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Survivor

Octavia E. Butler

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

GARDEN CITY,NEW YORK

1978

All of the characters in this book

are fictitious, and any resemblance

to actual persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Butler, Octavia E

Survivor.

Page 1

I. Title.

PZ4B98674Su [PS3552.U827] 813'.5'4

ISBN: 0-385-13385-5

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-81548

Printed in theUnited States of America

First Edition

CHAPTER ONE

Alanna

I didn't know enough to appreciate my foster father the way I should have when we met back on Earth.

That was when I was about fifteen and his Missionaries caught me stealing from their cornfield. They shot

me, would have killed me, but he stopped them. Then he carried me back to his house, got a doctor to

tend my wound, and announced that he and his wife were adopting me. Just like that. I heard the doctor

try to talk him out of it when they both thought I was unconscious.

"You could be making a mistake, Jules. She's not the harmless young girl she appears to be. And she'll

never replace your children."

"My children are dead," said my foster father quietly. "I've accepted that. I wouldn't expect her or

anyone else to replace them."

The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. "Well, at least she can talk."

"Of course she can talk! She is human, Bart, wild or not."

"Yes… physically anyway. Some of them can't do much more than grunt, you know. They've either

forgotten speech, or they never learned it. As wild humans, they spend their lives either hunting or being

hunted. By the time they're this girl's age, they're more wild than human."

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"This one's a future Missionary," said my foster father. "She'll learn. She'll become one of us."

"Maybe." The doctor sounded doubtful. "If the people let her, and if she really wants to. But I think all

she'll learn for quite a while is how to pretend to be one of us. Don't expect more than that."

And my foster father didn't at first. I don't think he had even before the doctor warned him. All he asked

of me was that I learn to put on a good act when I was with people other than him and his wife Neila.

That would protect me from the less tolerant of his Missionaries. Perhaps during that early period, he was

too tolerant himself, though, too willing to let me stand apart from his people as I was naturally inclined to

do. Perhaps there was a time when I could have become a Missionary if he had insisted, pushed me. But

as it happened, it was best for him, for his people, and especially for me, that he did not insist. Best that

when we left Earth and settled on our new world, I became something else entirely.

Two days after Alanna Verrick was rescued from her Tehkohn captors, the sharp edge of her pain

began to wear away. She could think again. She could look at her situation clearly and realize how much

trouble she was in.

Her rescuers, complacent and overconfident after their victorious raid, were also in trouble but they did

not know it. In fact, their ignorance was one of Alanna's problems. But she had another more immediate

problem. In a very short time, she was going to have to convince her rescuers that they had not made a

mistake in setting her free.

For now, though, she followed them silently as she had for the past two days while they herded their

own Tehkohn prisoners down from the mountains. They had already reached the foothills and Alanna

could look down from the trail into the valley's thick covering of yellow-green meklah trees. For the first

time in nearly eight hundred days—two local years—she saw the planet's only settlement of Earth

humans. TheMission colony that had once been her home. Like her, it had changed.

The Missionaries had transformed their settlement from a scattered collection of cabins almost hidden by

the surrounding trees to a solidly stockaded town—a fortress that apparently provided them with the

dangerous illusion of security.

Alanna looked around for some sign of the Garkohn town. Since the Garkohn, native allies of the

Missionaries, chose to live underground, a sign of their town would be a small hill somewhere along the

eastern side of the valley—the far side. But there were many such hills, all natural-looking, all identically

covered with meklah trees and shrubs. The Garkohn knew that real security began with adequate

camouflage. But then, the Missionaries considered this world's version of even adequate camouflage to

be beyond their reach. The expertise of the natives intimidated them.

Thus, only the Missionary fortress stood in plain view, beckoning unwittingly to the Tehkohn—inviting

them to steal in and butcher everyone without even the inconvenience of a battle. And, Alanna guessed,

after the defeat that the Tehkohn had just suffered, they would be strongly motivated to do just that.

Alanna looked back at the Tehkohn prisoners. They walked together in a group completely surrounded

by their Garkohn and Missionary captors. She noticed that one of the prisoners, the big blue one, was

watching her. This startled her because until now, he had been very careful to pay no attention to her at

all. She turned away quickly.

Her foster father, Jules Verrick, was walking beside her. He noticed the gesture and naturally

misinterpreted it.

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"Don't worry," he said. "They're well guarded. For once, they're the prisoners instead of us."

Silently, Alanna found fault with the inclusive "us." She alone had been a prisoner of the Tehkohn.

Others, Garkohn and Missionary, had been captured with her, but they were dead. Only Alanna had

managed to live beyond the first few days of her captivity. Only she had survived to be rescued.

Jules spoke again gently. "You'll feel better when we get home and those creatures are locked up out of

your sight."

She nodded meaninglessly, wondering whether he really thought that after two years among the

Tehkohn, she could still be upset by the sight of them. She looked out over the valley again. The sight of

the defenseless Missionary fortress had far more power to upset her. In the long run, the Missionaries

were in greater danger than she was.

