Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19

by The Ruins of Isis (v2. 1)

  "The Scholar Dame is kind," Rhu said, shaking his head sorrowfully, "but it is too late for me, even if somehow I could have that experience; I do not think I could ever believe it, now."

  Dal laid a hand on his shoulder. He said, with a warmth that astonished Cendri, "Rhu, my friend—look at me." Cendri could not see his hands; he kept them out of sight; but she guessed quickly at the gesture as he said softly, "You were not born in chains—"

  Rhu looked, in terror, at Cendri. He said, "No, no—not here—"

  Dal was motionless for a moment. He said, "Cendri is not—" then sighed. "Very well. When we arrive at the Residence, if you wish."

  Shocked and hurt by this mark of distrust, Cendri realized she should have known it all along. Dal had a mission here which had nothing to do with the Ruins.

  I knew it, that day when the fugitive Bak was caught_____

  This is against the laws of the Unity! she thought, then berated herself as naive. Who but the Unity could have sent Dal on such a mission, primed with the passwords he would need? So much, she thought wrathfully, for the University code of ethics, of noninterference in the basic codes of a society!

  Are they going to interfere in the Matharchate, try to twist it their way? She wondered how Dal could stoop to this—to entangle himself in Unity politics. Dal was a scientist! The ethics of a Scholar of University should certainly supersede the political struggles of the Unity! Isis had a right to structure their society in their own way! How could the Unity dare to send agents dedicated to destroying it, altering it, arbitrarily, to fit Unity standards?

  She turned away, afraid that Dal could see the anger in her face, relieved as the car drew to a halt and Rhu said, "This is the Residence of the pro-Matriarch Mahala."

  It was, in its own way, as imposing a dwelling as Vaniya's home, although longer, lower, all on one floor. There were wide lawns and flower and herb gardens, shrubbery and playgrounds where a group of half-naked children were playing. The walls were decorated with murals, as usual on Isis, but the quality of the painting was so much better that Cendri surmised—rightly, as she later discovered—that Mahala had gone against custom and had her walls decorated by a professional painter rather than by members of the household.

  There were no steps here. Cendri remembered that most houses in Ariadne were built without stairs or upper rooms because of the constant danger of earthquake. In the large front hall, a young woman greeted them formally and ushered them inside, saying, "The honored guests from University, Mother Mahala." Rhu was ignored as if he had been one of the small children on the lawns.

  The Pro-Matriarch Mahala rose easily from a large cushion where she had been sitting, examining some papers, and came toward them. She was a small, wiry, dark-haired woman, in a brief kilt that left her withered breasts bare; but, perhaps in deference to Unity custom, she had thrown a scarf about her upper body. Her voice was light, low and quick.

  "It is a pleasure; you honor me, Scholar Dame, and you, Master Scholar of the Unity." Cendri blinked; it was the first time in their stay on Isis that Dai's position had been spontaneously recognized.

  And yet this was the woman who had sent a message forbidding the women of the college of Ariadne to associate with male scholarship? Cendri felt completely confused.

  "I had hoped to meet you before," Mahala said, in her quick light voice. "I do not know how much my colleague Vaniya—how she hates me!—has told you about the political situation, but I presume it is not much."

  "She has told us that your High Matriarch lies at the point of death and that she has not named either of you as her successor," Cendri said.

  "That is true. Unfortunately, before lapsing into unconsciousness, Mother Rezali insisted you must be lodged with Vaniya, because her Residence is so near to the Ruins of We-were-guided. I have tried to encourage you to visit me, but I do not suppose my messages reached you; finally I was forced to arrange things in a way even Vaniya could not ignore. I apologize for placing you in this position, Scholar Dame." She smiled, then looked at Dal and said, with a sudden grin, "And I suppose I should also apologize on behalf of my people for the position in which you have been placed all along, Master Scholar, but the customs of the Matriarchy are what they are, and I could not abate them for the sake of a single guest, no matter how worthy. I trust it has not been too much of an inconvenience, Scholar Malocq."

