Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19

by The Ruins of Isis (v2. 1)

  And then she had begun to wonder, hestitate about doing it at all. After all, Dal was from Pioneer; he had come a long way in one generation, but culturally imposed social attitudes were not changed overnight. Considering that, perhaps one advanced degree was enough in a family. There was always interesting work to be done for a Scholar; she had no particular ambition, now, to be a Dame. And she was not sure it would please Dal if she became a Dame.

  Dal liked the Scholar Dame di Velo and respected her work. But it was clear that he found it hard to accept the notion that a woman could be his superior in position and status; she knew he was chafing until his own Master Scholar qualifications would make him the Scholar Dame's equal. He said often, as a joke—but he said it once or twice too often for a joke—what would they think of me on Pioneer, taking orders from a she-Scholar?

  Then everything had happened quickly. The Scholar Dame di Velo had been requested, by the Matriarchate of Isis/Cinderella, to come and examine the ancient ruins on their world, which might, or might not, be of Builder origin. The Scholar Dame di Velo had regarded this as a vindication of a long campaign; Dal had been considerably less enthusiastic.

  "The Matriarchate on Cinderella!" Dal had been halfway between despair and disgust. Cendri, feeling the lurch and sway as the shuttle ship shuddered out of free orbit into deceleration, remembered the dismay with which Dal had spoken of the Matriarchate.

  "A society run entirely by women! Sharrioz!" He had scowled and stormed for hours about this assignment. "There won't be any chance at all for me to do independent research, not in the Matriarchate! I'll just be there to fetch and carry for the di Velo woman!" he raged, "and here I was thinking I could get my Master's quals before I went—"

  Angry as Dal had been, Cendri could not help being excited.

  "The Matriarchate! Oh, Dal, if we could go together—if I could get a grant to do my research there—there are almost no records of study actually within a matriarchal society—"

  "That's because there aren't any in the civilized worlds," Dal had grumbled, "and I already asked the Scholar Dame." His injured tone had said clearly, see, I'm always thinking about you, and Cendri had cringed even while she was grateful to him. "The Matriarchate refuses to allow any anthropological research on Cinderella, something about being a working society, not a freak to be studied—so you can't go openly as an anthropologist. But the Scholar Dame said you can go along; she's going to invent some minor job for you, so you can be with me, and maybe you can take notes enough to expand them into some kind of research work. There's so little information about any working Matriarchy that even a little information about them ought to be valuable." And Cendri had been grateful for even that crumb, until he had added gloomily, "If I go at all, that is. I ought to throw up this job and get a Research Assistantship with some good, qualified man."

  But there had been really no choice. The Scholar Dame di Velo was the only Scholar of repute working on the Builders at all, and only her reputation had made work on the Builders remotely acceptable. Dal had to stick with the Scholar Dame, or do the last two seasons of his research over again on something else—not to mention that if he deserted the Scholar Dame di Velo on such flimsy grounds, he would never again get a decent Research Assistantship.

  The pilot glanced over her bare shoulder at Cendri and said, "We will now be descending into atmosphere, Scholar Dame. In a few minutes you will be seeing the shoreline of Ariadne." Cendri, fighting the growing tug of gravity—unaccustomed after so long in the Unity ship—winced again at the undeserved title. Obsessively, she went back to remembering, as if she had to get it all straight before they landed.

  There had been all the preparations for departure to Cinderella, which the Matriarchate had renamed Isis. Taped lessons in the language, in what little was known of their culture. Cendri remembered that, and remembered, more clearly, Dai's increasing distress and disquiet at the assignment, so that Cendri felt guilty about her own growing eagerness. How could she be so happy when Dal was so wretched?

  She had discussed the project with her own Research Mentor, and he had agreed to give her tentative approval—subject to review on her return, and the amount of research she could actually complete on Isis/Cinderella—to use this as her Research fieldwork.

