Five Ways to Forgiveness

Forgiveness Day

SOLLY HAD been a space brat, a Mobile’s child, living on this ship and that, this world and that; she’d traveled five hundred light-years by the time she was ten. At twenty-five she had been through a revolution on Alterra, learned aiji on Terra and farthinking from an old hilfer on Rokanan, breezed through the Schools on Hain, and survived an assignment as Observer in murderous, dying Kheakh, skipping another half millennium at near-lightspeed in the process. She was young, but she’d been around.

She got bored with the Embassy people in Voe Deo telling her to watch out for this, remember that; she was a Mobile herself now, after all. Werel had its quirks—what world didn’t? She’d done her homework, she knew when to curtsy and when not to belch, and vice versa. It was a relief to get on her own at last, in this gorgeous little city, on this gorgeous little continent, the first and only Envoy of the Ekumen to the Divine Kingdom of Gatay.

She was high for days on the altitude, the tiny, brilliant sun pouring vertical light into the noisy streets, the peaks soaring up incredibly behind every building, the dark blue sky where great near stars burned all day, the dazzling nights under six or seven lolloping bits of moon, the tall black people with their black eyes, narrow heads, long, narrow hands and feet, gorgeous people, her people! She loved them all. Even if she saw a little too much of them.

The last time she had had completely to herself was a few hours in the passenger cabin of the airskimmer sent by Gatay to bring her across the ocean from Voe Deo. On the airstrip she was met by a delegation of priests and officials from the King and the Council, magnificent in scarlet and brown and turquoise, and swept off to the Palace, where there was a lot of curtsying and no belching, of course, for hours—an introduction to his little shrunken old majesty, introductions to High Muckamucks and Lord Hooziwhats, speeches, a banquet—all completely predictable, no problems at all, not even the impenetrable giant fried flower on her plate at the banquet. But with her, from that first moment on the airstrip and at every moment thereafter, discreetly behind or beside or very near her, were two men: her Guide and her Guard.

The Guide, whose name was San Ubattat, was provided by her hosts in Gatay; of course he was reporting on her to the government, but he was a most obliging spy, endlessly smoothing the way for her, showing her with a bare hint what was expected or what would be a gaffe, and an excellent linguist, ready with a translation when she needed one. San was all right. But the Guard was something else.

He had been attached to her by the Ekumen’s hosts on this world, the dominant power on Werel, the big nation of Voe Deo. She had promptly protested to the Embassy back in Voe Deo that she didn’t need or want a bodyguard. Nobody in Gatay was out to get her and even if they were, she preferred to look after herself. The Embassy sighed. Sorry, they said. You’re stuck with him. Voe Deo has a military presence in Gatay, which after all is a client state, economically dependent. It’s in Voe Deo’s interest to protect the legitimate government of Gatay against the native terrorist factions, and you get protected as one of their interests. We can’t argue with that.

She knew better than to argue with the Embassy, but she could not resign herself to the Major. His military title, rega, she translated by the archaic word “Major,” from a skit she’d seen on Terra. That Major had been a stuffed uniform, covered with medals and insignia. It puffed and strutted and commanded, and finally blew up into bits of stuffing. If only this Major would blow up! Not that he strutted, exactly, or even commanded, directly. He was stonily polite, woodenly silent, stiff and cold as rigor mortis. She soon gave up any effort to talk to him; whatever she said, he replied Yessum or Nomum with the prompt stupidity of a man who does not and will not actually listen, an officer officially incapable of humanity. And he was with her in every public situation, day and night, on the street, shopping, meeting with businessmen and officials, sightseeing, at court, in the balloon ascent above the mountains—with her everywhere, everywhere but bed.

Even in bed she wasn’t quite as alone as she would often have liked; for the Guide and the Guard went home at night, but in the anteroom of her bedroom slept the Maid—a gift from His Majesty, her own private asset.

She remembered her incredulity when she first learned that word, years ago, in a text about slavery. “On Werel, members of the dominant caste are called owners; members of the serving class are called assets. Only owners are referred to as men or women; assets are called bondsmen, bondswomen.”

So here she was, the owner of an asset. You don’t turn down a king’s gift. Her asset’s name was Rewe. Rewe was probably a spy too, but it was hard to believe. She was a dignified, handsome woman some years older than Solly and about the same intensity of skin color, though Solly was pinkish brown and Rewe was bluish brown. The palms of her hands were a delicate azure. Rewe’s manners were exquisite and she had tact, astuteness, an infallible sense of when she was wanted and when not. Solly of course treated her as an equal, stating right out at the beginning that she believed no human being had a right to dominate, much less own, another, that she would give Rewe no orders, and that she hoped they might become friends. Rewe accepted this, unfortunately, as a new set of orders. She smiled and said yes. She was infinitely yielding. Whatever Solly said or did sank into that acceptance and was lost, leaving Rewe unchanged: an attentive, obliging, gentle physical presence, just out of reach. She smiled, and said yes, and was untouchable.

And Solly began to think, after the first fizz of the first days in Gatay, that she needed Rewe, really needed her as a woman to talk with. There was no way to meet owner women, who lived hidden away in their bezas, women’s quarters, “at home,” they called it. All bondswomen but Rewe were somebody else’s property, not hers to talk to. All she ever met was men. And eunuchs.

That had been another thing hard to believe, that a man would voluntarily trade his virility for a little social standing; but she met such men all the time in King Hotat’s court. Born assets, they earned partial independence by becoming eunuchs, and as such often rose to positions of considerable power and trust among their owners. The eunuch Tayandan, majordomo of the palace, ruled the King, who didn’t rule, but figureheaded for the Council. The Council was made up of various kinds of lord but only one kind of priest, Tualites. Only assets worshiped Kamye, and the original religion of Gatay had been suppressed when the monarchy became Tualite a century or so ago. If there was one thing she really disliked about Werel, aside from slavery and gender-dominance, it was the religions. The songs about Lady Tual were beautiful, and the statues of her and the great temples in Voe Deo were wonderful, and the Arkamye seemed to be a good story though long-winded; but the deadly self-righteousness, the intolerance, the stupidity of the priests, the hideous doctrines that justified every cruelty in the name of the faith! As a matter of fact, Solly said to herself, was there anything she did like about Werel?

And answered herself instantly: I love it, I love it. I love this weird little bright sun and all the broken bits of moons and the mountains going up like ice walls and the people—the people with their black eyes without whites like animals’ eyes, eyes like dark glass, like dark water, mysterious—I want to love them, I want to know them, I want to reach them!

But she had to admit that the pissants at the Embassy had been right about one thing: being a woman was tough on Werel. She fit nowhere. She went about alone, she had a public position, and so was a contradiction in terms: proper women stayed at home, invisible. Only bondswomen went out in the streets, or met strangers, or worked at any public job. She behaved like an asset, not like an owner. Yet she was something very grand, an envoy of the Ekumen, and Gatay very much wanted to join the Ekumen and not to offend its envoys. So the officials and courtiers and businessmen she talked to on the business of the Ekumen did the best they could: they treated her as if she were a man.

The pretense was never complete and often broke right down. The poor old King groped her industriously, under the vague impression that she was one of his bedwarmers. When she contradicted Lord Gatuyo in a discussion, he stared with the blank disbelief of a man who has been talked back to by his shoe. He had been thinking of her as a woman. But in general the disgenderment worked, allowing her to work with them; and she began to fit herself into the game, enlisting Rewe’s help in making clothes that resembled what male owners wore in Gatay, avoiding anything that to them would be specifically feminine. Rewe was a quick, intelligent seamstress. The bright, heavy, close-fitted trousers were practical and becoming, the embroidered jackets were splendidly warm. She liked wearing them. But she felt unsexed by these men who could not accept her for what she was. She needed to talk to a woman.

She tried to meet some of the hidden owner women through the owner men, and met a wall of politeness without a door, without a peephole. What a wonderful idea; we will certainly arrange a visit when the weather is better! I should be overwhelmed with the honor if the Envoy were to entertain Lady Mayoyo and my daughters, but my foolish, provincial girls are so unforgivably timid—I’m sure you understand. Oh, surely, surely, a tour of the inner gardens—but not at present, when the vines are not in flower! We must wait until the vines are in flower!

There was nobody to talk to, nobody, until she met Batikam the Makil.

It was an event: a touring troupe from Voe Deo. There wasn’t much going on in Gatay’s little mountain capital by way of entertainment, except for temple dancers—all men, of course—and the soppy fluff that passed as drama on the Wer­elian network. Solly had doggedly entered some of these wet pastels, hoping for a glimpse into the life “at home,” but she couldn’t stomach the swooning maidens who died of love while the stiff-necked jackass heroes, who all looked like the Major, died nobly in battle, and Tual the Merciful leaned out of the clouds smiling upon their deaths with her eyes slightly crossed and the whites showing, a sign of divinity. Solly had noticed that Werelian men never entered the network for drama. Now she knew why. But the receptions at the palace and the parties in her honor given by various lords and businessmen were pretty dull stuff: all men, always, because they wouldn’t have the slave girls in while the Envoy was there; and she couldn’t flirt even with the nicest men, couldn’t remind them that they were men, since that would remind them that she was a woman not behaving like a lady. The fizz had definitely gone flat by the time the makil troupe came.

She asked San, a reliable etiquette advisor, if it would be all right for her to attend the performance. He hemmed and hawed and finally, with more than usually oily delicacy, gave her to understand that it would be all right so long as she went dressed as a man. “Women, you know, don’t go in public. But sometimes, they want so much to see the entertainers, you know? Lady Amatay used to go with Lord Amatay, dressed in his clothes, every year; everybody knew, nobody said anything—you know. For you, such a great person, it would be all right. Nobody will say anything. Quite, quite all right. Of course, I come with you, the rega comes with you. Like friends, ha? You know, three good men friends going to the entertainment, ha? Ha?”

Ha, ha, she said obediently. What fun! —But it was worth it, she thought, to see the makils.

They were never on the network. Young girls at home were not to be exposed to their performances, some of which, San gravely informed her, were unseemly. They played only in theaters. Clowns, dancers, prostitutes, actors, musicians, the makils formed a kind of subclass, the only assets not personally owned. A talented slave boy bought by the Entertainment Corporation from his owner was thenceforth the property of the Corporation, which trained and looked after him the rest of his life.

They walked to the theater, six or seven streets away. She had forgotten that the makils were all transvestites, indeed she did not remember it when she first saw them, a troop of tall slender dancers sweeping out onto the stage with the precision and power and grace of great birds wheeling, flocking, soaring. She watched unthinking, enthralled by their beauty, until suddenly the music changed and the clowns came in, black as night, black as owners, wearing fantastic trailing skirts, with fantastic jutting jeweled breasts, singing in tiny, swoony voices, “Oh do not rape me please kind Sir, no no, not now!” They’re men, they’re men! Solly realized then, already laughing helplessly. By the time Batikam finished his star turn, a marvelous dramatic monologue, she was a fan. “I want to meet him,” she said to San at a pause between acts. “The actor—Batikam.”

San got the bland expression that signified he was thinking how it could be arranged and how to make a little money out of it. But the Major was on guard, as ever. Stiff as a stick, he barely turned his head to glance at San. And San’s expression began to alter.

If her proposal was out of line, San would have signaled or said so. The Stuffed Major was simply controlling her, trying to keep her as tied down as one of “his” women. It was time to challenge him. She turned to him and stared straight at him. “Rega Teyeo,” she said, “I quite comprehend that you’re under orders to keep me in order. But if you give orders to San or to me, they must be spoken aloud, and they must be justified. I will not be managed by your winks or your whims.”

There was a considerable pause, a truly delicious and rewarding pause. It was difficult to see if the Major’s expression changed; the dim theater light showed no detail in his blue-black face. But there was something frozen about his stillness that told her she’d stopped him. At last he said, “I’m charged to protect you, Envoy.”

“Am I endangered by the makils? Is there impropriety in an envoy of the Ekumen congratulating a great artist of Werel?”

Again the frozen silence. “No,” he said.

“Then I request you to accompany me when I go backstage after the performance to speak to Batikam.”

One stiff nod. One stiff, stuffy, defeated nod. Score one! Solly thought, and sat back cheerfully to watch the lightpainters, the erotic dances, and the curiously touching little drama with which the evening ended. It was in archaic poetry, hard to understand, but the actors were so beautiful, their voices so tender that she found tears in her eyes and hardly knew why.

