"Really, Miranda," Laurina interrupted, her voice high, not looking at her friend, "You don't owe me any explanations, it is for your mother to say, but is it really fair to Rhu? Oh, I admit he is pretty enough, but you know how easily such men have their heads turned by such attentions! You know he will be blamed if anything happens to you!" She turned and began to go back, and Cendri said, slowly, "I suppose Vaniya will be anxious about you, Miranda. You really should go and let her know you are safe."
"Yes, I suppose so." Miranda pressed her hands across her back as if it hurt her, and began slowly to cross the courtyard. She sighed and walked with her head cast down, after a moment raising her eyes defiantly to Cendri.
"It isn't what you think! Rhu has never touched more than my fingertips! And it was not his choice to become a Companion—!"
"Miranda," said Cendri gently, "I'm not sitting in judgment on you!"
"But Laurina is so sure I have shamed myself and my kin-mothers, and so magnanimous about not revealing the guilt we do not have—" Miranda sputtered. "I am not ashamed!"
"No. Why should you be?" Cendri said, and walked slowly at her side. The sun had set; twilight was falling over the great, dark shapes of the ruins, and she shivered, suddenly, with cold. Miranda stumbled in the near-dark and Cendri put an arm around her, feeling a sudden surge of affection and sympathy. She said, "Miranda, lean on me, you mustn't fall." She noticed that Miranda's hands were clasped protectively over the pink pearl at her throat. She said softly, "Was it Rhu's gift, then?"
"Yes. He came by it honestly," she added at once. "It was given him by the Elder of the Weaver's Guild, who is very rich, for a song he wrote for her daughters—he is not only a singer, he is a maker of songs as well! And he gave it to me—it was not a sea-gift," she added, defensively.
"You love him," Cendri said gently, after a moment.
Miranda nodded. In the darkness, Cendri could not see her expresssion, but her voice was filled with pain.
"I do not understand it myself; they say this kind of love is for a woman to give her child, her sisters, her kin-mothers. This is why I had hoped you could understand this, you seem to think it is not strange to love a man—"
"No, Miranda," said Cendri gently, "it doesn't seem strange to me."
But on Miranda's world, Cendri thought, romantic love served none of the social functions of family formation and child-nurture which it served elsewhere. Here, the major bonds of social cohesion were family bonds between women, and sexuality had little or no part in them. A woman who found herself irresistibly drawn, emotionally, sexually, personally to a man, might well believe that this was a strange and unlikely perversion; might find herself at a loss to understand, or even express, her own desires and hungers.
She asked softly, "Is Rhu the father of your child?"
Even in the darkness, Cendri could sense Miranda's shock and horror. "What do you think me? What woman could possibly know a thing like that?"
And now Cendri really did not know what to think or say. She turned to Miranda in the darkness. "Come, they will be worrying about you. Let me help you on the steps, they are a little irregular." Miranda clung to her, trustfully, and Cendri felt a strange flooding emotion; protective, tender; an emotion new to her, and disturbing. She wondered if this was how these women felt about one another. Or is this how I would feel about a daughter if I had one? Unwilling to explore the emotion, she turned to thinking of Dal. How troubled he would be when he discovered that she had been into the ruins! He is going to want to know everything, she thought, and I won't have much to tell him, I won't be able to tell him nearly enough!
And suddenly she did not really care. The ruins could wait. They had waited a long time—not, perhaps, the two million years of Builder ruins, but still, they had waited a long, long time! They could wait a little longer. She, Cendri, had an opportunity which might never come again to a woman of the Unity, and she intended to make the most of it!
Dal could wait. But he wouldn't wait much longer; circumstances had forced Vaniya's hand, and now there could be no excuse for further delay.
CHAPTER SIX
Just inside the wall of the ruined city, where Vaniya had gathered with the women from the destroyed pearl-divers village, they had lighted torches and fires. Laurina came out of the darkness to join Cendri; and Vaniya beckoned Miranda to her side.
