The Gate to Women's Country

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Things," Michael had said, "seem to be coming together! We may be taking over very soon. So what happened with that letter you wrote to Stavia, Chernon? Did she ever answer?"

  Almost a year before, Michael had instructed Chernon to send a letter to Stavia in Abbyville, a letter begging her to go away with him when she returned to Marthatown, not away to the Gypsy camps but on some romantic, memorable escapade. She had never answered, a fact which Chernon had found embarrassing.

  "Not so irresistible as we thought he was, our Chernon," Stephen had chuckled.

  After that Chernon had decided for a time that he hated her, but hating her had seemed pointless since she was not there to notice it. He didn't even hate Habby anymore, and he never thought of his mother at all. Time had passed, and the trumpets and drums no longer evoked quite the emotional frenzy they had done at the ceremonial when he was fifteen. Though his heart still surged when the centuries were paraded, and though he still carried Casimur's ribbons, plus the ribbons of another dead warrior from the fifty-five, honors he would carry for fifteen years until they were retired to the repository with the rest of the seventy century, the splendor of it was spasmodic, brief orgasms of emotion separated by long periods of calm, almost of depression, relieved only when Michael or Stephon or Patras involved him in the plans for the upcoming rebellion.

  Michael said three other garrisons planned to move against their cities at the same time, Mollyburg, Peggytown, and Agathaville, away in the east,though he didn't sound as sure about the details as Chernon thought he should.

  "We'll attack after harvest," Michael said. "Late fall or early winter. After the grain is in the warehouses, and the year's fish have been smoked and put away, and the fall trading is over. That way, there'll be stocks of everything right here, where they're needed. Once we decide to move, we'll only need a few days to let the other garrisons know and get our own men worked up and properly enthusiastic! One night the women will all go to bed in their own houses, and when they wake up, every house will have a warrior in it!"

  "Then there's no real point in my getting Stavia away before then," Chernon had objected.

  "Every point, boy. We still don't know about that weapon Besset claims he saw. Stavia's older now. She's more likely to know the women's secrets now than when she was a kid."

  "If there are any secrets, I'll bet nobody but the Council knows them," Chernon had sulked. "Besides, we haven't heard a word about that weapon since. I think Besset was drunk."

  "Possibly. Just in case, however, we've got men courting every Council-woman young enough to be courted," snorted Patras, "and every Councilwoman's daughter as well. Don't worry about Besset. Your assignment is that girl."

  It was true that Chernon still dreamed of journeying, of adventure and heroism. However, she had not answered his letter....

  Now he said to Beneda, "I don't know whether I want to see Stavia," knowing perfectly well he would have to see her, but toying with the illusion of independent decision. "Maybe I want to see her. I'll let you know next time."

  "Make up your mind," said Beneda. "There's some talk she's going to go away again soon as part of an exploration team."

  He was down the stairs and halfway across the parade ground before the sense of her words hit him. Beneda said there was talk of Stavia's going away as part of an exploration team.

  His mouth dropped open and he stopped in his tracks. Exploration team! He had heard it without understanding it. Perhaps this was her response to his letter! But, if so, why hadn't she told him? Cursing, Chernon scuffed his foot in the dust for a moment, making angular, angry incisions in the soil before turning back the way he had come. Beneda was still standing on the wall, staring down at him. He crossed the parade ground and climbed the stairs again to stand beneath her, hands on hips.

  "Tell her I want to see her," he said. "Tell her to come to the hole in the wall. This afternoon, if she can. Tomorrow at sunset otherwise."

  He didn't wait for Beneda's joshing answer. When he had been fifteen, it hadn't seemed too undignified. Now that he was twenty-four, her little-girl teasing grated on him. Down in the parade ground once more, he walked across it to the northernmost barracks building, then onto the shady lawn of officers' country. Michael saw him coming and came out onto the porch, a mug of beer in his hand.

  "I just found out," Chernon said. "Stavia may be going out with an exploration team."

  "Well, well, well," said Michael, leaning back through the door to speak to someone. "Did you hear?"

  "I heard." Stephen came out onto the porch, shutting the door carefully behind him. Through the crack between door and jamb, Chernon saw two strange men sitting at their ease inside. More conspirators from other garrisons. "I'd forgotten it was time for exploring again."

  "They seldom find anything," commented Michael. "Last time all they came back with was two new kinds of bugs and some plant they could make tea from."

  "She could be planning to let me go along," Chernon said doubtfully. "Maybe."

  "Be damn sure she does, grub," Stephen directed. "Make yourself irresistible."

  "You still think this is the year?"

  "Looks like it, boy. Some of the other garrisons are just as sure as we are. But we've still got this one little, tiny, nagging bother. That weapon old Besset thinks he saw. We've been after him, now and then. He still swears to it. Not that it matters greatly. Just that it could make trouble for us."

  "I know."

  "Well, don't know it out loud," instructed Michael.

