Climate of Change (36 page)

Haven drew the Rebel figure again, right in front of the two men, and facing away. “Men seek Haven, but catch Rebel,” she said grimly. She drew the second man's arms holding Rebel from behind, and moved the Bub figure in front of her. “Rape Rebel.”

What were they doing? She didn't know the word, and couldn't grasp why one man would be behind her and one in front of her.

“Rape,” Haven repeated. She drew in the erect stick penis, this time touching the Rebel figure's crotch.

Now she understood. Forcible sex! She wouldn't tolerate that.

But if one man had held her, while the other did it, she must have had no choice. Bub had wanted the elder sister, but settled for the one he could catch. Still, Rebel could have killed them right after it.

Haven redrew the figures. “Bub hit Rebel,” she said. She drew a club in the man's hands, and touched the Rebel figure's head. He had bashed her and knocked her out! That was why she hadn't gone after them with her knife.

“Drag Rebel away,” Haven said. She drew the figures again, showing Rebel being dragged across the ground by her feet. “Left for dead.” The figure was shown in a gully.

Raped her and killed her, so she couldn't tell. That was the way of brute men. But she hadn't died, and that would be their undoing. As soon as she recovered.

Haven drew another female figure, herself. “Haven miss Rebel. Look for Rebel. Find scuffle marks.” The words weren't intelligible, but Rebel got the gist of it. Her sister had searched for her, and found her in the gully, and managed to get her to their secret cave.

So now she knew, and she had learned several key words. She was recovering, and in due course would have her revenge. She would find this Bub character and kill him.

Satisfied, she relaxed, and realized she was hungry. The nuts were not yet ready; she would have to rinse them and soak them again, then dry them and grind them between stones to make flour. But Haven had brought millet. Millet was good, but hard to harvest in any quantity at
one time; the wild grains tended to ripen at different times, scattered in distant patches. So they would cut the grass when the seed was full but the stems remained green, and store it while it ripened. Then they would thresh it, so that all the seed fell to the ground in one place. It was a lot of trouble, but the dry regions had spread during the drought, becoming better for millet. Haven had found some almost ripe millet that could be threshed now. So they got to work on it, and before long had a fair pile. They pounded the seed between stones and wet it, making a paste they could bake over a small fire. They finally had some fresh bread to chew on.

Rebel had a thought she wouldn't have cared to speak, even if she had the words. She was married to Harbinger, but now was away from him. Haven could see him often. Would Haven take advantage of that? No, of course not; Haven was her loyal sister. But was it possible that she was tempted on occasion? What about Harbinger? Rebel could bear him no babies, while Haven could. Haven had almost done so, once, before breaking with him. What memories of that might they both be harboring?

Rebel pushed the thought from her mind. Haven wouldn't do any such thing, she was sure. It was just her own illness and helplessness that made her worry foolishly. After all, wasn't Haven taking good care of her, here in the cave?

Haven left, and Rebel slept again. This time her dream was not of herself or her family, but of great groups of people. This must be the time after Dreamtime, but still very long ago, when people were spreading out to occupy the land. Some went north, and some went east, and some stayed south. The northerners settled in cold lands. They developed a huge vocabulary, with specific names for everything of interest to them. They hardly needed connectors; they weren't interested in interactions between words, just in the words themselves, with some modifications. The good berry patch and bad leopards were enough for them. This worked well enough, but required a prodigious memory, with a big head to contain it.

The easterners traveled far, meeting many new challenges. They settled in warm lands, or in mountainous lands, or in cold lands, or by the
shore. They developed connections between terms, so that they could describe more complicated interactions. Because of this, they needed fewer terms, and did not have to remember as much. But they did just as well.

