Ardor on Aros (12 page)

“Hank Ardor,” I said. I’d decided to hell with being Kro Ardoris; thousands of people who’d anglosaxonized their Polish or Jewish or whatever names in America later wished they hadn’t.

“Right,” he said, shaking his big head, and he gave me a good grip. “Come on back for some wine, Hahnkahdah.”

We passed through the ship and the hanging at the back, then through his jumbled studio, showing me that he believed in juggling more than one project simultaneously, like a writer, and through another hanging into a kitchen. He waved at one of the two chairs at the big table. Chairs and table were beautiful wood, fitted together with grooves and wooden pegs rather than twine or nails.

“Did you make this furniture, Pro Thoris?”

“Of course. You can’t buy anything like this without selling your next life—and it would still be sloppily done. Nobody takes any pride in his work anymore, since all this trade started with Itza and Risathade and those other barbarous places. Hm…here.”

Silver mugs. Beautifully tooled and chased; his work, of course, and I commented on their perfection. Seating himself at the table angled beside me rather than across from me, he smiled.

“Don’t gush—save that for my
company
goblets. Going to finish ’em one of these days.” By which I learned that I was not being given super-guest treatment, and that the work of art I held in my hands was his “everyday china.” I wondered how he’d feel about Melmac. Barbarous.

“I want to get something said to you so we can have it done with, uh…”

“Hank Ardor,” I supplied. The wine was good, and I poked my soot in it again to disguise my smile.

He shook his head. “Bar—well. Ahdah? Ahdah. Anyhow, Ahdah—I see it’s
Guildsman
Ahdah now, good for you—I want to thank you for saving my daughter from that barbarous beast out there, and telling you that it is impossible to ask more of me that I will give.”

It was partially formal; the last phase was, anyhow. But he meant it. I felt that I could ask for a house-size bust of myself and he’d kill himself or go broke trying to make it. I bobbed my head and handed him my goblet.

“Good,” I said. “Lay some more wine on me.”

He took the goblet and reached for the pitcher—beautifully hand-tooled silver, of course. “Lay some…interesting expression! A bit barbarous, here. You’re a bibber?”

“I was drunk once when I was seventeen and I decided not to do it again,” I told him, gazing at the nearly clear wine in my mug. “But I like to drink, yes.”

“Hm…have to let you try some of that barbarous Risathoy stuff some night. Distilled grapes.” He shook his head. “Interesting. Slides down like hot butter and then gets up and kicks you right in the head, if you’re not careful.”

“Brandy,” I said. “My people all it brandy.”

“Brahndy? I call it slookfoot. Kicks the same. About your people—“

“Beyond the desert and beyond the mountains across the desert,” I said. “There lies America.”

“You’ll be going back?”

I stared into my cup, wondering how sad I really was as I said, “I—don’t think so.”

“Customs are different over there?”

“Very different, yes.”

“Well, they seem to make men pretty much the same way, although—! How’re the silversmiths?”

I turned my mug. “Would you believe not this good? You said people don’t seem to take pride in their work—that’s the way it is in my country. Everything’s done communally, and that destroys personal pride in creation. Nothing works and nobody cares,” I added, remembering Ruark’s last article.

“Hmph! If that’s the case, you’d better have a look at my company goblets before you leave. They’re almost finished. Started ’em nine years ago. That about the warriors there? Guilded?”

I shook my head. “Not exactly. Army, controlled by the government—we think. Conscription, mostly, and ugly uniforms so that a man can’t swagger. And too many of those who join voluntarily are looking for a womb. It is that.”

“No pride in that. How d’you explain the paradox, then Ahdah? You say craftsmen and artisans are guilded, and take no pride in their work. The warriors aren’t, and they don’t either. Here the warriors belong to the Guild—I mean
belong
—but the pride is unbelievable.”

I shrugged, realizing he was a shrewd man; he’d certainly pieced that one fast! I’d been wondering about it myself. I decided to worry about it later. Maybe it was this, or something near: the Guildsmen were unionized, but
warriors.
While any sort of organized warring depends by definition upon cooperation among the members of the “team,” a sword is still a mighty personal weapon. You can napalm a rice-farming village—or your own troops—or blow up a city or blaze away into the jungle with a high-powered weapon, killing one or a dozen or dozens. All without
seeing
the enemy. Glory? Pride? No, just long-distance impersonal killing, like spraying a swamp with insecticide to zap the mosquitoes you understand are there, without ever having seen them.

