Wedding (21 page)

“So instead of inherited positions,” Josh
said, “you think it’s better to have a ruling class made up of
those who have acquired money?”

“Now, look here,” the man said. “That’s not
at all what I said.”

Eleonora broke in with her clear, cold voice.
“That’s exactly what you said, whether you care to admit it or
not.”

The man goggled at Eleonora’s blunt words but
didn’t retreat. A sort of merchant, tenant in one of Aranyi’s
villages, he made his living traveling to Eclipsia City and back
for the trade fairs, a middleman for the farmers and artisans who
didn’t want the trouble and expense of the arduous journey. He had
become wealthy without owning land, an anomaly in this rural world,
and his situation had made him bold to the point of
belligerence.

“As you wish, my lady,” he addressed Eleonora
with feigned deference. “All I’m saying is, the Terran system has
some real advantages that would benefit most of us on Eclipsis.
Only the ’Graven stand to lose their privileged status. Of course
you resist it. I’m a guest in this house, so that’s as much as I’ll
say, but truth will out.”

“And if your truth isn’t recognized as soon
as you wish,” Josh said, still amiable, but with a hint of steel in
his voice, “then you’ll use whatever weapons you can get your hands
on, even something as deadly as Eris. War and devastation to make a
better world, is that it?”

“My lord,” the merchant responded with
automatic respect to Josh’s commanding tone, “I already said that
using the Eris weapon was a mistake. But these so-called rebels
still had a valid point—reminding you ’Graven that the rest of us
won’t be silent much longer.”

Other people jumped in with arguments back
and forth. The man was content, it seemed, to have loosed a
firestorm, and saw no further need to defend his viewpoint. Only
when Sir Nicholas bellowed that as far as he could see, the rebels
simply wanted to use the weapon to displace the ’Graven and become
the new rulers themselves, was the merchant moved to reenter the
fray.

“You don’t see it,” he said, “because you
stay away from the city and you listen to what the ’Graven tell
you. But the fact is the Terrans have a lot of things they could
teach us, things most of us would be glad to learn. Instead of
restricting them to their one little sector, we ought to be
encouraging them. They’ve offered many times to help us with
projects—roads and power plants, mining and manufacturing—and
people like Margrave Aranyi always prevent it. And, forgive me,” he
added, with a general nod in my direction, and Eleonora and Josh’s,
“but while it’s in his interest to keep things as they are, he’s
going to have to accept that other people have their own interests
that will not be thwarted forever.”

Once again I was moved by curiosity and
indignation to jump in with both feet. “Is that really what you
want? Power plants and factories and mines, roads choked with
traffic? Even if you don’t own any land yourself, you still benefit
from the condition of the land around you. What will you do when
the air is so polluted it makes you sick, and the water isn’t safe
to drink, and the forests have all been cut down to make toilet
paper?”

The merchant chuckled at my vehemence. “I see
you’ve been taken in by all the ’Graven propaganda. But I’ve spoken
to men in Eclipsia City, men who were born and raised on Terra, and
they’ve told a very different story. There are laws to prevent all
those things you’re so worried about. And look around.” He moved
his arm in a stiff arc intended to signify the larger world outside
the room. “It would be hundreds of years before we had to worry
about that. All this unspoiled land. Men who live hand-to-mouth now
could live like lords, just from selling land rights to Terrans.
Their children and grandchildren could be wealthy without having to
work, and all we’d be giving up is a few hundred acres of useless
mountain land here and there.”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s how they did it on
Terra, too. Everybody wants to live like lords, only they call it
middle class. But it’s the same old story—a few rich people, who
are the lords without titles, and everybody else. Except that the
Terran lords don’t have any sense of responsibility. When people
can’t earn enough money to buy what they need, and they have no way
to grow or make their own things, the Terran businessman-lord won’t
help.”

My sad certitude made the man suspicious.
“Mistress,” he said, “anyone would think you had lived on Terra,
the way you talk. How do you expect me to believe all this
nonsense?”

