Return to Fanglith

FOUR

The storm lasted about an hour, then stopped almost as suddenly as it began, leaving us with sunshine, and water dripping from the trees. If we were to stay another five days, we'd need to keep fishing, so I went out and cut poles to make a raft with. Then, it still being our day to fish, Jenoor and I went back out. There were no more thunderheads to the west, but we stayed within a hundred yards of the island anyway. The raft wasn't as quick as the skiff, and we had only push poles to move her with.

We were lucky we'd had four sets of fishing tackle.

If the fish had given us almost no action earlier that day, this time we had more than we needed within half an hour: a pair of sand moochers more than thirty-five inches each.

That evening, instead of talking about stealing a cutter, we talked about where we'd go in it. Piet told us about a planet we might try-one that dad had favored. He called it Grinder.

"It used to be a mining world," he said. His voice was quiet, as soft as the twilight that let us see his Face but hid his expression. "There used to be deposits of very high quality heavy-metal ores in the crust. But after a few centuries they were mined out, and Grinder was too far from anywhere to make ordinary ores worth mining. By six hundred years ago the mines had shut down. Most of the people left then, but some stayed, hunting and farming, and gradually it turned into a hideout for smugglers."

"You think it would work as a rebel base then?" Deneen asked.

"It's as promising as any." He paused as if deciding whether or not to say what he said next. "Both your parents favored it, so it's the place they're most likely to go if they get off Evdash."

If they get off Evdash. It was the first time Piet had even implied an if, and the words ended the conversation. We sat together in the silent gloom for a minute or more longer before anyone moved. Then Tarel got up without saying anything and went out to his hammock. A moment later Deneen went to hers, and then Jenoor, my eyes following her. That left only Piet and me squatting in the shelter, and when I turned to him, his eyes were on me.

"Piet," I murmured, "I need to talk to you. Privately."

"Go ahead."

"I need more privacy than this," I said, and got up. Piet got up too, and followed me as I walked to the floater. It was parked outside the repellent field, so we got in and shut the door quickly to keep most of the bugs outside.

"Okay," he said when we'd both sat down, "let's have it."

"I want you to marry Jenoor and me. You're the senior member-the leader and magistrate in this community. If you say we're married, we are."

"You've talked to Jenoor about this?"

"No. I wanted to get your agreement first."

"How old is she?" he asked.

"You know how old she is. She's sixteen. And a half."

"What's the legal marriageable age for a girl on Evdash?"

"Eighteen. Seventeen with a parent's consent. What's the legal age in the Federation? The Empire?"

"Eighteen. Sixteen with a parent's consent."

"Or a guardian's?" I asked.

"Or a guardian's."

"So there's no natural law that says eighteen. Only legal arbitraries that some past legislatures passed."

"Not all laws make sense," he replied. "But they're the stuff of civilization. Unless a law is actually destructive and can't be changed, it ought to be obeyed. Decent laws, even if they seem a bit foolish, are what keep a society from coming apart."

His words surprised me. I hadn't expected them from someone who'd been a rebel most of his life. I could see what he meant though, even if I felt sure it didn't apply in this case. I sat there waiting for something to come to me that would convince him, but all I could think of was how I'd felt when Jenoor and I had gotten ashore that afternoon, safe from the sea, and I'd lain there with my arms around her. It had felt like my heart was in my throat, and I'd wanted to keep her safe forever. Among other things.

Piet was the one who broke the silence. "All right. So let's say I'm her guardian now; I guess I am. Give me a reason it's all right for you two to get married."

"Okay," I answered slowly. "First let's assume she's willing; that she wants to. Evdash is part of the Empire now, so legally, sixteen should be old enough, if we consider you her guardian and you give your permission. And next, we're outside the law, so we can't go to some courthouse and ask them to marry us. We couldn't if we were thirty, so age isn't the issue. Only whether she wants to and whether you're willing."

"Why not wait?" he said. "You're not the kind who lets his gonads rule his life."

There was no denying that sex was part of it, but only part, though I suppose it added a lot of the urgency to it. And like I said, I felt protective of her. But I also felt fond, and-I just wanted to be with her as her husband. I didn't really have the language to describe it.