  And then the accident, which had so completely altered their plans. The Scholar Dame Lurianna di Velo was, at present, in an amniotic tank on University Medical Center, growing a new hand and a new eye, and regenerating assorted internal organs. At her age, that was a complicated and lengthy business. It had looked as if the Isis/Cinderella project would have to be abandoned; and Cendri had not known whether she was glad or sorry. The Matriarchate had been duly notified of the accident; and after certain delays, an answer had come. It had told them that in lieu of the Scholar Dame di Velo, the Matriarchate would gladly accept the presence of her assistant, the Scholar Dame Malocq.

  Cendri was, like most Scholars, a passable linguist; but she had not been extensively trained in semantics, and had not, at first, understood the implications of this. On her own world, a married woman did not take her husband's name at all, and Cendri still thought of herself as Cendri Owain; Scholar Owain. But it was the custom on Pioneer, and it had seemed very important to Dal; so she had applied for, and received, identification in Dai's name. Cendri Malocq.

  "Don't you see," Dal said, "in their language, there is no special word differentiating Master Scholar from Scholar Dame. The word for a higher degree would translate something like Extra-Scholar, but it is translated Scholar Dame because on Isis/Cinderella all honorifics are feminine. It didn't occur to them that a famous woman scholar—and they did know that di Velo was a woman, they had made sure of it—would not have a woman assistant. So in sending a message accepting the Dame di Velo's assistant, they naturally used the feminine honorific."

  "But why should they assume—?"

  "I thought you had studied the Matriarchate. One of their basic assumptions is that all worlds in the Unity are completely dominated by men, and that no woman intelligent enough to be a Scholar would risk this domination. So they believe di Velo's assistant, Scholar Malocq, would of course be a woman—"

  "But you aren't—" she said, not quite seeing what he was driving at, and he had said, "But you are. Don't you understand? There is a Scholar Malocq, with credentials. Isn't it lucky that you took my name? Now you can go in the Scholar Dame's place—"

  "Dal, I can't," she protested, panicked, "I don't know anything about Archaeology—"

  "But I do," he had said, in excitement. "I can give you tapes, educator crash courses, hypno-learning sets—enough to give you the patter, enough to get by! And I'll be right at your elbow all the time as your Research Assistant—don't you see? I'll be doing the work, and getting my quals, and you'll be fronting for me! And you'll be able to do your own research, too, you can observe everything because they'll take you everywhere as a visiting dignitary—can't you see, Cendri, what a wonderful chance this is, for both of us?"

  She had still protested. It wouldn't be honest, it wasn't fair to the Matriarchate. But her protests had been half-hearted. A chance to study the Matriarchate at first hand, an assignment where she could get qualification as a Scholar Dame and which would not separate her from Dal! The authorities on University had been all too willing to go along with the deception. It was, after all, the first time anyone with anthropologist's credentials had been allowed inside the Matriarchy. Anyway, it wouldn't have been easy to find a replacement for the maverick di Velo; she was the only Scholar of repute who would seriously investigate the possibility of Builder ruins on Isis.

  And so Cendri had been qualified; hastily, and provisionally, as Acting Dame for the term of her stay on Isis/Cinderella; and here she was.

  The young pilot spoke into her intercom, meaningless technical phrases to Cendri, then said, "We are now flying at an altitude of six thousand Universal Meters over the shoreline of Ariadne, Scholar Dame, if you would care to see an aerial
view of the harbors and coastlines. There is a viewport directly at the side of your couch; the latch releases upward."

  Cendri thumbed the latch, and the cabin of the shuttle ship was quickly flooded with orange sunlight. She slitted her lids against the light of the sun, and looked down at a surface of sea which, from this distance, looked one even green color. Small islands were scattered, thick greenish patches, or dark rocky outcrops; then she made out the shoreline, with brownish edgings which she knew were sandy beaches, and dark patches of some kind of vegetation. She could see boats, at this distance only tiny toylike shapes, in the harbor and out on the waves; there were, further inland, smooth rolling hills, and strips which might have been ploughed fields under cultivation, a blackish-purple color.

  As they flew along the coast, Cendri noticed black shapes, sharp-edged and regular, thrusting upward in a curious pattern. There seemed a kind of geometry to their arrangement, although she could not identify it.

  She asked, "Those towers—is that the city of Ariadne?"