The southerners remained in warm lands. They developed a new class of words to describe things that didn't happen. This was confusing to the northerners and easterners, and they had nothing to do with it. But these new terms facilitated understanding of things that might have been. Storytelling came into existence. Children listened raptly to the adventures of men and women who didn't really exist. They dreamed of things that had happened long ago, or were happening far away, or that might happen in times to come. Of things that could happen, if something were different from what they knew. They developed imagination. Useless as this seemed, it nevertheless improved their command of language, and made them better able to cope in an increasingly complicated society.

But this didn't make sense, she realized as she woke. The south was not warm, it was cold; the warmth was in the north. So this aspect of Dreamtime seemed reversed. If it was really Dreamtime. Maybe in the period after Dreamtime, the nature of things changed, and then changed back again in recent times.

But direction didn't matter as much as substance. She now knew that the bad man Bub desired the elder sister, but had actually raped the younger one. She was that one. She didn't know why the men of her family weren't going out to kill Bub for that insult.

Well, she was obviously in that branch of people who had imagination. She should use it to figure out why.

Haven arrived, with more food. She had a bag of roasted moth abdomens. What delight! Rebel knew how the moths were caught and prepared. In the summer they swarmed to the heights of the distant mountains to aestivate. They piled high in crevices, layer upon layer, where they could be gathered. A fire was made on a flat stone base, and when the embers were swept aside, the rock remained hot, and the moths were dumped on it for cooking. The dust and ash were winnowed out, leaving the abdomens, each the size of the last digit of a little finger.
They were delicious, and made folk fat and sleek. But they could be obtained only by trading with distant tribes, and were a rare treat in this location. Somehow Haven had gotten some, and here they were.

Rebel ate them avidly. They were just the thing for strength for recovery. Then she saw that her sister wasn't eating. She paused. “Eat?”

Haven shook her head. “For you.”

But Rebel insisted that her sister share, and then Haven did eat a few. Rebel knew Haven loved the moths as much as she did, but was trying to help Rebel mend.

Soon they talked. They were developing a larger mutual vocabulary, and Rebel was beginning to remember words. The dreams had helped her, giving her inspiration and direction, and maybe her head was healing inside too. “Bub want Haven, rape Rebel,” she said, setting the base for further clarification. She strained for a moment, and captured the key word: “Vengeance?”

Haven sighed. “Not yet.”

“Brothers do?”

“Not yet.”

“Why?” There was one of the key concept words, that separated mankind from the cousin species. The others settled for what and how; her own kind sought when and if and why. The terms of imagination.

Haven frowned. “Hard to tell.” She meant it was difficult to explain, because it was complicated and they lacked the words.

But Rebel insisted on knowing. She had no memory of the event, but might bring it back by hearing what Haven knew. A bad man had gone after the elder sister, but unlike the legend, had caught the younger one. That much was clear; Rebel surely had not been fleeing, not realizing that she could be in danger too. But if they knew who did it, why wasn't vengeance already being accomplished?

Haven tried. “Brothers work with Bub's clan.”

It took a moment to assimilate the statement, but she was getting better. “Why?”

“Drought. Family hungry. Need food.”

It took another moment to get “drought,” but it came. A prolonged period of dryness, that shriveled plants and starved animals. She remembered:
it had indeed been very dry. They lived near a lake, and that helped, but they foraged well beyond it, and out there the land was suffering. Turkey, geese, and bird eggs were sparse, and the wallaby and kangaroo were ranging elsewhere in search of better grazing. Rebel and Haven and Crenelle had been going out in the dugout canoe to fish with hook and line, while the brothers went after fish with spears. But even the fish were getting scarce, as if they too felt the dryness. It might be better, hunting and fishing elsewhere, but they were limited to their territory, on pain of keeping the peace with the neighboring clans.

So they had made a deal with a neighbor, the men agreeing to join its hunt across larger territory, for a share of the kill. Rebel remembered now, as Haven described it. The women had done the same, assisting the foraging and gathering. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than going hungry.