  Dal said, politely, "No more than any Scholar would accept for the privilege of exploring the ruins of the ancient people who built the site, Mother Mahala." Cendri noted that he used the title spontaneously and with ease, as he had never seemed able to do with Vaniya. Cendri, too, was not immune to Mahala's charm. If Vaniya was, as Cendri had occasionally thought her, a magnificent golden lioness, Mahala was like a small friendly kitten; but Cendri warned herself not to underrate this woman's intelligence or shrewdness.

  Mahala waved them both to seats on the cushions at her side. She said, "Now we will talk a little before this entertainment. I am sorry that you chose not to compete, Scholar Malocq—" her eyes dwelt for a moment, appreciatively, on Dal. "You are handsome enough to give us all a treat on the field of competition; but I suppose you felt you could not join in the unfamiliar contest. A pity. Another time, perhaps, you will give us that pleasure." As food was brought in by women of her household, she served them herself, and said, "I had thought that my message denying you the assistance of the women of the college would have brought you to me at once, Scholar Dame."

  "It did not occur to me," Cendri confessed. "I am not very skilled in politics; I thought it simply an expression of hostility."

  Mahala laughed. "I was too subtle, then; I was hoping to create a situation which would bring you to me, to confront me—even in anger—so that I could see you away from Vaniya's influence. I am quite aware that she holds the ruins of We-were-guided in a completely superstitious awe, and I feared she might attempt to delay exploration indefinitely." She gestured. "Do eat while we talk, we do not have a great deal of time. I don't suppose you know why I am anxious to see the ruins explored?"

  It was Dal who said, "Surely you don't have any scientific curiosity about the Builders, Lady?"

  "Not a smidgin of it," Mahal said frankly, "but if they are genuinely the ruins of a race which seeded the entire Galaxy, then Isis will become the center of scientific interest all over the Unity. We are a poor planet, Scholar Dame—" Cendri noted that in spite of her defiant decision to treat Dal as an equal, and her attempt to include him in the conversation, she found herself automatically addressing Cendri; even to the enlightened Mahala, it did not come easy to speak directly to a man. "We are a poor planet. We have few exports. And you have experienced our earthquakes, though we can deal with them and even predict them a little. And, worse, our terrible tidal waves."

  Cendri said, "Yes; I saw a village wiped out by one, it was terrible indeed!"

  "I heard about that," Mahala said. "So you know that our pearl harvest for this year is reduced by at least a third, until the pearl-divers can rebuild their boats and their nets. We need the kind of predictive seismic equipment the Unity can give us. Yet we are caught—caught between the quake and the great wave! We need, we desperately need, what the Unity can give us. We cannot afford to buy it—you have seen that, I think!"

  It was Dal who said, "Lady, the Unity has grants for member worlds, to allow them to rebuild their worlds and bring a homestead world up to the necessary level of efficiency. Surely the predictive equipment would so much improve your agriculture and your industry, freeing you from the continual destruction of quakes and tsunami, that it would pay for itself within a very few of your Long Years."

  "This may be true," Mahala said, "but we are not a member world of the Unity, Master Scholar, nor likely to become one, for reasons I am sure you are intelligent enough to understand have no personal insult. We are what we are. We cannot accept the conditions under which the Unity would grant us membership."

  Cendri said quietly, "Respect, Pro-Matriarch
, but I do not quite understand. What is it that you cannot accept about the Unity conditions?"

  "They would demand that we re-structure our society to admit males to a completely equal franchise. We cannot accept that the Unity has a right to decide whom we shall admit to citizenship. Our history tells us that every society where men are admitted to equality soon comes under their domination. Males—again, please understand, this is no offense to you personally, Master Scholar— are not content with equality; they cannot endure a society where they do not dominate. And every society dominated by men has soon come to accept male values of aggression, competition, and, eventually, war. And this has destroyed every culture known in the Galaxy, one after another—you are a scientist, Scholar Dame, you are familiar with Rakmall's Limit?"

  The question was put to Cendri, but it was Dal who answered, "I know what Rakmall's Limit is; it is the extreme outside margin of the time during which a culture can resist entropy. But—with respect, Mother Mahala—I do not believe Rakmall's Limit is determined by the position of men in a culture."

