“What are the dolphins, Bess? Just decoration?”
“No. A sacred symbol. Only officials of the church may wear those bands. Some of the devout wear a dolphin on a chain around their neck, but only one, and not on a band.”
“What are they made of? Is it jade?”
“What’s jade?”
“A jewel stone, about that color.”
“I don’t know, Coyote—we call it ‘atk.’”
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
THE ELDERS FORM A ROW, THE OLDEST HOLDING A LOOP ATTACHED TO THE WALL BESIDE THE ALTAR, THE OTHER FOUR IN A GOLDEN NET SLUNG TO THE LEFT. MUSIC BEGINS.
“Wait a minute… Bess, this is under water. How are they going to do vocals?”
“It’s just for the wedding. The speech—exactly as it was made in finger speech—is dubbed in later, like the music. The actress who does my speech is very good. Everything else, then, took place in the watertight rooms.”
“I see.”
“You’ll see their fingers moving, but you’ll hear vocal speech from the film.”
“Got it.”
“Here I come now… followed respectfully by my intended. He’s a Senator in our Planetary Council, owns a monopoly on half a dozen products essential to our people, is a very powerful man.”
“And you were awarded to him.”
“Exactly. Like a medal.”
BESS SWIMS INTO VIEW AND THE CAMERA MOVES IN FOR A CLOSEUP. SHE IS WEARING A SORT OF NECKLACE OF GOLD NET WITH THE GREEN STONES, A NECKLACE THAT EXTENDS DOWN OVER HER BREASTS AND SHOULDERS AND IS ALMOST A JEWELED CAPE, WITH LONG FRINGES OF GOLD THAT EXTEND DOWN HER ARMS. THE MAN WHO SWIMS BEHIND HER IS WEARING A SIMILAR CAPE, BUT WITHOUT JEWELS.
“”Those are wedding costumes, I suppose?“
“Yes, indeed. Very high class wedding costumes they are, too. There now, you see, we’ve taken our places at the altar, holding those rings set in the rock. All traditional.”
“Is the ceremony the same for mindwives as for—what do you call them—body wives?”
“Just the same. Now it’s beginning.”
ELDER: In the eyes of the Most High, under the blessed auspices given and ordained by Him Who knows all, I come to you this afternoon as Marrying Elder of the Ahl Kres’sah. I greet you; may you swim well.
ALL: May you swim well, Holy Elder.
ELDER: Upon this solemn occasion it is my joy to name as husband Tri Ttha Hahlw-Obe’an, who comes not as Senator, not as a man of power, but as a simple man, like any other man, to claim his wife. I call upon you, Ttha Hahlw-Obe’an, is it your will that I should proceed?
TRI: That is my will, Holy Elder.
ELDER: Upon this solemn occasion it is my joy to name as wife Kh’llwythenna Be’essahred Q’ue, who comes not as sacred mindwife, not as a woman blessed and chosen by the Most High, but as a simple woman, like any other woman, to be claimed by her husband. I call upon you, Kh’llwythenna Be’essahred Q’ue, is it your will that I should proceed?
BESS: It is not. I’ll swear fidelity to no man and take no oath meant to make me a sacred whore for the government of this…
PANDEMONIUM BREAKS OUT, THE NOISE OF THE HORRIFIED ONLOOKERS DROWNING OUT THE WORDS ON THE SOUNDTRACK. THE CAMERA FADES OUT.
“That was a mighty short wedding, Bess.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Why didn’t you just refuse to go in the first place?”
“And miss an opportunity like that?”
NARRATOR: Citizens, this was a first. Never before, in the history of the Ahl Kres’sah, has any woman so disrupted and despoiled a sacred ceremony, much less her own wedding! And this was no ordinary woman, Citizens, this was a mindwife, a mindwife who—of course I know nothing of these things, but I quote her Training Elders—a mindwife who would have been one of the greatest mindwives we have ever had… Citizens, this was a sad occasion. But it didn’t begin here, no, it began long, long before…
“Really?”
