The Sisterhood

by Juanita Coulson

  Niand’s ruler and her daughter surveyed the offworlders narrowly. Renee returned the favor. Seeing the two women and Chayo together made their family relationship obvious. The matriarch was thinner than her adult children, and her complexion tended more toward a mellow ivory tone than Zia’s golden, butterscotch-tinged skin or Chayo’s somewhat darker version of the same hue, but all of their features came out of an identical gene pool-prominent cheekbones, turned-up noses, striking pale eyes. The matriarch’s gaze was particularly piercing, but none of them was a slouch in the locked-gazes department. Zia reminded Renee of a silken tank. Ingenious makeup, and perhaps skillful cosmetic surgery, had honed and polished natural beauty to stunning near-perfection, but it didn’t hide the steel beneath the princess’s gorgeous facade. She looked a hell of a lot tougher than her brother did, in many ways. Hers was also a face Renee had seen earlier — on the answering-service TV in Chayo’s wrecked apartment.

  The matriarch’s laser eyes bored intently at Martil and Tae for a long moment, then darted in Renee’s direction, perturbing the Earthwoman.

  Okay. Now what?

  Tae’s fingertips pressed lightly against Renee’s back, and she bowed, though not so deep it could be called a kowtow. Enough, however, to make her hope that the chief dresser had pinned on those wigs and falls securely. The matriarch and Zia bowed slightly, acknowledging the newcomers’ presence. “Welcome, Lady, to you, and to your companions. We had prepared for but two Arbiters, and feared this delegation would not be to our liking,” Niand’s ruler said, speaking precisely, picking and choosing her words. “Yet … it is well.”

  “You honor us, Most High, Eminence. It was solely to please your royal persons that the Arbiters so altered our representation and I was sent here.” Renee blinked. Had she said that? No, Renee-Tae had.

  “We are grateful that the Arbiters see fit to accommodate us in this way,” the matriarch replied. “The message my son Chayo received told us of these … these male Arbiters.” Her glance turned, for an instant, to Renee’s companions, silently expressing distaste. Then the monarch went on, “It is — Chayo was informed that these males are known as Martil of the Bright Suns and Tae of — of the Green Union.” She bit off those last two words, almost choking on them. Recovering, she asked, “How must we address you, Esteemed Lady? What is your title?”

  Again, without consciously willing it, Renee-Tae spoke. “Most High, I am Renamos of the Sisterhood of the Nine Worlds.”

  Given the stiff protocol in action here, Renee didn’t dare swivel around and blurt out her annoyance at Tae — and punctuate that with a kick in the shins. So she hurled visual daggers at Martil. He didn’t respond in the slightest, adding to her pique.

  Then Zia was moving forward, approaching Renee. After a split second of oh-my-god apprehension, Renee realized that Tae wouldn’t let her goof up. She held out her hands, taking Zia’s, and the two young women brushed cheeks politely. It was a parody of celebrity guests on a talk show greeting one another, and no more sincere. Formality. The princess had to perform this particular one; Niandian culture insisted that the matriarch remain aloof from public physical contact. Only that hem-kissing ritual was permitted. Her daughter carried out any necessary kissy-face routines.

  Up close, Chayo’s sister seemed absolutely luscious. She made Renee feel like a cow, and she was relieved when the charade ended and Zia retreated a pace or two. “Which male is —” Zia wrinkled her cute nose “— is of the Green Union?”

  Martil gestured theatrically. “My companion is Tae of the Green Union.” As soon as he’d said that, the matriarch and Zia lost all interest in him and stared at Tae with undisguised loathing. The room’s figurative temperature plummeted. Renee longed to make a hasty getaway, but she couldn’t; Tae was holding her in place.

  So she heard Renee-Tae saying, “There must be truce, Most High, Eminence, or there can be no meaningful discussion.”

  Meaningful discussion. Oh, yeah! The diplomats’ favorite mealy mouthed phrase for “Knock it off, before we kill each other.”

  After a long, tense moment, the mood of hostility softened a bit. Zia murmured, “We must concede that his form is not overly offensive.” She had a low-pitched, sexy voice to go with her gorgeous looks.

