Courtship Rite

14

MEN WERE OUTSIDE, guarding the modest house that stood on the highlands overlooking Sorrow’s Temple in an area of difficult streets and stairways and cobblestoned back alleys. Apparently there was no front entrance and so the boy took Teenae to Oelita via the back, down stone stairs to a room that faced the sea through leaded windowpanes of bubbly green glass. The shy guide did not know how to make introductions; he just stood by awkwardly. Oelita was standing. Her eyes met Teenae with such open clarity that Teenae feared she knew everything and that this was a trap. Those wounded wrists!

“Where did you get such a beautiful gown?” she blurted to hide her fear.

“A friend. The oz’Numae weave them in one piece. My friend tells me that the oz’Numae are a small clan who live on the islands of the Drowned Hope Sea.”

“Then it indeed comes from afar! Where Scowlmoon is on the eastern horizon! A long overland trip!”

“You are a stranger to Sorrow,” said Oelita. “You’ve come from afar yourself.”

“Who on Geta is a stranger to sorrow? Really, you’re not a stranger to me. I read your Sayings of a Rule Breaker long ago,” she lied.

“Zeilar gom-n’Orap tells me you wish to publish a small edition of that book.”

Ah, thought Teenae listening to the eagerness of her voice. I’ve chosen the right snare. She reached into a pocket and brought out a fine book on kolgame strategy printed in Kaiel-hontokae. Bait. “This is an example of our craftsmanship.”

“Beautiful,” said Oelita enviously, turning the pages, fingering the needlework of the binding. There was no paper like this among the Stgal, nor was the printing here as crisp.

“It would please me,” continued Teenae, “if you would care to look over my handwritten copy of your manuscript for mistakes. In your growing wisdom you may even wish to incorporate alterations.”

“I’ve been thinking on this matter all night, ever since Zeilar carried the good news of your interest to my attention. But we’ll discuss business later when we know each other better.”

A little girl sneaked into the room and crawled under the table as if children should be heard and not seen. She spoke in a singsong voice. “Toeimi walks to False Start at dawn. He wishes to know if there is anything you want him to bring back.”

Oelita went to her knees, smiling. “There’s a little shop that carries root-spice just below the stalls of the tinkers. There’s no root-spice in Sorrow.” She glanced at her wrists. “It will help the healing. That’s all, my wee bug.” The girl waited impatiently while she received an affectionate head rub, and then crawled out from under the table and ran off. Oelita turned back to Teenae. “Are you in the mood for a game?”

“Kolgame?”

The holy woman smiled. “I’m a kolgame master. You’ll have a hard time. Perhaps chess?”

“Kolgame.”

Teenae watched the game for clues to Oelita’s character from the moment they threw dice to assemble the many-shaped blocks of the game’s territory. A pattern emerged. The heretic seemed to take over territory only to stabilize her food supply so that the Culling condition would occur less frequently. Teenae countered by occupying key command centers. Surprisingly, Oelita shared the burden of the inevitable impasse conditions among her tenants, making it difficult to eat them. This was an unorthodox defense and astonishingly well played. Oelita could see very far into the future — but it was always better to load your weaknesses onto one tenant and grant suicide. Oelita could have won had she been willing to sacrifice more often but she would cede control rather than lose a tenant and so Teenae’s o’Tghalie mind ruthlessly annihilated her by playing on that one weakness.

And Teenae knew then that the Kaiel could conquer her. Threaten someone’s life and Oelita would be set against herself. She was neither willing to kill to save a life nor willing to stand aside while that life was taken. Such contradictions, intensely analyzed, were always at the fulcrum of Teenae’s shattering attack.

Oelita’s weakness reminded Teenae of the teachings of the kembri-Itraiel. Those who are not willing to kill make tempting victims and thus have chosen endless conflict, while those who are willing and able to kill may always choose a peaceful life. Whosoever values his life becomes enmeshed in the game of saving his life.

Teenae’s own thoughts were more mathematical in nature. A strategist might seek to minimize death, but the attempt to eliminate death invited such a misplacement of resources that the only result must be a higher than minimal death rate. Especially if you were playing against Teenae.

“You have a merciless soul,” said Oelita, conceding defeat with a smile.

“Only when I play kol. Otherwise I’m very tenderhearted.”

“Will you stay for dinner?”

Teenae laughed with pleasure. “I shall be delighted to share your time and bread.”

“Could I send a runner out to find your husband? I’m really quite obliged to him for the help he gave me.”

Teenae was suddenly alert. “Joesai cannot. He’s such a man of business. His time is planned dawns ahead. He’s such a wretched man to live with.” Her eyes were twinkling. “I’d die of boredom without my other husbands.”

“I found him very kind.”

Oelita cooked the dinner over a small ember fire in the central stove of her room. She chatted happily with her new friend about the outside world and books. Teenae noticed that every mention of the Kaiel made her wary.

“You’ve never been to Kaiel-hontokae, have you?” Teenae asked, probing.

“I wouldn’t dare. The Kaiel priests would attack me for heresy. I wouldn’t enjoy the game and they wouldn’t get their coin’s weight; I’d make a tough Judgment Feast.”

“They’re not like that!”

“They’re so sure they are right, so sure of their destiny!”

“But a person who is sure that he is right feels no need to persecute,” said Teenae gently. “It is only those who are not sure that they are right who have a need to harass heretics.”

“So you think it would be safe?”

“Kaiel-hontokae is the one city on all of Geta where there is no fear of dissent.”

“But they are bloodthirsty! They eat children! It’s revolting. I want nothing to do with them!”

“The Stgal ate your children and you have courage enough to preach to them,” said Teenae logically.

Oelita winced as if she had been stabbed. “Pouring oil on yourself and striking a flint to illuminate the darkness of a strange city is a futile gesture.”

