Then there was the strange attitude of Antis. On one hand he had taken to staring at her in a curiously intent fashion when he thought she was not looking. Time and again she caught him at it, and he would at once look away and pretend he had been observing something else all the time. On the other hand he developed an odd standoffishness, refusing to sleep with her any more on the mumbled pretext that he was not getting enough actual sleep.
What on Niond was bothering the dear fellow? Iroedh for her part loved him more than ever and wanted to be close to him as much as possible. She found herself, in fact, developing a possessive, sentimental, and exclusive tenderness toward him like that attributed to the females in A Girl of the Limberlost toward their drones.
It was very puzzling. Why had all this happened to her? In the old days, according to her researches, one blamed a jealous or capricious god for one’s undeserved misfortunes, but nobody had taken the gods seriously for generations. It was, thinkers agreed, a case of the mysterious operations of luck. Emotionally, however, blind chance was a poor substitute for a god when you wanted something on which to turn your resentment at the hard treatment accorded you by fate…
“Hey, Iroedh!” said Bloch. “Turn in! You have third watch.”
Iroedh pulled herself together. “Antis…?”
Antis scowled. “If you don’t mind,” he said, indicating the far side of the open space.
“But why? I shall be cold and lonesome. Are you angry? What have I done?”
“On the contrary…” Antis seemed torn by indecision, then burst out: “You forget you’re now a queen, Iroedh dearest.”
“Oh, but not yet!”
“Well then, a princess. A functional female. In fact we ought to call you ‘Iroer,’ except that we’re used to the old name.”
“What of it? Do you love me less because of it?”
“Not at all. But I’m a functional male, do you see? And if I may not act like one…”
“Why can’t you?” she asked innocently.
“You mean—you mean with you?”
“Of course, stupid. You certainly boast enough about yourself and that bloated old Intar. Am I less attractive than she?”
“Oh, darling, there’s no comparison. But—you see, then I was acting under orders. I shouldn’t know how to take the initiative in such a case. I don’t know what to do. If you were just any old queen, I’d—But you’re Iroedh, whom I’ve always looked up to like one of the old goddesses. You’re so much more intelligent than I—”
“I’m not really—”
“Don’t contradict!” he roared.
Iroedh was surprised, first by his vehemence, second by the fact that she did not mind being bossed so much as she would have before her change. (That cursed diet again!)
Antis, looking at her sharply, continued: “Does this mean you’re planning to collect yourself a harem of drones like other queens?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought. I suppose so. Why, have you any objections?”
“I certainly have! You’re mine by right of discovery or something, and I’ve had my fill of sharing my queen with a dozen others. If I catch another drone so much as looking at you, I’ll serve him as King Aithles used Idhios in the Lay.”
“Are you sure you can minister to the needs of a whole functional female all by yourself, when the task is normally divided among twelve or sixteen drones?”
“Certainly. I could take care, not only of you, but of two or three functional females at once. If I had a couple here—”
“I like that! You wish me to have no drones but you, yet you reserve the right to fertilize any queen who falls into your clutches.”
“Don’t you think I should?”
“I don’t know whether you should or not, but it would make me just as unhappy as my entertaining other drones would make you.”
Antis stared at the fire, chewing a stick for some seconds, then said: “I suppose we need some definite agreement, like that which we drones enter into when we reach our majority. Now, the Terrans have worked out a system of male-plus-female units, based upon their long experience, which seems to work for them. According to what you tell me, our remote ancestors had such a system before the reforms of Danoakor and the rest. But that’s gone and forgotten, so that we should have to start practically from nothing. I think we might ask the advice of our Terran friends.”
“I was about to suggest the same thing! Oh, Daktablak!”
“Yes?”
Antis and Iroedh, speaking alternate paragraphs, explained their predicament.
Bloch ran his fingers through his stubble of beard. “Bless my soul! Don’t tell me you two are in love in the full, ghastly, sentimental Terran sense?”
“It looks that way,” said Antis, “as far as we can judge. To me it’s like being on fire.”
“It’s got you,” said Bloch. “If Mrs. Porter could only know the revolutionary effect of her sentimental potboiler on the culture of a planet eight light-years away and nearly three centuries after her time—”
“But what shall we do?” pleaded Iroedh.
“Why, of course you—that is—How should I know? What do you desire to do?”
Iroedh spoke: “We should like to be like you and Barbe.”
“Well, what hinders you? I suppose you know the mechanics of—”
Antis said: “Daktablak, you don’t understand. With you Terrans mating is not a mere animal act, but an institution. Now, we have no such institution on Niond, but we should like one. If we’re starting a new way of life we wish to start it right, and therefore we pick the best model we know: your system.”
“Your confidence in Terran institutions touches me, my dear friends, and I hope it is not too badly misplaced. Apparently you wish me to devise, offhand, an institution of marriage for your whole race: a task to daunt the boldest. Have you considered that you belong to a species different from ours; that your cultural background differs greatly from ours; and that therefore a system that worked passably well for us might not function so well with you?”
