Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (7 page)

 
          
"Will
the Scholar Dame forgive my mother? The earthquake has caused much damage in
the fisherwoman villages along the shoreline, and the Pro-Matriarch has been
urgently summoned to see what damage has been done and what help must be given
to the poor women there; many boats were smashed in the harbor. She has left word
that she will return at sunset, unless some very great urgency should delay
her, at which hour she will be pleased to welcome you and dine in your company.
Meanwhile, may I make the Scholar Dame comfortable in the chambers which have
been prepared? And if there is any other way in which I may serve the Scholar
Dame, she has only to ask."

 
          
Cendri
replied politely that she was content to await the total convenience of the
Pro-Matriarch. She was getting very tired of these elaborately formal speeches,
which seemed to rest uncomfortably upon Miranda's lips. She added that it
would be very good to rest after the journey.

 
          
"If
the Scholar Dame will follow me—"

 
          
The
rooms lay at the top of two flights of stairs, elaborately and carefully
balustraded, and one of them closed off with a device which was evidently a
kind of nursery gate to keep small children from tumbling down. On these upper
floors she saw the first solid interior wall construction she had seen anywhere
on Isis/Cinderella, although the walls were masked, in part, by the light
movable screens which seemed the normal interior wall-decor for this world.
Walls and screens were painted with murals that looked like children's work;
and, tired as she was, Cendri was still taking the mental notes of the trained
anthropologist. Children were very much in evidence, not banished to a separate
part of the household or community. Miranda opened a door which had been
gilded, and said, "These rooms have been prepared for the Scholar Dame
and— and her Companion." For the first time she glanced, briefly and
shyly, at Dal, and Cendri had the odd impression that she wished to extend him,
too, some courtesy, but did not know what form it ought to take.

 
          
She
thought in wonder, and some indefinable irritation, haven't these women ever
seen a man before? They act, quite literally, as if they had never set eyes on
a man, and that is preposterous, there are men all over the place! What is it?

 
          
I
can't expect to understand it,
after only an hour
or
two.
...

 
          
The
room was hung all round, inside, with curtains; literally a cyclorama of
curtains, surrounding the entire room. Miranda showed Cendri how they could be
pulled back—"So that you can have darkness and privacy, or light, at your
wish," she said, and adjusted them, with what seemed an automatic gesture,
to admit indirect light while keeping out the glare from a window which faced
the sun. Behind another fold of the curtains she indicated a door, saying,
"Here you may refresh yourself as you wish; the Scholar Dame has no
objection to sharing bathing facilities with her Companion? If it is so, I am
instructed to tell you that there is a male facility at the foot of the
stairs—"

 
          
"I
have no objection," said Cendri quickly.

 
          
At
the center of the room was a bedstead; quite the highest and narrowest bed
Cendri had ever seen. She wondered how she would possibly sleep in it without
falling out. Miranda indicated racks for clothing, shelves—Cendri noted that
they were carefully braced on what looked like gimbals and had movable arms
which could be extended to hold the books in the shelves, a reasonable
precaution for a world prone to continuing seismic tremors—a mirrored enclosure
with a padded seat, and at one corner of the room an alcove, cushioned deeply
and filled with luxurious pillows, as if the entire alcove had become a thick,
comfortable bed. The Lady Miranda said, with a quick glance at the alcove,
"When our Mother informed me that the Scholar Dame had brought a
Companion, it was this room we set aside for her to inhabit a room with an
Amusement Corner." She glanced, quickly and surreptitiously, at Dal, and suddenly,
looking at the piled, luxurious pillows, Cendri understood, and felt almost
inclined to giggle, or to blush in embarrassment.

 
          
The
separation
—that high, narrow, obvious
bed, and the sybaritic
"Amusement
Corner"—tells me more about how this society regards sex, than a whole
series of
erotic films,
or any number
of lectures about sexual
customs.
¹
She saw that Dal had understood, too, for his mouth twitched a little at the
corners, and Cendri was suddenly afraid he would laugh out loud while Miranda
was still in the room. She said, hastily, "You are too kind, Lady;
everything seems more than comfortable."

 
          
With
a few more formal phrases, and assurance that their luggage should be brought
soon, the Lady Miranda turned to go, with a final request that if everything
was not as the Scholar Dame liked
it,
she had only to
request assistance.

 
          
"We
are honored and content," Cendri said. It was a risk to include Dal in the
pronoun, but by including the "Amusement corner" in her room—again
the hidden mirth bubbled up inside her—they had taken at least a tacit notice
of his existence! She said with a formal gesture, "We ask only one thing;
if we offend in anything against your
customs,
we ask
that you accept that it is done in ignorance and without intent to offend."

 
          
It
was the first time she had ever had occasion to use this little memorized
speech suggested for contact with any alien society, and in her years of
training she had come to think of it, too, as a cliche, so banal and
stereotyped as to be virtually meaningless; she was surprised when it drew the
first genuine, spontaneous smile from the Lady Miranda.

 
          
"You
are kind, Scholar Dame. I trust you will be happy here." Again the quick,
embarrassed look at Dal; she added in a whisper, as if greatly daring,
"Both of you," and, coloring, withdrew.

