Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (35 page)

 
          
A
man was kneeling on the sand before her, his face indistinct in the moonlight. His
voice was husky and tentative, and Cendri somehow judged that he was very
young.

           
"In the name of the Goddess who
has bidden us to visit the sea...."

 
          
Cendri
thought there was probably a ritual answer, but she didn't know it. It didn't
seem to matter. He put his arms around her, drawing her down on the cool sand.

 
          
She
had expected, feared, something cold and impersonal, a ritual brutality like
rape, had braced herself to endure that. Her preconceptions melted away before
the gentleness of the man whose face she never saw. His hands on her were
clumsy, yet tender; his body on hers warm and inviting. Her dread melted away;
she welcomed him into herself, giving herself over to the night and to the soft
sounds all around her. Laurina was close, so close that she could have touched
the other
woman,
she could hear the sounds and almost
feel the movements of the other's lovemaking. It didn't seem to matter.

 
          
In
one small part of her mind she was amazed and shamed. She had had a lover or
two, before Dal, but they both came from monogamous societies and since her
marriage she had been faithful, neither desiring nor seriously paying attention
to any other man. She thought almost regretfully of Dal, but on a deeper level
something in Cendri desired just this, accepted it.

 
          
At
last he moved a little apart from her, but still holding her in the curve of
his arm, lightly touching her hair, her breasts. He murmured, "My name is
Yan; may I know yours, to treasure it in memory when I have returned to the
Men's House?"

 
          
Cendri
started to speak her name; remembered that all the female names here were
three-syllabeled, amended it slightly: "Cendriya."

 
          
He
repeated it in a whisper. "
Lovely,
and strange. I
shall cherish the memory." He laid something in her hand; it was a chain
of carven leather.
A belt, a headband?
"My gift
to you," he whispered, and was gone.

 
          
A sea-gift.
And this was how Miranda had passed off Rhu's
fine pearl. Cendri lay back on the sand, weighing the strange experience. Then
she was aware of another dark form, kneeling, whispering:

 
          
"In
the name of the Goddess who has bidden us to visit the sea_
_
"

 
          
After
the fourth time, during that long night, she stopped trying to count the men
who came silently out of the dark, whispering their ritual greeting. Afterward
there was always the whispered exchange of names, and each of them left her a
gift; a necklace of shells, a small jewel—she could not see it in the dark—on a
fine chain; a polished carving of glinting nacre; one, who seemed hardly out of
childhood, left her a garland of ribbon which, he told her, he had won in the
arena in the boy's foot-race. Some of them left her quickly after the ritual
exchange of names; others lingered for a few moments, to lie close to her in
tenderness, holding her close and murmuring; one or two talked a little. One
man told her that he was working on the delta dam project, south of Ariadne,
and that he was the leader of a group of a dozen men there; he talked, troubled
and almost compulsively, of a comrade of his who had had his foot crushed in a
rockslide and been unable to come to the festival. "We promised each other
we would go together," he told her, almost weeping, and Cendri did not
know what to say to comfort him. She found herself wondering, briefly, and
troubled,
if the men paired off as the women did, in
long-term partnerships. On the whole she thought probably not; nest-building
was a female instinct. But they evidently formed deep and lasting ties.

 
          
Another,
the very young man who would later give her his athlete's prize, wept for a few
moments against her breast, saying that she reminded him of his mother, that he
had been in the Men's House only a few moons. Cendri thought it was a strange
compliment, until she remembered Rhu's song:

 
          
Twice
have I been driven from
paradise;

 
          
Once
when I left my Mother's womb,

 
          
And
again when I was driven

 
          
From
my Mother's house___

 
          
Here,
perhaps, the image of the mother was deep-rooted, ineradicable; every contact
with women re-stimulated the memory of the lost paradise of living in a world
of women, every woman would become a search for the Mother. And indeed, in a
society where no one could possibly know who had fathered any child—now she
understood Miranda's bewilderment at the question—no tie existed save that of
the Mother. And there was, in fact, nothing to prevent a grown son from meeting
his mother in this way...no incest taboo. She cradled the sobbing boy against
her breast, and strangely thought that some day she would like to have a child
there...he calmed, at last, and began kissing her breasts in a most unfilial
way.

