Thendara House

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

On the roof of the copter landing. Peter was arguing with Monty. “If they come in like this, costumes or no, they’ll know we’re Terrans right away. I think we should ride with that crew down there.” He pointed at a group of men saddling up in a street near the HQ.

  “They need able-bodied men to fight fire,” Monty said. “I don’t think they would care whether we were Terrans or cralmacs provided we could carry a hoe, and if we go in the copter we can get there sooner and do more work without tiring ourselves out by riding in. The important thing is to help them fight the damned fire! It might even be good public relations, if they knew that the Terran Empire sent able-bodied men to help them—”

  “I’d like to remind you both,” said Alessandro Li, “that we are still working for Intelligence; this isn’t a humanitarian mission. Haldane, who are those people getting ready to ride?

  Peter had a strong pair of bionoculars tucked in his belt; he raised them and looked down into the street. “Second call-up; the first one, only volunteers went, but this party is evidently taking out all the men they can find, there are old men and little boys no older than twelve in that lineup— I went out one year. And there are three or four Comyn, with a few dozen Guardsmen, and at least one leronis.”

  “You mean the lady draped in red?” Monty asked, and Peter nodded.

  “Comyn again! Damn it, I wish I knew what made the whole countryside jump like frogs whenever they nod their heads!” Aleki said, “but the ones who know won’t tell. One of these days, Jaelle, we’re going to have a long talk about that, aren’t we? Let’s get the horses and go. Forget the copter. I don’t want anything marking us as Terrans. Intelligence, remember.”

  Jaelle said swiftly, “I am going too. I have fought before this on the fire-lines—and I need not keep the camp with the women; I am a Renunciate and I can do a man’s work.”

  “Commendable spirit in your lady,” said Alessandro Li dryly, “but tell her to stay at home, Haldane, she’s more use to us here for language and liaison. If she wants to be helpful, let her get on good terms with what’s-her-name, Lady Rohana.”

  “I need to go. And Magda must be there, if they are calling out all the able-bodied—”

  “Able-bodied men,” said Monty firmly. “You know as well as I do that they haven’t reached the point of calling out women, Jaelle.”

  Peter interrupted as she opened her mouth to answer, “You are not going out there, Jaelle. There’s a full-fledged forest fire raging out there, and you—”

  “I have probably fought more fires than you have,” she said angrily. “I went first into the lines when I was fourteen—‘

  “Forget it,” said Cholayna. “We don’t have time to wait while you get medical clearance—

  “Medical clearance? To go into my own countryside?”

  “Right,” Peter said. “You’re here in Magda’s job, and one of the first rules is that nobody—nobody—goes into the field without clearance.” The two men were striding toward the elevator; Jaelle said quietly, stepping in after them, “You forget. I am a Darkovan citizen. I am not subject to those regulations—”

  “That’s what you think.” Peter stabbed roughly at a ground-level button. “When we were married, I applied for Empire citizenship for you, so our kids would have it. Besides, by your own Oath, you are here to abide by the terms of your employment. That’s one of them. The matter, sweetheart, is closed.” He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose. “See you when we get back, love.” He walked quickly away.

  Some day, she thought angrily, he was going to throw their marriage, and her Empire citizenship, up at her once too often. She toyed with the notion of going into the hateful surroundings of Medic and getting the damned clearance, to spite them all. They could hardly prevent her…

  … but then they would have her registered as pregnant, and something told her that this one thing she ought to keep from them. For some reason she did not want that on the Terran records. She asked herself if she was only spiting Peter—he would surely want his coming child registered. She started to go, then something inside her said, cold and clear, No.

  Rationalizing this, she thought of her last visit to Medic, the machines which looked inside and through her, the feeling of being completely depersonalized, her body a machine among other machines, violated. If they knew she was pregnant, it would be worse. She had some days off coming—Peter had explained that to her; she went up to the office and asked Cholayna for the day off to visit the Guild House.

