Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19

by The Ruins of Isis (v2. 1)

  "Look! Look!"

  From the gates of Ariadne, a great multitude were surging out of the city, running, plunging upward along the shore, up the hill in a great human wave. Cendri thought of the tidal wave which had engulfed the pearl-divers' village on the shore; only this was a human tide, flowing along the shore, rising slow and inexorable on the slopes toward the gates of We-were-guided. And in the moonlight Cendri could see that all the forms were those of men, moving like a great groundswell. And one and all, their faces bore the same dazed rapture that Cendri had seen on the faces of the women, that day___

  Vaniya moaned, moving aside from the surge of men, stumbling. Cendri held her so that she would not fall, and heard her weeping aloud. "Profanation," she moaned, "profanation!"

  The men surged into the city, stood before the old ship. The lights began to glow. Cendri felt the faint echo of the lapping warmth, but it did not speak to her; she felt cold and alone, and she could feel Vaniya shaking, and held the woman tight in her arms, with an almost anguished desire to comfort her, as the woman, desolate, deprived of the contact and the love which was life to her, stood and watched others drinking in the communion from which she had been exiled. Others, despised. Men. Not even people.

  How long it lasted, Cendri never knew. She held Vaniya in her arms, trying to quiet her sobbing, until she was stiff and cramped and aching. And then, suddenly, it was over.

  One of the men, a tall man with long hair flecked with grey, wearing a coarse pajama suit, came hesitantly toward Vaniya.

  "Respect, Mother Vaniya... he said hesitatingly, and Vaniya wearily tried to pull herself together. She stood erect, moving out of the support of Cendri's arms.

  "Can it be that you come to me with respect, here?" she asked, and her voice was a whiplash of scorn. "When you have trampled your mothers in your profanation?"

  "Mother—" the man entreated, "those who speak to us have given a message which you must know! Men cannot handle this alone!"

  Vaniya drew a long breath. She said, "Speak, my son."

  The man gestured toward the ocean. "They have told us," he said, "that far out in the ocean, many, many, many leagues in the place of fish too deep for diving, the bed of the sea shakes, and will shake again and again. And as these quakes move ever closer, the great waves will build up and up, until at last, before nightfall tomorrow, a wall of water higher than this will smash the shore down near the great dam, and if it should strike full on the dam, not a single stone will be left piled upon another. Therefore, Mother—" the man entreated, "you Mothers, and your daughters, who control the cars and the messages and the transportation, we beseech you to help us to bring all of our people out of the encampments there, and all of our stores and possessions, lest they be lost forever. The storehouses of grain and building materials could all be swept away, and all our foods and reserves."

  Vaniya swallowed hard, "How do you know this, my son?"

  "They told us," the man said, gesturing formlessly toward the old ship.

  "And how do you know it is true?" Vaniya demanded, "that they were not deceiving you as they deceived me? Why should they now begin to give warnings about quakes and tidal waves, when all these years they have not done so?"

  The man made a low bow. He said, "Respect, Mother, one of us asked that. This was their answer; that you had never asked them for such help and they did not know they could give it until one of us asked to make our needs known, and they found they could answer."

  Vaniya still looked shaken. But she said, "They do not lie. They found the ring and robe of Mother Rezali. Nothing is hidden from them that they wish to know. Come, Mahala," she said quickly to her fellow Pro-Matriarch. "You are a quicker organizer than I, and we have no time to waste now with protocol or rivalry! We have just time enough—if we hurry—to get every man, woman and child, and all their stores and possessions, out of the area of the great dam, if we lose no time. There will be no time to reinforce the dam; if it is swept away it must be swept away, but if we are fortunate, there will be no loss of life. Come, Mahala! let us hurry to the city, and make all ready!"

  She leaned heavily on Cendri as she hurried down the hill, already moving people of her household around her to give quick, cryptic orders.

