She watched the lights winding along the shore, where the surf tumbled and boomed softly with small breaking whitecaps. They moved further away and became small twinkling fireflies in the distance. Then they reappeared, no more than tiny points of light, winding slowly into the very center of the ruins which Miranda had called We-were-guided.
And their spaceship lay there. Thinking of Miranda's rapt expression when she spoke of contact with the Builders, Cendri wondered; was this, then, the procession of some sort of religious cult which had grown up around the ruins? Had they gone—Cendri found herself shivering—to try and appease the supposed spirits of the Builders for their imminent invasion by outworlders bent on learning their secrets? Perhaps, even, to appease their supposed wrath? Again she shivered—ancestor-worship cults were notoriously bloodthirsty! Were they offering sacrifices at the Builder's
shrines? And what sacrifices? They seemed a peaceful, enlightened culture, with an adequate technology, but religious cults were by definition outside of a society's rational structure.
Again she sought out the distant twinkling lights, adorning ruins and spaceship. They had formed into a circle. A garland of lights, Cendri thought drowsily, watching it. She yawned, tired and thoroughly chilled—Isis' culture did not evidently run to central heating, though in view of the daytime heat and general subtropical climate that was not surprising; but now it was distinctly chilly. She thought longingly of the warm cushions, and Dai's warm body, even in sleep wonderfully comforting and reassuring.
Yet she stood as if compelled, watching the distant torches that festooned the ruins like Festival lights on the Sacred Tree of the Vhanni on Rigel Four—the light that had begun to glow, like a reflection of the huge pale moons, at the summit of the ruins. She was not conscious of cold now. She stood in amazed fascination, watching the light, the slow, suffusing, comforting glow. It was like a voice in her heart, filling her with kindliness, love, warmth____ her heart went out toward the light, and for a moment she felt like the child she had been, running to hide herself in the lap of a nurse___ a fragment of Rhu's song lingered for a moment in her mind, When I am done with life, will the Goddess take me to her loving breasts.
Cendri started upright, shaking herself, Had she been asleep? The moons had set, but the light lingered, a faint glow around the ruins, the echo of the voice in her mind—had it ever been there, or had she been dreaming? Reason said, I was dreaming, but enough of the warmth lingered that she was reluctant to dismiss it as a dream. She was enough of a scientist not to trust her own perceptions when they seemed to deny reason.
She turned and called softly "Dal—"
He came awake slowly, confused, "Cendri? Where are you?" She could see him feeling about in the bed for her beside him. Had she been asleep, standing bolt upright at the window? Was a bizarre dream enough cause to rob him of his rest? But she said softly, "I'm here at the window, Dal. Come here, I want you to see something—"
"Sharrioz! At this hour?" He sat up, bewildered, then padded softly, naked, across the room to her side. "Sweetheart, is something wrong?"
"Dal, look—toward the ruins—"
Blinking, he pressed his face to the pane. "Lights—down there in the ruins—"
"I saw them leave the house—hours ago now, I suppose. I have no idea what time it was, but the moons were still in the sky. They went into the ruins—"
"Well," he interrupted, "Why shouldn't they? Vaniya said, at supper, that they were a religious shrine. Maybe they go to say their prayers by moonlight, or something. That's your job—to study this culture!"
She reminded herself that his truculent tone was not an insult; that he had been roused from a sound sleep to see something Cendri herself had not been sure she saw.
"That isn't all," she said, "I saw a light in the ruins—near the tip of that building, do you see, the one with a tip like a broken horn___ " The light, to Cendri, was still faintly there, and the sight of it somehow roused again, in her, the memory of that brief, ecstatic glow___
But she was not sure, not now. If she had fantasied it, or if it had been an illusion, born of a glimmer of reflected moonlight on some unknown shining surface.. .she would not suggest it. Not unless he saw it independently, and felt what she had felt, what she seemed to feel faintly even now, would it validate her own perceptions.
"There is a light... no, not a light, a kind of glow. Are you sure it wasn't moonlight, Cendri? Or perhaps some kind of luminescent material—we have no idea what kind of materials the old Builders may have had." He broke off, yawning hugely. "Are you sure you didn't dream it?"
Cendri realized she was not sure. One moment she had been full of the flooding light, warmth, the suffusing joy she could not identify, happiness for no known cause; the next moment cramped, cold, the moon set.
"I did see a glow—" she insisted forlornly.
"I'm sure you did." Dal yawned again. "Maybe that high place is reflecting the glow of the rising sun out on the ocean, dawn can't be very far away." With sudden solicitude he felt her cold hands, bent to touch her chilled feet.
"Darling, you're chilled through! Have you slept at all, or have you stood here half the night watching torchlight processions and things? Here, let me warm you up."
She put her arms around his neck; tenderly, as he had done in their first days, he picked her up and carried her to the cushioned corner, covering her, enfolding her in his own warmth, taking her cold feet into the curve of his body to warm them. Snuggled close, she persisted. "Dal—when you were looking at the lights—did you feel anything?"
