“As though watching from singularity tellus,” said the god Perfecta: “Singularity luna revolves at 3h 4m 33s , 17° 11' 55", with singularity sol at 15° 1h 24m 41s, 8° 53' 57"—”
“As though you were the watcher . . . ?” the Blessèd Femysade interrupted, murmuring dreamily.
“Yes,” the god said, and returned to speaking the requisite quantities. As soon as Perfecta had finished, the Blessèd Femysade began to spill forth numeric babble, which after some time she broke to say—more apologetically than her wont—“The last few hundredths of a percent cannot, of course, be accounted for with certainty. I therefore finish with fatidic notation.”
The younger god, who stared avidly into her little handheld ceramic, all achirp and aglimmer, glanced up. “Yes, of course,” the god said. “Please do go on.”
The Blessèd Femysade spoke, and finished.
“Well, child?” The elder god exclaimed to younger, “What does the bright medium say?”
Ah, interesting—the gods too can suffer crushing disappointment. With trembling voice and clearly on the verge of tears, Perfecta said, “She cannot be the one, or else the prophecies are voided. The Blest has answered wrongly.” The younger god spoke another, presumably differing and correct answer.
The Blessèd Femysade listened with head cocked at first in bemusement, then shaken impatiently. “Faulty numbers, maga. You fail to calculate observer effect—which condition, be reminded, you did require. Factor once more, this time including the perturbation you would cause as a telekinetic watcher. My assumption was that, as Ashëan archmage, you would minimally disturb the observation, and could approach pure quantum measurement, having attained pellucidity. Can you; have you?”
Perfecta sat a moment, lips parted, the question appearing to catch her up short. “Of course,” the god said as one whose honor is grossly impugned; but then, confessionally: “for the most part.”
“Well, do not sit there mouth-hanging-open, child!” the elder god all but shouted. “Have the bright medium recalculate.”
“I am, Nana; I have!” Perfecta again watched her glowing ceramic. “And it appears that the Blessèd Femysade is . . .” correct! She was, verily, the subject and objective of the gods’ long wait and search these many generations.
Why now? Why today? Aqib may have spoken the questions aloud.
Ancient auguries, refined only yesterday in a scriptomancy cast by Adónane, had brought the gods here today, to them. Lucretia, daring to speak up, said, “And please, O Prophet, with what question did you qualify the cosmogenetic probabilities?” though she couldn’t’ve but known the price of such forwardness: mother reaching round father, and with fingertips, smiting the back of her head.
Adónane, indulgent, answered. “We knew from past great oracles that the Awaited One would be full grown at this time, living in some great nation. We knew too that she would very likely be a witch of strange mutation. Who, we didn’t know, nor where exactly. So those were my questions, Blessèd child. A lesser prophet gives terribly vague answers, in obscure words; and in recent generations, the Enclave has given rise only to prophets of lesser gifts. Mine are not, however: and great power speaks with clarity. When I awoke from trance, this is what I’d written.” She passed across a sheet of creamy paper. The Blessèd Femysade glanced, and then set it aside in the grass. Pensively she looked out into the glare-washed middle distance beyond the shady grove.
(Aqib gathered the paper up, but found no images thereon: only women’s business, a chicken-dance of blots and scratches that yielded no meaning he could glean. He passed the sheet to his daughter. “Pumpkin? Will you make sense of this for your papa?”
Lucretia looked the scribbles over. Her father had whispered, so she did as well. “It’s very easy, Master Aqib,” the child said. “The paper only has our names, all squoze together without spaces. LucretiaAqibFemysade is written here.”
“Thank you. And do say ‘squeezed,’ darling.” He kissed the top of his daughter’s head.)
