Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (16 page)

 
          
"Nor
will you die in them," Dal said, "I do not know if those are the
words you want, but I think we should talk. Cendri, go and leave us
alone..."

 
          
Slowly,
Cendri moved away from the door as Dal drew Bak into the room. He said, "I
have been expecting someone. Come and tell me—damnation! What is that
commotion? Come in here, quickly—"

 
          
He
drew him quickly through the door of the bathroom, as pounding feet raced up
the stairs. Then, rudely, the door was thrust inward, and two or three sturdy
women stepped inside.

           
Cendri began to protest: "What
is—"

 
          
"Respect,
Scholar," one of the women said, "but we have reason to believe an escaped
male has taken refuge here. Our duties require us to search." Cendri began
to protest, but they moved quickly around the room, opened the bathroom door,
called
to her companions; after a moment they reappeared
with Bak struggling between them.

 
          
"Be
quiet, you," said the leader, roughly, jerking him along with one arm.
"It's the Punishment House for you this time, Bak, and probably a flogging
as well! When they learn you've intruded into the quarters of the Scholar from
University—"

 
          
Dal
stepped toward them; made a menacing gesture. He said, "Let go of him! He
is my guest, and came to talk to me! Take your hands off him, I said!"

 
          
Cendri
watched, paralyzed in horror, as the woman thrust out her truncheon and gave
Dal a vicious blow in the stomach. He yelled and fell, doubled up, to the
ground. The woman said angrily, "Restrain your Companion, Scholar Dame, or
we will be forced to hurt it!" Unprovoked, she gave the writhing Dal a
savage kick, jerked hard on Bak's arm.

 
          
Cendri
said, struggling for composure, "I don't understand. This man—" she
indicated the cowering Bak, "has done nothing; it came and asked,
politely, to speak with my—my Companion. I do not understand why a guest of the
Unity should be hauled away as a captive."

 
          
The
woman guard raised her face, her jaw set and contemptuous. "You are not
now in the maleworlds, Scholar Dame, and males cannot intrude with impunity
into the houses of women. You—" she said to Bak, whose defiance had
collapsed, so that he stood shivering between his captors. "Who owns
you?"

 
          
He
stood defiantly silent.

 
          
"Speak,
you!" shouted the woman guard, striking him across the face. Obstinately
he remained silent; she came and jerked at his collar, forcing his head up. She
studied the red brand across his forehead a moment,
then
said in angry disgust, "The Pro-Matriarch Mahala! See, Scholar Dame, it's
a plot to discredit you; we've seen you here and we know you'd never have
invited this here—"she made a sneering gesture, "but there are women
all over Ariadne who might believe it! And then there would be no chance for
you to do your work here without scandal! Take it away," she ordered.
"We'll hold the creature till Mother Vaniya has time to deal with it as it
deserves!"

 
          
Cendri
moved to Dal, knelt beside him,

 
          
"Dal—did
they hurt you?" she begged. One of the women, who held Bak's limp arm,
guffawed; the leader of the women guards turned, with a savage gesture.
"Hold your noise!" she commanded, "The Scholar Dame's from
off-world, you have no right to make donkey noises about everything you don't
understand; just tend to your prisoner there, girl!"

 
          
She
ushered the women and their prisoner out of the room. Cendri was shaking all
over.

 
          
Dal
swore as he picked himself up. His hands cradled his bruised stomach.

 
          
"I
never thought I'd want to hit a woman, but Sharrioz! I'd like to cram that
truncheon down her throat!"

 
          
"Dal,
what was that all about? They said he came from the Pro-Matriarch Mahala—a plot
to discredit me?"

 
          
"That's
nonsense."

 
          
"Dal,
what was it, then? Do you know who he was?" she surveyed him in dread.
"You know you must not get involved in their politics—"

 
          
He
frowned. "Look, Cendri, this is my affair; don't meddle. I know what I am
doing." He glanced at the timepiece he wore, and said politely, "The
Lady Miranda will be waiting for you. Go along to visit the blessing of the
pearl-divers, or whatever it is, and don't worry. I can look after myself,
Cendri; I was doing it a long time before I ever met you."

 
          
"Dal—"
she hesitated, frightened. "Oh, Dal, don't get into any trouble," she
begged. But he only repeated, smoothly, "The Lady Miranda is waiting for
you."

 
          
The
village of the pearl-divers was only a little way along the shore; it seemed to
lie at the very foot of the ruins, and Cendri looked up at them in frustration.
How long would Vaniya continue to stall them off? If Dal, she thought, could
get into them, start the work he had come to do, he would not be tempted to
engage in dangerous and, certainly, illegal intrigues with the men. She
thought, between dread and
anger,
that
could
get us sent
away
from
Isis
.
University makes
it very clear that the
Scholars
who
go to study
a culture must not entangle themselves in politics...

