“I’m in no hurry to choose a man,” I told Gehl. “I don’t want to be trapped either.”
“I will break with Ihiateh soon,” she said. “Natahk has asked me to come to him.”
“Gehl, will you help me learn to hunt?”
Her narrow eyes widened, and for the first time, her furry face seemed to show expression. Surprise. “To hunt?” she said. “But you have food. There is meklah over all the valley, and we bring you meat. And in time, you can kill some of your own animals and plant your own crops.”
“It will be awhile before we can slaughter many of our animals,” I said. “And though it is good of your people to help us, bring us meat, we should learn to help ourselves. We should learn what we can of your ways of hunting just as we learn to speak with you.”
“Most of your people are not learning to speak. We learn your English.”
“Then we should change.”
“You need not. We are content and your people are content. Why should there be change?”
“Will you help me learn to hunt?”
She gazed downward, answered softly. “No. Natahk has forbidden it.”
“Forbidden…“I frowned. “Why?”
“He has not said.”
She was lying. There was no new yellow in her coloring but there was suddenly an odd tension in the way she held her body. She was suppressing emotion, holding her coloring normal as Missionaries might hold their faces placid in spite of fear or anger. But I knew her well enough now to see through the deception.
“I speak your language well enough now,” she said. “I think we need not meet again.”
I stared at her. In spite of whatever had suddenly fallen between us, I had come to think of her as a friend. I had felt more comfortable with her in the short time that we had been meeting than I had felt with many of the Missionaries after three years. She was more like me somehow. Freer, less concerned with appearances.
“You know English,” I said, “and I know Garkohn. In the exchange, haven’t we become friends?”
Now she yellowed, just slightly. “I think you are a fighter.”
“When I have to, I fight. You know that we don’t divide ourselves into clans as you do.”
“I know.” She sighed, then suddenly flared yellow. “Sometimes it is foolish to make individual friendships among foreign fighters. But we will try a little foolishness.” Her coloring settled back to normal. “Perhaps soon you will have a friend highly placed.”
“So?”
“I… you will say nothing of this to anyone?”
“I’ll say nothing.”
“I’m going to challenge the Third Hunter. I can beat him. I know I can.”
I was impressed. I had seen the Third Hunter and he was impressive. If Gehl really thought she could beat him…
“Natahk knows,” said Gehl. “He says my ambition will kill me. He knows that if I beat the Third Hunter, I will take on the Second.”
“But you will not challenge Natahk himself, after that?”
She gave me a look of yellow disgust. “I do want to live, Alanna. I only challenge where there is a chance for me to win. No Garkohn would challenge Natahk until he is old and weak.”
I grinned. I had not seen anyone among the Missionaries who would have dared to challenge the massive Garkohn leader either. Not without a gun in his hand, at least.
“Come tonight and eat with my parents and me,” I told her. “Soon you may be too busy for such things.”
She looked thoughtful. “I can bring Ihiateh?”
I tried to hold back, but suddenly I found myself laughing aloud. “Bring him, Gehl, but…”
“I know.” She whitened. “He already knew some Missionary ways and he told me. I think he would have beaten me yesterday if he could have. I won’t provoke him here among your people again.”
Alanna passed through the high gates of the stockade with the raiding party and saw before her a town far more finished than it had been when she was abducted. There were more houses now. The settlement was much like the walled town the Missionaries had lived in back on Earth. As on Earth, the houses and storage buildings were grouped comfortably around a wide expanse of open land held in common by all the people. The common was landscaped as it had been on Earth with one difference. For some reason, there was no grass—no neatly cut lawn for.the people to sit or lie on. There were a few flowers—Earth flowers—nourishing in the alien soil. There was bare hard-packed ground, and there were tall meklah trees connected to each other by thick benchlike roots. Clumps of trees formed natural gathering places. Or the people could gather in the open as they were doing now around the raiding party. The Missionaries who had stayed behind and the several Garkohn who happened to be at the Mission settlement gathered around the raiding party just in front of the largest fragment of the ship that was left intact— the great, nearly hollow shell that served as the Mission Church.
Alanna found herself struggling to comprehend the words of welcome and congratulation that came both in English and in Garkohn. Both languages spoken quickly and carelessly sounded oddly foreign to her. More than once, she found herself mentally translating them into Tehkohn as though Tehkohn was her native language.
During the first moments, she was jostled but otherwise ignored by people eager to greet relatives or get a look at the prisoners. Missionaries in particular came to stare with a mixture of hostility and curiosity at the silent Tehkohn.
