Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19

by The Ruins of Isis (v2. 1)

  Cendri nodded, not explaining, and they hurried down the barricaded road, moving to the edges as heavy machinery lumbered through. With one piece she saw the Pro-Matriarch Mahala, who called, "Everything from the North level is out, Larida!"

  Cendri's companion nodded, hurrying her along. She said, "There's not much to go now. Is it true they've found a new way to predict quakes and tidal waves, then, to give us advance warning?" Cendri nodded and she said, "Wonderful, we can start to fight that way. Come along, this way—" she looked back at Rhu with concern. "I don't think it ought to come. Nobody's going to have time or energy to carry it if it faints."

  "Rhu," Cendri said, concerned by the pallor of Rhu's face, "Why not stay here? We can take the message to Vaniya!"

  Stubbornly the man shook his head.

  They saw the inner sea-wall now, dikes piled high with sandbags and heavy reinforcements, and withdrawing from them with the last of the machinery, the tall heavy form of Vaniya. Cendri ran toward her.

  "Vaniya! Vaniya," she called. "We know where Miranda is held! She is here—have you found her?"

  Vaniya stopped, looking at Cendri in disbelief and dismay.

  Here? Cendri, she cannot be, every building has been searched!"

  "The three warehouses of lumber and cement, the ones you said not to go near—" Cendri gasped, "she is being held in the center one—quickly, quickly—"

  Vaniya turned without another word and hurried toward the outer sea-wall. Cendri, looking down the slope, saw that everything possible to remove had been removed, and only the skeleton of buildings remained. Vaniya flung over her shoulder "How did you find this out?"

  "It was Rhu—" she turned and sought with her eyes for him. "Where is he? Has he fainted?" she cried out, quite forgetting that the male pronoun was not proper. But there was a commotion on the slope, women shouting.

  "You can't go down there—hi! Come back! It's too late, everything's out of there—" and as Vaniya hurried toward them, Cendri at her heels, the women guarding the slope said angrily, "Some damned man ran down there, some curled-hair pet forgot its ribbons, I suppose—"

  Vaniya said tightly, "My daughter—she is down there, in the warehouse—"

  "Oh, no, Mother Pro-Matriarch," said one of the women soothingly, "there's nobody at all down there, trust me. Everybody's out, you know, we searched every building except those old empty warehouses, and there's nothing there but cement and lumber, who would bother going in there? Anyhow, she'd have come out a long time ago."

  Vaniya said shakily, "She might be in labor and unable to walk-"

  "She'd have had enough warning, surely—" the woman broke off, shading her eyes against the sun. She said, "Goddess! There is someone coming out of that warehouse—two people!" She checked her timepiece, and said, "We may have just time—" and hastily, signalling toward the figures below, began to run down the slope.

  Vaniya began to run after them; Cendri caught her, held her back by force. "No, no," she urged. "They will get her out if it is humanly possible—please, Vaniya—come back behind the inner wall—Dal, help me—" she begged, supporting the old woman's weight, "Look, Vaniya, they have them both—Rhu was carrying Miranda, carrying her in his arms, now they have taken Miranda from him, they are carrying her—"

  "They're carrying Rhu, too," Dal broke in, "I knew he shouldn't have gone in—oh, my God!" He stiffened, staring out at the horizon, and Cendri knew, in horror, what he had seen. A siren went off somewhere, and the few people left between the sea and the inner dike dropped everything and began to run. Cendri thrust Vaniya along, twisting her head to see the four strong women, carrying Rhu and Miranda, hurrying toward the inner dike. Cendri and Dal between them boosted the Pro-Matriarch's heavy body over the wall, but she struggled away from them, hurrying to where the women were laying Miranda on the grass. One of them, looking at Miranda sharply, said, "I will see if there is a midwife in the crowd up there," and ran up toward the barriers.

  Miranda was deathly white. She said, "I am all right, I tell you, I need the midwife more than I need anyone else's help. Cendri, is it you? What is this all about? Rhu would explain nothing, he simply grabbed me up in his arms and ran, what is happening?"

  But before anyone could answer—Cendri realized in a flash that Miranda, confined in an empty warehouse, knew nothing of the tidal wave or the warning from We-were-guided—there was a great, crashing roar like the end of the world, and Cendri saw a great wall of water which looked miles high racing toward the shore with the speed of a gigantic jet. Miranda heard the roar and cried out in terror, and Rhu, lying collapsed on the grass, his face drawn in pain, whispered in agony, "Miranda—"

  "She is safe, Rhu," Dal said, leaning over him. "You're both going to be all right; just lie back and relax."

  "Miranda—" he whispered again, and she turned over, slowly, painfully, reaching for his hand. She whispered, "Rhu—Rhu—"

  The agony contorted his face again; he struggled for breath. Miranda held his hand tightly; leaned over and kissed him on the lips, but when she drew away his face was slack and still. Alarmed, Dal felt for a pulse; shook his head.

