The old person came closer and sat down. He or she spoke again, softly and courteously.

I laid one hand on my chest and said my name. “Lixia.”

After a moment my host said, “Li-sa,” and pointed at me.

“Lixia,” I repeated.

My host laid a bony hand on his or her chest. “Nahusai.”

I pointed. “Nahusai.”

The answer was a gesture, a quick flick of one hand. On a hunch it meant “yes.”

Well, then. I knew a word. It referred to my host. But what did it mean? Was it a name or a title or a generic term such as “human being”?

Time would tell.

A person came in: the flute player. He or she wore the same tunic as the night before and the same copper bracelets.

“Yohai,” my host said and pointed.

The flute player looked at us.

It was a name. I was almost certain.

Yohai made breakfast: a gray-brown mush. It had a sour flavor. I learned the name of it: atsua. When we were done eating, Yohai went to the door and gestured. I got my pack, following him or her around the house. There was an open space in back, where vegetation grew. Most of it was blue with a few white or yellow flowers.

Was it a garden? I didn’t think so. The plants grew helter-skelter, and they had a ragged look. This was a patch of weeds.

In the middle of the open space was a building about the size of a walk-in closet. As soon as I got close to it, I knew what it was. A privy. It stank to high heaven. I considered for a moment. Then I used the thing. Afterward I asked what it was called.

“Hana,”Yohai said. Or maybe hna. I wasn’t certain I was hearing a vowel in the first syllable.

He or she gestured again. I followed. We went through the village. The streets were full of children. We met only a few adults. The children stopped playing and stared at me. The adults pretended I wasn’t there. I had a feeling that Yohai was uneasy. I felt a little uneasy, too. But the day was lovely, sunny and mild. A light erratic wind blew. It carried the smell of the forest and—very faintly—of the ocean. This wasn’t a day to worry. I tried not to.

We reached the edge of the village. There were gardens there: long, narrow, rectangular plots that lay between the houses and the forest. Each was surrounded by a fence made of wood, low enough to see over. Inside the fences people worked, one or two in each garden. They moved between rows of plants. Some weeded. Some picked. Some poured water out of jugs that looked like amphorae.

That answered one of my questions. The society was—to some extent, at least—agricultural.

We entered a garden. At one end was a tree. Yohai led me into the shade and pointed at the ground. I sat down.

My companion began to work. I glanced around. Off to the east were ragged cumuli. A storm tonight. In the next garden over was a baby, tiny and furry, sitting under a plant. As I watched, it reached up, trying to grab hold of one of the leaves. But the leaf was too high.

A short distance away an adult was pouring water. He or she emptied the pot, then set it down, straightened, and turned. Under her tunic I saw the bulge of breasts. Two breasts. She was the first person I had seen who wasn’t flat-chested. Clearly she was a nursing mother.

The woman looked at me, then made a gesture: a vertical slash. I had a feeling it was hostile. I looked away.

At noon Yohai came over to me. We sat together and ate bread. The bread was flat and sour. Afterward Yohai taught me several words: “bread,” “sky,” “tree.”

We went back to the house. My host was there. Yohai left. I sat down and learned more words. Late in the afternoon I heard the roll of thunder. Rain began to fall—first a sprinkle, then a downpour. My host and I ate dinner. It was the same as breakfast: atsua. Gray mush. I didn’t eat a lot.

Afterward we sat without talking. The sun was down. The rain glistened, lit by firelight, a silver curtain at the door. I leaned against a post. My host was by the fire. He or she was hunched over, huddled in the orange robe. One hand moved now or then. It twisted a bracelet or tapped on the ground. This was a person with a serious problem, and I had a feeling the problem was me. Yohai had given me the impression of nervous valor, of someone making a point that he or she did not want to make. “See what we have here. See our guest. See the person we are not ashamed of.” That had been the message given when he or she took me to the garden. What exactly was going on? I decided not to speculate. I had too little information, and I could not be sure that I understood anything about these people.

There was more rain the next day. My host and I worked on vocabulary: household objects mostly and some common verbs. In the afternoon Yohai got down a small loom that had been hanging on the wall. He or she began to weave a strip of cloth. The yarn was white and blue. I watched. Yohai worked quickly. Soon I made out a pattern. It was geometric, full of sharp angles. It looked hostile to me and far too intricate. What did it mean? Was this culture byzantine? Or was I paranoid?

I stood and began to do yoga exercises. My host looked at me, eyes opened wide.

I stopped. “This is nothing harmful or malevolent,” I said gently. “I do this to keep my back from hurting and to keep my mind reasonably tranquil.”

I continued my exercises. My host watched. The rain lightened. It was a drizzle now.

“Excuse me.” I took my pack and went to the privy. It smelled as bad as ever. I went in and sat down, then got out my radio and called the ship.

“Yeah?” the radio said. The voice was deep and a little hoarse. I was talking to Edward Antoine Whirlwind, Ph.D., author of Native American Society on the Reservationand Patterns of Survival in the Late Twentieth Century,formerly the Bellecourt Distinguished Professor at the University of Duluth—he resigned the position when he left Earth—and for many years my colleague in the Department of Cross-cultural Studies.

“This is Lixia,” I told him. “I’m calling from an outhouse, so I’m going to be quick.”

Eddie laughed.

“I needed someplace private.”

“Okay,” Eddie said.

I rested the radio on my knees, then took my medallion off its chain and put it in a slot in the radio.

The little computer in the medallion spoke to the slightly larger computer in the radio. That computer spoke to a computer onboard the ship. It only took a minute. The radio beeped and I pulled the medallion out. Everything the medallion had recorded—everything that had happened to me in the past two days—was now in the information system on the ship.

The radio asked. “Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Okay. Three other people have made contact. No trouble so far. But take care and call again as soon as possible. I ought to have some real information in a couple of days.”

I shut off the radio, packed it, and went out. The rain was coming down hard. I ran to the house.

The next day was clear. Yohai and I went to the garden. The ground was still wet. Drops of water sparkled on the leaves. Yohai taught me to weed. We worked all morning. At noon we rested under the tree. In the other gardens people moved around, talking to one another. But no one came to visit us. Interesting. Once again I had a sense that a point was being made, and Yohai did not want to make it. I bit into a yellow vegetable. It was juicy and bittersweet.

In the evening I sat with Nahusai. Yohai went out, I didn’t know where. I learned more verbs and a lot of prepositions: the curse of every language, but they held all information together. To. From. At. Of. Between.

The next day was my fifth on the planet. The sky was clear again. Yohai and I worked in the garden. I learned the names of various plants. Yohai told me that she was a woman. She wasn’t a mother, though. When she told me this, she seemed unhappy.