"I wasn't kidding, dear," Rod said softly. "We were being gentle."
"Relatively," Yorick agreed. "But then, everything is relative, isn't it? According to the anthropologists, I'm even a relative of yours."
"Removed," Rod said quickly. "Several times removed—but not far enough."
"Aw, you're just a stickler about the straight line of descent," Yorick groused.
"Sure." Rod shrugged. "It's mine. We've got a common ancestor—but you guys branched off into a dead end road that fizzled out."
"If you can call a hundred thousand years 'fizzling out,'" Yorick snorted. "As to its being a dead end—well, at least we left Terra in good shape, when we ran off."
"Gentlemen!" Gwen held up her hands, one palm toward each mouth. "Will it please thee to hear what our sergeant did outside the Wall, yestermorn?"
"Yeah, that would be nice." Rod turned back to her, all attention. "He never went anywhere near the Sun-Greeting Place, did he?"
"Not by a league," Gwen confirmed, "nor a dozen leagues, for all that."
Yorick frowned. "Spare me the suspense. What was he doing outside the Wall?"
"He did perform the role of a courier," Gwen explained.
"The General-Governor had sent him to bear word to the Chartreuse tribe." She turned to Rod, frowning. "Tis an odd name for a color."
"Unchartered territory," Rod agreed. "So what was he telling the Chief?"
"Yeah." Yorick frowned. "Why the hell did he have to go out in the middle of the night?"
"For that," Gwen explained, "the Chartreuse tribe had borrowed a great sum from the General's—'bank,' did he call it?"
"Savings," Rod explained. "Think of embers banked, to be saved through the night, dear."
'"Tis an odd word, yet an odder thought." Gwen turned to him, frowning. "Why do these folk not keep their money themselves? Wherefore must they give it to others to save for them?"
"Too much chance of thieves," Rod explained. "This way, instead of always worrying about robbers, they only have to worry about the banker—and they always know where he is."
"Almost always," Yorick qualified.
"Well, true," Rod admitted. "Anyway, it's much more efficient."
"An thou sayest it," Gwen sighed, "though I bethink me I'll comprehend thy 'gravity' sooner than thy banks."
"Just think how the Wolmen feel. So the Chartreuse tribe owes the Bank of Wolmar a lot, huh?"
"Aye, yet they did have the wherewithal to repay stored in the bank. Naetheless, they had sent to ask for the…" she scowled "… for the… 'interest rate?'… on the loan, as it did compare with the 'interest rate' they did receive, on their saved money." She frowned. "What is this 'interest rate,' my lord? Doth it denote the degree of attention the Chief doth pay to the Banker?"
Rod had to swallow hard. "I suppose you could say that, dear. What it means, though, is how much the bank is paying the Chartreuse tribe for the use of its money."
Gwen stared. "But why would the bank wish to use money?"
"Same reason any of us would," Yorick sighed.
"To invest, dear," Rod explained, "Say, to buy shares in a captain's trading voyage. He wants to make the voyage right now, not in ten years, which is how long it would take him to save up the money by himself."
"Then this bank will make more money from the captain?"
"A lot more, and it'll deal with lots of captains, not just one."
Gwen frowned, eyeing him strangely, then sighed. "An thou sayest it. I ken the meaning of the words, but I do not ken the manner of thought that doth produce it."
Rod said "I'm not certain about it, myself."
"Yet wherefore doth the bank pay the Chartreuse for the use of their money, whiles the tribe doth pay the bank for the use of its money? It doth but go about and about in a circle, my lord! It maketh no sense!"
"I'm not sure it does to me, either," Rod confessed. "But I think it works this way: if the Wolmen are getting twelve percent—twelve BTUs for every hundred—and are only paying ten percent for the money they've borrowed, they make two percent profit by keeping the money in the bank, instead of using it to pay off their loan."
Gwen stared.
Then she took a deep breath, and said, "Yet the bank thereby doth lose this two percent thou speakest of! Wherefore doth it pay more than it doth receive?"
"I can't make sense of that one, either," Rod confessed. "The only thing I can think of is that Shacklar must run the bank, and that he's willing to take the loss to make the Wolmen dependent on him. After all, if a man has all your money locked up, you're… not… too… apt to make war on him!" He stared, his eyes huge. "My lord! Of course! He's buying them off!"
