Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19

by The Ruins of Isis (v2. 1)

  She seemed so disturbed that Cendri paused a moment to frame her reply carefully, to soothe that disquiet. She said at last, "Every world has its own customs, Lady Miranda, and there is no great authority somewhere in Limbo to say with arbitrary words which customs best express the human spirit." She felt sententious as she mouthed this banal cliche—it had been an epigraph in an elementary text of Comparative Anthropology—but it lightened the careworn look on the Lady Miranda's face. She said, "Excuse me for a moment, I must see if my mother is able to receive you—" and hurried past the screens, leaving them alone. Cendri looked quickly at Dal, but he raised his eyebrows noncommittally and said nothing. In the distance—privacy must be difficult or impossible in houses with this kind of open construction—she heard a low-voiced colloquy, then Miranda came hurrying back.

  "Will the Scholar Dame forgive my mother? The earthquake has caused much damage in the fisherwoman villages along the shoreline, and the Pro-Matriarch has been urgently summoned to see what damage has been done and what help must be given to the poor women there; many boats were smashed in the harbor. She has left word that she will return at sunset, unless some very great urgency should delay her, at which hour she will be pleased to welcome you and dine in your company. Meanwhile, may I make the Scholar Dame comfortable in the chambers which have been prepared? And if there is any other way in which I may serve the Scholar Dame, she has only to ask."

  Cendri replied politely that she was content to await the total convenience of the Pro-Matriarch. She was getting very tired of these elaborately formal speeches, which seemed to rest uncomfortably upon Miranda's lips. She added that it would be very good to rest after the journey.

  "If the Scholar Dame will follow me—"

  The rooms lay at the top of two flights of stairs, elaborately and carefully balustraded, and one of them closed off with a device which was evidently a kind of nursery gate to keep small children from tumbling down. On these upper floors she saw the first solid interior wall construction she had seen anywhere on Isis/Cinderella, although the walls were masked, in part, by the light movable screens which seemed the normal interior wall-decor for this world. Walls and screens were painted with murals that looked like children's work; and, tired as she was, Cendri was still taking the mental notes of the trained anthropologist. Children were very much in evidence, not banished to a separate part of the household or community. Miranda opened a door which had been gilded, and said, "These rooms have been prepared for the Scholar Dame and— and her Companion." For the first time she glanced, briefly and shyly, at Dal, and Cendri had the odd impression that she wished to extend him, too, some courtesy, but did not know what form it ought to take.

  She thought in wonder, and some indefinable irritation, haven't these women ever seen a man before? They act, quite literally, as if they had never set eyes on a man, and that is preposterous, there are men all over the place! What is it?

  I can't expect to understand it, after only an hour or two....

  The room was hung all round, inside, with curtains; literally a cyclorama of curtains, surrounding the entire room. Miranda showed Cendri how they could be pulled back—"So that you can have darkness and privacy, or light, at your wish," she said, and adjusted them, with what seemed an automatic gesture, to admit indirect light while keeping out the glare from a window which faced the sun. Behind another fold of the curtains she indicated a door, saying, "Here you may refresh yourself as you wish; the Scholar Dame has no objection to sharing bathing facilities with her Companion? If it is so, I am instructed to tell you that there is a male facility at the foot of the stairs—"

  "I have no objection," said Cendri quickly.

  At the center of the room was a bedstead; quite the highest and narrowest bed Cendri had ever seen. She wondered how she would possibly sleep in it without falling out. Miranda indicated racks for clothing, shelves—Cendri noted that they were carefully braced on what looked like gimbals and had movable arms which could be extended to hold the books in the shelves, a reasonable precaution for a world prone to continuing seismic tremors—a mirrored enclosure with a padded seat, and at one corner of the room an alcove, cushioned deeply and filled with luxurious pillows, as if the entire alcove had become a thick, comfortable bed. The Lady Miranda said, with a quick glance at the alcove, "When our Mother informed me that the Scholar Dame had brought a Companion, it was this room we set aside for her to inhabit a room with an Amusement Corner." She glanced, quickly and surreptitiously, at Dal, and suddenly, looking at the piled, luxurious pillows, Cendri understood, and felt almost inclined to giggle, or to blush in embarrassment.

