Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19

by The Ruins of Isis (v2. 1)

  "That woman! How dared she? You must go home at once, Mother, I am sure that the Mother Rezali will communicate with you—Maret must be told at once to await the word—" Quickly, she gestured to the waiting car, motioned Dal and Cendri into it, ushered her mother inside. Rhu clambered in last, taking his place close to Vaniya and saying soothingly, "Do not disturb yourself, Vaniya, you must remain calm to await word."

  "Yes, yes," Vaniya said distractedly, "I cannot believe that Rezali will appoint that woman High Matriarch in her place—yet there is always the chance—"

  She saw Cendri's puzzled face and said, "Forgive me, my dear, but I fear that until the Mother Rezali has made her will known, your work must come to a halt."

  "Make her will known?" Cendri said, "I thought—the word you received—I thought the High Matriarch was dead!"

  "Why, so she is," Vaniya said, "but when a woman of our people is appointed to the post of High Matriarch, she secretes a duplicate of her ring of office, and her robe of power, in a place known only to her. And then, should death take her before she has designated her successor, her spirit will appear to her chosen successor, and tell her, or an Inquirer in her household, where the ring and robe have been hidden. So that whichever of us first discovers her ring of office, and her robe, where they have been hidden, becomes High Matriarch in her place. And I must go and await some communication from the other side of the great barrier, telling me that our beloved Mother Rezali wishes me to carry on her work among our people, and whispering to my spirit where I may find her ring of office to show the City Mothers."

  She fell silent, deep in thought, her eyes going blank, and Cendri, blinking, thought; what a development! Now all their work depended on a kind of mediumistic treasure-hunt!

  Dal whispered in her ear, "What a hell of a way to run a government!"

  And for once she did not feel even a little like arguing with him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next few days Dal and Cendri spent in the ruins, measuring, taking soil-scrapings, making computer analyses of the buildings and structures. Dal adapted a force-field breaker to attempt again to enter the structures without damage, trying frequency after frequency, but decided to delay any attempt to cut into them until he had X-ray pictures of the interior. To devise these in a way that would penetrate the unknown force-field, he said, might be a long task and demand conferral by long-distance relays with sources on University.

  "We could do more damage trying to get into them than we realized," he told her, "if we could break the force-field and just walk in, that's one thing. But if they're in time stasis, nothing we could do will break into them because, essentially, they're not in this dimension at all."

  That sounded like nonsense to Cendri and she said so. "If they're not here, how can we touch them, lean on them, press against them—"

  "Cendri, I don't have time to give you a complete course in temporal mechanics. Just take my word for it, unless living on Isis has made you unwilling to trust male scholarship." But he laughed, and Cendri knew it had become a joke between them again. She was profoundly relieved.

  "I wish we could get a good temporal mechanic here," Dal continued. "The trouble is, the only ones I know on University are men, and I don't suppose any of them would be willing to wear some woman's property tag, although to get a chance at a site which might actually be in time stasis, I know some mathematicians who would do more than that. I don't know any temporal mechanic who is a woman—" he continued, as they came out of the site late in the evening, and turned to Laurina. "Are there any specialists in mathematics on your world—the mathematics of temporal conditions and stress?"

  Laurina looked bewildered. She could talk to Dal now without too much self-consciousness, but as always when she was confused or felt insecure, it was to Cendri she turned before answering. "Truly, I don't know; I know so little of mathematics. My own specialty is history. I can inquire at the college if you like, though."

  "Do that," Dal directed. "The help of anyone who had a grounding in temporal mathematics would be a help in determining if this place really is in time stasis."

  "It cannot be that," Laurina argued, "or how could the inhabitants communicate with us?"

  Dal made a wry face and did not answer. He did not argue with Laurina's beliefs; but he would not dignify them by comment, either. He simply said, "I'd take it as a great favor if you could put me—us—in touch with the most highly regarded mathematician at your college. He—I mean she—would certainly have tried to investigate something of the math of temporal stress, I understand it's the most exciting field in mathematics in the last two or three hundred years."