  Renee wondered what in the hell the princess was talking about. But somehow she kept her mouth shut, or Tae did that for her. Her head was throbbing and her stomach aching. Lack of sleep and food was making her short-tempered. She had to watch it, or she might blurt out something tactless. Martil sensed that and took over the conversation. “We are pleased that you approve. The Arbiters so arranged Tae’s appearance, the better to implement —”

  “You may enter,” the matriarch cut in, stomping on whatever else Martil had intended to say. The outer doors of the large room opened and a bunch of Niandians trooped in. Most were well-dressed middle-aged women. A few were men, a couple of them wearing what were obviously uniforms. The latter two, especially a hard-faced guy who looked like a local version of a Pentagon type, filmed visibly. The women bowed to the matriarch and her daughter; the men knelt and went through the ritual hem-kissing routine, adding a formal brush of the lips across the backs of the ruling females’ hands. Even while that was going on, the matriarch was making introductions, a flood of alien names and titles. Renee nodded, trying to memorize designations and the faces that went with them. Apparently, the group was the matriarch’s cabinet — her top ministers and generals. Two of the four generals, Renee noted, were men. So that much didn’t change from one humanoid species to another. It seemed Niandian males were just as likely to be the war-game players here as they were among Earth peoples. Then another, bemusing thought struck her: Most of the matriarch’s top rankers were women, which meant that the few men in her cabinet must be very good at what they did.

  The cultural minority has to, in many cases, be even better at doing a job than the cultural majority, simply in order to reach a more or less equal status with their “superiors,” Renee thought. The familiar patterns, thrown topsy-turvy: “He must be really good, to qualify for the matriarch’s cabinet …!”

  A lot of polite greetings had been traded absently, the ruler’s cabinet officers going through the same knee-jerk initial responses to Tae’s presence, then backing off verbally. But the hard-faced general didn’t back down. “Treacherous Green Union monsters!” he exclaimed suddenly. The women cabinet members glowered at him, and Zia gasped in annoyance. “We were promised that an Arbiter peace mission would also be sent to the enemy to —”

  “Control yourself,” the matriarch interrupted him, her tone one she might have used toward a high-strung, likable teenager. “You always jump to conclusions, my dear Vunj. Calm down and explain yourself.”

  “Please, you must act with caution, Most High,” Vunj begged. He punched at a panel on the wall with twinkling lights. Flanking walls lit up, dancing with insert star maps and rows of alien numbers and letters. The matriarch studied the display thoughtfully. “New attacks, launched less than three iyas ago. Our outposts besieged —”

  “Yes, yes, I can see that,” she said, again slicing rudely across his words.

  He insisted on spitting out the rest of his accusations, earning an affronted glare from the matriarch and the women of her cabinet. “Betrayal by those slimy abominations, while your own son tries to traffic with one of the devils in an Arbiter’s guise …”

  “Do you want the slaughter to go on forever, Vunj?” Chayo demanded. In striking contrast to his usual deferential manner, he was downright belligerent toward the general.

  “It is better than a shameful, cowardly —”

  “Propaganda posturing, from a motherless —”

  “Be still, both of you!” The quarrel choked off, though Chayo and General Vunj continued to clench their fists and scowl at one another. The matriarch turned to the Arbiters. “Your reply to our message assured us that you would seek a truce from the Green Union as well as from Niand. And yet they persist in
these attacks and commit further atrocities upon our people. Is this to be the proof of your sincerity?”

  “And is Niand blameless?” Renee-Tae countered. “Can you deny that your military forces have sometimes committed atrocities against the Green Union? Can you deny that even now certain units are preparing or actually conducting strikes deep into the Green Union’s territories, despite your claims that you desire a truce?” General Vunj spluttered, not convincing anyone. The guilty truth was in his eyes, and in the matriarch’s and Zia’s.

