Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (40 page)

 
          
And
by coming here, by asking a simple question, Dal has destroyed these long years
of blind, mindless devotion. But what will Vaniya do now? What will she do?
Vaniya was looking at Dal with naked hate.

 
          
I
don't blame her. He has
robbed her
of her
Goddess
..
.and yet he did
nothing wrong.
Why do the innocent have to suffer?

 
          
Slowly,
with drooping steps, Vaniya turned away from the ancient ship. Her head was
bent and she stumbled as she walked. Cendri, impulsively, stepped forward and
laid her arm around the old woman, supporting her steps. For a moment she
feared Vaniya would rebuff her with a rebirth of anger, but Vaniya was too sunk
in her own anguish to care. She leaned on Cendri as they came out of the dead
city and started down the hill; then Lialla, behind them, cried out in dismay
and fear.

 
          
"Look!
Look!"

 
          
From
the gates of Ariadne,
a great multitude were
surging
out of the city, running, plunging upward along the shore, up the hill in a great
human wave. Cendri thought of the tidal wave which had engulfed the
pearl-divers' village on the shore; only this was a human tide, flowing along
the shore, rising slow and inexorable on the slopes toward the gates of
We-were-guided. And in the moonlight Cendri could see that all the forms were
those of men, moving like a great groundswell. And one and all, their faces
bore the same dazed rapture that Cendri had seen on the faces of the women,
that day___

 
          
Vaniya
moaned, moving aside from the surge of men, stumbling. Cendri held her so that
she would not fall, and heard her weeping aloud. "Profanation," she
moaned, "profanation!"

 
          
The
men surged into the city, stood before the old ship. The lights began to glow.
Cendri felt the faint echo of the lapping warmth, but it did not speak to her;
she felt cold and alone, and she could feel Vaniya shaking, and held the woman
tight in her arms, with an almost anguished desire to comfort her, as the
woman, desolate, deprived of the contact and the love which was life to her,
stood and watched others drinking in the communion from which she had been
exiled.
Others,
despised.
Men.
Not even people.

 
          
How
long it lasted, Cendri never knew. She held Vaniya in her arms, trying to quiet
her sobbing, until she was stiff and cramped and aching. And then, suddenly, it
was over.

 
          
One
of the men, a tall man with long hair flecked with grey, wearing a coarse
pajama suit, came hesitantly toward Vaniya.

 
          
"Respect,
Mother Vaniya... he said hesitatingly, and Vaniya wearily tried to pull herself
together. She stood erect, moving out of the support of Cendri's arms.

 
          
"Can
it be that you come to me with respect,
here?"
she asked, and her
voice was a whiplash of scorn. "When you have trampled your mothers in
your profanation?"

 
          
"Mother—"
the man entreated, "those who speak to us have given a message which you
must know! Men cannot handle this alone!"

 
          
Vaniya
drew a long breath. She said, "Speak, my son."

 
          
The
man gestured toward the ocean. "They have told us," he said,
"that far out in the ocean, many, many,
many
leagues in the place of fish too deep for diving, the bed of the sea shakes,
and will shake again and again. And as these quakes move ever closer, the great
waves will build up and up, until at last, before nightfall tomorrow, a wall of
water higher than this will smash the shore down near the great dam, and if it
should strike full on the dam, not a single stone will be left piled upon
another. Therefore, Mother—" the man entreated, "you Mothers, and
your daughters, who control the cars and the messages and the transportation,
we beseech you to help us to bring all of our people out of the encampments
there, and all of our stores and possessions, lest they be lost forever.
The storehouses of grain and building materials could all be swept
away, and all our foods and reserves."

 
          
Vaniya
swallowed hard, "How do you know this, my son?"

 
          
"They
told us," the man said, gesturing formlessly toward the old ship.

 
          
"And
how do you know it is true?" Vaniya demanded, "
that
they were not deceiving you as they deceived me? Why should they now begin to
give warnings about quakes and tidal waves, when all these years they have not
done so?"

 
          
The
man made a low bow. He said, "Respect, Mother, one of us asked that. This
was their answer; that you had never asked them for such help and they did not
know they could give it until one of us asked to make our needs known, and they
found they could answer."

