Courtship Rite

by Donald Kingsbury

  “But a rock-fisted man who insults at the first opportunity is what Aesoe wants.”

  “Because he needs a dead man!”

  “Exactly,” said Gaet.

  “And if I do it my way, swift, and without foot-kissing, I still get murdered.”

  “Exactly,” said Gaet.

  “Which is why you will do it my way.” Hoemei’s manner was that of a surgeon at work. “You will not enter Soebo with your advance party. You will stay a day’s march from the town and do nothing.”

  “God’s Itch, you know I have not the mental capacity to do nothing!”

  “You will not rescue your men. You will not make court. You will not fight. You will do nothing. I have my prediction registered in the Archives about the outcome of this affair. It is based on the assumption that you will do nothing. Aesoe has his prediction of the outcome of this event registered in the Archives. His outcome requires your death, perhaps to demonstrate Mnankrei unwillingness to host an Inquest. He does not think you capable of doing nothing. Thus that is what you will do to survive. My solution aids mankind, the Kaiel, and my brother.”

  Joesai’s whole inner body was rebelling. Do nothing in the middle of enemy territory? Impossible! “And I just sit there while the Mnankrei skin me alive?”

  “The Mnankrei will be poised to respond to your game, and you will have no game. Besides, God is on our side.“ Hoemei grinned at the lethal rifle parked against the door. ”You will have one hundred of those with you. They will not approach you. You will not have to use them.”

  Joesai calmed himself. Hoemei was faster of mind than anyone he knew. Survival meant listening to an unshakably loyal brother who had proven his worth. “You know something I don’t know.”

  “We are looking at the same chess board.”

  Joesai thought about that. His brother had just insulted his intelligence. “If I move to a position one square from Soebo and sit there painting my nails, it is checkmate, eh?”

  “In three moves.”

  “He is marvelously brilliant,” said the Liethe creature proudly. She had been watching Hoemei. She saw that he was thirsty and rose to bring him a drink before he knew that himself.

  Gaet smiled affectionately at Joesai. “Don’t look so bewildered, husband. Hoemei and I have done much feeling in the dark while you’ve been gone.”

  Hoemei was cleaning up the meal so that the rubble would not be left for Honey. To keep her out of the way, he insisted she play a melody for them. “And how is Kathein?” The timbre of his voice mixed concern and bitterness.

  “Why?” asked Joesai sullenly.

  “You’ve seen her more than we have of late.”

  “She assaulted me!” exclaimed Joesai indignantly.

  Gaet, who had been alerted by the mention of Kathein’s name, rolled off his pillow, chuckling. “She hit you?”

  “With verbal fists! I bled internally!”

  Gaet stamped his enthusiasm. “She’s learning! I didn’t know she had it in her! That’s a good sign.”

  Hoemei, making quick work of the dishes, only smiled.

  “And you insects pass for my brothers!” Thoughts of Kathein depressed Joesai.

  “We’ll talk more on the morrow. I don’t want to be late for Teenae, and I have flowers to pick up on the way,” said Hoemei.

  Gaet didn’t like to see his brother brooding. “Joesai, spend the night with me and Noe at the Great Cloister.”

  “No,” rejoined Hoemei. “He should stay here and study my file on Soebo. Honey will spice his time and make his rest a pleasure.”

  So, thought Joesai, Hoemei offers the luxuries of the flesh to his uncouth brother who cannot inspire love. Wasn’t that Gaet’s role? He felt sarcastic until he remembered… Noe’s warm teasing… the smile that always lit little Teenae’s eyes under her lush eyebrows. “Wait,” he said, “I have messages.” He took paper and wrote two poems. For Teenae:

  The secret

  beneath dark eyebrows

  is a loyalty

  still there

  when a fool

  asks forgiveness

  for being a coward.

  And for Noe:

  You should never hit a man

  my love

  until he’s down

  or feed him salt

  when he’s not sure it’s sugar.

  That way you prove

  my love

  that winter’s snow is spring.

  36

  At the Conclave of Summer Heat, during the final rounds of the kalothi contest, Reeho’na, greatest living o’Tghalie, unveiled a theory of many participant games that tells us why the bargainer who seeks to optimize the gains of each member of a group can become richer than the opponent-mind who seeks to optimize his personal gain by minimizing the gains of others.

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

  THE ALLIANCE DOCUMENT had come in from the printers. Oelita lay curled by the window of her room on the second floor of the maran-Kaiel mansion re-reading its lucid phrases, smelling the inked paper, and feeling smug. The prolog was all hers. She hadn’t let them change a word of it. Some of the free poetry was hers — she liked images — but the contract was mostly the word-smithing of Hoemei’s students, edited by the iron hand of Hoemei himself.

  How could Hoemei of the hairy chest and tender smiles love Joesai? They were so different!

  The writing of the agreement had been an awesome experience unlike any group work she had ever undertaken. Her confrontations with the Stgal had taught her that priestly councils were ponderous affairs where hidden decisions were made in a guise to appease and lull opponents. Her own heretical group was scarcely better and many had been the time she had been forced to castigate and cajole. In contrast, the Kaiel mongered their wares with open enthusiasm and the precision of practiced survivors.