“Really. Watch.”
NARRATOR: Citizens, the man whom you now see on your screens is the Senior Training Elder of the Temple of Mindwives. He has graciously consented to speak to us today of this unfortunate woman. Good afternoon, Holy Elder.
ELDER: Greetings, may you swim well.
NARRATOR: Thank you, Elder. Now, you know of this sad incident—
ELDER: The wedding that was so abruptly cut off? Yes, I know of it. I could hardly avoid knowing of it.
NARRATOR: Of course of course. Now, could you tell us something of this woman? You had her training, did you not?
ELDER: Yes. A heavy burden, a very heavy burden.
NARRATOR: I’m sure it must have been.
ELDER: She was so obviously superior, from the very first week that we had her in our care, that it was felt best for me to take over supervision of her training personally.
NARRATOR: What was she like, as a child?
ELDER: Like any mindwife. Rebellious, angry, undisciplined, wild. That is normal and to be expected.
NARRATOR: Was she unusual in any way?
ELDER: In the degree of her abilities, yes; she was very unusual. The power of her mind has not been met with before or since, so far as I am able to determine.
NARRATOR: But she did submit to discipline, when she was a young girl at the Temple?
ELDER: Well… You must remember, she was a very unusual case. Because of her brilliance, which is to a great extent a function of her lack of discipline in the sense you mean, we tolerated a greater degree of deviance from her than we would normally have done. That was our mistake, of course, as we can see now. But at the time it seemed justified.
NARRATOR: I see, I see. Then this… performance… of hers was not unexpected?
ELDER: The business at the wedding ceremony? Good heavens, man, of course it was unexpected! She fooled us very neatly… there had been an initial resistance on her part, but we thought that she had gotten over that when she saw that we were not going to give in to her nonsense.
NARRATOR: Well, what sort of ‘nonsense’ was it that she advocated?
ELDER: I don’t know quite how to put it. This is, after all, a family program, is it not?
NARRATOR: Well, perhaps we can come back to that. Can you tell us, had she been a source of difficulty to you before?
ELDER: Oh, yes. Yes, she had. She had been a source of havoc, if you really want to know. It had been necessary for us to keep her in total isolation… solitary confinement… off and on for the past six years, because of her influence on the other mindwives.
NARRATOR: But isn’t that rather futile? I mean, isn’t she able to communicate with them all the same? Mentally?
ELDER: Mmmh. Hmhmm. It isn’t… uh, it isn’t generally known, but we do have a sort of cell from which it is not possible for the mindwives to project their thoughts or receive the thoughts of others. It’s heavily shielded against any sort of electrical activity—or any other sort of activity. In fact, if she had been returned to our care after her arrest instead of to the civil authorities, she would not be at large now.
“Is he right about that, Bess?”
“I don’t know. I had never before really tried to get out of that cell of theirs, so I just don’t know. But I think I would have gotten away.”
NARRATOR: When you say she had been a source of havoc, what exactly do you mean?
ELDER: Well, she had a lot of radical ideas, which, as I said, I can’t possibly express to you here and now, when children might be listening. She communicated these ideas to the other mindwives, and although she wasn’t too successful, there was always the possibility that they might spread. As I say, it was for that reason that we isolated her.
NARRATOR: You didn’t feel she would remain a danger after her wedding?
ELDER: She fooled us, I told you. She seemed chastened, docile, very repentant. She had just spent an uninterrupted period of eleven months in the shielded cell. We felt that she had learned her lesson and would welcome, rather than abuse,
her freedom.
NARRATOR: Ha, ha, ha. She really pulled the gills over your ears, didn’t she?
ELDER: I don’t find it particularly amusing.
NARRATOR: Well, Citizens, you can see why the Elder’s becoming a little upset. He has been under a severe strain, of course, we must all remember that…
“Bess?”
“Yes, Citizen?”
