High Couch of Silistra

ISBN: 0-553-10522-1

HIGH COUCH OF SILISTRA

A Bantam Book / May 1977

All rights reserved. Copyright © 1977 by Janet Morris

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

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ISBN 0-553-10522-1 Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Herewith I do discharge both the
chaldra of the Mother, and that
of the Father.

I am Estri Hadeath diet Estrazi, former Well-Keepress of Astria on the planet Silistra. I have begun three times to tell this story, and three times I have been interrupted. This, then, the fourth attempt, will surely prove successful.

Perhaps you have heard of Silistra, the planet that was catalyst to the sexual revolution in the year twenty-two thousand, seven hundred and four Bipedal Federate Standard Time, or of the Silistran serums that lengthen life and restore vitality in virtually any bipedal life form, or perhaps you have at some time contracted the services of a Silistran telepath, or a precognitive, or a deep reader. It is possible that you haye in your own home the scintillating, indestructible web-cloth woven by our domestic arachnids, or have seen holograms of our golachits, those intelligent builder-beatles who exude from their mouths that translucent superhard substance called gol and create from this gol, under the guidance of the chit-guards, the formidable and resplendent structures in which we live and work.

And perhaps you have seen no web-cloth, no gol, never been ill, and are not interested in sex. If so, you may never have heard of Silistra.

I carry Silistra in my mind’s eye, here under this alien sun. In my mind alone can I look out the east window of my beloved exercise hall in Well Astria and see the sun’s rising burst upon the jewellike towers and keeps of the Inner Well and a thousand rainbows arc and dance in the greening sky.

I was Well-Keepress. Seven thousand people thrived under the aegis of my Well. I was sought and celebrated for my beauty and lineage, for I was great-granddaughter to Astria Barina diet Hadrath, the Well-Keepress who seduced M’Glarenn, Liaison First for the Bipedal Federation, and changed the sexual habits of bipeds on one hundred and forty-eight worlds. I was high-couch in the greatest house of pleasure in the civilized stars. I commanded a great price.

Any being who was capable of desiring me, I could fulfill. I was fluent in the language and customs of fifty worlds. I had more than a passing acquaintance with the other ninety-eight. I was reasonably happy, happier than I knew.

I must speak briefly of chaldra and chaldric chains, for it is chaldra that brought me here, to this strange and frightening world, so far from all that I hold dear.

It is a Silistran saying that we are all bound, the least of us no more than the greatest, and a Silistran would have it no other way. The bonds of which the saying speaks are bonds of the spirit, of responsibility and duty and custom, and these are called chaldra. Upon the body of each Silistran, proudly displayed in twisted belts called chalds, are the thin, supple, many-colored chaldric chains of precious metals. A Silistran without chaldra is a person bereft of purpose and self-respect, and often such unfortunate individuals, when unable to acquire ennobling chaldra, choose to take on the chaldra of the soil—by their death gaining that which was denied to them in life.

There is high-chaldra and low-chaldra. An example of high-chaldra is the chaldra of reproduction, of begetting one child, no easy task among Silistrans, which is symbolized by the bronze chain before the chaldra is met, and the golden chain after the child has been produced. Also the chaldra of the mother and father, the task set by the parent of the same sex, symbolized by the red chain before completion and the blue when the task is done. The chaldra to the Stand of Well is high also, and the chain is always silver. Low-chaldra are such as the chaldra of couch-bond between a man and a woman, recognized by the pinkish titrium chain, or of skill, such as the black-iron Slayer’s chain, or of vocation or avocation, as the Day-Keeper’s slate-colored chain or the golachit breeder’s brown. There are over two hundred chaldric chains, if one counts both high and low.

I still wear my chald of eighteen intertwined chains. Once it lay snugly across my navel, but I have lost much weight in this dreadful place, and now it slaps annoyingly about my lower abdomen as I labor at the senseless tasks set me by my inscrutable masters.

I was marked from birth for this end, and all saw it, but none understood. I was born out of couch-bond to Well-Keepress Hadrath Banin diet Inderi by an out-worlder known only as Estrazi. My mother carried me thrice the normal term, and died birthing me on the twenty-five thousandth anniversary of Well Astria.

How much my mother knew of my fate is still open to conjecture, but until I received her legacy, and another, on my three hundredth birthday, I thought myself little different, if more favored, than my couch-sisters. The second bequest came in the form of a letter from my great-grandmother Astria, to be opened upon the three hundredth anniversary of my birth. The letter, which I received in the office of Rathad, my dead mother’s half-brother and adviser to my Well, had my full name upon it and the date, Macara fourth seventh, 25, 693, and was written eight hundred and forty years before I was born.

