She caught her breath. It adapts. And she had adapted. Even if her clone didn't have a brain, presumably she had adaptability. "So that's all I am? A seed blown on the wind?"
He snorted. "Seed on wind and being adaptable. Same as me, Ellin. Same as everybody. All of us, seeds. Seed is ninety percent precursor mammal, like mouse. Seven or eight percent chimpanzee-human primate precursor. One point nine nine nine percent generalized Homo sapiens. Tiny fraction one percent me, or you, different from everybody else. One healthy creature being able to blow on wind and still live! Able to choose."
He threw up his hands, scowled at her, then patted her foot with a gesture that was pleasant without being in the least threatening. There, there, he seemed to say. Settle down.
"Oh, go away," she said, turning to bury her face in the pillow. "Very soon we'll be meeting that other ship, and I don't want to be all messed up in a frangle with you about my identity—or lack of it!"
"Lacking of it?" He grinned. "I make it rule only to talk to identities. Stop fretting and sleep."
Though unconvinced by anything he had said, shortly after he shut the door, she slept.
Back in his own stateroom, however, Gandro Bao did not sleep. Instead he stared into the mirror, his brows tented in query, one nostril lifted, as though scenting a trail. "Here I am being helpful," he murmured to himself. "Lecturing all about roots and growing in space where is nothing to grow on. Maybe is being only wind under us, and no place for us to hold to? Who is this Bao Bao Down to be giving Ellin Voy small contentments, like mama giving cookies?"
He smoothed his face, making it expressionless, calm, accepting. "Demand much of yourself and little from others," he quoted to himself from the analects. "You will prevent discontent."
That would have to do, for tonight.
24—Harassments
Bane and Dyre began harassing Mouche the moment they were moved into Consorts' quarters, as they had to be very soon, for the protection of the new students. "Dirt rubs off," as Madame was wont to say, and with Bane and Dyre dirt took all forms from attitudinal, to behavioral, to linguistic.
At first the two of them merely placed themselves within Mouche's view and stared endlessly, the lidless stare of serpents. Mouche ignored them. Within a few days, Simon had them so busy they had no time for staring.
Nights were still free, however, so they moved from covert threat to overt violence. One night, as Mouche was returning to his suite, Bane and Dyre leapt out at him from behind a protruding pillar, grimacing in theatrical fashion, mouthing their intentions in voices far too loud for secrecy, and with knives snaking from between their fingers. The assault was interrupted by Fentrys and Tyle, who came around the corner too late or just in time, depending on one's point of view. They were all wounded by the time it was over, and it took all three of them to put the two brothers down and send them off, bloody but still threatening.
"What started that?" Fentrys wanted to know.
"I told you about Duster," Mouche said, dabbing at a cut on his hand. "Those two did it, and they recognized me the first day they were here. Now they want to punish me for what they did."
"Well," said Tyle, "if they're that sort, they'll want to punish all three of us. We'd better travel in company for a time, to watch one another's backs."
And so they did, sticking so tight with each other or around the instructors that they thwarted several more attempts at violence. Simon, whose job required keen observation, noted this collective stance almost immediately, but it took him several days to determine the cause. At that point Simon took an early opportunity to call Mouche aside and have an informal conference.
"What is this?" Simon asked the boy, after seating both of them comfortably in Simon's quarters and pouring two glasses of wine.
"Those two used to live near my family's farm," said Mouche. "They killed my dog. Worse, they made poor Duster suffer!"
"What cause did they have for doing that?" Simon wondered. "Or was it random meanness?"
"Oh, they thought they had cause," Mouche admitted. "Duster and I stopped their killing some little native creature, killing and torturing it, too, I'd guess. I didn't hurt them any, and this business of trying to wound me or kill me just doesn't make sense. Why are they doing it?"
