Part 27 (1/2)

Thus each arrangement he makes will have its flaws, which in the end bring it to ruin; but each will also have its virtues.

I myself don't think here-and-now is such a bad place to live. But others might. In fact, others do. At the same time, we cannot deny that some ways of life are, on balance, evil. The worst and most dangerous are those which cannot tolerate anything different from themselves.

So in an age of conflict we need a clear understanding of our own values-and the enemy's. Likewise we have to see with equal clarity the drawbacks of both cultures. This is less a moral than a strategic imperative. Only on such a basis can we know what we ought to do and what is possible for us to do.

For we are not caught in a meaningless nightmare. We are inhabiting a real world where events have understandable causes and causes have effects. We were never given any sacred mission, and it would be fatal to believe otherwise.

We do, though, have the right of self-preservation. Let us know what it is we want to preserve. Then common sense and old-fas.h.i.+oned guts will probably get us through.

This is rather a heavy sermon to load on a story which was, after all, meant as entertainment. The point was made far better by Robinson Jeffers: ”Long live freedom and d.a.m.n the ideologies.”

WILLIAM SANDERS.

William Sanders's first novel, Journey to Fusang, was published in 1988, and garnered acclaim for its irreverent portrait of an alternate world in which the Western Hemisphere was settled by Asians and Arabs. His second novel, The Wild Blue and the Gray, proposed with equal imagination a triumphant Confederate States of America coming to the aid of the French and British in World War I. As Will Sundown, he has written the military science-fiction novel Pockets of Resistance and its sequel The h.e.l.lbound Train. His short fiction, which has appeared in Asimov's, Tomorrow, and the anthologies Alternate Generals and Wheel of Fortune, has three times been selected for inclusion in The Year's Best Science Fiction. He won the 1998 Sidewise Award for alternate history. In addition to many nonfiction books, he is the author of Blood Autumn, a murder mystery set in Oklahoma featuring writer-detective Taggart Roper.

THE UNDISCOVERED.

William Sanders

So the white men are back! And trying once again to build themselves a town, without so much as asking anyone's permission. I wonder how long they will stay this time. It sounds as if these have no more sense than the ones who came before.

They certainly pick the strangest places to settle. Last time it was that island, where anyone could have told them the weather is bad and the land is no good for corn. Now they have invaded Powhatan's country, and from what you say, they seem to have angered him already. Of course that has never been hard to do.

Oh, yes, we hear about these matters up in the hills. Not many of us actually visit the coastal country-I don't suppose there are ten people in this town, counting myself, who have even seen the sea-but you know how these stories travel. We have heard all about your neighbor Powhatan, and you eastern people are welcome to him. Was there ever a chief so hungry for power? Not in my memory, and I have lived a long time.

But we were speaking of the white men. As you say, they are a strange people indeed. For all their amazing weapons and other possessions, they seem to be ignorant of the simplest things. I think a half-grown boy would know more about how to survive. Or how to behave toward other people in their own country.

And yet they are not the fools they appear. Not all of them, at least. The only one I ever knew was a remarkably wise man in many ways.

Do not make that gesture at me. I tell you that there was a white man who lived right here in our town, for more than ten winters, and I came to know him well.

I remember the day they brought him in. I was sitting in front of my house, working on a fish spear, when I heard the shouting from the direction of the town gate. Bigkiller and his party, I guessed, returning from their raid on the Tuscaroras. People were running toward the gate, pouring out of the houses, everyone eager for a look.

I stayed where I was. I could tell by the sound that the raid had been successful-no women were screaming, so none of our people had been killed or seriously hurt-and I didn't feel like spending the rest of the day listening to Bigkiller bragging about his latest exploits.

But a young boy came up and said, ”They need you, Uncle. Prisoners.”

So I put my spear aside and got up and followed him, wondering once again why no one around this place could be bothered to learn to speak Tuscarora. After all, it is not so different from our tongue, not nearly as hard as Catawba or Maskogi or Shawano. Or your own language, which as you see I still speak poorly.

