The Color of Distance

Chapter 16

Anito sculled hard with the steering paddle, pushing the raft into the faster current of the main channel. The first five days on the river had been quiet and peaceful, with much feasting and trading with other villages on migration. Tomorrow they would reach the first major rapids. The land around them was getting steeper, sloping toward the sea. The river moved faster too; riffles of white water were forming on the upriver edges of islands.

Anito glanced at Moki and Eerin, sitting together in the bow of the raft. New bami needed almost constant attention and contact. Sometimes it was hard on their sitiks. Anito had expected Eerin to tire of Moki’s constant need for company, but Eerin seemed to enjoy the attention.

Eerin was a model sitik in every way but one: she still shrank from allu-a. Eerin’s refusal to link with Moki left him hurt and confused.

Eerin must learn how to link properly, Anito thought with a flicker of impatience. Ukatonen was going to have to help her teach Eerin to overcome her fear. Moki needed to link with his sitik in order to remain in harmony with himself and others. He needed allu-a every bit as much as he needed food, water, and air.

Moki reached into his net bag and pulled out a waterproof pouch made of a waxed fish bladder, the kind usually used to hold fishing equipment.

“Let’s catch some fish,” he suggested to Eerin.

Eerin turned dark green with approval. “Maybe we’ll catch some more sweet-fish,” she said. “They’re delicious.”

Anito rippled negation. “You probably won’t. The river’s too fast here. Sweet-fish like slower water.”

Moki and Eerin settled themselves on the stern of the raft. Moki pulled out the fishing line and watched intently as Eerin tied on a bone fishhook. When she was done, he examined the knot and then darkened with approval.

“Very good,” he told his sitik. “You’ve tied it nice and tight this time.”

Amusement rippled along Anito’s back at the sight of the small bami instructing the tall, angular new creature. Ukatonen had asked Moki to teach Eerin to fish. He took his task very seriously.

She looked at Ninto, who watched the new creature and her bami with quiet amusement.

“They’re good together. If only Eerin would link with him. He needs her so much,” Ninto said, her words greyed with sadness.

Anito flickered agreement. “Especially with Ukatonen so busy choosing a new chief.”

Ukatonen had spent most of the last five days swimming from raft to raft, talking with the other villagers, getting to know the most likely candidates for chief elder. He hadn’t been able to spend much time with Moki and Eerin. The burden of helping Eerin bond with her new bami had fallen mostly onto Anito’s shoulders. Fortunately, Ninto and Baha were understanding and helpful. Still, Anito needed Ukatonen’s help with the new creature. She couldn’t make Eerin understand how much Moki needed allu-a.

Anito touched Eerin on the shoulder. “I’m going to visit Ukatonen. The river’s calm here, there shouldn’t be any problems.”

Anito dove into the cool water, feeling the taste of the river on her skin. It was a taste as distinctive as the smell of the jungle, full of subtle, ever-changing flavors. Every stream and tributary altered the taste of the river. Now, during flood season, it tasted of mud and drowning vegetation, with a faint hint of rotting fruit. The shadow of a large fish swirled away from her into the murky depths. Anito flinched involuntarily, then relaxed. There were no large predators in this stretch of the river. Below the cataracts, however, it was a different story. She shuddered, remembering a narrow escape from the jaws of a giant kulai. Ilto had pulled her to safety just in time. The kulai had tried to leap into the raft after her. Two elders clubbed the kulai and it fell back into the rushing river.

She hoped no one would die this trip. There had been too many deaths in the village this year. Anito surfaced beside the raft Ukatonen was visiting. She greeted the other elders on the raft, and one of them, Iketo, extended a hand and pulled her aboard.

“Thank you for giving Moki the fishing tackle,” Anito remarked to Ukatonen after making the expected polite greetings to her hosts on the raft.

Ukatonen rippled a shrug. “He’s my responsibility too.”

“It’s funny, watching him teach Eerin how to fish,” Anito said with a ripple of amusement. “Sometimes Moki acts like he’s the sitik and Eerin’s the bami.”

“Good,” Ukatonen said. “Eerin needs a lot of looking after. You’ve had to work much too hard. Let Moki help. It will make the bond between them stronger.”

“Moki needs to link with his sitik,” Anito reminded the enkar. “I need your help to convince-Eerin to link with him.”

Ukatonen flickered negation. “I can’t help you. No one can. Eerin must decide to link with Moki on her own.”

Anito rippled a grey, rueful acknowledgment. “But it’s hard, watching Moki suffer. What happens if Eerin never learns to link with Moki?”

Ukatonen looked away, his skin misted a greyish-purple with doubt. “I don’t know,” he said, looking back at her. “If Eerin doesn’t learn to link, it will kill Moki, but if their bonding is successful, then we will have a Tendu who understands these new creatures better than you or I will ever be able to. We need someone like that. The risk is great, but the rewards could be even greater.”

“And if Moki dies?” Anito asked.

“Then I will follow him into death.”

Anito looked away. Death followed the new creature like a second shadow. She wished that Eerin had died before she had been found. It would have prevented so much pain.

She turned back to the enkar, so that he could see her words. “I’m sorry, en. I shouldn’t speak of such things.”

Ukatonen touched her shoulder. “You’re beginning to ask difficult questions. That’s good. You’re starting to think like an enkar.”

