Courtship Rite

by Donald Kingsbury

  Oelita cried when her children were brought to her from Joesai’s tent. At her reappearance, the twins were too stunned to speak but clung to her. The three slept bundled together in the tent. When Oelita woke, she found Joesai stretched beside her, watching her, one young guard outside, and the noises of the eight-man camp. The sense of danger was gone. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “I have carefully considered that. I am bonded to you.”

  “That could be a nuisance to me!”

  “We will be married.”

  She rose to her elbows, waking sleeping infants. She breathed. “We will not!”

  “Don’t say I wasn’t generous,” he said with Noe’s straight face. “I gave you seven chances to decline the offer.”

  She stared at him, amazed. He was teasing her! She groped for words, intrigued by the game. How did one tickle a friendly monster who was known to have a bad temper? “Is this your Seventh Trial: marriage? I think I’ve been very good at avoiding that one.” Suddenly she laughed.

  “There was an ominous ring of no in that laugh,” he said.

  “Joesai, you’re mad! Of course I shall say no!”

  “The Kaiel are bargainers. I will suggest a bargain. You wish kalothi for your children. Some of that mighty stuff is beyond bargain, for part of your children’s kalothi is your own. Some of it comes from their father, and with Hoemei you have made a wise choice, for who is greater? Some of a child’s kalothi comes from within and that, too, is beyond the help of family or clan. But some of this elixir of life is the gift of strength grown under wise protection and that we can give. You saw how vulnerable you were alone? The maran-Kaiel are not alone. And we need a three-wife. Your children will thrive.”

  “What of Kathein?”

  “She has sold her body and her soul to Aesoe,” he said blackly.

  “I was not wanted.”

  “Mine was the greatest objection. We maran have a free will. We revolted at imposition from above. Aesoe’s order soured us. But Teenae always loved you, first with calm logic and then with her heart. And Gaet was at least willing to try you out on the pillows.”

  “My little ones will piss all over me if I do not take them out to water the flowers.”

  At the tent flap, she paused, her backside to Joesai. “I have grown old in the wilderness. I have wrinkles.”

  “I have grown old waiting for you.”

  “My will crumbles before your words. Have you become so used to seducing women?”

  “I have been introduced to women, and women have seduced me, but I think it can be said that I have borne the brunt of this courtship. I have been clumsy.”

  “Yes,” she said and was gone. He wondered if she meant yes-I-will-marry-you or yes-you-are-clumsy.

  She let Reia play with the twins and returned to Joesai. “It is nice to have a giant slave. I’m already enjoying it. Will you do anything for me?”

  “Within reason.”

  Her desert-etched lines wrinkled into a smile. “Already you are trying to back out! Cut your nose off for me!”

  “I like my nose.”

  “Something a little less drastic, then. Kiss me.”

  He reached for her and she countered. “Not now!” In fending him off the fingers of her nearest hand closed with his fingers. Male and female hand held the other tightly. “Once when I was a little girl I was at an engagement ruckus in the hills. I had to stand in my father’s lap to see the drunks. I still remember one of the songs. The famine was over and the crops were in. A skinny boy and girl had decided to risk leaving their families. It was an excuse for people to be happy again — to laugh, to make fools of themselves.”

  At the rising of Stgi and Toe

  We sing what songs we know.

  If the underfoot is rocky slope

  We dance the dance of hope.

  “I use it as a lullabye for my babies.”

  “I brought along a bag of whisky,” said Joesai.

  She sneaked a glance at the face of the man whose fingers she wouldn’t let go. “Could we have a ruckus and make fools of ourselves? There are ten of us and two babies. Then I’ll kiss you!”

  58

  To ride on a man’s back, you must have a tight grip on his ears.

