The Color of Distance (25 page)

Anito touched her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“The tinka will die, and you laugh at it,” Juna told her. “It’s not funny to the tinka.”

“We all die eventually, and besides, it’s only a tinka,” Anito told her. “It isn’t a person. It was lucky, for a tinka. It had a safe place in the village. Some other tinka will take^its place if it doesn’t return soon. Then it will have to live out in the jungle, where some animal will kill it. It’s a stupid tinka, not fit to become a bami. Stop worrying about it. It isn’t worth it.”

“But it’s wrong!” Juna said, unable to contain her anger any longer. “Why let tinka die? Why not have fewer offspring? Then the tinka wouldn’t have to die!”

“But what would we eat?” Anito asked her. “If we had fewer young, then our villages would have to be smaller. We could not support so many people without eating our young.”

Juna went beige with disgust. “You eat your young?” she asked, incredulous.

“Of course,” Anito replied. “You’ve eaten narey too.”

Juna remembered helping butcher the giant tadpoles that the aliens raised in the base of the tree, remembered the faintly cheesy taste of their raw flesh, and then realized what she had been eating.

“Oh, my God,” she moaned. A sudden, horribly vivid image of a baby hung like a butchered goat rose to her mind. She remembered her little brother, his fingers clasped around one of hers, as she helped her mother change his diaper. The Tendu ate babies. Her gorge rose and she vomited her lunch over the side of the branch.

Ukatonen touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked solicitously.

“I’ve been eating babies,” Juna said aloud. “What kind of people are you?” She turned and fled blindly through the canopy.

She scrambled through the trees until her foot slipped on a rain-slick branch and she found herself clinging one-handed over a forty-meter drop. She pulled herself back up onto the branch and looked around. Off in the distance, a few animals called. A leaf fluttered down through the canopy toward the distant ground. She was alone.

Now what?
she wondered to herself. She had no idea where she was, or how to get back to Anito and Ukatonen. She looked around at the wet, dripping canopy, and felt vaguely ashamed of her sudden visceral reaction. Then the image of the butchered baby sprang unbidden to her mind, and she shuddered. How could the Tendu do such a thing?

She shook her head. She had let herself forget that the Tendu were aliens, with an alien culture. She was a biologist; she could name dozens of examples of cannibalism occurring in nature. She had to accept that this was the way they did things, even if it seemed like a great and terrible wrong to her.

The tadpoles weren’t like human children, she reminded herself. They seemed no more aware or intelligent than any other tadpole. From a biological standpoint, the aliens were fascinating. No one would ever have predicted a sentient alien species whose reproductive habits were as profligate and impersonal as those of oysters. The Alien Contact people back home would have to tear up all their existing theories of cultural development and start over again.

When did intelligence begin for these aliens? She would have to ask Anito and Ukatonen what their earliest memories were. First though, they would have to find her.

Juna scanned the canopy for her alien caretakers, but there was no sign of them. She considered trying to find her way back on her own, but decided that it would only make things worse. Anito and Ukatonen were much more likely to find her than she was to find them. She hefted her gathering sack. She had food, enough for today and tomorrow, and she had her computer. She would wait here until tomorrow, and if they hadn’t turned up by then, she would head back to the coast and throw herself on the dubious mercy of the villagers of Lyanan. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect, but it was better than being lost in the forest.

She found a suitable spot, and built a crude nest of branches. Then she took out her computer and began to work. She was busy working with the linguistic expert system, resolving some inconsistencies in grammar, when a rustling noise above her head made her look up.

It was the tinka again. It clung to a branch, watching her work.

“Go away!” she told it in skin speech, making shooing motions with her hands. The tinka swung off into the canopy, leaving her alone again.

Juna sighed, rubbed the rain out of her eyes, and looked around. Nearby, a pooo-eet bird was calling, insects hummed, and some unidentifiable creature periodically let loose with a bloodcurdling shriek. A group of lizards fed on leaves in a nearby tree and there was the constant patter of rain. She sighed again, feeling small and alone in the immensity of the forest.