"I'd say your not hurting them is part of the why," said Simon. "Remember what Madame has taught you about gaming groups, packs, tribes? If you'd beaten them bloody, they might have fawned on you. Some men want more than anything to have a place in a pack and follow a lead dog. But if you won't fight for the role of lead dog, then you're an outsider, someone who interfered with their doing as they liked, and to men like Bane and Dyre, outsiders, particularly interfering ones, are the enemy. Prey, property, or enemy. You have to be one of the three."
Mouche ducked his head to hide the angry tears at the corners of his eyes. He always teared up when he thought of Duster. "Do they get pleasure out of acting like that?"
Simon leaned forward and laid a rough hand on his shoulder. "Look, Mouche, you've got to understand what Newholme men are about, not from Madame's point of view but from our own. Now most men get taught early on that being dutiful is good, so they think they're being good when they work themselves into exhaustion and meanness. And most men know that pleasure distracts them from duty, so that teaches them pleasure is shameful. But at the same time, we have these restless brains inside that tell us to keep pushing toward the top so we can make a hole, crawl through, and see what's up there. All of us, even Consorts and supernumes, figure we've got a natural right to be there, on top and we use whatever we've got to get there. Humor. Or eloquence. Or skill. Whatever.
"Bane and Dyre, now, they've got the idea mutual pleasure is sissy stuff, so the only pleasure they get is sniggering and bullying and destruction. And they don't like duty either, so they avoid it. The only thing that gives them satisfaction is anger, so being angry is how they go looking for themselves, like vandals taking a city: throw, hit, break, kill, shatter—it's all one to them. Destroy enough stuff, suddenly they'll find the hidden door with heaven behind it."
Simon looked at his glass, swirling the liquid in it, watching the patterns it made. "I try to tell you boys, best I can, that there isn't any door. You climb over people, you push and shove and get up there on top, it's empty. I try to tell you pleasure's a good thing, and it's easier with Hunks than most, because you're being trained to give it. And I try to tell you that duty's good, too, but you've got to balance it. And you've got to study yourself to know how much of each you need, for no one man is a measure of all."
"What do you mean, study?" Mouche asked.
"If you want to know about a Purse fish, you don't beat the fish to death or drain the sea dry. You look at the fish where it is. You study how it swims and what it eats and how it lives. You don't take hold of it, or kill it, you watch it. So, if you want to know who you are, you don't go laying around with a pickax. You try to catch yourself when you're not pushed by anybody or anything and watch yourself. You see what you do, and you figure out why, and you decide how that makes you feel, and how it affects others, and whether it makes you joyful or proud."
"It's amazing how many people don't know their own nature, even though they can't do anything with it until they know what it is. How can you move toward joy if you don't know what makes you happy?" Simon shook his head. "Nobody's required to live in pain. We should always try to move toward joy ... "
He looked up to meet Mouche's smile, suddenly radiant.
"Oh, Simon," he said, "It's not easy, but you're right. And even the pain lights a road for you, doesn't it? It beckons you to fix it! Like if you know something's hurt, you can try to mend it."
Simon, surprised into near silence, agreed it could.
He later mentioned the matter to Madame, when they were alone and very private, for she had asked him, as a favor, to come warm her bed that night and he had, as much from affection as duty, done so.
"'Mouche is right," murmured Ma
dame, sitting naked on the side of the bed, her hair loose about her shoulders, while Simon knelt behind her, kneading her neck between strong hands. "They beg for murder, both of them."
"Have you no pity for them, Madame?"
"Of course I pity them, Simon. I pity the mad dog that bites the child, the bull that gores the herdsman, the boar pig that tears the swineherds leg to shreds with his tusks. If they were wild creatures, we would say, with Haraldson, that they have the right to be as they are and the fault is ours for straying into their territory. The fact is, they are not wild creatures, they are protected and doctored and fed by mankind, and are thus kept according to mankind's rules. So it is with Bane and Dyre."
He went on kneading. "An odd thing happened when I was talking with Mouche. I was talking about discovering oneself, the lecture you often give ... "
" ... so our Consorts can help their patronesses discover their joys ... "
"And their own. Yes. And he got this expression on his face. I've never seen such ecstasy on a face!"