"Yet, then, if they send to learn of their money's interest, doth it not mean…" Gwen's eyes rounded, too. "Nay, certes! They did seek to recover their money, that they might be free to make war!"
"Without taking a loss on it," Rod said grimly. "Which is plenty of reason for Shacklar to send a courier out in the middle of the night. Just what was the message he carried?"
"That the interest rate was but now increased by five parts in a hundred."
"A five percent hike, on the spur of the moment?" Rod goggled, and Yorick whistled. "This Chartreuse chief knows how to bargain! Nothing like the threat of war to motivate the General into giving them a little extra profit."
"Very sharp," Rod agreed. "What did the Chartreuse tribe send back—a polite 'Yes,' or a withdrawal slip?"
"Sergeant Thaler did bear back word lauding General Shacklar for his honesty, and naught more."
"Which means they left their money on deposit." Rod drew a deep breath. "Y'know, Shacklar's not too bad a horse trader himself. What's five percent against forestalling a war? He may just have had the right idea, trying to bring the Wolmen into the modern world." But he wasn't sure that applied to Gwen.
"Here, then!" Cholly's voice called down the stairwell. "Have a care, mister and missus! Here's one who wants't' talk't' yer!"
Rod looked up, adrenaline thrilling through him.
Chornoi came down the steps, face a bright pink.
Gwen smiled. "Thou dost seem newly scrubbed."
"Of course," Chornoi snapped. "Wouldn't you be?"
"Aw! I thought you looked good in that color," Yorick protested.
Rod relaxed, feeling the adrenaline ebb. "Yeah, it was the real you."
"Oh, stuff it!" she blazed.
Rod stared, taken aback for a moment. "What's the matter? Didn't you like being a Wolman?"
"What do you think?" she snorted. "It's not easy, being Orange."
Yorick pushed a crate over with his foot. "Sit. Tell us what's happening under the big open skies."
"Do not heed their impudence," Gwen advised. "Truly, within, they rejoice to see thee home and hale."
"They sure hide it well," Chornoi growled.
"Thanks." Rod nodded. "Now, tell us what happened out there."
Chornoi snorted, and dropped down on the crate. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
They stared at her for a moment.
Then Rod sighed and leaned back. "We couldn't really expect anything more, anyway. But somebody must have come to the Sun-Greeting Place."
"Oh, he did—and it was Hwun, all right."
"But he smelled a rat?" Then Rod struck the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Of course—what's the matter with me? He knows every member of his tribe by sight! Why didn't I…"
"Don't worry, I did." Chornoi's mouth turned down at the corners. "He's a Purple chief, so I was wearing Orange paint. And I staged it well: When he came up in the false dawn there, with the sky just beginning to glow in the east, he found me on my knees, weeping." Her eyes lost focus; she gave a slow, critical nod. "Yeah, I did it well… He just stood there for a few minutes. I pretended I didn't notice. Then he reached down and grabbed my shoulder." She winced. "He grabs hard! Talk about a grip of steel…"
"I trust he did not hurt thee!" Gwen frowned, concerned.
Ch
ornoi shook her head. "I don't think he meant to, and I suppose he was sympathetic, by his lights. He said, 'Woman. Why you weep?'"
"Wait a minute." Yorick held up a finger. "Didn't he want to know your name?"
Chornoi shook her head. "No need. I was from another tribe—that was all he needed to know. And that I wasn't trespassing—because I was on sacred ground, which is open to all. So I told him that I was weeping for the man who was killed yesterday morning. And Hwun said, 'But him not of your tribe.'"
"Oh, did he!" Rod lifted his head slowly. "That means the corpse must've still had his body-paint on when Hwun found him."
"Which means Hwun washed it off." Yorick frowned.
"Yeah, to hide the victim's identity." Rod scowled. "Why would he want to do that?"
But Chornoi was shaking her bowed head, waving her hands in front of her, palms out. "No! Hold it! Stop! You're both missing the main point!"
"Which is?" Rod asked.
"That Hwun wants to get all the tribes together, and the dead Wolman could be a very powerful common focus. But it'll work much better for that, if nobody can tell which tribe he came from."