“A pity the makils always draw on the Arkamye,” said San, with smug, pious disapproval. He was not a very high-class owner, in fact he owned no assets; but he was an owner, and a bigoted Tualite, and liked to remind himself of it. “Scenes from the Incarnations of Tual would be more befitting such an audience.”

“I’m sure you agree, Rega,” she said, enjoying her own irony.

“Not at all,” he said, with such toneless politeness that at first she did not realise what he had said; and then forgot the minor puzzle in the bustle of finding their way and gaining admittance to the backstage and to the performers’ dressing room.

When they realised who she was, the managers tried to clear all the other performers out, leaving her alone with Batikam (and San and the Major, of course); but she said no, no, no, these wonderful artists must not be disturbed, just let me talk a moment with Batikam. She stood there in the bustle of doffed costumes, half-naked people, smeared makeup, laughter, dissolving tension after the show, any backstage on any world, talking with the clever, intense man in elaborate archaic woman’s costume. They hit it off at once. “Can you come to my house?” she asked. “With pleasure,” Batikam said, and his eyes did not flick to San’s or the Major’s face: the first bondsman she had yet met who did not glance to her Guard or her Guide for permission to say or do anything, anything at all. She glanced at them only to see if they were shocked. San looked collusive, the Major looked rigid. “I’ll come in a little while,” Batikam said. “I must change.”

They exchanged smiles, and she left. The fizz was back in the air. The huge close stars hung clustered like grapes of fire. A moon tumbled over the icy peaks, another jigged like a lopsided lantern above the curlicue pinnacles of the palace. She strode along the dark street, enjoying the freedom of the male robe she wore and its warmth, making San trot to keep up; the Major, long-legged, kept pace with her. A high, trilling voice called, “Envoy!” and she turned with a smile, then swung round, seeing the Major grappling momentarily with someone in the shadow of a portico. He broke free, caught up to her without a word, seized her arm in an iron grip, and dragged her into a run. “Let go!” she said, struggling; she did not want to use an aiji break on him, but nothing less was going to get her free.

He pulled her nearly off-balance with a sudden dodge into an alley; she ran with him, letting him keep hold on her arm. They came unexpectedly out into her street and to her gate, through it, into the house, which he unlocked with a word—how did he do that?—“What is all this?” she demanded, breaking away easily, holding her arm where his grip had bruised it.

She saw, outraged, the last flicker of an exhilarated smile on his face. Breathing hard, he asked, “Are you hurt?”

“Hurt? Where you yanked me, yes—what do you think you were doing?”

“Keeping the fellow away.”

“What fellow?”

He said nothing.

“The one who called out? Maybe he wanted to talk to me!”

After a moment the Major said, “Possibly. He was in the shadow. I thought he might be armed. I must go out and look for San Ubattat. Please keep the door locked until I come back.” He was out the door as he gave the order; it never occurred to him that she would not obey, and she did obey, raging. Did he think she couldn’t look after herself? that she needed him interfering in her life, kicking slaves around, “protecting” her? Maybe it was time he saw what an aiji fall looked like. He was strong and quick, but had no real training. This kind of amateur interference was intolerable, really intolerable; she must protest to the Embassy again.

As soon as she let him back in with a nervous, shamefaced San in tow, she said, “You opened my door with a password. I was not informed that you had right of entrance day and night.”

He was back to his military blankness. “Nomum,” he said.

“You are not to do so again. You are not to seize hold of me ever again. I must tell you that if you do, I will injure you. If something alarms you, tell me what it is and I will respond as I see fit. Now will you please go.”

“With pleasure, mum,” he said, wheeled, and marched out.

“Oh, Lady— Oh, Envoy,” San said, “that was a dangerous person, extremely dangerous people, I am so sorry, disgraceful,” and he babbled on. She finally got him to say who he thought it was, a religious dissident, one of the Old Believers who held to the original religion of Gatay and wanted to cast out or kill all foreigners and unbelievers. “A bondsman?” she asked with interest, and he was shocked— “Oh, no, no, a real person, a man—but most misguided, a fanatic, a heathen fanatic! Knifemen, they call themselves. But a man, Lady—Envoy, certainly a man!”

The thought that she might think that an asset might touch her upset him as much as the attempted assault. If such it had been.

As she considered it, she began to wonder if, since she had put the Major in his place at the theater, he had found an excuse to put her in her place by “protecting” her. Well, if he tried it again, he’d find himself upside down against the opposite wall.

“Rewe!” she called, and the bondswoman appeared instantly as always. “One of the actors is coming. Would you like to make us a little tea, something like that?” Rewe smiled, said, “Yes,” and vanished. There was a knock at the door. The Major opened it—he must be standing guard outside—and Batikam came in.

It had not occurred to her that the makil would still be in women’s clothing, but it was how he dressed offstage too, not so magnificently, but with elegance, in the delicate, flowing materials and dark, subtle hues that the swoony ladies in the dramas wore. It gave considerable piquancy, she felt, to her own male costume. Batikam was not as handsome as the Major, who was a stunning-looking man till he opened his mouth; but the makil was magnetic, you had to look at him. He was a dark greyish brown, not the blue-black that the owners were so vain of (though there were plenty of black assets too, Solly had noticed: of course, when every bondswoman was her owner’s sexual servant). Intense, vivid intelligence and sympathy shone in his face through the makil’s stardust black makeup, as he looked around with a slow, lovely laugh at her, at San, and at the Major standing at the door. He laughed like a woman, a warm ripple, not the ha, ha of a man. He held out his hands to Solly, and she came forward and took them. “Thank you for coming, Batikam!” she said, and he said, “Thank you for asking me, Alien Envoy!”

“San,” she said, “I think this is your cue?”

Only indecision about what he ought to do could have slowed San down till she had to speak. He still hesitated a moment, then smiled with unction and said, “Yes, so sorry, a very good night to you, Envoy! Noon hour at the Office of Mines, tomorrow, I believe?” Backing away, he backed right into the Major, who stood like a post in the doorway. She looked at the Major, ready to order him out without ceremony, how dare he shove back in!—and saw the expression on his face. For once his blank mask had cracked, and what was revealed was contempt. Incredulous, sickened contempt. As if he was obliged to watch someone eat a turd.

“Get out,” she said. She turned her back on both of them. “Come on, Batikam; the only privacy I have is in here,” she said, and led the makil to her bedroom.

He was born where his fathers before him were born, in the old, cold house in the foothills above Noeha. His mother did not cry out as she bore him, since she was a soldier’s wife, and a soldier’s mother, now. He was named for his great-uncle, killed on duty in the Sosa. He grew up in the stark discipline of a poor household of pure veot lineage. His father, when he was on leave, taught him the arts a soldier must know; when his father was on duty the old Asset-Sergeant Habbakam took over the lessons, which began at five in the morning, summer or winter, with worship, shortsword practice, and a cross-country run. His mother and grandmother taught him the other arts a man must know, beginning with good manners before he was two, and after his second birthday going on to history, poetry, and sitting still without talking.

The child’s day was filled with lessons and fenced with disciplines; but a child’s day is long. There was room and time for freedom, the freedom of the farmyard and the open hills. There was the companionship of pets, foxdogs, running dogs, spotted cats, hunting cats, and the farm cattle and the greathorses; not much companionship otherwise. The family’s assets, other than Habbakam and the two housewomen, were sharecroppers, working the stony foothill land that they and their owners had lived on forever. Their children were light-skinned, shy, already stooped to their lifelong work, ignorant of anything beyond their fields and hills. Sometimes they swam with Teyeo, summers, in the pools of the river. Sometimes he rounded up a couple of them to play soldiers with him. They stood awkward, uncouth, smirking when he shouted “Charge!” and rushed at the invisible enemy. “Follow me!” he cried shrilly, and they lumbered after him, firing their tree-branch guns at random, pow, pow. Mostly he went alone, riding his good mare Tasi or afoot with a hunting cat pacing by his side.

A few times a year visitors came to the estate, relatives or fellow officers of Teyeo’s father, bringing their children and their housepeople. Teyeo silently and politely showed the child guests about, introduced them to the animals, took them on rides. Silently and politely, he and his cousin Gemat came to hate each other; at age fourteen they fought for an hour in a glade behind the house, punctiliously following the rules of wrestling, relentlessly hurting each other, getting bloodier and wearier and more desperate, until by unspoken consent they called it off and returned in silence to the house, where everyone was gathering for dinner. Everyone looked at them and said nothing. They washed up hurriedly, hurried to table. Gemat’s nose leaked blood all through the meal; Teyeo’s jaw was so sore he could not open it to eat. No one commented.

Silently and politely, when they were both fifteen, Teyeo and Rega Toebawe’s daughter fell in love. On the last day of her visit they escaped by unspoken collusion and rode out side by side, rode for hours, too shy to talk. He had given her Tasi to ride. They dismounted to water and rest the horses in a wild valley of the hills. They sat near each other, not very near, by the side of the little quiet-running stream. “I love you,” Teyeo said. “I love you,” Emdu said, bending her shining black face down. They did not touch or look at each other. They rode back over the hills, joyous, silent.

When he was sixteen Teyeo was sent to the Officers’ Academy in the capital of his province. There he continued to learn and practice the arts of war and the arts of peace. His province was the most rural in Voe Deo; its ways were conservative, and his training was in some ways anachronistic. He was of course taught the technologies of modern warfare, becoming a first-rate pod pilot and an expert in telereconnaissance; but he was not taught the modern ways of thinking that accompanied the technologies in other schools. He learned the poetry and history of Voe Deo, not the history and politics of the Ekumen. The Alien presence on Werel remained remote, theoretical to him. His reality was the old reality of the veot class, whose men held themselves apart from all men not soldiers and in brotherhood with all soldiers, whether owners, assets, or enemies. As for women, Teyeo considered his rights over them absolute, binding him absolutely to responsible chivalry to women of his own class and protective, merciful treatment of bondswomen. He believed all foreigners to be basically hostile, untrustworthy heathens. He honored the Lady Tual, but worshiped the Lord Kamye. He expected no justice, looked for no reward, and valued above all competence, courage, and self-respect. In some respects he was utterly unsuited to the world he was to enter, in others well prepared for it, since he was to spend seven years on Yeowe fighting a war in which there was no justice, no reward, and never even an illusion of ultimate victory.

Rank among veot officers was hereditary. Teyeo entered active service as a rega, the highest of the three veot ranks. No degree of ineptitude or distinction could lower or raise his status or his pay. Material ambition was no use to a veot. But honor and responsibility were to be earned, and he earned them quickly. He loved service, loved the life, knew he was good at it, intelligently obedient, effective in command; he had come out of the Academy with the highest recommendations, and being posted to the capital, drew notice as a promising officer as well as a likable young man. At twenty-four he was absolutely fit, his body would do anything he asked of it. His austere upbringing had given him little taste for indulgence but an intense appreciation of pleasure, so the luxuries and entertainments of the capital were a discovery of delight to him. He was reserved and rather shy, but companionable and cheerful. A handsome young man, in with a set of other young men very like him, for a year he knew what it is to live a completely privileged life with complete enjoyment of it. The brilliant intensity of that enjoyment stood against the dark background of the war in Yeowe, the slave revolution on the colony planet, which had gone on all his lifetime, and was now intensifying. Without that background, he could not have been so happy. A whole life of games and diversions had no interest for him; and when his orders came, posted as a pilot and division commander to Yeowe, his happiness was pretty nearly complete.

He went home for his thirty-day leave. Having received his parents’ approbation, he rode over the hills to Rega Toebawe’s estate and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The rega and his wife told their daughter that they approved his offer and asked her, for they were not strict parents, if she would like to marry Teyeo. “Yes,” she said. As a grown, unmarried woman, she lived in seclusion in the women’s side of the house, but she and Teyeo were allowed to meet and even to walk together, the chaperone remaining at some distance. Teyeo told her it was a three-year posting; would she marry in haste now, or wait three years and have a proper wedding? “Now,” she said, bending down her narrow, shining face. Teyeo gave a laugh of delight, and she laughed at him. They were married nine days later—it couldn’t be sooner, there had to be some fuss and ceremony, even if it was a soldier’s wedding—and for seventeen days Teyeo and Emdu made love, walked together, made love, rode together, made love, came to know each other, came to love each other, quarreled, made up, made love, slept in each other’s arms. Then he left for the war on another world, and she moved to the women’s side of her husband’s house.

