All the fathers had advice and opinions and observations and commentary. Before long, she found herself snarling at them to shut up and leave her alone. They didn’t; they were Runa, after all, and saw no reason to shun or abandon her. So they went on talking and kept her company, their long-fingered hands busy and beautiful, reweaving windbreaks and sections of thatch for roofing damaged in the storm.
By midday, exhausted, she gave up trying to control what was going on and fell silent. When Kanchay carried her to a small waterfall near the camp, she did not argue, and sat with him under water that beat coolly down on her shoulders, drowning out the irritating voices of the others with its steady roar. To her own surprise, she relaxed, and this must have helped her dilate.
"Sipaj, Fia," Kanchay said after a time, watching her with calm eyes of Chartres blue, "put your hand down here." He guided her fingers to the crowning head and smiled as she felt the baby’s wet and curling hair. There were three more crushing contractions and as the child emerged, she was swamped by the terror of a remembered nightmare. "Sipaj, Kanchay," she cried, before she knew if she had a daughter or a son. "Are the eyes all right? Do they bleed?"
"The eyes are small," said Kanchay honestly. "But that’s normal for your kind," he added by way of reassurance.
"And there are two," his cousin Tinbar reported, thinking this might have worried her.
"They’re blue!" their friend Sichu-Lan added, relieved because Fia’s strange brown eyes had always been a source of vague unease to him.
There was a silence as she felt the infant’s legs slip from her and she thought at first that it was born dead. No, she thought, it’s all the other noise — the talking and the waterfall. Then, finally, she heard the baby squall — jolted into breathing by the chilly water that had been such a comfort to its mother at the end of this stiflingly hot and endless day.
Kanchay brought leaves to wipe it down and Sichu-Lan was laughing and pointing to its genitals, which were external. "Look," he cried, "someone thinks this child is in a hurry to be bred!"
A son, she knew then, and whispered, "We have a little boy, Jimmy!" She burst into tears — not of grief or terror but of relief and gratitude— as strong warm hands lifted her from the cool water and the hot breeze dried her and the baby. With a shock, she felt again skin on human skin, and slept. Later, her son’s lips closed for the first time around her nipple: a gentle, almost lazy suckling, as sweet as Jimmy’s, as beautiful to feel, but feeble. There’s something wrong, she thought, but she told herself, He’s newborn, and premature. He’ll get stronger.
Isaac, she decided then, whose father had, like Abraham, left his home to travel to a strange land; whose mother, like Sarah, had out of all expectation borne a single child and rejoiced in him.
Sofia held her infant to her breast and gazed down at the wise owl eyes in a tiny elfin face capped by dark red hair. She respected her son more than she loved him at that moment and thought, You made it. The djanada nearly killed us and you were born too soon and you’ve gotten a bad start, but you are alive, in spite of everything.
It could be worse, she thought as she drifted off to sleep again, with the baby close, the heat of Rakhat as enveloping as a neonatal incubator, the two of them surrounded by the arms and legs and tails of whispering Runa. I am Mendes, and my son is alive, she thought. And things could be worse.
5
City of Inbrokar, Rakhat
2046, Earth-Relative
"THE CHILD IS DEFECTIVE."
Ljaat-sa Kitheri, forty-seventh Paramount of the Most Noble Patrimony of Inbrokar, delivered this bald news to the infant’s father without preface. Summoned by a Runa domestic to the Paramount’s private chambers just after the rise of Rakhat’s second and most golden sun, Supaari VaGayjur received the announcement in silence, and had not so much as blinked.
Shock or self-control? Kitheri wondered, as his daughter’s preposterous husband moved to a window. The merchant stared out at the jumbled angles of Inbrokar City’s canted, crowded rooftops for a time, but then turned and lowered himself in obeisance. "If one might know, Magnificence, defective in what way?"
"A foot turns in." Kitheri glanced at the door. "That will be all."
"Your pardon, Magnificence," the merchant persisted. "There is no chance that this was… malformation? Some slight insufficiency of gestational condition, perhaps?"
