Shadow's End (4 page)

As though that old devil conscience would have let her say no! “You know me,” she said angrily. “You knew I wouldn't say no. Didn't you?”

As he did. As Fastigats did. Lutha told me all about Fastigats. Fastigats get to know people very quickly, very well, very completely, as had this bald, quirky old empath across from her who hadn't come right out and told her he was one of them. Who hadn't needed to, any more than Leelson had, when they had been together.

“Y
ou're going to be fine,” Leelson had said often during her later stages of pregnancy, soothing her in moments of dismay.

“I know,” she'd snapped. “Women have been having babies for hundreds of thousands of years.”

“Well, yes. But I don't regard that as particularly comforting, do you?” He made a face at her, making her laugh. “Stars have been blowing up into novas for billions of years, but that doesn't make their near vicinity desirable.”

“If you intend a similarity, I am offended,” she said. “Though I may have assumed the proportions of a nova, I have no intention of bursting. I merely scream when I stand up, because it hurts to stand up! This may sound like an explosion, but actually—”

“We are not Firsters. You could have—” he interrupted gently.

“Don't tell me. Of course I could have.” Could have
chosen not to be pregnant. Could have chosen to delay the development of the fertilized egg. Could have had the baby developed in a biotech uterus, given crèche birth. She hadn't chosen that. Why not? She didn't know why not! Why had he gotten her pregnant in the first place? Fastigats could control that if they wanted to! Obviously, he hadn't wanted to!

“Well then?” Leelson being reasonable.

“I keep thinking it must be boring for you.” Great Gauphin, it was boring enough for her.

“A new experience is seldom boring. Womb-birth is becoming quite rare, and rare happenings appeal to the collector's taste. All Fastigats are collectors.”

She didn't say what she was thinking, that the whole thing had been an accident. That she'd had second thoughts about it, but then Leelson's mother had said—Leelson had said…

The less thought about all that the better. Still, she was peevish when Leelson seemed more fascinated by the pregnancy than he was by her. She said this, laughing at herself.

“It's not true,” he assured her. “I am passionately fond of you, Lutha Tallstaff. You are like a dinner full of interesting textures and flavors, like a landscape full of hidden wonders. I am not ignoring you in all this.”

True. When one had a Fastigat for a lover, one could not complain of being ignored. One's every whim was understood; one's every mood was noted. For the most part, one's every desire was satisfied, or thwarted, only to make the satisfaction greater when it occurred. If a Fastigat lover was not forthcoming, it was not through lack of understanding. Sometimes Lutha felt (so she told me) she was understood far too well. Sometimes she longed for argument, for passionate battle, for a sense of her own self back again. Pride kept her from showing it, that and the fear that Leelson would accommodate her. Only a fool
would take on an opponent who could block every thrust before it was made.

It was easier during those early months after Leely was born, for then Leelson switched at least part of his searching intelligence from her to the child, leaving Lutha to her udderish moods and mutters while he hovered over the infantender, forehead creased, feeling his way into that little mind.

“Like a maze,” he'd said, almost dazedly. “All misty walls and dazzling spaces. Hunger or discomfort comes in like jagged blobs of black, and the minute he eliminates or burps or takes the nipple, he's back to dazzling spaces again.”

“No faces?” she'd asked, disappointed. Babies were supposed to recognize faces. Like baby birds, back when there had been birds, recognizing the special markings of their own species. Eyes, nose, mouth: that configuration was supposed to be instinctively recognized by humans. Lutha had read about it.

“Well, I can't feel faces,” he'd replied. “No doubt they're there.”

Later he postulated that Leely recognized something else or more than faces. Some quality unique to each person, perhaps. Some totality.

“He's not one of us, I'm afraid. Not a Fastigat.” Leelson had shaken his head ruefully over the four-month-old child. It was then Lutha admitted to herself what she had refused to consider before: Leelson was disappointed at not having a Fastigat son. Virtually all Fastigat sons were empaths, at least. If she'd had a daughter, it wouldn't have mattered!

