The Color of Distance

Chapter 10

Juna tilted her head from side to side, stretching out the kinks in her neck as she tried to focus on what the villagers were saying. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally, after her farewell to the Kotani Maru, but she had to pay attention. Her life might depend on this conversation.

The villagers were discussing what should be done about the destroyed section of forest. Anito had explained to her that the villagers were Tfery angry and wanted to punish her for the forest’s destruction. Ukato-nen would listen and decide what should be done.

Anito told her that the villagers were describing in detail what they had lost, and suggesting suitable punishments. Most wanted to keep Juna as some kind of slave, but a few of the suggestions involved pain, injury, and even death.

At last the villagers were done speaking.

Ukatonen looked at her, ears raised. “You speak now?” he asked.

Juna stood, feeling very alone. “I understand your anger. I apologize for my people. We came to learn about the things living here. We gathered plants and animals and looked at them to see what we could learn. We afraid that we might make the forest sick, so when we go we burned the forest to kill any sickness. If we had known you were here, we not do. We look for people, but we not find you. When my people come back, we try to make right what we hurt. It easier if I am alive to help you talk to my people.” Her arguments seemed very insubstantial in the face of their anger. She wished she knew more skin speech.

The aliens regarded her with their cold, inhuman eyes, skins still and neutral, watching her speak. If she thought that her arguments sounded inadequate and silly, what were they thinking?

Ukatonen waited till she was done. He turned to the assembled villagers. “What do you say to that?”

The stocky alien that Juna thought was the village chief moved to the small mound that the villagers spoke from. It glared at her, flushing red with anger.

“How many anang till your people come?” the chief asked.

Juna looked at Anito. “I don’t understand. What is anangl”

Anito looked at Ukatonen, a flicker of lavender uncertainty rippling over her skin. “Anang is time. There are three seasons per anang.”

Juna frowned. Anang seemed to be their word for year. She consulted her computer, which agreed with her.

“My people return in five to seven anang,” Juna told the alien.

The chief elder said something, which Anito translated. “Too long to wait. Need help now.”

“I help until my people return,” Juna offered.

Anito laid a hand on Juna. “No. I need to go back to Narmolom. She comes with me.”

The chief spoke rapidly to Ukatonen in angry hues. He replied in soothing blue tones. The rest of the village began speaking. The room was a rippling rainbow of argument and comment. Ukatonen held up his hands and the colors died away to a neutral “silent” green.

“I have heard enough. I go think. I tell you my decision dog” Ukatonen announced.

The gathering broke up. Anito beckoned to Juna to follow her, and they returned to their room. Ukatonen joined them. Anito and Ukatonen talked together for an hour. Juna couldn’t follow their conversation, but her name sign kept appearing. They were discussing her. Juna watched anxiously, knowing that her future, and possibly her life, were at stake. Eventually Ukatonen broke off the discussion. Anito left, dark red flickers of subdued anger breaking out on her skin. The discussion must not have gone the way Anito wanted it to. Ukatonen watched Anito leave, then sat facing the wall, a sign that he didn’t want to be disturbed.

Juna took out her computer and tried to work with her linguistic programs, but she was too worried to concentrate.

Ukatonen got up and squatted in front of her. Juna put down the computer.

“What is it?” Juna asked.

“All others tell me what they want,” Ukatonen said. “What do you want?”

Juna thought for a minute. “I want to live. I want to return to my people. I want to go—” She paused, unsure of-what the correct word for home was. At last she used narmolom, the word Anito used to refer to her village, unsure whether it was the word for home, or a place name.

“You not want to stay here?” Ukatonen asked.

Juna shrugged. She didn’t want to live in a village full of hostile aliens. However, she needed to come back every six months or so to radio new discoveries or observations to the Survey satellites orbiting overhead.

“I not want to stay here, but I must come back to this place two times every three seasons to talk to my people.”

Ukatonen’s ears widened. “I thought your people not hear you.”

“I leave words for my people to find if I get sick and—” She paused, not knowing the word for death. “If I no longer here, the way that Ilto is no longer here, then my people know what I learn.”

Ukatonen thought over Juna’s words. “I understand. You leave talk for your people, so if you nurrun, they know what you do.” Ukatonen turned a reassuring dark blue, “Don’t be scared. Anito and I take care of you. You listen to us, you not nurrun. Understand?”