The captives were standing just inside the gate, guarded by a couple of Bigkiller's brothers, who were holding war clubs and looking fierce, as well as pleased with themselves. There was a big crowd of people by now and I had to push my way through before I could see the prisoners. There were a couple of scared-looking Tuscarora women-one young and pretty, the other almost my age and ugly as an alligator-and a small boy with his fist stuck in his mouth. Not much, I thought, to show for all this noise and fuss.

Then I saw the white man.

Do you know, it didn't occur to me at first that that was what he was. After all, white men were very rare creatures in those days, even more so than now. Hardly anyone had actually seen one, and quite a few people refused to believe they existed at all.

Besides, he wasn't really white-not the kind of fish-belly white that I'd always imagined, when people talked about white men-at least where it showed. His face was a strange reddish color, like a boiled crawfish, with little bits of skin peeling from his nose. His arms and legs, where they stuck out from under the single buckskin garment he wore, were so dirty and covered with bruises that it was hard to tell what color the skin was. Of course that was true of all of the captives; Bigkiller and his warriors had not been gentle.

His hair was dark brown rather than black, which I thought was unusual for a Tuscarora, though you do see Leni Lenapes and a few Shawanos with lighter hair. It was pretty thin above his forehead, and the scalp beneath showed through, a nasty bright pink. I looked at that and at the red peeling skin of his face, and thought: well done, Bigkiller, you've brought home a sick man. Some lowland skin disease, and what a job it's going to be purifying everything after he dies....

That was when he turned and looked at me with those blue eyes. Yes, blue. I don't blame you; I didn't believe that story either, until I saw for myself. The white men have eyes the color of a sunny sky. I tell you, it is a weird thing to see when you're not ready for it.

Bigkiller came through the crowd, looking at me and laughing. ”Look what we caught, Uncle,” he said, and pointed with his spear. ”A white man!”

”I knew that,” I said, a little crossly. I hated it when he called me ”Uncle.” I hated it when anyone did it, except children-I was not yet that old-but I hated it worse when it came from Bigkiller. Even if he was my nephew.

”He was with the Tuscaroras,” one of the warriors, Muskrat by name, told me. ”These two women had him carrying firewood-”

”Never mind that.” Bigkiller gave Muskrat a bad look. No need to tell the whole town that this brave raid deep into Tuscarora country had amounted to nothing more than the ambush and kidnapping of a small wood-gathering party.

To me Bigkiller said, ”Well, Uncle, you're the one who knows all tongues. Can you talk with this white-skin?”

I stepped closer and studied the stranger, who looked back at me with those impossible eyes. He seemed unafraid, but who could read expressions on such an unnatural face?

”Who are you and where do you come from?” I asked in Tuscarora.

He smiled and shook his head, not speaking. The woman beside him, the older one, spoke up suddenly. ”He doesn't know our language,” she said. ”Only a few words, and then you have to talk slow and loud, and kick him a little.”

”n.o.body in our town could talk with him,” the younger woman added. ”Our chief speaks a little of your language, and one family has a Catawba slave, and he couldn't understand them either.”

By now the crowd was getting noisy, everyone pus.h.i.+ng and jostling, trying to get a look at the white man. Everyone was talking, too, saying the silliest things. Old Otter, the elder medicine man, wanted to cut the white man to see what color his blood was. An old woman asked Muskrat to strip him naked and find out if he was white all over, though I guessed she was really more interested in learning what his male parts looked like.

The young Tuscarora woman said, ”Are they going to kill him?”

”I don't know,” I told her. ”Maybe.”

”They shouldn't,” she said. ”He's a good slave. He's a hard worker, and he can really sing and dance.”

I translated this, and to my surprise Muskrat said, ”It is true that he is stronger than he looks. He put up a good fight, with no weapon but a stick of firewood. Why do you think I'm holding this club left-handed?” He held up his right arm, which was swollen and dark below the elbow. ”He almost broke my arm.”