Guilt Edged Ivory

by Doris Egan

  The woompah-woompah sound stopped and I saw the workman by the truck disengage his hose. He started hauling it back from the dry pond. In my mind I saw Kade, bully and loanshark; Eliana, going over the line in her plan to escape her father's house; Coalis… I wasn't sure exactly what Coalis' problems were, but he wasn't the boy next door. Just a typical Ivoran family, I thought, a little hysterically. Save this planet, people. Start a creche, ban family names, the way we did on Pyrene.

  … And Jusik, tyrannizing over the rest. Except he didn't look like much of a tyrant right now.

  I said to Coalis, "Does this mean you've given up monkhood forever?"

  "It's not a profession, Theodora, it's a state of mind."

  One you would do well to emulate, I heard unspoken. He was probably right.

  I stood up. "Farewell, and good fortune. Your acquaintance has been… unforgettable."

  "Oh, Theodora." He stood and bowed over my hand. "Believe me, your acquaintance has made quite an impact."

  Indeed, and it was courteous of him not to kill me because of it.

  I walked past the dry pond, the crushed flowers, and the still-tall jinevra bushes. It would be good not to come back here.

  Behind me, the bones of a dying family stirred themselves for the move.

  I thought of Coalis sometimes and his quest for achieving the true state of "na' telleth-ri"; a quest whose cold arm reached into the most normal, taken-for-granted moments of life. The last line of a disagreement with one's husband, for instance: "What do you want me to do?"

  An interesting word, want. Close enough to care to make the na' telleths nervous. What do you want? A chair, a bed, the salt passed? I ask to be polite; I'm human myself, I know how we are. Any desires hanging on your back, pinching your toes, stirring your drink for you so it no longer tastes good? Justice, vengeance, sexual satisfaction? Feel free to speak up, we're all siblings here.

  It's how we deal with each other, the basic web of civilization. We start with barter, move on to a system; we're no fools. Here, have some money, you can buy what you want. Should we go to the play tonight? If that's what you want. Me, I only want you to be happy.

  Jack Lykon had returned to Tellys, but his specter remained. And as I snapped at Ran, "What do you want me to do?"

  Not that he had asked me to do anything.

  At the end of the month we went to the fair in the Imperial Park.

  Twice a year the lowest level of the park, beside the river, is given over to craftspeople and farmers from the provinces who bring in every old piece of crockery and wagonload of fruit they think they can unload on city folk. Mixed in with them are acres of riches: Unexpected delights in the way of painted bowls showing mythological creatures drawn out in fiery symmetry; handblown goblets; finely patterned paper to use for decoration; and all manner of dishes, pipes, tah-burners, ceramic flowerpots… The park, needless to say, is crowded on such days. Stuff that would be auctioned off at a fine arts house on Athena can be picked up for a smile and a handful of old coins.

  We'd wandered around for half the day to our artistic and monetary satisfaction, and toward late afternoon we started to aim for the food and spice wagons, to bring things home for supper. Today countrypeople were free of the spice monopoly's prices and could bring their whitemint and pepperfall direct to the consumer—and the consumers were lined up, happy to wait for bargains.

  I stopped to look at a row of candlestick holders. A man went by in a yellow brocade robe, a little girl on his shoulders, giggling. Two others followed behind him, sucking lemon ices. Lately it seemed that everywhere I went there was a high tide of children. And the families all looked so happy. What happened to the harassed mothers, screaming red-faced at their kids, smacking them as they wailed and making passersby feel uncomfortable?

  "Excuse me," said a voice. I turned to see a young woman in very plain standard dress, a fellow barbarian. She looked about twenty, verging on pretty, and out of place. "I'm sorry to bother you," she said, uncertainty in her voice, "but you look like you know your way around here. Do you think these—" and she extended her hands, each holding a cheap brass candlestick, "look all right?"

  "Well…" I said, not sure how to respond; actually, I've always found brass candlesticks quite ugly, and the pair she had chosen had to top the list in that department.

