The Covenant by James A. Michener Read Free Book Online Page A

think about her, too,” the old woman said.
    “You do?”
    “She will soon be ready to lead this clan. But she must have a husband, a young one, and if we can’t find her one, we should give her to some other clan, for she is going to be a strong woman.”
    Gumsto was about to say that he had seen enough of strong women, but Kharu interrupted: “There are the thorn bushes!” and when she ran to them and uncovered the nine hidden ostrich eggs, she found the water still sweet. Sighing with gratitude, she said, “Now we can enter the desert.”
    Gumsto spent that night beset by two nagging problems: he could not understand how old Kharu could frustrate every plan he devised for taking Naoka to be his extra wife; and he could not cease staring hungrily at that beautiful girl. It was tantalizing to see her, smooth-skinned and lovely in the moonlight, with dust upon her long legs, lying so near to him and yet untouchable.
    But as the long night passed, he had to admit that on one basic fact, Kharu was right. If she could instruct Naoka, a girl she disliked, in the principles of survival, he was obligated to speed his son’sinduction into manhood, and if in so doing, he qualified Gao to marry Naoka, that was a small price to pay for the safety of the clan. So he began investigating the terrain, looking for locations where eland might be grazing.
    It was he who now walked at the head of the file, for the clan was penetrating land they had not touched before, and quick decisions were often necessary. They were a curious lot as they walked bravely into the arid lands, with four peculiarities that would astonish all who came in contact with them later.
    Their hair did not grow like that of other people; it appeared in little twisted tufts, separated one from the other by considerable space of empty scalp.
    The women had buttocks of enormous size, some projecting so far backward that they could be used by babies to ride upon.
Steatopygia
this phenomenon would be called (suet buttocks), and it was so pronounced that alien observers frequently doubted the evidence of their own eyes.
    Their language was unique, for in addition to the hundred or so distinctive sounds from which the world’s languages were constructed—the
ich
of German for example, or the
ñ
of Spanish, the San added five unique click sounds formed with lip, tongue and palate. One click sounded like a noisy kiss, one like a signal to a horse, one a clearing of the throat. Thus Gumsto used the normal complement of consonants and vowels, plus the five clicks, making his speech an explosive chatter unrivaled in the world.
    The male penis was perpetually in a state of erection. When the first observers reported this to an incredulous world, explorers rushed to confirm the miraculous condition, and one French scientist said, “They are always at the ready, like a well-trained unit of infantry.”
    When they were far into the desert, their search for food became so imperative that they could not make much forward progress, but even so, their drift toward the west and south was irreversible, and as the moons changed they passed deeper and deeper into the desert. It was not an endless sweep of white sand, such as the desert of northern Africa would become in historic periods; it was a rolling, brutal mix of isolated rock sentinels, thorn bush clinging to the red sunbleached surface, little animals scurrying about at night, larger antelope and their predators moving by day in ceaseless search for water, but never seen. To venture forth upon this cruel expanse of blazing noontimes and bitterly cold nights even if one had adequate foodand water would be daring; to try to cross it as these Bushmen were doing was heroic.
    One afternoon Kharu, always casting about with hungry eyes, leaped in the air like a gazelle, shouted, “Ooooooooo!” and sped across the desert like an antelope with torn and dirty coat. She had spied a tortoise, and when she captured it, with the band