His three-year posting was extended year by year, as his value as an officer was recognised and as the war on Yeowe changed from scattered containing actions to an increasingly desperate retreat. In his seventh year of service an order for compassionate leave was sent out to Yeowe Headquarters for Rega Teyeo, whose wife was dying of complications of berlot fever. At that point, there was no headquarters on Yeowe; the Army was retreating from three directions towards the old colonial capital; Teyeo’s division was fighting a rear-guard defense in the sea marshes; communications had collapsed.

Command on Werel continued to find it inconceivable that a mass of ignorant slaves with the crudest kind of weapons could be defeating the Army of Voe Deo, a disciplined, trained body of soldiers with an infallible communications network, skimmers, pods, every armament and device permitted by the Ekumenical Convention Agreement. A strong faction in Voe Deo blamed the setbacks on this submissive adherence to Alien rules. The hell with Ekumenical Conventions. Bomb the damned dusties back to the mud they were made of. Use the biobomb, what was it for, anyway? Get our men off the foul planet and wipe it clean. Start fresh. If we don’t win the war on Yeowe, the next revolution’s going to be right here on Werel, in our own cities, in our own homes! The jittery government held on against this pressure. Werel was on probation, and Voe Deo wanted to lead the planet to Ekumenical status. Defeats were minimised, losses were not made up, skimmers, pods, weapons, men were not replaced. By the end of Teyeo’s seventh year, the Army on Yeowe had been essentially written off by its government. Early in the eighth year, when the Ekumen was at last permitted to send its Envoys to Yeowe, Voe Deo and the other countries that had supplied auxiliary troops finally began to bring their soldiers home.

It was not until he got back to Werel that Teyeo learned his wife was dead.

He went home to Noeha. He and his father greeted each other with a silent embrace, but his mother wept as she embraced him. He knelt to her in apology for having brought her more grief than she could bear.

He lay that night in the cold room in the silent house, listening to his heart beat like a slow drum. He was not unhappy, the relief of being at peace and the sweetness of being home were too great for that; but it was a desolate calm, and somewhere in it was anger. Not used to anger, he was not sure what he felt. It was as if a faint, sullen red flare colored every image in his mind, as he lay trying to think through the seven years on Yeowe, first as a pilot, then the ground war, then the long retreat, the killing and the being killed. Why had they been left there to be hunted down and slaughtered? Why had the government not sent them reinforcements? The questions had not been worth asking then, they were not worth asking now. They had only one answer: We do what they ask us to do, and we don’t complain. I fought every step of the way, he thought without pride. The new knowledge sliced keen as a knife through all other knowledge— And while I was fighting, she was dying. All a waste, there on Yeowe. All a waste, here on Werel. He sat up in the dark, the cold, silent, sweet dark of night in the hills. “Lord Kamye,” he said aloud, “help me. My mind betrays me.”

During the long leave home he sat often with his mother. She wanted to talk about Emdu, and at first he had to force himself to listen. It would be easy to forget the girl he had known for seventeen days seven years ago, if only his mother would let him forget. Gradually he learned to take what she wanted to give him, the knowledge of who his wife had been. His mother wanted to share all she could with him of the joy she had had in Emdu, her beloved child and friend. Even his father, retired now, a quenched, silent man, was able to say, “She was the light of the house.” They were thanking him for her. They were telling him that it had not all been a waste.

But what lay ahead of them? Old age, the empty house. They did not complain, of course, and seemed content in their severe, placid round of daily work; but for them the continuity of the past with the future was broken.

“I should remarry,” Teyeo said to his mother. “Is there anyone you’ve noticed… ?”

It was raining, a grey light through the wet windows, a soft thrumming on the eaves. His mother’s face was indistinct as she bent to her mending.

“No,” she said. “Not really.” She looked up at him, and after a pause asked, “Where do you think you’ll be posted?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s no war now,” she said, in her soft, even voice.

“No,” Teyeo said. “There’s no war.”

“Will there be… ever? do you think?”

He stood up, walked down the room and back, sat down again on the cushioned platform near her; they both sat straight-backed, still except for the slight motion of her hands as she sewed; his hands lay lightly one in the other, as he had been taught when he was two.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s strange. It’s as if there hadn’t been a war. As if we’d never been on Yeowe—the Colony, the Uprising, all of it. They don’t talk about it. It didn’t happen. We don’t fight wars. This is a new age. They say that often on the net. The age of peace, brotherhood across the stars. So, are we brothers with Yeowe, now? Are we brothers with Gatay and Bambur and the Forty States? Are we brothers with our assets? I can’t make sense of it. I don’t know what they mean. I don’t know where I fit in.” His voice too was quiet and even.

“Not here, I think,” she said. “Not yet.”

After a while he said, “I thought… children…”

“Of course. When the time comes.” She smiled at him. “You never could sit still for half an hour…. Wait. Wait and see.”

She was right, of course; and yet what he saw in the net and in town tried his patience and his pride. It seemed that to be a soldier now was a disgrace. Government reports, the news and the analyses, constantly referred to the Army and particularly the veot class as fossils, costly and useless, Voe Deo’s principal obstacle to full admission to the Ekumen. His own uselessness was made clear to him when his request for a posting was met by an indefinite extension of his leave on half pay. At thirty-two, they appeared to be telling him, he was superannuated.

Again he suggested to his mother that he should accept the situation, settle down, and look for a wife. “Talk to your father,” she said. He did so; his father said, “Of course your help is welcome, but I can run the farm well enough for a while yet. Your mother thinks you should go to the capital, to Command. They can’t ignore you if you’re there. After all. After seven years’ combat—your record—”

Teyeo knew what that was worth, now. But he was certainly not needed here, and probably irritated his father with his ideas of changing this or that way things were done. They were right: he should go to the capital and find out for himself what part he could play in the new world of peace.

His first half-year there was grim. He knew almost no one at Command or in the barracks; his generation was dead, or invalided out, or home on half pay. The younger officers, who had not been on Yeowe, seemed to him a cold, buttoned-up lot, always talking money and politics. Little businessmen, he privately thought them. He knew they were afraid of him—of his record, of his reputation. Whether he wanted to or not he reminded them that there had been a war that Werel had fought and lost, a civil war, their own race fighting against itself, class against class. They wanted to dismiss it as a meaningless quarrel on another world, nothing to do with them.

Teyeo walked the streets of the capital, watched the thousands of bondsmen and bondswomen hurrying about their owners’ business, and wondered what they were waiting for.

“The Ekumen does not interfere with the social, cultural, or economic arrangements and affairs of any people,” the Embassy and the government spokesmen repeated. “Full membership for any nation or people that wishes it is contingent only on absence, or renunciation, of certain specific methods and devices of warfare,” and there followed the list of terrible weapons, most of them mere names to Teyeo, but a few of them inventions of his own country: the biobomb, as they called it, and the neuronics.

He personally agreed with the Ekumen’s judgment on such devices, and respected their patience in waiting for Voe Deo and the rest of Werel to prove not only compliance with the ban, but acceptance of the principle. But he very deeply resented their condescension. They sat in judgment on everything Werelian, viewing from above. The less they said about the division of classes, the clearer their disapproval was. “Slavery is of very rare occurrence in Ekumenical worlds,” said their books, “and disappears completely with full participation in the Ekumenical polity.” Was that what the Alien Embassy was really waiting for?

“By our Lady!” said one of the young officers—many of them were Tualites, as well as businessmen—“the Aliens are going to admit the dusties before they admit us!” He was sputtering with indignant rage, like a red-faced old rega faced with an insolent bondsoldier. “Yeowe—a damned planet of savages, tribesmen, regressed into barbarism—preferred over us!”

“They fought well,” Teyeo observed, knowing he should not say it as he said it, but not liking to hear the men and women he had fought against called dusties. Assets, rebels, enemies, yes.

The young man stared at him and after a moment said, “I suppose you love ’em, eh? The dusties?”

“I killed as many as I could,” Teyeo replied politely, and then changed the conversation. The young man, though nominally Teyeo’s superior at Command, was an oga, the lowest rank of veot, and to snub him further would be ill-bred.

They were stuffy, he was touchy; the old days of cheerful good fellowship were a faint, incredible memory. The bureau chiefs at Command listened to his request to be put back on active service and sent him endlessly on to another department. He could not live in barracks, but had to find an apartment, like a civilian. His half pay did not permit him indulgence in the expensive pleasures of the city. While waiting for appointments to see this or that official, he spent his days in the library net of the Officers’ Academy. He knew his education had been incomplete and was out of date. If his country was going to join the Ekumen, in order to be useful he must know more about the Alien ways of thinking and the new technologies. Not sure what he needed to know, he floundered about in the network, bewildered by the endless information available, increasingly aware that he was no intellectual and no scholar and would never understand Alien minds, but doggedly driving himself on out of his depth.

A man from the Embassy was offering an introductory course in Ekumenical history in the public net. Teyeo joined it, and sat through eight or ten lecture-and-discussion periods, straight-backed and still, only his hands moving slightly as he took full and methodical notes. The lecturer, a Hainishman who translated his extremely long Hainish name as Old Music, watched Teyeo, tried to draw him out in discussion, and at last asked him to stay in after session. “I should like to meet you, Rega,” he said, when the others had dropped out.

They met at a café. They met again. Teyeo did not like the Alien’s manners, which he found effusive; he did not trust his quick, clever mind; he felt Old Music was using him, studying him as a specimen of The Veot, The Soldier, probably The Barbarian. The Alien, secure in his superiority, was indifferent to Teyeo’s coldness, ignored his distrust, insisted on helping him with information and guidance, and shamelessly repeated questions Teyeo had avoided answering. One of these was, “Why are you sitting around here on half pay?”

“It’s not by my own choice, Mr. Old Music,” Teyeo finally answered, the third time it was asked. He was very angry at the man’s impudence, and so spoke with particular mildness. He kept his eyes away from Old Music’s eyes, bluish, with the whites showing like a scared horse. He could not get used to Aliens’ eyes.

“They won’t put you back on active service?”

Teyeo assented politely. Could the man, however alien, really be oblivious to the fact that his questions were grossly humiliating?

“Would you be willing to serve in the Embassy Guard?”

That question left Teyeo speechless for a moment; then he committed the extreme rudeness of answering a question with a question. “Why do you ask?”

“I’d like very much to have a man of your capacity in that corps,” said Old Music, adding with his appalling candor, “Most of them are spies or blockheads. It would be wonderful to have a man I knew was neither. It’s not just sentry duty, you know. I imagine you’d be asked by your government to give information; that’s to be expected. And we would use you, once you had experience and if you were willing, as a liaison officer. Here or in other countries. We would not, however, ask you to give information to us. Am I clear, Teyeo? I want no misunderstanding between us as to what I am and am not asking of you.”

“You would be able… ?” Teyeo asked cautiously.

Old Music laughed and said, “Yes. I have a string to pull in your Command. A favor owed. Will you think it over?”

Teyeo was silent a minute. He had been nearly a year now in the capital and his requests for posting had met only bureaucratic evasion and, recently, hints that they were considered insubordinate. “I’ll accept now, if I may,” he said, with a cold deference.

The Hainishman looked at him, his smile changing to a thoughtful, steady gaze. “Thank you,” he said. “You should hear from Command in a few days.”

So Teyeo put his uniform back on, moved back to the City Barracks, and served for another seven years on alien ground. The Ekumenical Embassy was, by diplomatic agreement, a part not of Werel but of the Ekumen—a piece of the planet that no longer belonged to it. The Guardsmen furnished by Voe Deo were protective and decorative, a highly visible presence on the Embassy grounds in their white-and-gold dress uniform. They were also visibly armed, since protest against the Alien presence still broke out erratically in violence.

Rega Teyeo, at first assigned to command a troop of these guards, soon was transferred to a different duty, that of accompanying members of the Embassy staff about the city and on journeys. He served as a bodyguard, in undress uniform. The Embassy much preferred not to use their own people and weapons, but to request and trust Voe Deo to protect them. Often he was also called upon to be a guide and interpreter, and sometimes a companion. He did not like it when visitors from somewhere in space wanted to be chummy and confiding, asked him about himself, invited him to come drinking with them. With perfectly concealed distaste, with perfect civility, he refused such offers. He did his job and kept his distance. He knew that that was precisely what the Embassy valued him for. Their confidence in him gave him a cold satisfaction.

