Courtship Rite

29

HOEMEI LEFT THE communications room and aimlessly wandered about the golden and alabaster luxury of the Palace. No additional word from Soebo. Not a word about Joesai or Teenae for days now. Somehow he needed a confirmation of their deaths so that he could quiet this restless need to do something. Noe was threatening to march for the northern coast and gather a fleet from her mother’s allies and take it to Soebo. Such a path seemed to invite disaster. Hoemei saw only burning ships and Mnankrei crowds in elated Judgment Feast of hapless Kaiel sailors who were not sailors.

He wandered until he felt some hunger pangs at the smell of food wafting from the great dining room which kept twenty cooks busy. It was a room where Kaiel met and where Kaiel decided. They were a clan that enjoyed eating while they worked.

In the hall, Aesoe hailed him from the great wooden table where only the most powerful dared sit.

He was with Kathein. The shock hit Hoemei.

To avoid them his eyes shifted to the small Liethe woman. Aesoe’s Liethe were as cold as a northern river dammed behind spills of ice until they smiled at you in a way that made you feel as if you had just met the love of your life. Hoemei had shunned these women like poison, though that was difficult to do because Aesoe was a great socializer and liked to share them as if they were some fine liqueur to bestow upon his closest friends — but for a price. Hoemei had never liked the price: total loyalty to Aesoe.

The Liethe’s blue and flecked eyes were watching him boldly. Once he had disliked these women as ostentatious examples of Aesoe’s power but he had lost his dislike the first time one of the Liethe — he could never tell them apart — had served him tea and flattered him outrageously. He never tired of watching them dance, as they often did at Aesoe’s parties. Some said they were very intelligent, but graceful as they might be they were far too servile for Hoemei’s taste. This one was serving both Aesoe and Kathein — and she ate with them as if she were their equal.

Kathein and Aesoe.

He felt bitter. He would have avoided Aesoe now, but he was with Kathein. The temptation was irresistible. She had not spoken to him since Aesoe had made his command. Now she would have to speak to him.

He went to the table. She pretended to be in animated conversation with the Prime Predictor and only when Hoemei arrived did she look up and nod. He nodded back. They said nothing.

“Kathein was telling me of an interesting communications trick she has between her toes. She wants to bounce long heat waves off the moon.”

“Devious mirror magic,” said Hoemei with frigid politeness.

“No, no,” Kathein said stiffly. “It is just like the rayvoice only the waves are shorter, more difficult to generate. We’re working on it.”

The Liethe woman radiated at Hoemei’s side, glancing at him, offering him a choice of pastes for the hard crackers. It gave him a good excuse to ignore Kathein. The moment he smiled at this strange unmarked creature she spoke. “The baked spei is wonderful right now if you’re hungry. That’s what you’re smelling. I’ll bring you some.” She waited.

“Honey, a jug of mead, too,” said Aesoe.

She touched Hoemei lightly with her fingertips, then withdrew. “He didn’t ask if you wanted mead. They have juices today.”

“Mead is fine.”

When he looked back at Kathein she was searching him anxiously. “Have you heard from Joesai and Teenae?” she asked formally.

“No reason to think they aren’t dead.” His bluntness was deliberately cruel.

Kathein shrunk into herself. “I told him to be careful.”

“There was never any hope for Joesai,” said Aesoe solemnly.

Hoemei could not answer. Tears were brimming in his eyes, more because he had been cruel to Kathein than for Joesai. It took him a while to regain control of himself. Aesoe made no further comment. Kathein was hard put to suppress her suddenly unleashed upset.

“So tell me about bouncing voices off the moon. What will the far side of Geta do for conversation? I suppose you’re not speaking to them, too?” He hated his sarcasm as soon as he had spoken it.

Honey returned with the food, and Hoemei used her attention as an excuse to say nothing while Kathein chattered inanely about technical matters. All this time the Liethe woman never lifted her eyes from Hoemei and, finally, when he had finished eating she spoke to Aesoe. “He is leaden with grief, Aesoe prime-Kaiel. If it pleases you I shall take care of him.”

“No! Let me talk to him. I’ll go with him,” said a stricken Kathein.

“You will stay here,” said Aesoe.

Hoemei left them abruptly, but he was followed by the flowing Liethe. That annoyed him. “I didn’t ask for your presence.”