  "He's gone," he said. "Poor, poor heroic little devil!"

  Miranda began to sob helplessly. Vaniya bent over Rhu, gently closed his eyes. And then, with a great roar, the tsunami struck below them. Cendri saw the warehouses go, with one great explosion of flying lumber, heard the roar as the outer sea-wall burst and sagged inward like a child's sand-castle, and the water came racing, flying inward with such a sound of thunder that Cendri was deafened, and, watching the great wall of water, felt certain it would roar inward, sweep them away where they stood, with the wreckage of the dikes....

  But although the flying spray drenched them with salt, stinging their eyes and splashing high against the dike above them, it held, and, miraculously, began to recede. Cendri sank down, gasping. Vaniya looked at Rhu's body with deep regret.

  "How heroic—for a man," she said, in wonder. "What could he have cared for Miranda! But even a dog can be heroic—"

  And suddenly Cendri was angry, with a blazing fury. She stood up, towering over Vaniya in uncontrollable rage.

  "Do you know what he did?" she demanded. "Do you know that it was Rhu who saved her, who killed himself for her? If he had waited until your officials here got through arguing, she would be down there in that smashed matchwood that used to be a warehouse! She and her unborn child both! If he hadn't acted on his own initiative, without waiting for some woman's permission, your daughter and your heir would be lying dead down there, and you would never even have known it! Even a dog heroic? He loved her, Vaniya! He loved her!" she repeated, collapsed into Dai's arms and began to cry.

  Vaniya looked shaken. She said slowly. "How do you know this?" and, wiping her eyes, Cendri explained how she and Dal and Rhu had gone together to We-were-guided.

  "Then you had a part in it too, Cendri, and you—Scholar," Vaniya said awkwardly, and after a moment Cendri realized she had spoken to Dal. He said, still kneeling by Rhu's lifeless body, "I only wish I could have done more, Pro-Matriarch; not only to save Rhu—he was my friend—but to show you, perhaps, that men can show all the good qualities which you of Isis reserve for women."

  Vaniya bowed her head. She said, "Some day, perhaps, I shall know how best to thank you."

  Miranda was sobbing, holding Rhu's cold hand in hers. She whispered to Cendri, "For this to happen—for this to happen now— when we might have seen our dream—"

  Cendri held Miranda close, but she said nothing. Let Miranda keep the dream that some day, if Rhu had lived, they might have had one another in the way Dal and Cendri had each other. It could never have been. They were both children of the Matriarchate, and that bold a change would not come in Miranda's lifetime, or, perhaps, of her unborn daughter. Cendri and Dal had begun as equals, had found one another through shared work and shared interests and mutual respect. Rhu and Miranda might have tasted the outer fringes of this kind of love. But it could
only have turned, for them, to bitterness and disappointment. Now Miranda would keep, forever, a romantic memory of what might have been, and the knowledge that the man she loved had given his life for her. And Rhu—with her heart torn, Cendri remembered his plaintive

  song;

  When I am dead

  Will the Goddess take me, perhaps

  To her loving breasts?

  Miranda cried out suddenly, holding herself with both hands.

  "Oh! Oh! quick! Somebody! Help! Get the midwife—please, somebody—any midwife, but hurry—"

  There was a flurry, and Vaniya said, looking up the slope, "She will be here in a minute, my precious, she will come to you here.”

  Miranda sighed with relief. She said, shakily, "It took a tidal wave to make my lazy daughter decide to be born—and wouldn't you know? I am the first woman to have her baby while visiting the sea!"

  "Miranda!" said Vaniya in shock, "How can you make such a joke at a time like this—" for all the women around had burst into scandalized giggles.

  Dal said plaintively to Cendri, "Will you please tell me what the hell is so funny about that?"

  But Cendri knew that she could not explain it, in the presence of the women of Isis, to any man. Not for generations.

  A portion of the Report submitted to the Mentor Lokshmann, of the College of Xeno-anthropoJogy and Comparative Culture on University, by the Scholar Dame Cendri Owain, resident on lsis/Cinderella:

  ...this season the great dam on the river Anahit has been completed, with earthquake-proof safeguards. The Inland Land Reclamation Project has absorbed most of the workmen from the dam construction site. Most of the men continue to live in the inland villages which they have colonized, and to hire out for wages. Few of them bother to exercise the legal franchise, saying that too much concern with politics serves to destroy a man's natural instincts.

  Shortly after the great tsunami which destroyed the first construction site, the Council of Ariadne, under the advice of the Intelligences who have been designated pro tern as Ruins A Culture, appointed the High Matriarch Vaniya to assume all the religious duties of High Priestess, while the High Matriarch Mahala was chosen to administer all secular matters within the City of Ariadne. A representative from the Men's Houses is chosen every Long Year, with the provision that he must be of what the Council calls a "sedate old age" and therefore, as they say, no longer at the mercy of his sexual drives, and capable of abstract thought. Thus the Council is headed by a tripartite authority, with an absolute provision that no matter shall be settled unless to the satisfaction of all three parties. This, as they say, assured that no majority can force the will and conscience of a minority, and that no material considerations may override the spiritual needs of the people. The formal designation of the male appointed to the tripartite authority is Elder Brother, and the new custom states that a former Elder Brother shall retain for life his Council seat, without a vote, but shall advise and instruct his comrades and younger brothers in the Men's Houses of the city and countryside.

