The Gate to Women's Country (29 page)

“I taught myself while I was with the garrison. There's a great deal of waste time in garrison. Every minute not spent on drill or housekeeping is supposed to be spent on sports, but some of the men take up one craft or another, just to keep their hands busy. Carving's a favorite, of course. The barracks are one solid mass of carved beams and carved wall panels and gables and doorposts. Basket making's acceptable, and weaving. I've seen some decent pots made by old warriors, too.”

She sat on the edge of her bed and waved him toward the only chair in the room. There was something she was trying desperately to understand. “Corrig, tell me about garrison life.”

He, with an odd smile, seated himself, folded his great, graceful hands in his lap, and complied.

C
HERNON
, now a member of the twenty-four century and within a few months of the twenty-five, learned of Stavia's return from Michael, though when Beneda repeated the news he pretended he hadn't known about it. He had made it a habit to come to the armory roof to meet his sister every week or so. It would have been considered undignified for a mother to come, but warrior mythology expected sisters to be almost as sentimental as lovers were, and it was a way of keeping in touch.

“How long has she been back?” he asked, trying to sound offhand about it and dismayed by his inability to do so.

“You still care about her!” exclaimed Beneda.

“I was always fond of Stavia,” he returned stiffly. “I never made any secret of it.”

“You certainly didn't act fond, telling her to leave you alone just because she didn't want to break the ordinances anymore.”

“It was best for both of us. She was only a child.”

“She was twelve, almost thirteen, and when she went away, she was still mourning over you. She's twenty-two now. Do you want to see her?”

He didn't answer this. He didn't know what his own feelings were in the matter, but he was quite sure what Michael wanted. Michael wanted Chernon to meet with Stavia. Michael wanted it very much. Commander Sandom had been dead for over a year. He and his cronies had been coming back from the Gypsy camp when they had been set upon by bandits. Only one of the armorers had escaped to tell the story. Michael was now Commander.

Michael was now Commander and his agents said the other nearby garrisons would either take over their own cities when Marthatown garrison did or turn a blind eye on the whole thing. This year could possibly have the best harvest anyone could remember. The warehouses would be bulging.

“Things,” Michael had said, “seem to be coming together! We may be taking over very soon. So what happened with that letter you wrote to Stavia, Chernon? Did she ever answer?”

Almost a year before, Michael had instructed Chernon to send a letter to Stavia in Abbyville, a letter begging her to go away with him when she returned to Marthatown, not away to the Gypsy camps but on some romantic, memorable escapade. She had never answered—a fact which Chernon had found embarrassing.

“Not so irresistible as we thought he was, our Chernon,” Stephon had chuckled.

After that Chernon had decided for a time that he hated her, but hating her had seemed pointless since she was not there to notice it. He didn't even hate Habby anymore, and he never thought of his mother at all. Time had passed, and the trumpets and drums no longer evoked quite the emotional frenzy they had done at the ceremonial when he was fifteen. Though his heart still surged when the centuries were paraded, and though he still carried Casimur's ribbons, plus the ribbons of another dead warrior from the fifty-five—honors he would carry for fifteen years until they were retired to the repository with the rest of the seventy century—the splendor of it was spasmodic, brief orgasms of emotion separated
by long periods of calm, almost of depression, relieved only when Michael or Stephon or Patras involved him in the plans for the upcoming rebellion.

Michael said three other garrisons planned to move against their cities at the same time—Mollyburg, Peggytown, and Agathaville, away in the east—though he didn't sound as sure about the details as Chernon thought he should.

“We'll attack after harvest,” Michael said. “Late fall or early winter. After the grain is in the warehouses, and the year's fish have been smoked and put away, and the fall trading is over. That way, there'll be stocks of everything right here, where they're needed. Once we decide to move, we'll only need a few days to let the other garrisons know and get our own men worked up and properly enthusiastic! One night the women will all go to bed in their own houses, and when they wake up, every house will have a warrior in it!”