The letter lay between us on the table of thala-wood that I had shipped down from the northern forests as a gift to my mother’s brother almost a full year ago. A silver cube lay beside the envelope, yellow with age, upon the night sky of the thala. The reflections deep within the wood seemed to go on forever.

Musicians tuning, laughing, limbering through their scales mixed with kitchen clank and the gol-master’s hoarse calls as he set the golachits to their building. I did not rise from my seat to watch them at work in the Inner Well amid the bustle of the Well as it is rising, as I might have on another day. Nor did the smells of the morning meal, of baking bread and roasting meat, entice me. My appetite had disappeared with Rathad’s summons. My recalcitrant precognitive gift had given me no warning, nor any information as to why, on this, the one day of the year on which I habitually secluded myself, seeing and speaking to no one, he had sent for me. On this day had he sent a messenger to summon me from my solitude. I had run the distance here to Rathad’s keep, filled with foreboding, leaving the messenger in the exercise hall staring, undismissed, openmouthed at my undignified haste.

When I reached the mirrored doors and burst through them, I was badly winded. Rathad did not so much as raise his grizzled head to me in greeting, but waved me to the dark carven chair, silent, staring fixedly at the two objects on the table between us.

My breathing was no longer labored when Rathad, his fingers upon the silver cube, raised his eyes to mine.

“Daughter of my sister,” he said, “have you, perhaps, knowledge of these things before me, that you have arrived here so swiftly?”

I shook my head no, and his jibe passed unanswered, though at any other time I would have berated him for disturbing me.

He sighed. “One might hope that the foreseeing abilities of your mother, and, it seems, your great-grandmother”—his hand was on the envelope—“might someday manifest in you. You have no idea, then, why I sent for you today, or even why you showed such uncharacteristic haste in presenting yourself to me?”

“None at all.” I am a very weak foreseer. “Did you call me to discuss my psychic debilities? If so,” I said, rising, “I will return to my day’s undertakings.” I did not care for the amused condescension in his voice.

“Will you indeed? I doubt it. Now, sit back down. Good. It would be a sad thing, Estri, if you let our personal differences prevent you from receiving this message from your mother, and this … ah, shall we say, unusual communication from the Foundress of the Well herself.” He was leaning back in his chair, fondling his chald, a smile playing around his lips.

“What mean you, Rathad? Do not toy with me.”

“I mean but what I say, Well-Keepress. This,” he said, picking up the silver cube, each side of which was the length of my middle finger, “is a recording device, popular in the days of my youth. When your mother knew herself pregnant with you, she came to me with it and asked that I deliver it to you at this time. She knew she would not survive your birth.” I heard the bitterness in his voice. It was common knowledge that Rathad considered his sister’s self-sacrifice ill-conceived, and had urged her to abort me. Because it was his chaldra to do so, he had brought me up. I am sure he would rather have drowned me upon the day of my birth, so great was his love for my mother, Hadrath.

“And this,” he continued, fingering the yellowed envelope, “this comes to us through the kindness of Day-Keeper Ristran, who attests to its authenticity, and bids me to tell you it has lain in the Hall of Records these eight hundred and forty years, awaiting your maturity.

“I have not opened either of them, nor do I have any information as to their contents. I have my suppositions, of course, the validity of which we will ascertain here together.” Again that deeply seasoned face smiled at me. Rathad’s smile has always made me nervous. It is the smile of the predator upon a new kill.

His hand closed about the silver cube, and he shook it. A dull rattle came from it. “As is often the case with such containers, there is something within.” He placed the cube carefully beside the envelope.

“Which one, which will you explore first, Estri?”

I grabbed for the silver shape so fast I brushed his retreating hand. He had not made clear to me the significance of the letter, except that it was old and that it had been in the possession of the Day-Keepers, those among us who study the past and keep its legacy. In any case, I, who had never seen my mother’s face or heard her voice, had in my hands that which she had meant for her daughter to hold. Emotion roared through me like the Falls of Santha. My hands shook and my tongue attached itself to the roof of my dry mouth.

I held it, turning the metal cube in my fingers. My mother’s name rang in my head. I searched for my voice.

“How does it work?” I asked finally. I had seen two small circular insets, and above them a larger triangular one, all on one side of the object. The other sides were, as far as I could determine, featureless. I was afraid, suddenly, that I might somehow damage it before its long-held secrets could be revealed.

“Hold the cube with the circles uppermost.” I did so.

“Farther away from you. Now, press once firmly upon the triangle.” I did this also, and a rectangular section halfway down the cube’s surface slid back, and then from the opening extruded a dished bar, metal on all sides but the one facing me, which was composed of two lenses recessed in a metal frame.