Afterwards, she said, as though to herself, and almost unwillingly, “So, then … not everything one learns in foreign parts is bad.”
He thought that this required nothing to be said on his part, so he kissed her breast. It was still wet.
• • •
And even after that, though she no longer spoke of “having heard of such things … abroad,” still she complained that he was often with his friend. He knew of no way to tell her that it was not quite so, but that his friend was often with him.
• • •
At various times in history the Synod of Guardians had been the supreme organ of delegated authority; at other periods this place had been occupied (“usurped,” if one preferred) by the Assembled Lords. The sharpness of these historical dividing-eras was blurred by the often ages when the two had struggled for superiority without either quite gaining. The present governance of Tarnis was based upon a balanced and perpetual truce between them, a truce complicated in typical Tarnisi fashion by the fact of each body containing members who were also members of the other. The Tarnisi themselves accepted this, but not without a sense of its peculiarity — typified, perhaps, by the famous story of the young man who — facing a parental summons to account for reported wrongdoing — urgently inquired of his mother, “Advise me, for my life! is my august father being a Lord or a Guardian today? so that I may know what to say to him!”
That young Lord Tilionoth was among the informal gathering at Greenglades, when everyone was concerned with matters affecting the interest of the Guardians, was no surprise either to him or to the others. It was the season of the Former Equinox and green was being worn: leaf-green, grass-green, sea-green, sky-green, grain-green, insect-green; sunset-, dark-, and feather-green. Tilionoth had removed his robe of vine-green and stood in under-costume of the same hue, a hundred marks from the great triangular target, the figure which had once delineated a stag-Volanth prancing with club in hand now faded to a dim outline on which only the five vital spots — throat, heart, belly, and the arteries of the right and left groins — still stood out brightly and retouched. The young Lord moved up and down on his toes and swung his arms. His Pemathi handed him the spear-thrower and he held it with his right arm and placed it athwart his right shoulder. Next he took the target spear, examined it, hefted and tossed it several times, catching it with his left hand. Then he stepped back to the line and set the shaft in the thrower so that the butt end rested securely in the pocket prepared for it at the end of the throwing-stick.
Several of the older men leaned upon their T-staves and watched with detached interest.
“Stands well … .”
“Yes. None of those ropy muscles, you know. Ah — ”
“Well tossed! Well thrown! Neatly in the left!”
“Glad to see that his fondness for foreign toys hasn’t made Tilionoth forgetful of the classical sports.”
“Ah — ! Neatly in the throat! Well tossed!”
“What foreign toys are those, Guardian?”
“Oh … .” The gray-haired Guardian waved his hand downslope. “You know. The river, there, for instance. Skimming and darting like water-bugs, hundreds of them. You can’t have missed them.”
“Yes, yes. Those tiny power craft, the one-man ones? I’ve been tempted to try, but I’ve got too much belly on me to lie flat, and then, you know, all that spray in the face, I … . Neatly in the right!”
“Well tossed!”
The few women present waved their hands so that their jewelled bangles tinkled Like tiny bells. The air smelled of fresh-cut grass and of the aromatic sawdust sprinkled at the line where Lord Tilionoth stood, now swinging the thrower in his right hand to limber it and the arm and shoulder muscles. He glanced at one of the women and smiled.
“There’s been quite a fashion for foreign toys of late, it seems to me. It won’t result in any turning away from any of the ancient ways, not just in sport, one must hope. Ah — ! Ah — ! Neatly and well!”
The gray-haired Guardian placed two fingers before his lips in the Tarnisi negative. “Oh, no fear of that, no fear. One of the returned men, son of an exile, Tonorosant — have you met him? You will, one must hope — he has sort of taken up these foreign toys as a hobby. And, well, one does know that none of us born in the land are ever so anxious for the ancient ways as a returned exile. Which is understandable, which is natural … deprived of them for so long, ‘in barbarous lands and far,’ oh?”
“ ‘Thirsty flock, return ye to the water,’ oh?”
