Tepper,Sheri - Six Moon Dance

by Six Moon Dance(Lit)

  The life of Haraldson (3306-3454 AZY) has been the subject of many biographers; his abilities and intentions have been analyzed for centuries. It is true that he was a popular musician of interstellar fame, one who could move the population of whole systems with the sound of his voice or the twitch of a finger on the strings. It is true he had wed the most beautiful woman in the known universe and fathered children whose charm and poise, even in adolescence, had to be witnessed to be believed. It is true that he had no faults anyone could uncover with the most diligent search, and it was also true that he displayed the virtues of kindness, fidelity, modesty, and empathy combined with a political savvy which had not been known since before the Dispersion and had, even then, been rare. He was a phenomenon, a unique example of mankind, one whose honesty and goodwill could not be questioned, and it is probable that only Haraldson could have done what he did.

  What he did was to get himself elected President for Life of the Council of Worlds (COW), with the title of Beneficent Exemplary. At his coronation, Haraldson sang the first verse of "Reflections," the song that had first brought him to the attention of the worlds: "Mothers can not tell us who we are. Mirrors can not tell us who we are. Only time can tell, for every moment we are choosing what to be."

  "Let us choose justice and civility," he went on. "Let us do so in the company of beauty and joy. If we have not that company, let us still honor ourselves in the choice of justice and civility."

  No sooner had the coronation occurred than Haraldson issued the Edicts of Equity, in which for the first time humanity was defined in terms of intelligence, civility, and the pursuit of justice rather than by species or form. Certain Earthian creatures other than mankind were immediately rendered human by the edicts, gaining the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of satisfactions thereby, and some extremist individuals and groups who had previously paraded themselves as human were disabused of this notion.

  The fallout from the edicts had not yet settled when Haraldson reorganized the bureaucracy of the council, setting up several departments or "Houses," among which were HoTA, House of Technical Advancement, and HoLI, House of Legislation and Investigation. In setting up HoLI, Haraldson declared that regulation and research should be inseparable, since mankind's societies had for too long been hip-deep in laws that had been useless, unenforceable, and despicable from inception. If a law needed constant tinkering with, he said, it is a bad law, and the goal of justice should always be superior to the rule of bad law no matter how good the intent!

  It was Haraldson, almost single-handedly, who made COW an effective agent of general welfare for all member worlds—as well as any mankind worlds COW could reach—were then subject to Haraldson's edicts forbidding slavery, genocide, settling on previously occupied planets, racial crowding, and the destruction of either habitat or biodiversity. Haraldson further provided that persons must not only advocate but assure personal rights for all races, and that they must not discriminate against born, hatched, aggregated, or budded creatures on the basis of species, morphology, color, hispidity, gender, age, or opinion, except as species, morphology, gender, et al. provably altered the consequence of any given situation.

  It sounded innocuous enough until Haraldson made it clear just how inclusive he expected the term "opinion" to be:

  Language, cuisine, the arts, culture, tradition, religion, sexual and reproductive practices vary widely among mankind and even more widely among other races. All these, therefore, are to be considered matters of opinion, to which every person is entitled, and the free expression of which is guaranteed up to and no farther than the point at which that expression conflicts directly with someone else's opinion. Direct conflict shall be defined as incivility directed at a specific person or group as well as any action designed to alter someone else's opinion by coercion, law, or violence.

  Students of history will recall that prior to Dispersion, our Earthian ancestors espoused civil liberties. Theoretical liberties, however, were too often assured at the expense of actual civilities, and as civilities were lost, litigation emerged as a way of life with a consequent reduction in real liberties for all persons except lawyers, who, like mercenaries, are profiteers of discord. Persons were actually allowed, by law, under the guise of free expression, to shout into the faces of those who held differing opinions and to intrude upon their privacy. Liberty has two legs. Vigilance is certainly one, but civility is as certainly the other.

  With this in mind, I hereby establish the defecation rule: A defecator is at liberty to commit the act, but he may not commit it on his neighbor's doorstep or in the quiet street in front of his neighbor's house, or in his neighbor's alley, or in his neighbor's customary place of work, or anyplace where the neighbor or any other passer-by may step in it by accident in his own zone of privacy and tranquility.

  This means that any opinion may be expressed privately or in incorporated communities of the likeminded from which the non-likeminded are at liberty to depart. When an opinion moves into another's zone of privacy and tranquility, however, civility shall reign. If the Hairless Supremacists of Thor plan to march through a quiet community of furry Krumats with the sole intent of discomfiting the Krumats thereby, they may not do so, for though freedom of expression is guaranteed, a captive audience for an incivility is not.

  Our neighborhoods are an extension of our homes. Our right to privacy does not stop at our front doors. Our rights to the tranquility of our own senses and the privacy of our own space only gradually decrease as we move from our homes to the neighborhood street, down that street through our incorporated community of likeminded persons, out of that community and into the arteries of public commerce, waning gradually as we come to areas also used by other persons and ideas. Even there, we hold about ourselves a bubble of privacy which we lose totally only when we relinquish both senses and space by voluntarily choosing to become a tourist or part of a live audience.

