Courtship Rite

by Donald Kingsbury

  She saw the swift Mnankrei ships and the good harbor at Sorrow, and at the same time she saw the Wailing Mountains and the treacherous trail through the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves. Was he aware of how absurd his challenge appeared — a frail vehicle against this frightful terrain? “Let’s go back inside.”

  “You don’t seem impressed?”

  “How could I be?”

  “Neither am I,” Gaet said, subdued by her coolness. “It’s the best we can do.”

  She invited him to her tiny room and he built a fire for her, then rummaged about finding a quilt to warm her back. It was a lesson to her. All the Kaiel were different. This one was not violent like Joesai. He had an easy compassion. “I must ask you one more question.”

  Gaet nodded while feeding another bush trunk to the blaze.

  “Were you sent here to get the crystal from me? I do not have it with me.” There was defiance in her voice.

  He looked up at her, the flickering light playing over the scars of his face. The face revealed nothing, no surprise, no alertness. He was merely waiting for her to go on. He had not understood what she said, and so perhaps it was true that he had not been in contact with Joesai.

  “The crystal that Joesai called A Voice of God,” she explained.

  “You have one of those? Yes, that would catch Joesai’s fancy. I know little of such things.”

  She was disappointed. Gaet did not react at all as Joesai had. His disinterest frightened her. She was staking her safety on the value of that crystal to the Kaiel, for whatever superstitious reason they might want it. “It is of no value to you? I thought I might exchange it for wheat.” That had seemed like a good idea once. Now it sounded foolish.

  “I’ll introduce you to a woman who will be extremely interested.”

  “You’re still insisting on escorting me?” She did not feel so safe now.

  “I must. This is Kaiel territory. You have no choice.”

  “I have been challenged by the Kaiel to a Death Rite. I wish that ridiculous game to be cancelled. I wish protection from such nonsense.”

  “Joesai?”

  “I’m afraid of him. I feel haunted by him, as if he is following me through the mountains.”

  “Lovely woman, I will protect you from him.”

  Impulsively she began to search Gaet for knives. He only laughed and squatted by the fire, letting her touch him.

  “Is this Death Rite a personal obligation of Joesai, or is it a clan obligation?”

  “Once he has initiated it, the Death Rite becomes a clan obligation.”

  “I’m going back to Sorrow.”

  “No need. There are many ways these things can go.”

  “Yes,” she flared. “You could kill me tonight. I have no reason to trust you.”

  “How many of the Seven Trials have you survived?”

  “He has said three. I count four. And I’m frightened.”

  Gaet was amused. “Aesoe seems to have been correct about your kalothi.”

  “I’m just a woman. I can die. Living is itself a Death Rite and no one survives!”

  He pondered. “I’ll tell you what we can do. It will fit each of the criteria. We won’t return via the road. We’ll knife through the mountains, over the White Wound. That will be Trial Five.”

  “You think so little of your own traditions that you mock them!” she snarled scornfully, backing away from him to the pillows where she wrapped herself in the quilt.

  Gaet reproached Oelita with a hurt look. “The White Wound is no mockery. That mountain still kills.”

  Horror gripped her. He was serious! “A moment ago you promised to protect me!” She had walked with the specter of the Death Rite at her back, hurrying, furtively watching over her shoulder — suddenly to glance forward and into the eyes of the Fiend himself! He was roasting his hands there beside the fire between her and the door.

  “I will protect you. There is nothing in the Death Rite that requires you to face an ordeal alone. Is it not true that a person who cannot have help is low in kalothi?”

  “They say you Kaiel are born of machines. It’s true! It’s true! You’re a machine! Just like Joesai!” she raged.

  “The climb over the White Wound is an exalting experience. Why should one face death and find horror and pain when one has the choice of facing a beautiful death?”

  These Kaiel! The way they lived with the Death Fiend! Morbid people! “I want peace! I want peace! I’ve always wanted peace!” she raged against her pillow until she was sobbing. “I want to be left alone by you priests! Leave me!”

