Children of God

12 Village of Kashan 2046, Earth-Relative

"SUPAARI HAS BROUGHT SOMEONE HOME!" KINSA CALLED JOYFULLY AS the barge tied up briefly at the Kashan dock.

The cliffside village was not quite one day’s travel south from Kirabai, and Supaari had been content to spend that time drowsing on the sun-warmed boards of the barge deck with the Runa passengers, planning no plans, thinking no thoughts, holding the baby Ha’anala, and chatting with Kinsa and the others. Off-loading his own baggage, he glanced up as the Runa poured out of their cut-stone dwellings and smiled as they cascaded like a spring torrent down the rocky paths toward the riverside.

"Sipaj, Kinsa: they were worried about you," he told the girl, before acknowledging the shouted farewell of the barge pilot as the vessel disappeared around the southern branch of the river.

But it was Supaari himself whom the VaKashani crowded around—all of them swaying, the children keening. "Sipaj, Supaari," was the most common refrain, "you are not safe here."

With an effort, he restored some kind of order to the gathering, speaking loudly over the chaotic Runa babble, persuading them finally to go back up to their largest meeting room, where he could listen to them properly. "Sipaj, people," he assured them, "everything will be peaceful. There is nothing worth making such a fierno about."

He was wrong, on both counts.

The proclamation had reached his hometown of Kirabai only hours after he’d left, received when the storm-downed radio tower was repaired. The Inbrokari government had declared him renegade. Hlavin Kitheri, now Paramount Presumptive, had called Supaari’s life forfeit for the murder of the entire Kitheri family and of some man named Ira’il Vro, whom Supaari had never heard of. Already, a bounty hunter had come here to Kashan. "Sipaj, Supaari," one of the elders told him, "the midwife Paquarin sent us word. She used your money to send a runner." "So we knew why the hunter came," another woman said, and then the others began again to talk all at once. "Sipaj, Supaari. Paquarin is gone now too."

Of course, he thought, eyes closing. She knew I didn’t do it—not that Runa testimony would have made a breath of difference.

"A hunter took her," someone said. "But her runner saw, and came to us." And the cry went up again, "You are not safe here!"

"Sipaj, people! Someone must think!" Supaari pleaded, ears folded flat against the uproar. Ha’anala was hungry and rooted near Kinsa’s neck, but the frightened girl was swaying witlessly. "Kinsa," he said, laying a still-blunt hand on her head, "take the baby outside and feed her, child. There’re provisions in the luggage." Turning back to the elders, he asked, "The hunter who came here—where is he now?"

The sudden silence was startling. A young woman broke it. "Someone killed him," said Djalao VaKashan.

If she had burst into song, he could not have been more dumbfounded. Supaari looked from face to face, saw the shuffling, swaying confirmation in their bodies and thought, The world’s gone mad.

"The djanada say there must be balance," said Djalao, ears high. She was perhaps seventeen. Taller than Supaari himself, and as powerful. But clawless. How had she…? "Birth by birth," Djalao was saying. "Life by life. Death by death. Someone made a balance for Paquarin."

He fell back against his tail like a random-bred drunk. He had heard the stories — there were other Runa like this, who had dared to kill Jana’ata, even after most of the rebels had been culled. But here? In Kashan, of all places!

Sinking onto the stone floor, he began to think the business through. He was known to have traded with Kashan and Lanjeri. None of the southern towns would be safe. He had been seen on the barge, so the river-ports would be watched. Pieces of his bedding would be distributed to all the checkpoints: his scent would be known wherever he fled.

"Sipaj, Supaari," he heard someone say. Manuzhai, he realized, looking up and seeing him for the first time since the death of the man’s daughter, Askama, almost three years earlier. "Can you not become hasta’akala?"

"Sipaj, Manuzhai," Supaari said quietly. "Someone is sorry for your loss." The VaKashani’s ears dropped listlessly. Supaari turned back to the others, as the impossible idea of making him hasta’akala rippled through the crowd. "No one will take this one for hasta’akala," he told them. "When someone was made Founder, he gave everything he had to endow the new lineage. Now there is no property to compensate the sponsor."

"Then we will sponsor you," somebody cried, and this idea was taken up with enthusiasm.

They meant well. A man in trouble could barter his property and titles for immunity to prosecution if he could find someone to take him on as a dependent and keep him off the public stipend rolls. In return for lodging and provision, the hasta’akala yielded everything he possessed to the sponsor and had his hands clipped—a lifelong guarantee against his becoming a VaHaptaa poacher. Supaari stood so they could all see him clearly. "Someone will explain. The sponsor must be able to feed the one taken hasta’akala. You would not be able to feed this one," he said as gently as he could.

They understood then. Runa had no access to state meat allowances, and obviously no right to hunt. There was a soft thudding of tails, raised and dropped to the ground in gestures of dismay and pity, as the talk fell off to an unhappy silence.

"Sipaj, Supaari," Manuzhai said then, "we could feed you ourselves. Someone is ready. Someone’s wife and child are gone. Someone would rather be yours than a stranger’s."

Other voices joined Manuzhai’s: "Sipaj, Supaari, we can make you has-ta’akala." "The VaKashani could sponsor you." "This one, too, is ready to go." "We can feed you."

