Courtship Rite

by Donald Kingsbury

  “We court Kathein pnota-Kaiel,” said Hoemei warily.

  “No longer. I have given the orders. I have the votes. You are to marry Oelita the Clanless One who has single-handedly created this heresy.”

  “And she knows of this?” asked Hoemei, his voice delaying while his thoughts raced.

  “Of course not.”

  “We are to take a Kaiel-killing heretic to our pillows?”

  “It is to be so.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  Aesoe flared at this rebellion. “I have thirty families such as yours to deal with this week. Your personal problems are petty. I see the whole. I do what I must do for the clan. Without the clan you are destroyed. Therefore you will do what you must do. Some other day I’ll argue.”

  Hoemei felt his love for Kathein like a stab of warm pain passing down his spine. He thought of a time once spent with her in the garden, her black hair in his lap, while he chattered as if she had suddenly drilled an artesian well into his unconscious with her gentle questions. Ah, how loss makes us feel our love. He stared at Aesoe, careful not to speak, for tears would have been an improper response to this order.

  3

  The Gathering of Ache marched into the Wailing Mountains to meet the challenge of the Arant. The Arant heresy proclaimed that the Race was created by machines in the caves of the Wailing Mountains. Arrogantly they stated that the God of the Sky was merely an inner moon — but they died by Judgment Feast while the God of the Sky orbited over the land He had found for the Race. And the Gathering created the Kaiel to guard the Wailing Mountains from falsehood.

  The Clei scribe Saneef in Memories of a Gathering

  NOE, ONE-WIFE OF GAET and Hoemei and Joesai, came out on the stone balcony of the inner courtyard only after dressing. She smiled down at Gaet. Teenae hurried up beside her, a full head shorter than her co-wife, to stare anxiously at Gaet with huge eyes that glowed beneath dark eyebrows.

  Bathing his feet in the atrium’s pool, Gaet looked up. Such beauty allowed him to dismiss his anger for a moment: Noe with her hair carefully braided into a helmet of excellence, Teenae with her hair shaved down the middle and flowing like liquid night upon her shoulders; Noe in a soft drape, her breasts scarred in a lazy hontokae, Teenae in casual trousers stitched together out of hundreds of saloptera bellies and hung from a wide belt of the cured hide of her favorite grandfather, her breasts carved in the mathematical spirals that the o’Tghalie often sported.

  Gaet was proud that he had found these worthy wives. He had even discovered Kathein, now to be denied them as three-wife. His brothers were shy with women, to their genes’ disgrace.

  Noe was a Kaiel — her mother the organizer of trading fleets on the Njarae Sea that tested the might of the Mnankrei, her father architect of the Kaiel Palace.

  Teenae he had bought from the o’Tghalie clan when she was still breastless and pliable. He smiled. She had shown too great an interest in mathematical matters and the o’Tghalie men had rid themselves of her, for they brooked no competition from their women, a difficult convention when both sexes share the same genes. Teenae could do sums and products in her head as fast as you could give her numbers, though she had no training. She was a marvelous addition to their family councils — no one was better at uprooting the inconsistencies which crept into their group logic.

  “Peace fights with your anger,” said Teenae, watching Gaet, “and your anger laughs.” Her voice was gentle.

  Gaet broke into a grin. “How can my dark gloom survive the rising of Stgi and Toe?” The two brightest stars in the Getan sky belonged to the mythology of love and Gaet often used their names affectionately in reference to his two wives.

  Joesai came to the balcony, towering beside his wives, his body scarred in intricate designs of unorthodox curve whose meaning lay outside of the conventional symbology. “Ho. What is it?”

  “Aesoe has denied us Kathein as three-wife!”

  “Cause for anger! What compensation does Aesoe offer?”

  “Little. He orders us to wed a coastal barbarian.”

  “There are no Kaiel on the coast.”

  “True.”

  “What clan is she?”

  “She is clanless.”

  “Aesoe has gall! And why should her genes host in Kaiel bodies?”

  “He vouches for her kalothi,” said Gaet.

