They looked at me adamantly, “But, La-ant, beloved master and faithful husband —”
“There are no buts about it,” I insisted. “There will be no names.”
“Then there will no family-making either.” They said with a whimper.
I looked at these two women. The number one wife I had purchased while still wearing the fur of youth. She had been with me for many years and had borne me two fine sons and only one daughter. She had been a faithful companion, and I had trained her to my moods well. She was no longer as sleek as she once was, but I would not discard her to the vagaries of the old womens’ compound. No, she was too well suited for the duties of running my home.
And the number two wife, sleek and sassy. Young she was, and only a wife of three cycles. She had borne me only daughters. She was spoiled and shrill.
Abruptly, I found myself mourning the loss of the number three wife, the modest and sweet one. She had talked little, and the others had bullied her, but she had been the most gentle. She had borne one son, but both she and he had been lost in the destruction of the old village.
I wondered about the possibility of gaining a new wife. Perhaps I should discard these two if they were going to be so difficult. After all, there were plenty of women around — they would jump at the chance to marry a man such as I.
But then, most of the good women were already married. It was only the flightier and shriller ones who were still single — and even the most comely of those was none too attractive.
Besides, if any other men were thinking in the same manner as I, there would be such a demand for wives that many would go without.
The possibility of trading my wives for the wives of someone else also occurred to me — but who wanted to inherit someone else’s bad habits? No, I would just as soon keep these women.
But, no family-making thing.
I could try taking them by force — but they would probably make such grimaces and terrible expressions that there would be no enjoyment in it.
No — I must be the master in my own house. If they would not accept my wishes, then I would discard them and bring in new wives. I could have my pick of the village. After all, was I not the Speaker?
But most of the wailing was in the compound of the unwed women!
These were the women who did most of the spinning — and they were the ones wailing the loudest about names.
But surely, I thought, surely there must be at least one or maybe two of these women who would be willing to forsake her name for the privilege of keeping my house and bearing my children. Surely there would be one who would do the family-making thing with me.
I was mistaken.
Too many other men had had the same idea — too many other men were too eager.
And the women wanted names.
We held another council meeting.
Hinc stood up and said, “I propose that we beat our wives thoroughly. Tell them we will allow them no names and will not permit a strike —”
There was a chorus of cheering. Clearly, it was a popular idea.
But a man of the Lower Village shook his head and said, “It won’t work, Hinc. We have already beaten our wives — and still they won’t work. They want names and no amount of beating will erase that desire.”
“But it’s unthinkable!”
“The women are incapable of thinking!”
“But we are not! Think about it! Beating will only increase their resentment!”
We thought about it.
We went home and beat our wives and thought about it some more.
We held another meeting. At last, we decided that a compromise might be in order. The word was Purple’s — as was the solution.
The women could have names — but names only to be used as identifiers. They would be unconsecrated names with no religious significance at all. Just words, so to speak, that might let us know which woman we were speaking of.
In other words, a woman’s name would be outside the influence of the Gods. . .
Shoogar grumbled at this — something about undermining the foundations of modern magic. He said. “By their very definition names are part of the object which they are the name of. You can’t separate the two. A flower is a flower is a flower.”
“Nonsense, Shoogar; a flower by any other name is still a flower!”
“Wrong, Lant — it’s only a flower because you call it a flower. If it weren’t a flower, it would be something else. It would be whatever you named it!”
“But it would still smell the same!”
“But it wouldn’t be a flower!”
We were getting off the track, “I’m sorry, Shoogar, but these names cannot be retracted. The best thing we can do is deconsecrate them and make the best of a bad situation. Make the women spellproof. Let the names be only meaningless words.”
“That’s just it, Lant. There are no meaningless words. All words have meanings, whether we know them or not. There can be no words that are not also specific symbols of the objects they are names of — and a symbol is a way to manipulate the object. When Purple says we must deconsecrate the names, he is talking foolishness. You cannot deconsecrate a name.
“Unh,” I said, “but Purple thinks so.”
“Purple thinks so! — Who is the magician here? Me or Purple?!”
“Purple,” I said meekly.
That brought him down. He glared at me.
“Well, this is his territory.”
Shoogar harrumphed and started picking through his spell devices.
I said, “Shoogar, you are as smart as he — surely there must be some way —”
He frowned. “H’m yes —” He considered it. “Yes, Lant, there is. I will simply consecrate every woman with the same name. Therefore no one will dare cast a spell on anyone else’s woman, because he will also be casting a spell on his own. And no woman would dare curse another because she would be cursing herself as well!”
“Shoogar — you are brilliant!”
“Yes,” he said modestly. “I am.”
The next day he went out and named all the women Missa. Gone were the Kates and Ursulas and Annes and Judys. Gone were the Karens and Andres, Marions, Leighs, Miriams, Sonyas, Zennas and Joannas. Gone were the Quinns.
Now there were only Missas. Trone’s Missas, Gortik’s Missas, Lant’s Missas.
