Six Moon Dance (36 page)

“Oh, that’s so true,” bubbled Ellin.

“How very kind,” smiled Marool, soothed into amiability.

“Oh!” cried Ellin, on approaching a certain corner. “Nova roses. My favorite. May I pick one?”

Marool condescended, looking on with amusement while Ellin stepped lightly into the back of a bed where she clipped an enormous silver white blossom and put her nose into it. She then offered it to Marool, saying, “The scent is quite remarkable.”

Marool sniffed at the rose. “It is wonderful,” she said with an indifferent nod.

“Among the most fragrant in your garden,” Questioner murmured.

“Indeed,” Marool agreed.

They walked on, Ellin burbling on about the beauty and the fragrance of the garden as she sniffed at this and that and Bao offering this or that blossom for appreciation. At the end of their stroll, they departed from their hostess with fulsome expressions of gratitude, and Marool went back to the more decorous parts of her daily routine in a somewhat improved mood. Though Questioner was nothing but a piece of machinery, it was a polite piece of machinery and its aides were polite also. Marool could tolerate them.

Questioner said, “It’s as I thought,” she said. “Mantelby has no sense of smell! The Nova rose is odorless. Did you watch her when Bao waved the crimson stinkbrush in her face?”

Ellin nodded. “She didn’t flinch. She has a smile like a shark, that one.”

“What is it meaning?” asked Bao.

“I have no idea.” Questioner showed her own teeth in a tigerish grin. “It goes down onto my list with all the other odd data.”

“Odd?” Bao raised his eyebrows. “What things are you counting as odd?”

Questioner ticked them off on her fingers. “There’s the oddity of the first colony, the one that disappeared. There’s the oddity of the little houses too small for the people who live in them. There’s the dirty streets and the stink out back, and the fact that Madam Mantelby has no sense of smell. There are those monumental schools that show up on the business inventory, seeming far too large for their stingy classes of little boys. Well, we have a clue to that, now, don’t we?”

“Consorts?” asked Ellin. “Consort academies?”

“Assuredly. If they are trained to cosset women, they must be trained somewhere. In itself a strangeness. Well, most cultures have oddities of one kind or another.”

“I am not understanding what you mean by strangeness,” said Bao.

The Questioner seated herself comfortably, quite willing to educate a willing listener. “All societies maintain themselves by forcing personal behavior into a mold or pattern which the society calls its ‘culture.’ The patterns are imposed by natural or political conditions; for example, either recurrent drought or recurrent persecution can result in similar patterns. Most patterns require changes in behavior, and that requires changes in belief systems, or vice versa, sort of chicken and egg as to which comes first.

“So a few thousand years go by and the climate changes, or the politics, but the people still follow the same taboos because by now they believe their deity ordered them to do it. Long-practiced behaviors that started as a response to conditions, always fossilizes into ‘traditional values,’ that is, the only ‘right way’ to do things. At that point people no longer use the system in order to survive, the system uses them in order to survive. That’s something people often don’t understand. Systems are parasitical, they have a life of their own, and they, too, evolve and change and try to survive. The one fact that is true of all cultures, without exception, is that it never represents the free desires of the people who are jammed into it even when people are conditioned from childhood to accept uniformation.”

“Really?” asked Ellin. “Never?”

Questioner grinned at her. “Only mavericks live in accordance with their desires, and even they don’t often get away with it. They are usually labeled as troublemakers and gotten rid of. So, when the Questioner arrives on a new planet, the people show us the culture. Here, they say, this is what we are, we have nothing to hide. Genetic variation, however, guarantees that sometimes a rebel will be born, and you may be sure the culture has come up with a way to deal with him.

“So, in order to find out what’s really going on, we investigate how the culture reacts to threats, we look for the people who do not fit, we look for the oddities, the strangenesses. When we have enough of them, we learn what the bones and nerves of the culture are really like, beneath the skin.”

“But you’re saying all societies are coercive,” said Ellin in a troubled voice.

