Courtship Rite

33

THE TEMPLE OF Human Destiny was dominated by a circular window of blazing glasses that illustrated the backward-facing mind and the forward-facing eyes. It glowed like a lunar overlord in the dimness above the gaming dens where citizens played their wits against the priestly measures. Oelita thought the Kaiel temples obscene, profligate, grandiose compared with Stgal elegance. Noe, who had brought her here, showed a delight in overwhelming bigness that probably stemmed from an architect daughter’s pride in the sheer ability to over-engineer. Still, the Temple was staggering.

Oelita released her man from his cell, comforting him. He was a guileless fellow who feared he had done her grievous wrong. She thanked him for not letting the crystal come to harm. She gave him money and told him where he could stay to await further word from her.

“Noe!”

A painted temple courtesan, roguish in his sensual outfit, rushed through the relaxed crowd and spoke to Noe with the gaiety of an out-of-touch friend. He had introduced Gaet to Noe when she was working here, consoling those who claimed Ritual Suicide and entertaining those who merely came to the Temple to practice their wits.

“How’s the game?” she asked in the wry way she talked to people who never changed.

“The girls seem to prefer chess,” he lamented.

“You’re not losing your ways?”

“I need new colors, new makeup.”

Noe took his hand and brought him with them to share cakes — for a moment. They talked of books Oelita had never read, and of Saeb’s astonishing rendition of the Commandment Chant they were to hear tonight.

It was dizzying for a coastal villager to adjust to an exuberant people who were consciously building a city that they intended to be the dominant intellectual and ruling center of Geta. The loose, almost revealing gown Noe had insisted that Oelita wear was stylish but she had never worn such a thing before in public. She found their religious pragmatism refreshing — but shocking to coastal ears — and it frightened her that she, who had always taken such a delight in shocking people, sounded conservative to herself when her conversation was interlaced with these people’s easygoing disrespect for the temples they were totally committed to uphold.

Oelita was curious to visit the meat market. No such place existed in Sorrow. There the only meat was given away at the Temple when it was freshly available, or one waited to be invited to a funeral. Here it was sold by the temples at atrocious prices. Noe bought a small jar containing two pickled baby tongues. For a moment, remembering her own twins, Oelita hated Noe with a violent passion. Then she calmed herself. She had long ago learned that the way to tackle such widespread customs was to accept them utterly until she knew the very source of the thought patterns that created the custom. Only then did she have a chance of exorcising it.

God’s Will. That’s what they would say. In the end she would have to destroy their God. He was at the root of all this evil. They thought: I am not killing and eating these children; God is eating them and I am merely the arms and mouth He lacks. She shuddered.

Oelita asked to see the back room where the meat was prepared. She spoke to the butchers gently, never showing her mind, searching theirs. They were jovial about their task as they prepared the carcass of a “machine,” the name the Kaiel seemed to have given the genetic monster-women who bore the babies for the creches.

“Ye covet a block o’ that thigh? Cost ye an arm and a leg, it will.” He laughed.

“Was she very old?”

“This un, ye’ll have’t’ boil. She mebe 30-40 chile down the road.”

These Kaiel machines matured sexually when a normal child was just learning to walk and hosted their first embryo immediately. Their second batch was always twins, and their third, when they were fully grown, triplets. Once they were as old as a normal woman would be at the first flowering weight of full breasts, the machines were worn out and ready for butchering. They were sterile, and reproduced by cloning.

Oelita left hurriedly and returned to the Temple where Noe was now engaged in a game of batra with an old gentleman, testing the quickness of her sight. The machines mainly supplied the creches but Noe, Oelita thought, would be the kind of woman who would use a surrogate mother to carry her own children. She’d have a batch of maybe six and keep the finest of the lot for herself after careful tests had sent the remaining five to a temple abattoir. How was it possible to reach a woman like that?

