Empery

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  That was the other thing Sujata learned: that she was good at doing the things the Service needed done. She had a knack, more trained than inherited, for making groups function smoothly—not by inspiring them, not by mastering every last detail of their task herself, but by reading the strengths of each individual and placing them where they could be most effective.

  In the world of outsiders there was opportunity for one with such a skill. On Maranit the road to the top was congested with other aspirants. Kinship and friendship and personality often counted as much as ability, and in those categories she had no special advantage. Seduced by praise she deserved but rarely heard, she stayed.

  Perhaps because of her lineage, rather than despite it, she had been well rewarded. Her first job had been as a minor project leader during the construction of USS-Central; her portion had come in ahead of schedule and within the conservatively set budget. From there she had gone to Microscopium Center as an associate deputy manager of base operations.

  Two promotions later she had moved on to Ba’ar Tell as Director of the Service’s office there. At each stop she had become more a part of the Service and less a part of Maranit.

  But throughout she had kept the lifecord, and if she had had fewer chances to wear it those years, that was not to say that it had become any less important to her. She still faithfully cared for it: the core of the sugar-brown necklace of intricately woven and knotted hair was now nearly twenty years old, but was still as silky and supple as when it had been part of her uncut tresses at age twelve. She had been late to menarche and so had welcomed the chance to begin work on her lifecord when it finally came.

  And she still faithfully observed the requirement to add to the lifecord yearly, so that the record it contained might be complete. According to tradition, the fragile strands held the memory of each hour and minute of that person’s life. When that individual died, the lifecord was treated with more reverence than the body and was commonly kept by the family as a memorial.

  Inevitably, anthropologists had come to dissect Maranit customs. With the imperiousness of superior knowledge, they had announced that while hair did indeed contain a continuous record of health and diet, dead protein offered neither the mechanism nor the structure to preserve emotion and experience. Like most Maranit, Janell Sujata found she did not care. What matter if a lifecord was not really a vault of memories, so long as when she contemplated it and touched it, she remembered?

  Concealed by the loose Shinn-style blouse she wore, Sujata’s lifecord was around her neck now as she walked through the corridors of Unity’s diplomatic section. Hanging from the cord was a smooth-surfaced pendant made of what seemed to be a finely grained wood but was in fact a tiny piece of Maranit itself. She had chipped her heartstone from the mother rock in Murlith the same day her hair was cut for the lifecord. Like all new heartstones, it had broken off jagged and ugly, characterless. The beauty it had since acquired had come solely from her.

  If the lifecord was a testament to accumulated experience, the heartstone was a test of character. Many a young girl made her fingers bleed trying to accomplish too much too quickly. It had taken Sujata eight years to work her stone, hand-rubbing its roughness smooth, imprinting her soul on its malleable heart. Only then had she been proud enough of her stone to hang it from her lifecord and so proclaim herself an adult.

  Lifecord and heartstone together—the merging of learning and experience with commitment and inner strength—made for the most precious and the most private possession a Maranit woman owned. Sujata had never allowed Wyrena to see it, or even to know that it existed. Created by Maranit sensibilities, it was fit only for Maranit eyes.

  She turned onto a wide boulevard flanked by yard apartments whose front doors opened not onto a sterile corridor but to a private patch of landscaped life lit from a high-arched glassine ceiling. The ground cover and flowers chosen by Environmental Maintenance were egocentrically Terran, to be sure, but the effect was still pleasing. Had the whole block that contained it not been security-restricted, Gegenschein Way would likely have been featured on the standard Unity tour.

  As she came up the walk toward the entrance to one of the apartments, the door slid open and a woman stepped to the opening.

  “Come in, Sujata,” Allianora said, and stepped aside to admit her.

  Wordlessly they readied themselves, shedding jewelry and blouses, scrubbing away makeup. The ritual of xochaya was familiar to each separately, even if they were relatively new to each other. It was not uncommon for sisters or close friends to sit down together weekly, or lovers daily. Sujata’s relationship with Allianora fit none of those categories, and in the three months since her arrival the two women had performed xochaya only three times.

  That was admittedly more Sujata’s doing than Allianora’s. As the senior ruler, Allianora had made the customary offer on first meeting, and Sujata had accepted, as politeness demanded. But whether due to the difference in age, Sujata’s separation from her own traditions, or simply as a matter of random incompatibility, they learned that time that Sujata did not read Allianora well. Xochaya required mutual trust, involved mutual risk, but could not promise mutual rewards.

  With a long-time mate on her diplomatic staff Allianora could gracefully sustain an occasional unequal match. Sujata was too aware of the one-sidedness to avail herself often of Allianora’s generosity. But there were times, like this, when the need was too great.

  Bare to the waist, hipwrap knotted on the private right instead of the public left, they sat down on opposite sides of a low table decorated with elaborate abstract carvings. Sujata placed her hands side by side on the table, palms down, fingers parallel, thumbs touching tip to tip. Allianora did the same, completing the cradle. Allianora’s hands reminded Sujata of her mother’s: the skin life-toughened, the ring finger almost as long as the middle. Closing her eyes, Sujata focused on her own breathing until it became deep, peaceful, and regular. The heartstone dangled between her breasts, swaying like a metronome and pacing her body’s fundamental rhythm.

