The Gate to Women's Country

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "What's his name?"

  "Barten. He's in Michael's command. Tally's fit to be quarantined, she's so mad at me. He was courting her until he met me." She preened, throwing her head back, looking for an instant as beautiful and mysterious as Morgot sometimes did. "How old is he?"

  "He belongs to the twenty-two, I think. He's not twenty-five, at any rate. He doesn't have any scars yet."

  "What's the real reason they don't let them fight until they're twenty-five?"

  "You know. They told you in women's studies."

  "I know what they told me. They're strongest and healthiest and most virile between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five, and if they're going to father babies, that's the time to do it. So, they aren't risked in battle until they're older. But is that the real reason?"

  "What else?"

  "I thought it was maybe to give them a few more years to decide if they want to come back or not."

  "Not very many come back after they're twenty," Myra said definitely, her lightly freckled face drawn into a frown. "Hardly any at all."

  "I'll bet you were hoping...."

  "I wasn't hoping anything!" she said angrily. "Don't be silly. Barten is proud to be a warrior. He'd never do that. Morgot says it's better if they don't get talked into it, either, or you end up with someone coming back who's just miserable. 'A warrior home against his will remains at heart a warrior still.' Do you want to do your lines anymore?"

  "No. I'm only second understudy, anyhow. I won't get to play a part until next year or the year after." Stavia found herself slightly annoyed about this, mostly because the young woman playing the lead was, in Stavia's opinion, very bad at it. "Michy's doing Iphigenia this year."

  "Michy!" she asked incredulously. "You're having a fat ghost?"

  "Well, I suppose Iphigenia could have been fat. Who knows? Maybe that's why they wanted to sacrifice her. I suppose if you sacrificed a goat or a sheep, you'd pick a nice fat one."

  "A fat ghost!"

  "Who's a fat ghost," Joshua asked from the door.

  Seeing Myra's lips set into a stubborn line, Stavia explained, hastily. Myra was continuing to be unpleasant around Joshua, not answering direct questions, pretending not to see him. If this was the effect Barten was having on her, Stavia didn't look forward to meeting Barten, blue-blue eyes or not. Not that she'd probably have a chance to meet him. During carnival the warriors stayed near the plaza where the assignation houses and carnival taverns and amusements were; they weren't allowed in the residential sections of town, and Stavia was too young to go tavern-hopping.

  "Michy will probably be dressed in floating draperies and you won't be able to tell what shape she is," Joshua commented. "Myra, Morgot wants to see you, please, as soon as possible. And Stavia, I ran into your physiology instructress at the hospital. She sent a message that she wants to talk to you and Morgot about your going to the basic medical institute at Abbyville."

  "The institute?"

  "At Abbyville. Oh, she doesn't expect you'd want to go for a few years yet. It's a nine-year course if you do the whole thing, seven years' study plus two years internship, with not much opportunity to come home. She wants to know how you feel about it, and how Morgot feels about your going, of course...."

  "Why would she have told you that?" Myra asked in a dangerously unpleasant voice. "What business is it of yours?"

  Joshua looked at her, a long, rather quiet look, as he sometimes looked at weeds in the garden, deciding whether to pull them out or not. "Perhaps she values my opinion of Stavia's talents, Myra. I am asked from time to time to offer opinions concerning both of you."

  He turned and left.

  Myra took a quick breath, as though she had been slapped.

  "Well, you had it coming," muttered Stavia.

  "Shut up."

  "I will. But if a few soppy looks from the walls make people as rude as you, Myra, I hope I never go near the walls again."

  "It's none of his business!"

  "It wasn't about you. It was about me! And I'm willing to have Joshua talk about me, so it was his business. Who the hell are you, all of a sudden?"

  "It was about me! He said he gave opinions about me, and if you want to know who I am, I'm someone who's sick and tired of having a... a serving man sticking his nose in my business."

  "Oh, you'd rather some warrior stuck his nose somewhere else, huh?"

  "Stavia!" Morgot's voice snapped like a whip. "Myra! Will you come with me, please?"

  Stavia shrunk into herself, wishing she were invisible. Fighting with Myra was something she'd promised herself not to do. Myra flounced out of the room, and Stavia heard her voice through the closed door. "None of his business.... Don't know why you... ? Barten says...."then the crack of her mother's voice.

  "Never say to me 'Barten says.' Never. This is Women's Country, and if you cannot hold to its courtesies you can leave it." Silence. Oh, Great Mother. Weeping.

  The door opened. "Stavia?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Myra would be less likely to forget herself if you didn't argue with her. Her current state of mind should be obvious to you."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "You've learned something about it."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "You know what it's called."

  "Infatuation."

  "You know what it does?"

  " 'Infatuation makes otherwise reasonable women behave in unreasonable and illogical ways. It is a result of biological forces incident to racial survival.' "

  "And?"

  "And, 'Infatuation should be regarded with forbearance. Though episodic, it is almost invariably self-limiting.' "

  "Stavvy...."

