Children of God

"Sit and eat!" she ordered more firmly this time, and handed a sak to Ha’anala before starting her own breakfast.

"Suukmel, I have tried to understand her," Ha’anala insisted, as though her older friend had argued. "I have tried to believe that she did not know what was happening to us—"

"Sofia was at Inbrokar," Suukmel pointed out.

"So she herself saw that slaughter." Ha’anala downed the eggsak’s contents, oblivious to its taste. "She knows now—even if she didn’t plan it herself from the begi

"Unquestionably," Suukmel agreed.

Ha’anala lowered herself to the ground, making a tripod of her legs and tail, belly swelling out before her. "And yet she expects me to forget all this, to leave my people, and come to her!" Ha’anala cried. "We have paid in lives for every attempt to find some kind of understanding or to make some kind of agreement!" Suukmel put out a hand and gently pulled Ha’anala over until she lay down, head in Suukmel’s lap, wrapping her tail around herself like an infant. "Maybe Shetri’s nephew Athaansi is right. We’re fools to keep on hoping…"

"Perhaps," Suukmel allowed.

"But it’s Athaansi’s raids that feed their fear! Every time his men bring down a Runao for his settlement, they eat their fill for a few hours and Athaansi is a hero—"

"And for every Runao who is killed, there is a whole village freshly convinced that the only way to live safely is to begin the war again," Suukmel pointed out.

"Exactly! The imaging satellites are too far south on the horizon to see us, and the Runa can’t track us, but they are not stupid! One day Athaansi, or someone like him, will lead them back to the valleys! I’m sure of it, Suukmel. If they ever find us, they’ll finish us! I have tried and tried to make Athaansi see that he multiplies our enemies faster than we can make children—"

"Athaansi is trapped in his own politics, child. He can’t rule without the VaPalkirn faction, and they will defend tradition at any price." Suukmel’s legs were cramping and she took Ha’anala firmly by the shoulders, lifting her to a sitting position, noting as she did so the narrowness of Ha’anala’s hips so late in pregnancy, the thi

Ha’anala glared down at the N’Jarr, where lean women bore fewer children every year, no matter whom they mated with. "If any wish to leave here, they may go!" she declared recklessly. "Athaansi will welcome the numbers."

"Undoubtedly," Suukmel said, watching Ha’anala’s gallantry fade. There had been no births during the past year, and few before that. Sofi’ala was a sturdy child who looked likely to survive childhood, but Ha’anala had lost a spindly toddler to the lung blight Shetri’s herbs could not stave off, and had borne another son dead.

"Maybe Athaansi is right," Ha’anala said, almost soundlessly.

"Possibly. And yet," Suukmel pointed out with wonderment, "we stay with you, and there are Runa who stay with us."

"Why?" Ha’anala cried. "What if I’m wrong? What if it’s all a mistake?"

"Eat this," Suukmel said, handing Ha’anala another eggsak. "Be glad for abundance and sunshine when they come." But Ha’anala simply let her hand fall listlessly, too distracted and dismayed to be heartened by a day when dense northern clouds parted around thin, silvery light. "Once, long ago," Suukmel told her, "my lord husband asked Hlavin Kitheri if he never worried that it might have been a mistake to do as he had done. The Paramount answered, ’Perhaps, but it was a magnificent mistake.’»

Ha’anala stood and walked to the edge of the rocks, the breeze riffling through her fur. Suukmel stood then herself and walked to Ha’anala’s side. "I have heard the songs of many gods, child. Silly gods, powerful gods, and capricious gods, and biddable gods, and dull. Long ago, when you first welcomed us to your household, and fed us and gave us shelter, and invited us to stay, I listened to you say that we are all—Jana’ata and Runa and H’u-man—children of a God so high that our ranks and our differences are as nothing in his far sight."

Suukmel looked out over the sweep of the valley, dotted now with small stone houses and filled with the sound of voices high and low, home to Runa and to Jana’ata and to the single outlandish being whom Ha’anala called brother. "I thought then that this was merely a song sung by a foreigner to a foolish girl who believed nonsense. But Taksayu was dear to me, and Isaac was dear to you. I was willing to hear this song, because I had once yearned for a world in which lives would be governed not by lineage and lust and moribund law, but by love and loyalty. In this one valley, such lives are possible," she said. "If it is a mistake to hope for such a world, then it is a magnificent mistake."

Ha’anala dropped to her knees and put her hands to the rock, to hold herself up. The keening was soft at first, but they were alone on this hillside, far from those whose faith could be undermined by a leader’s failure of nerve. Now was as good a time as any to give in to tiredness and worry; to hunger and responsibility; to yearning for lost parents and mourning for lost children, and for all that might have been and wasn’t.

"Rukuei came home," Ha’anala said finally in a tiny voice, face pressed now into Suukmel’s belly. "That’s something. He’s seen everything, and been everywhere. He came back here. And he has stayed…"

"Go back down the mountain, my heart," Suukmel advised serenely. "Listen to Isaac’s music again. Remember what you thought when you first heard it. Know that if we are children of one God, we can make ourselves one family in time."

"And if God is just a song?" Ha’anala asked, alone and frightened.

Suukmel did not answer for a while. Finally she said, "Our task is the same."

"LISTEN TO THEM!" TIYAT VA’AGARDI WHISPERED, AMAZED. "WOULD YOU have guessed that djanada were capable of arguing like that?"

"Just like the old days," Kajpin VaMasna agreed, "except now it’s them and not us." She listened to the wrangling for a while and then lay back to watch the clouds roll over the valley. It had been a long time since Kajpin herself had required agreement before making a decision—a character flaw she was no longer embarrassed by. She looked over at Tiyat. "I say we give them until second sunrise, and then we go."

Tiyat gazed affectionately at her companion. A former soldier, sickened by killing, Kajpin VaMasna had come north by herself, and since then had helped to ease the lives of VaN’Jarri of both species by raiding Runa trade caravans. Tiyat was just a domestic in the old days. She’d held a position of trust and responsibility even then, but she still sometimes hid in the middle of the herd, and admired Kajpin, who did not abase herself but still got along with everybody.

When the news about the new foreigners spread through the community, it was Kajpin who suggested that she and Tiyat should go south and bring a human back to the N’Jarr, touching off the fierno that was still raging. Most of the Runa had gotten bored and gone off to find something to eat, but the Jana’ata showed no signs of consensus.

"Ha’anala," Rukuei was saying, "I’ve studied all the records! Yes, there is a great deal I don’t understand. Too many words and ideas I can’t make clear to myself," he admitted. "But the foreigners first came here because of our music, and now they’ve come back. We have to know them—"

"And if all this talk of God’s music is nonsense?" Ha’anala demanded, trying to ignore Isaac’s humming, which was getting louder and more insistent by the moment. "If we are wrong—"

Tiyat spoke up for the first time. "It’s not nonsense! Someone thinks—" She stopped, shy but ashamed of taking cover, especially on this point. Tiyat loved the music Isaac had found; it was the only kind of music she had ever been able to listen to, and it had changed her. "I say we should let the other foreigners hear it. They’re part of this!"