Courtship Rite

by Donald Kingsbury

  “I should go,” Oelita thought pensively. She was recalling how much trouble her foolish rage against the Kaiel at Nonoep’s farm had already cost her. “You’ve probably heard that the Mnankrei are after my life. But,” she added angrily, “I should stay and fight, too. I’m afraid.”

  “Let me tell you something else. You have influence here. The Kaiel are hungry for influence in this region as you well know. They would bargain with you.”

  “What could they offer me? Would they stop their butchering of helpless babies?” she asked bitterly.

  “They could offer you time, protection. How long will the Stgal last? It’s a changing world. Your books have made friends in Kaiel-hontokae.”

  “I’ll sleep on it. You’ll tell me more about your mysterious city. We hear only the wildest rumors.”

  The smell of the food attracted curious children from the neighborhood. Once inside they played with Teenae and crawled all over Oelita. She finally shooed them away but at the door was greeted by a noseless man who had chosen that moment to return one of her pamphlets. The two women talked with him for a while, debating theological points, and then he left.

  “You’re so at ease with criminals.”

  “He’s harmless!” exclaimed Oelita impatiently. “He stole a loaf of bread from the first harvest after the last famine. A loaf of bread! Have you ever seen a dangerous criminal? The dangerous ones get to make their Contribution-to-the-Race in a hurry!”

  “He loves you. You give him hope,” Teenae retreated.

  “He needs hope, poor boy. Will you have broth with your meal? It’s profane but harmless. I’m careful that way.”

  “A small cup.”

  Idly the discussion came back to printing Oelita’s manuscripts. She was eager and trying not to show it. There were other books she considered more important than Sayings. She left her cooking to fetch her newest work from a messy pile and in her excitement to show Teenae the pages she almost toppled her insect boxes with a brisk swing of her arm.

  “It’s such a clutter here. I’ve just moved and I have less space.”

  “You have quite an insect collection.”

  “My father’s.”

  Teenae examined the fine dissection kit and microscope that had been used to draw and classify the insects. It sat beside a rock collection.

  “Is this glass?” Teenae was so startled by one of the stones that she forgot the manuscript in her hands.

  “It’s too hard for glass! And it is the wrong crystalline shape for a diamond. I don’t think a diamond ever grows that large.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I collected stones as a child. That one I found while swimming. It was just there in the sea overgrown with weed and I took it.”

  “The sea?”

  “My father taught me to swim. It’s not dangerous.”

  “Joesai says such crystals contain the Frozen Voice of God.”

  “If we put it on the fire will God come out by the hearth and tell us stories?” chided Oelita.

  “He talks about genes,” said Teenae defensively.

  “Like a priest when he’s drunk on whisky?”

  “I’ve never seen it happen.”

  Oelita laughed. “But you’ve heard about it. Do you think that rock in the sky ever spoke to anyone?”

  I’m sure of it. “I don’t know,” said Teenae to avoid controversy. She did not know what to do with the manuscript that Oelita had suddenly forgotten.

  “We’re such a superstitious people!” the Gentle Heretic raved. “There is a rational explanation for everything. We could chant that God brought the insects — but you can trace how they changed to meet challenge until they fill every niche where life can exist. My father found life in the driest desert! He found, embedded in stones, the shells of insects that don’t even exist today. Do you know how long it would take for that kind of stone to form from clay soft enough to trap an insect? Eons! And the Chants say that the Race just appeared here in a puff of smoke at noon practically yesterday!”

  “There are no human fossils.”

  “We make soup out of bones!” exclaimed Oelita, setting a meal before her guest, beside her newest manuscript.

  “My family collects bones.”

  “We’ll find human fossils. You’ll see. No one has ever looked! And they haven’t looked because they haven’t dared! And we have found bone tools.”

  “Recent ones.”

  “Teenae! We’ve only been a tool-making insect recently. There weren’t many of us before. It’s been a rapid evolution.”

  “Because we ate the less intelligent ones.” Teenae had wanted to bring up this contradiction in Oelita’s philosophy. Oelita condemned cannibalism while claiming that the vitality of the Race derived from cannibalism.

