by Nōnen Títi
The Frimon who stepped out of his home was a different one than Jema had left inside. He was like she’d always seen him: full of power and showing it. People made way for him without having been asked, at least a set of them. It was this busy only at the full moon, but, according to Anoyak, Society membership was getting bigger.
“Membership? You make it sound like a club.”
“It seems that way. People kind of pay to get in.”
Jema asked no more questions. Frimon, speaking with the burning fire as his backdrop and the huge print resting on his arm, captivated his audience. Within minutes he became more driven and through his tone of voice and the movement of his hand, the emotions started trickling over onto the crowd. They repeated his words. Here and there people were crying. It was impressive and frightening.
Jema took Anoyak’s hand. He smiled down at her. His hair was still the same sleek, unmanageable mess it had always been, but he had fleshed out and grown taller. He didn’t seem to be taken in by it as much. Yet this same boy had been transformed by Frimon from the frightened teenager she’d known on SJilai into a man, confident and at peace with himself.
The speech ended, but that wouldn’t be the end of it and Jema had a good idea what to expect: One volunteer after another worked themselves into a trance before submitting to a public penance, calling for Bue to save them – or something like that – and to abide by the rules of the Society concerning commitment, promiscuities, and violence. All the behaviour that had irritated Frimon in town was hereby made into a moral wrong.
The first two she watched. It was no longer the beating that made her shiver. It was the “aah”s and “ooh”s of the crowd watching it, the looks on their faces and the ease with which those people put themselves through this. It wasn’t just the devil’s followers who were dangerous – the other side was just as bad.
Thankful for Anoyak’s arms around her shoulders she wondered about the sort of people who came to watch this spectacle every twenty-one days. Why Laytji? So sensitive to hurt, she stood there cheering with all the others. Maike may have been right to try and hold her back. And with her were Kisya, Doret, and Ilse, who was only eleven. Damn Kolyag and the example he set… No, that wasn’t fair. If she blamed Kolyag for Ilse then Jema would be responsible for Laytji being here.
The ceremony ended with the proud new members leaving first, followed by the spectators. Frimon picked up the strap, hesitated for maybe a fraction while looking at Anoyak and herself still standing there, then turned and went home.
“How did this happen?”
“They want it, Jema. He’s not forcing anybody. They are demanding it. Most are new to the Society. They come and watch one day, and the next time around they want to do it.”
“But it isn’t real. It’s a show.”
Anoyak didn’t deny it. It was that which Leni was making a stand against. She didn’t openly protest it. She didn’t make a public demonstration against him. She just stayed away and that was exactly what hurt Frimon.
Jema went back to Leni’s home the next day. She needed to talk. “Why do people or animals sacrifice themselves?”
“Bue, Jema, that’s not really a question for me. I’m no philosopher.”
“So what’s the difference between philosophy and religion?”
Leni wasn’t sure. “Religion is organized. It has rules and values for people to abide by.”
“Oh come on, Leni. Fetjar’s was a philosophy and all of DJar ended up living by its rules.”
“I don’t really want to think about the deeper meaning of it, Jema. It gives me peace and a close bond with the people I share this with. That’s all I need.”
“But you can think about it. I heard when you talked to Nini. You can believe and still allow other views without feeling threatened. So why can you do that and why can’t Frimon? Why do some people become so rigid?”
“Frimon lives by the Sjusa. He follows what is written because it makes sense to him that way. I rarely read the print. I go with what makes me feel comfortable,” Leni answered.
“But why?”
“Ask Frimon that question, Jema.”
“But you think he’s wrong to let this happen?”
Leni indicated she didn’t want to discuss it.
“Well you do, don’t you? I watched it last night. He has all those people paying penance and they’re proud of it.”
Leni abruptly sat down on the corner of the chest in front of Jema, who was in Frimon’s seat, and put her hand on Jema’s leg. “Penance used to be a rare and private affair with sincere emotions and the emphasis was on talking with the goal of resolving hurt caused by moral problems. What you saw last night was not penance. These people don’t have a problem with Frimon’s morality; they indulge in it. They do it to get some kind of self-worth out of it. In principle there’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t believe that is what Bueror meant when he called for penance as a means to ensure peace.”
“Exactly. He wanted peace through penance, like Fetjar wanted peace through altruism. They were both sacrifices, so what’s the difference?”
Leni stood back up. “I told you I won’t speculate on interpretations, neither to connect them nor to set them against each other,” she said and walked away. But she had, with that one line, pin-pointed the exact problem: She didn’t want to use the meaning of the word for either peace or war; she didn’t want to preach what could only be lived.
