Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19

by The Ruins of Isis (v2. 1)

  Vaniya said indulgently, "The Scholar Dame will have enough to do in looking after her own Companion, my dear, without being burdened with your care as well."

  For a moment Cendri thought Dal would explode; she grabbed his wrist, out of sight between the cushions, and squeezed his hand warningly. He was silent, and Vaniya said, with a glance at Cendri, "May I indulge my dear Companion in this whim, then? If it is careful to keep well out of your way—"

  Cendri could feel Dai's obvious distaste, and at the same time, she did not feel inclined to go against Vaniya's wishes. She hesitated, caught in the middle, but finally found it most politic to say, "Rhu will be welcome, of course."

  "I thought so," Vaniya said, smiling, "since you will have Laurina and perhaps other women from the college of Ariadne to assist you with the real work."

  Cendri knew this was making it worse, but what could she say? She knew it would make trouble with Dal, and she was tired and exhausted, and her cut feet ached miserably in Laurina's sandals. She wanted to get away and fall into bed, and she knew there would be a scene with Dal. Dal tended to take out on her all the frustrations of the days, when he must keep silent and pretend to be nothing but a frivolous attachment for Cendri's leisure time. Tonight when they were alone, it was more than sullenness, it was rage.

  "Confound it, Cendri, I tried to make it clear I didn't want Rhu along, and now, our first chance to visit the ruins, you've spoiled everything by saddling us with that damned little parasite! Now Vaniya will expect me to spend my whole day entertaining him and keeping him out from under foot, and I won't get a damned thing done!"

  "Dal, I'm sorry," she pleaded, trying to conciliate him, "I truly am, but all the work we do here is dependent on Vaniya, and I didn't feel I could refuse her this small courtesy."

  "Small courtesy! My first chance to do some of the work I came here to do—"

  "Dal, Vaniya accepted my word that you had nothing to do with the prisoner's escape. Diplomatic immunity is broken on the suspicion you had anything to do with their politics—you know that! She could have insisted that you be questioned by force, and there wouldn't have been a damned thing I could do about it! I felt I owed her something!"

  "Diplomatic immunity be—" he swore, grimly, a gutter obscenity from Pioneer. She caught his arm, pleading.

  "Dal; Dal, tell me—did you set that man free?"

  He set his mouth. "It's better if you can say honestly that you don't know, Cendri. Keep out of this, I told you!"

  "Oh, Dal, you know you mustn't meddle in their politics—" She felt frightened, apprehensive, but Dal only shrugged. "I know what I am doing. And in all the confusion this afternoon, when they heard about the tidal wave—well, as I said, the less you know, the less they can blame you." He turned away to ready himself for bed; stopped, shaken, at the sight of her bleeding feet.

  "Cendri! Darling, what happened?"

  "I cut my feet on the rocks," she said, and found herself telling him about the tidal wave. He listened, tightening his mouth when she told about going up into the rickety bell-tower with Laurina to ring the alarm.

  "Sharrioz!" he swore. "I was standing here at the window and saw the wave hit and the tower go! And you were in that thing?" He held her hard enough to hurt. "Cendri, Cendri! Damn a world like this—sending a woman into such danger!"

  She leaned on him, the exhaustion and pain of the day suddenly coming down on her. It was a temptation, to let him comfort and coddle her, forget his own humiliation in solicitude for her. Yet, even while she let him lead her into the bath, while he washed and bandaged her cut and torn feet, she rebelled against the female deviousness of that.

  "Dal, women here are expected to take risks as a matter of course. I didn't want them to despise me, or think the women of the Unity are an inferior species! They already think women in the Unity are subservient and owned by men!"

  He seized her shoulders and held them. "Are you more concerned in proving points about the Unity, and women Scholars, or about the work we came here to do? Cendri, when I saw that wave hit, when I knew you'd gone there with Miranda—you'll never know how I felt! Cendri, you're my wife! I can't let you risk yourself that way!"