Sir Karl Ormonde leaned in, smug and
expectant, poised for the kill. I looked for help, remembering
Clara Galloway’s kind words and Lucretia Ladakh’s sympathy of last
night, and realized that Eleonora was the only other woman here.
Like every activity on Eclipsis and in the world of ’Graven, even
something as basic as after-supper chitchat was segregated by sex.
Eleonora, accustomed to the freedom and status of a sibyl, had
joined the men’s group rather than bore herself with the domestic
trifles she knew would be the subjects among the women.

Josh came to my rescue. “I told her,” he
said. “What Amalie says is incorrect only in its understatement.
Terra is a ruin of a world. Those laws you mentioned were put in
place only after so much damage was done to the environment that it
became unlivable.”

The merchant looked doubtful. “If it’s
unlivable,” he asked, “how come there are so many live
Terrans?”

“Unlivable to us,” I said. “Nobody took any
of it seriously on Terra, either, until it was too late. They
actually changed the climate of the whole world with their industry
and pollution. The layer of air that protected people from the sun
was burned off, the temperature went up, the polar ice melted and
the glaciers, the sea level rose—”

“Keep going,” the merchant said. “We could
use a little of that here. Warmer temperatures, melting ice.” He
laughed as I enumerated Terran disasters that sounded very
appealing in the cool Eclipsian summer.

I tried again. “How would you like a world so
hot that the sun burned your skin, gave you a fatal disease if you
didn’t cover yourself? Where you had to pay money for every drop of
clean water? Where the air is full of soot and dust, and you must
breathe it into your lungs from the moment you’re born until you
die?”

The merchant guffawed. “Children’s stories.
Ogres and monsters to frighten us.”

“Why do you think Terrans have gone out all
over the universe?” Josh continued his argument as if there had
been no interruption. “To help you, Master Merchant of Aranyi, by
building a paved road just so you can travel more easily to
Eclipsia City, and putting in a power plant so you can enjoy
electricity? Think about it. Why should they care about you? All
they want is more virgin territory to exploit now that they’ve
wrecked their own world.”

“Oh,” the merchant said, “I see I can’t win
against a roomful of ’Graven. All I’m saying is, people want more
than you’re willing to give them, and your clever arguments won’t
stop people from wanting it. The rebels went about it in a bad way,
using that weapon that brought the ’Graven together against them,
but their message is real.”

Yes
, I thought,
I know it is
. I
couldn’t keep up my side any longer without betraying my Terran
origins. And the facts were unassailable. Human nature is what it
is. Eclipsians, the mass of them, are poor. It’s not the desperate,
hopeless poverty of Terran cities. It’s just the everyday,
hard-working austerity of the farmer and herdsman, the woodsman,
even the millers and the blacksmiths. In isolation, people hadn’t
known their lives were especially harsh; they were unaware of all
they lacked that Terrans take for granted. Once modern Terrans
arrived and tried to recreate their home environment, it was
impossible for ordinary Eclipsians to remain content with their
meager sufficiency. They hungered after the luxuries they had seen
in Eclipsia City, or heard of, greatly magnified, from those who
had been there, willing to pay a price in what they had in such
abundance—clean air, water, and above all, independence. They had
no idea these things were finite, or might be worth something in
themselves.

And who’s to say what the relative merits are
of toiling at manual labor every day in a healthy environment,
wearing one suit of clothes until it wears out, always with the
chance of bad weather to wipe out years of labor, or death or
disease taking life young, compared to working long hours in an
office, with the pressure of deadlines and an extended commute,
drinking bottled water and getting lung cancer from the air, trying
to earn enough to buy all the things required in the modern world,
driven by the economy’s need for ever-increasing consumption? But
you have electricity and running water, indoor plumbing and holonet
entertainment, a car and—

Amalie
, Dominic thought to me,
we’re ready for you
. He spoke to Stefan next, an echo of his
deep voice sounding faint in the overheard communion.

“Excuse me,” I said as I stood up. “Margrave
Aranyi is calling me.” Never had I been so glad to leave a
room.

“Ah, her master’s voice,” the merchant said.
“That’s one thing we can teach the Terrans. Their women don’t know
their place. Do you know they actually wear breeches? I’ve seen
them, strutting about unashamed, showing everything, bossing men
around.”