  And he was beside her, stroking her hair. “It is never that easy.”

  Gaet became Oelita’s lover in the wilderness during the ascent up the ragged slope of the White Wound’s north face. The danger wore her out and his tenderness revitalized her. She did not understand why she had come to trust him, or why it was becoming important to her to impress him with her strength, or why she was beginning to love him.

  At the top of the peak, windblown, cold, barren, she huddled with Gaet, amazed by the most incredible sight of her life, mountain shapes, blue and purple below her and a vast plain in front of her, yellowish to the horizon. She could even see the smudge that was Kaiel-hontokae. They were so high that the moon was no longer hidden. The sun rose in reds of glory. Here, man was nothing.

  29

  The Mnankrei priests claim that since the past is known and fixed, so must the future be fixed — for is it not true that the genetic pattern knows the unfolding of the adult? No matter what crime is committed the Mnankrei invoke the historical necessity of the event — for, if the past is fixed and the future is fixed, how could what is happening be otherwise? A priestly crime becomes justified as an inevitable stage in the development of the genotype toward its final destiny. This is arrogance.

  The Mnankrei tell us that after long study of their doctrine, a Mnankrei priest, in trance, can see the images of this fixed future revealed to him. This is false.

  Every backwards transfer of information through time destabilizes the future. The mere act of observing the future changes it. Not even God can violate the First Law of Clairvoyance.

  If we had a torch to illuminate the darkness of the future, as Getasun illuminates dark Scowlmoon, what we would see would not be what will happen.

  Some events, like the motion of the planets, have great temporal inertia. Who can change the heavenly motions? We look at them and come to believe in determinism.

  Some events, like a burning house, have little temporal inertia. A man who sees his house burning tomorrow can, today, snuff out the candle that would have set the fire.

  Future events with great temporal inertia are like the lake waters at the bottom of a valley. Future events with little temporal inertia are like the precariously teetering stone on a mountain’s ridge that will fall and bounce down the mountainside in any direction a climber chooses to push it.

  The future seen is not the future that will be — because it was seen. Learn this law well, Kaiel child, use it, and you may become the Prime Predictor.

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

  HOEMEI LEFT THE communications room and aimlessly wandered about the golden and alabaster luxury of the Palace. No additional word from Soebo. Not a word about Joesai or Teenae for days now. Somehow he needed a confirmation of their deaths so that he could quiet this restless need to do something. Noe was threatening to march for the northern coast and gather a fleet from her mother’s allies and take it to Soebo. Such a path seemed to invite disaster. Hoemei saw only burning ships and Mnankrei crowds in elated Judgment Feast of hapless Kaiel sailors who were not sailors.

  He wandered until he felt some hunger pangs at the smell of food wafting from the great dining room which kept twenty cooks busy. It was a room where Kaiel met and where Kaiel decided. They were a clan that enjoyed eating while they worked.

  In the hall, Aesoe hailed him from the great wooden table where only the most po
werful dared sit.

  He was with Kathein. The shock hit Hoemei.

  To avoid them his eyes shifted to the small Liethe woman. Aesoe’s Liethe were as cold as a northern river dammed behind spills of ice until they smiled at you in a way that made you feel as if you had just met the love of your life. Hoemei had shunned these women like poison, though that was difficult to do because Aesoe was a great socializer and liked to share them as if they were some fine liqueur to bestow upon his closest friends — but for a price. Hoemei had never liked the price: total loyalty to Aesoe.

  The Liethe’s blue and flecked eyes were watching him boldly. Once he had disliked these women as ostentatious examples of Aesoe’s power but he had lost his dislike the first time one of the Liethe — he could never tell them apart — had served him tea and flattered him outrageously. He never tired of watching them dance, as they often did at Aesoe’s parties. Some said they were very intelligent, but graceful as they might be they were far too servile for Hoemei’s taste. This one was serving both Aesoe and Kathein — and she ate with them as if she were their equal.