 
          
At last the first glimmer of dawn showed in the sky.
Cendri
could clearly see the face of the last man who came to her; he was the only one
who did not delay to ask her name, simply pressed a beautiful shell into her
hand, kissed her long and tenderly, and went quickly away. The men gathered
silently on the shore, took up their masks and spears and melted into the
rising sun.

 
          
Cendri
lay on the sand, listening to the tide slowly lapping toward the full again.
The women drew together around the cold ashes of the fire, in a close group.
Cendri felt Laurina's arms

 
tighten
around her, her face against Cendri's, and for
some strange reason, wanted to cry. Around her the women were clustered,
hugging one another, snuggling together in each other's arms, and Cendri
understood; this too was a part of ritual, a ceremonial reaffirming that after
the bonds of mating, the deepest and truest ties of the women of
Isis
were with one another.

 
          
Laurina,
her face against Cendri's, whispered, "I hope I have a baby this time
.. .
I came away empty last season, I thought my heart would
break
..
.my daughter is already in her tenth year, I
long for a little one...."

 
          
Cendri
held her tight, murmuring, "I hope you do, if that is what you want."
Oddly, and only for a moment, she found herself wishing that she could be
pregnant. It could not happen, of course. When she and Dal had agreed to delay
childbearing, they had each taken medical treatments to abolish their fertility
for a time. Since they were monogamous, Dal had offered to have
himself
temporarily sterilized and save her the physical
side-effects of the treatment. But she had chosen to share the treatment, and
though Dal had not been happy about her choice—men of Pioneer took it for
granted that they would be the custodian of their wives' fertility—he knew it
was not the custom on Cendri's world.

 
          
And
if he had not conceded her right to take responsibility for her own fertility,
she would have been vulnerable now to pregnancy. So that by giving her the
choice, he had saved himself possible humiliation; their marriage had included
an agreement that she would not bear any child not of his fathering. Would she
ever be able to tell Dal about any of this?

 
          
She
did not protest when she felt herself drawn into a close embrace, felt
Laurina's kiss like a lover's on her mouth. She had been too shaken, too
surprised by the strangeness of this ritual mating on the sand, to find the
sort of pleasure she normally took in sex; surprised, shocked at herself, she
discovered that the woman's touch was bringing her to the release which tension
and uncertainty had denied her before. In a surge of tenderness she found
herself reciprocating, felt a curious shaken delight as the other woman
trembled and cried out under her caresses.

 
          
Dal,
she thought with last-minute compunction, would probably think this was worse
than the fact that I had sex with eleven, or was it thirteen, men tonight. But
she no longer cared. Her last waking thought was, Why should I care
what any
man
thinks?
and
even then there was a faint
flicker of surprise at it. Then she slept a little, beside Laurina, cradled
close in each other's arms.

 
          
The
sun was high when she woke. All around her women were slowly coming awake,
gathering up the small piles of gifts, and concealing them within the folds of
their robes as they made their way back to their homes. Cendri woke and sat
watching for a moment, then shook her head in amazement, hardly able to realize
that she had been a part of it. At her side, Laurina said softly, "I must
go back to the city, and see how my daughter fares; she is still a year or two
too young for the festival. Will you need my aid at We-were-guided today,
Scholar Dame?"

 
          
Cendri
knew why Laurina had spoken formally, and smiled, touching her hand in kindly
reassurance. She said, "Not today, I think, I want to sleep.
Tomorrow, Laurina."

 
          
All
around her the women of Vaniya's household were making their way up from the
shore. Cendri joined them, realizing that her festival gown was soiled and
bedraggled, and that she was covered with sand. She wanted a bath and a long
sleep. It was still very early; no one was about in the downstairs hallway but
a few small children, and Miranda, cross-legged on the floor, dabbing
listlessly at a screen with watercolor paints adorning it with small
delicately-drawn fish and flowers.

           
Cendri said, "I had hoped your
child would be born last night, Miranda!"

 
          
Miranda
sighed and said, "For a time I thought so, but it was only another false
alarm, I did the same with my first child, false labor every day for twenty or
thirty days." Cendri had not even known that Miranda had another child, so
much had been made of her present child being Vaniya's heir; she said so, and
Miranda shrugged listlessly.