“Hardly fair,” she'd muttered, wanting to weep. “Sexist!”

He'd smiled charmingly, the way he did. Fastigats were almost always charming. “Not my fault, Lutha. I didn't design it. It's sex-linked, that's all.”

“You'd think biologists—”

He hadn't let her finish. “Well, of course our women say attempting to make female Fastigats is meaningless, because any normal woman is a sensitivity match for a male empath, any day.”

He'd made her laugh, hiding his own disappointment. Perhaps even then he'd known—or at least suspected—this disappointment wasn't to be the only one.

Time came soon enough, of course, when suspicion was fulfilled and Leelson went away. Unforgivably away. Without announcement or preamble. One morning she had wakened to find him gone. He'd left a note, of course, if one could call five words a note. Not much after their years together.

“You must feel abandoned. Betrayed!” This from Lutha's older sister, Yma, sector-famed, thespian absolute.

The accuracy of this made Lutha blaze hotly as she denied it. “I do not! Leelson's and my relationship lasted a long time. Neither of us is from a contractual culture, so why would I feel betrayed!” She said it as though she meant it. In fact, she did feel betrayed and abandoned, not that she could possibly admit it to Yma. How could he? She couldn't have left Leelson! How could he have left her?

Yma went on. “Perhaps not a contract, but still …”

“But still nothing, Yma. I had a child because I wanted a child.” That was partly true. She kept her lip from trembling with considerable effort. After the initial shock, she had wanted a child.

“Well, of course you did, darling, but it was a genetic risk. With him.”

“Fastigat men father normal children on non-Fastigat women all the time!”

Yma couldn't leave it at that. “Well, there are no aberrations in your family line.”

“You don't know that!” Lutha cried.

“Oh, yes I do and so do you. Even though we've never
met them, we know all about Papa's side of the family. They're all totally ordinary, ordinary, ordinary!” To Yma, nothing could be worse.

Lutha did indeed know a great deal about Papa's family, and his many siblings and half siblings out on the frontier. Frontier worlds began with a colony ship, a few hundred crew members, and a hundred thousand human embryos. Thirteen or fourteen years later the original embryos were boys and girls who began procreating on their own, using the crèche equipment on the ship. A few decades, the colony might number in the millions! Twenty children per woman was not uncommon, virtually all of them crèche-born. In a homo-normed world, there were few impediments. No dangerous diseases, little danger from weather, no danger from plants or animals—in fact few plants and no animals at all.

“Mama Jibia does go on and on about the kinfolk,” Lutha admitted.

“She's never said anything indicating they're anything but boring. And Mama's family, we know all about, both sides, four generations back. Her mother is Lucca Fineapple, and we've met her. Remember?”

“The religious grandma,” said Lutha with vague discomfort at the memory. “Who visited us on her way through the sector.”

“Exactly. You do remember! We thought her very strange! Well, women who depilate and tattoo their entire bodies
are
strange. But that's simply attitudinal; biologically she's quite all right. And Mama Jibia is always telling stories about Lucca's mother—Nitha Bonetree, remember, the one who first ran away to the frontier?”

“Which is where Lucca was born, and Mama too. I guess I remember some of that. Mama Jibia always said we'd inherited our talents from Nitha's line.”

“It isn't the detail that matters in any case! The only thing that matters is there's no problem in your family on either side back four generations. And Leelson should
not
have left you to provide the entire care for the boy, as though it were somehow your fault!”

Lutha felt herself turning red, felt the tears surging, heard the anger in her words. “I had always intended to be responsible for my child. It was
my
choice.”

Was it? Was it indeed? Then why couldn't she remember making it! She asked me this and I laughed. I couldn't remember either. It had just happened. One couldn't really question it. Lutha said even Yma knew she'd gone too far. Wisely she let the matter drop.

Lutha never mentioned to Yma the credit drafts regularly deposited to her account from Fastiga. Fastigats did not father by chance. As a society, they fathered no unknown or unacknowledged children, and all children fathered by Fastigats received support from Fastiga. It was a matter of honor, one of the primary differences, so said Fastigats, between Fastigats and lesser men.