Anito looked down at the dark-green water swirling past the raft. She didn’t want to think about leaving the village.

“We’ll need to watch out for them once we reach the cataracts. Neither of them has made the trip before,” Anito said, changing the subject.

Ukatonen flickered agreement. “It will be especially hard for Moki. Without the reassurance of a link, he might panic.”

“I wish I understood why Eerin fears linking so much.”

“Why?” Ukatonen asked. He was fond of that word. He liked to make her explain everything she said. He said it taught her to think about thinking.

“If I knew why she was afraid, then maybe I could find some way to help Eerin past her fear.” A faint grey mist passed over Anito’s body like a sigh. “It’s so hard. Every time I think I understand Eerin, she does something strange and I realize I know nothing at all about her or her people. How can I manage an atwa I don’t understand, en?”

Ukatonen brushed her shoulder. “I know it’s difficult, kene, but I don’t think anyone could handle this situation any better than you have.”

Anito looked away; she could feel pride and embarrassment flaring on her skin. “Thank you, en.”

Ukatonen touched her shoulder. “Look,” he said, rippling with laughter. “Eerin’s caught a fish.”

Anito looked up as Eerin pulled a large fish from the water. She held it up, azure with pride. Anito turned deep green with approval. The other elders on the raft laughed at the new creature’s delight. Just then the fish gave a great heave, nearly slipping from Eerin’s grasp. Moki tried to help and the two of them fell back onto the deck of the raft, grappling with the thrashing fish, their bodies rippling with laughter. Anito could hear the loud choking cries that Eerin made when she was amused. Moki and Eerin got control of the fish and put it into a large openwork basket. They tied the basket to the raft and tossed it into the river to keep until dinner.

“A good teacher and a quick student are a fortunate combination,” Ukatonen said. “We’ll eat well tonight! Let’s go congratulate our fishermen.”

Ukatonen dove into the river, and Anito followed him. Together they swam for their raft. As they reached it, there was a cry from the one in the lead. A line of rafts had appeared ahead of them. Eager for a chance to trade, the rafts from Narmolom began sculling to catch up to them. Ninto seized the steering oar, seeking the fastest water to push them along. Anito grabbed an oar and added her strength to Ninto’s. Eerin and the others followed suit.

The two villages’ rafts merged into one large fleet. There was much cheerful shuttling back and forth as elders from the two villages began to dicker and trade. A large knot of curious strangers formed around Eerin, exclaiming in amazement at this flat-faced, small-eared giant. Moki intervened protectively between the strangers and his sitik, provoking waves of amusement from the strange elders. They began to tease Moki. Anito moved to stop them, but Ukatonen held her back.

“Wait, let’s see how Eerin handles this.”

Eerin stepped forward. “It’s all right, Moki. They’re only curious. My name is Eerin, and this is my bami, Moki. I come from very far away. The people of Narmolom found me and sheltered me when I was lost in the jungle. You may look at me all you want, but please don’t link with me.”

Anito’s ears lifted. Eerin was doing very well.

Eerin motioned Moki back and stepped into the knot of curious strangers. She let them examine her hands and feet, gently but firmly removing their hands when she didn’t like what they were doing. Moki stood by, looking on anxiously.

At last Eerin looked at Anito and Ukatonen. They moved forward to fend off the curious strangers, diverting attention away from Eerin. Soon the talk changed from the new creature to trading.

Eerin and Moki went off to one of the outer rafts to recover from the onslaught of curiosity. When Anito glanced up from her dickering she saw Moki requesting allu-a, his skin dull blue-grey with longing. Eerin shook her head, flickering negation, and reached out to hold Moki. He shrugged away from her touch and dove into the river.

Concern flowed across Anito’s back. Something must be done, and soon, about Eerin’s fear of linking. She left off her trading, and went over to Eerin and touched her on the shoulder.

“Your bami needs you,” Anito said when Eerin looked up. “His need goes deeper than skin hunger.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Eerin replied.

Anito shook her head and walked back to her trade goods. Clearly Eerin didn’t understand what she was trying to tell her; she would have to find some other way to explain it to her.

That night, after the feasting and trading was done, Anito wandered back to their nest site. The strangers’ curiosity about the new creature had proved profitable. She had made some good trades. Moki was sitting up, watching Eerin sleep. Anito brushed her knuckles across his shoulder as she sat down beside him. He leaned against her for a moment, seeking comfort, then shifted so that they could talk.

“Why won’t Eerin link with me?” he asked, his words glowing orange with anxiety in the darkness. “Am I bad?”

“No, little one. I’ve watched you with Eerin. You’re a good bami. It isn’t you, Moki. Eerin’s afraid of linking—with you, with me, with anyone.”

Moki’s skin flared pink in surprise, then dimmed into wordlessness. The fireflies flashing in the surrounding trees reminded Anito of half-formed words.

“Why?” Moki asked, after a long stillness.

Anito rippled a weary shade of uncertainty. “If I knew, perhaps we could teach her not to be afraid. Eerin’s not a Tendu, Moki. It will be hard for you, being her bami. That’s why Ukatonen is helping her with you. Link with him, Moki, let him teach you. He is of your people, Eerin is not.”

“I understand. I do link with him, but he’s not …” Moki shook his head. He was already picking up many of Eerin’s gestures. “He’s not Eerin. She is my sitik, not Ukatonen. I need her.”

