Courtship Rite

51

LIKE A GOLDEN shape, the Temple of Raging Seas lay atop an ancient volcanic upthrust that had defied the relentless smashing of the Njarae. The huge structure was one of the oldest of the Great Temples on Geta. As such it lacked elegance and height. The masonry was thick, crudely hewn. Built by the chattel children of the early slave-trading Mnankrei, half the awesome beauty of this Adoration of God seemed to belong to the rough tumble of sea-slimed stones crouching in obeisance at its feet.

Joesai did not wholly trust his efficient Comfort, who had put together an interesting plan he could not fault. It was either very workable or it was a trap. In case it was a trap he had constructed a careful contingency tactic. No one would expect them to retreat over the massive north wall. Explosive charges, laid with a quarryman’s skill that night, were in place for a sacrilegious exit. Riflemen, not a part of Comfort’s modest exercise, had been artfully stationed to cover such an emergency withdrawal.

In the early morning of the next high day, through the rose-tinted fog that drifted off the sea from the red mouth of an enormous Getasun, four impostors, wearing the ochre and purple-striped robes of Mnankrei Time Wizards, shared the stairway of God’s Ascension with scurrying temple priests who clattered past them in wooden-soled shoes. Joesai brazenly stopped a boy bringing nectar up the steps and bought a gourd from him while a tradesman, encumbered by a packsack of honey, paused on the stairs followed by an impatient Chanter in full headdress and painted face.

The bronze doors were done in the theme of a tempest that flung water toward God’s Sky. All Getan myths echoed the struggle of kalothi against the leveling forces. Inside the doors Joesai took a moment to admire the simple interior excellence of a vast room that predated the Kaiel. His seemingly casual glance oriented him, relating the structure to maps quickly memorized the previous evening.

A functionary was already waiting for them. The necessary paperwork, an ever-present part of Mnankrei life, had been done, presumably by an excellent forger who had access to secret Swift Wind marks, and they were ushered to a small room on the lower levels which was unlocked for them. Presently unsuspecting acolytes of the Time Wizards began to arrive — to be subdued by a silencing hold and drugged into paralysis by potions provided by Comfort.

Joesai and Eiemeni then exchanged Wizard costume for the dark brown robes of a High Priest of the Inquisition and arrogantly descended into the depths, where again the proper paperwork had been done. One by one the Kaiel prisoners were brought out for “intensive” questioning and returned to their cells on stretchers in a state of unconsciousness. Eventually the “acolytes” left the Temple with their Time Wizard Masters. Watching them emerge, the forward rifleman relaxed at his hidden post, passing to his rear the sign of the unwon, but conceded, game.

Robe changes and rehearsed trickery dissolved the group one by one, later allowing the fugitives to assemble undetected at a prearranged canal-front warehouse. Once inside the wooden-beamed hideout, tension broke both among the liberators and those who had expected to make their Contribution as soup bones. The men hugged each other. They grinned their triumph silently, and cuffed Joesai. They loved him. Tears wet their eyes. They kissed the walls and swung upon the log beams.

Unobtrusively Comfort busied herself filling mugs from a keg of mead. She hurried to spread sauce over fresh whole wheat buns as fast as they were devoured, her eyes seldom leaving Joesai. She was wrapped in sturdy travelling clothes, her sleeping mat and essential belongings already tied together in a waiting backpack.

Still wearing his Mnankrei robes for the sheer humor of it, Joesai began to brief his men, exploiting their euphoric sense of immediate loyalty. His attack plan on Soebo was now clear in his mind. Passionately he explained the strategy behind the plan, developing action modules and assigning roles as he went along.

“What drives the resistance against us in Soebo? It is fear of Kaiel ferocity!” He struck the Pose of Lurking Death, then spoke again. “It is old memories of the fate of the Arant!” He tossed his hand and demons sprung from his palm. “It is the remembrance of the fate of the clans who served the Arant!” His hand sliced to his wrist in the symbol of execution.

