Along with the languages came a variety of folkways—from which valley the young people of a village might seek a spouse, and into which it was forbidden to marry. Some villages practiced strict exogamy; some regarded “foreign” spouses with suspicion and treated their children and grandchildren as strangers.
“I love Singhfold,” said Ram Odin. “My regret is that because I’ve tried to prolong my life by sleeping through the years in stasis, I never have time to visit here for more than a few days. It’s the life I think humans were meant to lead—intensely involved with a community that knows you too well, that’s always in your face and in your business.”
“I think those sound like reasons not to like the life here,” said Rigg.
“People don’t understand how evolution has shaped us to hunger for human company,” said Ram Odin. “Even the shyest of introverts suffer from being alone.”
“Meaning yourself,” said Rigg. “Because what human on Garden has been as much alone as you?”
“I feel it more than most, it’s true,” said Ram Odin. “But that doesn’t mean my observation isn’t true. Shy people might take their doses of companionship like an ill-tasting medicine, but they need it, and they suffer a thousand maladies, physical and mental, if they don’t have it.”
“Well, then, this must be the healthiest place in the world,” said Rigg.
“It is,” said Ram Odin. “Partly because there’s no anonymity. Everybody is always with people who know who they are.”
“No traveling merchants or peddlers? No show people, no bards? No wars to force one village to bow to another?”
“At different times and places such people have arisen, and such events have happened. It’s in human nature to come to blows sometimes. Every few generations, one of the cities of the plain, weary of the struggle to live with little water, gets the grand idea of conquering the mountain valleys.”
“But they fail?”
“Oh, they succeed easily. The valleys don’t have enough people to defend them against a relentless enemy. But the valleys farther in take the refugees, and the people of the plain don’t know how to work the land, or what crops grow. And when do you stop? Which valley is the last one you’ll conquer? Whatever place you choose, the people in all the nearby valleys will shun your trade, and if you’ve been particularly brutal, the neighboring valleys conduct a relentless guerrilla campaign. If the conquerors leave a small force, it will be killed one by one. If they leave a large one, it will starve or freeze.”
“So their history is the same thing over and over,” said Rigg.
“All
history is the same thing over and over,” said Ram Odin. “The technology may change, but the behavior is still human. We are who we are. Individuals learn, grow up, get better, wiser, stronger, healthier, kinder—or the opposite. As a group, though, we keep inventing the same behaviors. Some work, some don’t. In the valleys of Singhfold, most of the villages and hamlets have found and held on to customs that allow the most happiness for the most people.”
“First you tell me that there’s infinite variety here, and then—”
“The superficial customs vary extravagantly,” said Ram Odin. “But the underlying principles of village civilization are still served by all of them. Which is why Singhfold could reward a lifetime’s study—and can be discovered almost completely in a few days.”
“But if they don’t have peddlers or bards, what are we?”
“Priests,” said Ram Odin. “It’s one of the ways they amuse themselves—there are more religions than languages. Organized and disorganized, proselytizing and localized, every possible religion.”
“Each valley has its own?”
“Some valleys are mostly one thing or another, and others are so eclectic there are hardly enough believers in any sect to make it worth building a meetinghouse.”
“And what religion, exactly, are we preaching?” asked Rigg. “Are they mostly monotheists? Partisans of favorites in a pantheon?”
“It almost doesn’t matter. Because traveling priests are all treated respectfully, but none is expected to do anything in particular. Some are silent and very holy. Others pitch in and join the village in all their labors, talking about their gods as they do. We can belong to the Church of Finding Out How People Think, and simply ask questions.”
“That might make us the most annoying of all,” said Rigg.
“Your face will make us annoying and disturbing,” said Ram Odin.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, people get used to me if they look long enough. And this lovely facemask of mine might make me seem all the holier.”
“Then let’s do it,” said Ram Odin. “These valleys are secure enough that they don’t have any habit of killing strangers. The worst that can happen is that they’ll escort us to a pass and encourage us to move on to another valley.”
“Well, then, human nature is not the same here as everywhere else.”
“You’ll see,” said Ram Odin. “They don’t have to kill us, because expulsion, to them, is worse than death. To be alive, but have no home, no village, no people you belong to—booting out strangers is, to them, worse than killing them, but also kinder.”
“There have to be exceptions,” said Rigg.