“Joesai will object,” said Oelita.
“He won’t object to going to Soebo. That’s where his men are,” mused Teenae.
“The Gathering will kill many, Joesai among them.” Kathein was morose.
“I, for one, will bet on Joesai’s kalothi,” Oelita stated calmly.
“He’s foolishly impetuous!” stormed Teenae.
“He’s stubborn beyond reason!” reviled Kathein.
“Nevertheless, he has rare kalothi,” insisted Oelita,
“Would you wish him dead?” Kathein was curious.
“As long as I live, I would make peace with him.”
Kathein closed her hand on Oelita’s wrist. “Aesoe is angry with Hoemei, too, for his part, but he needs Hoemei and cannot exile him. You will negotiate your deal with Hoemei. I will be custodian of the crystal. We have done preliminary work with it but our listeners are improper in their attitude and must be rebuilt” — she sighed — “again. I’ll show you our one conversation with God.” She gestured. “Soepei, bring the silvergraph.”
The page was blurred, meaningless. “It is not more genetic maps. It is writing. Teenae, it is God’s writing. Three pages are superimposed and we cannot read through it, but see the alphabet? It is not our alphabet but it is close enough. It is like the carvings in the wall at Grief. See the ‘p’ and at the side, that could be the inflected ‘t’.”
“There’s the under-edge of a line of writing at the bottom!” exclaimed Teenae in awe.
“We’ve puzzled it out. This is what it says.” She wrote for them:
“What does that mean?”
“God knows. God’s Silence comes in mysterious hushes. We need more silvergraphs. We must have better rituals. We need more reverence and better tools. We need more money.”
“You are deducing much from very little,” ventured Oelita.
“What? Did maelot excrete that crystal?” Kathein was impatient with barbarian speculations.
Oelita’s mind was working, hunting for a place to fit this piece of data. The leaves in her teacup did not give her many clues.
“May I see Jokain?” asked Teenae sweetly.
Soepei took the box of the crystal and the silvergraph and Teenae followed Kathein, who warmed at the mention of her baby. “He may be asleep. I never know. He hardly cries. Sometimes when he is awake and hungry he just stares about his world so intently, as if he really saw something. He’s very patient. He only cries when he’s been ignored outrageously.”
They found him in his basket, awake, cooing, fluttering an arm, not quite sure why one was free and the other pinned. Teenae lifted him, and he took that as the signal to attack her breast with his lips. Teenae squealed. Kathein laughed and put him to her breast.
“You do not visit us,” said Teenae reproachfully.
“It is forbidden.”
“Not everything can be seen by Aesoe.”
Kathein carried her child to the window. “When you love people you cannot have, that is painful. When you see them, you inflict your pain on them though all you might ever wish for is to make them happy. Because of your pain they learn to hate you. I do not wish that to happen.”
“Kathein.” The younger woman could not get her attention. “Kathein.” She took her beloved betrothed from behind, and held her while the baby nursed. “You’re full of nonsense for a mind so intelligent.”
“Oelita is very nice. I’m glad for you.”
“Oelita is the nicest person in the world,” whispered Teenae. “But she is a barbarian. She is too different from us. She’s unformed, uneducated. It will never work. A Six is a difficult creation. We need you, Kathein.”
“Now you have made my pain so much worse.” She patted Teenae’s hand wrapped around her waist. “We have to find a way to protect Joesai from Aesoe. I couldn’t bear it if he died and I was mistress to Aesoe and could do nothing. Go. Please go. Our business is finished.”
Teenae brought out a bright ribbon with a bauble on the end. She pressed it into Kathein’s hand. “For Jokain. Homage to the Horse,” she said.
33
There is no way for the backward-facing mind to see what is spread before the forward-facing eyes. The eye is attached to the mind only across a chasm of time that falls from the here and now down to the turmoil of our conception. Every vision drops from the eye to the darkness of the womb and crawls up through a lifetime of ledges before it reaches the mind that watches now. The lower baby-who-was filters all sensation for line and form and color, passing what remains up to the simple child who blocks out the sketch and perspective and sets the balance and passes what remains up to the convoluted adult who adds the detail and mutes the unnecessary and gives purpose to the image. Is it any wonder that two people seeing the same thing see such different shapes?
THE TEMPLE OF Human Destiny was dominated by a circular window of blazing glasses that illustrated the backward-facing mind and the forward-facing eyes. It glowed like a lunar overlord in the dimness above the gaming dens where citizens played their wits against the priestly measures. Oelita thought the Kaiel temples obscene, profligate, grandiose compared with Stgal elegance. Noe, who had brought her here, showed a delight in overwhelming bigness that probably stemmed from an architect daughter’s pride in the sheer ability to over-engineer. Still, the Temple was staggering.
Oelita released her man from his cell, comforting him. He was a guileless fellow who feared he had done her grievous wrong. She thanked him for not letting the crystal come to harm. She gave him money and told him where he could stay to await further word from her.
“Noe!”
A painted temple courtesan, roguish in his sensual outfit, rushed through the relaxed crowd and spoke to Noe with the gaiety of an out-of-touch friend. He had introduced Gaet to Noe when she was working here, consoling those who claimed Ritual Suicide and entertaining those who merely came to the Temple to practice their wits.
“How’s the game?” she asked in the wry way she talked to people who never changed.
“The girls seem to prefer chess,” he lamented.
“You’re not losing your ways?”
“I need new colors, new makeup.”
Noe took his hand and brought him with them to share cakes — for a moment. They talked of books Oelita had never read, and of Saeb’s astonishing rendition of the Commandment Chant they were to hear tonight.
It was dizzying for a coastal villager to adjust to an exuberant people who were consciously building a city that they intended to be the dominant intellectual and ruling center of Geta. The loose, almost revealing gown Noe had insisted that Oelita wear was stylish but she had never worn such a thing before in public. She found their religious pragmatism refreshing — but shocking to coastal ears — and it frightened her that she, who had always taken such a delight in shocking people, sounded conservative to herself when her conversation was interlaced with these people’s easygoing disrespect for the temples they were totally committed to uphold.
Oelita was curious to visit the meat market. No such place existed in Sorrow. There the only meat was given away at the Temple when it was freshly available, or one waited to be invited to a funeral. Here it was sold by the temples at atrocious prices. Noe bought a small jar containing two pickled baby tongues. For a moment, remembering her own twins, Oelita hated Noe with a violent passion. Then she calmed herself. She had long ago learned that the way to tackle such widespread customs was to accept them utterly until she knew the very source of the thought patterns that created the custom. Only then did she have a chance of exorcising it.
God’s Will. That’s what they would say. In the end she would have to destroy their God. He was at the root of all this evil. They thought: I am not killing and eating these children; God is eating them and I am merely the arms and mouth He lacks. She shuddered.