  As she had half expected, Cholayna asked if she might come along. Jaelle went up and dressed quickly, feeling relieved as she slid into her Amazon clothing; leather breeches for riding—they were tight in the waist, she would have to borrow a pair from Rafaella to wear till the baby was born—and proper boots. When she joined Cholayna at the gates, the woman was wearing a heavy weatherproof down jacket which would have been wonderful for the Hellers in winter, but made Jaelle wonder how Cholayna avoided suffocating in it today—it was really not that cold.

  “But I was born on a really hot world,” Cholayna said, shivering even in the heavy clothes, and looking in dismay and disbelief at Jaelle’s light tunic, over which she wore only the lightest of riding cloaks.

  “But it’s almost summer,” Jaelle said, and Cholayna chuckled.

  “Not to me, it isn’t.”

  But Cholayna kept pace with Jaelle, even in the high-heeled sandals in which Jaelle could not have taken four steps without breaking her ankles. Walking beside Cholayna, Jaelle felt like a young girl again, the Amazon fosterling; there had been a time when Kindra had taken employment as a guard for warehouses about the city. When she made her morning rounds, she had sometimes taken her foster daughter with her, it was then that they had had some of their best times together, mother and daughter. It was those months that had made Jaelle an Amazon.

  She could have confided in Kindra as she could not in Rohana. Once she had conceived a child, Rohana could not see her, Jaelle, at all, but only the potential mother of a child for the Aillard Domain.

  But surely there would be someone in the Guild House that she could talk to.

  They were walking through the marketplace and she saw rounded eyes, curious glances at Cholayna’s dark skin. But one would have thought Cholayna had never experienced anything but these shocked or hostile glances; she strode along blithely in her uniform and Jaelle envied the woman her confidence.

  I was like that once, when I walked with Kindra and the townspeople stared and jeered at the Renunciates. What has happened to me?

  Only on the very steps of the Guild House did Cholayna hesitate for a moment and ask, “Should I have worn makeup, Jaelle? I could have painted my skin so that I looked like anyone else. I do not want to embarrass you in your own home…”

  Jaelle liked Cholayna more for asking, but she shook her head defiantly. Renunciates themselves were different, if they could not accept Cholyana’s differences so much the worse for them!

  And indeed, when Irmelin answered the door, she stared for a moment at Cholayna, but quickly collected herself to welcome Jaelle with a hug.

  “I know Mother Lauria will want to see you,” she said to Cholayna, and showed the Terran woman directly toward the Guild-mother’s office. But to Jaelle’s inquiries she told her that Rafaella, Camilla and Margali were all out on the fire lines, they had been gone from the house for several days now.

  All of my oath-sisters. There is no one here I can talk to. She supposed Marisela had gone with the others, but Irmelin told her that the woman was in the house, and guessed, of course, why Jaelle wished to see her.

  “You’re expecting a baby, Jaelle? Why, how nice for you!” Jaelle supposed she should have expected that; she said all the appropriate things, and let Irmelin bring her into the kitchen and sit her down with a cup of hot bark-tea and a piece of fresh buttered bread from the ovens, as if Jaelle were again the twelve-year-old fosterling who had been everybody’s pet in the Guild House.

  “I’ll fetch d
own Marisela to you, there’s no reason for you to be running up and down all the stairs—”

  “Irmi, it will be four moons before running up and down stairs would bother me,” Jaelle protested, but just the same, Irmelin’s fussing comforted her. At least someone cared; she sat dripping tears into her tea. After a time Marisela came into the kitchen, dipped herself up a cup of tea and sat down, letting it steam in front of her. She smiled at Jaelle, that smile which seldom reached her mouth but only twinkled behind her eyes.

  “Well, you look healthy enough, Shaya, is there some reason I should have come down to you?”

  “Oh, Marisa, I’m sorry, I told Irmelin—”

  “No, sister, it’s all right, I slept through breakfast and am glad to have some company, with everyone out on the fire lines.”

