didn't do much for me. The piggies conferred together.
Human emerged from the group and came closer to the fence. "We'll hide you."
"They'll never find you in the forest," said Mandachuva.
"They have machines that can track me by my smell," said Miro.
"Ah. But doesn't the law forbid them to show us their machines?" asked Human.
Miro shook his head. "It doesn't matter. The gate is sealed to me. I can't cross the fence."
The piggies looked at each other.
"But you have capim right there," said Arrow.
Miro looked stupidly at the grass. "So what?" he asked.
"Chew it," said Human.
"Why?" asked Miro.
"We've seen humans chewing capim," said Leaf-eater. "The other night, on the hillside, we saw the Speaker and some of the robe-humans chewing capim."
"And many other times," said Mandachuva.
Their impatience with him was frustrating. "What does that have to do with the fence?"
Again the piggies looked at each other. Finally Mandachuva tore off a blade of capim near the ground, folded it carefully into a thick wad, and put it in his mouth to chew it. He sat down after a while. The others began teasing him, poking him with their fingers, pinching him. He showed no sign of noticing. Finally Human gave him a particularly vicious pinch, and when Mandachuva did not respond, they began saying, in males' language, Ready, Time to go, Now, Ready.
Mandachuva stood up, a bit shaky for a moment. Then he ran at the fence and scrambled to the top, flipped over, and landed on all fours on the same side as Miro.
Miro leaped to his feet and began to cry out just as Mandachuva reached the top; by the time he finished his cry, Mandachuva was standing up and dusting himself off.
"You can't do that," said Miro. "It stimulates all the pain nerves in the body. The fence can't be crossed."
"Oh," said Mandachuva.
From the other side of the fence, Human was rubbing his thighs together. "He didn't know," he said. "The humans don't know."
"It's an anesthetic," said Miro. "It stops you from feeling pain."
"No," said Mandachuva. "I feel the pain. Very bad pain. Worst pain in the world."
"Rooter says the fence is even worse than dying," said Human. "Pain in all the places."
"But you don't care," said Miro.
"It's happening to your other self," said Mandachuva. "It's happening to your animal self. But your tree self doesn't care. It makes you be your tree self."
Then Miro remembered a detail that had been lost in the grotesquerie of Libo's death. The dead man's mouth had been filled with a wad of capim. So had the mouth of every piggy that had died. Anesthetic. The death looked like hideous torture, but pain was not the purpose of it. They used an anesthetic. It had nothing to do with pain.
"So," said Mandachuva. "Chew the grass, and come with us. We'll hide you."
"Ouanda," said Miro.
"Oh, I'll go get her," said Mandachuva.
"You don't know where she lives."
"Yes I do," said Mandachuva.
"We do this many times a year," said Human. "We know where everybody lives."
"But no one has ever seen you," said Miro.
"We're very secret," said Mandachuva. "Besides, nobody is looking for us."
Miro imagined dozens of piggies creeping about in Milagre in the middle of the night. No guard was kept. Only a few people had business that took them out in the darkness. And the piggies were small, small enough to duck down in the capim and disappear completely. No wonder they knew about metal and machines, despite all the rules designed to keep them from learning about them. No doubt they had seen the mines, had watched the shuttle land, had seen the kilns firing the bricks, had watched the fazendeiros plowing and planting the human-specific amaranth. No wonder they had known what to ask for.
How stupid of us, to think we could cut them off from our culture. They kept far more secrets from us than we could possibly keep from them. So much for cultural superiority.
Miro pulled up his own blade of capim.
"No," said Mandachuva, taking the blade from his hands. "You don't get the root part. If you take the root part, it doesn't do you any good." He threw away Miro's blade and tore off his own, about ten centimeters above the base. Then he folded it and handed it to Miro, who began to chew it.
Mandachuva pinched and poked him.
"Don't worry about that," said Miro. "Go get Ouanda. They could arrest her any minute. Go. Now. Go on."
Mandachuva looked at the others and, seeing some invisible signal of