When Oelita expressed some curiosity about the “machine” wombs, Noe took her out for more exploration. This wife of her lovers was inexhaustible. She walked Oelita halfway across the city to a small sacristy hidden behind iron gates. A friend of Gaet finally agreed to take them underground.

Pillowed and pampered, the sacred object looked like another superstition to Oelita. Its frame was crusted and bent. Had a colony of sea creatures been building their apartment around some piece of flotsam that had later been fished from the waves, then crushed, and burned?

“Another sacred rock,” she said, a touch of irony in her voice.

“You’ve heard of the Arant heresy?” asked Noe.

“Not the Arant side of the story.”

“They claimed we were created by machines.”

“As logical an origin as falling out of a star.”

“This is such a machine. It’s old, old. It is a non-biological womb.”

Oelita only smiled.

Noe did not seem offended. She was well aware that the object was not impressive. “Who knows what it was once like? It was recovered many generations later from a building burned and razed during the Judgment. Joesai wanted you to see it. He thinks your education is lacking.”

“Joesai is a superstitious man.”

“He accepts the word of many great priests. You’ve heard of Zenei?”

“No.”

“Zenei deduced the function of this machine from its remnants, no easy task. The carbon-based components have all been burned away.”

“Fortunately for Zenei.” Oelita was not hiding her skepticism.

“We learned how to duplicate the function of this machine.”

“No you didn’t. Your machine is no more than a genetically modified woman.”

“The end result is the same,” replied Noe stiffly.

“Then you follow the Arant? You don’t believe in the God of the Sky?”

The needling was successful. “The Arant were wrong!” Noe blazed. “They denied Original Conception. Even with such a machine, conception is necessary. We know God exists because this machine was part of Him.”

“Is She dead and Her parts scattered — a Finger here, a Womb there?” Oelita asked wryly.

Noe sighed. Was there no quick way to deal with ignorance?

They returned to the central hustle of Kaiel-hontokae, their conversation reduced to talk of men and sex. As the red twilight faded, dim alcohol torches were lit and Noe and friends decided it was time to wander toward the Chanting. They led Oelita past stalls where anything might be had. There were artists who showed their work and willingly carved into your flesh the design of your choice. A cabinet worker planed and polished while selling, potter joked with rugmaker, and og’Sieth waited to make you ornament or instrument out of metal. Oelita broke away to watch a craftsman building electron jars by ghoulish yellow electric light. Noe and her laughing male friend had to pull her away.

They arrived at the amphitheater before the Chanting began and seated themselves beneath the stars on benches carved from bedrock. The crowd joked. Men flirted with women they had never met before, and women teased men. Children were hushed. Newcomers arrived to display their finery.

“Look. See where Saeb enters! He’s here tonight!” Saeb doffed his helmet and smiled for those who had noticed him.

A party entered from below, taking honored seats. Instruments piped a welcome. “Aesoe’s group,” whispered Noe, pointing him out to Oelita. “Your patron. You could have no stronger ally! I have been commanded to introduce you to him tonight.”

Oelita craned her neck. He did not seem imposing at this distance. “Who are those women he is with?”

“Which ones?”

“They wear veils.”

“Those are only his Liethe whores. One of them has her teeth into our Hoemei.”

The music began like a faint whistling storm, building on piping reed instruments. The crowd hushed. Slowly eight male and eight female Kaiel, carrying torches and humming as does the wind blowing over the plains, ascended from two narrow underground tunnels. The procession moved by step and pause, step and pause. They were dressed only in cape and headplumes but the body designs that crawled in the flickering fire fully clothed them. All threw their torches simultaneously into the central pit, causing an explosion of igniting flames. As if by signal, eighty children flowed onto the stage, their bodies covered to hide their undecorated nakedness. Each wore a mask-piece which contained resonant chambers and flaring beaks to distort and amplify the voice.

