Rockabye, Grady

On the charts, it's P-1345-AZ, and a thin blue line marked with cryptic letters indicates that a Mallor Lines cargo ship stops three times in each local year. The Guide will tell you a little more; that it's a small hot planet, covered with fern forests and swamps, and inhabited by one of the innumerable primate-human species of the universe. It was also inhabited, for a while, by one Terran, James Grady.

The natives call it Pru'ut, which, freely translated, means "the world." They refer to themselves as Kya, which means "people." James Grady, being a realist, called it the Mudhole, and added a descriptive adjective or two; but he did not find it nearly as unpleasant a place as a few others in which he had been in the course of forty years of wandering.

Pru'ut has no inclination, and only one season, which is rather like a rainy August on Earth. When Grady arrived, he stepped from the landing stage of the Mallor Lines' Berenice into six inches of gluey mud; the sun was seldom out long enough to harden the surface of Pru'ut.

"It's not an easy place," the departing agent, Jansen, told Grady. "Rain, and heat, and getting along with the locals."

"Anything the matter with 'em?" Grady asked. He was watching the tall, yellow-pale shapes of natives loading bales into the Berenice's cargo slings.

"Nothing much," Jansen said. "Sane as any primitives. All kinds of complicated rules and taboos, and naturally they'll get as mad as hell at you if you scratch a single rule. Most of the data on that is in the agent's notebooks. You add anything to the record that seems to be worth putting down, the way the rest of us have."

"And if they get mad at you, they stop packing plants," the Berenice's mate put in. "Which will make the Mallor Company mad at you, too. This place is a regular bargain basement for drug materials. At least eight different drug plants, all of them worth as much as uranium. More, in some ways."

"Mm." The ex-agent picked up a handful of brown leaves from a table. "This, for instance. It's a distant relation of coca. The natives chew it for fun, but it's the source of a first class anesthetic. And this. If your kidneys ever break down, the doctors use this stuff to keep you alive. Kerosin, it's called. Anyway, you'll find price lists and descriptive material in the files. You've worked for Mallor before, haven't you?"

"Yes," Grady said. "I put in three years on Tengo, in Port City. Then I quit for a while. Had something else to do."

"Oh? What?"

Grady's face cracked into a slight grin. "Little bit of an argument. The Mutiny. I joined the local army, if you could call it that. I had my own gun, so they made me a major on the spot."

"The Mutiny?" The Berenice's mate had heard of that brief and savage war, in which a handful of settlers and local militia had beaten off the troops of a powerful state, and had actually won. The mate hastily readjusted his opinion of Grady upward. A trader's agent was one thing; a man who had fought through the Mutiny was something more than that. The mate opened his mouth to ask more of the story; but the Berenice's air-horn cut him off with a long wail.

"Take-off in twenty minutes," the mate said, as the noise subsided. "You ready, Jansen?"

The ex-agent nodded, and shook hands with Grady. "Good luck," he said, and started for the ship, the mate following.

"Yeah," Grady said, closing the door of the agency. He had completely put the Berenice out of his mind by the time the roar of her departure split the wet air of Pru'ut. He was, in fact, well on his way to settling down as a permanent resident by that time.

A year later, the Berenice had called twice, and her captain and mate were calling Grady by his first name. He had also acquired a native woman, who, in accordance with one of the innumerable customs, could not call him by name at all. She referred to him as Kotasa, which is a sort of title. He, also in accordance with customs, called her Shallra, which was not her name, but that of her mother. Grady was also extremely careful not to speak to her mother at all, because of another custom.

Grady—Kotasa to his wife, and Shassa to the rest of the village—fitted in well, better than any Terran had until his coming. Grady had spent most of his life living in odd places and with strange people; and had come to the conclusion that it was always a good idea to be a conservative by local standards. He could recall, quite clearly, the day he had found what was left of Steynert, who had tried to change the dietary habits of the inhabitants of Kree.

By comparison with the Kree, the Kya were an easy people to get along with. Their lives were not hard, since Pru'ut was a fertile world, and full of food sources. The Kya farmed their garden patches, fished, and hunted, and spent the remaining time gathering plants for Grady and reciting endless and complex genealogies. Grady paid for the plants with goods from the trade warehouse, and listened gravely to the genealogies, making mental notes whenever anything was mentioned that might be of practical use. He did not consider himself as a collector of scientific information; he was a practical man, and he selected information for practical ends.

