by Robin Roseau
"That's-"
"This is a harsh world, Cecilia," I said. "The Talmonese are peaceful. We do not have the troubles you've mentioned in other places. We do not have... Um. When a man lies with the wrong woman when he is in an exclusive relationship."
"Adultery," Cecilia said.
"I have heard of a man forcing a woman. I told you that story. But I do not recall a case in Sudden. We have not had a murder during my lifetime."
"We did," Sartine said. "I was seven or eight."
"But sometimes people need reminders," I added. "Drinking is the biggest problem, with the behavior that follows. And sometimes young people, especially men, can be very stupid. Sometimes there is... breaking things."
"Vandalism."
I nodded. "Pranks that cause damage. Fighting." I smiled. "You are guilty of that, and your Vendart could have subjected you to a punishment for it."
"It doesn't count if you are being kidnapped," I said.
"It was not a kidnapping," Sartine said. "It was a galatzi raid and entirely legal. And you knew it was legal."
"I didn't think it was legal to take me."
"We had addressed that by our last fight."
"And I paid for that fight. You did punish me."
Sartine sighed. "I suppose I did. But I didn't the other two. Chaladine only said I could have, not that I should have." She turned to me. "You are the one receiving the most punishments. Do you want me to stop?"
I thought about it. "I think I would slip more if it wasn't as uncomfortable. We are all agreed: English only. It is important. No. Do not stop."
We both turned to Cecilia. "Governor?" Sartine asked.
She sighed. "My Vendart."
"This is my decision, then. The punishments continue." She turned back to me. "You are at six points now. At ten, you get the cangue. One hour, in public, for ten. Add an hour per point after that. You then get one attempt to properly read the hardest poem, or you take another hour."
I nodded.
Cecilia sighed. "What is the cangue?"
"A large wooden board with a hole in the center. It goes over her head and hangs on her shoulders. I then lock it into place. It is too wide for her to reach around it."
"That sounds a little humiliating."
"That's the point," Sartine said. "No one is damaged. Tomorrow, he can go back to work. But otherwise it is much like the stocks."
"Father used the cangue on me once, too," I admitted. "I was rude to him in front of half the village. I immediately regretted it, but it was too late." I sighed. "He told my friends to torment me."
"Did they?"
"Of course they did, but no one was cruel. We are Talmonese. It was a minor offense, and I was a good child, so it was only a few hours. I learned how to respectfully disagree, and Father has always been willing to listen to his children as long as we are respectful."
"I do not care for these punishments," Cecilia said. "For real crimes, perhaps. But for a simple mistake speaking?"
"What would you do instead?" Sartine asked. "The punishment must bite, or it is not punishment."
"You could put me in the jail cell," I said. "But then I cannot do my job. I would rather take Sartine's punishments. They do, indeed, bite, but they are over quickly."
Cecilia sighed, but she had no solution.
* * * *
Three nights later, I refused to say a single word. I clamped my mouth shut and wouldn't even open it. Cecilia finally asked what was wrong.
"She's at nine points," Sartine said. "I caught her twice already today. She doesn't want the cangue. And even if she makes it the rest of the day, she is still at nine tomorrow as well."
"Sartine, these punishments are too cruel. It is counter-productive if she doesn't talk at all. The entire point is to talk."
I sighed.
"She is right, Chaladine. You will engage in conversation normally or take a point."
I sighed again, then lowered my eyes and said simply, "Yes, Vendart."
"Good. Tomorrow is a day for recreation. Tell us what you would like to do."
"I believe we should relax our rules during recreation days."
"No."
"That's what I thought you would say," I said. "Perhaps we could go for a hike in the mountains. They are beautiful."
"And in the evening?"
"We should use the baths, then go to dinner and spend the evening at the inn."
"Where we speak Talmonese so we are understood?"
"I wasn't thinking of that," I said. "I swear. I only thought it would be nice to relax amongst friends."
"During our hike, we will take turns telling stories," Sartine said. "If you make it through the day with no lapses into Talmonese, and you tell very, very amusing stories, I will remove an extra point. You would reduce to seven again."
"Thank you, Vendart," I said. "I am trying."
"I know you are," she said. "I have made mistakes, too. I am at four. Hilopid and Cecilia are at zero. Of course, this is an easy rule for Cecilia, and Hilopid avoids us so as to avoid my punishments."
"He cheats himself," I said. "I'm sorry. I was cheating myself, too."
"Not as badly," Sartine observed. "You should work hard to avoid the cangue, but it would not be so bad if you slip. Now, at fifteen, you really won't like it."
I never asked, and I never earned the Cangue, but it took me another month to reduce my count to five, and then another month before I reached zero for the first time since we implemented the rule.
Both Sartine and I were speaking English slowly, and Cecilia had to speak slowly for us to understand. We made mistakes. But we were understood.
I was deeply proud.
Preparations
I had been Cecilia's assistant for a year when we visited Sudden for a ball. I arrived with Cecilia and Sartine, and we received a warm welcome from Mother. I hadn't seen her for several weeks, and so it was very good to hold her for a minute.