  Vunj tried to divert the argument, aiming his hatred at Tae. “I plead with you, Most High, give that disguised shape-shifter to my intelligence people. We’ll interrogate the monster and —”

  The matriarch opened her mouth, but it was Martil who spoke, saying icily, “Tae is not a citizen of the Green Union.” Stunned shock gripped the Niandians, both men and women. Plainly, tromping on their ruler’s absolute command of a conversation simply was not done. Heedless, Martil went on, “You were promised a team of Arbiters representing both sides of this conflict. Species types, not members of your own interstellar communities. The team working, at this moment, in the Green Union, is composed of an Arbiter of their race and a humanoid in Green Union form, just as Tae has assumed your form. You have been favored by having two humanoid representatives on our team, in the persons of Renamos and myself. More will not be granted.”

  Renee-Tae pointed to the war map, a miniaturization of a battle raging across light-years. “It will take time to effect a truce. Attacks will not cease instantly. For a while, loyalties will be strained. We must not be rash with accusations of treason.”

  Chayo jumped into the debate. “I am no traitor, but there are traitors among us. Niandians! Mother, the Gevari destroyed my quarters only a short while ago. They knew the Arbiters were with me, and they tried to kill them!”

  “What did you expect?” Vunj asked, sneering. “You volunteered to contact these mediators, to deliver us to our enemies —”

  “Be still!” the matriarch exclaimed, and Zia and the general traded enigmatic glances. Renee couldn’t read their expressions. Were they afraid? Contemptuous? The matriarch took Chayo’s hand and said anxiously, “Were you hurt?”

  “Not I, but the Arbiter Martil was, slightly …”

  “Oh, all of this must stop!” The matriarch sank into a chair that appeared magically out of the floor. She no longer seemed the total autocrat but a sad, motherly woman mourning too much war and death. Her face could have come straight from a fighting-front journalist’s photo album. “My children, my people, they must be spared any further grief or agony, before it is too late.”

  “Indeed,” Martil said. “And it should begin with a conference of Niand’s leaders. We were told such a conference would already be convened here in Niand’s capital when we arrived.”

  “There have been … delays,” Zia said, and Chayo regarded her with a puzzled frown.

  “Yes, difficulties, many difficulties,” the matriarch agreed. “Please be patient, Arbiters. The Gevari rebels refuse to break off their terrorist campaigns or end their subversions, and —”

  “Then we may be helpless to aid you,” Renee-Tae said.

  “I beg of you!” Niand’s monarch said, her voice shaking.

  Martil dispensed entirely with the fiction that Renee was the group’s spokesperson and said, “It is easier to begin a war than end one, as you are discovering. The situation has occurred often, among many species. When fanatics assume control, a war is likely to come to a horrible conclusion for both opponents in an interstellar conflict such as this. And innocent species, not at all involved in your disputes, will be at risk because of that. We Arbiters will not allow them to be slaughtered with impunity by you or the Green Union.”

  General Vunj blustered, “You threaten us, alien?”

  “Only with the truth. It is because your war threatens to spread beyond the stellar territories where you and the Green Union are presently fighting that the Arbiters have agreed to step in. Our team was sent here to help negotiate a peace. You have realized your war is overwhelming your ability to handle it, else why did you send for us?” That got Chayo a dirty look from the military men. Martil went on. “You had to go to extreme effort to contact the Arbiters, but our welcome has been contradictory, to say the least. We are willing to assist you and your people, Most High. However, you must also help yourselves. Whether or not this particular Arbiter team remains on Niand or departs is immaterial. We are now watching your actions — and the Green Union’s — very closely. We will be on guard to protect everyone. Use your ultimate weapons — and you know to which ones I refer — and we will use ours.”

  Chapter 4

  RENEE shivered. Martil had ditched his wry mannerisms. He had addressed the matriarch and her daughter and the cabinet with deadly seriousness. In a few words, he had painted them a picture of Armageddon on a scale that boggled the imagination — or that boggled Renee’s imagination, at any rate. She wished his pronouncements would be interrupted by an inane TV commercial, but knew that wasn’t going to happen. As he’d said, he was threatening the Niandians with reality. An entirely too grim reality.

  “We — we have heard of your weapons, Arbiters,” the matriarch said, her voice unsteady. “And we respect them. Yes. What do you wish of us?”

  “The promised conference of your Federation’s leaders, the assemblage necessary to achieve a truce.”