It also occurred to me that now Piet's questions were more to make sure I'd thought it through myself. That probably meant he'd say yes. "Why not wait?" I said, answering his question. "Because in two weeks there's a good chance we'll all be dead. And we could have had two weeks together by then."

Piet turned the door handle. "Ask her," he said. "I hope she tells you yes. Five to one she does."

We shook hands on it and got out. When I'd closed the door, we walked together through near night the twenty yards to camp. I almost went over to her hammock right then to ask her, but I didn't, Hers was between Deneen's and Tarel's-they were only about six or eight yards apart-and I wanted my proposal to be private.

Sometime in the middle of the night it rained again. Not a downpour like we'd had that afternoon, but a pretty good rain that chased us all out of our hammocks and into the shelter. So of course we had to bunk down on the bare ground-not the most comfortable sleeping, especially with Bubba smelling like a wet canid. He read my thought and chuckled, a sound so human you'd have to hear it to believe it.

In the morning we could cut vegetation and pile it in the shelter for beds. The repellent fields would keep it from getting full of insects and other arthropods. But the hammocks, which were made of fine-mesh netting, were cooler and generally more comfortable than piles of weeds would be. So the best solution seemed to be to keep on sleeping in the hammocks and only take shelter as needed-hopefully not often. I couldn't see any practical way of slinging hammocks inside the shelter.

Maybe, I told myself, we'd been too quick to leave our hammocks. We didn't wear much to sleep in anyway, and as long as the rain wasn't too cold… And the hammocks were made of "Skin-Soft" synthetic, so they didn't soak up water.

Which brought to my mind the matter of privacy if Jenoor agreed to marry me. We had a second repellent field, so we could have our hammocks away from the others, but they were too small and unstable for double occupancy. And as for separate shelter if needed… This definitely seemed to be the rainy season. The best possibility seemed to be the floater, if we moved it a little farther away. The floater would get around the problem of hammock stability, too. At the very beginning, Piet had said no one would sleep in the floater because everyone couldn't, not comfortably, and he wasn't going to give anyone, including himself, special privileges. Besides, hammocks were cooler.

But Jenoor and I would be married. If she said yes. And he'd treat that as a different situation, I was sure.

I went back to sleep feeling pretty cheerful, considering our long-range prospects.

The next morning had a good feel to it. It even smelled good-not dusty any longer, but fresh-and I was glad the rainy season had arrived. We all had a hand-foot workout and then Deneen and Tarel went fishing. Piet sat on a log stool-we'd sawed five blocks from a log to use for seats-and began working on a new carving. He was the best of us all at turning a piece of wood into something artistic. It would have been my day to keep the still supplied with salt water, except that now we had rainwater-all of it we needed.

It was Jenoor's day to collect jonga fruits, beat them thoroughly with a hammer, and put them to soak, to soften for tomorrow's breakfast. The way to pick jonga fruits is to take a pole with a heavy survival knife lashed to it and find some you can reach from the ground or from some branch you could climb on. Then, with the pole and knife, you saw or hack at their tough stems till they drop off. She had picked up the pole and her old plaited packsack and was leaving camp when I fell in beside her.

Bubba had fallen in on her other side. Not all right, Bubba, I thought to him. He knew what I had in mind. This isn't going to be easy for me. If you have to eavesdrop, do it from somewhere out of sight, okay?

He flashed me a quick grin and veered off casually to explore some interesting smell. As if there was any spot or critter on Lizard Island that he hadn't examined a dozen times already.

"Okay if I walk along with you?" I asked Jenoor.

She smiled sideways at me. "Sure. Glad to have you."

"I've got something in particular I want to talk to you about."

"All right." She looked interested, and something more. I really didn't know what to say next, or rather, how to say it. Will you marry me would make sense of course, but it seemed kind of abrupt and inelegant.

"What I want to say is-it's a question." I stepped in front of her. "Jenoor, will you marry me?"

So much for elegance.

She looked at me seriously, not turning her eyes down shyly or anything like that. "Of course I will, Larn. I've been hoping you'd ask one day. I can't imagine marrying anyone else; I haven't since the first week Tarel and I came to live with your family."

"You mean it!" I said. It seemed a wonder. "You really mean it!" I stepped back from her and looked around for something to sit on; my knees felt a little weak. But there wasn't anything handy.

"Who'll marry us?" she asked.