Anito put her arm around him, knowing that the gesture would do little to soothe him. Moki’s need went deeper than skin hunger. Anito remembered the time that Ilto had gotten hurt while hunting. It had taken him three days to get home. She was frantic with need by the time he returned. She had been his bami for several years, long enough that the urgent need for linking had passed. Moki had gone for nine days without linking. This little one was as tough as stonewood to endure such isolation for so long. Eerin had chosen better than any of them knew.

“I’ll talk to her, Moki. I’ll try to explain how important it is, but it might not help.”

Moki looked away for long moment. “Thank you, kene,” he said, his words dim and muddied by emotional turmoil.

The next morning they arose before dawn in order to be on the water at first light. It was important to reach the cataracts early in the day so that they could make it through before night fell. Anito checked the lashings on the raft, making sure they were tight. She didn’t want her raft coming apart in the middle of the cataracts.

A touch on her shoulder startled her. It was Ninto and Baha.

“Are they ready for this?” Ninto asked, gesturing with her chin at Moki and Eerin.

“I hope so. We’ve shown them what to do. Whether they can remember it when we pass through the cataracts is another thing entirely. It is kind of you to accept two such inexperienced people as your crew.”

“We could hardly split up a newly joined pair like that, could we? Besides, I also have you and Ukatonen with me, and that makes up for a great deal.”

“Yes, but—”

“You are also my tareena. Our sitik asked that I look out for you.”

Anito looked away for a moment, a brilliant, wordless flare of emotions playing over her skin.

When she looked back, Ninto offered her wrists. They linked, mingling their feelings—pride, shame, their love for their shared sitik, and their grief at his death.

When they emerged from the link, Ninto gave Anito’s shoulder a squeeze and turned to see to the raft. No words were necessary between them after such a sharing.

Anito glanced up at the brightening sky. It was time to be going. She helped Ninto push the raft off into the river, then hauled herself aboard. Ninto swung up on the other side as Anito picked up a pole and began to push. Moki and Eerin fended the raft off from the flooded treetops with long poles as they made their way into the main channel.

A flock of brilliant red gwais burst from a treetop ahead of them, honking loudly. Anito looked after the birds wistfully. One of them would have made a nice breakfast, but there was no time for hunting today. They would have to make do with dried provisions and fruit. She pulled several ripe ooroo pods from a vine as they passed by, and consoled herself by popping a couple of their hot, peppery seeds into her mouth.

The current grew swifter as the morning wore on and the banks of the river drew closer together. Anito nervously checked and rechecked their cargo, making sure it was lashed down tight. The channel through the cataracts was narrow and unforgiving. A mistimed move by a crew member could flip the raft, or pull it down into a whirlpool. She glanced at Eerin. Would she make it through the cataracts without panicking?

They neared the rapids shortly after noon. Yiato, their best river pilot, signaled that they would stop to take a look at the rapids before going on. Anito was glad that she was leading them through the cataracts. Yiato was one of the oldest remaining villagers, and would have been a prime contender for chief elder if she hadn’t removed herself from consideration. It was a shame; she would have been an excellent leader. Ukatonen had asked Yiato to reconsider, a sign that he thought very highly of her.

Yiato and her bami, Dalo, hiked along the sheer cliffs along the river’s edge, vanishing around the curve of a rock wall. The villagers waited tensely for her return. The first cataract was always the hardest. There were rougher stretches of the river, but this cataract was the first test of the rafts and their crews. Would the rafts hold together? Were the crews ready?

Yiato returned sooner than expected. The villagers crowded around her, purple shadows of curiosity boiling over their skin.

“There was a rock slide about ten li down the path,” she told them. “I couldn’t get around it. The water is high and very fast and most of the worst rocks are hidden, so you must watch the water carefully. From what I remember, it’s best if you stay to the right around the big rock with the lovi tree on it.”

Yiato held out her arms. It was traditional for the entire village to link together before the major rapids. Linking bound the village into a cohesive, harmonious unit. Out on the river, where lives depended on split-second timing, it was essential that the villagers knew what each member would do and when. That feeling of being part of a larger whole always gave Anito confidence and courage. She would need it now. She glanced anxiously at Eerin and Moki. Would they panic in the midst of the raging river, endangering them all?

Anito reached to include Eerin in the link, but the new creature shook her head and slid out of the forming circle. Moki looked after Eerin, his skin blue-grey with longing. For a moment it seemed as though he would slip away and follow Eerin, but Ukatonen took his hand and they joined the link.

Anito entered the link, feeling the familiar presence of the other villagers. United, Anito knew that they would be stronger than any river. The powerful presence of Ukatonen joined the link, making their united strength even greater. Then she felt the new, uncertain presence of Moki, aching with bitter, salty need and longing. The protective warmth of the village surged to enfold him, to dissolve his pain in the comfort of their presence. Moki’s pain eased, but never vanished. It tainted the link, an irritant, like a piece of grit in a bowl of seaweed, or a buzzing fly, keeping the village from achieving total unity.

Slowly the group link separated into subgroups and affinities, then separate crews, and finally family units of bami and sitik. Anito found herself linked with Ukatonen and Moki. Moki’s pain flared again with painful intensity. They attempted to reassure him, but he remained inconsolable. At last, defeated, they broke the link.

