I have taken a step into the cave, and I am carrying the child with me.

Not "the child." My child. My daughter, he thought.

There was no one to discuss her naming with. By custom, a first daughter would take an unused name from among the dead of the dam’s lineage. Supaari had no wish to commemorate anyone from Jholaa’s family, so he tried to remember names of his own mother’s ancestors, and realized with dismay that he didn’t know any. A third who, it was presumed, would never breed, Supaari had not been told the names of the old ones; or, if he had been told, he did not remember any. Having no fixed notion of what he would do next, beyond leaving Inbrokar with his child alive and intact, Supaari had decided to go home to Kirabai. He would ask his mother to choose a name, and hoped that his request would please her.

Filling his lungs with air that carried nothing of cities, he thought, Everything is different now.

And yet, the scents of home were the same. The horizon was blurred with redbush pollen, visible in the slanting light of second sundown—a haze of fragrance rising off the ground. Where the riverland flattened, and the water widened and slowed, lazy winds brought the familiar medicinal vapor of grass digested: the strangely clean smell of piyanot dung. And there was the peppery tang of green melfruit a few days before ripening, and the pungent smokiness of datinsa past its peak. All that welcomed him and his daughter, and he slept on deck that night, dreamless and content.

He roused on the fourth day south to a stirring among the passengers as the barge approached the Kirabai bridge; many would stop here overnight to trade. Supaari stood and told Paquarin to gather up their baggage and get ready to disembark, and began to brush himself down clumsily. Without his asking, a Runa trader stepped forward to join Paquarin in unpacking Supaari’s best clothes and, chatting, helped with his laces and the overrobe buckles. Glad to be done with the forced hauteur of Inbrokar, Supaari thanked them both.

A small, strong excitement rose in him — optimism, pent-up energy, a gladness to be home. He turned to Paquarin and held out his own arms for the baby, careless of his finery. "Look, child," he said, as the barge passed under graceless limestone arches. "The keystone bears the emblem of your ninth-generation beforefather, who fought noticeably well in the second Pon tributary campaign. His descendants have held Kirabai since, as birthright." Her eyes widened, but only because the barge had moved from sunlight to the shadow beneath the bridge. Supaari lifted her to a shoulder and breathed in the musty infant sweetness of her. "I tell you truly, little one, we have to go back that far to find someone to be proud of," he whispered wryly. "We are hostelers, providing lodging four nights south of Inbrokar and three nights north of the seacoast. In return, we’re due a stipend from the government, and one part in twelve of any trade carried out by VaKirabai Runa. Your father’s family, I am afraid, is not illustrious."

But we don’t murder children with deceit, he thought as the barge reemerged into the light.

"We will stop here only until the second dawn tomorrow, lord," the Runa barge owner called to him from the pilothouse. "Will you come with us downriver?"

"No," Supaari said, elated by the sight and smell and sound of Kirabai. "We are home."

Outwardly serene, he handed the baby back to Paquarin as the barge was poled to a halt, watching as huge braided tie lines were thrown over the pilings. He searched faces and tasted windborne scents among the carriers on the dock but found no kin to people he’d known as a boy, so he pressed past the Runa crowd declaring cargo and paying dock fees, and hired a Runao at random for the baggage, even though there was not much baggage and he did not have a great deal to spend on pride. He had been driven from Kirabai with almost nothing, but he’d built a trading company that generated money as the plains breed grass; he had known wealth and had thought sometimes, in the dark hours when sleep would not come, of returning home in luxury and triumph. Instead, he had surrendered all his assets to the state treasury when he took his place as Founder. Now he was arriving on a freight barge no better than the one he’d left on, with nothing to show for his striving but a nameless baby and six hundred bahli—all he had after selling his jewelry at the Inbrokar dock to hire Paquarin and buy her passage on the barge. So he had dressed in his best and hired a bearer, hoping to make a good first impression, and wished his claws were longer.

The child is worth the price, he thought, mercantile and unashamed. I can make money again.

The hostelry was visible from the docks, squatting astride an elongated hill that rose above the high-water mark of the river. Yesterday’s storm had been stronger here than upriver and, as Supaari led his little entourage through the main gate and beyond the central plaza, up a mesh of narrow walkways lined by the limestone houses of the VaKirabai Runa, they had to step over roof tiles and broken hlari branches. The radio tower had blown over and, in the grove near the bridge, several big marhlar had tumbled into the river, their roots pulled loose from the banks. But storm damage aside, the town of Kirabai itself seemed almost untouched by the years of his absence…

Of course, he was used to the rushing energy of Gayjur and the cramped intrigue of Inbrokar—it was natural that Kirabai seemed lethargic to him. Still, this was a bridgehead for the eastern rakar fields, a reasonably important trading center for inland harvesters. And there were the Runa weaving cooperatives, and the khaliat factories. There is a lot I can do here, Supaari thought, refusing to be discouraged.