  “There are many ways of surviving! There are many kalothies! Our way of surviving is to organize. Answer my question: why should her genes be allowed to host in Kaiel bodies?” His body loomed above the railing.

  “Aesoe is impressed because she has more than two hundred friends personally loyal to her.”

  “Impossible!” snorted Joesai.

  “… to one as ugly as you!”

  Teenae soothed the hand of her largest husband without looking at him. “Is that true,” she asked of Gaet, “that this barbarian commands loyalty so easily?”

  “I have no reason to doubt Aesoe.”

  “Then the order is logical,” said Teenae. “The Council has deeded our family the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves all the way down to the Njarae Sea. But another clan jealous of the Kaiel rules there. A constituency of two hundred in that location would give us power. We cannot logically refuse this order.”

  “You give up Kathein so easily?” prodded Noe.

  Tears burst upon the smaller woman’s cheeks and ran down along the ridges of her facial cicatrice. “Not at all easily.” Teenae loved the Kathein she had never seen enough of. When a family was already five in number it was difficult to find a co-spouse who could love and be loved by them all. Some families never grew past five. Kathein could make Joesai laugh. She could make the taciturn Hoemei talk. She could dominate Gaet.

  At first Teenae had been afraid of the powerful force that was Kathein and what she might do to the comfortable dynamics of their Five. She had one of the greatest minds on all of Geta. And then one day Kathein had simply blocked out the brothers by piling furniture against the door and the three women had spent from noon to noon together, hugging, talking about men, sharing secrets, and now Teenae’s heart ached with longing when she thought of union with “three-wife”.

  “You’re thinking,” said Joesai, returning the squeeze of her hand.

  “I am thinking that the Kaiel have chosen the path of power and that the logic of power demands self-sacrifice.”

  “Life does not always follow logical trails!” snapped Joesai. “The bonds of loyalty take us over mountains, not around them!”

  Teenae backed away a little from this fierce attack. She was the youngest and not yet sure that she belonged in this strange clan. She had been brought up to please men who built abstract models and who became upset if those models were found to conform to some reality. Now she was dealing with people who created reality.

  “I love Kathein, too, but Aesoe has my respect as a man of formidable reason.”

  “His path is not that logical, my little dark-eyed beetle,” said Gaet. “This woman of the coast has many friends, true, but most of them are of low kalothi and will be eaten during the next famine. Some of them are noseless criminals and will be eaten before the next famine. She lives in our deeded land beside the Njarae, true, but that fact does not make her an asset — she is a fanatical heretic.”

  “Aesoe knows this?” blurted Teenae.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “What is her heresy?” asked Joesai, intrigued.

  “She’s an atheist.”

  “And what is the God of the Sky?”

  “A moon like Scowlmoon, like the moons of Nika.”

  “He doesn’t look like a moon in my sky-eye. At a magnification of four He still looks like a brass button with a hint of filigree. Still, she’s not far wrong. Is she aware that a moon can be God? What else does she believe? Did we come full blown out of machines in the Wailing Mountains?” He winked. The brothers had been born from machines in the Wailing Mountains and those so brought to life spoke obliquely of their
inhuman origin.

  Gaet laughed. “No. Worse than that. She proclaims we have insects for ancestors.”

  “My God!” exclaimed Noe. “She doesn’t! She can’t believe that!”

  “Which insect?” asked Teenae.

  “The maelot.”

  “Logical. The maelot is the only four-legged insect with fleshy parts on the outside of its exoskeleton.”

  “But a maelot is so small!” protested Noe.

  “The largest insects are in the maelot class. The ones who have returned to the sea can be as large as your leg. Wrong ammo acids, though. Wrong replication coding. Not logical. We are closer to the bee than to the maelot. We are even closer to wheat than to the maelot.”

  “She has no place for God?” asked Joesai.

  “None. She cites some impressive evidence for genetic drift and selective pressures, then supposes that the link between us and the maelot is missing because we evolved from a cannibal form of the maelot that ate its inferior offspring and so left no fossils.”

  “Absurd biochemistry! Absurd history! We know the day and the sun-height of the day that the God of the Sky brought us here!” stormed the tallest brother.

