Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 (6 page)

 
          
Cendri
said neutrally—the one thing she must not do was to question, publicly, the
prime postulate of their society—"The worlds of the Unity are not, of
course, dominated by males, Lady Miranda. Oh, perhaps a few hundred years ago,
on such worlds as Pioneer and Apollo, there were certain—certain inequities.
But on my own home world they were never very great, and on University, men and
women are quite equal."

 
          
Miranda
raised her feathery eyebrows in obvious skepticism. She said, "I am not,
of course, well enough informed for intelligent comment on this, Scholar Dame.
But it does conflict with everything I have ever heard."

 
          
Cendri
smiled. "And of course I could never convince you, Lady Miranda. The
simplest thing would be for your world to send some—" she hesitated,
phrasing it carefully, "Some of your finest students there, so that each
woman might see for herself that she is welcomed as the equal of any man, and
accepted only on the basis of her individual talent and aptitude for
scholarship."

 
          
The
Lady Miranda laughed. She said, "The very fact that men are accepted as
scholars
points to prejudice and inequity," she said.
"It is a biological fact, long proven by any impartial scientist, that the
average man's brain is smaller than the brain of a woman, that female children
are taller and heavier at puberty, and of course
after
puberty, males
are so much at the mercy of their compulsive sex drives that it is impossible
to educate them. Male children, of course, can be educated, if it is skillfully
done. But only in a society where males make the rules could anyone accept the
idea of a true scholarship for adult functioning males."

 
          
Firmly
Cendri reminded herself that she was not there to debate, or to defend the
Unity, or the world of University. She said diplomatically, "I am sure in
your experience you have found it so, Lady, but I do assure you that on
University we have many great male scholars."

 
          
Miranda
nodded, and after a moment Cendri realized that she was being humored; that
Miranda was being diplomatic and polite. "Of course they have taught you
to think so, Scholar Dame, and you have never had, I am sure, a chance to do
research without cultural bias."

 
          
Since
this was exactly what Cendri would have liked to say to Miranda, she wanted to
laugh. "Let us hope for a day, then, Lady, when your scholars from
Isis
can see for themselves."

 
          
Miranda
returned the smile, with spontaneous friendliness. "I wish we might! It has
been spoken of, you know, in the councils of the High Matriarch—that we should
send scholars to University, have more trade into the Unity, share problems
with other worlds; we need to know more about water-table technology, and the
mathematics of reserve technology and arid-land cultivation; and more about
pelagic ecology. The High Matriarch believed, too, that we have a
responsibility to the women of the Unity, to show them the example of a sane
society in function, and that until they are shown our example, they could
never follow it. But so many of the women here are paranoid on the subject!
They still believe—or, in the case of some politicians, pretend to believe—that
the worlds of the Unity are just lying in wait to seize us again, and put us
under male domination, as they did with our first colony on Labrys..." she
paused, looked at Cendri and asked "You know the story—?"

 
          
"I
only know that the colony on Labrys was destroyed," she said. "The
official story is that an overanxious administration miscalculated the speed
with which their Sun was to go Nova, and resettled them on a world with an
unstable orbit. There are not many records; most of those which remain call it
a colossal bureaucratic blunder, for which the Unity paid a heavy indemnity.
But indemnities, of course, cannot wipe out the loss of life, and it would not
be at all surprising if some people called it a plot against the
Matriarchate."

 
          
"It
is so called," said Miranda, soberly, "and there are those who think
me a traitor because I have said that I, myself, would like to go and study on
University—"

 
          
"I
hope someday you may," said Cendri, and Miranda smiled gaily and said,
"I would like to see other worlds. I am not afraid of male-dominated
worlds! I—" she laughed again, a merry, defiant sound, "I
defy
any
male to dominate me!"

 
          
She
sounded completely confident, and Cendri thought how incongruous it was that
this young woman, delicate, pretty, pregnant, should express such defiance. She
would have said, if she had been on her own home world,
There
are a great many
men who would
really enjoy
trying it, my dear, and
you might enjoy
it,
too,
if you
would give
it a fair chance!
In
some things, dominance is not so
bad!
Miranda was
pregnant,
surely she must have found
that
out! But of course she could not say
this; so she only rejoiced that the Lady Miranda was in a feminine gossiping
mood—she supposed this was a typical mode for a world of women—and encouraged
it.

 
          
"You
yourself would like to study on University? Are there many women interested in
that, do you think?"

 
          
"I
am sure there are," said Miranda. "There are many women from the
College
of
Ariadne
who have volunteered to assist the Scholar
Dame from Unity in her researches, if she will have them. But there are also
those who fear that this is sacrilege, that your work there will deprive us of
the love and concern of the Builders—"

 
          
"The—"
Cendri swallowed hard, "the—the love and concern of the—the
Builders?" For a moment she felt certain that she must have misunderstood
Miranda's speech. Miranda's eyes were glowing.

 
          
"Oh,
yes! You will feel
it,
too, you are a woman—"

 
          
Cendri
blinked again. How could she possibly do any dispassionate work on the Builder
ruins when she found them an object of religious worship—a worship which,
judging from Miranda's expression, fell just short of idolatry!

