Some of the tribesfolk did not understand that, at first. Anijang, who was the oldest, came to Koshmar not long after their arrival in Vengiboneeza and said, “It is my death-day this day. What shall I do, go out into the jungle alone?”
“Anijang, there are no more death-days!” Koshmar said, laughing.
“No death-days? But I am thirty-five. I have kept the count very carefully.” He displayed a tattered old strip of leather, marked with notches. “This is the day.”
“Are you not still strong and healthy?”
“Well—” He shrugged. Anijang’s shoulders were bent and his muzzle was beginning to turn gray; but he looked sound enough to Koshmar.
“There’s no reason for you to die until your natural time comes,” she said. “This isn’t the cocoon any more. There’s room for everyone now, for as long as he can live. Besides, you are needed. There’s work to do for all of us here, and in the times to come there’ll be even more. How can we spare you, Anijang?”
The baffled and forlorn look in the man’s eyes astonished her. Then Koshmar realized that he had long ago made his peace with death and was unable to welcome or even to comprehend this reprieve. For him, for this ordinary man, this plain slow-witted hardworking man, the thirty-five years was enough. He saw no reason to go on. Death to him was only an unending sleep, restful, pleasing.
“I am not to go?” Anijang said.
“You must not go. Dawinno forbids it.”
“Dawinno? But he is the Destroyer.”
“He is the Balancer,” said Koshmar. “He takes and he gives. He has given you your life, Anijang, and you will hold it for many years to come.” She pulled him close, gripping his arms tightly. “Rejoice, man! Rejoice! You will live a long time! Go, find your twining-partner, celebrate this day!”
Anijang went shuffling away from her. He seemed not to understand; but he would accept.
Some of the others, Koshmar knew, would be confused in the same way. This matter had to be dealt with by a decree. She spoke a long while with Torlyri, devising what must be said. It was so difficult for them to work it out that they resorted to twining, which gave them the necessary depth of understanding. Then Koshmar called the tribe together to explain the new order of things.
It would be wrong, she told them, to believe that the gods had ever required early death of them. She reminded them of the teachings by which they had been reared. The gods had asked only that the People live within the cocoon in an orderly way until the Time of Going Forth arrived. Since the gods loved life, it had been important that new life occasionally enter the cocoon; but since the tribe could not easily expand the cocoon and their supplies of foodstuffs were limited, the gods had ordered them to maintain a balance of population. Thirty-five years was all that they could live, and then they must leave the cocoon to face their destiny, so that new life might enter. For every child, a death. No one, said Koshmar, had ever questioned the necessity and the wisdom of that.
But the gods in their mercy had brought them forth now into the world and the old strictures no longer applied. The world was huge; the tribe was small; food was easy to find. Now it was the desire of the gods that they be fruitful and multiply. Death would come when the gods willed it, but only then. This now was the season of life, of joy, of the growth of the tribe, said Koshmar.
“And how long will we live, then?” Minbain asked. “Will we live forever?”
“No,” said Koshmar, “not forever. Only for the natural time, however long that is.”
“Yes,” called Galihine, “and how long is that?”
“As long as the chroniclers have lived,” Koshmar said. “For they alone have lived their natural time.”
Still the faces were blank.
“How long is that ?” Galihine repeated.
Koshmar looked toward Hresh. “Tell me, boy: what was the name of the chronicler who kept the casket before Thaggoran?”
“Thrask,” Hresh said.
“Thrask, yes. I had forgotten, because I was so young when he died. Hardly any of you were born in Thrask’s time, but I tell you this, that he lived to be old and bent, and his fur was entirely white. And that is the natural time.”
“To be old and bent,” Konya said, shivering a little. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“For warriors,” young Haniman said with sudden impudence, “the natural time will be much shorter, Konya.”
The meeting dissolved in laughter. Koshmar could see that there was more uneasiness than she had anticipated: death for some was freedom, she realized, and not the brutal interruption of life that it seemed to her. They would learn. They would come to understand the new ways. And even if they struggled with these ideas, their children would not, and their children’s children would have trouble so much as believing that anything like a limit-age and a death-day had ever been imposed on the tribe.
But Koshmar saw that she could not only abolish death; she must encourage life. And so another of her new laws revoked the restrictions on childbearing. No longer, she decreed, would breeding be limited to just a few couples of the tribe, and they permitted to conceive only as often as was necessary to provide replacements for those who had reached the limit-age. From now on anyone above the age of twining might have children in any number. Not only might: should. The tribe was too small. That must change.
At once new couples began coming to her to ask for the coupling-rites. The first were Konya and Galihine, and then Staip and Boldirinthe. Then, most surprisingly, Harruel came with Minbain, who had brought forth Hresh by her mate Samnibolon. Samnibolon had died of a fever long ago. Did Minbain truly mean to breed again? Koshmar wondered if there had ever been a woman who had borne two children, two by different fathers. It was not the custom. But this was a new age, she reminded herself for the thousandth time. Had she not said that it was everyone’s obligation to breed who could? Then why not Minbain, since she was still of childbearing age? Why not any of us?
Why not you, Koshmar?a voice within her unexpectedly asked.
It was so odd an idea that she burst out laughing. I am a chieftain, she answered herself, trying to imagine herself lying in a bower with her belly grown huge and women clustered around to comfort her while a baby tried to force its way out of her body. For that matter, she could not even think of herself in a man’s embrace, his hands on her breasts, his hands pushing her legs apart. Or — how did they like to do it? The woman thrust down against the ground on her face, the man’s weight descending on her from behind — no, no, it was not for her, the chieftainship was enough of a burden for her—
And why not Torlyri?the same mischievous voice asked.
Koshmar caught her breath and clutched her side as though she had been kicked in the stomach. Warm good Torlyri, her Torlyri? Why, she was the mother of the whole tribe, was Torlyri. She had no need to bring forth babes of her own. How could the offering-woman take time for childrearing, anyway? She had so much else to do.
Still, the image would not go from her: Torlyri in the arms of some warrior whose face she could not see, Torlyri gasping and sighing, Torlyri’s sensing-organ thrashing about the way they did during coupling, Torlyri’s thighs opening—
No. No. No. No.
Why not Torlyri?the voice said again.
Koshmar clenched her fists.
These are new times, yes, she told herself. But Torlyri is mine.
Taniane said, “What did those sapphire-eyes things mean, when they said we were monkeys and not humans?”
“Nothing,” Hresh told her. “It was just a stupid lie. They were only trying to belittle us.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“Because we are alive,” said Hresh. “And they are things that never were, built by a race that is dead.”