  A proverb of the Liethe

  THE NEW LIETHE hive in the city of Kaiel-hontokae was the old Temple of God’s Praises, a mere stroll from the whisky warehouse of the old hive which was kept as a cell block for budding Liethe. In the tower of God’s Praises the notorious crone known as the se-Tufi Who Finds Pebbles poured her tea into a pale blue o’ca cup that sat on top of the oiled goldwood box that was her private wirevoice. “You wish my advice,” she stated blandly.

  A woman stood in front of her with the peculiar poise that comes before the discovery of age and after the loss of innocence. “It is more than I can handle,” pleaded Humility.

  “It is always more than any of us can handle.”

  “I need to make a wise decision.”

  “We will live with whatever decision you make.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “You have been well trained, and if you fail it is our failure also. Time passes. In the same storm the river that displaces a grain of sand, replaces that grain of sand. The old die and the young grow older. When we were young, the crones did not make for us the critical decision of our lives. Thus we learned to rule before our teachers died. Before I die, I wish to see who you are when you work alone.”

  “I’ve always worked alone,” said Humility rebelliously.

  “You have obeyed our orders,” said the crone sternly.

  Humility changed tactics. “Aesoe is in violation of Kaiel law. The predictions are to be audited and the man with the best record automatically becomes Prime Predictor regardless of his political beliefs or his alliances.”

  “It is not so simple. One principle that the Liethe have learned in our parasitic role is that the law is never clear no matter how many noses are grafted onto the public face. The o’Tghalie say that the law is a map and, by theorem, that every map fails to locate at least one stone.”

  Humility insisted. “I have done a major gaming of the audit myself with the help of young girls in my class who I am training in Kaiel politics. Hoemei should have been declared Prime Predictor and the policies of Aesoe should be void.”

  “‘Should’ is a word with volume enough to paint infinity. A point in case: Tae ran-Kaiel wrote the present constitution of the Kaiel. He refined the unwritten traditions of succession that were no longer working. Indeed, he specified that audits of the Archives must take place and that the best predictor must be elevated to Prime Predictor. But no man challenged Tae in his lifetime. Even Aesoe, Tae’s best student, never came close. Aesoe was declared Prime Predictor only after the audit following the Immortal Funeral Feast. Thus the tradition is not clear in the minds of men, however clear it is upon paper. Does the audit that determines the new Prime Predictor come before or after the death of the old Prime Predictor? May a Prime Predictor be replaced by a rival or must the rival wait on Death?”

  “The law is clear,” said Humility.

  “And you are in love with Hoemei. Others are not. The law is what is read, not what is written.”

  “I beg you, crone mother, this matter is of some importance. Aesoe’s policies have drastic consequences for the Liethe and for all of Geta, and Hoemei’s policies a very different consequence.”

  “Doubtless in a thousand-thousand revolutions of Geta about Getasun it shall seem as the differences between the red and blue flecks of the sandstone of the Dry Bones.”

  Humility flared. “It is against the Word of God as revealed in The Forge of War! Shall we be only another star among all stars? Aesoe has succumbed to wicked temptation! He would follow the policies of the Riethe devils and call it defense! Only a week ago as Cairnem I mussed the pillows of two priests of the kembri-Itraiel who have come here to negotiate with Aesoe’s Expansionists, hoping to reli
nquish their priest status, before they are conquered, in exchange for the role of warrior clan. They would ally themselves with the Kaiel as a fighting arm and with their force unite all of Geta in but one generation. We talked all night and they lusted for more than my body. They lusted for all of Geta, they lusted to walk upon Scowlmoon, they lusted for the stars and I felt their passion to the depths of me.”

  “Power will always be with us. It is the way of the human.”

  “But this is the very way that God has warned us against! There are many ways! I would take God’s way. I need your help!”

  “The decision is yours.”

  “Aesoe outreaches Hoemei three to one in the number of his Kaiel allies and two to one by voting strength. Kathein sneaked away from Aesoe for Sorrow under cover of night to take the maran in marriage in open defiance of the law. The maran will be destroyed. I do not have time to make a wise decision!”