They were very canny, Aqib thought, in their manner of persuading the Blessèd Femysade. The gods offered her nothing material. “Such capacity as now you have, Blest,” said the elder god, “to grasp and parse a problem would be enhanced one thousandfold. Yes!—it is exciting, isn’t it? At home in the Enclave, we have prosthetics that can magnify a superior mind even to that degree. With a flickering thought, you might disentangle seeming paradoxes that would cost you a lifetime’s struggle in your mathematicon. We have such wonders to show you, Blest. Ashê’s true gods left to us, flying in the uppermost airs around the planet, a sentinel eye trained out upon the universe. With it, we can see to the surface of other worlds, and watch the comets pass, even as closely as that bee there settles onto that flower. We Ashëans have means to step, a living ghost, from our bodies, and then walk upon those distant worlds, or ride those comets across the sky. And though you, descending impurely from Ashê, lack sufficient telekinesis to requantize matter, still, in our sanctum across the bayou, even a witch-miscegenate such as you can work miracles. And so many marvels besides, we hope to offer you, Blessèd Femysade: knowledge. Science of the highest order, all spread out at your feet . . .”
Her eyes shone. Never had Aqib seen the Blest quite so moved. Not when she’d sometimes allowed him into her mathematicon, in bygone days, to sit quietly watching while she worked, and then some rare eureka! lit up her face. Not after the best fêtes, sublime music, delirious dancing, heady wine. Not when trying his utmost to please her well, and doing so—or so said her softly relaxed body, her limbs sprawling out, smile lazy and affectionate. She’d said so in words, too, at times. And one could trust any praise the Blessèd Femysade offered, for she never gave too much. Aqib hadn’t seen her look so when Her Grace the Queen took from the midwife’s hands a whole and healthy infant, and settled granddaughter into daughter’s arms.
She will leave us, Aqib thought. Then it seemed to him that, if the gods had already labored at this endeavor for so many of their long generations, then the Blest’s help notwithstanding, a solution could hardly come overnight. The Blessèd Femysade might be away from him, from her daughter, from Olorum itself, for much longer than a season or two. It seemed to Aqib that years and decades—maybe all of a lifetime—were more likely. Tenderness was in her, and Aqib must appeal to it. He must beseech his wife to consider them, too, in her decision—
The younger god, with a fulsome smile, turned abruptly to Aqib. “Sanctified Cousin,” said Perfecta, “I think you’d better take your daughter to relieve herself. The child really has to go. And you yourself have yet to break the fast. Your tongue is parched for water, and your belly rumbles for food. Why not help yourself to some refreshment? We and the Blessèd Femysade shall linger here for a while, talking.”
But Aqib wished to stay and hear! “But I—”
The Blest lifted a forefinger. “Husband.”
“Darling, come with your papa,” Aqib said to his daughter. “Let’s find you a privy, and then see about some nuncheon, too.”
“You will,” the god Perfecta said, “let His Holiest Majesty know all we’ve said here, won’t you?” Like some gust of wind, these words struck Aqib a soft bodywide blow, hot on his skin as sunny brilliance. (At times the gods spoke without moving their lips or making any sound. And yet Aqib could still hear them, as from a distance, tinnily, as now:
“Perfecta,” Adónane murmured reprovingly.
“Oh, it’s just a little geas, Nana! So, he’ll tell our story nicely.”)
They left, the Blessèd Femysade’s pretty husband and obedient daughter. His one glance back stirred some ancient recognition. Seeing his wife so statuesque, so darkly fine, side by side with the gods, Aqib thought she did look some kin to them, a sort of lesser scion. Did the Olorumi cousinry owe all their health and height, beauty and longevity, to dribs and drabs of Ashëan ancestry?
No sooner had father and daughter come indoors from the colonnade than it seemed half the court of Olorum pounc
ed on them.
“Well?” The king seized Aqib by both arms and shook him once, hard. “What in six blue hells do they want?”
Lucretia had seen huge uncles, huge grandfather, and huge Cousins handle her little father often enough, and with just such casual roughness, that she no longer screamed and threw herself desperately into the fray. She hung her head in misery, upset for him. Aqib saw the girl’s nurse there in the crowd, and with a sharp nod bade the woman to bear his daughter away.