  Despite this rule of civility, departure from the community and open expression of opinion remain absolute rights, and every community and every government must provide both opportunities for departure and venues for expression. Such opportunities and venues shall be both fully accessible to and fully avoidable by all citizens. No one shall attempt to control the coming and going from such venues or the events occurring within them."

  The edicts of Haraldson were heralded as enlightened and were, after some false starts and befuddlement, generally accepted among the member worlds. The number of extremists began to drop as various factions killed each other off in the free-expression zones, and conflict waned as rebels were encouraged to depart. Except for gender issues, which, like Proteus, seemed capable of infinite metamorphoses, most societal agitations were assuaged and kept that way.

  The House of Legislation and Investigation was charged with the periodic assessment of all mankind worlds for conformity to the edicts. During the first few decades of Haraldson's reign, these assessments were done in an orderly and timely way, producing tranquility and openness of opportunity and serving to increase general knowledge about the worlds in question.

  Eventually Haraldson grew weary of his long years at the helm. He desired to leave the post of Exemplary and spend his last years in the study of non-mankind intelligences. The Council of Worlds, however, appealed to Haraldson's sense of duty, claiming that no candidate could possibly take his place. After a period of reflection, the aged Haraldson addressed the public.

  He said he was not immortal, he had found his task arduous, and he felt that no holder of an elective office, including himself, could be relied upon to continue indefinitely a course which ran counter to so many human urges. Age or appetite would inevitably corrupt good intentions, he said, and therefore an unbiased and incorruptible agency must be created to continue the assessments of human settlements around the galaxy.

  COW referred the matter to HoLI, who decided no committee or council of persons could be totally incorruptible. HoLI referred the matter to the House
of Technical Advancement (HoTA) whose staff came up with an answer. They would develop a bionic construct that contained a human mind or minds, a construct infallibly programmed with Haraldson's edicts. The construct would be capable of learning, applying, and adapting those edicts while retaining their spirit and sense. Even though the technicians would start with one or more human brains—a more ideal interface could not be found—human memories and emotions would be repressed. The construct would have no vanity or greed, it would be incapable of pique or sloth, and would, thus, be immune to influence. The brains within it would be harvested from among persons who were already dying. Haraldson, on being approached, refused the honor of being among them.

  HoTA was fortunate at that time to employ a number of exceptional scientists who, even more fortunately, worked well together. When the assemblage was completed it turned out to be a conceptual and technological tour de force, decades if not centuries ahead of its time. Because it held three human brains and unlimited memory, complicated corpora callosa and storage units of enormous capacity were required, but the solutions to these and other problems of structure and design were uniformly inspired.

  In fact, the most knotty problem encountered by the technicians had been not the brain but the body. There had been no conception of what the Questioner—as it was now being called—should look like. Eventually, the team agreed on a motherly image, anethnic in appearance and, since the machinery was massive, Brunhildian.

  Questioner I was finished and programmed, and Haraldson himself attended the dedication. On that occasion, with his usual foresight, he advised the chief of HoTA that it would be prudent for the House to undertake a continuous update of Questioner plans and specifications in the event that Questioner ever met with a fatal accident.

  Questioner I worked well among the worlds for several hundred years. Questioner was able, in many cases, to bring imperfect societies into conformity with the edicts, and it was also able to dispose of societies which were totally unacceptable. After lengthy argument, the Council of Worlds agreed that Questioner had proven flawless and might, therefore, see to such matters on its own initiative. At first COW wanted advise and consent status, but after the first few interminable debates, COW felt it best to get out of the loop and was, accordingly, bypassed.

  The ruthless sentences of the Questioner were carried out rarely but thoroughly. Many were the docudramas produced concerning the final years of intransigent populations. Questioner I perished at last in the Flagian Miscalculation, the cataclysm of self-mortification that destroyed the Flagian Sector. Due to Haraldson's foresight, however, the technical specifications and many of the core components for a new device were ready and waiting, including technical advances that had been made in the intervening centuries.

  Questioner II had all the abilities of its predecessor but a slightly less massive housing and a slightly expanded mission. On the basis of Questioner I's tantalizing reports, COW wished to know more about the non-mankind races: the horn-headed Gablians; the inscrutable Quaggi; the individualistic Borash; the numerous Korm.

  At no time during the first or second construction of the Questioner had anyone in the Council of Worlds thought to specify that the brains used in Questioner should come from member planets that were subject to the edicts. In the welcome absence of such directives, the technicians had chosen brains that would make their jobs easiest: those easiest to get, with the least information and the fewest treasured memories. One technician, in fact, was heard to comment on the irony of selecting Questioner brains from cultures that forbade asking any questions at all.

  4—Orientation to the Amatory Arts

  During orientation, which is what Madame Genevois called the sessions conducted with each new boy in the small classroom, Mouche was required to memorize certain information that Madame categorized as "essential to your understanding of your role in life." These rules, regulations, laws, and customs were read aloud and explained by Madame, after which Mouche was drilled until letter perfect by Simon, one of the instructors, a former Hunk who had been improvident and was now required to earn a living in his later years.

