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they raid the Quwanga on a regular, recurring basis. They re every
bit as warlike as their assailants, and if
Mahd ji s anything to go by, they seem to enjoy it. He gestured in the
direction the Pendju female had taken. That s where she s off to now, to help
the rest of the village make preparations to go after the raiders. She was in
a hurry to leave us because she was afraid she d miss out. He stared evenly
at Lejardin.
They also eat their dead.
O Sandringham s jaw dropped. Lejardin assumed a look of disbelief. No.
Not the Pendju.
He nodded slowly. Not only their own dead, but those of their enemies
as well. According to Mahd ji, they don t believe in letting anything go to
waste, up to and including a freshly killed corpse. Furthermore, it
seems that Mahd ji herself was once a
Quwanga. She s a Pendju captive, raised to be a citizen of this
village.
Carnavon was sympathetic. That explains some of the expressions you
were running through, Jack. I was wondering what the hell you two were talking
about.
Simna eyed his friend. You know me, Ced. I wear my feelings on my
face. I ve always been a lousy poker player.
Mahd ji doesn t have any regrets about being a captive?
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Millie Carnavon inquired.
If she does, she didn t express them to me. She seems to be fully integrated
into the Pendju tribe. I detected no indication of bitterness on her part.
I wonder if they fight over possession of the dead, Stevens remarked.
O Sandringham gave him a look to which he responded defiantly. Just because
you ve got the degrees doesn t mean you re the only ones who can speculate,
Bee-el.
Great, just great, Halstead was murmuring. No alien
Rousseaus here. In addition to being combative, our cheerful, pastoral
Xicans also turn out to be cannibals.
We re starting to encounter animals that aren t what they re supposed to be
at first glance, Carnavon noted. Why should the
Pendju be any different? His tone was cool, objective. I think
maybe we ve overly romanticized this part of our discovery here.
I m not saying it was conscious, mind. But Xica isn t Paradise, so we
shouldn t expect the Pendju or their cousins to be particularly innocent.
Cannibals. Lejardin kicked gently at the dry earth.
Necrotism.
There s no worship involved, Simna went on. Mahd ji as much as told me
that she d eat part of her own mother if the circumstances were
appropriate.
She licked her lips as she gazed back at him. You admit that your knowledge
of the Xican language is still far from perfect, Jack.
Are you sure you got all this right, that you didn t miss something in the
translation? Thought Mahd ji was saying one thing when she was actually saying
something else?
I m doing the best I can. I had far more followup questions than I did time
to ask them. She was very anxious to be on her way.
See, delicate little Mahd ji wants to go kill some relatives, because that s
the right thing to do. He let his gaze rove among his companions.
That s more or less what she said: that it was the right way to
live.
Retribution, revenge& Halstead looked unhappy.
I m not sure that s a correct interpretation of the situation, Ted, Simna
told him. I got the impression it wasn t that straightforward. It s
more subtle. I m just not sure of the differences.
It was all too easy. Prentice encompassed the entire village with a sweep of
his hand. This was too simple, too idealized from the start.
No kidding. Noosa made no attempt to restrain his cynicism. Ted s
right. We wanted to see a nonhuman intelligence living in an alien paradise,
so we didn t dig too deep. Instead, they turn out to be as morally
deficient as a comparably primitive human society. Maybe more so.
I m not so sure the analogy s that simple, Cody. When
Simna was deep in thought, you could practically hear the wheels turning
inside his skull. Mahd ji spoke of attacking the Quwanga, but she didn t
speak of killing. There was no malice in her tone, not a hint of anger.
Despite the village s losses she sounded almost content.
Careful, Jack, Carnavon warned him. Trying to learn an alien
tongue is tough enough. Emotions, overtones, social subtleties& you
might be interpreting everything backwards. There used to be places on
old Earth where a smile was taken as a challenge.
I know, Ced. Again, I m doing the best I can. Bear in mind that when I give
my opinions, that s all they are.
So what do we do?
They all turned to Stevens. What do you mean, what do we do, Kauri? Prentice
asked him.
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Well, I mean, do we just sit here and wait to see how many of our new
friends make it back home? He caressed the cutter clipped to his
workbelt.
Prentice was horrified. We can t participate, Kauri. You know that.
No, I don t know that. Don t tell me there are regulations about not
interfering in native affairs, because no one ever
expected to encounter any natives. He looked around at the others.
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