He continued his oration to an alert audience. “The main strategic thrust of the Advance Court has to be to establish trust among the underclans. We cannot simply try to convince them that it is the Mnankrei who are the ferocious fei flowers of the sea and we the bees who make honey through a steadfast policy of bargaining. Would they believe strangers?”

“No!” roared the unanimous answer to his rhetorical question.

For a moment Joesai moved about the warehouse, mimicking the alienness of the stranger — his slight unsureness, eyes that noticed what was too common to be noteworthy, a queer walk. “Nothing a man lives with daily is ferocious to him. It is the stranger who seems ferocious. We will not be able to convince these people that there will be no overnight change of laws with the coming of a Kaiel government, no confusion, no retroactive Contribution for laws invented today. They will think we lie to gain their favor so that we may have their skins. All logic reaches one conclusion: without trust, no argument is effective. Trust must be the key word of our strategy.

“What then is trust? Trust is the emotional residue of contracts entered upon and fulfilled. We have no time to make elaborate contracts that must persist weeks or seasons before completion. But we can do one thing. Human beings innately understand the nature of bargaining and they trust the bargaining process wherever it appears, whether from little children or from old enemies.

All of you here know how to bargain. That is the Kaiel tradition. So that is what we will use.

“Selected underclan spokesmen have already been contacted. You will meet them covertly. Begin bargaining immediately. Establish the needs of your assigned clan in detail by means of the opening move of the Tae Bargaining Ritual:

“ ‘What desired event has failed to happen?’

“ ‘What has happened that should not have happened?’

“The mere act of delineating the differences between their ideal world and the real world will generate the crucial preliminary trust. You will then know their most pressing needs. Match Kaiel strengths against these needs and make your offer. Do it formally. The first offer is to contain no lies, no fantasy, no promises you know the Kaiel cannot keep. Write down their first offer. Then haggle.”

He smiled. “Within six sunrises I want the main clans of Soebo to be in awe of Kaiel skill at the bargaining game. They will be impressed. The Mnankrei do not make social contracts by bargain. Do as much as you can before I come again. Do not stop talking! Build a constituency!”

For the first time Joesai introduced the odd phrase “Will of the People” into his exhortations. He had picked it out of The Forge of War, thinking that it perfectly expressed Kaiel notions of obtaining the loyalty of the underclans. Was not the function of a hereditary ruling clan to sense the thousand conflicting wills of its people and artfully shape that force into a single Will?

Joesai had found himself bemused by the context in which the People of the Sky had used the phrase. But they never spoke words in simple ways. The Amerikans wrote “Will of the People” into their Constitution to justify slavery as if the Black clan itself had devised slavery to promote the Greater Will.

Even more peculiar was the use of the phrase by the Russian Tsar, Lenin the Terrible. Joesai had been intrigued by certain passages in The Forge of War suggested to him by Teenae. Lenin, dismayed by past losses of Tsarist property to the expanding Capitalist clan and outraged by Socialist calls for land reform in which former state slaves would be awarded the farmland they had tilled for generations, had, immediately after his coronation, begun the extermination of the Capitalists by mass terror while, simultaneously, conniving from within the Socialist clan to restore all property to the Tsar by systematic liquidation of every Socialist within his realm. In retaking the land for the state he justified the mass murder of peasants as the Will of the People because it was the peasants who had given the Tsardom to Lenin and therefore was it not their Will when he ordered them destroyed rather than relinquishing to them the land which historically was his?

Joesai said it another way. “Let bargaining forge from the will of the clans the Will of the People. Then when I return to Soebo shall we not have a new city?”

The Liethe woman followed him out of the old Soebo. She was a brown shadow, indistinguishable from any other traveller. For a while they walked boldly by road in a direction too westerly to be connected with the Gathering. He was impressed by Comfort’s strength. She was too small, tiny even, but if he slowed out of sympathy she was soon ahead of him, cautioning him about branches, picking their path.

