Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (29 page)

 
          
Cendri
never heard what happened or what he realized. At that moment loud cries of
dismay and lamentation rose, spread through the crowd. She heard Vaniya cry out
in grief and felt fear clutch at her heart—what had happened? Had something
happened to Miranda? No; Miranda was standing next to her mother, crying out,
adding her own voice to the rising chorus of lament. She hurried down the
stairs toward them.

 
          
Mahala
raised her eyes to Cendri and
said,
her voice low and
tense, "Catastrophe, my dear Scholar Dame. Our Mother and Priestess, the
revered and beloved High Matriarch Rezali, has left us and ascended to join the
Goddess. We have just had word; she died but a few moments ago, without ever
recovering consciousness."

 
          
"And
so," Vaniya said, her face pale, "We are without a High Matriarch.
And there is no way of knowing, cousin, which of us would have succeeded to her
ring and her robe."

 
          
Cendri
looked at the two rivals, in shock. She had not known the dead
woman,
the late Mother Rezali was nothing to her. But what
would this mean to her work? What would this mean to Vaniya and her household?

 
          
Mahala
said blandly, "I must go home at once. I am certain that the Mother Rezali
will attempt to communicate with me from the great barrier, and I must be ready
to receive her word. I pray—" She turned to Cendri and bowed, "Excuse
me, Scholar
Dame, that
I leave you without ceremony.
Vaniya, I confide to you, as Mother Rezali wished, the care of our honored
guests, since I am sure you will have no other duties at the moment."

 
          
Cendri
saw Vaniya's large broad face flush pink with wrath; but she merely bowed to
her rival and said nothing. When Mahala had stepped into her official vehicle
and driven away, Vaniya took Cendri's arm in a tight clasp. Miranda came close
to her mother, flushed with anger.

 
          
"That woman!
How dared she? You must go home at once,
Mother, I am sure that the Mother Rezali will communicate with you—Maret must
be told at once to await the word—" Quickly, she gestured to the waiting
car, motioned Dal and Cendri into it, ushered her mother inside. Rhu clambered
in last, taking his place close to Vaniya and saying soothingly, "Do not
disturb yourself, Vaniya, you must remain calm to await word."

 
          
"Yes,
yes," Vaniya said distractedly, "I cannot believe that Rezali will
appoint that woman High Matriarch in her place—yet there is always the
chance—"

 
          
She
saw Cendri's puzzled face and said, "Forgive me, my dear, but I fear that
until the Mother Rezali has made her will known, your work must come to a
halt."

 
          
"Make
her will known?" Cendri said, "I thought—the word you received—I
thought the High Matriarch was dead!"

 
          
"Why,
so she is," Vaniya said, "but when a woman of our people is appointed
to the post of High Matriarch, she secretes a duplicate of her ring of office,
and her robe of power, in a place known only to her. And then, should death
take her before she has designated her successor, her spirit will appear to her
chosen successor, and tell her, or an Inquirer in her household, where the ring
and robe have been hidden. So that whichever of us first discovers her ring of
office, and her robe, where they have been hidden, becomes High Matriarch in
her place. And I must go and await some communication from the other side of
the great barrier, telling me that our beloved Mother Rezali wishes me to carry
on her work among our people, and whispering to my spirit where I may find her
ring of office to show the City Mothers."

 
          
She
fell silent, deep in thought, her eyes going blank, and Cendri, blinking,
thought; what a development! Now all their work depended on a kind of
mediumistic treasure-hunt!

 
          
Dal
whispered in her ear, "What a hell of a way to run a government!"

 
          
And
for once she did not feel even a little like arguing with him.

 
          
The next few days Dal and Cendri spent in the ruins, measuring,
taking soil-scrapings, making computer analyses of the buildings and
structures.
Dal adapted a force-field breaker to attempt again to enter
the structures without damage, trying frequency after frequency, but decided to
delay any attempt to cut into them until he had X-ray pictures of the interior.
To devise these in a way that would penetrate the unknown force-field, he said,
might be a long task and demand conferral by long-distance relays with sources
on University.

 
          
"We
could do more damage trying to get into them than we realized," he told
her, "if we could break the force-field and just walk in, that's one
thing. But if they're in time stasis, nothing we could do will break into them
because, essentially, they're not in this dimension at all."

 
          
That
sounded like nonsense to Cendri and she said so. "If they're not here, how
can we touch them, lean on them, press against them—"

 
          
"Cendri,
I don't have time to give you a complete course in temporal mechanics. Just
take my word for it, unless living on
Isis
has
made you unwilling to trust male scholarship." But he laughed, and Cendri
knew it had become a joke between them again. She was profoundly relieved.

