Shaman (3 page)

Yoshi nodded. “Then you're the logical equivalent of their Shaman and the Shaman must have apprentices and we have to look and act the part.”

“Exactly. And when it comes to looking and acting the part, there is a... slightly different measure of decorum among the Pa-Kai than we're used to. The clothing we consider businesslike, they consider unworthy.”

Yoshi continued to nod, her dark eyes lighting. “Yes. Our clothes seemed dirty to them—drab like the clothing worn by their children—little color.”

Rick blinked at her. “Is that what that was all about?”

“Didn't you notice? The young Pa-Kai wear drabber colors than their elders. I would say you earn your colors on this part of Pa-Loana. It's a sign of status. The more colors, the greater the status.”

Rhys was pleased. The girl had the makings of a good cultural anthropologist. He wondered what either of them was doing in a negotiating team for a major corporation.

Rick nodded. “All right. So, we looked young and dirty. And since we want to impress them as mature and capable...” He shook his colorful habit.

“You've got it. But don't forget the behavior part of the equation. A Shaman is obviously expected to use the full range of body language to communicate. Our mannerisms probably seem ... weak or even secretive to them.”

Rick's eyes glinted with a sudden spark of realization. “Then, Count Vladimir, with his dress blues and dignity fetish...”

“May find that what were once assets are now liabilities,” finished Rhys. “At least, that's what I'm hoping.” He crooked his finger at them. “Let's go.”

“But,” said Yoshi, falling into step beside him, “what if Zarber catches on?”

“I'm hoping he won't. After all, he accused me of the same thing you did—pretense.”

Yoshi blushed. “Sorry, sir.”

“No apologies necessary. Now, think Shamanistic thoughts and smile.”

o0o

The Tanaka contingent arrived at the collective village circle to find that the Bristol-Benz party had preceded them. Vladimir Zarber's expression went from arch to stunned to incredulous to amused and back to arch again in remarkably swift succession. Dressed in a midnight blue full-dress unisuit, he strolled over to Rhys with all the swagger of a nineteenth century buccaneer and looked him over from head to toe with a scathing, chuckling glance.

“What in the name of creation are you made up for, Llewellyn? Have you gone completely mad?”

Rhys smiled. “Not that I know of. I'm just trying to fit in with the other Shaman.”

“Really? You could have just explained that where we come from, Shaman don't dress like that. That's what I intend to do if the subject of my ‘youthful' garb comes up again. After all, Llewellyn, in our common culture, it's the immature who costume themselves in garish abandon.”

“That's true. But this isn't our culture, common or otherwise.”

Zarber shook his head. “Honestly, I can't imagine what Danetta Price was thinking of to hire a Professor of Anthropology over someone with Ph.D. s in Business Psychology and Diplomacy. You are completely unqualified for this line of work, you know. You belong in a dusty little museum somewhere, pottering about with bones and poring over hieroglyphs. It astounds me that you've enjoyed as much success as you have. I can only credit it to your beleaguered support staff.” He flicked his gaze to Yoshi and Rick, who met his eyes with cool insolence. “You're an archetypal geek, Llewellyn,” he said flatly. “And you're turning your assistants into geeks, too.”

“So there!” muttered Rick when Zarber had stalked off again. “I guess that put us in our place. What was that about Price picking an Anthropologist over a Doctor of Biz-Psych?”

“I don't know,” said Rhys thoughtfully. “Curious comment, wasn't it?”

A gong sounded just then, announcing the arrival of the Eldest and his Shaman. There was a general clearing away of Pa-Kai along his preferred route as he was carried to his place in the banquet circle by four hefty specimens, each bearing a corner of his carved and ornamented pallet. He was preceded by Pa-Lili and followed by a standard bearer whose pole-top pennant blazed with the Eldest's Clan emblem.

Rhys and his assistants bowed and bobbed along with the Pa-Kai, then went to greet their seated host. The Shaman showed them to their seats. She put Rhys to her right and Zarber to her left. Each set of apprentices sat flanking their Shaman. Rhys felt intuitively that the arrangement augured well, if for no other reason than that by placing him so, Pa-Lili seemed to be expressing a preference for his company.

She heightened his suspicion of favoritism by addressing him with great familiarity during the ensuing meal. At one point, having told what passed among the Pa-Kai as a joke, she even slapped him sonorously on the back.

