Courtship Rite

9

TRADITIONALLY GETAN MESSAGES were carried by travellers and, if speed was essential, by Ivieth runners or by the flags and lights of the towers. Over difficult terrain some of the modern towers were connected by wire. But fantastic change was upon the land.

Kaiel neurophysiologists, curious about the electric field of the brain, had hit upon a trail that took them to mechanically induced electromagnetic radiation. Effects barely measurable by beetle-leg jerking first led to organized experiment and then to increasingly sophisticated instrumentation. Suddenly the Kaiel leadership found itself with the beginnings of a message network several orders of magnitude swifter than the network of every rival.

Hoemei was a member of the team assessing the most rapid way to exploit what they all knew would be a temporary advantage. He spent days at the communications command center in the Palace among the shelves of coils and electron jars puzzling over transcripts of rayvoice calls.

His main center of interest was the Njarae coastline, listening for echoes of his brother.

Hoemei’s electromagnetic eye took in the whole of the immense Njarae Sea. His agents were established at fourteen key points. Over the weeks as he attempted to shadow Joesai, using that problem to feel out the potential of this machine, he became increasingly fascinated by what he was seeing with his new toy. Joesai remained invisible — but the view!

He found himself watching game players who thought they were hidden. They had no reason to suspect that their huge board had been connected by spies in instant communication. The Mnankrei were poising themselves for a lethal strike against the Stgal. In his notes it all came together.

Even Aesoe would be hard-pressed to believe their boldness because such a plan broke too many rules. And Joesai; innocently Joesai had entered the focal center of their game, unaware of the fury rising distantly at sea.

Hoemei stood at a circular window of the Kaiel Palace, his back to the electrons that leaped across hot wires through net to dock, his mind flickering with images of far places superimposed upon the image of his city. Kaiel-hontokae had been built on the ruins of the Arant to guard against the return of heresy but, instead, had been possessed by questions which led to newer heresies.

Truly the Palace has magic eyes, he thought. Would those eyes deliver the power to rule the world they saw? Before he descended from this high room he spoke to each member of his staff so that they all tasted his joy in their competence. Hoemei wandered home through the walled maze of the city, deep in his own mental maze.

Kaiel-hontokae had roving streets, paved in stone, which turned upon themselves or stopped abruptly in stairs or reached a deadend at the gate of some wall-building. The wall-buildings were enormous three-storied structures that completely enclosed areas where commercial activity was taboo. Each such palisade had its own name. There was the Bok of the Fountain of Two Women, the Bok of the Kaiel Palace, the Bok of Seven Mourners, the Bok of Sudden Joy, the Bok of Many Trees, the Bok of the River Rapids.

His feet found a path home while his mind tested the passageways that power could open to a priest, leading him to light or to lightless labyrinths. These thoughts meandered along twists and turns until they returned to Noe where they were content to rest in comfort upon the shifting images created by his memories of an enigmatic woman.

I will need Noe’s counsel, he thought. She knew the Mnankrei better than any other member of his family.

Hoemei had been enjoying his days alone with Noe in the stone mansion on the hill. Gaet was away. Joesai and Teenae were far away. Their absence gave him time to explore this woman whom he had never understood, who was never in a hurry to be understood, who alone of the women he knew relished power.

Noe possessed more useless skills than he had ever known existed — patter that pleased but meant nothing, sailplane gliding, flower arranging, rock reading, staig poetry, dream analysis. She had learned her sexuality as a temple courtesan honoring men who were preparing themselves for Ritual suicide. She indulged herself outrageously in things like the body sculpture that had given her those delicate folds of skin along her ribcage which Joesai teasingly referred to as her “handles”. There was no end to it.

When Gaet first brought her home to their bed, Hoemei had thought of Noe as a scatterbrain. But she had her own direction. If she indulged in luxury, she was also a master of such stoic arts as cross-desert hiking. Was it style she craved? Her only consistency was style. Even hardship was raw material for her style.

