Tepper,Sheri - Six Moon Dance

by Six Moon Dance(Lit)

  She murmured, "I wish we could ask the Council of Worlds for help."

  "Help to do what?" Onsofruct asked. "We can't ask for evacuation. There are too many of us."

  "I read something about HoTA devising some new method of controlling earthquakes ... "

  "Can they do it from off-planet?"

  "No. I'm sure not. It involved burning deep wells along the fault lines and pumping in some kind of shock-absorbing liquid. It doesn't stop the earth moving, but it does make the movement smooth instead of shuddering. It's the shaking does the worst damage ... "

  "Well, take your pick," said D'Jevier. "Die in a quake or invite COW in and die anyhow."

  "You think the Council of Worlds would really kill us all?"

  "In the first place, they'd send the Questioner. The Questioner doesn't even need council approval anymore, hasn't for at least a century. And what the Questioner would do would be worse than merely killing us all."

  "If she comes here, she would see ... what she would see."

  "She'd turn right around and make examples of us, for the edification of the galaxy."

  "So we're trapped."

  "Trapped ourselves."

  "We didn't. Not you and me."

  "Well, Hags did. And Men of Business."

  A long silence. D'Jevier tipped her glass and pretended to be concentrating upon the light reflected in its depths as she said, "We might ask ... them. Maybe they know something that would help."

  "Jewy! You wouldn't dare!"

  The other woman grinned mirthlessly, shaking her head. "Every day I get closer to daring. If it gets worse, yes, I'll dare."

  Both fell silent, thinking long, hard thoughts that they had already gone over a thousand times. Decisions made centuries ago that could not now be unmade. Roads taken that allowed no possibility of return. An hour later they were still there, their glasses long since empty, still staring wordlessly at the world-wound upon the height, livid ash and bleeding fire. They and their world were at the mercy of the mountain, and they could think of nothing at all that would be helpful.

  14—A Diversion of Dancers

  "It's really very simple." The planetary compliance worker smiled fleetingly at Ellin across the shining width of her authority surface. "Do pay attention."

  "The Questioner is a device of the Council of Worlds. The Questioner moves about among the worlds assessing mankind-occupied worlds for conformity to the edicts of Haraldson. While doing assessments, the Questioner likes to take along a person or persons from a similar developmental stage as the world being assessed. One of the planets to be assessed, for example, is Bandat, where society has achieved what the Absolute Correct Ones call their preholiness phase. Another world is Chirry-chirry-dim-dim, which the Butterfly-Boys identify as being in the caterpillar stage prior to planetary pupation. You will visit Newholme, which is in the incipient industrial stage."

  Ellin Voy, Nordic-Quota 2980-4653, shifted uneasily. After a long moment of silence, she cleared her throat and asked, "Am I here because I play a part in History House and have some knowledge of preindustrial society?"

  "Honorable Ellin, from Old Earth America, you are here partly for that reason, but more because you are a dancer. Also going to Newholme will be Honorable Gandro Bao, who is a character in History House of the tenth Asian Urbopolis." The woman in blue nodded gently in the direction of a lean, olive-skinned man in the chair nearest Ellin. "Honorable Gandro Bao works in Old Earth, Asia: Heritage of the Arts. He is an actor-dancer of the fifteen to nineteen hundreds, Kabuki style, authentic female impersonator. Honorable Ellin is a dancer of western classical style. Among this variety of background, some skill should be found to assist the Questioner in assessing the planet Newholme."

  "We are assessing it for what?" asked the man identified as Gandro Bao. "I am not understanding the role of dancers."

  The woman in blue put her face in censorious mode, one of the seven official government expressions Ellin had been able to identify over the years: kindliness with smile and/or chuckle, businesslike with tight lips, censorious with narrowed eyes, threatening with mouth distended, rage with red face, forgiveness with nod and gesture of benediction, and pity with sorrowful mouth and dropped eyes and chin. Conversations invariably began with kindly or businesslike, though they might end with any of the seven.

  "Were you not educated, Honorable Gandro Bao?" challenged the PCO.

