Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (36 page)

 
          
"No
doubt it has run away to sulk, my dear; but did you not give it permission to
leave the grounds? Our Punishment House is at your disposal if you wish to
discipline it," Vaniya remarked. But where Vaniya saw only a question of
discipline, Cendri was deeply troubled for Dai's safety. Had he been detected
in his plotting? Was he somewhere encouraging revolt or riot among the men, and
what would they do to him if it was discovered?

 
          
Or—worse—had
he run away to confer with Mahala, to join her party? Were she and Dal actually
to line up on opposing sides of the political situation on
Isis
? The thought sent a shudder of horror
through her. As a scientist of University she—and Dal—were supposed to be above
local politics. Dal had already violated that regulation. Must she do it too? Or—Cendri
had been trained into rigid intellectual honesty—had she already violated it,
or seemed to do so, out of her deep personal affection for Vaniya and Miranda?
Had Dal mistaken this for a kind of political commitment? She must make it clear
that it was personal____

 
          
Miranda
was not at dinner, either. Lialla told her that Miranda was in bed, with the
midwife nearby
... ."
But I think it is only
another false alarm," Lialla said, resigned. "Her first child was
many, many days past the proper time; almost all of those who became pregnant
from last winter-festival have already borne their babes, but Miranda is always
slow. Some women simply do this."

 
          
It
was a silent and, generally, a glum meal, the women mostly tired and suffering
from lack of sleep. Vaniya, irritable at the silences, asked Rhu to sing, and
he said sullenly that his throat was sore and his
lyrik
out of tune.
"However," he said, making an effort to be pleasant, "I shall
apply myself to composing a song as birth-gift for the Lady Miranda, since she
takes pleasure in my poor songs."

 
          
Cendri,
watching him, thought, why, he really cares about Miranda, he's worried about
her, as worried as if he
were
the father of her child. Or is it just
that anything to do with Miranda involves him, emotionally, and he knows he
must conceal it? If romantic love is a perversion for women in this world, how
much more for men! Pitying Rhu, she knew she pitied herself.

 
          
Dal
did not return all that night. Cendri slept poorly, rousing again and again, thinking
she heard his step in the suite, every small sound anywhere in the house of
women, a restless child crying, anyone moving about on the lower floors,
disturbing her light sleep. Where was Dal? What had become of him? Was he
somewhere in a Punishment House, having broken all unknowing one of the many
rules for men on this world?

 
          
Long
before dawn, sleep deserted her entirely; she sat by the window, looking down
into the ruins of We-were-guided, deeply troubled. Her growing insensitivity to
Dai's needs had driven him away from her, and now where was he?

 
          
Had
she really, as Dal had accused, been corrupted by the society of the women of
Isis
? No, she realized; not really. The Matriarchate
had only given a form and expression to a hostility which had—she now
knew—begun long before they came here. A resentment, that she had given up her
own ambitions to be Scholar Dame, fearing Dai's jealousy; that she had taken
time off, after her marriage. But Dal had never asked it of her. It had been
her own
idea.
If Dal had wanted a
submissive woman, all the women of Pioneer, trained to it for centuries, and
not yet taking full advantage of their freedom, had been at his disposal.
He had chosen her instead.

 
          
And
when he forgot, when he
fell into old
habits from Pioneer,
it was for
me to protest; not to submit, stifling resentment,
until the inevitable
explosion. I was not honest with him. Have we lost each other now, forever?

 
          
When
the sun rose, red and dripping with sea-fog, peering through the cloudbank over
the shore like a weeping eye, Cendri was exhausted and frightened. Laurina
came
early, ready to accompany Cendri to the ruins; but by
then Cendri knew what she must do.

 
          
She
told Laurina of Dai's disappearance. "I am afraid that he, unused to the
laws of
Isis
, has somehow gotten into trouble," she
told the younger woman, "and that he is somewhere in a Punishment

 
          
House.
You have been around Mahala's faction____ she has
some connection with your college, does she not?" Laurina nodded, and
Cendri said, "Can you find out what has become of him?"

 
          
"I
would do more than that for you, Cendri, but why is it so important to
you?" Laurina actually seemed a little jealous, "I am here to give
you what help you need."

 
          
For
a moment Cendri desperately wanted to pour out the truth. She was so tired of
this imposture, so weary of the pretense that she was the Scholar Dame
archaeologist
who knew all, and Dal her unregarded
assistant—but tardy caution prevailed; the words, once spoken, could not be
recalled. Would these women of
Isis
despise her if she was only some man's assistant? She said slowly, "Dai's
aid is indispensable to me; his special training on University makes it
impossible for me to work efficiently without—it—at my side."

 
          
Laurina
grimaced slightly and said, "It must be hard for the women of University,
but after all it is one of the maleworlds. Well, Cendri, I will go and inquire
in Mahala's faction. But what makes you think it might have gone to them?"

 
          
"One
of Mahala's men—anyhow, marked with her tattoo of ownership—came to speak with
Dal, secretly," Cendri confessed. "I warned Dal about conspiring with
men, but he may not have understood how serious this was." Half-truths;
she knew Laurina did not understand, but the woman was content with the
explanation and set off for the city.

