The Gate of Ivory

by Doris Egan

  A slight attack of culture shock, I told myself, that was all it was. It was bound to recur every now and then… Well, if I was still in the game, it would help to learn the rules. I wondered where the library was.

  It was in a cavernous room on the second floor, densely carpeted, softly lit. I had passed it by before, and the goldband I pestered into leading me there had to insist before I would go in. "There are no books, no tapes, no terminals. How can it be a library?" I asked him. He shrugged. Like all the goldbands, he didn't say very much; at least, not to me.

  The room was lined with shallow wooden shelves from ceiling to floor, with sliding ladders against each wall. The shelves contained everything except books. There were pieces of pottery, necklaces, pendants, and rings, odd bits of stone, and miscellaneous specimens of daily life, some of which I could identify and some I could not. On a shelf nearby I saw a brass shoehorn.

  By far the greater number of pieces were stone, and most of them were the milky red or bluestone found in Ivory riverbeds. Stone has always tempted me; I picked one up.

  "Would you like some makel?" asked my host. "No, thank you," I answered, cleaning the sauce in my bowl with a piece of bread. We were gliding on Lake Pell on a late summer evening, the lanterns on the prow swaying gently over the water. ' 'More wine, then," said Bakfar. "More wine, by all means.'' I was well content. My business with Bakfar was almost concluded, and the profits for Cor-mallon should be substantial. My girl from the Great House handed me a cup, and I kissed her as I took it. Her hair was warm and fragrant. Bakfar provided for his guests like a gentleman, a good omen for our future association. All at once I was stabbed by a searing pain in my side. I looked down, expecting to see a knife, but there was nothing there. The stabbing came again. I gasped for breath. The

  cup rolled out of my fingers and struck the boards of the boat. The girl stared at me. The night sky framed her white face. I looked with effort to Bak-far. Poison or sorcery, I didn't care. I would kill him.

  I dropped the piece of stone. It hit the carpet soundlessly and I turned to look for a chair. I needed to sit now. You fool, I thought, seeing none, there are only about ten chairs on all of Ivory. Sit on the floor if you must.

  It's not easy to stop being a fifty-year-old man, let alone one who has just been murdered, in the space of a minute. I needed to sort things out. I sprawled pretzel-fashion in the position I dropped, not bothering to get comfortable. I remember paying a great deal of attention to the feel of the carpet on my fingers.

  After a while I looked at the shelves. If every one of them held something like that…

  That man had really existed, nobody made him up. Sitting in that boat on Lake Pell I'd been conscious of the unbroken memory of Seth Cormallon, stretching back through childhood. That was fading now, but I still had the central incident, the one I'd lived through—his murder.

  I ought to put the stone back, I knew, but I didn't want to touch it again. I started to get up when my eye was caught by a bronze plaque in the base of the wall. It said, in simple lettering: "Immortality is a privilege to be won and not a right. Rest in peace knowing you will live in honor and love as long as Cormallon endures." The stones, the jewelry, the random flotsam of several hundred lives—this library was Ran's family.

  There was a sound to my right, a whirring, mechanical sound. I leaped to my feet.

  "Didn't mean to startle you," said the voice. "But you really should pick it up. We can't leave relatives on the carpet. People would step on them, and how would we explain it to Grandmother?"

  He rode out into the dim light—rode, on a floater horse, the kind I'd seen used in Athenan hospitals for nonam-bulatory patients. His legs were strapped to the sides. "Eln Cormallon, at your service."

  I supposed I would have to get used to seeing echoes of Ran's face in the people here. But the resemblance was strong in him—if not for the lines around the eyes and mouth, if his hair were black instead of brown, he would be Ran's reflection.

  "And you must be my brother's mysterious guest. Is your name really Theodora?"

  I nodded. I had never thought of myself as mysterious before.

  "But what's your family name? Ran's keeping it a deep, dark secret."

  "Cormallon, I guess, at the moment. I don't really have one."