It was the perfect solution. The men were happy, the women were happy — excuse me, the Missas were happy.
And best of all, they went back to spinning and working and doing the family-making thing.
Purple could call them whatever he wished — it wouldn’t make any difference. Their consecrated names were Missa. That was the only name that had any power.
The men of the village breathed a sigh of relief. Now we could get back to normal — the business of making a flying machine.
In order to disturb the production of the aircloth as little as possible the looms were being separated at the rate of only three a day. New looms were being built on other slopes instead of in the same general area as the first ones.
When Lesta had been told that he would have to separate the looms already built and working, he had groaned in dismay — the thought of moving all forty-five looms was frightening. But Purple had quickly pointed out that he need move only twenty-two; if he removed every other loom from the line, he would leave plenty of working space between the rest.
Shaking his head, Lesta went off to issue the orders.
Half of the new cloth was allocated to Purple’s construction. The rest was divided on a percentage basis. Each weaver was paid in product, the amount determined by his importance and by the labor he had performed.
Purple paid for his cloth with spell tokens. I had carved them, or my assistants had, to meet his needs. The first set of chips was given to Lesta to be distributed to his workers in the same proportion as the cloth.
At first neither Lesta nor the weavers understood their purpose, but when we explained that each was the pro
mise of a future spell, they nodded and accepted them.
Within a few days they were trading them back and forth among themselves in exchange for various labors. One group of the men was found rolling the bones for them: a common game, except that they had thought of exchanging chips according to the way the bones fell! Shoogar decided it was an offence against the Gods to trifle so with magic. They were severely warned, and their chips confiscated.
Still another man was found trading his wives’ family-making privileges for chips. We confiscated his wives.
Because the put-it-together lines were so efficient, the total production of aircloth was more than twenty percent greater than all of the villages’ previous cloth production combined. Of course Purple’s share comprised half of that production, but few of the weavers minded — without Purple, there would have been no aircloth at all. They knew that they would be able to trade it for much more than the old cloth.
For a while Purple considered appropriating all of the cloth for his flying machine, but he let himself be talked out of it. If the weavers felt they were working only for Purple’s benefit, they would be resentful and careless. If they knew they were working for themselves as well, they would treat each piece of cloth as if it were their own — as it might very well be, after the distribution.
Distributions were held every second hand of days. Most of the men received enough of the cloth for their own uses, and enough more for trading. The lesser weavers, the apprentices and novices whose labors did not add up to enough to make even one piece of cloth, were paid with a spell token. If they saved up three of them they could trade them for a piece of cloth.
That the cloth was highly valued was no secret. It soon became a mark of status to wear an aircloth toga, and trading for the material was fast and furious. Several men, head weavers in their own villages, took to clothing their wives in aircloth to show their own importance. But we put a stop to that soon enough.
It was not that they had not the right to parade their wealth, but they should not use their women for the purpose. The women were proud enough as it was — just with names. We didn’t need our wives complaining that so-and-so’s wife was wearing aircloth and why couldn’t they wear aircloth too?
Hurriedly, we stifled that trend.
Chastened, the weavers wore the clothes themselves — as many as they could. For a while it was the fad to wear one’s fortune on one’s back, but it stopped after a few days. This was still the wading season — the season of sweat.
There was another incident too. We had our first theft.
They were two of the lesser weavers — boys really — they had coveted Purple’s huge store of aircloth. They were from one of the other villages on the island and did not truly comprehend the importance of the flying machine project. They were only here for the weaving — and for the marvelous new aircloth.
But, being only apprentices, they weren’t paid in cloth, only in extra spell tokens, and they were bitter about it.
Most of the weavers, not needing airtight cloth, took it as it came from the looms. The threads of the linens were highly polished due to the dipping in housetree blood. The cloth had a luxuriously smooth, starchy feel to it.
Purple’s share of the cloth was set aside for its later treatment. It would have to be dipped again, this time m housetree-binding solution. It was this stockpile of waiting cloth that had tempted the boys.
They had been caught, of course. Although it was past midnight and most people were asleep, still the red sun was high in the west. Purple, whose sleeping habits were not like the rest of us, had accosted them — indeed had bundled into them, their arms laden with his stolen cloth.
The boys made the mistake of running for the weaving fields, Purple in hot pursuit, yelling, “Stop, thief! Stop!”
The midnight weavers did not know the word. But they saw two boys running and a screaming magician following, and they knew something was up. They headed off the boys, and held them for Purple.
At blue dawn we held a council: the magicians, the head weavers of the villages, and five Speakers including myself and Gortik.
“I don’t know how they expected to escape,” Purple confided in me. “Is there a standard punishment for —” He seemed to search for a word, “— this crime ?”
“How could there be? Such a thing has never happened before. I don’t know what we will decide.”
Purple looked astonished. He seemed about to speak; but then the proceedings began.
I said little. This was not a matter for me to decide. It was for the Speaker of the boys’ village. The boys stood trembling, off to one side. They were much the same age as my Wilville and Orbur.
