by Doris Egan
"Really, Theodora, I paid you a high enough salary-"
"I was saving up!"
He raised his hands. "All right, all right." He laid back on the bed, thinking.
After a while I said, "Are you going to lie there thinking all night?"
"Probably," he said.
"Yeah, well, it's good to talk to you again, too." I crawled under the blankets. After a minute I added, "If you can think in the dark, you'd better put out the candle. We pay the Mullets extra for those."
And he put it out, without another word.
When I woke up, he was already gone. There was a note on the bedtable that said: "Running errands. You'll find your wallet two bakras lighter." No signature, because discretion as well as courtesy form the two rivers that run deepest in a Cormallon. In truth I could not actually read the whole message, but I recognized the symbols for "errands" and "bakras" and the rest was self-explanatory.
I washed and went out to the square, where The River was breaking up. I waved to the participants. As I turned the corner out of the square, I looked down the street and saw Ran standing in the shadow of the village hall, talking to a man I'd seen from time to time in The River sessions. He was one of the more disreputable citizens of the village, and I'd picked up the idea (although no one had specifically warned me) that I should avoid his company.
I put it out of my mind and went out to the hills to do my class with Vale. I was at a difficult time in my training; I was somehow supposed to synthesize all the modes of thought and all the physical techniques and anything else I'd picked up on the way into some glorious whole.
"You shouldn't even have to stop to think about it," said Vale, grinning like a shark.
"I can't stand much more of this," I said. "It gets more and more impossible. Each time I think I've made progress you spring something on me that I see at once will mean months of study. I can't win. There's too much to absorb, it takes years, Teacher, and you knew that when you let me start."
"Well, well," he said.
"I'm not even a novice! I'm not even qualified to be a novice! I'm still at the beginning of the beginning!"
"Well, never mind that," he said. "I've been doing this for half a century, and I'm just at the beginning of the middle."
"Is that supposed to cheer me up? If you're not an expert, what does that make me?"
"That's not for me to answer," he said. He knelt down beside me. "You have to begin somewhere, tymon, or you'll never begin at all. I don't know what this obsession is with expertness you foreigners have. You're not a machine. None of your clients have complained to me, let that be enough for you right now." There was a knock on the door and he sat back on his heels. "That's someone I asked by to test you on. I can ask him to come back later, if… is there something else bothering you? You didn't bring Ran today, and you say he's normalized…"
"He is." I sniffled. For a moment there I'd felt the threat of tears, but it was gone now. "Let him in, Teacher. Do your worst."
So he let in the client, age forty to forty-five, dressed like a fisherman but not anyone I recognized. "Where would you begin to work?" asked Vale, so I knew there was a trick somewhere. I looked the client up and down and watched the way he walked—there was something off about it—and asked him to lie down, and observed how his limbs fell when he relaxed. Then I picked up his boots and saw from the soles that he avoided putting weight on the inside of his left foot. So I said to Vale, "Tinther arthritis?" And Vale said, "Don't ask me, ask him." I thought about that and said to the client, "Excuse me, gracious sir, is there anything you would like to tell me before we begin?" And he smiled and gave me a beautifully classic description of tinther arthritis. I traced the twist in his muscle up the leg, and did a little extrapolation to figure where he would have to shift his weight to compensate. I moved up to the shoulders, and put my hand on the knot of muscles by the right side of the neck. "Here," I said.
Vale applauded and stamped his foot on the floor of the hut.
The client grinned at me, upside down. "Not bad for a tymon, I guess," he said.
Vale put me through a lot that day. I was glad when my old friend Pyre came in, last of all. Pyre was tolerant, he would take anything, and I wasn't sure I was up to much. But as I knelt over him something occurred to me. Vale was always telling me to "de-energize my telleth" before I began a session, and I'd always listened with a straight face and thought: De-energize, indeed. I'll begin when I begin.