Eerin stood waiting by the raft. Anito repressed a sudden surge of anger at the new creature. If only she could make Eerin understand how much pain she caused Moki, and through Moki, the entire village. If only— A flicker of irritation flared on her spine. “If only” never accomplished anything. As soon as they were settled for the night, she would speak to Eerin. Her refusal to link with Moki affected the balance of the whole village. It could no longer be tolerated.

Anito used her anger to help push the raft off the beach. She swung aboard, grasping her oar, rowing the boat into the swift, powerful current. The river banks rushed by as the river sped up. She heard the rapids ahead, a steady, rising whisper. Moki stared apathetically at the deck in front of him, his oar ignored. She nudged him with a foot.

“Wake up!” she told him. “It’s rough ahead.”

Anito hauled on her oar, holding the raft straight as they shot through a narrow passage between two rocks. The river rounded a sharp bend and a roaring stretch of white water surged toward them. They shot into it, and Anito’s attention was taken up with steering between huge waves and fangs of black rock. A huge boulder appeared suddenly behind a standing wave. They pulled left, just missing it, then banged into a hidden rock that turned them crossways to the current.

Moki stared at the wall of water rushing toward him. The oar was torn from his grasp and he was swept up against the bow railing. Anito watched helplessly, straining her oar against the full might of the river to turn the raft off the rock. If she tried to help him, they would all be lost. Finally, the raft turned with a huge, grinding shudder and was swept off the rock and into the rapids. Eerin managed to grasp Moki’s arm, when another wave crashed across the bow, tearing Moki from her grasp and sending the bami sliding back across the deck, crashing into the stern. The raft banged into anether rock. A sudden surge of water swept Moki into the raging rapids.

Eerin cried out, and reached after him as the raft slewed against another submerged rock.

Anito nudged Eerin with her foot. “No!” she said in bold red-orange patterns, outlined in black. “Row now, or we all die!”

Eerin grasped her oar and pulled hard. The raft heaved off the rock. Moki’s head bobbed up in a sudden surge ahead of them and then vanished. They shot forward around a cluster of boulders. Moki appeared again, to the right of the main channel, sheltering from the force of the current on the downstream side of a large rock. They pulled hard on the oars, trying to get close to him, but the river had them in its grasp and it swept them on past Moki and over the short, broad waterfall that marked the end of the rapids.

The raft struck the pool with jarring force. As soon as they got control of it in the quiet water below the falls, they pulled into an eddy beside the waterfall. Ukatonen grasped an overhanging branch, and pulled himself up into the trees beside the river. Eerin and Anito followed, leaving Ninto and Baha to steady the raft.

Moki huddled on top of a rock, a flaming orange spot of terror in the midst of the foaming white and green river. They watched from the tree-tops as a raft tried to steer toward him, but was pushed away by the force of the river. The remaining five rafts also tried to rescue the bami and failed; one nearly capsized in the attempt.

“He’s going to have to swim for it,” Ukatonen said.

Moki clung to the rock, small and helpless in the midst of the raging torrent.

“He’ll never make it! He’ll drown!” Eerin exclaimed.

Anito looked startled by this. The least of Moki’s problems was breathing the oxygen-rich white water.

Then she realized that Eerin didn’t understand. She didn’t know that Moki was in more danger of being crushed against a rock, or getting eaten by one of the giant fish that waited below the rapids, than he was of being drowned.

“He won’t drown, Eerin,” Anito said. “He can’t drown. He can breathe the water through his skin.”

“But how can we get him out of there? He can’t get out by himself!”

“He may have to,” Ukatonen told her. “We can’t get a raft to him, and he’s too far out to reach by rope.”

Moki saw them and waved. He looked up expectantly, ears wide, asking for help and guidance.

Ukatonen shook his head. “You must swim,” he said in large patterns. “Try for the bank, just above the waterfall. We will be there to catch you.”

“Be careful!” Eerin added.

Moki nodded. “I go,” he said, his words barely visible against the intense orange of his fear.

He leaped into the river. They stared anxiously at the churning white water, waiting for him to emerge. Then Ukatonen grabbed Eerin’s arm, pointing with his chin.

“There!”

Moki’s limp form surged to the surface. They scrambled down to the bank, and reached for his body as it floated by. One arm trailed in the water, obviously broken. He was either unconscious or dead. Ukatonen’s fingers closed around one limp ankle and pulled him in.

They laid Moki gently down on the soft sand. His skin was torn and bruised; in places it resembled chopped meat. His arm was broken in a dozen places, but he still breathed. Eerin knelt by his head, making crooning noises.

Ukatonen looked at Anito. “Monitor me.”

Anito flickered acknowledgment. They linked and entered Moki’s body.

The damage was not as bad as it looked. Moki had a mild concussion and had lost a fair amount of blood. Several internal organs were bruised. The broken bone in his arm had pierced his allu. That would be the trickiest thing to repair.

Ukatonen closed hemorrhaging blood vessels, and eased the building pressure in Moki’s skull. Anito was dimly aware of someone outside the link straightening and splinting Moki’s broken arm. The most urgent injuries attended to, Ukatonen tried to reassure Moki, but the bami’s presence remained huddled and unresponsive, walled off by the depth of his grief. A wave of bitter sadness welled up from Ukatonen as he broke the link.

“Well?” Eerin asked, as they emerged from the link. “Will he live?”

