“Nahusai?” I asked.

She made the gesture that meant “yes.” “Mother,” she said, then put her hand on her chest. “Mother me.”

Aha. A kinship relationship. My first one. I began to feel I was getting somewhere.

The day after that Yohai took me to the river. It ran between the gardens and the forest. This time of year—midsummer—it was low. The water ran around yellow stones. Yohai waded in and turned over a stone, then grabbed something. “Tsa!”

She handed the thing to me. It was maybe ten centimeters long, green and hard, with eight legs. I held it gingerly. The legs moved. At one end were two long stalks. Were they eyes? Or antennae? They flicked back and forth.

“We eat,” said Yohai.

“Oh, yeah?” I made the gesture that meant uncertainty or confusion.

“You see.” Yohai took the creature and tossed it into a pot. “You here.” She beckoned.

I took off my boots, rolled up my pants, and waded in. She had another creature. It went into the pot. “You.”

I reached into the water and rolled over a rock. Something scurried past my fingertips. I grabbed and missed.

“Damnation.” I found another rock and tried again.

We spent all morning in the river. Yohai caught twenty or so of the creatures. I caught two.

At last she waded out of the river. She stared at me, looking puzzled.

“What am I good for?” I said in English. “An interesting question. I’m verygood at learning languages and pretty good at figuring out how other people think. Though I can’t always explain how I know what I know. Is that any help?”

Yohai picked up the pot. The green things were still alive. They crawled over one another, trying to get out.

“Come.” She beckoned.

I picked up my boots. We walked downstream. After a few minutes the gardens were gone, and there were trees all around us. The air smelled of whatever-it-was: the forest aroma, sharp and distinctive, for which I had no name.

There were rapids in the river. Nothing important. The water rippled down over a series of little drops. Here and there I saw a little foam. At the bottom of the last drop was a pool. The water was quiet, deep, and green.

My companion put down the pot she carried. She kicked off her sandals and pulled her tunic over her head. Her body was lovely, dark and sleek. It reminded me of otters and bears and of my own species as well. She was remarkably humanoid. The only striking difference was the fur. The eyes were a bit unusual, of course. The pupils were vertical slits. The irises, which were pale yellow, filled the eyes. I could see no white. Her hands had three fingers and a thumb. Her feet had four toes. Except for this and her flat chest, she looked like our senior pilot, Ivanova.

She pointed at me. “You. Li-sha.”

I undressed.

“Tsa!” She touched my bare shoulder. “What?”

I kept still. She walked around in back of me. “Hu!” I felt the touch of her hand very lightly on one shoulder blade. I shivered. She came around in front and stared at my chest. For a human woman I was pretty flat. Still, my breasts were far more noticeable than hers.

“Mother? You?” she asked.

“No.”

She looked me straight in the eyes. She was frowning. “What you?”

I answered her in English. “I can’t explain, Yohai. Not yet. I don’t know how you say ‘world’ or ‘star’ or ‘friend.’ But there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not dangerous. I mean no harm.”

Yohai stared at me for another minute, then turned and dove into the pool. She was a terrific swimmer. I saw her glide through the green water as gracefully as a seal.

I dove after her. My foot slipped on the bank, and my dive turned into a belly flop. I came up, coughing and embarrassed. Yohai made a barking noise. A laugh?

I swam to the middle of the river, turned over and floated. The water was cool. There was hardly any current. Far above me a bird soared across the sky. Ah!

After a while I swam to shore. I climbed out and washed my clothes, using a couple of stones—I had learned the technique in California from the aborigines—then hung the clothes on a bush to dry.

Yohai joined me, brushing the water out of her fur. We sat together on the riverbank. Her eyes were half-closed, and her fur glistened in the sunlight. She looked so comfortable! Why couldn’t I relax like that? Maybe I should take another course in yoga.

Yohai roused herself and told me the name of the creatures in the pot.

That evening I learned how to kill and shell the creatures. I didn’t enjoy this. But I did it. Yohai boiled the remains. The result was delicious. I ate too much. Afterward I sat in the doorway. Children played in the street. They seemed to be playing tag. I watched and felt more or less contented, though I could have used an after-dinner drink. Something light and dry. A white wine maybe.

The next morning I paid another long visit to the privy. I called the ship and got Eddie again.

“I have news for you,” he said. “But first, transmit your information.”

I put the medallion into the radio and waited. There were half a dozen bugs in the privy. A couple buzzed around my head. I waved them away. The radio beeped. I pulled the medallion out.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. I’m staying with two people. Nahusai and Yohai. No one visits them. When Yohai and I work in the garden, no one talks to us. I think the problem is me.”

There was a pause. “Do you think the situation is dangerous? Do you want to get out?”

“No. Not yet.”

Another pause. “Your instincts are usually excellent. Okay. But I want you to call in more often.”

“I’ll try. It won’t be easy. There isn’t much privacy here.”

“Do what you can. Now, for your information—Harrison Yee got driven out of his village. They were polite, but firm. It happened after he took a bath. We think he violated a nudity taboo or a taboo against washing in running water or maybe just in that particular river. Try and find out how your people bathe before you take a bath.”

“I’ve already taken one, Eddie.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“In the nearest river.”

“Alone?”

“With Yohai. The daughter of my host. She looked a little surprised when she saw me naked. Apparently she hadn’t realized that I had no fur on me anywhere. Well, almost no fur. In any case, nothing happened.”

“That’s interesting. Of course, Harrison was nowhere close to you. However, the language you are learning is similar to the one he was learning, before he took his bath.”

“He’s on the other side of the continent.”

“Uh-huh. And your language is almost identical to the one Derek is learning. He’s down the coast from you.”

A bug landed on my face. I swatted and missed. The radio began to slide off my knees. “Damnation!” I grabbed it before it could go into the hole below me.

“Lixia?”

“Nothing. What does all of this mean?”

“We don’t know. But there are theories. You may be learning a trade language, something like pidgin English. Or maybe all the people contacted so far are closely related, part of a recent migration.”

“How likely is that?”

“Not very. The trade language is a distinct possibility—or so we think at the moment.”

I signed off and left the privy. Outside, a couple of meters away, a person waited. He or she wore a robe and a tall hat. The robe was covered with embroidery. The hat was decorated with shells. After a moment I recognized him or her. It was the person who had broken up Nahusai’s party.

“Yes?” I said in the native language.

He or she made a gesture—a vertical slash—then turned and walked away.

I went back to the house feeling a bit nervous. The person had radiated hostility. Who was he or she? I couldn’t ask. I didn’t know the right words.

For the next half-dozen days the sky remained clear. The weather was hot. Yohai and I worked in the garden. Mostly, we brought water from the river: pot after heavy pot. We poured the water out on the dry ground. Then we returned to the river. We refilled our pots. We went back to the garden.