Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (2 page)

 
          
Maybe
the Unity is right, not to give
assignments like this to women. I know
I'm going
to make a
mess
of this one!

 
          
It's
going to be rough
on DaJ
if I fail at this—and
maybe worse
if
I
succeed. Women on Pioneer
are
never Scholars; there hasn't been a
Scholar Dame from Pioneer in
the history of
University.'

 
          
Cendri
and Dal had met on University, the scholar's world, where all the knowledge of
the known planets of the Unity was gathered in a single central location.
Cendri had been already a Scholar, then, while Dal was still only a Student. At
first—she knew it—the very difference had intrigued the young man from Pioneer.
Cendri's own world did not regard scholarship in a woman as anything so very
surprising, and there had been a few—though not many—Scholar Dames from her
home planet, Beta Capella; mostly in education and linguistics, but it was not
really unusual for women to excel in the social sciences.

 
          
She
had found it intriguing when he had courted and flattered her. She knew that
she herself had been the first woman he had ever known who
was
genuinely his intellectual equal
. She was flattered that he had turned
to her, rather than to one of the men, for help in finding his way around the
bewildering new world of University. And also, at first, she had been flattered
that he had tried to meet her on an intellectual level, as a fellow Scholar,
rather than as a man meets a woman. Later it had seemed almost a slight, and
when he had begun to court her in earnest, she had felt relieved, as if, in
some way, he had confirmed the quality of her womanhood. Soon sexuality had
begun to shadow and compete with their shared interests and tastes; and before
very long they were spending so much time together that it had seemed logical
to marry instead of maintaining separate quarters.

 
          
They
had been married, now, just over a year. Dal had been preparing for his
examination as Master Scholar, and Cendri knew he was already regarded as the
most promising Scholar in the Department of Alien Archaeology and Artifacts. He
had chosen to do his thesis and graduate research on the very few remaining
extant ruins of the mysterious, and still hypothetical, race known as the
Builders. He had applied for, and been accepted, as Research Assistant to the
Scholar Dame Lurianna di Velo.

 
          
The
Scholar Dame di Velo was a woman of considerable age, powerful, important, author
of many controversial, but impeccably scholarly, works on Archaeology. She was
considered
the
foremost authority on alien artifacts; but she was
notorious because she adhered, publicly, to the controversial theory that the
entire Galaxy had, at one time, been seeded, or colonized, by a single race of
beings which had been given the name of Builders. Master Scholars and Dames all
over the Galaxy attacked her thesis; but they could not fault her scholarship
or her respectable credentials; the theory had acquired respectability largely
because of her defense of it. It had previously been considered questionable,
if not completely crackpot.

 
          
Cendri
herself should have applied, two seasons before, for a Scholar Dame's grant.
But on her marriage, she had applied for a season's leave of absence, and had
been granted it. Afterward, she had delayed. Cendri's own field, the Department
of Xenoanthrop-ology and Comparative Culture, still insisted that all research
theses be done as fieldwork, and Cendri did not want to be parted so quickly
from Dal. She was hoping that Dai's first assignment with the Scholar Dame,
while he qualified for his own credentials as Master Scholar, would take them
together to a planet where Cendri could do her own thesis work at the same
time.

 
          
And
then she had begun to wonder, hestitate about doing it at all. After all, Dal
was from Pioneer; he had come a long way in one generation, but culturally
imposed social attitudes were not changed overnight. Considering that, perhaps
one advanced degree was enough in a family. There was always interesting work
to be done for a Scholar; she had no particular ambition, now, to be a Dame.
And she was not sure it would please Dal if she became a Dame.

 
          
Dal
liked the Scholar Dame di Velo and respected her work. But it was clear that he
found it hard to accept the notion that a woman could be his superior in
position and status; she knew he was chafing until his own Master Scholar
qualifications would make him the Scholar Dame's equal. He said often, as a
joke—but he said it once or twice too often for a joke—what would
they think
of
me on Pioneer, taking
orders from a she-Scholar?

 
          
Then
everything had happened quickly. The Scholar Dame di Velo had been requested,
by the Matriarchate of Isis/Cinderella, to come and examine the ancient ruins
on their world, which might, or might not, be of Builder origin. The Scholar
Dame di Velo had regarded this as a vindication of a long campaign; Dal had
been considerably less enthusiastic.

 
          
"The Matriarchate on Cinderella!"
Dal had been
halfway between despair and disgust. Cendri, feeling the lurch and sway as the
shuttle ship shuddered out of free orbit into deceleration, remembered the
dismay with which Dal had spoken of the Matriarchate.

 
          
"
A society run
entirely by women!
Sharrioz!"
He had scowled and stormed for hours about this assignment. "There won't
be any chance at all for me to do independent research, not in the
Matriarchate! I'll just be there to fetch and carry for the di Velo
woman!" he raged, "and here I was thinking I could get my Master's
quals before I went—"

 
          
Angry
as Dal had been, Cendri could not help being excited.