 
          
Vaniya
still looked shaken. But she said, "They do not lie. They found the ring
and robe of Mother Rezali. Nothing is hidden from them that they wish to know.
Come, Mahala," she said quickly to her fellow Pro-Matriarch. "You are
a quicker organizer than I, and we have no time to waste now with protocol or
rivalry! We have just time enough—if we hurry—to get every man, woman and
child, and all their stores and possessions, out of the area of the great dam,
if we lose no time. There will be no time to reinforce the dam; if it is swept
away it must be swept away, but if we are fortunate, there will be no loss of
life. Come, Mahala!
let
us hurry to the city, and make
all ready!"

 
          
She
leaned heavily on Cendri as she hurried down the hill, already moving people of
her household around her to give quick, cryptic orders.

 
          
"Lialla,
go to the spaceport, find flycraft of any kind available and muster them for
airlifting. Zamila, go with this man and help him line up all able-bodied men
between fifteen and fifty, and arrange for transport at once! Thanks to the
Goddess, Mahala, most of the men had not returned to the site of the dam; no
one must go back there unless they are needed to help in the evacuation!"

 
          
Dal
and Cendri stood watching as together the Pro-Matriarchs began organizing their
plan. Dal murmured, "I had thought the men would try to stand on their own
feet. But the first thing they did was to yell for help from the women___
_ "

 
          
Cendri
felt something very like anger at Dai's failure to understand. "Dal, don't
you see? Something where men and women have to work together, because women
control all the transport, all the organizational facilities, all the technical
know-how! Do you really think a society is going to turn itself right around
all night?"

           
She seized his arm, saying
earnestly, "Dal, it wouldn't make a bit of sense to overturn the tyranny
of the women and set up a new tyranny of the men! The only thing that will save
this society is co-operation—lots of it! Being able to do things together that
neither men or women could do on their own___
_ "

 
          
He
nodded, but she could see that his thoughts were elsewhere. After a moment he
said, as he watched Vaniya's household quietly organizing transport,
"Cendri, do you realize that we have not one but two alien civilizations
to deal with here? We still don't know who built the ruins—the city. It was
probably the Builders, but it will take centuries to know, and we'll have to
break the Time stasis first. And then—there's the aliens who spoke to—to us,
and then to the Men. Cendri,
Isis
is going to be the new scientific focus of the entire Galaxy! Maybe Mahala's
going to get what she wanted after all!"

 
          
Cendri
could see that, but what was troubling her now was more immediate, more
personal.

 
          
Where
was Miranda? Was she being held at the site of the dam, with the tidal wave
racing inexorably toward the shore?

 
          
The
sun was rising over Isis; Cendri looked down on the river below, the spreading
delta mouth where the river alternately roared and meandered through flats
covered with reed and salt-marsh, where the land had been torn away repeatedly
by flood. All night she had watched trucks and cars coming and going, emptying
storehouses, taking away the heavy machinery, men and women working side by
side. And all night, while the Pro-Matriarchs worked side by side,
co-ordinating the efforts of the work parties, Vaniya had repeatedly raised her
head to every man who came before her, asking him—steadily enough, but in a
voice that trembled— "Do you know where my daughter is being held? If you
know who holds her hostage, will you send him to me that I may bargain for her
freedom?"

 
          
But
every man had professed ignorance—Cendri, watching from a distance, had begun
to believe that they were truly ignorant, that only a few of the ringleaders
had been allowed to know the inside of the plot. The words of Yal rang in her
mind,
What
I
don't know,
they can't
make
me
tell.
And oh, but Vaniya was reaping the harvest of her
harsh rule!

 
          
Yet
she would not leave her post. Mahala, moved by her anguish, had said at
midnight
, "Vaniya, my sister, go back to the
city, seek your daughter there. I will continue here."

 
          
But
Vaniya, pale and agonized, shook her head.

 
          
"My
duty
lies
here, sister. Miranda is my daughter, and
she understands the meaning of responsibility. If we all live through this
night, I will seek her out, even if I must kneel before every male on Isis and
beg for its help; and I will make such terms as I may honorably make for her
release, and if I cannot make honorable terms, I pray the Goddess will give us
both strength to endure her fate. But for now my duty lies here; I cannot leave
men and women to die while I think only of my daughter and her child."