Ukatonen gave a dubious, muddy ripple of affirmation. “He’s not seriously injured, but I don’t think he wants to recover. He’s lost the will to live. He wants you, Eerin. He needs to link with you. You’re his sitik. No one else will do. You must link with him every day. Without your strength, your presence, he will die.”

Eerin turned pale orange and looked away for a moment. Her jaw worked, and then suddenly, as she reached some inner decision, her skin deepened into a sudden resolve. “Show me what I must do.” A flicker of fear, quickly suppressed, ran across her torso.

Anito laid a hand on Eerin’s shoulder. “First you must remember that Moki is your bami, and would never do anything to hurt you. You must not be afraid. Linking is natural. Moki needs it. Even when he’s healthy he needs to link with you every day. Now he needs it more than ever.”

Eerin touched Moki’s uninjured arm, near his allu. She looked up at Anito and Ukatonen. “Should I—can I link with him now? It won’t hurt him?”

Ukatonen nodded and looked at Anito. “Will you help her, kene? I’m too tired.”

Anito held out her arms. She guided Eerin’s arm to Moki’s uninjured spur, and then linked with Eerin. Together they entered Moki. Anito watched as Eerin enfolded Moki, flooding him with reassurance and encouragement, and some other thing that was wholly alien, wholly part of the new creature. Moki uncoiled from his knot of despair, returning the alien flood of feeling. As the two of them mingled, Anito helped Eerin’s body give Moki strength. Then she broke the link between them.

Several other villagers helped carry Moki to the raft. They needed to keep going. Fortunately they were through the worst of the white water. The river was smooth except for a few small patches of rough water. Even so, Anito doubted that she could do much to help steer.

Ninto touched her shoulder. “Yiato wants you and Ukatonen to ride with her. Dalo and Kadato will take your place.”

Anito agreed numbly, hardly noticing the packet of food that Baha handed her. Death’s silvery sheen seemed to dance on every sunlit ripple. She was so tired. If Moki died, she would follow him and Ukatonen into death.

Juna stared down at Moki’s unconscious form. His splinted arm was bound up in a fishnet sling. His uninjured arm lay outstretched. Golden sun dapples of early morning light lay across his bruised body like fallen petals. Yiato had declared a day off to give the other villagers a chance to repair rafts battered by yesterday’s trip through the cataracts.

Anito and Ukatonen were clearly exhausted. Juna gathered fruit and caught fish to feed them. Fortunately the fishing was good; she pulled in half a dozen good-sized fish from small, quiet pools underneath the trees. One of them was a new species, which she duly recorded, before knocking it on the head to kill it.

Anito flickered approvingly at her catch, helping her skin, gut, and fillet the fish. Juna smiled briefly to herself. At last she was doing something right. Ever since Lyanan, life had been one mistake after another. She shook her head in frustration, drained and tired by all that had happened.

She heard a rustling in the treetops, and looked up. Ukatonen was climbing down from the nest. He squatted beside her, and linked briefly with Moki.

“How is he?” Juna asked when he emerged from the link.

“See for yourself,” Ukatonen said, holding out his arm for a link. “He needs you.”

Juna swallowed her fear, remembering how Moki had reached for her in the link. He had been like a starving child. He clung to her as she soothed him, vaguely aware that Anito was manipulating them through the link. Strength had flowed from her to him, and he relaxed, contented at last. Juna continued to enfold him, deeply moved by the strength of his need for her. His need for a link with her was a deeply physical one, as profound and absolute as a human infant’s need to be held.

But what about her own needs? Every time she linked, Juna felt as if another layer of her humanity had been stripped away. Worst of all, she enjoyed it. Each link made her want more. Would she become addicted to allu-a? Would she still be human when the Survey found her?

Juna’s spurs linked with Moki’s and Ukatonen’s. She was plunged into the touch-taste-smell inner world of the aliens. Her old panic threatened to overwhelm her. Then Moki greeted her with the joyful abandon of an overeager puppy. A surge of fondness rose in her. Moki echoed that fondness, amplifying and returning it to her. The two of them spiraled higher, each cresting off the other’s emotional peaks until Ukatonen gently but firmly stopped the emotional upsurge. He let them rest in their sea of emotions, then guided them gently apart.

When she was calm again, Ukatonen showed Juna the beating of her own heart pumping steadily away in her chest with a steady one-two, one-two rhythm. Ukatonen nudged her heartbeat briefly faster, then slowed it. Then he showed her how to control her own heartbeat. Juna felt her heart race and slow like some small animal inside her chest. She held her life in her hands like some fine thread made of electricity, pulsing with the beat of her heart. It was simultaneously exhilarating and scary.

Then Ukatonen guided her inside himself, showing her the steady one-two-THREE beat of his three-chambered heart. When he was through, Juna understood his heartbeat and her own in an intuitive, sensory way that went beyond anything she could have learned from dissections and observations using instrumentation. Ukatonen showed her Moki’s heartbeat; it was thin and thready, not beating as strongly as his own, but it was already stronger than yesterday.

They emerged ffom the link.

“Well?” Ukatonen asked her. “How is Moki doing?”

“He’s improving,” Juna replied.

Ukatonen nodded. “It will be at least ten days before his arm is out of that splint.” He paused and touched Juna’s shoulder. “But it was your linking that gave him the will to live.”

“Thank you, en.” Juna looked away, trying to hide her fear.