  He nodded, seeming in no whit embarrassed. "I am recognizing what is the Questioner. I am recalling function of Questioner in examining planets. I am not understanding why dancer is wanted."

  "Ah." Her expression switched to forgiveness, the requisite smile flickering in and out of existence so quickly as to be almost subliminal. "Questioner is allowed total discretion in determining how investigation is done. Questioner has asked for dancers. Therefore, we send dancers. Questioner does not say why. We do not ask."

  Ellin shook her head, conscious of weariness and annoyance. "So we're supposed to go to Newholme, which will be kind of a History House in the sky, and determine whether they treat one another properly? An android could do that!"

  The censorious expression returned. "The Questioner is beyond criticism. If Questioner felt an android could do it, an android would be sent."

  "Sorry," murmured Ellin. "I'm just ... surprised, is all." Surprised hardly expressed it. She was actually shocked into near paralysis. The thought of being suddenly uprooted left her teetering over an abyss, fumbling for words and proper responses, dizzy and adrift, shocked by the immediacy and strength of her emotions. After all the years she had imagined being free, after all those dreams of going to other worlds, seeing other peoples, finding her own special place in which to live her own, unique life, now here she was, invited to do virtually as she'd always thought she wanted, at no trouble or expense to herself, and she was frightened witless.

  "You may have time to adapt," said the woman in blue, giving her a very percipient look.

  The word evoked a veritable bonfire of associations. Time to adapt. Time to move on. Time to do this, do that. Infant fosterage giving way to boarding school in History House. Boarding school giving away to advanced studies. Advanced studies giving way to the corps de ballet. Always time to say good-bye, to give up treasured things, familiar friends, always time to adapt ...

  The woman's voice cut through Ellin's confusion. "Suddenness is difficult for all creatures, but this will not be sudden. Honorables Ellin Voy and Gandro Bao will go to Newholme. The ship leaves soon, in seven days, but the voyage will be lengthy. During some of it, you will be asleep. For this next few days, however, the honorables will live here, in prelaunch. During this time you have medical assessment, wardrobe and other necessities will be assembled, and you will have access to all records and reports on the planet Newholme, which should be studied assiduously. Go through that door there," she pointed, "to Suite Four Thirty-Four."

  The forgiving expression returned momentarily as the woman returned to her papers. "Honorable DoJub and Honorable Clementi will be visiting the planet Boshque, which is in a late arboreal phase due to ground-level predation ... "

  Bao stood in front of the door sensor, keeping the door open for Ellin, a courtesy which earned him a half smile. The two of them prowled silently down the corridor, Ellin avoiding his eyes, concentrating on finding Suite Four Thirty-Four. She needn't have bothered, for at their approach a door lit up and caroled a welcome.

  "Honorables Ellin and Bao. Welcome to Suite Four Thirty-Four, prelaunch facility for planetary examiners."

  Bao broke his silence with an angry mutter. "Being much filth and excrement. Five days from now I am to be dancing the lead in the Chikamatsu Shinj ten no Amijima, with orchestrated Joruri, as adapted from the Bunraku. I have been much wishing this for three years. And now this is happening!"

  "Be calm," said the door in a soothing tone. "Feel elation! HoLI COW pays off contracts of all nominees who are contractees as well as post-bondage stipend. Once duty is done
for the Questioner, you are free! Feel satisfaction! Do not distress yourself, Honorables. Even if you do not return for decades, all will be well. Oh, feel elation!"

  At the word "decades," Ellin felt a watery lick, as though an icy wave were rising inside her, threatening to spurt out of her throat in a jet of pure hysteria. She pushed it down, swallowed it, and felt it dissolving her insides. She must not disgrace herself. Not in front of this person. Not in front of this door, which was so very solicitous and was probably programmed to report any deviation from acceptable norms. She dropped into a chair and put her hands over her face, evoking the patterns on her wall, swirlings, eddies, flowing ... calm and quiet. Herself part of the flow. None of this was really happening, not yet. She would put off the happening for a little time, and when it came, she would be ready.

  "Are you feeling elation?" demanded Bao in an arrogantly angry tone. "Are you liking to go so far for doing Questioner knows what?"