It was dark, but she could feel him looking at her in amazement. "Feel anything? Cendri, you're half asleep," he said tenderly, "Just that I can't wait to get out there! Thanks, by the way, for making it clear to the old girl that I am a Scholar and that you'll need me; I was half afraid I'd never be allowed out there at all."
"Oh, Dal! Could you doubt it?"
"I wasn't sure. I mean—you're one of them, a woman, they respect you—I thought you might take this chance to try and prove what you can do on your own...."
She thought, appalled, does he still not trust me? And then, troubled by her own thoughts, does any man ever trust any woman? Completely? Is that why men on some worlds try so hard to dominate women...not arrogance but fear?
"Dal, Dal—I couldn't do anything without you...."
"I wasn't sure," he said, shaking, holding her tight—not now, she sensed, to warm her, but to reassure himself. It shook Cendri's certainties. She had always seen Dal so strong to her weakness, powerful where she was without strength. But now?
"Cendri, don't you think I know how much you've resented this, resented not being a Dame when I was made Master Scholar, I couldn't blame you if you...if you took advantage...," he murmured, and she clasped him tight, troubled and shocked beyond words at her own thoughts. Was this place corrupting her too, where these women gave her illusions and delusions about her own power? Abruptly, frighteningly, she wished they had never come here.
"Oh, Dal, hold me," she begged, suddenly, "Hold me tight, don't let me go! I'm afraid! Oh, Dal, hold me!"
CHAPTER FOUR
Vaniya's duties continued to occupy her, to the exclusion of her alien guests, for the next ten days. Cendri was not altogether displeased; she welcomed the opportunity to study the strange society into which she had been admitted. Already she was envisioning, with pride, a report with her name on it, studying these women who lived essentially without men; a report which would surely make secure her borrowed status as Scholar Dame.
She kept copious notes, scribbling them in the antique script of her childhood for secrecy's sake; she still remembered that one recorded statement from the Matriarchate—we will not be studied by your scientists like one of those glass-sided insect colonies we give for toys to our little daughters. A voice-scriber might be found and turned on by accident; but there was no one on this planet, not even Dal, who could read the language and written script of Cendri's home world.
Yet Miranda's growing friendliness encouraged her to think that sooner or later she would be allowed to see beneath the outer surfaces of the society of the Matriarchate. And Miranda seemed endlessly curious about the Unity—almost as curious, Cendri thought, as she herself was curious about the Matriarchate.
One day they were in the garden of the Residence, among the flowers and herbs of the ornamental walks, when Miranda asked abruptly, "How long have you and your Companion been together?"
Cendri, automatically converting from the time-scales of University, said, "About a third of your Long Year."
"Did you take him as Companion only for your—your stay here on Isis?"
Cendri smiled gently and said, "No; no, we intend to stay together as long as we both desire it. It is not common for a marriage to endure lifelong—" There was, as far as she knew, no word for marriage in the language of Isis, so what she actually said was life-partnership. "—but it is not unheard-of either, and at present we have no thought of separating at any time in the foreseeable future."
"Then your Companion is actually your—your life-partner as well?" Miranda said, in astonishment. "How strange it would seem to me—to anyone here, to take a male as life-partner! Strange and far too—too—" she paused, fumbled for words, finally said stiffly, not looking at Cendri, "—too sexually exacting, even exhausting."
Cendri wondered exactly what kind of idea Miranda had of a man's sexual needs and demands—or, for that matter, of her own. She knew sexual needs were mostly psychological, and largely conditioned by the society anyway, but did she really believe men were sexually insatiable? She remembered that the shuttleship pilot—or was it Miranda herself, on their first day here?—had spoken of the impossibility of educating men because they were so much under the compulsion of their sexual needs. How could any woman have a realistic idea of what men were like when she never knew any of them at close hand? She said, "No, I don't find it so, Miranda," but she was embarrassed anyway.
Miranda said, "But—aren't you lonely, with no other women in your household? It seems so un-natural to me, and odd."
Cendri was used to this; on University, one of the commoner patterns was group marriage, and she was accustomed to the mixture of pity and curiosity from women in such marriages, feeling that Cendri must be lonely with no other women, and bored with only one man. She said tranquilly, "I have many women friends, Miranda, but our pattern of life, Dai's and mine, has its basis in the idea that one man and one woman, and their children, form the basic unit of society, and that the man and woman are closest to one another, best friends and intimates, with everyone else somewhere outside that bond."
"But how can you really have woman friends when you do not share the important things of your life with them?" Miranda asked. "Can a man really—really be close to a woman that way?"
Cendri smiled at the young woman. They were the same age, and Miranda was, by her own world's standards, very well-educated; yet she had never been off her homeworld of Isis, and this alone would have made her seem, to Cendri, provincial and somewhat immature. She said, "On University we see many life patterns; in mine it is taken for granted that a man can be a closer friend to any woman than another woman."
"But women are so much alike, they can understand one another so well," said Miranda, and she sounded a little wistful. "I am lonely—I was partnered at school, but I was too young, I suppose, to choose wisely, and we quarreled and separated last season; so I am bearing this child alone. My mother and sisters have been kind to me, but it is not the same." She hesitated and seemed about to say something further, then sighed and asked, "Have you no children, then?"
