Master of None

by N Lee Wood

  Nathan sighed. “How nice,” he said scornfully. “But art out of boredom isn’t a virtue. Can you honestly tell me, Yaenida, that all the dancing and music and poetry is to satisfy any particular creative urge of their own? It’s all geared toward making themselves more valuable as marriage commodities for the Family business.”

  She regarded him silently for a moment, her lips pursed. “Aren’t you being a little harsh in your judgment?”

  “Not as harsh as life is for the men of Vanar.”

  She snorted. “I suspect there are those who might not feel so sorry for you. The asteroid miners in the Craswell system, for example. Long hours, hard physical work, the most basic amenities, low-paying labor contracts, high accident mortality. Can you imagine their reaction to your bitching about your soft existence?”

  “I’ll be happy to trade places with any one of them this minute, l’amae, if you’ll allow it. They at least have the freedom to quit their jobs.”

  “The freedom to starve, Nathan? Don’t pretend to be naive. They survive any way they can, the same as you do.” Her eyes narrowed as she tucked her hands into her sleeves for warmth, although the room was a comfortable temperature. “Freedom comes packaged in a variety of cages. Get used to yours.”

  “I don’t think I can,” he said bitterly.

  “Why not?” she asked reasonably. “You don’t really believe human beings are born kind and good and wise, do you? We are greedy, selfish, and ruthless, which is why our species has survived for so long.” She leaned back in her chair, wincing in pain through an amused smile. “Women endured much worse for untold generations. We survived. And so will you.”

  “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their sons?”

  She laughed. “Not my religion,” she said. “But, yes. The good of the community outweighs the good of the individual. Men’s biological nature is violent and must be controlled, to protect society as well as themselves. Women have always had plenty of reason to fear male violence. Women are rarely serial killers. We’re not even equipped for rape.”

  He didn’t answer, staring into the lifeless screen of the reader. She sighed, leaned back into the cushion in the chair shaking her head. “Such a stubborn boy,” she admonished. “Surely it can’t all be that dreadful for you here? You could still be living in Westcastle, you know.”

  “I don’t need a lecture on the horrors of war, jah’nari l’amae,” he said thickly, glancing up at her angrily. “As for Vanar being a place of peace and harmony where all women are gentle pacifists, I’ve got a five-inch scar down my left side that contradicts you.”

  She snorted dismissively. “That was merely politics.”

  “And that makes the difference?”

  “Absolutely. We’ve always had the usual squabbles between rival Houses, business conflicts, even an assassination once in a while, but nothing major, nothing to threaten our entire society. Our streets are safe, we live without locks on our doors, those of us who even bother with doors. In all our history, we have never had a war. Can’t you see that these are things worth protecting?”

  “For godsake, Yaenida,” he protested. “Protect from whom? Me? I’m not a rapist or a murderer! I am not a violent man.”

  “Aren’t you?” She shook her hands out of her sleeves, and leaned forward to rest her elbows on the arms of the chair. “You made a very threatening gesture toward a woman on the street. Don’t tell me you weren’t angry enough to hit her.”

  “That woman had no right to hit me.”

  “Of course she did. To her, it looked like you were assaulting Lyris Arjusana. Men are never to touch a woman against her wishes, Nathan. Not on Vanar. You were naekulam, a foreigner without family, rude and unpredictable. They had reason to believe you were ready to respond to an ordinary rebuke with violence. That woman knew you weren’t Vanar and likely thought she actually was doing you a favor. If she or Lyris Arjusana had made a formal complaint, you’d have found yourself back in much more unpleasant circumstances. The violence done to you hurts more from insult than any injury. How much physical harm can a woman half your size really inflict? Had it been the other way round, you could have easily caused severe injury to her.”

  “The real injury caused to me, Yaenida, is being imprisoned here with no hope of escape. I’m a botanist, not a criminal, and certainly not a rapist or a murderer. Tell me, how is that violent? Who is going to be hurt if I go out into the jungle to study plants?”