  Laurina said, with the queer stiff formality she still sometimes used with Dal, "I am certain that any scientist would consider it an honor to work with the respected Scholar Dame from University and her Companion."

  As the great pale sun of Isis drew lower in the sky, they came out of the site and saw a procession passing along the shoreline road toward the city of Ariadne. As they drew near, Cendri saw that it was mostly men afoot, although there were a few cars and surface vehicles of the kind used on Isis. Most of them were young, and wearing the brief kiltlike garments worn by manual laborers of either sex. The few men among Vaniya's servants went down to speak with them and after a moment Dal followed. To Cendri's surprise, the men called out greetings to the women, and Vaniya's servants answered; after a moment, shyly, so did Laurina. Cendri's face must have shown her curiosity, for Laurina explained, unasked.

  "They are men from the great dam project, about a hundred kilometers south of the city, coming here for the festival. They will camp along the shoreline, it is the only time of the year when they are allowed spearfishing in the coastline waters. And in four days now—has no one told you?—is the highest of our holidays, when we visit the sea and invoke the Goddess as bringer of life. But certainly—" she hesitated, diffident. "You are the friend of the Lady Miranda, surely she has invited you to join with us in this festival?"

  Miranda had mentioned it, once or twice, in such a way that Cendri knew it was somehow connected with the unknown mating customs of the Matriarchate, concealed by the society. Cendri felt a flicker of excitement. Was she, then, enough accepted by them that she would be allowed to witness this festival?

  Laurina said, "But no, the lady Miranda is so near to the birth-time that she will not join, this year, in the festival. I had thought her child would have been born long before this." She went on, "It is our Longest Day, and this year it coincides with the double Full Moon, when both our moons show their smiling face; which happens only once in every nine or eleven years, alternately. So this year the festival is particularly sacred; I hope that by then we will have a new High Matriarch to perform the rites. We visit the sea three times in a year, but this, the Longest Day, is the holiest and most blessed of our festivals. Cendri—" she hesitated, then smiled, "you are here alone, without sisters or kinswomen, and it is for us to offer you hospitality and companionship. Since Miranda has not thought to do so, let me be the one to invite you to join us at this highest of festivals."

  Cendri felt the flicker of excitement again. Actually to be allowed to witness their highest festival! Nevertheless she felt compelled to ask, "Is it permitted for an outsider, Laurina?"

  "I feel that the Goddess could hardly smile on a woman who did not join us in her worship on this day," Laurina said seriously. "All women are of one blood, and since you are here on this world she has blessed with her presence, it seems to me unthinkable that you would choose not to join us."

  So not only was she invited to join them; it might even be taken as an affront to their Goddess if she did not! She thought, if I had come openly as an anthropologist, to study them, they might have taken pains to conceal some of their rites from me! Perhaps it is as well I did not...

  As she returned to Vaniya's house, she was pondering this. The sexual customs of Isis were evidently some form of visitational marriage, then, preceded, and formal
ized, evidently by the rite called "visiting the sea." She said to Laurina, "So many men! I had not known there were so many! Do they all live outside the city, then? Are they colonists, living in separate villages?"

  "Men, colonize anything?" Laurina said with a blank look, halfway between amusement and incredulity. "No, but some Men's Houses have been taken there under their overseers, or leased by their owners, to work on the great dam. They are building dykes and when they have finished, it will provide flood control all along the delta of the great river which we call Anahit, and energy as well. Some of our best engineers are working there, but of course they need immense crews of male labor. Men are reasonably good at manual labor, provided they are carefully supervised by trained women. Of course their attention span is short, and they must be lavishly provided with amusements and rewards, but mostly the men like to work on such projects; it gives them a chance to use their muscles, which is what they do best; they have a natural instinct for manual work, as you can see by their gift for athletics. They are not as graceful as women, but their strength makes up for that. And they enjoy the extra rations of sweets, and the extra opportunity, outside the city, for hunting. So everyone is happy; the men because of the fun of building the dam, and the women because we will have power and flood control."