“Then there's no real point in my getting Stavia away before then,” Chernon had objected.

“Every point, boy. We still don't know about that weapon Besset claims he saw. Stavia's older now. She's more likely to know the women's secrets now than when she was a kid.”

“If there are any secrets, I'll bet nobody but the Council knows them,” Chernon had sulked. “Besides, we haven't heard a word about that weapon since. I think Besset was drunk.”

“Possibly. Just in case, however, we've got men courting every Councilwoman young enough to be courted,” snorted Patras, “and every Councilwoman's daughter as well. Don't worry about Besset. Your assignment is that girl.”

It was true that Chernon still dreamed of journeying, of adventure and heroism. However, she had not answered his letter….

Now he said to Beneda, “I don't know whether I want to see Stavia,” knowing perfectly well he would have to see her, but toying with the illusion of independent decision. “Maybe I want to see her. I'll let you know next time.”

“Make up your mind,” said Beneda. “There's some talk
she's going to go away again soon as part of an exploration team.”

He was down the stairs and halfway across the parade ground before the sense of her words hit him. Beneda said there was talk of Stavia's going away as part of an exploration team.

His mouth dropped open and he stopped in his tracks.
Exploration team!
He had heard it without understanding it. Perhaps
this
was her response to his letter! But, if so, why hadn't she told him? Cursing, Chernon scuffed his foot in the dust for a moment, making angular, angry incisions in the soil before turning back the way he had come. Beneda was still standing on the wall, staring down at him. He crossed the parade ground and climbed the stairs again to stand beneath her, hands on hips.

“Tell her I want to see her,” he said. “Tell her to come to the hole in the wall. This afternoon, if she can. Tomorrow at sunset otherwise.”

He didn't wait for Beneda's joshing answer. When he had been fifteen, it hadn't seemed too undignified. Now that he was twenty-four, her little-girl teasing grated on him. Down in the parade ground once more, he walked across it to the northernmost barracks building, then onto the shady lawn of officers' country. Michael saw him coming and came out onto the porch, a mug of beer in his hand.

“I just found out,” Chernon said. “Stavia may be going out with an exploration team.”

“Well, well, well,” said Michael, leaning back through the door to speak to someone. “Did you hear?”

“I heard.” Stephon came out onto the porch, shutting the door carefully behind him. Through the crack between door and jamb, Chernon saw two strange men sitting at their ease inside. More conspirators from other garrisons. “I'd forgotten it was time for exploring again.”

“They seldom find anything,” commented Michael. “Last time all they came back with was two new kinds of bugs and some plant they could make tea from.”

“She could be planning to let me go along,” Chernon said doubtfully. “Maybe.”

“Be damn sure she does, grub,” Stephon directed. “Make yourself irresistible.”

“You still think this is the year?”

“Looks like it, boy. Some of the other garrisons are just as sure as we are. But we've still got this one little, tiny, nagging bother. That weapon old Besset thinks he saw. We've been after him, now and then. He still swears to it. Not that it matters greatly. Just that it could make trouble for us.”

“I know.”

“Well, don't know it out loud,” instructed Michael.

“Not if you don't want to vanish, just like your old buddy Vinsas did.”

Chernon, not liking this thought, changed the subject. “You really think Stavia knows anything?”

Michael raised his eyes in Stephon's direction, as though in question.

Stephon frowned, then nodded. “We've got a man courting Stavia's sister, Myra. Myra moved out of Morgot's house a few years back, but she still spends a lot of time bitching about Morgot and her sister. How Stavia was always the favorite, how Stavia always got to do the interesting things. One of the interesting things Stavia got to do was to go on a trip over toward Susantown with Morgot, and that servitor of theirs.”

“So?”

“Well, the interesting thing is that Myra can remember exactly when it was. It was just before the Susantown war. Before Barten died. Myra remembers that. She's not ever going to forget that. It was about the same time that Besset and his bunch saw that wagon coming back from Susantown.”

