I thought to myself, “I can say no,” and said, “Yes.”
He kissed me very gently, then hesitated, with a trace of anxiety. “You’re sure?”
I thought of leaving him in the loneliness I had found him in, and said, “I’m sure.”
I undressed him the way I did each night, hanging his clothes away in the closet and bringing him his robe. Then, as he sat on the edge of his bed watching with fearful anticipation, I took my uniform off and laid it carefully over a chair. When I was completely naked, he looked at me from every angle, as if I were an art work newly revealed to him, and what he saw delighted him.
“You are so beautiful,” he said. “It makes me ashamed of what I have become. Once, I was like you. Look at me now.”
“You look beautiful to me,” I said shyly, and meant it. He was not flabby or sagging, as old men get; he was still lean from abstinence and exercise. His body had the marks of a long life on it, but there is nothing ugly about that.
“If I thought you were capable of flattery, I would suspect you,” he said, smiling.
I had expected him to take the lead, to show me what he wanted; but when it came time he turned oddly shy and awkward. It was clear he had never been to bed with a bland. He had no notion what to do or how I might give him pleasure. I realized that I was going to have to guide him—yet I couldn’t let him know that I had been trained. The idea would revolt him, and I was afraid that if he knew my past I would revolt him, too.
Slowly, I began to show him things I thought he would enjoy—simple, natural things, the sort of things that seem obvious once you know them. Gradually, he relaxed; the tension and complexity left him, and he was able to submerge his mind in sensation. For a while he became quite passionate, and I think I was able to give him a kind of pleasure, and a kind of release, he had not had in many years.
But for me the best part came after all his sexual energies were spent and we lay pressed close against each other in bed, drowsy. The wind was blustering against the window, but we were warm together. My cheek rested against his chest, and his arm was around me, and he stroked my hair, from time to time bending over to kiss it. All down my body my bare skin pressed against his, and I felt in that intimacy a perfect safety, as if his love formed a protective sphere around us, and nothing could ever penetrate that barrier.
When I woke the next morning, the chill light of an overcast dawn was coming in the room, and the bed beside me was cold. I raised my head and saw him standing at the window again in his dressing gown. There was a terrible tension in his body.
He heard me stir, and turned around. “Tedla, can you forgive me?” he said. His face was distorted with remorse.
I rose on one elbow, still a little confused with sleep, but alarmed by this new turn. “For what?” I said.
“For using you this way.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I was not myself last night. I was carried away by base urges; I couldn’t control what I did. It was shameful of me to coerce you this way, to make you satisfy my needs. It’s not your fault. I swear to you it will never happen again. But if you don’t trust me, if you feel you can’t be comfortable around me any more, I will arrange for you to go elsewhere, to serve another—”
“No!” I cried out. I was fully awake now. His mood was frightening me. I reached out to touch his hand where it rested on the coverlet, but he snatched it away, as if afraid of my touch.
“No, please,” he said, “I can’t trust myself. I thought I was a better man than this. I thought I was stronger, but I’m not.”
It was horrible, like a nightmare, to find out I had made him ashamed. The room seemed cold, and I was naked; I pulled the covers up around me, shivering. I suddenly saw myself without the illusions of last night. Of course he was shamed to have loved me. I was a bland. My touch was pollution.
He saw my misery, and it made him desperate. “I didn’t mean to harm you, Tedla. Anything but that.”
“I understand,” I said numbly. The inviolate bubble that had seemed so strong last night was gone. I wasn’t the person I had thought. I was still a bland. This was all my fault.
I threw the covers aside and got out of bed. I went into his bathroom and turned on the shower, scalding hot, then made myself step into it and wash. When I got out I returned to the bedroom and started putting on my uniform. The squire was still sitting on the edge of the bed, exactly where I had left him, frozen in thought. When I was ready, I said, “Do you want to dress, or shall I bring your coffee first?”
