I frowned. Derek glanced at me, then continued, “Every society has standards for proper conduct, and in every society people fail to meet those standards. Reality and human frailty get in the way. Well, you can’t abandon the standards, and you can’t have everyone in the society going around crying ‘Mea culpa.’ So you invent hypocrisy. It’s present in every society I’ve ever studied. I’m sure they have it here on this planet.”

“Maybe.”

We turned away from the shore, walking toward the grove.

“Think of my people,” Derek said. “To them two qualities are important. Mellowness and honesty. Well, what do you do when honesty will create an unpleasant situation?”

He paused. I said nothing. “First of all, you try to evade the problem. You eat a little peyote. You concentrate on the cosmic patterns. That’s what’s important, after all—all that energy, pouring down from the stars and rising up from the ground.

“And so on. If you can’t escape from the problem, if you are pulled back to the here and now, then you lie. Which is dishonest and hypocritical, but natural and human, and it keeps everything mellow.”

We reached the camp. The oracle was up, rebuilding the fire. He glanced at us. “Nia has gone?”

“Yes,” said Derek. “And that woman came. Inahooli. She’s down by the water. I tied her up.”

“Our luck is changing. Nia will find the bowhorn, and everything will come out the way it is supposed to. My spirit has promised me.”

Derek made the gesture that meant he had heard what had been said, but was reserving judgment.

Late in the morning we went down to the canoe, all three of us. Inahooli was in the same position as before. Her head was turned, and her eyes closed against the glare of the sun.

I looked at her a moment. “This isn’t going to work,” I said in English. “Nia could be gone for days. We can’t keep the woman like this.”

She opened her eyes, frowning and squinting.

“It’s uncomfortable. It’s humiliating. And it’s undemocratic. What right do we have to deprive her of freedom?”

“We have the right to protect ourselves,” Derek said.

“Well, maybe. In any case, this isn’t practical. How is she going to eat? Or go to the bathroom? We can’t let her lie in her own excrement like a character in a novel about the old society.”

The oracle bent over Inahooli. He loosened her gag.

“Demon,” she said.

“No. I am a holy man. An oracle. I serve the Spirit of the Waterfall, who is large and powerful and able to handle any kind of evil.”

An interesting word, that one. I translated it as “evil,” an abstract noun. In his language it was an adjective coupled with a noun that meant “thing.” The adjective meant “bad,” as in a bad taste. It also meant “unlucky” or “peculiar.”

“You are a demon,” the woman said. “You travel with demons.”

“They are not demons. They are people without hair.”

“One of them is male. And you are a man.”

The oracle made the gesture of agreement.

“Everyone knows that men are solitary by nature and have bad tempers and are unwilling to share anything with other men. But you travel with that one.” She nodded toward Derek. “You must be a demon or a monster.”

“You are thinking badly,” the oracle said.

Again the same word, the one that meant “bad” or “evil” or “strange.” This time the form was adverbial.

The oracle straightened up. “You have been alone too long. It isn’t natural for a woman to sit by herself on an island.”

“I am the guardian. And that one—the woman—has done harm to my tower.”

“How?” asked the Voice of the Waterfall.

“She came to the island. She sat in the shadow of the tower.”

“No I didn’t. It was noon. There wasn’t any shade. Right below the tower, maybe, but not where I was.”

“You were on the island. Bad people—people who are unlucky—cannot go to a holy place. Not until they have taken part in a ceremony of purification. But there is no way to purify a demon.”

“You said if I was a demon, the tower would harm me. I wasn’t harmed. How can I be a demon?”

The woman closed her eyes for a moment, frowning. Then she looked at me. “I explained this before. You are a demon. I can see that now. You have to be a demon. Who else would travel with men? And with a woman like Nia? The magic in the tower should have destroyed you. Or—at the very least—given you a terrible pain. But you are fine. Therefore, it must be the tower that has come to harm. And I am the guardian! How will I ever explain?”

Derek said, “This kind of thinking goes around in a circle. If Lixia is a demon, the tower will hurt her. The tower does not hurt her, and this means she is a demon.”

I made the gesture of disagreement. “You haven’t understood the argument.”

“Help me sit up,” the woman said. “I can’t talk like this.”

The oracle took hold of her shoulders. He pulled her into a sitting position. She grunted and twisted, moving the upper portion of her body from side to side. “My arms are numb. I can’t feel anything. And how can I talk without using my hands?”

The oracle looked at me.

“Free her. But only her hands.”

“I need a knife,” he said.

Derek gave him one.

The oracle cut.

“Are they free?” the woman said. “I can’t move them.”

“They are free.”

She leaned forward. Her arms fell apart, and her hands knocked against the sides of the canoe. “I feel nothing! I cannot make them work!”

“Your arms are sleeping,” Derek said. He pulled her arms forward, till her hands were resting on her thighs. Then he began to rub one of the arms.

“Aiya! It hurts! It tingles!”

Derek kept rubbing. “Lixia?”

“Yes?”

“Explain the argument. The one I didn’t understand. And you—” He looked at Inahooli. “Remember, your feet are tied. Don’t try anything humorous.”

Inahooli frowned. “This is no time for a joke. And anyway, I am not good at joking. Everyone tells me that.”

“The problem is Nia,” I said. “I am a demon because I travel with her. And with you and the oracle.”

The woman raised her arm. She clenched her hand, then opened it and made the gesture of agreement. Then she began to rub her other arm. Derek stood up and stepped back.

“If I am a demon, then it follows that the tower is my enemy. If the magic of the tower does not harm me, then it follows that my magic must have harmed the tower. —An elegant line of reasoning,” I added in English. “I don’t see any flaw.”

“This is stupid,” the oracle said. “You talk and talk, and you don’t settle anything. You are all thinking badly and more than that”—he raised one hand for emphasis—“you are fooling around with words. You are like children with bright stones. You toss the words. You line them in rows. Aiya! How pretty! But what does it mean?” He paced around the canoe, then turned and stared at us. “Listen to me, all of you! Among my people there is a woman who is called the go-between. When there is an argument, she goes to the women who are involved. She asks questions. Each woman tells her side of the argument. Then the go-between goes off by herself. She thinks over everything she has heard. She picks through the stories, and she throws away anything that seems malicious or foolish. When people argue, they begin to brood. The memory of the argument stays in their minds. It becomes like food that has been stored all winter: half-rotten and full of bugs. And it is hard to tell what is good from the garbage.

“But the go-between learns to turn ideas over. She knows how to find the soft spots and the little holes where bugs have burrowed in. She throws away all the bad ideas. Whatever is left is the real reason for the argument. Once she knows that, she can begin to settle the argument.”