  "Lialla, go to the spaceport, find flycraft of any kind available and muster them for airlifting. Zamila, go with this man and help him line up all able-bodied men between fifteen and fifty, and arrange for transport at once! Thanks to the Goddess, Mahala, most of the men had not returned to the site of the dam; no one must go back there unless they are needed to help in the evacuation!"

  Dal and Cendri stood watching as together the Pro-Matriarchs began organizing their plan. Dal murmured, "I had thought the men would try to stand on their own feet. But the first thing they did was to yell for help from the women____ "

  Cendri felt something very like anger at Dai's failure to understand. "Dal, don't you see? Something where men and women have to work together, because women control all the transport, all the organizational facilities, all the technical know-how! Do you really think a society is going to turn itself right around all night?"

  She seized his arm, saying earnestly, "Dal, it wouldn't make a bit of sense to overturn the tyranny of the women and set up a new tyranny of the men! The only thing that will save this society is co-operation—lots of it! Being able to do things together that neither men or women could do on their own____ "

  He nodded, but she could see that his thoughts were elsewhere. After a moment he said, as he watched Vaniya's household quietly organizing transport, "Cendri, do you realize that we have not one but two alien civilizations to deal with here? We still don't know who built the ruins—the city. It was probably the Builders, but it will take centuries to know, and we'll have to break the Time stasis first. And then—there's the aliens who spoke to—to us, and then to the Men. Cendri, Isis is going to be the new scientific focus of the entire Galaxy! Maybe Mahala's going to get what she wanted after all!"

  Cendri could see that, but what was troubling her now was more immediate, more personal.

  Where was Miranda? Was she being held at the site of the dam, with the tidal wave racing inexorably toward the shore?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The sun was rising over Isis; Cendri looked down on the river below, the spreading delta mouth where the river alternately roared and meandered through flats covered with reed and salt-marsh, where the land had been torn away repeatedly by flood. All night she had watched trucks and cars coming and going, emptying storehouses, taking away the heavy machinery, men and women working side by side. And all night, while the Pro-Matriarchs worked side by side, co-ordinating the efforts of the work parties, Vaniya had repeatedly raised her head to every man who came before her, asking him—steadily enough, but in a voice that trembled— "Do you know where my daughter is being held? If you know who holds her hostage, will you send him to me that I may bargain for her freedom?"

  But every man had professed ignorance—Cendri, watching from a distance, had begun to believe that they were truly ignorant, that only a few of the ringleaders had been allowed to know the inside of the plot. The words of Yal rang in her mind, What I don't know, they can't make me tell. And oh, but Vaniya was reaping the harvest of her harsh rule!

  Yet she would not leave her post. Mahala, moved by her anguish, had said at midnight, "Vaniya, my sister, go back to the city, seek your daughter there. I will continue here."

  But Vaniya, pale and agonized, shook her head.

  "My duty lies here, sister. Miranda is my daughter, and she understands the meaning of responsibility. If we all live through this night, I will seek her out, even if I must kneel before every male on Isis and beg for its help; and I will make such terms as I may honorably make for her release, and if I cannot make honorable terms, I pray the Goddess will give us both strength to endure her fate. But for now my duty lies here; I cannot leave men and women to die while I think only of my daughter and her child."

/>   And Mahala, lowering her head, answered, "I know, old friend. Forgive me for thinking otherwise."

  Cendri had been put to run small errands needing no other skill; after a time she was put to work in a hurriedly organized field-kitchen to feed the workers on the site. She watched them slowly, under the supervision of the two Pro-Matriarchs, slowly cross-sectioning the site, performing, she realized, a form of methodical decision akin to triage; what must be removed at any cost (mostly food supplies and heavy machinery), what must be left to take its chances in the path of the wave (mostly structures), and what must be knowingly abandoned. Every decision, Cendri knew, had to be made by the Pro-Matriarchs.

  She worked with other women and a few young boys, brewing tea and drinks for the workers, cooking grains and fish for them. She worked here through the night, and as the sun was rising, she came face to face with Rhu, carrying plates of food to a work-party resting for a few minutes on the grass.