An outrageous remark but, considering the source, the Paramount ignored it. "No female in my lineage or my wife’s has been at fault lately," Kitheri said dryly, pleased to see the merchant’s ears flatten. "Lately," in this context and used by a Kitheri, implied a lineage older than any other on Rakhat.
Initially dismayed by his daughter’s improbable marriage, Ljaat-sa Kitheri had become reconciled to the match simply because a third line of descendants presented a number of unusual political opportunities. Now, however, it was clear that the whole affair had been a travesty. Which was, the Paramount thought, only to be expected given Hlavin’s involvement.
It was typical of Hlavin, who was himself a disgrace, that he would grant breeding rights to this Supaari person on a whim, simply to embarrass the rest of the family. From time immemorial, the legal power to create a new lineage had been entrusted to the Kitheri Reshtar, precisely because statutory sterility was the most notable aspect of his life. These hapless late-born males could normally be counted on to grant sparingly a privilege they themselves might never enjoy. But nothing about Hlavin had ever been normal, the Paramount thought with irritable distaste.
"Was it a son?" the merchant asked, interrupting the Paramount’s thoughts.
Curious merely, his tone said. Already putting the child in the past. Admirable, under the circumstances. "No. It was female," the Paramount said.
Surprising, really—the outcome of the mating. When the merchant arrived in Inbrokar to cover Jholaa, the Paramount had been relieved to see that he was a goodly man with a fine phenotype. Ears well set on a broad head that sloped nicely to a strong muzzle. Intelligent eyes. Good breadth in the shoulders. Tall, and some real power in the hindquarters—traits the Kitheri line could benefit from, the Paramount admitted to himself. Of course, it was impossible to predict how an outcross with untested stock would go.
Leaning back on a tail thick-muscled and hard, the Paramount folded his arms over a massive chest, hooking his long curved claws around his elbows, and came to the point. "In cases like this, there is, you understand, a father’s duty." Supaari lifted his chin, the long and handsome and surprisingly dignified face still. "There may be others," the Paramount offered, but they both knew Jholaa was almost unapproachable now. The merchant said nothing.
It was disconcerting, this silence. The Paramount sank onto a cushion, wishing now that he’d sent a protocol Runa to the merchant’s chambers to deliver the news.
"So. The ceremony will be tomorrow morning, then, Magnificence?" Supaari asked at last.
My ancestors must have done this, the Paramount thought, moved in spite of himself. Sacrificing children to rid our line of recurring disease, wild traits, poor conformation to type. "It is necessary," he said aloud and with conviction. "Kill one insignificant child now, prevent generations of suffering in the future. We must bear in mind the greater good." Naturally, this peddler lacked both the breeding and the discipline that molded those meant from birth to rule. "Perhaps," Ljaat-sa Kitheri suggested with uncharacteristic delicacy, "you would prefer that I—"
The merchant stopped breathing for an instant and rose to full height. "No. Thank you, Magnificence," he said with soft finality, and slowly turned to stare. It was a finely calculated threat, the Paramount decided with some surprise, serving silent notice this man would no longer be insulted with impunity, but nicely offset by the deferential mildness of Supaari’s voice when next he spoke. "This is, perhaps, the price one pays for attempting something new."
"Yes," Ljaat-sa Kitheri said. "My thoughts exactly, although the commercial phrasing is unfortunate. Tomorrow, then."<
br />
The merchant accepted this correction with grace, but left the Paramount’s chambers without the prescribed farewell obeisance. It was his only lapse. And, the Paramount noted with the beginnings of respect, it might even have been deliberate.
I HAVE SANDOZ TO THANK FOR THIS, SUPAARI THOUGHT BITTERLY AS HE swept through twisted corridors to his quarters in the western pavilion of the Kitheri compound. Throat tight with the effort to hold back a howl, he fell onto his sleeping nest and lay there in stunned misery. How could it all have gone so wrong? he asked himself. Everything I had — wealth, home, business, friends — all for an infant with a twisted foot. But for Sandoz, none of this would have happened! he thought furiously. The whole thing was a bad bargain from start to finish.