His own government had never approached him to give information, though he certainly learned things that would have interested them. Voe Dean intelligence did not recruit their agents among veots. He knew who the agents in the Embassy Guard were; some of them tried to get information from him, but he had no intention of spying for spies.

Old Music, whom he now surmised to be the head of the Embassy’s intelligence system, called him in on his return from a winter leave at home. The Hainishman had learned not to make emotional demands on Teyeo, but could not hide a note of affection in his voice greeting him. “Hullo, Rega! I hope your family’s well? Good. I’ve got a particularly tricky job for you. Kingdom of Gatay. You were there with Kemehan two years ago, weren’t you? Well, now they want us to send an Envoy. They say they want to join. Of course the old King’s a puppet of your government; but there’s a lot else going on there. A strong religious separatist movement. A Patriotic Cause, kick out all the foreigners, Voe Deans and Aliens alike. But the King and Council requested an Envoy, and all we’ve got to send them is a new arrival. She may give you some problems till she learns the ropes. I judge her a bit headstrong. Excellent material, but young, very young. And she’s only been here a few weeks. I requested you, because she needs your experience. Be patient with her, Rega. I think you’ll find her likable.”

He did not. In seven years he had got accustomed to the Aliens’ eyes and their various smells and colors and manners. Protected by his flawless courtesy and his stoical code, he endured or ignored their strange or shocking or troubling behavior, their ignorance and their different knowledge. Serving and protecting the foreigners entrusted to him, he kept himself aloof from them, neither touched nor touching. His charges learned to count on him and not to presume on him. Women were often quicker to see and respond to his Keep Out signs than men; he had an easy, almost friendly relationship with an old Terran Observer whom he had accompanied on several long investigatory tours. “You are as peaceful to be with as a cat, Rega,” she told him once, and he valued the compliment. But the Envoy to Gatay was another matter.

She was physically splendid, with clear red-brown skin like that of a baby, glossy swinging hair, a free walk—too free: she flaunted her ripe, slender body at men who had no access to it, thrusting it at him, at everyone, insistent, shameless. She expressed her opinion on everything with coarse self-confidence. She could not hear a hint and refused to take an order. She was an aggressive, spoiled child with the sexuality of an adult, given the responsibility of a diplomat in a dangerously unstable country. Teyeo knew as soon as he met her that this was an impossible assignment. He could not trust her or himself. Her sexual immodesty aroused him as it disgusted him; she was a whore whom he must treat as a princess. Forced to endure and unable to ignore her, he hated her.

He was more familiar with anger than he had used to be, but not used to hating. It troubled him extremely. He had never in his life asked for a reposting, but on the morning after she had taken the makil into her room, he sent a stiff little appeal to the Embassy. Old Music responded to him with a sealed voice-message through the diplomatic link: “Love of god and country is like fire, a wonderful friend, a terrible enemy; only children play with fire. I don’t like the situation. There’s nobody here I can replace either of you with. Will you hang on a while longer?”

He did not know how to refuse. A veot did not refuse duty. He was ashamed at having even thought of doing so, and hated her again for causing him that shame.

The first sentence of the message was enigmatic, not in Old Music’s usual style but flowery, indirect, like a coded warning. Teyeo of course knew none of the intelligence codes either of his country or of the Ekumen. Old Music would have to use hints and indirection with him. “Love of god and country” could well mean the Old Believers and the Patriots, the two subversive groups in Gatay, both of them fanatically opposed to foreign influence; the Envoy could be the child playing with fire. Was she being approached by one group or the other? He had seen no evidence of it, unless the man in the shadows that night had been not a knifeman but a messenger. She was under his eyes all day, her house watched all night by soldiers under his command. Surely the makil, Batikam, was not acting for either of those groups. He might well be a member of the Hame, the asset liberation underground of Voe Deo, but as such would not endanger the Envoy, since the Hame saw the Ekumen as their ticket to Yeowe and to freedom.

Teyeo puzzled over the words, replaying them over and over, knowing his own stupidity faced with this kind of subtlety, the ins and outs of the political labyrinth. At last he erased the message and yawned, for it was late; bathed, lay down, turned off the light, said under his breath, “Lord Kamye, let me hold with courage to the one noble thing!” and slept like a stone.

The makil came to her house every night after the theater. Teyeo tried to tell himself there was nothing wrong in it. He himself had spent nights with the makils, back in the palmy days before the war. Expert, artistic sex was part of their business. He knew by hearsay that rich city women often hired them to come supply a husband’s deficiencies. But even such women did so secretly, discreetly, not in this vulgar, shameless way, utterly careless of decency, flouting the moral code, as if she had some kind of right to do whatever she wanted wherever and whenever she wanted it. Of course Batikam colluded eagerly with her, playing on her infatuation, mocking the Gatayans, mocking Teyeo—and mocking her, though she didn’t know it. What a chance for an asset to make fools of all the owners at once!

Watching Batikam, Teyeo felt sure he was a member of the Hame. His mockery was very subtle; he was not trying to disgrace the Envoy. Indeed his discretion was far greater than hers. He was trying to keep her from disgracing herself. The makil returned Teyeo’s cold courtesy in kind, but once or twice their eyes met and some brief, involuntary understanding passed between them, fraternal, ironic.

There was to be a public festival, an observation of the Tualite Feast of Forgiveness, to which the Envoy was pressingly invited by the King and Council. She was put on show at many such events. Teyeo thought nothing about it except how to provide security in an excited holiday crowd, until San told him that the festival day was the highest holy day of the old religion of Gatay, and that the Old Believers fiercely resented the imposition of the foreign rites over their own. The little man seemed genuinely worried. Teyeo worried too when next day San was suddenly replaced by an elderly man who spoke little but Gatayan and was quite unable to explain what had become of San Ubattat. “Other duties, other duties call,” he said in very bad Voe Dean, smiling and bobbing, “very great relishes time, aha? Relishes duties call.”

During the days that preceded the festival tension rose in the city; graffiti appeared, symbols of the old religion smeared across walls; a Tualite temple was desecrated, after which the Royal Guard was much in evidence in the streets. Teyeo went to the palace and requested, on his own authority, that the Envoy not be asked to appear in public during a ceremony that was “likely to be troubled by inappropriate demonstrations.” He was called in and treated by a Court official with a mixture of dismissive insolence and conniving nods and winks, which left him really uneasy. He left four men on duty at the Envoy’s house that night. Returning to his quarters, a little barracks down the street which had been handed over to the Embassy Guard, he found the window of his room open and a scrap of writing, in his own language, on his table: Fest F is set up for assasnation.

He was at the Envoy’s house promptly the next morning and asked her asset to tell her he must speak to her. She came out of her bedroom pulling a white wrap around her naked body. Batikam followed her, half-dressed, sleepy, and amused. Teyeo gave him the eye-signal go, which he received with a serene, patronising smile, murmuring to the woman, “I’ll go have some breakfast. Rewe? have you got something to feed me?” He followed the bondswoman out of the room. Teyeo faced the Envoy and held out the scrap of paper.

“I received this last night, ma’am,” he said. “I must ask you not to attend the festival tomorrow.”

She considered the paper, read the writing, and yawned. “Who’s it from?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“What’s it mean? Assassination? They can’t spell, can they?”

After a moment, he said, “There are a number of other indications—enough that I must ask you—”

“Not to attend the festival of Forgiveness, yes. I heard you.” She went to a window seat and sat down, her robe falling wide to reveal her legs; her bare, brown feet were short and supple, the soles pink, the toes small and orderly. Teyeo looked fixedly at the air beside her head. She twiddled the bit of paper. “If you think it’s dangerous, Rega, bring a guardsman or two with you,” she said, with the faintest tone of scorn. “I really have to be there. The King requested it, you know. And I’m to light the big fire, or something. One of the few things women are allowed to do in public here…. I can’t back out of it.” She held out the paper, and after a moment he came close enough to take it. She looked up at him smiling; when she defeated him she always smiled at him. “Who do you think would want to blow me away, anyhow? The Patriots?”

“Or the Old Believers, ma’am. Tomorrow is one of their holidays.”

“And your Tualites have taken it away from them? Well, they can’t exactly blame the Ekumen, can they?”

“I think it possible that the government might permit violence in order to excuse retaliation, ma’am.”

She started to answer carelessly, realised what he had said, and frowned. “You think the Council’s setting me up? What evidence have you?”

After a pause he said, “Very little, ma’am. San Ubattat—”

“San’s been ill. The old fellow they sent isn’t much use, but he’s scarcely dangerous! Is that all?” He said nothing, and she went on, “Until you have real evidence, Rega, don’t interfere with my obligations. Your militaristic paranoia isn’t acceptable when it spreads to the people I’m dealing with here. Control it, please! I’ll expect an extra guardsman or two tomorrow; and that’s enough.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and went out. His head sang with anger. It occurred to him now that her new guide had told him San Ubattat had been kept away by religious duties, not by illness. He did not turn back. What was the use? “Stay on for an hour or so, will you, Seyem?” he said to the guard at her gate, and strode off down the street, trying to walk away from her, from her soft brown thighs and the pink soles of her feet and her stupid, insolent, whorish voice giving him orders. He tried to let the bright icy sunlit air, the stepped streets snapping with banners for the festival, the glitter of the great mountains and the clamor of the markets fill him, dazzle and distract him; but he walked seeing his own shadow fall in front of him like a knife across the stones, knowing the futility of his life.

“The veot looked worried,” Batikam said in his velvet voice, and she laughed, spearing a preserved fruit from the dish and popping it, dripping, into his mouth.

“I’m ready for breakfast now, Rewe,” she called, and sat down across from Batikam. “I’m starving! He was having one of his phallocratic fits. He hasn’t saved me from anything lately. It’s his only function, after all. So he has to invent occasions. I wish, I wish he was out of my hair. It’s so nice not to have poor little old San crawling around like some kind of pubic infestation. If only I could get rid of the Major now!”

“He’s a man of honor,” the makil said; his tone did not seem ironical.

“How can an owner of slaves be an honorable man?”

Batikam watched her from his long, dark eyes. She could not read Werelian eyes, beautiful as they were, filling their lids with darkness.

“Male hierarchy members always yatter about their precious honor,” she said. “And ‘their’ women’s honor, of course.”

“Honor is a great privilege,” Batikam said. “I envy it. I envy him.”

“Oh, the hell with all that phony dignity, it’s just pissing to mark your territory. All you need envy him, Batikam, is his freedom.”

He smiled. “You’re the only person I’ve ever known who was neither owned nor owner. That is freedom. That is freedom. I wonder if you know it?”

“Of course I do,” she said. He smiled, and went on eating his breakfast, but there had been something in his voice she had not heard before. Moved and a little troubled, she said after a while, “You’re going away soon.”

“Mind reader. Yes. In ten days, the troupe goes on to tour the Forty States.”

“Oh, Batikam, I’ll miss you! You’re the only man, the only person here I can talk to—let alone the sex—”

“Did we ever?”

“Not often,” she said, laughing, but her voice shook a little. He held out his hand; she came to him and sat on his lap, the robe dropping open. “Little pretty Envoy breasts,” he said, lipping and stroking, “little soft Envoy belly…” Rewe came in with a tray and softly set it down. “Eat your breakfast, little Envoy,” Batikam said, and she disengaged herself and returned to her chair, grinning.

“Because you’re free you can be honest,” he said, fastidiously peeling a pini fruit. “Don’t be too hard on those of us who aren’t and can’t.” He cut a slice and fed it to her across the table. “It has been a taste of freedom to know you,” he said. “A hint, a shadow…”

“In a few years at most, Batikam, you will be free. This whole idiotic structure of masters and slaves will collapse completely when Werel comes into the Ekumen.”

“If it does.”

“Of course it will.”

He shrugged. “My home is Yeowe,” he said.

She stared, confused. “You come from Yeowe?”

“I’ve never been there,” he said. “I’ll probably never go there. What use have they got for makils? But it is my home. Those are my people. That is my freedom. When will you see…” His fist was clenched; he opened it with a soft gesture of letting something go. He smiled and returned to his breakfast. “I’ve got to get back to the theater,” he said. “We’re rehearsing an act for the Day of Forgiveness.”

