Earthsong

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  “Your role, Cheris,” they told her, “is to feed the eye. Beads, please. Feathers. Bells. Whatnot. The rest of us will be in our usual plain tunics; we need you for bird of plumage.”

  “Among the birds,” Cheris reminded them, “it is ordinarily the male who is spectacular to look at.”

  “Moot point, Cheris, since there are no males of your tribe. We want you absolutely splendid, please.”

  There had been much hilarity in the Womanhouses when the committee announced its selections after their hasty meeting. “Perceive,” someone had said, “there’s nobody to represent the greens! You’ve left them out!” What passed for water on the pseudo-planet Hoos had turned its population the color of young grass; it wasn’t unreasonable to say that there was now a race of greens who were more truly green than any human beings had ever been truly red or white or yellow.

  Why not a representative for all the tall peoples of humankind? Why not someone for all the fat ones? Ona Chornyak suggested that she herself go along to stand for all left-handed humans. At Chornyak Womanhouse the game of suggestions went on, growing more and more raucous, until Noukhane began tapping her fingertips together in front of her face and peering at them over the steepling.

  “Well, Noukhane?” Ona challenged her. “None of this is any sillier than what you’re actually proposing. Red and black and white and yellow and brown? With Cheris as Token Exotic? It’s absurd! You know what it reminds me of? Those doll-of-the-month clubs they huckster on the shopping threedies!”

  “There is a reason,” said Noukhane. “There are two reasons.”

  “And they are?”

  “One woman per alleged human color is something the members of the UNE … and the men of the Lines … will accept without question. It will keep them from wondering why we chose this particular one and not that particular one; it will keep them from perceiving plots and stratagems.”

  “Ah. And the other reason?”

  “And,” said Noukhane, “it will serve as a symbol.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of traditionalism. They say that we’ve ended human life; this says that we remember and honor it still, and from its deepest and most ancient roots.”

  “But why should we say that?”

  “For that matter,” put in another, “why should we do this at all?”

  “We’ve been over it a dozen times,” Noukhane reminded them. “You know we have. And it was decided: nothing can be gained by seeming to oppose the United Nations of Earth, and nothing will be lost by seeming to accommodate them.”

  “No skin off our noses?”

  “Exactly. We want to distract them from this flap about ‘an interplanetary secret conspiracy of women,’ not focus them on it by making them lose face.”

  “It is an interplanetary conspiracy of women,” Ona pointed out, “and until now, it always has been secret!”

  “Yes—but the sooner they forget that, the better.”

  “They want to lecture us,” said Noukhane’s mother. “You are providing them with the opportunity. A public scolding, you perceive.”

  Noukhane laughed. “A ceremony honoring us for heroism is too much to expect,” she said.

  The five women sat courteously listening through the speeches, in each of which they were rebuked one more time for not having gone immediately to male scientists with Delina Chornyak Bluecrane’s rediscovery of audiosynthesis and were sternly advised that by their egotistical and childish behavior they had held back the process inexcusably and condemned millions of human beings to hunger that could have been prevented.

  They understood that these things had to be said. The members’ constituents, watching the proceedings on their comsets, would have rioted worldwide if they had not been said. You do not interrupt an adult temper tantrum; the raver will only begin again at the beginning and go on longer. The baby tucked into Noukhane’s ample sleeve was lulled by the droning; she slept quietly the entire time.

  The crucial message was then delivered by the President of the United States of Earth himself. In person. He had insisted on it. He began by running through a few accusatory paragraphs from the script the other speakers had been using, watching the women carefully. It was incomprehensible to him that they could simply sit there, as serene as if he were reciting nursery rhymes at them. He had prepared carefully for this, eager to the depths of his heart for the opportunity to pillory them, relishing the fact that the UNE had the power to make them just sit there and take it, no matter how brutally they were attacked. He had been trembling with the anticipation of watching them squirm under the lash of his tongue; he had been prepared, when they tried to speak in their own defense, to come back at them in a way that made them look like what they were: Unspeakably filthy Judases. Betrayers of all humankind. He had had a whole litany of such phrases ready to be fired at them. He had been ready to reduce them to hysteria, he had hardly been able to wait to get at them and bring that off. How could they just sit there smiling at him, without even a flicker of response in their eyes? It was intolerable.

  And then suddenly understanding dawned on him, and he relaxed. They’re drugged, he realized. Of course. It had been a mistake, letting them attend only by comset; if they’d had to come in person they would have been checked for drugs and given antidotes on the spot. But it was too late to change that now, and he was wasting his time; they were protected by their chemicals against anything he could say. Because that was how it was, he cut short his prepared words and went straight to the list of demands, pausing only to send the assembly a brief clarifying message before he began speaking.

  “This,” he said to the women then, worn out now both by his passion and by his disappointment, “is what you will do—and I warn you: we will tolerate no argument.

  “You will immediately send your best MGTs to the US Department of Education, where they will assist on a crash basis in the development of a Panglish curriculum series for the mass-ed computers—to teach audiosynthesis to all the children of the inhabited universe.