Jema knew little about the people who had been Bueror and Fetjar, but enough to know they were essentially the same. They might explain their ideas using socialist or divine power words, but what they sent was the same message. Both belief systems had suffered from a turn toward doctrine and away from the ideal: an ideal forged from social inequalities and suppression. So who was it that changed those ideals? Was it those who had trusted it to paper or was it those who read the print; those who took the words literally, turning it into a moral rule based on acts, but failing to see the underlying meaning? Even clever people, like Frimon…
And it wasn’t just religion. Instead of taking nature as a whole, DJar’s creators had aimed to take every little bit apart and then failed to connect the pieces back together. They missed the big picture because they had nothing to compare, and so they couldn’t accept the existence of a people eight mas ago who’d been capable of doing so, and they couldn’t accept a reality in which people were not the most intelligent and the most highly evolved. In the end, Postlearners was no more than the church of the creators, indoctrinating its apostles with a one-sided view and refusing to let those who queried its validity in – another religion which had temporarily taken over on DJar, until it, too, would become myth.
All those groups fighting each other were mere expressions of the same thing, then: people’s need to reason their existence, making the act of believing itself a survival mechanism, which was why Frimon could argue that Bue existed because Bue said so, and Roilan could believe in objectivity because he could objectively rationalize it – unable rather than unwilling to see the other viewpoint.
As soon as they started quarrelling with each other over right and wrong, they’d lost it. Not only had they lost each other, but more importantly, they had lost the connection with the founder of their own philosophy. And the more lost they became, the louder they started shouting, the more rigid their rituals became, and the more reasons they found to exclude others, doing exactly what their originators had tried to escape from. Maybe Jema hadn’t been so wrong that time on SJilai, when she’d warned Frimon that he’d lose his son. Rorag had turned away from him yesterday; sad but true.
“What are you frowning about?” Leni asked.
“Nothing.” What was Frimon getting out of all this? He’d been outcast most of his life, made to feel unwelcome wherever he went. Was that why he was now so determined to prove that he was important? And the more he needed to be accepted, the more moralistic his club became, until… exactly the way Roilan had been motivated; the
two of them accepted what was considered knowledge from a source they trusted, but they took the facts rigidly, without perspective.
“I don’t know where you are with your thoughts but you’re certainly not visiting me,” Leni said.
“Sorry. I don’t know where they all come from. I can’t stop it.” On DJar she would have written it down. On SJilai, too–
“Now tell me about you and Nini,” Leni said, sitting down in the other reed chair.
The sudden change of subject took Jema by surprise. What she had with Nini was a very close friendship, no more. She told Leni so.
“If I’m right it isn’t just Nini who so desperately wants a baby, is it, Jema? What I don’t understand is why you don’t try for one. Like Rorag said, you were never a user.”
“Did you talk to Nini about that?”
“I don’t need to talk to anyone. I can see it.”
Jema retied her hair. “I’m too old.”
Leni refused to accept that as an answer. If a body was capable it was still possible. Why wait until it was too late?
“But how could I have a child?”
Leni started to laugh. “Now don’t go telling me you’re ignorant. There are no rules here. Plenty of people share a mat with whoever they want. I’m not saying I approve of that, but the possibility is there. You wouldn’t need to commit for it. You could share the outcome with Nini.”
“Aren’t you supposed to believe that procreation is the outcome of a commitment between one man and one woman?” Jema asked.
“Nobody states how long that commitment is supposed to last, Jema. It could last as long as a lifetime or as short as one night.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying that.”
“A child should be conceived of love, not of commitment, and a woman shouldn’t have to give up what she was created for just because she has no comate. It isn’t worth the suffering. After all, what’s the difference between creation and procreation?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“So why not try?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Jema had no answer to give Leni.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Leni said.
But Jema wasn’t thinking – at least not that which Leni meant. What she was thinking was that she really didn’t want to be here right now.
“You must have thought about it before?”
Jema shrugged. Of course she had, but thinking and saying were two different things. It was too late now anyway. On DJar, maybe even on SJilai, she’d had some hope, but DJar was six years ago.
“You were committed before, right?” Leni asked.
Yes and what a disaster that had been…
“What went wrong?”
Everything went wrong. Jema was what went wrong. Her existence had offended Kityag and Mom and the rest of the planet; a nuisance, not productive, no maker, not obliging, not acceptable and, thus, not procreating either. Couldn’t risk handing DJar society to people who could think for themselves, after all. What were the chess-players to do if the pieces had minds of their own?
Leni stood up, walked to the arched entrance of her home and stopped. “You can leave then,” she said.
Jema caught herself staring.
“If you’re not going to speak to me you can leave right now and not come back.”
Leni was kicking her out? Without getting upset or angry?
While her body refused to move, Jema’s mind went on a race. She couldn’t not go, but if she did the friendship would be over, and if she didn’t… but Leni didn’t want her here anymore. Who did? Way to go. How long before she had no friends left? Maybe it wasn’t just DJar society she didn’t fit into. Maybe it was all of them.
Leni stood waiting. The smile was gone, but she just watched, no more. Was she serious?
Jema forced herself out of the seat. It felt like in slow motion, like when they’d first come to Kun DJar. Her legs were heavy, but it was from the weight of Leni’s gaze. She could hardly push her way through, but with Leni standing in the entrance – which was no more than a low walk-through – Jema would have to ask to be allowed to pass… and all that because she’d not answered a few questions?
Her fists clenched she forced the words, her eyes on the floor. “Excuse me.”
