Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (12 page)

 
          
"There
is a light... no, not a light, a kind of glow. Are you sure it wasn't
moonlight, Cendri? Or perhaps some kind of luminescent material—we have no idea
what kind of materials the old Builders may have had." He broke off,
yawning hugely. "Are you sure you didn't dream it?"

 
          
Cendri
realized she was not sure. One moment she had been full of the flooding light,
warmth, the suffusing joy she could not identify, happiness for no known cause;
the next moment cramped, cold, the moon set.

 
          
"I
did see a glow—" she insisted forlornly.

 
          
"I'm
sure you did." Dal yawned again. "Maybe that high place is reflecting
the glow of the rising sun out on the
ocean,
dawn
can't be very far away." With sudden solicitude he felt her cold hands,
bent to touch her chilled feet.

 
          
"Darling,
you're chilled through! Have you slept at all, or have you stood here half the
night watching torchlight processions and things? Here, let me warm you
up."

 
          
She
put her arms around his neck; tenderly, as he had done in their first days, he
picked her up and carried her to the cushioned corner, covering her, enfolding
her in his own warmth, taking her cold feet into the curve of his body to warm
them. Snuggled close, she persisted. "Dal—when you were looking at the
lights—did you
feel
anything?"

 
          
It
was dark, but she could feel him looking at her in amazement.
"Feel
anything?
Cendri, you're half asleep," he said tenderly, "Just that I can't
wait to get out there! Thanks, by the way, for making it clear to the old girl
that I am a Scholar and that you'll need me; I was half afraid I'd never be
allowed out there at all."

 
          
"Oh, Dal!
Could you doubt it?"

 
          
"I
wasn't sure. I mean—you're one of them, a woman, they respect you—I thought you
might take this chance to try and prove what you can do on your own...."

 
          
She
thought, appalled, does he still not
trust
me? And then, troubled by
her own
thoughts, does any man ever trust any woman?
Completely?
Is that
why
men on some worlds
try
so
hard to dominate women...not arrogance but fear?

 
          
"Dal,
Dal—I couldn't do anything without you...."

 
          
"I
wasn't sure," he said, shaking, holding her tight—not now, she sensed, to
warm her, but to reassure himself. It shook Cendri's certainties. She had
always seen Dal so strong to her weakness, powerful where she was without
strength.
But now?

 
          
"Cendri,
don't you think I know how much you've resented this, resented not being a Dame
when I was made Master Scholar, I couldn't blame you if you...if you took
advantage...," he murmured, and she clasped him tight, troubled and
shocked beyond words at her own thoughts. Was this place corrupting her too,
where these women gave her illusions and delusions about her own power?
Abruptly, frighteningly, she wished they had never come here.

 
          
"Oh,
Dal, hold me," she begged, suddenly, "Hold me tight, don't let me go!
I'm afraid! Oh, Dal, hold me!"

 
          
Vaniya's
duties continued to occupy her, to the exclusion of her alien guests, for the
next ten days. Cendri was not altogether displeased; she welcomed the
opportunity to study the strange society into which she had been admitted.
Already she was envisioning, with pride, a report with her name on it,
studying these women who lived essentially without men; a report which would
surely make secure her borrowed status as Scholar Dame.

 
          
She
kept copious notes, scribbling them in the antique script of her childhood for
secrecy's sake; she still remembered that one recorded statement from the
Matriarchate—we
will not be
studied
by
your scientists like
one
of
those glass-sided insect colonies
we
give for toys to our
little
daughters.
A voice-scriber might be found and turned on by accident; but
there was no one on this planet, not even Dal, who could read the language and
written script of Cendri's home world.

 
          
Miranda
continued to be friendly, and on several occasions invited Cendri to join the
life of the women of the household, inviting her into sewing-rooms,
weaving-rooms, gardens and nurseries. Yet she knew that the essential life of
the Matriarchate eluded her. They did not live their lives without men—considering
the number of small children in Vaniya's household. And the general level of
the society seemed somewhat too unsophisticated for widespread acceptance of
artificial insemination. A considerable number of them must have quite active
relations with men. But she wondered how they managed it; one never saw a man
around this household, except for occasional menial work.