The doorkeeper at the hostelry compound was new, but the gate itself was not, and Supaari noted with some dismay that it still needed the upper hinge repaired. "Find your master!" he cried to the Runa porter, smiling in anticipation of his parents’ surprise. "Tell him he has visitors from Inbrokar!"

Without a word, the Runao left them standing in the courtyard. A long silence ensued and when Paquarin looked at him inquiringly, Supaari dropped his tail in a gesture of ignorance. After a time, he called out a greeting and listened for voices, hoping to hear someone familiar. No one answered. Puzzled, Supaari began to look around. There was plenty of room for travelers’ equipage in the courtyard, but evidently no one was in residence. Normal for the season, of course. Most Jana’ata traveled in early Fra’an before the heat set in—

"I won’t have a bastard within my walls, so if that’s what you want, you can leave now."

He whirled, too startled by his mother’s voice to be wounded by her words.

"People send anonymous letters to Inbrokar about us, but my sons are useless," the old woman snarled, glaring at the baby, who was awake now and making small sounds as she rooted near Paquarin’s neck. "I told them, Take the case to the Prefect! But the Gran’jori lineage has poisoned that bait. May as well howl at the rain. There’s never any money for repairs. The Gran’jori want Kirabai and they’re welcome to it—this place is nothing but bones. I was born to better, I can tell you! The Prefect pretends to settle things, but it suits him to have us claw at one another’s guts. Don’t stand there, idiot! Feed that brat or I’ll have your ear," she snapped at Paquarin, as the baby began to keen. "The Prefect is supposed to investigate, but he believes what those scavengers upriver say, so where’s the meat in trying? Nothing but bones…. My brother could have done something with this place! I was born to better, you know. A decent man would have left me in my sire’s compound, but not your father!"

Speechless, Supaari followed his mother into the shade of the gallery along the riverward wall of the house, where the breeze was best. He asked her to sit, but she ignored him, sweeping from one end of the arcade to the other, veil askew, skirts gathering a cargo of dust and leaves and fallen hlari blossoms. Paquarin settled into a corner with the baby and got out the last of the pureed meat, methodically dipping a delicate finger into the paste and holding it to the child’s lips. Supaari took a place on the cushions near the cool stone of the wall and watched his mother, grayed and shrunken, as she paced and ranted.

At last, his father appeared, coming around the back of the pumphouse with a Runa do-all, whom he dismissed with a grunt. "Nobody writes letters about us, wife. And the Prefect has better things to do than persecute hostelers." Enrai sighed, hardly glancing at Supaari and ignoring the baby entirely. "Go on, get back into the house where you belong, y’shameless old bitch. And send that girl out with some meat. I’m famished."

He collapsed onto a cushion at some distance from Supaari and stared out at the river, gleaming like gold foil in the brazen light of three suns. It was quiet, now that the old woman had gone into the house. "Your brothers are out butchering," Enrai said after a time. "These new Runa are worthless. I don’t know how the Prefect expects us to train a whole new staff at once. The VaInbrokari rule, but they’re as bad as your mother, dreaming up conspiracy and plots and tailless monsters with tiny eyes." He half-turned toward the kitchen and shouted again for meat before muttering, "She was a lovely thing once. You brats ruined her."

Waiting to be fed, the hosteler passed the time as his wife had, with a flow of democratic rancor that took in the living and the dead, the near and the distant, the known and the unknown alike. When Supaari’s elder brothers appeared, they joined in with a complicated tale of feuds and rivalries, as intense as they were petty. In the midst of it all, an adolescent Runao appeared with a platter of meat, holding it at arm’s length, moving sideways so it remained downwind.

Only Supaari looked at her. A VaKashani villager, he realized, but couldn’t quite recall her family. He rose and took the platter from the girl, murmuring a greeting in Ruanja. She was about to speak when Enrai sneered, "If that’s what you’ve learned in the city, Supaari, you can leave it off here. We don’t coddle Runa in Kirabai." So she sank in an awkward curtsy, the movement still new to her, and hurried back into the kitchen.

Rigid, Supaari stood silently for a moment, then placed the platter on the low table as his brothers laughed. He returned to his place on the cushions, and it was a long while before his eldest brother noticed that Supaari had not eaten. "You can have a little of this," Laalraj said, waving the back of his hand toward the meal. But he added, "There’s nothing extra here. Look around you."

"When will you be leaving?" his brother Vijar asked, chewing.

"Tomorrow at second dawn," Supaari said, and went to see that Paquarin had been settled in with the kitchen help.

