Courtship Rite

55

TIME SWEEPS AWAY all things, and though the annexation of Mnank by the Kaiel had fascinated the whole Race, that was part of the past. Now the clans of Geta were concerned with more important matters such as the rayvoice, the revelations from The Forge of War, steam engines, rockets, kalothi among the stars. The millennium of the Savior Who Speaks to God was at hand. In the Era of Silence, how had the Great Danger evolved?

A cool wind was blowing in over the beaches near Sorrow at the back of a hardy native girl who ran toward the tall Kaiel priest through the sand that retarded her by sinking under her feet. “I want a ride on your shoulders! You gave Saiepa one last time and you didn’t give me one!”

She came up to about the height of his hips and her nakedness was undecorated except for scarred stripes that ran from her knees to her ankles, the universal symbol of the money-lending Barrash clan. “Ho!” glowered the giant called Joesai, “and who says priests are fair?”

“You have to be fair or they’ll send a Gathering after you to make themselves some shoes!”

“In that case, since you insist that I ride on your shoulders…” And he swung a foot over her head and pretended to ride her, marching along on tiptoes in the sand.

“I didn’t say that! You have sand in the wax in your ears! I said: give me a ride on your shoulders!” She tried to squirm her head out from between his legs.

He squeezed his legs.

“Hey, you’re pushing my ears into my brains!”

He reached down an arm and pulled her out from between his legs by the feet, hanging her upside down, one large hand around each ankle, her long hair sweeping the sand. “And now what, little beetle?”

“Put me on your shoulders or I’ll get a nosebleed,” she threatened.

He flipped her up and placed her carefully around his neck.

“That’s better! Run! I like it when you run!”

And Joesai, in lucent folds cut like the chitin cover of an insect, the hontokae emblazoned in blue on its front, was suddenly thrown back to that immortal day long gone when he had entered Soebo with his Advance Court. He smiled at the ridiculous image of himself staggering into the city at the height of the insurrection like a common Ivieth with a Liethe whore riding his shoulders, having just bought Soebo with a palace he did not own.

Those had been strange days compared with his exile now. He had been in control, not because he could have done anything with the mobs, but because the mobs did not want the power they had usurped — they were traditional folk, shocked by their own rage and fear. It had been a time of rushed juggling, marathon talks with every clan leader he could find, speeches at the flaming cremation for the diseased host women taken from the Temple of Raging Seas, and the consecration of 170 Ritual Suicides. The city came back to normal after six sunsets. Two weeks later Bendaein hosa-Kaiel arrived and took over. The life of the exile was very different.

Joesai often wondered about Comfort. Rumor said she had been given to Bendaein. If so he kept her out of sight at some country estate. She never wrote. The last he had ever seen of her was a surprise visit on the docks when he and Noe were leaving for Sorrow.

“Why do you live alone in that big house?” asked the girl on his back.

Joesai laughed. “I don’t live alone. You haven’t known me long enough. Two-wife comes tonight from Kaiel-hontokae to stay for the birth of her second child. And you can be our three-wife if you learn to bake cakes.”

“I’m not Kaiel; I’m Barrash. But you can be my eleven-grandfather.”

“I’m not old enough to be a grandfather.”

“You have gray hairs.” She pulled one out and showed it to Joesai.

“That’s because I owe your three-father so much coin.”

“One-mother says you are in prison. Are you a debtor?”

“My family visits me but I do not visit them in Kaiel-hontokae because I am in exile. Exile is not prison and my nose is firmly on my face.”

“How did you get to be a bad man?”

“I kidnap and eat little girls.”

There was a long pause from above. “That was a bad joke. You even scared me. Really why are you bad? I’m bad, too — sometimes — so don’t feel left out.”

“I fell in love with a woman who was also loved by a very powerful man. She had my child, and he does not want me around so he never forgives me.”

“That’s sad. A man who keeps a woman for himself is not polite. Do you miss her?”

He laughed. “But she comes into my life. We see each other to share our son, meeting at the sky-eye in the mountains. I brought some lens grinders back with me from Soebo. Did you know that Getasun is a double star? We share space with a distant midget sun that is red and hardly bigger than Nika. It was discovered by a Mnankrei girl not much older than you. I made shoes out of her fathers and she tried to kill me so I adopted her. She has great kalothi. She always wanted to be a navigator but Mnankrei women are not allowed on ships so I’m training her as an astronomer. If she passes her Trials I will make a Kaiel of her.”

“Did you kill her fathers?”

“No. They slit their own wrists.”

“I wouldn’t want to be a priest. They’re always killing people. You won’t kill my fathers, will you?”

“No, not unless they want their money back too soon.”

“There was a priest who was chasing the Gentle Heretic. He killed her.”

“No, he didn’t. I used to think he had, but today I bought a book that she wrote after she last saw him.”

“Are you a Follower? My mothers say it is all foolishness.”

“Oelita the Clanless One is human like us all. She is foolish and wise at the same time. She has passed the Sixth Trial of the Kaiel Death Rite and that means she has great kalothi which is better than wisdom.” Six out of seven.

“You sound like a Follower. They are all over.”

“No, I’m not a Follower. I’m the priest.”