  “Not quite that precisely. Radioactive dating has its flaws.”

  “I speak of the Chants. The Outpacing, verse 107, line 4.”

  “Which version?” chided Gaet. He paused, ready to put the critical question to a vote. “Who is in favor of continuing the courtship of Kathein?”

  “I,” said Joesai.

  The two women nodded.

  “But can we disobey Aesoe?” asked Gaet, testing their resolve. “I suggest that I journey to the village called Sorrow and court Oelita.” He winked at Noe. “I may bring back new ways of loving.”

  Joesai grinned. “You know too much already for the good of Hoemei and myself. I suggest that I slip into the village called Sorrow. I’ve been thinking that Aesoe cannot object if we court this coastal barbarian by Rite of Trial. She must earn her Place, and no Kaiel finds an easy Place.”

  “He will not object to the Couth Rite.”

  “I had in mind the Death Rite.”

  “That would not please Aesoe. Premature death is a sacrilege if it does not take inferior genes with it.”

  “If the Rite does not challenge her with Death how can it be a true test of her kalothi?”

  “And if she lives? She may. Aesoe claims her kalothi is of the highest.”

  “Ho! He hears that from the Stgal. Who takes seriously the kalothi rating of a village temple? If she lives, Gaet, she will be a worthy three-wife for us.”

  “But could she love us after we have tried to kill her?” Gaet kept his game face, but his eyes betrayed mischief. “Such mistrust might mar the harmony of our marriage.”

  “That cannot be my problem. To survive she will have to kill me.”

  “You will never be popular with women,” sighed Gaet.

  “Some women love only the men they defeat.” Teenae’s large eyes were sparkling. “I love Joesai because I always beat him at kolgame.”

  “Little larva!” He kissed the shaved streak across the top of her head. “For that insult I’m taking you with me to the coast as my shield!”

  “A shield you think I am! I would protect this Oelita against your zeal!”

  “Ho. What is this? Already the heretic’s kalothi shows itself to guard her? You both must host common barbarian genes. Good. Then with you by my side I will understand her!”

  Teenae turned wildly to Gaet. “He’s not serious?”

  “Yes. You must go with him. The Council has given us that land, but we must earn it, and neither you nor Joesai have yet mixed its dirt in the cuts of your feet.”

  Noe grabbed her tallest husband by the biceps and forced him against the stone, lifting her face to speak to his. “Even after Aesoe’s command, you still think we will marry Kathein?” She was disturbed.

  “Of course we’ll marry Kathein!” snarled Joesai.

  4

  If Death is in front of you, he appears to be behind. A man who runs from Death, runs into the arms of Death. A man who faces Death turns his back on Death, and standing there, proud of his courage, is taken from the rear.

  The nas-Veda Who Sits on Bees, Judge of Judges

  JOESAI’S BULK OVERWHELMED the small stool in the archives of the Temple of Human Destiny while he copied out of the Kaiel Book of Death in the tiny, precise script of a man who has been a genetic surgeon since the time he learned to write. Reddish sunlight diffused from the curved mirrors around the windows cut into the stone. At dusk he continued to work while the shadows deepened, but finally closed the books, unwilling to pen by glowlamp. Evening found him wandering through the city, memorizing what he had copied, fleshing out the dryly recorded rituals with mental images of planned action.

  Since Aesoe had disrupted their lives, orange Getasun had dawned fourteen times to the east of Kaiel-hontokae, marking seven high days and seven low days, waking them from seven sleeps. The Constellation of the Amorists had given way to the Constellation of the Ogre and Joesai’s work was nearly done. He needed only one more boy to complete the team he was to take against the heretic — a mature boy, eager to please, a Kaiel, a brave and cunning youth, a boy who was not in a hurry, one who could play games with his opponents. Joesai already had his quota of girls.

  At the Creche of the Seven Holy Martyrs he ate supper from the Master’s table above the machine-born children, watching them. They were used to him. He taught here and they thought nothing of his presence while they joked and reached for the steaming food, but he was weighing them against his needs, deciding which one he would reward with life by removing him from the creche as he had been taken as a youth. Only one in four survived the creche-culling and Joesai knew he was selecting an apprentice who, by being selected, would become one of the survivors.