  "Amazing." He maneuvered the floater to just above the carpet, reached over, and picked up the stone I'd dropped. He could just reach it with the tips of his fingers. "But Theodora is far too long. I'll call you Theo… in case there's a fire or something, and I have to shout for you in a hurry.'' He leered with melodramatic wickedness.

  I couldn't help laughing. At the same time I wondered what Ran had told him about fires.

  He reached behind the floater and pulled out a bottle. "Will you join me? Vintage Ducort. For your christening."

  "Some other time, thank you. I couldn't handle it on an empty stomach."

  "Empty stomach? What happened to breakfast, lunch, and dinner?"

  "There was a breakfast back there somewhere… and I've got a piece of melon in my pocket."

  "But this is horrifying. What will happen to our reputation for hospitality? Still, no need to panic, we'll fix it right away." The floater carried him off toward the door. I followed.

  "Look, you don't have to—"

  "Just how weak are you? Are you going to faint? I'll dismount, noble lady. You can ride and I'll walk."

  I wasn't sure if he was kidding or not. Rather than put it to the test I accompanied him to the kitchen.

  It was a big room with a central plank table where a substantial, broad-shouldered woman was rolling dough. It was clear from the air that she was already responsible for something wonderful baking in the oven. "Hello, Herel," Eln said to her. "Just thought I'd ride through. Where are you hiding the good tah? And didn't I see some hermit's eggs here this morning?"

  "Now, Eln—you know supper was hours ago. Grandmother wants you at table with everyone else. You can't keep showing up here at all hours—"

  "Herel, Herel, you misunderstand me. We have need of your noble talents. Our guest here is about to collapse from lack of nourishment. Have pity. —Theo, look pale, or Herel might not feed us."

  Herel shook her head, a broad, involuntary grin on her face. She began pulling out bowls and cutlery and laying them on the long wooden table. Eln brought his floater over to the table and I took a seat on the bench. My feet didn't quite reach the floor. The table was huge, the room was huge, Herel—pretty huge herself—was dealing with pots and pans of a suitable size for mass cooking; all in all, I felt as though Eln and I were children who had wandered into a giant's kitchen.

  Eln took up a paring knife and started peeling an apple. "Have you been on Ivory long?"

  "Over two years now." He finished the apple and handed it to me.

  "And from what fantastic planet did you come?"

  I told him my story, in a general sort of way. He listened closely and asked questions about Pyrene and Athena, my friends and what I did there. "And you've been working in the capital for two years. Doing what?"

  Well, it would be easy for him to find out, if he wanted to. "Telling fortunes. In Trade Square."

  "But I've never known foreigners to have the talent

  … ah. A light begins to dawn. You're Ran's new card-reader, true?"

  I said nothing. He laughed and said, "You don't have to worry. It's an open secret, at least in the family. Poor Ran… and Grandmother's so easy to deal with, if you don't get her angry. Well, I hope you're charging all the freight will bear. You're irreplaceable, you know."

  I remained silent, shifting uncomfortably. I watched Herel's broad, workmanlike hands deftly kneading bread dough. Eln said suddenly, "Have you heard the Emperor's latest speech? It's priority one on all the terminals. Every time I punch for the racing scores from the capital it keeps popping up… 'In view of the, er, dipping balance of the trade situation…' "

  I had to laugh. It was the Emperor's favorite phrase, and E
ln had captured the pompous tones with cruel precision.

  Herel fed us royally. Eln made her sit down and have some wine with us while he told the story of the flyer he had backed in the last Imperial races. "Came in last in a field of forty-three. Do you know what the odds are for that? If only I'd known, I could have bet the other way." He imitated the flyer's owner making his excuses; he had a gift for imitation.

  Other stories and talk followed. I lost track of time. It must have been near sunrise when the door opened and Kylla came in. She looked tired and disheveled, and was unslinging her quiver as she spoke. "Herel, I'm glad you're up. Can you give me a hand? I've got three ground-hermits outside, they'll need to be plucked…" She saw Eln and me at the table, looked from him to me and back again. "Oh, dear," she said.