  Sujata opened her eyes to find Allianora studying her closely. The focus of Allianora’s gaze was not Sujata’s face but just below. Sujata showed her acceptance of the scrutiny by returning it. Opening herself to Allianora’s reading, Sujata reached out with her eyes toward what Maranit artists called the “second face”—the breasts, lifecord, and heartstone of another. Together they spoke the pledge:

  Selir bi’chentya

  Darnatir bi’maranya en bis losya

  Ti bir naskya en bis pentaya

  Loris bir rownya

  Qoris nonitya

  I lower my mask

  Open my heart to your eyes

  My ears to your words of guidance

  Expose the flaws in my essence

  Make me whole

  Breaking the cradle, Allianora reached out with her right hand and closed her fingers around Sujata’s heartstone. Closing her eyes, she explored its sinuous surface with her fingertips, as if drawing through them the residue of Sujata’s unresolved emotion. After several minutes she released the stone and sat back on her heels.

  “You are unhappy,” Allianora said, opening her eyes. “The little one has complicated your life.”

  Sujata sighed deeply. “She’s working so hard to get close to me that she’s driving me away. She is endlessly solicitous. She apologizes anytime she imagines she has displeased me—and she imagines it often.”

  “Her need follows the path of dependence.”

  “But she wasn’t like this before,” Sujata said, taking her own heartstone in hand. “On Ba’ar Tell she was confident, playful. She came to me, not the other way around. Nothing would have happened between us if that hadn’t been true.”

  “This is your world, Sujata. It frightens her.”

  “Why should she be frightened? I’m as new to this Unity as she. But I find nothing frightening here.”

  Allianora smiled. “Because you have something important to do. You h
ave worth-making tasks enough to occupy you fully—as they did before she came. But you are her whole life now.”

  “I know that,” Sujata said resignedly. “But I don’t want to be.”

  “Because of the responsibility you feel toward her?”

  “It’s an unhealthy way to live, for either side.”

  “Don’t judge so harshly. None of us can fully escape that which we learn with the uncritical mind. You were able to introduce her to a new pattern because she was secure that the old was there for her to flee to. It was a game, an adventure. She was testing herself with the forbidden, and it took hold of her. Now she is here, without that security. All she has is the old patterns driven into her as a child.”

  “She never showed me this face before.”

  “She had no need to. What you describe is the way in which Ba’ar Tell women are taught to hold their mates. What you despise, men cherish because it brings gratification to them and peace to the household. If she is true to the pattern, you will never hear her complain, no matter how unhappy she becomes. One of the rules of compromise is to swallow your own unhappiness.”

  “She has shown that already,” Sujata said unhappily. “Allianora, I cannot share my home with this sort of woman.”

  “Then do not.”

  Sujata said nothing, and Allianora nodded. “I know. If you have conscience, you are as much a prisoner of her dependence as she is. How deep are your feelings for her?”

  “For the Wyrena I knew six months ago, very. For this stranger using her name and face—”

  “You know the choice, then,” Allianora said. “You can turn her out, solving your problem by increasing hers. Or you can swallow your own unhappiness long enough to help her to grow, against her will. That way you may rediscover the Wyrena you thought you knew—”

  That was when the interruption came: a grating buzz in Sujata’s right ear and a louder, more musical message alarm sounding from Allianora’s terminal in a far corner of the room. As Allianora rose from the table Sujata’s right hand went to the small depression behind her ear. With a practiced motion she pressed the skin-covered stem twice: once to silence the alert and once to retrieve the message.

  “Comité Janell Sujata: Chancellor Blythe Erickson wishes to advise you that a special session of the Steering Committee, Unified Space Service, has been called for 20:00 hours, Day 134, A.R. 654, in the customary place. Comité Janell Sujata—”

  As the message began to repeat, Sujata pressed the stem again to silence the transceiver and looked to Allianora, now standing by her net. “I presume yours is also about the Committee meeting?”

  “Yes,” Allianora said, standing at the net and studying the display. “How very odd—at night, and with only an hour’s warning.”

  “So it is unusual? I wondered.” Sujata stood and reached for her blouse. “Are you going to go?”

  “Are you?”

  “I have to,” Sujata said matter-of-factly. “And I’ll be doing well not to be late. Could you call down to the terminal and reserve a seat? Or two, if you’re coming.”

  “But we weren’t finished. I hate being interrupted. I don’t like leaving xochaya with so much still to talk about and so little resolved—”

  Sujata flashed a helpless, resigned smile. “What can we do? The Chancellor calls, for whatever reason.”

  Erickson had not intended that four days would slip by between the decision itself and its execution. In reflecting on her meeting with Wells and Berberon, only one course of action had recommended itself to her, and it was one best carried out quickly. The problem was that the Committee would not stand still.

  In calling a meeting, Erickson needed to give only an hour’s notice, not the three days that was her custom. For this particular session she determined from the start to give Wells as little time as possible to work on the rest of the Committee. But key individuals kept placing themselves more than an hour away—most notably Wells himself. By the time she was ready to move, he was already gone, on his way downwell in the middle of the night.