  The group assigned to bargain with Oelita consisted of six men and five women, nine of them offspring of the creches. Three might take her for a game of kol at the temple, proposing, while they played, outrageous and often conflicting deals which they would bamboozle her into buying. The others would be off studying, creating new proposals, testing for flaws.

  When she finally agreed to a deal — she smiled remembering her gullibility — they would start to bicker among themselves about why they thought she might later be unhappy with that deal. Sometimes some old teacher of Hoemei would sit with them mediating, teaching, guiding their efforts. They would be radiantly excited one day and dour the next after having dreamed upon the consequences. They were obsessed with consequences.

  Oelita was familiar with Stgal organizational architecture which tried for no high structures. The Stgal governed by patchwork and emergency repairs. They were always having to redo what they had just done. Policies were reversed and amended. Failed policies were frequently reintroduced after the failures were forgotten.

  With a lifetime of such experiences Oelita was amazed to discover these intense young Kaiel feverishly designing an edifice built on piles driven into the past, able to support whole future generations. Each paragraph was placed in the document like it was a foundation stone under a temple whose upper stories would give solid floor to an eyrie for beloved, if chimeric, grandchildren.

  Of the eleven, Oelita became closest to Taimera, a studious hedonist, almost a child, taken only recently from her creche by Hoemei, her breasts, neck, shoulders as yet unscarred. She was a mischievous girl who had a sharp eye for which threads of the past a weaver must grasp to splice strength into any future design. She was the one who probed Oelita deepest for reservations, always sensitive to conflict between Kaiel ambition and heretic morality. One time when Oelita was giving Taimera a lesson on coastal clan relationships, Taimera os-Kaiel explained why her co-workers were so thorough.

  Those groupings of Kaiel who created effective laws gained power, money, influence — and the release of their genes to the breeding rooms of the creches. Predictions accurate over the immediate fut
ure were rewarded, but the big stake was in being able to control distant consequences.

  The young group that Hoemei had assembled around Oelita knew that Kaiel auditors, armed with hindsight, would still be checking over the effects of this document when its authors were well into their political prime. If by then the coastal peoples were prospering in their relationship with the Kaiel, the votes of each author of such success would be enormously magnified, but if the document failed to do what they were predicting for it, then they would find themselves relegated to some petty job in the bureaucracy.

  It was a matter of honor to Taimera, and some anxiety, to have the kind of record which spoke of continuous good judgment. She was ambitious. She had been driven to excellence to escape her creche, and was driven now to reach the top councils. As yet, she confessed to Oelita, she had managed a constituency of only five people, and so her voting weight was low, but she knew that the power of a Kaiel was not based on constituency size alone. In the end it was based on the craftsmanship of one’s work.

  The document had already been through the financial council to insure that, if it became law, funds would be available for its implementation. There had been no trouble. It had been written with a full knowledge of the funding criteria it would have to meet. Now it was on the voting roll.

  Any Kaiel in good standing was allowed to vote before the cutoff date, but few would because the Kaiel had a peculiar system. A mere yes or no was not sufficient. The Kaiel maintained that a yes/no vote did not require careful thought and so encouraged sloppy lawmaking. A Kaiel who voted, and they were constantly taking the trouble to vote on something, made a deposition in the Archives stating in detail what he believed to be the consequences of his choice. The archivist did not accept the vote unless the consequences were stated in measurable terms.

  The voting on any issue was sparse, but indicated the decision of Kaiel who had taken the trouble to inform themselves and were willing to gamble their political future on their estimate of the outcome. There was no central lawmaking council. A Kaiel was trained from childhood to make laws in the areas where he felt a personal responsibility. He soon learned that, to get a law passed, he had to contact a representative number of Kaiel who were likely to vote on the issue and to work out a consensus with them before he put his suggestion on the voting roll.

  Oelita was told by Taimera that there was an unwritten custom requiring twenty committed yes votes and a statistical analysis of the opposition before a bill would be accepted. Since every Kaiel prided himself on his ability to predict, little legislation was put forward that was not passed.

  The nature of the attack upon the Stgal was to be a simple one. Copies of the alliance document would be distributed covertly among Oelita’s supporters so that they would know she sought their support for a game play resembling the de-priesting play of kol.

  Young Kaiel would begin to infiltrate toward the coast, recruiting constituencies. A Kaiel, taking on a member of some coastal clan, would assume a personal responsibility to protect that person and, if food became short, to bring in food for him or pull him out to the refugee camps that were being built along the road in the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves. In return the represented one would transfer his name from the kalothi rolls of the Temple at Sorrow to the kalothi rolls of Kaiel-hontokae and swear to uphold the laws of the Kaiel.

  Oelita felt guilty that the first people to be protected would be her own, but Hoemei only laughed and said that a Kaiel’s first duty was to his own constituency — it was that obligation which gave Kaiel-ruled territories their vigor. When the people surrounding Sorrow found that the low in kalothi protected by the Kaiel were better off than the high in kalothi protected by the Stgal, the Stgal would find themselves deserted and suddenly powerless.

