Courtship Rite

3

NOE, ONE-WIFE OF GAET and Hoemei and Joesai, came out on the stone balcony of the inner courtyard only after dressing. She smiled down at Gaet. Teenae hurried up beside her, a full head shorter than her co-wife, to stare anxiously at Gaet with huge eyes that glowed beneath dark eyebrows.

Bathing his feet in the atrium’s pool, Gaet looked up. Such beauty allowed him to dismiss his anger for a moment: Noe with her hair carefully braided into a helmet of excellence, Teenae with her hair shaved down the middle and flowing like liquid night upon her shoulders; Noe in a soft drape, her breasts scarred in a lazy hontokae, Teenae in casual trousers stitched together out of hundreds of saloptera bellies and hung from a wide belt of the cured hide of her favorite grandfather, her breasts carved in the mathematical spirals that the o’Tghalie often sported.

Gaet was proud that he had found these worthy wives. He had even discovered Kathein, now to be denied them as three-wife. His brothers were shy with women, to their genes’ disgrace.

Noe was a Kaiel — her mother the organizer of trading fleets on the Njarae Sea that tested the might of the Mnankrei, her father architect of the Kaiel Palace.

Teenae he had bought from the o’Tghalie clan when she was still breastless and pliable. He smiled. She had shown too great an interest in mathematical matters and the o’Tghalie men had rid themselves of her, for they brooked no competition from their women, a difficult convention when both sexes share the same genes. Teenae could do sums and products in her head as fast as you could give her numbers, though she had no training. She was a marvelous addition to their family councils — no one was better at uprooting the inconsistencies which crept into their group logic.

“Peace fights with your anger,” said Teenae, watching Gaet, “and your anger laughs.” Her voice was gentle.

Gaet broke into a grin. “How can my dark gloom survive the rising of Stgi and Toe?” The two brightest stars in the Getan sky belonged to the mythology of love and Gaet often used their names affectionately in reference to his two wives.

Joesai came to the balcony, towering beside his wives, his body scarred in intricate designs of unorthodox curve whose meaning lay outside of the conventional symbology. “Ho. What is it?”

“Aesoe has denied us Kathein as three-wife!”

“Cause for anger! What compensation does Aesoe offer?”

“Little. He orders us to wed a coastal barbarian.”

“There are no Kaiel on the coast.”

“True.”

“What clan is she?”

“She is clanless.”

“Aesoe has gall! And why should her genes host in Kaiel bodies?”

“He vouches for her kalothi,” said Gaet.

“There are many ways of surviving! There are many kalothies! Our way of surviving is to organize. Answer my question: why should her genes be allowed to host in Kaiel bodies?” His body loomed above the railing.

“Aesoe is impressed because she has more than two hundred friends personally loyal to her.”

“Impossible!” snorted Joesai.

“… to one as ugly as you!”

Teenae soothed the hand of her largest husband without looking at him. “Is that true,” she asked of Gaet, “that this barbarian commands loyalty so easily?”

“I have no reason to doubt Aesoe.”

“Then the order is logical,” said Teenae. “The Council has deeded our family the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves all the way down to the Njarae Sea. But another clan jealous of the Kaiel rules there. A constituency of two hundred in that location would give us power. We cannot logically refuse this order.”

“You give up Kathein so easily?” prodded Noe.

Tears burst upon the smaller woman’s cheeks and ran down along the ridges of her facial cicatrice. “Not at all easily.” Teenae loved the Kathein she had never seen enough of. When a family was already five in number it was difficult to find a co-spouse who could love and be loved by them all. Some families never grew past five. Kathein could make Joesai laugh. She could make the taciturn Hoemei talk. She could dominate Gaet.

At first Teenae had been afraid of the powerful force that was Kathein and what she might do to the comfortable dynamics of their Five. She had one of the greatest minds on all of Geta. And then one day Kathein had simply blocked out the brothers by piling furniture against the door and the three women had spent from noon to noon together, hugging, talking about men, sharing secrets, and now Teenae’s heart ached with longing when she thought of union with “three-wife”.

“You’re thinking,” said Joesai, returning the squeeze of her hand.

“I am thinking that the Kaiel have chosen the path of power and that the logic of power demands self-sacrifice.”

“Life does not always follow logical trails!” snapped Joesai. “The bonds of loyalty take us over mountains, not around them!”

Teenae backed away a little from this fierce attack. She was the youngest and not yet sure that she belonged in this strange clan. She had been brought up to please men who built abstract models and who became upset if those models were found to conform to some reality. Now she was dealing with people who created reality.