  “But you contemplate a decision you consider to be unwise and expect me to save you by countermanding it. You would deny the Itraiel their warrior march among the stars in exchange for a gift to Hoemei of one cactus bloom picked at the full fragrance of highnode.”

  “Yes. I would do that.”

  The eyes of the crone glinted. “The right decision is always best no matter how painful.”

  “The right decision!” exploded Humility. “Yours or mine!”

  “Neither. This is a test of your kalothi. I give you one week of power over the destiny of Geta for the next thousand generations. See what you come up with. I repeat, the decision is yours.”

  “You and your illusions that we dong-kissers rule Geta!” stormed Humility in open rebellion, jerking her finger upward at the tower. “Our rayvoice doesn’t even speak today! At the library I tried to find out the numbers of the Itraiel and no one knows. And you want me to make a decision in the flutter of a heartbeat that God has pondered silently since you were born!”

  “It was ever thus.”

  “The crones will accept the consequences of my decision, whatever that decision?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good!” she snapped and left, the fabric upon her small body fluttering in agitation behind her.

  59

  The eyes of the audience must be upon the assistant when the magician’s hands are distorting reality.

  A proverb of the Liethe

  HUMILITY PAUSED ON the ladder of the tower, watching the sunset’s reds flash off the windows of Kaiel-hontokae, before she continued up the ladder to the tower rooms of her young friend, the ru-Paie Who Catches Redflies, an adept of the rayvoice quite capable of designing devices that even the Palace Kaiel did not have. Her line was young — as yet only six units of the ru-Paie had been cloned — and Redflies was the first of them to leave Hive-home, still concubine to the crone who had brought her across the Njarae. She was teased about her virginal innocence more than most girls. Recently her peers at the whisky warehouse had served her a mock male genital in her soup when the crones weren’t looking. Humility watched over her.

  “You’re my one friend who isn’t afraid of that ladder!” greeted Redflies.

  “Did you ever find out from anyone the population of the Itraiel plains?”

  The girl smiled in a way that was going to bewitch many male bodies. “I don’t think we ever will. We don’t even have a rayvoice in the Itraiel. I’ll keep trying.”

  “No,” Humility decided, “you have better ways to discipline your time.”

  “My table is a mess, isn’t it?”

  Humility smiled in wonder. “I used to understand rayvoices.”

  “This is a web I think will give better sensitivity for less antenna length. I think.”

  “Can it wait on a party at the Palace tonight?”

  Redflies turned with anxious grace. “I’ll have to ask permission of my crone.”

  “I have permission to take you whenever I need you. Your crone tells me you are ready.”

  “But men are different!”

  “In a week you’ll be making as good dong soup as the rest of us.” They both laughed.

  “Do I get to serve drinks and make witty sayings?”

  “You are very good at the Fire Dance. I had that in mind.”

  Redflies turned her head in modesty. “I have only been practicing. The Fire Dance is for a woman of great passion.”

  “Or a girl whose passion is just igniting. You will be dancing for an audience of two hundred but your eyes will be for one man.”

  “Two hundred! I’ll be embarrassed!”

  “The White Mind will banish all trepidation and the Circling Focus of Seduction will pull Kasi mon-Kaiel to you like he was iron from sand.”

  “Does it really work that well?”

  “Yes, but to make sure, I’ll pass by at just the right time and whisper to him that you are a virgin. He is a middle-aged romantic. See that his foolishness is not in vain. I want his nose in the pocket of a woman I trust.”

  “A girl,” she corrected.

  “Not after you meet him.”

  Redflies turned, stricken, to her component-scattered table. “What of my web?”

  Humility grinned. “Think about its copper and glass intricacies while you make soup between his crotch and he will be awed by the intensity of your interest in him.”

  “You’re not very romantic.”

  “Sometimes I am.” A wistful smile.

  “Is he like Hoemei?” asked Redflies coyly.