HE SPENT THE ENDLESS TIME BETWEEN FIRST AND SECOND SUNDOWN with his brothers and a few neighbors summoned by runners. No one seemed interested in Gayjur or Inbrokar, nor did anyone ask why Supaari was in Kirabai or how he came to be traveling with an infant. Their conversation was salted with shouted demands for food from frightened, half-trained Runa, and was composed primarily of an exhaustive discussion of how a few judicious assassinations might shift genealogical and political status throughout the Pon drainage. Insufficiently to break the jam at the level of Kirabai was the consensus, reached with the spiritless resignation of men who knew themselves trapped by birth and history.

"The Triple Alliance has been a mistake from the start," a neighbor growled, head sunken on his chest. "We need combat like Runa need good fodder. We’ve all degenerated, waiting out these years. Idleness and decay…"

Leave, Supaari wanted to shout. Get out. Track a different scent.

But they could no more leave Kirabai than Runa could sing. It wasn’t in them — or maybe it was, but they were too crippled by custom to try. Inheritance was all that counted, even when all the ancestors bequeathed was a list of whom to hate and whom to blame for every stroke of ill fortune in the past twelve generations. No fault is ever found within, Supaari thought, listening to them. None among us is dull or inept or shiftless. We are all powerful and triumphant, but for the ones above us.

The chants began as the light of second sundown burned away, voices raised in ancient harmonies as the neighbors left for home and his brothers prepared to sleep. Supaari’s earliest memories were of hearing these songs at sunset, chest tight, his throat gripped by silence. The truest beauty he had known as the founder of a new lineage was joining the Inbrokar choirs at sunset; it was a joy surpassing even the announcement of Jholaa’s pregnancy.

He now held legal right to take the part of Eldest, but on this evening, Supaari was as silent as the Runa domestics cowering in the kitchen. I will sing again, he promised himself. Not here, not among these benighted, spiteful fools. But somewhere, I will sing again.

HE BOARDED THE BARGE THE NEXT MORNING LIKE A MAN SNEAKING OUT of a city on the rumor of plague: fortunate to escape, but full of contemptuous pity for those left behind. Paquarin, distressed by the hostility around her, had begged him not to make her go further, so he’d endorsed her travel permit and left her with enough money to stay in Kirabai until the next northbound barge went by. With his last three hundred bahli, he bought the VaKashani Runao’s labor from Enrai, promising the girl that he’d return her to Kashan if she’d take care of the baby for him until he found a permanent nursemaid.

"This one is called Kinsa, lord," she reminded Supaari after a few quiet hours on the barge, touching both hands to her forehead. "If it is pleasing to you, lord, may this useless one know the baby’s name?"

Why am I so different? he had been thinking, blunted hands resting on the rail as he watched the river. All the world thinks one way and I think another. Who am I to judge it wrong? At the girl’s words, he turned. "Kinsa—of course! Hartat’s daughter." Her scent had changed since he’d met her last. "Sipaj, Kinsa," he said, "you’ve grown."

She brightened at the sound of her own language, and her natural cheerfulness reasserted itself. After all, Supaari VaGayjur was known to her from birth, had traded with her village for years; she trusted him. Lucky child, he thought for one wistful moment. Your people will be happy to touch you again.

"Sipaj, Supaari, what shall we call this little one?" Kinsa pressed.

Not knowing what to answer, he held out his arms and, unslinging the baby from her back, Kinsa handed the child to him. He smiled. Kinsa had been among the Jana’ata for so short a time, it still seemed normal for a father to carry his own infant. Holding the baby to his chest as shamelessly as a male Runao, Supaari began to walk the perimeter of the barge.

I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, he told his daughter with his heart. I don’t know what life I’m making for us. I don’t know where we will live or whom you can marry. I don’t even know what to call you.

Leaning back against a railing, he settled the child into the crook of his arm. For a time, his eyes left his daughter’s face and came to rest on the far south, where river mist met rain, where there was no certain difference between sky and water, and felt again the dream’s sensation of wandering. I am a foreigner in my own country, he thought, and so is my daughter.

Like Ha’an! he thought then, for of all the foreigners, Anne Edwards was most vivid to him. In K’San, the sound was good: Ha’anala. "Her name shall be Ha’anala," he said aloud. And he blessed his child: May you be like Ha’an, who was a foreigner here but who had no fear.

He was pleased with the name, happy to have the matter settled. The world seemed full of possibilities as he watched the riverbanks move past. He had contacts, knowledge. I won’t sell to the Reshtar again, he thought, wanting nothing more to do with Hlavin Kitheri—no matter how well he paid. He remembered that he’d once considered opening a new office in Agardi. Yes, he thought. I’ll try Agardi next. There are different cities. There can be new names.

And later on, quietly, so as not to alarm Kinsa or the others, he did what no Jana’ata father had ever done before: he sang the evening chant to his daughter. To Ha’anala.