  The separation—that high, narrow, obvious bed, and the sybaritic "Amusement Corner"—tells me more about how this society regards sex, than a whole series of erotic films, or any number of lectures about sexual customs.1 She saw that Dal had understood, too, for his mouth twitched a little at the corners, and Cendri was suddenly afraid he would laugh out loud while Miranda was still in the room. She said, hastily, "You are too kind, Lady; everything seems more than comfortable."

  With a few more formal phrases, and assurance that their luggage should be brought soon, the Lady Miranda turned to go, with a final request that if everything was not as the Scholar Dame liked it, she had only to request assistance.

  "We are honored and content," Cendri said. It was a risk to include Dal in the pronoun, but by including the "Amusement corner" in her room—again the hidden mirth bubbled up inside her—they had taken at least a tacit notice of his existence! She said with a formal gesture, "We ask only one thing; if we offend in anything against your customs, we ask that you accept that it is done in ignorance and without intent to offend."

  It was the first time she had ever had occasion to use this little memorized speech suggested for contact with any alien society, and in her years of training she had come to think of it, too, as a cliche, so banal and stereotyped as to be virtually meaningless; she was surprised when it drew the first genuine, spontaneous smile from the Lady Miranda.

  "You are kind, Scholar Dame. I trust you will be happy here." Again the quick, embarrassed look at Dal; she added in a whisper, as if greatly daring, "Both of you," and, coloring, withdrew.

  When the door had closed, Dal drew a long, whistling breath. He dropped into the "Amusement Corner" cushions, saying explosively, "What do you think of all that? Sharrioz! What a world!" He chuckled. "If they want to get into the Unity they're sure going to have to change their ways!"

  Cendri started to protest—there was no evidence that they wanted to get into the Unity at all—then held her peace. This was just a way of working off the long tension of being treated like a nothing, part of Cendri's baggage, a mere convenience for her amusement or pleasure. Poor Dal! she thought, and was eager to make it up to him, but didn't quite know how.

  "Let's look and see what kind of bath they've given us. Some studies judge a culture by the quality of their plumbing, you know."

  "I know," Dal said, good-humored again. "I told you that, remember. The ruins on Serpens Delta Four had eight separate and distinct classes of latrine and bathing facilities, each for a different class of society, and judging by the ritual objects we found, there were rigid taboos against one caste going near the bathing facilities of any other caste! We might as well explore this one before it gets to be an artifact!"

  "We really do the same work, in a way, don't we, Dal?" she said, voicing a thought that had come to her before. "I study cultures while they're still going on, and you study them after they've stopped, but it's the same work, isn't it, darling?"

  "I suppose so," Dal said, kindly but without enthusiasm. "Although, of course, there is no way to measure a society objectively while scientists must observe it through subjective judgments, either their own or the judgments of the society in question. No society can ever be judged except in historical perspective," he added, and Cendri, who had heard this before without agreeing with it, and knew she would never agree with it, let it
pass without comment. Together they went to explore the luxurious bath assigned to them by the Pro-Matriarch.

  "If a culture could be judged by plumbing, we'd have to give this one high marks, wouldn't we?" Cendri said at last; it was unbelievably elaborate, containing not only elaborate toilet and bathing facilities, but showers of different sizes and heights, and some fixtures about whose use she was not certain, though she guessed that one very shallow, waist-high tub, with guard-rails and a headrest, and faucets fixed to give only warmish water, with no hot or cold, must be a special fixture for bathing very young babies without danger of dropping, chilling or scalding. Others she could not even make intelligent guesses about; body-care facilities could be judged only by actually observing their use.