“Villagers not nurrun me?” Juna asked. She was certain enough that nurrun had to do with dying to use it in a sentence.

“No. I not let villagers hurt you. However, your people hurt villagers. Something must be done to bring harmony. You must do something to help bring harmony to village.”

“What can I do to help?”

Ukatonen shook his head, a human habit he used when talking to her. “I don’t know. You, villagers, Anito, me, your people; all must be brought into harmony. I must find way for this to happen. I not know how. This very difficult.”

Juna nodded and flickered agreement. “I understand. Not do all now. Wait. My people come. Talk to them. I help now, but cannot speak for my people. What can I do to help bring harmony to this village until my people come?”

“I go think. I tell my decision after dinner.”

Juna sat back against the wall with a sigh of relief. There were still many unanswered questions, but at least she knew that Ukatonen would not let them hurt her. She picked up her computer and called up the linguistic program. She felt a lot better after talking to Ukatonen.

About an hour after dinner, a deep, booming noise reverberated through the tree.

Ukatonen stood. “It is time for the meeting.”

Juna followed the two aliens into the great central meeting area by the pool at the bottom of the tree. The villagers were already assembled. They rose at their approach, ears stretched wide, necks craning for a better view. Flickers of comment, shaded in tones between pink and lavender, showed the curious, anticipatory mood of the village. They were, Juna thought moodily, looking forward to the sentencing.

She stood, letting the aliens have a good look at her before Ukatonen announced his decision. She refused to let her inner nervousness show. At last a formal pattern flared on Ukatonen’s chest. The villagers’ skin speech stopped, and they sat down, waiting attentively for the proceedings to begin. Anito put a hand on Juna’s shoulder, guiding her to sit down as well. The head oT the village stood and spoke. Its words were too complex and formal for Juna to understand.

She touched Anito’s shoulder. “What say?”

Anito glanced at Juna, then turned to look at the chief. “Not much,” Anito said, in small patterns on her shoulder, which Juna recognized as the skin-speech equivalent of a whisper. “Glad Ukatonen is here. Says many nice things about Ukatonen, talks about how bad things are since forest destroyed. Many words, not much said.”

Anito’s summation made the chief’s address sound so much like human political speech that Juna smiled. Some things seemed to be universal.

At last the chief’s address came to an end. Green ripples of approval flickered across the villagers. Ukatonen and Anito joined in briefly.

Ukatonen waited until the villagers’ approval died away. Then he stood and moved onto the raised mound that the chief had spoken from. He waited until all eyes were on him, then launched into a formal speech. Anito provided Juna with a “whispered” translation on her shoulder.

“Greetings. Thanks for letting us stay in village, and many good things done for us.” That sentence summarized the first ten minutes of the speech.

“You ask me to tengarra to bring harmony. The new people have destroyed part of your forest. You want me to find a way to make Juna give your forest back. I say she cannot do this thing. She says that her people would not have done this if they had known that you were here. Also, she was not there when the forest was destroyed. Yet you want bad things done to her because your forest was destroyed in ignorance. When a fire destroys forest, or a big wind destroys forest, do you do bad things to the fire or the wind? No. In this case the new people were acting like the wind, ignorant of the harm that they caused. Your talk of harming the new creature comes from being out of harmony with the world. You must restore that harmony, but not at the cost of other people.”

Dark red ripples ran over the villagers’ skin. They were not pleased by this. A few villagers looked away, expressing their unhappiness with Ukatonen’s words. Ukatonen made a loud, shimmering sound, and the villagers’ skins became still.

“Your forest is destroyed. You must get back what you lost. I know this. Anito, whose atwa the new people are, knows this. Eerin knows this and her people know this. Eerin’s people told me that they would try to make the forest better, but we must begin to repair the forest before the flood season comes. Eerin must help. Anito must help, because the new people are her atwa. I help too. But Anito belongs to Narmolom and she wishes to return there. It would be wrong to make her stay. Here is how I have said things should be:

“Anito, Eerin, and I will come back twice each year. We will work one pida at repairing the forest each time we come back. I will ask other enkar to come and help as well. All obligations to the enkar will be owed by the new people. When they come back, we will talk to them about repayment.”

