The Gate to Women's Country

by Sheri S. Tepper

  She pegged the sheet to the line and hauled the line on its pulley out over the courtyard. "You're allowed to send written messages, aren't you?"

  "Oh yeah, if you have to. If you're willing to explain everything all the time and argue with the officers. If I'd been eight or nine, no one would have thought anything of it. I do sleeper-in duty for kids that age, and they're always homesick. But when you're thirteen or fourteen, you're expected to go home just because it's a duty. You're not supposed to want to."

  "I suppose they say it's womanish." She finished hanging the last of the wash, Beneda's undershirt, and wiped her wet hands on her trousers.

  "That, yes. And worse things. It's all right to miss your mother's cooking, though."

  "Beneda says you eat a lot of it!" What Beneda had said, actually, was that he gulped and didn't even bother to taste what he was eating.

  He flushed, and she changed the subject. "Why did that warrior make you insult your mother?"

  There was an odd expression on Chernon's face, half hungry, half furious.

  Stavia blurted, "Oh, I'm sorry. Morgot tells me my mouth will be the death of me. I didn't mean to be personal."

  "It's all right. I don't think he ever knew her. Mother said she might have met him once. And she said she was never, you know, with him. He claimed he got her pregnant but she didn't name him as the father out of spite...."

  "That's silly, Chernon."

  He gave her a quick glance from the corner of his eye, intercepted an unexpectedly skeptical glance, then laughed unconvincingly. "Oh, it was all crazy. Sometimes he claimed I was really his son, but I'm not. I asked Mother and she says no, I'm not. He probably never even had a son. Probably no woman ever sent a boy to him."

  "Then why make such a fuss over it?"

  He seemed angry at the question. "You women don't understand! Mother wanted me just to lie to him, but I told her that was dishonorable. She said telling the truth to a madman was fruitless, and your mother said the same thing, but he was my superior, my senior, anyhow, and I had to do what was honorable. Warriors don't lie to each other. I tried to tell you women that."

  " 'You women'?"

  He flushed. "My mother. Your mother. I tried to explain I had to do what Vinsas wanted, even if it was crazy, because that's what we do in the garrison. We obey orders, and we don't ask whether the officer is crazy or not!"

  "You knew he was crazy?"

  "During carnival... one of the warriors said that during carnival there were always six big women with clubs near him, wherever he went, and if he even looked at one of the women, they landed all over him. I heard... I heard he even forced one of the boys."

  "Chernon! That's absolutely forbidden." Stavia bit her lip. Even in Preconvulsion times it had been known that the so-called "gay syndrome" was caused by aberrant hormone levels during pregnancy. The women doctors now identified the condition as "hormonal reproductive maladaption," and corrected it before birth. There were very few actual HNRM's called HenRams, either male or female, born in Women's Country, though there was still the occasional unsexed person or the omnisexed who would, so the instructors said, mate with a grasshopper if it would hold still long enough. If the warrior had indeed "forced one of the boys," it had almost surely been done out of viciousness and dominance, not from any libidinal need. Libidinal need was fully accepted as a normal and useful fact of life. Viciousness was not; rape wasn't tolerated in Women's Country. "He could have been executed for that," she said soberly. "I can't imagine why he wasn't."

  "No one could prove anything," he said uncomfortably. "Anyhow, it was just a rumor."

  "Couldn't they control him?"

  "They? You mean the officers? Vinsas was in Michael's command, and I suppose Michael could have done something, if he'd wanted to. But when Mother came to Michael it just made him stubborn, and he wouldn't do anything. Vinsas was out of his helmet, really. Mostly they let him alone. And then he died. I think someone killed him."

  "Murdered him?"

  "Just killed him. I think it was during a raid his century did on the bandits. Except we all suspected it wasn't the bandits that did for him. Everybody was glad he was gone."

  Stavia bit her lip as she picked up the empty basket to carry it downstairs. Even though Chernon was unreasonably bitter toward his family, she excused it because of what he had gone through. The thought brought hot moisture to her eyes. She shook her head furiously, letting the nearest wet sheet flap in her face to hide her tears. "Do you think about coming home?"

  "You mean like now, for carnival?"

  "I mean for always. Through the gate...." She caught a glimpse of his face, suddenly remote and faintly contemptuous.

  "Don't say it, Stavia. Of course I think about it, but I don't want to talk about it. It's not something we talk about, that's all."

  This withdrawal surprised and frightened her. He had not refused to talk about anything else. "All right. Let's talk about something else. Do you know Barten?"

  He relaxed, now on safe ground. "Oh, everyone knows Barten. You were talking about your mouth getting you in trouble. Barten's mouth is a lot bigger than yours. He brags all the time. We're going to be so glad when he gets to be twenty-five and can actually fight instead of just talk about how great he's going to be. Maybe somebody will wound him around the mouth and make us all happy."