 
          
"I
wish we could get a good temporal mechanic here," Dal continued. "The
trouble is, the only ones I know on University are men, and I don't suppose any
of them would be willing to wear some woman's property tag, although to get a
chance at a site which might actually be in time stasis, I know some
mathematicians who would do more than that. I don't know any temporal mechanic
who is a woman—" he continued, as they came out of the site late in the
evening, and turned to Laurina. "Are there any specialists in mathematics
on your world—the mathematics of temporal conditions and stress?"

 
          
Laurina
looked bewildered. She could talk to Dal now without too much
self-consciousness, but as always when she was confused or felt insecure, it
was to Cendri she turned before answering. "Truly, I don't know; I know so
little of mathematics. My own specialty is history. I can inquire at the
college if you like, though."

 
          
"Do
that," Dal directed. "The help of anyone who had
a
grounding
in temporal mathematics would be a help in determining if this
place really is in time stasis."

 
          
"It
cannot be that," Laurina argued, "or how could the inhabitants
communicate with us?"

 
          
Dal
made a wry face and did not answer. He did not argue with Laurina's beliefs;
but he would not dignify them by comment, either. He simply said, "I'd
take it as a great favor if you could put me—us—in touch with the most highly
regarded mathematician at your college. He—I mean she—would certainly have
tried to investigate something of the math of temporal stress, I understand
it's the most exciting field in mathematics in the last two or three hundred
years."

 
          
Laurina
said, with the queer stiff formality she still sometimes used with Dal, "I
am certain that any scientist would consider it an honor to work with the
respected Scholar Dame from University and her Companion."

 
          
As
the great pale sun of Isis drew lower in the sky, they came out of the site and
saw a procession passing along the shoreline road toward the city of Ariadne.
As they drew near, Cendri saw that it was mostly men afoot, although there were
a few cars and surface vehicles of the kind used on Isis. Most of them were
young, and wearing the brief kiltlike garments worn by manual laborers of
either sex. The few men among Vaniya's servants went down to speak with them
and after a moment Dal followed. To Cendri's surprise, the men called out
greetings to the women, and Vaniya's servants answered; after a moment, shyly,
so did Laurina. Cendri's face must have shown her curiosity, for Laurina
explained, unasked.

 
          
"They
are men from the great dam project, about a hundred kilometers south of the
city, coming here for the festival. They will camp along the
shoreline,
it is the only time of the year when they are allowed spearfishing in the
coastline waters. And in four days now—has no one told you?—is the highest of
our holidays, when we visit the sea and invoke the Goddess as bringer of life.
But certainly—" she hesitated, diffident. "You are the friend of the
Lady
Miranda,
surely she has invited you to join with
us in this festival?"

 
          
Miranda
had mentioned it, once or twice, in such a way that Cendri knew it was somehow
connected with the unknown mating customs of the Matriarchate, concealed by the
society. Cendri felt a flicker of excitement. Was she, then, enough accepted by
them that she would be allowed to witness this festival?

 
          
Laurina
said, "But no, the lady Miranda is so near to the birth-time that she will
not join, this year, in the festival. I had thought her child would have been
born long before this." She went on, "It is our Longest Day, and this
year it coincides with the double Full Moon, when both our moons show their
smiling face; which happens only once in every nine or eleven years,
alternately. So this year the festival is particularly sacred; I hope that by
then we will have a new High Matriarch to perform the rites. We visit the sea
three times in a year, but this, the Longest Day, is the holiest and most
blessed of our festivals. Cendri—" she hesitated,
then
smiled, "you are here alone, without sisters or kinswomen, and it is for
us to offer you hospitality and companionship. Since Miranda has not thought to
do so, let me be the one to invite you to join us at this highest of
festivals."

 
          
Cendri
felt the flicker of excitement again. Actually to be allowed to witness their
highest festival! Nevertheless she felt compelled to ask, "Is it permitted
for an outsider, Laurina?"

 
          
"I
feel that the Goddess could hardly smile on a woman who did not join us in her
worship on this day," Laurina said seriously. "All women are of one
blood, and since you are here on this world she has blessed with her presence,
it seems to me unthinkable that you would choose not to join us."

 
          
So
not only was she invited to join them; it might even be taken as an affront to
their Goddess if she did not! She thought, if I had come openly as an
anthropologist, to study them, they might have taken pains to conceal some of
their rites from me! Perhaps it is as well I did not...

 
          
As
she returned to Vaniya's house, she was pondering this. The sexual customs of
Isis were evidently some form of visitational marriage, then, preceded, and
formalized, evidently by the rite called "visiting the sea." She said
to Laurina, "So many men! I had not known there were so many! Do they all
live outside the city, then? Are they colonists, living in separate
villages?"