Questioner laughed. “But Honorable Ellin, of course they are. This is what makes reading history so amusing. Most cultures think of themselves as free while regarding others as coerced. They do so because they are following ‘traditional values,’ and the generations of coercion that resulted in those values is long forgotten. On Old Earth, in one society, women rejoiced that they were ‘free’ to have children, when in fact they had been coerced into excessive reproduction by a profit-driven culture that required a growing population. Men felt they were ‘free’ to ingest deadly substances or own deadly weapons, when in fact they were coerced into desiring them by industries that had to sell weapons and drugs to survive. Weapons, poisons, and large families were all parasites on the population. The people weren’t free, they had been molded into consumers, which is what the mercantile culture needed.

“Such things can be most amusing,” she said with a chuckle.

“I think the veils on the men is being coerced,” said Bao.

“Of course they are,” the Questioner agreed. “Usually it is women who are locked behind the veil, but veiling isn’t unusual. I have heard two phrases that are unusual, however: ‘mismothering’ and ‘blue-bodying.’ These words are indicative of intricacies being kept from us.”

“The gardener who isn’t a gardener referred to mis-mothering,” said Ellin. “It was in the context of men desiring their own posterity.”

“Yes.” The Questioner mused. “In which case, to have a child by other than one’s lawful mate would be mismothering. Depend upon it. When we find what the penalty is for that, it will be far worse than mere veiling.” She rose to stare out the window across the manicured lawns of Mantelby Mansion.

“It’s too early to say exactly what’s going on, for we’re still collecting data….” Her voice trailed off as she switched thoughts. “Which reminds me: I’ve asked the technicians on the ship for a detailed report on the geological situation, and it will be finished by morning. First thing tomorrow, we’ll summon a conveyance. The report will make a good excuse for me to call upon the Temple of the Hagions.”

T
he following morning, the Questioner, dressed in the force-shield cloak she wore outside for protection against everything short of meteorites, was standing with Ellin and Bao on the gravel drive, awaiting their conveyance, when the ground began to shake, the initial tremor building into a bone-twisting shudder that lasted some minutes but seemed, in retrospect, to have gone on for hours. The gardens shimmied, blooms were whipped from their stems to fly like shrapnel in all directions. The terraces snapped like so much sugar candy, the rough edges of the shards grinding against one another in a rasping mutter that almost drowned out the sound of the roar, the exhalation, the whatever-it-was from wherever-it-came that subsumed all other sounds.

When the ground stilled at last, Questioner was still standing obdurately erect, stabilizers extended, with Ellin and Bao each clinging to an immovable arm. Waiting for the last of the noise to subside, the Questioner asked in a mildly interested tone: “Read for me what the report says, Bao. That one you are still holding. And may I remark how dutiful you are to have held on to it.”

Bao, between gritted teeth, hissed a commentary that fell far short of describing his feelings.

“Take a deep breath,” said Questioner. “Release. Now again, in, out, in, out. Are you recovered?”

Bao muttered again, as Ellin broke into a titter that threatened full-fledged hysteria.

Questioner turned her head from side to side, examining them both. They still clung, as though for dear life. “It’s over for the time being,” she told them. “Look, down the driveway, where the horses attached to our carriage are having seizures of anxiety. Observe the driver in the exercise of his phlegmatic habitude. Does he not inspire you? Are you not moved to emulate his imperturbability?”

Ellin stepped carefully away, feet spread well apart, braced for the resumption of the tremor. Bao followed her example, keying the file he held and peering at it blindly. “It says,” he gulped, “it says …”

“There, there,” said Questioner impatiently. “What does it say?”

“It says the crust of the planet is becoming increasingly unstable …”

“How perceptive of them!” cried Ellin.

“… and may reach, but has not yet reached, the point at which it endangers planetary life,” he concluded, handing the report to Questioner, who scanned it rapidly.

The carriage, which eventually approached, was one that had been adapted to carry Questioner’s massive form. She climbed the two steps without help and sat hugely upon the seat, the two aides across from her, the report open upon her lap.

“When you first went to the Temple,” said Questioner to Ellin, “I recall that D’Jevier remarked about the volcanoes. Did it seem to you she was greatly disturbed?”