Nice or not, Moses’ sixth commandment to his errant people or not, face-to-face fighting depends on skill and strength and nerve and it instills pride. That’s in the first place; even though unionized, each man is a single unit when it comes down to the Arone nitty-gritty. In the second, a man can work a lifetime on Earth tightening Screws a, c, and e-1. Without them the care would fall apart is it rolled out of the plant. But—that screw-tightener doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He didn’t
make
that car. He’s just one of many who touched it, piece at a time, as it went by. And finally: what the hell price can there be in helping make a machine designed to enter senility precisely thirty-six months—the normal mortgage period—after it is made?

There was more involved in the pride and success of guilded Arone warriors, of course, but I didn’t think of it at the time and I am trying not to cheat; trying to tell you thinks as I learned them.

I told Pro Thoris that fighting was less personal where I came from (he questioned; I mentioned arrows and spears). That even though life was incredibly cheap and there was too damned much of it, people felt constrained to pretend that violence was not an innate trait of man and that life should be preserved—even if it were little more than the kind of stiff, uncommunicative preserves that comes out of jars.

“As to Bryndan industry,” I said, wanting to get off the subject, “I wish I had a lot of money. I will have to find a way to make a lot of money. Then I’m going to become your best customer. You are an artist.”

“This he tells me after seeing my everyday tableware,” the silverman groaned, rolling his eyes. “If you ever have the money to realize that asinine ambition, I hope you also employ someone with taste to do your choosing.” He shook his head and muttered a word. I didn’t hear it, but I was sure it was “barbarian.”

“Naturally I had to express my gratitude for my daughter’s life, Hank Ardor,” he said—he didn’t pronounce it that way, but I believe I had made it sufficiently implicit how they pronounce my name and indeed all
r
’s, and I see no reason to beat a dead slook. “I want you to know that what I said is true. I am in your debt, and you cannot ask too much of Pro Thoris.”

I frowned a little:
But
—I thought….

“But,” he said, “we have swords to cross, nevertheless.”

I put a “Gee, how’s that” look on my face. He didn’t mean it literally, of course; Arone figger of speech. We had a crow to pick or a bone to split. Hair? I seem to be forgetting Amerenglish….

“What’s wrong with my daughter?” he asked, seeing after a pause of several seconds that I wasn’t going to bite.

I cocked my head at him; one picks up the damndest habits from one’s friends! “Sir?”

“You heard aright, Ardor. What fault do you find with my daughter Dejah?”

I evoked a mental image of her. Not difficult. What man can’t mentally bring up that face and figure whenever he chooses? (And what man wouldn’t like to materialize her rather than her image!) What was wrong with her? Nothing! Not to me! Her face: sensual female. Her lips: made for kissing. Her body: sensual female.

I smiled. “Nothing,” I said. “Very definitely nothing, Pro Thoris. She is a woman, a very desirable woman. She is Woman.”

“She’s a silly damned child, but that’s beside the point; she does have her mother’s face and form, thank god, rather than mine! In that case I must ask further. Is there something wrong with you? Pardon my asking—but why then did you insult her?”

I chewed on that awhile before I answered, carefully. “Pro Thor—“

“—call me Thoris.”

“Thoris, remember that I am a stranger here I think there must be some custom I don’t know about. I assure you I didn’t intend to insult your lovely daughter.” I grinned, man to man: “You don’t think I came here to meet
you,
do you?”

“Hm. No, I don’t…and you don’t look like an art lover either, despite what you say. Did my daughter offer you Julan?”

“Yessir. She said it very clearly: ‘Julansee.’”

“And—“

“And…well, I thanked her. I told her I was honored, as I remember.”

He was leaning forward. “And—“

“And? And? That’s all!”

His big fist came down on the tabletop with enough force to make my silver mug jump. I caught it just as it reconnected with the table.