 
          
"It
was only a male; Lialla looks after it much of the time, as she seems to be
barren, and Zamila has no daughters either. But Maret has predicted that this
will be a daughter." She sighed again. "So the midwife is provoked at
me because she missed the festival for nothing, and did not even drink much
lest she should have to work later; and Rhu is sulking—there is a proverb, as
sullen as a Companion on festival-morning—go and sleep, Cendri, I am not fit
company for any woman on this morning!" She laughed a little at herself,
but she looked wretched and weary.

 
          
"That
is a pretty screen you are painting," Cendri said, and Miranda frowned
almost angrily. "Such children's work serves to pass the time, and now I
am not supposed to do anything more strenuous than this!" A small child
ran up to her, tangled in a wet breechclout, and Miranda snapped at it as she dragged
herself upright and hauled it, in no pleasant mood, off to be changed and
dried.

 
          
Cendri
went up to her room, feeling exhausted and let down, all the exhilaration of
the night evaporating. Dal still slept in his corner; Cendri put away the
little pile of sea-gifts in her personal luggage-case without examining them.
Some day, she knew, she would want to take them out again, look them over,
study them, examine as a scientist, examine their psychological meaning to the
men of Isis and to the women who received them, but for the moment she was too
emotionally involved with the memory to be detached, and she was sure she would
not want to look at them for a long, long time.

 
          
She
was tempted simply to fling herself down beside Dal and sleep again, but her
festival gown was so bedraggled that she wanted to take it off, and that once
done, she felt so gritty and soiled with sand and seaweed that she wanted to
bathe. Before she had finished Dal came in and stood beside the running shower.

 
          
"How
was the festival, Cendri? Interesting?"

 
          
She
pretended not to hear him over the noise of the shower as she carefully soaped
the sand and grime from her hair, enjoying the luxurious bathing facilities of
the suite. When she stepped out, wrapping
herself
in a
robe, he repeated the question and she discovered that she was reluctant to say
anything at all. She merely shrugged.

 
          
"It
was interesting enough. I know you aren't interested in the anthropological
aspects, Dal, so I won't bore you with them. There was a moonlight dinner on
the shore, and spearfishing, which is only allowed at festivals. We cooked the
fish and ate it."

 
          
He
scowled. "Something Rhu let drop—I understand it's a kind of fertility ritual!
You didn't take part, did you?"

 
          
She
found herself remembering Miranda's phrase, sullen as a Companion on
festival
morning. She thought, suddenly, that she would like to tell Dal all about
it, share it—but he was a man of Pioneer; he would never understand how she had
felt about it, he would never see anything except that she had been unfaithful
to him. She knew he could have tolerated a deeply emotional episode, as he
would have expected her to tolerate a genuine love affair on his part; but he could
never have understood this kind of simple, undiscriminating sexuality.

 
          
He
noticed that she had not answered and his frown deepened.

 
          
"Cendri,
tell me about it!" he demanded, "Fertility rituals on undeveloped
planets are all indecent! If you're not ashamed of it, why don't you want to
tell me about it?"

 
          
Suddenly
she was angry. "Because I know perfectly well you wouldn't
understand," she flared at him, "You've made it very clear that you
regard all these things as senseless native customs and superstition; I'm not
going to hold it up for you to ridicule!"

 
          
"Cendri,
we agreed to share our work—"

 
          
"Share
be
damned!" She was really angry now. "What
you mean by sharing is that you tell me what to do and we do it! If you feel
like it, that is! You won't say a word about what you're doing with the men,
and every time I ask, you tell me to mind my own business, keep out of it! You
have refused to let me know anything of what you are doing among the men; how
dare you question my work among the women?"

 
          
"Cendri,"
he said quietly, very sober, "if I do not confide in you about my work
among the men, it is only to protect you. I think you can guess that it would
be dangerous."

 
          
"So
much for your talk of sharing," she flung at him, surprised at
herself
for what was surfacing in her now. "If I were
truly your equal, Dal, and not just your—your pawn, your figurehead—you would
be willing to share risks as well as triumphs! The real reason you will not
share it with me is because you know that what you are doing is not lawful! Are
you trying to start a civil war on this world?"

 
          
"That
only shows me that you would never understand."

