Ara frowned again. “You have a lot of names for yourselves. Can’t you decide what you are?”

“No,” I said.

“Ah. Well, if I meet any more hairless people, I will ask them for a name. Maybe they will come up with a better answer than you have.” He turned his animal and rode off along the trail.

“I liked my answer,” Derek said. “I guess these people don’t appreciate wit.” He used the English word for “wit.” Was there a native word? I didn’t know.

Nia got the bowhorns. We mounted double, Nia behind the oracle, Derek behind me. In that way we crossed the river. At the deepest point the water came to the bellies of our animals. I had to pull my feet up in order to keep them dry. Derek didn’t bother. As usual he was barefooted. The water felt good, he said.

On the far side Nia and Derek dismounted. We found the trail. It went south and west along the river. We followed it.

That evening we made camp in a grove by the river. We ate the last of our food.

Nia said, “Tomorrow I will hunt.”

Derek made the gesture of assent and then the gesture of inclusion. The two together meant “I will hunt, too.”

I thought of calling the ship. But I was tired and depressed and didn’t feel up to a conversation with Eddie.

Rain fell during the night. I woke and heard the soft patter on foliage above me. It couldn’t have been much of a rain. It didn’t get through the leaves. I listened for a while, then went back to sleep.

By morning the rain had stopped. But the sky stayed overcast. Nia and Derek took off hunting. The oracle and I continued along the trail. To the right of us were groves of monster grass. To the left was the river. It ran over yellow stones and through beds of dull purple reeds. Birds clung to the reeds and made gurgling noises.

I thought about breakfast. My stomach gurgled, sounding like the birds. “Tell me a story.”

“What kind?” asked the oracle.

“An important story. A story about something that matters.”

“I will tell you about the moon.”

“Which one?”

“The big one. It was not always up in the sky. It used to be down here on the ground. The Mother of Mothers kept it. It was her cooking pot. The pot was able to fill itself. It needed no help from anyone.”

I thought of asking him to tell a different story.

“People could eat and eat. When the pot was empty, the people would sit down and wait. In a little while the pot was full again, all the way to the brim. It held porridge in the morning. At night it held a tasty meat stew. The Mother of Mothers fed everyone who was hungry. Everyone who was in need of food was able to come to her.”

Too late. He was getting into the story. It would be rude to ask him to stop. My stomach made another gurgling noise.

“But the people became lazy and greedy. They thought if a village had that pot, no one in the village would ever have to work. So the fourteen kinds of people I know about all sent emissaries to the Mother. Each one said, ‘Give me your pot, for then my people will be happy forever.’

“The Mother said no. The emissaries became angry. They went off together and consulted.

“ ‘We will steal the pot, all of us together. When we have it, we’ll draw straws. Whoever gets the longest straw can take the pot home and keep it for a year. At the end of the year she must give the pot to whoever got the second longest straw. In this way we’ll share. Every village will have a good year, one out of fourteen.’

“They stole the pot. It wasn’t hard. The Mother of Mothers was not suspicious. Then they drew straws and the trouble began. The women with long straws were happy. The women with short straws were furious. They began to quarrel and shout. They even hit one another.

“The noise attracted the Spirit of the Sky, who was far above them. He flew down and grabbed the pot and carried it away—though I don’t know how he did it, since he has wings instead of arms. Maybe he grabbed the pot with his feet. There are women who say his feet are claws like the feet of a hunting bird.

“Then the Mother of Mothers said, ‘You see what being greedy gets you. I am going to put my cooking pot in a safe place, and I am going to punish all of you, so that—in the future—women will think twice before they bother the spirits.’

“She put her cooking pot in the night sky. It became the moon. And she put the emissaries up there as well. ‘Your punishment will be that your mission will never be completed. You will wander through the sky forever, unable to get my cooking pot and unable to go home. The people of the world will learn from this to be less greedy and to treat the spirits with more consideration.’

“Those women became the little lights that travel across the sky night after night. We call them the Wanderers or the Thieves or the Women Without Respect.”

The little moons, I thought. The captured planetoids. A very nice explanation, except we had counted only twelve little moons.

“You said there were fourteen emissaries,” I said finally. “But I have seen only twelve lights.”

“That is true,” said the oracle.

“What happened to the other two?”

“That is another story, and I don’t think a man should tell it to a woman.”

“Oh.”

“It is not decent.” He used the negative form of the word that meant “well done,” “well made,” “in balance,” or “appropriate.”

“Oh,” I said.

We rode on in silence. At last the oracle said, “I forgot one thing about the story of the cooking pot. If you look up into the sky, you will see the pot grow more and more empty night after night. And then—night after night—you will see the pot refill.”

“Who eats from it?” I asked.

“People aren’t certain. Maybe it is the great spirits, and maybe it is the people who die. They must go somewhere and when they get there, they have to eat.”

I made the gesture of uncertainty and then the gesture of agreement. That meant I agreed, but not with any enthusiasm.

“Now I am hungry,” the oracle said. “I should have told another story.”

“Do you want to? I’m willing to listen.”

“Not now. Maybe Nia will come back soon.”

She didn’t. After a while rain began to fall: a fine drizzle. We took shelter in a grove of monster grass. The rain grew heavier. Drops of water came down through the foliage above us.

The oracle said, “On a day like this, I remember the house of my mother.”

“You do?”

He made the gesture of affirmation. “I remember it was always dry, even when rain came out of the sky like a river—like the waterfall my spirit inhabits. Aiya! It was comfortable! The flap was up over the smoke hole, and the fire burned low. Raindrops hissed in. The smoke coiled around itself under the ceiling—like lizards in the late spring when they mate.” He paused for a moment. “When it was done coiling, the smoke would slide out around the lifted edges of the flap—the way the male lizards do when they are finished with their womenfolk and eager to get away but also tired.”

What a speech! Amazing how well people were able to speak in a culture without books or holovision. We—who valued the written word and the projected image—talked in grunts and avoided metaphors as much as possible.

I looked at the oracle. His shoulders were hunched against the rain. His tunic clung to his body. The fabric was so thin that it offered almost no protection. Poor fellow.

Something clicked in my mind. Why didn’t these people wear trousers? They rode astride. On Earth, through most of our history, trousers had been connected with the riding of horses. Cultures that traveled on horseback wore trousers. Other cultures did not.

The rule did not work for China. Everyone wore trousers there and had for centuries, but few people rode horses.