Free Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

pastures to winter in the valley. The women of Singing Pastures and those of the valley form two distinct communities. They even use different calendars dictated by different moons: the valley people divide the year into fifteen months of eighteen days each; the women of the pastures reckon with a ten-month calendar, each month twenty-seven days long.”
    She hit PAUSE. She wished she could spare the time to stay and observe the mingling of the different populations, watch how they interacted. It would be like being able to go back in time and observe the early symbiotic interactions between people from human history on Earth.
    A wirrel shrieked. Marghe went very still. This was not Earth; this was Jeep, a planet of alien species, a place where the human template of dual sexes had been torn to shreds and thrown away. This was something new. She knew these people had evolved cultures resting on bases very different from those of any Earth people; she did not know whether that made these women human or something entirely Other.
    She shook herself. The question, What was humanity? was as old as the species, one she never expected to answer. She resumed her walk through the trees, but more slowly, thinking and occasionally making notes.
    “If skelter trees grow at approximately the same rate as Earth trees, then to shape such a tree into a dwelling place must take forty or more years.” She imagined a family group selecting a tree, bending it, pruning it judiciously as babies were born, girls grew, and old women died. Did the lodge retain its integrity when the tree died?
    She exited RECORD and looked up botanical records. Skelter trees lasted two hundred years. “The use of such building methods must be indicative of the social temperament of these people: patient, planning for the long term. Also willing to experiment.”
    The trees ended a few yards from the river in a grassy slope, hammocked and tufted here and there where it grew over old tree stumps. Marghe wondered whether the tree fellers had used axes with stone or olla blades.
    Someone was walking through the trees toward the path she had just left. Color flashed. Marghe recognized the fatigues.
    “Lu Wai!” She waved and the Mirror saw her. “How’s Letitia?”
    “Angry with herself and a bit shamefaced for making you risk yourself like that.
    Otherwise, she’s fine. I was coming to see if you’d join us for breakfast.”
    “I’m breakfasting with one of the women who farm the biggest field here. Cassil.
    I hope to trade for some travel rations. But thank you.” She paused. “This thing with Letitia, I gather it’s happened before.”
    “More than once.”
    “Is it organic?”
    “I haven’t been able to find anything.” Lu Wai shrugged. “Which doesn’t mean it’s not there. The diagnostic tools we have are primitive.” She sighed. “But what do I know? I’m only a medic.”
    Marghe heard the hours of tests and record-searching in the Mirror’s voice and could find nothing to say. She watched Lu Wai walk away and wondered if Danner knew about Letitia. Yes, the Mirror commander would know; she would have to know everything in order to make Jeep work. She would know, too, that Lu Wai would do everything in her power to keep Letitia safe.

    Cassil had hair the red-brown of strong tea, and gray eyes. She also had a baby on her hip, which, judging by its fair hair and brown eyes, was not hers. She looked tired and utterly human. She spoke slowly and with much repetition for Marghe’s sake.
    “What we have isn’t mine or my kith’s to give.”
    “But you farm the land?”
    Cassil sighed, as though she had tried to explain this many times before and failed. “My kith farms well. Everyone sees that. So the journey women give us more land to work. We work it well, produce more food, leave the land fresh for the next season’s growing. Everyone benefits. We use the food to feed ourselves, and for trata.” The word she used did not mean trade,