Ukatonen stepped off the mound, and sat down beside Juna and Anito. Juna looked around. The village was a wash of patterns and colors, some red, a few blue and green, many lavenders and purples. A mixed response, but that was an improvement over the uniform anger and hostility that she had seen before.

The head of the village got up and moved to the speaker’s mound. It stood there surveying the people of its village for a moment before speaking.

“We thank the enkar for his tengarra. We hope that it will bring harmony,” the chief said, and then turned and climbed up the tree.

That seemed to be a signal. The assembly began breaking up.

Ukatonen touched Anito on the shoulder. “You go upstairs,” he said, gesturing at Juna. “I come later.”

Juna followed Anito up the tree to their room. She began checking the computer’s record of Ukatonen’s speech to see if it had learned any new words. There were over a dozen new terms. Only eight of them had word-equivalents in any of the Terran languages she knew, but the computer had what appeared to be reliable definitions for almost all but one. Juna smiled. Her computer was finally beginning to put the language together. She wished she could speak the aliens’ language as well as it did.

Ukatonen came in as Juna was putting the computer away. He motioned her to sit down. Anito joined them.

“Did you understand what I said?” Ukatonen asked.

“I think so. I must work for this village twice each year one pida each time. You and Anito will help me. When my people come back, then they will talk to the village about how to make things better. I do not understand how long a pida is.”

“A pida is between twelve and thirty-two days long. There are eighteen pida a year.”

So a pida was a variable unit of time, roughly equivalent to a month. She would work no more than sixty-four days a year. That seemed extremely reasonable to her.

“When will we do this thing?” Anito asked. “I cannot stay too long. I must return to Narmolom before flood season.”

Ukatonen flickered agreement. “The month of Wuri is just beginning. We will work for the rest of this month. If we hurry, we can make it back to Narmolom before flood season.”

Anito flickered agreement, but Juna could tell that she was not happy about this decision. Anito’s behavior was puzzling. She didn’t seem to like Juna very much, yet she had accompanied her on this trip, and was remaining here with her. Why did Anito stay, even though she would rather be back at her village? Ukatonen seemed to think that Anito was somehow responsible for what Juna and other humans did. Why?

She touched Anito on the shoulder. “You want to go to Narmolom. Why you stay here?”

“I must stay and work,” Anito told her.

“You not destroy the forest. My people do. Why you work?”

“I must work because you are my atwa.”

Atwa was a common word, but one that Juna still didn’t have a good definition for. The computer indicated that it was either a relationship or a thing, but that was as far as it had gotten. Juna was no closer to a definition than the computer. It seemed to be an important term, and one that somehow applied to her relationship with Anito.

“What is an atwa?” Juna asked.

At that point, the conversation became very complicated, and difficult to understand. Every Tendu had an atwa, Anito said. Ukatonen corrected her. Only some kinds of Tendu did. Then there was a complex discussion between the two aliens. Afterwards Ukatonen agreed that all the Tendu did have an atwa for a while. Juna and the other humans were Anito’s atwa. Somehow Anito was responsible for what Juna and the other humans did.

Did Anito “own” her and the other humans? Was this more like a parent-child, or a master-apprentice, relationship? Juna shook her head. She wasn’t ready to ask such complex questions yet. She wanted to know a lot more about ownership and relationship terms before getting any further into this discussion. She didn’t want to agree to enslavement because of her own ignorance. Still, if Anito was responsible for her behavior, it would be wise to let Anito know that she would try to behave well, without agreeing to any kind of ownership on Anito’s part.

“I do what you say. I not make things bad for you, but I not your atwa. I am my own atwa. Understand?”

“I not understand. Everyone is someone’s atwa.”

“Whose atwa are you?” Juna asked.

“I am the atwa of Narmolom.”

“And whose atwa is Narmolom?” Juna asked.

“It is mine, and that of the other enkar,” Ukatonen told her.

“And the enkar?”

“The enkar are the atwa of the other enkar.”

“The enkar are their own atwa,” Juna said. “I am the atwa of my own people. I am not your atwa.”

“But the new people are Anito’s atwa. You are Anito’s atwa.”

“No!” Juna insisted. “I am not. I not want!”