“I know Kaiel-hontokae. I would guarantee your safety.”

“I should go,” Oelita thought pensively. She was recalling how much trouble her foolish rage against the Kaiel at Nonoep’s farm had already cost her. “You’ve probably heard that the Mnankrei are after my life. But,” she added angrily, “I should stay and fight, too. I’m afraid.”

“Let me tell you something else. You have influence here. The Kaiel are hungry for influence in this region as you well know. They would bargain with you.”

“What could they offer me? Would they stop their butchering of helpless babies?” she asked bitterly.

“They could offer you time, protection. How long will the Stgal last? It’s a changing world. Your books have made friends in Kaiel-hontokae.”

“I’ll sleep on it. You’ll tell me more about your mysterious city. We hear only the wildest rumors.”

The smell of the food attracted curious children from the neighborhood. Once inside they played with Teenae and crawled all over Oelita. She finally shooed them away but at the door was greeted by a noseless man who had chosen that moment to return one of her pamphlets. The two women talked with him for a while, debating theological points, and then he left.

“You’re so at ease with criminals.”

“He’s harmless!” exclaimed Oelita impatiently. “He stole a loaf of bread from the first harvest after the last famine. A loaf of bread! Have you ever seen a dangerous criminal? The dangerous ones get to make their Contribution-to-the-Race in a hurry!”

“He loves you. You give him hope,” Teenae retreated.

“He needs hope, poor boy. Will you have broth with your meal? It’s profane but harmless. I’m careful that way.”

“A small cup.”

Idly the discussion came back to printing Oelita’s manuscripts. She was eager and trying not to show it. There were other books she considered more important than Sayings. She left her cooking to fetch her newest work from a messy pile and in her excitement to show Teenae the pages she almost toppled her insect boxes with a brisk swing of her arm.

“It’s such a clutter here. I’ve just moved and I have less space.”

“You have quite an insect collection.”

“My father’s.”

Teenae examined the fine dissection kit and microscope that had been used to draw and classify the insects. It sat beside a rock collection.

“Is this glass?” Teenae was so startled by one of the stones that she forgot the manuscript in her hands.

“It’s too hard for glass! And it is the wrong crystalline shape for a diamond. I don’t think a diamond ever grows that large.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I collected stones as a child. That one I found while swimming. It was just there in the sea overgrown with weed and I took it.”

“The sea?”

“My father taught me to swim. It’s not dangerous.”

“Joesai says such crystals contain the Frozen Voice of God.”

“If we put it on the fire will God come out by the hearth and tell us stories?” chided Oelita.

“He talks about genes,” said Teenae defensively.

“Like a priest when he’s drunk on whisky?”

“I’ve never seen it happen.”

Oelita laughed. “But you’ve heard about it. Do you think that rock in the sky ever spoke to anyone?”

I’m sure of it. “I don’t know,” said Teenae to avoid controversy. She did not know what to do with the manuscript that Oelita had suddenly forgotten.

“We’re such a superstitious people!” the Gentle Heretic raved. “There is a rational explanation for everything. We could chant that God brought the insects — but you can trace how they changed to meet challenge until they fill every niche where life can exist. My father found life in the driest desert! He found, embedded in stones, the shells of insects that don’t even exist today. Do you know how long it would take for that kind of stone to form from clay soft enough to trap an insect? Eons! And the Chants say that the Race just appeared here in a puff of smoke at noon practically yesterday!”

“There are no human fossils.”

“We make soup out of bones!” exclaimed Oelita, setting a meal before her guest, beside her newest manuscript.

“My family collects bones.”

“We’ll find human fossils. You’ll see. No one has ever looked! And they haven’t looked because they haven’t dared! And we have found bone tools.”

“Recent ones.”

“Teenae! We’ve only been a tool-making insect recently. There weren’t many of us before. It’s been a rapid evolution.”

“Because we ate the less intelligent ones.” Teenae had wanted to bring up this contradiction in Oelita’s philosophy. Oelita condemned cannibalism while claiming that the vitality of the Race derived from cannibalism.

“Yes,” came the defiant answer, “because we ate the less intelligent ones! People always get me wrong. They say I don’t believe we should follow the path of kalothi. I believe in kalothi! It created us out of insects and it is our destiny. We haven’t stopped evolving and I don’t want us to stop evolving. But we don’t have to eat each other to evolve! There are other ways. I can think of other ways.”

A long pause ensued while a thoughtful Teenae nourished herself. “What ways would you suggest?”

“If we women got together and only had our children by men of great kalothi, that would be one way. Those of us, like me, who have defective genes can decide not to breed. That’s another way.”

They argued while they ate, but Teenae never tried to win. Oelita’s ignorance in too many fields was too appalling to make it worthwhile to argue logically. There was a God. That fact was so obvious with the proper background. Without the proper background one could only have faith. Oelita had neither knowledge nor faith. She was an ignorant, unsophisticated, self-educated country girl. Teenae liked her but was rather horrified at the thought of being married to her. Aesoe was a mad dreamer. When she had Oelita in Kaiel-hontokae she would convince Aesoe that there was a better way than marriage.

Oh Kathein, I love you so!

The sun was long gone before the two women were talked out. They cleaned up from the meal. Teenae read part of the new manuscript. She accepted a small gift from Oelita and gave one in return, exacting with it the promise that they would meet again for supper.

“Soon!”

“Soon,” smiled Oelita.

Crashing waves raised by the wind brought salt spray all across the village. The blackness was full, for Scowlmoon was dark at sunset. Only the starlight illuminated her pathway home. She was going to relish her triumph over Joesai. She had begun the first steps in a real negotiation and she felt elated!

Fingers took her from behind over the mouth, muffling her protests while two other men clamped vise-like grips upon her fiercely struggling body.