And yet, until the Paramount announced this disastrous news, it had seemed to Supaari that he had behaved correctly at every step. He had been cautious and prudent; reconsidering three years of choices, he saw no alternatives to his decisions. The Runa of Kashan village were his clients: he was obligated to broker their trade, even when that required doing business with the tailless foreigners from H’earth. Who was the obvious buyer for their exotic goods? The Reshtar of Galatna Palace, Hlavin Kitheri, whose appetite for the unique was known throughout Rakhat. Should I have stayed with the foreigners in Kashan? he asked himself. Impossible! He had a business to run, responsibilities to other village corporations.
Even when the foreigners taught the Runa how to cultivate food, and the authorities discovered the unsanctioned breeding in the south, and the riots broke out—even then, Supaari had regained control before Chaos could dance. The foreigners were strangers; they didn’t know that what they’d done was wrong. Rather than let the two surviving humans be tried for sedition, Supaari had offered to make them hasta’akala. Admittedly, it was a bad sign when one of them died almost immediately. Perhaps I should have waited until I knew more about them before having their hands clipped, Supaari thought. But he was intent on establishing their legal status before the government could execute them. How could he have known that they would bleed so much?
When Sandoz recovered, Supaari did his best to incorporate the little interpreter into the life of the Gayjur trading company. He urged Sandoz to spend time in the warehouse and in the offices, encouraged him to deal with the dailiness of commerce, but the foreigner remained despondent. Finally, having done everything he could with courtesy, Supaari resorted to the rude expedient of asking Sandoz directly what was wrong.
"Your unworthy guest is alone, lord," Sandoz had said with a movement of the shoulders that seemed to signal resignation. Or acceptance, perhaps. Indifference, sometimes. It was hard to be certain what such gestures meant. But then the foreigner offered his neck, to remove the hint of criticism. "You are more than kind, lord, and your hospitality faultless. This useless one is exceedingly grateful."
He longs for others of his kind, Supaari realized, and wondered if the foreigners were more like Runa than like Jana’ata. Runa affections were genuine but elastic, encompassing anyone who was near, contracting smoothly when someone left. Even so, they needed a herd. Oh, the females could tolerate some solitude and work with strangers, but males needed families, children. Isolated from kin and friends, some Runa men would simply stop eating and die. It was rare, but it happened.
"Sandoz, do you pine for a wife?" Supaari asked, blunt in his anxiety that this foreigner, too, would perish in his custody.
"Lord, your grateful guest is ’celibate,’ " Sandoz told him, using a H’inglish word, his eyes sliding away. Then he explained, in his charmingly awkward K’San, "Wives are not taken by such as this unworthy one."
"So! Your kind are like Jana’ata then, who permit only the first two children to marry and breed," Supaari said, relieved. "I too am this thing — celibate. You are third-born as I am?"
"No, lord. Second. But among such as your guest, any person may mate and have children, even fifth-born or sixth."
Five? Six! Litters? Supaari wondered then. How can they allow so many? He felt sometimes that he understood only one thing in twelve of what he learned about the foreigners. "If you are second, why did you not take a wife?"
"This unworthy one chose not to, lord. It is an unusual choice, among my species as among yours. Men such as your guest leave the families of their birth and do not form attachment to any single person nor make any children. Thus we are free to love without exclusion, and to serve many."
Supaari was shocked to learn this about the little foreigner, whom he had come to care for. "You yourself are a servant to many, then?"
"Yes, lord, this one was, when among his own kind."
But there are none of your kind to serve here, Supaari thought. Confounded, he fell back against the pile of dining cushions on which he had lingered as the leavings of his meal cooled, and thought wistfully of the days when his most perplexing problem was predicting next season’s demand for kirt. "Sandoz," he said, reaching out to grip some kind of certainty, "what is your purpose? Why did you come here?"
"Lord: to study the gifts of the tongue—to learn the songs of your people."
"Ha’an told me this!" Supaari cried, making sense at last of something Anne Edwards had once said. "You came because you heard the songs of our poets and admired them." He stared at Sandoz: not an interpreter bred to trade, but a second-born who chose to make no children, and a poet who serves many! No wonder Sandoz had shown no interest in commerce! That was when everything fell into place-it seemed brilliant, at the time. "Would it please you to serve among the poets whose songs brought you here, Sandoz?"