  Dal looked dubious. He said, "I'm not sure; societies which place too much value on luxurious body-care have usually been decadent, historically speaking. Viable and vigorous societies tend to be more spartan in emphasis; but the overemphasis on physical comfort is what I would expect of a society where females define the major priorities."

  Cendri frowned, not sure she understood. "All societies work for physical comfort as they define it, don't they, Dal?"

  "You know better than that," Dal chided. "The pursuit of luxury appears, normally, only after a culture has expended its primary energies. Women are usually out of the main stream of culture, since the real work of a society is done by men, and only when the real aims of the society are accomplished do the men have leisure to pamper their women by creating non-essentials such as physical comfort. Historically, when this happens, a culture has begun to die, since the men have nothing better to do than to pursue the goals and aims set by women..."

  Cendri said tentatively, "But perhaps in a culture where the primary goals were determined by women, priorities would be differently ordered—"

  "That is precisely what I was saying," Dal said with weary patience. "A culture where women's priorities took precedence would reach decadence at a very early stage. This society is still new, but I notice already the early signs of decadence; a very low level of organization, and an unstructured hierarchy without visible incentive status, which fits very well, with the other signs of decadence; undue emphasis on physical comfort, and a lack of time-values; for instance, the idea that if you are made comfortable while you wait, you will not protest at the wasting of your valuable time as a trained specialist. This indicates, of course, a contempt for the Unity's values, and for the Unity's time—"

  They were interrupted by two people who brought their luggage, a man and a woman; when they withdrew, Cendri had lost all interest in the argument—she had heard it in her study of Cultural Institutions—but Dal would not be silenced.

  "There are certain priorities which, in a colony as new as they, must take priority over anything as unnecessary as physical comfort. First comes conquest—if there are no actual enemies to involve them in war, then the terrain and the climate must be conquered and reduced to submission—then expansion, and the achievement of hierarchy, and directives for structuring social goals. A society which gives priority to things which are important only to women would never achieve any of these stages in a vigorous or viable form." He smiled. "And such a society never lasts long, so study it while you can, Cendri; it's not likely, with these priorities, to achieve anything lasting enough to have any kind of historical value or perspective." He added, indulgently, "Of course, you wouldn't be interested in historical perspective, would you, Cendri? Women aren't—it's excusable, of course, probably necessary for biological reasons, but women always tend to live in the present, and leave historical perspectives for men. And women never seem even to define this as a fault!"

  Cendri wondered if he included the Scholar Dame Lurianna di Velo, one of the most notable archaeologists in the Unity, among those women who were unable to see anything in historical perspective, but she had sense enough not to say so.

  "Did you hear anything of what the Lady Miranda told me about the situation here?"

  As she had feared, this revived Dai's major grievance.

  "How could I, bumping along in the luggage compartment beside the old hag who was doing the driving?"

  "I'm sure you saw more of the city than I did," she said, but he was not mollified. "I didn't come here to look at scenery!" he grumbled, "No, not a word of it."

  "I thought not, or you would not be complaining about their having kept us waiting," she said. Briefly she explained what the Lady Miranda had told her of the deathwatch on the High Matriarch, and the possibility that whoever took her position might have a totally different attitude toward the Unity.

  Dal asked sharply, frowning a little, "What is the attitude of the Pro-Matriarch—this one, the house where we are staying? What are her feelings about the Unity?"

  "I don't know, Dal. The time didn't seem quite right to ask. I should imagine, from the way the Lady Miranda spoke—she herself said she would like to study on University—that she is not completely prejudiced against the Unity: but I don't really know."

  "I should think that would have been the first thing you would have wanted to know," said Dal, frowning. "Don't women ever come to grips with essentials?"

  Now she was provoked. She said, "I don't know what women do, Dal; I only know I used my best judgment about what I could and couldn't ask! After all, we are in a strange society here, and have to find out something of their forms of courtesy and social restrictions! I did the best I could!"