  "What are you doing here, Rhu?"

  "The same as you," he said, with a weary smile. "I have no skills to work among the women, and no strength to work among the men, so I do what I can." His face was pale in the rising light, and Cendri remembered what Dal had told her; that he had a heart weakened by childhood illness.

  He said, "I saw Dal on the slope by the site; every man on Isis wants to see him, to look up to him as inspiration. Whatever comes this night, Scholar Dame, life on Isis may be more endurable for men hereafter."

  Slowly, Cendri nodded. The basic misconception of the society here—that the inferiority of men was backed by divine command because the Builders would not speak to them—had been toppled at one blow. Men must still compensate for their disabilities of education, struggle for equality as the women had done on Pioneer, and it would not come quickly. Indeed, men on Isis would probably continue to live separate from women, since both women and men were content to have it that way; but since the lower status of men was no longer buttressed by a kind of divine ordinance, it could not survive. Nothing would change overnight. Some things would never change at all. But now there was a kind of hope that had never been here before.

  One of the women called to Rhu.

  "Take some food to the Mother Vaniya, Rhu; she must eat and keep up her strength, and she may take it at your hands more easily."

  Cendri went with Rhu. The field-kitchen was actually over-supplied with workers—every woman who had no duties elsewhere was there—and she was not needed. Vaniya, weary and worn, looked up at them.

  "Vaniya," Rhu pleaded, "you must eat something. Here, I have brought you food and wine."

  "I am not hungry," Vaniya said, but she sighed, laid down a map of the site, and glanced at a man waiting for her orders. She said, pointing to a segment of the map, "Leave those three warehouses along the edge of the site. They contain only lumber and building cement, and they are not worth the time and machinery it would take to clear them. The water may not ever reach so high, but if it does, then the contents can be replaced with less than the loss of diverting heavy machinery there now."

  The man nodded, saying, "Where shall we move the machinery, then?"

  "Here." Vaniya pointed again. "Take three of the engineers from the college, and go to strengthen the dikes there; the water might be diverted where it comes in, to flow harmlessly across the lower delta. We will have flooding, but, the engineer from the college tells me, the strength of the wave will not smash there." She raised her hands to her forehead, wearily, as the man and the engineer bent over the map. She said, "We had a copying machine set up in the outer office there, have copies made for each of you, and bring it back to me___ " And as they hurried away with it, she raised her head to take the tray of food.

  "Rhu, Cendri—" she smiled tiredly as she put a fork to her mouth. "Well, Cendri, you came here to study the Matriarchate in crisis, and now you can see rebellion, anarchy, all those things which try a society—what report will you take back to the Unity, little Cendri?"

  Cendri said gently, "I do not know, Vaniya. This—" she gestured, indicating the field office that had been set up around them, "looks not to me like anarchy."

  Vaniya yawned, putting her hand to her mouth. She said, "No, perhaps not. In this crisis we do what we must, all our sons and daughters work together for salvation. I wonder, now, that I never thought to ask those at We-were-guided for help in such things___ " she yawned again, closing her eyes for a moment. Then, she raised her eyes to Rhu. "Have you any news of Miranda? Of where she is being held among the men?"

  Rhu's pale face looked drawn and miserable. He burst out, "No, Vaniya! On my life, no! They betrayed us both!"

  Vaniya's broad face looked stunned, disbelieving. "What is this talk of betrayal, Rhu? What could you have had to do with it?" And even in this crisis Rhu flushed at the contempt in her voice.