  At this interruption of her hard-won calm, she felt a flare of fury, as though she had received an injection of some energizing drug.

  "Don't speak to me as though addressing a nus. I am not a nus. I have useful skills. Though I am a quota-clone, I retain my rights of reproduction and am as honorable as yourself. I, too, have disappointments. This rotation I was to dance in one of the Morris ballets of the late twentieth century. Your arrogance is not acceptable. You will treat me with courtesy, or I shall report you for status harassment!"

  "Oh, gracious," cried the door. "Let us not speak of reportings. Feelings are strained. Emotions are liberated in unattractive ways. This is understood. Being nominated is stressful. Suddenness is resented by all organisms. Please. Sit down and let yourselves be comforted."

  Again hysteria threatened to erupt. Ellin's jaw clenched tight as she sank back into the chair. One did not achieve pleasantness by greeting incivility with incivility. She knew that as well as she knew ... anything.

  A six-legged server came scuttling across the floor, eager to be of help. "Something to drink?" it whispered in a husky little voice. "A massage of feet? Of neck? Some food? Milky nutriment often soothes. Nordic types are lacto-tolerant. Please?"

  "Tea," she said in her Charlotte Perkins voice. "Hot tea. In a real cup. With lemon flavor and sweetness. And a cookie." Long ago, the infant Ellin had been comforted with cookies by Mama One. She had not had a cookie for many years.

  The server scuttled off.

  "Apologies," Bao said wearily. "I am being frangled." He sighed and sank into the chair across from her, looking around himself at the luxurious setting. There were real carpets. There were real fabrics at the sides of the view screens. The chairs were large and cushiony. The small table at his side had the appearance of real wood, though that was, of course, unlikely. Still, going to the trouble to make it look like that was an indication of ... something. "They are believing us to be important," he said.

  "They want us to believe they think we're important," she snarled, unwilling to forgive him. "Sending us off for years and years, disrupting our lives! All this is like offering a child candy if he will be good." She had seen a good deal of that in Perkins Store, where so-called penny candies were provided for children as souvenirs of Old Earth.

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on her face as though he had just noticed her. "There is being high probability we must be good regardless, so candy is being offered for making us more happy about inevitables. A bonus, perhaps?"

  "Bribe, not bonus!" She snorted. Newholme. She had no idea where Newholme was. They spoke together:

  "Are you knowing where ... "

  "I have no idea where ... "

  He laughed. After a moment, unable to help herself, she smiled waveringly.

  He made an expansive, almost girlish gesture. "We are being angry at situation, not at one another. Maybe we are being angry with Questioner, but Questioner is not knowing and is not caring, so we waste anger on nothing. It is clear we are being together for some time. Let us be easy together."

  "Is the Questioner a she?"

  "So I am understanding. Of a sort."

  The server brought the tea and several cookies, real cookies that smelled of vanilla and lemon. Ellin smiled at this and allowed herself to be soothed. Gandro Bao was right, of course. There was no point getting frangled with one another.

  "Do you have family?" she asked.

  "I was natural born," he said. "I have mother, father, one sister."

  "Do you look anything like your sister?" Ellin asked curiously. Full siblings were rare except for clones. The genetic agencies usually required donor insemination for second births, to keep the gene pool as widely spread as possible within types.

  He nodded, raising a hand to the server, which came buzzing over, stopping at his elbow. "I am desiring a ham sandwich," he said. "With mustard and a pickle."

  "Corpulent likelihood," murmured Ellin.

  "I am testing if we are really important," he said, crinkling his eyes at her. "Your question about my sister, yes, she is looking much like me, Asian type, and we are having similar facial structures. What is your family?"

  "No family I know of. Except clones. I was born on preassigned ethnic quota, so my parent could have been anyone ... "

  "I am looking at you," he corrected her. "I am thinking not just anyone, no."

  She flushed. "I never asked if I had non-clone siblings, full or half. Somehow it didn't seem to matter."

  "Where was your rearing?" he asked.

  "First in an infant fosterage, but I don't remember much about it, to tell you the truth, except for Mama One. They cloned six of me, and History House approved us for fosterage—not together, of course—then it picked me up on a quota-clone contract when I was six ... "

  "After you were infant?"