  "Mom."

  "She upset you, didn't she?"

  "She was so... she was nasty to Joshua."

  "I know. Remember it. That way, if you ever go through what Myra's going through, you won't be as foolish as she is."

  "She won't just give up on the ordinances, will she? She won't just leave?"

  "Become a Gypsy?" Morgot chewed her lip, as though she had had a sudden thought. "I doubt it. But if she does, well, almost all of them who try it come back in a few months." Morgot looked even more thoughtful.

  "I know. But there's quarantine."

  "Only for as long as necessary to be sure they're not sick. Well, we'll do what we can to forestall that. Speaking of Gypsies, I'm making the weekly health inspection at the camp this afternoon. I think it would be a good idea if you came along."

  "I... I didn't like it the last time."

  "Good! That's a very appropriate reaction." Morgot started out the door, then turned back. "As a matter of fact, I think we'll take Myra along."

  "Myra! She'll puke."

  "Well, that won't kill her." She went out, leaving Stavia with very mixed feelings. It was good to be included, but not always. Not in everything.

  THE SOUTH WALLS of Marthatown rose up out of sheep pens and pig pens and hay barns, a bucolic clutter wedged between the walls and the patchwork of pasture and stubble field, green and yellow and ashy white, dotted with huddles of dirty-gray sheep and scattered flocks of spotted goats to the place the fences ended. Beyond that open meadows ran off to the foot of the mountains where the woodcutters worked.

  The north walls of the city were girded by warriors' territory. Armory and ceremonial rooms stood at the foot of the walls facing the parade grounds. North of the parade ground were rows of long wooden barracks, their carved gables and doors fronting on the exercise yards and the playing fields. East of these lay the pleasantly shaded walls of the officers' residence. To the north, at some distance from the city, the virtually empty hulk of the Old Warriors' Home huddled in a screening grove of trees. All this was garrison country, surrounded by a low fence, off limits to women and a more or less well-observed boundary for the men except when in search of what they were pleased to call "recreation."

  Beyond the Old Warriors' Home the river ran westward toward the sea. It came from the eastern
hills, through the marsh, then over a series of little dams and weirs which irrigated farmland from the foot of the hills almost to the shoreland in the west. There, near the shore, a road came down from the northwest to cross the river at a shallow ford, and near this ford the Gypsies had their perennial though not continuous encampment, a ragged and fluid collection of shacks on wheels, some brightly painted and others the faded gray of sun-dried wood, a sprawl of messy domesticity around the blackened stones of a central cooking fire.

  Morgot, in her role as chief medical officer of Marthatown, went out each week to inspect the Gypsies, or sent a delegate. True to her word, she had brought both Myra and Stavia with her on this particular occasion.

  During the medical visits, there were seldom any men around, except one.

  This man, who called himself Jik, met them as they pulled off the road. "Back too soon, Doctor. You women just got done with them yesterday." He had a narrow face with a lopsided jaw. His teeth pointed in various directions, some filling in for others which were missing. One shoulder was lower than the other, and his laugh was a sneer made large. "Just yesterday I got them working."

  "You had all of them but one, Jik. A sick one."

  "Off the whole week, and not a coin out of her."

  "She's cured now, Jik. You've probably already got her flat on her back milking the warriors for their amusement money." Though this wasn't Jik's only source of income, Morgot knew. The man dealt in beer and scarce commodities and information and rumor, as well, all of which the Council was well aware of and used for their own purposes from time to time. Morgot got down from the wagon and pulled her bag from beneath the seat. "It'll go quicker if you line them up for me."

  Jik made a rude gesture, but started his circuit through the wagons. Women climbed from the wheeled huts, lining up around the fire, hoisting their skirts, some wagging bottoms while others thrust pudenda's in the general direction of Morgot's wagon, laughing and catcalling, "Want some, Doctor? Want a little puss-puss, girlies? Hey?"

  Morgot stared down the row, looking at each woman deeply and calmly, and in a moment the catcalls stopped. "Just in case you've forgotten, ladies," she called, "I've got the seal, and there won't be another doctor out until next week. No seal, no business."

  The mockery became muted.

  "Swabs," Morgot said to Stavia. "And remember to keep the vials labeled."

  "What shall I do?" whispered Myra, her face very pale.

  "Just sit there," her mother told her. "And watch."

  Stavia kept telling herself it was never as bad as she remembered that it was. They smelled, sure, but it was mostly just dirt and smoke. Morgot took two swabs from each of them, one vaginal, one rectal, dropping them into the vial that Stavia held ready before she sealed the woman on the forehead with indelible ink. Last week's seal was still there, too, a faded circle on the left side. This week's went on the right. The date and the medical officer's initials. MRTM. Morgot Rentesdaughter Thalia Marthatown. No one else in Women's Country had those initials. No one else had Stavia's, either. SMRM. Stavia Morgotsdaughter Rentes Marthatown. Thalia was her great-grandmother's line.