For the first time in a full season, the foreigner seemed to brighten. "Yes, lord. This would honor your most unworthy guest. Truly."
So Supaari set out to make this possible. The negotiations were delicate, intricate, delicious. In the end, he achieved a subtle and beautifully balanced transaction: the crowning achievement of a remarkably successful mercantile career. The foreigner Sandoz would be provided with a life of service to Hlavin Kitheri, the Reshtar of Galatna, whose diminishing poetic power might once more be lifted to greatness by inspiring encounters with the foreigner. The Reshtar’s younger sister, Jholaa, would be released from the enforced barrenness of her existence, as would Supaari himself, by their marriage and by the foundation of the new Darjan lineage with full breeding rights. Since Supaari VaGayjur’s own wealth would endow the Darjan, the Most Noble Patrimony of Inbrokar gained a third sept without any hint of unseemly inconstancy: an ideal multiplication of descent lines with no division of inheritance.
Agreement reached, the transfer of custody took place. Sandoz appeared to settle into the Reshtar’s household reasonably well after his placement in Galatna Palace. Supaari himself had overseen the foreigner’s presentation to the Reshtar; he was, in fact, a little unnerved by the pathetic, trembling eagerness with which Sandoz invited Kitheri’s attentions. But the merchant left Galatna Palace elated over his own good fortune, and believing that he had done right by Sandoz.
It wasn’t long before Supaari realized that there might have been some kind of misunderstanding. "How does the foreigner?" he inquired some days after the transfer, hoping to hear that Sandoz was thriving.
"Well indeed," was the reply. Even after his initiation, the Reshtar’s secretary reported, Sandoz was extraordinary: "Fights like a virgin every time." The Reshtar was pleased and had already produced a splendid song cycle. His best in years, everyone said. The puzzle, Supaari learned, was that the foreigner reacted to sex with violent sickness. This was disturbing but, Supaari thought, it was evidently normal for his kind. One of the other foreigners had been bred just before she was killed in the Kashan riot, and Sofia too had trouble with nausea.
In any case, the deal was done; there was no second-guessing it now. And the Reshtar’s poetry was lovely. So was Supaari’s new home, the city of Inbrokar; so was his new wife, the lady Jholaa.
But then the poetry took a very odd turn, and the Reshtar was silenced. And Inbr
okar was maddeningly boring compared to the bustle of Gayjur. Jholaa, Supaari noted wryly, was not boring but she was, quite likely, mad. And Sandoz was gone now, sent back to wherever he came from by the second party from H’earth, which had itself disappeared. Returned to H’earth as well, most likely. Who knew?
In view of how the mating had turned out, Supaari was inclined to wish he’d never known any of them—Sandoz, the Reshtar, Jholaa. Fool: this is what comes of change, Supaari told himself. Move a pebble, risk a landslide.
It was then that Supaari realized with sickening certainty that if he was to sire another child to take this one’s place, his second encounter with Jholaa would be even uglier than the first. At this level of society, bloodlines were guarded like treasure, and it occurred to him that Jholaa had probably never even seen Runa bred, which was the way most commoners got their first instruction in sex. Supaari had initially approached the lady with a certain untraditional anticipation of the staggering erotic beauty defined and promised by the Reshtar’s poetry, but it had quickly become clear that Jholaa herself was unfamiliar with her famous brother’s more recent literary output. The child Supaari would kill in the morning had, on the occasion of her conception, nearly cost her sire an eye; he’d have funked the job entirely if pheromones and the irresistible scent of blood hadn’t taken over.
When the union was concluded, Supaari had retreated from it with relief, badly disillusioned. And he understood at last why so many Jana’ata aristocrats preferred to be serviced by Runa concubines—bred for enjoyment and trained to delight—the moment their dynastic duty had been accomplished.
SLEEPING NOW AND EXHAUSTED FROM THE STRUGGLE TO EXPEL HER husband’s brat, the lady Jholaa Kitheri u Darjan had always been more of a dynastic idea than a person.
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