She said softly, "Mouche is a good one, isn't he Simon? Quite out of the ordinary. Something about him ... "
Simon moved his hands to the other side. Yes, he thought to himself. There was something about Mouche.
25—The Long Nights
At midwinter the people on Newholme took a long holiday which coincided, Mouche found, with the disappearance of the Timmys. When the Timmys went away, everything shut down, and in winter it stayed shut down for seven or eight days.
The holiday was called the Long Nights, or The Tipping of the Year, an occasion for family gatherings. Then kinfolk sat around the fire to tell over the names of ancestors, to honor those who had achieved g' status or Haghood among them, to relax standards of neatness and laundering (in the absence of whomever or whatever might have been, at other times, responsible for neatening and laundering), and to give amusing gifts and consume traditional foods prepared by their own hands while telling old stories around the tile stoves.
Though Consorts would never be, strictly speaking, "family," they needed to know how these occasions were managed, and House Genevois paid local families a generous stipend for hosting two or three youngsters in their homes during the Long Nights.
Mouche might have balked had the courtyard still been tenanted. His nightly forays had become an addiction, despite the feelings that flooded him at each watching. Initially, there was a kind of ecstasy in the watching, but gradually it turned to pain as if some huge thing was dying and unwilling to do so. The feeling exhausted him, and he had a sense the Timmys felt as he did, that they, too, were exhausted by the grief and weariness that came out of nowhere.
But the courtyard was empty, and he felt better for the respite. It was good, for a time, to have a simple skin-deep life, to be amused and think of nothing but singing or cooking or playing with children. He and Fentrys and Tyle always went to the weaving house of Hanna and Kurm g'Onduvai; their grown son, who supervised the looms, and his dowered-in wife as well as the eldest daughter, who had been dowered-in by a neighboring family, but who was visiting for a few days. There were also numerous merry and lively grandchildren.
Mouche and his friends enjoyed the annual give and take of the holidays. They played games with the children, taking them sledding on the nearby hill and ice-sliding on the frozen brook. In the evenings, they entertained by singing and playing on their instruments a number of songs everyone knew: "The Wind in the Chimney Corner," and "Six Black Cows," and the wordless melody of the "Lullaby for the Summer Snake." Even the chatter was interesting, and it was from Hanna's chatter, in fact, that Mouche first learned something on a subject he had been on the lookout for, the history of Dyre and Bane.
The conversation was between Hanna and Kurm, concerning some yarn Kurm had recently purchased from a local farmer.
"I can't use the stuff," said Kurm. "It's last year's spin, and I hate telling old man Dutter it's no good, but I can't afford not to. I can't use it."
"The quality is bad?" asked Hanna. "The Dutters were always good spinners."
"It isn't the quality," he replied. "It's the smell. I told you what I suspected ... "
"About Dutter not fathering those boys? Yes. You told me long ago."
"Well, you know he has that smell. Skunk-lung is what it is, and it's why they wouldn't have him, no matter how much he offered for dowry. And he's been seen here and there near the Dutter farm since those two boys came there—everybody knows they aren't Dutter's boys—and they have that same smell. Old man Dutter, he's either got no nose or he's so used to it he doesn't notice."
"But the boys don't spin."
"No. And billy goats don't give milk. But you make goat cheese where there's a billy, the cheese stinks, sympathetic like. You spin yarn where there's skunk-lung, and the yarn stinks, too. They breathe it onto everything, and whatever the cause, I can't use it."
Which was all that was said, enough to make Mouche mightily interested. The Dutter boys had lived over the hill from his own home. And Madame had said she'd turned Dutter down when he'd tried to sell them. So, Dutter was a farmer, and the boys probably weren't his, and they smelled, and House Genevois had two newish students who smelled and whom Madame was not thrilled with. So, who was the he who had been seen near the Dutter farm? The same he who had come to House Genevois?
"Have you heard about them smelling bad?" Mouche asked his friends, when they discussed the matter that night in the loft where they slept.