But I felt wrung out, and didn't want to shortchange Pyre. So I knelt there and calmed myself down and cleared all the trash out of my mind, and told myself to just concentrate on the session. And as I put my hands on Pyre's shoulders he said, "Oh, tymon. " I felt distant surprise but went on with it and when it was over he said, "You're really getting good at this, aren't you?" With just enough surprise in his voice that I wondered what his previous opinion had really been.
Pyre asked me to work on his hands afterward, because he'd been practicing the hand-walk scene from Clerina, the classic chakon theater dance. Vale was sweeping the floor, as he did once a day, trying not to hit the cat. I'd pulled my outer robe off a long while back, and Pyre had his shirt still off. We were sitting there on Vale's hearth, laughing comfortably over a story Pyre was telling about his dancing partner, as I held his hand in my lap, putting pressure on the palm muscles. Ran walked in.
We'd been laughing too hard to notice the knock, and anyway my mind was focused on the session. Ran looked us over, and I let go of Pyre's hand. It was the first time since the beginning of training that I felt embarrassed to touch somebody. Ran said, "I came to talk to Vale." I resented his attitude—if anyone ought to understand ti-naje, it was an Ivoran—at the same time I wanted to let him know that if Pyre had sexual interest in anybody it was not in women.
Pyre said, "I have to go anyway." He put on his shirt and fisherman's jacket. "I'll see you tomorrow, tymon."
"Tymon?" said Ran, raising an eyebrow. He turned to me. "You'd best go as well. I want to speak with Vale privately."
If his edict about not trusting anybody was going to extend to me, he was going to hear about it. "Look, if you've got something to say—"
"You'll hear about it soon enough," he said.
Vale spoke up. "I think it's for me to decide if I want to speak privately to your friend. Why don't you wait outside, tymon?"
"Wait at Mullet's. This will take a while." Ran didn't look at me.
WeJJ, so be it. Later he would have to listen to me.
When Ran hadn't shown up within an hour, I went to the Athenans' dinner without him. It would have saved the price of a meal if he'd come along, and that, I told myself, was the only reason I was annoyed.
Their boat was as opulent as advertised. Annamarie met me at the top of the plank. "I'm so glad you came, we're all dying to talk to you."
She took me into the dining hall, which had a long table (high enough for foreigners) and dining couches with satin covers. "Must be hell for the servants to clean," I said, and she responded with a look of puzzlement.
"We've put you next to Clement," she said.
"Thank you," I said, keeping sarcasm out of my voice.
It was a good enough dinner, not half the meal I'd enjoyed at the wedding at Issin, but a few notches above village hall kitchen fare. Wine was passed around freely, but I kept at one glass. Clement did not.
I thought I would have to bring up the work I was doing on Athena, and it had worried me a bit, as many of the details had faded in my mind. However, this was not required of me. Clement told me about his planned article on provincial myths and mind-sets. He told me about his last three articles and last two promotions.
He told me that his wives didn't understand him.
Eventually his chin rested on the pillow of his couch. One of the pleasanter aspects of horizontal dining was that it lulled people like Clement to sleep long before they started sliding one hand up your thigh. After that I could join in the general conversation.
And it wasn't bad. They were pleasant people, on the whole, and I even remembered a couple of relevant points from my experiences on Athena that added to the conversation, and we exchanged anecdotes about traveling on the Queen liners. I liked them.
Someone brought up the topic of the University Extended Research Institute, which was trying to open up a branch on Ivory to add to the ones on Telly's and Pyrene. But they couldn't seem to find a building of the proper size for sale, nor could they get a permit to build one of their own.
"Can you imagine," said the man who was telling the story, "the last time they applied, the official at the permits bureau wanted a bribe? He wanted five hundred ta-bals—god only knows what that comes to in dollars."
There was shocked murmuring around the table.
"Not only that," said the man. "The official before that one wanted six hundred tabals."
"They should have taken the second one, then." I finished off the sip of wine left in my glass.
A silence descended on the table.