“Linking still frightens you. Why?” Ukatonen asked.

“It’s too—” She looked away, searching for words. “I feel overwhelmed, en. It’s like I’m drowning. It’s too much for me. I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop, that I’ll forget who and what I am.”

Ukatonen ducked his chin in thought. “I don’t understand. How could you forget who you are?”

“Because your presence is so overwhelming, en. I can’t control what is happening to me.”

“When you swim, do you control the water you swim in?” Ukatonen asked.

“No.”

“You swim by being in balance with the water, by understanding its flows and shifts. You learn to move with it. You must learn to do this in allu-a.”

“How?”

“You are already starting. Today I showed you the life-rhythm of the heart. You learned to change the balance of your heartbeat. Each life-rhythm you learn will teach you more balance in allu-a. You must be patient. It’s as hard for Anito and me to teach you as it is for you to learn. We do such things instinctively. Thinking about them is like trying to follow the course of one bird in a large flock.”

“I hope it works,” Juna said.

“So do I. Now, let’s go and eat. You must be hungry.”

They spent the next day on the beach beside the river, resting and repairing their rafts and checking their cargo. The following day they loaded up and set off again.

Two days later they encountered the next rapids. Yiato surveyed the rapids, and reported that the water was high and the channels were clear. The safest passage was to the left. Then the villagers formed a circle for another group link. Juna shook her head when Anito invited her to join. She could barely tolerate a link with Moki. The thought of exposing herself to the entire village was too much.

Juna leaned against a beached raft, watching the villagers join together. The noisy silence of the jungle deepened, heavy with the calls of insects and birds, the rush of wind through the trees, and the occasional rustle of some unseen animal moving through the trees. She was alone for the first time in weeks. She turned on her computer and watched a comedy. The show was one of her favorites, but the jokes and laughter flowed past without touching her. It all seemed so far away and improbable. Juna paid more attention to the hot food on the table than the words of the actors.

Frustrated, she shut the program off. A soft rain began to fall as the villagers sat like a ring of green stones, totally lost in their silent communion. Humanity seemed so remote, here among these alien creatures. Juna felt a terrible gulf separating her from both her own people and the Tendu.

Eventually the villagers unlinked and pushed off onto the river. Juna sat in the stern of the raft, struggling to match their tightly coordinated rhythm. Then they were in the rapids, pulling hard around large rocks and snags. They were nearly through when someone on the raft ahead of them got swept off into the river. Ninto pulled hard on the steering oar, and they drew near the swimming alien. As Anito grasped his arm, there was a sudden tug that nearly yanked her off the raft. Baha and Ukatonen grabbed Anito and helped her pull. The Tendu shot out of the water and into the raft. It was the elder Miato. Blood gushed from his leg. His left foot was gone. It had been severed just above the ankle.

The flow of blood from Miato’s stump slowed to a trickle as the river swept them into the slow water below the rapids. They beached their raft beside Miato’s. Miato’s bami and his crewmates lifted him from the raft and stretched him out on the smooth sand, their skins ochre with concern.

They linked with Miato, and the raw flesh at the end of his stump healed into new, tender skin. Juna recorded everything she saw, watching in amazement through the viewfinder of her computer. Even though she had seen healings like this before, they still seemed miraculous. The aliens unlinked and bandaged Miato’s stump with moss and fresh leaves.

Juna got out her fishing gear and began to fish from the end of the raft. She caught several medium-sized fish, all of them familiar species. Anito emerged from the jungle with a gathering sack full of oblong spiny fruit.

“For Miato, and the Tendu helping him,” Juna said, holding up her catch. Anito colored approvingly and squatted beside Juna to help prepare it.

“How terrible for Miato, to lose his foot like that!” Juna said.

Anito flickered agreement. “If only I had been a little faster. I could see the kulai coming for him, but I wasn’t able to reach him in time.” She sliced open the fish and neatly removed the guts, still in their translucent sac. “That almost happened to me, when I was a bami. My sitik pulled me out just before the kulai got me. It followed me onto the raft. The other elders had to club it back into the river.”

“How will Miato manage with only one foot?” Juna asked. In all her months among the Tendu, she had never seen a single maimed or crippled individual.

“It will grow back.”

“Grow back?” Juna asked incredulously. “His foot will grow back?”

“Of course,” Anito said. “He couldn’t get around very well with only one foot.”

“How does it grow back?”

Anito rippled a wavy multicolored pattern that seemed to be the Tendu equivalent of a shrug. “He tells it to. He’ll put mantu jelly on the stump. It will become part of his leg. His foot would grow back without the mantu jelly, but it would be a lot more work and take much longer.”

“Can other animals grow back missing limbs?” Juna asked.

“Some lizards can grow back their tails, but other than that, nothing with a backbone can grow back a limb. Sometimes we will heal an injured animal to maintain the balance of the forest. That’s why we healed that taira you hurt. We needed more taira to keep the puyu from killing too many young trees. We rarely heal any animal as badly injured as Miato. It’s too much trouble, and it’s too hard on the animal.”

“It’s different for my people,” Juna said. “We can’t grow back an arm or a foot if we lose one.”

Anito’s ears lifted in surprise. “What do you do instead?”

“We make them a replacement limb, if we can.”

“What kind of animal do you use to grow a replacement limb?” Anito asked, looking puzzled.