  “Can I get you something?” Marisela started to shake her head, then looked sharply at Jaelle and said, “Yes. I would like some bread, sliced very thin, please, and honey instead of butter.” And Jaelle, busying herself with cutting the bread with the proper knife, and finding the honey crock and spoon and spreading it, found that she no longer wanted to dissolve into tears. She wondered why Marisela was smiling as she sat down again, sliding the plate of bread and honey toward her. The older woman asked, “How far?”

  Jaelle counted mentally and told her, and Marisela nodded.

  “So that is why you were asking all those soul-searching questions about not knowing our own minds and how to tell whether we are pleasing ourselves or someone else,” Marisela said. It was not a question and not sympathetic, and Jaelle felt as if Marisela had flung cold water over her, but she realized she was not entitled to ask for sympathy. No one had bidden her lie with Peter, nor marry him, and she could have made certain she did not get with child. She blinked fiercely, but she no longer wanted to cry. Done was done.

  So she told Marisela, making a good, funny story of it, all about the Terran Medic machinery which had inspected her inside and out, and Marisela laughed with her.

  “I think we can all agree that you do not need such care as that. You are young and healthy; only if you should begin vomiting, or show any sign of bleeding. Take care what you eat, drink much milk or beer but little wine, get as much fruit and fresh food as you can, and tell the Terrans, if they should ask, that you have seen your own medical adviser. You should come back to the House to bear your child, but the Terrans may not allow it—they think what we know of medical practice is limited and barbarian, and I must admit that to a certain extent they are right and I am not altogether sorry for it. Just the same, two days ago I lost a mother and her child and I would have given all I own for some access to your Terrans’ skills—”

  “Well,” Jaelle said, “Cholayna is in there arranging ways for you to have such help,” but Marisela shook her head.

  “Ah, no, my dear, it is not as simple as that. It sounds like a perfectly simple thing, and a thing that is all good, that I should be able to save mothers alive to care for their children, and save their children alive so that no mother may weep because half the little children she bears do not live past weaning. But it is not such a good thing as all that.”

  “Do you dare to say it is a bad thing?”

  “Aye, and I do say so,” Marisela said, and at Jaelle’s indignant stare, she said, “I want to speak with your friend anyway. Shall we go and talk with Mother Lauria? Finish your tea, it is good for you.”

  Jaelle had grown up thinking of Mother Lauria’s office as a sacrosanct place, not to be breached except in emergencies, but Marisela simply knocked and went in, and Mother Lauria smiled at her.

  “I was going to send for you, Marisela. Cholayna—” she struggled a little with the name. “Is that how you say it?”

  “Near enough,” said Cholayna and nodded in a friendly way to Marisela. “So you are the house Medic, as we would say it. It is you who should choose women to be instructed in Medical techniques, or you yourself may come and learn them with the younger women—”

  “I should be interested,” Marisela said, “and knowledge is always a good thing, but will you teach them only to use their medical sciences or will you teach them when they should not use them?”

  “I do not understand,” Cholayna said. “The business of a Medic is to save lives, and Mother Lauria was just telling me how you had had to let a woman die because you could not save her or her child. We can teach you ways to save most of them…”

  “So that every mother will have a dozen living children?” said Marisela, “and then, how shall they be fed?”

  “I am sure you know that we have knowledge of contraceptive techniques,” Cholayna said. “So that a woman can put her strength into bearing only one or two children and not spend all her life in bearing them and watching them die.”

  Marisela nodded. “If the two she does bear are the strongest and best, and we could be sure of that,” she said, “but suppose the two who survive are the weakest, and so their children will be weaker yet? Ten, twenty generations down the road, we will be a people of weaklings, kept alive only by sophisticated medical techniques and thus dependent on your technology. If a woman is saved alive when her pelvis is too small, then perhaps her daughters will live to bear more children with this defect, and once again, we are dependent upon more and more medical help to keep them alive in childbirth. Believe me, it hurts my heart to watch women and children die. But when a child is born, for instance, blue and unable to breathe because he has a hole inside his heart…”

  “That can be repaired,” Cholayna said. “Many of our people are living who would have died here at birth…”

  “And his children will multiply those defects,” said Marisela. “Oh, believe me, on the cases where something has gone wrong in the womb and the child is lacking strength, perhaps we should save that child alive, but if it is a defect he will pass to his own sons? Better that one should die now than that a hundred weaklings should sap the strength of our people. And it is like a lottery—the first two children are not always the brightest, the strongest, the best; so often a great leader or genius will be born seventh, or tenth, or even twentieth among the children of his family.”