She wilted first, though. Fondly, he took her packsack, and then she was holding onto him. She never complained. He was not sure if she was really tired, or whether she simply wanted an evening alone with him. He would have continued all night but, pleased with an excuse, he found a campsite.

“We’ll have Scowlmoon to ourselves,” she said, building a small fire. She had brought water from a brook and was making broth.

He let her — why fight her need to serve a man? — but to busy himself, unrolled their mats. Her essential things amused him. A comb; a blue glass bottle, probably perfume; eye shadow; the leaves of the olinar, a powerful contraceptive. “Your clan knows the Mnankrei like few others. They are hardly real to me except for a priest who once hung my smallest wife from a yardarm. I was angry for a while.”

“Did she survive?”

“Yes, but he will not! She never forgives. To this day she reproaches me for acts I cannot remember committing.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Yes. She’s small like you.”

“Tonight you shall have me at halfmoon. You’ll forget her for a moment. What will I get in exchange?”

“Ho! I see I spoke too much about bargaining!” He tried to read her smile in the darkness. “I’ll carry your packsack,” he said to make her offer seem casual.

“I want your nose for an amulet,” she said to tell him that she was priceless.

Idle fingers picked up a rust red stone, flecked by copper green. “How about a jewel instead?”

She brought him his bowl of broth and kissed his nose. “How about Soebo’s Palace of Morning? The cupola at dawn is enough to break a girl’s heart.”

“And a man’s purse!”

“If you promise me the Palace of Morning I’ll massage your back.”

“Give me a sample to see if you’re worth it.”

“Hug me first. You have to be tender, or we won’t let you into the city with your ridiculous Court.”

The desire was on him. He tugged at her sashes, and found buttons, and lifted her body so that he could get her clothes off. Then he laid her on the mat, head in his lap, and whimsically put his stone in her God’s Eye, which was what Getans called their navel. For a moment he was content to look at her. “I’ve slowed down,” he said. “Nothing seems to be such a hurry anymore.”

“It’s better that way.”

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“I sleep better when I’ve ridden a man who loves me. You’ve been kind to me. I’ll dance for you all when we reach camp.”

He shook his head and lifted her body so that they were coupled in an upright position. “No dancing. When we reach camp, we break camp and blister feet toward Soebo.”

“There’s always time for celebration,” she replied petulantly. “The world seems less cruel when we have been laughing and dancing.”

He held back his thrusts — remembering Noe’s patient lessons on how to arouse a woman. He wanted to be better than any Mnankrei lover she had ever known. He listened to her breathing.

“Is marriage like this?” she asked. “Holding a stone in your Eye out in the wilderness while you hold a man you never want to leave?”

“You must be crazy! Marriage is more like your wife stealing coin from you to pay a forgotten debt while she’s humping your co-husband.”

He felt her breath on his cheek, a sacred human perfume unlike any other smell of the red sun’s world. Slowly her rhythm built, slowly her fist tightened around the Liethe amulet he wore.

There was a celebration when they reached camp with the news of the move on Soebo. The young Kaiel were restless. They were not used to idleness but to the Trials, to winning, to cunning escapes from death and so the celebration came spontaneously. His strange Liethe taught the Kaiel girls a simple dance that their quick bodies perfected while the boys provided vocal music and enthusiastic clapping.

These youths were too fresh from the creches for Joesai to think of them yet as men and women. He watched the gaiety with affection. Even if they were inept at sea, they were lethal on land. He was proud of them. They called themselves judges. In another age, among the stars, they would have called themselves warriors. Joesai found himself clapping along with the throbbing voices of the choir.

Comfort insisted on providing the recipe for the celebration feast. The camp was being taken down around them but eating was a constant of life. She rushed between the wagons, serving the Kaiel, seeing that everyone was well fed, making sure that there were no leftovers. Joesai she found busy in the old farmhouse organizing the march and she had to sit beside him and feed him or he would not have bothered.

Much later, when the camp was already asleep, the watches stationed, Comfort returned to the farmhouse, waiting to sweeten his mat. When he felt his way down the ladder, tired, ready for oblivion, she massaged him, relaxing the cramps that came from stooping over a torch to do his papers, working his muscles with experienced hands, limbering them.