  The pilot made a negative gesture. "No, indeed!" she said, "Could intelligent women live at such heights? When the ground shakes, what would happen? Directly below us is the territory known as We-were-guided; in my grandmother's day, or so we are told by the Elders, the ship which brought our foremothers to Isis was guided here to these ancient ruins."

  Dal sat up, craning his neck toward the viewport at Cendri's side; Cendri could understand how he felt. She, Cendri, couldsee the mysterious Ruins—were they those of the Builders?—which had brought Dal here; and he, Dal, swaddled in blankets and wedged into a spare seat like unregarded cargo, could not! Her heart ached for him, but there was a part to be played, and already the pilot was frowning disapprovingly at Dal over her shoulder.

  "Tell it to lie down and be quiet or it may be hurt," she said, not as if she cared, and Cendri, felling she would choke on the words, said, "Lie down, Dal. It won't be long now."

  As if she were speaking to a troublesome dog. Just like that. And Dal was the Scholar for whom the Matriarchs had sent—but they didn't know it!

  Cendri had never felt so much like an imposter as she did at that moment. She tried to catch Dai's eye; but he would not look at her.

  All this had seemed like a joke, on University. Now it did not seem funny at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cendri had seen many spaceports through the Unity; mostly, they were very much alike. Chaotic, confusing, with hurrying hordes of passengers, uniformed personnel everywhere, and all manner of concessions and services. By contrast, this seemed hardly a spaceport at all. A low concrete wall surrounded a long expanse of thickly planted vegetation which felt soft and springy underfoot; paths were worn in the sand here and there, and there was one big area where there was no vegetation at all, only a blackened spot where the shuttleship had landed. There were about half a dozen other small shuttleships at one side of the enclosure, inside a long, low, roofed building open at one side to the weather; beyond the concrete wall was a view of distant hills, grey in the distance.

  There were only two other buildings inside the enclosure; one looked like an enormous warehouse of plastic prefab; the other was a good-sized building with an assortment of vanes, antennas and other instrumentation protruding from a sort of dome on top.

  Cendri and Dal were the only passengers anywhere in sight. There were no slidewalks; the pilot herself helped Cendri down the steps of the shuttle ship (Dal was left to scramble down as best he could) and beckoned to a tall, thin man in a loose, whitish pajama suit, a red baldric tied around his shoulder. He was wheeling a small motorized dolly-platform.

  The pilot said, "The personal belongings of the Scholar Dame from University are to be sent to the home of the pro-Matriarch Vaniya. Will you make certain of that when a conveyance is available?"

  He bowed without speaking, and Cendri, staring at the red baldric—she could not think of any world in the Unity where men habitually decorated themselves in this way—happened to intercept a glance between the man wheeling the platform—some kind of porter, apparently—and Dal. The man stared until he was sure he had Dai's attention; then, with one hand, taking care to avoid being seen by the pilot, made a curious gesture. He held his right hand with all four fingers, bunched, touching the thumb; then slowly drew the thumb apart from them, murmuring something too low for Cendri to hear.

  The pilot was waiting, and Cendri started and hurried after her. The anthropologist within her was taking notes. Of course; in a society where women dominated, there would be many kinds of male bonds, secret societies and recognition symbols among men. Male bonding in groups appeared to be universal—Cendri was too good a scholar to say that anything, in a Galaxy-wide civilization, was actually universal, but male bonding was certainly a widespread phenomenon, and, Cendri had been taught, was the major form of social cohesion. That was one reason why such planets as Isis/Cinderella, with women socially dominant, were extremely rare. She could think of only two, in fact; this world where she now stood, and its own mother colony. Persephone. Except for the ill-fated Labrys experiment, she could remember no others.

  Dal would have to help her study the male groups. If she was doing archaeological work for him, he would have to make up his mind to doing some of her work. She followed the pilot along the path, lifting her thin-sandalled feet fastidiously. She had not expected a world quite so primitive, and had been prepared for slidewalks., at least.

  Why had the man with the red baldric greeted Dal? Was it simply a universal greeting between males?