 
          
"Where
is your integrity as a Scholar of University? One of the reasons why the
Scholars of University are so highly regarded as scientists is because they are
above the petty politics within the Unity—"

 
          
"We
are outside the Unity, Cendri. And how can you—you of all people—reprove me for
taking part in politics, when you have allied yourself so firmly with Vaniya
and
her
party? If the ruins at We-were-guided are truly Builder ruins—I
don't think you understand even now what that means, Cendri! Do you realize
that they are the most important artifacts ever discovered in the known
universe, then?
Isis
must be made part of the Unity, by any
means possible! This is the scientific discovery of the aeon—don't you even
realize that? What do the politics of the Matriarchy mean, stacked up in the
scale against
that?"

 
          
She
cried, shaken, "And you'd destroy the whole culture of
Isis
for your damned Ruins, just to be the man
who opened them to the Unity, just for your own personal ambition?"

 
          
"And
you call yourself a scientist!" he stared at her in scorn and the
beginnings of contempt. "I don't believe you even care about the Ruins,
Cendri!"

 
          
She
didn't know what she was going to say until she heard herself saying it.

 
          
"Not
in the way you do, no—I don't give a damn! You don't know half as much as I do
about the ruins at We-were-guided, because you never believe in anything you
can't weigh and measure! They mean more to me than they can ever mean to you!
You just see them as a dead culture, you would let in every Scholar and
scientist and gaping tourist in the Unity, to break into them, trample all over
them, just for your own personal ambition. I don't give a damn about the ruins,
Dal,
I am interested in something more important than
that! And I'm not going along with some stupid man's idea of what ought to be
done with them! Now get out of here! I want to sleep!"

 
          
"Cendri—"
he begged, troubled.

 
          
"No!
Damn it, Dal,
get
out of here and let me alone!"
She wrapped herself in the toweling robe, and threw herself down to sleep. Dal
said her name again, kneeling beside her, but she did not raise her head,
closing her eyes resolutely. It had felt good, for once to speak her mind to
him, to give voice to all the hostility she had been suppressing ever since she
came here, his contempt for her own work, the way in which he made her pay for
every slight and humiliation the society of
Isis
put in him. She felt purged and honest. A
trace of contrition stirred briefly in her—had she been too hard on him? No, he
had deserved every harsh word she had spoken, and she would not undo it all and
capitulate again.
As sullen as a Companion on festival
morning.
It was just offended male pride. He'd get over it, and then she
would speak more moderately, too. Firmly ignoring him, she drifted off to
sleep.

 
          
She
slept for hours, until she was jolted awake by a screen, falling over near her
bed.
Earthquake, again?
She heard small children
crying out, and flung on a garment to run downstairs; but evidently the fallen
screens were the only damage, and Cendri went back up to dress. It was near
evening. Dal was nowhere in the suite. Feeling faintly guilty at the memory of
her harsh words, she resolved to hunt him up, tell him as much as he wanted to
know about the festival, compound their differences somehow. But he was nowhere
in the house, either.

 
          
It
was too late, in any case, to do anything in the Ruins that day; everyone in
Vaniya's household was engaged in clearing up after the festival. It had been
silly of her not to share everything with him. He was a scientist, not a man of
the Pioneer of five generations ago! He might be distressed that she had gotten
herself into the situation without fully understanding it, but he would
certainly understand why she could not have withdrawn, once committed.

 
          
Anyway,
if he was angry, he was angry; what was done could not be changed, and she
didn't have to fear his anger. Then she began to worry. Just before she had
silenced him, sent him away in anger, he had been trying to communicate with
her, to tell her something. Her own nervous guilt, based on his questions about
the festival had not recognized until now that he had left that topic and had
been trying to tell her something else.
But what?
Had
she really begun thinking like these women of
Isis
, that whatever a man had to say, it could
not be important to her? In any case, anger or no, misunderstanding or no, they
must talk seriously about what he was doing among the men. It might be
personally dangerous, and she had a duty to share whatever risks were involved.

 
          
If
she had listened, encouraged Dal to tell her more, from the beginning
..
.Cendri grew more and more troubled as Dal did not
return. He was nowhere in the house; he was not on the shore with the men
servants who were clearing away the wood ashes from the dead fires, he was not
in the Ruins, for one of Vaniya's women told her that no one had entered
We-were-guided that day. He was not at dinner either, and Vaniya smiled when
she inquired if anyone had seen him.