“Damn,” she muttered, wishing that Anito and Ukatonen would hurry up and find her. She was in no mood to work anymore. She shut down the linguistic program, and summoned up a selection of her favorite songs. She sang along. Her voice was thick and rusty from disuse. The aliens found her voice either disturbing or hugely amusing, so she had fallen into the habit of silence. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the music.

The song ended. She paused the music and drank some water to ease her scratchy throat. She hadn’t sung since the night the
Kotani
had jumped into hyperspace. She hadn’t been alone since then either. Every single moment, waking and sleeping, had been spent in the company of the Tendu.

Juna summoned up another song, one of her favorites, an ancient blues tune. She wasn’t a particularly talented singer. Mostly she sang in the cleanser, or along with a recorded vocalist, but she did love to sing, especially when she was alone. At the end of the song, she opened her eyes and looked up. The tifVka was watching her again, ears spread wide, head cocked in an attitude of amazement. Juna laughed aloud at the tin-ka’s expression of surprise, and laughed again as it fled from the sound of her laughter. She wondered if she should chase it away, but decided to let Anito and Ukatonen worry about the tinka.

She started the music again, and sang along with several more songs, then paused for another sip of water. When she looked up, she saw that Anito and Ukatonen were sitting on the branch where the tinka had been. They were watching her, ears spread wide, magenta with surprise and puzzlement.

Juna switched off the music and sat up regretfully. It had been a pleasant interlude, but now it was time to get back to work. It would probably be a long time before she was alone again, and free to indulge herself in her humanity.

“Are you in pain?” Anito asked her. “Do you need healing?”

“I’m fine,” Juna reassured the alien.

“Why did you run?” Ukatonen asked.

Juna shook her head again. “It’s hard to explain, en,” she said formally. “My people do not eat their young. We believe that it is wrong. I was—” She hesitated, uncertain how to proceed, not knowing the words to express her feelings. “I think I know how you felt, looking out at the forest my people destroyed. It is hard for me to accept that you eat your young.” Juna felt faintly queasy again, thinking about it.

Anito and Ukatonen swung down to join her on the branch.

“I think we do not understand each other,” Ukatonen said. “We eat only our tadpoles, and only those without front legs. Once the front legs emerge, they aren’t eaten.”

“What happens to them after that?” Juna asked.

“During the flood season they swim off into the jungle. Those that survive come back to us as tinka. The smartest and best of the tinka are chosen by elders to raise as bami. Then the bami become elders. Understand?”

“I think so. It is very different from how my people treat their young. It is unusual for us to have more than one child at a time. Each child is very important to us, which is why it is hard for me to accept that you”— Juna paused, fighting back another surge of disgust—“eat them.”

“We eat only the tadpoles,” Ukatonen reminded her. “The tinka are free to fend for themselves.”

“That too, seems wrong to me. We look after our children until they are able to look after themselves.”

“But you have fewer children. It is simply not possible to look after every tinka, even those living in the villages. It wouldn’t be fair to the other tinka, waiting in the forest for a place in the village.”

Juna sighed. This conversation was getting way out of her depth. “Our people are very different.”

“Yes,” Ukatonen agreed. “We are.”

Anito reached out and touched Ukatonen’s arm. “We should be going, en.”

Ukatonen flickered agreement. “We will talk more about this later.”

They waited while Juna gathered her things, and then the three of them proceeded on their way.

The tinka continued to follow them. The next morning, Juna awoke to find a freshly killed lizard lying at her feet. Anito stopped her before she could pick it up.

“It’s from the tinka,” Anito told her. “Accepting the lizard will only encourage it.” She picked up the lizard and tossed it over the side of the nest. They breakfasted on leftover game and fresh fruit, then set out for the day.

Anito caught the tinka about an hour later. Ukatonen again ordered it to return to the village, sending it on its way with a hard slap.

The tinka still followed them. Anito and Ukatonen began pelting it with rotten fruit and even fresh dung. The tinka hung farther back, out of range, but did not go away. Blows and curses did nothing to discourage it. Finally they settled into grimly ignoring it.

The battle of wills between the tinka and the elders would have been funny if it hadn’t been a life-and-death struggle for the youngster. Whenever the young alien disappeared for a day or so, Juna began to worry that it had been killed and eaten by some predator. She stopped wishing that the tinka would go back to Lyanan, and began hoping that it would somehow manage to find a place in Anito’s village. Surely someone would take pity on this grimly determined youngster, and accept it as an apprentice.