I looked up. "Well, they're not going to do any better if they wait," I pointed out.
The man said to me, as though repeating for a child, "It's a bribe, you see. He wanted a bribe."
"Yes. I understand the word."
"Are you saying," said a woman slowly, "that we should encourage corruption? Be a party to extortion of this sort? I must say, that's a strange view for an Ath-enan."
"On Athena it would be a bribe. On Ivory it's business as usual. I don't see the point of sticking to one's personal customs if it means you can't do business with anyone else—I mean, do they want to open a branch here, or not? Because without a bribe—without a lot of bribes, actually—they're just not going to."
Someone said, "But it's wrong. "
"I don't know," I said. "On Athena you have to tip waiters for good service, and on Pyrene they consider that blackmail. It's just geography. Face it, nobody goes to the bathroom on Ivory without paying somebody else off."
I looked around the table. Annamarie was staring at her plate, embarrassed. Nor was she the only one who seemed uncomfortable. I saw their faces and I just knew that there was no way, no way in the world I was going to get through to them.
I got to my feet. "Excuse me," I said. "I'm afraid I have to leave early. Thank you for the excellent dinner."
There were a number of "you're quite welcomes" and "not at all, not at alls"—but nobody tried to stop me.
I walked down the plank and stood on the dock under the starlight and the crackling torchlight from the boat-deck. Water slapped the side of the dock. I took a long, deep breath of the crisp night air. Then I started back to Mullet's.
Chapter Twelve
Ran still wasn't back by the time I got to our room, so I went to bed. Nor was he back the next morning. I rose, feeling a vague grudge against Ran, Vale, and all Ath-enan tourists, and tried to deal with a mind and a stomach equally unsettled. By rights I should have gone straight up to Vale's, but some contrary stubbornness kept me in the village. I worked on my notebook, did The River by myself when I thought I could handle it, and talked to Seth about his Annurian stories. I wondered about going back to see the Old Man when the next time came; I'd like to show him how my abilities had improved, but at the same time it didn't seem particularly safe. On the other hand, it would look strange if I didn't show up when I was expected… and there was no law that said the Old Man had to stay on the island if he didn't want to. He was probably good with a short sword anywhere.
I remember that day with special clarity. When evening came I went to the early supper at the village hall, saying hello to the kitchen staff before I sat down. Dana the food-taster was back on the job, and better her than me, I thought. The table I chose was already occupied by five women in fisherman's trousers and jackets, but they made room for me courteously.
They were strangers to Teshin and we stared at each other with mutual curiosity. They drank an enormous amount of wine, and spoke and moved with the wide, free gestures of the lowest-class trading families. One was only fourteen, but the others were in their thirties and forties.
I asked them who they were, and they told me they were boatwomen from the Kiris River (in the west) but they'd brought their barges down the Silver to the bay and thence to Teshin. "And what about you, outworider?" asked the oldest. "Farther from home than we are, I think."
"What makes you think I'm an outworider?"
There were chuckles at that, and I told them a little of my story—the high points, at least, and I changed Ran's name. There were clucks of sympathy in the right places, and a couple of the women made the gesture disassociating themselves from bad luck.
"Now," I said, "What brings five boatwomen from across the mountains to run the Silver River?"
And they told me, amid much mutual promptings; but since it is not part of my story I will not repeat it here. Anyway, bits of their explanation were highly personal, albeit highly interesting, and I suppose you can take the scholar out of Athena but you can't stop her blushing after you've done so.
It was a more successful dinner, socially speaking, than my previous night of Athenan hospitality. The upshot of it was that the boatwomen gave me their trading address in Bentham City and told me to look them up if things got too hot for me in the capital. Apparently life was a bit looser over the mountains; or, as the oldest said, "It's not the Northwest Sector, but it's as close as you can get and still be legal."