Cendri told her no—she and Dal had agreed to delay children until they had both gained the credentials they wanted, and had decided on which world they wished to live, or whether they would stay on University indefinitely.
"It would seem strange, to be forced to consult some man's convenience for a decision of that sort," Miranda said, and Cendri laughed and said, "Dal is not 'some man' to me, but my life-partner, as you would say, and I would not make any decision without consulting him, any more than he would without consulting me. It is truly mutual, Miranda, no matter what you have been told about what you call the maleworlds. I am not forced to consult his decisions, it is my choice."
"But how very strange," Miranda said. "Among us, most women take a life-partner when they are about my age; but a woman can share decisions with other women because we are so much alike."
"Does not your mother share decisions with her Companion?"
"With a Companion?" Miranda said, raising her eyebrows in incredulity. "No, no, of course not. But she is old enough to keep a Companion, her decisions at her age are her own; no woman my age would keep a male." She laughed, nervously. "I suppose you are used to many different life patterns and choices then—"
Cendri nodded. "If you were on University you would see many of them, too. And yet you would, I suppose, choose to remain with the one which gave you the emotional satisfactions you learned to need from childhood. Most people remain lifelong with the sexual patterns they learn before puberty. It's very rare for anyone to change. Some people have tried—a woman from my world joined a group-marriage on University. She was my friend, brought up to the kind of marriage I learned, one man and one woman, yet she joined— for a time—in a group-marriage where all the other members had been brought up to think of this as the only endurable or decent marriage." She was silent, remembering. Jerri's brief attempt to cross cultural lines had been a disaster; most such attempts ended in suicide or mental breakdown.
Cendri said after a time, "In the early decades of University, such cross-cultural marriage experiments were hailed as a broad step toward intercultural understanding. There were so many tragedies that now most people think, on the contrary, that they should be forbidden by law. I suppose the real truth—if there is any real truth—is somewhere in between."
Miranda nodded, understanding that. She said, "Yes, to me our way seems as right as if the hand of nature itself had written it in our flesh, in our bodies, our wombs, our hearts; and yet I can see that this is because from my earliest days I have been taught to think so, and to someone not so taught it would seem strange and even disgusting. Does our way disgust you, Cendri?"
Cendri said honestly, "I don't know enough about it to know how I really feel about it." She had, in any case, undergone lengthy conditioning, during her training as an anthropologist, to free her of some of these prejudices; but she could hardly say so. She wished she could question Miranda about some of the things that puzzled her; wished there was some way to do so without rousing her suspicion that she was not quite what she seemed. She wondered about their relations with men, wondered if the "life-partnerships" between women involved physical sex—she supposed they did, close relationships and even sexual partnerships between the same sex were not unknown even on University—but she did not know how to frame her questions without violating some as-yet-unknown taboo.
Miranda stooped to a flowerbed beside the path, picked a small pale blue flower. She stood turning it this way and that in her hands as she said, "There are times when I—I like to wonder what it would be like to live in some of those other ways which seem so—so unspeakable to our women. You say that your Companion is your life-partner too. But—you are from the Unity, from the maleworlds,
does he not—not own you, then? Are you bound to him by a bond you could not break at will?"
Cendri smiled and said, "To dissolve our partnership, I would merely have to go before the Civic Authority on University, and make with him a joint declaration that we wished to separate; no more than that. If one of us was willing and the other unwilling, it might be a little more complicated—an Arbitrator would have to hear the case—and if there were children we would have to make mutually agreeable arrangements for their care and education. But a marriage cannot persist if either does not desire it; that would be slavery."
"And you would let him go like that, if he wished to leave you?"
Cendri countered, "Would any woman wish to keep a man who no longer wished to remain with her?"
"It would seem to me strange to consult the wishes of a man,
especially of a Companion," Miranda said, and she was frowning a
little. "I had thought perhaps it was the reverse of the way it is here;
that perhaps in your worlds a man owned a woman and was
responsible for everything she did____ "
Cendri shook her head. "No, although I believe there have been worlds—Pioneer, many generations ago—where this was true. And in some cultures a man is required to provide for the support and nurture of any children he may have fathered."
Miranda said, "That does seem strange, for a man to be responsible for a child; how can any man possibly know that a child is of his fathering, unless he has kept the woman locked away from everyone else?" Again she seemed on the verge of saying something else, and again hesitated, drawing back; Cendri wondered if indeed the time were ripe to ask something about the unknown mating customs of Isis, but instead Miranda frowned a little and said, "It seems so natural that the woman, who bears the child, should take all responsibility. Yet I can see that your way could have its—its attractions," she added, her lips curving for a moment in a faraway smile. Cendri wondered who had fathered Miranda's child; if, for a minute, she had actually forced Miranda to think beyond her own cultural prejudices. Then Miranda said, "But if you had—had a child, and separated from your life-partner, as I from mine, would you not simply do as I have done, return to your mother and sisters so that they could care for you and your baby?"
Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 Page 8