  "The scientific research done on Persephone has determined otherwise," Mahala said. "A culture rises from the animal into matriarchy; as the matriarchy decays, men take over, entropy begins under the name of progress, technostructures and entities multiply needlessly, social experiments begin, and from there the political, historical and evolutionary process appears to be predetermined. It was upon this research that the Matriarchate began the Persephone experiment, an attempt to build a culture which could resist decay, progress, and entropy, by indefinitely delaying or eliminating the stage at which males seized power from the primitive mother-right. Patrilineal cultures always signal the beginning of entropy and decay, and the death of a culture by aggression and war."

  Cendri listened with fascination. In a few minutes, Mahala had told her more of the basic assumptions behind the culture of Isis than she had learned from Vaniya's household and her own observation in many days. But she found herself quite unable to agree with Mahala's analysis.

  Damn, she thought, I wish 1 were here as an anthropologist, openly. I could talk to Mahala and she would understand. She felt a pang of disloyalty to Vaniya.

  She said, hesitating, "I am—I am something of a historian, Pro-

  Matriarch. In primitive pre-space cultures, the matriarchal

  societies, too, underwent degeneration, when they in turn began to

  oppress men___ "

  Mahala smiled. "But we do not oppress our men," she said, "Our men are completely content and happy, because they know they live under a rational culture which will never destroy itself, and that we are here to protect them from their baser impulses, and free them for what they are best suited to do." She gestured to a hovering servant, and added kindly, "Let me help you to a little more of this delicious melon, my dear Scholar Dame."

  Dal said, "Are you aware, Mother Mahala, that the Unity has been instrumental in reversing some of the very abuses of which you accuse it? On my world of Pioneer, which joined the Unity approximately four hundred years ago, the Unity demanded the enfranchisement of women as a condition of admission for Pioneer, and the men of Pioneer agreed; not cheerfully, but we agreed, and women on Pioneer are now free to be the equals of men. Are you saying that cultural customs are so sacred that Pioneer should have refused to enfranchise our women, to preserve our customs of long standing?"

  Mahala narrowed her eyes. She said, "I know only a little of Pioneer. However, I cannot believe that what the Unity did made so much difference, after all. It is hardly equality for women, if they are simply freed to live as equals in the kind of culture designed by men for men; a woman, to be equal in such a culture, can only be equal by doing the same things men do; and equality in a corrupt male-dominated culture is probably not worth having. Women can fulfill themselves only in a culture designed by women; the difference is that in a culture designed by women, both men and women can know true fulfillment." She added, with a charming smile, "But there is no need to argue politics now. I do not expect you to agree with me, Master Scholar." She turned to Cendri and said, "However, Scholar Dame, I am sure you can see my point. If the ruins at We-were-guided are of sufficient scientific interest, then the Unity will, perhaps, give us trade allowances, including the earthquake-predictive equipment we need, in return for concessions for scientific study, without demanding that we violate the basic principles of our social structure."

  Dal said frankly, "It is quite possible, if the ruins prove indeed to be those of the Builders. I—" he broke off, with a glance at Cendri, and she said, "I am not yet ready to form any conclusion about the actual age or origin of the ruins at We-were-guided. It seems most likely, from their state of preservation, that they are of much more recent origin than the Builders; old, indeed, and perhaps unique in the known worlds of the Unity, but probably not ancient enough to be those of the Builders—if, indeed, the culture called the Builders ever existed, which is rather doubtful and remains to be proved."

  She was proud of herself; for once, she thought, she had managed to sound precisely like a professional archaeologist. She caught Dai's eye; he was smiling, a faintly superior, tolerant grin, and she felt stung. What had he expected her to do?

  "In any case," said Mahala, "I shall hope that they prove of sufficient interest to draw the scientific community to us, and give us the equipment we need without concessions which would ruin our culture and doom it to follow the rest of the Unity to the death decreed by Rakmall's Limits. At least, my dear Scholar Dame, you are studying the ruins left by the Builders—or whomever the makers of the ruins may have been—and not offering incense and flowers at their shrine! And now, I see that my worthy colleague has arrived, so allow me to escort you to the games in your honor, and I wish you a most enjoyable and entertaining afternoon."