“What’s it like to be married?” she asked, returning to her favorite subject.

“Hectic.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything. Life is hectic.”

“Try a few husbands someday and find out.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve taken my vows. Who’s your favorite wife?”

“The one who is on my pillows.”

“Will I do as a substitute?”

“I’m not complaining. You take better care of me than Teenae or Noe ever did.”

“Thank you.”

“You have a magic about you.”

“Why do you stay married? Why don’t you just wander from woman to woman? That would make life more interesting.”

“Why should beginnings be more interesting than middles or ends? I know my wives and husbands. We’re the kind of team it takes a lifetime to build. Without them there would be no other women; I would be dead. Beginnings tell you very little. I didn’t even like Noe when I first met her. I thought she was altogether too flighty for us. I wanted a serious girl from the creches, not one of those soft Kaiel who come from a family. So beginnings aren’t always where the fun is. I didn’t really get to like Noe until we started to go sailplane gliding together.”

“And Teenae?”

“How can you resist a child who worships the very ground you walk on? I was rough and uncouth with her and laid her without much thought to her own pleasure. It was a long time before her fierceness and brilliance tamed me. I found strength in her. She planted tolerance in me and ruthlessly tore at the inconsistencies I was so prone to have. All these things take time. They are not for beginnings.”

Comfort sighed with faraway eyes. “I feel so lonely with you. I suppose that’s because I haven’t known you long enough. I’m not at the middle yet.”

He pulled her to him, pleased with the warmth of her small body, feeling less lonely than he had for all the time he had been on Mnank. He caressed her. There was nothing he could say that was really appropriate. “A man should not talk to a Liethe of his wives.”

“Nonsense,” she replied sadly. “I have to know everything.”

Joesai wondered why, on the eve of every great event, the talk was so trivial — of gossip, of past events, of the shape of breasts, of how much whisky a man could hold before he fell over, of love and loneliness. She had lapsed into silence, words gone from her.

“Hi there,” he said.

“I don’t want you ever to forget me.” She took him then.

It was still dark when fever woke him. He tried to move and couldn’t. He could hardly open his eyes. The pale face of Comfort was staring at him. She was fully dressed in her brown travelling robe.

“You’re sick,” she said.

He tried to move his tongue and it was like moving a mouthful of dough.

“The paralysis isn’t part of the sickness. I’ve poisoned you with the juice of ei-cactus so that you won’t be able to kill me for having given all your judges the sickness.”

He tried to lunge at her by sheer will and managed only to fall on his own arm and pin it. Ponderous grunting noises came from his mouth.

She rolled him into a more comfortable position. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it. You were not wise to trust me. I arranged the escape of your friends with Nie’t’Fosal. So that you would not question me.” And she was gone.

He could still think. Thoughts came with an unfamiliar despair. I’ve made the one mistake I’ve never been allowed to make. He was dead and the Advance Court was dead and Joesai maran-Kaiel was an idiot. Aesoe had won, as usual. Joesai had been a foil to bring out the most deadly counterthrust of the Mnankrei and now they had made it and Bendaein would know what he was up against and respond to that, Bendaein the Cautious. I’ve disgraced my family. He could still cry though he could not wipe the tears from his eyes.

Hoemei had trusted him to wait, and he had grown impatient and gone to the city and brought back the pestilence as a lover. Noe had warned him. Teenae would have shot Comfort at a hundred man-lengths. Gaet would mourn him as he had Sanan — and then go find another husband. Fever began to take the coherence from his mind. Kathein’s child, bearing his genes, would give whatever kalothi he possessed one more risky chance but Kathein’s face faded into Joesai’s last image of Oelita — mad with her sudden belief in God. He had driven her to her death and now the Liethe were returning the favor.

Joesai’s most horrible loss was that there could be no Funeral Feast. No one would share his flesh. He would be cremated, unclean.