  The review narrowed down to Eiemeni. Yes. That shadow was fast and loyal and deadly. Joesai had heard it told that once Eiemeni had delivered a friend of his to death without tears. Joesai rose. “Eiemeni!” he commanded, stilling the other youths. Eiemeni stood. “Come forth.” Joesai had the table cleared and stood Eiemeni upon it, giving him a wooden bit for his mouth while he took out tools and carved an enigmatic design upon the stoic’s foreleg. In the morning Joesai brought the limping Eiemeni to the training camp outside Kaiel-hontokae and gave him to the group trainer, Raimin, to be integrated into the team. Another few days and they would move out.

  Joesai spent the rest of the morning in the city working with miniature hammer at the table of goldsmith y’Faier. At Noe’s suggestion her husband was to assume the guise of a wandering goldsmith, the kind of person who was liable to derive from mixed stock. No one would recognize him as Kaiel. He was a head taller than the ordinary member of his clan, as tall as the Ivieth who pulled the wagons, but too narrow to be of the Ivieth. His face was plain with a commonplace nose that fell straight from forehead to tip. His body decorations were of no recognizable pattern.

  Teenae, it was decided, should not hide her identity. She could never pass for anything but o’Tghalie, but then, the o’Tghalie sold their women and it wouldn’t be unusual for a goldsmith to have one as a follower. Certainly no one would suspect that she was Kaiel.

  The family had temporarily split into two groups. Gaet and Hoemei tended to Teenae and slept with her. Noe spent these last low days with Joesai, impishly finding this an ideal time to teach manners to her “cactus bush”. An unctuous goldsmith would know all the refinements of the coast. She taught him phrases until he rolled his eyes. She dressed him in robes, one of saffron yellow with embroidery that held metal and stones made by a tailor who was in her constituency, and she showed him how the girdle fastened and how to hold his skirts as he ascended stairs.

  Laughing inside, because Noe liked nothing better than to tease an awkward man, she brought out one of her own coastal robes held together by complicated wrappings and gravely instructed him in how to undress her while
at the same time praising her beauty.

  “I’m a fighter,” he lamented, rebelling.

  “But we are walking you to the coast to seduce a powerful woman, not to fight.” Noe nearly lost control of her face.

  Later, on his knees, his mind rotted with sly flattery and his fingers sore from deft unwindings, he looked up imploringly and broke role for a moment. “Goldsmiths do this?”

  “Of course. They’re very sensual. But much more gently and with far more conviction.” She slipped away from her husband. “Here. I’ll dress again and we’ll start over.”

  His imagination began to work on Joesai. One-wife stood against the window while the dusk sun, like a happy farmer unwilling to leave productive mountain fields, plowed the textured furrows of her skin. Joesai saw the hontokae on her breasts sprouting profane tai berries, saw desert wheat springing from the whorls on her belly, and sacred corn from the fluted grooves along her legs. The whole image was too powerful. In one passionate motion his hands surged to grasp her wrists so that he might kiss her, but though he pulled her body close, he could not find her dodging mouth or move her toward the pillows.

  “No,” she laughed, “not until you’ve learned your lesson!”

  “How do they breed, those coastal barbarians, if they have to go through this to be loved!”

  Passing by, Gaet heard the commotion, the outrage, the muffled kiss, the laughter, the struggle. Curiously he peered through the curtained doorway. “Who needs help?”

  Noe instantly accepted the alliance. “Take this ruffian away.” But she managed her own escape. “Do you think we’ll ever make a goldsmith out of him? He never learns.”

  “He learns when his life is on the line. His only skill is staying out of the stew pot.”

  “I was doing some very acceptable filigree with y’Faier this morning,” grumped Joesai. Y’Faier was a goldsmith of Hoemei’s constituency, a man, Joesai claimed, who was suspiciously lacking in the legendary amorous talents, except, Noe teased, when he was alone with the ladies.