The Shore of Women

by Pamela Sargent

  “Birana took what she wanted. She had men with her. I could do nothing.”

  “Do you expect the Council to believe that? Do you think I believe it? You might have called for help as soon as they were gone, but instead all you did was send messages to your mentor and friend to make certain your disgusting recordings would be saved.”

  “There was nothing I could do.”

  “Don’t add lies to your crimes.”

  “I suppose that you’re angry that I brought the child back,” I said. “You would probably have preferred to see her die with her mother and father.”

  “Don’t speak of those wretches to me. The child will suffer enough when she learns of how she was born. You may have shown her little mercy.”

  “She’s alive, at least. Isn’t that our reason for everything, Eilaan—life?” I was silent for a moment. “Are you going to send out ships to search for Birana?”

  “We’ve already done so. They’ve found nothing. What are we to do—have all the cities search the continent for one woman? Wipe out every band that might have seen her? Bren is now saying that it’s better to let Birana go, that it’s likely she’ll flee to abandoned land far from men, that in time she’ll become only part of another story the men tell, and that this can’t affect us. She wants mercy, and the Council is heeding her words. How clever you were to make those recordings, Laissa. Some on the Council were so moved by those images of Birana with her child, by her tale of woe. You made it possible for that wretched woman to plead for herself directly.”

  “We might learn much from her story,” I said.

  “We’ve learned quite enough. Do you think what has passed between her and that man means anything? You heard the rest of her story; you know what happened to other women who lived among men. No life is possible with men for long—even Birana will learn that. The man with her will revert to what he is eventually and take advantage of her weakness.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “I saw what he was.”

  “Always we’ve exiled those who had committed grave crimes. Now some wonder if we can resort to that punishment again, for if Birana could survive, so could others. But others are saying that such a life outside may be punishment enough, that many would fear expulsion all the more if they heard Birana’s story.” Eilaan closed her eyes. “I’ve loved this city; I’ve worked for it all my life. You think of me as heartless—you can’t look into my mind and see my struggle. I’ve had my moments of doubt but put them aside for the city’s sake. Now I see the beginning of the end of all we have tried to do.”

  “Do you think we’re so weak?”

  “This is how it begins,” she answered, “with one misplaced act of mercy, with setting one life above one’s duty. It will lead to other such acts. More wrongdoers may be expelled and may survive, and some will want to show them mercy as well. Our lives—very slowly, perhaps—will change. We won’t have to worry about the men discovering our limitations. We’ll weaken ourselves.”

  “Do you think mercy shows weakness? Maybe if we’d trusted in our own strength more, we could have shown more mercy in the past. We think we restored peace to Earth. We only built places to hide.”

  Eilaan gazed at me steadily, then slumped forward. “I can do nothing now. The Council has questioned my competence. I’ll have no voice.”

  “What will happen to my recordings?” I asked.

  “The historians will have them. They’re used to such sordid material. No one else will be interested. Historians have so many documents others scorn—that story may be forgotten in time even by them.”

  I took a breath. “And what will happen to me? Am I to be expelled?”

  Eilaan brushed back a lock of gray hair. “Oh, no. You won’t be expelled, Laissa. You’ll be allowed to plead for yourself before the Council and offer what explanation you can for your actions, but I already know what your sentence will be. I’ll have the satisfaction of telling it to you now.”

  I waited.

  “You’ll never be a Mother of the City. You’ll leave the towers and live among those we serve, and even they will probably have little to do with you. You’ll do whatever work is found for you.”

  “I can accept that. I’ll have a daughter someday. My daughter or hers will join the Mothers of the City again.”

  She shook her head. “There will be no children for you. That’s the rest of your punishment. You’ll never go to the wall; you’ll never have a child. You’ll vanish and leave no direct descendants.”

  “No,” I whispered. My throat constricted; I clung to the side of the bed, afraid I might slip to the floor.

  Eilaan rose. “You’ll be allowed to raise the child Nallei. You brought her here, after all. You can think of the daughters you’ll never have when you raise her. She can think of the life she might have had in the towers if you had done your duty.” She walked toward the door. “The Council will summon you soon. Don’t expect anything from them. You might have been exiled. Bren argued against that, but even she knows that an example must be made.”

  I endured my day before the Council in a trance, almost unable to focus on their words. I answered their questions passively, offering no arguments, refusing to fight for myself. The sentence was passed, as Eilaan had predicted.

  A house was found for me at the northern end of the city, a structure of stone and glass at the end of a path. To the north lay the wall; to the south, the distant spires of the towers reminded me of what I had lost. A patrolwoman brought Nallei to me, put her in my arms, and took me to my new home. My personal belongings had already been moved, but my books and papers were not among them.