“They say that you, Most Holy, wish to build a sturdy fort beside the sea, the better to defend Olorum against the corsairs who raid our coasts so often. In aid of its construction, the gods would offer their every device and talent. The power of the Ashëan Enclave, they say, could raise a citadel such as the world has never seen. The gods say, too, you foresee that Olorum, like an ever-growing creeper vine, will sprawl out in new districts as the decades pass—someday extending as far north as the Monkey forests, just as lately the City has spread down the eastern bayou to the sea. The gods say this worries you. If the municipal sewers and irrigation canals already fall short of present-day boundaries, how much worse shall things become latterly? But even as the gods did construct the original public works, so would they happily modernize the City—how and wheresoever Olorum require it, according to your judgements, Most Holy. They would gladly populate all the new waterways with their tonic flora and purifying fauna, so that every Olorumi, common or Cousin, remains free of the plagues that now decimate the outskirt shantytowns. Yet the gods beg you to see, Most Holy, that these feats must try even the resources of the Ashëan Enclave—that such gifts must come dear.”
Although most women liked men, powerful and strapping, some few did prefer a slim, gorgeous effeminate. Obviously the king would never have chosen the latter for a son-in-law, but the Blessèd Femysade seemed content with her choice. His Holiest Majesty therefore loosed his grip, and even pinched and jerked at the shoulders of Aqib’s mussed robe, straightening it. For a moment or two, the king stood by in pensive amazement, considering lifelong dreams suddenly attained. It was the Blest, Aqib’s sister-in-law, who spoke the burning question.
“And what do they want in return, Brother-in-law?” she said. “Something from Femysade, it seems—but what, exactly?”
“What else?” Aqib gave a fatigued little wave. “Maths.”
“Maths?” cried the king, waking from preoccupation. “What kind of maths?” One knew by the rise and crack of his voice that His Holiest Majesty felt it absurd, exchanging a bit of women’s business for such weighty boons. “What earthly maths shall my little girl do for them that the gods cannot?”
Aqib raised placating hands. “Holiest of Olorumi, I swear I do not know. One god said the Blest inherits a quality they call savance. The other said, she has a freakish talent for ‘psionic modeling,’ for—what did they call it?—‘coding in three dimensions and time.’”
“Oh, surely not, Son-in-law,” said Her Grace. “Surely you have misunderstood, Aqib-sa! Those are Ashëan sciences, and we mortals lack faculties even to perceive, much less practice them.”
“The gods, Your Grace, said they would admit the Blest into their deepest sanctum across the bayou. There, aided by ‘numinal prosthetics,’ they say she shall surpass even their best. The Blessèd Femysade will know and see such things as no one now can. The quarks and quanta. A world virtual, and of spirit. Psionics. Oh, I do not know what all!”
“Steady, Brother-in-law.” The Blest his sister-in-law cupped Aqib’s elbow with a comforting hand. “Steady, there. If this has thrown us all into disarray, how much more so for you, poor little Cousin Aqib, summoned here so abruptly, without forewarning?” She was a very gentle woman, of calming presence and sweet voice. “The gods believe that my sister can help them with the Photoassumption?”
Aqib nodded tiredly. Indeed, he was very hungry, and thirsty too. “Yes,” he answered. “The elder god, the prophet Adónane, said no one alive, no one who has yet lived, can do more to aid the Ashëans in joining the formers-of-terra, the true gods, who are now in heaven. The Blessèd Femysade shall teach the gods to become light.”
Part Three
“Dey would fight yuh all night long and next day nobody couldn’t tell you ever hit ’em. Dat’s de reason Ah done quit beatin’ mah woman. You can’t make no mark on ’em at all. Lawd! wouldn’t Ah love tuh whip uh tender woman . . .”
Zora Neale Hurston
[eighth day]
Softness pressed his lips, and grit, and bitter salts. In lamplight and shadow, he opened his eyes to Lucrio—stinking of horses, grimy and sweat-soaked—kissing him. Aqib caught him round the neck and tried to draw him down to bed, but Lucrio wouldn’t come. “I’m all nasty. Let go, man!” He pulled away and, laughing, stood.
Aqib sat up in the sheets. “No, come to bed. I was waiting for you.”
“You were sleeping is what.” Lucrio unfastened back from breastplate. “Just wait here for me. I’ll be right back.” He shucked off his tunic, muddied with sweat and dust. The hair of his body lay in wet whorls across his chest and legs.
“We’ll only go and wash up again, once you’ve had your way with me,” Aqib said. “So you may as well have me now, as you are.”
“Nah. Let me wash up first. Cavalry maneuvers all damn day with the prince—mayhebeBlessed—and that man had us on the field even after dark, with godslights up. I was thinking about nothing but getting back here, going out back of the taberna to the bathing channel, to clean myself up for you.” Lucrio unwound his loincloth.
