Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (43 page)

 
          
Vaniya
turned without another word and hurried toward the outer sea-wall. Cendri,
looking down the slope, saw that everything possible to remove had been
removed, and only the skeleton of buildings remained. Vaniya flung over her
shoulder "How did you find this out?"

 
          
"It
was Rhu—" she turned and sought with her eyes for him. "Where is he?
Has he fainted?" she cried out, quite forgetting that the male pronoun was
not proper. But there was a commotion on the slope, women shouting.

 
          
"You
can't go down there—hi! Come back! It's too late, everything's out of
there—" and as Vaniya hurried toward them, Cendri at her heels, the women
guarding the slope said angrily, "Some damned man ran down there, some
curled-hair pet forgot its ribbons, I suppose—"

 
          
Vaniya
said tightly, "My daughter—she is down there, in the warehouse—"

 
          
"Oh,
no, Mother Pro-Matriarch," said one of the women soothingly, "there's
nobody at all down there, trust me. Everybody's out, you know, we searched
every building except those old empty warehouses, and there's nothing there but
cement and lumber,
who
would bother going in there?
Anyhow, she'd have come out a long time ago."

 
          
Vaniya
said shakily, "She might be in labor and unable to walk-"

 
          
"She'd
have had enough warning, surely—" the woman broke off, shading her eyes
against the sun. She said, "Goddess! There is someone coming out of that
warehouse—
two
people!" She checked her timepiece, and said,
"We may have just time—" and hastily, signalling toward the figures
below, began to run down the slope.

 
          
Vaniya
began to run after them; Cendri caught her, held her back by force. "No,
no," she urged. "They will get her out if it is humanly
possible—please, Vaniya—come back behind the inner wall—Dal, help me—" she
begged, supporting the old woman's weight, "Look, Vaniya, they have them
both—Rhu was carrying Miranda, carrying her in his arms, now they have taken
Miranda from him, they are carrying her—"

 
          
"They're
carrying Rhu, too," Dal broke in, "I knew he shouldn't have gone
in—oh, my God!" He stiffened, staring out at the horizon, and Cendri knew,
in horror, what he had seen. A siren went off somewhere, and the few people
left between the sea and the inner dike dropped everything and began to run.
Cendri thrust Vaniya along, twisting her head to see the four strong women,
carrying Rhu and Miranda, hurrying toward the inner dike. Cendri and Dal
between them boosted the Pro-Matriarch's heavy body over the wall, but she
struggled away from them, hurrying to where the women were laying Miranda on
the grass. One of them, looking at Miranda sharply, said, "I will see if
there is a midwife in the crowd up there," and ran up toward the barriers.

 
          
Miranda
was deathly white. She said, "I am all right, I tell you, I need the
midwife more than I need anyone else's help. Cendri, is it you? What is this
all about? Rhu would explain
nothing,
he simply
grabbed me up in his arms and ran, what is happening?"

 
          
But
before anyone could answer—Cendri realized in a flash that Miranda, confined in
an empty warehouse, knew nothing of the tidal wave or the warning from
We-were-guided—there was a great, crashing roar like the end of the world, and
Cendri saw a great wall of water which looked miles high racing toward the
shore with the speed of a gigantic jet. Miranda heard the roar and cried out in
terror, and Rhu, lying collapsed on the grass, his face drawn in pain,
whispered in agony,
"
Miranda—"

 
          
"She
is safe, Rhu," Dal said, leaning over him. "You're both going to be
all right; just lie back and relax."

 
          
"Miranda—"
he whispered again, and she turned over, slowly, painfully, reaching for his
hand. She whispered, "Rhu—Rhu—"

 
          
The
agony contorted his face again; he struggled for breath. Miranda held his hand
tightly; leaned over and kissed him on the lips, but when she drew away his
face was slack and still. Alarmed, Dal felt for a pulse; shook his head.

 
          
"He's
gone," he said.
"Poor, poor heroic little
devil!"

 
          
Miranda
began to sob helplessly. Vaniya bent over Rhu, gently closed his eyes. And
then, with a great roar, the tsunami struck below them. Cendri saw the
warehouses go, with one great explosion of flying lumber, heard the roar as the
outer sea-wall burst and sagged inward like a child's sand-castle, and the
water came racing, flying inward with such a sound of thunder that Cendri was
deafened, and, watching the great wall of water, felt certain it would roar
inward, sweep them away where they stood, with the wreckage of the dikes....

           
But although the flying spray
drenched them with salt, stinging their eyes and splashing high against the
dike above them, it held, and, miraculously, began to recede. Cendri sank down,
gasping. Vaniya looked at Rhu's body with deep regret.

 
          
"How
heroic—for a man," she said, in wonder. "What could he have cared for
Miranda!
But even a dog can be heroic—"

 
          
And
suddenly Cendri was angry, with a blazing fury. She stood up, towering over
Vaniya in uncontrollable rage.

 
          
"Do
you know what he did?" she demanded. "Do you know that it was Rhu who
saved her, who killed himself for her? If he had waited until your officials
here got through arguing, she would be down there in that smashed matchwood
that used to be a warehouse! She and her unborn child both! If he hadn't acted
on his own initiative, without waiting for some woman's permission, your
daughter and your heir would be lying dead down there, and you would never even
have known it!
Even a
dog
heroic?
He loved her,
Vaniya! He loved her!" she repeated, collapsed into Dai's arms and began
to cry.