"I asked Piet if he would, last night when he and I went to the floater. He's the one we look up to here- sort of the magistrate of Lizard Island. He questioned me about it pretty closely, and then he said he would, right here on the island, if you agreed. He even said he hoped you'd say yes. And I've already solved the problem of privacy."

It suddenly occurred to me I was talking too much, too fast, and I stopped.

She answered slowly. "Of course. The extra repellent field and the floater. Piet would let us use the floater, under the circumstances."

I nodded.

"When would you like the wedding?" she asked.

"How about-this evening? Just before supper."

She nodded thoughtfully. "That sounds good." Then she leaned the pole against a tree beside her. "Is there…" This time it was her turn to be a little embarrassed, "Is there something we should do now to seal the agreement?"

I stared. She was so darned pretty. I put out my hands. She took them and we stepped together and kissed, long but gently. Then she stepped back.

"I'm going to like being married to you," she said. "And I want it to last a very long time. Until… As long as circumstances allow. But now I want you to go back to camp, and I'll go cut some jongas. It's best if we don't spend all day together."

"Right," I said, and started back to camp. She'd handled the whole scene as if she was twenty-five years old, I told myself. I'd known she was mature for her age, but she'd been incredible.

Suddenly I flipped out and did a run of three handsprings right there in the forest.

Back at the shelter I told Piet what Jenoor's answer had been. He accepted it matter-of-factly and didn't even smile. To my surprise, that bothered me. It was as if I wanted him to pump my hand and congratulate me or something. Then it occurred to me that I'd once heard mom mention something to dad about someone she called "Gwennith"-as if this Gwennith had been married to Piet, or anyway been someone special to him. And as if something had happened. But I'd never heard anything more. In the rebel life he'd led, with the political police always looking for him… She might have been killed or imprisoned, or they might have had to separate and never found one another again. I was sure Piet would have been a heck of a good husband. He had all the qualities.

The thought bothered me for a while. Then, as if he'd read my mind, Piet put down his whittling and, smiling, reached out a hand to me. "Congratulations," he said as we shook. "You've got excellent taste in women. And she's got excellent taste in men. I hope you have lots of years together."

A woman. That's what she was, a sixteen-year-old woman. And that 'lots of years" would begin today. Tonight. If there was anything I wanted, it was to make her happy. It would help that my parents had been the kind of role models they'd been: considerate, sharing, affectionate, willing to talk things out and to let each other be themselves.

I felt confident, both for the long run and about tonight. In lower middle school I'd heard a couple of guys describe their dads telling them the facts of life. It had amounted to a short biology lecture. But when dad had told me the facts of life, he'd included discussion of rights, comparative emotions, courtesy and consideration, tenderness, and two-way communication, so I couldn't imagine things working out any other way than fine. Maybe-maybe Jenoor and I would even settle down on some world and spend our whole lives there, maybe operating a training camp in hand-foot art.

I spent the next hour building daydreams on that theme, until Deneen and Tarel got back with a string of fish. The fork-tailed streakers had been feeding. They were small, but about the tastiest species we ever caught there. Even Bubba preferred them.

A little later Jenoor came back too. She'd not only cut jongas, she'd taken the time and trouble to pick about three cups of tiny pink thrimberries-the closest thing to delicious that Lizard Island had to offer. Thrimberries were so small and so sparse, and the bushes so prickly, that none of us had tried to pick any quantity of them before. It hadn't seemed worth the trouble. When she arrived, we stood together in front of the others and announced our engagement-the shortest engagement I'd ever heard of.

It was Deneen who did the whooping-old cool-headed Deneen, who'd always seemed to take everything calmly. She whooped and squealed and jumped around like an enthused eight-year-old, and kissed us both while Tarel stood there watching without saying anything. Then she said she was going to bake the fish they'd brought back-that we'd just have to put up with heat damage to vitamins and amino acids for the sake of festivity. And anyway the thrimberries would make up for the vitamin loss.

It was Piet's and my turn to clean the fish, while Jenoor and Tarel took clubs and started hammering the jongas on a flat place I'd cut once on a large log.