“You not understand,” Ukatonen broke in. “You do what Anito say. We talk later, when you understand more.”

This seemed to be a reasonable compromise, for now. Juna hoped that it was clear that she was not willing to belong to Anito. She flickered unwilling agreement, then added, “I not say yes to being Anito’s atwa. Understand?”

Anito was about to say something, but Ukatonen laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Understand,” Ukatonen said. “You go to sleep now. Next day, we work hard.”

Juna wadded up her computer, washed, and crawled into her leafy bed, but she remained awake for a long time, worrying about what would become of her.

Next morning Anito woke her early. They ate a hurried breakfast, and set out with two of the villagers, scrambling along dripping wet branches through the heavy morning fog. Ukatonen stopped them, and they climbed down to the forest floor. He gestured to Anito and the two of them picked up something heavy. Juna looked closer. They were holding a ground limpet, a large sluglike creature with a thick, mottled shell the color of the forest floor. Their anomalous physiology had been the talk of the biology lab. The limpet’s skin and organs were normal enough, but the bulk of the creature was made up of enormous undifferentiated multinucleated cells with no apparent function.

“It’s a huge mass of cytoplasm, waiting to be told what to do,” Hernandez had remarked.

They carried four of the ground limpets back to the village tree, leaving them with Ukatonen. Then Anito led Juna to the bottom of the tree. The small green workers that the aliens called tinka were hauling huge dripping gourds of stinking mud from the bottom of the pool. Juna was put to work digging out giant tadpoles from the mud and tossing them back into the pool. The mud was then put into leaf-lined baskets, on ledges near the pool while the rest of the water drained out of it. It was unpleasant, backbreaking labor, and it took most of the rest of the day.

When they were done,.Anito took Juna to a clear stream to bathe, after which they returned to their room. All that remained of the ground limpets was a wooden trough full of jelly and a row of empty shells lined up against the wall like discarded shields.

Juna ate dinner and crawled into bed, too exhausted to work on the aliens’ language. Her last thought as she fell asleep was that Ukatonen had been right—they had worked hard today.

The days quickly fell into a routine. They woke, ate a hurried breakfast, and set to work. Juna found herself working with the tinka, cleaning the seeds from a vat of vile-smelling rotten fruit, rolling seeds in poorly composted dung, or hauling heavy loads of mud or seaweed. Even the smallest task was subject to correction and criticism. The compost was not properly mixed, or it smelled wrong, though Juna was unable to detect any difference. Then the thickness of the seed coating was wrong, or they weren’t drying properly.

It was horrible, frustrating work, and the villagers seemed to delight in making it as disagreeable as possible. Juna bore it as best she could, although the petty harassment sometimes made her want to scream with rage. She had no choice. Complaining would show weakness, anger was too dangerous. At night she was so worn out that she could barely finish dinner before she fell asleep. Her computer sat in a corner, gathering dust. She had no time for it now. Her entire existence consisted of meals, work, and sleep.

One day, near the end of the second week, Juna was carrying a heavy basket of compost and seaweed up a steep embankment, when she slipped and fell. Someone helped her up. Juna found herself looking into the pale green eyes of a tinka.

“Thank you,” Juna said in skin speech, touching the tinka’s shoulder.

The tinka fanned its ears open and closed in acknowledgment. The juveniles were incapable of skin speech, something that furthered Juna’s theory that they were really a different species. The Tendu treated the tinka almost as if they weren’t there at all. She doubted that any intelligent species would treat its young so callously. Were the aliens sexually dimorphic? She knew nothing about how they reproduced. She had never seen anything that could be clearly identified as courting or mating behavior. The tinka could be one of the two sexes. Perhaps they were some form of slave race or species.

Juna shouldered her load, and they started out again as though nothing had happened, but she felt that a connection had been made. She turned to help the tinka up over the crumbling remains of a fallen tree. It steadied her the next time she stumbled, saving her from another fall. She had earned a friend.