  “Yes,” came the defiant answer, “because we ate the less intelligent ones! People always get me wrong. They say I don’t believe we should follow the path of kalothi. I believe in kalothi! It created us out of insects and it is our destiny. We haven’t stopped evolving and I don’t want us to stop evolving. But we don’t have to eat each other to evolve! There are other ways. I can think of other ways.”

  A long pause ensued while a thoughtful Teenae nourished herself. “What ways would you suggest?”

  “If we women got together and only had our children by men of great kalothi, that would be one way. Those of us, like me, who have defective genes can decide not to breed. That’s another way.”

  They argued while they ate, but Teenae never tried to win. Oelita’s ignorance in too many fields was too appalling to make it worthwhile to argue logically. There was a God. That fact was so obvious with the proper background. Without the proper background one could only have faith. Oelita had neither knowledge nor faith. She was an ignorant, unsophisticated, self-educated country girl. Teenae liked her but was rather horrified at the thought of being married to her. Aesoe was a mad dreamer. When she had Oelita in Kaiel-hontokae she would convince Aesoe that there was a better way than marriage.

  Oh Kathein, I love you so!

  The sun was long gone before the two women were talked out. They cleaned up from the meal. Teenae read part of the new manuscript. She accepted a small gift from Oelita and gave one in return, exacting with it the promise that they would meet again for supper.

  “Soon!”

  “Soon,” smiled Oelita.

  Crashing waves raised by the wind brought salt spray all across the village. The blackness was full, for Scowlmoon was dark at sunset. Only the starlight illuminated her pathway home. She was going to relish her triumph over Joesai. She had begun the first steps in a real negotiation and she felt elated!

  Fingers took her from behind over the mouth, muffling her protests while two other men clamped vise-like grips upon her fiercely struggling body.

  15

  In his lifetime a man will pace over all the stones in the river, the large ones and the small ones, the flat ones and the slimy ones. The stone he misperceives will kill him. The merciless man does not see mercy and so when he needs mercy his feet cannot find it. The man too proud to show his mistakes makes a fool of himself missing his jump. The man who lives in dangerous waters and leaps nimbly from suspicion to suspicion will be unable to cross the river because he will not trust the solid stones.

  Foeti pno-Kaiel, creche teacher of the maran-Kaiel

  JOESAI WAS WORRIED, yet not ready to worry seriously. He had Teenae’s note and he was angry at her for slipping out of his protection in the town where two Kaiel families had been murdered; but she hadn’t promised to be back before dawn, and Getasun was only one diameter above the horizon. Noe, bless her, would not have gone without consulting everybody, but Teenae was Teenae. She liked secrets. Five of his men watched for her quietly.

  Damn! I’ll spank her bare wheatcakes when I catch her. Restless, he left the inn and paced up the long quay. If they’ve hurt her I’ll hang their screaming skinless bodies for the bees to hive on.

  He
turned and saw Eiemeni approaching along the granite with Oelita and four of her fierce men. The way of their walk was foreboding. They were in a hurry. Her robes flapped in the sea breeze.

  It was going to be the news about his wife. In a flash he suspected that Oelita had met his deception with a deadly counter-deception. I’ll kill her if Teenae is in danger! When Oelita was close enough so that he could see her face he knew his conjecture was right. “Teenae!” he hissed as he quenched his anger and poised himself with a tempered soul, ready for anything, emotionless.

  “The Mnankrei have your wife! It’s my fault!” Her voice was stricken.

  Of course he did not believe her. She had taken his headstrong child bride and was now paying off Joesai in the coin of some grisly joke. “Explain yourself.”

  “Your wife left my place and four thugs took her. Two of my guards, who had been following her for protection, tried to interfere. The thugs left one unconscious. The other followed to spy.” A tall, deeply scarred man bowed. Oelita went on breathlessly, “I don’t know why they took her. Perhaps they thought she was me.”

  “The ones who challenged you with a Death Rite?” he asked without letting his face show a flicker of disbelief.