“But, Lucrio, do wear a robe out this time,” Aqib said. “You mustn’t go about thus, displaying your glory to any and all. It’s . . .” a thing menials and drudges do, going about naked “. . . bad form to pass through the fondac unclothed for bathing, causing scandal. We Olorumi are not so free with our bodies as you Daluçans.”
“You’re free enough with the doors closed.” Lucrio crawled over the sheets and—rank and soapy with sweat—pushed him flat to take a kiss. “But everybody will be just fine. It won’t hurt ’em none to see a bit of culus and mentula. They all either got one or seen it before.”
Before Aqib could admonish further, or catch hold of him properly, Lucrio had leapt from bed and ducked away through the portiere—and no doubt he’d tarry, for he swam like an eel and loved to do so. The naked slap of Lucrio’s footsteps sounded down the passage and out the back of the fondac. Already Aqib missed him; but he missed sleep, too, and inexorably subsided down into the sheets again. Lately the interval between closing his eyes to predawn gray and snapping them open for morning blue had dwindled to nearly nothing. Even hale and in love, youth had its limits. He’d rest his eyes for just a moment . . .
Uproar erupted at the front of the fondac—down where the hall gave to the refectory. A girl shrilled, and another woman. Then men bellowed, struck, and were struck in turn. Startled awake, Aqib thought at first these were the sounds of bloody murder, but then the furor resolved in his ears as overwrought bickering among menials left unsupervised. He rose from the sheets and threw on a robe—meaning to rebuke the whole lot of menials in terms none of them should soon forget. Aqib swept aside the room’s portiere, stepped out, saw:
All the late-night custom had quit the place. Gourd bowls and clay cups, overturned or shattered, littered the floor around denuded tabletops. Spattering half the refectory’s palmyra mats was the tipped-over communal dish of long-cook-gravy and corn. A wailing boy—the child who filled the cups—made tracks up the hallway, dodging past Aqib. Screaming, the menial with the green kerchief pushed herself up to standing against a wall: the whole left of her face already swollen from some heavy blow, her lower lip split. Aqib now recognized his own name being shouted amidst the obstreperities, and the word “Where?” He ran headlong toward the ruckus. The Corporal dashed together heads of cook (come out the kitchen, clearly) and bouncer (come in from the porch) and flung away the two men, stunned and reeling. Before the menial could hurl hersel
f onto the monster again, Aqib caught the girl in his arms, said into her ear, “Fetch Master Daluçan at the bathing channel,” and opened his embrace toward the long hallway. He hurled himself onto the monster.
Aqib never could fight, being a coward and weakling. Since two or three years of age, when his brother was seven or eight, Aqib would only crouch, cover his head, and cry. But to rebuke one’s inferiors with sharp words was one thing, quite another to lay hands upon the helpless. Aqib knew the despair of that extremity only too well: what it meant to have no recourse except to yield, and yet be met with violence anyway. So the abuse of menials was unbearable to him. No other cause—certainly not his own—would make him lift up his voice and flail his arms uselessly. The Corporal knew well how to get a rise from his too-gentle brother; he called this “rousing your spirits.” Many a menial woman and girl had been pinched and roughly grabbed, men and boys had their heads bounced against walls, just to inspire such an inept attack. Normally he would then laugh while applying a beating to his younger brother. But tonight the Corporal was angry.
He jerked Aqib about, rag-doll-style, laying in slaps and shouts. “Whore!” figured in that noise, and “ . . . your Daluçan?” The Corporal’s hand struck right then left cheek, stunningly—palm and back, palm and back, as the harder sort of man corrects his wife. Repeatedly the soft world burst against a world of hurt, and wouldn’t it be just lovely to catch a glimpse of Lucrio about now, rushing this-way up the long hall? To him it would doubtless seem that older brother meant to kill his younger, though that wasn’t so. The little things understood within a family are unaccountable to others. That Big Brother only means to teach the baby a proper lesson, as before when they were still very young, as always. That nothing edifies a fool so well as pain. That, for soft boys needing to grasp real men’s ways, nothing served better than a beating.
A Taste of Honey Page 5