Deneen went to the debris of dead branches and twigs where I'd cut the three trees that first day, and brought back pieces that were dry enough to burn. Then she dug in her pack and took out her tinder box and spark wheel. We'd only had fire once or twice before on Lizard Island; fire made smoke and light, which theoretically might be seen if anyone was flying past. Besides which, until yesterday's rain, the island had been dry and dangerously flammable. But this day was special, and before long she'd built a small fire, piled tall.

When Piet and I had the fish cleaned, he got up and moved the floater off between the trees to a place some hundred and fifty feet from camp.

Finally the fish, wrapped in large wet leaves, were buried beneath coals. Then Piet looked at Jenoor and me. "Are you ready?" he asked.

I nodded, my face sober, my heart starting to thud. I heard Jenoor say "yes" in a small voice.

"All right," Piet said, and stood up. "We'll do this without rehearsing. The two of you stand in front of me."

We did.

"Tarel, you stand beside Larn. And Deneen beside Jenoor." He watched while we lined up. Then he looked us over and nodded.

"Good," he said. "Start of a wedding. Larn, Jenoor, a marriage is a lifetime commitment-a commitment to love and help and care for each other. It is a two-way arrangement that becomes unethical if it is allowed to get lopsided-if it becomes too much take on one side and too much give on the other. Marriage is also a commitment to trust, and to be worthy of trust. Larn, you must know what a marriage should be; you've seen how your parents treat each other. Jenoor, I don't know your parents, but I've seen the kind of people you and your brother are. I'm confident that you too know what a marriage should be. A marriage resembles any close friendship, but in addition it has special responsibilities, and it should have special love. Now. Larn, bearing all this in mind, do you promise to be a good husband to Jenoor forever?"

My throat felt as if a whole jonga was stuck in it. I could hardly believe how normally the words came out when I said, "Yes, I do."

"And Jenoor, bearing all this in mind, do you promise to be a good wife to Larn forever?"

My eyes moved to her as she answered. "Yes, I do."

Piet nodded as if in approval. "Then I pronounce you man and wife." His serious expression changed; he grinned. "You may kiss each other."

We did. Softly and not too long. When we stepped apart, I looked at Tarel. He looked more serious than ever. And Deneen? She was grinning a foot wide, even though her eyes were watery.

Then Piet reached into his pocket and handed us what he'd spent much of the day making: Two pairs of hearts, perfectly carved, the hearts in each pair joined at the edge. And on them, engraved with a straightened, filed-down fishhook point, were our names. He was still grinning at us as we made sincerely appreciative noises.

We wrapped our gifts together in an old undershirt, and while Jenoor stashed them in a corner of the shelter, I turned to Tarel again. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"Tarel," I said, holding out my hand, "I want you to know I'll be the best husband to Jenoor that I know how to be, and that I'm glad to have you as my brother-in-law."

He nodded without smiling. "I know you will. And I'm glad to have you as my brother-in-law. You're the best brother-in-law I can imagine."

I think I must have blushed; no one mentioned it, but that's how it felt. He'd surprised me, and I felt like he must have gotten me mixed up with someone else, I mean, I generally think I'm pretty good, but the best brother-in-law he could imagine? That was more than I was ready for. I didn't know what to say back, so I gave his hand a couple of extra shakes and hoped someone would say something to get me off the hook.

It was Bubba who did. Tail waving slowly, he'd been standing behind Piet watching, as if making sure everything was done right. "I think you guys make good family," he said to me now. "When Lady and pups find us, I tell pups one of them should adopt you."

Deneen applauded that, and Piet and Tarel joined her. Then, with a stick, Deneen dug the fish out of the coals and we ate. It had started to get dark when we finished, so I went and hung Jenoor's and my hammocks on the other side of the floater, then set up the second repellent field. Afterward the five of us kept the fire going for a while and sat around it, talking without saying much. I was feeling a little nervous; nothing serious.

Finally Deneen stood up and stretched. "I don't know about anyone else," she said, "but I'm going to bed."

"Sounds like a good idea," said Piet. He too got up, and with him Tarel.

"Yeah," I said, and standing, turned to Jenoor. "Time to go, while it's still light enough to find our way."

I helped her up, her hand small but strong in mine. Actually, it wasn't going to be a really dark night. Donia, the major moon, was close to full, and the forest roof was less than solid. Hand in hand we walked toward the floater. The lump did not return to my throat. This evening the world felt right to me, even in a sector ruled by the Empire.