As I reach the entrance to the cave, I hear a seductive, haunting voice singing in a language I do not know very well. I think it is Japanese, the human tongue spoken by most of the prisoners we took after the Battle of Butaan Ji. The singing man and his dead daughter.
The song coming from the cave, though, is not sad. It reminds me of the song Pina would sing at times before we loved. I wonder if I might interrupt Kita Yamagata and Davidge in a human love-making, but then I hear Davidge bellow "Shit!" This well known human sentiment is followed by the sound of pottery being smashed. Yamagata is no longer singing her song.
I enter the cave and see the woman, seated on one of the chemical-glass-covered firewood logs. She is wearing a deep purple suit that covers everything except her head. Around her neck is a golden chain and suspended from it is an amulet similar to a Drac Talman. As she sees me, she nods a little bow and smiles.
The interior of the cave is black from the flames and condensed vapor, the odor of chemicals strong in the air. Balanced on the rocks of the fireplace, there is a battery-powered lamp casting everything in a harsh blue light. Before either she or I can say anything, Davidge’s voice comes from one of the back chambers. "Esha may be able to divest itself of material possessions, but we don’t live in a tropical paradise!" He emerges from the entrance on my right holding a small pair of boots, blackened and gummy-looking. "Look at these. Haesni worked so hard on them."
"And what is the lesson Haesni now has an opportunity to learn from this?" asks Yamagata, her face quite serious, but her eyes filled with mocking laughter.
Davidge aims a brief scowl at her, then softens his face and sits next to the investigator, holding the boots before him. "Fairness is an illusion. Neither effort nor intention holds title to the nature or form of either the present or the future." His lips crack in a tiny smile. "And if sincere effort has no title, what interest can the bellow or the lamentation hold?"
"The humans on Amadeen have a different way of saying it," I observe.
Davidge faces me and asks, "What’s that?"
"Tough shit."
Both of them laugh at that and Davidge gets to his feet, tossing the boots aside. "Well, after Yazi Ro’s abbreviated version of the Koda Ovsinda, about the only thing left to do is to find another cave." He waves a hand at the walls. "It’ll be decades before this will be a safe place to bring up a youngster."
I walk over to him and ask something that has bothered me since I first met Willis E. Davidge. "Why bring up a youth in a cave? Why do you do this?"
Davidge frowns at me as he puts on his hooded coat. "As to why I rear the children here, I find meaning in it. It’s the first meaning I ever found in my life. There is nothing more important." He grins. "As to why I do it in a cave, Ro, of all the persons I have ever met, you are the one I thought would understand without explaining." With that, he turns, picks up his coat, and heads for the opening.
In a flash I shout at his back, "I am not one of your students!"
Kita Yamagata stands, places a hand on my arm, and says, "If that is so, you may want to ask yourself why you are here."
"The talma. The path to peace on Amadeen. That is why I am here."
She nods, her eyes looking up at me. "What is the point of putting you together with Will if he learns nothing from you, if you learn nothing from him? We are all students, Yazi Ro; and we are all teachers." She pauses as though weighing something she might say.
"What is it?" I ask.
She weighs it once more, purses her lips, narrows her eyes, and says, "Learn your Talman, Ro. It’s not only the peace on Amadeen that may be at stake." She pats my arm. "At stake as well is the peace of your own being."
I want to shake her hand off my arm, but I do not, for I fear she is right. A burdensome thing to hear from a Drac; more burdensome still from a human. I look at the golden locket hanging from her neck. It is her Talman, carrying the strange sign of a dragon. At the battle of Butaan Ji, I saw a similar sign. It was a tattoo on the back of one of the dead defenders. I watched as a Mavedah soldier cut the skin from the dead man’s back, saving the tattoo for a trophy. I watched and felt nothing.
Kita Yamagata smiles at me and turns to put on her hooded coat.
"Yamagata," I say.
"Kita," she corrects. "With humans the line name comes last." She smiles widely. "Which is funny, because that is not always true. With my people the given name does come last, Of course, with my people my name is not Kita Yamagata; it is Yamagata Kita."
"Kita, then. Do you know The Talman?"
"My father and mother reared me within Earth’s Talman Kovah." She continues fastening her coat.
Old myths, cryptic lessons, they seem to make no difference on Amadeen. The only one on Amadeen I know who memorized its Talman was Zenak Abi, traitor, fugitive, and gunslinger. Too, Abi is the only person I met on Amadeen who appeared happy. Strangely enough, Abi also lives in a cave, if the Jetah still lives.
"Kita, what is it that Davidge thinks I ought to understand about his cave?"
"The answer is less important than what you learn finding the answer." She holds her hands up, indicating the cave. "The answers are in here." She reaches out a hand and touches the side of my head with her fingertips. "And in here."
After she leaves, I look around at the blackened walls, the fireplace, the remains of the chairs, the beds, the firewood glued together with melted explosive. There are crudely made pots and plates, baked to a light red color. I see eating utensils carved from wood. The covers and branches that made Davidge’s bed are nothing but ashes, but Haesni’s was not touched by the flames, The covers, though, are spread with the residue of the burning igniter’s smoke.
I take off my coat, hang it from a blackened peg, and turn back to the bed. I pull back the top cover and see its underside, untouched by the residue. The cover is made from long colorful strips of soft, pliable snakeskin, each strip carefully stitched into the cover. There is a small tear in the cover exposing the insulating medium that fills the layers. I pull some out and see that it is composed of seeds, each seed carrying a soft crown of delicate white fibers. The seeds tell me there is indeed a season on Friendship when the ice is gone and things grow. Seed pods are gathered, opened, and the fluff-covered seeds quilted into layers of snakeskin for a coming winter.
So much cold and ice, the winds strong and frightening. What the heart must feel when the spring comes. The ice melts, the first growing thing shows life, the first animal who hides from the cold is seen emerging from the dark. It must have taken endless hours collecting the seed pods, catching and skinning snakes, curing and softening the skins, stitching them together.
I look more closely. The thread is handmade from some kind of plant fiber. I do not doubt that in Davidge’s cave the needles that were used were made as well.
In the center of winter’s intolerable cold, what must it be like to sleep upon such a bed, warm beneath such a quilt? Everything worn, eaten, slept on and beneath, hunted with, and used is something that was fashioned with mind-driven hands. No child could do all of this without knowing that it matters, that the work it does has value, that personal responsibility is a survival tool.
Forty-one Drac children had been brought to adulthood in caves with Davidge. In the cave’s primitive surroundings these children learned self reliance, teamwork, trust, to look beyond appearances at an individual’s character, how to work, how to adapt, how to improvise, how to endure. By becoming one with this icy horror of a planet, they turned it into a home. The Jeriba Estate with its extravagant luxuries is only a stopping place for Davidge’s students, all of whom are as just as comfortable in cave or castle. There is no work beneath them, no challenge too exalted or too frightening to try.