“But I asked for yours.” The se-Tufi Who Walks in Humility spoke softly. “I’ve noticed you. I’ve wanted to be alone with you for years,” she lied. Then, with gentle authority, “To your room, creche child, before you fall apart.”

He was mystified that when she uttered the words “creche child” in that light tinkle of her voice, waves of grief touched him and he had to fight to keep phantom losses at bay. In his room she lit a single candle. Her presence recalled his childhood dream fantasies of women. Some such woman had leaned over him that terrible Night of the Crooked Trial so long ago. She turned to him and he did not know the name of the year.

“It is not all right that they are dead, is it?” she asked, putting no qualifier on who was dead.

He saw creche mates dead, and funerals, and the dissection tables at the creche, and Sanan, his brave brother, dying in the desert when he was a boy. Hoemei wept. Only when he calmed would she speak, and then only to probe some horror, or to lift a black corpse from some sewer, or to make him weep again.

He talked about his family, first incoherently and then with calm passion, and then he had to laugh. He was remembering what a poor sport Teenae was when she lost at kolgame. Somewhere in all this Humility moved away so that when he finally noticed her again, he found her sitting serenely on a cushion with her elbows on the floor, looking at him, listening solemnly.

“Tell me,” he said with genuine liking for this creature, “why does a man get the impression when you make eye contact with him, that he has just met the love of his life?”

“Because he can’t have me,” she teased.

“Don’t you ever feel that you’ve met the love of your life?”

“Why should I? I can have any man I want. How’s my sad man right now?” She was smiling directly into his eyes.

“I think I’m all right. I’ve been brooding for days in an abyss. You’d better get back to Aesoe. Thanks.”

“I’m staying. Aesoe thinks you need a vacation from your work. So do I.”

“Which of the three are you? I always get you mixed up. Aesoe claims he can tell the difference.”

“I’m the frivolous one. I’m easy to arouse, curious. I’m curious about you. Aesoe doesn’t think I’m intelligent, but I’m much smarter than he thinks I am. I just need someone like you to bring it out in me. Do you want to do something frivolous?”

“You’re bringing out the shyness in me.”

She slipped over so she could hold his leg. “I’m shy, too. Men don’t know that about bold women. They think that just because we boldly go into a man’s quarters where no woman has ever dared go before, that we aren’t scared to death.”

“I sincerely don’t think you are frightened of anything.”

“Oh yes I am. I’m scared of what you’re going to do when I sing a lullabye in your ear.” Gracefully she rose, slipping fingers into his hair, her body touching his, her mouth next to his cheek. She sang in almost a whisper:

She kissed his ear. “I’m full of nonsense. You have funny ears. Did you know that Aesoe says you have a magic ear and can hear anything anywhere on the planet? Is that so? Is this a little magic ear I’m kissing?”

“Almost.”

“Aesoe says it’s all secret.”

Hoemei laughed. “He thinks of strategic advantage. I don’t think secrecy is a big help. My own prediction is that the Kaiel will be much more powerful once the secret is out and all can build a magic ear.”

“Only the Kaiel can do that.”

“No. It’s easy. It takes pieces of wire and bits of glass all hooked up in a magical way that anyone can learn, no more. I’ll show you.”

“Can you really talk to faraway places?” Humility was impressed.

“Sure.”

“To Soebo?”

“Especially to Soebo.”

“You don’t really know what happened to Joesai and Teenae, do you? They might still be alive. I could find out if I could talk to Soebo. Aesoe won’t let me so we’d have to do it in secret. Can you keep a secret?”

“You have contacts in Soebo?” Hoemei was suddenly keenly interested.

“Of course. There are Liethe hives everywhere. We’ve been concubines for the Mnankrei since long before I was born. We get to ride in their biggest ships. Their women don’t like us but we are used to that. So we know everything that happens in Soebo except what the women are gossiping about.”

Hoemei smuggled her into the communications room and placed a call to his Soebo spy group. After he had made contact he put the round earvoices over Humility’s head and she listened open-mouthed to the crackling speech. When she talked, the ear-voice answered her! She instructed her voice friend in the details of a cryptic code with which he could contact the Liethe hive. She told him that it would be enough to get him the information he wanted. Soebo promised to call back in a day or two.

Humility was very curious about the electron demons that danced in the soft red glow of the sealed jars. She was appalled by the complexity of the strange machines and poked about in them until she received a shock that made her jerk away in surprise. “You said I could make one of those,” she pouted. “It doesn’t like me. It kicked me! And I was just petting it!”