  “Ostensibly, no one,” she admitted candidly, her expression nonchalant. “But to allow one man more privileges than another invites discontent and jealousy. Be realistic, Nathan. Vanar or not, we all have limitations; accept yours and you’ll be happier.”

  He stared down at the knuckles of his clenched fists in his lap without speaking.

  “You have access to the grounds, and permission to have your private litte garden. Grow flowers. Grow weeds, if that’s what you want to do. It’s healthy for men to be interested in plants, to appreciate their bond with the earth, respect the source from which all life flows.”

  “Worship your Mother Goddess?” he said sourly.

  She picked up her pipe and rolled a small ball of sticky black resin between her fingers to reload the bowl. “Our beliefs are more philosophy than religion. We don’t worship any deity like your hairy old man squatting in the clouds to piss abuse down on those who refuse to crawl before his tyranny. She is merely a symbol—the union of all living beings into one reality, neither male nor female, greater than the sum of its parts. As individuals, we must accept our personal limitations as being only part of the whole. But there is no divine judgment or punishment, only the harm we do to ourselves when we try to divide the mind from the body and the body from the soul.”

  She gazed off distractedly over his shoulder, puffing the pipe to life. “A clever sermon,” he said. “Do you really believe it?”

  She smiled. “Certainly.” She focused back on his face. “Why not? It’s no sillier than any other theology, and centuries of Vanar peace and prosperity haven’t harmed its validity.” Her eyes hardened. “But while this philosophical discussion has been amusing, Nathan, you would do well to listen to some practical advice.”

  “Always, Pratha Yaenida,” he said, and she glanced at him as she heard the sudden wariness in his voice.

  “Don’t labor under the illusion that you are more cunning than the men of my House. Aelgar isn’t stupid, he simply underestimated you. He’s perfectly aware you’ve used our own conventions to outsmart him . . . this time. He’s not likely to let that happen again. Sahakharae, on the other hand”—she shrugged—“have their place, but are often envious creatures who enjoy stirring up trouble. You are not liked by the men of my House. They are resentful of your intimacy with me and are afraid of your strangeness. They have little else to do and plenty of time to do it in, should they decide to hurt you.”

  She studied him silently for a moment. “You will find yourself in a very small minority if you continue voicing your discontent. There are many things about our men you know little of. It would profit you to open your mind as well as your eyes. Vanar men don’t think of themselves as oppressed; they consider themselves blessed to be living in a society that allows them to be cherished and protected by the ideals of the Eternal Mother.”

  He was sure he heard a tinge of irony in her voice.

  “You’re here to stay, for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not. So you can do one of two things, Nathan. You can sit around sniveling about it, or you can accept what you cannot change and turn what you can to your own advantage. For the moment, you are an asset to me, and I will defend you as best I can. As I have been. No one will challenge my authority openly, and it is not wise to annoy me too far. But if you become such a disruptive influence that the stability of my House is threatened, I will not protect you.”

  A thrill of alarm shot through his gut.

  “I cannot afford to,” she said softly.

  Sh
e turned back to her reader, flipping it open and squinting at the oversized Vanar script. “You can start by paying stricter attention to learning Vanar. We begin,” she said firmly. “Certain verbs are followed by an infinitive with a linking preposition, others are not. Those verbs with linking prepositions fall into four categories of construction, depending on the subjunctives aht, tvae, aen, and ynah....”

  He made better progress that day. The stick could also be a powerful incentive to learning.

  XVI

  PRATIMA WAITED FOR HIM BY THE RIVER, SITTING WITH HER LEGS tucked underneath her on the grassy bank as the gray water flowed by. Her face was turned away from him, only the curve of her cheek visible, but he knew she was aware he stood at the edge of the brake behind her, watching her.

  She was not beautiful, and he had never wanted a woman more. The thick bracken crackled under his bare feet as he approached her. She turned her head slightly, listening. Her eyes closed as his hands settled onto her shoulders. Kneeling behind her, not bothering to brush his sati out of the way, he kissed the side of her neck, her skin cool under his lips.