  “This will be done. Vunj?” The matriarch turned to the burly man and he nodded hastily. He was pale and considerably subdued. “We must consider how to arrange this,” the matriarch went on, addressing her ministers. Like General Vunj, they’d been thoroughly scared by Martil’s warning. As the Arbiters waited on the sidelines, the Niandians set about weighing methods. Every now and then, one of the group couldn’t resist glancing at Tae and shuddering, and Vunj frequently interjected muttered comments about the Green Union’s “slimy abominations” into the verbal hash. That reaction continued to puzzle Renee. She knew their animosity wasn’t reciprocated by Tae; the wavelengths she was getting via that big hand at her back were full of goodwill, not racial hatred.

  Back and forth and up and down, the Niandians thrashed out possible tactics. How to circumvent the machinations of the pro-war Gevari rebels and gather that high-level assembly of Niand’s widely scattered leaders.

  To Renee’s relief, she wasn’t expected to contribute to the conversation. Nor was Martil. He had laid down the law, from the Arbiters’ standpoint. Now it was up to the Niandians to produce.

  The matriarch clearly ran the show. Her ministers offered opinions, often strong ones, and suggestions. But every decision was made by the queen, usually after she and her daughter had a brief, whispered conference. Throughout the process, Renee got the impression that her universe had been, if not stood on its head, tipped off balance. Body language, vocal clues, eye contact — a dozen subtle telltale nuances. The male participants and the two female generals followed a certain familiar pattern, one associated with so-called masculine virtues. A tendency to aggressive body movements, brusque speech. The military types, of both sexes, had a jut-jawed damn-the-torpedoes stance Renee had seen their counterparts on Earth take in countless TV interviews and movies. And yet none of the males was in charge. They didn’t dare interrupt a Niandian woman in the way numerous studies had shown human men interrupted human women as a matter of course. Quite the reverse. Occasional smoldering expressions revealed that the Niandian males resented being stepped on like that, but they took it. In fact, they even resorted to wheedling as much as they did to the usual firm “I know what I’m doing; trust me” masculine inflection. Whenever that happened, the matriarch, Zia, and the women ministers would swap tolerant glances, tacitly forgiving the men’s patently obvious little tricks.

  The scene was upside down and skewed sideways from the social arrangements Renee had always known.

  Eventually, the conversation had reached a point where Vunj and the oth
er military officials were being asked to come up with logistics plans, figures, and estimates of travel times and transport vehicles. Zia muffled a yawn, crooked an elegant finger at Renee, and moved to one side, outside the queen’s debating circle. Renee hesitated, then received a mental nudge from either Tae or her Ka-Een: “Go ahead. We won’t let you go splat.”

  As she and Zia edged out of the cabinet’s earshot, Zia said softly, “We will meet the Arbiters’ terms, rest assured.” She looked directly into Renee’s eyes, seeking approval. The alteration in her attitude was startling. Renee realized earlier objections had been a song and dance. The Niandians probably felt they had to put on a show of suspicion and self-interest. It must be a serious strain on their species’ pride to admit they’d gotten themselves trapped in an endless war and were forced to appeal for outside arbitration to settle it. Face had been saved, and now Princess Zia was willing to put forward a friendly feeler.

  “I am glad to hear that,” Renee said. “I hope it won’t be necessary for us to exercise the option Martil of the Bright Suns spoke of.”

  “Oh, no!” Zia said, aghast. “Definitely not.”

  Chayo sidled close to the women and chided his sister, “You should not monopolize the Arbiter.”

  With a nasty smile, the princess retorted, “What you mean is, you want to monopolize her. Don’t intrude. This is woman’s talk, of no interest to you.” Chayo retreated reluctantly, his expression very sour. Zia laughed, nodding to Renee as though they were conspirators. “They go through such efforts to attract our attention, don’t they? My brother is quite taken with you, ripe for the plucking, my dear. You do have your choices, don’t you? Two males on your team, seeking your favor.” She eyed Martil and Tae calculatingly. “The thin-faced one is too rude for my taste. But the large, fair one is attractive. And that form does hide his … his alien origins quite successfully, I must agree. Do you find him pleasing? The big males are so sweet, when they’re attempting to win one’s affections, aren’t they?”