She said, "We must go and speak to Them, give them thanks for the shelter they have given us from the great wave. Later we can all go down—for the time being, the homeless can be housed on the grounds of the Residence. But this comes first. Cendri—" by torchlight her eyes gleamed, "You are here to learn about Them, so you must have a place among us now; and it is fitting, since you have risked yourself for our people." She took Cendri's hand in hers. "Come and join us when we speak to Them." With a little frisson of excitement, Cendri realized that Vaniya was speaking of the Builders.
Can she really believe this? That a civilization a million years dead can hear? For a moment the scientist in Cendri struggled with scorn—Vaniya, Pro-Matriarch, capable administrator, states-woman— and she could be so superstitious? Then Cendri admonished herself to wait and see. Religious faith gave life and emotional force to a culture; and Vaniya might well be speaking symbolically of a form of observance, without any superstitious or irrational component at all...except insofar, Cendri reminded herself, as any religious observance is irrational.
She let herself be drawn into a place—of honor?—at the head of the procession, between Miranda and Vaniya. Laurina walked close beside Cendri. Rhu, she realized, had withdrawn into the shadows and walked alone, separated from the women—but equally separate from the men of the pearl-divers village, who followed at a distance, barefoot, shabby, rude and uncouth.
I feel sorry for Rhu. No place among the women—but even Jess among the life of what they call the Men's House. Of course. He has what they consider a privilege, and they envy him—to Jive among women. But this privilege makes him an outcast among those who would otherwise be his peers. Paint a monkey green, and the others will tear it to bits.
They walked by torchlight into the very center of the ruins, through black shadows and empty echoing spaces, along a path that felt strangely smooth under their feet. It was very quiet; no one spoke, not even a whisper, and to Cendri the silence was strangely full. She told herself not to be superstitious, but she found herself thinking it was easy to understand how primitive emotion had peopled all ancient things with ghosts. It was as if the ancient Builders were watching them, as if the darkness beyond the torchlight were peopled with the ghosts of those ancient people, ringed about with invisible eyes that watched the women winding their way through the city which had once been theirs, wondering and waiting.
At the very center of the ruins lay an open space, vast enough to have been a spaceport. And there, by the shadowed torchlight, Cendri saw what she had seen by moonlight from the upper window of the Residence; gleaming faintly by reflected light, the structure of the antique-fashioned ship. Was this, indeed, the ship which had brought the foremothers of the Isis colony here? If so, it was no wonder they held it in reverence. The pilot of the shuttlecraft had said it; they were guided there...what folly had prompted the colonists to set their ship down at the very center of a ruined city? Cendri knew almost nothing of the art of piloting ships, small or large, but she did know that on a world with no established spaceport, you found the largest uninhabited tract of wild country you could find, and put it down there!
She felt Vaniya's hands on her elbow, guiding her forward toward the old ship. The hands forced her gently to her knees. She was half annoyed, half in a curious state of suspended belief.. .an anthropologist must be ready to join the people of her research at prayers__
She blinked; it seemed that a dim light had begun to glow and shimmer around the structures of the ancient ship. Natural phosphorescence; reflected moonlight, she told herself firmly.
And with the glow came the warmth, the light, th
e suffusing tenderness. She felt a flood of love poured out on her, and poured it out lavishly in return. Some fragment of wonder in her cried out, "Oh! Who are you?" and the answer came, a steady pulsing glow; I am; that is enough. Love me, love me as I love you___
It was cold. The torches had died to a glimmer, and Cendri blinked herself awake, shivers of ice running down her spine. What had happened? She was walking slowly away from the dead city, outside the walls, moving as if in a dream. Next to her Miranda moved, her face by moonlight dazed and enraptured. Laurina, too, looked irradiated. Vaniya turned her eyes to Cendri, and smiled, with so much tenderness that Cendri felt a lump in her throat; she wanted to throw herself into Vaniya's arms, and sob out "Mother; Mother, I love you—"
"What is the matter with me?" Cendri thought, dazed. What's happened to us? Whatever it was, it happened to all of us, not just me! Look at them!