Shallra was the best wife he had ever had, and Grady had lived on several worlds. She spoke little, and when she did, it was direct and to the point. She was affectionate, but, like most Kya, undemonstrative. She had been brought up to consider that males were equals, but that certain male privileges, such as the lodge magics and the use of horn pipes, were inviolable. Grady had lived on one world where men were considered very much superior to women, and had found that the attitudes which result are not as pleasant as they might seem. And lastly, Shallra was probably the best cook on Pru'ut, if not the best on several worlds.

The Kya generally liked and trusted Grady, and, after two years, he was almost one of them. Standing on the agency porch, in the weak sunlight, he seemed to have acquired the same yellowish skin and lean face, and he was dressed in the same loose kilt. Shallra came out to stand beside him, and they looked like any other Kya.

"The sun," she said gravely. "There will be a dance tonight."

Grady nodded. "Like to see it," he said. "The dance, I mean."

"It is for men," Shallra said. "Koor," she pointed at the sun, "is a god belonging to men. The women dance when the sky clears in the night."

"Men's dance, eh?" Grady said, sucking on his pipe. "You're probably right about it being all right for me to go. But I'd better check with the Chief anyway."

He started down the log-paved walk, toward the Chief's house on the other side of the village. He could see it clearly at the far end of the long, muddy street, but it was necessary to walk along a twisting detour, rather than directly toward it. There was an acre of ground in the center of the village, filled with crumbling, empty huts, and no Kya walked through this ground. It belonged to Sa'ahah, whose ghost walked in a wide circle around the hut where a jealous rival had speared him in his sleep.

The house was the usual Kya affair, on tall stilts, with painted signs on its facade, but much more elaborate as befitted the Chief's position. He was Anla-Who-Speaks-for-the-Ancestors. There were several other kinds of chief, but it was Anla whom Grady consulted before trying anything in the least unusual. Anla sat on his porch now, regarding the sun through slitted eyes.

Grady greeted him in proper form, and Anla returned the greeting, rising and bowing.

"Is there any reason why this person may not attend the dance of Koor with his brothers on this night?" Grady asked.

Anla thoughtfully pulled his lower lip; then, nodding, he said, "No, there is no reason not to."

Then Grady made the mistake. He made it in full view of Anla's mother-in-law, who sat peering balefully out from her special room in the corner of the Chief's house; and of Anla's wife, and of his wife's innumerable relations, who were clustered on the porch. When Grady saw their silent staring, he looked down at his feet, and he saw what it was that he had done. Anla saw it too, and the two men looked up again, and at each other, very gravely.

Grady did not say he was sorry. It would have been of no use whatever. Nor did he point out that the sun came out so infrequently that his mistake was one which could be excused. Among the Kya there are very few mistakes which can be excused, and stepping on the shadow of a chief is not one of them.

Neither did Anla make any reference to the long friendship between them, because there would have been no point in doing so. Anla's eyes grew darker, and the wrinkles at their corners deepened, but his words were calm, the correct words for such a time.

"Your name was Shassa," Anla said. "You have broken the ghost-cloak of the Chief, and your name cannot be Shassa. From this place and this time I take back your name, Shassa, and you have no name."

Grady did not say anything, because a Kya cannot hear the words of a man without a name; besides, there was nothing to say, though a great deal to think about. The Berenice was due in four days. Four days during which a man without a name would have to avoid the custom which decreed that such a man must be killed. Killed as soon as possible, because each day he continued to live was a day which must be removed from the calendar, a day on which no man's birth date might be celebrated, or any animal killed for food, or any root taken from a garden.

Grady turned, and walked slowly, with a stiff back, down the path away from the Chief's house. To run, or to show fear, would be fatal; the Kya were themselves in a state of shock at the thing which had happened, and it would be an hour or more before they began to prepare for what they had to do. Therefore, Grady held his spine straight, feeling a cold spot between his shoulderblades where the first iron-headed arrow might strike in.

Ahead of him, through the village, the silent children ran on light feet, darting into the houses and out again—the children, who were the bearers of news. He saw three of them dash toward the agency, and enter it; and in a moment, as he came up the path, Shallra came out on the porch, carrying a clay pot in her hands.

"You who were Kotasa," she said, "take this, and drink it to free me of your name."

It was the standard form of divorce among the Kya, and if the eyes of Shallra had not been bright with tears, Grady might have slipped. He took the clay pot, but he did not drink, because he could smell the faint and bitter odor about it, which was not the odor of the fruit wine that it should have held.