Relief came when Leni did step out of the way. Jema felt the warm air around Leni’s body. Outside the light was still bright and cool. But before she could take the last step, a hand on her arm forced her to turn back. Leni’s soft brown eyes had gone dark, but her voice was still gentle. “Do you value our friendship?”
Jema nodded. Of course she did.
“Do you want to walk away from it, like you did from Daili?”
No, she didn’t.
“Look at me.”
Everything was wrong suddenly. She didn’t want to lose Leni’s friendship, but right now Leni acted more like… like Kaspi would have. Jema looked up.
The hand around her arm repeated the question. “Say it.”
“No.” That sounded like she was refusing to say it. “No, I don’t.”
“Think you can talk?”
“Yes.”
Leni let go of her.
What had just a short while ago been a warm, welcoming home, now felt strange and cold as Jema returned to the seat she’d been in, because Leni pointed that way.
“Now tell me about your comate,” Leni said as if nothing had changed.
What was there to tell? But Jema started anyway. “We just didn’t get along.” She told Leni that nothing had happened to make her leave Kityag; no fights, no mistreatment, just nothing, because she wanted a child and he didn’t. Everything between them had just died over that.
“He blamed me for not being like other women. He used professional articles to prove what was normal and I still believed them then. I tried at first, but I was no good at it and I felt betrayed, so I stopped pretending. He’d say he didn’t mind, that it wasn’t important to him, that he liked me for who I was, but he blamed me anyway, so he refused to try for a child. At that point my life was over so I walked away, emotionally. It was easier. That’s about it.”
“And now you’re afraid another man will be just like him?” Leni asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s been so long. I just can’t pretend. I know most women do, but I can’t.”
“Why don’t you go to someone to learn it, so you don’t have to pretend? Why do you think we have guides?”
“But you’re kids then.”
“So you’re back to saying you’re too old? Aren’t you now the one using DJar prejudice?”
“Maybe.”
“You never tried again? Never on SJilai or on this planet?”
“No.”
“And before Kityag?”
“No.”
“So you base all your worries on one relationship?”
One had been more than enough.
“Listen to me, Jema. Just like any other species, people need to procreate to exist. Men have another role to play in that process and, thus, have different needs, which they will pursue no matter what words they use to contradict that, exactly the way Frimon can talk about tolerance but still act judgmental. The words, like the articles, are social pressure, temporary moral views that come and go with the ideals they are meant to support, but people don’t respond to words; they respond to instincts and emotions. Ideas change with time, instincts do not; not for men or women. Instincts exist for survival, both the instinct to procreate and the instinct to judge. Once upon a time, people needed to make judgments to determine whether something was dangerous, but having an instinct does not mean having the right to use it against others. Kityag used statistics to justify what was motivated by instinct without being aware of it. His words were sincere; he wanted to accept you, because in view of the time that was the right thing to want, but wants are not instincts and they don’t rule. By refusing to give in you’ve hurt yourself more than Ki
tyag.”
“I know.” Nini had said the same thing. “But he was basically wanting me to sell out my values. He took revenge by denying me the child I was stupid enough to tell him I wanted and I believed his lies. I should’ve known better. Life had never given me what I wanted.”
“Excuse me?”
Jema realized the wrong of that statement when it was already out. Another bad mark in Leni’s print. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Whether you did or not, you said it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Leni sighed audibly. “Instincts override values, Jema, and I’m sure Kityag was no monster. It’s easy to hate, walk away from, or slay a monster. It’s a lot harder to leave a person who’s not evil. It is very difficult to stand against a friend, and it’s almost impossible to fight yourself, yet that’s what you’re doing. You turned Kityag into a monster. You were willing to walk away from me like you did from Daili; not because you wanted to, but because you can’t stop fighting. You’ve told yourself you don’t have any needs – no physical needs, no feelings and no need for friends. You blame Kityag and you blame DJar, but no system is perfect.”
“Yours seems to be okay.”
Leni contemplated for a bit. “No, ours isn’t either. I repented to Frimon not so long before leaving DJar to put something right; something I had done a long time ago and for which I had used our system. I didn’t think he’d ever forgive me, but I couldn’t leave on this journey without telling him. He decided to come with me anyway. The details of that are not important. The point is that without our system I could not have used Frimon for my own gain.”
Jema didn’t quite understand it all, but she didn’t ask.
“Would you like a drink now?” Leni asked.
Did she ever, but she had to say something first, so she stood up when Leni did. “Thank you… for not letting me go earlier.”
Leni put her arms around Jema and pulled her close. Jema didn’t fight that. There was nothing left to hide from Leni and it felt like coming home.
EVOLUTION
6/2/5/8/1
Benjamar untied his cloak and draped it over the rack outside the Hearth, put there for exactly that purpose. Ever since a farmer had discovered how to separate the reed fibres into strips thin enough to be woven, most people had copied her example to make warm cloaks, which at night functioned as an extra blanket. As it was a bit early for breakfast, Benjamar found only Yako and Marya inside.