  Plop, the swabs went into the vial.

  "Is it labeled?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Over in the wagon, Myra was looking at everything except the line of flabby buttocks and bushy vulvas on display.

  Morgot had it down to a kind of chant, "Left leg up. Thank you. Bend over, please. Thank you. You're Vonella, aren't you?" she asked. "I thought so. Go climb into the wagon, Vonny. You'll have a week in the quarantine house. You can be thinking up the names of all the warriors you've fucked since your last clean seal, too. I'll need them all." The women were supposed to keep a contact book, but few of them were accurate about it.

  When they had finished, Morgot asked, "All right, Jik. Are you harboring any elopers? Any silly little girl some handsome warrior has talked out here for his pleasure?"

  He shifted from foot to foot. "The warrior paid me...."

  "He could have paid you and gone to bed with you," Morgot snapped. "He might have told you she'd never had sex with anyone but him, and him only once, I'd still need to see her."

  "In there," he said, pointing. The wagon looked cleaner than some of the others.

  "Get her out here."

  "Can't you go... ?"

  "You know the rules, Jik. Examination is done in public, with everybody knowing all about it. No secrets. No girly saying she didn't know old Rosy had the plup. This way everybody knows who's got what and whether they're curable or not."

  "She's only a kid."

  "Weren't they all kids once?"

  Jik had some trouble getting the girl out, and when Stavia saw who it was, her mouth dropped open and she felt her face turning bright red. It was one of Myra's friends. Tally. Seventeen, just like Myra. From the wagon behind her came a muffled exclamation. Myra had seen her, too.

  "You're Tally," Morgot said, as impersonally as if she'd never seen her before. "I'll make up a page for you in my Gypsy book...."

  "I'm not...." the girl protested. "I didn't...."

  "Stand up straight and lift your skirts."

  "I... Morgot, please."

  "Lift... your... skirts. "

  "Might as well, honey," cried one of the Gypsies. "She'll get that swab up your ass one way or another."

  The girl started crying, her hands before her eyes and her mouth twisted up. "Do you want to go home?" Morgot asked. "You can come back to Women's Country, you know. Or you can stay here. If you stay here too long, however, we won't take you back. Once disease is chronic, we don't take people back or allow them to stay near the city."

  "Barten said he'd take me away...."

  Stavia heard the sound from behind her in the wagon, the intake of breath, the creaking of that breath, like aching wood, stressed in wind.

  "Oh? Really! I think he probably told my daughter Myra the same thing. Where did you think he'd take you? Into the wilds? Did he plan to join the Gypsies with you? He's already taken you as far as he intended to, girl. What's the matter, couldn't he wait two months until carnival? Or did he have other plans for carnival and want to get some fun out of you in the meantime?"

  The girl broke and ran toward the wagon, weeping.

  Stavia whispered, shocked, "You were mean."

  "I was, wasn't I."

  "Did you know she was here?"

  "I'd heard rumors to that effect."

  Stavia said nothing in a combination of furious embarrassment for Myra and anger for herself. Morgot had planned this!

  "If you make it embarrassing enough, they usually don't repeat," Morgot said in a low voice. "I really don't want to come out here next time and find Myra in that wagon. Barten has quite a history of getting girls from Women's Country out here. Dishonoring them is part of the fun for him. I think Tally is his third or fourth. It's as though the girls were some kind of spoils of battle. They keep score, you know, some of the warriors in the garrison. How many women they've taken. It's a kind of game with them."

  "I didn't know," Stavia mumbled, abashed. She still felt angry but she couldn't be angry at Morgot. This wasn't one of the things she had learned in women's studies. It wasn't one of the things Habby had talked about, or Byram.

  "Not all of them do it, Stavvy. I don't think Habby would. Or Byram."

  "How did you know I was thinking about them?"

  "I think about them. All the time."

  IN THE WAGON, Myra rode with her scarlet face straight forward, her mouth clamped in a grim, voiceless line. Tally lay in the back of the wagon, crying noisily, with many gulps and sniffles. The other woman, Vonella, chatted as though a week in quarantine was a treat for her.

  "It probably is," Stavia thought. "Showers and a clean bed and cooked food and too much of our precious antibiotics."

  "I've got a daughter in Marthatown somewhere," Vonella said. "And a son in the garrison at Susan."

  "Then what are you doing out there?" Stavia deman
ded, forgetting for the moment that she was a child and not supposed to ask personal questions.

  "Stavia!" Morgot warned.

  "Oh, it's all right, Doctor," the woman said. "I don't mind the kid askin' and I don't mind sayin'. I just wasn't suited for town, you know? Too clean. Too neat. Too much expected of you all the time. Studies and work and crafty things, no more time to yourself than a dog with the itch. Somebody after you all the time to cook better or weave better or be responsible for somethin'. I'd rather be out here, travelin' around. Jik's an old villain, but he's not bad to us, really. Some of the men are all right. We have some times."