Chernon cast back in memory. “You think Stavia was in that wagon? You think she knows what happened?”

Stephon shrugged. “Likely. Could be.”

“I think Besset made it up. Or he was so drunk he didn't see anything.”

Michael smiled a particularly menacing smile. “Pretend you believe it, boy. Give her a try. Make yourself pretty and try it.”

There was no point in making himself pretty to talk to Stavia through a hole in the wall, so he didn't bother. The big old tree at the edge of the parade ground still hid the hole through the wall. It also hid the oiled paper package Chernon had kept hidden there for four years. A book he had stolen from Beneda.

He worked his way into the hollow behind the tree where he could hear if anyone came into the room at the other end of the hole. The package was there, in a crevice in the bark of the tree. One red book. Even though he knew every word of it by heart, even though he found nothing in it of significance, having it was forbidden. The significance lay there, in his defiance of rules, in his contempt for the ordinances. He was not allowed to read, but he would read!

The pages opened almost of themselves. “Migratory societies, the Laplanders.” Sticking his fingers in his ears to shut out the distant sound of cheering from the game fields, Chernon began his ritual of contempt for the ordinances of the women.

S
TAVIA CAME AGAIN
to treat old Bowough Bird, and then yet again, but his condition did not improve. If anything, it worsened. His breathing grew more labored. His mind seemed to wander. Septemius fretted, jittering, gnawing his knuckles and engaging in frivolous, irrelevant expostulation whenever Stavia appeared.

“Hush, man,” she said, drawing him into the adjacent room where the three gray dogs curled on the hearth, raising their black muzzled heads to stare at her, licking their black lips with quick, pink tongues. “You're worried about him. How old is he, really?”

“Old,” admitted Septemius. “You know as much as I how old. He doesn't remember now, if he ever did. I know how old I am, which is sixty something, but how old he was when I was born, I haven't the least idea.”

“Somewhere between eighty and ninety, at least,” she mused. “I've got some stuff that will clear up his lungs, pretty surely, but it's not on the open list for use on itinerants. Which means, Septemius Bird, that I must either withhold it from you or steal it from Women's Country.”

He fumbled for words, not sure what she was leading up to, though certain she was leading up to something.

“She wants something,” Kostia had said an evening or two before. “That medic wants something from us, Septemius.”

“Something she can't get otherwise,” Tonia confirmed.
“She's a very troubled woman. Something strange going on there.”

“One thing,” Kostia murmured, “she doesn't have a child yet, and her in her twenties.”

“Some of them don't,” Septemius objected.

“A few don't,” Tonia agreed. “But damn few.”

“She's been several years at the medical academy at Abbyville. She hasn't had time for childbearing,” Septemius objected.

“Even so. There's more to it than that, Septemius. She wants something from us. We can both feel it.”

How many times had she run into them on the street? How many times had she invited them to tea? How many times had she questioned them?

“Tell me about your travels south of here,” she had demanded.

“Not a pleasant subject,” Septemius answered, trying to be politely evasive.

“I have a reason for asking,” she had said, as politely but firmly. “I'd appreciate it.”

Shrugging, he had complied. “South of here are two smallish Women's Country towns, both fairly new, one on either side of the desolation, Emmaburg near the shore, and Peggytown inland. Neither are in any way remarkable. You probably know more about them than I do.”

“South of that?”

“I have heard there is a fortified sheep camp south of Emmaburg now. It was not there when I traveled south, once, long, long ago when I was a child. As I remember, one comes first to broken country and badlands, a fantasy land of pillars and carved towers, of wind that sings endlessly among the stones. This is a stretch of this, a mile or so wide, then there is a range of mountains that runs all along on the east and south. If one keeps along the coast, one comes to several great desolations. But if one goes along the foot of the mountains—which one would not normally do, because the land is very broken and full of little canyons—one finds people living back in the valleys, just the way they did before the time of convulsion, I suppose.”