  As I cared for Nallei or walked along the path near my house, I thought of the times I had sought solitude. My neighbors spoke to me only when necessary and did not urge me to trade with them for their handmade items. Those with small daughters did not bring them to the house. My work, what little there was of it, consisted of monitoring the cyberminds managing that part of the city and noting where a malfunction might occur; it was work I could do inside the house by my screen.

  The women living near me did not seem aware of exactly what I had done. I had gone outside, I had spoken to men, but they barely understood what a man was, shielded as they were from the deliberations of those who lived in the towers. I had aided an exiled woman, had brought her child into the city; to them, Nallei might as well have been the offspring of a woman and a fabled beast. They whispered among themselves, fell silent when I passed, then murmured again, not seeming to care if I heard. All they had to know was that I was disgraced, deprived of the right and duty to bear children—that I was as removed from the life of the city as if I had been expelled.

  I might have given in to despair, but Nallei depended on me. At first, I tended her automatically, making sure that she was fed, cleaned, sung to, and given toys; but, as I grew more accustomed to her presence, I warmed to her. I saw Birana in her eyes, Arvil in her face. She was a child of my twin and the only child I would ever have. Perhaps giving her to me had not been part of my punishment, but a consolation for what I had lost.

  I was sitting in front of my door, watching Nallei crawl in the grass, when I saw Zoreen walking along the path toward me. She stopped in front of me and folded her arms. “You’ve been here almost two months,” she said. “I haven’t heard a word from you. Is that any way to treat me?”

  “I didn’t want to cause you any more trouble.” I moved closer to Nallei as Zoreen sat down. “You probably shouldn’t have come here. You can always leave a message on my screen.”

  “I don’t want to leave you messages.” She glanced behind me at the house. “Seems you have room enough for a friend or two to live here.”

  “I have no friends.”

  “I came to ask if I could live here.”

  I gaped at her, surprised. “But that’s impossible.”

  “You have to live here,” she said, “but the Council never said that others couldn’t live here with you.”
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  “They didn’t have to say it. Zoreen, your place is in the city’s center. You don’t have to make some gesture to me out of pity.”

  She took my hand. “It isn’t pity. Can’t you see that?”

  “But you…”

  “I’m not highly thought of as it is. I’d rather live here than alone in my rooms. I can do my work here as easily as anywhere else. I’ll be planning to have a child before long, and I have a feeling Nallei may need a friend. I don’t want to live without you, Laissa.”

  I looked away.

  “I listened to your recordings,” she said, “with Fari and Bren, before Bren took them to the Council. I think I know why you acted as you did. I think you came to love Birana, in a way. I was jealous at first, but she’s gone and I’m here, and I won’t do less for you than you did for her. Tell me I can stay.”

  “I might have loved her. It’s past now.” I leaned against her, feeling a loose lock of her brown hair under my cheek. “I want you to stay.”

  “Then I’ll move my things. I suppose I’ll have to be neater. I wouldn’t want Nallei getting into my books and papers.” Nallei crawled toward us and settled next to Zoreen. “I don’t suppose you know this, but the ships haven’t found a trace of Birana. The Council will keep looking, but I don’t think they’re trying too hard. Maybe she’s found a hiding place by now.”

  “She may be dead,” I whispered.

  “That settlement she spoke of, the one where those poor women live with men—they haven’t done anything about that, either. Those women couldn’t adapt to our life, most likely, and the settlement won’t survive anyway. Fari’s put your recordings into the system. Most of the historians have looked at them and listened to them by now, and we’ve had messages from cities that hardly ever speak to us asking for them. You did some important work, you see. The historians now know more about the outside than we’ve known for some time.”

  “They’re the only ones who will care,” I said. “In time, that tale will be no more than a curious sidelight even to them. The cities will go on as they have. You’ve spent some time among those we serve— walk down this road and listen to their talk. They don’t want to think about what makes their peaceful lives possible. If you offered them a chance to have a voice in any change, most of them would refuse it and tell us to leave things as they are. How can I blame them? They live without having to struggle. To tell them that a life without any struggle and pain leads only to weakness and decline would seem an abstraction to them—they’d look at the cheerful, calm faces of their daughters and wonder what I was talking about.” I sighed. “Anyway, that isn’t my concern. I have other tasks.”

  “You sound much like one of those we serve,” she said softly.

  “I am one of them now.”

  Within a few weeks, Zoreen’s room was filled with the disorder of her books and documents. She discussed her work with others over the screen or went to see them in their rooms. I never asked her about what she was doing; after a few tentative overtures, she refrained from discussing her work with me. I expected her to tire of me, to find an excuse to leave me before long; I saw worry and disappointment in her green eyes whenever she looked at me. Yet she stayed on, as if hoping I might become what I once had been—a companion to whom she could speak freely, a lover who knew her thoughts.

  My mother began to leave messages, but I did not seek her out. I had disgraced her, had made her own position more precarious; she would only want to weep over me or utter angry accusations. She might expect me to wallow with her in her own guilt as she talked of how she had failed me. I refused to answer her; speaking to her now would accomplish nothing.