Once, while Anito was butchering a large feathered animal with the face of a deerlike herbivore and the feet of a bird, Juna asked if she would accept the youngster as an apprentice.

“No. I’m too young for an apprentice. It would be wrong. Besides, I should choose one from my own village.”

“What about the other elders in your village? Would one of them take the tinka?”

Anito shook her head. “Probably it won’t even get a place on the rafts. It’ll be left behind when we head downriver.”

“But it’s so brave and determined!” Juna protested. “Surely that must count for something!”

“It knew its chances when it decided to follow us,” Anito said. “It was foolish to take such a risk. If it dies, it will be its own fault, and yours, for encouraging it to follow you.”

Stung by Anito’s words, Juna turned away. She had been kind to the tinka at Lyanan, and made the fatal mistake of accepting their small gifts, thinking them no more than kindness. Ignorance could be as harmful as active malice.

“What should I do now?” she asked Anito.

“Ignore the tinka, as you have been doing. There is nothing else that can be done.”

“What about Ukatonen?” Juna asked. “Could he accept the tinka as his apprentice?”

Anito’s ears lifted in surprise. A flicker of irritation forked down her chest. “It would be very rude to suggest such a thing to Ukatonen. Don’t do it. Understand?”

Juna nodded. “I understand.”

“Good.”

Two days later, as they were moving through the canopy, the tinka was attacked by a large lizard. When they heard the squalling of the struggling tinka, Ukatonen and Anito glanced back briefly and continued on their way. Juna stopped. The young alien fought fiercely, biting and clawing, but it was unable to pierce the lizard’s thick hide. Unless something was done, the tinka was doomed.

Anito and Ukatonen went on as though nothing at all had happened. Anito glanced back and gestured to Juna to hurry. The tinka’s struggles were growing weaker. It looked at her, its pale green eyes pleading. She remembered how the tinka had gathered around her at Lyanan, like so many eager children…

Juna broke off a dead branch, and rushed the lizard, shouting and yelling. It dropped the tinka and leaped into the next tree.

Juna caught the little alien just before it slipped off the branch. It was covered with blood. Claw marks scored its chest, and there were deep hire marks on its shoulders and neck. She could see a major blood vessel pulsing beneath a thin layer of connective tissue. She was fumbling out her medical kit when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Anito.

“Leave it. Let the lizard have its prey,” Anito told her.

Juna looked at the pathetic, bleeding tinka, its eyes slitted open. It was watching her decide its fate. Saving its life would constitute a major breach of regulations; she would be directly interfering with an alien culture. This wasn’t a human child, she shouldn’t apply human values to it. The tinka’s eyes slid closed, and its head rolled sideways.

She remembered the lengths her mother had gone to in order to keep Juna and her brother, Toivo, alive in the howling hell of the refugee camps. She had heard from her father and her aunt Anetta about everything they had done to find them. Without their love and determination, she and Toivo would be dead now. She remembered stealing food for Toivo, stolen from others needier than herself, so that her brother could live. She closed her eyes, tears pricking her eyelids, remembering how her mother had fought for their lives. How could she condemn this little alien to die?

“No.”

“You must,” Ukatonen told her.

“I can’t,” Juna said. “Not after all it’s done to follow me. It’s too brave for me to let it die.”

Ukatonen ducked his chin, looking thoughtfully at the tinka.

“If it lives, you must accept it as your apprentice. Are you willing to accept that burden?”

Juna looked up, meeting the alien’s eyes. How could she take on responsibility for another creature? She was barely managing as it was. It was also a flagrant breach of protocol regulations. Every other regulation she had broken was justifiable. She had had to do it in order to survive. But this? She shook her head. No AC specialist in their right mind would do something like this. It was completely and totally wrong. But she couldn’t let the young alien die, no matter what happened as a result of her decision. The tinka had fought too hard for a chance to live. Juna had already decided, and no amount of rational thought could change her mind. This touched her in a place where Survey regulations had no hold on her. Somehow she would manage. “Yes, en. I accept this burden.”