  The first thing drummed into him was the Dower Law.

  "Section one," parroted Mouche, "provides that a family wishing to continue through the male line, usually through the eldest son, must pay dowry to a girl's family for the use of the girl as a wife."

  "And this is called?" asked Simon.

  Mouche responded promptly, "This is called dowering in, as the wife comes into the man's family and takes his name. Section two provides that a younger son who also wishes to continue his biological line may set up a new ... "

  "With the support," prompted Simon.

  "May, with the support of his family, set up a new line, under a new name, and pay dower for a wife under that name ... "

  "Which is called?"

  "Dowering off. Because his new name is an off-shoot of the old family name. Like, say, the family name is Vintner, he could set up as family Vineyard. Or he may buy his way into a family that has a daughter but no son, where he takes her family name, and that's called dowering out."

  "Dowering in, off, or out," explained Simon, with a muffled yawn, "is always seen from the groom's parents' point of view, as they are the ones who pay. Now, section three?"

  "Section three states that any attempt to evade the law through elopement, rapine, or abduction is punishable by blue-bodying and consequent death. Simon, what's rapine?"

  "Forcing sex upon a woman, often with the intent of getting her pregnant."

  "I didn't know you could do that."

  "Used to be a good bit of it, but no more. Not unless you want to end up dead."

  "When was there a good bit of it?"

  Simon settled himself. "Well, it was like this. Our ancestors came to this world in ten ships. The first ship had the male workers, the livestock ova, and the reproducer, but it didn't have any women on it at all. That was so the men could get things whipped into shape, shelters made weathertight, crops planted, things like that, before the women and children came on the second ship. But the second ship was delayed, and instead they sent the support ship, the one that had the machines ... "

  "What machines? I didn't think we had machines?"

  "Of course we had machines. What do you think the Denti-med is? And the sensor array that keeps track of the volcanoes? And the stuff at the space port that lets us talk to the ships?"

  "Oh. I guess I never thought those were machines."

  "Well, they are. Our people didn't bring many, they had limited resources, but they chose not to do without medicine or geological and weather sensors or a space port. So, anyhow, the technology ship was the one that set down second, and it was full of technicians and scholars, a lot of them women, but most all of them were, so to speak, spoken for."

  "They had husbands?"

  "Right. Or as much as. Anyhow, the first ship men were feeling pretty randy by then, so they started raiding, stealing the women, and some of them got hurt."

  "Some of the women?"

  "Right. Some even got killed, which made their friends and colleagues very angry, so the others, the scientists and professors and technicians, men and women both, they moved the machines and the supplies and the libraries into the half-built fortress in Sendoph, and all the women stayed in there where they couldn't get abducted. Most of the people on that second ship were Gaeans, like Haraldson, worshippers of the Life-mother, and they were the ones who set up the Council of Hags."

  "And they wrote the Dower Laws."

  "Well, not right away. The laws sort of developed. But the key thing was, nobody got a wife without paying for her, and wives got the right to satisfactions for themselves. When the ship with all the women arrived, two or three years later, the Dower Laws were already in effect. Including section four, which you may now quote."

  Mouche nodded. "Section four provides that every Family Man must have a unique family name for his genetic line, as it is to guarant
ee the uniqueness of each male line that this system was designed by the Revered Hags to meet the needs of the men of Newholme." Mouche swallowed a yawn.

  "And, finally, section five."

  "Section five says that every marriage contract must provide that once the wife has fulfilled her contractual obligations in providing her husband with his own, specific lineage, she has the right to one or more well trained Consorts to make her life more pleasant."

  "Which is why you're here," said Simon, cuffing him lightly over the ear. "Recite it one more time, then you can be excused."

  5—Life as a Lobster

  During Mouche's first days at house Genevois, he stayed in the welcome suite where his life seemed to consist of nothing but orientation and baths. Dirt that had taken twelve years to accumulate was loosened over a period of days, pried from beneath finger and toenails, rasped off of horny calluses, steamed out of pores he had not known he had in places he had never bothered to wash.

  "You know what we call new boys?" said Simon. "We call them lobsters, because they're always in hot water."

  "What's a lobster?" asked Mouche.

  "A kind of Old Earthian critter," Simon replied. "Eaten after boiling. Like a crustfish, sort of, but with more legs."

  Even while Mouche soaked in the hot water there were snacks, bits of this and that, little plates and bowls brought by silent, invisible creatures at whom one never looked directly. They took away the empty plates and refilled them and brought them back again, but no one noticed the plates until they were set down, because when they were being carried, they too were invisible.

  Bodies could not be properly contoured, according to Madame, unless they were well fed. There was also massage, which was embarrassing, though he soon learned to disregard the invisible creatures pounding away at him. When the staff of the House weren't washing him or pounding on him, or feeding him, or correcting his speech, he could read anything he liked from a great library full of real books.