She had scarcely needed his warning, since she had so little contact with people as individuals, but she had of course heeded it; and it had been an element of her early, severe disappointment, her discouragement. The old Akan usages and language she had learned on Earth had led her to think she was coming to a sexually easygoing society with little or no gender hierarchy. The society of her native corner of Earth had still been cramped by social and gender caste, further rigidified by Unist misogyny and intolerance. No place on Earth had been entirely out from under that shadow, not even the Pales. One of the reasons she had specialised in Aka, had learned the languages, was that she and Pao had read in the First Observers’ reports that Akan society was not hierarchically gendered and that heterosexuality was not compulsory, not even privileged. But all that had changed, changed utterly, during the years of her flight from Earth to Aka. Arriving here, she had had to go back to circumspection, caution, self-suppression. And danger.
So, then, why did they all so promptly try to enlist her, to use her? She was scarcely a jewel in anybody’s crown.
Tong’s reasons were superficially plain: he’d jumped at the first chance to send somebody out unsupervised, and chose her because she knew the old writing and language and would know what she found when she found it. But if she found it, what was she supposed to do with it? It was contraband. Illicit goods. Anti-Corporation sedition. Tong had said she was right to delete the fragments of the old books from the ansible transmission. Yet now he wanted her to record such material?
As for the Monitor, he was playing power games. It must be a thrill for a middle-weight supervisor of cultural correctness to find a genuine alien, an authentic Observer of the Ekumen, to give orders to: Don’t talk to social parasites — don’t leave town without permission — report to the boss man, me.
What about the Fertiliser? She could not shake the impression that he knew who she was, and that his gift had some meaning beyond courtesy to a stranger. No telling what.
Given her ignorance, if she let any of them control her, she might do harm. But if she tried to do anything bold and decisive on her own, she would almost certainly do harm. She must go slow, wait, watch, learn.
Tong had given her a code word to use in a message in case of trouble: ’devolve.’ But he hadn’t really expected trouble. The Akans loved their alien guests, the cows from whom they milked the milk of high technology. They wouldn’t let her get into danger. She mustn’t paralyse herself with caution.
The Monitor’s rumbling about brutal tribespeople was bogey talk. Okzat-Ozkat was a safe, a touchingly safe place to live. It was a small, poor, provincial city, dragged along in the rough wake of Akan progress, far enough behind that it still held tattered remnants of the old way of life — the old civilisation. Probably the Corporation had consented to let an offworlder come here because it was so very out of the way, a harmless, picturesque bywater. Tong had sent her here to follow up a hunch or hope of finding under the monolithic, univocal success story of modern Aka some traces of what the Ekumen treasured: the singular character of a people, their way of being, their history. The Akan Corporation State wanted to forget, hide, ban, bury all that, and if she learned anything here, it would not please them. But the days of burying and burning alive were over. Weren’t they? The Monitor would bluster and bully, but what could he do?
Nothing much to her. A good deal, perhaps, to those who talked to her.
Hold still, she told herself. Listen. Listen to what they have to tell.
The air was dry at this altitude, cold in the shadow, hot in the sun. She stopped at a cafeteria near the Teachers’ College to buy a bottle of fruit juice and sat with it at a table outdoors. Cheery music, exhortations, news about crops, production statistics, health programs blared across the square from the loudspeakers as always. Somehow she had to learn to listen through that noise to what it hid, the meaning under it.
Was its ceaselessness its meaning? Were the Akans afraid of silence?
Nobody about her seemed to be afraid of anything. They were students in green-and-rust Education uniforms. Many had the padded cheekbones and delicate bone structure of the old street people here, but they were plump and shiny with youth and confidence, chattering and shouting across her without seeing her. Any woman over thirty was an alien to them.
They were eating the kind of food she had eaten in the capital, high-protein, sweet-salt packaged stuff, and drinking akakafi, a native hot drink rebaptized with a semi-Terran name. The Corporation brand of akakafi was called Starbrew and was ubiquitous. Bittersweet, black, it contained a remarkable mixture of alkaloids, stimulants, and depressants. Sutty loathed the taste, and it made her tongue furry, but she had learned to swallow it, since sharing akakafi was one of the few rituals of social bonding the people of Dovza City allowed themselves, and therefore very important to them. "A cup of akakafi?" they cried as soon as you came into the house, the office, the meeting. To refuse was to offer a rebuff, even an insult. Much small talk centered around akakafi: where to go for the best powder (not Starbrew, of course), where it was grown and processed, how to brew it. People boasted about how many cups they drank a day, as if the mild addiction were somehow praiseworthy. These young Educators were drinking it by the liter.
She listened to them dutifully, hearing chatter about examinations, prize lists, vacation travel. Nobody talked about reading or course material except two students nearby arguing about teaching preschoolers to use the toilet. The boy insisted that shame was the best incentive. The girl said, "Wipe it up and smile," which annoyed the boy into giving quite a lecture on peer adjustment, ethical goal setting, and hygienic laxity.
Walking home, Sutty wondered if Aka was a guilt culture, a shame culture, or something all its own. How was it that everybody in the world was willing to move in the same direction, talk the same language, believe the same things? Fear of being evil, or fear of being different?
There she was, back with fear. Her problem, not theirs.
Her crippled hostess was sitting in the doorway when she got home. They greeted each other shyly with illegal civilities. Making conversation, Sutty said, "I like the teas you serve so much. Much better than akakafi."
Iziezi didn’t slap one hand down and the other across her mouth, but her hands did move abruptly, and she said, "Ah," exactly as the Fertiliser had said it. Then, after a long pause, cautiously, shortening the invented word, she said, "But akafi comes from your country."
"Some people on Terra drink something like it. My people don’t."
Iziezi looked tense. The subject was evidently fraught.
If every topic was a minefield, there was nothing to do but talk on through the blasts, Sutty thought. She said, "You don’t like it either?"
Iziezi screwed up her face. After a nervous silence she said earnestly, "It’s bad for people. It dries up the sap and disorders the flow. People who drink akafi, you can see their hands tremble and their heart jump. That’s what they used to say, anyhow. The old-time people. A long time ago. My grandmother. Now everybody drinks it. It was one of those old rules, you know. Not modern. Modern people like it."
Caution; confusion; conviction.
"I didn’t like the breakfast tea at first, but then I did. What is it? What does it do?"
Iziezi’s face smoothed out. "That’s bezit. It starts the flow and reunites. It refreshes the liver a little, too."
"You’re a … herb teacher," Sutty said, not knowing the word for herbalist.