Juna shook her head, startled by the question. “The replacement limb isn’t alive. It’s made out of dead things, like wood or stone. It doesn’t work as well as the real limb, but it’s the best that we can do.” She couldn’t explain further; the Tendu had no word for plastic or metal in their language, and she had no idea how to explain mechanical objects to them. They thought her computer was some strange kind of half-alive stone animal.

Yet the Tendu were capable of prodigies of biotechnology. Her transformation and the amazing feats of healing she had seen proved that. She shook her head. It was hard to square their primitive lifestyle with their incredible abilities. She wondered how much of their biological skill was instinctive, and how much of it was learned.

“How much training-do you need in order to heal someone?” she asked Anito. “Could Moki heal someone now, or would he have to be trained?”

“He is helping to heal himself. All bami know how to do that.”

“What will Moki have to learn in order to become a sitik?”

Anito shook her head and spread her hands and ears wide. “Many things. He must learn something of the balance of the atwas, he must learn the history and customs of the village, and he must learn to heal himself and others well enough to be worthy of a place among the elders. Even then he will not be ready. He must be able to make the difficult decisions required of elders. He must be responsible. When he becomes an elder, he will share in deciding what the fate of the villagers will be.”

“How many years does that take?”

“It varies. I was with my sitik for many years.”

“How many years?”

Anito shook her head. “I don’t know. It was a long time. Long enough for a sapling like that one”—she pointed with her chin at a seedling that was little more than a slender twig with a handful of pale, shiny leaves— “to become a tree like that.” She pointed at a mature canopy tree.

Juna looked at the tree and turned bright pink in amazement. It was at least fifty or sixty Standard years old. If her ears had been mobile like a Tendu’s, they would have been spread wide. Anito was older than she was and she was barely an adult.

“How long do your people live?” Juna asked. “How old was Ilto when he died?”

Anito laid a hand on Juna’s arm. “It is not polite to call the dead by their names,” she informed her. “My sitik was the oldest Tendu in the village. He grew up in the tree our village lived in before this one. Ninto was his bami. When an elder died without a bami, Ninto was chosen to fill her place. Because of this, my sitik lived longer than most Tendu. He did not have to die or be exiled when Ninto became an elder.”

“I don’t understand,” Juna said. “Are you saying that an elder must leave the village or die before their bami can become an elder?”

“Of course, except when an elder dies without a bami, or if the bami dies before it can become an elder.”

“Why?” Juna asked. The implications of this were beginning to sink in.

“There are only so many elders in a village. It depends on the size of the tree, and the fertility of their jungle.”

“How big are most villages?” Juna asked.

Anito shook her head. “Ask Ukatonen. He knows more about what things are like in other villages.” She picked up a leaf full of neatly sliced fish. “We should take this over to Miato and the others. They will be hungry.”

The conversation was over, but Juna was full of questions. If her estimates were right, the Tendu lived at least 120 years, despite their primitive technology. Was this due to some intrinsic genetic characteristic, or was it due to their healing abilities? How would she be able to tell the difference?

Juna set a generous portion of the sliced fish and a basket of fruit beside the villagers who were working on healing Miato. They accepted it with a flicker of acknowledgment and thanks. She took a smaller portion of fish and some fruit over to Moki. He picked it up awkwardly with his uninjured arm, and fed himself. She peeled back the spiny rind of the fruit, exposing the translucent white inner pulp, and handed that to him.

A bami could not become an adult until its elder died or became an exile. What did this mean for her and Moki, and for Ukatonen? Could Moki become an elder after she left? Would Ukatonen have to die to make way for Moki? Where would Moki become an elder? She didn’t belong to any village. She had no place for Moki to fill. Juna sighed, and offered Moki another peeled fruit. Had she made a mistake?

“What’s the matter?” Moki asked, in shades of concern. “You seem sad. Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m just worried about what’s to become of you, with a strange sitik like me. What village will accept you?”

Moki rippled reassuringly. “Ukatonen would not have let you adopt me if he didn’t think it could work.”

Juna sucked out the gelatinous pulp of a fruit. “Perhaps you’re right, Moki. I’ll talk to him,” she said with a confidence that she didn’t feel.

Ukatonen came up as they finished eating. He helped himself to a bite of fish.

“How is Miato?” Juna asked.

“He’ll heal nicely,” Ukatonen said in skin speech as he chewed.

“How long before his foot grows back?”

“That depends. If everything goes well, he should have enough of a foot to swim with when we reach the sea. It should be completely healed by the time we return.” He brushed her shoulder affectionately. “Thank you for catching those fish. It was very helpful.”

“Thank you, en. I was glad to help. The village has done so much for me.”

“We should link with Moki while we’re stopped here,” Ukatonen said.

Juna nodded, and held out her arms. Linking still bothered her, but it was necessary in order to be a good sitik to Moki. Besides, linking with Moki wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as linking with Anito or Ukatonen. The enkar let her set the pace of the link, and the level of intensity.

Moki and Ukatonen gripped her arms; she felt the pricking of their spurs, and then the link enfolded her.

She followed Ukatonen as he examined Moki’s broken arm. Juna could feel the ends knitting together, though the joins were still fragile. His internal organs showed no signs of their bruising, and his injured allu appeared to be healing. Ukatonen radiated pleasure at Moki’s progress.