  Cendri wondered briefly how the men would have reacted to this analysis, but they had arrived at Vaniya's house. But before she had finished washing off the grime of the day's work in the ruins, Miranda knocked at their door and came in.

  She looked troubled and distracted. "Cendri, will you come? My mother is very distressed, she wants all of the women in her household with her now—"

  "What is it, Miranda?"

  "Mahala has sent word that she has found the High Matriarch's ring and robe. We must all go to the Council to verify them—I cannot travel now." And indeed Miranda was ungainly now, dragging heavily around. "Lialla and her partner will be with her, but still— she is fond of you, Cendri, will you go in my place? And it may interest you, to see the solemn formality of investing a High Matriarch—"

  "I will go," Cendri promised, and Miranda went away. Dal frowned at her and said, "Damn it, Cendri, do you really want to align yourself so much with the losing Pro-Matriarch's faction?"

  Cendri said quietly, "Miranda said it; she is fond of me. And have you forgotten, Dal, why I am really here? If I have any opportunity to see the workings of this society, then I must do so."

  "I suppose so. But I'm worrying. If you make an enemy of Mahala—"

  "I'm not planning to make an enemy of Mahala, Dal. I am going with Vaniya in the place of an ailing daughter," Cendri said with careful patience, and Dal frowned again, angrily.

  "I don't like that, damn it! She's getting entirely too fond of you to suit me! I haven't forgotten how she treated you at the athletic contest—I suppose it's to be expected, that women who live apart from men should develop morbid homosexual tendencies, but you're my wife and you can't expect me to approve of letting you run around with a woman like that!"

  "Dal, for goodness sake! A woman like that—what in the world, any world, do you mean? Do you honestly believe the Pro-Matriarch of Isis is going to attack an honored guest sexually?"

  "Well, I suppose not, but—I saw the way she acted the other day—"

  Cendri sighed, knowing she could never make Dal understand. She understood the impulse of affection and excitement that had prompted Vaniya to embrace her, an intimacy which would have been taken for granted in Vaniya's own world; an overture, not an attack, and when Cendri had not responded, Vaniya had behaved unexceptionably! She said, "I'm not going to argue with you about it, Dal, it's customary in their world, and you have no right to make invidious remarks about it. When the men are considered unsuitable for companionship, naturally they find their closest emotional ties among one another. I could cite half a dozen parallels among men, if I wanted to—the warrior caste of Kahornia, for instance, who aren't allowed to approach women except for one season in every four—"

  "I know," said Dal, grimacing, "I don't approve of them either; I haven't cultivated the virtue of scientific detachment, and I hope sincerely that I never do, if it means tolerating that kind of thing!" Then he shrugged and laughed. "All right, love, there's no sense quarreling." He came and put his arms around her, kissing her hard. "I'm really not worried; I know you too well for that. But don't develop too much scientific detachment or tolerance, darling."

  Cendri was relieved, even though she knew perfectly well that Dal did not understand. He was, after all, not trained in cross-cultural comparisons. She supposed this grudging tolerance was all she could expect, and she was glad he was not making an issue of it. She robed herself in her most elaborately formal garments, suitable for a Dame's Investiture on University, and went down to join Vaniya.

  Vaniya indeed looked solemn and distracted, but she held out her hands to Cendri with a warm smile. She said, "It is good of you to come in a daughter's place, my child; it was Rhu who suggested it might entertain you to see this solemnity, and he has pledged himself to entertain your Companion in your absence."

  Now I wonder, Cendri thought, as she joined Vaniya's other daughters in Vaniya's car, does Rhu intend to spend the time with Dal, learning more about the position of men in the Unity—or is he taking this opportunity to be with Miranda?

  On the ride to the city they passsed still more of the groups of men, inbound from all over the continent, and Vaniya, waving graciously as the men bowed to her passing car, said distractedly, "It will be a scandal if we do not have a High Matriarch and Priestess for the ceremonies this year!"

