Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (27 page)

 
          
Mahala
narrowed her eyes. She said, "I know only a little of Pioneer. However, I
cannot believe that what the Unity did made so much difference, after all. It
is hardly equality for women, if they are simply freed to live as equals in the
kind of culture designed by men for men; a woman, to be equal in such a
culture, can only be equal by doing the same things men do; and equality in a
corrupt male-dominated culture is probably not worth having. Women can fulfill
themselves only in a culture designed by women; the difference is that in a
culture designed by women, both men and women can know true fulfillment."
She added, with a charming smile, "But there is no need to argue politics
now. I do not expect you to agree with me, Master Scholar." She turned to
Cendri and said, "However, Scholar Dame, I am sure you can see my point. If
the ruins at We-were-guided are of sufficient scientific interest, then the
Unity will, perhaps, give us trade allowances, including the
earthquake-predictive equipment we need, in return for concessions for
scientific study, without demanding that we violate the basic principles of our
social structure."

 
          
Dal
said frankly, "It is quite possible, if the ruins prove indeed to be those
of the Builders. I—" he broke off, with a glance at Cendri, and she said,
"I am not yet ready to form any conclusion about the actual age or origin
of the ruins at We-were-guided. It seems most likely, from their state of
preservation, that they are of much more recent origin than the Builders; old,
indeed, and perhaps unique in the known worlds of the Unity, but probably not
ancient enough to be those of the Builders—if, indeed, the culture called the
Builders ever existed, which is rather doubtful and remains to be proved."

 
          
She
was proud of herself; for once, she thought, she had managed to sound precisely
like a professional archaeologist. She caught Dai's eye; he was smiling, a
faintly superior, tolerant grin, and she felt stung. What had he expected her
to do?

 
          
"In
any case," said Mahala, "I shall hope that they prove of sufficient
interest to draw the scientific community to us, and give us the equipment we
need without concessions which would ruin our culture and doom it to follow the
rest of the Unity to the death decreed by Rakmall's Limits. At least, my dear
Scholar Dame, you are studying the ruins left by the Builders—or
whomever
the makers of the ruins may have been—and not
offering incense and flowers at their shrine! And now, I see that my worthy
colleague has arrived, so allow me to escort you to the games in your honor,
and I wish you a most enjoyable and entertaining afternoon."

 
          
As
they were driven to the amphitheater allotted for the day's games, Cendri was
thoughtful. Mahala's charm had made an impression on her—enough of an
impression that she felt seriously disloyal to Vaniya, for whom she had come to
feel genuine affection. But Dal, she knew, was in a deeper predicament. Mahala
had, in a sense, offered him—by way of an offer to the Unity—his uttermost
desire; a free hand for Unity scientists to come here openly and study the
Builder ruins; to bring a fully equipped team here and give them systematic
study over a period of years. Yet she had tied this concession—one Cendri knew
Vaniya would never have made—to a condition Dal, with his fairly obvious
undercover mission to the men of
Isis
, could
never accept: a pledge, on the part of the Unity scientists, not to meddle with
the social structure of
Isis
and
the enslavement and disenfranchisement of their men.

 
          
In
the Official Box above the amphitheater, where they had an excellent view of the
huge oval playing field, she and Dal were seated in a position of honor. Vaniya
was at her side, with Miranda, too, joining them in the box. The stands were
packed with women of all ages, from young girls to old ladies, shouting and
applauding enthusiastically as a large number of athletes—all male, and all
naked except for colored ribbons tied around their heads—paraded in the
amphitheater. Cendri blinked with surprise; this was the last form of
entertainment she had expected here. But on reflection it made sense; as much
sense as some of the spaceport-area sex displays of female beauty. It was,
perhaps, even a little more tasteful, since they had come together, at least
ostensibly, for athletic competition, and nudity in athletics had come and
gone, as a fashion, since pre-space days. Flower sellers vended their colorful
wares through the amphitheater; Miranda bought a basket of blossoms and offered
it to Cendri, displaying their use by tossing down flowers to particularly
handsome specimens parading, readying themselves for the early contests; pretty
adolescent boys running races and displaying agility at leaping and vaulting.

 
          
Dal
whispered under his breath to Cendri, "Damn it, this is
embarrassing!"

 
          
"I
don't see why it should be any more embarrassing to you than it was supposed to
be embarrassing to me when you took me into a show once in the port district
and were admiring the pretty girls there," Cendri whispered back, and
Dai's face took on a dull color. He muttered, "I never thought you minded
that, you didn't tell me."

 
          
Some
of the women discussed the fine points of the athletes with considerable
technical understanding; they played a leaping game with rackets—Cendri had
seen something like it on University, hitting a ball back and forth over the
net—and prizes were awarded by Mahala herself, varying from the trivial,
garlands of flowers and shells for the boys' contests, to silver and gilt
badges and medals, huge boxes of confections and baskets of fruit, and
elaborate sports equipment for the contests among the older men. The women
shouted and cheered, threw down flowers and colored ribbons, and urged on their
favorites in loud voices. The men strutted and preened, displaying their
prowess and good looks without any undue modesty. Cendri found the display
embarrassing, and was embarrassed, too, at the frankness with which the women
admired the men.

 
          
"What
a pity your Companion does not choose to compete, my dear," Vaniya said,
eyeing the men in the arena with a look Cendri could only describe to herself,
privately, as lecherous, and looking regretfully at Dal. "He is so very
handsome. Dear Rhu, alas, is quite hopeless at athletics, but then," she
added, sighing, "
one
cannot have
everything."