“How bad was it… the solitary confinement?”
“Would you like to try it some time?”
Coyote pulled her into his arms, conditioning be damned, and rocked her gently.
“Hush,” he said. “I’m an utter ass sometimes. Too damn often. What’s left in the film?”
“My trial.”
“They let you talk then?”
“After a fashion.”
“Let’s see it.”
“You’re seeing it. That’s what he was doing while you were gabbling, going through the ‘now we take you to the sensational trial etc., etc’ bit.”
“Oh.”
NARRATOR:… speaking in her own defense.
THE TRIAL IS BEING HELD IN A CLOSED CHAMBER, BEFORE THREE JUDGES. THERE IS NO JURY, AND NO AUDIENCE. THE JUDGES WEAR NARROW COLLARS OF SILVER, OTHERWISE THEY ARE NAKED. BUT BESS IS COMPLETELY CLOTHED, IN A LONG ROBE OF WHITE CLOTH, A PRISONER’S GARMENT, OBVIOUSLY INTENDED TO BE A TORMENT UNDER WATER BECAUSE IT CLINGS AND TWISTS ABOUT THE BODY AND MAKES SWIMMING AN AWKWARD, NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE PROCEDURE.
JUDGE: What have you to say for yourself, Mindwife? Are you repentant? Do you regret your disgusting behavior?
BESS: I regret nothing.
JUDGE: How do you expect mercy from us, if you insist upon taking that position?
BESS: CENSORED.
“What did you say, Bess?”
“I said ‘kluth your mercy!”
“‘Kluth’? What does that mean?”
“In Panglish? It’s a pejorative term for non-mental sexual intercourse, if I may be so formal. I don’t know the word.”
“Oh, I see. ‘Fuck’ your mercy is what you said.”
“Is that the word?”
“That’s the one, love.”
JUDGE: Obscenities will be of no use to you here, Mindwife. We are accustomed to such things and you waste your time and ours. If you have anything to say in your defense I suggest you say it.
BESS: My defense is composed entirely of the fact that I am guilty of nothing.
JUDGE: And how did you arrive at that interesting conclusion? Your crime was public, woman, how are you to deny it?
BESS: I deny that it was a crime.
JUDGE: I allow you to continue with this nonsense only because I am indulgent; I warn you that my indulgence has limits.
BESS: I am guilty of protesting against a system that is called holy, but is infamous. I am guilty of trying to bring the truth into the open. I am guilty of trying to cleanse our Holy Path of a festering dungheap.
JUDGE: You speak in riddles.
BESS: Judge, you know perfectly well what we mindwives are. Holy! We are filth. We are a special, very highly trained, very expensive sort of filth, reserved for the secret pleasures of those who teach us to perform our “duties” and for the men of our society who are powerful enough to buy one of us. You know this as well as I do. I refused, and I do still refuse, to take part in such a perversion, and that is not a crime.
JUDGE: You would put an end to mindwifery?
BESS: Either it should be stopped, irrevocably and forever, or it should be made free, for the benefit of everyone. Every Ahl Kres’sah, man, woman, and child, must pay for the training and the maintenance of the mindwives, either directly through taxation or indirectly in that he is deprived of what that money could purchase for our people if it were not so used. If all must pay for it then all should enjoy it—and you know quite well, Judge, that any one of us, any capable mindwife, could bring ecstasy to fifty men a day instead of one.
“Bess, I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“Surely… I thought this was for general viewing .
“It was never released to the public, Citizen. I have a stolen copy.”
“I see.”
THE JUDGES ARE ON THEIR FEET, LIVID WITH RAGE. ONE RAISES A FIST AND SHAKES IT AT BESS, ENTIRLY FORGETTING HIS DIGNITY.
JUDGE: Enough! You cannot expect me to believe that this filth, this blasphemy, this unspeakable obscenity, is to be seen and heard by the people of this planet! I order that the cameras and the other equipment for duplication be turned off as of this instant.There was a quiet click as the projector came to the end of the film.