Acceptance by one tinka soon led to acceptance by all. She found herself surrounded by helping hands. They competed for her attention when the elders weren’t around. Sometimes she felt like a teacher with a class of enthusiastic ten-year-olds. If she sat down to rest, eager hands would reach out to help her take off her basket. They were constantly bringing her things: choice fruits, flowers, once even an enormous live butterfly. Its wings were a brilliant, shiny orange, edged with intense, iridescent blue, and it had a wingspan of at least thirty-five centimeters. She admired the insect’s vivid colors for a moment, wishing that she had brought her computer along to catalogue it, then let it go. The butterfly soared off into the canopy, occasional shafts of sunlight making it glow like a piece of living flame.

Just then, Anito and some of the village elders came up the trail. The tinka quickly scattered, picking up their loads. Juna, struggling to shoulder the heavy, dripping basket she was carrying, slipped and fell. None of the tinka moved to help her. Anito helped her up and tried to lift her basket. She could barely budge it.

“Why you carry so much?” Anito asked.

“They tell me to,” Juna said, gesturing toward the village elders. “So I do.”

Anito turned and said something to the elders. Juna couldn’t follow her words, but she could tell that Anito was angry. Was she sticking up for her? Whatever it was about, Anito didn’t like the outcome. She helped Juna lift the heavy basket onto her back.

“I talk to Ukatonen,” Anito said in small patterns meant only for Juna. “We find other things for you to do.”

Anito had to admit that the new creature worked hard. The village elders gave it the most difficult and unpleasant tasks, scolding her for the least mistake. The new creature toiled steadily, without a flicker of complaint. She kept up with the tinka, and sometimes even worked faster than they did. That was exactly the right thing to do. The new creature’s patience and restraint had earned Anito’s grudging respect. She had even started thinking of it as Eerin.

At last, after watching Eerin struggle under a load that would strain two Tendu to lift, Anito could bear it no longer. She turned to Lalito, who was standing by watching.

“You are mistreating my atwa,” Anito told her. “That load is much too heavy for her.”

Lalito regarded Anito calmly for a long time. Anito squirmed under that cold gaze, feeling every bit of her own youth and inexperience.

“Are you saying that the creature is backing out of her promise?” Lalito asked. “Do you want to renegotiate the terms that the enkar has decided?”

“No, but—” The last thing Anito wanted to do was to lose face by implying that Ukatonen’s judgment had been wrong. “The creature is suffering,” Anito said. “She is my atwa and I am responsible for her welfare.”

“Your atwa destroyed part of our forest,” Lalito retorted. “Two elders decided to die because there wasn’t enough food. Bami must wait longer to become elders because of the new creatures. Why should we care about the suffering of one creature, when so many of our own people are suffering?” Lalito’s words were bright red with rage. “Go!” she told Anito. “I will see no more of your words, unless you wish to renegotiate the enkar’s decision.” The chief elder turned her back on Anito.

Chastened and furious, Anito turned and walked away.

Ukatonen was busy checking the plant seeds developing in the jeetho when Anito came in, fuming at Lalito.

“What’s the matter, kene?” Ukatonen asked.

“It’s Lalito. She’s letting the village mistreat Eerin. They’re working her too hard, making her carry too much, giving her tasks she’s not equipped to do. I talked to Lalito about this, and she says that I would have to renegotiate your decision.”

“Do you want to?”

“No!” Anito said, realizing how close she was coming to making the enkar lose face. It was so easy to forget that Ukatonen was an enkar, and that would be a terrible mistake.

“No, en,” she went on. “You were very generous to me, but Eerin is my atwa, and I am responsible for the new creature’s welfare. I worry that she might get hurt. I must speak out about this.”

“Next time, do not bother the elders with such things. Come directly to me,” Ukatonen told her, suddenly becoming a stiff, formal enkar. “I will see to it that Eerin receives better treatment.”

“Thank you, en.”

“Good. That’s solved.” Ukatonen dropped his formal manner as quickly as he had assumed it. “I found a late-fruiting tumbi tree. Come and eat.”

Eerin came in while they were eating, still dripping from a bath. She sat and ate, as wordless as a tinka, then crawled into bed.

Ukatonen gave the creature a long look of concern. “It’s good you spoke of this to me,” he said to Anito. “She will get sick if the villagers keep working her this.hard.”

“What are you going to do?” Anito asked.

Ukatonen turned a conspiratorial shade of brownish-green. “Wait and see.”

