Part 40 (2/2)

'Yes, I have a question,' said a woman. 'You say that your people have no spoken language.' (Sylviana had told the doctor, who in turn had pa.s.sed it on to the others). 'And yet you have a name.

How is that?'

'My people all have names, but no sounds to go with them. My name is a sign made with the hands, or a figure drawn in the dirt, so that I can be identified to others at need, such as during a hunt. The Machine called me Kalus, to my mind as well as my ears, just as it gave names to all the elements of my world. I have always wondered how this was done.'

Brus.h.i.+ng over this last information, which none understood and which they could always come back to, they asked several more questions about the hill-people, until one of the younger men produced a greaseboard and marker, and approached him.

'Your sign, the one that identifies you. Could you draw it?'

Kalus took the board, and after being shown how to use it, drew a straight line, horizontal, then a long curving tooth like a saber at the end of it, pointing downward.

'This represents the upper jaw of the hill-cat, one of the greatest hunters of our world. My first father made it for me, hoping that I would be as fierce and cunning. All our names our similar. When he was killed by a bear. . .I drew it in anger on the ground, then with my foot blurred away the sharp point, to show that I was no great predator, but only a man. Like this.' He smeared the lower half of the tusk, leaving only a squarish root. 'That has been my mark ever since.'

'The MANtooth,' said Sylviana suddenly, and much to her own consternation. But half embarra.s.sed, half proud in spite of herself, she pushed on. 'The Machine called you the Mantooth.'

'Yes,' he said simply. 'And that is what I am.'

'This machine---' began another.

'No, no, we'll come back to that later,' said Rawlings.

'Your ?first father', Kalus. What did you mean by that?'

'Barabbas is my father now. I think it is what you would call adoption, though to us it is much more than that. The adopted sons of a childless leader are more dear to him.....' He stopped as emotion swelled in his throat, and he realized with a sudden pang the truth of these words. 'Barabbas is my father now.'

'Barabbas,' replied Rawlings thoughtfully. 'Surely that's not a name given by a machine.'

'Yes. In fact it is. But I too have always thought it strange, and somehow appropriate, since I learned of the Barabbas in your Bible.'

'It's not MY Bible,' said Rawlings quickly. 'But still, how do you mean that?' Kalus pondered for a moment, trying to think how to express it.

'It wasn't Barabbas' fault: that he was freed, and Jesus crucified. He was only trying to survive. And who can say what his ?crime' was that he should have been imprisoned by the Romans, who seem to me among the greatest criminals of history. And yet for the simple fact of his presence on that day, and his desire to live rather than die in agony, he is branded a villain and hated, by those who need such symbols of hate, and love. Surely Jesus did not hate him.'

At this all were quietly stunned. For until that moment they had retained the subconscious arrogance that Sylviana first experienced, and to which she had lately returned: the belief that a rough man without education could not think or feel as they did, could not possess the same soul, or depth of feeling.

They were wrong.

'Well said,' came a voice. And for the rest of the afternoon the questions were not asked as from adult to child, from superior beings to inferior, but as from man (and woman) to man. Sylviana could only watch and listen, and tell herself in vain she didn't love him.

Because she had been stung by the affection he showed Kataya, and refused to admit she was afraid of losing him.

Chapter 41

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