Odiedin was writing these for a family, Tobadan was dispensing herbs and salve to another family, and Siez, having finished the chant, had sat down with the rest of the population to tell. A narrow-eyed, taciturn young man, Siez in the villages became a fountain of words.
Tired and a little buzzy-headed — they must have come up another kilometer today-and liking the warmth of the afternoon sun, Sutty joined the half circle of intently gazing men and women and children, cross-legged on the stony dust, and listened with them.
"The telling!" Siez said, loudly, impressively, and paused.
His audience made a soft sound, ah, ah, and murmured to one another.
"The telling of a story!"
Ah, ah, murmur, murmur.
"The story is of Dear Takieki!"
Yes, yes. The dear Takieki, yes.
"Now the story begins! Now, the story begins when dear Takieki was still living with his old mother, being a grown man, but foolish. His mother died. She was poor. All she had to leave him was a sack of bean meal that she had been saving for them to eat in the winter. The landlord came and drove Takieki out of the house."
Ah, ah, the listeners murmured, nodding sadly.
"So there went Takieki walking down the road with the sack of bean meal slung over his shoulder. He walked and he walked, and on the next hill, walking toward him, he saw a ragged man. They met in the road. The man said, ’That’s a heavy sack you carry, young man. Will you show me what is in it?’ So Takieki did that. ’Bean meal!’ says the ragged man."
Bean meal, whispered a child.
’"And what fine bean meal it is! But it’ll never last you through the winter. I’ll make a bargain with you, young man. I’ll give you a real brass button for that bean meal!’
"’Oh, ho,’ says Takieki, ’you think you’re going to cheat me, but I’m not so foolish as that!’"
Ah, ah.
"So Takieki hoisted his sack and went on. And he walked and he walked, and on the next hill, coming toward him, he saw a ragged girl. They met in the road, and the girl said, ’A heavy sack you’re carrying, young man. How strong you must be! May I see what’s in it?’ So Takieki showed her the bean meal, and she said, ’Fine bean meal! If you’ll share it with me, young man, I’ll go along with you, and I’ll make love with you whenever you like, as long as the bean meal lasts.’"
A woman nudged the woman sitting by her, grinning.
"’Oh, ho,’ says Takieki, ’you think you’re going to cheat me, but I’m not so foolish as that!’
"And he slung his sack over his shoulder and went on. And he walked and he walked, and on the next hill, coming toward him, he saw a man and woman."
Ah, ah, very softly.
"The man was dark as dusk and the woman bright as dawn, and they wore clothing all of bright colors and jewels of bright colors, red, blue. They met in the road, and he/she/they said, ‘What a heavy sack you carry, young man. Will you show us what’s in it?’ So Takieki did that. Then the maz said, ‘What fine bean meal! But it will never last you through the winter.’ Takieki did not know what to say. The maz said, ‘Dear Takieki, if you give us the sack of bean meal your mother gave you, you may have the farm that lies over that hill, with five barns full of grain, and five storehouses full of meal, and five stables full of eberdin. Five great rooms are in the farmhouse, and its roof is of coins of gold. And the mistress of the house is in the house, waiting to be your wife.’
‘Oh, ho,’ said Takieki. ‘You think you’re going to cheat me, but I’m not so foolish as that!’
"And he walked on and he walked on, over the hill, past the farm with five barns and five storehouses and five stables and a roof of gold, and so he went walking on, the dear Takieki."
Ah, ah, ah! said all the listeners, with deep contentment. And they relaxed from their intensity of listening, and chatted a little, and brought Siez a cup and a pot of hot tea so that he could refresh himself, and waited respectfully for whatever he would tell next.
Why was Takieki ’dear’? Sutty wondered. Because he was foolish? (Bare feet standing on air.) Because he was wise? But would a wise man have distrusted the maz? Surely he was foolish to turn down the farm and five barns and a wife. Did the story mean that to a holy man a farm and barns and a wife aren’t worth a bag of bean meal? Or did it mean that a holy man, an ascetic, is a fool? The people she had lived with this year honored self-restraint but did not admire self-deprivation. They had no strenuous notions of fasting, and saw no virtue whatever in discomfort, hunger, poverty.
If it had been a Terran parable, most likely Takieki ought to have given the ragged man the bean meal for the brass button, or just given it for nothing, and then when he died he’d get his reward in heaven. But on Aka, reward, whether spiritual or fiscal, was immediate. By his performance of a maz’s duties, Siez was not building up a bank account of virtue or sanctity; in return for his story-telling he would receive praise, shelter, dinner, supplies for their journey, and the knowledge that he had done his job. Exercises were performed not to attain an ideal of health or longevity but to achieve immediate well-being and for the pleasure of doing them. Meditation aimed toward a present and impermanent transcendance, not an ultimate nirvana. Aka was a cash, not a credit, economy.
Therefore their hatred of usury. A fair bargain and payment on the spot.
But then, what about the girl who offered to share what she had if he’d share what he had. Wasn’t that a fair bargain?
Sutty puzzled over it all through the next tale, a famous bit of The Valley War that she had heard Siez tell several times in villages in the foothills — "I can tell that one when I’m sound asleep," he said. She decided that a good deal depended on how aware Takieki was of his own simplicity. Did he know the girl might trick him? Did he know he wasn’t capable of managing a big farm? Maybe he did the right thing, hanging on to what his mother gave him. Maybe not.
As soon as the sun dropped behind the mountain wall to the west, the air in that vast shadow dropped below freezing. Everyone huddled into the hut-tents to eat, choking in the smoke and reek. The travelers would sleep in their own tents set up alongside the villagers’ larger ones. The villagers would sleep naked, unwashed, promiscuous under heaps of silken pelts full of grease and fleas. In the tent she shared with Odiedin, Sutty thought about them before she slept. Brutal people, primitive people, the Monitor had said, leaning on the rail of the riverboat, looking up the long dark rise of the land that hid the Mountain. He was right. They were primitive, dirty, illiterate, ignorant, superstitious. They refused progress, hid from it, knew nothing of the March to the Stars. They hung on to their sack of bean meal.
Ten days or so after that, camped on neve in a long, shallow valley among pale cliffs and glaciers, Sutty heard an engine, an airplane or helicopter. The sound was distorted by wind and echoes. It might have been quite near or bounced from mountainside to mountainside from a long way off. There was ground fog blowing in tatters, a high overcast. Their tents, dun-colored, in the lee of an icefall, might be invisible in the vast landscape or might be plain to see from the air. They all held still as long as they could hear the stutter and rattle in the wind.
That was a weird place, the long valley. Icy air flowed down into it from the glaciers and pooled on its floor. Ghosts of mist snaked over the dead white snow.
Their food supplies were low. Sutty thought they must be close to their goal.
Instead of climbing up out of the long valley as she had expected, they descended from it on a long, wide slope of boulders. The wind blew without a pause and so hard that the gravel chattered ceaselessly against the larger stones. Every step was difficult, and every breath. Looking up now they saw Silong palpably nearer, the great barrier wall reaching across the sky. But the bannered crest still stood remote behind it. All Sutty’s dreams that night were of a voice she could hear but could not understand, a jewel she had found but could not touch.