sing, of course. Men, interestingly, usually do the carving. The ulo, or woman's knife, with its semicircular blade, customarily fixed in a wooden handle, is not well suited to carving. It is better at cutting meat and slicing sinew. Also, carving ivory and bone requires strength. But women sing as well as men. Sometimes they sing of feasting clothes, and lovers, and their skill in quartering tabuk.
Another man now took the drum and began to sing. He sang a kayak-making song, customarily sung to the leather, wood and sinew, with which he worked, that it not betray him in the polar sea. A fellow after him sang a sleen song, usually sung on the water, encouraging the sleen to swim to where he might strike them. The next song dealt with a rascal who, supposedly hunting for tabuk, lay down and rubbed his boots on a rock, later returning to his companions with a report of luckless hunting, indicating his worn boots as evidence of his lengthy trekking. From the looks cast about the room I gathered the rascal might even be present. One fellow, at least, seemed quite embarrassed. He soon leaped up, however, and sang a song about the first fellow, something about a fellow who could not make good arrows. Two women sang after this, the first one about gathering birds' eggs when she was a little girl, and the other one about her joy in seeing the face of a relative whom she had not seen in more than two years.
It is rather commendable, I think, that the red hunters make up songs. They are not as critical as many other people. To them it is often more important that one whom they love sings than it is that his song is a good song. If it is a «true» song, and comes from the heart, they are pleased to hear it. Perhaps then it is a 'good song' after all. Songs, even simple ones, are regarded by the red hunters as being precious and rather mysterious They are pleased that there are songs. As it is said, 'No one know. from where songs come.'
'Sing. Imnak!' called Akko.
'Sing, Imnak' called Kadluk.
Imnak shook his head vigorously. 'No, no,' he said.
'Imnak never sings,' said Poalu, helpfully volunteering this information, forgetful apparently of the bondage strings knotted on her throat.
'Come, Imnak,' said Akko, his friend. 'Sing us a song.'
'I cannot sing.' said Imnak.
'Come, come, sing!' called others.
To my surprise Imnak rose to his feet and, hastily, left the feasting house.
I followed him outside. So, too, concerned, did Poalu.
'I cannot sing,' said Imnak. He stood by the shore. 'Songs do not come to my mouth. I am without songs. I am like the ice in the glacier on which flowers will not bloom. No song will ever fly to me. No song ever has been born in my heart.'
'You can sing, Imnak,' said Poalu.
'No,' said Imnak, 'I cannot sing.'
'Someday,' said Poalu, 'you will sing in the feasting house.'
'No,' said Imnak, 'I will not sing. I cannot sing.'
'Imnak,' she protested.
'Go back to the feasting house,' he said.
She turned about, and returned to the feasting house. The feasting house, except for being larger, was much like the other dwellings in the permanent camp. It was half underground and double walled These two walls were of stone. Between them there were layers of peat, for insulation, which had been cut from the boglike tundra Hides too, were tied on the inside, from tabuk tents, affording additional protection from the cold. There was a smoke hole in the top of the house. One bent over to enter the low doorway The ceiling, supported by numerous poles. consisted of layers of grass and mud. There was the feasting house, and some ten or eleven dwellings in the camp. Although there were some fifteen hundred red hunters they generally lived in widely scattered small groups. In the summer there was a gathering for the great tabuk hunt, when the herd of Tancred crossed Ax Glacier and came to the tundra, but, even in the summer, later, the smaller groups, still pursuing tabuk, would scatter in their hunts, following the casual dispersal of the tabuk in their extended grazings. At the end of the summer these groups, loosely linked save in the spring or early summer, would make their ways back to their own camps. There were some forty of these camps, sometimes separated by journeys of several days. Imnak's camp was one of the more centrally located of the camps. In these camps the red hunters lived most of the year. They would leave them sometimes in the winter, when they needed more food, families individually going out on the pack ice to hunt sleen. Sleen were infrequent in the winter and there would not, often, be enough to sustain ten or twelve families in a given location. When game is scarce compensation can be sometimes achieved by reducing the size of the hunting group and extending the range of the hunt. In the winter, in particular, it is important for a family to have a good hunter.
Imnak looked out, over the water.
'Once, I thought I would make up a song,' he said. 'I wanted to sing. I wanted very much to sing. I thought I would make up a song. I wanted to sing about the world, and how beautiful it is. I wanted to sing about the great sea, the mountains, the lovely stars, the broad sky.'
'Why did you not make up a song?' I asked.
'A voice,' said Imnak, 'seemed to say to me, 'How dare you make up a song? How dare you sing? I am the world. I am the great sea. I am the mountains, the lovely stars, the great sky! Do you think you can put us in your little song? Then I was afraid, and fell down.'
I looked at him.
'Since that day I have never tried to sing,' said Imnak.
'It is not wrong to sing,' I said.
'Who am I to make up a song?' asked Imnak. 'I am only a little man. I am unimportant. I am no one. I am nothing.'
I did not attempt to respond to him.
'All my songs would fail,' he said.
'Perhaps not,' I said. 'At any rate, it is better to try to make a song and fail, than not to try to make a song. It is better to make a song and fail, than not to sing.'
'I am too small,' said Imnak. 'I cannot sing. No song will sit on my shoulder. No little song comes to me and asks me to sing it.'
'No song,' I said, 'can catch the sky. No song can encompass the mountains. Songs do hot catch the world. They are beside the world, like lovers, telling it how beautiful it is.'
'I am unworthy,' said Imnak. 'I am nothing.'
'Perhaps one day,' I said, 'you will hear a voice say inside you, 'I am the world. I am the great sea, I am the mountains. the lovely stars, the great sky. And I am Imnak, too! Tell me your song, Imnak, for I cannot sing without you. It is only through you, tiny insignificant Imnak, and others like you, that I can see myself and know how beautiful I am. It is only through you, my tiny, frail precious Imnak, and others like you, that I can lift my voice in song. '
Imnak turned away from me. 'I cannot sing,' he said.
We heard laughter from the feasting house. I could see the stars now above the polar sea. It was thus already the polar dusk.
The remains of the great Hunjer whale lay beached on the shore, much of it already cut away, many bones, too, taken from it.
'The meat racks are full,' I said, referring to the high racks here and there in the camp.
'Yes,' said Imnak.
Two weeks ago, some ten to fifteen sleeps ago, by rare fortune, we had managed to harpoon a baleen whale, a bluish, white-spotted blunt fin. That two whales had been taken in one season was rare hunting, indeed. Sometimes two or three years pass without a whale being taken.
'It is good,' said Imnak, looking at the meat racks. 'It may be that this winter the families will not have to go out on the ice.'
Ice hunting can be dangerous, of course. The terrain beneath you, in wind and tides, can shift and buckle, breaking apart.
The sun was low on the horizon. We heard more laughter from the feasting house.
The polar night is not absolutely dark, of course. The Gorean moons, and even the stars, provide some light,