“Exactly! That’s all! So she told me, weeping as if her heart were twained, poor girl. How could you possibly have ignored her? It is not more than custom, of course…but a man is a man, and made the way he is. It’s more than custom makes him accept, unless she is a totally abominable woman!”

I sighed. “Stranger, remember? Obviously Julan means something here that it doesn’t mean in America.”

He stared at me. “Could your people be such barbarians?”

I rose. “Thoris, I didn’t come here to listen to you call me and my people barbarians, and I’m tired of it. I’ll go out and find a slook and send him in so you can try to build yourself up by berating him. Falkh! Have you considered taking up literary criticism?”

His gaze was as open as mine. “Ah, sit down, Ardor. You know by now I don’t really mean it. What I have I’ve made; you would not believe my beginnings. And you know what Frood says about a man’s adult life being affected by his childhood.”

Frood?
Frood?
My knees went weak. I’d heard it before, in just such a context. I’d had a history professr who pronounced “Freud” as it looked, rather than the usual “Froid.” We’d grinned at him, we superior teenagers in the back of the room, listening to a lecturer who knew more than our combined knowledge taped and collated and printed out. But—Frood? What the hell was Sigmund Freud/Froid/Frood doing on
Aros?

I sat. I reached for the pitcher.

We fenced a bit more, and then Pro Thoris explained the custom of Julan to me. Maybe you’ve already figured it out and feel smugly superior about it. I’ve noticed that it’s a lot easier to figure out what’s going on when you’re reading about it rather than involved in it. That’s what enables lit’ry critics to earn (?—recive) their bread. I knew a fellow once who read one book about the Africa War in World War II, and immediately pointed out what a dummy Montgomery had been. My friend won the whole business, in a month or so, on paper. I told him drily it was too bad Montgomery hadn’t had him there; the world would never have paid such a tribute to Rommel. My friend did not consider that the situation might have been a bit more difficult to figure, close-hand and personally involved.

Anyhow, Julan, and excuse me: my dictating this is pretty much stream-of-consciousness. I haven’t any written script, of course; I haven’t bothered. Julan, with a lowercase letter, means reward or compensation. Julan, uppercased, refers to the compensation/reward offered a man by a woman he has saved from something or other. “Julansee” means “I offer reward,” literally. But it isn’t the literal translation that’s important or germane; it’s the ritual meaning that’s important. In a “barbarian” society (or in any society, in wartime), the conquerors naturally rape every woman in sight. Not even the stern old lonely god of the children of Abraham frowned on that practice!

Conquered—or rescued—women were fair game. When American soldiers liberated a French girl or girls from the hands of the raping Nazis, they didn’t sit down and play pattycake with the girls, no matter what Van Johnson and John Wayne did. Rescue a lady and she’s yours. Maybe for the moment, maybe permanently.

Well, Aros is culturally a little beyond that phase. They brave warrior doesn’t
claim
his reward. The girl offers it. If she doesn’t, then he lays claim, and her. But she always does. It’s custom. They are a sexually healthy people, and even when the priesthood was in power prior to the rise of the Guild, the religion was not antisexual. When the offer is made, a man does
not
refuse. In the first place only a genitalless idiot would, unless the lady involved were absolutely revolting. In the second place, a true gentleman, a man of honor, goes ahead and accepts the offer even of a creature with a face and bod her mother couldn’t love.

So, I had rescued—sot of—the power jadiriyah Solah, daughter of the even more powerful Guildmaster. And she had offered herself, and I had turned her down. Which explained her odd look and perhaps her curtness.

Certainly she hadn’t
wanted
a sensual session at that point, and I
had
been nice about it, too new and dumb to know what she was offering.

Then I had rescued Thoris’ daughter Dejah. She had established first that I was not a hired protector (whose business it is to save lives, and thus who do not merit Julan—unless the lady happens to want it: the connection of danger/pain/sex is well known on Earth). Dejah offered Julan. All she could read into my apparent decline of her offer was a churlish displeasure with her as a woman. Of course the matter was also complicated by the widow. I suppose I gave her more encouragement and hope—nondeliberately.

Maybe I sound pretty egoistic, but I’ve
told
you: It wasn’t a personal thing. It’s
custom.
Is it egoistic for you to say your neighbor was hurt because you failed to return his greeting this morning?