Some form of hypnotic experience? Some mass hallucination? Or had anything happened at all? Had she, suggestible and lonely, isolated from all her normal sources of emotional satisfaction, gone into some kind of religious daze with these women? Firmly, she struggled against the need to let go, sink herself into this hypnotic flood of joyous love.
Nonsense, absurdity....
She forced herself to look around, firmly calculating what could have happened. Of course it was some kind of illusion; and equally of course, this was what Miranda had meant when she spoke of the love and concern of the Builders. But whatever had happened, if anything had happened, it was certainly not the spirits of the Builders, from two or three million years ago, sitting there around the old spaceship and pouring out floods of hypnotic love and emotion on the women who came there!
Most of the women shared the dazed look of excitement and delight which was on Miranda's, Vaniya's face—Cendri supposed that she looked much the same. Most of the girl children over eight or nine had some trace of it; they looked sleepy and joyous. The smaller children were restless and crying, and their mothers were leading them along or carrying them. The men____
It was all too obvious that whatever the experience had been, none of the men had shared it; one or two of them looked awed, but most of them, stumbling along in the semi-dark after the women, looked cross, tired and bored with the waiting.
She was almost too tired to think straight. There was no way she could evaluate it now. Was this why the Matriarchy regarded this as a holy place, a sacred precinct? She wished she could discuss it at leisure with Laurina, who was a scientist and historian and might have some sort of objective attitude, but this was neither the time nor the place.
Now that the ecstasy had subsided a little—or the hypnotic illusion—she realized that her feet, torn on the rocks and imperfectly protected by Laurina's too-large sandals, were very sore. She was limping painfully by the time they came into the grounds of the Residence, and her eyes felt sore and ached in the lights streaming from every window. Servants came flocking out with cries of welcome and Vaniya's older daughter, running to welcome them, cried out with relief.
"We were so frightened, Mother—we knew you had gone to the pearl-divers village and afterward, when we saw the wreck the great wave had left, we feared you had been hurt or drowned—"
Vaniya seemed to have returned entirely to herself. She gave orders that tents should be set up on the grounds of the Residence, that the men should be housed in the Men's House, that the sick, the pregnant and the elderly should be taken into guest-rooms within the residence itself. She commanded food to be served for all, and while they were waiting for it, one of the women whose task it was to assist Miranda in the running of the household, came up to Vaniya and said, "Respect, Mother, we have had trouble here; an intruder, a male belonging to the Pro-Matriarch Mahala, broke into the house, and managed to gain entry to the quarters assigned to the Scholar Dame from University, and to her Companion."
Cendri blinked, the last vestiges of her daze vanishing. So much had happened since this morning that she had forgotten the intruder, the branded man called Bak, who had come to talk to Dal and given him that peculiar password. Vaniya looked displeased, but said, "I might have expected that of my colleague; I am only curious to know why she did not think of it sooner. Did you question it?"
"No, we held it for you to deal with, Mother."
Vaniya shrugged. She indicated the refugees clustered on the lawn of the Residence and said, "As you can see, I am very much occupied with these homeless people. But I suppose you must bring the intruder to me."
The woman summoned the fierce-looking guards who had burst into Cendri's rooms and taken Bak away over Dai's protest; but they came back quickly.
"Respect, Mother—the prisoner has escaped!"
"So?" Vaniya said, almost without interest. "I suppose it has run home to the bitch who loosed it upon us in the first place, but there will never be any way to prove it. But how did it escape? Was the cage damaged by the quake? Who saw to the fastenings?"
"I did, Mother," said the main guard, "Respect, but I saw to the hasps myself and they were all in good order. Some human hands let it out of that cage, and that's a fact." She glared at Cendri, her face grim. "The Scholar Dame's Companion tried to interfere when we took it away. I'd like to know where that one was when the prisoner got loose!"
Vaniya said, "Go and fetch the Companion."
Cendri said, "Vaniya—"
"Hush, my dear, if your Companion is innocent he won't be hurt. I might have suspected Rhu, but he was with me all day." She sighed, told her oldest daughter to continue arranging for the housing of the refugees from the pearl-divers' village, and went into the house, with Cendri and Miranda.