The Speakers argued for most of the morning. There was no precedent, no basis for a decision.
At last it was Shoogar who decided it. Grumpily he stepped to the center of the ring. These boys have committed a theft,” he said. The word is Purple’s. Purple tells us that a theft is an offense where he comes from.
“Personally, speaking for myself, I consider it an act of foolishness — taking something from a magician is downright dangerous!”
There was a murmur of agreement.
Shoogar continued, “Obviously, because the property taken was a magician’s, this is not a matter for Speakers. It is a matter for magicians.”
This time the Speakers agreed heartily. Shoogar was taking them off the hook.
“It was aircloth that these two thieves wanted,” said Shoogar, advancing on the boys. They shrank away from him. Therefore, I propose that the punishment match the offense — I say we give them aircloth!”
And with that he unfurled the huge bolts of cloth the boys had taken from Purple. They were long strips, the first ones sewn together for the airbags. “Wrap them in it!” commanded Shoogar.
“Now, wait a minute —” began Purple.
Shoogar ignored him. The head weavers shoved the boys forward and forced them onto the ground, flat on the strips of cloth. “Roll them up!” said Shoogar. Tight! Roll them tight!” The weavers did so.
“But — Shoogar,” Purple protested, “they’ll suffocate.”
“I do not know the word,” said Shoogar, not taking his eyes from the struggling bulks in the cloth.
“It means to — to run out of oxygen.”
Shoogar threw him a glance. He may have remembered the word, but what of it? Oxygen was the gas Purple threw away when he made hydrogen from water. Throw-away gas.
“Fine,” he said. “They will suffocate.”
“You mustn’t,” said Purple. He was quite pale.
Shoogar turned away with a grimace.
Purple made a sound in his throat. I thought he would go after the other magician; but he did not.
The boys were completely bound up now, the weavers were tying the cloth firmly about them. They looked like giant sting thing larvae, long and brown and shapeless.
“We will leave them here until the next rising of the blue sun,” said Shoogar. “You will post men to see that no one comes near.”
When the boys were unrolled, they were stiff and dead.
Even Shoogar was shaken. “I had not expected —”
He shook his head slowly. “So that’s what suffocate means.” He circled the bodies. “A strong spell it must be. Look, not a mark on them.”
We looked. Their faces were dark and cold. Their tongues protruded, and their eyes bulged in amazement; but of wounds there were none.
When we told Purple, he made a sound of pain — but as if he had expected it, I thought. He went down to the clearing himself to see. “I shouldn’t have let him,” he said. “I should have stopped him.”
When he saw their stiff forms, he recoiled. He sank down upon a log and buried his head in his hands and sobbed. Even Wilville and Orbur edged away from him.
The fathers of the boys arrived then. They had been summoned from the other side of the island, and it had taken them almost a day to make the journey. When they learned what had h
appened, they began to wail. They had come to participate in a punishment ceremony, not a funeral.
I myself felt strange, empty, taken with a terrible sense of loss.
Gortik gathered up the thefted cloth, handling it with new respect, and presented it to Purple. Purple raised his head, looked at the offering. He shook his head vehemently, shrinking back. “Take it away. Take it away.”
In the end, we buried the boys in it.
* * *
Afterward I found Purple alone. He was sitting morosely on the unfinished airboat frame.
He looked at me, “I told Shoogar. They’ll suffocate. They won’t get enough oxygen.”
“Curse your throw-away gas anyway! They didn’t get any air, Purple! Your aircloth holds air out as well as gas in!”
“Yes, of course.” He looked puzzled.
“You knew? You knew!” I cried wildly. “You knew they would die! If you’d sat on Shoogar and made him listen — or told me! The boys had done nothing so very wrong —”
“Stop it!” he moaned.
“You let them die, Purple! For so small a thing?”
“But that’s the way it is in many savage societies!” he said. He stopped then and looked at me. Speechless.
“Savage societies?” I asked. “Is that what you think of us — that we are savages?”
“No — no, Lant, I —” He flailed about. “I thought that — I have never seen a punishment here. I did not know what | your penalties were. I thought Shoogar knew what he was doing. I — I — I’m sorry, Lant. I didn’t know —” He covered his face.
Suddenly, I was calm. Purple was outside all human experience. We had been assuming things about him just as he had been assuming them about us.
I asked, “Do they kill for theft, where you come from?”
He shook his head. “It is not necessary. When one commits a major crime, our — Advisors can tamper with the thief’s — soul, so that he can never do it again.”
I was impressed. “It is a powerful spell.”
“And a powerful threat,” said Purple. “A killer who has been so treated cannot even defend himself, or his children or his property. A treated thief could not theft water, though his house was burning … But, Lant, I do not understand — how can theft be so rare here? The boys took a thing that | did not — pertain to them; they did not build it or earn it or trade for it. How can this be unusual?”
The Flying Sorcerers Page 21