  "You see, I'm having a guest for dinner, and I want it all to look nice," she said.

  "I've never been fond of brass," I said.

  "They're about all I can afford," she said frankly. She gazed at them with dissatisfaction.

  They were the cheapest pair in the row, I saw. I picked up one of the less expensive looking crystal holders and glanced at the vendor. He raised four fingers. My fellow barbarian followed the exchange and her face fell.

  "Is your guest Pyrenese?" I asked hopefully. A Pyrenese would hardly notice or care about the artistic merits of his dinnertable. In fact, it would be considered morally beneath him to take note of such things.

  "He's Ivoran," she said.

  "Oh, dear." And you don't know what you're letting yourself in for, my child.

  Ran appeared then; he'd been lingering over a set of marble paperweights two wagonloads back. A true Ivoran, an aesthetic question engaged his interest at once.

  "Why don't you buy one of those bowls with the phoenix-griffin design? —You remember them, Theodora.

  They're down by the water's edge—the craftsman was packing to leave, and selling them for almost nothing. Then you can fill it with scented water and put a few of those floating candles in."

  "I never heard of floating candles," she said doubtfully.

  "It would look splendid," he insisted. "Come on, I'll point you in the right direction. —You'd best get a spot for us in line, Theodora. I'll be back in five minutes."

  An appeal for aesthetic judgment will get Ran's attention where an appeal for mercy may leave him cold. He pulled his victim/charitable object after him, and I filled up a string bag with fruit and pastries, and went to stand in line at the spice wagon.

  Several people had brought their own carts, now piled high with loot from the day. Good gods, there were eight— no, nine—children in line in front of me, and a tired woman with the voice of a drill sergeant watching over them. Wasn't she young to have— One of the older children's robes rustled as she moved, and I saw the character for "property of." I watched till she turned around, and read, "Kenris Training School."

  Trocha children: Orphans and "superfluous offspring" brought up to be sold into trade apprenticeships. Even they didn't look unhappy. They demanded attention of their guardian freely, constantly tugging on her sleeves, and she gave it to them as their due.

  All a facade, I thought, standing there, remembering the Poraths and wondering about what had gone wrong in my own past.

  I remember once talking to one of the therapists on Athena about the strangeness of "family" to a Pyrenese creche-graduate like me. I'd been saying nice things about the Cormallons, thinking of the relationship between Kylla and Ran, and the therapist had grinned and remarked that the older he got the more he felt the phrase "dysfunctional family" was redundant.

  He had a point. But is it just families? Is the Pyrenese system really better? It didn't give me a happier childhood. And would I have found the same painful rubbing-together, one wound against another, in any group that had to live with each other, even nonrelatives on Pyrene? I never gave it a chance, so I suppose I'll never know.

  I have my suspicions, though. What is it about us human beings, anyway? How can we possibly hurt each other as much as we do and still feel so put-upon while we're doing it? I sometimes feel we would all benefit greatly from having our lives recorded and played back, so we could see every wrong move we make from a spectator seat; every harmful remark and then a close-up on the eyes of the person we're talking to.

  So far Ran hasn't blossomed into any super-neurosis, and the quirks he has are ones I'm prepared to live with. His distorted view of fami
ly, distorted in its way as mine, is like an anchor; he's unreasonably prejudiced in my favor, just because I had the good sense to marry him. So he's willing to put up with a great deal, too, and just assume that my intentions are good.

  That's an attitude worth gold. It's not why I married him, but I'm beginning to see that people get married for reasons that are different from the reasons they don't get divorced.

  All right, Theodora; you don't want anybody to take these treasures away from you. But what are you going to tell the Cormallon council next year?

  Not to mention the ghost of Ran's grandmother. I wished she'd been as forthcoming in her message to me; I wished I knew her exact words. I'd heard this "new blood" phrase before, but how I could be responsible for it was beyond me. Was I supposed to trust Grandmother, unstopper the healer's cap (I felt like a bottle of old wine in someone's cellar), and go for the marginal odds as Jack Lykon had laid them out? Grandmother must have been crazy. Because if there's anything to this heredity business at all, this hypothetical offspring wouldn't be getting any terrific genes for the manipulation of magic, not from me. And yet I was the item she wanted factored into the plan. Did this make sense?