  Stabs of sadness passed through Humility. Hoemei’s affair with Honey had languished while Humility had been in Soebo and had never recovered. The other Honeys hadn’t cared. With Noe gone and Teenae on the coast, he had concentrated on the hopeless courtship of Kathein the Slut. Damn the pain of the soul! Unrequited love could dismember one’s sanity. “There are few such as Hoemei.”

  “I’d like to sleep with him.”

  Standing, Humility wrapped her arms, from behind, around her sitting friend. “You would, would you!”

  “When you’re a crone, of course.”

  “You’ll make less mistakes on an older man. They’re good for practice. Kasi is handsome and so gentle that he imagines only a virgin girl could appreciate his tenderness.”

  “My crone says all Kaiel men are handsome. That’s what makes them so arrogant. What does he look like naked? With his girdle off?”

  “Like the stars thrown into the firmament, like stones thrown into a lake. Maybe to you he would look like a dozen transmitting rayvoice stations.”

  “In less flowing language that means his body is scarred in spirals or circles.”

  “Circles.”

  “Why do you want to use me in such a hurry? I always thought it would come slowly. First a man would see me nude and I would not look at him. The second time I would undress and lock eyes with his. He would not be allowed to touch me until the third time and only after he had dreamed about me for weeks and was wild with desire would our bodies join.”

  “With such cynical crones to raise us, where do girls like you come from?” wondered Humility.

  “I was born for love.”

  “Then listen to the romance of politics. Kasi is the Auditor of Predictions. He has been lax in his duties. There is a sudden necessity for him to meet a pure love, unsullied by a lifetime of crass bargaining, who has such high ideals that she could not love a man who has not demonstrated his integrity. Kasi is the man who will make Hoemei maran-Kaiel the new Prime Predictor.”

  “I’m frightened. Just a little bit. Have you ever been in the pay of Kasi mon-Kaiel?”

  “Once Aesoe gave me to Kasi as his reward for cleverly delaying the audits.”

  “That’s why you are so cynical! Aesoe knows and he’s trying to block the full play of kalothi!”

  “Come. Your crone will dress you for the evening. She will cry to lose one so sweet as you.” Humility kissed the girl who was to become her sacrificial card.

  60

  At the time of the destruction of
the Arant, the cynic Miosoenes spoke of the rulers of men as the candles we blame for causing our stumbling in the dark.

  From The Cynic’s Compendium

  THE PARTY FLOWED from Aesoe’s seething energy, pulsing with his pulse, beating at the skull’s temples to the music of God. And Aesoe took the stage of his celebration to reveal in compact speech his newest Racial Future, every word arranged for the cymbals of oratory so that Vision seemed to blend with the dancing.

  At his side was the faithful Liethe woman known to the Palace as Sieen. His friends were glad she was there to fill the void of Kathein’s abandonment. Sieen was the symbol of the continuity of loyalty. She praised her man. She defended him. She advised him. Tonight when the whisky was poured, she added color to his Vision by describing troop carriers, longer than planets, stuffed with loyal kembri scarred-men as they slipped across nebulae to bar the reaching Riethe. Aesoe smiled at this dream, vaster than any thoughts of Hoemei.

  The Fire Dance came late in the evening when the party was building to a sensual throb and enough barrels of whisky had been emptied so that even a sky lit up by the stellar explosion of Getan seed did not seem preposterous. Redflies, under the persona of Star, modified her dance to the constraints of the Circling Focus of Seduction. The elemental flame of her motion darted through the audience or warmed the fire watchers with licking undulations but always her eyes found a moment’s heartbeat to settle upon the radiating cicatrice of Kasi, to flit away, to be pulled again into his aura. He drifted closer like a convection current drawn to a temple torch.

  Her arms rose, her head flashed and stilled while her hair continued its sweeping caress of her shoulders. One smile flew from her face and did not return. Humility, as Sieen, was in place and on tiptoes whispering, “She is a virgin,” to the ears of a heart caught admiring the smile, now disappearing on downcast eyelashes as the fire burnt to ash.