He shook his head. There was a gulf between them. He was the disciplined product of the creches where a child demonstrated his abilities quickly or was sent to the abattoir. Hoemei had never been given a second chance nor had he needed one. Noe was a pampered child of riches.

How alien they remained. When he entered the courtyard of the mansion she was placing a bowl of profane flowers called blooded-teeth. An excited bee had found the bouquet. Lovers were said to forget all quarrels near this aroma. Hoemei was touched. The gesture could only have been meant for him. She smiled. “My love.” And hurried on her way to the kitchen without kissing him.

He lingered near the flowers, fragile white petals with red rims, guarded by a stem of poisoned spikes. He sniffed, then followed Noe’s scent, faintly grinning. She was like a flower, herself.

She fixed him an appetizer of baby-liver pate on crunch bread. That was so like her. She always had delicacies around regardless of the expense. “I discharged all of our due-debts today,” she chatted.

“You can slaughter a whole day that way.”

“But I arranged it so that I visited half my constituency while I did the money rounds,” she said smugly.

“What did they have to say?”

“The usual problems. We’ll have to find a means to get more water up to the Kalkenie. And you?”

“How would you kill an underjaw beetle?”

She laughed. “Step on it.”

“Millions of them. You know about such things. I don’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m about to make a fateful prediction and some policy decisions to be registered and witnessed for the Kaiel Archives. The outcome will drastically affect my kalothi rating one way or another. My unconceived children will live or die by this decision.”

She looked at him sharply. “Gaet and Joesai and Teenae should be here!”

“No. The decision has to be made tonight. And you are the perfect person to advise me. You know the rituals of genetic modification.”

“Only what Joesai has taught me.”

“But you are good at it. And your mother ran trading fleets against the Mnankrei. You have a feel for those wind riders.”

“They dominate through trade.”

“Exactly.”

He took her by the wrist and pulled her into the study where he rolled out a map on the table, weighing down the corners with carved ancestral skulls from Noe’s and Teenae’s families. The largest of Geta’s eleven landbound seas, the Njarae Sea extended along a northeastern diagonal one-fourth of the way around Geta, fat to the north, narrow to the south like a poised club. Sorrow hugged the western shore formed by the Wailing Mountains. The Mnankrei islands lay to the north but the Mnankrei priests had generations ago spread from the islands to the northern plain. Hoemei moved his finger down from the Stgal mountain reaches, far south into the Stgal Plain, a distance covered by bad roads and controlled by six loosely confederated Stgal clans.

“There’s famine here.”

“I heard it was a good crop.”

“It was. Plagues of underjaws are eating the wheat.”

“But they die when they attack the Sacred Food!”

“These don’t.”

“Oh my God!” The idea was terrifying. It was a disorienting event, like God falling from His Sky. “A mutation?” She couldn’t imagine a mutation that drastic.

“No. I’ve had my men on it. We’ve been in constant contact via rayvoice. They haven’t got the equipment they need but one of my women is of the creches and she’s a brilliant microbiologist. You wouldn’t believe the shortcuts and sidestepping she can do. The underjaws are manufacturing some human enzymes. And other such strangenesses.”

“They are carrying human genes?”

“Exactly.”

“Now that is a Violation of the Rules,” she said, awed by someone’s audacity.

“Could it be done? That’s what I want to know.”

Noe retreated into a deep scan of her knowledge. “We made your mother.”

“Yes, but she’s human in her way. I didn’t think it was possible for sacred and profane cells to operate together.”

“I could think of ways. It would be difficult.”

“Then it is the Mnankrei who have unleashed this plague.”

“Not the Mnankrei I know.”

“Look. The rayvoice has given me an immense vista.” He swept his hand up the map. “The port watchers are sending us data on every Mnankrei ship movement. Relief ships loaded with grain left the islands for Stgal Plain harbors before the plague even started. And now they are departing for the northern ports. A grain ship set sail for Sorrow even today. It is like carrying honey to a beehive. The harvest is due.”