 
          
Yet
Miranda's growing friendliness encouraged her to think that sooner or later she
would be allowed to see beneath the outer surfaces of the society of the
Matriarchate. And Miranda seemed endlessly curious about the Unity—almost as
curious, Cendri thought, as she herself was curious about the Matriarchate.

 
          
One
day they were in the garden of the Residence, among the flowers and herbs of
the ornamental walks, when Miranda asked abruptly, "How long have you and
your Companion been together?"

 
          
Cendri,
automatically converting from the time-scales of University, said, "About
a third of your Long Year."

 
          
"Did
you take him as Companion only for your—your stay here on
Isis
?"

 
          
Cendri
smiled gently and said, "No; no, we intend to stay together as long as we
both desire it. It is not common for a marriage to endure lifelong—" There
was, as far as she knew, no word for marriage in the language of
Isis
, so what she actually said was
life-partnership. "—but it is not unheard-of either, and at present we
have no thought of separating at any time in the foreseeable future."

 
          
"Then
your Companion is actually your—your life-partner as well?" Miranda said,
in astonishment. "How strange it would seem to me—to anyone here, to take
a male as life-partner! Strange and far too—too—" she paused, fumbled for
words,
finally
said stiffly, not looking at Cendri,
"—too sexually exacting, even exhausting."

 
          
Cendri
wondered exactly what kind of idea Miranda had of a man's sexual needs and
demands—or, for that matter, of her own. She knew sexual needs were mostly
psychological,
and largely conditioned by the society
anyway, but did she really believe men were sexually insatiable? She remembered
that the shuttleship pilot—or was it Miranda herself, on their first day
here?—had spoken of the impossibility of educating men because they were so
much under the compulsion of their sexual needs. How could any woman have a
realistic idea of what men were like when she never knew any of them at close
hand? She said, "No, I don't find it so, Miranda," but she was
embarrassed anyway.

 
          
Miranda
said, "But—aren't you lonely, with no other women in your household? It
seems so un-natural to me, and odd."

 
          
Cendri
was used to this; on University, one of the commoner patterns was group
marriage, and she was accustomed to the mixture of pity and curiosity from
women in such marriages, feeling that Cendri must be lonely with no other
women, and bored with only one man. She said tranquilly, "I have many
women friends, Miranda, but our pattern of life, Dai's and mine, has its basis
in the idea that one man and one woman, and their children, form the basic unit
of society, and that the man and woman are closest to one another, best friends
and intimates, with everyone else somewhere outside that bond."

 
          
"But
how can you really have woman friends when you do not share the important
things of your life with them?" Miranda asked. "Can a man
really—really be close to a woman that way?"

 
          
Cendri
smiled at the young woman. They were the same age, and Miranda was, by her own
world's standards, very well-educated; yet she had never been off her homeworld
of
Isis
, and this alone would have made her seem,
to Cendri, provincial and somewhat immature. She said, "On University we
see many life patterns; in mine it is taken for granted that a man can be a
closer friend to any woman than another woman."

 
          
"But
women are so much alike, they can understand one another so well," said
Miranda, and she sounded a little wistful. "I am lonely—I was partnered at
school, but I was too young, I suppose, to choose wisely, and we quarreled and
separated last season; so I am bearing this child alone. My mother and sisters
have been kind to me, but it is not the same." She hesitated and seemed
about to say something further, then sighed and asked, "Have you no
children, then?"

 
          
Cendri
told her no—she and Dal had agreed to delay children until they had both gained
the credentials they wanted, and had decided on which world they wished to
live, or whether they would stay on University indefinitely.

 
          
"It
would seem strange, to be forced to consult some man's convenience for a
decision of that sort," Miranda said, and Cendri laughed and said,
"Dal is not 'some man' to me, but my life-partner, as you would say, and I
would not make any decision without consulting him, any more than he would without
consulting me. It is truly mutual, Miranda, no matter what you have been told
about what you call the maleworlds. I am not forced to consult his decisions,
it is my choice."

 
          
"But
how very strange," Miranda said. "Among us, most women take a
life-partner when they are about my age; but a woman can share decisions with
other women because we are so much alike."

 
          
"Does
not your mother share decisions with her Companion?"