  "You don't like him much, do you?" She thrust an extra clothespin over the corner of the nearest sheet, watching it belly into the wind.

  "Barten likes Barten enough for all of us. Mostly because of who his warrior father is."

  "Who's that?"

  "Michael. They've always got their heads together. Didn't you know that?"

  Stavia shook her head, not trusting her tongue. So, in point of fact, Barten might be her half brother. Myra's half brother? No. No, if that were the case, Morgot would have said something about it. Not that a liaison with a half brother was necessarily a bad thing. Depending. She sat down on the railing, staring out over the back courtyard wall toward the sea.

  "What are you thinking about?" he asked her.

  "Genetics."

  "What's that?"

  "The science of how things pass on their characteristics to their offspring."

  There was a long silence. He sat down on the railing beside her, his head turned away. If she could have seen his face, she would have seen it concentrated in thought, in sudden inspiration.

  "What's the matter?" she asked him.

  "You make me feel... you make me feel ignorant," he said in a wounded voice. "I don't know about things like that."

  She gave him an astonished look. "It's all in books! The garrison has a library."

  "Romances, Stavia. Tales of battle. Sagas. Designs for armor. Hygiene. Maintenance of garrison property. You know! Nothing about real things. Nothing about medicine, or engineering, or management."

  "Those are women's studies."

  "I know what they are. I just said you made me feel ignorant, that's all." He looked hurt again. "It isn't a nice feeling."

  "I could lend you some books, while you're home. I'll even give you some old ones to take back with you if you want." She made the offer before she had time to think, and a part of her stood aside, aghast, as it realized what she had said. Giving Women's Country books to a warrior was absolutely forbidden!

  "I couldn't do that." His lips said it, but his eyes were looking at her from their corners, as though weighing the offer. "They'd have me up on charges."

  She almost sighed with relief. "You're not allowed to read?"

  "Not things like that. Not womanish things."

  "Ah." She sought some compromise. "Beneda's got books you can read while you're home, though."

  "Hers don't have the kinds of things I'd like to know," he said with calculated sadness, eyes falling away from her own to contemplate something distantly chill, an attitude which had always brought Sylvia to him, begging him to tell her what was wrong, what she could do to make it better.

>   It had a similar effect on Stavia. She found herself wondering what harm it would do. After all, there was no ordinance against reading to him, or talking to him about anything she had read. What was the difference? It just showed how stupid some of the ordinances were. "I just never thought of a warrior wanting books. But, if you're that interested."

  He turned back to her, flushing, face as eager as Jerby's would have been at the promise of candies, and her reluctance seemed arbitrary and unkind. And yet... it was against the ordinances.

  She put on a deliberate gayety. "In return for which you can do me a favor."

  "Name it!"

  "Tell me what the warriors call that monument you've got at the end of the parade ground."

  "The Ulysses Statue?"

  "No. The tall one."

  He turned red. "We call it the reviewing stand."

  She shook her head in exasperation. "That's silly. You can't stand on it."

  He blushed again.

  "Come on, Chernon. Why do you call it that?"

  "It's an erection suitable for a parade ground," he muttered.

  It took her a moment. "I see. What is it, really?"

  "Just what it looks like," he muttered again. "Blooded warriors take their oaths of honor on it. It's a symbol of shared manhood."

  "Penis worship?"

  "It's symbolic," he said resentfully.

  "Yes," she agreed in amazement. "It certainly is."

  CARNIVAL TIME gathered momentum. Habby and Byram and Jerby all home, with Joshua and Morgot fixing special meals and giving presents. Popcorn by the stove, holiday pies, the whole family off to see the magicians or the fireworks together. Except for Myra. She went flitting out every morning with flushed cheeks and a giddy laugh, her usual trousers changed for short, colorful gowns for which Habby and Byram had learned a short and very vulgar name, going twice a day to the assignation house, drinking beer and wine and dancing with Barten in the carnival taverns until all hours of the night.

  There was no time to miss her or worry about her with the dozens of itinerant clowns and magicians; the rockets screaming into the evening sky; the acrobats; jugglers; jongleurs; the city full of the sound of music and drums and choirs. There were song contests between the warriors and the women which the warriors almost always won. Warriors had a lot of time to practice, all the time they weren't fighting or practicing fighting, or engaged in their interminable sports contests. They sang battle epics, mostly, though they did do some amusing songs and some of the old folk songs and love songs that everyone knew: "Gone Away, Oh, Gone Away," and "The Lost Century," and "What the Warrior Wears Beneath His Kilts," and "I Lost My Love at Carnival," a lament. The women didn't have nearly as much time to practice, but they sang nonetheless, and the town resounded with voices.

  After five or six days of it, Stavia got the impression that Myra might be tired.