He turned to look at me bleakly. “Tedla, I am the one at fault here. Last night I betrayed everything I have spent my life working for. What I did to you was a crime. I could be put in prison for it. I know, because I was the one who wrote that law, and persuaded all the orders and communities to accept it. I have worked all my life to protect people like you from people like me.” He closed his eyes, distracted by inner contradictions.
“Do you want your coffee?” I asked again.
At last he squared his shoulders and rose. “No. I want to wash and dress.” He came to the bathroom door, where I was standing, and paused, looking at me. “Please don’t come in,” he said. “For your own safety, you must keep your distance from now on.”
His words were saying one thing, his eyes were saying another. I saw it clearly: He wanted to take me in his arms right then and there. I hesitated, not knowing which one of his minds to obey.
“Go get my coffee while I wash,” he said. “We’ll begin the day just like all the others. Thank god no one is in the house but the Capellan magister. He’ll never suspect.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
I was about to go, but he stopped me. “Tedla, we must forget last night, and make sure it never happens again,” he said.
He didn’t mean that, either. His face, his whole body told me he was more in love than ever. Last night hadn’t been the end. It was just the beginning.
I left by the graydoor then, as if nothing had changed.
But in fact, everything had changed.
Chapter Seven
The next morning there was still no message from WAC or UIC. Val found the silence unnerving, so as soon as she could get into the studium she punched Magister Gossup’s number.
When Kendra answered, she said, “Hi, Val,” without any trace of coldness. “He’s not in.”
“Who’s he been meeting with?” Val probed.
“Oh, WAC, Epco, you name it. Should I tell him you called?”
Val hesitated a moment. “Yes. Tell him everything’s just fine.”
After cutting off, she sat a few moments, thinking, Epco? Had Shankar stepped into the ring?
It would explain the silence. If the two infocompanies were battling over control of Tedla, then they might be leaving the Gammadian with her only because any other arrangement would require one or the other of them winning.
Shrugging, Val called up Galele’s reports again. She skimmed rapidly through reams of bloodless information he had collected in carefully orchestrated visits to a matriculatory, gestatory, and midway house. One passage caught her eye:
***
Finally got my first close-up look at some asexuals, who were employed in caring for the infants at the gestatory. Terribly disappointing. They do, in fact, appear to be mentally disadvantaged. My guide assured me they can talk, but I could not induce them to utter a word to me. When my group entered the nursery, the three blands on duty retreated to a corner where they huddled, staring at the floor, with all the signs of intense fear. When my efforts at rapprochement produced no result, their supervisor spoke sharply to them, ordering them to answer my questions. Even that had no effect. They were quite unable to do it.
They look much like humans—no obvious deformities or physical characteristics of retardation. I was surprised that they were allowed to care for the infants, since the job requires (it seems to me) a considerable amount of judgment and responsibility. The gestagogues laughed and said they never had any problems
, that the neuters were quite capable where children were concerned. It made me suspicious that the behavior I was witnessing was a social performance, the conventionally “correct” response for a bland. There is no way to find out, short of getting a neuter to talk to me alone—not a likely thing. The humans quickly hustled me away. They seemed both protective and embarrassed, as if I had discovered the mad relative in the attic.
Apparently, there is no way to diagnose neuterism prior to puberty. All Gammadians, it seems, are born with X chromosomes, so that sexual differentiation is a matter of selective gene activation. Everyone has the potential to be any sex. I asked whether neuterism was inherited, but they answered that there is no way to find out, since lineage records are sealed for confidentiality. It struck me then: If neuterism is random, people free to look up their own relatives would necessarily find that they were related to neuters. The whole system of sacred secrecy, though justified by lofty social ideals of “non-tribalism,” seems perfectly constructed to keep anyone from realizing they are the parent or sibling of a neuter. Is this a byproduct, or an underlying purpose?
Felt the need to check my observations with someone else, so called up Magister Mackey, our geneticist, who is working with the Matriculators, the most secretive and insular of all the orders. Asked if she knew what causes neuterism. She laughed ironically and said, “As if they’d let me study that.”