  Cendri asked hesitatly, "Is there any doubt of this? Miranda told me that—that the Pro-Matriarch had found the ring and robe of—of her predecessor—"

  "So my worthy colleague says, indeed." Vaniya curled her lip. "Yet it would not be the first time that a Pro-Matriarch had presented a forgery. Some women will stop at nothing. As for me—" her broad leonine face was stern, "I have not heard the word of our Mother and Priestess, although I have awaited the word with solemn fasting and prayer." Indeed she looked worn, by sleeplessness and hunger. "But I would yield my place at once, rather than win it unworthily, or without the word of my predecessor. If Mahala has truly the ring and robe of Rezali, then I shall be the first to do homage and swear loyalty to her."

  Cendri had seen the Residence of the High Matriarch from outside; but until now, when she came as a member of Vaniya's entourage, she had not yet entered the building. She walked with Vaniya up the long marble steps, between the columns, noting that like many other imposing structures on Isis, they were mounted in what looked like gimbals. She had to admit that it made sense, on a planet as earthquake-prone as Isis, but also it took away something—at least in Cendri's eyes—from the elegant formality of the structure.

  Perhaps, she thought, this is why so much of their society, so much of their formal structure, seems to my eyes ill-designed and catch-as-catch-can. On a planet like this, nothing is permanent. Except, perhaps, the ruins at We-were-guided. No wonder this is a sacred place to them.

  A small crowd of children—not naked in sunhats and sandals, now, but dressed in their best and looking, as dressed-up children always do, vaguely uncomfortable—had gathered to watch outside the Residence, watching wide-eyed and solemn. A great many of them, Cendri noted, had come into the great hall of the Residence and were standing there to see what was going on, and it was typical of Isis that nobody thought to shoo them out of the center of the great hall. Down the very center of the hall was a long row of statues in glass cases. Statues? No; they were elegant wax effigies, elaborately robed, each glass case and effigy set into a pit protected by sand so that it would fall over and survive undamaged and unbroken. They were surrounded by the usual screens and their bases were also decorated with the usual casual art, each one (Cendri could read the written language now well enough to tell) decorated by a different children's school.

  Vaniya said, in a
low voice, "Some of these effigies have come with us all the way from our mother planets of Persephone and Labrys. Here is our first High Matriarch, our beloved foremother Alicia." She pointed to a woman whose hair, arranged in an elaborate triangular coiffure, was silvery white, wearing an archaic robe. "She was born on the Unity world of Pioneer, I believe, in the worst of the old days." Slowly they passed through the hall of effigies, and Vaniya named, one by one, the High Matriarchs of Isis, standing here for all time as they had appeared to their daughters in life. Each wore an elaborately embroidered robe, of the same archaic pattern as the foremother Alicia's, although the details of the embroidery of each robe, so Vaniya told Cendri, were unique, and chosen by each High Matriarch to be individual to herself; after a High Matriarch assumed her office, the duplicate of her robe and ring were destroyed and she had one made for her own personal use, bearing an individual motif.

  "And here stands our mother Rezali, as she appeared in life," said Vaniya, pausing and bowing briefly before the final statue. Cendri beheld a withered, little, elderly woman, dark-skinned and shrunken, her scant hair all white. "She bore her ring for eighty years; in the time since we left Persephone she has been our Mother and Priestess, the longest reign of any High Matriarch in the history of the Matriarchate."

  Passing the statue—a macabre custom, Cendri thought—they came face to face with Mahala and her entourage. A quick look told Cendri at once that the other Pro-Matriarch, unlike Vaniya, had not awaited her call with sleepless prayer and fasting; she looked calm, rested, refreshed. She went toward Vaniya and embraced her in the formal way she had done before.

  "You seem weary and worn, my sister," she said sweetly. "This will be over soon, and you shall go and rest, and be free of the cares you have borne since our beloved Mother Rezali fell too ill to make her wishes known."