  His hands slipped inside the edge of her sati, sliding down her ribs to cup each tiny breast, her nipples hardening. She leaned back against him, her eyes still closed, and sighed. His own breath caught at the sound, the urgent pressure growing in his groin.

  They made love slowly, without speaking, black and pale blue cloth spread underneath naked bodies. He watched her in amazement as she suddenly gasped, back arching, roll after roll of orgasmic surge carrying her. She hadn’t reached the end of the waves before the tingling pressure began in his own legs, rushing through him and exploding in his head.

  He dozed after that, his arm across her thin chest, her legs tangled around his. The warm breeze carried the sweet smell of the river across their sweating skin. When he woke, she had vanished as completely as a dream. He wondered at it, but was not surprised she could so easily slip away.

  He rolled onto his back, his arms and legs loosely splayed against the sheer linen sati. Staring up into the electric blue of the sky as it began to darken into late afternoon, he sighed, then rose to shake the fragments of twigs and stiff river grass out of his sati.

  A small package flew out of the silk folds, and he nearly lost it in the thick vegetation. Only the rainbow flash of paper caught his eye, and when he unwrapped it, he held a tiny wooden box. The fragile clasp was ancient, bronze metal in ornate design. His thumb pushed it up gently, prizing the lid open against the stiff hinge.

  Inside, several dozen bloodred svapnah seedpods nested one against the other. He smiled, shaking the box a bit to make them roll across the bottom.

  That afternoon, he started his garden.

  He raided the groundskeeping system, the gardening tools oddly shaped as they were made for use by machines, but he managed. Choosing a site away from the main garden, screened by a stone wall but exposed to the morning light, he started breaking the ground.

  Raemik settled onto the narrow ledge of the wall, sati pulled up from around his knees to allow him to sit cross-legged. Nathan wiped his forearm across his eyes to glance at the boy. His pale skin seemed to absorb the sunlight, glowing a golden color reflected from a silver mirror. The end of his sati over his head cast his eyes into shade, accenting the faint blue in his irises. But he looked distinct from his sister, now that Nathan was more adept at perceiving the subtle differences between them. He was also relieved to find his sexual confusion toward Raemik gone.

  The boy regarded him silently, and Nathan went back to his back-breaking work, double digging the ground to prepare his garden site. As he worked, the only sounds were the trills of birds, insects humming in the air, and his own grunts and breathing as he dug the spade into the soil: lift, turn, break the clods with the edge of the shovel, step back, and repeat down the long row.

  “You’re my sister’s lover,” Raemik said suddenly.

  Startled, Nathan straightened, blinking away the sweat beading into his eyes. He wasn’t sure if Raemik meant it as a question. Probably not, since privacy was limited in the men’s house, gossip the lifeblood of their daily existence.

  “I’m not your sister’s lover,” he said, recognizing the word Raemik had chosen as one that implied a semipermanence. “I”—he had to think of the various terms he could use, with all their shades of meanings—“had sex with her,” he finally settled on. “I don’t know if I will see her again.”

  Surprisingly, the boy smiled, a tight, cold sneer that had nothing to do with humor. “You will,” he said. “Like attracts like. You’re both exotics.”

  Nathan eyed the boy, but that seemed to be the end of the conversation for a while. After Nathan had broken the ground for nearly another hour under the watchful gaze of his young overseer, Raemik said, “Tell her she should go away. Go back to her beloved Worm.”

  Nathan’s back ached as he straightened, and he jabbed the spade into the ground to give him a footrest. Leaning on the handle he looked up at the boy, breathing hard. “Why should she go away?” he asked reasonably.

  There was more emotion in the single glance the boy threw at him than he’d ever seen: fear, loathing, anger, hate, and a faint sheen of desperation and bravado. “Tell her to come back in a year. I’m not ready. She can’t make me, you know. That’s one thing they can’t make men do.”

  He understood what the boy meant. “And you’ll be ready in a year?” he asked dubiously.