The next day they stopped to watch Eerin as she struggled to wrap jumba seeds. The villagers scolded the new creature constantly, sometimes when she was doing nothing wrong. Anito had wrapped jumba seeds before. The thickness of the coating was not that critical. What mattered was that the mix of compost and ground seaweed smelled right, indicating that the ratio of nutrients would favor the jumba seedling over weedy intruders. The new creature couldn’t smell well enough to tell the difference between good compost and bad. There were dozens of other useful things that Eerin could do, but the villagers kept her here, where they could watch her struggle and fail.

Anito kept waiting for Ukatonen to speak, but the enkar merely stood and watched silently for a long while, then left. Anito followed him, fighting back her anger and curiosity until they were alone in the jungle.

“You saw how badly they’re treating her. Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

“I just did. Tumbi fruit doesn’t ripen overnight. Wait and see.”

The next day Ukatonen joined Eerin when she went to receive her work assignment.

Laying a possessive hand on Eerin’s shoulder, he addressed the elder in charge. “I watched the new creature yesterday,” Ukatonen told him. “She is completely incompetent. I will work beside her and teach her.”

The elder, a short, thin Tendu named Nuito, looked as if he had just swallowed a fire beetle. A trickle of laughter rippled down Anito’s back.

“I must consult with the chief elder, en. I believe she had a special task for the new creature today. I was just on my way to talk to her.”

“Good,” Ukatonen said. “We’ll wait.”

Lalito arrived a short while later, with Nuito scurrying behind her.

“Good morning, en. I understand that you wanted to work with the new creature today.”

“Yes, kene. She’s incompetent, and needs someone to teach her properly. I realize that your people have tried, but she’s so stupid that it requires special skills. I am familiar with the new creature, and so I have decided to work with her until she understands what she’s supposed to do.”

“Thank you, en. I hope you do not mind that we were going to give her a new job today. She was so clumsy that we have given up on trying to teach her. We thought we’d send her out to work at planting.”

“That was a wise choice, kene,” Ukatonen said. “Please, I want you to treat me the same as the new creature. If she fails, scold me too. After all, the failure of those who learn is also the failure of those who teach.”

Lalito’s ears twitched as Ukatonen’s veiled reproof sank home. “Of course, en.”

“Thank you for giving this incompetent new creature a second chance, kene. Anito and I will see to it that she doesn’t fail again.”

With that, Ukatonen beckoned imperiously to the new creature.

“You work with me today,” he told Eerin.

Eerin flushed a shade of blue denoting pleasure and nodded.

Ukatonen beckoned and the three of them set off.

Juna took the cultivator that Ukatonen handed her, and waited for his instructions.

“You dig like this,” he explained, pounding on the hardened ground with the cultivator until it broke through the seared crust. Then the alien began breaking up the hard clods of dirt, and fluffing up the newly exposed soil.

Relief washed over Juna. This was just like tilling the vegetable garden back home. At last, a job that she could do! She seized a cultivator and began digging away, happy to be doing something she understood.

After the grinding toil she had endured for the last week and a half, working for Ukatonen and Anito was a great relief. They only cultivated or planted when it was heavily overcast or raining, so there were frequent breaks. During clear spells, they oversaw the gathering of leaves from the forest floor, and sometimes seaweed from the beaches along the coast. The loads that they asked her to carry were no heavier than theirs, and they let her rest when they did. The seaweed and leaves were piled into great, steaming heaps of compost, or laid out over the newly cultivated ground to prevent heavy rains from damaging the barren areas. She was surprised at the progress the villagers had made. Already a mist of bright green shoots covered the planted areas. Juna smiled at the tender new plants and bent to her work.

Anito paused to take a drink. She watched the new creature turning the dirt over at a steady pace.

“You’re good at that,” she told Eerin.

“I do before,” she replied. “My—” The new creature paused, looking for words. “People who gave me life, they do this often.”

They worked wordlessly until they had dug up another body-length of dirt. “You rest,” Ukatonen told them. “I go get compost and leaves.”

They squatted beside their digging.

“I not work for village now?” Eerin asked.

Anito shook her head. “You work for village, but we teach you.”

“How long you teach me?”

“Until Ukatonen say you know enough.”

“I not like working for village. I learn slow.”

“That is good,” Anito said. “You learn slow, but you work hard.”