I turned, opened my mouth, saw Stefan out of
the corner of my eye grinning with a boy’s enjoyment of a fight,
and controlled myself.

“Yes,” Eleonora said in her coldest voice,
“you’d think they believed in equality.” She paused for effect.
“Didn’t you just say how much you valued it?”

“For men, my lady,” the merchant said.
“Surely, as a sibyl, you understand the importance of maintaining
the difference between the sexes.”

“Oh yes,” Eleonora said. “I see it all very
clearly.”

I left before the real fighting began, Stefan
close behind me. “How do you know so much about Terra?” he asked.
“Or were you just making it up to keep him from having it all his
own way?”

“Didn’t Dominic tell you?” I asked.

“That you lived with Terrans?” Stefan said.
“Sure. But you sounded like you had actually lived on Terra
itself.”

I checked cautiously as we walked up the
stairs to the bedrooms. Stefan had learned his lessons well in his
six months of seminary training. All he had to do was explore a
little, in one of my many unguarded moments, to learn the truth,
but such unmannerly conduct had apparently never crossed his young
mind. He had accepted Dominic’s bowdlerized explanation of my
origins, and looked no further.

“Dominic would be proud of you,” Stefan
added, “the way you defended our world.”

“I just said what I thought,” I said, guilty
to be winning praise for honesty with such a great lie behind
me.

“That’s a good way to get into trouble,”
Stefan said, as if he had had experience. At his age, I imagined,
he had known lots of that kind of trouble.

“Now that you’re an adult,” I said, “you
won’t get into so much trouble. At least a different kind. And you
were smart to keep out of that stupid conversation.”

“My father always says to let windbags like
that merchant blow themselves out,” Stefan said, not taking credit
even for prudent silence. “Once they’re finished, they’ve run out
of air, they think they’ve won, and nobody has to hear it anymore.”
He shrugged. “Anyway, every time I tried to think of what to say,
you and Josh said it for me. And then I’d think what Dominic would
say—”

“I know,” I said, sharing a laugh. “Not
something you could say in front of guests. But didn’t you think
some of his arguments were valid?” I was curious where his
sympathies lay, a younger son with no prospects.

“You’re joking!” Stefan looked down at me,
worried, as so often with the young, that he had failed to catch an
adult’s meaning, answering me thoughtfully when he saw I had not
been speaking over his head. “No, I think things are better as they
are. I see plenty of Terrans, too, you know.” In the Royal Guards,
he explained, cadets patrol the streets of Eclipsia City under the
command of junior officers, keeping order in the areas where
Eclipsians and Terrans mingle, a more trusted presence to the
natives than the foreign occupiers. “And that merchant may think
Terrans are perfect, but he can’t really know the truth. Terrans
don’t think like men.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, “ ‘don’t think
like men?’ Do you mean like women? Or not human, a different
species?”

“Dominic says that’s the same thing.” Stefan
repeated his lover’s joke, realized his mistake and apologized.
“Dominic sometimes leads patrols himself, of squadrons made up only
of gifted cadets. And he has us use our
crypta
on the
Terrans we encounter, as part of our training.” He waited to see if
I reacted with predictable female disapproval, saw my mood of
surprised but friendly interest, and continued. “Dominic says it’s
wrong in general, but that it’s more important to know the enemy.
And we don’t use our gifts actively, just listening.”

After I had digested this rather alarming
fact, I was moved to ask Stefan to give me a better idea of what he
meant.

He considered his answer, stopping in the
corridor while we talked. “Terrans are rich; that merchant wasn’t
lying. Sometimes I think I’d like to be rich like that. But all
they ever seem to do is worry about making more money. You must
have noticed it too, when you lived with them, unless you were too
polite to listen in.”

“Yes,” I said, “I noticed something like
that.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that was probably
because it was all I’d known. What Stefan saw as a limited outlook,
I had seen as the common, inevitable lot of adulthood. “But is that
your only objection to Terrans? I mean, it’s not anything to aspire
to, but is it so different from here, worried about how the harvest
will turn out or if you’ll have enough wool from the shearing to
trade for a good packhorse in the market?”