“You’re him?” She squirmed and slipped off Joesai’s back. She turned and stopped at a distance of four man-lengths. “I’m not a Follower, either,” she said. Then she fled.

Joesai carried the title of Coastal Predictor. The de-priested Stgal had built his residence overlooking a curving beach that pointed out toward three rocks rising from the Njarae that, since olden times, had been called the Old Man, the Mother, and the Child of Death. Joesai loved his family’s new mansion and, though it was far from finished, it had the beauty of Life Incomplete. (Perhaps he didn’t like the wirevoice pole.) The Stgal spent at least one lifetime on a building they cared about, feeling how it was lived in before they added the next organic layer. When the Stgal had been broken as priests Teenae logically decreed their new role as architects. They were clumsy with chemistry and rule but, ah, the miracles they made with stone and wood and mortar!

He toured the rooms, seeing that all was ready for Teenae, his anticipation stirring his dormant loins. The cactus flower was blooming and he moved it to a prominent position in the light from the tall leaded window. The luster of the wooden table disappointed him and he found oil for a rubdown. The fruits and breads that Teenae liked were in stock.

He took special care with his room for that was where they would sleep. It was a kind of formalism they had developed over their marriage. When he arrived from a journey, he would spend his first evening in the bed chamber of one of his wives and when a wife had journeyed she became a guest of her husbands.

He poured his best whisky into a better bottle and washed the shot glasses a second time until they sparkled, remembering how Teenae hated to drink from spotted glass. He bathed and perfumed his underarms and put on his cleanest undergarments.

The wirevoice chimed. When he answered, disembodied male words from Sorrow’s switchery told him Teenae was on the way. God help us if the copper line ever reaches Kaiel-hontokae, he thought grumpily, but quickened the pace of his preparations.

From a balcony in the sloping roof he watched her arrive by four-wheeled skrei-wheel powered by a male and female Ivieth couple. He let them unload her iron-reed basket, then set off two rifle-powder bangers whose crack! crack! made the three of them look up in time to see his rocket rise on sparking tail to explode in a blue flash that spread across the sky while it burned to a dazzling white.

“Joesai!” Teenae screamed up at him, “you’ll scare the neighbors out of their skins!”

“This lonely exile welcomes you home, beloved!”

He rushed downstairs to meet her. Teenae was directing the placement of her basket and flashed him the open smile that had addicted him to her. She waited until the basket was safe before she hugged him. “Your bathwater is hot,” he said.

“Don’t you ever think of anything besides giving me a bath! The world is falling apart and all you can think of is having a wife on your pillows who doesn’t smell! Oh Joesai, I’m too exhausted for even a bath! To think I once walked over the mountains!”

“With a little help from our tall friends.”

“I’m heading straight for the whisky and I know where you hide it!”

He followed her to his room, where she poured herself an amber gulp, downed it, undressed, and began to sponge her body with cold water. He tried to help. She pushed him away. “Keep your hands off me,” she said almost angrily. “You know how I am when I haven’t been with you for a long time. I have to get used to you again. You’re so big!” Her pregnancy was showing, her belly just beginning to swell with child. Hoemei’s this time.

“Where’s Gatee?” Gatee was her baby daughter by Gaet.

“I left her in the mountains with relatives. Noe or Gaet will pick her up when they come out. I thought I’d have you all to myself for a while before Noe arrives to distract you. Hoemei is coming, too. I hope. I practically had to put a ring in his dong and haul him here by chain. There’s trouble in Kaiel-hontokae and I want him away from it.”

“I’ve heard nothing.”

“Because nothing is blabbered over the rayvoice. I’m too tired to talk about it.” She sank onto the pillows, her profile outlined like stitching in a quilt, her last bit of energy used up. He smiled warmly, just happy to have her with him again, relishing every ridge of the cicatrice design that flowed down her back and up over the hills of her rump. The best of the artistry was the wheat stalk of the Heresy that she had put there to fill the last gap on her body to defy him, to tell him that she was a finished woman and no longer a child bride who had to listen to him, a decision which led to her swinging upside down from the yardarm of a Mnankrei ship for a whole night.

He touched Oelita’s slim book that he had bought from a man who did not know Joesai as the priest who had cast the Death Rite upon his prophetess. It was a present for Teenae. She had a special place in her heart for Oelita. But he took his hand away from the cloth binding. Tomorrow, when she was rested.

Teenae shifted her legs and looked up at Joesai. “I’m not asleep yet. Hug me a little. Don’t be shy. You know I’ll be madly in love with you again by about the time Scowlmoon goes into eclipse, which isn’t too long to wait. Lover.”

Much later they made love with a sleepy passion. Her half-awake sighs faded back to unconsciousness but when he tried to leave, she held him. So he waited for a while, enjoying the warmth of her, before he brought some simple food to their bed. He sat on the pillows while she ate and with his lather and knife shaved the centerline over her skull from forehead to the nape of her neck. He rubbed his nose in her hair, smelling the black silkiness of it. They chatted.

“Gatee has teeth and she has decided to bite everything!”

“Did anyone ever restore the masonry on the north face?” He was referring to their mansion in Kaiel-hontokae.