Then the neighbor subchief had approached Haven. He liked her look, and wanted her as a mistress. She had demurred; she wasn't married, but he was, and she didn't much like him anyway. He had made it clear that the family could prosper if she obliged him and kept silent about it, and that the family could suffer if she did not. She wanted no part of it, but did not tell others in the family, because they needed the work. So it was that she didn't tell Bub outright no, but did try to avoid him. The brothers got work, because Bub knew that if he sent them away, Haven would go too, and he would lose his chance. He was trying to play her in gradually, to convert her, so that she would willingly do his bidding. He evidently had some experience at bending women to his way.

But still she eluded him, and he was getting impatient. When Haven and Rebel switched places in the foraging line, so that Bub discovered the younger sister where he had thought to catch the elder, he must have been angry. Perhaps in frustration, or maybe as a warning to Haven, or maybe just because she was there, he had taken Rebel. She must have fought, so that he knew there would be trouble, so he tried to kill her. At least that was the way Haven re created the scene; she had not been there.

Rebel nodded. She would have fought.

So Haven had rescued Rebel, after finding her in the gully. And saved her life. But she still hadn't dared tell the others, because she knew they would seek immediate vengeance, and that would get them exiled or killed.

“First,” she said, “we must get you well, physically and mentally. You are improving, but you remain weak, and your speech is not back to normal.”

“I know it,” Rebel said, for she had to struggle to comprehend that speech. At least she was able to; connections were evidently being made in her head. Her comprehension seemed to have recovered to about the extent her body had: maybe halfway. “But why not home with Harbinger?”

“Because then Bub would know you survived. There would be trouble. If he even learned you are in this cave, he might seek to kill you, so you couldn't tell. But if you get well, then we can handle him. So it must be secret, until we are ready.”

“While our brothers and Harbinger work for Bub?” Rebel asked, appalled.

“Yes, so as to give no notice. So that when we are ready, we can kill him.”

“As the Seven Sisters would have killed Nyiru,” Rebel agreed, liking it better. “Had they been able to.”

“Yes,” Haven agreed grimly, understanding the reference. “If they had been able to catch him unawares.”

“And does Harbinger know I survive?”

“Yes, we all know. But all of us pretend we don't know where you are. Bub says you must have run away, not liking to work hard.”

“The liar!”

“Of course. We express doubt, but since we are supposed not to know, we merely hope you will return. So things are uneasy, and there is no sign of you. And I still avoid Bub, though it is not easy.”

Rebel chafed at the restriction, but knew her sister was right. It was better for Rebel to remain lost, until she was well again, and until the drought ended. Then—ah, then!

Yet she couldn't quite suppress that nagging concern. Was this the
truth? Did Rebel really need to remain sealed away from her husband all this time? She knew her worry was foolish, yet could not completely abolish it.

She slept again, and dreamed richly, learning to talk more perfectly. When she woke it was true; her language was returning rapidly. As time passed, her head and body mended, and she was whole again. Haven visited frequently, usually at night, bringing what food she could scrounge without being obvious. Rebel suspected that much of it was Haven's own food, that she had pretended to eat but actually hidden, and hoped her sister wasn't starving herself. She brought assorted fruits, taro, arrowroot, coconut, and nuts. And of course they had the processed poison nuts, now detoxified.

One night Rebel woke, aware of a presence. It wasn't Haven. She clutched her knife.

“Rebel.”

“Harbinger!” she cried with glad recognition.

Then they were embracing. “Haven said you were well enough now,” he said. “So I came alone, secretly.” He sounded uncertain.

“I am well enough,” she agreed, embracing him and spreading her legs. She hadn't realized how hungry for him she had been. She wrapped her legs around him and drew him in, welcoming his ardor. It wasn't just because of the time they had been apart; it was that sometimes a man would reject a wife who had been raped. Considering the way their own relationship had started—

But there was no rejection, only passion. He was bursting inside her. She was relieved and delighted, milking him of all he had to give. But another part of her was neither forgetting nor forgiving the injuries she had experienced, though she still did not remember their actual occurrence.