  "It's not a good idea to spend much time'with Eln," Ran said to me later that afternoon. We were in the study, where he was searching through the files on his heirloom terminal.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "Eln is… a very moody sort of person. He gets upset about things sometimes. No, not exactly upset… he's unreliable."

  "You don't trust him?" For I wasn't very clear on that.

  "Of course I trust him. He's my brother," he said, with an air of self-evident logic. "But he's not reliable, and you shouldn't spend your time with him."

  I shrugged, a response I often found useful in the face of Ivoran thinking, and changed the subject. "Why are you always on the Net now? You never used to spend much time on it back in the city."

  He watched the screens flick past on the terminal. "I'm making sure there aren't any enemies lying around that I've forgotten." He halted the flow of data and made a note on a pad beside the terminal. "It's incredible that the people we've got investigating this haven't come up with any strong possibilities. They keep eliminating suspects. It's very irritating of them."

  "What if you don't come up with anybody? Do I stay here for the rest of my life?''

  "I've thought about it," he said seriously. "I suppose we could handle the business by vidiphone for a while, with me in the capital and you here, but I don't think it would work in the long run. You really need personal contact to make your judgments. You'd have to come back with me."

  Praise Wisdom for that.

  "Meanwhile, I almost forgot—see that book on the table? The one with the red binding. Yes, there—take a look through it."

  I picked it up; the cover showed a single symbol in white against a blood-red background:^.. I remembered Ran had a crystal block in his office etched with the same symbol.

  "It's a book of sorcery," he said. "The Red Book, for beginners. Start studying it."

  "Ran, you know I've got no talent for sorcery."

  "True, but the more familiar you become with technique, the better your understanding of our work will be. Besides, there are some things anybody can pick up, and they might do you some good. How to avoid certain spells, for instance."

  "How?"

  "Read it and see." He went back to writing in his pad.

  I read in the shade of the courtyard until dinnertime. Grandmother wasn't there for the meal, nor had she been present at lunch or breakfast. Ran said that she was often ill and ate in her room. For the Cormallons dinner was a meal of many tiny courses; the whole thing together didn't make up their usual breakfast, but was somehow very satisfying to the mind and palate. Kylla passed me a tiny seed-cake, the dessert, and poured me a little bell-glass of white wine. "Are you coming with us tomorrow?" she asked.

  "With you?" I looked around at Ran. "Where?"

  "We're going on our jaunt," he said. "It's a family custom, at least with Kylla and me. We ride out into the hills and camp for a couple of days. We do it every year."

  "If you're sure I won't—" I cut it off. Inappropriate response. These were Ivorans; if I were in the way, they would not have asked me. "Thank you…we'd still be within the barrier, wouldn't we?"

  Ran smiled. "We'll be within the barrier. It's a jaunt, we're not looking for trouble. Think of it as a long picnic."

  "Will Eln be coming along?" I asked. As usual, he was not at the table with us. Ran's cousins were gone as well, I didn't know where; so the three of us were alone.

  Kylla looked at her brother, who was silent. "Will he?" she asked.

  He got up and walked around the table. A servant began gathering up the plates. Ran brushed by him and left the room.

  Kylla watched him go with a worried look on her face.

  "I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing," I told her.

  "It's not your fault." She started to pile the plates at one end of the table, where the servant was scraping them into a large wheeled bucket. "Eln used to come with us… until a few years ago." A slight tremor appeared in her voice, so faint that I could not be sure if I imagined it.

  There was only the scrape, scrape, scrape of knife against plate, and the sound of food hitting the bucket.

  Ran reappeared in the doorway. "If you want him to come, then ask him," he said.

  Chapter Five

  Kylla handed me a pack. I slung it over my back and then staggered under the weight. "I hope you don't expect me to walk very far with this," I said.

  "Don't be silly," she smiled. "You don't have to walk at all with it. It's a jaunt, not a hike."

  I followed her out the door and down the front steps. "Then how are we going to—Great Plato, what's that?"

  Ran came up to the edge of the lawn leading two huge animals. "Olin will have yours in a minute, Ky," he said. He slapped one of the creatures on its flank, a move which alarmed me but which the beast seemed to tolerate. "This one's for you," he told me.