She wasted all day at court. She had made persistent attempts to obtain permission to visit the mines and the huge government-run farms on the far side of the mountains, from which Gatay’s wealth flowed. She had been as persistently foiled—by the protocol and bureaucracy of the government, she had thought at first, their unwillingness to let a diplomat do anything but run round to meaningless events; but some businessmen had let something slip about conditions in the mines and on the farms that made her think they might be hiding a more brutal kind of slavery than any visible in the capital. Today she got nowhere, waiting for appointments that had not been made. The old fellow who was standing in for San misunderstood most of what she said in Voe Dean, and when she tried to speak Gatayan he misunderstood it all, through stupidity or intent. The Major was blessedly absent most of the morning, replaced by one of his soldiers, but turned up at court, stiff and silent and set-jawed, and attended her until she gave up and went home for an early bath.

Batikam came late that night. In the middle of one of the elaborate fantasy games and role reversals she had learned from him and found so exciting, his caresses grew slower and slower, soft, dragging across her like feathers, so that she shivered with unappeased desire and, pressing her body against his, realised that he had gone to sleep. “Wake up,” she said, laughing and yet chilled, and shook him a little. The dark eyes opened, bewildered, full of fear.

“I’m sorry,” she said at once, “go back to sleep, you’re tired. No, no, it’s all right, it’s late.” But he went on with what she now, whatever his skill and tenderness, had to see was his job.

In the morning at breakfast she said, “Can you see me as an equal, do you, Batikam?”

He looked tired, older than he usually did. He did not smile. After a while he said, “What do you want me to say?”

“That you do.”

“I do,” he said quietly.

“You don’t trust me,” she said, bitter.

After a while he said, “This is Forgiveness Day. The Lady Tual came to the men of Asdok, who had set their hunting cats upon her followers. She came among them riding on a great hunting cat with a fiery tongue, and they fell down in terror, but she blessed them, forgiving them.” His voice and hands enacted the story as he told it. “Forgive me,” he said.

“You don’t need any forgiveness!”

“Oh, we all do. It’s why we Kamyites borrow the Lady Tual now and then. When we need her. So, today you’ll be the Lady Tual, at the rites?”

“All I have to do is light a fire, they said,” she said anxiously, and he laughed. When he left she told him she would come to the theater to see him, tonight, after the festival.

The horse-race course, the only flat area of any size anywhere near the city, was thronged, vendors calling, banners waving; the Royal motorcars drove straight into the crowd, which parted like water and closed behind. Some rickety-looking bleachers had been erected for lords and owners, with a curtained section for ladies. She saw a motorcar drive up to the bleachers; a figure swathed in red cloth was bundled out of it and hurried between the curtains, vanishing. Were there peepholes for them to watch the ceremony through? There were women in the crowds, but bondswomen only, assets. She realised that she, too, would be kept hidden until her moment of the ceremony arrived: a red tent awaited her, alongside the bleachers, not far from the roped enclosure where priests were chanting. She was rushed out of the car and into the tent by obsequious and determined courtiers.

Bondswomen in the tent offered her tea, sweets, mirrors, makeup, and hair oil, and helped her put on the complex swathing of fine red-and-yellow cloth, her costume for her brief enactment of Lady Tual. Nobody had told her very clearly what she was to do, and to her questions the women said, “The priests will show you, Lady, you just go with them. You just light the fire. They have it all ready.” She had the impression that they knew no more than she did; they were pretty girls, court assets, excited at being part of the show, indifferent to the religion. She knew the symbolism of the fire she was to light: into it faults and transgressions could be cast and burnt up, forgotten. It was a nice idea.

The priests were whooping it up out there; she peeked out—there were indeed peepholes in the tent fabric—and saw the crowd had thickened. Nobody except in the bleachers and right against the enclosure ropes could possibly see anything, but everybody was waving red-and-yellow banners, munching fried food, and making a day of it, while the priests kept up their deep chanting. In the far right of the little, blurred field of vision through the peephole was a familiar arm: the Major’s, of course. They had not let him get into the motorcar with her. He must have been furious. He had got here, though, and stationed himself on guard. “Lady, Lady,” the court girls were saying, “here come the priests now,” and they buzzed around her making sure her headdress was on straight and the damnable, hobbling skirts fell in the right folds. They were still plucking and patting as she stepped out of the tent, dazzled by the daylight, smiling and trying to hold herself very straight and dignified as a Goddess ought to do. She really didn’t want to fuck up their ceremony.

Two men in priestly regalia were waiting for her right outside the tent door. They stepped forward immediately, taking her by the elbows and saying, “This way, this way, Lady.” Evidently she really wouldn’t have to figure out what to do. No doubt they considered women incapable of it, but in the circumstances it was a relief. The priests hurried her along faster than she could comfortably walk in the tight-drawn skirt. They were behind the bleachers now; wasn’t the enclosure in the other direction? A car was coming straight at them, scattering the few people who were in its way. Somebody was shouting; the priests suddenly began yanking her, trying to run; one of them yelled and let go her arm, felled by a flying darkness that had hit him with a jolt—she was in the middle of a melee, unable to break the iron hold on her arm, her legs imprisoned in the skirt, and there was a noise, an enormous noise, that hit her head and bent it down, she couldn’t see or hear, blinded, struggling, shoved face first into some dark place with her face pressed into a stifling, scratchy darkness and her arms held locked behind her.

A car, moving. A long time. Men, talking low. They talked in Gatayan. It was very hard to breathe. She did not struggle; it was no use. They had taped her arms and legs, bagged her head. After a long time she was hauled out like a corpse and carried quickly, indoors, down stairs, set down on a bed or couch, not roughly though with the same desperate haste. She lay still. The men talked, still almost in whispers. It made no sense to her. Her head was still hearing that enormous noise, had it been real? had she been struck? She felt deaf, as if inside a wall of cotton. The cloth of the bag kept getting stuck on her mouth, sucked against her nostrils as she tried to breathe.

It was plucked off; a man stooping over her turned her so he could untape her arms, then her legs, murmuring as he did so, “Don’t to be scared, Lady, we don’t to hurt you,” in Voe Dean. He backed away from her quickly. There were four or five of them; it was hard to see, there was very little light. “To wait here,” another said, “everything all right. Just to keep happy.” She was trying to sit up, and it made her dizzy. When her head stopped spinning, they were all gone. As if by magic. Just to keep happy.

A small very high room. Dark brick walls, earthy air. The light was from a little biolume plaque stuck on the ceiling, a weak, shadowless glow. Probably quite sufficient for Werelian eyes. Just to keep happy. I have been kidnapped. How about that. She inventoried: the thick mattress she was on; a blanket; a door; a small pitcher and a cup; a drainhole, was it, over in the corner? She swung her legs off the mattress and her feet struck something lying on the floor at the foot of it—she coiled up, peered at the dark mass, the body lying there. A man. The uniform, the skin so black she could not see the features, but she knew him. Even here, even here, the Major was with her.

She stood up unsteadily and went to investigate the drainhole, which was simply that, a cement-lined hole in the floor, smelling slightly chemical, slightly foul. Her head hurt, and she sat down on the bed again to massage her arms and ankles, easing the tension and pain and getting herself back into herself by touching and confirming herself, rhythmically, methodically. I have been kidnapped. How about that. Just to keep happy. What about him?

Suddenly knowing that he was dead, she shuddered and held still.

After a while she leaned over slowly, trying to see his face, listening. Again she had the sense of being deaf. She heard no breath. She reached out, sick and shaking, and put the back of her hand against his face. It was cool, cold. But warmth breathed across her fingers, once, again. She crouched on the mattress and studied him. He lay absolutely still, but when she put her hand on his chest she felt the slow heartbeat.

“Teyeo,” she said in a whisper. Her voice would not go above a whisper.

She put her hand on his chest again. She wanted to feel that slow, steady beat, the faint warmth; it was reassuring. Just to keep happy.

What else had they said? Just to wait. Yes. That seemed to be the program. Maybe she could sleep. Maybe she could sleep and when she woke up the ransom would have come. Or whatever it was they wanted.

She woke up with the thought that she still had her watch, and after sleepily studying the tiny silver readout for a while decided she had slept three hours; it was still the day of the Festival, too soon for ransom probably, and she wouldn’t be able to go to the theater to see the makils tonight. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the low light and when she looked she could see, now, that there was dried blood all over one side of the man’s head. Exploring, she found a hot lump like a fist above his temple, and her fingers came away smeared. He had got himself crowned. That must have been him, launching himself at the priest, the fake priest, all she could remember was a flying shadow and a hard thump and an ooof! like an aiji attack, and then there had been the huge noise that confused everything. She clicked her tongue, tapped the wall, to check her hearing. It seemed to be all right; the wall of cotton had disappeared. Maybe she had been crowned herself? She felt her head, but found no lumps. The man must have a concussion, if he was still out after three hours. How bad? When would the men come back?

She got up and nearly fell over, entangled in the damned Goddess skirts. If only she was in her own clothes, not this fancy dress, three pieces of flimsy stuff you had to have servants to put on you! She got out of the skirt piece, and used the scarf piece to make a kind of tied skirt that came to her knees. It wasn’t warm in this basement or whatever it was; it was dank and rather cold. She walked up and down, four steps turn, four steps turn, four steps turn, and did some warm-ups. They had dumped the man onto the floor. How cold was it? Was shock part of concussion? People in shock needed to be kept warm. She dithered a long time, puzzled at her own indecision, at not knowing what to do. Should she try to heave him up onto the mattress? Was it better not to move him? Where the hell were the men? Was he going to die?

She stooped over him and said sharply, “Rega! Teyeo!” and after a moment he caught his breath.

“Wake up!” She remembered now, she thought she remembered, that it was important not to let concussed people lapse into a coma. Except he already had.

He caught his breath again, and his face changed, came out of the rigid immobility, softened; his eyes opened and closed, blinked, unfocused. “Oh Kamye,” he said very softly.

She couldn’t believe how glad she was to see him. Just to keep happy. He evidently had a blinding headache, and admitted that he was seeing double. She helped him haul himself up onto the mattress and covered him with the blanket. He asked no questions, and lay mute, lapsing back to sleep soon. Once he was settled she went back to her exercises, and did an hour of them. She looked at her watch. It was two hours later, the same day, the Festival day. It wasn’t evening yet. When were the men going to come?

They came early in the morning, after the endless night that was the same as the afternoon and the morning. The metal door was unlocked and thrown clanging open, and one of them came in with a tray while two of them stood with raised, aimed guns in the doorway. There was nowhere to put the tray but the floor, so he shoved it at Solly, said, “Sorry, Lady!” and backed out; the door clanged shut, the bolts banged home. She stood holding the tray. “Wait!” she said.

The man had waked up and was looking groggily around. After finding him in this place with her she had somehow lost his nickname, did not think of him as the Major, yet shied away from his name. “Here’s breakfast, I guess,” she said, and sat down on the edge of the mattress. A cloth was thrown over the wicker tray; under it was a pile of Gatayan grainrolls stuffed with meat and greens, several pieces of fruit, and a capped water carafe of thin, fancily beaded metal alloy. “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, maybe,” she said. “Shit. Oh well. It looks good. Can you eat? Can you sit up?”

He worked himself up to sit with his back against the wall, and then shut his eyes.

“You’re still seeing double?”

He made a small noise of assent.

“Are you thirsty?”

Small noise of assent.

“Here.” She passed him the cup. By holding it in both hands he got it to his mouth, and drank the water slowly, a swallow at a time. She meanwhile devoured three grainrolls one after the other, then forced herself to stop, and ate a pini fruit. “Could you eat some fruit?” she asked him, feeling guilty. He did not answer. She thought of Batikam feeding her the slice of pini at breakfast, when, yesterday, a hundred years ago.

The food in her stomach made her feel sick. She took the cup from the man’s relaxed hand—he was asleep again—and poured herself water, and drank it slowly, a swallow at a time.