 
          
When
the door had closed, Dal drew a long, whistling breath. He dropped into the
"Amusement Corner" cushions, saying explosively, "What do you
think of all
that?
Sharrioz! What a world!" He chuckled. "If
they want to get into the Unity they're sure going to have to change their
ways!"

 
          
Cendri
started to protest—there was no evidence that they wanted to get into the Unity
at all—then held her peace. This was just a way of working off the long tension
of being treated like a nothing, part of Cendri's baggage, a mere convenience
for her amusement or pleasure. Poor
Dal!
she
thought, and was eager to make it up to him, but didn't quite know how.

 
          
"Let's
look and see what kind of bath they've given us. Some studies judge a culture
by the quality of their plumbing, you know."

 
          
"I
know," Dal said, good-humored again. "I told you that, remember. The
ruins on Serpens Delta Four had eight separate and distinct classes of latrine
and bathing facilities, each for a different class of society, and judging by
the ritual objects we found, there were rigid taboos against one caste going
near the bathing facilities of any other caste! We might as well explore this
one before it gets to be an artifact!"

 
          
"We
really do the same work, in a way, don't we, Dal?" she said, voicing a
thought that had come to her before. "I study cultures while they're still
going
on,
and you study them after they've stopped,
but it's the same work, isn't it, darling?"

 
          
"I
suppose so," Dal said, kindly but without enthusiasm. "Although, of
course, there is no way to measure a society objectively while scientists must
observe it through subjective judgments, either their own or the judgments of
the society in question. No society can ever be judged except in historical
perspective," he added, and Cendri, who had heard this before without
agreeing with it, and knew she would never agree with it, let it pass without
comment. Together they went to explore the luxurious bath assigned to them by
the Pro-Matriarch.

 
          
"If
a culture could be judged by plumbing, we'd have to give this one high marks,
wouldn't we?" Cendri said at last; it was unbelievably elaborate,
containing not only elaborate toilet and bathing facilities, but showers of
different sizes and heights, and some fixtures about whose use she was not
certain, though she guessed that one very shallow, waist-high tub, with
guard-rails and a headrest, and faucets fixed to give only warmish water, with
no hot or cold, must be a special fixture for bathing very young babies without
danger of dropping, chilling or scalding. Others she could not even make
intelligent guesses about; body-care facilities could be judged only by
actually observing their use.

 
          
Dal
looked dubious. He said, "I'm not sure; societies which place too much
value on luxurious body-care have usually been decadent, historically speaking.
Viable and vigorous societies tend to be more spartan in emphasis; but the
overemphasis on physical comfort is what I would expect of a society where
females define the major priorities."

 
          
Cendri
frowned, not sure she understood. "All societies work for physical comfort
as they define it, don't they, Dal?"

 
          
"You
know better than that," Dal chided. "The pursuit of luxury appears,
normally, only after a culture has expended its primary energies. Women are
usually out of the main stream of culture, since the real work of a society is
done by men, and only when the real aims of the society are accomplished do the
men have leisure to pamper their women by creating non-essentials such as
physical comfort. Historically, when this happens, a culture has begun to die,
since the men have nothing better to do than to pursue the goals and aims set
by women..."

 
          
Cendri
said tentatively, "But perhaps in a culture where the primary goals were
determined by women, priorities would be differently ordered—"

 
          
"That
is precisely what I was saying," Dal said with weary patience. "A
culture where women's priorities took precedence would reach decadence at a
very early stage. This society is still new, but I notice already the early
signs of decadence; a very low level of organization, and an unstructured
hierarchy without visible incentive status, which fits very well, with the
other signs of decadence; undue emphasis on physical comfort, and a lack of
time-values; for instance, the idea that if you are made comfortable while you
wait, you will not protest at the wasting of your valuable time as a trained
specialist. This indicates, of course,
a contempt
for
the Unity's values, and for the Unity's time—"

 
          
They
were interrupted by two people who brought their luggage, a man and a woman;
when they withdrew, Cendri had lost all interest in the argument—she had heard
it in her study of Cultural Institutions—but Dal would not be silenced.

 
          
"There
are certain priorities which, in a colony as new as they, must take priority
over anything as unnecessary as physical comfort. First comes conquest—if there
are no actual enemies to involve them in war, then the terrain and the climate
must be conquered and reduced to submission—then expansion, and the achievement
of hierarchy, and directives for structuring social goals. A society which
gives priority to things which are important only to women would never achieve
any of these stages in a vigorous or viable form." He smiled. "And
such a society never lasts long, so study it while you can, Cendri; it's not
likely, with these priorities, to achieve anything lasting enough to have any
kind of historical value or perspective." He added, indulgently, "Of
course, you wouldn't be interested in historical perspective, would you,
Cendri? Women aren't—it's excusable, of course, probably necessary for
biological reasons, but women always tend to live in the present, and leave
historical perspectives for men. And women never seem even to define this as a
fault!"

 
          
Cendri
wondered if he included the Scholar Dame Lurianna di Velo, one of the most
notable archaeologists in the Unity, among those women who were unable to see
anything in historical perspective, but she had sense enough not to say so.

 
          
"Did
you hear anything of what the Lady Miranda told me about the situation
here?"