 
          
"Look,"
Miranda said. "We are in time; there is my mother by the sea-wall—"

 
          
Vaniya,
draped in impressive folds of crimson and purple, was standing before a little
group of slender, naked women, hair cropped close to their heads, formidable
knives strapped to their waists. Cendri could not hear what she was saying, but
she passed before the women, and one by one, they knelt and she laid her hands
on their heads and then on their knives. Then they all knelt, and after a
moment Cendri heard a high, chanting lament.

 
          
Miranda
murmured, "They are singing a memorial for the women killed in the last
pearl-diving season. It is a very dangerous trade; in this little village
alone, four women were killed last year. Would you like to go nearer?"

 
          
"Yes,
I think so—"

 
          
Slowly,
they picked their way across the shore, littered with seaweed, driftwood, rocks
and shells. Cendri looked at the flimsy houses, built just above high-tide
mark, at the small boats, circular, and built of wood and fiber. "Are they
all pearl-divers in this village?" she asked, looking at the women and children
clustered on the shore watching the ceremony.

 
          
"Nearly all.
They have been bred for generations for
the diving, and from the time they are very little girls they are taught to
remain under water for a longer time every day. I can swim well, but when I was
a small girl I had a friend here in this village; she was in my school. Even
then she could stay under water for a time that made me dizzy and my ears
ring," Miranda said. "Once I nearly drowned because I
would
not
come up before she did, and I lost consciousness; if the matron had not fished
me out I would have died. It was then I learned that all the differences
between women are not due entirely to education and training, but are inborn,
part of the self, and competition is useless, a game for men...look, my mother
is putting a blessing on their knives. That is in order that the Goddess may
keep, away the, creatures of the sea, and they may not be forced to shed blood
in
Her
holy realms..."

 
          
"Is
your Goddess a sea-Goddess, then?"

 
          
"She
is the Goddess of the whole; the World-mother," Miranda said, "When
the First Mothers dwelt on Persephone, they worshipped the Goddess by that
name; here She is Isis, the spirit that inhabits rocks and soil, air and winds;
but we worship her especially in the sea, because it is from the Sea, so our
scientists and our wise-women alike tell us, that all life comes on any
world."

 
          
No
wonder they
renamed
this world,
Cendri thought, struggling with a
smile,
who could
worship a Goddess fay
the
name
of Cinderella?
She asked, "Is fishing forbidden, then, if blood cannot be
shed...?"

 
          
"Oh,
no," Miranda said, "the Mother sends food from the Sea, and,"
she added, with a quick shift from religious faith to practical wisdom,
"we have not enough arable land to raise all of our food as yet. But blood
is shed there only in the last extremity. Most fish are taken with nets; it is
less of an offense to the Goddess, or so many of our people still believe, and
will not eat spear-caught fish. And when we visit the sea and the men are
allowed to go spear-fishing, many women refuse to eat the fish caught by blood
spilled in
Her
waters." She laid her hands over
her pregnant belly and said, "I shall not visit the sea this season, I
shall have a child at my breast—" she sighed.

           
"Look, they are lowering their
boats; let us go up by the sea-wall where we can see them put out. The
pearl-beds are offshore, by the rocks—you will see them from there."

 
          
They
climbed the stairs together. Miranda was heavy now, and stumbled, and Cendri
took her arm, steadying her on the last steps, which were slippery with spray
and sea-wrack left by the tide. She asked "When will your baby be
born?"

 
          
"With
the next Full Moon, or so the Inquirers have told me," Miranda said.
"I will be glad when she is
here,
I am weary of
dragging around like this."

 
          
Cendri
wanted to know who the father was, but was not yet sure enough of herself to do
so; men were never mentioned, and it was all too easy to forget their
existence! She noted, however, that Miranda spoke of her coming child as
"she"; would she be disappointed if her child were a male? Well, she
would certainly find out when it was born, she might even find out something of
the customs surrounding birth.

 
          
"Look,
the boats are away, that is the closing hymn," Miranda said. "When it
is over, Mother and Rhu will come down to us. Cendri, why did your Companion
not come down with us today?"

 
          
"Dal—Dal
gets headaches in the sun," Cendri improvised uneasily.

 
          
"Still,
most men are glad of an opportunity to come to the seashore when they are
forbidden otherwise," Miranda said, shading her eyes to watch the small
boats sculling toward the distant rocks which marked the pearl-beds. "One
of our legends says that pearls are the tears of the Mother at what men have
done to her beautiful worlds...I know that is only a fairytale," she said
defensively. "I learned at school how it is that the small sea creatures
make pearls and their lovely shells of nacre. But it is a pretty story—"
She smiled shyly at Cendri and drew out a narrow chain from the folds of silk
at her breast. Delicately encased in a small filigree case of silver wire, a
large rose-colored pearl shimmered like some sea creature itself. "This is
my loveliest treasure—"

 
          
"It
is beautiful," Cendri said, thinking she had never seen quite so large and
beautiful a pearl.

