Changing Planes

Annup came by while I was engaged in this research. The Hennebet use no large machinery, doing all their digging and building with hand tools, but they long ago borrowed electronic technologies from people on other planes, using them for information storage and communication and voting and so on. Annup adored the translatomat, which was to him a toy, a game. He laughed now. “’Belief’—that’s thinking so?” he asked. I nodded. “What’s ’souls’?” he asked.

moment of your whole life you know that you are, then that’s your life, that moment, that’s unnua, that’s all. In a short life I saw my mother’s face, like the sun, so I’m here. In a long life I went there and there and there; but I dug in the garden, the root of a weed came up in my hand, so I’m unnua. When you get old, you know, you keep being here instead of there, everything is here. Everything is here,” she repeated, with a comfortable little laugh, and went on with her embroidery.

I have talked to other people about the Hennebet. Some of them are convinced that the Hennebet do literally experience reincarnation, remembering more and more of their previous lives as they grow older, until at death they rejoin an innumerable multitude of former selves, and are then reborn bringing this immaterial trail or train of old lives into a new life.

But I can’t square this with the fact that soul and body are a single thing to them, so that either nothing or everything is material or immaterial. Nor does it fit with what Mrs. Tattava said about “all the other persons living this life.” She did not say “other lives.” She did not say “living this life at other times.” She said, “They’re here too.”

I have no idea what abba is, aside from the plant with pungent little berries.

All I can really say about the Hennebet is that a few months with them confused my expectations of identity and my ideas about time very much, and that since my visit to them I seem unable to maintain a really strong opinion about anything; but that is neither here nor there.

THE IRE OF THE VEKSI

NOT MANY PEOPLE VISIT the Veksian plane. They are afraid its inhabitants will hurt them. In fact, the Veksi resolutely ignore visitors from other planes, considering them to be the impotent and evil-smelling ghosts of dead enemies who will go away if no attention at all is paid to them. This has generally proved to be true.

Some students of the varieties of behavior have, however, stayed and learned a good deal about their unwilling and indifferent hosts. The following description was given to me by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.

The Veksi are an angry species. Their social life consists largely of arguments, recriminations, quarrels, fights, outbursts of fury, fits of the sulks, brawls, feuds, and impulsive acts of vengeance.

There is no difference in size or strength between the men and the women of the Veksi. Both sexes supplement their natural strength with weapons, carried at all times. Their mating is often so violent that it causes injury and occasionally death to one or both of the participants.

They go about mostly on all fours, though they can and do walk upright with vigorous grace on their short, strong hind limbs, which end in hoofs. The Veksi forelimb is so jointed that the limb can be used equally well as a leg or arm. The slender forehoof encloses and protects a hand, kept curled in a fist inside the hoof when it is walked upon. When extended from the hoof, the four opposable digits are as dextrous and graceful as the human hand.

The hair of the Veksi grows coarse and long on the head and back, and as a fine, thick down or fur everywhere else on the body except the palms and genitals. The skin color is tan or brown, the hair color black, brown, tan, rusty, or a mixture of these in various brindles and shadings. As the Veksi age, white hairs appear, and old Veksi may be pure white; but there are not many old Veksi.

Clothing, being unnecessary for protection from cold or heat, is a matter of belts, harnesses, and ribbons, worn as adornment and to furnish pockets and holsters for tools and weapons.

The irritability of the Veksi temperament makes it hard for them to live together, but their need for social stimulation and conflict makes it impossible for them to live apart. The common solution is a fenced village of five or six large domed clay houses and fifteen or twenty small ones, built partly underground. These houses are called omedra.

The large, many-roomed omedra contain households, usually a group of related women and dieir children or sexually partnered women and their children. Men—relatives, sexual partners, and friends—can join a household only on invitation, may leave at will, and must leave if ordered out by the women. If they don’t leave, all the women and most of the other men attack them savagely, drive them away bleeding, and throw stones at them if they try to return.