 
          
Vaniya
looked shaken. She said slowly. "How do you know this?" and, wiping
her eyes, Cendri explained how she and Dal and Rhu had gone together to
We-were-guided.

 
          
"Then
you had a part in it too, Cendri, and you—Scholar," Vaniya said awkwardly,
and after a moment Cendri realized she had spoken to Dal. He said, still
kneeling by Rhu's lifeless body, "I only wish I could have done more,
Pro-Matriarch; not only to save Rhu—he was my friend—but to show you, perhaps,
that men can show all the good qualities which you of Isis reserve for
women."

 
          
Vaniya
bowed her head. She said, "Some day, perhaps, I shall know how best to
thank you."

 
          
Miranda
was sobbing, holding Rhu's cold hand in hers. She whispered to Cendri,
"For this to happen—for this to happen now— when we might have seen our
dream—"

 
          
Cendri
held Miranda close, but she said nothing. Let Miranda keep the dream that some
day, if Rhu had lived, they might have had one another in the way Dal and
Cendri had each other. It could never have been. They were both children of the
Matriarchate, and that bold a change would not come in Miranda's lifetime, or,
perhaps, of her unborn daughter. Cendri and Dal had begun as equals, had found
one another through shared work and shared interests and mutual respect. Rhu
and Miranda might have tasted the outer fringes of this kind of love. But it
could only have turned, for them, to bitterness and disappointment. Now Miranda
would keep, forever, a romantic memory of what might have been, and the
knowledge that the man she loved had given his life for her. And Rhu—with her
heart torn, Cendri remembered his plaintive
 
song;

            When
I am dead

 
          
Will
the Goddess take me,
perhaps

           
To her loving breasts?

 
          
Miranda
cried out suddenly, holding herself with both hands.

 
          
"Oh!
Oh!
quick
! Somebody! Help! Get the midwife—please,
somebody—any midwife, but hurry—"

 
          
There
was a flurry, and Vaniya said, looking up the slope, "She will be here in
a minute, my
precious,
she will come to you here.”

 
          
Miranda
sighed with relief. She said, shakily, "It took a tidal wave to make my
lazy daughter decide to be born—and wouldn't you know? I am the first woman to
have her baby while visiting the sea!"

 
          
"Miranda!"
said Vaniya in shock, "How can you make such a joke at a time like
this—" for all the women around had burst into scandalized giggles.

 
          
Dal
said plaintively to Cendri, "Will you please tell me what the hell is so
funny about that?"

 
          
But
Cendri knew that she could not explain it, in the presence of the women of
Isis
, to any man. Not for generations.

 
          
A
portion
of the
Report submitted
to the
Mentor
Lokshmann,
of
the College of
Xeno-anthropoJogy
and
Comparative
Culture on
University, by the Scholar Dame Cendri
Owain, resident on lsis/Cinderella:

 
          
...this
season the great dam
on the river Anahit has been completed, with
earthquake-proof
safeguards. The
Inland
Land
Reclamation Project has absorbed most of
the
workmen from
the dam construction site. Most of the men
continue
to live in the
inland villages
which they have colonized, and to hire
out for
wages.
Few of them bother to
exercise
the legal
franchise,
saying
that too much
concern
with
politics serves
to
destroy a
man's natural instincts.

 
          
Shortly
after the great
tsunami
which destroyed the first
construction site,
the
Council of
Ariadne, under
the advice of the Intelligences who
have been
designated pro tern as Ruins A Culture, appointed the High
Matriarch
Vaniya to
assume
all the
religious duties
of High
Priestess, while the High Matriarch Mahala was
chosen
to administer all
secular
matters
within the City of
Ariadne. A representative from
the Men's Houses is chosen every Long Year,
with the provision that he must
be of what the
Council calls a "sedate old age" and therefore, as
they say, no longer at the mercy of his sexual
drives, and capable
of
abstract thought. Thus the
Council is headed
by a tripartite
authority,
with
an absolute provision that no matter shall be
settled
unless
to the satisfaction
of all
three parties. This, as they say, assured
that
no majority can force the will and
conscience
of a minority, and that
no
material considerations may override
the spiritual
needs
of the
people. The formal designation of the male appointed to the tripartite
authority is
Elder Brother, and
the new
custom states
that a
former Elder
Brother
shall retain for life
his Council seat, without
a vote, but shall advise and instruct his comrades and younger brothers in the
Men's Houses
of the city
and countryside.

 
          
The
archaeological expedition to We-were-guided has now had a full Long Year in
the
ruins
at
We-were-guided. This preliminary team
of a
hundred
and nineteen men and a hundred and twenty-four women
have
worked
together admirably
well with
volunteer workers from the
College
of
Ariadne
,
which
is now known as
the
Women's
College.
After
observing
the work of the
men and women from
University, ninety-two men from
the city of
Ariadne
have volunteered to enroll
in
the
new
Men's
College built in the colony
village
of
Anahit
. The first class
will graduate with the
status
of Scholar, two Long
Years from now.