  "I'm sure you did," Dal muttered, but it was clear he didn't think that was good enough. She said, trying to placate him, "I don't know what Vaniya's political attitudes are, but she was willing to let us use her house as a base for the study of the Builder ruins, because it was located so near; the Lady Miranda said that the upper rooms here actually looked down on the ruins."

  She moved to the window, and drew aside the curtain. They were high up above an enclosed garden, hedged with greenish-gray shrubbery, brilliant with flowers and green leaves. Further off lay a long section of shore, with sandy beaches and a long expanse of slow rolling surf, and a small fishing village, houses clustered and crouching under a cliff, and one tall building, a kind of lighthouse or watchtower. It looked quite old, and weathered.

  And further away still, down the shoreline, lay low hills, and on the nearest of the hills, something else. A cluster of thick, black, upthrusting shapes, blackened, squarish; higher than any of the houses of Ariadne, and more regular; and at this distance, windowless, blank, featureless; strange, in their unvarying geometry, their curious proportions. They were not like anything else Cendri had ever seen.

  "Dal," she said. "Come here, look at this. Are these the ruins which the Scholar Dame di Velo called Builder ruins?"

  Dal came to the window, his muscular hand holding back the pale folds of curtain. He was silent, staring, and Cendri, watching his face, saw the jawline tighten, the eyelids twitch.

  At last he said, his voice muffled, "They are—ruins. More than this I could not possibly say. The Dame di Velo had seen what she considered evidence, to convince her that they were what we needed to prove that the Galaxy had actually been seeded by these people. It would not—not be accurately scientific even to hazard a guess. But yes, they are the ruins of Isis—the ruins we came here to see."

  Abruptly he turned from the window, letting the curtain swirl down into place. He strode heavily to the "Amusement Corner," blundering into one of the light interior screens as he went and steadying it with an unregarding hand. Why, Cendri wondered, with firm interior walls and curtains, were the screens here at all, when they had no function of separating off interior rooms? Or did the women of Isis feel that a room simply did not look to them like a room, or feel to them like a room, without the customary screens? She knew she was focusing on this silly question to hide her anguished awareness of Dai's pain.

  He said, his face pressed into the cushions of the "Amusement Corner," "And to think I can't—can't get out there and do anything about the
m, can't even go out and Jook at them—it's all going to be up to you, Cendri, and you don't even really care at all, do you? I should never have come, I should never have come...."

  She wanted to weep, to protest; / do care, Dal, / do. But she knew the words would be empty on her tongue. Quietly, she turned away from him, knowing he would never forgive her for having seen him break like this. His work meant so much more to him than anything else, anything in his life. Next to his despair, her own work seemed suddenly trivial, meaningless. But the only thing she could give Dal now was a sense of privacy. Very quietly she went to the far end of the apartment—glad, now, of the interior screens which divided it into several sections—and started unpacking their things and stowing them in the spaces provided.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hours later, when the light outside had dimmed somewhat, Cendri heard on the lower floors of the house a variety of sounds— footsteps, voices, movement and bustle—and knew that the Pro-Matriach Vaniya had returned. She knew they would soon be summoned to dine formally with her, so she bathed in the luxurious bathroom, did up her long fair hair in an elaborate coiffure, and put on a gown suitable for formal dining on University. Later she would learn, she supposed, what was proper for such occasions here. But it was not, from what she had seen, a society where minute differences in dress conveyed many cues about status. As she smoothed the narrow pleats in her elegant close-fitting dress, she wondered at that. It had seemed to her reasonable that a society structured by women would have paid enormous attention to dress. Wasn't that one of women's special concerns everywhere?

  Dal had recovered his spirits and was stowing their collection of reference works and making sure the cameras and recording devices had suffered no harm in the packing. He seemed busy and self-absorbed; she hated to disturb him, but finally said, "Dal, shouldn't you get ready?"