  Suddenly she was angry, flamingly angry. "Dal, I have a right to take my own risks! It's my decision, isn't it? Or do you really think you own me, as they seem to think men own women in the Unity?"

  "I have a right to be concerned about you," he retorted, "Or would you want me not to care?"

  She sighed, inwardly shaking, but not willing to keep the argument alive. She said, "It doesn't matter, love; I'm safe. And now everything's all right; tomorrow we are going into the ruins, and it was all for the best, because now Vaniya can't delay any more. And you can get started on what you came here to do."

  "I suppose that's true," he said, reverting to his earlier grievance. "But you've arranged it so I'll have to spend the time looking after Rhu—"

  "Dal, I thought—"

  "I know what you thought," he stormed, "you thought you'd get rid of me, not have me hanging around to show up how little qualified you are for this work, so you could botch it up any way you wanted to without having me around to criticize—"

  "Oh, Dal, no—" she protested, flushing. Actually she had been a little afraid that she would have to turn to him so often for help and advice that their carefully concocted story would not hold water; what would they think if the Scholar Dame from University continually consulted her supposed assistant at every possible moment and before making even the simplest decisions?

  "This place is corrupting you," Dal accused, "they've told you so much garbage about how self-reliant and independent women ought to be that you're beginning to believe you can get along without my help! I ought to walk out and let you show yourself up for the fake you are! Are you so damned cocksure you think you can do it all yourself?"

  "Dal, that isn't fair," Cendri said, feeling tears welling up behind her eyes.

  "Fair—" he shouted, "how fair have you been to me?" All his frustration came out in a rush. "You've tried to make me into a simpering effeminate like Rhu, trailing you around and picking up any crumbs you're willing to throw my way! I'm not like that, Cendri, I'm a man of Pioneer and you're my wife, and the first thing we're going to have understood—"

  "Dal, lower your voice," she begged, in sudden deadly fear; interior walls were flimsy here, and although they were speaking in their own language, the Scholar's speech of University, Dai's tone spoke—literally—louder than words. On Isis men did not raise their voices like that to women!

  "And don't you tell me to lower my voice! Do you think you can order me around the way Vaniya does with Rhu?"

  Cendri put out her hands to conciliate him, then suddenly something inside her snapped. She was weary of these nightly scenes where she tried to placate his hurt pride and then endured his angry lovemaking as if every night he should stamp on her body the imprint of his own strength, leaving her bruised, humiliated, without desire.

  She flung her head back.

  "All right, damn you, Dal! Do anything you please. Raise your voice. Yell. Rave. Storm. Carry on like one of your greatgrandfathers on Pioneer threatening to beat his woman and show her that her proper place is in his bed! See what it gets you! Once already today I put my credibility on the line and risked everything I've accomplished here, to keep them from beating you to rags! We're not on Pioneer. We're not even on University! We're in the Matriarchate on Isis, and do you realize that if I raise my voice, I can have you put outside in the male kennels to sleep there? If you lay a hand on me, Dal, I will call for help, and you have already had a taste today of how they treat a male who misbehaves!" She was shaking. "I am tired of this, Dal! I'm doing my best for both of us, and every night, every night I have to face this, and I'm sick of it, Dal, sick of it!" Dal lowered his hands. His face was dead white. "You've just been waiting for a chance to do this to me, haven't you, Cendri?"

  She shook her head. "I've been bending over backward
not to do it, Dal. But I've reached my limit! I can't take any more!" She bit her lip hard, trying not to cry. "It's not my fault things are the way they are on Isis! But you're blaming me for it! You wanted me to come here, you forced me into this position, into this impossible position, and now you are making it impossible for me—" her voice broke and she sobbed.

  White-faced, Dal reached for her; she flinched, and his jaw dropped in consternation. He whispered, "You're really afraid of me, Cendri? Love, what's happening to us?"

  She fell against his shoulder, weeping. "You begged me to come here, you begged me, you promised me it wouldn't make any difference who got the credit for it, you said it would be the two of us sharing our work, and now you're treating me as if I were your enemy—" She couldn't go on.