When she felt better she went to the door and explored its hinges, lock, and surface. She felt and peered around the brick walls, the poured concrete floor, seeking she knew not what, something to escape with, something…. She should do exercises. She forced herself to do some, but the queasiness returned, and a lethargy with it. She went back to the mattress and sat down. After a while she found she was crying. After a while she found she had been asleep. She needed to piss. She squatted over the hole and listened to her urine fall into it. There was nothing to clean herself with. She came back to the bed and sat down on it, stretching out her legs, holding her ankles in her hands. It was utterly silent.

She turned to look at the man; he was watching her. It made her start. He looked away at once. He still lay half-propped up against the wall, uncomfortably, but relaxed.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked.

“Thank you,” he said. Here where nothing was familiar and time was broken off from the past, his soft, light voice was welcome in its familiarity. She poured him a cup full and gave it to him. He managed it much more steadily, sitting up to drink. “Thank you,” he whispered again, giving her back the cup.

“How’s your head?”

He put up his hand to the swelling, winced, and sat back.

“One of them had a stick,” she said, seeing it in a flash in the jumble of her memories—“a priest’s staff. You jumped the other one.”

“They took my gun,” he said. “Festival.” He kept his eyes closed.

“I got tangled in those damn clothes. I couldn’t help you at all. Listen. Was there a noise, an explosion?”

“Yes. Diversion, maybe.”

“Who do you think these boys are?”

“Revolutionaries. Or…”

“You said you thought the Gatayan government was in on it.”

“I don’t know,” he murmured.

“You were right, I was wrong, I’m sorry,” she said with a sense of virtue at remembering to make amends.

He moved his hand very slightly in an it-doesn’t-matter gesture.

“Are you still seeing double?”

He did not answer; he was phasing out again.

She was standing, trying to remember Selish breathing exercises, when the door crashed and clanged, and the same three men were there, two with guns, all young, black-skinned, short-haired, very nervous. The lead one stooped to set a tray down on the floor, and without the least premeditation Solly stepped on his hand and brought her weight down on it. “You wait!” she said. She was staring straight into the faces and gun muzzles of the other two. “Just wait a moment, listen! He has a head injury, we need a doctor, we need more water, I can’t even clean his wound, there’s no toilet paper, who the hell are you people anyway?”

The one she had stomped was shouting, “Get off! Lady to get off my hand!” but the others heard her. She lifted her foot and got out of his way as he came up fast, backing into his buddies with the guns. “All right, Lady, we are sorry to have trouble,” he said, tears in his eyes, cradling his hand. “We are Patriots. You send messish to this Pretender, like our messish. Nobody is to hurt. All right?” He kept backing up, and one of the gunmen swung the door to. Crash, rattle.

She drew a deep breath and turned. Teyeo was watching her. “That was dangerous,” he said, smiling very slightly.

“I know it was,” she said, breathing hard. “It was stupid. I can’t get hold of myself. I feel like pieces of me. But they shove stuff in and run, damn it! We have to have some water!” She was in tears, the way she always was for a moment after violence or a quarrel. “Let’s see, what have they brought this time.” She lifted the tray up onto the mattress; like the other, in a ridiculous semblance of service in a hotel or a house with slaves, it was covered with a cloth. “All the comforts,” she murmured. Under the cloth was a heap of sweet pastries, a little plastic hand mirror, a comb, a tiny pot of something that smelled like decayed flowers, and a box of what she identified after a while as Gatayan tampons.

“It’s things for the lady,” she said, “God damn them, the stupid Goddamn pricks! A mirror!” She flung the thing across the room. “Of course I can’t last a day without looking in the mirror! God damn them!” She flung everything else but the pastries after the mirror, knowing as she did so that she would pick up the tampons and keep them under the mattress and, oh, God forbid, use them if she had to, if they had to stay here, how long would it be? ten days or more— “Oh, God,” she said again. She got up and picked everything up, put the mirror and the little pot, the empty water jug and the fruit skins from the last meal, onto one of the trays and set it beside the door. “Garbage,” she said in Voe Dean. Her outburst, she realised, had been in another language; Alterran, probably. “Have you any idea,” she said, sitting down on the mattress again, “how hard you people make it to be a woman? You could turn a woman against being one!”

“I think they meant well,” Teyeo said. She realised that there was not the faintest shade of mockery, even of amusement in his voice. If he was enjoying her shame, he was ashamed to show her that he was. “I think they’re amateurs,” he said.

After a while she said, “That could be bad.”

“It might.” He had sat up and was gingerly feeling the knot on his head. His coarse, heavy hair was blood-caked all around it. “Kidnapping,” he said. “Ransom demands. Not assassins. They didn’t have guns. Couldn’t have got in with guns. I had to give up mine.”

“You mean these aren’t the ones you were warned about?”

“I don’t know.” His explorations caused him a shiver of pain, and he desisted. “Are we very short of water?”

She brought him another cupful. “Too short for washing. A stupid Goddamn mirror when what we need is water!”

He thanked her and drank and sat back, nursing the last swallows in the cup. “They didn’t plan to take me,” he said.

She thought about it and nodded. “Afraid you’d identify them?”

“If they had a place for me, they wouldn’t put me in with a lady.” He spoke without irony. “They had this ready for you. It must be somewhere in the city.”

She nodded. “The car ride was half an hour or less. My head was in a bag, though.”

“They’ve sent a message to the Palace. They got no reply, or an unsatisfactory one. They want a message from you.”

“To convince the government they really have me? Why do they need convincing?”

They were both silent.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t think.” He lay back. Feeling tired, low, edgy after her adrenaline rush, she lay down alongside him. She had rolled up the Goddess’s skirt to make a pillow; he had none. The blanket lay across their legs.

“Pillow,” she said. “More blankets. Soap. What else?”

“Key,” he murmured.

They lay side by side in the silence and the faint unvarying light.

Next morning about eight, according to Solly’s watch, the Patriots came into the room, four of them. Two stood on guard at the door with their guns ready; the other two stood uncomfortably in what floor space was left, looking down at their captives, both of whom sat cross-legged on the mattress. The new spokesman spoke better Voe Dean than the others. He said they were very sorry to cause the lady discomfort and would do what they could to make it comfortable for her, and she must be patient and write a message by hand to the Pretender King, explaining that she would be set free unharmed as soon as the King commanded the Council to rescind their treaty with Voe Deo.

“He won’t,” she said. “They won’t let him.”

“Please do not discuss,” the man said with frantic harshness. “This is writing materials. This is the message.” He set the papers and a stylo down on the mattress, nervously, as if afraid to get close to her.

She was aware of how Teyeo effaced himself, sitting without a motion, his head lowered, his eyes lowered; the men ignored him.

“If I write this for you, I want water, a lot of water, and soap and blankets and toilet paper and pillows and a doctor, and I want somebody to come when I knock on that door, and I want some decent clothes. Warm clothes. Men’s clothes.”

“No doctor!” the man said. “Write it! Please! Now!” He was jumpy, twitchy, she dared push him no further. She read their statement, copied it out in her large, childish scrawl—she seldom handwrote anything—and handed both to the spokesman. He glanced over it and without a word hurried the other men out. Clash went the door.

“Should I have refused?”

“I don’t think so,” Teyeo said. He stood up and stretched, but sat down again looking dizzy. “You bargain well,” he said.

“We’ll see what we get. Oh, God. What is going on?”

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “Gatay is unwilling to yield to these demands. But when Voe Deo—and your Ekumen—get word of it, they’ll put pressure on Gatay.”

“I wish they’d get moving. I suppose Gatay is horribly embarrassed, saving face by trying to conceal the whole thing—is that likely? How long can they keep it up? What about your people? Won’t they be hunting for you?”

“No doubt,” he said, in his polite way.

It was curious how his stiff manner, his manners, which had always shunted her aside, cut her out, here had quite another effect: his restraint and formality reassured her that she was still part of the world outside this room, from which they came and to which they would return, a world where people lived long lives.

What did long life matter? she asked herself, and didn’t know. It was nothing she had ever thought about before. But these young Patriots lived in a world of short lives. Demands, violence, immediacy, and death, for what? for a bigotry, a hatred, a rush of power.

“Whenever they leave,” she said in a low voice, “I get really frightened.”

Teyeo cleared his throat and said, “So do I.”

Exercises.

“Take hold—no, take hold, I’m not made of glass!—Now—”

“Ha!” he said, with his flashing grin of excitement, as she showed him the break, and he in turn repeated it, breaking from her.

“All right, now you’d be waiting—here”—thump—“see?”

“Ai!”

“I’m sorry— I’m sorry, Teyeo— I didn’t think about your head— Are you all right? I’m really sorry—”

“Oh, Kamye,” he said, sitting up and holding his black, narrow head between his hands. He drew several deep breaths. She knelt penitent and anxious.

“That’s,” he said, and breathed some more, “that’s not, not fair play.”

“No of course it’s not, it’s aiji—all’s fair in love and war, they say that on Terra— Really, I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry, that was so stupid of me!”

He laughed, a kind of broken and desperate laugh, shook his head, shook it again. “Show me,” he said. “I don’t know what you did.”

Exercises.

“What do you do with your mind?”

“Nothing.”

“You just let it wander?”

“No. Am I and my mind different beings?”

“So… you don’t focus on something? You just wander with it?”

“No.”

“So you don’t let it wander.”

“Who?” he said, rather testily.

A pause.

“Do you think about—”

“No,” he said. “Be still.”

A very long pause, maybe a quarter hour.

“Teyeo, I can’t. I itch. My mind itches. How long have you been doing this?”

A pause, a reluctant answer: “Since I was two.”

He broke his utterly relaxed motionless pose, bent his head to stretch his neck and shoulder muscles. She watched him.

“I keep thinking about long life, about living long,” she said. “I don’t mean just being alive a long time, hell, I’ve been alive about eleven hundred years, what does that mean, nothing. I mean… Something about thinking of life as long makes a difference. Like having kids does. Even thinking about having kids. It’s like it changes some balance. It’s funny I keep thinking about that now, when my chances for a long life have kind of taken a steep fall….”

He said nothing. He was able to say nothing in a way that allowed her to go on talking. He was one of the least talkative men she had ever known. Most men were so wordy. She was fairly wordy herself. He was quiet. She wished she knew how to be quiet.

“It’s just practice, isn’t it?” she asked. “Just sitting there.”

He nodded.

“Years and years and years of practice…. Oh, God. Maybe…”

“No, no,” he said, taking her thought immediately.

“But why don’t they do something? What are they waiting for? It’s been nine days!”

From the beginning, by unplanned, unspoken agreement, the room had been divided in two: the line ran down the middle of the mattress and across to the facing wall. The door was on her side, the left; the shit-hole was on his side, the right. Any invasion of the other’s space was requested by some almost invisible cue and permitted the same way. When one of them used the shit-hole the other unobtrusively faced away. When they had enough water to take cat-baths, which was seldom, the same arrangement held. The line down the middle of the mattress was absolute. Their voices crossed it, and the sounds and smells of their bodies. Sometimes she felt his warmth; Werelian body temperature was somewhat higher than hers, and in the dank, still air she felt that faint radiance as he slept. But they never crossed the line, not by a finger, not in the deepest sleep.

Solly thought about this, finding it, in some moments, quite funny. At other moments it seemed stupid and perverse. Couldn’t they both use some human comfort? The only time she had touched him was the first day, when she had helped him get onto the mattress, and then when they had enough water she had cleaned his scalp wound and little by little washed the clotted, stinking blood out of his hair, using the comb, which had after all been a good thing to have, and pieces of the Goddess’s skirt, an invaluable source of washcloths and bandages. Then once his head healed, they practiced aiji daily; but aiji had an impersonal, ritual purity to its clasps and grips that was a long way from creature comfort. The rest of the time his bodily presence was clearly, invariably uninvasive and untouchable.

He was only maintaining, under incredibly difficult circumstances, the rigid restraint he had always shown. Not just he, but Rewe, too; all of them, all of them but Batikam; and yet was Batikam’s instant yielding to her whim and desire the true contact she had thought it? She thought of the fear in his eyes, that last night. Not restraint, but constraint.

It was the mentality of a slave society: slaves and masters caught in the same trap of radical distrust and self-protection.

“Teyeo,” she said, “I don’t understand slavery. Let me say what I mean,” though he had shown no sign of interruption or protest, merely civil attention. “I mean, I do understand how a social institution comes about and how an individual is simply part of it—I’m not saying why don’t you agree with me in seeing it as wicked and unprofitable, I’m not asking you to defend it or renounce it. I’m trying to understand what it feels like to believe that two-thirds of the human beings in your world are actually, rightfully your property. Five-sixths, in fact, including women of your caste.”