Zarber, quite literally on the other hand, she treated with pronounced decorum. She referred to him always as “Shaman Tsar-Bar” and never once slipped from the Pa-Kai formal pronouns into the more familiar address she used with Rhys. Rhys was pleased with that, but he was the slightest bit uneasy about the fact that Zarber seemed as pleased with her formality as he was with her familiarity.

Just as bemusing was the title “Shaman” being accorded to a man who, earlier that day, Pa-Lili had referred to as “not-Shaman Rumble Mouth.” Taking advantage of Zarber's distraction by the food and entertainment, Rhys turned to Pa-Lili wearing the “Question?” expression.

“Pardon my nose, O Radiant Pa-Lili, but may I ask why you refer to Zarber as a Shaman? I thought I heard him say he was not a Shaman of the Bristol-Benz Clan.”

“Ah.” Pa-Lili nodded. “Yes, that one was a little confused. He said he did not understand what was being asked of him. The word ‘Shaman' was not familiar to him. He said among the members of his Clan he is called ‘Doctor.'” Her violet eyes gazed at him very directly. “You had no trouble with the word.”

“We are from different Tribes,” explained Rhys. “Our training was very different.”

“He has more age than you, Reeslooelen.” The name rolled off Pa-Lili's long slender tongue with a fluidity Rhys had thought possessed only by native speakers of Gaelic.

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, he's quite a bit older than I am.”

Pa-Lili displayed a most Human frown of bemusement and commented, “He dresses very young. Perhaps he is not comfortable enough with age to admit to it.”

Rhys swallowed a chuckle. “May I also ask why you are so formal with Shaman Zarber?”

“I do this because he likes to be addressed from a distance,” said Pa-Lili. “It strokes him. You would be put off with such formality.”

Rhys bit the inside of his lip. He'd been wrong. Pa-Lili was obviously very sensitive to the personality quirks of other beings. As she was “stroking” Zarber with formality, she was “stroking” Rhys with intimacy.

“And besides,” Pa-Lili said, after a moment of thought, “I like you.”

Rhys quite nearly blushed. He felt a rush of pleased surprise. “I like you, too,” he told her.

She blinked and made the “This pleases” face, her crest hair rippling visibly. She patted his hand. “You wear my gift spirit bag,” she noted.

“Oh, yes. Thank you, Many Hued Pa-Lili. Your gifts were most generous. My medicine pouch is full.”

“What spell do you weave—or is it a secret one?”

Rhys mind went blank except for the entirely irrelevant thought that no one had ever asked him that before and was this what it was like to attend a Sorcerer's Convention?

“I would like to weave a spell of good will and complete honesty,” he said. That sounded innocuous enough and seemed to please Pa-Lili.

“What, then, are the contents of your bag?”

“I, uh... It's empty.” He knew that was wrong and gritted his teeth, waiting for Pa-Lili to register her offense at his ineptitude.

She merely shook her head and clucked at him from somewhere deep in her throat, her long face saying, Poor baby. “No spell may be drawn from an empty bag,” she told him with the air of one repeating ageless advice. “You must place the spell-weaver within.”

Rhys blinked, sensing his apprentice's eyes hot on the side of his perspiring face.

“A spell-weaver?” he asked limply.

Pa-Lili clucked again. “What do they teach you on your world, Reeslooelen?” She began a rhythmic recitation: “Within the bag must live/the fetish that will power give. Within the bag must dwell / the talisman that weaves the spell.” She raised a long finger. “If a thing is to be tagged, a piece of it goes in the bag. If a soul is to be touched, a bit of their life will serve as such.”

She finished the musical little chant and nodded once, then turned her eyes to Rhys. “They do not teach you this?”

“Not exactly, but I think I understand.”

“I don't,” said Yoshi unexpectedly. She colored as both Rhys and Pa-Lili turned to look at her. She pressed her hands together before her chest and bowed her head deferentially. “Pardon me, Most Wise Ones, but what does it mean—‘a bit of their life?' How can you put a bit of someone's life in a bag?”

Pa-Lili deferred to Rhys. “Will you explain to your apprentice, Reeslooelen?”