I was quite interested by this response. “Don’t they want our help finding a cure?” I asked.
“They don’t need our help,” she said. “These people know as much about genetics as I do. They’re pretending ignorance. The more I reveal I know, the more they shut down.”
I asked if they had given her access to the lineage records, and she laughed again. “Not a chance,” she said. “No one touches those. Absolutely all they want from us is artificial gestation.”
“You think they could cure neuterism if they wanted to?”
“If it’s curable. If it’s even genetic, and not environmental or viral or something. They claim they don’t know, but I don’t believe a word of it.”
This left me very thoughtful. Up to now, I have assumed that my difficulties at probing certain subjects were the result of social convention, misunderstanding, embarrassment. I had not considered deliberate concealment.
Mackey’s attitude, though paranoid on the surface, makes sense. Why would Gammadians want to cure neuterism, and thus eliminate the most useful part of their work force?
Ought I to be thinking of neuters as a social class, rather than a gender?
Much food for thought here.
***
Galele recorded two more encounters with neuters after this, each more frustrating than the last.
***
I can’t even get them to look at me, much less respond. They meticulously avoid eye contact with humans. I think the message is multiple: first, submission (“I am not dangerous, do not harm me”); second, tuneout (“I am not listening, so don’t try to communicate with me”). Humans accept their avoidance as respectful in some circumstances, sullen and dull in others. I suspect there is yet a third, more hidden message—“You are irrelevant to me, so don’t try to impinge on my life or I won’t respond.” I find this very passive-aggressive, almost rebellious, but other humans don’t find it so. Perhaps I am overanalyzing, and there is in fact no coherent thought in their minds at all.
I can’t help noticing that neuters perform many of the tasks assigned to females in gender-differentiated cultures: child care, cooking, cleaning, etc. They appear to occupy the economic role of women, but not their social or sexual role. Is this significant?
***
At last, paging through, Val found the passage she was looking for.
***
Very promising development: Ovide invited me to a dinner party at the home of a mentor of hers, Prosper Tellegen Lexigist. In his youth he was part of a movement called the Sensualists—lofty, high-minded young artists and thinkers who advocated connection to nature and discovery of the god within through sensory experience. I gather they became rather notorious for free love, but also produced some great art and poetry. Tellegen was their theoretician. He later underwent a well-publicized religious conversion and became a crusader for humanitarian reform. Ovide spoke of him with great affection and respect; I rather suspect her of being sweet on him. I was to be something of a diversion for him, I think.
We went in the dreaded aircar. The great man has retired to the most remote place imaginable—a ranch far out on the central plains of the continent. But when we arrived, the place was jam-packed with aircars: pilgrims and protégés come to see him. We descended into a large, elegant mansion where a lively soiree was in progress: a dozen or more of the acutest, most unconventional people I have yet met.
Tellegen himself is a tall man, refined and elegant, a true elder statesman and philosopher. After meeting him, I’ve changed my mind again: there is a Puritanical streak in this culture. Though the most gracious of hosts, he seemed emotionally elusive, remote and priestlike among this crowd of loving devotees. He asked Ovide curiously about events in the convergence: obviously he follows the politics closely. I got a better sense of the factionalism there.
Convention seemed to exercise no limits on the conversation here, as in Tapis: people talked openly about topics I’ve had to dance around delicately for months. I actually got a conversation going about neuters. In lofty theoretical terms we debated whether they are human (Tellegen believes so, others disagreed), whether the concept of natural rights applies to them (again, Tellegen took the radical view). Curious: while everyone else (so far) denigrates neuters as brutish and dull, Tellegen appears to idealize them as innocents—beings untouched by human corruption, children of nature. A sharp, ironic man named Nasatir challenged him with hypocrisy, since he lives a pampered life supported by a large staff of blands. Why, Nasatir demanded, didn’t he grant his own blands rights? The reply: the entire social system is unjust, and an individual cannot act justly within such a context. Despite the ready answer, Tellegen seemed quite troubled and vexed by the challenge.