After a while he said, “My family owns about twenty-five assets.”

“Don’t quibble.”

He accepted the reproof.

“It seems to me that you cut off human contact. You don’t touch slaves and slaves don’t touch you, in the way human beings ought to touch, in mutuality. You have to keep yourselves separate, always working to maintain that boundary. Because it isn’t a natural boundary—it’s totally artificial, man-made. I can’t tell owners and assets apart physically. Can you?”

“Mostly.”

“By cultural, behavioral clues—right?”

After thinking a while, he nodded.

“You are the same species, race, people, exactly the same in every way, with a slight selection towards color. If you brought up an asset child as an owner it would be an owner in every respect, and vice versa. So you spend your lives keeping up this tremendous division that doesn’t exist. What I don’t understand is how you can fail to see how appallingly wasteful it is. I don’t mean economically!”

“In the war,” he said, and then there was a very long pause; though Solly had a lot more to say, she waited, curious. “I was on Yeowe,” he said, “you know, in the civil war.”

That’s where you got all those scars and dents, she thought; for however scrupulously she averted her eyes, it was impossible not to be familiar with his spare, onyx body by now, and she knew that in aiji he had to favor his left arm, which had a considerable chunk out of it just above the bicep.

“The slaves of the Colonies revolted, you know, some of them at first, then all of them. Nearly all. So we Army men there were all owners. We couldn’t send asset soldiers, they might defect. We were all veots and volunteers. Owners fighting assets. I was fighting my equals. I learned that pretty soon. Later on I learned I was fighting my superiors. They defeated us.”

“But that—” Solly said, and stopped; she did not know what to say.

“They defeated us from beginning to end,” he said. “Partly because my government didn’t understand that they could. That they fought better and harder and more intelligently and more bravely than we did.”

“Because they were fighting for their freedom!”

“Maybe so,” he said in his polite way.

“So…”

“I wanted to tell you that I respect the people I fought.”

“I know so little about war, about fighting,” she said, with a mixture of contrition and irritation. “Nothing, really. I was on Kheakh, but that wasn’t war, it was racial suicide, mass slaughter of a biosphere. I guess there’s a difference…. That was when the Ekumen finally decided on the Arms Convention, you know. Because of Orint and then Kheakh destroying themselves. The Terrans had been pushing for the Convention for ages. Having nearly committed suicide themselves a while back. I’m half-Terran. My ancestors rushed around their planet slaughtering each other. For millennia. They were masters and slaves, too, some of them, a lot of them…. But I don’t know if the Arms Convention was a good idea. If it’s right. Who are we to tell anybody what to do and not to do? The idea of the Ekumen was to offer a way. To open it. Not to bar it to anybody.”

He listened intently, but said nothing until after some while. “We learn to… close ranks. Always. You’re right, I think, it wastes… energy, the spirit. You are open.”

His words cost him so much, she thought, not like hers that just came dancing out of the air and went back into it. He spoke from his marrow. It made what he said a solemn compliment, which she accepted gratefully, for as the days went on she realized occasionally how much confidence she had lost and kept losing: self-confidence, confidence that they would be ransomed, rescued, that they would get out of this room, that they would get out of it alive.

“Was the war very brutal?”

“Yes,” he said. “I can’t… I’ve never been able to—to see it— Only something comes like a flash—” He held his hands up as if to shield his eyes. Then he glanced at her, wary. His apparently cast-iron self-respect was, she knew now, vulnerable in many places.

“Things from Kheakh that I didn’t even know I saw, they come that way,” she said. “At night.” And after a while, “How long were you there?”

“A little over seven years.”

She winced. “Were you lucky?”

It was a queer question, not coming out the way she meant, but he took it at value. “Yes,” he said. “Always. The men I went there with were killed. Most of them in the first few years. We lost three hundred thousand men on Yeowe. They never talk about it. Two-thirds of the veot men in Voe Deo were killed. If it was lucky to live, I was lucky.” He looked down at his clasped hands, locked into himself.

After a while she said softly, “I hope you still are.”

He said nothing.

“How long has it been?” he asked, and she said, clearing her throat, after an automatic glance at her watch, “Sixty hours.”

Their captors had not come yesterday at what had become a regular time, about eight in the morning. Nor had they come this morning.

With nothing left to eat and now no water left, they had grown increasingly silent and inert. It was hours since either had said anything. He had put off asking the time as long as he could prevent himself.

“This is horrible,” she said, “this is so horrible. I keep thinking…”

“They won’t abandon you,” he said. “They feel a responsibility.”

“Because I’m a woman?”

“Partly.”

“Shit.”

He remembered that in the other life her coarseness had offended him.

“They’ve been taken, shot. Nobody bothered to find out where they were keeping us,” she said.

Having thought the same thing several hundred times, he had nothing to say.

“It’s just such a horrible place to die,” she said. “It’s sordid. I stink. I’ve stunk for twenty days. Now I have diarrhea because I’m scared. But I can’t shit anything. I’m thirsty and I can’t drink.”

“Solly,” he said sharply. It was the first time he had spoken her name. “Be still. Hold fast.”

She stared at him.

“Hold fast to what?”

He did not answer at once and she said, “You won’t let me touch you!”

“Not to me—”

“Then to what? There isn’t anything!” He thought she was going to cry, but she stood up, took the empty tray, and beat it against the door till it smashed into fragments of wicker and dust. “Come! God damn you! Come, you bastards!” she shouted. “Let us out of here!”

After that she sat down again on the mattress. “Well,” she said.

“Listen,” he said.

They had heard it before: no city sounds came down to this cellar, wherever it was, but this was something bigger, explosions, they both thought.

The door rattled.

They were both afoot when it opened: not with the usual clash and clang, but slowly. A man waited outside; two men came in. One, armed, they had never seen; the other, the tough-faced young man they called the spokesman, looked as if he had been running or fighting, dusty, worn-out, a little dazed. He closed the door. He had some papers in his hand. The four of them stared at one another in silence for a minute.

“Water,” Solly said. “You bastards!”

“Lady,” the spokesman said, “I’m sorry.” He was not listening to her. His eyes were not on her. He was looking at Teyeo, for the first time. “There is a lot of fighting,” he said.

“Who’s fighting?” Teyeo asked, hearing himself drop into the even tone of authority, and the young man respond to it as automatically: “Voe Deo. They sent troops. After the funeral, they said they would send troops unless we surrendered. They came yesterday. They go through the city killing. They know all the Old Believer centers. Some of ours.” He had a bewildered, accusing note in his voice.

“What funeral?” Solly said.

When he did not answer, Teyeo repeated it: “What funeral?”

“The lady’s funeral, yours. Here— I brought net prints— A state funeral. They said you died in the explosion.”

“What Goddamned explosion?” Solly said in her hoarse, parched voice, and this time he answered her: “At the Festival. The Old Believers. The fire, Tual’s fire, there were explosives in it. Only it went off too soon. We knew their plan. We rescued you from that, Lady,” he said, suddenly turning to her with that same accusatory tone.

“Rescued me, you asshole!” she shouted, and Teyeo’s dry lips split in a startled laugh, which he repressed at once.

“Give me those,” he said, and the young man handed him the papers.

“Get us water!” Solly said.

“Stay here, please. We need to talk,” Teyeo said, instinctively holding on to his ascendancy. He sat down on the mattress with the net prints. Within a few minutes he and Solly had scanned the reports of the shocking disruption of the Festival of Forgiveness, the lamentable death of the Envoy of the Ekumen in a terrorist act executed by the cult of Old Believers, the brief mention of the death of a Voe Dean Embassy guard in the explosion, which had killed over seventy priests and onlookers, the long descriptions of the state funeral, reports of unrest, terrorism, reprisals, then reports of the Palace gratefully accepting offers of assistance from Voe Deo in cleaning out the cancer of terrorism….

“So,” he said finally. “You never heard from the Palace. Why did you keep us alive?”

Solly looked as if she thought the question lacked tact, but the spokesman answered with equal bluntness, “We thought your country would ransom you.”

“They will,” Teyeo said. “Only you have to keep your government from knowing we’re alive. If you—”

“Wait,” Solly said, touching his hand. “Hold on. I want to think about this stuff. You’d better not leave the Ekumen out of the discussion. But getting in touch with them is the tricky bit.”

“If there are Voe Dean troops here, all I need is to get a message to anyone in my command, or the Embassy Guards.”

Her hand was still on his, with a warning pressure. She shook the other one at the spokesman, finger outstretched: “You kidnapped an Envoy of the Ekumen, you asshole! Now you have to do the thinking you didn’t do ahead of time. And I do too, because I don’t want to get blown away by your Goddamned little government for turning up alive and embarrassing them. Where are you hiding, anyhow? Is there any chance of us getting out of this room, at least?”

The man, with that edgy, frantic look, shook his head. “We are all down here now,” he said. “Most of the time. You stay here safe.”

“Yes, you’d better keep your passports safe!” Solly said. “Bring us some water, damn it! Let us talk a while. Come back in an hour.”

The young man leaned towards her suddenly, his face contorted. “What the hell kind of lady you are,” he said. “You foreign filthy stinking cunt.”

Teyeo was on his feet, but her grip on his hand had tightened: after a moment of silence, the spokesman and the other man turned to the door, rattled the lock, and were let out.

“Ouf,” she said, looking dazed.

“Don’t,” he said, “don’t—” He did not know how to say it. “They don’t understand,” he said. “It’s better if I talk.”

“Of course. Women don’t give orders. Women don’t talk. Shitheads! I thought you said they felt so responsible for me!”

“They do,” he said. “But they’re young men. Fanatics. Very frightened.” And you talk to them as if they were assets, he thought, but did not say.

“Well so am I frightened!” she said, with a little spurt of tears. She wiped her eyes and sat down again among the papers. “God,” she said. “We’ve been dead for twenty days. Buried for fifteen. Who do you think they buried?”

Her grip was powerful; his wrist and hand hurt. He massaged the place gently, watching her.

“Thank you,” he said. “I would have hit him.”

“Oh, I know. Goddamn chivalry. And the one with the gun would have blown your head off. Listen, Teyeo. Are you sure all you have to do is get word to somebody in the Army or the Guard?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You’re sure your country isn’t playing the same game as Gatay?”

He stared at her. As he understood her, slowly the anger he had stifled and denied, all these interminable days of imprisonment with her, rose in him, a fiery flood of resentment, hatred, and contempt.

He was unable to speak, afraid he would speak to her as the young Patriot had done.

He went around to his side of the room and sat on his side of the mattress, somewhat turned from her. He sat cross-legged, one hand lying lightly in the other.

She said some other things. He did not listen or reply.

After a while she said, “We’re supposed to be talking, Teyeo. We’ve only got an hour. I think those kids might do what we tell them, if we tell them something plausible—something that’ll work.”

He would not answer. He bit his lip and held still.

“Teyeo, what did I say? I said something wrong. I don’t know what it was. I’m sorry.”

“They would—” He struggled to control his lips and voice. “They would not betray us.”

“Who? The Patriots?”

He did not answer.

“Voe Deo, you mean? Wouldn’t betray us?”

In the pause that followed her gentle, incredulous question, he knew that she was right; that it was all collusion among the powers of the world; that his loyalty to his country and service was wasted, as futile as the rest of his life. She went on talking, palliating, saying he might very well be right. He put his head into his hands, longing for tears, dry as stone.

She crossed the line. He felt her hand on his shoulder.

“Teyeo, I am very sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to insult you! I honor you. You’ve been all my hope and help.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If I— If we had some water.”

She leapt up and battered on the door with her fists and a sandal.

“Bastards, bastards,” she shouted.

Teyeo got up and walked, three steps and turn, three steps and turn, and halted on his side of the room. “If you’re right,” he said, speaking slowly and formally, “we and our captors are in danger not only from Gatay but from my own people, who may… who have been furthering these anti-Government factions, in order to make an excuse to bring troops here… to pacify Gatay. That’s why they know where to find the factionalists. We are… we’re lucky our group were… were genuine.”

She watched him with a tenderness that he found irrelevant.