Inexorably the Commandment Chant began its recitation of the laws of genetics — but in an astonishingly different form than anything Oelita had ever heard in theater. Throats swooped and boomed and danced in alien harmony, sometimes to soft effect, sometimes building on a rising timbre that shook the amphitheater with inhuman tone.

“What in the Sky?” asked Oelita so dumbfounded she willingly exposed her ignorance.

“Saeb has put God’s Voice into the children.”

“But how does he do that!”

“Don’t ask about it! Just listen!”

The celebrating went on all through the brief night. Noe moved her party to a temple that was nothing compared to the Temple of Human Destiny and only a third as large as the Stgal Temple at Sorrow. But it was intimate and quiet in its glory. Noe told Oelita that this was where Aesoe had commanded them to meet him.

He was already there. He waved his people away to allow Oelita access to his table and immediately set her up for a game of chess. Being senior to her he took God’s side, white, and opened with a classic Farmer to Child’s four. He smiled and waited. She moved. He followed her move instantly.

Noe settled down on cushions beside Oelita. Their male courtesan had been joined by a woman of the temples with shaved stripes along both sides of her head and platinum rings in the flesh of her right arm. Her eyes never left Aesoe. One of the Liethe appeared silently with juice for Oelita and disappeared. Aesoe’s party watched. Of them all, Oelita knew only Kathein.

Every move was received with attention. There were horrified comments when Oelita let her Child run free without protection of Black Queen or Horse. She ate both of Aesoe’s Priests and blocked him with a reach of her Smith. He counterplayed deftly. She had to hide her Child. It was the White God against the Black Queen. She was expecting to lose. Was this not the Prime Predictor who had the reputation for being able to see a hundred moves into the future? But she trapped him.

“Check,” she said, speaking her first word to Aesoe.

Aesoe laughed. It was checkmate. He waited for her to eat the White Child as was the custom — but she would not. That was her custom.

“Come,” he said. “I would speak to you.”

It was near dawn, and he insisted on taking her up to the Room of Ritual Suicide to watch the vast red circle of rising Getasun transform the ovoids of the Kaiel Palace into molten iron. Oelita waited. It was not right for her to speak first, but she was content to observe.

“You will be dealing with Hoemei. That is my wish. Drive a hard bargain with him. Drive a ruthless bargain and I will back you.”

“I want Scowlmoon, polished to a bronze sheen, for my morning mirror.”

Aesoe laughed. “You will not get it.”

“You only have a city with marvels of architecture, wealth, and land to give?”

“And very little of that is mine. I can’t change the religion of my people, for instance.”

“What if your wealth is not great enough to buy me?”

“Then you must ask the Mnankrei for their wealth.”

So much for that. She changed the subject. “It seems to me that you sent for me.”

“No. You came.”

“But you’ve been interested before I came.”

“And chose the wrong vessel to contact you! May Joesai die with no one to honor his flesh!”

“The first thing I will ask of you is that Joesai not be harmed.”

“So it is true what they say about you, that you collect the wretches of the world!” He laughed. “I give you Joesai, in pieces or whole. That I can do. Joesai is not the moon. What next?”

“You could start by telling me what it is that I am to negotiate with Hoemei?”

“Why, the terms of the surrender of Sorrow to the rule of the Kaiel.”

“That is not mine to give.” This man was mad!

“Tell me then, to whom should I speak?”

The Stgal are the priests of Sorrow.”

“Ah, the Stgal. I have made a study of whom they represent. They represent themselves. And who represents the people of Sorrow? There is only you, and while it is true that you are not a priest, little details like that have never bothered me overmuch. I’ll make an honorary priest of you. Marry into one of my families and I’ll make a genuine priest of you! You are Kaiel in your soul and don’t know it.” He smiled gently.

“What makes me Kaiel?”

“You doubt my word?”

“Yes!”

“Ho! So it is true that I can see some of what you fail to see? After our chess game I was despairing for my vision!”

“You taunt me! Which of my ways are Kaiel-like?”