“I try. It good I know digging. I like being good.”

“You good before, teachers bad. You can’t do work they give you. You not smell good.”

Eerin’s mouth widened into a grimace, and it smelled its arm. “I smell fine,” it said, then broke out in that strange choking noise that it made when it was amused. Ripples of laughter ran down her back.

Anito stared at her for a moment, perplexed, and then realized that the new creature had made a joke. It wasn’t a very good joke, but Anito was impressed that she could do it at all. She joined in Eerin’s laughter. It was at that moment, Anito later realized, that she began thinking of Eerin as a person.

Just then Ukatonen came up, followed by a tinka. The two of them were carrying baskets of compost. Eerin jumped up and helped the tinka lower its basket.

Surprise and irritation flickered over Ukatonen’s body. Clearly, he had been expecting the new creature to help him, not the tinka. Anito was surprised too. After all, Ukatonen was an enkar, and the tinka was merely a tinka, there to be ordered around.

Anito got up. “I apologize for Eerin, en,” she told him. “She isn’t very smart.”

A shrug rippled down his long body. “I keep thinking of her as though she were a bami. She learns so quickly and well that it’s easy to forget that she’s not a Tendu.”

The new creature and the tinka had emptied their basket. Eerin thanked the tinka, then picked up her digger and began turning in the compost.

Ukatonen’s ears fanned wide in surprise. “Is she letting the tinka know that she’s willing to be courted? That makes no sense!”

The gesture had surprised Anito as well. “I don’t know what she’s doing, en. I don’t think she knows either.”

Anito chittered to get Eerin’s attention. When the new creature looked up, Anito said, “No talk to tinka. Understand?”

“Why?” the new creature asked. She seemed surprised.

“Because it not good. Makes trouble.”

“I not understand. Why not talk to tinka?”

“Tinka not for talk. Tinka for work. You talk to tinka they—” Anito paused. There were no words for explaining about tinka in the limited language that the new creature understood. Explaining what an atwa meant had already proved impossible. “It hard to explain. You talk to tinka, you make trouble. Not do. Understand?”

A brief flare of anger reddened the new creature’s skin.

“I understand,” she said. She thrust her digger into the soil as though it were a spear, and began digging.

The next evening Lalito and some of the other village elders gathered to celebrate how quickly the work was getting done. More than half of the burnt-over area had been planted, and the elders were extremely pleased with themselves. The first saplings had shouldered their way through the dirt and mulch and begun to shoot upward. In some places they were as high as Anito’s chest.

It would be a lifetime before the forest was truly back in harmony with its surroundings. It would be another lifetime before it would be impossible to tell where the forest had been burned. But the plants were coming up, holding the soil and the nutrients in place, and the elders felt the need to celebrate the rebirth of their destroyed forest. Someone brought out a box of halrin, and passed it around. The elders stuffed wads of the tart fermented leaves in their mouths and chewed. The talk became brightly colored and carefree as the halrin took effect. They praised the strength of their bami, the generosity of their neighbors, the intelligence of their elders, and of course, Ukatonen’s wise decision. They began to boast about how hard they had worked.

Anito’s mouth was numb and her head buzzed from the halrin, but despite the drug, she felt rather irritated. She and the new creature between them had done three times as much as anyone else in the village. She sat and brooded, growing steadily more angry and morose as the boasting continued.

Then one of Lalito’s younger cronies began making fun of Eerin, imitating the way she coated the seeds. The villagers rippled wildly in amusement, slapping their hands loudly against their thighs.

“And you should see the way it digs!” one of the villagers remarked. She got up and pretended to scoop up tiny bits of dirt with a limp leaf. The villagers’ ripples speeded up until it seemed that the whole room was dancing with blue and green laughter.

Anito stood somewhat unsteadily. “Eerin is very good at digging,” she asserted. Ignoring Ukatonen’s flicker of warning, Anito continued. “She could outdig any two of you.”

Another wave of hilarity passed over the villagers at this remark. Uka-tonen stood, and was about to speak, when another villager commented that a three-legged koola could dig faster than the new creature.

Anito turned bright red with rage. “That might be true, but since you can’t outrun a mantu, the new creature wouldn’t have much trouble beating you.”