To the end of his days, Supaari would remember the sensation of the ground moving under his feet, as though there had been a minor earthquake. For an instant, it felt so real that he looked around at the Runa in astonishment, and wondered why they did not flee to open ground, to escape the rockfall sure to follow.

Why not? he thought then. Runa had been bred since beyond remembering to serve Jana’ata in life and to sustain them in death. Manuzhai was clearly pining away from loneliness; if the Runao didn’t want to live —. Again, Supaari felt the sensation of movement. Even now, he would have eaten the supply of food he’d brought with him from Kirabai without a thought! But that wasn’t… people like these. He had never taken meat from his own villages or household compound. Indeed, he had never killed his own prey. He was a city man! He collected his meat already butchered, never thinking—. There was nothing wrong with it; it was perfectly natural. Everything dies. It would be a waste if…

People like these.

Walking out to the edge of the meeting hall’s terrace, where the rockface dropped away steeply to the river below, Supaari stared into the distance and would have keened like a child if he had been alone. No, he thought, looking back at the VaKashani, seeing them all with new eyes. Better to starve. Thinking this, he realized at long last why Sandoz, whom Supaari knew to be carnivorous, had obstinately insisted on eating like a Runao while in Gayjur. Well, I cannot eat like a Runao, he thought angrily. And I will not scavenge!

Which left one honorable course open to him and his child. The dream cave, he thought, and saw himself, lost, with his daughter in his arms.

When he spoke, it was firmly. "Sipaj, people, this one cannot accept your offer."

"Why not?" the cry went up. He shrugged: a movement of the shoulders that he had learned from Sandoz, a foreigner trapped in a situation he could not escape and hardly understood. The Runa were a practical folk, and so Supaari fell back upon plain facts.

"As hasta’akala, someone’s hands would be clipped. This one would not be able to… take the meat, even when it is offered with such generosity of heart."

It was Manuzhai who said, "Sipaj, Supaari, we can make you hasta’akala and Djalao can take the meat for you. She knows how. The rest of us could learn!"

Again there was a burst of cheerful agreement, the VaKashani pressing forward to pat his back, pledging him their support, delighted by their solution to his troubles, happy to help this Jana’ata merchant who’d always been kind and decent. It was nearly impossible to resist them, but then he met the eyes of Djalao, standing apart from the others.

"Better to die for a good reason," said Djalao, holding his gaze like a hunter, but it seemed that she was offering death to Supaari himself, not to Manuzhai.

The others took up the notion happily; no VaRakhati—neither Runa nor Jana’ata—had ever yet said, "Better to live."

Supaari turned his head away, unable to bear Djalao’s stare. He agreed to consider their offer, and promised a decision in the morning.

RUNA BLADES WERE OF VOLCANIC GLASS, SHARPER THAN ANY STEEL, with a knapped edge so fine that Supaari would hardly feel its work. There would be a few quick, neat strokes through the fleshless webbing between his fingers, and the short, thick-muscled digits would fall free almost bloodlessly. In some ways, he had already adapted to the reduction in function, having severed his own claws days before. He expected that his hands would be clumsier than ever, but he had always had Runa to take care of his clothes, to write for him and open doors and groom his coat and prepare his food.

To be his food.

Physically, the hasta’akala was a trivial procedure, but the permanance of it! The irrevocable change in status! Always before, Supaari had met adversity with the conviction that he could turn it to advantage somehow, but if he accepted the hasta’akala, he conceded guilt. He was marked forever as a dependent—of Runa! And though he now admitted to himself that he had always been dependent on Runa — even so, it was bitter.

Apart from Sandoz, Supaari had never known a hasta’akala. Once accepted by a sponsor, such men were of no further interest to the government and there was nothing to prevent them from traveling abroad except shame. Now Supaari understood why Jana’ata who submitted to the procedure most often withdrew from society, sequestering themselves like women, loath to be seen. He himself could hardly stand to be with the elated Runa villagers who continued to talk blithely through the evening of their plans to care for him, discussing the order in which Djalao could slaughter the elders…

Sometime that night, during the endless blind misery that sleep did not curtail, he realized that their scheme was well meant, but it couldn’t work. If the village corporation fed Supaari and Ha’anala, it wouldn’t make its quota to the state. It was unprecedented, that a Runa corporation would take on the sponsorship of a hasta’akala. A Runao culling another Runao — it might be illegal. There was no telling what a court would make of it. The arrangement probably wouldn’t hold up under legal scrutiny and, even if it did, Hlavin Kitheri could annul the hasta’akala contract by decree.

By first sunrise, he had resolved to walk into the wilderness and die there with his child. "Sipaj, people," he called out, when the Runa roused and his vision sharpened. "You are not safe if someone stays here. This one can only be a danger to Kashan and all who live here. Someone will take Ha’anala and leave, to keep you safe."

They would not simply let him go; they were Runa, and nothing could be done without consensus. The discussion seemed to him interminable and he was frantic to leave, truly frightened now by what could happen if he were discovered here.

In the end, it was Djalao who dropped a tail and said without emotion, "Take him to Trucha Sai."