 
          
And
Mahala, lowering her head, answered, "I know, old friend. Forgive me for thinking
otherwise."

 
          
Cendri
had been put to run small errands needing no other skill; after a time she was
put to work in a hurriedly organized field-kitchen to feed the workers on the
site. She watched them slowly, under the supervision of the two Pro-Matriarchs,
slowly cross-sectioning the site, performing, she realized, a form of
methodical decision akin to triage; what must be removed at any cost (mostly
food supplies and heavy machinery), what must be left to take its chances in
the path of the wave (mostly structures), and what must be knowingly abandoned.
Every decision, Cendri knew, had to be made by the Pro-Matriarchs.

 
          
She
worked with other women and a few young boys, brewing tea and drinks for the
workers, cooking grains and fish for them. She worked here through the night,
and as the sun was rising, she came face to face with Rhu, carrying plates of
food to a work-party resting for a few minutes on the grass.

 
          
"What
are you doing here, Rhu?"

 
          
"The
same as you," he said, with a weary smile. "I have no skills to work
among the women, and no strength to work among the men, so I do what I
can." His face was pale in the rising light, and Cendri remembered what
Dal had told her; that he had a heart weakened by childhood illness.

 
          
He
said, "I saw Dal on the slope by the site; every man on Isis wants to see
him, to look up to him as inspiration. Whatever comes this night, Scholar Dame,
life on Isis may be more endurable for men hereafter."

 
          
Slowly,
Cendri nodded. The basic misconception of the society here—that the inferiority
of men was backed by divine command because the Builders would not speak to
them—had been toppled at one blow. Men must still compensate for their
disabilities of education, struggle for equality as the women had done on Pioneer,
and it would not come quickly. Indeed, men on Isis would probably continue to
live separate from women, since both women and men were content to have it that
way; but since the lower status of men was no longer buttressed by a kind of
divine ordinance, it could not survive. Nothing would change overnight. Some
things would never change at all. But now there was a kind of hope that had
never been here before.

 
          
One
of the women called to Rhu.

 
          
"Take
some food to the Mother Vaniya, Rhu; she must eat and keep up her strength, and
she may take it at your hands more easily."

 
          
Cendri
went with Rhu. The field-kitchen was actually over-supplied with workers—every
woman who had no duties elsewhere was there—and she was not needed. Vaniya,
weary and worn, looked up at them.

 
          
"Vaniya,"
Rhu pleaded, "you must eat something. Here, I have brought you food and
wine."

 
          
"I
am not hungry," Vaniya said, but she sighed, laid down a map of the site,
and glanced at a man waiting for her orders. She said, pointing to a segment of
the map, "Leave those three warehouses along the edge of the site. They
contain only lumber and building cement, and they are not worth the time and
machinery it would take to clear them. The water may not ever reach so high,
but if it does, then the contents can be replaced with less than the loss of
diverting heavy machinery there now."

 
          
The
man nodded, saying, "Where shall we move the machinery, then?"

 
          
"Here."
Vaniya pointed again. "Take three of the engineers from the college, and
go to strengthen the dikes there; the water might be diverted where it comes
in, to flow harmlessly across the lower delta. We will have flooding, but, the
engineer from the college tells me, the strength of the wave will not smash
there." She raised her hands to her forehead, wearily, as the man and the
engineer bent over the map. She said, "We had a copying machine set up in
the outer office there, have copies made for each of you, and bring it back to
me___ " And as they hurried away with it, she raised her head to take the
tray of food.

 
          
"Rhu,
Cendri—" she smiled tiredly as she put a fork to her mouth. "Well,
Cendri, you came here to study the Matriarchate in crisis, and now you can see
rebellion, anarchy, all those things which try a society—what report will you
take back to the Unity, little Cendri?"

 
          
Cendri
said gently, "I do not know, Vaniya. This—" she gestured, indicating
the field office that had been set up around them, "looks not to me like
anarchy."

           
Vaniya yawned, putting her hand to
her mouth. She said, "No, perhaps not. In this crisis we do what we must,
all our sons and daughters work together for salvation. I wonder, now, that I
never thought to ask those at We-were-guided for help in such things___
" she
yawned again, closing her eyes for a moment.
Then, she raised her eyes to Rhu. "Have
you
any news of Miranda?
Of where she is being held among the men?"