  “The Mnankrei? Yes. I don’t understand them,” she said.

  Now there was a bluff for a temple’s game table! “Where is she now?” What is your price?

  “On their ship. It arrived yesterday, warning of famine to the south.”

  Joesai nodded to Eiemeni and his man left on the run. Oelita’s face was compassion. He did not know what to say. She seemed to be able to lie as well as he lied. He dared not openly voice his suspicion of her for fear of walking into a trap Oelita had set for him. His respect for her deviousness increased enormously. Not content to organize a defense against attack, she was returning the attack ruthlessly. It had never happened to him before. “I love that woman,” he said darkly, locking his eyes with the heretic. “Whosoever harms her, I shall destroy.”

  Oelita touched his arm. Her treacherous sympathy enraged him.

  “Why was she with you?” he asked.

  “We were discussing a publication scheme I’ve had in mind for a while. We hardly talked about it. We played kol and chatted about gentleness and the reasons why people should not destroy each other. Your wife thought she might be able to help me get a book of mine printed.”

  So that’s how you reached her, he thought in an aside to Teenae. He cursed himself. All the time he had spent with Oelita escorting her back to Sorrow along the coast, she had known who he was and was plumbing him for weaknesses, preparing her counter-offensive. She had audacity to flaunt herself in front of him now. But there was nothing he could do but pretend innocence while she pretended innocence. “I want her back,” he said.

  “They’re still here.”

  “Who?”

  “The Mnankrei.” She pointed impatiently. “Their ship.”

  He had to grant her a chagrined smile. She constructed her story well. A Mnankrei freighter was indeed at anchor far out in the bay, its sails furled. He did not believe for a moment that Teenae was aboard. “What do you suppose they want of her?” he said with muted sarcasm. “Ransom?”

  She stared at the ship with hatred. “What do you suppose they want of me? I will get her back for you. I have a score to even with them.”

  “That sounds brutal coming from the mouth of the Gentle Heretic.”

  She smiled briefly and tweaked his nose. “There are ways to even scores without being brutal, my chitin-hearted man. Watch me! I am not powerless. They think to use your wife to trap me. I will trap them!”

  Eiemeni trotted back along the quay. “She is held in yonder ship. It is confirmed.” Eiemeni had his eyes fixed on Joesai.

  For the first time Joesai looked out at the ship with alarm. He braked his alarm. Best not to rush too fast, he thought. Eiemeni was not old enough to be aware of the intricate turnings which a trap might take. A magician could convince you that his head was full of pebbles.

  Joesai explored different theories. If Oelita had an alliance with the Mnankrei then the deception of the Mnankrei Death Rite would have been transparent from the beginning. But if there was such an alliance then Oelita was truly dangerous and rescuing Teenae would pose grave risk and might not even be possible. I will be forced to negotiate with Oelita.

  She left, promising to be back. Joesai gathered the key strategists of his group at the inn for a game council, awaiting further intelligence. Rumor spoke of Mnankrei priests at the temple offering the Stgal to bring in wheat if that should prove necessary. Finally one of Joesai’s scouts returned with a grin. He had boarded the Mnankrei ship as a “port inspector” and indeed caught a glance of Teenae below decks while pretending to check harbor regulations. She was naked and manacled.

  That was all Joesai needed to know. “We’ll sink the ship,” he said. When I get Teenae back, I’ll keep her in irons myself, he thought gruffly, not meaning it. Then he called a planning session.

  16

  The purple Njarae is the breeder of our ability. Does she not drown the careless sailor?

  Proverb of the Mnankrei

  SEA PRIEST TONPA, Storm Master, sat in his carved swivel chair, long hair braided into his beard, his face scarred with the flying-storm-wave design, examining Teenae, who stood naked, ankles manacled, wrists manacled in brass chain, holding her head high, guarded by two erect seamen. He felt fatherly amusement for the tiny girl but was quite willing to hide that in order to properly terrify her.

