'And you? You are Drinker.'
She looked puzzled. 'I am Jai.'
'You are Drinker,' he said, for as he had worked on her injured foot he had seen the small pores from which would grow the tendrils, should she have need to return to the earth.
'I don't know what you mean,' she said. 'Until I ran away I was pong in the city of Arutan.'
Duwan shook his head. She spoke as a Drinker, but her words were, occasionally, misshaped, slightly askew, and he did not know the words pong, and Arutan.
'I have been starving,' she said. 'Please, please, cut a great slice of meat from the haunch of the farl. As hungry as I am I can almost eat it raw.'
Duwan reached for a life organ on a particularly succulent fixed brother, breaking it away carefully. 'If you are hungry, here is food,' he said.
Her eyes went wide. 'It is forbidden.'
He took a nibble of the leaf, thrust the rest toward her mouth.
'Must I, Master?' she asked.
'Eat,' he said. 'You will need your strength to heal your wounds.' She closed her eyes, swallowed, took the leaf and began to chew it. Her eyes opened. 'Good,' she said, reaching for the fixed brother, which was quite near her, tearing away several leaves.
'No, no,' Duwan said. 'Gently, and carefully.' She would have stripped the fixed brother had he not restrained her, gathering more for her from other fixed brothers, taking only a small portion of their life, thanking each as he did.
'At least I will die with a full stomach,' Jai said, as she munched.
'I think,' Duwan said, 'that we have much to learn from each other. When you are rested, we will talk.'
It soon became apparent to Duwan that the female, Jai, was not the most articulate of Drinkers, that, indeed, her ignorance was astounding. Nor was he the most experienced of interrogators. His curiosity was great, but satisfying it was complicated by Jai's tendency to throw in words with which he was not familiar, words that did not have the sound of the only language Duwan had ever heard.
'Slowly, slowly,' he said. 'You speak of pong. What is or are pong?'
'I am pong.'
'You are not Drinker, female?'
'I know not this word, Drinker.'
'I am Drinker. All are Drinker.'
'You have the basic form of pong, but more beautiful,' she said. 'Yet you could pass for Devourer.'
'Again,' he said, 'I know not that word.' Unless, he thought, it also meant Enemy. 'Are the Devourers the Enemy?'
'Enemy?' She mused. 'Does that mean one who is against you?'
'One who kills, who takes.'
'They kill,' she said, 'so I suppose they are enemy.' Duwan sighed and looked up at the sky. 'Long, long ago this Land of Many Brothers was the home of the Drinkers. The Enemy came from the south. You cannot be of the Enemy, for you are Drinker.' She looked puzzled. Irritated, he lifted her good foot and pointed to an area of many small pores. 'This shows that you are Drinker,' he almost shouted. 'Do these Devourers have such pores on the bottoms of their feet?'
'I have never had occasion to examine feet,' she said. Duwan reached for a tasty life organ from a nearby brother. Jai's eyes followed the movement of his hand. He sighed, plucked another life organ, handed it to her.