I left the hall feeling less of a clod and idiot than I had since the unfortunate events of yesterday. But as I walked down the street outside I saw Annamarie and the Athenan boy (whose name I never did get straight) walking toward me. It was too late to duck around a corner, so I went on hoping they wouldn't notice me.
"Oh, hello," said Annamarie.
"Hello," I said, still walking. But she stopped, so I had to stop or be openly rude.
"I'm sorry about last night," she said. "I hope we didn't seem too impolite. There was a lot of wine, you know.''
"Yes, there was. I'm sorry if I offended anyone."
"No, no, it's we who should apologize, you were the guest. Free speech is the cornerstone of Athena progress," she said primly, "and Clement was very annoyed with us when he came arou—when he woke up. What I was wondering, was… people asked me, you see, and I'd forgotten… what I mean to say is, what is your name again?''
I caught the reflex in time and said, "Actually, it's Theodora."
Her eyes widened. "Theodora of Pyrene?"
"Why, yes—"
At that moment Seth came running down the street. He barreled into me and grabbed me by the hand. "You must come at once," he said. "Ran sent me. You must come at once." He was panting.
"What, what's the matter?"
"You must come," he said. "Vale's been arrested."
"Two Imperial cops," said Ran. We were in our room at Mullet's, stuffing things into our packs. "They were on Vale's doorstep over an hour ago. They've got him in the basement under the village hall—for interrogation, I assume."
"Imperials? In Teshin? That makes no sense."
"No point in staying to figure it out. See if you can get food from the Mullets before we—no. Cancel that. We say nothing to the Mullets and we leave through the window.''
"We're on the second story."
"There's a ledge over the downstairs window. We can reach there and drop from it. Anyway, the street outside is just dirt.''
I thought about it. "Ran, it might not be us they're asking about."
"What do you mean?"
"Vale is the known friend of a fugitive who lives over on Kado Island. They might have heard… no. It still doesn't explain the timing." Annurian had lived on the island for years. Ran had broken out of his trance just yesterday, and one day later the nearest healer was brought in for questioning.
Still, what about Vale? Maybe if I got word to Annurian, he would able to do something for the healer; over the past winter I'd developed a lot of respect for
the Old Man of Kado Island. If I could hitch a ride over on one of the fishing boats, I could warn him… try a little logic, Theodora. With two Imperials in the village you would leave a trail leading to Annurian's door? The Old Man really would kill you for that one, and you would deserve it for stupidity of such magnitude.
"Well?" asked Ran, waiting for me to continue.
"Never mind. We go out the window."
"Right." He handed me my pack.
"How did you find out about the arrest?" I climbed up on the sill. This narrow slit was going to be hell to get through, and even if a dwarfish barbarian could do it I didn't see how Ran was going to. I threw the pack down first.
"Manager Peradon sent word with Seth, right before I sent Seth to find you. I don't know if Peradon knows anything, or if he just decided on principle that Imperials and foreigners shouldn't come together. Just think, if the Imperials had offered him a split of their juice we'd probably be in the basement instead of Vale. Save the cops a lot of trouble. Are you ready to go?"
I looked down. "Maybe."
"But they were typical Imperials. Rudeness never pays, Theodora, remember that."
First thing Grandmother ever taught you, I was about to say. But Ran said, "Try to roll when you hit," and gave me a friendly push.
I hit the dirt. It was like being smacked by a giant fist. All the breath left my body and I was paralyzed for minutes.
"Theodora? Are you all right?" Ran was kneeling over me, fear in his voice. I was all right, although in pain, but I couldn't get my breath back to tell him so. "Theodora?"
After a bit I said, "M'okay."
"What?"
"I'm all right," I whispered. "Just give me a minute."
He sat back on his heels. "I told you to roll when you hit," he said.
"You said… there was a ledge, too."
"Oh, that—I realized as soon as you got up that that window was too narrow to get through without being pushed from this side. You would never have been able to get into position. But it's not that far up! I told you to roll!"
"Yes, well… when I can move again, I will."