 
          
"Men,
colonize anything?" Laurina said with a blank look, halfway between
amusement and incredulity. "No, but some Men's Houses have been taken
there under their overseers, or leased by their owners, to work on the great
dam. They are building dykes and when they have finished, it will provide flood
control all along the delta of the great river which we call
Anahit,
and energy as well. Some of our best engineers are working there, but of course
they need immense crews of male labor. Men are reasonably good at manual labor,
provided they are carefully supervised by trained women. Of course their
attention span is short, and they must be lavishly provided with amusements and
rewards, but mostly the men like to work on such projects; it gives them a
chance to use their muscles, which is what they do best; they have a natural instinct
for manual work, as you can see by their gift for athletics. They are not as
graceful as women, but their strength makes up for that. And they enjoy the
extra rations of sweets, and the extra opportunity, outside the city, for
hunting. So everyone is happy; the men because of the fun of building the dam,
and the women because we will have power and flood control."

 
          
Cendri
wondered briefly how the men would have reacted to this analysis, but they had
arrived at Vaniya's house. But before she had finished washing off the grime of
the day's work in the ruins, Miranda knocked at their door and came in.

 
          
She
looked troubled and distracted. "Cendri, will you come? My mother is very
distressed,
she wants all of the women in her household with
her now—"

 
          
"What
is it, Miranda?"

 
          
"Mahala
has sent word that she has found the High Matriarch's ring and robe. We must
all go to the Council to verify them—I cannot travel now." And indeed
Miranda was ungainly now, dragging heavily around. "Lialla and her partner
will be with her, but still— she is fond of you, Cendri, will you go in my
place? And it may interest you, to see the solemn formality of investing a High
Matriarch—"

 
          
"I
will go," Cendri promised, and Miranda went away. Dal frowned at her and
said, "Damn it, Cendri, do you really want to align yourself so much with
the losing Pro-Matriarch's faction?"

 
          
Cendri
said quietly, "Miranda said it; she is fond of me. And have you forgotten,
Dal, why I am really here? If I have any opportunity to see the workings of
this society, then I must do so."

 
          
"I
suppose so. But I'm worrying. If you make an enemy of Mahala—"

 
          
"I'm
not planning to make an enemy of Mahala, Dal. I am going with Vaniya in the
place of an ailing daughter," Cendri said with careful patience, and Dal
frowned again, angrily.

           
"I don't like that, damn it!
She's getting entirely too fond of you to suit me! I haven't forgotten how she
treated you at the athletic contest—I suppose it's to be expected, that women
who live apart from men should develop morbid homosexual tendencies, but you're
my wife and you can't expect me to approve of letting you run around with a
woman like that!"

 
          
"Dal, for goodness sake!
A woman like that—what in the
world, any world, do you mean? Do you honestly believe the Pro-Matriarch of
Isis is going to attack an honored guest sexually?"

 
          
"Well,
I suppose not, but—I saw the way she acted the other day—"

 
          
Cendri
sighed, knowing she could never make Dal understand. She understood the impulse
of affection and excitement that had prompted Vaniya to embrace her, an
intimacy which would have been taken for granted in Vaniya's own world; an
overture, not an attack, and when Cendri had not responded, Vaniya had behaved
unexceptionably! She said, "I'm not going to argue with you about it, Dal,
it's customary in their world, and you have no right to make invidious remarks
about it. When the men are considered unsuitable for companionship, naturally
they find their closest emotional ties among one another. I could cite half a
dozen parallels among men, if I wanted to—the warrior caste of Kahornia, for
instance, who aren't allowed to approach women except for one season in every
four—"

 
          
"I
know," said Dal, grimacing, "I don't approve of them either; I
haven't cultivated the virtue of scientific detachment, and I hope sincerely
that I never do, if it means tolerating that kind of thing!" Then he
shrugged and laughed. "All right, love, there's no sense quarreling."
He came and put his arms around her, kissing her hard. "I'm really not
worried; I know you too well for that. But don't develop too much scientific
detachment or tolerance, darling."

 
          
Cendri
was relieved, even though she knew perfectly well that Dal did not understand.
He was, after all, not trained in cross-cultural comparisons. She supposed this
grudging tolerance was all she could expect, and she was glad he was not making
an issue of it. She robed herself in her most elaborately formal garments,
suitable for a Dame's Investiture on University, and went down to join Vaniya.

 
          
Vaniya
indeed looked solemn and distracted, but she held out her hands to Cendri with
a warm smile. She said, "It is good of you to come in a daughter's place,
my child; it was Rhu who suggested it might entertain you to see this
solemnity, and he has pledged himself to entertain your Companion in your
absence."