“I love Kathein, too, but Aesoe has my respect as a man of formidable reason.”

“His path is not that logical, my little dark-eyed beetle,” said Gaet. “This woman of the coast has many friends, true, but most of them are of low kalothi and will be eaten during the next famine. Some of them are noseless criminals and will be eaten before the next famine. She lives in our deeded land beside the Njarae, true, but that fact does not make her an asset — she is a fanatical heretic.”

“Aesoe knows this?” blurted Teenae.

“Yes, yes.”

“What is her heresy?” asked Joesai, intrigued.

“She’s an atheist.”

“And what is the God of the Sky?”

“A moon like Scowlmoon, like the moons of Nika.”

“He doesn’t look like a moon in my sky-eye. At a magnification of four He still looks like a brass button with a hint of filigree. Still, she’s not far wrong. Is she aware that a moon can be God? What else does she believe? Did we come full blown out of machines in the Wailing Mountains?” He winked. The brothers had been born from machines in the Wailing Mountains and those so brought to life spoke obliquely of their inhuman origin.

Gaet laughed. “No. Worse than that. She proclaims we have insects for ancestors.”

“My God!” exclaimed Noe. “She doesn’t! She can’t believe that!”

“Which insect?” asked Teenae.

“The maelot.”

“Logical. The maelot is the only four-legged insect with fleshy parts on the outside of its exoskeleton.”

“But a maelot is so small!” protested Noe.

“The largest insects are in the maelot class. The ones who have returned to the sea can be as large as your leg. Wrong ammo acids, though. Wrong replication coding. Not logical. We are closer to the bee than to the maelot. We are even closer to wheat than to the maelot.”

“She has no place for God?” asked Joesai.

“None. She cites some impressive evidence for genetic drift and selective pressures, then supposes that the link between us and the maelot is missing because we evolved from a cannibal form of the maelot that ate its inferior offspring and so left no fossils.”

“Absurd biochemistry! Absurd history! We know the day and the sun-height of the day that the God of the Sky brought us here!” stormed the tallest brother.

“Not quite that precisely. Radioactive dating has its flaws.”

“I speak of the Chants. The Outpacing, verse 107, line 4.”

“Which version?” chided Gaet. He paused, ready to put the critical question to a vote. “Who is in favor of continuing the courtship of Kathein?”

“I,” said Joesai.

The two women nodded.

“But can we disobey Aesoe?” asked Gaet, testing their resolve. “I suggest that I journey to the village called Sorrow and court Oelita.” He winked at Noe. “I may bring back new ways of loving.”

Joesai grinned. “You know too much already for the good of Hoemei and myself. I suggest that I slip into the village called Sorrow. I’ve been thinking that Aesoe cannot object if we court this coastal barbarian by Rite of Trial. She must earn her Place, and no Kaiel finds an easy Place.”

“He will not object to the Couth Rite.”

“I had in mind the Death Rite.”

“That would not please Aesoe. Premature death is a sacrilege if it does not take inferior genes with it.”

“If the Rite does not challenge her with Death how can it be a true test of her kalothi?”

“And if she lives? She may. Aesoe claims her kalothi is of the highest.”

“Ho! He hears that from the Stgal. Who takes seriously the kalothi rating of a village temple? If she lives, Gaet, she will be a worthy three-wife for us.”

“But could she love us after we have tried to kill her?” Gaet kept his game face, but his eyes betrayed mischief. “Such mistrust might mar the harmony of our marriage.”

“That cannot be my problem. To survive she will have to kill me.”

“You will never be popular with women,” sighed Gaet.

“Some women love only the men they defeat.” Teenae’s large eyes were sparkling. “I love Joesai because I always beat him at kolgame.”

“Little larva!” He kissed the shaved streak across the top of her head. “For that insult I’m taking you with me to the coast as my shield!”

“A shield you think I am! I would protect this Oelita against your zeal!”

“Ho. What is this? Already the heretic’s kalothi shows itself to guard her? You both must host common barbarian genes. Good. Then with you by my side I will understand her!”

Teenae turned wildly to Gaet. “He’s not serious?”

“Yes. You must go with him. The Council has given us that land, but we must earn it, and neither you nor Joesai have yet mixed its dirt in the cuts of your feet.”

Noe grabbed her tallest husband by the biceps and forced him against the stone, lifting her face to speak to his. “Even after Aesoe’s command, you still think we will marry Kathein?” She was disturbed.

“Of course we’ll marry Kathein!” snarled Joesai.