“What we don’t know,” he said, “is what side the Ekumen will take. That is… There really is only one side.”

“No, there’s ours, too. The underdogs. If the Embassy sees Voe Deo pulling a takeover of Gatay, they won’t interfere, but they won’t approve. Especially if it involves as much repression as it seems to.”

“The violence is only against the anti-Ekumen factions.”

“They still won’t approve. And if they find out I’m alive, they’re going to be quite pissed at the people who claimed I went up in a bonfire. Our problem is how to get word to them. I was the only person representing the Ekumen in Gatay. Who’d be a safe channel?”

“Any of my men. But…”

“They’ll have been sent back; why keep Embassy Guards here when the Envoy’s dead and buried? I suppose we could try. Ask the boys to try, that is.” Presently she said wistfully, “I don’t suppose they’d just let us go—in disguise? It would be the safest for them.”

“There is an ocean,” Teyeo said.

She beat her head. “Oh, why don’t they bring some water….” Her voice was like paper sliding on paper. He was ashamed of his anger, his grief, himself. He wanted to tell her that she had been a help and hope to him too, that he honored her, that she was brave beyond belief; but none of the words would come. He felt empty, worn-out. He felt old. If only they would bring water!

Water was given them at last; some food, not much and not fresh. Clearly their captors were in hiding and under duress. The spokesman—he gave them his war-name, Kergat, Gatayan for Liberty—told them that whole neighborhoods had been cleared out, set afire, that Voe Dean troops were in control of most of the city including the Palace, and that almost none of this was being reported in the net. “When this is over Voe Deo will own my country,” he said with disbelieving fury.

“Not for long,” Teyeo said.

“Who can defeat them?” the young man said.

“Yeowe. The idea of Yeowe.”

Both Kergat and Solly stared at him.

“Revolution,” he said. “How long before Werel becomes New Yeowe?”

“The assets?” Kergat said, as if Teyeo had suggested a revolt of cattle or of flies. “They’ll never organise.”

“Look out when they do,” Teyeo said mildly.

“You don’t have any assets in your group?” Solly asked Kergat, amazed. He did not bother to answer. He had classed her as an asset, Teyeo saw. He understood why; he had done so himself, in the other life, when such distinctions made sense.

“Your bondswoman, Rewe,” he asked Solly—“was she a friend?”

“Yes,” Solly said, then, “No. I wanted her to be.”

“The makil?”

After a pause she said, “I think so.”

“Is he still here?”

She shook her head. “The troupe was going on with their tour, a few days after the Festival.”

“Travel has been restricted since the Festival,” Kergat said. “Only government and troops.”

“He’s Voe Dean. If he’s still here, they’ll probably send him and his troupe home. Try and contact him, Kergat.”

“A makil?” the young man said, with that same distaste and incredulity. “One of your Voe Dean homosexual clowns?”

Teyeo shot a glance at Solly: Patience, patience.

“Bisexual actors,” Solly said, disregarding him, but fortunately Kergat was determined to disregard her.

“A clever man,” Teyeo said, “with connections. He could help us. You and us. It could be worth it. If he’s still here. We must make haste.”

“Why would he help us? He is Voe Dean.”

“An asset, not a citizen,” Teyeo said. “And a member of Hame, the asset underground, which works against the government of Voe Deo. The Ekumen admits the legitimacy of Hame. He’ll report to the Embassy that a Patriot group has rescued the Envoy and is holding her safe, in hiding, in extreme danger. The Ekumen, I think, will act promptly and decisively. Correct, Envoy?”

Suddenly reinstated, Solly gave a short, dignified nod. “But discreetly,” she said. “They’ll avoid violence, if they can use political coercion.”

The young man was trying to get it all into his mind and work it through. Sympathetic to his weariness, distrust, and confusion, Teyeo sat quietly waiting. He noticed that Solly was sitting equally quietly, one hand lying in the other. She was thin and dirty and her unwashed, greasy hair was in a lank braid. She was brave, like a brave mare, all nerve. She would break her heart before she quit.

Kergat asked questions; Teyeo answered them, reasoning and reassuring. Occasionally Solly spoke, and Kergat was now listening to her again, uneasily, not wanting to, not after what he had called her. At last he left, not saying what he intended to do; but he had Batikam’s name and an identifying message from Teyeo to the Embassy: “Half-pay veots learn to sing old songs quickly.”

“What on earth!” Solly said when Kergat was gone.

“Did you know a man named Old Music, in the Embassy?”

“Ah! Is he a friend of yours?”

“He has been kind.”

“He’s been here on Werel from the start. A First Observer. Rather a powerful man— Yes, and ‘quickly,’ all right…. My mind really isn’t working at all. I wish I could lie down beside a little stream, in a meadow, you know, and drink. All day. Every time I wanted to, just stretch my neck out and slup, slup, slup…. Running water… In the sunshine… Oh God, oh God, sunshine. Teyeo, this is very difficult. This is harder than ever. Thinking that there maybe is really a way out of here. Only not knowing. Trying not to hope and not to not hope. Oh, I am so tired of sitting here!”

“What time is it?”

“Half past twenty. Night. Dark out. Oh God, darkness! Just to be in the darkness… Is there any way we could cover up that damned biolume? Partly? To pretend we had night, so we could pretend we had day?”

“If you stood on my shoulders, you could reach it. But how could we fasten a cloth?”

They pondered, staring at the plaque.

“I don’t know. Did you notice there’s a little patch of it that looks like it’s dying? Maybe we don’t have to worry about making darkness. If we stay here long enough. Oh, God!”

“Well,” he said after a while, curiously self-conscious, “I’m tired.” He stood up, stretched, glanced for permission to enter her territory, got a drink of water, returned to his territory, took off his jacket and shoes, by which time her back was turned, took off his trousers, lay down, pulled up the blanket, and said in his mind, “Lord Kamye, let me hold fast to the one noble thing.” But he did not sleep.

He heard her slight movements; she pissed, poured a little water, took off her sandals, lay down.

A long time passed.

“Teyeo.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think… that it would be a mistake… under the circumstances… to make love?”

A pause.

“Not under the circumstances,” he said, almost inaudibly. “But—in the other life—”

A pause.

“Short life versus long life,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“No,” he said, and turned to her. “No, that’s wrong.” They reached out to each other. They clasped each other, cleaved together, in blind haste, greed, need, crying out together the name of God in their different languages and then like animals in the wordless voice. They huddled together, spent, sticky, sweaty, exhausted, reviving, rejoined, reborn in the body’s tenderness, in the endless exploration, the ancient discovery, the long flight to the new world.

He woke slowly, in ease and luxury. They were entangled, his face was against her arm and breast; she was stroking his hair, sometimes his neck and shoulder. He lay for a long time aware only of that lazy rhythm and the cool of her skin against his face, under his hand, against his leg.

“Now I know,” she said, her half whisper deep in her chest, near his ear, “that I don’t know you. Now I need to know you.” She bent forward to touch his face with her lips and cheek.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Tell me who Teyeo is….”

“I don’t know,” he said. “A man who holds you dear.”

“Oh, God,” she said, hiding her face for a moment in the rough, smelly blanket.

“Who is God?” he asked sleepily. They spoke Voe Dean, but she usually swore in Terran or Alterran; in this case it had been Alterran, Seyt, so he asked, “Who is Seyt?”

“Oh—Tual—Kamye—what have you. I just say it. It’s just bad language. Do you believe in one of them? I’m sorry! I feel like such an oaf with you, Teyeo. Blundering into your soul, invading you— We are invaders, no matter how pacifist and priggish we are—”

“Must I love the whole Ekumen?” he asked, beginning to stroke her breasts, feeling her tremor of desire and his own.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, yes.”

It was curious, Teyeo thought, how little sex changed anything. Everything was the same, a little easier, less embarrassment and inhibition; and there was a certain and lovely source of pleasure for them, when they had enough water and food to have enough vitality to make love. But the only thing that was truly different was something he had no word for. Sex, comfort, tenderness, love, trust, no word was the right word, the whole word. It was utterly intimate, hidden in the mutuality of their bodies, and it changed nothing in their circumstances, nothing in the world, even the tiny wretched world of their imprisonment. They were still trapped. They were getting very tired and were hungry most of the time. They were increasingly afraid of their increasingly desperate captors.

“I will be a lady,” Solly said. “A good girl. Tell me how, Teyeo.”

“I don’t want you to give in,” he said, so fiercely, with tears in his eyes, that she went to him and held him in her arms.

“Hold fast,” he said.

“I will,” she said. But when Kergat or the others came in she was sedate and modest, letting the men talk, keeping her eyes down. He could not bear to see her so, and knew she was right to do so.

The doorlock rattled, the door clashed, bringing him up out of a wretched, thirsty sleep. It was night or very early morning. He and Solly had been sleeping close entangled for the warmth and comfort of it; and seeing Kergat’s face now he was deeply afraid. This was what he had feared, to show, to prove her sexual vulnerability. She was still only half-awake, clinging to him.

Another man had come in. Kergat said nothing. It took Teyeo some time to recognize the second man as Batikam.

When he did, his mind remained quite blank. He managed to say the makil’s name. Nothing else.

“Batikam?” Solly croaked. “Oh, my God!”

“This is an interesting moment,” Batikam said in his warm actor’s voice. He was not transvestite, Teyeo saw, but wore Gatayan men’s clothing. “I meant to rescue you, not to embarrass you, Envoy, Rega. Shall we get on with it?”

Teyeo had scrambled up and was pulling on his filthy trousers. Solly had slept in the ragged pants their captors had given her. They both had kept on their shirts for warmth.

“Did you contact the Embassy, Batikam?” she was asking, her voice shaking, as she pulled on her sandals.

“Oh, yes. I’ve been there and come back, indeed. Sorry it took so long. I don’t think I quite realised your situation here.”

“Kergat has done his best for us,” Teyeo said at once, stiffly.

“I can see that. At considerable risk. I think the risk from now on is low. That is…” He looked straight at Teyeo. “Rega, how do you feel about putting yourself in the hands of Hame?” he said. “Any problems with that?”

“Don’t, Batikam,” Solly said. “Trust him!”

Teyeo tied his shoe, straightened up, and said, “We are all in the hands of the Lord Kamye.”

Batikam laughed, the beautiful full laugh they remembered.

“In the Lord’s hands, then,” he said, and led them out of the room.

In the Arkamye it is said, “To live simply is most complicated.”

Solly requested to stay on Werel, and after a recuperative leave at the seashore was sent as Observer to South Voe Deo. Teyeo went straight home, being informed that his father was very ill. After his father’s death, he asked for indefinite leave from the Embassy Guard, and stayed on the farm with his mother until her death two years later. He and Solly, a continent apart, met only occasionally during those years.

When his mother died, Teyeo freed his family’s assets by act of irrevocable manumission, deeded over their farms to them, sold his now almost valueless property at auction, and went to the capital. He knew Solly was temporarily staying at the Embassy. Old Music told him where to find her. He found her in a small office of the palatial building. She looked older, very elegant. She looked at him with a stricken and yet wary face. She did not come forward to greet or touch him. She said, “Teyeo, I’ve been asked to be the first Ambassador of the Ekumen to Yeowe.”

He stood still.

“Just now—I just came from talking on the ansible with Hain—”

She put her face in her hands. “Oh, my God!” she said.

He said, “My congratulations, truly, Solly.”

She suddenly ran at him, threw her arms around him, and cried, “Oh, Teyeo, and your mother died, I never thought, I’m so sorry, I never, I never do— I thought we could— What are you going to do? Are you going to stay there?”

“I sold it,” he said. He was enduring rather than returning her embrace. “I thought I might return to the service.”

“You sold your farm? But I never saw it!”

“I never saw where you were born,” he said.

There was a pause. She stood away from him, and they looked at each other.

“You would come?” she said.

“I would,” he said.

Several years after Yeowe entered the Ekumen, Mobile Solly Agat Terwa was sent as an Ekumenical liaison to Terra; later she went from there to Hain, where she served with great distinction as a Stabile. In all her travels and posts she was accompanied by her husband, a Werelian army officer, a very handsome man, as reserved as she was outgoing. People who knew them knew their passionate pride and trust in each other. Solly was perhaps the happier person, rewarded and fulfilled in her work; but Teyeo had no regrets. He had lost his world, but he had held fast to the one noble thing.