  Tonpa could see in the quivering of her mouth that she was not taking her humiliation well. Probably she was being silent to hide her near-tearful state. These Kaiel, who watered down their stock with the genes of the underclans, were all bluff. As the saying went, they were the kind who could only play games on a steady table.

  “We arrive here,” he said severely, “after having run a storm to bring in relief supplies to the south. This port is an out-of-the-way call on our return, but we think of it as our sacred obligation to warn of the plague that brings famine to the Stgal communities below, for it must come here as the wheat ripens. And what do we find? Lies. Slander against the Mnankrei. It is not to be tolerated.”

  He waited for her reply. She did not reply but stood rigidly stiff, her expression slightly disgusted as if the ship-smell of ripe sea creatures and salt offended her mountain nose.

  “We hear of this act perpetrated against one of the most respected women of this community. True, she is a heretic. True she speaks falsehood and foolishness, but she does not lie. So who is the source of these lies? The innocent folk who live here are willing to listen to lies about the Mnankrei just as they are willing to listen to lies about the Kaiel, so they look no farther for truth. But we are the Mnankrei and so we look for the source of these vicious lies. Of course we suspect the Kaiel.

  “Are not the Kaiel known for their devious lies and their arrogance? The kaiel insect spreads false scent so it can control. The priest insects who have usurped this name spread calumny for the same purpose. But the salt spray that clears the nose gives us immunity from such ensnarement.

  “Was it hard to find you? It took a day. You stand on my deck against your will, shaved of your dignity, in fetters. We also have spies. Our spies are more brilliant than your spies. Haven’t we Culled for intelligence week by week while you baby-eaters wait for famine to tell you when to Cull?” He paused and cleaned his fingernails with the point of his knife. “A Kaiel posing as an o’Tghalie. True Kaiel deception. Futile. The wind that fills our sails does not need feet. Speak! Defend yourself or confess!”

  To abate the adrenalin terror, the manacled woman clenched her fists and breathed heavily, breasts rising and falling with her chest, but she would not reply.

  Tonpa flipped his knife and it sank into the deck, vibrating. One of the seamen recovered the thin weapon, returning it with a bow. The Storm Master never took his eyes off Teenae. He accepted a mug of warm broth from a b
oy who emerged up a ladder and still he did not unlock his nude victim from the brig of his gaze. He grew impatient.

  “This woman you wish dead, whom you have so cowardly attacked in the name of the Mnankrei, is coming aboard ship. You know she is in no danger here. But because of your lies, she was difficult to persuade. I have had to offer hostages. You will have to face her.” He watched Teenae flinch and laughed the great laugh. “She does not know the truth.” He watched Teenae shrink. “I do.” He watched Teenae turn her head away ever so slightly. She was breaking. “I give you a choice. You may face her and keep silent and make your Contribution through Ritual Suicide to the larder of this ship which has sacrificed so much to bring food to those threatened with starvation, or you may speak with honor the truth and escape with only your nose being cut from your face for the crime of slander. Speak!”

  Teenae was glaring at him with a hatred that had overwhelmed her fear — for the moment. Tonpa shrugged, deliberately feigning indifference. “It’s been a long voyage. Be stubborn. The men will not object to the taste of fresh meat.” He watched her eyes dart between her two guards. They were grinning. Her hatred crumbled to fear and he had her.

  “I will speak the truth to Oelita — but not for my life,” she said with loathing.

  “Because you are honorable, of course.” He couldn’t resist that last whiplash. A gesture told the guards to take her away.

  Tonpa followed her down to the lower deck but his ever-alert eyes caught the stare of one of his sailors as the prisoner was escorted past him. Arap was a big boy, bigger than Tonpa, and useful in a storm for his untiring ferocity. He was young, very young; he had no more than fuzz for a beard but he was precocious with the women, a jolly soul who could convince a matron twice his age that she was young again, and never failed to try.

  “What a waste!” he sighed to his master, his hand gesturing in open grip as if he would take heaven by her round buttocks.

  “Nothing is to be wasted,” replied Tonpa to provoke Arap. “Every finger of her is lean meat.”