He shrugged. "What makes you think they'd invite me? Or have you forgotten I'm only the dog?"
She couldn't blame him at all for that. "Let's say I have a hunch, Dal. After all, they went out of their way to notice you by giving me a room with an—" she hesitated, then laughed, a forced laugh, but she knew they must make a joke of it or it would be unendurable, "an Amusement Corner."
He laughed too, as she had hoped, and came to drop a kiss on the back of her neck. "It's a bit more elaborate than a dog's bed! If you're good, I may let you sleep in it with me!" His hands lingered, and Cendri felt an overflowing relaxation, a lessening of tension. At least he was not blaming her!
"I will try to make them realize you are a Scholar in your own right, Dal."
His smile was a little sour. "Why bother? Enjoy it while you can. Women are always saying they don't get enough recognition, there aren't nearly as many Dames as Master Scholars—this might be your only chance at Scholarly eminence!"
That ruffled her a little; she would have been a Dame by now, had she not taken off time after her marriage! Then, with humility, Cendri thought; that's what he means, a man, a serious Scholar, wouldn't have done that. Women just aren't as serious about Scholarship as men! "Well, Dal, we will simply have to prove it to them."
He laughed, stroking her hair. "We can't upset the whole basis of their society, darling. Do you think I give the weight of a hydrogen atom to what they think of my scholarly credentials?"
It felt so good, to have him laughing with her again! And of course Dal was right, there was no way, and no need, to challenge the basic postulate of the Matriarchate; but she supposed any young anthropologist in a society which was wholly irrational, would feel this way! The daydream; that she, single-handed, could show them the error of their ways, prove a major influence to bring them into the mainstream of the Unity... .She laughed at herself and turned so that Dal could tie the ribbons of her sash.
She looked at herself in the mirror with satisfaction; no woman of the Matriarchate could say she had not taken the trouble to honor her hosts! Hostesses, she amended. Dal, too, was resplendent, with the University decorations which proclaimed him Scholar and Master, and the insignia of his homework! Pioneer; he had dressed as if for a Scholar's Banquet, and she was proud of him.
The Lady Miranda came for them; after bowing to Cendri, she turned to Dal, with a shy gesture. "The Scholar Dame, and her Companion, are bidden to dine with the Pro-Matriarch this evening, and I am bidden to say to you that my mother's Companion, Rhu by name, is eager to entertain and find company and friendship with the Scholar Dame's Companion."
Thank God, Cendri said to herself, someone at fast has taken special notice of Dal, and men, at least, can dine with women.' For a time she had wondered if this society had revived ancient interdining taboos; in some societies men and women did not eat together, but it was usually because women were considered unclean, or unfit to join the dominant males; she had been afraid this culture had simply reversed all cultural taboos!
Lady Miranda had taken down her braid, and her long hair flowed down her back; she wore a loose, waistless gown of pale blue, nearly translucent, which made her pregnancy very conspicuous. She must be, Cendri thought, very near to term; she looked enormous. Miranda's eyes lingered on Dal for a few minutes, shyly studying his decorations, and Cendri felt annoyed. Are the men kept out of sight so much that I'm going to have to worry about women admiring Dal? Even pregnant, Miranda's pretty enough that if she seriously tries to get Dai's attention, I ought to worry!
Downstairs, in an enormous long room, scattered at low tables and sitting on cushions, many women, and some children were gathered. There were two or three pre-adolescent boys, but she saw, at first, no other adult male. Miranda led them through the clustered small tables, heads turning to watch as they passed, into a small alcove at the far end, where a man and woman were sitting.
Cendri's first thought—is this a polygamous society, is he the husband of all these women and father of all these children?—was quickly dismissed; the man was very young, considerably younger than Dal himself. But it was the woman beside him, rising to her feet to greet them, who drew Cendri's eyes.
Vaniya, Pro-Matriarch of Isis/Cinderella, was a woman of middle age, her face lined and slightly stern. She had the head of a magnificent lioness, framed in a heavy cloud of thick, frizzy, amber-colored hair. She was tall and strong-looking, her forehead high, her nose long and arched; her eyes deep-set and flashing brilliant blue. Her thick body was draped with violet silks, falling in elaborate folds which did not suit her; but she looked imposing. She raised her hands and clasped them before her face, in the Unity's greeting.