  He held her gently, trying to soothe her. "It's this damnable place," he said, "You're beginning to act like these accursed women here. I can't understand you any more, Cendri! Would you really have turned me over to them?"

  She shook her head, her eyes blurring with tears. But when he

  would have carried her to the padded corner, she began to cry again.

  Not this, not that he should soothe his hurt pride again with

  lovemaking___ He tried to coax her, calm .her, but she continued to shake her head, sobbing, and at last, angrily, he let her go and went wrathfully off to his corner.

  "So now you're going to use sex to discipline the wild animal?" he flung at her in a rage. She did not trouble to reply, though she knew that was not how it was at all; rather, he had been using his sex as a weapon to impose his will on her, and when she refused to be manipulated that way, turned the accusation back on her. Silently, she went and climbed into her high solitary bed. It was just as narrow, just as cold and uncomfortable, as it looked. She thought longingly of the warmth of Dai's body, but she knew she could not give in now. In the end she cried herself to sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He woke still sullen, and did not speak to Cendri as he moved around the luxurious bath. But when she came back after a long hot bath he was standing at the window, looking down at the ruins, shrouded in thin morning fog. He could not keep back a smile as he turned to her:

  "Today's the day, Cendri! Somehow I never thought we'd actually get inside them, I thought they'd keep stalling and stalling us-"

  "I'm glad, Dal," she said, and he came to her, contritely pulling her into his arms. "Cendri. I'm sorry I bullied you last night. I won't do it again. It just got to be too much for me, that's all."

  "I'm sorry too, Dal." She leaned her head against the warmth of him. "I just—exploded, that was all. The waiting makes me nervous, too."

  "And then when you wouldn't sleep with me afterward—it was just the breaking point, that's all. But it's over. Let's try never to get out of synch with each other again, shall we?"

  "I'll try, I promise."

  "I still think we could have made it up, if you'd been willing—"

  Softened and warmed by his touch, Cendri still found a small core of anger remaining. Did he really think that things could have been settled by coming together sexually, when nothing of the basic conflict had been dealt with? Was that really a universal male failing? Gently, she freed herself from Dai's arms. "We mustn't get off to a late start, Dal. It's going to be a long day. Have you the recording equipment ready?"

  Instantly diverted by the memory of his long-awaited work, he went off to assemble it, while Cendri thought, surprised and shocked at herself, How devious I am! That's a female way of handling it, and I despise it.' She had always despised such elusive female maneuverings. Yet how quickly the technique had come to her hand when she wished to make use of it!

  She had known all along that this place was damaging Dal. Now, uneasily, she explored the possibility that it might be having an effect on her too—or was it simply making her see, with her surface consciousness, things she had done unconsciously all her life? Damning the whole Matriarchate under her breath, and Dal along with them, she started gathering together the materials they would need.

  They made a considerable assembly stacked on the floor of their suite, and Dal surveyed them with a frown. "We'll never be able to carry all this. Do you suppose Vaniya will lend us a couple of people, or servomechs if they have them? I'd prefer servos, it goes against the grain to have other people carry things for me. If Rhu's bound and determined to come, maybe I can talk him into carrying some of this stuff!"

  "That might be useful. Anyway, some of the woman students from the College of Ariadne were supposed to be showing up to assist us."

  "To assist you, you mean," he grumbled, then deliberately made himself grin. "Well, at least it will be only young women flocking around to share your prestige and admire you! I often thought that if the Scholar Dame di Velo had had a jealous husband she could never have had the kind of career she had! Funny thing," he mused. "She's not good-looking, she seems as old as the Windic Ruins, and as for sex appeal, my grandfather might have thought her a fine-looking woman, but certainly no younger man ever did! And yet, when she started talking, nobody ever noticed any younger woman, no matter how beautiful she might have been. I was often surprised that you weren't jealous of her, Cendri."

  She slipped her hand within his arm and murmured, "I was, a little. Didn't you know?" And privately she thought: Vaniya has something of that quality. It's the quality of power, of force of personality, which has nothing at all to do with personal attraction.