  Kathein and Aesoe.

  He felt bitter. He would have avoided Aesoe now, but he was with Kathein. The temptation was irresistible. She had not spoken to him since Aesoe had made his command. Now she would have to speak to him.

  He went to the table. She pretended to be in animated conversation with the Prime Predictor and only when Hoemei arrived did she look up and nod. He nodded back. They said nothing.

  “Kathein was telling me of an interesting communications trick she has between her toes. She wants to bounce long heat waves off the moon.”

  “Devious mirror magic,” said Hoemei with frigid politeness.

  “No, no,” Kathein said stiffly. “It is just like the rayvoice only the waves are shorter, more difficult to generate. We’re working on it.”

  The Liethe woman radiated at Hoemei’s side, glancing at him, offering him a choice of pastes for the hard crackers. It gave him a good excuse to ignore Kathein. The moment he smiled at this strange unmarked creature she spoke. “The baked spei is wonderful right now if you’re hungry. That’s what you’re smelling. I’ll bring you some.” She waited.

  “Honey, a jug of mead, too,” said Aesoe.

  She touched Hoemei lightly with her fingertips, then withdrew. “He didn’t ask if you wanted mead. They have juices today.”

  “Mead is fine.”

  When he looked back at Kathein she was searching him anxiously. “Have you heard from Joesai and Teenae?” she asked formally.

  “No reason to think they aren’t dead.” His bluntness was deliberately cruel.

  Kathein shrunk into herself. “I told him to be careful.”

  “There was never any hope for Joesai,” said Aesoe solemnly.

  Hoemei could not answer. Tears were brimming in his eyes, more because he had been cruel to Kathein than for Joesai. It took him a while to regain control of himself. Aesoe made no further comment. Kathein was hard put to suppress her suddenly unleashed upset.

  “So tell me about bouncing voices off the moon. What will the far side of Geta do for conversation? I suppose you’re not speaking to them, too?” He hated his sarcasm as soon as he had spoken it.

  Honey returned with the food, and Hoemei used her attention as an excuse to say nothing while Kathein chattered inanely about technical matters. All this time the Liethe woman never lifted her eyes from Hoemei and, finally, when he had finished eating she spoke to Aesoe. “He is leaden with grief, Aesoe prime-Kaiel. If it pleases you I shall take care of him.”

  “No! Let me talk to him. I’ll go with him,” said a stricken Kathein.

  “You will stay here,” said Aesoe.

  Hoemei left them abruptly, but he was followed by the flowing Liethe. That annoyed him. “I didn’t ask for your presence.”

  “But I asked for yours.” The se-Tufi Who Walks in Humility spoke softly. “I’ve noticed you. I’ve wanted to be alone with you for years,” she lied. Then, with gentle authority, “To your room, creche child, before you fall apart.”

  He was mystified that when she uttered the words “creche child” in that light tinkle of her voice, waves of grief touched him and he had to fight to keep phantom losses at bay. In his room she lit a single candle. Her presence recalled his childhood dream fantasies of women. Some such woman had leaned over him that terrible Night of the Crooked Trial so long ago. She turned to him and he did not know the name of the year.

  “It is not all right that they are dead, is it?” she asked, putting no qualifier on who was dead.

  He saw creche mates dead, and funerals, and the dissection tables at the creche, and Sanan, his brave brother, dying in the desert when he was a boy. Hoemei wept. Only when he calmed would she speak, and then only to probe some horror, or to lift a black corpse from some sewer, or to make him weep again.

  He talked about his family, first incoherently and then with calm passion, and then he had to laugh. He was remembering what a poor sport Teenae was when she lost at kolgame. Somewhere in all this Humility moved away so that when he finally noticed her again, he found her sitting serenely on a cushion with her elbows on the floor, looking at him, listening solemnly.

  “Tell me,” he said with genuine liking for this creature, “why does a man get the impression when you make eye contact with him, that he has just met the love of his life?”