When he was done checking on Moki, Ukatonen took Juna on a tour of her digestive system. She tasted the processes of digestion, felt her food get broken down in her stomach, and then further broken down and absorbed in her large and small intestine, until the remaining wastes were excreted. It was an amazingly intricate transformation—food into energy, raw materials, and waste.

They emerged from the link to find that the rain clouds had given way to brilliant sunlight. Juna lifted her face to the sun. The sky had been blanketed with thick, rain-swollen clouds for most of the trip. These rare sun breaks were something to treasure. She laid her computers out to top up their batteries. The villagers began unloading cargo, spreading it out on the beach to dry in the sun, checking the waxed gourds for signs of rot and water damage. Juna helped Ninto and Anito spread out their things. Two gourds of honey had small soft black spots of rot on them. Anito left them out in the sun. When the honey inside was warm and fluid, she poured it into empty gourds. Then they split open the old gourds and licked up the remaining honey from the insides.

“How old are you?” Juna asked Ukatonen as they sucked the last bits of sweetness from their gourds.

Ukatonen ducked his chin and thought for a while. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve lived a long time.” He turned a faint, nostalgic blue-grey “It’s been a good life.”

“Are you older than Anito’s sitik was?” she asked.

Ukatonen flickered yes. “Much older.”

“How much older?” Juna asked. The Tendu vagueness about time was extremely frustrating.

“When I became an enkar, Anito’s sitik’s sitik would not have been bom yet. Before I was an enkar, I was chief elder of my village. I have seen trees like that one”—he pointed at a gnarled and ancient forest giant, heavily bearded with moss—“sprout and grow and die at least six times over.”

Juna turned bright pink with surprise. That would make Ukatonen well over 700 years old.

“You must be one of the oldest of your people.”

Negation flickered, across Ukatonen’s chest. “There are many enkar much older than I am. There are some who have lived ten times as long as I have, and even they are not the oldest of my people.”

“Don’t you”—Juna paused, searching for the word for aging—“grow weaker as you get older?”

Ukatonen’s ears spread wide and his head went back in surprise. “Why should we?” he asked.

“My people only live for about one hundred of your years. When we get to be about eighty years old, our bodies start to fail. We get sick easily, our bones become brittle. We sometimes get forgetful. Eventually we get old and die.”

“You can’t control your bodies well enough to stop this? How do you manage to raise the next generation if you live such short lives?”

“We have children early in our lives. Most people have children in their twenties or thirties. And children become adults much faster among our people. We are considered adults when we are about twenty years old.”

Ukatonen’s amazement deepened. “How can you be ready to raise children at so young an age?”

“It’s the way we have always done things. A thousand years ago most people were lucky to live past forty. People started having children when they were only fourteen or fifteen. Half their children died while they were still babies, so they had six or eight children.”

“All at once?” Ukatonen asked, vividly pink with surprise. “How selfish of them.”

“They needed their children to take care of them when they got old,” Juna explained. “In those days, children were our wealth.”

“But so many young? How could you teach each one properly in so little time? How could you feed them?”

“We worked very hard. We—” Juna searched for words to describe planting crops and raising animals. “We grew big areas of food plants; we kept animals for food, the way you keep narey.”

“Your people are very strange,” Ukatonen said.

“My people are very different,” Juna agreed. She wondered how she could explain war and famine to Ukatonen. Had the Tendu ever fought a war? Had they ever starved? She looked away. The thought of asking such questions of these peaceful people shamed her. She remembered the refugee camp, remembered her stomach cramping with hunger. She darkened with shame as she recalled stealing food from others for herself and Toivo after their mother died. She had done it to survive, but that didn’t excuse the terrible things she had done.

Juna looked up as the sun momentarily dimmed. A heavy bank of clouds was closing in. The villagers began gathering up and reloading their cargo. She helped Anito and the others load their raft. She looked at the Tendu, their moist skins gleaming in the pearly light that heralded the coming rain. Their lives were so different from hers. How could she ever explain humans to them?

The next day they stopped and portaged around a large waterfall. It took the rest of that day and the next to disassemble the rafts and carry them and their cargo around the waterfall, and then reassemble and reload them. Once past the waterfall, the character of the river changed, becoming wider, slower, and more placid. The few stretches of white water they encountered were relatively easy and safe.

Anito and Ukatonen continued teaching Juna about linking. By the time the river broadened and separated into marshy channels near the delta, she had learned to heal small cuts and abrasions on her own body. When they entered the tidal mangrove swamps near the coast, they were set upon by millions of tiny black biting insects. Anito showed Juna how to synthesize an insect repellent in her allu-a, and to adjust her skin so that the saltier water of the ocean would not burn her. At last, after several days of rowing through placid channels, they heard the sound of surf. The trees opened out and they found themselves in a wide bay.

Ukatonen dove off the raft, and vanished beneath the waves. The villagers waited, watching the water intently. All was quiet except for the water lapping against the rafts, and the distant sound of surf. Suddenly the water ahead began to boil. A sleek green shape leaped from the water, followed by several others. As they approached, the rafts drew closer together, and there was a rising flicker of excitement among the villagers. Then the creatures surrounded the rafts. To Juna’s surprise, Ninto reached down and helped one of them climb aboard. It stood with difficulty on its short, stumpy legs.

“My name is Munato. I will escort you to our island,” the creature said in skin speech. “Do you have any honey?”