 
          
"The Matriarchate!
Oh, Dal, if we could go together—if
I could get a grant to do my research there—there are almost no records of
study actually
within
a matriarchal society—"

 
          
"That's
because there aren't any in the civilized worlds," Dal had grumbled,
"and I already asked the Scholar Dame." His injured tone had said
clearly, see,
I'm
always thinking
about you,
and Cendri had
cringed even while she was grateful to him. "The Matriarchate refuses to
allow any anthropological research on Cinderella, something about being a
working society, not a freak to be studied—so you can't go openly as an
anthropologist. But the Scholar Dame said you can go along; she's going to
invent some minor job for you, so you can be with me, and maybe you can take
notes enough to expand them into some kind of research work. There's so little
information about any working Matriarchy that even a little information about
them ought to be valuable." And Cendri had been grateful for even that
crumb, until he had added gloomily, "If I go at all, that is. I ought to
throw up this job and get a Research Assistantship with some good, qualified
man."

 
          
But
there had been really no choice. The Scholar Dame di Velo was the only Scholar
of repute working on the Builders at all, and only her reputation had made work
on the Builders remotely acceptable. Dal had to stick with the Scholar Dame, or
do the last two seasons of his research over again on something else—not to
mention that if he deserted the Scholar Dame di Velo on such flimsy grounds, he
would never again get a decent Research Assistantship.

 
          
The
pilot glanced over her bare shoulder at Cendri and said, "We will now be
descending into atmosphere, Scholar Dame. In a few minutes you will be seeing
the shoreline of Ariadne." Cendri, fighting the growing tug of
gravity—unaccustomed after so long in the Unity ship—winced again at the undeserved
title. Obsessively, she went back to remembering, as if she had to get it all
straight before they landed.

 
          
There
had been all the preparations for departure to Cinderella, which the
Matriarchate had renamed
Isis
.
Taped lessons in the language, in what little was
known of
their culture. Cendri remembered that, and remembered, more clearly, Dai's
increasing distress and disquiet at the assignment, so that Cendri felt guilty
about her own growing eagerness. How could she be so happy when Dal was so
wretched?

 
          
She
had discussed the project with her own Research Mentor, and he had agreed to
give her tentative approval—subject to review on her return, and the amount of
research she could actually complete on Isis/Cinderella—to use this as her
Research fieldwork.

 
          
And then the accident, which had so completely altered their plans.
The Scholar Dame Lurianna di Velo was, at present, in an amniotic tank on
University
Medical
Center
, growing a new hand and a new eye, and regenerating
assorted internal organs. At her age, that was a complicated and lengthy
business. It had looked as if the Isis/Cinderella project would have to be
abandoned; and Cendri had not known whether she was glad or sorry. The
Matriarchate had been duly notified of the accident; and after certain delays,
an answer had come. It had told them that in lieu of the Scholar Dame di Velo,
the Matriarchate would gladly accept the presence of her assistant, the Scholar
Dame Malocq.

 
          
Cendri
was, like most Scholars, a passable linguist; but she had not been extensively
trained in semantics, and had not, at first, understood the implications of
this. On her own world, a married woman did not take her husband's name at all,
and Cendri still thought of herself as Cendri Owain; Scholar Owain. But it was
the custom on Pioneer, and it had seemed very important to Dal; so she had
applied for, and received, identification in Dai's name. Cendri Malocq.

 
          
"Don't
you see," Dal said, "in their language, there is no special word
differentiating Master Scholar from
Scholar
Dame.
The
word for a higher degree would translate something like Extra-Scholar, but it
is translated Scholar Dame because on Isis/Cinderella
all
honorifics are
feminine. It didn't occur to them that a famous woman scholar—and they did know
that di Velo was a
woman,
they had made sure of
it—would not have a woman assistant. So in sending a message accepting the Dame
di Velo's assistant, they naturally used the feminine honorific."

 
          
"But
why should they assume—?"

 
          
"I
thought you had studied the Matriarchate. One of their basic assumptions is
that all worlds in the Unity are completely dominated by men, and that no
woman intelligent enough to be a Scholar would risk this domination. So they
believe di Velo's assistant, Scholar Malocq, would
of
course be a
woman—"

 
          
"But
you aren't—" she said, not quite seeing what he was driving at, and he had
said, "But you are. Don't you understand? There is a Scholar Malocq, with
credentials. Isn't it lucky that you took my name? Now you can go in the
Scholar Dame's place—"

 
          
"Dal,
I can't," she protested, panicked, "I don't know anything about
Archaeology—"

 
          
"But
I do," he had said, in excitement. "I can give you tapes, educator
crash courses, hypno-learning sets—enough to give you the patter, enough to get
by! And I'll be right at your elbow all the time as your Research
Assistant—don't you see? I'll be doing the work, and getting my quals, and
you'll be fronting for me! And you'll be able to do your own research, too, you
can observe everything because they'll take you everywhere as a visiting
dignitary—can't you see, Cendri, what a wonderful chance this is, for both of
us?"

 
          
She
had still protested. It wouldn't be
honest,
it wasn't
fair to the Matriarchate. But her protests had been half-hearted. A chance to
study the Matriarchate at first hand, an assignment where she could get
qualification as a Scholar Dame and which would not separate her from Dal! The
authorities on University had been all too willing to go along with the
deception. It was, after all, the first time anyone with anthropologist's
credentials had been allowed inside the Matriarchy. Anyway, it wouldn't have
been easy to find a replacement for the maverick di Velo; she was the only
Scholar of repute who would seriously investigate the possibility of Builder
ruins on
Isis
.