David Mason

“ Grady asked. He was watching the tall, yellow-pale shapes of natives loading bales into the Berenice's cargo slings.
"Nothing much," Jansen said. "Sane as any primitives. All kinds of complicated rules and taboos, and naturally they'll get as mad as hell at you if you scratch a single rule. Most of the data on that is in the agent's notebooks. You add anything to the record that seems to be worth putting down, the way the rest of us have."
"And if they get mad at you, they stop packing plants," the Berenice's mate put in. ”

“ Anla said. "You have broken the ghost-cloak of the Chief, and your name cannot be Shassa. From this place and this time I take back your name, Shassa, and you have no name."
Grady did not say anything, because a Kya cannot hear the words of a man without a name; besides, there was nothing to say, though a great deal to think about. The Berenice was due in four days. Four days during which a man without a name would have to avoid the custom which decreed that such a man must be killed. ”

“ Shallra said, and there is nothing harder for a Kya to say. But she added something even harder for a Kya woman to say; his name, his proper name, which she had always known but could never use. Then she walked away, and out of Grady's life, because he was now a man without a name. ”

“ The Berenice's mate had heard of that brief and savage war, in which a handful of settlers and local militia had beaten off the troops of a powerful state, and had actually won. The mate hastily readjusted his opinion of Grady upward. A trader's agent was one thing; a man who had fought through the Mutiny was something more than that. The mate opened his mouth to ask more of the story ”

“ Killed as soon as possible, because each day he continued to live was a day which must be removed from the calendar, a day on which no man's birth date might be celebrated, or any animal killed for food, or any root taken from a garden. ”