  I was unprepared for her visit to my house. Her gaze was steady; she did not look like a tormented woman. She embraced me without speaking, holding me as she had when I was a child.

  I ushered her into my front room. Zoreen looked up from her book. “Where is Nallei?” Mother asked.

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Don’t disturb her, then. I’ll see her another time.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” I said. “It’d be better for you to forget me.”

  “A mother doesn’t forget her daughter.” She sat down on the couch next to Zoreen. “I came here because your mentor—your former mentor, Fari—asked me to bring you this.” She reached inside the pocket of her blue tunic, took out two spools, and handed them to me. “She would have brought them herself, but—I suppose she knew I’d want to see you.”

  “What are they?” I asked as I sat in the chair nearest to her.

  “Copies of recordings you made outside. The story Birana and Arvil told to you.”

  “You shouldn’t have brought them,” I said harshly. “That work is over now. My papers were taken from me.”

  “Perhaps Zoreen can keep the recordings. Nallei might want them someday.”

  “What good can they do her? They’ll only remind her that it would have been better if she’d never been born.” I looked down at the spools. “Why did Fari want me to have them?”

  “I’m not sure,” Mother said.

  “Maybe she thinks I need a reminder of my crime.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure she didn’t think that.” She put her hand on the arm of my chair. “I listened to them. I hadn’t known the whole story before. It was a hard thing to hear, and I’m sure most wouldn’t want to listen to it, but—Arvil is my son, after all. That meant little to me once. Now I find myself remembering what he was as a child, and I wish I had loved him more.”

  “You loved Button too much.” I sat back in my chair. “In a way, that’s what brought me here, I suppose. That’s how it all started.”

  “I know that,” Mother said softly.

  “Thank you for bringing the recordings, but they’re useless to me.”

  Zoreen set down the pages of her book. “You’re a chronicler, Laissa,” she said. “There’s a story on those spools the cities have never heard.”

  “I’m not a chronicler any more.”

  “Do you need to have the Council call you one to be one?” she asked. “Must an adviser tell you that’s what you are?”

  “No one wants to hear that story.”

  “You mean that they don’t want to view those recordings. What would they see and hear? An exiled woman talking about a world we can barely understand and a man who would probably terrify most of them. I suppose only historians and a few others would have the stomach for it. But you could write a chronicle. You could make that world live for others, Laissa. You can help them understand it. You can find a way to make others want to read that story, and maybe a few can find some compassion for those people in it.”

  I was silent.

  “I think that may be why Fari wanted you to have those spools,” Zoreen continued, “though she’d be too cautious to say so herself. You have your work if you want it.”

  Mother rose. “I’ll visit my granddaughter another time.” She stroked my hair. “Think about what your friend’s said. I nearly lost the will to live once myself—I don’t want to see that happen to you. Let Nallei believe someday that there’s some purpose to her life and in the lives of those that gave her to us.”

  I did not want to set down this chronicle. Perhaps I would not have begun to write it except for Nallei; in her, I seemed to see Birana and Arvil pleading for their story to be told.

  Some will read these words and think that I have set myself against our cities. I do not want to destroy what we have built. We saved Earth and came to know our true power. Our daughters grow up unscarred by the wounds that marked the lives of women in ancient times; we must never go back to what once existed. Yet we have made this life for ourselves at the cost of the lives of those outside. To be free, we have enslaved them.

  Those outside are our brothers. I do not mean that in the sense in which we usually use that term, which means only a male born of one’s own mother and no more, but in the way it was once used. They are our fathers and our sons. There i
s something of us in them and something of them in us.

  We were forced to choose this pattern once because our survival was at stake. I believe it may be at stake once more. We may stagnate, as life does when it holds to a pattern that is no longer needed, which can keep it from growing and becoming something more. It may be time for us and for those outside to begin to reshape ourselves and become another kind of being.

  During the time it has taken me to write this chronicle, I have heard rumors circulating in the city of men who have gone to shrines and prayed for the Lady to dwell among them once more. I have heard of bands trying to preserve a fragile peace with others, who speak of the woman who listened to their tales in a shrine. There are more stories of the woman and the tiny girl-child who once revealed themselves to men. Near a shrine in the east, a crude carving in wood shows a man and a woman with a child in their arms; a ship’s pilot has seen men worshipping there. And there is Nallei, who lives because a woman and man somehow found love for each other.

  We are being given a chance to reach out to our other selves. What we do will show what we are and determine what we shall become.

  There is no word of Birana’s fate or of Arvil’s, no sign that they live, no rumor that they have been seen outside. Yet I cannot think of them as dead. They live on in my mind, freed by their love from her world and his. I imagine them on a distant shore near a refuge they have built for themselves dreaming of the oceans we might sail again and the stars we might seek. Perhaps we will join them on that shore at last.