  As they were driven to the amphitheater allotted for the day's games, Cendri was thoughtful. Mahala's charm had made an impression on her—enough of an impression that she felt seriously disloyal to Vaniya, for whom she had come to feel genuine affection. But Dal, she knew, was in a deeper predicament. Mahala had, in a sense, offered him—by way of an offer to the Unity—his uttermost desire; a free hand for Unity scientists to come here openly and study the Builder ruins; to bring a fully equipped team here and give them systematic study over a period of years. Yet she had tied this concession—one Cendri knew Vaniya would never have made—to a condition Dal, with his fairly obvious undercover mission to the men of Isis, could never accept: a pledge, on the part of the Unity scientists, not to meddle with the social structure of Isis and the enslavement and disenfranchisement of their men.

  In the Official Box above the amphitheater, where they had an excellent view of the huge oval playing field, she and Dal were seated in a position of honor. Vaniya was at her side, with Miranda, too, joining them in the box. The stands were packed with women of all ages, from young girls to old ladies, shouting and applauding enthusiastically as a large number of athletes—all male, and all naked except for colored ribbons tied around their heads—paraded in the amphitheater. Cendri blinked with surprise; this was the last form of entertainment she had expected here. But on reflection it made sense; as much sense as some of the spaceport-area sex displays of female beauty. It was, perhaps, even a little more tasteful, since they had come together, at least ostensibly, for athletic competition, and nudity in athletics had come and gone, as a fashion, since pre-space days. Flower sellers vended their colorful wares through the amphitheater; Miranda bought a basket of blossoms and offered it to Cendri, displaying their use by tossing down flowers to particularly handsome specimens parading, readying themselves for the early contests; pretty adolescent boys running races and displaying agility at leaping and vaulting.

  Dal whispered under his breath to Cendri, "Damn it, this is embarrassing!"

  "I don't see why it should be any more embarrassing to you than it was supposed to be embarrassing to me when you took me into a show once in the port distri
ct and were admiring the pretty girls there," Cendri whispered back, and Dai's face took on a dull color. He muttered, "I never thought you minded that, you didn't tell me."

  Some of the women discussed the fine points of the athletes with considerable technical understanding; they played a leaping game with rackets—Cendri had seen something like it on University, hitting a ball back and forth over the net—and prizes were awarded by Mahala herself, varying from the trivial, garlands of flowers and shells for the boys' contests, to silver and gilt badges and medals, huge boxes of confections and baskets of fruit, and elaborate sports equipment for the contests among the older men. The women shouted and cheered, threw down flowers and colored ribbons, and urged on their favorites in loud voices. The men strutted and preened, displaying their prowess and good looks without any undue modesty. Cendri found the display embarrassing, and was embarrassed, too, at the frankness with which the women admired the men.

  "What a pity your Companion does not choose to compete, my dear," Vaniya said, eyeing the men in the arena with a look Cendri could only describe to herself, privately, as lecherous, and looking regretfully at Dal. "He is so very handsome. Dear Rhu, alas, is quite hopeless at athletics, but then," she added, sighing, "one cannot have everything."

  Cendri looked at Rhu's downcast eyes and flinched at Vaniya's tactlessness. She caught Miranda's eye as Miranda murmured something under her breath to Rhu. It was a disturbing thought. Did Rhu, with his intelligence and his musical talent—yes, and his good looks, too—really feel inferior because he could not compete in the parade of athletic and sexual display down there in that arena?

  The afternoon was to culminate with displays of boxing and wrestling, and Cendri gathered that these were the major events for which everything else was only preliminary, and the prizes for these were really valuable. A sort of intermission was going on now; the women bought iced sweets, chattered enthusiastically about their favorites, flung flowers at athletes waiting in the amphitheater, and watched displays of dancing and parades by—Cendri gathered—the Men's Houses of various households in the city. Dal rose, and murmuring an excuse, slipped out of the box—Cendri supposed he had gone to look for a rest room somewhere. Rhu called after him, then rose and with a word to Vaniya—who nodded indulgent permission—went after him. Cendri, watching Vaniya leaning over the rail and watching the handsome men in the arena, thought Vaniya was kind really, despite her tactlessness. She was unfailingly kind to Rhu, it would probably never have occurred to her that she was showing contempt for him. Indeed, Vaniya was kind to everyone of her household, she was a conscientious leader of the women of the city.