The baby rides high and fights to be free. It will be a boy, Nam Child, she Promised, and took Centaine off into the desert to gather special herbs that they would need for the birthing.
Unlike many Stone Age peoples, the San were fully aware of the processes of procreation and saw sexual intercourse not as an isolated and random act, but as the first step in the long voyage to birth.
Where is the father of your growing infant, Nam Child? H'ani asked, and when she saw the tears in Centaine's eyes she answered herself softly. He is dead in the north lands at the ends of the earth. Is that not so?
How did you know that I came from the north? Centaine asked, glad to turn away from the pain of Michael's memory.
You are big, bigger than any of the San of the desert, H'ani explained.
Therefore you must come from a rich land where living is easy, a land of good rains and plentiful food. To the old woman water was all of life. The rain winds comes from the north, so you also must come from the north.
Intrigued by her logic, Centaine smiled. And how did you know I was from far away? I Your skin is pale, not darkened like the skin of the San. Here in the centre of the world the sun stands overhead, but it never goes north or south, and in the east and west it is low and wasting, so you must come from far away where the sun lacks the warmth and strength to darken your skin. Do you know of other people like me, H'ani, big people with pale skins? Have you ever before seen people like me? Centaine asked eagerly, and when she saw the shift in the old woman's gaze, she seized her arm. Tell me, wise old grandmother, where have you seen my people?
In what direction, and how far away? Would I be able to reach them? Please tell me. H'ani's eyes clouded with a film of incomprehension and she picked a grain of dried mucus from her nostril and examined it with minute attention.
Tell me, H'ani.1 Centaine shook her arm gently.
I have heard the old people talk of such things, H'ani grudgingly admitted, but I have never seen these people, and I do not know where they could be found. And Centaine knew she was lying. Then, in a sudden vehement gabble, Kain went on. They are fierce as lions and poisonous as the scorpion, the San hide from them- She jumped up in agitation, seized her satchel and digging stick and hurried from the camp and did not return until sunset.
That night after Centaine had curled in her grass bed, H'ani whispered to O'wa. The child yearns for her own people. I have seen her look southwards with sadness in her eyes, O'wa admitted.
How many days travel to reach the land of the pale giants? Ram asked reluctantly. How far to travel to her own clan? I Less than a moon, Olwa grunted, and they were both silent for a long time, staring into the hot bluish flames, of the camel-thorn log fire.
I want to hear a baby cry once more before I die, I H'ani said at last and O'wa nodded. And both their little heartshaped faces turned towards the east. They stared out into the darkness, towards the Place of All Life.
Once when H'ani found Centaine kneeling alone and praying in the wilderness, she asked, Who are you speaking to, Nam Child? and Centaine was at a loss, for though the San language was rich and complex in its descriptive powers of the material aspects of the desert world, it was extremely difficult to use it to convey abstract ideas.
However, after long discussion spread over many days while they foraged in the desert or worked over the cooking fire, Centaine managed to describe her concept of the Godhead, and H'ani nodded dubiously and mumbled and frowned as she considered it.
You are talking to the spirits? she asked. But most of the spirits live in the stars, and if you speak so softly, how will they hear you? It is necessary to dance and sing and whistle loudly to attract their attention. She lowered her voice. And it is even then not certain they will listen to you, for I have found the star spirits to be fickle and forgetful. H'ani glanced around her like a conspirator. It is my experience, Nam Child, that Mantis and Eland are much more reliable. Mantis and Eland? Centaine tried not to show her amusement.
Mantis is an insect with huge eyes that see all and with arms like a little man. Eland is an animal, oh, yes, much larger than the gemsbok, with a dewlap so full of rich fat that it sweeps the earth. The San's love of fat was almost equal to their love of wild honey. And twisted horns that sweep the sky. If we are fortunate we will find both Mantis and Eland at the place to which we are going.
In the meantime, talk to the stars, Nam Child, for they are beautiful, but put your trust in Mantis and Eland. Thus simply H'ani explained the religion of the San, and that night she and Centaine sat under a brilliant sky and she pointed out Orion's glittering train.
That is the herd of celestial zebras, Nam Child, and there is the inept huntsman, she picked out the star Aldebaran, sent by his seven wives, she stabbed a gnarled finger at the Pleiades, to find meat. See how he has shot his arrow, and it has flown high and wide to fall at the feet of Lion Star. Sirius, the brightest of all the fixed stars, seemed truly lionlike. And now the huntsman is afraid to retrieve his arrow and afraid to return to his seven wives, and he sits there forever twinkling with fear, which is just like a man, Nam Child. H'ani hooted with laughter, and dug her bony thumb into her husband's scrawny ribs.
Because the San were also star-lovers, Centaine's bond of affection for them was so strengthened that she pointed out Michael's star and her own in the far south.
But, Nam Child, O'wa protested, how can that star belong to you? It belongs to no one and to everybody, like the shade of the camel-thorn, and the water in the desert pool, or the land on which we tread, to nobody and yet to everybody. Nobody owns the eland, but we may take of his fat if we have need. Nobody owns the big plants but we may gather them on condition that we leave some for the children. How can you say that a star belongs to you alone? It was an expression of the philosophy which was the tragedy of his people, a denial of the existence of property which had doomed them to merciless persecution, to massacre and slavery or to exile in the far reaches of the desert where no other people could exist.
So the monotonous days of waiting were passed in discussion and the leisurely routine of hunting and foraging, and then one evening both the San were galvanized by excitement and they faced into the north with their little amber faces turned up to a sky that was the flawless blue of a heron's egg.
It took Centaine a few minutes to discover what had excited them, and then she saw the cloud. It groped up over the rim of the northern horizon like the finger of a gargantuan hand, and it grew as she watched it, the top of it flattened into an anvil shape, and the distant thunder growled like a hunting lion. Soon the cloud stood tall and heaven-high, burning with the colours of the sunset and lit with its own wondrous internal lightnings.
That night O'wa danced and whistled and sang the praises of the cloud spirits until at last he collapsed with exhaustion, but in the morning the thunderhead had dispersed.
However, the sky had changed from unsullied blue, and there were streaks of high mare's-tails cirrus smeared across it. The air itself seemed also to have changed. It was charged with static that made Centaine's skin prickle, and the heat was heavy and languorous, even harder to bear than the dry harsh noons had been, and the thunderheads climbed above the northern horizon and tossed their monstrous billowing heads to the sky.
Each day they grew taller and more numerous, and they massed in the north like a legion of giants and marched southward, while an enervating blanket of humid air lay upon the earth and smothered it and everything upon it.
Please let it rain, Centaine whispered each day, while the sweat snaked down her cheeks and the child weighted her womb like an ironstone boulder.