Rhys nodded. “Certainly.” He turned to Yoshi and crossed his fingers under the billow of his cape, hoping that Pa-Kai Shamanism followed the same rules as the ancient Earth cultures he'd studied—his own included. “What the Sagacious Pa-Lili means is that something pertaining to the person for whom the spell is intended must be placed in the bag to—ah—to bind the spell and to... point it in the right direction.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rhys could see Pa-Lili twitching the end of her camelid nose in agreement. He heaved a mental sigh of relief.

“Well spoken,” said the Pa-Kai Shaman. “The bag contains the pointer to the spell, for the spirits/angels must know where the spell is to go—to what or whom it must be bound. So, you give them a twist of hair, a drop of blood, a slice of skin. If many people are involved—many bits of life go into the bag.”

Yoshi looked queasy. “Blood and skin?”

Pa-Lili gave an artless Pa-Kai shrug. “Eh, those things are needed only for the most potent of healing or educational spells.”

“Educational spells?” Rick echoed.

Pa-Lili looked at him sternly down the length of her nose. “You don't know about educational spells?”

“They are very young apprentices,” Rhys defended them. “Also, on our world Shamanistic apprentices tend to—um—specialize.”

“A serious mistake, Reeslooelen,” remonstrated Pa-Lili. “If everyone specializes, there will soon be no masters of the total discipline. A Shaman is by nature a General Practitioner—a Knower of All Knowledge. How else are we to intelligently advise our Chieftains?”

“So true,” said Rhys with a Sigh face barely hiding a smile. “I have often felt that on our worlds, the knowledge of each successive generation of Shaman is narrower than the one before. These children would benefit much by your knowledge, O Flamboyant Pa-Lili.”

Pa-Lili's crest danced. She raised her elongated head and gazed fondly at the “children” through her sweet eyes. “An educational spell is used when the student is too dense to learn the normal way. It is a great restorer of law and order for those who cannot control their behavior.”

“You mean, um...” Yoshi began, then stopped in bemusement. She turned to Rhys. “How do they say ‘criminals?'” she asked in Standard.

“Actually, they don't seem to have a word for them.” Rhys made the “How surprising!” face at Pa-Lili. “Do you mean that when people, er, misbehave or do wrong things, you put a spell on them to... instruct them?”

“To instruct and enlighten, yes. These are our educational spells.”

“Do they work?” asked Rick incredulously—for which Rhys would have cheerfully kicked him, if he could have reached that far.

“Of course, they work!” hooted Pa-Lili. “What good is a spell that doesn't work?” She turned to Rhys and murmured, “This apprentice needs much remedial work. You might consider using a bit of an educational spell on him.”

Rhys chuckled. “You may be right, O Wise Pa-Lili.”

“I would wager the Wise Pa-Lili is seldom, if ever, wrong,” said Vladimir Zarber's voice.

Rhys was pleased to note the fleeting expression that crossed Pa-Lili's face before she turned to include the Bristol-Benz negotiator in the conversation. The Advanced Lingual Base had translated it as, “An insect has just landed on an unreachable part of my anatomy.”

o0o

In the next three days, Rhys and his two “apprentices” spent much time in the company of the Pa-Kai, taking tours of the nineteen Clan villages and “talking shop” with every Shaman they could collar. Pa-Lili's personal apprentices were eager to display their knowledge to their Human counterparts and gave a good deal of their time to do so.

“Today,” said Rick at the end of day three, “we learned three different ways to cure crest hair loss and a couple of incantations for Pa-Lili's so-called educational spells.” He set his recorder down on the table in the shuttle's small passenger lounge and peeled off his crestcap.

Rhys nodded at the recorder. “You put them on disc?”

“Sure, why not? I figured you'd be interested in their anthropological value... Prof,” he added, grinning. “And besides, I think they're pretty hooky tunes. Put a band behind 'em and you've got some real hits. Here, give a listen.” He turned the recorder on.

A melody of fluid grace cascaded out of the tiny machine accompanied by the rhythmic beat of a tuned drum and the crystalline
ching
! of some native chimes. Rhys was charmed. Yoshi smiled with delight, humming along.

“That's wonderful!” said Rhys when the chants were finished. “You were right—I think it's absolutely fascinating. What instrument was that Hi-Pok was playing?”