The Color of Distance (21 page)

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.