They sat still for a moment. Then Rod nodded slowly. "Yeah… that could be…"
"More than 'could,'" Chornoi snorted.
"Then he did tell thee thou wert not of the slain man's tribe?" Gwen said.
Chornoi nodded. "So why was I weeping? Well, I had to think fast, I tell you! But I did, and I told him I was weeping for all Wolmen, that I would weep for any, who died at the hands of the Colonists!" She frowned. "I was waiting for him to tell me to stand up, but he never did."
"And for him to warm toward a weeping woman?" Rod said softly.
Chornoi glared at him. "I told you, I don't fit their standards of beauty!"
Rod didn't believe it. "Even so—you were female, and grieving. And you're young enough. You were waiting for something resembling a chivalrous response, weren't you?"
Chornoi held the glare a moment longer. Then her mouth twisted, and she admitted, "Yes, I was. But there wasn't any—not the ghost of a one."
Yorick grinned. "Well, you knew the Wolmen were a bunch of male chauvinists."
"Sure," Rod cut in. "Any primitive culture's going to be patriarchal."
"Not 'any.'" Yorick held up a palm. "But these guys are. Comes from imitating commercial fiction, no doubt." He turned back to Chornoi. "So you stood up anyway, huh?"
She shrugged, irritated. "I was getting a crick in my neck."
"So you stood up," Rod inferred. "Slowly, sinuously, with a few discreet wriggles."
Fury flared in Chornoi's eyes, but she didn't answer.
"It didn't work?" Rod said gently.
The fury faded a bit. Reluctantly, Chornoi inclined her head. "All he did was start reasoning. He pointed out that I shouldn't take it so hard. As a bona fide female, I had more to gain from the colonists than to lose."
Rod scowled. "Was he being sarcastic or something?"
Chornoi shook her head. "No… From his tone, he was just stating the facts of the case. As though it was a logical point, you know?"
"These subsistence cultures end up preoccupied with common sense," Yorick said. "So how did you answer that one? After all, there is a surplus of Wolman women, with the resulting polygamy." He frowned. "Odd, though—you wouldn't expect a leader to be quite so carefree about one of his people's women going to the men of his enemies."
"Well, that's just where I hit it. I put on the big indignant scene—that no true Wolwoman would want a man all to herself, if that man wouldn't be a Wolman, just a colonist. But Hwun just went on telling me, in that emotionless style of his, that it would make much more sense for me to have one man all to myself, if I could.
Rod frowned. "I thought he was trying to get the Wolmen out of association with the colonists."
"So did I. I stepped a little closer, snapping that there would've been plenty of Wolmen to go around, if the colonist soldiers hadn't killed off so many of our men in the war. But Hwun told me that there are always two percent more female children surviving infancy than male… I wonder who does his statistics?"
Yorick shook his head, looking dazzled. "Odd bunch of primitives they've got here."
"Must be Cholly and his educational force." Rod shrugged. "I'm surprised he didn't quote the last IDE census at you."
"No, but he did finally get around to praising my patriotism. Almost as an afterthought. Then he fed me some sort of line about how literate cultures always destroy oral cultures, then swallow them up or kill off their members."
Rod just stared at her for a moment. Then he said, "Not exactly what I usually think of as a call to arms."
"Well, it could have been, if he hadn't sounded like some damn professor!"
Rod wondered at her irritability. Of course, Chornoi was always touchy… "So what did he say to comfort you?"
"Nothing." Chornoi turned away in disgust. "All of a sudden, he spun around and ran over to the stone step. And believe me, he can sprint!"
"Primitives stay in good physical shape," Yorick assured her.
"Not that good! I swear he could've run a horse race without the horse!" She shook her head, exasperated. "He got there just in time, too. He barely set foot on the stone, and the sun came up."
"Natural sense of timing," Yorick said.
"Which some people don't have." Rod fixed him with a beady eye.
Chornoi shook her head in exasperation. "Talk about a wasted night!"
"Oh, I don't know." Rod pursed his lips. "At least, now we're pretty sure he didn't want anybody to know which tribe the corpse came from. That's something."
"Not much," Chornoi snapped, but Gwen smiled with gentle amusement. "Thou shouldst not be so aggrieved, solely for cause that he did not sway to thy charms."