  "Poor woman," Dal said, "I wonder how the Scholar Dame is getting on? I can't forget that I got my chance through her misfortune!"

  "She'd want you to do your best by it, and enjoy it," Cendri comforted him, and he sighed, "I know," as they went down toward the huge dining-hall and its morning component of frisky children and Vaniya's assembled family and hangers-on, trying for a word with the Pro-Matriarch before her duties took her away for the day. As they went to the places now reserved for them by custom, Dal muttered, "Actually, I wish we could eat a bit informally in our rooms and be on our way without all this fuss, but I suppose Vaniya would be mortally offended!"

  "Yes, I'm afraid so."

  "Why can't they just give us what help we ask for, and leave us to get on with the job? After all, it's what they brought us here to do!"

  "Dal, you're thinking in terms of the Unity and of University again," she chided, trying not to sound as if she were lecturing him. "That special idea—that time is a limited commodity and wasting it is somehow morally wrong—belongs only to a very few cultures in the Unity."

  "Well, they're the cultures that get things done," he argued. "They sent for an expert from the Unity, why don't they just let you do what they sent for you to do?"

  She shrugged. There was no way to convince Dal; he was in essence the male from Pioneer who valued attention to business and strict efficiency and a regulated approach to time, and she had long since accepted it. Her own world was time-oriented—although perhaps not so compulsively as Dal's—but at least she now regarded it as a preference, not a moral absolute!

  Vaniya, at the low table where she sat, with Miranda and Rhu and one or two other favored members of her household, such as the guests from the Unity, was listening to petitions, as she did every morning at breakfast. Cendri listened as she let Miranda fill her plate with small, crisply-fried shellfish. The petitioner just now was a man, in a brief tunic outfit, and Vaniya listened, frowning, as he presented a petition from the Men's House of—Cendri did not know what the area represented, or whether it was a single household, a district, a village or a whole city—to organize a hunt.

  "Are your rations really so inadequate?" Vaniya asked. "I do not like to think of anyone suffering from hunger. At the same time, I am most reluctant to grant this permission just now. Our reports from the seismic equipment warn of continuing quakes in that district, and it is unwise to expose yourselves to danger until the conditions are a little more settled. During one of the last quake seasons, almost a hundred men were killed
in the inland Land Reclamation district, which is why the project has been cancelled. If we cannot allow any of our subjects to go inland for anything as vital as Land Reclamation—although I have asked for some woman volunteers next season—certainly we cannot allow it for the frivolous purpose of a hunt!"

  "Respect, Mother," said the man, stammering, "but our hunt is not—not frivolous. The Inland area produces nothing and cannot even be reclaimed. The meat that grows there of its free will is a valuable addition to the protein reserve."

  Vaniya made a wry face. "A most uneconomical use of land reserves," she said, "and I am personally not inclined to substitute use of slaughtered creatures for the crops the land might grow if it were reclaimed. Even when one understands the additional need for protein in the male's food system, it seems to me irrational. It is not particularly reasonable, to rationalize your love of hunting by such arguments. I am sorry to deny your people a pleasure, but I am afraid I must refuse, for the present. I will give orders to supplement your protein rations by one-fifth, which should suffice in such a season as this, with extra allowance for athletes and manual laborers and growing youths. Will that content you?"

  "Respect, Mother Pro-Matriarch, but I have here a letter from our Supervisor stating that the crops this season will not support an increase in the protein allowance." He bowed and handed it to her, and Vaniya frowned over it, letting the food on her plate turn cold. Finally she said "I am sorry: I am so accustomed to men who rationalize the desire for hunting with specious arguments, that I had not been prepared to see a genuine need." For her, Cendri knew, that was a gracious apology. "Well, I suppose you must organize your hunt, then, but be sure to consult the City Mothers before your route is fully planned, and make certain to avoid known eruption areas."

  The man bowed. He said, "In gratitude, may we invite the Pro-Matriarch's Companion to be our honored guest on this hunt?"