Chapter Forty-Five of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

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Jess burst with elation. Cela-Byi lived. As soon as she woke, he removed her blood-thickened clothes. Despite she slapped away his hands and shouted that he should leave her be, that this wasn’t for men to do or for men to see, he washed the blood from her. He then attempted to wash the floor while she gingerly dressed herself in the fabrics he brought her from the stores. “You can weave your grasses again once you’re able,” he told her.

He hugged her. Hugged and hugged and hugged her.

Armar raised a high eyebrow at him when he again crossed the base to resume his duties as zem.

“She survived,” he told his censorious deputy. “Without our Tech-given help.”

“Meaning?”

“Those Techs have perverted us. Into our heads, controlling us. Can’t wipe our arses without the paper they provide for us.”

Armar kept step alongside him. “But without them in our heads, look at the chaos around us.”

“From out of chaos there comes change.” Jess didn’t know where he’d heard that, only that it had the feel of an oft-used quote.

“You’ve reports to be made?” Jess asked Armar once he’d settled at his desk at the back of the front-cell in what had been their shared hive.

“Made.” Armar sorted the loose papers on the desk, selected three and slid them towards Jess.

Jess looked from the reports to Armar. “Is so little happening amongst our three skeins? Or is it that you don’t understand what you’re seeing? Maybe when they burn a small mammal here, a big fish there, these are the Itamakku ways of communing with their gods.”

“And you’ve become expert?”

Jess tilted his head. He wouldn’t say yes. “We observe every aspect of their daily lives. Their morning ablutions. Their gathering food – their planting and tending it. And medicines. That, Armar, should at least interest you. Their meetings, though we never enquire of the meaning. But what does it mean to them? For instance, they order their calendar by the movement of stars – though why? You watch, but you don’t understand.”

Armar observed Jess for an uncomfortable time. Jess wished his eyes would move away. “No, it’s you I don’t understand.”

Kookka entered the hive as Armar left. “What was that about? And hey, good news about Cela-Byi.”

Jess nodded his thanks. “The Itamakku and their gods. Or we Monza and ours.”

“We have no gods,” Armar said over his shoulder.

“And what are the Techs if not that? That’s how Cela-Byi sees them. We can’t move without them – or could not. And now, as Armar so helpfully says, all is in chaos. Unlike the Itamakku, we haven’t the stories that’ll help and guide us from here.”

Kookka sat on the long soft seat, though that put Jess behind him. “You know their god-stories?”

“In outline only. But theirs aren’t ours. And thanks to the Techs, ours are forgotten.” Jess paced, his innards in turmoil. Armar had been right of the chaos, and Jess wanted an end to it.

“Time to create new ones?”

“We are the gods,” Jess said – at which Kookka looked at him through tight squeezed eyes. “Star-gods, that’s what the Itamakku say.”

“They might say but they don’t believe it. Refusing our foods and our fabrics and—”

“You exaggerate.”

“All they want from us is our seeds. Seeds that grow into babies.”

Jess lumped down on the seat beside his friend. “And isn’t that what the Techs were giving them? But we have knowledge, so much knowledge that they could use. And that’s what we ought to be giving them. It’s what we’ve said but it’s not what we’ve done. And why not? Because, as Cela-Byi has said, we know nothing that’s not Tech-given.”

“How perceptive of your woman. My carpentry skills, Tech-given.”

“Yet those skills exist in your body. They didn’t depart you when the Techs left. Likewise, my knowledge of stones and metals. Think of what other skills and knowledge we have amongst our clutch.”

Could this be the solution he sought. Though how it would work he didn’t know. Just, there was a rightness to it that all this fighting over the Itamakku women had not.

Jess was again on his feet, pacing. “We should be asking them how they survive in this world. Then filling in the gaps with our knowledge and skills.”

“That’s a sure way of annoying the Techs when they finally decide to send us replacements. No contact? Nothing on base that could betray our presence after we’ve left? No, let’s teach them how to make better tools.”

Kookka’s tone egged Jess on. “To make explosives.”

“No,” Kookka laughed. “That’s a step too far.”

“Yet all the ingredients are here, near to hand. I could make it tomorrow. In a flash.”

“That could be handy – if they chase after us once we’ve disappeared into the forest.”

Jess stopped his pacing and looked at Kookka, glad that Armar had left the hive. “I was joking.” But the idea had seeded and taken root. “And we still don’t know the cause of those bones, and the writing.”

“The…? Ah, your cave. I’d say death was the cause.”

Jess rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Death at whose hands?”

“The gods?”

“You mean the Techs? As you say, maybe it’s no bad idea to gather the makings of those explosives – if that’s the treatment we’ll get when the Techs return.”

“Then best we’re away from here by then.”

“Later. First there’s much we must learn. For while we’re teaching them, they’ll be teaching us.” Just as he’d made a start with Cela-Byi.

*

Not everyone wanted to know how the Itamakku found food. Why should they bother when they had field-grown crops? Weren’t those same crops the cause of the troubles between the Itamakku and the Banmakka? And to kill an animal? To kill it and eat it? Fine for the catering ops, they were more used to blood and…stuff. And then who wants to wear woven grasses when the Techs provided silky-smooth crotch-cloths and jackets?

“At least learn their calendar,” Jess pressed, but to little effect.

The interested few observed the night sky but they unanimously claimed there were no star-beasts circling around them. Jess agreed, they weren’t easily seen. He had learned them from Cela-Byi, but it was knowledge not acquired in the course of one night.

“You’re wasting your time.” Armar told him. “That’s not why we’re here. And neither should we be teaching them our ways.”

“No problem there,” Jess said. “These women refuse them. Their crops yield better than ours, less subject to pests and moulds. Less work involved. Less work to process their grasses too. A cape made in less than a day.”

Not that Jess’s observers worked any field, food nor fibre. Their daily routines were easy though boring. Observe. Record. It was for the zem to interpret what they’d seen. Though now more of the observers understood Itamakkuese, those records held more detail.

“There’s to be a big multi-dow meeting,” Shelek reported. “More than our three.”

“Where? When? And what’s it about?” This was more like it. Jess bubbled with excitement, with the feeling that at last he was becoming part of the Itamakku life. It wasn’t just him and Cela-Byi and the other women on this god-hill.

“When Sae sits on the star-seat. When’s that?” Shelek asked.

“Soon,” Jess said. “Just as soon as Tawan-star-bear moves his butt off.” He squinted while thinking. “About ten days. Though when in that moon-cycle?”

But when Jess mentioned it to Cela-Byi she laughed. “When the moon is full, slug-wits.”

“And you’ll know why the meeting?” Jess prompted her.

“Of course, I know why the meeting. You think Itamakku men want choice of only two dows of women? Ten dows attend. More choice.”

Jess noticed the way she’d phrased that. He asked, tentatively, “And the men do the choosing?”

She grinned and kissed his nose and pushed him back on the soft seat. “That’s how the men believe it. Like you believe if you refuse to die-bump me that I won’t make pecker peck me again.” She straddled him.

He grasped her hips and tried to move her. It wasn’t that his pecker wasn’t rising but, “I don’t want to risk that again. You nearly died.”

“And you believed you’d died that first time, but did I refuse the second. It’s time that we die together again.”

He opened his mouth to refuse her.

Continues next week
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