“Just exactly … . Ah. Last shaft.” They placed the carved and gilded top-pieces of their T-staves securely under their arms and leaned forward, mouths slightly open, jaws thrust slightly forward. No arm unaided could ever have propelled a target-spear one hundred marks; this was the function of the long wooden spear thrower, to constitute as it were an artificial extension of the thrower’s arm, thus to give greater force and distance to the hurtled lance shaft. A very light sweat glistened on the sun-dark skin of Lord Tilionoth, on face and neck, hands and arms and lower legs. He stood for a moment motionless in his place, the thrower hanging from his one hand, the spear pointing head down as it rested loosely in the other. In one swift flashing series of motions which seemed almost one motion, spear was in spear-thrower and thrower was flung forward and downward and spear was in air and spear was transfixed in target and quivered there and Lord Tilionoth was just righting himself and the thud of the stricken board met their ears.
“Heart! Heart! Well tossed, well thrown, and neatly in the heart!”
The dim and dancing Volanth image supported five shafts. Not one had missed, not one had dropped out. “No fear, eh? that anyone who can throw like that is likely to be spoiled by foreign toys — ”
“None whatsoever, one must hope. Mmm. Umm. Tilionoth is, ah, still quite safe?”
A look of craft and cunning and pride passed between the gray-haired man in the dark-green and the ruddy-faced one in the lizard-green robe, swept down to cover the young spearman who, stripping off his dampened under-tunic, was walking towards the bathing-booth, and came back to each other.
“Oh, yes. Still quite safe, one need not hope.”
Something of the heat had begun to pass from the later afternoon air. The groups of spectators broke up, walked to and fro, formed into other groups, gradually dispersed. And still the two stood where they had stood, leaning each one upon his T-stave, talking in tones no less intent for being quiet. And at length even they turned and tucked their staves and slowly walked back to the great bulk of Green-glades, greener — beneath its clustering of thick-growing vines — than the robes of either. They had mounted the low rise just before the ramp when one of them stopped and took a bit of the other’s sleeve between his thumb and his forefinger.
“One moment more, my sister’s sib … .”
“Certainly … ? my brother’s get … .”
“In all our talk of those men long-known and familiar to us, let us not forget the newly re-arrived. Exiles need not necessarily assume their fathers’ and grandfathers’ allegiances. Do you follow? So. And there is this, too, that their former lives abroad have served to whet their wits and sharpen their — ”
The other nodded, once, twice, quickly.
“Yes. There is that. Toys or not. Let us indeed not forget it.”
They walked their separate ways into the house.
• • •
Tonorosant and Sarlamat stood looking over the railing of Tonorosant’s new house at the swift-flowing river where the water purled among the grasses of the shallows. Not far below, it curved and vanished among clumps of furry saplings and beneath overhanging branches of huge-boled trees. A water-wander flipped and dipped after sprats in the eddy, sending scattered drops to pierce the pattern of the ripples. Now and then came a sound of wooden bowls clattering from the kitchen, almost instantly hushed by the soft-voiced and soft-footed Pemathi house servants. Aside from this, the sound of the water, and an occasional flash of b
ird song, all was silence.
Tonorosant sighed and breathed deeply. “I hope that no one is ever bored with this,” he said. “The river … . A whole new, clean, vivid, sweet, wonderful world. The river at Old Port was an open sewer, it didn’t even have tide enough to keep it clean. I saw the body of an infant floating there once, I remember. Came back a week later, it was still there.” He grimaced, shook his head and shoulders. Then he turned to his friend.
“How is your new lady?”
Hob Sarlamat smiled, the lines about his full mouth deepening. “She is well, she is wonderful. We are good friends, very good ones. She now accepts the fact that I don’t and never will paint leaves well, and of course blames it on my foreign upbringing. And I of course don’t bother to explain that I simply have no interest in painting leaves. Some things sink in more than others, I suppose. But I am in no hurry to leave, you can understand.”
“I do, I must hope,” said Tonorosant, who had been Jerred Northi. And, in a way, still was. “Atoral is coming for supper and she will stay the night.”
Sarlamat murmured, How nice. He smiled again. He made no move to leave.