We were just finishing our greetings when Mordain appeared. "Ah, your escort. Well, I suppose my eldest could have escorted you, but still... Mordain will take you to Baardorid."
"Greetings, Governor Grace," Mordain said in careful English. "It is very good to see you, Sartine." She grinned at me. "Close your mouth, Chaladine."
I laughed.
"I am to escort you to my Vendart," she added. "But I thought perhaps we could have a discussion about flying lessons."
Cecilia began to laugh. "I believe this is a prepared speech," she said. "But we will, indeed, have a half hour discussion. But if you speak one word of Talmonese, Sartine has a very suitable response for you."
Sartine chuckled.
It was two hours later before Mordain found us during a break for the musicians, and we let her lure us to a quiet room upstairs. We held our conversation. Mordain did, indeed, earn a punishment for a few words of Talmonese, but at the end, Cecilia said, "Mordain, you have done well. You are not done studying, but I will authorize flying lessons for you."
"Really?" She jumped to her feet and began dancing around. "Really? Really!"
"Yes. Really. But that was in Talmonese. Sartine?"
"Hold out your hands, Mordain," Sartine said. "Here is the poem."
Mordain took her punishment, reading it properly on the second attempt, with Sartine using a chair for the weight.
"Now, the bad news. Colonel Blue is not here. There is no one here who can give you these lessons. I am working on that. You will need to be patient. If Colonel Blue returns, she may start lessons, if she has time. I'm sorry."
"You promise though?"
"I promise. And you are not the only one who will be learning." She looked at me. "So will you, and Sartine needs to finish her lessons."
"Thank you, Governor," Mordain said. "Thank you, thank you." Cecilia got a hug and a kiss. I got a hug. But Mordain avoided her sister.
"Hey!" Sartine complained. "Where is mine?"
"You made me hold the chair," Mordain said. She grinned and hugged
her sister, too.
* * * *
It was another six months later before the promise of flight lessons began to look like a reality. Cecilia came to me in my office, smiling broadly, practically aquiver with joy.
"My family is coming to visit!" she exclaimed.
"Your parents?"
"Oh, not just my parents. My sister. Two of my grandchildren along with three of my great-grandchildren. I don't even know how old they are. One niece and one nephew. Two or three of their children. I don't know how many spouses." She smiled. "My sister's son is a flight instructor, and he has graciously allowed me to bribe him sufficiently to remain on Talmon for a period of time. He will be teaching you, Mordain, and a few others to fly the jumpers."
She clapped her hands. "I haven't seen some of them for decades."
"Decades? Literally."
"Literally. We don't all live on Centos Four. My sister and I coordinate to visit our parents at the same time, but if we try to coordinate extended families, it turns ridiculous."
"When are they coming?"
"They arrive on the scheduled shuttle in four months and will stay until the next shuttle, four months after that." She smiled. "One of the advantages of being distant and visited infrequently is that anyone who comes to visit is stuck here for a while."
"Colonel Blue could take them home."
"Colonel Blue will annoy me greatly if she offers," Cecilia said. "Nope. They're stuck here." Then she grinned. "When last I saw him, one of my great-grandsons was a hooligan. We must make sure he knows what the stocks are for."
I laughed.
* * * *
There was a great deal of planning involved, added to everything else we were doing, but Cecilia's energy knew no limits. We shared the schedule with Sartine and my parents, and we coordinated events. We also picked several events around Talmon to visit with them, and then we cancelled any other commitments we could.
Timing would be good. They were arriving in late spring and leaving in early autumn. It would be beautiful in both Sudden and Indartha.
I was ready to fill the entire time, but Cecilia said, "No. We will plan some major events, and a few simple events the first two weeks. We'll give a tour. But then we will see what people want to do. Some will want to live in the wilds for a time."
"In the wilds?"
"On their own, living off the land, or perhaps only in an isolated place, but with their supplies delivered to them. One or two may wish to hire a boat and take it out onto the ocean. I do not know all my sister's children that well, and their children not at all. I know my own grandchildren better, but not my great-grandchildren. They probably won't even remember me. I do not know what people will wish to do. So we will give them a sample and then see. My father may offer to teach. Four times he has been a teacher, and then he does something else for a while. But I do not know what he can teach when so few students speak English and he speaks not a word of Talmonese."
And so, we began to also interview those Talmonese who had been learning English. None were as good as Sartine or me, although Mordain was good and Margotain and Hilopid weren't bad. The two that surprised me were Reannaine and Riardarn. Their English was at least as good as Mordain's, and Cecilia said they were nearly as good as Sartine and me.
Of course, Father had long placed all the galatzi prisoners from Beacon Hill. Rordano had taken a mutual shine to Larimarn, and so my little brother was partnered. I understood from Margotain she had him wrapped around her finger, and it was as if he had been the galatzi prize and not her. But they were both happy, from what I could tell during my visits.
Kalorain was, of course, with Maddalyn. Maddalyn and I video conferenced several times a week, sometimes for work, sometimes for friendship, and she was insanely happy. I made a point of spending time with both of them whenever I could, which wasn't often.
Reannaine and Riardarn were placed with, of all things, a brother and sister. Riardarn, it turned out, preferred women. They had separate houses but shared a common courtyard. I understood the family dynamics were interesting, but they were also happy, or so they reported.