  "I lived at the History House boarding school, with dancing lessons every day, in a nurturance group—foster brothers and sisters—with our Mama and Papa Two, until I was twelve. Then I went into the ballet school, four of us with a foster aunt, for six years of additional education in dance and drama and twentieth-century studies. Then the corps de ballet. And they've moved me around. This last History House was my fifth."

  He grinned ruefully. "It is not sounding like much fun. How is it feeling to have foster parents? And foster aunts?"

  She frowned, chewing on a mouthful of cookie, surprised to find her eyes filling. She shook her head impatiently, refusing the tears. "Well, actually, I loved Mama One very much. I guess you could say I never really got over the separation. I still hear from her, every now and then. Mama Two was different, but as she told me herself, her job was different. And when it came time for Foster Aunt, her job was to get the four of us through the second-decade miseries. Do boys have miseries?"

  He laughed, his eyes half shut, his body shaking. "Oh, Ellin Voy, I am remembering all such things. Yes. Miserable boys, I am remembering."

  "How'd you get into a History House?" she asked. "Tapped, or on purpose?"

  "I was being tapped," he admitted. "I was attending school in town where family is living. There, in the school, I am being always ... what is called a laughjerker ... ?"

  "A clown?"

  "You are knowing the exact word. Clown, yes. Everything is being a joke for the face and for the voice and for the legs, always being funny, always making the laughter, always falling down so much they are calling me Bao Bao Down. So many times I was having the settle-down speech, the school was getting tired of saying it. So, instead, they were giving me the test battery, and as soon as I was reaching twelve years, my family was being told I am born actor, born comic, born Kabuki dancer for women's parts—all Kabuki is dancing by men, you know ... "

  "I didn't know. Why?"

  "Oh, long ago sex-workers were dancing Kabuki to be fetching customers, so Emperor was issuing decree that only men could be dancing. My life is being like your life. I am having foster uncle and three brothers also with miseries, and I am learning in the theater school, in the dance school. I am pla
ying parts of women characters in Kabuki; princess so-so in Japanese drama; jokey fisherman wife in China Sea; fall-down silly daughter of man who is keeping cormorants." He shrugged. "That one is fun, much miming of being in rocking boat, making whole audience seasick. Now I am dancing most of time, and for rotation I am doing weird empress or being strange holy woman." He folded his arms, half closed his eyes and gazed directly ahead with a lofty, detached expression of infinite disdain. "Very wise. I am memorizing whole book of Confucian analects."

  "Tell me an analect," she begged.

  "Major principles suffer no transgression. Minor principles allow for compromise."

  "What does it mean?"

  "It must be meaning my dancing is a minor principle," he said, laughing. "For my career is being compromised."

  "I guess that's how I feel, too."

  "Then we are agreeing on two things."

  "Two?"

  "We are agreeing on what is minor and what is principle."

  She sat back, suddenly relaxed. This duty might not be so bad. He seemed all right. The expression on her face was mirrored on his, and they both smiled, pleased to be with one another, beginning to anticipate whatever it was that was coming. The server interrupted this calm to bring Gandro's sandwich, which he sniffed at, tasted, and pronounced real—or so close as made no difference.

  Though soothed, Ellin was not entirely willing to give up worrying. "You know, even though we're both History House contractees, even though we think we know the period, this Newholme could be totally different from anything we know about."

  "Oh," he nodded, chewing, his face very serious, "I am having no doubt about that. I am sure it is being very, very strange."

  15—Marool Mantelby

  West of Sendoph, the terraces were narrower and steeper than in the farmlands to the east, climbing from the river in a great stair flight that ended on a final set of wooded ridges where the homes of the elite were built, very near the wilderlands. There among others of its kind stood the mansion of Mistress Marool Mantelby—Monstrous Marool, as she was known to some—the youngest of eight sisters, whose parents had done Marool great services firstly by having had no sons, and secondly by having died along with their eldest daughter, after they had sold off six younger daughters but before they had been able to sell Marool herself.