Iroedh said: “We have to start somewhere, and if we make mistakes we can correct them as they arise.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait a few days until we consult the Oracle? You will have a clearer idea of your destinies—”
Barbe broke in: “Stop making excuses, Winston darling. You know you don’t take this old Oracle seriously. Besides, we may all be dead in a few days.”
“I just wanted to be sure they realized—”
“Ils y ont mûrement réfléchi. Go ahead, marry them.”
Bloch sighed. “Apparently I’m elected Justice of the Peace for the planet Ormazd. It may be legally invalid and sociologically imprudent, but you’re three to one against me. Antis, what do you Avtini swear by when you testify to the truth of an assertion?”
“One swears by one’s Community, but we have no—”
“Wait,” said Iroedh. “There is an old form of oath, now obsolete, by the gods Dhiis and Tiwinos and Eunmar and Gwyyr and the rest. It was used up to a few years ago in some conservative Communities, even though the swearers no longer believed in the gods.”
“We’ll employ that, then,” said Bloch. “Now on Terra the agreement is exclusive and (at least nominally) for life, though in some cases provision is made—”
“Oh, we want it for life!” said Antis. “Don’t you, beautiful?”
“Y-yes,” said Iroedh, “though it does seem to me that some provision should be made in case the drone’s fertility and other powers decline—”
“Listen,” said Bloch, “I’m taking a big chance in devising a marriage system for you, and I’m damned if I will also commit myself to the task of formulating a divorce law. You let that work itself out. Barbe, what can you remember of that service Subbarau tied us with?”
Iroedh subsided, not without some inner reservations.
In time they got the wordings straightened out, and Bloch said: “Repeat after me: I, Antis of Elha
m, a functional male, take you, Iroedh of Elham, a functional female, to be my permanent and exclusive mate, to have and to hold…”
“…and the curious thing is,” said Iroedh to Barbe, “that whereas I used to be the dominant one of the pair, Antis now makes all the decisions. Of course I know more of the world than he, and he knows I do, so we play a little game. I make a suggestion—very tentatively, so as not to sound as if I were commanding him—and he grunts and says he’ll think about it. Then next day he bursts out: ‘Beautiful, I’ve just had the most wonderful idea!’ and goes on to repeat my suggestion in the very words I used. Isn’t it amazing?”
“Not so amazing to me as it seems to you,” replied Barbe. “On the whole do you like our one-mate system?”
Iroedh did a couple of steps from a round dance. “Like it! It is wonderful! I’ve given up even the thought of a harem of drones, for while it’s too early to tell about Antis’s fertility, I’m sure no mate could give me more pleasure.”
“Winston would say that was not a scientific attitude, but sometimes an unscientific attitude is better.”
“Of course,” continued Iroedh, “now that I’m getting to know Antis really well I realize he has faults along with his virtues. He’s headstrong, irritable, sometimes inconsiderate, and often pompous where his own dignity is concerned. But he’s honest and brave and jolly, so I still adore him.”
“Oh, they all have faults. My man, for instance, is clever as anything, but he is basically weak, that one, and has moods of depression in which he’s no good for sex or anything else.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“You wouldn’t. They try to hide these failings from everybody except their wives. But if we wait around for the perfect mate we shall be in a deep hole before we find him. Allô, what is this?”
They had come out onto the road to Ledhwid about a day later than they expected, and had now been marching north on this road for some hours, with their remaining belongings in bundles on the ends of sticks they bore on their shoulders. Although the road was rough, it seemed easy to Iroedh after the endless cross-country scramble she had experienced. The hills were getting steeper and less densely wooded; right now the road was heading into a great gorge, which Iroedh knew by repute as the Gorge of Hwead. Ledhwid could not be much farther.
The cause of Barbe’s exclamation was a corpse—or rather skeleton—lying by the road. A little further on lay another, and she saw still others scattered among the bushes and boulders. They had lain there long enough for the scavenger beasts to have picked the bones fairly clean, so that the stench of death had almost disappeared, but not so long but that occasional scraps of skin and cloth lingered among the remains.
“Iroedh!” cried Bloch. “Come here and identify these for me!”
He bounded up among the rocks to where a cuirass and helmet, dulled but not yet badly corroded, lay among a litter of bones.
Iroedh climbed up after him and said: “Let me see the teeth. That’s an Avtiny worker; from the device on the helmet she would have been from Khwiem.” She went from skeleton to skeleton. “All seem to be workers from the northern Communities. No, here’s a drone, also an Avtin. I thought this might be a massacre by a war party of Arsuuni, but to judge from the remains and the weapons it was an attack on a party of workers from several Communities by a band of rogue Avtiny drones. Probably the band of Wythias. The news of this slaughter had not yet reached Elham when I left there, but news travels slowly.”
Bloch said: “It’s that tightly compartmented society of yours. I wish I could take some of these stiffs along; I’ve been wanting an Avtiny skeleton in the worst way.”
“You’re not going to collect a series now!” cried Barbe.
“N-no, though I would if we had transport. I’ll merely take this one skull along to study on the way.”
He hopped from rock to rock back to the road, precariously balancing the round white object on the palm of one hand. The journey resumed.