  He said steadily, "I came to confess to you; Miranda left the house at my request, she came willingly with me as hostage. She and I—" his voice faltered and Cendri recalled that what he was confessing was something unthinkable in their society. "She and I— we have been much together; she said that she—she loved me—"

  "You!" Vaniya stared at him in disbelief. "She has always been kind to you. But to love a man—and not even a man, but a Companion—"

  "Whatever I am, whatever you think of me, I love Miranda," Rhu said steadily, "and she shared my concern for the plight of men who were nothing in your sight. I was your Companion, but only a— a toy for your leisure hours, while to Miranda I was—I was myself, a human being like herself. We hoped—we hoped together—for a world where man and woman could sometimes meet, if they chose, not only at the edge of the sea, in darkness, as animals rut in season—"

  "Silence," Vaniya burst out. "How dare you speak of such things now to me—"

  "We hoped for a world where man and woman could sometimes meet in the light, wanting one another's welfare and well-being and knowing one another as fellow beings, loving one another," Rhu went on steadily, ignoring her. "And so Miranda, when you would not hear the messenger, resolved to give herself up as hostage, thinking you would do nothing to endanger her. You cared nothing for the man from Unity, but you would hear a messenger if Miranda's safety was at stake. She left the house with me, and came to where the men were gathered, believing as I believed, that we were not born in chains—"

  Vaniya's face contorted in wrath. "You, my Companion—have you approached my daughter as no man may do? I will have you killed, as the penalty is for any male who attacks a citizen—"

  Rhu shook his head. He said quietly, "I have touched her hand, I have kissed her lips and embraced her as a child his mother, and no more; that is not what we sought from one another. It was love, Vaniya, not the sea-coming; and if it had been more, even so, she was heavy with child. You misunderstand, as you have always misunderstood."

  "So where did you take her, you wretch?" Vaniya interrupted, and Rhu shook his head. "They would not tell me, lest I should reveal all to you. They betrayed us both! And they did not trust me, any more than you trust me. As always, Vaniya, I am exiled from the world of men and from the world of women—"

  He covered his face with his hands, and after a moment Cendri realized that he was weeping.

  "I would have died before bringing her to harm, Vaniya, she

  was more than life to me___ "

  Vaniya looked at him, her face drawn with emotion. "Rhu, Rhu, how could you have done this to me? Have I been unkind to you, or cruel?"

  Rhu said, very low, "No, Vaniya. You have been kind, but to you I was nothing. You did not love me. Not as I love Miranda. Not as the Scholar Dame and her Companion love one another. No, Vaniya, you did not love me."

  "But who could have expected it?" Vaniya burst out. "How can any woman love a man? The relations between man and woman are ordained by the seasons and the tides, they meet as is ordained, but—but love?"

  Rhu shook his head, silent, and said no more. Cendri thought, aching for both of them, that they were both
victims of their world. Every society had its misfits. She, Cendri, was luckier than most, for she lived in a society where, if she did not find its ordinances to her liking, she could move outside it, into the open worlds like University, where a dozen cultures met. And as she watched Rhu standing helplessly before Vaniya, she understood something about herself and Dal.

  1 married a man from Pioneer, knowing he would make demands for a kind of submissiveness I was not trained to. I have a greater need for dependency than the women 0/ my world. And yet J have blamed Dal for being what he is. J now know that when we finish our work here, I must either accept Dal as he is.. .what he truly is, not what my insufficiencies need him to be.. .or leave him. But I cannot try to change him. Isis did not change us. It only showed us, unsparingly, what we already were.

  Rhu dashed the tears from his eyes, stood before Vaniya with his head resolutely erect. He said, "When this is over, go to the Builders at We-were-guided. They know all things. They will know where Miranda has been taken."

  Vaniya grimaced and after a moment Cendri realized it was meant for a smile. She said, heartbrokenly, "Did you not know, Rhu? The Builders have forsaken me. They now speak only to men."

  Rhu said steadily, "Then I shall go to We-were-guided and ask them in your name for guidance to rescue Miranda."

  Vaniya's face lighted with a momentary hope. She said, "But if she is here—"

  "Then it is all in the hands of whatever power lies behind man and Builders alike," Rhu said quietly, "but if she is in this encampment, the work parties who are exploring the site will surely find her somewhere. Have I your leave to go, then?"