  All right, assume I reported in to the council next year as barren. I'd chiseled the information out of Ran as to what would follow:

  "We'd adopt," he said.

  "Then what's all this about a second wife?"

  "Well… that's who we'd adopt from. It can be done on an entirely friendly basis, Theodora. You could even help pick her out—probably one of the Ducorts or the Cymins. Then when she, uh, produces, we write her a bank order, get a divorce—"

  "Forget that idea."

  "It's a purely businesslike arrangement, Theodora—"

  I'd given him a look that must have had more power than I'd realized because he shut up.

  I reexamined that exchange from a scholar's point of view: I didn't see how a child of Ran and one of Cormal-lon's usual allies would satisfy Grandmother's requirements for a new genetic infusion.

  I wished the old lady were alive. I wished I'd known her a little longer. I wished the Cormallons weren't so damned secretive.

  The cart belonging to the Kenris Training School was piled high with goodies, and with live cargo, too; a very small member of the school sat atop, facing backward, staring directly into my face. He looked to be about two or three years old, wearing a short quilted jacket of royal blue that somebody had buttoned for him right up to the neck.

  When he saw me focus on him, his dark eyes came alert. He zeroed in on my string bag, resting on the edge of the wagon.

  "What's that?" he said, pointing to my rose nectarine.

  "That's a rose nectarine," I replied.

  "What's that?" he said, pointing to a bundle of hand-woven napkins.

  "They're dinner napkins," I replied.

  "What's that?" he rapped out, pointing to my pellfruit— then to my phoenix-griffin dish—then to my colored papers.

  Each time I answered him he moved on to the next item. Is this kid making fun of me? I wondered, uncertainly. He can't even know what half these things are, but he keeps asking for more.

  Finally his exhausted looking guardian started to pull the cart away. The boy turned to me quickly and the words tumbled out. He jabbed his finger toward each item to illustrate his fact-checking. "That's a rose nectarine. That's dinnernapkins. That's a pellfruit. That's feenixgrif'n-dish.

  That's festival paper. That's red oranges. That's a penholder."

  "Yes!" I said, delighted.

  He didn't smile, but the solemn eyes looked pleased at his success.

  The cart moved away, past the spice line, out onto the path toward the park exit. I stared at it.

  Gracious lady?" asked the spice vendor. "You're next."

  "I'll be right back."

  I left the string bag on the wagon like any fool tourist and galloped after the shaky cart of the Kenris School troop.

  "Excuse me! Excuse me, gracious lady." The young woman stopped, with a facial expression that suggested she was too tired to even try to understand why I was bothering her.

  "Yes? Can I help you?"

  "I was just wondering. Are these children…" I searched frantically for the right word. What we usually translate into Standard as "adoption" refers to a series of ways people are taken into Houses, usually with a task in mind; I had no task in mind here. "Uh, are these kids available?"

  She said, politely, "If you require any sort of trade experience, we can probably supply it. For short-term assignments, we have contracts of even a day at a time. You have only to call on our registrar's office—"

  "No, no. Are they… for sale?"

  This phrasing she grasped. "Of course," she said.

  And they call us barbarians. "I'll have to get back to you on this," I said, "but meanwhile, can you tell me the name of the kid on top of the cart?"

  "Tirjon. We don't have any last names, of course, but there's an ID number: 428791."

  Numbers instead of surnames, just like my birthplace. I was practically nostalgic. "Four-two-eight-seven-nine-one," I said. "Many thanks. Four-two-eight-seven-nine-one." I walked away from the Kenris guardian and back toward the spice wagons. Four-two-eight-seven-nine-one. I needed a pen.

  Ran was waiting, having rescued my string bag. "Did I miss something?" he asked.

