And so she had pretended. Pretended she didn’t care. Pretended she didn’t want the straight back everyone else had. Pretended she liked the crooked one and preferred it. Pretended it didn’t hurt. And had never had the courage to just open her mouth and say, “I’ve changed my mind, I’ll have the new back now, please,” not in all these years. Not after the extraordinary baroque scenes she’d staged, refusing.
“I did it for pride,” she said, astonished to hear the words come out of her mouth, realizing that she had never before admitted it to anyone. “Wicked pride. And I have paid for it in full.” Pride. The deadliest of the seven sins that really matter.
“And now,” Will Bluecrane said, clearing his throat, “because your greatgrandmother says it must be done, you have come to ask for a husband from among the PICOTA. Despite your many and obvious flaws.”
Delina bit her lip; he did remember, then, after all. She’d been afraid that he had forgotten.
“Yes, please,” she said. “If one of your men will have me. I promise you: I will make a very good wife. I have no nonsense in my head about romance to cause him trouble. Our marriages have always been based on what is best for the Household and for the Line, and our husbands have always been chosen for us. My husband will find me sensible, and I will live wherever he likes now, or I will follow him wherever he wishes to go.”
“You believe your men will let you do this?” Anne asked. “Are you sure?”
Delina sighed. “They don’t care what we do anymore,” she said. “They’re trying to create an entire new economy from scratch, you perceive. They’re trying to put things back as they were before we first began Interfacing our babies with the Aliens, with as few modifications as possible. They don’t have time to care what we women do, not now. As long as I commit no criminal offense and am careful not to interrupt them, I can do as I please. More to the point, I expect … would one of your men be willing to marry a prideful Lingoe bitch in her thirties with a crooked back?”
The other woman cocked her head, and put her hands on Delina’s shoulders, considering her, not hurrying. “Delina,” she said carefully, “I’ll take your word that your men have better things to do than to interfere in this; that’s reasonable enough. And I will ignore the foolish question. We are wise enough here to understand what such an alliance would mean, and why it would be desirable. But there’s one other thing. Delina, please think carefully before you answer me. You would have to come to us; no PICOTA man would go to live in the houses of the Lines. Tell me this—could you bear it? You have always lived surrounded by women; could you bear to live with only a man?”
“It has to be done,” said Delina steadily, adding the pain in her heart to the other pain. “Someone must be first, and I am far more free than any other linguist woman. I have no children. No ties except ties of love. No duties, now that the interpreting booths are closed down and the Interfaces are empty. It will be hard, but it has to be me.”
“You’re sure?”
“If the PICOTA are willing, yes—I am absolutely sure.”
Will Bluecrane did not dawdle once he’d made up his mind. He looked at Anne for approval, and when she nodded yes he sent for the sorters. “Take Delina Chornyak to a guest bedroom,” he said, “and see that she has whatever she needs. She will be staying with us now for a while.” He cleared his throat again, and added, “We have business to attend to. She and I; and the PICOTA.”
It was Will Bluecrane, at the very end of his life, speaking from a bed where he lay in state on piled pillows while his relatives competed to wait on him and anticipate his smallest need, who declared the women an honorary tribe and gave the tribe its name. At first Delina, watching over him from the windowseat, thought he was joking, and she told him it was a pretty good joke, for an old man.
“It’s no joke, you ignorant Anglo woman!” he shot back at her. “I am still Chief of the PICOTA, and if I choose to call all you women of the Lines who are married to us a tribe, no one can refuse me!”
That was absurd; he would need approval from the Tribal Councils for such an innovation, like anybody else. But Delina let it pass, and she listened, smiling, as he told her that from now on she was a member of the Meandering Water tribe.
“You tell them I said so, Delina Chornyak Bluecrane,” he said huskily. “Because you linguist women don’t go in a straight line from A to B to C. You go this way a while, and that way a while, and this way again, instead. And you go gently and quietly. But you get there, always! You meander, as water meanders, headed for the oceans … and then you arrive.” He lay back on the pillows, breathless. “It’s important,” he said. “You tell them.”
They won’t believe me, she thought, but she said only, “I will do that, Grandfather; I promise.” And cautiously, not wanting to tire him or to presume, she asked, “What does it mean … to be an honorary tribe of the PICOTA?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s never been one before. But I can tell you two things: It’s an honor. A great honor. And with honors come responsibilities! No more loafing around. You tell them. And tell them that I want you and Henry with the Cherokees in Northwest Arkansas, where you can look after—” He stopped, gasping.
She wished he’d hush; it was so hard for him to talk. But Will would have been insulted at the idea that she thought he didn’t have sense enough to make such decisions for himself. Nobody but Anne could tell him what to do, not even the healers. She held her peace, therefore, and waited for him to catch his breath.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said, in a little while.
“I’m not surprised.”
“Not about the tribe.”
“No?”
“No! That’s done; I’m determined.”
“What then, Grandfather Bluecrane?”
“I’m going to tell them about it myself,” he said. “You’d get it all mixed up.”
And then he closed his eyes, exhausted, and fell asleep.