She picked up the skull of her great-grandfather, carved in swastikas and leaves. “What would you say, Pietri?” He said nothing. “Pietri died in defiance of the Mnankrei, so goes the family story. It was a famine. The Mnankrei offered food in exchange for control. My great-grandfather offered his body at the Temple to keep the Mnankrei away.” She smiled ruefully. “I think he was skinny.

The Mnankrei came anyway. They come during famine. Food for control. Always, always, always. My grandfather wedded himself to the sea as a free merchant to take their hand from his wrist. That’s where the seamen on my mother’s side of the family come from.”

“Food for control,” said Hoemei darkly, “and now famine to create the need for food.”

“I can’t believe that of them. How could they face God?”

“We have to believe it of them. They are moving in to take over the land we have been granted by the Council. Our children’s heritage. We’ll be disgraced.”

“Joesai is there.”

“It’s bad. Joesai will make it worse. It was a mistake to send him. We’re going to need this Oelita woman. Her position will be weak when the famine comes. It is easy to tolerate a Godless heresy when the crops are good but the day the famine hits, they’ll spit-roast the lot of them. Teenae can temper Joesai, maybe.”

“If you think Joesai shouldn’t be there taking care of our interests, go yourself!” Noe flared.

“With Kaiel-killing ogres lurking behind the bushes? No thank you. I intend to be a feast for my great-grandchildren. I respect people able to kill Kaiel with impunity. I show my respect by staying away.”

“You’re a coward!”

He laughed the great laugh. “Sometimes.” Then his shoulders sank in dejection. “Have you seen Kathein?”

“She won’t speak to me.” Noe’s voice was pain.

“I saw her today and it was as if I had absently walked into a wall.”

“Come eat with me. We’ve forgotten all about the meal I was making!” Her eyes flirted with him while she retreated from the study.

Noe was like a magician, he thought, changing a knife into a flower right before your eyes. And she always got him. Out of nowhere came this desire to bed her and forget the decisions he had to make. He watched her cook for a while, wondering what delicacy he would prepare for her when it was his turn. He couldn’t resist the lushness of her hips. He felt compelled to go over and hug her.

“Away from me, you insect!” she teased. “This is a very serious evening. I’m thinking how the Mnankrei would justify the creation of famines.” She turned her head and brushed his cheek sensuously before walking away with the soup. “You know what they say: ‘A Mnankrei always has meat on his table.’” That was a reference to the sea clan’s practice of continuous Culling. The more common Getan belief was that meat was a famine food.

Hoemei grinned. “The version I heard was, ‘A Kaiel always has meat on his table.’” The creches kept Kaiel-hontokae supplied with meat, a custom found nowhere else on Geta.

“That’s not the same,” she said petulantly. “Babies are only bodies.”

“You have a delicious body.”

“I don’t think you want my advice. Your blood has all gone to gorge your loins. I won’t say another word!”

“Yes, I want your advice,” he said, kissing her on the cheekbone.

“Well,” she went on, totally ignoring the kiss, “if I sent a man of low kalothi to the temple for Ritual Suicide when the silos were full, you’d call that murder — but the Mnankrei would only call it Culling. So why shouldn’t they create a famine? It would only be another form of Culling to them.”

“A clan that thinks such thoughts is damned to a Gathering.”

“Drink your soup.”

“Make love to me.”

“Aw, it’s your favorite soup.”

“Now.”

“Finish your soup first.”

He took her on the patio under the stars with a driving desire that noticed she was somewhere else but that couldn’t stop to find out where. Her fingers absently caressed him, affectionately enough…

In the afterglow he stared at the face beneath her twining braids that he was never able to understand. Her head lay tilted, eyes fixed on some star but she wasn’t there, musician fingers finding a groove in one of his decorative scars and plucking it as if tuning an instrument, but she wasn’t there, either.

Finally she turned to him with a languorous smile. “I see how to kill your underjaws.” She moved a fingernail from the hontokae on her breast to his belly where she stabbed — and laughed.