 
          
Cendri
looked at Rhu's downcast eyes and flinched at Vaniya's tactlessness. She caught
Miranda's eye as Miranda murmured something under her breath to Rhu. It was a
disturbing thought. Did Rhu, with his intelligence and his musical talent—yes,
and his good looks, too—really feel inferior because he could not compete in
the parade of athletic and sexual display down there in that arena?

 
          
The
afternoon was to culminate with displays of boxing and wrestling, and Cendri
gathered that these were the major events for which everything else was only
preliminary, and the prizes for these were really valuable. A sort of
intermission was going on now; the women bought iced sweets, chattered
enthusiastically about their favorites, flung flowers at athletes waiting in
the amphitheater, and watched displays of dancing and parades by—Cendri
gathered—the Men's Houses of various households in the city. Dal rose, and
murmuring an excuse, slipped out of the box—Cendri supposed he had gone to look
for a rest room somewhere. Rhu called after him, then rose and with a word to
Vaniya—who nodded indulgent permission—went after him. Cendri, watching Vaniya
leaning over the rail and watching the handsome men in the arena, thought
Vaniya was kind really, despite her tactlessness. She was unfailingly kind to
Rhu,
it would probably never have occurred to her that she
was showing contempt for him. Indeed, Vaniya was kind to everyone of her
household,
she was a conscientious leader of the women of
the city.

 
          
Is
she the superstitious fool Mahala thinks her? I simply can't believe it!

 
          
Miranda
stirred uneasily, and Cendri thought; her baby might be born at any time; she
must find this a long afternoon, sitting on these hard benches—for even in the
Official Box, where the benches were cushioned, they were hard, not
particularly comfortable for a pregnant woman. She slipped out of the box, and
Cendri went after her; she was anxious to see what she could of behind the
scenes.

 
          
The
rest room facilities were luxurious, as everywhere on
Isis
, with large mirrors at which many of the
women were preening themselves and lavishly re-applying cosmetics; this was,
Cendri realized, one of the few social events where she had seen cosmetics worn
at all, and clothing was more elaborate than she had yet seen. Miranda was
delicately outlining her large blue eyes with a shadowy variety of colored
pigments, an effect which Cendri found bizarre but pretty; female adornment
varied so much from world to world that it was hard to tell just what kind of
social or sexual cues any given adornment was supposed to convey. Laurina, the
young teacher from the
college
of
Ariadne
, was there too; she greeted Cendri with her
usual blend of wide-eyed awe and puppyish friendliness, and Cendri was glad to
see her. She glanced uneasily in the mirror at her own face—her society did not
wear cosmetics except to repair an obvious defect, to cover a freckle or
birthmark too small to bother about removing, or color streaked hair to a
uniform hue; at Miranda's suggestion she had worn a little pink cosmetic on her
cheeks, and a little gilt glitter on her eyelids, but even this modest
paintwork seemed blatant and overdone. Laurina, however, commented on how
pretty she looked. Women were crowding around the mirrors, and Cendri realized,
from the narcissistic chatter and attention—quite unlike the usual haphazard
attitude to clothing—that this was an event intended for display on both sides.
She filed away everything she saw for later analysis. It was the first event
she had seen at which men and women frankly displayed their attractiveness to
one another.

 
          
And
yet—she saw too, not only in the secluded rest room but on the stairs, as she
went back with Miranda—the women were excited and some of them over-wrought,
but in spite of their awareness of the men, they made no overt move toward
them. In a nook of the stairs, however, she saw two or three couples—pairs of
women—seeking partial privacy for intense and passionate kissing and fondling.
Cendri, who had never seen public lovemaking between women before, was
embarrassed, turning her eyes away from the couples. She had seen so many
different sexual patterns on so many worlds that nothing in the gamut of human
sexual behavior could really surprise her, but this seemed stranger than
anything she had seen yet. She would have thought that the presence of the men
would have turned the women toward them, caused them to fix their attention on
the handsome males in the arena. At her side Miranda sighed:

 
          
"At
times like this I am lonely," she said in an undertone, "I even miss
my old partner—" And then, in a low voice, "Or I regret that— that
there is no way Rhu and I can be together like this! What is the matter with
me, Cendri, that I am so unlike my own people? I find that I envy you and your
Companion more than I can say!"

 
          
Cendri
said nothing—what could she say? At last, hesitating, she said, "Every
society has its own rules, Miranda, but they are made by the people in the
society, there is nothing necessarily ordained by divine authority about any of
them; and in every culture I have ever seen, there are some who do not fit into
the patterns of its society. I don't know what you can do about it, in this
world you live in, but you shouldn't feel bad about yourself because you are
different."

 
          
Miranda
blinked fiercely, clinging to Cendri's arm. She said, "I wish—I wish—I
don't know what I wish. Maybe I wish we were part of the Unity, so that Rhu and
I could go away together somewhere, to a world where it wouldn't be shameful
for us to want to be together all the time—I feel so disloyal to my mother,
when I say this!" She struggled for self-control, standing between Cendri
and the balustade of the stairs. Women returning to their seats edged past
them, maneuvering—Miranda was so pregnant that it was not easy to pass her on
the narrow stairs—and giving them indulgent looks, winks and smiles. Cendri
realized that they accepted that she and Miranda were one of the couples she
had seen. But she had no time to worry about that, though it was embarrassing;
she was concerned with Miranda, who was crying noiselessly, tears streaming
down her face. Helplessly, Cendri dried Miranda's eyes with her own scarf,
urging, "Come along,
come
back to your seat,
Miranda. Don't cry like this here, don't—"