PART TWO
WHAT THE SECOND TRANCER SAID
Watch the children in church, taking Communion. The tiny bread-wafer is laid on the tongue; the mouth closes. And almost instantly, in the child’s eyes, you see the ancient memory stirring. You can see that the tongue and the teeth, the tender inner surfaces of the mouth and throat, are all remembering: There was a time when the sensation and the taste of mouthfood were commonplace. Sister, you can see the old lust waking. And that is why the children must swallow the wafer and go straight into the choir to sing! That is why, at the four festivals of the seasons, whatever they may be called in a particular culture, everyone must take their bite of the festival bread and then break at once into song, and the louder the better.
When I think of that old lust, curled up somewhere in every one of us, I don’t perceive it as snake or lizard or dragon, as one of the beautiful sleek swift coiled creatures. What stirs there in my mind’s eye is an old, old cat … most probably a tom … covered with street scars, and wise in the cruel, sly ways of the alleys.
(Archives entry; Sister Jessamine Noumarque Shawnessey)
The Meander music school of Our Blessed Lady of the StarTangle sat close beside the basechurch, making the long end of an L around the pad where the skychapels landed for refueling and crew changes. It was a pretty little school, set down in deep woods in a spacious clearing; you could look out its windows and see the Ozark Mountains, low and blue in the distance. There’d been a town on the same site once, and that had conveniently provided the clearing; no one mourned it, no one even remembered it anymore, and all its buildings and artifacts had been taken away long ago. The new town that had grown up nearby was an old town now itself, and to the people of Meander, Arkansas, it was as if the school and church had always been there. Like all StarTangle music schools, this one was a rectangle of rooms, built round a central courtyard where the school orchestra and band, and all the choirs, could gather to practice.
The sisters kept the borders of the courtyard planted with bloom
ing things … practical blooming things. Tall sturdy plantings of purple-flowered sage and chives. Rue with its bright yellow flowers and indestructible evergreen foliage. Fuzzy hoar-hound; columns of blue-flowered chicory. Beds of crisp mint, with their roots firmly constrained by stones set on edge and sunk into the ground. That sort of blooming thing. Things that looked after themselves and went undisturbed through every kind of weather; things that not only looked and smelled wonderful but could be used for food and drink and medicine. Things that didn’t notice when you took whole armloads of cuttings from them to send home with the small girls for their own gardens, after carefully showing the children how to get them to put out new roots and thrive.
“Sing to your gardens!” was always the final instruction, and the children obeyed. Every early morning or twilight of the year when the weather wasn’t so foul it was actually a hazard, outside every house that had a girlchild, you could find a little girl with hands clasped behind her back and her feet securely planted to give her balance for big deep breaths, serenading the plants in the gardens. Sometimes, though not often enough, there was a boychild, too. Even the children of Jefferson Household, free now from the interpreting booths, had leisure enough for such singing.
The mass-ed computers were wonderful for teaching children the basics, and the obligatory Homeroom sessions were satisfactory for teaching them how to interact with other human beings. But it took a school, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, to turn motley packs of kids into orchestras and bands and chamber music quartets and choirs. It took groups. You could learn to be a soloist from the computer. You could learn to sing or play along with a computer-generated group passably well. But there was always something missing. “The sum of the parts!” the sisters would say. “You can get all the parts going, on their own, with any old computer, but you can’t get the sum of the parts!” For the sum, you needed all the young ones assembled together, pressed shoulder to shoulder in rows, lustily belting out the music, weaving a fabric of it strong enough to tie joy to and know that it would hold.
On this particular Monday morning the school’s six classrooms were being scrubbed by the long arms of the cleaning servomech, snaking up through the ports in the floor from the basement, and the children were out in the courtyard in the sunshine that had followed the morning’s thunderstorm. The courtyard itself had been scoured already, by the wind and the hail and the rain.
The glory that was the sum of the parts—carrying, today, one of Calendia’s beloved “Consecrations of the Morning”—rose up toward the sky under the able direction of the music grammar teacher. And in the cubbyhole that served them as school office, the listening sisters were well satisfied.
“Just listen to that!” said Mother Superior Drussa Mbal, clapping her hands softly. “Calendia himself would be pleased!” She was right; the composer would have been both pleased and amazed. The current MGT from Jefferson Womanhouse, young though she was, had an almost magical knack for bringing music from the children that was pure bliss to listen to. She never had any trouble getting them to start practicing. She would give them the pitch, a clear true note ringing out like a bell in the courtyard, and they would respond instantly, singing their hearts out. The only problem she had was getting them to stop singing. They never wanted to quit, even when the sun was straight up overhead and it was indisputably time to quit. “We’re not hungry, Miss Jefferson!” they would call out. “We don’t want to go home!”
Their parents would have supported their claim that they weren’t hungry. “She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive!” they would have told you. “He barely touches his food!” But none of the parents worried. Because the children grew, and they were as strong and healthy as anyone could have asked. When they were made to go home anyway, shooed away like so many flocks of birds, they would leave still singing, their voices drifting away on the wind as they got into family flyers or, if they lived near enough, went running off together down the road.