“Perhaps your need for flattery?” he teased.

“I would know how I am Kaiel-like so that I might cleanse my soul,” she retorted instantly.

“Then you must abandon the self-aspect that makes you a political force,” he chuckled. “The very first thing about a Kaiel is that he is not a hereditary ruler, he is a hereditary representative. Who knows how this came about? It did. Tae ran-Kaiel understood it and formalized our custom so that now we all understand why the Kaiel have had victory where all others have failed. Tell me, if one of your people had a problem, would you know?”

“I make that my business.”

“So my spies noticed. In Sorrow such behavior is unheard of. It is your mission to work toward a mutual solution to the collective problems of those people who have sworn their loyalty to you. Who but a Kaiel thinks that way? A Kaiel is nothing in our councils until he represents somebody. It matters not where his genes come from, nor who his father was, nor who his mother was, nor the lineage of his teachers. You have a following. That is Kaiel. Why should I talk to a Stgal who rules because his father built a house on some hill? If the Stgal made a deal with me, would I have the loyalty of the people of Sorrow? No. If I make a deal with you, will I have the loyalty of your people? I believe that would be so.”

“I hardly speak for the most powerful of Sorrow. My people are mostly lowly in kalothi.”

“You speak with a misordered appreciation of kalothi. Does not a man who can bond himself to another for a mutual goal have greater kalothi than the fool who tries to carry a house upon his own back?”

“You’re made of brass. I’m to sell you our land and our heritage and all the people in it, and with that piece of paper from me, you will march in and take everything!”

Aesoe roared amusement. “Your attention span is short! How many heartbeats ago was I telling you to drive a hard bargain with Hoemei? I meant a bargain you will be satisfied with — now, tomorrow. I can deal with you because you represent more than yourself. I don’t know your people. How would I know what they want? How should I know what they need? You do. And Hoemei knows what we can give.”

“The coast is not for sale.”

“Vomit of God! Once there was a fool who found a bar of gold in the desert that was too heavy for him to carry so he guarded it and left his bones guarding it! Is that your thought?”

“In Getan mythology wherever there is a fool, there is also a wise man.” She was asking him to continue his story.

“The wiser man found the bar and could not carry it, either. He selected a friend he could trust and offered him half the gold to help him carry it to the city. Is not the moral self-evident? For a whole bar of gold you can buy nothing. For half a bar you can buy even immortality for your genes! Is help so bad? Is a man who offers you help, because you can help him, to be viewed as an enemy who will cheat you? Make a deal with me!”

“I’m cynical about deals. I’ve made contracts before.”

“Build all the guarantees you want into it! Of course some of the deal will fall through. A contract is a piece of paper made now. It has flaws. We can’t foresee the future. Look into the Archives and see how often I’ve been wrong. But when the deal deviates from its stated purpose, you don’t cry and feel cheated and rave about the dishonesty of your partner, you sit down and deal again until you are satisfied. You change the conditions to meet whatever happened up there in the future. What would I gain from cheating you? Position? A few pieces off the board in the early game? What is that worth to me if your children feel the necessity to cheat my children because you were cheated? Then the Kaiel would die! Then I would die! My sperm is on ice until the day when my dealings make their long-term payoff. How many priest clans are extinct because they didn’t learn to live beyond immediate gain? The Stgal are surviving now by covert dealings — a smile to your face, and poison in your cup. How long will they last? How many drops of kalothi is there in the most flawless dishonesty? All I ask — make a deal with me that satisfies you.”

“It will have to satisfy you, too.” She was struggling with the force of his attack.

“Of course!”

“I think I understand you. You will outdo yourself to take half of my gold.”

“God’s Eyeballs! Have I been raving in vain? You do not understand me. I want the privilege of being with a lovely woman while I get a hernia hassling her gold to market. I like the joy of planning how we’re going to spend it. Now do you understand me!”

“Yes. You’re a lecher.”