 
          
"Tell
me, Cendri, is it true that in the worlds ruled by men, pearls and jewels are
given to women by men, to—to reward them for their sexual functions?"

 
          
Cendri
blinked, startled by the phrasing of the question. At last she said, carefully,
"I cannot say that this has never been a practice among men. But I think,
most of the time, when men give pearls—or any jewels—to women, they give them
because they love them, because they want to see them even more beautiful,
because they want to give pleasure to—to the women they love."

 
          
Miranda
smiled and cradled the pink pearl in her hand, tenderly. "I am—I am very
glad to hear it," she said, her fingertips lingering on it as a cherished
thing. Cendri thought; I wonder
what man gave it to her?
A
gift from the father of
her
child,
perhaps?
Again she felt the sense of frustration; in the study of
any society, one of the first things an anthropologist had to know was
something about their mating customs, and so far, it seemed, children sprang
into being by spontaneous generation! And even with Miranda, friendly as the
Pro-Matriarch's daughter had been, Cendri did not feel secure enough to break
the taboo.

 
          
Vaniya,
resplendent in her brilliant robes, slowly came along the pier toward them. She
said to Cendri, "So my daughter has been guiding you and showing you our
rites—do you like our pearl-divers?"

 
          
"They
are certainly brave," Cendri said with a shiver.

 
          
"They
are born to this work, and trained from infancy for it," Vaniya said,
"and they are well-rewarded; there is no work in our society more highly
regarded than to descend into the bosom of
Isis
and bring up her tears for all women
everywhere to admire, and to the ends of your Unity, our pearls are considered
the finest. In fact, our divers are so well-rewarded and so admired that it is
all we can do to persuade them to take off a year, now and then, to bear
daughters to inherit their craft! Some day, perhaps, our scientists will find a
way to avoid wasteful bearing of sons in crafts where the blood lines are so
important. We can create parthenogenetic females for this craft, of course, and
that would give us more divers for a short time, but the daughters so born
would be sterile. And many of our fisherwomen are ignorant, and feel that such
conceptions are an offense against Nature. I can understand why no woman wishes
to take a season off from her work, even though we pay them well for their
resting time, only to discover she has not borne a daughter to inherit her
craft but only a useless male. Some have even been know to kill their male
children. I am forced to judge such women and punish them, but it goes
hard!"

 
          
Miranda
said, "In the worlds of the Unity it is possible to insure the conception
of male and female at will—is this not so, Cendri?"

 
          
"Yes, certainly."

 
          
"That
would have a certain limited social usefulness," Vaniya said, "it
might well be encouraged among such as the pearl-divers. But it could have
dangers too—would any woman be content to bear a male if she could win status
and recognition with a daughter? And then where would we be? You are not old
enough to remember, Miranda, but when the Grey Plague killed only males, many
women were frenzied with fear they would be doomed to live childless.
Fortunately the Goddess was merciful, and twice as many males were born in the
next three seasons, but we have had a frightening scare. Men, too, have their
place in the balance of nature.and you must never forget it, Miranda."

 
          
"Oh,
Mother," said Miranda impatiently, "You older women are always so
afraid that any new way of doing things will be an offense to the Goddess! If
She
had not intended women to use their minds, she would
have made us all stupid! I think if you had your way, we would all bear our
babies squatting in the reeds like our foremothers!"

 
          
"You
might do worse," said Vaniya, smiling serenely. "But I have no wish
to live in reed huts, and if I were the reactionary you think me I would not
have brought Cendri here. And I know it is true that in the Unity children can
be conceived male or female at will. But I do not know if it is so great a
blessing. Is it usually a matter of choice on your world, Cendri?"

 
          
"Not
entirely," Cendri said. "It has been prohibited on some worlds and
strictly regulated on others, because of the desire of men or women for one
sex, or the other, has indeed disturbed the balance of nature. Now it is used
rarely, and by special permission; if a family has had two children of one sex
and wish for another.
Although on a few worlds it is taken
for granted that every woman will bear one son and one daughter."

 
          
"I
suppose that is fair," Vaniya said, "though it seems dull and
regimented to me. And of course men are useful to the world, also," she
added, with a carefully polite glance at Rhu, hovering, as usual, in the
background. "I myself find as much pleasure in Rhu's company and
conversation as that of another woman, but of course Rhu is quite unusual; and
I am growing old and can afford to ignore convention a little."

 
          
Rhu
said, in his slow, hesitating voice, "Have you forgotten that it was Gar,
of the household of Gracila, who designed a way to deal with fluoride effluents
in the plastics industry, so they would not pollute the waterway of the
Goddess?"

 
          
"I
have just finished saying that there are extraordinary men in the world, my
dear," Vaniya said, patting him carelessly on the cheek. "The Goddess
knew what she was doing when
She
created humankind
both male and female." She turned her attention to Miranda again. "My
child, where did you get that exquisite pearl?" She touched the
rose-colored gem with an admiring finger.