Lalito rose. “Perhaps we should see who is faster. I suggest two of the village’s strongest bami race against your new creature, and see if she can dig more ground than they can.”

“But it would not be a fair competition,” Ukatonen protested. “When your bami get tired, their sitik give them energy through allu-a. The new creature doesn’t accept that kind of help. If we are to match the new creature against the bami of this village, then it should be a fair test of her strength and ability. I’m sure that two of your bami can outdig Eerin, even without linking. Agreed?”

Lalito looked rather disappointed to have the bami’s major advantage stripped away, but the enkar had trapped her. She had to agree to Ukatonen’s conditions. He was, after all, an enkar.

“Agreed,” she said.

They decided that the match would take place two days from now. They linked spurs to seal the agreement, and then Ukatonen and Anito went up to their room.

“That was foolish,” Ukatonen told Anito when they reached the privacy of their room. The new creature slept soundly in her pile of leaves.

“I know,” Anito said, brown as a dead leaf with shame. “I was angry at how badly they treat Eerin. She is clumsy and stupid, but she tries hard. Please excuse my disgraceful behavior, en.”

Ukatonen touched her shoulder. “I was angry too, kene. The villagers are out of harmony, and not thinking very clearly. What will happen when Eerin’s people return and find out how badly she has been treated? What if the villagers treat the other new creatures like this? Harmony must be reached with these creatures. They are too dangerous otherwise.”

“Dangerous?” Anito said, pale pink with surprise. “The new creatures are too stupid to be dangerous.”

“Stupidity can be dangerous. Eerin said that the new creatures burned the forest because they didn’t know about the village. They cut open animals because they didn’t know what was inside. They killed an entire tree and everything living in it because they wanted to know what lived there. These new creatures destroy everything they touch in order to learn. They destroyed that patch of forest the way you or I would wave away an insect. What if they decided that they didn’t like us?”

Anito’s skin turned orange, deepening in tone as she contemplated the possibility of the new creatures’ hostility. She had seen Eerin defend herself. Her strength and the depth of her anger were impressive. The villagers’ stories of the power of the half-alive stones that did the new creatures’ bidding were terrifying. The new creatures were her atwa. She was responsible for bringing them into harmony with the rest of the world. The enormity of what was expected of her began to sink in, in a new and terrifying way.

“How can I bring this atwa into harmony, en? The task is too big. I can’t do it. Find someone who can.”

Ukatonen rested a hand on her knee. “Who, kene? Who knows more than you do? One of the villagers here? Lalito, perhaps? Would you trust Eerin to her?”

Anito thought about the villagers, and how they would treat Eerin. “No, en. No one here.”

“Someone in your village, then? Who in your village knows more about the new creature?”

Anito thought it over. There was Ninto. Ninto knew the new creature well, and she was wiser and more experienced than Anito. She would take good care of the creature, but Anito couldn’t bring herself to name her tareena. Ninto had an atwa of her own and a bami to teach. It would be wrong to ask her to take on this additional burden. The only other Tendu that Anito could think of was Ukatonen.

“You, en. You could do it. You are wise enough for the task.”

“But I already have an atwa, Anito. You are my atwa. This village is my atwa, every Tendu in the world is my atwa. That is what it means to be an enkar. As an enkar, I look after the interests of the Tendu. You must look after the interests of the new creatures. I will help you, but there will be times when the interests of your atwa are different from the interests of the Tendu. Then we will have to work together to find a compromise. I’m sorry, Anito, but there is no one else who can take over your atwa.”

“I understand, en. I don’t like it, but I understand.” Anito stood and said, in high, formal patterns, “I accept this atwa, en.”

Ukatonen rose and touched her shoulder. “Thank you, kene.”

They stood a moment, wordless and awkward. Then Ukatonen said, “I think that this match can be turned to your atwa’s advantage, kene.”

“How?”

“Before you bring your atwa into harmony with the rest of the world, you must bring this village into harmony with the new creature. This way, when Eerin’s people return, they will be treated well. The villagers think the new creature is stupid and lazy. We know that isn’t true, but the villagers must learn to see Eerin with respect. If she wins this digging race, they will come to respect her strength.”

“But what if she loses, en?”

“Then she must not lose by much. If she makes their diggers work hard to win, the villagers will still respect her.”