 
          
Frankly,
she didn't care all that much whether the Builder ruins ever got explored or
not. That, of course, was Dai's prime concern; as for Cendri herself, the
longer the exploration of the ruins was delayed by the deathwatch on the dying
High Matriarch, the longer it would give her to explore and make notes on the
fascinating and supposedly impossible society of the Matriarchate.

 
          
The
vehicle was stopping before a building somewhat taller than the ones inside the
city walls. The Lady Miranda said, "Here is the Residence of my mother,
the Pro-Matriarch Vaniya. Welcome, Scholar Dame. You must not be
frightened," she added earnestly, "even though it is built with an
upper story, we are so near to We-were-guided that the ground never shakes
here, and you are as safe on the second floor as in the arms of the
Goddess."

 
          
Now
I wonder, Cendri thought, is
this an
observed
seismic phenomenon, or is
it an article of faith, because of the
supposed
love and concern of
the hypothetical "Builders"?
She could not
ask; she would simply have to take her chances. After all, earthquakes could
strike anywhere, on almost any world, and she had never been afraid of living
on an upper story; her small apartment on University was on the eighteenth tier
of a huge residence complex, and she had never given even the most fleeting
thought to earthquakes before this. She assured Miranda seriously that she was
not afraid, and Miranda smiled.

 
          
"And
I am not afraid of all the threatened dangers from the Unity, Scholar
Dame."

 
          
Cendri
had been on the verge of alighting from the vehicle; she
stopped,
her hand on the door-latch. She said in amazement, "The dangers of the
Unity? What, I must
ask,
could we possibly have that
is dangerous to you?"

 
          
"War,"
said Miranda, and her face was suddenly grave. "It is a historical fact,
Scholar
Dame, that
every society where men were
allowed to rule has been destroyed from within by wars, because of the competitive,
aggressive nature of the male animal. It is this, I think, that they
fear."

 
          
Cendri
blinked at Miranda and said, "But our society—the Unity—is flourishing
undestroyed, after more than five hundred years of peace, Lady Miranda. I
cannot understand your logic at all."

 
          
The
lady Miranda looked confused.

 
          
"I
told
you I didn't understand politics. You must talk to my mother about
it. Come," she said, leaning across Cendri and opening the door-latch,
"let me welcome you to our home, Scholar Dame."

           
Cendri, moving her cramped knees
carefully, got out of the car, watching Dal, equally stiff and cramped, and
scowling as if he had had an unpleasant trip, getting out of the front along
with the hauled-out baggage.

 
          
I
have a lot to tell
him.
How long will
it be
before we are alone
to talk?
I
don't dare to
speak
to him in public here!
She
smiled at Dal, trying to encourage him, but he avoided her eyes; and Cendri's
heart sank.

 
          
This
was the beginning of the most complex and difficult assignment she had ever had;
her first work as an independent professional, not a student. And she wasn't
even free to concentrate on it, because all her emotional energy was taken up
with worrying about Dai's feelings! It was justified, she could sympathize with
Dal completely, but still, she could not help resenting the drain on her
energy!

 
          
A
short flight of steps—the first she had seen on Isis, except at the elaborate
Residence and Temple of the High Matriarch—led up to the front door; the room
into which Miranda led them was spacious, hung about with thin draperies and
divided by the screen-like movable partitions, in pale colors. The floor was
matted cleanly with what looked like woven reeds or tatami matting. All around
the room were evidences of children's play, toys and cloth dolls, a child's
shoe lying abandoned at one edge of the room, but the children themselves had
been hastily cleared away; Cendri fancied that she could still hear childish
voices, raised in surprise and protest at the interruption of their games.

 
          
Yes,
what is an Ambassador from another world
to them? A Scholar from the Unity,
and her
mission, means less than nothing.
When will I see these people
as they
really are, and not as
they
choose
to
present
themselves
to me? Will I have any chance at all, to do that? A sociologist
can fade into the background, have a chance to
observe. But
I am here to
serve elaborate political aims—aims 0/
the Unity, aims of the
Matriarchate—and
studying
the ruins
is
only a
pretext. What I am is
living proof
that the Unity will not endanger
their way of life. That is my real
mission, even
though the Unity did
not tell me so.
I wonder
if Dal
has guessed
it
yet?

 
          
The
Lady Miranda was looking around the untidy, child-littered room distressfully.
"Is it true that on the world of the Scholar Dame there are rooms reserved
for formal meetings and policy?"

 
          
She
seemed so disturbed that Cendri paused a moment to frame her reply carefully,
to soothe that disquiet. She said at last, "Every world has its own
customs, Lady Miranda, and there is no great authority somewhere in Limbo to
say with arbitrary words which customs best express the human spirit." She
felt sententious as she mouthed this banal cliche—it had been an epigraph in an
elementary text of Comparative Anthropology—but it lightened the careworn look
on the Lady Miranda's face. She said, "Excuse me for a moment, I must see
if my mother is able to receive you—" and hurried past the screens,
leaving them alone. Cendri looked quickly at Dal, but he raised his eyebrows
noncommittally and said nothing. In the distance—privacy must be difficult or
impossible in houses with this kind of open construction—she heard a low-voiced
colloquy, then Miranda came hurrying back.