We were served by a strikingly beautiful adolescent of perhaps 16, with the poise and reserve of a young aristocrat cast unexpectedly into servitude. Despite its clearly servile role, several minutes passed before I realized it was a neuter, and not some young relative met with hard luck. The others in the room completely ignored its presence, pontificating away on the subject of blands as if it were deaf or incapable of understanding. It showed no reaction, though I watched closely. I thought it looked out of place, as if wrenched from everything it understood, sleepwalking through a life of degradation. The irony and poignancy both were lost on my companions.
After a sumptuous banquet, Tellegen asked us to stay the night. I was ready to comply, but Ovide had to get back, so we unfortunately took our leave. I am extremely eager to return. Partly because Tellegen’s acumen and unconventional views may give me some insight. But mostly because I think he would be able to answer my simple, factual questions about neuters. What is their intelligence? Their abilities? Do they have any emotions, any point of view? I am longing to get past that invisible barrier that hedges round the closed society of the blands.
***
Managed to wangle myself another invitation to Menoken Lodge, Prosper Tellegen’s ranch house-cum-salon. This time, went alone and stayed the night. Gathered much valuable information which I will write up some time.
Tellegen’s neuter servant was again in evidence. Its name is Tedla, and it clearly enjoys a privileged position, since Tellegen is a fond and indulgent master. Tedla is less skilled at maintaining the dumb brute pose than any other neuter I have observed. I am now convinced that it is a pose—at least in this case.
When alone with me, Tedla was impassive and monosyllabic, but surreptitiously curious—sizing me up as if to determine if I posed a threat. Given the restrictions on eye contact, this was a complicated maneuver, which I attempted
not to reveal I noticed. When Tellegen is present, however, Tedla is openly relaxed, almost to the point of showing real character. This seems to both amuse and confuse Tellegen. Case in point:
We were talking about the legal rights of blands, one of Tellegen’s favorite topics. As happens often, Tedla was in the room, silently serving us some completely redundant drink or other (I half suspect it of hanging around to eavesdrop). I asked Tellegen whether he thought blands even knew they had legal rights. He said confidently, “I expect so. The grapevine among blands is awesomely effective.” For some reason we both became aware of Tedla then, though it was doing nothing but standing there pretending not to listen. Perhaps the pretense had become a little obvious. Tellegen turned to it kindly and said, “Tedla? Do the blands know their rights?”
“Your blands do,” it said. “Outside, where they need to, it’s a different story.”
Tellegen looked startled and a little peeved that a teen-aged underling had dared to contradict him in front of company. But he smiled with an indulgent condescension. “You have barely been anywhere else in your life, Tedla,” he said.
“No, sir,” it said, looking down submissively.
“So you could scarcely be expected to know.”
“No, sir.”
Tellegen settled back in his chair, having confirmed his opinion and established dominance again through the gentlest of means. He continued our conversation. When I looked at Tedla several seconds later, it was watching him surreptitiously with a slight, wry smile, as if it understood perfectly the irony of what had just transpired.
Anyone who understands irony is no mental defective.
Later that day, something even more remarkable happened. It was after dinner, and we were speaking (I think) about blands’ intelligence. As usual, the person most likely to be able to enlighten me was employed clearing away the dishes, and not allowed to speak. For some reason Tellegen began gently teasing Tedla. For a while it put up with him stoically, but when he didn’t stop, it rather abruptly left the room. Presently another bland came in to take over, giving the feeble excuse that Tedla had been taken ill. I was very curious to see how Tellegen would handle this open insubordination. At first he ignored the situation, as if to deflect my attention. But presently he left the room. When he came back, he seemed pensive and moody. “I am afraid I must confess to being a fraud, Magister,” he finally said. “Here I have been passing myself off as an expert on blands, and I don’t even understand what is going through the head of the one I thought I knew best.”
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