Dal, brought before Vaniya, firmly denied any knowledge of the prisoner.
"I have been working in the room allotted to us, all day," he said. "I have not seen anyone since the guards took the prisoner away." And to all of Vaniya's questions he repeated the same thing.
One of the Guards said, "I have the means to make it talk." She flicked the rope at her waist suggestively.
Vaniya frowned a little. She said, "I am not fond of such business, but I suppose I really have no choice." She glanced at Cendri and said, "As a matter of form, since it legally belongs to you—I suppose you have no objection to having it interrogated by force?"
Cendri looked, appalled, at the barbed whip in the woman-guard's hand. She said, "Indeed I do have an objection!"
One of the guards snickered. There was a little nervous giggling. Vaniya said gently, "Come, come, my dear, you must not be squeamish. It is the only way to get the truth from one of them. I am sure Mallida will not hurt it any more than strictly necessary!"
Cendri said sharply, "What you do not realize is that my Companion is not property, but a citizen of the Unity, and a Scholar on University. His word is as good as my own; he is covered by diplomatic immunity!" She realized too late; male pronouns were indecent. Just now she did not care.
Vaniya looked at her, frowning a little. She said, after a moment, rather sadly, "I had hoped you were enough one of us, my dear, not to stand on technicalities of that sort. But it is true that you live by different laws. Can you truly trust your Companion's word?"
Cendri set her chin and said, "Yes."
"Ask him before us if he had any part in the freeing of the prisoner, then."
Her heart pounding—my system must be flooded with adrenalin—Cendri said, "Dal, did you have any part in the freeing of the prisoner?"
"I did not," he said, but Cendri noticed he did not look her in the eye. Oh, God! she thought, he's lying. This put her in a terrible position. If she backed up Dai's word, and he was later proven a liar, she had destroyed the credibility of University citizens—not to mention making it impossible to accept her statement that a man's word could be trusted! Yet if she proclaimed Dal a liar, what was the alternative to having the truth beaten out of him by the fierce Mallida's barbed whip? Ferociously she thought; I don't give a damn what happened to that poor bastard, I'm not going
to have Dal hurt!
She said, "I accept my Companion's word." But, she thought, I'll have to talk to Dal about it later!
Vaniya shrugged. She said, "It doesn't matter much, since the prisoner accomplished nothing of what he had come to accomplish. Set it free, Mallida."
Cendri found her hands were still shaking as Vaniya beckoned them to her side, saying, "And now let us forget all this unpleasantness and have our dinner." And, though the meal was good as usual, she found she could not eat.
"I feel to blame," said Rhu in his gentle voice, speaking to Cendri in an undertone, "I have been remiss in my duties as the host of the Scholar Dame's Companion. After all—" he spoke directly to Dal, "I am your only possible peer and friend here, since, like myself, you are excluded from the Men's House. I should have made more efforts to entertain you, Dal; perhaps set up a hunt to divert you."
Dal said awkwardly, "That's all right, I didn't expect it—"
"But Vaniya charged me with your entertainment," Rhu said, "and idleness breeds trouble in males.. .I am sorry for any trouble you have had. And now that the Scholar Dame has been inside the ruins—"
Dal started, glanced sharply at Cendri, and she felt a clutch of dread. She had been going to tell Dal herself, when the time was ripe! She had known he would be distressed, that she would visit the ruins without sending for him, but she had hoped she could make him understand the unplanned, almost accidental character of her visit there! Now his face was lambent with wrath; she could tell the signs, even though he managed to keep his voice calm when he spoke to Rhu.
"I did not know; Cendri had not seen fit to tell me."
"Oh, I am sorry," Rhu said apologetically, "I meant only—now, I suppose, the Scholar Dame will have need of your services there, since I understand you have been trained to function as her assistant. I envy you," he added, sighing. "Since there will be women from the College of Ariadne to assist the Scholar Dame, may I volunteer my services to entertain the Scholar Dame's Companion? I would like to come—"
Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 Page 13