  “Do you think many of my people will give Contribution in your Temple?” Oelita had been able to get no concessions about Ritual Suicide.

  “We are better organized than you imagine. The first of our Kaiel to penetrate the coast will bring with them the deviant underjaw suppressor and it will first go to those farms who bond themselves to the Kaiel thus protecting their neighbors also. Taimera has herself decided to work with your Nonoep on the large scale processing of edible profane foodstuffs. It won’t be much at first, but it will help take the edge off the famine and your people will get the first of the production. I can guarantee you nothing, only that they will be better off with us than with the Stgal.”

  “What of the Mnankrei?” asked Oelita.

  Hoemei smiled. “It is convenient to be brother to a killer.”

  “You’re sending Joesai to Soebo?”

  “Aesoe is sending him to Soebo.” Hoemei’s smile broke into a grin. “Even Aesoe makes mistakes and I’m ever willing to take advantage of them.”

  “I’m still afraid of Joesai.”

  “He has his gentle side. He does not dislike you. He is a child of the creches and all of us have been challenged by some form of Death Rite. It marks the soul. He would that you were his equal.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to abolish such cruelty?”

  “Someday — when the land becomes water and the water, land.” Which meant never. “The Death Rite is fair; it gives your kalothi a chance, and thus prepares you for Life, which is seldom fair.”

  Aesoe dropped by the maran-Kaiel mansion and took Oelita for a walk. He brought her to the botanical gardens where profane plants were bred for beauty. Many of them had strange symbiotic relationships with the insects. The flowers that attracted bugs by shape and color and smell had a similar effect on humans who bred them for ever more exotic show.

  “Some bluenoses!” she exclaimed. They were darkly violet with the hugest flaring nostrils she had ever seen. Her mind drifted to the bluenose season when spots of violet covered the hills above the Njarae, thriving in the windy spray of sea.

  Aesoe talked with her about the endlessly varied lives of the insects, a hobby of his, and he was genuinely glad to talk to someone as field-wise as she. He specialized in watching the eight-legged kaiel. He laughed when he told Oelita how lazy the kaiel were, how they always convinced the hogburrow to carve out their homes for them by stroking the backs of the hogburrow with scent that stimulated nesting behaviors.

  There among the flowers he made her an honorary Kaiel. He bestowed an arbitrary voting weight of 200 on her and told her that she would be allowed to vote on any issues involving the coast. He was not going to require her to identify the members of her constituency until she felt sure that the Kaiel had not betrayed her trust.

  Then he walked her back to the maran mansion, a long but interesting way over hills of stately homes. He flirted with her, patting her behind and telling her how voluptuous it was.

  “You’ll have to try kaiel smells,” she said, taking his arm, “flattery doesn’t seduce me.”

  The Prime Predictor left her at the door, saying he had urgent business elsewhere, perhaps because he remembered that Joesai was home. When she entered the inner court of the maran household, feeling stronger than she ever had before in her life, she met Joesai standing alone in the high ritual garb of priest. Even that did not daunt her.

  “Aesoe just made me an honorary Kaiel. I have a voting weight of 200,” she announced proudly.

  “Ho! The madman is at it again, flaunting tradition. You think yourself worthy of such honor?”

  “Yes!” she flung at his insult and felt gay. “Will you be voting on the coastal treaty?”

  “I’m voting yes. But with some reservations.”

  Teenae had appeared on the balcony overlooking the inner court. “You leave Oelita alone, you big bully!”

  “What are you filing with the Archives?” Oelita persisted, watching Joesai for every flicker of his expression.

  “I think the program will be difficult to implement. It needs you, and I’m predicting that you won’t be there.”

  Teenae sensed Oelita’s shock and vaulted off the balcony to attack Joesai with her fists. H
e simply reached out and snatched his wife by the wrist and jerked her up into the air, while his other hand lazily reached around and took her by the roundness of her buttocks, tossing her casually, clothes and all, into the central pool. She made a huge splash, accompanied by Joesai’s laugh resonating from his massive bones.

  Suddenly, Oelita was very afraid again.

  37

  And all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening; and at the going down of the sun Joshua commanded, and they took the body down from the tree, and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day.

  Excerpt from The Forge of War

  THE RUMORS ABOUT Oelita’s crystal ran through Kaiel-hontokae like quickfire through desert thorns.

  It was an eye into God’s Heart! It was an eye into Hell! The God of the Sky had broken His Silence! More sober talk simply puzzled upon a game called War.

  Oelita had heard Teenae whispering to Hoemei about violence that consumed cities in flashes of light and thunder. She had heard voices in the streets talking excitedly of killer clans who faced each other by the thousands, in orderly rows, hacking at arms and legs and heads and bodies with heavy long knives while they hid behind shields.

  No matter how she blocked off the rumors, they seeped through to Oelita like water through cracks in a retaining wall. She shrugged. For all their sophistication the Kaiel remained a superstitious clan.