 
          
"With a Companion?"
Miranda said, raising her
eyebrows in incredulity.
"No, no, of course not.
But she is old enough to keep a Companion, her decisions at her age are her
own; no woman my age would keep a male." She laughed, nervously. "I
suppose you are used to many different life patterns and choices then—"

 
          
Cendri
nodded. "If you were on University you would see many of them, too. And
yet you would, I suppose, choose to remain with the one which gave you the
emotional satisfactions you learned to need from childhood. Most people remain
lifelong
with the sexual patterns they learn before puberty.
It's very rare for anyone to change. Some people have tried—a woman from my
world joined a group-marriage on University. She was my friend, brought up to
the kind of marriage I learned, one man and one woman, yet she joined— for a
time—in a group-marriage where all the other members had been brought up to
think of this as the only endurable or decent marriage." She was silent,
remembering. Jerri's brief attempt to cross cultural lines had been a disaster;
most such attempts ended in suicide or mental breakdown.

 
          
Cendri
said after a time, "In the early decades of University, such
cross-cultural marriage experiments were hailed as a broad step toward
intercultural understanding. There were so many tragedies that now most people
think, on the contrary, that they should be forbidden by law. I suppose the
real truth—if there is any real truth—is somewhere in between."

 
          
Miranda
nodded, understanding that. She said, "Yes, to me our way seems as right
as if the hand of nature itself had written it in our flesh, in our bodies, our
wombs, our hearts; and yet I can see that this is because from my earliest days
I have been taught to think so, and to someone not so taught it would seem
strange and even disgusting. Does our way disgust you, Cendri?"

 
          
Cendri
said honestly, "I don't know enough about it to know how I really feel
about it." She had, in any case, undergone lengthy conditioning, during
her training as an anthropologist, to free her of some of these prejudices; but
she could hardly say so. She wished she could question Miranda about some of
the things that puzzled her; wished there was some way to do so without rousing
her suspicion that she was not quite what she seemed. She wondered about their
relations with men, wondered if the "life-partnerships" between women
involved physical sex—she supposed they did, close relationships and even
sexual partnerships between the same sex were not unknown even on
University—but she did not know how to frame her questions without violating
some as-yet-unknown taboo.

 
          
Miranda
stooped to a flowerbed beside the path, picked a small pale blue flower. She
stood turning it this way and that in her hands as she said, "There are
times when I—I like to wonder what it would be like to live in some of those
other ways which seem so—so unspeakable to our women. You say that your
Companion is your life-partner too. But—you are from the Unity, from the
maleworlds,
does
he not—not own you, then? Are you
bound to him by a bond you could not break at will?"

 
          
Cendri
smiled and said, "To dissolve our partnership, I would merely have to go
before the Civic Authority on University, and make with him a joint declaration
that we wished to separate; no more than that. If one of us was willing and the
other unwilling, it might be a little more complicated—an Arbitrator would have
to hear the case—and if there were children we would have to make mutually
agreeable arrangements for their care and education. But a marriage cannot
persist if either does not desire it; that would be slavery."

 
          
"And
you would let him go like that, if he wished to leave you?"

 
          
Cendri
countered, "Would any woman wish to keep a man who no longer wished to
remain with her?"

 
          
"It
would seem to me strange to consult the wishes of a man,
 
especially of a Companion," Miranda
said, and she was frowning a
 
little. "I had thought perhaps it
was the reverse of the way it is here;
 
that perhaps in your worlds a man owned
a woman and was
 
responsible for everything she did____
"

 
          
Cendri
shook her head. "No, although I believe there have been worlds—Pioneer,
many generations ago—where this was true. And in some cultures a man is
required to provide for the support and nurture of any children he may have
fathered."

 
          
Miranda
said, "That does seem strange, for a man to be responsible for a child;
how can any man possibly know that a child is of his fathering, unless he has
kept the woman locked away from everyone else?" Again she seemed on the
verge of saying something else, and again hesitated, drawing back; Cendri
wondered if indeed the time were ripe to ask something about the unknown mating
customs of Isis, but instead Miranda frowned a little and said, "It seems
so natural that the woman, who bears the child, should take all responsibility.
Yet I can see that your way could have its—its attractions," she added,
her lips curving for a moment in a faraway smile. Cendri wondered who had
fathered Miranda's child; if, for a minute, she had actually forced Miranda to
think beyond her own cultural prejudices. Then Miranda said, "But if you
had—had a child, and separated from your life-partner, as I from mine, would
you not simply do as I have done, return to your mother and sisters so that
they could care for you and your baby?"