  Cholayna said stiffly, “I am afraid I do not like playing God and deciding that women must suffer that way.”

  “Is it not playing God to decree that they shall not so suffer?” Marisela asked. “We once had a breeding program here where we chose to tinker with our genes, to create the perfect people and the perfect race. We bred laran into our people and we are still suffering for it. Perhaps when the Goddess decrees that some must die at birth, She is being cruel to be kind.”

  “I still feel we should not reject the gift of the Terrans when they wish to teach our people their arts,” Mother Lauria said, and Marisela nodded.

  “Oh, I am sure you are right. But I pray all the Gods that we have the wisdom to know where to end it. There is no virtue in saving some lives which will be a burden to everyone in the household, everyone in the village, everyone in the world. I—I do not want to play God in deciding who must live and who must die, so I leave it to the mercy of the Goddess. If I in my small self have the power to decide that this one must live and this one must die, I can only say, my business is saving lives, I will save alive all I can. That way lies chaos. Perhaps it is better not to have that power.”

  “I cannot agree that anything which diminishes a woman’s power can be right,” said Cholayna, and Marisela sighed.

  “In theory surely you are right. But sometimes it is a terrible temptation to take the short view and do the immediately humane thing, instead of what might be best for all of humankind over the centuries.”

  Jaelle asked angrily, “Do you mean you would let people die if you could possibly save them?”

  “Alas, no,” said Marisela. “I would not, and perhaps that is why I fear that power so much. I hunger for all your knowledge, so that I need never see a woman bleed and die, or a baby struggle to breathe; I hate to lose the fight with that D
ark Lady who stands beside every woman at this hour, contending with me for Her due. But my business is to save life when I can, as I said, and I will, I suppose, in the end, stick to my business of saving lives. The Dark Lady is a very ancient and friendly adversary, and she can care for her own.”

  Cholayna looked at her with interest. She said, “That is a point of view often debated at Head Center. I had not expected to hear it in this House—”

  “From a native midwife, or would you call me a witch doctor or sorceress?” asked Marisela, and they smiled at each other in the friendliest way.

  But Jaelle was restless as the conversation went far afield into complicated matters of ethics, and was relieved when Cholayna rose to go. Cholayna said, “You may stay as long as you wish, Jaelle, you are certainly entitled to a holiday,” but she went for her cloak, telling the older women that she had some work to do. She could surely find some work in Monty’s office, since he, and Aleki, had left so much undone when they went to the fire lines.

  But, restless and alone that night in the Quarters which seemed so much too big for her, with Peter away, she could not rest. The Guild House now seemed as unfriendly as the Terran Zone. And her main reason in going there had failed; she had wanted to see Magda, and Magda had been away on the fire lines, and Marisela and Mother Lauria, friendly as they were, were not really involved in her problems. There was no reason they should be.

  She had wanted, no, needed to see Magda and make friends again with her. Would it be better to pretend that nothing had happened, or to insist that they talk frankly about it? Perhaps it meant nothing. After all, Magda had had a tremendous load on mind and spirit; all the pressures of the housebound time, hostility because of the fight and the indemnity, the fear of being dismissed from the Guild House, the pressures of the training sessions and the endless nightmares… was it any wonder Magda had no extra strength to deal with Jaelle’s troubles?

  Yet it was more than that. Jaelle searched in her mind and found only a confused image of herself picking Kyril’s hand off her arm as if it were a crawling bug; intrusive, unplesantly suggestive of an unwanted intimacy. Yes, and before supper when she had hugged and kissed Magda, the other woman had drawn away uneasily. Everyone already thinks I am your lover. We should talk about that; between oath-sisters there should be no such barrier.