  "Not if you don't want to vanish, just like your old buddy Vinsas did."

  Chernon, not liking this thought, changed the subject. "You really think Stavia knows anything?"

  Michael raised his eyes in Stephen's direction, as though in question.

  Stephen frowned, then nodded. "We've got a man courting Stavia's sister, Myra. Myra moved out of Morgot's house a few years back, but she still spends a lot of time bitching about Morgot and her sister. How Stavia was always the favorite, how Stavia always got to do the interesting things. One of the interesting things Stavia got to do was to go on a trip over toward Susantown with Morgot, and that servitor of theirs."

  "So?"

  "Well, the interesting thing is that Myra can remember exactly when it was. It was just before the Susantown war. Before Barten died. Myra remembers that. She's not ever going to forget that. It was about the same time that Besset and his bunch saw that wagon coming back from Susantown."

  Chernon cast back in memory. "You think Stavia was in that wagon? You think she knows what happened?"

  Stephen shrugged. "Likely. Could be."

  "I think Besset made it up. Or he was so drunk he didn't see anything."

  Michael smiled a particularly menacing smile. "Pretend you believe it, boy. Give her a try. Make yourself pretty and try it."

  There was no point in making himself pretty to talk to Stavia through a hole in the wall, so he didn't bother. The big old tree at the edge of the parade ground still hid the hole through the wall. It also hid the oiled paper package Chernon had kept hidden there for four years. A book he had stolen from Beneda.

  He worked his way into the hollow behind the tree where he could hear if anyone came into the room at the other end of the hole. The package was there, in a crevice in the bark of the tree. One red book. Even though he knew every word of it by heart, even though he found nothing in it of significance, having it was forbidden. The significance lay there, in his defiance of rules, in his contempt for the ordinances. He was not allowed to read, but he would read!

  The pages opened almost of themselves. "Migratory societies, the Laplanders." Sticking his fingers in his ears to shut out the distant sound of cheering from the game fields, Chernon began his ritual of contempt for the ordinances of the women.

  STAVIA CAME AGAIN to treat old Bowough Bird, and then yet again, but his condition did not improve. If anything, it worsened. His breathing grew more labored. His mind seemed to wander. Septemius frett
ed, jittering, gnawing his knuckles and engaging in frivolous, irrelevant expostulation whenever Stavia appeared.

  "Hush, man," she said, drawing him into the adjacent room where the three gray dogs curled on the hearth, raising their black muzzled heads to stare at her, licking their black lips with quick, pink tongues. "You're worried about him. How old is he, really?"

  "Old," admitted Septemius. "You know as much as I how old. He doesn't remember now, if he ever did. I know how old I am, which is sixty something, but how old he was when I was born, I haven't the least idea."

  "Somewhere between eighty and ninety, at least," she mused. "I've got some stuff that will clear up his lungs, pretty surely, but it's not on the open list for use on itinerants. Which means, Septemius Bird, that I must either withhold it from you or steal it from Women's Country."

  He fumbled for words, not sure what she was leading up to, though certain she was leading up to something.

  "She wants something," Kostia had said an evening or two before. "That medic wants something from us, Septemius."

  "Something she can't get otherwise," Tonia confirmed. "She's a very troubled woman. Something strange going on there."

  "One thing," Kostia murmured, "she doesn't have a child yet, and her in her twenties."

  "Some of them don't," Septemius objected.

  "A few don't," Tonia agreed. "But damn few."

  "She's been several years at the medical academy at Abbyville. She hasn't had time for childbearing," Septemius objected.

  "Even so. There's more to it than that, Septemius. She wants something from us. We can both feel it."

  How many times had she run into them on the street? How many times had she invited them to tea? How many times had she questioned them?

  "Tell me about your travels south of here," she had demanded.

  "Not a pleasant subject," Septemius answered, trying to be politely evasive.

  "I have a reason for asking," she had said, as politely but firmly. "I'd appreciate it."

  Shrugging, he had complied. "South of here are two smallish Women's Country towns, both fairly new, one on either side of the desolation, Emmaburg near the shore, and Peggytown inland. Neither are in any way remarkable. You probably know more about them than I do."

  "South of that?"

  "I have heard there is a fortified sheep camp south of Emmaburg now. It was not there when I traveled south, once, long, long ago when I was a child. As I remember, one comes first to broken country and badlands, a fantasy land of pillars and carved towers, of wind that sings endlessly among the stones. This is a stretch of this, a mile or so wide, then there is a range of mountains that runs all along on the east and south. If one keeps along the coast, one comes to several great desolations. But if one goes along the foot of the mountains which one would not normally do, because the land is very broken and full of little canyons one finds people living back in the valleys, just the way they did before the time of convulsion, I suppose."

  "Unfriendly, from your tone."