  The archaeological expedition to We-were-guided has now had a full Long Year in the ruins at We-were-guided. This preliminary team of a hundred and nineteen men and a hundred and twenty-four women have worked together admirably well with volunteer workers from the College of Ariadne, which is now known as the Women's College. After observing the work of the men and women from University, ninety-two men from the city of Ariadne have volunteered to enroll in the new Men's College built in the colony village of Anahit. The first class will graduate with the status of Scholar, two Long Years from now.

  There is little social mingling between men and women, except among the relatively enlightened women of the college of Ariadne, and a few of the men working with the Unity team in We-were-guided. However, it has been noticed that over thirty women, a full half of them still of reproductive age, have applied for a license to take a Companion. Most women, however, still prefer a life-partnership with another woman, and the status of a Companion is very low. A new insult is in use among children in Ariadne; "Companion's-child." This word is considered too gross for use among grown women.

  Twenty-nine women of the University team have formed a Household in Ariadne, and although I have entered the household only on formal terms as a guest, I have noticed that a few of the women have chosen life-partners, although as yet there are no cross-partnerships between women of Isis/ Cinderella and the Unity.

  Enclosed in this report are several applications, passed on through the Embassy and approved by the Council, of five women and two men who have applied for matriculation and residence permits on University, with provisional Student status. Two of the women are personally known to me; Laurina, of the household of the High Matriarch Mahala, and a full professor of History at the Women's College, assisted me competently during the preliminary mapping of the site at We-were-guided; she comes with the personal recommendation of the Master Scholar Dallard Malocq as well as my own. She has written a monograph on archaeology for the use 0/ the two colleges here, and has requested that when she achieves Scholar's status she be reassigned to Isis/Cinderella to do her advanced work in the field of communication with nonhuman intelligences, among the people designated as Ruins A Culture.

  The second applicant to bear my personal recommendation is Miranda, daughter of the High Matriarch Vaniya. She holds a degree in vocaJ and instrumental music from the Women's College, and is my close personal friend; she has appointed me guardian of her daughter Cendriya during the period of her absence.

  The other applicants are not personally known to me, although one of the women bears the personal recommendation of the Scholar Dame Lurianna di Velo and holds a degree in Temporal Mathematics; both of the men bear the recommendation of the Master Scholar Dallard Malocq, and are advanced students and instructors at the Men's College.

  At a later date I shall submit information as to the continuing cultural investigation of social organization among the Ruins A Culture, a project which is barely beginning.

  I know that you and your colleagues are also interested in the progress of the study of the ruins at We-were-guided. May I direct your attention to the study forwarded under separate cover by the Master Scholar Dallard Malocq and the Scholar Dame di Velo. This is, of course, a preliminary study; it has not yet even determined whether or not the ruins were erected by the race designated as the Builders. The Scholar Dame Lurianna di Velo will forward an advanced report by the next ship from Isis. 1 enclose also her request, to be forwarded to the Mentors of the College of Archaeology, for an advance team of four hundred; I wish in my capacity of resident expert on matriarchal customs to remind the assigning committee of University that by the laws of the Matriarchate, the committee must number fewer men than women. The Scholar Dame has also requested that among the committee, at least half a dozen women be included who hold degrees in Temporal Mathematics. She is aware of the current Scholar's attitude toward the theory of Time stasis, which is why she asked me to forward this request informally instead of going through channels.

  I thank you for your kind wishes, and the offer to grant me a maternity leave for the next season, and to delay the forwarding of my advanced reports and qualification data, but it is not the custom of women on Isis/Cinderella to take such leaves, and it would reflect poorly upon the women of University if I were to do so. Nevertheless, I am deeply grateful for your attempted consideration.

  I shall be awaiting your reply, and your promised visit to the site of the Ruins A Culture.

  With respectful greetings,

  Cendri Owain Malocq

  Scholar Dame [qualified; Isis/Cinderella)

  About the Author:

  Marion Zimmer Bradley is best known for the famous "Darkover" series which began with The Bloody Sun in 1961. She has consistently injected social commentary into her work, and describes herself as a feminist long before anyone heard of women's lib. The Ruins of Isis carries on that tradition. Her wide-ranging interests include costumery, gourmet
cooking, opera, Gaelic folk music and parapsychology. She considers her writing to be in the realm of "interplanetary adventure," rather than the hard technology school of science fiction. Recently elected vice president of the Science Fiction Writer's Association, Marion Zimmer Bradley has three children and lives in Berkeley, California.