  “You will immediately send other MGTs to every government agency of Earth to train its officials in audiosynthesis and assist in the development of inexpensive threedy courses for adults.”

  “We’ve got to have a better name for it,” the President said crossly, interrupting himself. “You can’t expect us to go around saying ‘audiosynthesis’! We have our best people working on that.”

  “You will immediately send women of the Lines, skilled in audiosynthesis, out to designated posts in the colonies—to counsel and comfort the populations as they make the transition from mouthfood to music.

  “And you will immediately turn over to us the Archives of the Barren Houses and the Womanhouses, so that the useful information they contain about all these matters can be entered into the government computers of every human nation and shared with their populations.”

  The President would have liked to end with something like “And may you burn forever in the depths of hell,” but that wouldn’t have looked or sounded presidential; he settled for “And may God have mercy on your souls.”

  He’d said nothing about appropriating the wealth that the women of the Lines had accumulated over the centuries; because its source had been the men of the Lines, there seemed to be no way to do that legally. But it pleased him to know that taxes and penalties of enormous size could legally be assessed against those vast fortunes, and that the invoices were being drawn up by the computers at that very moment.

  The farmers of Earth and the agrirobot companies were demanding compensation on the grounds that audiosynthesis was going to put them out of business; similar claims were pouring in from every profession and business involved in the production and preparation and serving and advertising and distribution of food. Because there could be no end to this chain of demands, because every segment of the economy directly affected by audiosynthesis was intricately linked to every other segment, it was clear that the only possible solution was a total prohibiti
on of all claims. That decision would be announced by the State Department as soon as the world’s people had had a few days to recover from their current state of shock. And it delighted Tobias Dellwilder that the funds necessary to ease the inevitable suffering during the years of transition would then be under the direct control of the government of the United States of America. Not all of the members of the assembly would share his opinions about that, of course, and on the colonial worlds that counted on Terran consumers the temporary return to colonialism was going to create interplanetary turmoil. But the President, despite his fear of what was to come, was looking forward to managing all that money.

  When they saw that the speech was over, the men of the UNE delegations sat motionless in the silence that follows any catharsis. The note that had been flashed to them from Tobias Dellwilder’s wrist computer—“THESE WOMEN HAVE ALL BEEN DRUGGED!”—had made everything clear. It had deprived them of the pleasure they would have taken in watching the Lingoe bitches suffer a little, but it had comforted them, too. If the women hadn’t known what was coming, and feared it, they wouldn’t have resorted to drugs. There was some satisfaction in knowing that at least they had been afraid.

  Now the delegates—

  OUT OF THE NIGHT, OUT OF THE RAGING BLIZZARD, CAME A MAN IN A BLACK CAPE, CARRYING A DYING WOMAN IN HIS ARMS. “HELP!” HE SHOUTED, THE SNOW SWIRLING AROUND HIM IN THE DOORWAY, “I—”

  ???

  THE TRANCER MOANS SOFTLY … “I CAN’T HELP IT,” SHE SAYS. “I AM SO SORRY. I KNOW IT’S ALL SCRAMBLED AND ROUGH … I’LL TRY AGAIN.”

  THIS IS THE FOREST PRIMEVAL. THE MURMURING PINES AND THE HEMLOCKS, BEARDED WITH MOSS AND IN GARMENTS GREEN, INDISTINCT IN THE TWILIGHT—

  ????

  “WAIT,” SAYS THE TRANCER. “PLEASE. WAIT. I AM HAVING A VERY HARD TIME. FORGIVE ME; I THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. NOW …”

  The delegates waited only to hear what terms and conditions the women would try to establish, wondering whether, in their drugged condition, they would try. The men were prepared to bring up a retroactive law against “the willful withholding of information critical to the survival of the human race” as a way of demonstrating who was in charge here. It turned out not to be necessary.

  “We would be delighted,” said Sharowa Ndal Adiness, her voice filling the room like molten gold flowing warm and thick over black marble. “I speak for all of us, and for all the members of the Households of the Lines, when I tell you so.”

  And she was delighted; she spoke the truth. The seniors in the Barren Houses had been almost perfectly accurate in their predictions of what would be demanded; it had only been a bit simpler than they had expected. Nothing had gone wrong in this command appearance; no confrontations had had to be dealt with; boredom had been the only unpleasantness. And the edited copy of the Archives was at this very minute sitting on the desk in the Oval Office at the White House, waiting for the President’s return. It was all very satisfactory.

  “We will be very pleased to comply,” she assured the delegates, inclining her head a measured fraction of an inch, “and to cooperate with you in every way possible.”

  Just like that?

  The chairman of the UNE cleared his throat and asked, cautiously, if there wasn’t something more the distinguished ladies wished to say, but Sharowa only smiled again. In Noukhane’s sleeve the baby responded to a skilled bounce or two by growing restless, and Sharowa reached over to take Mary Leaf from Noukhane. “You are referring,” she said, cradling the baby before her in her arms, rocking it gently, her attention clearly on the child and not on the assembly, “to the formal details. For that information, gentleman, I refer you to Thomas Barlow Chornyak of Chornyak Household.” She looked up from the baby briefly, saying, “And now I am sure that you have no further need for us. Good afternoon to you, gentlemen!” And the image of the five women and the child disappeared from the dais.