  “Because he can’t have me,” she teased.

  “Don’t you ever feel that you’ve met the love of your life?”

  “Why should I? I can have any man I want. How’s my sad man right now?” She was smiling directly into his eyes.

  “I think I’m all right. I’ve been brooding for days in an abyss. You’d better get back to Aesoe. Thanks.”

  “I’m staying. Aesoe thinks you need a vacation from your work. So do I.”

  “Which of the three are you? I always get you mixed up. Aesoe claims he can tell the difference.”

  “I’m the frivolous one. I’m easy to arouse, curious. I’m curious about you. Aesoe doesn’t think I’m intelligent, but I’m much smarter than he thinks I am. I just need someone like you to bring it out in me. Do you want to do something frivolous?”

  “You’re bringing out the shyness in me.”

  She slipped over so she could hold his leg. “I’m shy, too. Men don’t know that about bold women. They think that just because we boldly go into a man’s quarters where no woman has ever dared go before, that we aren’t scared to death.”

  “I sincerely don’t think you are frightened of anything.”

  “Oh yes I am. I’m scared of what you’re going to do when I sing a lullabye in your ear.” Gracefully she rose, slipping fingers into his hair, her body touching his, her mouth next to his cheek. She sang in almost a whisper:

  If beetles chirp

  And babies hear

  Can the wind a-knocking go?

  Walking feet

  And tickled chin

  A baby’s smile will know.

  She kissed his ear. “I’m full of nonsense. You have funny ears. Did you know that Aesoe says you have a magic ear and can hear anything anywhere on the planet? Is that so? Is this a little magic ear I’m kissing?”

  “Almost.”

  “Aesoe says it’s all secret.”

  Hoemei laughed. “He thinks of strategic advantage. I don’t think secrecy is a big help. My own prediction is that the Kaiel will be much more powerful once the secret is out and all can build a magic ear.”

  “Only the Kaiel can do that.”

  “No. It’s easy. It takes pieces of wire and bits of glass all hooked up in a magical way that anyone can learn, no more. I’ll show you.”

  “Can you really talk to faraway places?” Humility was impressed.

  “Sure.”

  “To Soebo?”

  “Especially to Soebo.”

  “You don’t really know what happened to Joesai and Teenae, do you? They might still be alive. I could find
out if I could talk to Soebo. Aesoe won’t let me so we’d have to do it in secret. Can you keep a secret?”

  “You have contacts in Soebo?” Hoemei was suddenly keenly interested.

  “Of course. There are Liethe hives everywhere. We’ve been concubines for the Mnankrei since long before I was born. We get to ride in their biggest ships. Their women don’t like us but we are used to that. So we know everything that happens in Soebo except what the women are gossiping about.”

  Hoemei smuggled her into the communications room and placed a call to his Soebo spy group. After he had made contact he put the round earvoices over Humility’s head and she listened open-mouthed to the crackling speech. When she talked, the ear-voice answered her! She instructed her voice friend in the details of a cryptic code with which he could contact the Liethe hive. She told him that it would be enough to get him the information he wanted. Soebo promised to call back in a day or two.

  Humility was very curious about the electron demons that danced in the soft red glow of the sealed jars. She was appalled by the complexity of the strange machines and poked about in them until she received a shock that made her jerk away in surprise. “You said I could make one of those,” she pouted. “It doesn’t like me. It kicked me! And I was just petting it!”

  30

  One man alone is like a cripple bound to his pillow, ennobled/humbled by the daily discipline of conquering trivial detail, even the lacing of boots a major challenge. When does the One achieve more?

  Two may live serenely, with occasional storms of high happiness, if the weather and the times are with them, and chance smiles on them, and Death does not halve them. The man of such a union must take vows of poverty, his one woman will never be as rich as his dreams. The woman of such a union must learn to cherish weaknesses and lacks; her one man will have to work too hard to be the best of lovers. When expectations are small, and life benevolent, a Two works well enough.