Fastigats didn't even sign certificates of intent. Their honor was so untarnished they were exempt from the requirement imposed on all other citizens of Central, to have five responsible, self-supporting coparents on record by the fourth month of pregnancy.

Lutha and Yma and Mama Jibia and two male cousins had signed for Leely. No one cared who had children, or how many, but one of the basic rights of Alliance citizens was not to be responsible for other people's. The penalties for dereliction of responsibility were severe, and the credit drafts from Fastiga were infuriatingly beyond the call of duty. Even more infuriating were the Fastigat uncles and male cousins who visited at intervals, observed Leely's growth and development, then went away again. Meantime, Leely grew bigger and stronger and older and Lutha became more tired and desperate.

“You ought to consider the alternatives,” Yma said, every time they met. “Really, Lutha. You ought to.…”

The Fastigat uncles and cousins also urged her to consider alternatives. Santeresa's World, they'd suggested,
where the whole planet made its living caring for the sick, the injured, the disabled. It was expensive, but Fastiga would pay for it. Lutha had refused. Her child was not an alternative. End of statement. End of consideration, no matter how her life narrowed around her day by day and even her necessary professional duties gave way to Leely's needs. She could not decide to let him go any more than she had decided to have him. Though she had. She must have!

For years now she had kept a fragile calm, slathering sentimental oil on every emotional linkage, making her life move like some old cog-and-belt-driven machine, creaking and wobbling from one day to the next. And now, here, all at once, this skinny old fart, this Fastigat servant of the Alliance, this bureaucrat, had thrust an additional duty among her gears, grinding her to a screaming halt!

She abandoned simile and summoned anger, making herself rage at being forced to do the Alliance's will. Was this a penalty, for having known Leelson? Another one?

The anger wouldn't hold. It was too hard to hide from herself the anticipation she felt at the promise of somewhere to go, the relief at the idea of someone to help her. The promise of succor and change.

S
o Lutha planned a journey, even as I, Saluez, planned a journey, though hers was far longer than mine. In a sense, at least, hers was longer, though mine wrought greater changes. For me a night soon came when Shalumn and I wept on each other's shoulders, I out of fright, she out of fear of losing me. The following morning I bent beneath the brow-strap of my carrying basket and went up the rocky trail with Masanees. High on a shelf above Cochim-Mahn, I panted, waiting for her to catch up with me. Masanees is not as agile as she once was. She has not yet received Weaving Woman's reward, that comfortable time of life when she need no longer fear conceiving, but she is
no longer young. I am young. I am twelve in Dinadh years, twenty standard years. Too young for this, perhaps. But no. Women younger than I, much younger than I have made this trip. If a woman is old enough to conceive, she is old enough for this. So the songfathers say. “Soil which accepts seed is ready for the plow!”

“Whsssh,” Masanees breathed as she came up to the stone where I waited. “Time for a breather. That path gets steeper every year.”

“Have you come up before this year?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

Masanees nodded. “With Dziloch. And last year with Kh'nas.”

“Imsli a t'sisri,” I murmured.
Weave no sorrow.

“None,” Masanees replied cheerfully. “They're both fine. We did it right.”

I tried to smile and could not. I was not reassured. Each year some did not return from the House Without a Name. Each year some went behind the veil, down into shadow. Each time the women no doubt thought they had done it right. Who would go there otherwise?

There was no point in saying it. Saying it only increased terror. I had been told one should, instead, sing quietly to oneself. A weaving song, dark and light, pattern on pattern. Turning away up the hill, I chanted quietly to myself in time with my plodding feet.

The House Without a Name stands on a promontory above Cochim-Mahn. One can see a corner of it from the shelf where the songfather stands, only a corner. One would not want to see it all. One would not want to look at it as part of one's view of the world. It is easier to ignore it, to pretend it isn't really there. One can then speak of the choice in measured tones, knowing one need not fear the consequences. As songfathers do.