And so, Cecilia and I received assurances we would have people available to act as guides. We couldn't match everyone with someone, but we had enough that if people didn't head in too many directions at once, we could provide.
Housing was only a minor problem. In Indartha, Cecilia's parents, sister, and sister's spouse, if she brought one, would stay with us. It is not the Talmonese way to have hotels the way Cecilia explained they had on Centos Four, and the only such establishment on the entire planet was the resort south of Sudden. We decided for the first nights, we would use the resort, as it easily would hold everyone. But in Indartha and most places we might visit, we would accept hospitality from the townsfolk. Two or three would stay as guests in someone's home.
Cecilia didn't want Imperial currency floating into Talmon. It would arrive far too unevenly, providing no end of difficulty. And so, everyone arriving would exchange Imperial currency for local, Talmonese currency.
On Talmon, we didn't have a technologically advanced society. But Talmon was not a social backwater, either. Most towns had some sort of theater. Sudden had a dinner theater, as did some of the other towns, with a variety of events every week including musical groups, comedy shows, and similar forms of entertainment. Once a month we had poetry readings.
And Talmon had a banking system. The banks were operated by the vendarti as part of their duties. We had arrived from Earth with all the knowledge of Earth. If technology and science knowledge had fell by the wayside, that didn't mean we lost other forms of knowledge. We knew about property rights and money supply and inflation.
Everyone on Talmon had a bank account, and most forms of payment for jobs, between businesses, or for major purchases like a home were made to or against your account; you did not use physical money. Cecilia once told me she was surprised to see this on a planet with no technology to track the flow of money in this fashion, but assured me this was the norm on most technological planets. Physical currency was most likely only used during interstellar travel, as then you encountered the same problem as I would have when traveling to Fessen, for instance. There was no way to check someone's account for available funds when that account was two day's -- or two month's -- travel away.
But of course, on Talmon we had physical currency. Cecilia showed me Imperial currency; it was something like paper, but not paper. On Talmon, all currency came as coins. Each vendart was authorized to produce new coins annually, with the number of coins determined based on population and designed to keep inflation low while ensuring sufficient physical currency to allow a smooth economy. The amounts of new currency allowed annually were fixed over ten year periods. There were no controls in place to prevent a particular vendart from producing more than his share, but this was Talmon. We were, more or less, an honest people, and abuse had been exceedingly rare.
After all, you would be caught eventually.
Our coins were not made from metal. Oh, we knew about metal coins. As I said, we were not a complete backwater. Sudden had a museum, and amongst the objects in the museum were a great many artifacts from our founding, including things from Earth such as money. We knew about metal coins.
But our coins were made from a hardened sap from a particular tree. The sap ran freely when heated, but when exposed to air and allowed to cool, it became a hardened mixture. While still fairly hot, it could be forced into molds, and that was how the coins were formed. Dye was added to the sap based on the denomination being produced, so each of the coins was a different color. And larger denomination coins were made in different sizes and edge patterns. You could tell a coin by feel, and coins that were similar sizes had different cuts to the edges so you could still tell only with your fingers whether you held a one dollar or five dollar coin.
But that wasn't all. The molds were made largely of wood, but there was an implant, carved from metal by a local jeweler, almost alw
ays containing an image of the vendart or a member of the vendart's family.
Yes, my face appeared on coins.
We referred to our basic unit of exchange as a dollar, a word borrowed from a variety of old Earth cultures from the time of the diaspora. We used images of the vendart and his family for coins in sizes of one dollar and up, and we had coins in various denominations all the way to one thousand dollars, although those were rare, and father only made a small batch of those every six or eight years. They were rarely used except for large trades between villages, and trades between villages were far more likely to be goods for goods rather than financial. For small coins below a dollar, other images were used based on what the jeweler decided to make and the vendart approved.
It was traditional for the youngest member of the vendart's family to appear on the smallest coins, but not until she is eight years old. And so, the year I turned eight, my image appeared on one dollar coins. I continued to appear on one dollar coins until Rordano turned eight, and he remained on them only until Margotain turned eight. Unless Father officially adopted younger members into the family, Margotain's image would remain on one dollar coins until one of us had a child who turned eight.
Father's image was on the largest denomination coins, and then Mother's, and then mine, again down to Margotain. Because of this progression, Mother appeared on ten dollar coins one year, but then I appeared the following year. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, Father appeared on the largest coins down to the one hundred dollar coin. Mother appeared on fifties and twenties, and so you were more likely to see her image than Father's. I appeared on tens, Rordano on fives, and Margotain on ones. And so Margotain was also more common to see than I was.
I didn't mind.
While the coins were cooling, they hardened, but they were still malleable even after cooling enough they could be touched. The front image was as produced by the jeweler, and the perimeter of the back side had another image, but the center of the back side was blank. While the coins cooled, we each pressed an image of our thumbprint into this blank area. We were allowed to use our left or right thumb, but we had to wash our thumb after each imprint, or you would get a poor image after the first one. I would normally do two, one with each thumb, then wash. Two more, then wash.