  "Just because I yawned," Myra snarled. "It doesn't mean I'm tired."

  "You can miss a day if you like," Morgot said.

  "I don't like."

  "Well, maybe skip some of the drinking tonight and get a night's sleep."

  "Barten doesn't want to drink alone."

  "He wouldn't be alone, Myra," Habby yawned, echoing the gaping jaw on Myra's face. "He'd find somebody."

  "Habby!" Myra, red in the face, really angry. Or hurt.

  "Yes, Habby," Morgot remarked. "I'd keep my helpful suggestions to myself, if I were you."

  The eighth day, Myra didn't go out at all. Sodden sounds from her bedroom, gulpings and howls.

  "They had a fight," Morgot explained.

  "He had a fight," said Stavia. "Chernon told me all about it. All of the young warriors planned to have a fight with their sweethearts after seven or eight days. That's so they can try some of the others."

  "A basically self-defeating proposition," sighed Morgot. "Since the 'others' are all at home crying, too."

  There seemed to be some logic in that. A messenger brought a plea from Barten for Myra to join him.

  She went out, giddy-eyed.

  "Oh shit," said Stavia. "She doesn't have any sense at all."

  "No," yawned Morgot. "None of them do. Neither did I, when I was that age."

  "I refuse to be that age."

  "I wish you luck."

  THEN CARNIVAL ENDED. Chernon went back to the garrison. So did Habby and Byram and Jerby, Habby and Byram resignedly, Jerby in tears. It was easy to know how they felt, but Chernon? Who knew what Chernon was feeling?

  "He likes you, doesn't he?" begged Beneda, her eyes shining. "When you're older, maybe you can be lovers."

  "Beneda," Stavia protested.

  "Well maybe you can. And maybe you can have Chernon's baby, and we really will be like sisters."

  "Beneda! I won't talk about that." Her face burned. She couldn't talk about that. It was too close to feelings she was having that she couldn't understand or control.

  The great central gate through which warriors had been coming and going for two weeks was slammed shut on the plaza once more. Bemused women set about cleaning the littered streets. The shed-like carnival taverns were closed, the drink barrels drained until next brewing time. In the houses of assignation, sheets were thrown over the furniture, the plumbing was drained, and the doors were closed again.

  There was an almost silence in the city, a funeral quiet. Doors shut quietly. Voices murmured. Even the Well of Surcease seemed to have muted its music, and bird song came as a puzzled question rather than an affirmation. It seemed a time of mourning. "Severance," murmured Morgot, quoting a Women's Country poet. " 'The silence of severance, a vessel of quiet to hold mourning, for those who have said welcome, and farewell; a time to summon once again those things not so much lost as unremembered.' "

  "I think everybody's just tired," said Stavia practically. She knew she was tired. Not being with Chernon was unthinkable, but being with him made her weary in strange ways. "Just tired." Preoccupied with her own confused feelings, she did not see the appraising look that Morgot gave her.

  The week after that, Stavia went back to her studies.

  Not before she gave Chernon a book, however, against her better judgment, against her common sense, the observer Stavia pleading with the actor Stavia to be sensible. Actor Stavia did it anyhow, asserting that the ordinances were stupid, arbitrary, and that Chernon was different.

  "And you'll bring me more, won't you?" Chernon pled through the hole in the wall, their fingers touching deep within that recess, quivering like tiny animals, smelling one another out. "Please, Stavia. To the hole in the wall. Anything. Anything I can read!"

  "You'll get caught," she said, halfheartedly hoping he wouldn't press it. It would get them both in trouble, probably... perhaps. And yet it tied them together, probably....

  "I won't get caught. I'll come there during my free time, I'll stay right there and read, then I'll leave the things there, pushed down behind the tree. Oh, I know you will. Please, Stavvy."

  "All right, Chernon," she promised him, giddy from that liquid, furtive feeling he gave her, a feeling which she assumed was "infatuation." She had no other name for it. Lending him a few books seemed such a small thing to do to keep that stricken, wounded look away from his face. She couldn't bear to see him looking like that.

  SEVERAL DAYS after carnival, Myra went to the medical center, taking Stavia with her for company. After an hour, Myra came out looking angry and ill used, and they walked toward home together.

  "Have you got something?" Stavia asked.

  "No, I have not got something. I'm healthy."

  "What's the matter."

  "Just, they're so rude. Always the same questions. When was my last period? She knew. It was just before carnival, and she gave me an exam then. Was I taking my supplements? Did I have any sexual problems?"

  "That doesn't sound too rude."

  "It was something else. She had me up on the table all spread out like a split fish with that metal gadget in me, squirting me with syri
nges and stuff, and then they called her out for an emergency and she left me there!"

  "There are emergencies, My. There really are."

  "Well, somebody could have come and let me loose. I was there for half an hour, flat on my back."