  Inside, the building with the instrument domes on top was divided into several separate areas by what looked like low, movable screens of translucent paper or plastic, painted with landscapes and flowers in bright colors. Beyond one such screen she saw an office filled with instrument consoles and television monitors; there was a low buzz of people, machinery, low-voiced conversation. In the larger space, a variety of people were coming and going, and it was here that Cendri finally decided what seemed so strange about the place.

  It was not entirely the absence of enormous expanses of concrete and skyscrapers; Cendri had been on other worlds with little travel and no funds for expensive installations. Nor was it the absence of passenger traffic; there were many worlds whose citizens were content to remain at home, for cultural or psychological reasons. No, it was something else which made this world seem completely different. It was the absence of uniforms.

  Two or three people were dressed like the shuttleship pilot, in brief metallic-cloth bands across breast and hip; but one of them was behind some kind of booth providing a service Cendri was not yet fluent enough in the written language to identify, and the other was emptying a trash container, so that this dress did not signify "shuttle ship pilot" or even "spaceport officer." There were many people coming and going on unidentifiable errands, but so far she had seen so many different costumes that it was dizzying. Many were dressed in a sort of loose pajama suit, shirt and trousers, making it hard to tell at once whether the wearer was male or female. Besides the pajama suits, and the brief functional breast-and-hip bands (she even saw a man wearing one such costume) there were loose, flowing robes, some hooded and some not; a few in kilts to the knee, leaving breasts bare (no sexual taboo on this, for both men and women wore them). She noted one or two men with elaborately curled and coiffed hair, but some of the women, too wore this kind of hair-dress. There seemed to be no specific dress difference between males and females. Cendri felt confused. How could you tell anyone's function or status without some kind of uniform to mark what they were doing? On the Unity ship which had brought them here, one could immediately tell ship's officers and functionaries, from stewards or service personnel. But everyone here seemed to be dressed chaotically, without regard to function or even to gender. Cendri was used to this on University—where most people followed the dress of their native world, except actually within official University areas—and at spaceports where men and women of various cultures mingle
d. But such diversity within citizens of a single culture group was unusual; Cendri had been on field trips to many different societies, and she could not think of a single one where it was not immediately possible to tell men from women by some immediate cue of dress, hair style or manner.

  How do they tell the men from the women? she wondered. There must be some cultural clue; she simply wasn't experienced enough in this society, yet, to guess what it was.

  She wanted to ask a million questions; she wished she were here "on a normal research assignment in cross-cultural anthropology. But she remembered that the Matriarchate had put themselves on record about that, a long time ago, in one of their very few communications with the Unity:

  "The Matriarchate of Isis is not an experimental society, and we will not allow ourselves to be studied by scientists as if we were one of those glass-sided insect colonies we give to our little daughters for toys!"

  Hurrying through a long corridor at one edge of the building-she noted that it, too, was only semi-divided from the offices and waiting rooms, by the thin, translucent screens which looked movable—she thought about that.

  Cendri's Mentor, Dr. Lakshmann, had grumbled a lot about this. A most unscientific attitude, he had called it; unworthy of any society; ungrateful, anti-social. Cendri had protested—she had been only a Student then. Surely it was their own society, she had said, and they had the right to keep people out if they wanted to. Lakshmann hadn't been convinced. Paranoid, he had called the Matriarchate. But then a society which had convinced itself that women were mistreated within any society as enlightened as the Unity, would have to be paranoid. Cendri had tended to agree. After all, women were the equal of men, by law, on University, which represented the Unity at its best, its official policy. If there were fewer Scholar Dames than Master Scholars and Scholar Doctors, surely it was only that fewer women were willing to compete for these advanced academic prizes. Psychologically, Cendri had learned, women were less competitive; she had seen it in herself after her marriage to Dal. Cendri herself had had no trouble attaining Scholar rank; she was acknowledged—and by men—to be the superior of most men of that rank. Most women who became Scholars, and Scholar Dames, were superior; there were no mediocre Scholars, the mediocre woman Students dropped out. Didn't that prove that women, in the Unity, were actually regarded as somewhat superior? Cendri knew that she herself would have attained her quals for an advanced degree if she hadn't done what women were too likely to do, and taken time off after her marriage.