Rod's eyebrows shot up as he turned to look at her.
Chornoi sat very still, paling. Then she heaved a sigh. "All right, so my feminine pride's been hit. How'd you know, Ms.?"
Gwen answered with a shrug of her shoulders. "The lilt of thy voice, the tilt of thine head. Thou art quite knowledgeable in the use of thy womanhood, art thou not?"
"I've gotten pretty good at it," Chornoi admitted, "ever since I found out that the Wolmen have a very stiff code of honor where women are concerned—especially unmarried ones. It was such a welcome relief from my fellow colonists!"
"Also safer?" Rod guessed.
Chornoi nodded, chagrined. "I've always been a favorite with them, and not just because I was disaffected. Maybe they all thought I'd make a nice addition to their lodges, I don't know—but it was nice to be treated like a lady again after all these years. And I got to be pretty good at flirting." She sounded vaguely surprised.
Rod frowned. "But if their code of honor was so stiff that they wouldn't even try to seduce you…"
"Oh, I didn't say that!" Chornoi glared icicles at him. "They all did, always, every single one. That was what was so nice about it. I could flirt all I wanted to, then say 'No,' and they'd accept it. Even if they didn't want to, they'd stop right away."
"But this Hwun did not attempt to seduce thee?"
"Not a bit, not the tiniest flirt. Not even a leer, let alone a bedroom eye."
Rod cocked his head to the side. "But it sounded as though he was interested in you."
";
"Oh, yeah! In who I was, and why I was there, but beyond that… Well, he didn't even seem to be aware that I was female!"
Yorick shook his head. "Odd. Definitely odd. Anomalous, in fact. Y' might expect that kind of thing in a civilized culture, but…"
"Whoa! Hold it!" Chornoi's palm went up. "What makes you so sure the Wolmen aren't civilized?"
"Because the word means 'citified,'" Yorick answered, irritated. "At least pick legitimate nits, will you?"
"Yet wherefore wouldst thou look for such behavior in cities, yet not in the country?" Gwen asked.
"Because it takes a higher degree of technology to build cities than
to build temporary villages," Yorick said. "I suppose I really should have said 'highly-technological,' instead of 'civilized.' I mean, can you really call it a 'city' if it's only got a hundred thousand people, and not a single factory?"
"Yes," Rod said, with conviction.
Yorick shrugged. "All right, so we're down to definitions. Me, I think of industrial ugliness as a 'city'—you know, steam engines, power looms, railroads, factories…"
"No, I don't know." Rod shook his head. "I didn't study that much archaeology. But I can play straight man—'Why would you expect a man from an industrial civilization to not even notice that a woman was a woman?'"
Yorick frowned. "Well, maybe not 'expect', but at least not be surprised by. In the industrial culture, Major, you make progress by putting each item into its own separate pigeonhole, so you can control it and assemble it with a lot of other things into whatever new gadget you want—and what you do with your tools, you also do with your minds. So the industrial man starts seeing 'emotion' as one aspect of the mind, and 'intellect' as another, and he puts each one into its own separate pigeonhole in his soul, where it can't get in the other's way. So you might not be surprised to find that a leader who was currently dealing with a major problem, might have sex safely pigeonholed out of the way for the time being."
"But to the point where he wouldn't even notice that a woman was a woman?" Chornoi stared, appalled.
"Oh, he'd notice it, all right—but he'd ignore it."
"Even to the point of not responding as a man?"
Yorick shrugged. "What can I tell you? It's possible. But the Wolman culture isn't industrial—it's tribal, with a very basic technology that concentrates on wholeness and individuality. They see everything as weaving together into one great big configuration—and sex as a natural part of life, just like every other part. Feelings and thoughts are naturally interwoven in a culture like that. The one leads to the other, in an endless circle."
Rod pursed his lips. "Are you trying to tell me that Hwun wasn't reacting like a true tribal chieftain?"
Yorick stood still with his mouth open. Then he closed it, disgruntled. "Well, yeah, something like that. Right."
"Well, I'd say you pinned that one right on the donkey. But there's something that really bothers me about that guy's attitude." He scowled off into space, chewing at the thought mentally for a few minutes, then shrugged his shoulders with a sigh. "I can't pin it down."
The Warlock Wandering Page 11