  The boy smiled enigmatically. “A year is nothing for her, and everything to me. Tell her I’m not ready yet to throw away the rest of my life.” Then he was up on his feet, running along the thin ledge of the wall with an agility Nathan had only seen before in Pratima.

  As it was, Nathan didn’t see her again for several weeks, although he spent as much of his free time as he could waiting for her at the river or at the kaemahjah. There were few other places where they could meet. He had been reclining against the kaemahjah cushions smoking a water pipe and listening to the music with his eyes closed when he felt someone settling beside him. He knew before opening his eyes it would be Pratima.

  What did surprise him was the depth of his hunger as he pulled her down by her neck to kiss her gently. He held her tightly, and when she pulled back, her own eyes regarded him with a touch of alarm and wonder.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said quietly.

  “Family business,” she apologized. She smiled, reserved. “How is your garden coming along?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll just have to wait to see what comes up.”

  She smiled, placing a gentle hand on the swelling in his lap. After that, they sat side by side quietly, listening to the end of the music holding hands with almost chaste diffidence. When it finished, they left by silent agreement, taking a taxi hoverfloat into the center of the city to the white tower.

  They rose up the marble shaft into the top without speaking, nor even looking at each other much, and Nathan found he was vaguely uneasy. As the floor petaled back, revealing the vast room, he realized they were not alone.

  He heard her before he saw the woman in the pool, then glanced at Pratima. She had her lips pursed in an expression of regret for him, but her eyes sparkled with far more animation than he’d seen before.

  The woman swam languidly to the edge of the pool, dark red hair fanning out like sea grass behind her in the water.

  “Pratima,” she said, her voice clear over the sound of the waterfall. As she heaved herself out of the pool, Nathan realized with a shock that she was naked and very pregnant. He looked away as she bent awkwardly to retrieve the silk robe on the floor.

  Pratima crossed the huge circular room and the two women raised their hands, palms pressed together for a long moment. “Bralin,” Pratima said, more as a confirmation than a greeting. They kissed, more chastely than lovers, but far more intimately than Nathan expected.

  Bralin glanced at him curiously, her eyes an unusual shade of green. She draped the black silk over her shoulder
s, tying it loosely above her swollen belly, and crossed to lower herself carefully onto the mass of pillows kicked into a circular screen.

  “Bralin is a Pilot for the Ushahayam motherline,” Pratima said to him in Hengeli.

  Bralin’s eyes widened. “You must be Nay-teen Karoo,” she said to him in heavily accented Hengeli, obviously intrigued. He felt his face flush as Pratima looked at him expressionlessly.

  “I apologize if I embarrass you,” Bralin said hurriedly. “But I never before meet a . . .” She stopped, struggling for the word, then said something in Vanar to Pratima.

  “Foreigner,” Pratima answered. He was suddenly sure the word Bralin had used had far more meaning than what had been tactfully translated. “Nathan, Bralin and I would like coffee.”

  His back stiffened, and he stared at her, seeing nothing but an impassive cold in her face. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to serve you both, l’amaée,” he said in rigid Vanar before he turned his back on Bralin’s puzzled glance and marched toward the opposite end of the tower room.

  “Coffee please, Ilitu,” he said to the mechanical spider and watched as the machine disengaged itself from the slot in the wall. The articulated robot quickly and efficiently made the thick, dark brew, but as it clamped its mandible around the tray to balance it on its flat back, Nathan got an almost perverse pleasure out of bending over to pick it up. “Thank you,” he said firmly.

  The machine didn’t resist, silently refolding its jointed legs back into the slot.

  The two women sat together as comfortably and close as lovers, Pratima’s palm resting lightly on the pregnant woman’s belly. They spoke in an odd, soft, rapid language, not even Vanar, he realized, resentful of even this smallest exclusion. Doing his best to parody the lowest-ranking sahakharae he could envision, he carried the tray across the room. He shifted his weight to sweep his sati to one side with his foot, and set the tray on the soft carpet. His hands shook only slightly as he held out the small porcelain cups ritually to the two women. Bralin looked uncomfortable, he was pleased to see, but Pratima regarded him with remote indifference.