           
Cendri was too distraught to work;
she even absented herself from Vaniya's dinner-table that night, sending the
excuse that she was not feeling well. She spent the evening looking through her
notes from the ruins, and writing, in the undecipherable-to-outsiders script of
her homeworld, all that she could remember of the ceremony of visiting the sea,
knowing she must do so before the memory blurred in her mind. She found it was
an exercise in self-control and discipline, but she did not spare herself, even
writing down the shaming memory of how she had reacted sexually to Laurina's
embraces when the ceremony was ended, firmly forcing herself to make a note of
the fact that she had felt ashamed. She realized that her intellectual
awareness, that sexual moralities were purely a cultural imprint, did nothing
to minimize them for her personally. Afterward she noted, with wry amusement,
that the attempt to force herself into clinical detachment from the reaction
had given her a very real headache, and in the end she took a sleeping pill,
for the first time since she had come to Isis, willing to face the danger of
sleeping through an earthquake, or being hard to wake if there was news of Dal,
rather than lie awake for hours juggling guilt and fear and the attempt at a
scientist's discipline.

 
          
The
next morning Miranda was still abed, and Laurina came to tell Cendri that as
far as she could discover, none of Mahala's people had seen Dal there. "It
is not in their Punishment House, nor hidden in their Men's House," she
said, "A schoolmate of mine is in charge of their Men's House and I asked
her to make an excuse to call a search of the Men's House for concealed
contraband, things men are not allowed to keep. So it is not concealed
there."

 
          
But
then where was Dal? Cendri was beginning to be seriously frightened. Late that
morning, knowing that it was a minor breach of Matriarchal etiquette but by now
too troubled to care, she went up to Rhu's quarters. She found the Companion,
barefoot and wearing an old and rumpled kilt, his face for once unpainted,
bending over his Jyrik, searching for chords. Was he working on Miranda's song?
His face was sullen, but he bowed to her with respect.

 
          
"How
may I serve the Scholar Dame?"

 
          
She
said straightforwardly, "My Companion has disappeared. I do not believe he
has gone willingly; I am afraid he may have broken some law unwittingly and is
being held somewhere, in trouble. Can you help me?"

 
          
Rhu's
face was closed and unrevealing. He said, "This much I will tell you; he
went willingly. Beyond that, you cannot expect me to betray a fellow male. I
know that our customs are strange to you, Scholar Dame, and I am not offended
that you ask, but I cannot answer further."

           
She stared at him in shock and
dismay. Somehow, knowing his secret and Miranda's, she had not expected he
would draw this barrier down between them. She said, in distress,
"Rhu—can't I talk to you simply as a fellow human being, as an equal?
Can't you understand that my concern is for Dal, and he is your friend?"

 
          
Rhu's
mouth tightened, bitterly. He said, "No master can talk as an equal to a
slave. I know you are concerned to protect him, you want him back mostly for
your own concerns; to be the kind of man I am. If he has escaped into freedom,
even though I cannot, I will rejoice for him and never betray him."

 
          
Shocked,
Cendri said, "He was free on University; he is free here; he will be free
again—"

 
          
Rhu
made a wry face, "Would you really have taken him back there, Scholar
Dame, knowing now the pleasure of having him a thing and a toy for your sport?
At first I thought there was a different kind of relationship between you.
Now—" his narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. He said, "I am only a
man; I know nothing more. Will you have me tortured, to tell what little I
might know more than this? It would be useless. Perhaps he has told you; my
heart is weak, I would die under the lash. Will you have my life, Scholar
Dame?"

 
          
Cendri,
shocked, put out her hand in an appeasing gesture, and
 
Rhu recoiled, an instinctive movement
that shocked her more than
 
anything Rhu had said. If was exactly as
if he
feared I would strike
 
him___

 
          
She
said, swallowing hard, "No, Rhu. Forgive me. I am afraid some such fate
may have befallen Dal—if you decide I might help save him from such fate, I beg
you, come to me—" but his face was closed, and she went away, feeling
tears rise and choke her.

 
          
What
could she do? What could she do?

 
          
Later
in the morning, Vaniya's older daughter, Lialla, sought her out. She said,
"Scholar Dame—"she had never come to the informal terms Miranda and
Vaniya used with the stranger—"my sister is abed and ill; she has asked
you to pay her a visit."

 
          
Cendri
was still so distressed over Dai's continuing absence that she felt she would
be no fit company for the sick; but she knew Lialla would never consider worry
over a mere male anything to interfere with the friendly duties between women,
so she dismissed her annoyance at the interruption—in any case,
it isn't
helping
Dai any for me
to sit and stew about it
—and went to Miranda's room.

 
          
Miranda
was lying down, her pregnant body looking enormously humped between blankets.
She greeted Cendri warmly, gesturing with amusement to a pallet on the floor.

 
          
"Vaniya
has insisted that I sleep with the midwife in my room, so I have not even privacy
any more, at night. I have missed you, Cendri, but I really feel too heavy and
tired to get about. They keep telling me it would be better for me to take lots
of exercise and jolt my lazy baby loose from her snug nest, but I am too heavy
of foot to think of it without at least a dozen shudders. Listen, Cendri—we are
alone, I sent the woman to make me a hot drink—has your Companion been
found?"

 
          
Cendri
said, "No," and wondered whether Rhu had told Miranda what he refused
to tell
her.

 
          
"You
know I have not been at the family dinner table for days, I have been taking my
meals here in my bed—last night Lialla came and kept me company while I ate,
taking her dinner at my bedside so I would not fret—so she said, but I think it
was for fear I should go into labor if left alone for a few minutes. When
Zamila came up to her from the dinner table she began to gossip with her about
what was
happening, and—you
were not at dinner either,
Cendri?" "No, I had a headache—"