“He got rather upset,” Bess observed. “He never let me say another word.”
“You weren’t allowed to speak again?”
“Not once.”
“That’s incredible.”
“I was summarily sentenced and taken away to prison—the state prison, fortunately, not the Temple one.”
“But you had no lawyer, Bess—don’t you people have specialists in the defense of criminals, people who act on their behalf and have special knowledge of the law?
“For civil crimes, yes. Not for religious ones. For a religious crime it is a foregone conclusion that you will be sentenced, and the only purpose of the trial is for the accused to plead for mercy. No one is ever acquitted under such circumstances.”
“That’s barbaric, Bess.”
“Agreed. Many things are barbaric.” She got up and began putting away the viewing equipment.
“You know, Citizen, that judge who was shaking his fist had a very good reason to be angry?”
“Oh? Why is that?”
Bess laughed, tucking the cassettes into the shelves under the projector. “Because, he has a mindwife of his own.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Up above the world so high
Like a windbag in the sky.”
(from an old nursery rhyme)
To be back on Mars Central again was a strain on his already abused powers of readjustment. Twice before he had done this switch, from a primitive mode of existence to the advanced technological style that was characteristic of the Inner Galaxy, and each time he found it more of a wrench. The cities seemed vast and noisy and swarming with people, the machines that had been an unnoticed part of the background like the walls and the floor suddenly seemed ugly and obtrusive, and everything looked foreign. He knew it would wear off in a day or two, but it bothered him now. And of course he missed Bess. The two months it had taken him to get here had been only two days for him—the first day, while he was processed for the hibernation tanks, and the last, while they readied him for landing. But he missed her already. She was good company.
He turned into the offices of the Tri-Galactic Intelligence Service, stepped into an anti-grav chute and drifted up to the seventh floor, where he found the Fish still attended by the Amanuensis Mark IV.
“Drop dead,” he told it in chill tones, and it began blinking and clicking frantically, finally producing, “That activity is not one for which I am programmed, sir.”
“Stop monkeying around with my equipment, Mr. Jones,” ordered the Fish.
“You know something?”
“What?”
Coyote regarded him stonily. “It seems to me that a man who employs a servomechanism for a secretary should be advanced enough to give up the use of an ancient form of address like ‘Mister.’”
“The reason,” said the Fish, “that I am reduced to employing such a servomechanism, is that I am no longer able to find the ancient form of human being known as a secretary. Everyone is a lunasthetist or a biosylthesist or a starship stewardess or some such idiocy these days. I do not see that this misfortune, over which I have no control, should constitute a reason for an alteration in my personal habits.”
Coyote shrugged. “All right,” he said. “Be an odd old pansy. I don’t care.”
“Pansy?”
“Archaic term for homosexual.”
“I’m not a homo
sexual. I’m not a heterosexual. I have no use for either alternative, and I’m sure you’d be more use to the Service if you’d follow my example.”
“Mmm. Nonetheless, in this day and age, to call people ‘Mister’ or ‘Miss’ is very pansy.”
“Irrelevant. Please get to the point, Mr. Jones.”
“Have you read the reports I sent ahead?”
“I have. I found them singularly uninformative. Not one word in them that the computers didn’t already have in their databanks. What have you been doing all this time?”
“The reason the reports are uninformative is because they are faked. I am quite sure that three-fourths of the personnel on Mars Central read the reports that come in from the agents of TGIS and I wanted them to be sure they had the full story, so there’d be no problem in accomplishing what I really want.”
“I see. Then that’s not really the situation?”
“No, no. Actually it couldn’t be less like the stuff you have in your files.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean, no. Period. I won’t report to you, alone. I want to report to the full Board, plus a representative from the Tri-Galactic Council who’s one of us and has some influence.”
“Look, Mr. Jones—”
“Or I won’t talk at all.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Jones. Well put you on hypnodrugs and you will tell us everything.”
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