  "Stavia, the population there is sparse, suspicious, and unprofitable. The river courses tend to be more like canyons than valleys, with precipitous sides of unscalable stone and no way in or out except at the northern ends or deep to the south where the watercourses fall from the heights. We didn't go into the valleys by choice. We were driven to take shelter in one of those sheer-sided traps because of a great storm. It was many years ago. At the time we had my cousin Hepwell's acrobatic troupe traveling with us, and there were a dozen strong men along. If it hadn't been for that, we'd be there still, for the natives were strangely disinclined to let us be on our way. However, most of their older menfolk, their elders were off at some kind of religious observance, so they hadn't quite the force they needed to keep us against our will."

  "Fertile land, though?"

  "Amazingly, from what I remember. Flat fields along the streams. Green pastures. Wooded along the streams, but not many trees elsewhere except upon the heights. They had sheep and goats and chickens, I remember that, and gardens. Fruit trees. I don't remember it well, but then it was thirty or forty years ago, Medic. I can't say I remember it rightly."

  "But sparsely populated?"

  "As I remember, yes," he had said, wondering both at her persistence and at her dissatisfied expression.

  "She wants something from us," Kostia commented later.

  "Something to do with the places we've been," said Tonia. "Or places you've been, Uncle Septemius, before we were born."

  So now he asked Stavia, "What is it you want, Medic? Is there a price for the medicine for old Bowough? Something you've a mind to trade?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know at this moment, Septemius Bird. Perhaps. But, whatever I might want, I wouldn't like to say I'd trade the old man's life for it. More, I'd like you to think that if I do you a favor now, and not an inconsiderable one, either, you might do me one later on."

  "So?"

  "We'll talk more on it again." He could not pin her down. She was as slippery as one of those rare fishes that were showing up every now and then in the streams. However, that evening she appeared with a syringe and gave old Bowough an injection which seemed, by morning, to have made his breathing easier.

  WHEREVER SHE HAPPENED to be working during the day, Stavia took her breakfast and supper at home with her family, Morgot, Joshua, Corrig, and very occasionally Myra and her little boy. The toddler was usually enough distraction to keep Myra from being rude to the servitors or from recalling old injustices and dissatisfactions.

  Tonight there was, however, a new source for annoyance.

  "I don't see why it is that Stavia gets to do everything," Myra complained, wiping applesauce from the little boy's chin. "As she does, Morgot. You do have two daughters, you know?"

  "I did not nominate Stavia for the exploration team," Morgot responded calmly. "The nomination came about largely because she is medically trained."

  "Surely they're not sending just people who are medically trained!"

  "No, of course not. But they aren't sending any mothers of young children, either. They prefer young people, without children, trained in some useful field. There won't be a lot of people involved. The team going south will be only two people, one woman, one servitor, and a pack animal or two. It will have two purposes; finding botanical specimens and spying out the land south of there which we have reason to believe is occupied. We don't want a large team that might stir up a lot of attention or trouble, just a small one that can sneak along the hills and find out how far north the strangers come."

  "There are other teams!"

  "Yes. Two middle-sized teams will go east and north, the eastern one to see whether the desolations there have shrunk any and the northern one to explore the limits of the ice. Those, too, will search for botanical or zoological specimens of interest. One quite sizable group will go westward by boat and then down the shore to see whether there is any sign of useful life. All will be strenuous trips, not something you would much enjoy, Myra."

  "I would simply enjoy getting out of the house and away from babies for a while!"

  Morgot shook her head and remained silent. Myra had chosen to have three children, Marcus first, then baby Barten when Marcus was five, now this one. All suggestions that she might take the babies to the crŠche for a few hours a day in order to focus on her education met with tears and stubborn incomprehension. "They're all boys! I'll only have them for a little while, Morgot! I want to spend all the time with them I can!" Only to exclaim in the next moment that she would lose her mind if she didn't get away from children! Motherhood had not changed Myra appreciably. Well, the second boy would be going to his warrior father within the month.

  "Have you decided whether you will accept the nomination?" Morgot asked Stavia. "You've been very dilatory about making a decision."

  Stavia, who had already planned to go, who was considering breaking the ordinances once more but putting it off as long as possible, tried to avoid making a commitme
nt just yet. "Thinking, Morgot. You said the trip might take as much as six months. That's a chunk out of my life right now."

  "It has compensations. My mother went on one, thirty years ago it would be. Her art was poetry, and she wrote some very good things afterward."

  "My art is drama, Morgot. What do you expect me to do? Do mimes about it?"

  "No, I thought more about your science and your craft, quite frankly. They're short of medical attention at the sheep camp. And you have more information about botanical things than most of our candidates. Collecting plant specimens isn't exactly a mindless activity."

  Stavia fell silent, embarrassed. She hadn't even thought about it. "Hasn't a systematic collection been done?"

  "No, only sporadic bits and pieces. A new grain crop or root crop could more than pay for your time. Or some new herb with therapeutic properties. Even some new garden flower would be welcome."