She glanced at the prisoners again, seeing them in a different way now—seeing them as living shields for

the Missionaries.

"How many of the prisoners are yours, Jules?" she asked. He was the Missionary leader and would

know exactly.

"Five hunters," he answered, "and one of the blue-green types."

"A judge," said Alanna. "Higher than a hunter among the Tehkohn."

"Yes, and… all the farmers are ours." He sounded a little ashamed of this last. As far as Alanna was

concerned, he had reason to be. Farmers and artisans were nonfighters. Capturing them was no

achievement. The Garkohn had taken none of them. The Garkohn had hunters, judges, and one other.

These were the prisoners who would have been most useful to the Missionaries. Prisoners whom the

Tehkohn could ill afford to lose, prisoners whom the Missionaries could shield themselves behind and

negotiate through. The Missionaries could negotiate a peace now that all Tehkohn would respect if Jules

could only speak privately with the prisoners who belonged to the Garkohn. Such a peace had to be

arranged if the Missionaries were to survive. And Alanna had to arrange it somehow. That was the

responsibility she had assigned herself. It was not a responsibility she wanted. It would center the

attention of three warring peoples on her. If she made a mistake, one of the groups would surely kill her.

But she was the only person with the knowledge, and possibly the leverage, to manage it. And she owed

her foster parents a debt. Years before, they had saved her. Now she would try to save them, and save

theirMission , which meant so much to them. She had to try.

"Lanna?"

Alanna looked at her foster father knowing from his apologetic tone that she would probably not like

what he had to say.

"Natahk has been wanting to talk to you—ask you a few questions about your stay with the Tehkohn."

Alanna turned away from him, striving to conceal her fear and anger. Here was the personal trouble she

had been anticipating. Natahk was the Garkohn leader, their First Hunter. She could show fear at having

to see him, but she had to be careful not to show her anger. "I guess I should have expected that," she

said.

Jules put an arm around her. "Look," he said, "I know how you must feel about the natives—any

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natives—after what you've been through. If you think talking to Natahk will be too much for you right

now, I'll tell him you can't…"

"No," she said. "It's all right, Jules. I'll see him."

He looked at her with concern. "You're frightened," he said, "and sick. You've been like a sleepwalker

these past two days. I shouldn't have bothered you with this. I'm going to tell him to wait."

Tempted to let him go ahead, she kept silent for a long moment. She did not want to talk to anyone

about her experiences with the Tehkohn, did not want to talk to a Garkohn about anything at all. She had

no doubt that the Garkohn were responsible for involving the Missionaries in this raid that had so

endangered them—just as two years before, the Garkohn had made the Missionaries vulnerable by using

their settlement as a base from which to raid the Tehkohn. The valley natives were not the friends the

Missionaries thought them to be. Alanna had learned much about them from their Tehkohn enemies. And

she had seen some of what she had learned proven in the raid just past.

The thought of having to go to Natahk now and feign ignorance and friendship sickened her. But for that

reason more than any other, she had to do it. She had to let him ask her in carefully veiled words where

her loyalties were. What had two years among his enemies done to her? Had he freed a Missionary

prisoner, or a Tehkohn spy?

"I'm well enough, Jules," she said finally. "I'll talk to him."

Jules shrugged. "All right, girl. It's your decision."

After perhaps another hour of walking, Jules and Natahk called thenoon rest stop. Alanna sought out

Natahk at once.

The Garkohn leader was a tall stocky humanoid who easily matched Alanna's own unusual

height—nearly two meters. His height and his deeper-than-usual green coloring showed that although he

was of the hunter clan, he had had a judge ancestor or two. It was only within Natahk's own lifetime that

the last of the Garkohn judges had been killed, victims of interclan fighting with the more numerous

hunters.

Natahk's eyes were narrowed by a Kohn version of the epicanthic fold. His fur grew longer and thicker

on his head and around his neck and shoulders, forming a kind of mane. Even his face was furred all

over, though the fur was shorter. But the face was long and flat and his body and limbs were humanly

proportioned. He was not apelike. The Missionaries saw him and his people as strangely colored, furred

caricatures of human beings.

The Missionaries had made a religion of maintaining and spreading their own version of humanity—a

religion that had helped them to preserve that humanity back on Earth. Now, though, their religion had

gotten in their way. It had helped them to justify their belief that the Kohn were lower creatures—higher

than apes, but lower than true humans who had been made in the image of God. The trouble was, the

Missionaries had known such "intelligent animals" before. Missionary prejudices were long established

and, as far as Alanna was concerned, dangerous. If she had accepted them herself, the Tehkohn would

have rid her of them. The natives were human enough. And they were powerful humans.

Their greatest weapon was the fur that the Missionaries condemned them for. It was unlike any fur that

the Missionaries had known back on Earth—fine thick alive stuff that changed color and seemed to

change texture. It permitted the natives to blend invisibly into their surroundings whenever they wished. It

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