Her voice was a light soprano, which nevertheless was strong enough to be audible everywhere in the room; the voice of a trained singer or public speaker.
"It is a pleasure to welcome the Scholar Dame Molocq from University. In the name of our High Matriarch Rezali, I make you welcome for yourself, and for the Scholars you represent."
Cendri said, aware that after the trained resonance of Vaniya's voice her own sounded like a child's, "It is a pleasure and an honor, my Lady."
The Pro-Matriarch's face, stern and unsmiling till now, relaxed in a smile. Her face was unsymmetrical, and when she smiled she looked lopsided and untidy, but good-natured. "And now I am sure you have had quite enough of formalities, my dear Scholar Dame. Please sit here beside me." She indicated a large, soft blue cushion. Awkwardly, Cendri lowered herself. There were societies with chairs, and there were societies without chairs, and she was glad of her young and athletic knees. The Pro-Matriarch turned her piercing eyes on Dal, who raised his hands in the Unity gesture of greeting; after a moment the Pro-Matriarch returned the gesture and Cendri relaxed.
"May I know the name of your Companion, Scholar Dame?"
Cendri said firmly "He is the Master Scholar Dallard Malocq."
Vaniya raised her shaggy eyebrows. Her complexion was tawny, roughened somewhat with age. "Dear me, all that? What do you call it, my dear?"
Cendri colored with annoyance and dismay. "Dallard, or Dal."
"Dal." Her smile was charming and hospitable. "Rhu, you must entertain Dal for me while I talk seriously with the Scholar Dame," she said, turning to the young man on the cushion beside her.
Women were moving around the room, setting bowls of fruit and platters of undefinable substances on the tables, taking their own places. There seemed to be no servants, or if there were, they sat at table with their betters and were not distinguished by dress or manner. Lady Miranda took a seat beside Cendri, saying courteously, "Allow me to serve you, Scholar Dame," and began to fill her plate with food.
"I trust the rooms prepared for you are comfortable, my dear Scholar Dame," Vaniya said.
"Very comfortable indeed; very luxurious."
"I hoped you would find them so," Vaniya said. "They are the rooms which I myself inhabited with my Companion when I was somewhat younger, but such luxuries, of course, are more suitable for younger women, and I felt it proper to allot them to the honored guest of the Matriarchate. And, to her Companion. Your Companion is charming and attractive," she added, "but I find it surprising that you brought no assistant for your work among us, Scholar Dame."
Cendri, feeling Dai's eyes upon her said firmly, "I thought it had been made clear, my Lady, that my Companion is—" she stumbled over the lie, "—is my assistant, and that I shall require his company and assistance at all times in the Ruins."
"A man, for assistant? But how surprising!"
"Dal is a Scholar in his own right," Cendri said. Vaniya's smile was a little uncertain. "One understands, certainly, that there are male Scholars on University, which is why we requested the Scholar Dame di Velo for work here. But it did not occur to us that a woman Scholar would choose a male for assistant at her serious business!" Now Cendri identified her expression; Vaniya was scandalized. "Don't you find it—" she actually blushed, "distracting."
Cend
ri thought, helplessly, Oh, damn, this is ridiculous.' The one thing she must not do was blush, now, or she admitted her vulnerability to this idiotic cultural and sexual taboo! She bit her lip, hard, and the pain dispelled the blush she felt rising to her cheeks. Her voice was level. "Not at all distracting, my Lady; our work is kept apart from—" she fumbled for a moment; the language of Isis had no word for marriage. "From companionship."