Ellin thought back. “Not greatly, no,” she said, grabbing for a handhold as the carriage dropped an inch or two over a recently fallen slab. “Her perturbation seemed more dramatic than real.”

Questioner scanned farther in the report. “Our planetologists tell us that the greatest damage thus far has occurred on the other side of this world, where islands have sunk or are sinking, all of them uninhabited, so far as anyone knows. Our scientists go on to say that what we are experiencing, this local disturbance in the vicinity of the Giles, happens every ten to twenty years in gravitic response to certain lunar configurations. So, if she, the Hag, has seen this happen before, why is she being so dramatic about it now?”

“She is dragging, perhaps, a dead fish along the way, hoping we will go sniffing after that rather than something else?” asked Bao.

“Rather than thinking of indigenes?” Ellin asked.

“Quite possibly,” mused Questioner. “Of course, this latest eruption is exceptionally strong, and dangerous, but do they know that?”

Ellin tittered again, breathlessly. “It would be ironic if we all got swallowed up by some volcano, the indigenes along with the rest of us.”

“Which could happen in time,” said Questioner, dispassionately. “For our planetologists say that if present conditions persist, the settled areas will be endangered. Further, they say they can find no geological reason for this instability except an ‘unforeseen and mysterious change in the movements of the crust itself, though there is no detectable change in its nature.’ I find that very interesting.”

“Interesting.” Ellin gulped. “She finds it interesting.”

Questioner turned toward her. “We all die, Ellin Voy. Even I, in time. I was designed to be interested in all things, including those that repulse mankind, like slime and strange insects, like plague and famine and dying. You may be interested, too, when you have a calm moment to consider it. Now do as I bade Gandro Bao. Breathe, breathe, and calm yourself.”

The rest of the journey was made in nervous silence by the dancers, in apparent serenity by Questioner, and in some apprehension by the horses. The driver was habitually glum, and nothing had changed him. The passengers were met at the foot of the Temple stairs by Onsofruct herself, her face pallid and her hands moist, who conducted them up the stairs and into the forecourt.

“I’m sure you are not female in the sense our worshippers would understand,” said Onsofruct to Questioner. “But in some cases, appearances are all. Shall we go into the Temple?”

They did so, seating themselves on the lowest bench, the one nearest both the lectern and the effigies of the Hagions. There were worshippers scattered about in the Sanctuary, some kneeling, most of them standing quite still or seated upon cushions. Older women, some very old, sat on the high-backed benches around the sides. Though the air was hazed with dust, the Temple seemed undamaged by the recent tremors.

Questioner scanned the interior of the lofty space, comparing it to the account Ellin had recorded. She saw the book on the lectern, rose and went over to it, flipping the pages with one hand, too rapidly for the others to see anything but a blur. When she returned to sit beside them, she had put into memory the total contents of every page, including the chemical traces left on each page by the fingers and breath of those who had taken time to read it. A separate part of her mind went to work analyzing what it had read and cross-referencing persons to pages.

She smiled at Onsofruct, took out the geological report, keyed it, and turned it so that the Hag could see it.

“Your concern about the stability of Newholme’s crust is well founded.”

Onsofruct stared at her, mouth very slightly open, thinking vaguely that she and D’Jevier had been blown by their own bomblet. Though the Hags had purposefully overstated their fears, it seemed this current instability was living up to their pretended anxieties.

Smoothly, Questioner continued, “What we find most interesting about this is that the geologists can find no reason whatsoever for this increasing instability. There is no significant change in the geothermal variations of the mantle or the core. There is no gross change in the slow movement of the plates or the frictional heat causing up-ellings from mantle through crust. Our technicians tell me, and I find this imaginative, that it is as though the world’s crust was suffering discomposure. A planetary eczema, perhaps?”

Onsofruct smiled, a humorless smile, her eyes focused on some other time or place.

Questioner shook her head with seeming sadness. “Madam, pay attention. Whatever other problems you may have here on Newholme, they pale beside this one. Whatever guilts you are attempting to hide from me, they are small beside this actual danger of destruction. Actual, proximate, and total destruction.”