“I only wish,” said Sister Septembra wistfully, “that the other MGT was as good.” The teacher for the orchestra and band, that was. Sister Septembra had been a choir nun, but she had a great fondness for instruments, especially brass ones. Especially trumpets. She loved trumpets.
“But she is good,” Sister Dolores Maria objected. “She does very well considering how few of the children want to play instruments instead of singing in the choirs.”
Septembra sniffed. “She’s not topnotch!”
“Septembra,” said the Mother Drussa, “in my opinion, you say that only because she—quite properly—won’t set up the brass choir you keep fussing for. With nine schools on her route, Sister, Cress Chornyak doesn’t have time for brass choirs.”
“Perhaps,” said Septembra grudgingly. “But we need the brass choir, Mother.”
“You need the brass choir, Sister; please be precise.”
“We have so many brass choir music chiplets,” observed Sister Dolores Maria, “that there’s no space in the cupboards for anything else.”
“It’s not the same, Dolores Maria, it’s not like live brass!” said Septembra. “You can hear the difference as well as I can.”
“But we can’t have every kind of musical group here, Sister! For heaven’s sakes! We have no opera … no musical comedy ensemble … no raptyhop group … no jug band!”
The expression on Septembra’s face at the idea that a jug band might be compared to her beloved trumpets sent the other nuns, even the Mother Superior with all the worries she had on her shoulders that day, into gales of helpless laughter. They laughed until Septembra gave in and laughed with them, wiping her eyes with the edge of her headdress. “All right!” she said. “I surrender! You’re correct, you really are; Miss Chornyak does, in fact, manage to get very respectable music out of one trumpet, two flutes, a cello, and a couple of drums. And I cannot imagine how she can possibly see to the music for nine schools—when does she sleep? I don’t give her nearly enough credit; I admit it.”
“Very good, Sister!” said Mother Superior. “We are pleased to hear you say so at last.”
“Are there StarTangle schools where more of the children want to play instruments?” asked Sister Kathra, who had been a silent observer until then. She was not a StarTangle nun; she was a visiting Carmelite sent to observe the way this small country school was run, to find an explanation for its choirs’ reputation for excellence, and to pursue other familiar agendas.
“Of course,” Dolores Maria answered. “Lots of them! The overpowering attraction for vocal music here is because Shawana Jefferson just plain enchants the children, and they all want to be part of the music she makes. It makes it hard on Cress Chornyak, I’m sure, though she never complains.”
“I have never heard an MGT complain,” said Mother Superior, and she looked at Septembra and Dolores Maria for confirmation. “Have you?” And when they shook their heads no, she said, “Well, then.”
“Are they saints?” asked Sister Kathra, sounding cross. “Or what?”
“You never went to a music school, Sister? When you were a little girl?”
“My parents were against it,” she said. “They had the idea that something else … something mysterious and dangerous … was really being taught in the music schools. That the MGTs had some secret agenda. You remember the sort of superstitions people used to have in those days, I’m sure.”
“Well, the MGTs are not saints, thank goodness! Saints are wonderful at a distance, but nobody wants to live with one. It’s just that the women of the Lines had such abominably hard lives in the past. All the records of that time were lost in the Greatwar, of course, but it’s said that they literally worked from dawn to dark six days a week, and then were required to spend all of Sunday in church. That training is still with them; I don’t think they even notice how heavy their schedules are.”
“How could there possibly have been that much interpreting and translating to do?” the Carmelite protested. “It would have to have be
en makework … just invented to keep them busy at all costs. To maintain those silly myths about the linguists. Don’t you think?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right,” said the Mother Superior, her eyes and face the very picture of candor. “But, of course, makework or no, it meant they had no time at all for themselves—and it’s said they were put to work as young as nine years of age, Sister.”
“More myths!” Sister Kathra scoffed. “That would never have been allowed.”
“Well … it’s hard to know what to believe, isn’t it?” said Mother Drussa. “Whatever the facts may be, whatever the details, the women of the Lines seem to think what they do now is more vacation than work. And that is our great good fortune, because of course the more they delight in their teaching, the more the children learn and the better they learn it.”
“And they do all the music teaching in your schools, by themselves.” Sister Kathra sniffed. “Very commendable.”
“They teach theory and performance. And we StarTangle sisters do rehearsals and coaching, and drill the students in scales and chords and exercises … that sort of thing.”
“I see.” Sister Kathra’s face changed abruptly; she was suddenly all business. “It’s time,” she stated, “to start bringing in music teachers from outside the Lines. Really, Sisters. Surely it’s time, and long past time!”
“The first time one of the linguist MGTs fails to give us satisfactory service,” the Superior assured her, “we will certainly consider that alternative.”
“It’s already happening, obviously,” said the Carmelite. “Your own sisters say the Jefferson teacher is pressed for time. And you’ve been sitting here, all of you, clucking over the burden that a nine-school route represents for one person. I heard you. Why won’t you let us help?”
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