Miranda lowered her eyes; Vaniya frowned slightly in puzzlement. "I am not narrow-minded, I hope; I am not one of those who believes that learning makes a male somehow unmanly, and on some subjects I can converse with Rhu—" her eyes dwelt on him, fondly, "almost as with an intelligent woman. But that is not what I meant, not entirely. You come from a society dominated by men, Scholar Dame—at least one where the academic prizes are mostly reserved for men. So it would seem you might well have chosen a fellow woman for the prestigious post of your assistant, rather than choosing a man who could have won scholastic honors on his own. I understand how rude it must seem for me to criticize your choice, and I can well understand that a young woman might well desire for her Companion to be trained in her own field so that she might have the pleasure of his attendance on an assignment far from her home world. But you could have brought a capable woman for assistant, my dear; we would willingly have extended hospitality to your Companion, simply for your convenience and—" she smiled, indulgently, "the amusement of your leisure."
Miranda was blushing; she said something almost reproving to her mother in an undertone. Cendri was debating half a dozen answers, realizing—and the memory stung—that the Scholar Dame di Velo had chosen a male for her assistant, and that she, Cendri, had originally intended to accompany Dal in much the same capacity that Vaniya now indulgently allotted to her "Companion." But any answer would only satisfy a selfish desire to defend her own customs against Vaniya's—an ignoble desire for an anthropologist!
Finally she said, "Within the Unity, Lady, men and women do not compete for posts of honor. We try to assign work to the person best qualified to do it, regardless of male or female, and it would never occur to me that I should appoint a woman for assistant, any more than a man would choose a male assistant because—" she broke off, remembering that the male pronoun was not used except in a sexual connotation, "because the male was male."
Vaniya said, thoughtfully, "Yet there is a proven biological difference which simply unfits men for certain tasks. It would seem to be kinder not to force men to compete in spheres where they are not qualified." She glanced at Rhu and Dal, saying, "You two must really not take this personally, but, Scholar Dame, don't you find it tends to unfit a man for his real function, when he is allowed to develop his mind too much?" Cendri noted the deliberate use of he and his. "Men are such magnificently physical creatures at their best, and many women feel that allowing them to cultivate womanly talents such as art and music will make them weak and even impotent. Of course, there are exceptions—" she looked dotingly at Rhu. "But are the men of the Unity still—still pleasing to women?"
Cendri saw that Dal looked ready to explode; she looked warningly at him, but he only smiled. "Lady Vaniya," he said, "five hundred years ago on my homeworld of Pioneer, our men shared at least one of your beliefs, that the cultivation of art, music and scholarship would indeed make men womanly and weak. Only in the last hundred years on Pioneer have men been allowed to cultivate serious scholarship, and my own grandfather looked with scorn on the idea that a real man could be a Scholar, far less an artist or musician."
"Then your world—Pioneer—retains some traces of matriarchal rule, Dal?" inquired Vaniya seriously, and Cendri had trouble keeping her face straight. Dal refused to look at Cendri, but his voice was sober. "I am not enough of a Scholar to discover any such traces, Lady."
Oh, damn you, Dal! Cendri thought, trying not to choke on stifled laughter, nobody alive could be enough of a Scholar to discover traces of matriarchal rule on Pioneer, because there weren't any! If ever a culture was patrist and woman-suppressive, it was that one! This was wicked of Dal! Making fun of the Pro-Matriarch, right to her face!
But thoughtfulness displaced her laughter. It wasn't just reversal of woman-suppressive cultures, then; it was an exaggeration, of trends already present in the Unity, on worlds such as Pioneer, which went to extremes; if all the softer and more scholarly talents were unmanly, and men's sphere restricted to the warlike and competitive, this too could tip the balance of stereotyping for sex-roles...
Again she was angrily conscious of all the questions she could not ask. Her stay here was going to be a frustrating experience! She applied herself to the food on her plate; it was good, though unfamiliar. In any case, Cendri's training had conditioned her to eat virtually anything edible to humans without distaste or disgust; people had such widely different ideas of the palatable that any cross-cultural student had to be able to join in any kind of meal with apparent, if not actual, enthusiasm. She noted that most of the food seemed to be grains and seeds, with portions of fruit and greens, and wondered if there were taboos on meat-eating.
"Scholar Dame—"
"My Lady-?"
"Forgive me; these formalities seem un-natural," Vaniya said, "Our society does not use them; my daughter—" she looked indulgently at Miranda, "studied your forms of courtesy and convinced me that I must use them, at first, to make you welcome; and one can understand that on a world like University where many cultures meet and mingle, a veneer of formalities would smooth social relationships. But I am hoping you will find friends here, as well as interesting work. Have you a personal name, Scholar Dame, and would you find it offensive if we used it to you?"