"Why?" he asked her, quietly.

"Because it is an easier death than the knife and the arrow," she said, and added, "When you were Kotasa, you were—a good man for me. Drink the wine." She said it pleadingly. He shook his head.

"I am sorry," Shallra said, and there is nothing harder for a Kya to say. But she added something even harder for a Kya woman to say; his name, his proper name, which she had always known but could never use. Then she walked away, and out of Grady's life, because he was now a man without a name.

He set the pot down carefully on the agency's steps and went inside. As he closed the door, there was a high, whistling noise, and a sharp thud against the door planks. He did not need to look to know that an arrow stood in its wooden panels.

Grady closed the heavy wooden shutters carefully, not even jumping when a second arrow whickered through the last shutter as it swung. He lit a table lamp and took the heavy, seldom-used rifle from the wall. He did not need to check it; he had oiled and cleaned it once a week for two years. Instead, he laid it on the table and took a book down from a shelf.

"General Code of the Federation Authority," Grady read the words on the spine, and opened it. "Extent of responsibilities of individuals on mandated planets...."

Under the circumstances, Grady discovered, he could kill any number of Kya if he were so inclined. The Authority would require a full report, in quadruplicate, of the circumstances—and as another arrow struck the door, Grady wondered wryly who would make out that report.

Also, Grady was not in the least inclined to kill any Kya. If doing so would have saved his life, he would have shot any number of them without any particular qualms. But there were no reasons at all to think that killing any of them would do Grady any good. And Grady thoroughly understood why it was that they had to kill him. He was no more angry with the Kya than he had been with the Imperial Guards, five years before, when they had come up Kanno Hill with their band playing and their bayonets gleaming. He could remember how military and colorful they had looked, in comparison to the overalled, grimy rabble who stood beside him; and how they had come up that hill again and again, fewer of them each time, and the band losing a bit of verve on the last. Grady's anger then had been at the damned fool, whoever he was, who ordered those useless charges; and his anger now was with himself, because it had been his own mistake.

There was a growing murmur outside the agency. The villagers were gathering in the street, and in the yards behind the building. There was no way out now, and nowhere to go if there had been a way out.

Grady got up, and walked to the door. He opened the sliding panel a crack and peered out.

The rain had begun again, and through its thin gray curtain he could see the ranks of villagers, silent, standing around the house, along the railings, and watching. The men stood in front, each holding his weapons, his bow bent in his hands. There was Lahrsha, who had been brother in the Lodge to Grady, and whose blood had been mixed with his to seal the tribal bond. There was Ahl, whose small son Grady had nursed through a bad week. There were Grady's friends and neighbors and brothers, each with an arrow on the nock for Grady.

"It's a queer thing to happen," Grady said to himself, aloud. The sound of his own voice startled him; he had become so much a Kya that to him a man without a name should not have a voice.

The arrows struck oftener now. Grady saw a small group of men move away, and then return, carrying a short log.

The door, Grady thought. They'll break it down, and come in, with their grave faces and their polite ways, and they'll cut my throat. And it won't matter if I kill one or two or ten of them; they'll do it anyway. They won't hear an argument, because they can't hear me at all, without a name; they won't even hear any noise I make when they finish me off.

The log had begun to beat against the door, with a steady thunder. Grady opened a cabinet, and took out a jar of brown liquid. Quickly he drank it and sat down, his face graying. His head fell forward on his arms, and the book of regulations fell to the floor, atop the unfired rifle.

The Berenice swung outward, riding home to port with an empty hold. The Mallor Company would not be pleased, but there were other jobs. And the mate, sitting across the messroom table from James Grady, put the matter in its simplest terms.

"Just one of those things," the mate said. "You can't be blamed. They'll take another agent without any fuss, I imagine."

"No doubt of it," Grady said. "Can't say I'm glad to leave, though. It was a good place."

"I still don't get it," the mate said. "We came in and found you in the agency, out cold with coca. The door was down, and arrows all over the place. Why didn't they come in and dig a knife into you?"

"Customs and taboos," Grady said. "I took a chance on it, but I was pretty sure I was right. Common sense—by their standards. Man's asleep—his ghost is walking around. If you kill him in his sleep, you free his ghost, which is very bad, very strong magic. So you have to wake him up to kill him. And they couldn't wake me up; I was full of that coca leaf, enough for a week."