"The room smelled bad that time," said Tyle.
"Maybe it wasn't them. Maybe it was the other one."
They didn't know. Bane and Dyre were still new boys. If they smelled, only the other new boys would know.
The fact that the other new boys didn't know was a testimonial to Madame's assiduity and long experience. She had not been in the same room with Bane and Dyre for more than a moment before realizing they would present a challenge. Charcoal in the food, and chopped alfalfa, and certain herbs she knew of. Certain uncommon unguents rather than usual ones. One drug, expensive but efficacious in quelling goaty effusions in young bucks. The condition presented by the two youngsters was not unknown, though this was the first she'd ever heard of it in young men. The condition was usually reported as infecting those few weird and elderly outcasts who frequented the frontier. They'd wander into town, nobody knowing who they were, and they'd have that smell.
He, her patron, who had offered a very large sum in gold for the training of these boys, had the same affliction, though he looked perfectly normal. To him, it must have seemed unimportant, for he did little to ameliorate his own condition. He, of course, was not married. He had not produced children. Except, vague rumor had it, these two, and they under such circumstances as were ... well, better not mentioned. Those who had at one time spoken openly of the matter had ended up ... gone. Vanished. Still, people whispered: Had he placed them with Dutter? Or had she! The woman. Whoever she was or had been. A certain name was sometimes whispered; whispered unwisely, Madame felt.
Madame was fairly sure who the mother had been, though she did nothing to verify the fact. She asked no questions, sent no investigators—though there were several she had employed in the past when she had needed information. In order that she might be unburdened of the boys as soon as possible, she concentrated instead on turning Bane and Dyre into acceptable candidates, and within two or three seasons she had them to the point where they could be seen occasionally in public without greatly risking the reputation of House Genevois.
That they were well groomed and handsome was an artifact, produced by much labor, none of it their own. That they were, when left to their own devices, belligerent, unmannerly, dirty and ill spoken was a given. That they were maintained in a more or less obedient state only by the threat of intervention from outside was the leash to keep them heeled. All of which could have been overlooked if they had showed any inclination to adopt a more acceptable manner. They did not do so, and it was this that made Madame despair
.
Unwilling boys could be forced to obey, but they could not be forced to learn. They could be beaten into submission, but not into charm. Since learning and charm were the hallmarks of the Consort, what Madame could make of Dyre and Bane, the Hagions only knew.
26—Amatory Arts, the Marions
Madame rapped her desk for attention. "Finish up quickly boys. We have had a long session today." The afternoon "honored visitors," as they were called, had gone. The students had showered and dressed for supper. This lecture would be short.
The more diligent among them were making a few quick notes concerning the visitors' session. "Stroke, stroke, tweak," Mouche wrote, rehearsing the latest matter in his mind. "Not shove, shove, grab."
"Ahem," said Madame. "Gentlemen. If you will close your notebooks and attend, please."
Mouche underlined the last phrase, then closed his book.
"This evening," said Madame, "I want to discuss the worship of the Hagions.
"I'm sure it has crossed your minds that on occasion, a Consort may find himself unable to respond to the person of his patroness. Though he does his exercises, though he sets his mind to his task, though he is devoted to his profession, he finds something lacking in his own work.
"In handling these occasions gracefully, it is wise to be able to call upon at least one of the Hagions. In our library you will find several volumes devoted to the Hagions, the various manifestations of female divinity, all the goddesses ever worshipped by mankind. You will find Athena the wise and Aphrodite the fair; You will find lyatiku, corn mother; Isis, goddess of fecundity; Gaea, earth mother; Cybele, founder of cities; Sophia, holder of wisdom; Hestia of the hearth; Heka of childbirth, all these and a thousand more. For the most part they are kindly and comforting, though some among them are foreign to our idea of womanhood. I recommend that you avoid choosing one of the destroyers and torturers, for you would do so at your peril. Those who delight in killing condemn themselves to a bad and ugly death.
Tepper,Sheri - Six Moon Dance Page 17