 
          
Rhu's
pale face looked drawn and miserable. He burst out, "No, Vaniya! On my
life, no! They betrayed us both!"

 
          
Vaniya's
broad face looked stunned, disbelieving. "What is this talk of betrayal,
Rhu? What could you have had to do with it?" And even in this crisis Rhu
flushed at the contempt in her voice.

 
          
He
said steadily, "I came to confess to you; Miranda left the house at my
request, she came willingly with me as hostage. She and I—" his voice
faltered and Cendri recalled that what he was confessing was something
unthinkable in their society. "She and I— we have been much together; she
said that she—she loved me—"

 
          
"You!"
Vaniya stared at him in disbelief.
"She has always been kind to you. But to
love
a man—and not even a
man, but a Companion—"

 
          
"Whatever
I am, whatever you think of me, I love Miranda," Rhu said steadily,
"and she shared my concern for the plight of men who were nothing in your
sight. I was your Companion, but only a— a toy for your leisure hours, while to
Miranda I was—I was myself, a human being like
herself
.
We hoped—we hoped together—for a world where man and woman could sometimes
meet, if they chose, not only at the edge of the sea, in darkness, as animals
rut in season—"

 
          
"Silence,"
Vaniya burst out. "How dare you speak of such things now to me—
"

 
          
"We
hoped for a world where man and woman could sometimes meet in the light,
wanting one another's welfare and well-being and knowing one another as fellow
beings, loving one another," Rhu went on steadily, ignoring her. "And
so Miranda, when you would not hear the messenger, resolved to give herself up
as hostage, thinking you would do nothing to endanger her. You cared nothing
for the man from Unity, but you would hear a messenger if Miranda's safety was
at stake. She left the house with me, and came to where the men were gathered,
believing as I believed, that we were not born in chains—"

 
          
Vaniya's
face contorted in wrath. "You, my Companion—have you approached my
daughter as no man may do? I will have you killed, as the penalty is for any
male who attacks a citizen—"

 
          
Rhu
shook his head. He said quietly, "I have touched her hand, I have kissed
her lips and embraced her as a child his mother, and no more;
that
is
not what we sought from one another. It was love, Vaniya, not the sea-coming;
and if it had been more, even so, she was heavy with child. You misunderstand,
as you have always misunderstood."

 
          
"So
where did you take her, you wretch?" Vaniya interrupted, and Rhu shook his
head. "They would not tell me, lest I should reveal all to you. They
betrayed us both! And they did not trust me, any more than you trust me. As
always, Vaniya, I am exiled from the world of men and from the world of
women—"

 
          
He
covered his face with his hands, and after a moment Cendri realized that he was
weeping.

 
          
"I
would have died before bringing her to harm, Vaniya, she
 
was more than life to me__
_ "

 
          
Vaniya
looked at him, her face drawn with emotion. "Rhu, Rhu, how could you have
done this to me? Have I been unkind to you, or cruel?"

 
          
Rhu
said, very low, "No, Vaniya. You have been kind, but to you I was nothing.
You did not love me. Not as I love Miranda. Not as the Scholar Dame and her
Companion love one another. No, Vaniya, you did not love me."

 
          
"But
who could have expected it?" Vaniya burst out. "How can any woman
love a man? The relations between man and woman are ordained by the seasons and
the tides, they meet as is ordained, but—but love?"

 
          
Rhu
shook his head, silent, and said no more. Cendri thought, aching for both of
them, that they were both victims of their world. Every society had its
misfits. She, Cendri, was luckier than most, for she lived in a society where,
if she did not find its ordinances to her liking, she could move outside it,
into the open worlds like University, where a dozen cultures met. And as she
watched Rhu standing helplessly before Vaniya, she understood something about
herself and Dal.

 
          
1
married a man from Pioneer, knowing he would
make
demands
for a
kind of
submissiveness I was not trained to. I
have a greater
need
for
dependency than the women 0/ my
world.
And yet J
have
blamed
Dal for being what he
is. J now know
that when we finish
our
work here, I must either
accept Dal as he is
..
.what he truly
is, not
what my insufficiencies need him to be
.
.
.or
leave
him. But I cannot try to
change him.
Isis
did not change us.
It only
showed
us, unsparingly,
what we already were.