  The delegates gave one long collective sigh and moved immediately to excited discussion among themselves, falling into the usual political groups and subgroups, while the chairman pounded the gavel for order without effect, also as usual. They would have preferred carte blanche for “the formal details,” of course, but they had known that to be unrealistic. The linguist men no longer had any special power, but they had been trained to remember having it; they would relish this opportunity to be in control again, however briefly. The delegates understood that, and would have felt the same way if the situation had been reversed. What mattered was knowing that things could move forward now—that the negotiations would not have to be carried on, infuriatingly, with a bunch of women.

  It was a tremendous relief to them. Women don’t know how the game is played.

  The Interplanetary Women’s Congress had an elegant office in San Antonio, opening on the old River Walk, a place of fountains and tiles and plants and tasteful pieces of art. They had an even fancier office in Geneva, overlooking the lake. But when the PICOTA envoy Banyon Jordacha went to apologize on behalf of the tribes, he didn’t go to either of those places; he went to headquarters.

  He found Delina Jefferson sitting at a narrow worktable putting the final touches on an Ozark rainbow wreath. He waited a minute to be sure she’d seen him, and then he said, “Nice!” It was a fair comment; the wreath itself was a sturdy circle of Virginia creeper vine as thick as his thigh, and the God’s-eye in the seven bands of rainbow color that filled its center glowed up at him. Delina cut no corners in the craft-work that filled her shop. No sloppy wreaths made by just winding vine around and around and fastening it off. No cheap yarns for the ojos. Nothing glued that should have been sewn or set with pegs or woven in; no imitations. Only the best of both materials and craft, always. Banyon respected that, and he decided that if the price was not completely beyond his means he would buy the rainbow wreath for his oldest sister’s fiftieth birthday, coming up on him fast and not yet attended to.

  “Banyon!” she said, sounding very pleased. “Wil sha, Banyon.”

  “Hello, Delina.”

  Banyon nodded at her, pleased to see her in his turn, wishing he weren’t here on formal business—but then, of course, he wouldn’t have been here at all. He didn’t know Delina in person, but he’d been talking to her threedy image in councils much of his life; they were old friends.

  “I’m glad you like the wreath,” she said. “And I will give it to you for Nordranna’s fiftieth birthday, if you think she would find it acceptable.”

  Banyon grinned in spite of his determination to stay solemn; now he was really pleased. “We’ll discuss it,” he said. He knew how much money the Traditional Holiday Crafts Shop earned for Delina in Meander, Arkansas, he knew how hard she worked, and he knew how many people depended on her. He’d take the rainbow wreath, but he’d buy its fair value in other goods.

  “Coffee?”

  “I’ll help myself.”

  He went to the shelf where the coffeepot … made by Delina, he was sure, looking at it … sat steaming. He filled a mug, wrapping both hands around it for the warmth it gave him, and went to pull up a battered rocker across from her.

  “Delina, I’ve come with a message from the PICOTA,” he said, after he’d tried the excellent coffee and given it the minute of quiet appreciation it merited.

  She glanced up from her work and smiled at him. “Are they throwing me out?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I’m glad of that!” She laughed, and tied off an end of emerald green yarn. “It would be awkward to be chief of the Meandering Water and have to manage without the PICOTA.”

  He knew she was waiting for him to get on with it, but it was hard. He didn’t recall ever before having to carry a message that was a formal apology.

  “Can I help?”

  Banyon shook his head.

  “Then I will wait,” she said, and went back to her work.

  He looked around the room, enjoying the array of beautiful objects that were both good to see and good to use. She set her pr
ices too low, he saw; he would talk to her about that. Or perhaps he wouldn’t. It depended on how this went.

  Finally, he took a deep breath, and said it straight out. “Delina Bluecrane Jefferson,” he said, “on behalf of all the tribes of the PICOTA, I come to offer you our apology.”

  She sat bolt upright and stared at him, and he could see that she was truly astonished.

  “I can’t have heard you right,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he went on, in a strained voice. “We … the PICOTA … are deeply sorry for what we have done. And we would be grateful if you would carry that word for us to the women of the Lines.”

  “But Banyon—whatever in all the world have the PICOTA done?”

  “We didn’t intend to do it,” he said, fixing his eyes on the floor.

  “You didn’t.”

  “No.” He cleared his throat. “It wasn’t planned.”

  “Go on.”

  “Putting Marthajean Brown into the Oval Office was planned,” he said, keeping his voice clear and steady. “Before ever she was born, they say, that was planned. Making a classical guitarist of Alice Mary Brown … Cleo St. Andrews … so that she could move easily among the powerful all over this planet; that was planned. The idea was that Marthajean would be in a position to influence the President of the United States of Earth, should that prove necessary, and that Cleo would be a source of very useful information from many places we could not otherwise have gone.”