“ — And. I don’t know if you were informed … ” Tonorosant knew, in fact, almost nothing of the subtle means whereby Hob was kept informed. “ … but I have paid the last amount. To the Craftsmen, I mean. I now own myself.” It was his turn to smile. He saw his face reflected in a little pool below. It was a well-made face, in more senses than one, and he liked it not the least because it lacked a certain pinched, bitter look which the face of Jerred Northi had been sometimes wont to have. He admired in a detached way the line of the upper eyelids, in between acanthic and epicanthic, and the way the green of the iris took on a deeper green from the water.
“Congratulations,” Sarlamat said, in his low, slow, unhurried voice. “ ‘On owning yourself,’ I mean. It was a good stroke of business, wouldn’t you agree? Yes … you no longer need me. You haven’t for quite some time now. As far as that’s concerned I could leave. But … I rather like it here, do you know,” he smiled. “And in addition to everything else, there’s my new lady. So I am in no hurry.”
His friend disclaimed any desire that he should ever be in any hurry to leave. Somehow the talk fell upon the subject of “foreign toys,” as the Tarnisi had from the first chosen to call them. There were the water sleds which had set at least half of the younger male Tarnisi skimming and darting over rivers and lakes. The great, kite-shaped gliders which had made so great and so unexpected an appeal to the older members of the community, with their slow, silent, majestic soarings and swoopings, rich — it turned out — in philosophical over- and undertones. The coiffures, available in at least a hundred different models, undistinguishable by touch and sight from natural hair, which released the mature and elder matrons from the hours of tedious setting and waiting previously required to procure the results demanded by inflexible and unchanging tradition which had almost the force of law. And all the others … .
And still it passed off without difficulty as a mere hobby of Tonorosant’s, he helping to gratify the curiosity of his fellow-elite with foreign-acquired acumen. The stigma of commerce was not present. The open work of importation was arranged by his Pemathi clerk and distribution carried on between the latter and the clerks and stewards or other upper servants of the Tarnisi interested. Openly, the once Jerred Northi never touched money. No one insulted him by asking a price, he insulted no one by naming it. In all probability, no one but the Pemathi under-class was even aware that he was making money. The mind of aristocratic Tarnis was simply not attuned to thinking along such lines. The Pemathi, of course, knew. They had the task of paying out their master’s money, after all. Which made them, likely, the most pleased of all; for it was a firm principle of their homeland’s that “money must melt.” And it melted a little in every pair of pale, red-haired, often freckled hands … to freeze up again until it should be time to retire to Pemath and melt (or at least thaw) all over again.
Meanwhile, in several various foreign fiscals, Tonorosant’s personal (and exceedingly private!) accounts went on to grow and proliferate in a most satisfactory manner.
Atoral came and dined and stayed the night and her lover wondered again about the Tarnisi prejudice against early marriage … “early” being anything before the middle thirties. In general it had, he supposed, the virtue of keeping down the numbers of the Tarnisi population, although certainly sophisticated methods of doing so were not only known but utilized … as, for example, by Atoral. Prejudice, again, tended to disallow its use within the marital structure. And in particular it enabled him, Tonorosant, to enjoy the pleasures and benefits of the liaison without worrying about the entanglements of marriage. Which could become very entangled indeed. His genes had not been changed by the processes he had undergone at the hands of the Craftsmen. Such change was possible, or had at least once been possible. But Orinel was not a world in which the fullness of the possible had ever been used to flourish. Tarnisi reaction to his fathering obviously only half-Tarnisi children would be unfavorable, to say the least. It would not only be infinitely unwise for himself, it would be infinitely unfair to both the woman and the child. He recollected with distaste the incident he had been told about of the “Quasi” who had tried to pass as pure Tarnisi that day at Yellowtrees … and all the incredibly ugly talk about such wretched creatures which from time to time cropped up in conversation. And then there was the merely emotional matter of his becoming over-involved with Tarnisi life at all.
No, no. Better to remain disengaged as most he might, and then, when he judged it best, slip out and slip away and simply never return, leaving behind him nothing deeper than perhaps casual wonder.