"My name is Cendri," she said, "and I would not object at all..." she felt a flow of elation which had nothing to do with the question. I was right/1 knew these formal manners didn't fit what I had seen of this society—the clothes without social distinctions, the haphazard layout of the city! As when she had first used memorized textbook cliches for intersocial structuring, and had found they were not lifeless formulas, but actually worked, she was excited. It made her work seem real to her—her real work, not the lifeless Builder ruins.
"Cendri—it is a pretty sound," Vaniya said, "Has it meaning in your language?"
"It means—a spark, a flash of flame, a live coal," Cendri said, searching for equivalents in Vaniya's language, and Vaniya touched her hand lightly. "As I can see you are in truth, through the formal manners the Unity has put on you. I felt sure you were a woman like ourselves, though my daughters were sure that, coming from the Unity, you would be either weak, submissive, dominated by men— or else harsh and competitive, corrupted by striving against them in daily life."
Cendri knew Vaniya meant a compliment, but to her it did not sound much like one. She felt herself as competitive as any man, and as qualified to compete. But she accepted the words in the spirit in which they were given. "My lady is kind."
"But if I am to call you Cendri, you must call me Vaniya; or perhaps when we know one another better you will call me Mother, as all the women of my household do, even those who are not the daughters of my womb."
It was a cue for Cendri and she picked it up. "Then all these women are not your daughters, Vaniya?"
"Daughters of my household, but not of my body," Vaniya said, and seemed not ill pleased to expand on this theme. "You have met Miranda, who is the youngest daughter of my body, and who is bearing my heir," she said. "I have three other daughters of the body, although one has gone to live in the household of her life-partner, with her children, and one is away tonight in the city. And this—" she indicated one of the other women at the table with them, "is my eldest daughter Lialla, and her life-partner Zamila."
The two women she indicated smiled shyly at Cendri. Cendri noted that they were seated very close together, and they were taking turns feeding a very small child with a spoon. Life-partner. So the women do pair off, then. Where do they get all these children? Artificial insemination? Where in this world
are all the men?
If the men are kept away from the women as carefully as this, maybe it is no wonder they are regarded as dangerous animals____ but that train of thought embarrassed her and she turned her thoughts to analysing all the names she was told. Most of them were three-syllabled and euphonious, like all the female names Cendri had heard there.
"Also within my house are two foster-daughters and their grown children and life-partners—" she told Cendri their names, but Cendri was losing track, and found it hard to assimilate so many names and complex relationships, "...and my foster-sisters, and the grown daughters of the life-partner of my mother, and three or four women of our remote kin, who have come to live with us so that we may share companionship and work in fields and household, and visit the sea in company. My youngest male child, Lar, went to the Men's House nearly fifteen turns of the sun ago, so that no males now live under this roof except my dear Companion—" again, the doting smile at Rhu—"and three grandsons not yet a decade in age. I should also mention our household Inquirer, Maret—" she indicated a grossly fat, fair-haired person at a nearby table, who was rocking a small sleepy child in an ample lap. "Maret is a woman-by-courtesy; it was born Mar, my foster-sister's eldest male child, but many years ago it was given the privilege of wearing woman's garments—" (Cendri wondered how anyone ever told the difference, since all garments appeared unisex, but maybe the differences were too subtle for an outsider to see) "—and of performing sacrifices at the shrines of the Goddess, to be called Maret, and to live here among us as a sister."
And now that Cendri looked carefully she could see that the grossly fat person was breastless and that there was a faint shadow, carefully shaven, along the jowly jaws. An effeminate? Or a eunuch? Was the transformation from male to woman-by-courtesy surgical or merely psychological? And what kind of functionary was a household Inquirer? She concealed the sense of revulsion which rose, uncontrollably, in her at the sight of this gross ugly man who had renounced his gender to live among woman. Apparently this society rewarded feminine behavior even in men, and she should have expected it.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 Page 6