The Chad Oliver Omnibus by Chad Oliver

Author:Chad Oliver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

The native who taught Ashley the rudiments of the language was named Rondol. He was a specialist in the native social structure, obviously a shaman among other things. Apparently, he had other capabilities as well. He was a brash man, a bit pompous, shrewd, and a good teacher. It early became clear that he was teaching Ashley a simplified form of the language of his people—scaling it down for ready comprehension.

That was unprecedented.

“I will teach you the rest when you are ready for it,” Rondol said to him, with a faintly superior air. “To understand, one must start at the beginning.”

“Drop dead, brother,” Martin Ashley said—to himself. He wasn’t getting enough sleep, and he was annoyed at his own inability to comprehend the culture in which he found himself.

On the surface, it wasn’t too complicated. The natives called themselves the Nern, which simply meant “human beings.” It was quite common for primitive peoples to name themselves in that manner, and the implication was usually obvious—no one else could be a human being, since they were not in the tribe.

It was not, Ashley reflected, a characteristic wholly restricted to primitives.

The Nern, as Ashley had already seen from the shuttle, had a simple mixed economy. They grew a single crop, a sweet tuber not unlike a potato, which they planted with digging sticks and harvested when their supply ran low. They shot several game animals with bows, mostly deerlike creatures that grazed on the great grass plains. They did some fishing in nearby streams, and they gathered a variety of fruits and vegetables that grew wild in the forest.

The Nern were monogamous, and lived in small family units. But they were very conscious of kinship ties, and the little village was divided into halves, or moieties. Each moiety was a unit in the social organization, and they worked together as a reciprocal whole. Marriage always took place between members of opposite moieties.

Nothing unusual there.

There were no clans, although the moieties had some clan characteristics. Sexes, as far as Ashley could tell, had equal rights. There was a “chief” of sorts, a charming man named Catan, but such authority as there was seemed vested in a council of elders—the ten oldest men and women. There was one shaman, Rondol, who was primarily concerned with healing and the supernatural.

Nothing unusual there.

There seemed to be a great emphasis on mythology, or even philosophy. There were many rituals, in which the whole village participated. There was the yearly cycle of ceremonies, a virtual universal among human beings. Some called them Christmas and Armistice Day and the Fourth of July, others rain dances and harvest sings and sacrifices to the sun.

Nothing unusual there.

One night, Rondol stood with Ashley in the central plaza. A cool breeze whispered in off the grass fields and sighed through the forest trees. A few orange fires crackled and hissed softly in front of the log huts of the village.

Rondol pointed up into the night, out into the infinite. “You say you came from the stars, Martin,” he said.

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