  "Ran, I've been thinking." As we spoke we started clean-

  ing, out the last three jars of maneroot from the vendor's display before they disappeared. "We ought to consider adoption. Regular adoption, I mean, none of this extra-wives stuff."

  He seemed puzzled. "Take in a cousin for fostering? It's done all the time, but I didn't know you were interested."

  "No, no. I mean bringing up a kid from scratch. Scratch from the Cormallon point of view, that is—didn't your grandmother used to talk about needing new blood?"

  "I don't think that's what she—"

  "There was a possible candidate here not two minutes ago. From the Kenris School."

  "A training school? Sweetheart—look, there are a lot of reasons why that would never work. First, the council would have a fit— What are you doing?"

  "I'm borrowing your pen." I slipped it out of his outer-robe pocket.

  "Theodora, you were born off-planet, you have no real grasp of how sensitive some issues—"

  He broke off, watching me flip open a corner of the decorator paper and write numbers on it. "Are you listening to me?" he asked.

  "Of course I am!" I said, offended. "You know I always do what you say."

  Not long after, autumn found us in Cormallon.

  I had passed the Poraths' house a few days earlier and peered in through the empty gate. A gold cat peered back at me from some long grass and another raised a sleepy head from the porch. Hadn't Jusik taken them along? Perhaps he'd tried and they'd chosen to take the first rest stop and return to familiar territory. Well, there were other pools here beside the dry one, and the Poraths still owned the property; I hoped sufficient mice and such could be found to keep them going.

  I supposed that we owed a debt of gratitude to the Poraths' Scythian yellow toms. If it weren't for them I never would have slept out on the porch, and never would have wondered what Auntie Jace was doing heading out through the garden at dawn. And who knows, without the whipping my sinuses took whenever we visited the household, my nose might have been more susceptible to Loden's perfume.

  So a few days later I was sitting in our own garden, in Cormallon, beside a small red pavilion open to the air. Kursek, one of the goldbands, had just brought us out tah, grinned, and left, taking the rocks over the stream instead of the bridge as his route back. It was a gorgeous day, with scudding clouds and cool breezes. In the privacy of the estate I'd thrown off my outerrobes and slipped into wide blue trousers and a tunic. Ran doesn't like trousers, on men or women, because he thinks they're provincial; so I compromised by not wearing them as often as I liked and he compromised by not commenting when I did
.

  Ran sighed happily from the boulder where he sat, pleased with his territory, his tah, his life. "Weather change coming," he said, after a good twenty minutes of silence, nodding toward the growing black fist on the horizon. There's often a series of thunderstorms in the area around Cormallon just before fall gets fully underway.

  After a while, I said, "You know, I hope we don't get involved in any more investigations."

  "I thought the idea appealed to your scholarly mind, tymon."

  I shrugged. "The process is fine. I just don't like the results."

  "Eliana was no friend of yours," he said, meeting my eyes.

  "No. I know that. But it's still a great deal of responsibility to take for another human being." At least five other human beings, actually. As I thought about Jusik, Auntie, Leel, Coalis… the servants, the cats… the abandoned house and garden…

  A freshening wind came up, ruing the sleeves of my tunic. I poured another cup of tah. The clouds were racing by now, autumn at their heels.

  "It was good for our reputation," said Ran, giving me what he would consider comfort if it were given to him.

  We'd discussed the idea of adopting a trocha child, but not, to my mind, exhaustively.

  I said, "Speaking of training schools—"

  "Great bumbling gods, haven't we finished that yet?"

  "Really, Ran," I said, surprised. "When I think I've run through all my arguments, I'll let you know."

  Two nights previously: Ran sitting on the bed, one sandal on and one off. "You don't understand the protocol, sweetheart. When trocha children get adopted, it's only as waymakers—an older sibling to help out with bringing up the firstborn."

  "Great. Then he can be a waymaker. It'll buy us more time from the council, we can say we want to give him a year or two to grow before we start on our own kids."