  By the time Wells returned the next day, Sujata had left to spend a long day reviewing productivity and safety problems with the staff of the Cluster B processing station, half a million klicks away—a good three hours even traveling by high-gee sprint. Then it was Wells’s turn again, off inspecting the sentinel Guardian, under construction in Yard 104. His shuttle was due back at Central in slightly more than twenty minutes;when it docked, all five members of the Committee would be on-station for the first time in four days.

  Wells’s trip to Earth troubled Erickson deeply. On orbit she could keep close tabs on anyone wearing a transceiver. She had no such authority on Earth, and her informal sources had returned few details of Wells’s brief visit. Aside from his general destination and the time elapsed between his landing and return, she knew nothing, had no clue who he had seen or what his business there might have been. It took little imagination to concoct ominous answers. She could only hope that, confident the next move was his, Wells had moved slowly enough to leave her an opening.

  Ka’in was the first to arrive, followed in short order by Rieke and Loughridge. Erickson sat in her alcove and made small talk with Rieke, using the Survey chief as a buffer against the curiosity of the others. As the others wandered in by ones and twos, both speculation and complaint were effectively squelched by Erickson’s presence, though an occasional stray comment reached her ear from the corridor outside.

  Wells arrived with five minutes to spare, looking somewhat worn and wrinkled from his travels and sporting a smear of lubricant along the right forearm of his Service blouse. He nodded politely to Erickson as he took his place, then turned his attention to the slate he carried.

  Those who had lingered outside in the corridor seemed to interpret Wells’s arrival as a signal that the meeting was about to start. They followed him in en masse, moving to their seats in a strange kind of silence.

  Sujata had been the farthest away and so was, unsurprisingly, the last to straggle in, breathless as though she had run all the way from the terminal. When 20:00 hours came, Prince Denzell and Elder Hollis were nowhere to be seen, but that did not matter; only the five who shared the center with her would have anything to say about what happened next.

  “First, I want to apologize for finding it necessary to call all of you away from whatever was occupying you this evening,” Erickson said, slowly scanning their faces. “I promise you that although what we are about to consider is important, it will not require much of our time. The sole purpose of this meeting is to consider a Chancellor’s Request for withdrawal by a sitting member of the Committee. No other business will be discussed.”

  There was a stirring, but Erickson did not pause long enough to allow it to become an interruption. “The reason cited in defense of this Request is Chancellor’s privilege. Although all authority does proceed from the Chancellorship, the fact is that the Director of any branch has considerable discretionary power. It is not possible for the Chancellor to exercise thoroughgoing and continuous oversight.

  “Nor should it be necessary. The Chancellor has the right to know that the executive officers acting in her name are also acting in accord with her stated objectives and principles, even if they should personally disagree with them. It was evident the last time we gathered here that a fundamental disagreement exists between Comité Wells and myself. Unfortunately I no longer have full confidence that Comité Wells accepts the condition and principle I just described.

  “I want to make perfectly clear that I am requesting the withdrawal of Comité Wells solely on the basis of Chancellor’s Privilege. I do not mean to imply in any manner or degree that Comité Wells is unfit for his post or to suggest he has deliberately abused his authority—nor do I believe that either of those is true. Comité Wells has been a dedicated member of the Service, and I would like to see him continue with the Service in a different capacity.”

  Erickson touched her console, and the secretary took
over.“Comité Wells, the Chancellor has requested that you voluntarily withdraw from your position as Director of Defense and a member of this Committee. Do you accede to this request?”

  “I do not,” Wells said firmly.

  “Comité Wells declines to withdraw,” confirmed the secretary. “A vote on removal is in order. Comité Wells, do you wish to make a statement?”

  “I do.”

  “You have one minute and twenty seconds.”

  Wells took several of those seconds to compose his thoughts, pursing his lips and staring at the recording pylon in the center of the arena. Then he straightened up in his seat, folded his hands across his lap, and raised his head to look directly at Erickson. He spoke softly at first, but his eyes were hard and unyielding.

  “I appreciate the Chancellor’s effort to spare me public humiliation by couching her demand in the least contentious terms, by cloaking it in the most admirable principles,” Wells said. “I am only sorry that my conscience will not permit me to do the same.”

  Shifting forward in his seat, Wells continued in a voice suddenly steel-edged and commanding. “The fact is that this vote has nothing to do with Chancellor’s Privilege,” Wells said. “This vote is about survival. If you vote as Chancellor Erickson asks, you are voting for timidity, for weakness, for vulnerability. You are voting to prolong the terror with which we’ve already lived for more than a hundred years. You are voting, should it come to that pass, for our dream to become a nightmare, for our people to again die screaming under the weapons of an alien race.”

  He sat back in his chair, gripping the armrests tightly with his hands. “If you don’t believe that can happen, if you’re confident the Mizari are nothing more than the boogeymen in a sixty-thousand-year-old scare story, then you should vote as Chancellor Erickson wishes you would. But if even part of you knows or fears, as I do, that the Mizari are still a threat to us, then there is only one way you can vote and only one course the Service can take—”