Survivor Read Free Page B

pleas and no outcry. Do exactly as I say, and you will live. Do anything else, and you will die. Now. Pick the fruit."
    One small fruit. Only one. It seemed so harmless. Yet the Tehkohn had warned her, She had been addicted once. Even one fruit would mean readdiction.
    She had watched a room full of people, Missionary and Garkohn, die very slowly in meklah withdrawal. She had not been able to watch too carefully because she had been in withdrawal herself. For days, she had been near death. She could no longer remember all that had happened to her during that time, but she remembered the pain.
    Her hand seemed to reach up against her will to pick a ripe yellow fruit.
    She looked at the fruit and wondered whether it would kill her this time the way it had killed the others. Because she would have to withdraw again. She would have no choice.
    She bit into the fruit, found it firm and sweet, delicious against all reason. No wonder the Missionaries had welcomed it so warmly .when the Garkohn introduced them to it. It had been one of the first gifts of the Garkohn to the new colonists three years before. The Mission doctor had tested it and declared it safe to eat. No one had thought that it might not be safe to stop eating.
    She finished the fruit and the Garkohn released her. She did not move, did not even turn to look at him. "When the Tehkohn come to kill you, Natahk, I hope they do it slowly. I hope they take away your meklah and let me watch."
    "So?" He smiled again grotesquely. "You should use your time thinking of things that are possible. Your husband, for instance, freed and cleansed of the red stigma."
    She ignored him, started to walk back to where the raiding party rested. He moved after her quickly.
    "Why do you continually force me to threaten you?"
    "What more do you think your threats can do?" Her voice was flat, dead. "I've told you that you don't have my husband. You can't force me to point out someone who isn't a captive. If you try, I'll choose one of your judges and claim him to please you. And you will be pleased with a lie."
    She walked faster and left him behind. He did not call her again. She skirted widely around the prisoners and returned to the Missionaries, who were just preparing to resume their homeward march.
CHAPTER TWO
    Alanna
    We were busy cannibalizing the ship, clearing land, and building our cabins when I decided to learn the Garkohn language. It bothered me, frightened me to live among people I couldn't understand-especially since they were learning to understand us so quickly. To the disgust of several Missionaries, Jules not only agreed with me, but he lessened my share of the work so that I would have time to learn.
    Next, I had to find a teacher. I asked around. Missionaries were often approached by Garkohn who had been ordered by their leader Natahk to learn English. Most Missionaries did not want to learn the Garkohn language, but sometimes they condescended to teach English. Industriously, the Garkohn learned. Now, I was told that there was a persistent huntress who had been living in the woods near our settlement for days trying to get someone to teach her. A Missionary man pointed her out to me.
    She was sitting on the thick exposed root of a meklah tree. Such trees spread some of their roots vinelike over the ground until they found open sunlight. Then they anchored themselves to the ground and began growing into new trees—or new extensions of old trees. Aboveground, much of the valley was covered with roots as thick as the bodies of two or three men. Missionaries had blasted loose many of them. The Garkohn had watched the blasting with fascination.
    Now though, the Garkohn woman I wanted to talk with was leaning back watching nothing at all. The coloring of her legs and lower torso blended into the rich yellow-brown of the wood she was sitting on so that she appeared to be growing out of it. Unconscious camouflage. Already we Missionaries had seen it too often to be surprised by