  The hell it was. "What is it?"

  "It's a horse," he said, "the old-fashioned, unmodified kind: straight Terran stock. Her name is Patch."

  Well, in an intellectual way I was delighted; so these were the guardian animals so often mentioned in Terran legends, partners of battle and adventure. I had imagined them to be about four feet tall, and covered with armor plate.

  I approached the creature very slowly. It stamped its hard front foot onto the ground and made,an ominous noise through its snout.

  I stepped back. It was so big. "It doesn't like me."

  "Nonsense. You just have to get to know her."

  "I'm not getting up on one of those things."

  "Then how are you going to keep up with us? A dead run all the way?"

  "Can't we take the aircar?"

  Eln's voice came then, startling me. Apparently he had joined us while my attention was, well, focused on the monster. I've noticed before that fear makes me overly attentive. "Ran, I could get her my other floater. It's modified for speed."

  "If she won't mount a horse, why would she mount a floater?"

  "No, it's a good idea," I said quickly. "I'm willing to try it." It was at least mechanical, not a huge unpredictable beast with teeth the size of my fist. Machines are different.

  So it ended with two of us on mechanical horses and two on flesh and blood. Cormallon, I found, covered a lot of territory. There were brooks, streams, woods, even the beginnings of mountains. Ran and Kylla kept a slow, sight-seeing pace, and Eln showed me how to match my speed to theirs. But when Kylla broke into a gallop over a meadow flecked with white hearthwhistle and golden violets, and Ran laughed and went after her, Eln put out his hand to the front of my floater. "Don't try it," he said. "They're going too fast. You're new to this, and your legs aren't strapped in like mine." It looked as if it would take us a while to catch up. As we rode after them, he said, "Are you having a good time? Nature can be horribly boring, if you're not in the mood for it."

  "I'm having a wonderful time. I never realized there were so many different plants here," I said, for while I'd been aware intellectually there was a whole planet around me, until then I had only seen the more cultivated flowers for sale in the market, cut to uniform length and with thorns removed. "That's hearthwhistle," I told him, pointing. Kylla had been telling me name
s all morning, far too many to remember, and I was proud of the handful I had managed to retain.

  "So it is."

  "It's beautiful."

  "It's a weed, and it's everywhere." He looked the meadow over with a jaded, supercilious air, a connoisseur searching for the truly fine, and not finding it.

  "Aren't you having a good time?"

  "I tend to prefer my entertainment on a more verbal level." Seeing my disappointment, he said, "But I agree with you, it's beautiful. Beauty's cheap on Ivory… the weather, the sky, the hearthwhistle… that doesn't stop it from being a weed, though."

  I was tempted to ask him why he had stopped coming on these expeditions with his brother and sister, but knew it was forbidden territory. Besides, he might answer, and I was already more involved with these people than seemed good for me.

  We camped by a lake that afternoon. Ran and Kylla busied themselves tending to the horses and setting things out for the night. I thought that for people who were used to a troop of servants in their house, they seemed perfectly content to take care of themselves.

  The idea of servants had bothered me, scratching at the corner of my mind, since I arrived at Cormallon. Pyrene is a fiercely egalitarian place, and Athena likes to think of itself as a meritocracy; neither system had prepared me for where I was. And it puzzled me that the Cormallons would want so many people not-of-the-family in their home. Only after much thought did I realize that they needed servants. It was a big place, on a technologically backward world. They could hardly set dust-catchers loose in the rooms—I hadn't seen one on the entire planet. Naturally they could have imported them from Tellys, but if it was the first time the import fees would be astronomical. (They explained this to us on Athena: Tellys knows it can't hold onto its technological lead forever. But when it runs out, they'd like to have a good bank account to fall back on. So the very first model of any item imported by any planet from Tellys is stamped with a fleur-de-lis, meaning "new and copyable technology." For that fleur-de-lis you pay two thousand times the actual price of the item. It's a nice system, for Tellys.)