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82.
Alex was grateful for the hospitality of the gentle LooWoo! people, and he tried to be helpful as he stayed with them.
They asked nothing of him, and were always prepared to offer their generosity. Only Tzoofaa seemed to remain standoffish, giving Alex dark looks and staying at a distance.
At first, Alex stayed around their village, which was called LooWoo! Deep-in-the-Woods, not far from the lake that had received Maryan’s remains, the village lay hidden among huge trees. The LooWoo! had ample living spaces, given their size. There seemed to be several hundred of them spread across a long valley, and they spoke of other villages in the distance. Alex began to guess that at least several thousand LooWoo! lived on L5 in harmony with their environment and each other.
While Tzoofaa kept his distance, Keetoo came to visit Alex often in the large hut where Leeree and the other women cared for him. Often, when the men sat and talked, the women left small children for them to tend, and these crawled happily around the men’s legs playing with each other and simple toys made of wood or stone. Alex enjoyed the company of the women and children as a continuing sort of balm that reminded him life did go on, when his sorrow became black and overwhelming.
“I will take you to Lector when you are ready,” Keetoo said. “He is our guide.”
“Is Lector your god?”
Keetoo shook his head with a vacant look. “God? This whole world is a god of which we are part.” He laughed and wiggled his fingers in the air. “These fingers, these toes, this nose, I am all god.”
“Then you live forever,” Alex guessed, bouncing a toddler on one knee while the child fell asleep with its head resting against Alex’s stomach.
Keetoo looked puzzled. “We live here a time, and then we forget. Nobody ever comes back.”
“I meant…you live on somehow, in the greater sense…” Alex saw her confusion, and gave up. Suddenly, the concept of a transcendent life after death seemed foreign here. He rifled through memories of ancient religions. “Have you seen anyone come back?”
Keetoo folded his arms on his knees and looked comfortable with himself, though awed by Alex’s notions. “Every time a baby is born, is a soul returning from Earth.”
“The dead go to Earth?”
“The dead go to Earth,” Keetoo said with certainty.
“What do you know of Earth?”
Keetoo’s eyes widened and he looked away, far, even through the distant city wall and through the clouds above, through the opposite side of the world cylinder. “Earth is without end. It is a circle like our world, but turned inside out. You walk many more days than we do here and swim in many big rivers.”
“Sounds like a wise belief.” How could he question or contradict them? He believed on faith that he was a duplicate of someone who had lived a million years ago, and he had no real understanding of how or why he himself lived. Perhaps Keetoo was right. Perhaps Alex’s very memories were little more than a dream.
Several times during their conversations, he mentioned finding the dead LooWoo! near the wall, and each time Keetoo changed the subject. Then, one day, word came that a hunter from a faraway village had disappeared, and his people had sent runners out across the world to find word of their missing kinsman. Keetoo brought this news to Alex, and Tzoofaa followed not far behind. They summoned him to a warrior lodge that vaguely resembled the sacred Takkar lodge. There, surrounded by an outer circle of respectfully quiet men holding spears ready for hunting, Alex sat with the two leaders.
“The wall,” Tzoofaa said, “we do not talk about, but now we have to. This Nizin, is he from the empty air beyond the wall?” He regarded Alex for an answer.
Alex realized increasingly how little they understood the universe, though they were intelligent and often sounded quite wise. “Yes,” he said, “Nizin is only one of a race of killers from Earth.”
A murmur went through the circle of warriors.
“And you are from the same place?”
“Not exactly, but close.”
Tzoofaa seemed to try to digest this, and seemed to have difficulty with the concept. “You do not belong here,” he said finally.
Alex felt those words go through him like a stab. He knew instinctively that the chief was right, but he wished he were not.
Tzoofaa spoke thoughtfully, chopping with a sharp flat knife at the log on which he sat. “From time to time, big people come here. They come in a shiny bird without wings. They bring bad luck to the LooWoo! people. We offer kindness, because it is our way, but we have learned to be careful. I have said nothing because I do not want my people to be afraid. Now I speak.”
A rumble of alarm passed among the warriors, and they slammed their weapons down with a single warning clatter. It seemed they were not permitted to speak at the council, but decorum permitted this expression of their feelings.
Tzoofaa continued: “I have thought about you. You do not seem like a killer. I thought about you when I first heard this news from a far village, but I do not think you killed their man.” He studied Alex quietly through a long pause. “You have suffered losing your woman, which makes a man like a ghost. You have no woman, no village, no spear. You do have deep pain and anger. I believe you will know when your time comes, and it will be soon. Then you will leave us, Ghost, and we will close our door to you forever.”
The warriors slammed their weapons down again, and the shock ran through Alex as did the Tzoofaa’s calling him a ghost. He was dead. That seemed true. Without Maryan, he had nothing to live for. And then, beyond that—was he not the ghost of a man who had lived a real life eons ago? Was his very existence maybe an offense against nature and an invitation for fate to shower him with bad luck?
“I saw with my own eyes,” Tzoofaa said, “that you did not kill your woman. We did not see the one who did, but the arrow he shot was as large as one of our spears, so he is one of the big people like you, who come from another world like evil smoke in frightening dreams.”
Keetoo interceded: “Chief, he is a being who has suffered misfortune. Does that make him evil, just because evil has destroyed his life? Do any of us become evil because we suffer evil?”
Tzoofaa considered this. “Peoplefear bad fortune, and blame those who suffer it.”
“We must be wiser than that,” Keetoo said.
“The greater care is to safeguard our people,” Tzoofaa replied.
“But you bring him to our council, knowing he understands our language.”
Tzoofaa nodded. “I know he suffers. He will leave us soon. When he goes, he will meet his gods or his fate or whatever is bigger than he is. Then he will tell them he was in our council and that we spoke well to him, and spoke well of the gods.”
“Lector knows we speak well,” Keetoo said. “We speak to him often.”
“Then it is time to take this one to Lector. Ask Lector for words.”
“I will do it,” Keetoo said.
The warriors all crashed their spears down. Tzoofaa rose, gathering his cloak about him, and left.
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