Humility spent some time accessing an unused part of her mental files. “D’go-Vanieta.”
“What does it mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Repeat d’go-Vanieta. Keep hammering the word with repeats until you break off the rust of the old speech. Change the inflection.”
Suddenly Humility was giggling.
“Ah,” smiled the old woman, “you have it!”
“God’s Vagina?”
“Now recall the passage in the innkeeper’s memoirs when Liethe was confronted by the sailor who brought her to the island of Vas.”
“She said she came from the Vagina of God. But she was only teasing the sailor!”
“I doubt it.”
“You think she was Arant?”
“I feel she was born here, yes. But Arant? No. I’ve been doing research at the various Kaiel libraries. People are willing to tell their inmost secrets to an old woman with smile wrinkles who is about to die.”
“I would not tell you my secrets!”
“And I would not tell you what I am about to tell you but that you are se-Tufi like me and I know you and have foreknowledge of what you shall become. I do not wish to die with my most unpopular opinions unshared.” She paused, wheezing before she spoke again. “I believe Liethe was a servant. I believe she was ugly and unloved by men.”
“Mother!”
The crone was enjoying her minor heresy so much that she took another tiny glass of pale liqueur. “I believe she was an ignorant servant who worked in Arant basements doing routine cloning work, day after day.”
“The Arant never knew how to clone! Only the Liethe know cloning!”
“We have no information about the Arant except what their enemies said, and their enemies all agreed that they were great biologists. In point of fact the Kaiel know how to clone; they have always known how to clone but make minor use of the technique.”
“Where did you find this out?”
“Here in Kaiel-hontokae. You don’t think all I do is suckle young girls!”
“The songs speak of Liethe as the most beautiful of all the Liethe.”
“The songs would. She left no writing, she left no research, and she was abysmally ignorant of genetics. She had no husbands. She spent her time cloning herself and it was not she, but three daughters of her clones who codified our ways. She left us with a page of comment that is single-mindedly obsessed with beauty and power. Think! Who would have a goal to be beautiful and to use her beauty to dominate the most powerful men?”
“A Liethe!”
“That is not the right answer, child. It is an easy riddle.”
“I don’t know the answer.” Humility was slightly antagonistic.
“Consider an ugly woman without charm who is ignored by men. Might not she have a raging desire to create the kind of beauty and image that would dominate the men all women desire?”
“I’m not ugly and I do dominate men!” Humility was defiant.
The old woman smiled, recalling herself in her prime. “And you do not have the goal to be beautiful and dominating. You are beautiful and dominating. Perhaps you dream about living longer than any se-Tufi has lived. Perhaps you dream of finding the man who can father a daughter who will found a great line with a better heart than your own. Perhaps you look for the ultimate poison. In ways your beauty may have fostered counter-goals. Sometimes you will seek ways to be ugly so that when you travel you will not be molested. One’s goals only reflect what one does not have.”
“I came here to kill Kaiel.”
The crone mother nodded. “So did I. And I found the most vigorous priest clan on all of Geta. They may break the stalemate. They have a magic ear which can go anywhere on the planet in a single heartbeat. They have delicate instrumentation beyond belief. Did you know that a Kaiel can transplant a single chromosome from an ovum with a success rate of one in a hundred? They even do genetic surgery on the chromosome while it is out of the cell with viruses they grow in beetles. Do you know what that means for us? We could forge sister lines that differ by a single chromosome!”
“Do you think the Kaiel will be the instrument of God’s will to unite Geta?” This was a somewhat horrifying thought for Humility.
“No, my child. They came on the scene far too late. God’s command has already been carried out.” The smile of wrinkles was there again. “Which clan is represented in every major city on Geta? Which clan has achieved access to all policy decisions and is present when they are made?”
“Mother!”
The hag cackled. “How easy it is to rule when you sneak into power as a man’s possession. We’re not a priest clan. Who would have suspected us? Who would have opposed us? What could seem more harmless than a woman for hire who does everything she is told to do?”
“But dear crone, we just lay them! We flatter them, and play them off against each other and, seeming to obey, make them give us what we want…” Her eyes widened.
“Go on.”
“But that’s not ruling a planet! There has to be policy. We’d have to be making momentous decisions!”
“Like which priest clan shall win Geta?”
Humility scoffed. “We aren’t going to do that! We’re going to side with the winners. We’re going to ride to power in their beds!”
“And what of the Timalie? that clan of priests who abhor mistresses? Would we allow them to win?”
Humility burst into the great laugh. “They haven’t got a chance!” She stared at herself as she would be five of her lifetimes from now. “Mother, I think you are serious!”
“Of course I am serious! But don’t think I am impressed with our power. We did all this without knowing we were doing it. Our relative strength is great on the planet as compared with any priest clan, but it is as if we commanded a bee’s brain in a human body. What could be more pitiful than a human whose brain takes all day to send a message to his hand? Rule and hand go together. We may be stronger than anyone else, even the Mnankrei, but we are weak. We must use our position, build on it, or in a single generation all could be lost.”
Humility scanned over her ambition and pride. In a sudden flash, it seemed trivial, bloated. “Will I ever be humble?” she cried out.
The old woman took the young girl and brought her down on the bed, holding her head against a dried bosom and caressing the flowing hair of youth. “Not if you grow up like me, you won’t.” She paused. “You have beautiful hair but it’s dry from your trip. We have superior hair tonics here in Kaiel-hontokae. I’ll buy some for you.”
Humility was sleepy. She struggled to get up, to wake up, to get back to her cell where she could sleep.
“No, no. Stay here. Your journey was enough asceticism for a purification. A night with me in this little room won’t spoil Aesoe’s Palace for you.”
“Why did you bring me to Kaiel-hontokae?”
“I need an assassin. I’m too old for that kind of job.”
But Humility was asleep.
27
There is a saying that in the western regions of the Kalamani Desert only a stone has kalothi.
READING OVER HIS old predictions, ineradicably and forever a part of the Archives, Hoemei was appalled by his naivety. Aesoe had taught him like Tae had taught Aesoe, and he had imitated his master, not always grasping the direction of Aesoe’s vision. Now suddenly he was seeing with a new clarity.
The rayvoice project had been a shock. Aesoe believed in a Geta where authority was centralized in Kaiel-hontokae. For such a structure to be viable, rapid communication to and from the city was a necessity. Yet Hoemei had established only forty-five rayvoice stations, fourteen along the Njarae coastline, and the information flow was already unmanageable. He was now sure Aesoe had miscalculated the complexity level of a centralized government by orders of magnitude.