Iroedh said: “What on Niond do you want with a lot of old bones?”
“To learn how the life forms on Niond are built, and how they evolved,” said Bloch.
“How they what?”
“Evolved.” Bloch gave a short account of the evolutionary process.
“By Gwyyr, that’s not what I learned in the filiary! We were taught that the world was hatched from an egg.”
“You may think as you please,” said Bloch. “However, do you know of any place where bones are found imbedded in rock or earth?”
“Yes; in Thidhem there’s a cliff, worn away by wind and weather, where such bones are exposed. Do you wish such things?”
“I certainly do. We need such bones, called ‘fossils,’ to learn how a race of egg-laying mammals evolved into organisms much like ourselves.”
Barbe remarked: “It is not so strange; much the same thing happened on Krishna, and we have the platypus on Earth…This road seems very little used; we’ve seen nobody except that one cart that passed us an hour ago.”
“It’s Wythias’s band,” explained Antis. “While they’re out, all the Communities in their path keep their workers at home.”
They were now well into the Gorge of Hwead. Bloch looked nervously up at the towering walls and said:
“This would be a fine place to drop rocks on people below.” Later he added: “What’s that noise? Like bells.”
Iroedh listened too. “It is bells; the bells of Ledhwid. They’re hung from the branches of the sacred grove and are rung by the wind, and the Oracle interprets the sounds.”
Bloch murmured a Terran poem:
“’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona Mountain
When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled…”
The Gorge of Hwead opened out and there stood the Hill of Ledhwid, crowned by the sacred grove of trees of immense size and antiquity. Before the grove, at the top of the path that wound up the steep hillside, stood the temple, of translucent blue stone, massive and graceful at the same time.
“Bless my soul!” said Bloch. “Whoever built that structure knew his business. I wish we hadn’t donated our camera to Wythias.”
“The ancients built such things,” said Iroedh. “Perhaps if Antis and I can start some people living as they did, we shall be able to do as well again.”
They straggled up the path to the irregular chiming of the bells. The slope made them puff. Iroedh looked down distastefully at her shape and for an instant resented her new weight; then remembered that without all this she and Antis would never have been united. That was worth hauling any number of bothersome female organs!
They passed through a gate in the stone wall that ran around the whole top of the hill. In front of the temple stood a single Avtiny worker-guard in such finery as Iroedh had never seen, even on a queen. Her cuirass and helmet seemed to be of gold, and the latter bore a rim of jewels with a big glittering stone in front, faceted like that in Barbe’s engagement ring.
“Good afternoon, sister,” said Bloch. “I wonder if—”
“You are expected,” said the guard. “Oh, Garnedh! Conduct these two visitors of another race to the Oracle at once. You two”—she indicated the Avtini—“will have to send in your question in the usual form.”
“But they’re with me—” began Bloch.
“I’m sorry, but I have my orders. Garnedh will take care of you.”
The other guard, who had stepped out of the shadows inside the temple, led Bloch and Barbe away. Iroedh, feeling lost, sat down on the steps. Antis relaxed against a pillar and blew on his flute a bar of an ancient Terran song Bloch had taught them, one that began:
“Main aidh av siin dhe glory av dhe kamyng av dhe Lord…”
“Antis,” said Iroedh, “what’s this ‘usual form’ in which they wish questions submitted?”
“I can tell you that,” said the guard. “Write your question on this pad, giving your name and Community, and send it in with your off
ering.”
“Offering?”
“Certainly. You don’t suppose an institution like this runs on air, do you?”
Iroedh looked at Antis. “I have nothing to offer, darling.”
“Neither have I—”
“How about some of that handsome armor of yours?” Iroedh turned to the guard. “Would his helmet be acceptable?”
“Quite,” said the guard.
“Hey!” cried Antis. “I won’t give up my armor! We may yet have a battle on our hands.”
“But then how shall we submit a question?”
“We needn’t. We know what’s good for us as well as the Oracle does.”
The guard said: “There is one other course: to submit a report on your Community. If you will write several thousand words on everything that has happened there recently, as well as any other news you have picked up along the way, the Master may consider that an acceptable substitute.” The guard’s voice became confidential. “My dear, I hope you won’t consider me inquisitive, but you’re a queen, aren’t you?”
“You might say so.”
“Well, this is something I have never seen in all my years of service here! Are you fleeing the destruction of your Community by the Arsuuni, or what?”
“No. I’m an ex-worker.”
“Impossible! Or should I say a miracle? May I make your acquaintance, Queen? I am Ystalverdh of Thidhem.”
“I’m Iroedh of Elham—or was. And this is Antis of Elham.”
“How did you become a functional female? And what are these strangers from Gliid, the gods returned to Niond? And where’s Yaedh?”
Iroedh started to tell about the death of Yaedh when another priestess raced up the road in a chariot. Up the path her ueg toiled and out of sight around toward the rear of the temple. A few seconds later the priestess panted back around the corner.
“Ystalverdh!” she cried. “Tell the Master at once. Wythias is marching on Ledhwid, searching for two strangers of another race.”
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