“Long ago.”

“I miss the city.”

“I, for one, am glad to be away. Hoemei has finally split with the Expansionists and you can’t believe the uproar that caused! Aesoe is after his hide and when two-husband goes to the Palace he avoids Aesoe. He’s furious at the blindness of the Expansionists. He’s pulled in a whole group to support him. Aesoe calls their proposals and predictions Stomach Thinking because Hoemei’s basic policy is Digest First, Eat Later. The conflict is dangerous because the split is basically along creche and non-creche lines.”

“That’s been coming for a long time.”

“You Who Were Born of the Machines are in the minority.”

“That won’t last.”

Teenae frowned. “It is not logical. The Expansionists want to move out rapidly and the only ready source of the priests they must have is the creches and that means they must sharply curtail the mortality rate of the Trials, but if they do that for long the creche children will be in the majority.”

“Aesoe will be dead by then and won’t care. And remember, his children will mainly come from the creches.”

Teenae gestured impatiently. “I don’t even think that is the real issue. Kathein is seeing Hoemei, more and more openly — she moons over him publicly, and makes no secret of her sexual interest in him. That drives Aesoe wild and he is about to exile Hoemei, too, or worse. I sent Gaet to talk to her, and she was her usual sweet self, but distant and uncommunicative. Hoemei thinks he is reaching her and will bring her back to us, but I think she is using him in some way I cannot compute.”

“She loves and hates Aesoe,” said Joesai. “I caught the breath of it when last at the mountain observatory. We were discussing finances. I carried a gold bar as gift from the Mnankrei for the new sky-eye.” He paused. “I was telling her of my policy of supporting and adopting Mnankrei children who have shown an aptitude for the priesthood and how that was paying off in good will. And she was telling me how she gets coin, bags of it, from Aesoe.”

Joesai threw his hands up in despair. “Aesoe is mad. He is so possessed by her that he strains all projects to please her whims. Thank God her whims are in line with the goals of Geta. I’ve come to see her as a religious fanatic. She is determined that in her lifetime our son will rise to meet God in a rocket. Everything to that end. It drives her. She hates Aesoe but he is the center of power so she loves him in order to get what she wants. I no longer know her myself. I’ve tried to seduce her but she won’t have me. What am I to her? An exile who wanders the beaches.” He smiled. “Remember how shy she used to be? And how the least encouragement would bring the kalothi power welling out of her?”

“She has placed Hoemei in great danger.”

Joesai laughed. “I see that Kaiel-hontokae hasn’t changed a bit since I was last there.”

“Kathein knows that Hoemei will be the next Prime Predictor and she is damming the mountain waters at both ends.”

“You think Hoemei has even a chance at that exalted position? He is creche. The non-creche would never permit it.”

Teenae rose to a straight sitting position with a fury that made her breasts point like fists. “The succession is not an issue of votes! It is a matter of an audit of the predictionsl Such is in Tae’s constitution!”

“And have the Kaiel ever hesitated to break the rules?”

“I’ve called a family council. We’ll all be here, in one spot, for once. I don’t know what we’ll talk about. I did it to get Hoemei out of the city.”

Joesai laughed the great laugh and threw Teenae around his neck like a shawl. “The world is one big creche.” And he took her to her room to see her new furniture.

“It’s here!” exclaimed a delighted Teenae.

The wood was the finest desert Okkai, planed and oiled to show a black grain. The surfaces were inlaid with polished Mnankrei leather, lead pebble holes and all, and was bordered with carved squares from the skull of Tonpa.

“Sorrow’s craftsmen are good,” he said.

She wiggled in delight. “The next low night we spend here! I’m so pleased! When I make your child it will be in this room!”

He chose that moment to present her with Oelita’s bound book, done in the crude print of a secret print shop. “She’s alive.”

Teenae’s eyes widened and he could see her heart begin to pound. “How do you know?”

“They keep knowledge of her from me. This book was kept from me. If she is dead, why would they protect her? But that’s not the reason I am confident of her health — in this book she speaks of God. She has worked Him into the weft of her warp. That means she has recovered from the shock of discovering that God exists and so has passed safely through the Sixth Trial.”

Teenae burst into tears. “I’ve hoped so to hear that she was all right. So she believes in God now, does she? Do we?”

“Four weeks ago when I was last at the observatory there was a perturbation in His Orbit that can’t be accounted for by gravity. Whoever He is, He is not passive; He stirs in His Sleep.”

“We should have married Oelita. Our antagonism was immature.”

“I know where she is,” he said.

When a startled Teenae looked up at her husband she saw an old glint in his eyes. He was older, more, cunning, and no less stubborn than he had ever been. “No!” she said. “I forbid it! Leave her alone. That’s over! Six is enough!”

He smiled gently. “I only meant that she revealed her location in her book. There’s a touch of the hermit philosophy in the images she uses. She can’t be far from Kaiel-hontokae. There are records of the old hermit haunts.”

“Leave her be, Joesai. For God’s Sake!”

He would not answer his wife. He showed her the new clothes he had bought for her and dressed her and took her down to the tall leaded windows where he read to her from Oelita’s book.