Meanwhile, if Atoral had accepted wonderingly certain aspects of physical lovemaking which Tonorosant had not learned in Tarnis, it was his part to accept with perhaps less wonder but no less appreciation certain aspects which she had certainly learned nowhere else. The chamber still odorous of the fresh-worked and fragrant wood, her body unworn and pliant in his arms, her voice joyously astonished in his ears, her hands sincere and deft upon his skin, were all quite and excellently different from either the stews of Pemath Old Port or the fancier brothels of the New Port or the either bluntly commercial or rough liaisons he had had elsewhere. There was no striving without desire on either his part or hers, no mere sufferance by her, no mere seeking outlet and relief by him. Repetition did not satiate either before the other and both were spared the near-Hell into which near-Heaven may so easily turn or be turned when appetite and its quest is all one-sided.
The deadly words, You think only of your own pleasure, had never passed in voice or thought between them.
They arose and walked about the grounds in the coolness of the dawn and the dew. His tentative identification of certain plants amused her, his absolute ignorance of some several others dismayed her. “Exile must be quite dreadful,” she said, her humor passing into genuine feeling.
“It is … .”
“To have no home, no family, no scenes so necessary that they cannot be done without — I can’t know how that might be.”
“No,” he said, a bitter, sombre note penetrating his thought and voice. “You can’t. Be glad.”
She bent to touch a flower and watch the drops of mist distill down its petals. Her face in profile seemed incredibly delicate and young. And lovely, too. He bent and touched her lip, her cheek.
“Oh, stay today. You will, I must hope?”
She smiled gently, but was so firm that regret could not enter. “Not be present at the tulsa-festival of my aunt’s youngest daughter? You aren’t serious, I must hope. One reaches puberty only once, you know. I remember my own … . I would ask you, you know, but we haven’t been lovers quite long enough. But I’ll return tonight. Will I be welcome?”
He spent the morning going over accounts with Idór uDan, his ostensible personal steward but actual executive vice-president. Long familiarity with the Pe
mathi mind and method made it unnecessary for him to reveal that he knew both chopchop and the actual language; the figures in the records and a very few words sufficed them both — and sometimes only a look, a clearing of the throat, a tap of the finger was sufficient. It was far from likely that Idór uDan believed that his employer’s interests in “foreign toys” constituted no more than a hobby. There was no cause for concern. ‘Dan was in Tarnis for the exact same purpose as his master: the “pure and disinterested desire” of making money: and would keep silence all the days of his life for the sake of ten tickys … let alone the hundreds of units which the matter would bring him. A passenger by grace and favor alone, he was not one to risk rocking the boat.
It was after a lunch eaten leisurely on the front slope of his house, dressed with brief, flitting, recurrent memories of dirty three-dish dining rooms, that he had changed his clothes with the intention of taking the prescribed two turns around his grounds. The upper house-boy appeared and, bowing silently, held out to him a T-stave with something bright wound about the crutch of it. The silver shoulder loop and crest of formal-most attire. This was high courtesy indeed: for every-day formality was abundantly satisfied with a rectangular card on which the crest was enprinted. He looked at the servant. “Guardian Othofarinal,” the man whispered. Tonorosant reflected a moment. Then he removed it. This was in effect an invitation for the owner to enter, for, according to ceremonial theory, he could not proceed away without it. One was in effect compelling him to enter. The servant bowed again and made to withdraw.
“Wait.” Tonorosant went into his cabinet room and removed from the wall chest the small inlaid box containing his own silver shoulder loop and crest. Returning, he wound this around the crutch of the T-stave, gestured the servant to present it to the caller. This was a double invitation to enter, implying as it did that the master of the house deprived himself of the possibility of leaving it unless he who received it returned it … by his own hand, of course. Then he withdrew to change into formal dress: robe, ruff, hood, gloves; and when the servant returned with the Guardian, he, Tonorosant, the master of the house, bowed, and accepted as though it were a great gift the fastening of his own silver crest loop upon his shoulder.
The Enemy of My Enemy Page 6